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diff --git a/16622.txt b/16622.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1e5594e --- /dev/null +++ b/16622.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4770 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Hearthstones of Dixie +by La Salle Corbell Pickett + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Literary Hearthstones of Dixie + +Author: La Salle Corbell Pickett + +Release Date: August 30, 2005 [EBook #16622] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE *** + + + + +Produced by Mark C. Orton and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: THE HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON, ASHLAND PLACE +Now owned by Mrs. George Fearn, Jr.] + + + +LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE + + + +_By_ + +LA SALLE CORBELL PICKETT + +AUTHOR OF "PICKETT AND HIS MEN," "JINNY," ETC. + + + +_With Portraits and Illustrations_ + + + +PHILADELPHIA & LONDON + +J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY + +1912 + +COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY +COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY + + +PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1912 + +PRINTED BY J.B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY +AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS +PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A. + + + + + Transcriber's Note: + + There is an inconsistency in the fifth paragraph of the Forword + where the author refers to Dr. Bagley's "The Old Fashioned + Gentleman," and the reference to Dr. Bagby's "The Old Virginia + Gentleman" in the chapter "Bacon and Greens". + + + + +FOREWORD. + + +The fires still glow upon the hearthstones to which our southern +writers in the olden days gave us friendly welcome. They are as bright +to-day as when, "four feet on the fender," we talked with some gifted +friend whose pen, dipped in the heart's blood of life, gave word to +thoughts which had flamed within us and sought vainly to escape the +walls of our being that they might go out to the world and fulfil their +mission. They who built the shrines before which we offer our devotion +have passed from the world of men, but the fires they kindled yet burn +with fadeless light. + +To us who have dwelt in the same environment and found beauty in the +same scenes that inspired them to eloquent expression of the thoughts, +the loves, the hopes, and the aspirations which were our own as well +as theirs, these writers of our South are living still and will live +through the long procession of the years. In the garden of our lives +they planted the flowers of poesy, of fable, and of romance. With the +changes of the years those flowers may have passed into the realm of +the old-fashioned, like the blossoms in Grandmother's garden, but are +there any sweeter or more royally blooming than these? + +The lustre of our gifted ones is not dimmed by the passage of time, +but in the rush of new books upon the world the readers of to-day lose +sight of the volumes which wove threads of gold into the joys and +sorrows of the generation now travelling the downward slope of life. +Their starry radiance is sometimes lost to view in the electric flash +of the present day. If these pages can in any slight way aid in +keeping their memory bright they will have reached their highest aim. + +The poets of Dixie in war days tended the flames that glowed upon the +altar of patriotism. Their lives were given to their country as truly +as if their blood had crimsoned the sod of hard-fought fields. They +gave of their best to our cause. Their bugle notes echo through the +years, and the mournful tones of the dirges they sang over the grave +of our dreams yet thrill our hearts. Before our eyes "The Conquered +Banner" sorrowfully droops on its staff and "The Sword of Lee" flashes +in the lines of our Poet-Priest. + +For the quotations with which are illustrated the varying phases of +his poetic thought I am indebted to the kindness of the publishers +of Father Ryan's poems, Messrs. P.J. Kenedy & Sons. For certain +selections from the poems of Hayne I am indebted to the Lothrop, +Lee & Shephard Company, and for selections from Dr. Bagley's "The +Old Fashioned Gentleman," Messrs. Charles Schribner's Sons. + +My thanks are due the Houghton, Mifflin Company for permission to +include in my paper on Margaret Junkin Preston two poems and other +quotations from the "Life and Letters of Margaret J. Preston," by Mrs. +Allan, the step-daughter of Mrs. Preston. + +The selections in the article on Georgia's doubly gifted son, Sidney +Lanier, poet and musician, are given through the kind permission of +Professor Edwin Mims and of Doubleday, Page & Company, publishers of +Mrs. Clay's "A Belle of the Fifties." + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + +"THE POET OF THE NIGHT" 11 + Edgar Allan Poe + +"THE SUNRISE POET" 41 + Sidney Lanier + +"THE POET OF THE PINES" 69 + Paul Hamilton Hayne + +"THE FLAME-BORN POET" 99 + Henry Timrod + +"FATHER ABBOT" 125 + William Gilmore Simms + +"UNCLE REMUS" 151 + Joel Chandler Harris + +"THE POET OF THE FLAG" 175 + Francis Scott Key + +"THE POET-PRIEST" 201 + Father Ryan + +"BACON AND GREENS" 225 + Dr. George William Bagby + +"WOMAN AND POET" 253 + Margaret Junkin Preston + +"THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'" 283 + Augusta Evans Wilson + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + PAGE + +THE HOME OF AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON, ASHLAND PLACE _Frontispiece_ + +EDGAR ALLAN POE 20 + +SIDNEY LANIER 58 + +HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS 116 + +WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS 126 + +JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS 156 + +SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA 166 + +FRANCIS SCOTT KEY 194 + +FATHER RYAN 204 + +ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE. FATHER RYAN'S LATE +RESIDENCE ADJOINING 216 + +DR. GEORGE W. BAGBY 236 + +"AVENEL" 240 + + + + +LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE + + + + +"THE POET OF THE NIGHT" + +EDGAR ALLAN POE + + +"I am a Virginian; at least, I call myself one, for I have resided all +my life until within the last few years in Richmond." + +Thus Edgar A. Poe wrote to a friend. The fact of his birth in Boston +he regarded as merely an unfortunate accident, or perhaps the work of +that malevolent "Imp of the Perverse" which apparently dominated his +life. That it constituted any tie between him and the "Hub of the +Universe," unless it might be the inverted tie of opposition, he never +admitted. The love which his charming little actress mother cherished +for the city in which she had enjoyed her greatest triumphs seemed to +have turned to hatred in the heart of her brilliant and erratic son. +In his short and disastrous sojourn in Boston, when his fortunes were +at their lowest ebb, it is not likely that his thought once turned to +the old house on Haskins, now Carver, Street, where his ill-starred +life began. + +The reason given by Poe, "I have resided there all my life until +within the last few years," suggests but slight cause for his love of +Richmond, the home of his childhood, the darkening clouds of which, +viewed through the softening lens of years, may have shaded off to +brighter tints, as the roughness of a landscape disappears and melts +into mystic, dreamy beauty as we journey far from the scene. + +The three women who had been the stars in the troubled sky of his +youth irradiated his memory of the Queen City of the South. In