Riley and Garland: Dont y' Darst!

James Whitcomb Riley was not long involved with politics, but he visited Washington, D.C. and the White House in 1888 and advocated for international copyright. When his friend and fellow Hoosier stater Benjamin Harrison became President of the United States, there were rumors that Riley would get some kind of political appointment. Nothing came of these rumors but, years later, when William McKinley was President, rumors were renewed. Wisconsin-born writer Hamlin Garland warned his friend in a letter dated December 19, 1898:

There is some talk here of your going abroad as a consul — but dont y' do it. Dont y' Darst! You've got a bigger mission than t'go to any dam ol' forin port. 

Garland was playfully using the same kind of dialect Riley became known for in his poetry. Garland also couldn't resist a stab at another writer, Bret Harte, who had recently taken successive consul appointment in Germany and Scotland. After his political appointments were up, Harte stayed in Europe and settled in London — causing some critics to suggest that his time overseas took the American-ness out of him. As Garland writes to Riley:

You'll be like Bret Harte git fat an' forget what y'r country looks like — an you'll fergit the "County Ditch" an' Kingry's Mil an' all them thare things we like t' hear about.

Riley never was offered an appointment after all, and his work continued to utilize the same kind of folksy tone that Garland seemed to love, like that used in Riley's poem "Kingry's Mill":

On old Brandywine — about
Where White's Lots is now laid out,
And the old crick narries down
To the ditch that splits the town,—
Kingry's Mill stood. Hardly see
Where the old dam ust to be;
Shallor, long, dry trought o' grass
Where the old race ust to pass!

That's be'n forty years ago —
Forty years o' frost and snow —
Forty years o' shade and shine
Sence them boyhood-days o' mine—!
All the old landmarks o' town.
Changed about, er rotted down!
Where's the Tanyard? Where's the Still?
Tell me where's old Kingry's Mill?

Don't seem furder back, to me,
I'll be dogg'd! Than yisterd'y,
Since us fellers, in bare feet
And straw hats, went through the wheat,
Cuttin' 'crost the shortest shoot
Fer that-air old ellum root
Jest above the mill-dam — where
The blame' cars now crosses there!

Through the willers down the crick
We could see the old mill stick
Its red gable up, as if
It jest knowed we'd stol'd the skiff!
See the winders in the sun
Blink like they wuz wonderun'
What the miller ort to do
With sich boys as me and you!

But old Kingry—! Who could fear
That old chap, with all his cheer—?
Leanin' at the window-sill,
Er the half-door o' the mill,
Swoppin' lies, and pokin' fun,
'N jigglin' like his hoppers done—
Laughin' grists o' gold and red
Right out o' the wagon-bed!

What did he keer where we went—?
"Jest keep out o' devilment,
And don't fool around the belts,
Bolts, ner burrs, ner nothin' else
'Bout the blame machinery,
And that's all I ast!" says-ee.
Then we'd climb the stairs, and play
In the bran-bins half the day!

Rickollect the dusty wall,
And the spider-webs, and all!
Rickollect the trimblin' spout
Where the meal come josslln' out—
Stand and comb yer fingers through
The fool-truck an hour er two—
Felt so sorto' warm-like and
Soothin' to a feller's hand!

Climb, high up above the stream,
And "coon" out the wobbly beam
And peek down from out the lof'
Where the weather-boards was off—
Gee-mun-nee! w'y, it takes grit
Even jest to think of it—!
Lookin' 'way down there below
On the worter roarin' so!

Rickollect the flume, and wheel,
And the worter slosh and reel
And jest ravel out in froth
Flossier'n satin cloth!
Rickollect them paddles jest
Knock the bubbles galley-west,
And plunge under, and come up
Drippin' like a worter-pup!

And to see them old things gone
That I onc't was bettin' on,
In rale p'int o' fact, I feel
kindo' like that worter-wheel—,
Sorto' drippy-like and wet
Round the eyes — but paddlin' yet,
And in mem'ry, loafin' still
Down around old Kingry's Mill!

Harris: under the spell of the old town

The people of Eatonton, Georgia were proud of their native son, Joel Chandler Harris, as he rose to literary fame. Best known for his Uncle Remus tales, Harris was then living in Atlanta, in a home he called Wren's Nest. He was some 80 miles from the town of his birth — not so very far, which made it so hard for him to turn down an offer to return to Eatonton. In a letter dated November 12, 1901, he wrote:

I have delayed answering your letter hoping to see my way clear to accepting the invitation which you were kind enough to send me, and which I assure you is very highly appreciated. Though I have been away so many years, I still feel that Eatonton is my home and the people there my best friends. I love them all, so much so that I have never written anything to be published in book form that I did not ask myself if there could be anything in it which my friends there would not approve. Thus, in a way, they have been my most helpful critics. I thank you heartily for the invitation and regret that a pressure of work will prevent me from accepting.

Harris was then working on what would become Gabriel Tolliver, a book which he dedicated to his friend James Whitcomb Riley. He also admitted to Riley that he had allowed the interest of his characters to overshadow the story. Even so, the book was set in Shady Dale, a fictionalized version of Eatonton, which served as an equally important character in Harris's writings.

The book begins not unlike the invitation he received in 1901: "Cephas! here is a letter for you, and it is from Shady Dale! I know you will be happy now." The narrative voice then admits that he far too often spoke of the town of his youth, that his recollections of Shady Dale were "coloured" and that he saw the people only through his "boyhood-eyes." The other character in that opening, Sophia, warns Cephas that if he were to go back, he'd learn they weren't so different from everyone else after all. "This was absurd, of course—or, rather, it would have been absurd for any one else to make the suggestion; for at that particular time, Sophia was a trifle jealous of Shady Dale and its people."