the +churchyard of historic old Saint John's, that once echoed to the words +of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Poe's mother lay +in an unidentified grave. In Hollywood slept his second mother, who +had surrounded his boyhood with the maternal affection that, like an +unopened rose in her heart, had awaited the coming of the little child +who was to be the sunbeam to develop it into perfect flowering. On +Shockoe Hill was the tomb of "Helen," his chum's mother, whose beauty +of face and heart brought the boyish soul + + To the Glory that was Greece + And the grandeur that was Rome. + +Through the three-fold sanctification of the twin priestesses, Love and +Sorrow, Richmond was his home. + +So Virginia claims her poet son, the tragedy of whose life is a gloomy, +though brilliant, page in the history of American literature. + +There are varying stories told of Poe's Richmond home. The impression +that he was the inmate of a stately mansion, where he was trained to +extravagance which wrought disaster in later years, is not borne out +by the evidence. When the loving heart and persistent will of Mrs. +Allan opened her husband's reluctant door to the orphaned son of +the unfortunate players, that door led into the second story of the +building at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Tobacco Alley, in which +Messrs. Ellis & Allan earned a comfortable, but not luxurious, living +by the sale of the commodity which gave the alley its name. As it was +customary in those days for merchants to live in the same building with +their business, the fact that he did so does not argue that Mr. Allan +was "down on his luck," but neither does it presuppose that he was the +possessor of wealth. But it was a home in the truest sense for little +Edgar, for it was radiant with the love of the tender-hearted woman who +had brought him within its friendly walls. + +From this home Mr. Allan went to London to establish a branch of the +Company business. He was accompanied by Mrs. Allan and Edgar, and the +boy was placed in the school of Stoke-Newington, shadowy with the dim +procession of the ages and gloomed over by the memory of Eugene Aram. +The pictured face of the head of the Manor School, Dr. Bransby, +indicates that the hapless boys under his care had stronger than +historic reasons for depression in that ancient institution. + +England was thrilling with the triumph of Waterloo, and even +Stoke-Newington must have awakened to the pulsing of the atmosphere. +Not far away were Byron, Shelley, and Keats, at the beginning of their +brief and brilliant careers, the glory and the tragedy of which may +have thrown a prophetic shadow over the American boy who was to travel +a yet darker path than any of these. + +Under the elms that bordered the old Roman road, what forms of antique +romance would lie in wait for the dreamy lad, joining him in his +Saturday afternoon walks and telling him stories of their youth in the +ancient days to mingle with the age-youth in the heart of the +dual-souled boy. The green lanes were haunted by memories of +broken-hearted lovers: Earl Percy, mourning for the fair and fickle +Anne; Essex, calling vainly for the royal ring that was to have saved +him; Leicester, the Lucky, a more contented ghost, returning in +pleasing reminiscence to the scenes of his earthly triumphs, +comfortably oblivious of his earthly crimes. What boy would not have +found inspiration in gazing at the massive walls, locked and barred +against him though they were, within which the immortal Robinson +Crusoe sprang into being and found that island of enchantment, the +favorite resort of the juvenile imagination in all the generations +since? + +At Stoke-Newington the introspective boy found little to win him from +that self-analysis which later enabled him to mystify a world that +rarely pauses to take heed of the ancient exhortation, "Know thyself." +In the depths of his own being he found the story of "William Wilson," +with its atmosphere of weird romance and its heart of solemn truth. + +Incidentally, he uplifted the reputation of the American boy, so far as +regarded Stoke-Newington's opinion, by assuring his mates when they +marvelled over his athletic triumphs and feats of skill that all the +boys in America could do those things. + +At the end of the year in which the family returned from +Stoke-Newington Mr. Allan moved into a plain little cottage a story and +a half high, with five rooms on the ground floor, at the corner of Clay +and Fifth Streets. Here they lived until, in 1825, Mr. Allan inherited +a considerable amount of money and bought a handsome brick residence at +the corner of Main and Fifth Streets, since known as the Allan House. +With the exception of two very short intervals, from June of this year +until the following February was all the time that Poe spent in the +Allan mansion. + +The Allan House, in its palmy days, might appeal irresistibly to the +mind of a poet, attuned to the harmonies of artistic design and +responsive to the beauties of romantic environment. It was a two-story +building with spacious rooms and appointments that suggested the taste +of the cultivated mistress of the stately dwelling. On the second floor +was "Eddie's room," as she lovingly called it, wherein her affectionate +imagination as well as her skill expended themselves lavishly for the +pleasure of the son of her heart. + +A few years later, upon his sudden return after a long absence, it was +his impetuous inquiry of the second Mrs. Allan as to the dismantling of +this room that led to his hasty retreat from the house, an incident +upon which his early biographers, led by Dr. Griswold, based the +fiction that Mr. Allan cherished Poe affectionately in his home until +his conduct toward "the young and beautiful wife" forced the expulsion +of the poet from the Allan house. The fact is that Poe saw the second +Mrs. Allan only once, for a moment marked by fiery indignation on his +part, and on hers by a cold resentment from which the unfortunate +visitor fled as from a north wind; the second Mrs. Allan's strong point +being a grim and middle-aged determination, rather than "youth and +beauty." Not that the thirty calendar years of that lady would +necessarily have conducted her across the indefinite boundaries of the +uncertain region known as "middle age," but the second Mrs. Allan was +born middle-aged, and the almanac had nothing to do with it. + +It was in the sunshine of youth and the warmth of love and the +fragrance of newly opening flowers of poetry that Edgar Poe lived in +the new Allan home and from the balcony of the second story looked out +upon the varied scenes of the river studded with green islets, the +village beyond the water, and far away the verdant slopes and forested +hills into the depths of which he looked with rapt eyes, seeing visions +which that forest never held for any other gaze. Mayhap, adown those +dim green aisles he previsioned the "ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir" +with the tomb of Ulalume at the end of the ghostly path through the +forest--the road through life that led to the grave where his heart lay +buried. Through the telescope on that balcony he may first have +followed the wanderings of Al Araaf, the star that shone for him alone. +In the dim paths of the moonlit garden flitted before his eyes the +dreamful forms that were afterward prisoned in the golden net of his +wondrous poesy. + +[Illustration: EDGAR ALLAN POE +From the daguerreotype formerly owned by Edmund Clarence Stedman] + +To these poetic scenes he soon bade farewell, and on St. Valentine's +day, 1826, entered the University of Virginia, where Number 13, West +Range, is still pointed out as the old-time abiding place of +Virginia's greatest poet, whose genius has given rise to more +acrimonious discussion than has ever gathered about the name of any +other American man of letters. The real home of Poe at this time was +the range of hills known as the Ragged Mountains, for it was among +their peaks and glens and caverns and wooded paths and rippling +streams that he roamed in search of strange tales and mystic poems +that would dazzle his readers in after days. His rambles among the +hills of the University town soon came to a close. Mr. Allan, being +confronted by a gaming debt which he regarded as too large to fit the +sporting necessities of a boy of seventeen, took him from college and +put him into the counting-room of Ellis & Allan, a position far from +agreeable to one accustomed to counting only poetic feet. + +The inevitable rupture soon came, and Poe went to Boston, the city of +his physical birth and destined to become the place of his birth into +the tempestuous world of authorship. Forty copies of "Tamerlane and +Other Poems" appeared upon the shelf of the printer--and nowhere else. +It is said that seventy-three years later a single copy was sold for +$2,250. Had this harvest been reaped by the author in those early +days, who can estimate the gain to the field of literature? + +Boston proving inhospitable to the firstling of her gifted son's +imagination, the Common soon missed the solitary, melancholy figure +that had for months haunted the old historic walks. Edgar A. Poe +dropped out of the world, or perhaps out of the delusion of fancying +himself in the world, and Edgar A. "Perry" appeared, an enlisted +soldier in the First Artillery at Fort Independence. For two years +"Perry" served his country in the sunlight, and Poe, under night's +starry cover, roamed through skyey aisles in the service of the Muse +and explored "Al Araaf," the abode of those volcanic souls that rush +in fatal haste to an earthly heaven, for which they recklessly +exchange the heaven of the spirit that might have achieved +immortality. + +A severe illness resulted in the disclosure of the identity of the +young soldier, and a message was sent to Mr. Allan, who effected his +discharge and helped secure for him an appointment to West Point. On +his way to the Academy he stopped in Baltimore and arranged for the +publication of a new volume, to contain "Al Araaf," a revised version +of "Tamerlane," and some short poems. + +Some months later No. 28 South Barracks, West Point, was the despair +of the worthy inspector who spent his days and nights in unsuccessful +efforts to keep order among the embryo protectors of his country. Poe, +the leader of the quartette that made life interesting in Number 28, +was destined never to evolve into patriotic completion. He soon +reached the limit of the endurance of the officials, that being, in +the absence of a pliant guardian, the only method by which a cadet +could be freed from the walls of the Academy. + +Soon after leaving the military school Poe made a brief visit to +Richmond, the final break with Mr. Allan took place, and the poet went +to Baltimore. + +Number 9 Front Street, Baltimore, is claimed as the birthplace of Poe. +There is a house in Norfolk that is likewise so distinguished. There +are other places, misty with passing generations, similarly known to +history. Poe, though not Homeric in his literary methods, had much the +same post-mortem experience as the Father of the Epicists. + +At the time of the Poet-wanderer's return to Baltimore his aunt, Mrs. +Clemm, had her humble but neat and comfortable home on Eastern Avenue, +then Wilks Street, and here he found the first home he had known since +his childhood and, incidentally, his charming child cousin, Virginia, +who was to make his home bright with her devotion through the +remainder of her brief life. + +In these early days no thought of any but a cousinly affection had +rippled the smooth surface of Virginia's childish mind, and she was +the willing messenger between Poe and his "Mary," who lived but a +short distance from the home of the Clemms, and who, when the frosts +of years had descended upon her, denied having been engaged to +him--apparently because her elders were more discreet than she +was--but admitted that she cried when she heard of his death. + +In his attic room on Wilks Street he toiled over the poems and tales +that some time would bring him fame. + +Poe was living in Amity Street when he won the hundred-dollar prize +offered by the _Saturday Visitor_, with his "Manuscript Found in a +Bottle," and wrote his poem of "The Coliseum," which failed of a prize +merely because the plan did not admit of making two awards to the same +person. A better reward for his work was an engagement as assistant +editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, which led to his removal +to Richmond. + +The _Messenger_ was in a building at Fifteenth and Main Streets, in +the second story of which Mr. White, the editor, and Poe, had their +offices. The young assistant soon became sole editor of the +publication, and it was in this capacity that he entered upon the +critical work which was destined to bring him effective enemies to +assail his reputation, both literary and personal, when the grave had +intervened to prevent any response to their slanders. Not but that he +praised oftener than he censured, but the thorn of censure pricks +deeply, and the rose of praise but gently diffuses its fragrance to be +wafted away on the passing breeze. The sharp satire attracted +attention to the _Messenger_, as attested by the rapid growth of the +subscription list. + +Here Poe was surrounded by memories of his childhood. The building was +next door to that in which Ellis & Allan had their tobacco store in +Poe's school days in Richmond. The old Broad Street Theatre, on the +site of which now stands Monumental Church, was the scene of his +beautiful mother's last appearance before the public. Near Nineteenth +and Main she died in a damp cellar in the "Bird in Hand" district, +through which ran Shockoe Creek. Eighteen days later the old theatre +was burned, and all Richmond was in mourning for the dead. + +At the northwest corner of Fifth and Main Streets, opposite the Allan +mansion, was the MacKenzie school for girls, which Rosalie Poe +attended in Edgar's school days. He was the only young man who enjoyed +the much-desired privilege of being received in that hall of learning, +and some of the bright girls of the institution beguiled him into +revealing the authorship of the satiric verses, "Don Pompioso," which +caused their victim, a wealthy and popular young gentleman of +Richmond, to quit the city with undue haste. The verses were the boy's +revenge upon "Don Pompioso" for insulting remarks about the position +of Poe as the son of stage people. + +On Franklin Street, between First and Second, was the Ellis home, +where Poe, with Mr. and Mrs. Allan, lived for a time after their +return from England. On North Fifth Street, near Clay, still stood the +cottage that was the next home of the Allans. At the southeast corner +of Eleventh and Broad Streets was the school which Poe had attended, +afterward the site of the Powhatan Hotel. Near it was the home of Mrs. +Stanard, whose memory comes radiantly down to us in the lines "To +Helen." + +Ever since the tragedy of the Hellespont, it has been the ambition of +poets to perform a noteworthy swimming feat, and one of Poe's +schoolboy memories was of his six-mile swim from Ludlam's Wharf to +Warwick Bar. + +On May 16, 1836, in Mrs. Yarrington's boarding-house, at the corner of +Twelfth and Bank Streets, Poe and Virginia Clemm were married. The +house was burned in the fire of 1865. + +In January, 1837, Poe left the _Messenger_ and went north, after which +most of his work was done in New York and Philadelphia. "The Fall of +the House of Usher" was written when he lived on Sixth Avenue, near +Waverley Place, and "The Raven" perched above his chamber door in a +house on the Bloomingdale Road, now Eighty-Fourth Street. + +When living in Philadelphia Poe went to Washington for the double +purpose of securing subscribers for his projected magazine, and of +gaining a government appointment. The house in which he stayed during +his short and ill-starred sojourn in the Capital is on New York +Avenue, on a terrace with steps to a landing whence a longer flight +leads to a side entrance lost in a greenery of dark and heavy bushes. +On the opposite side is a small, square veranda. The building, which +is two stories and a half high, was apparently a cheerful yellow color +in the beginning, but it has become dingy with time and weather. The +scars of its long battle with fate give it the appearance of being +about to crumble and crash, after the fashion of the "House of Usher." +It has windows with gloomy casements, opening even with the ground in +the first story, and in the second upon a narrow balcony. A sign on +the front of the building invites attention to a popular make of +glue.[1] + + [1] Since this was written the old house has been torn down. + +In 1849, about two years after the passing of the gentle soul of +Virginia, Poe returned to Richmond. He went first to the United States +Hotel, at the southwest corner of Nineteenth and Main Streets, in the +"Bird in Hand" neighborhood where he had looked for the last time on +the face of his young mother. He soon removed to the "Swan," because +it was near Duncan Lodge, the home of his friends, the MacKenzies, +where his sister Rose had found protection. The Swan was a long, +two-storied structure with combed roof, tall chimneys at the ends, and +a front piazza with a long flight of steps leading down to the street. +It was famous away back in the beginning of the century, having been +built about 1795. When it sheltered Poe it wore a look of having stood +there from the beginning of time and been forgotten by the passing +generations. + +Duncan Lodge, now an industrial home, was then a stately mansion, +shaded by magnificent trees. Here Poe spent much of his time, and one +evening in this friendly home he recited "The Raven" with such +artistic effect that his auditors induced him to give it as a public +reading at the Exchange Hotel. Unfortunately, it was in midsummer, and +both literary Richmond and gay Richmond were at seashore and mountain, +and there were few to listen to the poem read as only its author could +read it. Later in the same hall he gave, with gratifying success, his +lecture on "The Poetic Principle." + +In early September, with some friends, he spent a Sunday in the Hygeia +Hotel at Old Point. At the request of one of the party he recited "The +Raven," "Annabel Lee," and "Ulalume," saying that the last stanza of +"Ulalume" might not be intelligible to them, as it was not to him and +for that reason had not been published. Even if he had known what it +meant, he objected to furnishing it with a note of explanation, +quoting Dr. Johnson's remark about a book, that it was "as obscure as +an explanatory note." + +Miss Susan Ingram, an old friend of Poe, and one of the party at Old +Point, tells of a visit he made at her home in Norfolk following the +day at Point Comfort. Noting the odor of orris root, he said that he +liked it because it recalled to him his boyhood, when his adopted +mother kept orris root in her bureau drawers, and whenever they were +opened the fragrance would fill the room. + +Near old St. John's in Richmond was the home of Mrs. Shelton, who, as +Elmira Royster, was the youthful sweetheart from whom Poe took a +tender and despairing farewell when he entered the University of +Virginia. Here he spent many pleasant evenings, writing to Mrs. Clemm +with enthusiasm of his renewed acquaintance with his former lady-love. + +Next to the last evening that Poe spent in Richmond he called on Susan +Talley, afterward Mrs. Weiss, with whom he discussed "The Raven," +pointing out various defects which he might have remedied had he +supposed that the world would capture that midnight bird and hang it +up in the golden cage of a "Collection of Best Poems." He was haunted +by the "ghost" which "each separate dying ember wrought" upon the +floor, and had never been able to explain satisfactorily to himself +how and why, his head should have been "reclining on the cushion's +velvet lining" when the topside would have been more convenient for +any purpose except that of rhyme. But it cannot be demanded of a poet +that he should explain himself to anybody, least of all to himself. To +his view, the shadow of the raven upon the floor was the most glaring +of its impossibilities. "Not if you suppose a transom with the light +shining through from an outer hall," replied the ingenious Susan. + +When Poe left the Talley home he went to Duncan Lodge, a short +distance away, and spent the night. The next night he was at Sadler's +Old Market Hotel, leaving early in the morning for Philadelphia, but +stopping in Baltimore, where came to him the tragic, mysterious end of +all things. + +Poe knew men as little as he knew any of the other every-day facts of +life. In the depths of that ignorance he left his reputation in the +hands of the only being he ever met who would tear it to shreds and +throw it into the mire. + + + +"THE SUNRISE POET" + +SIDNEY LANIER + + +In my memory-gallery hangs a beautiful picture of the Lanier home as I +saw it years ago, on High Street in Macon, Georgia, upon a hillock +with greensward sloping down on all sides. It is a wide, roomy +mansion, with hospitality written all over its broad steps that lead +up to a wide veranda on which many windows look out and smile upon the +visitor as he enters. One tall dormer window, overarched with a high +peak, comes out to the very edge of the roof to welcome the guest. +Two, smaller and more retiring, stand upon the verge of the +high-combed house-roof and look down in friendly greeting. There are +tall trees in the yard, bending a little to touch the old house +lovingly. + +Far away stretched the old oaks that girdled Macon with greenery, +where Sidney Lanier and his brother Clifford used to spend their +schoolboy Saturdays among the birds and rabbits. Near by flows the +Ocmulgee, where the boys, inseparable in sport as well as in the more +serious aspects of life, were wont to fish. Here Sidney cut the reed +with which he took his first flute lesson from the birds in the woods. +Above the town were the hills for which the soul of the poet longed in +after life. + +Macon was the "live" city of middle Georgia. She made no effort to +rival Richmond or Charleston as an educational or literary centre, but +she had an admirable commercial standing, and offered a generous +hospitality that kept her in fond remembrance. In the Macon +post-office Sidney Lanier had his first business experience, to offset +the drowsy influence of sleepy Midway, the seat of Oglethorpe College, +where he continued his studies after completing the course laid out in +the "'Cademy" under the oaks and hickories of Macon. + +January 6, 1857, Lanier entered the sophomore class of Oglethorpe, +where it was unlawful to