From Gabriel Tolliver's chapter "A Town with a History":

Before, during, and after the war, Shady Dale presented always the same aspect of serene repose. It was, as you may say, a town with a history. Then, as now, there were towns all about that had no such fortunate appendage behind them to explain their origin... Shady Dale is no city, and it may be that its public spirited citizens stretch the meaning of the term when they call it a town. Nevertheless, the community has a well-defined history...

But to set forth its origin is not to describe its beauty, which is of a character that refuses to submit to description... You are inevitably impressed with a sense of the attractiveness of the place; you fall under the spell of the old town... And yet if you were called upon to define the nature of the spell, what could you say? What name could you give to the tremulous beauty that hovers about and around the place, when the fresh green leaves of the great trees are fluttering in the cool wind, and everything is touched and illumined by the tender colours of spring? Under what heading in the catalogue of things would you place the vivid richness which animates the town and the landscape all around when the summer is at its height? And how could you describe the harmony that time has brought about between the fine, old houses and the setting in which they are grouped?

All these things are elusive; they make themselves keenly felt, but they do not lend themselves to analysis.

Lucy Larcom's labor of love

I find that people are imagining I have been very industrious this winter, by the way they talk about my new book, which they suppose is something original. I don't want to give wrong impressions in that way, as the selections are more valuable on their own account than mine.

So wrote Lucy Larcom to publisher James T. Fields from Beverly, Massachusetts on May 20, 1866. The book in question was already receiving a little hype, though not yet officially announced. Titled Breathings of the Better Life when published the next year, it was not a book written by Larcom, but edited by her. The book compiled several prose sketches and poems, including several anonymous works and a few traditional hymns. All the selections follow a theme: finding inspiration in saints and Biblical quotes to apply to contemporary life. As Larcom described it, these are "voices that cannot fail to inspire the traveller struggling upward to a better life." Still, she told Fields, "It has been altogether a labor of love with me."

In fact, Larcom wanted to remove herself from the book as much as possible in the hopes of letting the content speak for itself. In her letter to Fields, she asked her name by listed only as "Miss Larcom" — or, better still, even less obtrusively as "L. L." She also emphasized to Fields that the book had to have the lowest cover price possible. Though the final publication did include her full name, the preface in the book carefully ascribed its purpose: an inexpensive book for those who did not have a large library, in a portable size that could be taken to "the workshop, the camp, or the sick-room," and serve like "the presence of a friend." Larcom goes on:

The soul, cramped among the petty vexations of earth, needs to keep its windows constantly open to the invigorating air of large and free ideas: and what thought is so grand as that of an ever-present God, in whom all that is vital in humanity breathes and grows? The want of every human being is a wider expansion to receive from Him, and to give of His; fuller inspirations and outbreathings of that Spirit by which man is created anew in Him, a living soul.

Religion is life inspired by Heavenly Love; and life is something fresh and cheerful and vigorous. To forget self, to keep the heart buoyant with the thought of God, and to pour forth this continual influx of spiritual health heavenward in praise, and earthward in streams of blessing, — this is the essence of human, saintly, and angelic joy; the genuine Christ-life, the one life of the saved, on earth or in heaven.

The book includes both prose and poetry. Few of the listings include the full name of the author, but some are recognizable: Edmund Hamilton Sears, Henry Ward Beecher, and Larcom's friend John Greenleaf Whittier. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a former minister, was represented by this excerpt from his long poem "Threnody":

Wilt thou not ope thy heart to know
What rainbows teach, and sunsets show,—
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of saints that inly burned, —
Saying, "What is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent;
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain;
Heart's love will meet thee again."

Rebecca Harding Davis: a modern story

Rebecca Harding Davis submitted her manuscript for "David Gaunt" to James T. Fields, editor and publisher of The Atlantic Monthly and co-owner of Ticknor and Fields publishing house, on May 14, 1862. Davis, or, rather Miss Harding at the time, was also looking for affirmation for what she called "a very abolition story" and asked Fields if it would meet a "cordial welcome." While writing the work, she had been preparing for a visit to the Northeast to meet Fields and other literary notables in New England before passing through Philadelphia (where she would meet her future husband L. Clarke Davis). She worried that, if her latest work was not well received, the author would be equally poorly received. She was willing, she offered, to skip her trip and stay at home in Wheeling, [West] Virginia "and write something else."

But Davis was somewhat baiting Fields, the man who had a year earlier published her novella and landmark in literary realism Life in the Iron Mills. The work proved popular and Davis was being courted by another publisher — a fact which she revealed to Fields. If she could write something about the current Civil War, this publisher offered liberal payment. She was only then becoming aware that Ticknor and Fields had been more than stingy in publishing her book Margaret Howth, which also proved a solid seller. "What do you think?" she asked Fields. "Had I better still abide by the old flag? meaning T&F?" Within days, Fields sent payment for "David Gaunt" and it was published beginning in the September 1862 issue as the lead article. Still, she warned him: "Don't leave any thing out of it in publishing it... deformity is better than a scar you know."