purvey any commodity, except Calvinism, +"within a mile and a half of the University"--a sad regulation for +college boys, who, as a rule, have several tastes unconnected with +religious orthodoxy. + +Lanier carried with him the "small, yellow, one-keyed flute" which had +superseded the musical reed provided by Nature, and practised upon it +so fervently that a college-mate said that he "would play upon his +flute like one inspired." + +Montvale Springs, in the mountains of Tennessee, where Sidney's +grandfather, Sterling Lanier, built a hotel in which he gave his +twenty-five grandchildren a vacation one summer, still holds the +memory of that wondrous flute and yet more marvellous nature among the +"strong, sweet trees, like brawny men with virgins' hearts." From its +ferns and mosses and "reckless vines" and priestly oaks lifting +yearning arms toward the stars, Lanier returned to Oglethorpe as a +tutor. Here amid hard work and haunting suggestions of a coming poem, +"The Jacquerie," he tried to work out the problem of his life's +expression. + + * * * * * + +When the guns of Fort Sumter thundered across Sidney Lanier's dreams +of music and poetry, he joined the Macon volunteers, the first company +to march from Georgia into Virginia. It was stationed near Norfolk, +camping in the fairgrounds in the time that Lanier describes as "the +gay days of mandolin and guitar and moonlight sails on the James +River." Life there seems not to have been "all beer and skittles," or +the poetic substitutes therefor, for he goes on to say that their +principal duties were to picket the beach, their "pleasures and sweet +rewards of toil consisting in ague which played dice with our bones, +and blue mass pills that played the deuce with our livers." + +In 1862, the Company went to Wilmington, North Carolina, where they +indulged "for two or three months in what are called the 'dry shakes +of the sand-hills,' a sort of brilliant tremolo movement." The time +not required for the "tremolo movement" was spent in building Fort +Fischer, until they were ordered to Drewry's Bluff, and then to the +Chickahominy, where they took part in the Seven Days' fight. + +Even war places were literary shrines for Lanier, for wherever he +chanced to be he was constantly dedicating himself anew to the work +of his life. In Petersburg he studied in the Public Library. In that +old town he first saw General R.E. Lee, and watched his calm face +until he "felt that the antique earth returned out of the past and +some mystic god sat on a hill, sculptured in stone, presiding over a +terrible, yet sublime, contest of human passions"--perhaps the most +poetic conception ever awakened by the somewhat familiar view of an +elderly gentleman asleep under the influence of a sermon on a drowsy +mid-summer day. Writing to his father from Fort Boykin, he asks him +to "seize at any price volumes of Uhland, Lessing, Schelling, Tieck." + +In the spring of 1863, on a visit to his old home in Macon, Lanier met +Miss Mary Day and promptly fell in love, a fortunate occurrence for +him, in that he secured an inspiring companion in his short and +brilliant life, and for us because it is to her loving care that we +owe the preservation of much of his finest work. On the return to +Virginia, he and his brother Clifford had as companions the charming +Mrs. Clement C. Clay and her sister, who wanted escorts from Macon to +Virginia. She claims to have bribed them with "broiled partridges, +sho' 'nuf sugar, and sho' 'nuf butter and spring chickens, 'quality +size,'" to which allurements the youthful poets are alleged to have +succumbed with grace and gallantry. I recall an evening that General +Pickett and I spent with Mrs. Clay at the Spotswood Hotel, when she +told us of her trip from Macon, and her two poet escorts. I remember +that Senator Vest was present and played the violin while Senator and +Mrs. Clay danced. + +Sidney Lanier said of his experience at Fort Boykin, on Burwell's Bay, +that it was in many respects "the most delicious period" of his life. +It may be that no other young soldier found so much of romance and +poetry in the service of Mars or put so much of it into the lives of +those around him. There are old men, now, who in their youth lived on +the James River, in whose hearts the melody of Sidney Lanier's flute +yet lingers in golden fire and dewy flowering. At Fort Boykin he +decided the question of his vocation, writing to his father so +eloquent a letter upon the desirability of pursuing his tastes, rather +than trying to follow the paternal footsteps in a profession for which +he had no talent, that his father relinquished all hope of making a +lawyer of his gifted son. + +In Wilmington, North Carolina, Lanier served as signal officer until +he was captured and taken to the prison camp at Point Lookout, in +which gloomy place was developed the disease which in a few years +deprived literature and music of a light that would have sparkled in +beauty through the mists of centuries. Imprisonment did not serve as +an interruption to the work of the student, for even a prison cell was +a shrine to the radiant gods of Lanier's vision. Probably Heine and +Herder were never before translated in surroundings so little +congenial to those masters of poesy. One of his fellow-prisoners said +that Lanier's flute "was an angel imprisoned with us to cheer and +console us." To the few who are left to remember him at that time, the +waves of the Chesapeake, with the sandy beach sweeping down to kiss +the waters, and the far-off dusky pines, are still melodious with that +music. + +After his release he was taken to the Macon home, where he was +dangerously ill for two months, being there when General Wilson +captured the town and Mr. Jefferson Davis and Senator Clement C. Clay +were brought to the Lanier house on their gloomy journey to Fortress +Monroe. In that month Lanier's mother died of consumption, and he +spent the summer months at home with his father and sister. In the +autumn he taught on a large plantation nine miles from Macon, where, +with "mind fairly teeming with beautiful things," he was shut up in +the "tare and tret" of the school-room. He spent the winter at Point +Clear on Mobile Bay, breathing in health with the sea-breezes and the +air that drifted fragrantly through the pines. + +As clerk in the Exchange Hotel in Montgomery, the property of his +grandfather and his uncles, he may have found no more advantageous a +field for his "beautiful things" than in the Georgia school-room, but +even in that "dreamy and drowsy and drone-y town" there was some life +"late in the afternoon, when the girls come out one by one and shine +and move, just as the stars do an hour later." But Lanier was as +patient and self-contained in peace as he had been brave in war, and +he accepted the drowsy life of Montgomery as he had accepted the +romance and adventures of Fort Boykin, on Sundays playing the +pipe-organ in the Presbyterian Church, and spending his leisure in +finishing "Tiger Lilies," begun in the wild days of '63, on Burwell's +Bay. In 1867 he returned to Macon, where in September he read the +proof of his book, his one effort at romance-writing, chiefly +noticeable for its musical element. The fluting of the author is +recalled by the description of the hero's flute-playing: "It is like +walking in the woods among wild flowers just before you go into some +vast cathedral." + + * * * * * + +The next winter Sidney Lanier was teaching in Prattville, Alabama, a +town built on a quagmire by Daniel Pratt, of whom one of his negroes +said his "Massa seemed dissatisfied with the way God