"David Gaunt" follows the titular character, a Calvinist minister with a blind patriotism who has difficulty understanding the realities of war. It also follows a female character named Thoedora and her repressed life in conservative rural Virginia (representing "the drift of most women's lives"). Both characters, ordinary American residents generally outside of politics, find themselves on different sides of the issue of slavery, and are forced to redefine their lives amidst the harsh Civil War. From the first chapter of the story:

What kind of sword, do you think, was that which old Christian had in that famous fight of his with Apollyon, long ago? He cut the fiend to the marrow with it, you remember, at last; though the battle went hardly with him, too, for a time. Some of his blood, [John] Bunyan says, is on the stones of the valley to this day. That is a vague record of the combat between the man and the dragon in that strange little valley, with its perpetual evening twilight and calm, its meadows crusted with lilies, its herd-boy with his quiet song, close upon the precincts of hell. It fades back, the valley and the battle, dim enough, from the sober freshness of this summer morning. Look out of the window here, at the hubbub of the early streets, the freckled children racing past to school, the dewy shimmer of yonder willows in the sunlight, like drifts of pale green vapor. Where is Apollyon? does he put himself into flesh and blood, as then, nowadays? And the sword which Christian used, like a man, in his deed of derring-do?

Reading the quaint history, just now, I have a mind to tell you a modern story. It is not long: only how, a few months ago, a poor itinerant, and a young girl, (like these going by with baskets on their arms,) who lived up in these Virginia hills, met Evil in their lives, and how it fared with them: how they thought that they were in the Valley of Humiliation, that they were Christian, and Rebellion and Infidelity Apollyon; the different ways they chose to combat him; the weapons they used. I can tell you that; but you do not know — do you ? — what kind of sword old Christian used, or where it is, or whether its edge is rusted.

I must not stop to ask more, for these war-days are short, and the story might be cold before you heard it.

*For information in this post, I am heavily indebted to Sharon M. Harris's Rebecca Harding Davis and American Realism (1991).

Dunbar: the ability to manage dialect

You ask my opinion about Negro dialect in literature. Well, I frankly believe in everyone following his bent. If it be so that one has a special aptitude for dialect work, why it is only right that dialect should be made a specialty. But if one should be like me — absolutely devoid of the ability to manage dialect — I don't see the necessity of ramming and forcing oneself into that plane because one is a Negro or a Southerner.

So wrote Alice Ruth Moore to her future husband Paul Laurence Dunbar on May 7, 1895. Moore was herself a poet, and the letter clearly implies that Dunbar felt uncomfortable taking advantage of his status as an up-and-coming black poet by writing in a stereotypical black dialect. He was correct to be concerned. Though he also wrote in traditional poetic language, it was his dialect poetry that soon launched his popularity. He was not a Southerner, having been born in Dayton, Ohio; Moore, on the other hand, was from New Orleans. One of Dunbar's boosters was William Dean Howells, who particularly enjoyed the dialect work. Two years after his letter to Moore, Dunbar admitted that Howells had done him "irrevocable harm"; the public came to expect a black dialect from the pen of Paul Laurence Dunbar, and was less likely to accept his more traditional work.

Dunbar was then 22 years old and had published his book Oak and Ivy two years earlier. That book included only a few dialect poems. His next book, Majors and Minors (1895) included a separate section for "Humor and Dialect." The same year, Moore published her first book, Violets and Other Tales. Though some of the prose stories in that collection had characters who spoke with Southern dialogue, her poetry used traditional language. One of Dunbar's more famous dialect poems is "A Negro Love Song":

Seen my lady home las' night,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Heahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'um huh eye,
An' a smile go flitin' by—
   Jump back honey, jump back.

Heahd de win' blow thoo de pines,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
Mockin' bird was singin, fine,
   Jump back honey, jump back.
An' my hea't was beatin' so,
When I reached my lady's do',
Dat I couldn't ba' to go—
   Jump back, honey, jump back.

Put my ahm aroun' huh wais',
   Jump back, honey, jump back.
Raised huh lips an took a tase',
   Jump back, honey, jump back.
Love me honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?
An' she ansawhd: "'Cose I do"—
   Jump back, honey, jump back.

Catharine Sedgwick: to pour a golden light

Nevertheless, my dearest sister, I would not have you love me any less than you do, because your affection has an irresistible power to improve and to elevate, to lift above low attachments, to separate from unworthy associations, to cheer me when I am sad, to rouse me when I am inefficient, to rescue both me and the world from that sort of morbid quarrel into which we are apt to get with each other, when it seems as if there were nothing here worth living for, and to pour a golden light on every object that skirts the path of my pilgrimage.

The above quote comes from a letter from Robert Sedgwick to his sister, the author Catharine Maria Sedgwick, March 28, 1816. Miss Sedgwick, as she was often named, was then about 26 years old, had already begun submitting short contributions to periodicals. She was still six years away from her first novel, A New-England Tale (1822), and 11 years away from her most popular work, Hope Leslie (1827). These works and various others made her one of the first financially successful women writers in the United States — and one of the most popular.

Much of Sedgwick's writings promoted virtue, religious tolerance, and strong roles for women. She never married and remained quite devoted to her large family (she was the ninth child in the family). Her four brothers supported her work as a writer and encouraged her to publish when she was just starting. Throughout her life, she alternated living with her brother Charles in western Massachusetts and with her brother Robert in New York City. In fact, she dedicated her fourth novel, Clarence; Or, a Tale of Our Own Times (1830), "To my Brothers — my best friends... as a tribute of affection." As she was completing the novel, she wrote to her brother Charles that she was unsatisfied with it: "That is the misfortune of a familiarity with fine works, carrying your taste so far ahead of your capacity."