had made the +earth and he was always digging down the hills and filling up the +hollows." Prattville was a small manufacturing town, and Lanier was +about as appropriately placed there as Arion would have been in a +tin-shop, but he kept his humorous outlook on life, departing from his +serenity so far as to make his only attempts at expressing in verse +his political indignation, the results of which he did not regard as +poetry, and they do not appear in the collection of his poems. His +muse was better adapted to the harmonies than to the discords of life. +Some lines written then furnish a graphic picture of conditions in the +South at that time: + + Young Trade is dead, + And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern + And folds his arms that find no bread to earn, + And bows his head. + +In 1868, after Lanier's marriage, he took up the practice of law in +his father's office in Macon. In that town he made his eloquent +Confederate Memorial address, April 26, 1870. + +Lanier, to whom "Home" meant all that was radiant and joyous in life, +wrote to Paul Hamilton Hayne that he was "homeless as the ghost of +Judas Iscariot." He was thrust upon a wandering existence by the +always unsuccessful attempt to find strength enough to do his work. At +Brunswick he found the scene of his Marsh poems in "the length and the +breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn," in which he reaches +his depth of poetic feeling and his height of poetic expression. + +From Lookout Mountain he wrote Hayne that at about midnight he had +received his letter and poem, and had read the poem to some friends +sitting on the porch, among them Mr. Jefferson Davis. From Alleghany +Springs he wrote his wife that new strength and new serenity +"continually flash from out the gorges, the mountains, and the streams +into the heart and charge it as the lightnings charge the earth with +subtle and heavenly fires." Lanier's soul belonged to music more than +to any other form of art, and more than any other has he linked music +with poetry and the ever-varying phenomena of Nature. Of a perfect day +in Macon he wrote: + + "If the year was an orchestra, to-day would be the calm, passionate, + even, intense, quiet, full, ineffable flute therein." + +In November, 1872, Lanier went to San Antonio in quest of health, +which he did not find. Incidentally, he found hitherto unrevealed +depths of feeling in his "poor old flute" which caused the old leader +of the Maennerchor, who knew the whole world of music, to cry out with +enthusiasm that he had "never heard de flude accompany itself pefore." + +That part of his musical life which Sidney Lanier gave to the world +was for the most part spent in Baltimore, where he played in the +Peabody Orchestra, the Germania Maennerchor, and other music +societies. An old German musician who used to play with him in the +Orchestra told me that Lanier was the finest flutist he had ever +heard. + +It was in Baltimore, too, that he gave the lectures which resulted in +his most important prose-writings, "The Science of English Verse," +"The English Novel," "Shakespeare and His Forerunners." + +In August, 1874, at Sunnyside, Georgia, amid the loneliness of +abandoned farms, the glory of cornfields, and the mysterious beauty of +forest, he wrote "Corn," the first of his poems to attract the +attention of the country. It was published in _Lippincott's_ in 1875. +Charlotte Cushman was so charmed by it that she sought out the author +in Baltimore, and the two became good friends. + +At 64 Centre Street, Baltimore, Lanier wrote "The Symphony," which he +said took hold of him "about four days ago like a real James River +ague, and I have been in a mortal shake with the same, day and night, +ever since," which is the only way that a real poem or real music or a +real picture ever can get into the world. He says that he "will be +rejoiced when it is finished, for it verily racks all the bones of my +spirit." It appeared in _Lippincott's_, June, 1875. + +Lanier was at 66 Centre Street, Baltimore, when he wrote the words of +the Centennial Cantata, which he said he "tried to make as simple and +candid as a melody of Beethoven." He wrote to a friend that he was not +disturbed because a paper had said that the poem of the Cantata was +like a "communication from the spirit of Nat Lee through a Bedlamite +medium." It was "but a little grotesque episode, as when a catbird +paused in the midst of the most exquisite roulades and melodies to mew +and then take up his song again." + + * * * * * + +In December of that year he was compelled to seek a milder climate in +Florida, taking with him a commission to write a book about Florida +for the J.B. Lippincott Company. Upon arriving at Tampa, he wrote to a +friend: + + Tampa is the most forlorn collection of little one-story frame + houses imaginable, and as May and I walked behind our landlord, + who was piloting us to Orange Grove Hotel, our hearts fell nearer + and nearer towards the sand through which we dragged. Presently + we turned a corner and were agreeably surprised to find ourselves + in front of a large three-story house with old nooks and corners, + clean and comfortable in appearance and surrounded by orange + trees in full fruit. We have a large room in the second story, + opening upon a generous balcony fifty feet long, into which + stretch the liberal arms of a fine orange tree holding out their + fruitage to our very lips. In front is a sort of open plaza + containing a pretty group of gnarled live-oaks full of moss and + mistletoe. + +[Illustration: SIDNEY LANIER +From a photograph owned by H.W. Lanier] + +In May he made an excursion of which he wrote: + + For a perfect journey God gave us a perfect day. The little + Ocklawaha steamboat _Marion_--a steamboat which is like nothing + in the world so much as a Pensacola gopher with a preposterously + exaggerated back--had started from Palatka some hours before + daylight, having taken on her passengers the night previous; and + by seven o'clock of such a May morning as no words could + describe, unless words were themselves May mornings, we had made + the twenty-five miles up the St. John's to where the Ocklawaha + flows into that stream nearly opposite Welaka, one hundred miles + above Jacksonville. + +It was on this journey that he saw the most magnificent residence that +he had ever beheld, the home of an old friend of his, an alligator, +who possessed a number of such palatial mansions and could change his +residence at any time by the simple process of swimming from one to +another. + +On his return to Baltimore he lived at 55 Lexington in four rooms +arranged as a French flat. He makes mention of a gas stove "on which +my comrade magically produces the best coffee in the world, and this, +with fresh eggs (boiled through the same handy little machine), bread, +butter, and milk, forms our breakfast." December 3 he writes from the +little French flat, announcing that he "has plunged in and brought +forth captive a long Christmas poem for _Every Saturday_," a Baltimore +weekly publication. The poem was "Hard Times in Elfland." He says, +"Wife and I have been to look at a lovely house with eight rooms and +many charming appliances," whereof the rent was less than that of the +four rooms. + +The next month he writes from 33 Denmead Street, the eight-room house, +to which he had gone, with the attendant necessity of buying "at least +three hundred twenty-seven household utensils" and "hiring a colored +gentlewoman who is willing to wear out my carpets, burn out my range, +freeze out my water-pipes, and be generally useful." He