When she reissued Clarence nearly two decades later, Sedgwick admitted that popularity, and novels in particular, were "ephemeral." She hoped, nevertheless, readers would enjoy the "home atmosphere" of this novel of manners set in New York. More than that, Sedgwick had written a book that questioned the development of American society, concerned that there was less concern for spiritual or social responsibilities in a world that emphasized profit and materialism.

Stowe: what sort of woman I am!

"So you want to know what sort of woman I am!" wrote Harriet Beecher Stowe with obvious surprise. The letter, dated from Andover, Massachusetts, on February 16, 1853, was written in response to that request and Stowe happily complied. She described herself as, "To begin with... I am a little bit of a woman, — somewhat more than forty, about as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very much to look at in my best days, and looking like a used-up article now."

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had been published in book form slightly less than a year earlier. Considering the recipient of Stowe's letter was a stranger to her, she was quite open, describing that Uncle Tom's Cabin was inspired in part by her own poor state and "awful scenes and bitter sorrows" of her own life, including the "peculiar bitterness" and "almost cruel suffering" of the death of one of her children. She was equally forthcoming about her poverty, even noting she did not own enough teacups for a family visit to her home. "But then I was abundantly enriched with wealth of another sort," she wrote. Her first payments from publishing stories, she said, was used to purchase a feather-bed, "the most profitable investment" she could think of at the time — she compared it to the philosopher's stone.

Now, Stowe noted, she was working on a follow-up to her novel: "It will contain all the facts and documents on which that story was founded, and an immense body of facts, reports of trials, legal documents, and testimony of people now living South, which will more than confirm every statement in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'..." The book, which would be published later that year as A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, was causing her difficulty because of the subject matter. "This horror, this nightmare abomination!" she wrote of slavery, "can it be in my country? It lies like lead on my heart, it shadows my life with sorrow."

Stowe's letter was addressed to Eliza Lee Follen, herself a published author, which may explain why Stowe was so forthcoming about personal details. She admitted to having felt already acquainted since her girlhood, having made "daily use of your poems for children." In fact, years ago, Stowe had considered writing to Follen to introduce herself and thank her for her work. In her first book, published 1839, Follen included an anti-slavery poem, "Remember the Slave," which Stowe almost certainly admired:

Mother, whene'er around your child
      You clasp your arms in love;
And when, with grateful joy, you raise
      Your eyes to God above, —

Think of the negro mother, when
      Her child is torn away,
Sold for a little slave — O, then,
      For that poor mother pray...

Ye Christians! ministers of Him
      Who came to make men free,

When, at the Almighty Maker’s throne
      You bend the suppliant knee,—

From the deep fountains of your soul
      Then let your prayers ascend

For the poor slave, who hardly knows
      That God is still his friend.

Let all who know that God is just,
      That Jesus came to save,

Unite in the most holy cause
      Of the forsaken slave.

Douglass: where the light comes

"It was a meeting long to be remembered," concluded William Cooper Nell in a letter to a colleague. The letter, dated February 15, 1848, described an anti-slavery speech given by Frederick Douglass in New Bedford, Massachusetts. In the "mere sketch," Nell emphasized that, "New Bedford has a widely spread fame as an Anti-Slavery town." The inhabitants of that town of 16,000 had actively helped gain sympathy for the cause, in part because the population included "twelve hundred colored people," 75% of which had come from enslavement. Douglass was one of them for a time.

After running away from enslavement, Douglass temporarily settled in New Bedford (and it was here that he chose his last name). Returning to New Bedford that February, he particularly noted the corruption of the federal government which had just annexed Texas, which he believed was a ploy to enhance slave power in the Senate, not to mention "the spirit of conquest that possesses the American heart," as Nell reported. In his speech, Douglass also broke down the views of Senator Henry Clay, who had been favoring colonization. This plan to remove free blacks and send them to Africa was an injustice, Douglass said. Nell quoted Douglass:

It [e.g. the colonization plan] is our deadly enemy, we shall not obey its wishes, but shall do that which Mr. Clay 'wishes' us not to do; we shall stay here in our country, identified with the slave, laboring to obtain our rights and his, and we shall secure them... The hand of Providence is with, and guides us; crush us to the earth, and we rise again; try to starve us, and we grow strong and vigorous; close up your hearts, legislate against us, and try to make us hate the land of our birth, and we love it the more. You may try to keep us low, ignorant and in the dark; but the light is shining all around; to it, though slowly, yet surely will come... Slavery cannot exist where the light comes.

Nell imagined what it would be like if Douglass and Clay had a public debate over the question in Washington, D.C. "What a spectacle!" he imagined, "A negro, and recently a slave, debating with the 'Demosthenes of the nation.'"

Nell's letter was published several days later in the North Star, an anti-slavery newspaper founded by Douglass and Nell in New York. At the end of it, he reiterated their shared belief that the press would help their cause, and that those who supported the North Star were supporting abolitionism. Douglass's speech, he reported, resulted in 20 new subscribers that day.

Botta: How good and how happy we ought to be!

Some thoughts for the new year from Anne Charlotte Lynch Botta, January 2, 1853:

How good and how happy we ought to be! But how impossible it seems for a human being to be really happy. Every new possession seems to bring a new want. This utter insufficiency of everything human and earthly, to satisfy the soul, seems one of the strongest proofs of its immortality.

I once thought of writing a kind of fairy tale, in which the hero should by some supernatural aid have all his wishes gratified. He should desire wealth, fame, love, power, and each in turn should fail to satisfy. At last, in despair, he should resign his supernatural power of accomplishing his wishes, and seek from the guardian spirit who attended him the secret of that happiness he had failed to secure. He now learns for the first time that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within him." That he carries it with him and diffuses it around. That it is in seeking the happiness and good of others that he is to find his own, rather than in the pursuit of selfish ends. How do you like the plot?

The Vermont-born Botta became better known as a social hostess for literary salons than for her own writing. Her welcoming personality enamored her to many, from fellow writers to political figures. She apparently never wrote the "fairy tale" she outlined above. Her writings, however, express similar sentiments of optimism in a cynical world, usually guided by her faith. She often compared life to a battle, one which is led by a perfect deity, yet which sees us struggle in our attempts to achieve perfection. Perhaps no short poem of hers better displays her outlook than one simply titled "To --" (1849):

In the noble army of Reform

     Thou art a pioneer; 

And bravely wields thy good right arm,

     The broadsword and the spear.

Thou may'st not see the battle's close,
     The victory may'st not win:

But the scars upon thy spirit prove,
     Thou hast not lived in vain.

Garland and Whitman: endlessly rocking

Hamlin Garland had disobeyed doctor's orders — not his doctor, but that of Walt Whitman. When Garland visited the aging poet at his home in New Jersey, his health was so poor that Garland was asked to stay no more than two minutes. But the Wisconsin-born author and educator, who was then living in Massachusetts, stayed for a half an hour.

Garland was enamored with Whitman and his work. Back in Waltham, Massachusetts, he started a series of classes on Whitman attended by 40 ladies. On November 9, 1888, he wrote of that class to the poet:

I talked last night to my Waltham class (of forty ladies) about your work and read to them. I wish you could have seen how deeply attentive they were and how moved by "Out of the Cradle" "To Think of Time" "Sparkles from the Wheel" and others. Many of them will now read your works carefully and understandingly.

Garland, a poet himself, particularly recommended that readers start with Specimen Days because reading his prose, he said, would prepare them to "sympathize" with his poetic views. Garland also noted he intended to write a review of November Boughs. True to his word, Garland's review was published in the Boston Evening Transcript only a week after his letter. Of course, Garland remembered Whitman's poor health and, as such, he concluded his letter with concern:  "It rejoices me to hear you are gaining [e.g. recovering]. I hope the winter will not be too severe for you — though I believe you stand the cold better than the heat." From the first poem Garland mentioned his students loved:

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bareheaded, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories sad brother, from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon late-risen and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of yearning and love there in the mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such as now they start the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither, ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man, yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them, but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing.

Victorian poets: sing more sweetly there

I am very glad to have a copy of your " Victorian Anthology." It is another monument to your learning, judgment, and taste. You certainly have done great service to the Victorian Age and to its bards. I had no idea there were so many singers—but the woods of England are full of birds and the birds sing more sweetly there than anywhere else.

Above is the letter from poet William Winter to editor Edmund Clarence Stedman, November 6, 1895. The book in question, Victorian Poets, was one of several editions of compilations; originally published in 1875, it had a companion in Stedman's popular anthology of American poets. The book was more than just a compilation, however, as it included lengthy discussions of the poets, their verses, and the period. These sorts of critical anthologies, and a few others, helped Stedman earn a place as the preeminent scholar of poetry by the turn of the century. His books regularly went into 30th editions and beyond. Fellow anthologist and poet Richard Henry Stoddard called his work "the most important contribution ever made by an American writer to the critical literature of the English poets."

But Stedman also took an odd step backward in the development and understanding of American poetry. Some 50 years earlier, Rufus Wilmot Griswold had established himself in the similar role of the arbiter of poetic taste and he clearly emphasized a need to improve American poetry, to celebrate distinctly American topics, and to overtake the assumption that English writers were inherently superior. Stedman reversed that, as Winter's letter shows.

To his credit, Stedman was open-minded and broad in his assessment. He considered somewhat controversial poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne, newer poets like Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and several women poets like the politically charged Augusta Webster. Perhaps most importantly, Stedman was able to establish the term for the period, the Victorian period, as the accepted term.

Edward Rowland Sill: like a fly on a pin

When Edward Rowland Sill heard that the well-known and highly-respected editor Edmund Clarence Stedman intended to include him in a book of poetry, he was hesitant. On October 13, 1885, he wrote to their mutual friend Thomas Bailey Aldrich:

Can you not tell Mr. Stedman (if his book is not yet beyond proofcorrecting) that one, at least, of the "twilight" poets, namely, "Sill," would much prefer to be left out of his enumeration? He had me in his "Century " article. I am not a publishing author (the booklet of verses of which I think I sent you a copy — "The Venus of Milo," etc., was never published, and never will be), and so might escape being stuck in his catalogue, like a fly on a pin. Don't you think?