mentions +having written a couple of poems, and part of an essay on Beethoven +and Bismarck, but his chief delight is in his new home, which invests +him with the dignity of paying taxes and water rates. He takes the +view that no man is a Bohemian who has to pay water rates and street +tax. + + * * * * * + +In addition to supporting his new dignity he finds time and strength +for his usual work, and he writes on January 30, 1878, "I have been +mainly at work on some unimportant prose matter for pot-boilers, but I +get off a short poem occasionally, and in the background of my mind am +writing my Jacquerie." Unfortunately, "Jacquerie" remained in the +background of his mind, with the exception of two songs--all we have +to indicate what a stirring presentation our literature might have had +of the fourteenth century awakening of "Jacques Bonhomme," that early +precursor of the more terrible arousing in 'Ninety-Three. + +In the latter part of the year Lanier was living at Number 180 St. +Paul Street, and in December he wrote to a friend: + + "Bayard Taylor's death slices a huge cantle out of the world.... It + only seems that he has gone to some other Germany a little farther + off.... He was such a fine fellow, one almost thinks he might + have talked Death over and made him forego his stroke." + +At Bayard Taylor's home, where Lanier visited, were two immense +chestnut trees, much loved by the two poets. Mrs. Taylor wrote that +one of the trees died soon after the death of its poet owner. The +other lingered until a short time after the passing of Lanier. It was +in connection with the lines of the "Cantata," written in the +Baltimore home of the Southern poet, that the poet friends began a +long-continued series of letters which one loves to read on a winter +night, when the winds are battling with the world outside, and the +fire gleams redly in the open grate, and the lamp burns softly on the +library table, and all things invite to poetic dreams. + +November 12, 1880, Sidney Lanier wrote to his publisher a letter of +appreciation of the beautiful work done upon his volume, "The Boy's +King Arthur." It is dated at Number 435 North Calvert Street, the +latest Baltimore address that we have. + + * * * * * + +The distinction Sidney Lanier achieved as first flutist in the +orchestra of the Peabody Institute led to an offer of a position in +the Thomas Orchestra, which the condition of his health did not permit +him to accept. + +In the summer of 1880 his "Science of English Verse" was published. +"Shakespeare and His Forerunners" resulted from his work with his +classes in Elizabethan Poetry. "The English Novel" is the course of +lectures on "Personality Illustrated by the Development of Fiction," +delivered at Johns Hopkins University in the winter of 1880-'81. As we +read the printed work in its depth and strength, we do not realize +that his wife took the notes from his whispered dictation, and that +his auditors as they listened trembled lest, with each sentence, that +deep musical voice should fall on eternal silence. All this while he +had been working at lectures and boys' books, when, as he said, "a +thousand songs are singing in my heart that will certainly kill me if +I do not utter them soon." One of the thousand, "Sunrise," he uttered +with a temperature of 104 degrees burning out his life, but it is full +of the rapture of the dawn. + +To the pines of North Carolina the poet was taken, in the hope that +they might give him of their strength. But the wind-song through their +swaying branches lulled him to his last earthly sleep. On the 7th of +September the narrow stream of his earthly existence broadened and +deepened and flowed triumphantly into the great ocean of Eternal Life. + + + + +"THE POET OF THE PINES" + +PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE + + +"Why are not your countrymen all poets, surrounded as they are by +beautiful things to inspire them?" I asked a young Swiss. + +"Because," he replied, "my people are so accustomed to beauty that it +has no influence upon them." + +They had never known anything but beauty: there were no sharp +contrasts to clash, flint-like, and strike out sparks of divine fire. + +Had the beauty of old Charleston produced the same negative effect, +Southern literature would have suffered a distinct loss--if that may +be regarded as lost which has never been possessed. For centuries the +Queen of the Sea stood in a vision of splendor, the tumultuous waves +of the Atlantic dashing at her feet, eternal sunshine crowning her +royal brow. Her gardens were stately with oleanders and pomegranates, +brilliant with jonquils and hyacinths, myrtle and gardenia. Roses of +the olden time, Lancaster and York and the sweet pink cinnamon, +breathed the fragrance of days long past. The hills that environed her +were snowy with Cherokee roses and odorous with jasmine and +honeysuckle. Her people dwelt in mansions in the corridors of which +ancestral ghosts from Colonial days kept guard. + +In old Charleston that goes back in history almost a century before +the Revolution and extends to the opening of the Sixties--the old +Queen City by the Sea, which now few are left to remember--was a +circle of congenial creative souls just before the first shot at Fort +Sumter heralded the destruction of the old-time life of the Colonial +city. William Gilmore Simms was the head and mentor of the brilliant +little band, and the much younger men, Paul Hamilton Hayne and Henry +Timrod, were the fiery souls that gave it the mental electricity +necessary to furnish the motive power. Through all the coming days of +trial and hardship, of aspiration and defeat, of watching from the +towers of high achievement or lying prone in the valley of failure, +not one of that little circle ever lost the golden memory of those +magic evenings in the home of the novelist and poet, the thinker and +dreamer, William Gilmore Simms, the intellectual father of them all. + +At that time in the old city was another picturesque home that harked +back to Colonial days--stately, veranda-circled, surrounded by that +fascinating atmosphere of history and poetry known to those old +dwellings alone of all the structures of the New World: the home of +the Southern poet of Nature, Paul Hamilton Hayne. Its many-windowed +front looked cheerfully out upon a wide lawn radiant with flowers of +bygone fashion, loved by the poets of olden times, and bright with the +greenery that kept perpetual summer around the historic dwelling. This +beautiful pre-Revolutionary home was burned in the bombardment of +Charleston, and with it was destroyed the library that had been the +pride of the poet's heart. + +In this old home the Poet of the Pines was born of a family that +looked back to the opening days of the eighteenth century, when +Charleston was young, glowing with the beauty of her birth into the +forests of the New World, wearing proudly the tiara of her loyalty to +King and Crown. Looking back along the road that stretched between the +first Hayne, who helped to make of the old city a memory to be +cherished on the page of history and a picture on the canvas of the +present to awaken admiration, and the young soul that looked with +poetic vision on the beginning of the new era, one sees a long +succession of brilliant names and powerful figures. + +Paul Hayne was the great-grand-nephew of "the Martyr Hayne," who has +given to Charleston her only authentic ghost-story, the scene of which +was a brick dwelling which stood till 1896 at the corner of Atlantic +and Meeting Streets. Colonel Isaac H. Hayne, a soldier of the +Revolution, secured