Sill, Connecticut-born but widely-traveled, apparently refused to call himself an author or, perhaps more likely, refused to live up to the scrutiny of national exposure which Stedman's book would have drawn. Sill was not exaggerating. At the time of his letter, he had only published one book — a translation of another person's book. The manuscript he had shown Stedman was intended only for his friends, never for publication. He claimed many of his poems — "the confounded little things" he burned in manuscript. He died two years later, having never published a book. The poem he mentioned to Aldrich, however, "The Venus of Milo," was collected posthumously. From that poem:

  Before the broken marble, on a day,
There came a worshiper: a slanted ray
Struck in across the dimness of her shrine
And touched her face as to a smile divine;
For it was like the worship of a Greek
At her old altar. Thus I heard him speak: —

  Men call thee Love: is there no holier name
Than hers, the foam-born, laughter-loving dame?
Nay, for there is than love no holier name:
All words that pass the lips of mortal men
With inner and with outer meaning shine;
An outer gleam that meets the common ken,
An inner light that but the few divine.

Thou art the love celestial, seeking still
The soul beneath the form; the serene will;
The wisdom, of whose deeps the sages dream;
The unseen beauty that doth faintly gleam
In stars, and flowers, and waters where they roll;
The unheard music whose faint echoes even
Make whosoever hears a homesick soul
Thereafter, till he follow it to heaven.

Ultimately, Sill received only a passing comment, and not even his full name, in Stedman's book, which turned out to be a much more significant undertaking than a mere compilation. Stedman, in fact, produced a massive, all-encompassing, running catalogue of American poetry. Poets of America (1885) was meant to prove the important role that poetry played in defining American cultural and intellectual development. The book was a sort of historic record which meant to add to the more typical record of politics and war that end up in history books. Stedman believed that, with the advancement of the United States in general, with its power and wealth in particular, one would see it best reflected in its imaginative creations, with poetry as "its highest forms of expression." After all, he said, "The song of a nation is accepted as an ultimate test of the popular spirit."

Alcott: A Golden Goose (and a phoenix)

Weary after the sudden success of Little Women after years of hard work as a writer, Louisa May Alcott traveled to Europe with her sister May Alcott and a friend. The trip was in part for rest but also because she found her new celebrity status more than a bit burdensome. In Bex, Switzerland on August 7, 1870, she wrote to Thomas Niles, her agent for the Roberts Brothers publishing house, that she was still receiving multiple requests for contributions. "I am truly grateful," she told him, "but having come abroad for rest I am not inclined to try the treadmill till my year's vacation is over." Instead, Alcott offered Niles a poem which she called "a trifle in rhyme," which she said would serve "as a general answer to everybody." The poem, "The Lay of a Golden Goose," is among her most autobiographical works (and the title is a pun; "lay" is a synonym for "poem"):

Long ago in a poultry yard
One dull November morn,
Beneath a motherly soft wing
A little goose was born.

Who straightway peeped out of the shell
To view the world beyond,
Longing at once to sally forth
And paddle in the pond.

"Oh! be not rash," her father said,
A mild Socratic bird;
Her mother begged her not to stray
With many a warning word.

But little goosey was perverse,
And eagerly did cry,
"I've got a lovely pair of wings,
Of course I ought to fly."

The poem obviously references Alcott's own upbringing and the influence of her parents, but it also references her lack of success before Little Women. Owl characters in the poem note, "No useful egg was ever hatched / From transcendental nest." But the little goose was determined and soon is able to fly. Here, the poem directly addresses Niles, who inspired and pushed Alcott to write the book that became her most famous:

At length she came unto a stream
Most fertile of all Niles,
Where tuneful birds might soar and sing
Among the leafy isles.

Here did she build a little nest
Beside the waters still,
Where the parental goose could rest
Unvexed by any bill.

And here she paused to smooth her plumes,
Ruffled by many plagues;
When suddenly arose the cry,
"This goose lays golden eggs."

At the revelation of the goose's golden eggs, her previous critics, including fellow fowl, change their tune and begin praising the awkward little goose ("Rare birds have always been evoked / From transcendental nests!"). In fact, her newly converted supporters demanded she keep laying more and more golden eggs. After a while, however, she refused:

So to escape too many friends,
Without uncivil strife,
She ran to the Atlantic pond
And paddled for her life.

Soon up among the grand old Alps
She found two blessed things,
The health she had so nearly lost,
And rest for weary limbs.

But still across the briny deep
Couched in most friendly words,
Came prayers for letters, tales, or verse,
From literary birds.

Whereat the renovated fowl
With grateful thanks profuse,
Took from her wing a quill and wrote
This lay of a Golden Goose.

Despite her promises to herself, however, Alcott did find time to write during her vacation. While she was in Rome, she completed the sequel to her book, Little Men. Still, she also enjoyed the rest she so desperately desired. In the same letter to Niles, she concluded, "I am rising from my ashes in a most phoenix-like manner."

Cable: Do everything cheerfully

Cable in 1915

Novelist George Washington Cable was with the Union Club in Boston when he wrote home to his oldest son in New Orleans on June 10, 1881, offering his insight on good living (and a few specific commands for his daughters):

I must send you a line for your own dear self. I am anxious to hear from you as well as from sweet mother, and I hope I may get a word or two from your own hand.

I could not in a whole hour tell you all the things I have seen since we parted. But I can say that all the time I saw the beauties of land or sea or hill or valley, whether nature's work or man's, I was still thinking of my beloved ones far away on the mountains.

Yet I did not fret, for I know that the Good Shepherd keeps my little flock, and my prayer is that their souls may be precious in His sight. I pray that they may be sweet, gentle, obedient children, trying to do their parents' will before the parents have to express it.

Be careful to help each other. Be amiable each to each. Remember in everything you do you are serving God. Do everything cheerfully—gladly.

Tell Mary not to tease and to keep her face at least half clean.

Tell Lucy I wish I had her here now with a little salt and pepper and mustard. I would eat her for dinner.

Tell Margaret not to forget her breakfast in the morning, her dinner afterwards, nor her supper in the evening. Tell her not to be cross to Lucy and to mind mother as well as sister Louise.

Now, form in procession and each kiss mother as you pass by.

Here are four kisses for four sweet girls and four for their dear mother.

Cable began to feel uncomfortable in his native South as he wrote a series of controversial essays on Civil Rights. He eventually moved with his family to Northampton, Massachusetts, only a few years after this letter was written.

Lynch and Willis: love or be famous

When Nathaniel Parker Willis and his (second) wife Cornelia heard of Anne Charlotte Lynch's engagement to Vincenzo Botta, they immediately wrote a letter of congratulations. The letter, dated March 24, 1855, expresses hope from the Willises for Lynch's future:

The positive news of your coming marriage affected us very strongly, of course. Nellie and I love you so well that we tremble while we rejoice in new wings so venturesome, though so expanding of scope and lift... You are above destiny — subject naturally to nothing.

Lynch had almost met Botta (pictured), a professor in Turin, Italy, while traveling through Europe two years earlier. The Italian government had sent him to the United States to research the American education system (he had previously been sent to Germany with a similar mission) and so they missed one another. Determined he should meet her, he supposedly carried six letters of introduction on his behalf. Back in New York after her European travels, Botta visited her daily until he finally proposed. He did not return to Italy, instead taking a job at City University of New York.

Willis had befriended Lynch, whom he called "Lynchie," many years earlier and was apparently ecstatic about her coming wedding. He invited the couple to visit him at Idlewild, his home on the Hudson River: "Our glen is a place for the happy... We trust you will both feel more at home at Idlewild than anywhere else." Willis adds that "no woman ever deserved more love" than Lynch. She, by then, had already established herself as a leading hostess for literary salons and had published several poems herself. In 1845, she had asked Willis for his opinion of her writing. Calling himself her "literary godfather," he offered a telling assessment of his own literary theory and his prediction for Lynch:

Poetry is a shadow over the heart that enables us to see to the bottom-like clouds cutting off the sunshine from a well. I now see the truth in the well of your heart, but I do not know as I dare tell you what it is like. You would be bound to deny a part of it, true or not, and (to tell a truth that is all my own) I do not yet feel sufficiently taken into your confidence to venture on translating your pulses to yourself—no; I will not venture!
...The intense passionateness of your nature is all ready for utterance in undying language; and that if you do not breathe your heart soon upon an absorbent object, you will either be corroded by the stifled intensity of undeveloped feeling, or you will overflow with poetry and (like other volcanoes that find a vent) blacken the verdure around you with the cinders of exposed agonies. In short, you must love or be famous!

Dunbar: Howells has done me irrevocable harm

Paul Laurence Dunbar had reason both to be thankful to editor/critic William Dean Howells and to be upset with him. Howells had used his influence to launch Dunbar's national fame. In doing so, however, he also drew attention specifically to Dunbar's dialect poems and encouraged him to do more of them (and less of his more traditional works). In doing so, Howells limited the public's expectation of Dunbar's work as stereotypically black. Worse, the problem was compounded by other critics who followed the word of the "Dean of American Letters." The poet was acutely aware of the problem. As he wrote in a letter dated March 15, 1897:

One critic says a thing and the rest hasten to say the same thing, in many instances using the identical words. I see now very clearly that Mr. Howells has done me irrevocable harm in the dictum he laid down regarding my dialect verse.

Similar sentiments were expressed overseas as well. Dunbar wanted to stay popular and successful. As such, he had to cater much of his work to the expectations Howells created for his potential readers. Further, critics implied he only deserved recognition because he was black; similar writings from a white person were less impressive. Dunbar, confined to this sphere, had difficulty fighting against it. Still, enough of his works challenge and complicate his contemporary reputation. Such tension is clear in one of his most powerful works "We Wear the Mask":

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
     It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
     We wear the mask.

We smile, but oh great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile,
But let the world dream otherwise,
     We wear the mask!

Cooper: exceedingly anxious to go abroad

James Cooper (he had not yet added the "Fenimore" to his name) was not happy with his financial situation in the United States. He had met with some success and substantial fame from his novels like Precaution, The Pioneer and The Last of the Mohicans but he felt that a job in Europe would be more suitable to him. More importantly, he anticipated that the Europeans had better taste than his fellow Americans.

Accordingly, on March 9, 1826, he wrote to New York Governor De Witt Clinton for help. Though he apologized for the unimportant request compared to his other duties, Cooper hoped Clinton would put in a good word for him for a federal appointment:

I am exceedingly anxious to go abroad with my family, for three or four years, and am induced both by prudence and feeling, to wish to do so, in some situation connected with the Government. My views are far from being very exalted, however, on this subject. I should prefer being on the waters of the Mediterranean, or near them, and would be exceedingly happy to find myself invested with any consulate that would yield me a moderate sum. I confess I know of no particular situation, and after waiting several years with the same desire, I do not find myself more likely to obtain the requisite information in time to apply.

Cooper noted frankly his embarrassment for requesting such a favor, also admitting he was unaware of "the propriety or impropriety" of such a request. He was living on Greenwich Street in New York with his family that winter and, it is said, he once bumped into his neighbor William Cullen Bryant. Cooper invited the poet to join him for dinner at his home at 345 Greenwich Street but Bryant asked him to write the address down lest he forget. The rather gruff Cooper responded, "Can't you remember three-four-five?"

Cooper traveled to Washington D.C. under the advisement of Governor Clinton (and, possibly, from Bryant too). There, Secretary of State Henry Clay offered him a position as Minister to Sweden and Norway; Cooper declined and was instead granted a consulship to Lyons (France). There, he continued to write, particularly stories at sea, including The Red Rover and The Water Witch. The Coopers returned to the United States in 1833.

A Principle which we call Love of Freedom

In every human Breast, God has implanted a Principle which we call Love of Freedom; it is impatient of Oppression, and pants for Deliverance.

The quote is from a letter dated February 11, 1774, by Phillis Wheatley, recognized as the first poet of African descent published in the New World. At the time she wrote this letter, Phillis was about 20 years old, having been brought to the Massachusetts Colony without her permission when she was a young girl. Enslaved by the Wheatley family, her true name was forgotten and she was instead named for the slave ship which brought her from her native Africa. Her enslavers taught her to read and write and particularly helped develop her religious life.

Phillis was, by then, already a published poet and the novelty of an African poet made her somewhat popular. She was no less enslaved, however, and her letter expresses the tension against the system of slavery as the colonists were beginning to look for a revolution to protect their freedom. She saw the hypocrisy in the situation, and compared her fellow slaves to the Biblical Egyptian slaves, admitting that they shared the same desire for freedom:

God grant Deliverance in his own Way and Time, and get him honour upon all those whose Avarice impels them to countenance and help forward the Calamities of their fellow Creatures. This I desire not for their Hurt, but to convince them of the strange Absurdity of their Conduct whose Words and Actions are so diametrically opposite, How well the Cry for Liberty, and the reverse Disposition for the exercise of oppressive power over others agree I humbly think it does not require the penetration of a Philosopher to determine.

Some of her poems include subversive cries against slavery, but this letter is explicit. She is "impatient" and "pants" for freedom, and notes how obvious the problem should be. It was published in several newspapers as early as a month later. It would not be another four years before she was granted her freedom.

Cawein to Riley: recognition of your genius

"Dear old boy," began Madison Cawein's telegram to James Whitcomb Riley, dated, January 25, 1912:

I want to be the first to congratulate you on receiving the gold medal for poetry. Great enthusiasm at Institute dinner over the award. Am proud of you over this national recognition of your genius.

The award in question was from the National Institute of Arts and Letters, an organization which Riley joined in 1908. Cawein was in attendance at that dinner, not because he had any hope of receiving the award but, as he wrote, "I want to be present on that occasion and see to whom the gold medal is to be presented." Cawein and the other voting members selected Riley unanimously. Riley himself, however, was not present; only two years before his award, Riley suffered a debilitating stroke that left him without the full use of his writing hand, but also in a deep depression. He was also still battling his alcoholism. But the very public admiration was a bit of a boost to him, and 1912 became an important year for the "Hoosier Poet."

He was asked, for example, to record himself reading some of his poems. By October of that year, the governor of Indiana declared Riley's birthday as Riley Day, and schools celebrated his poetry that day. In that year, he also re-published Rhymes of Childhood, which became his highest selling book. By 1913, he returned to public appearances with the aid of a cane.

Cawein wrote to a friend that Riley's gold medal was "the crown for his life work." He admitted that Riley should "feel proud of that medal, as doubtless he does, and should now be content to die, as perhaps he is." The year 1912 proved less fortunate for the Kentuckian poet Madison Cawein, however. His financial situation suffered miserably from the stock market crash, though he also began writing some of his most ambitious poems. Two years later, he was added to the relief list of the Authors Club before he died in 1914. Riley joined him in death two years later.

Hayne: looked down upon with contempt

Southern writing suffered a slow development in the early history of the United States, and certainly in the first half of the 19th century. Literary culture was sparse at the time; Southern authors who were successful typically relied on Northern readers for their popularity. Worse, those who did write in the South were scoffed at by their neighbors.

On December 28, 1859, struggling Southern poet Paul Hamilton Hayne complained about it to the highly successful Northern poet and editor James Russell Lowell: The "very profession [of poet] ... is looked down upon with contempt." Hayne was particularly bitter because he hoped to use poetry as his sole source of income.

By the date on his letter, Hayne was less than a month shy of his 30th birthday, though he had already published two volumes of poetry and was working on his third. The first, simply titled Poems, was published in 1855 in Boston — not the South. Two years later, his Sonnets, and Other Poems was published in his native Charleston, receiving little attention. Hayne's third book would be printed by Lowell's Boston publishers, Ticknor and Fields.

By the time he died in 1886, Hayne was recognized as the "Poet Laureate of the South" and one of the writers most responsible for a "new South" which respected literature. Some of his works were printed in the Atlantic Monthly while Lowell was the magazine's editor. Here is one of his earlier poems, "The Poet's Trust in His Sorrow":

O God! how sad a doom is mine,
    To human seeming:
Thou hast called on me to resign
So much—much!—all—but the divine
    Delights of dreaming.

I set my dreams to music wild,
    A wealth of measures;
My lays, thank Heaven! are undefiled,
I sport with Fancy as a child
    With golden leisures.

And long as fate, not wholly stern,
    But this shall grant me,
Still with perennial faith to turn
Where Song's unsullied altars hum
    Nought, nought shall daunt me!

What though my worldly state he low
    Beyond redressing;
I own an inner flame whose glow
Makes radiant all the outward show;
    My last great blessing!