a parole, that he might be with his dying wife. +While on parole he was ordered to fight against his country. Rather +than be forced to the crime of treason, he broke his parole, was +captured and condemned to death. From her beautiful, mahogany-panelled +drawing-room in that old home where the two streets cross, his +sister-in-law, who had gone with his two little children to plead for +his life, watched as he passed on his way from the vault of the old +Custom House, used then as a prison, to the gallows. "Return, return +to us!" she called in an agony of grief. As he walked on he replied, +"If I can I will." It is said that his old negro mammy, to whom he was +always "my chile," ran out to the gate with the playthings she had +fondly cherished since the days when they were to him irresistible +attractions, crying, "Come back! Come back!" To both calls his heart +responded with such longing love that when the soul was released, the +old home knew the step and the voice again. Ever afterward when +eventide fell, one standing at that window would hear a ghostly voice +from the street below and steps upon the stairs and in the hall; +footsteps of one coming--never going. + +Paul Hamilton Hayne's uncle, Colonel Arthur P. Hayne, fought under +Jackson at New Orleans, and was afterward United States Senator. Paul +was nephew of Robert Y. Hayne, whose career as a statesman and an +orator won for him a fame that has not faded with the years. With this +uncle, Paul found a home in his orphaned childhood. + +Of his sailor father, Lieutenant Hayne, his shadowy memory takes form +in a poem, one stanza of which gives us a view of the brave seaman's +life and death: + + He perished not in conflict nor in flame, + No laurel garland rests upon his tomb; + Yet in stern duty's path he met his doom; + A life heroic, though unwed to fame. + +Though he pathetically mourns: + + Never in childhood have I blithely sprung + To catch my father's voice, or climb his knee, + +still + + Love limned his wavering likeness on my soul, + Till through slow growths it waxed a perfect whole + Of clear conceptions, brightening heart and mind. + +That clear conception remained a lifelong treasure in the poet's +heart. + +Through a great ancestral corridor had Paul Hamilton Hayne descended, +with soul enjewelled with all the gems of character and thought that +had sparkled in the long gallery through which he had travelled into +the earth-light. + +In the school of Mr. Coates, in Charleston, he was fitted to enter +Charleston College, a plain, narrow-fronted structure with six +severely classic columns supporting the facade. It stood on the +foundation of the "old brick barracks" held by the Colonial troops +through a six-weeks siege by twelve thousand British regulars under +Sir Henry Clinton. + +Hayne satisfied the hunger and thirst of his excursive and ardent mind +by browsing in the Charleston Library on Broad and Church streets. It +may be that sometimes, on his way to that friendly resort, he passed +the old house on Church Street which once sheltered General +Washington; a substantial three-storied building with ornamental +woodwork which might cause its later use as a bakery to seem out of +harmony to any but _chefs_ with high ideals of their art. + +The Library of old Charleston was composed chiefly of English classics +and the literature of France in the olden time when Europe furnished +us with something more than anarchy, clothes, and bargain-counter +titles. A sample of the Young America of that early day asked an old +gentleman, "Why are you always reading that old Montaigne?" The reply +was, "Why, child, there is in this book all that a gentleman needs to +think about," with the discreet addition, "Not a book for little +girls, though." If we find in our circle of poets a certain +stateliness of style scarcely to be looked for in a somewhat new +republic that might be expected to rush pell-mell after an idea and +capture it by the sudden impact of a lusty blow, after the manner of +the minute-men catching a red-coat at Lexington; if we observe in +their writing old world expressions that woo us subtly, like the odor +of lavender from a long-closed linen chest, we may attribute it to the +fact that aristocratic old Charleston, though the first to assert her +independence of the political yoke, yet clung tenaciously to the +literary ideals of the Old World. + +On Meeting Street was Apprentices' Library Hall, where Glidden led his +hearers through the intricacies of Egyptian Archaeology. Here Agassiz +sometimes lectured on Zooelogy, and our youthful poet may have watched +animals from the jungle climb up the blackboard at the touch of what +would have been only a piece of chalk in any other hand, but became a +magic creative force under the guidance of that wizard of science. +Here he could have followed with Thackeray the varying fortunes and +ethic vagaries of the royal Georges. His poetic soul may have kindled +with the fire of Macready's "Hamlet" when, thinking that he was too +far down the slope of life to hark back to the days of the youthful +Dane, he proved that he still had the glow of the olden time in his +soul by reading the part as only Macready could. In this old hall he +may have looked upon the paintings which inspired him to create his +own pictures, luminous with softly tinted word-colors. + +Meeting Street seems to have been named with reference to its uses, +for here, too, was the old theatre, gone long ago, where Fannie +Ellsler danced with a wavering, quivering, shimmering grace that drove +humming-birds to despair. In that theatre it may be that Paul Hayne +heard Jenny Lind fill the night with a melody which would irradiate +his soul throughout life and reproduce itself in the music-tones of +his gently cadenced verse. There the ill-fated Adrienne Lecouvreur +lived and died again in her wondrous transmigration into the soul of +the great Rachel. + +When a boy, Hayne's heart may have often thrilled to the voice of the +scholarly Hugh Swinton Legare, as he made the heart of some classic +old poem live in the music of his organ-tones. + +A sensitive soul surrounded by the influences of life in old +Charleston had many incentives to high and harmonious expression. + +That the Queen City of the Sea did not claim the privilege of the +fickleness alleged to be incident to the feminine character is +illustrated by the fact that she had but two postmasters in seventy +years, a circumstance worthy of note "in days like these, when ev'ry +gate is thronged with suitors, all the markets overflow," and the +disbursing counter is crowded with claimants for the rewards due for +commendable activity in the campaign. One of those two was Peter +Bascot, an appointee of Washington. The other was Alfred Huger, "the +last of the Barons," who had refused to take the office in the time of +Bascot. + +In old Charleston the servants were the severest sticklers for +propriety, and the butlers of the old families rivalled each other in +the loftiness of their standards. Jack, the butler of "the last of the +Barons," was wide awake to the demands of his position, and when an +old sea captain, an intimate friend of Mr. Huger, dining with the +family, asked for rice when the fish was served he was first met with +a chill silence. Thinking that he had not been heard, he repeated the +request. Jack bent and whispered to him. With a burst of laughter, the +captain said, "Judge, you have a treasure. Jack has saved me from +disgrace, from exposing my ignorance. He whispered, 'That would not +do, sir; _we_ never eats rice with fish.'" + +Russell's book-shop on King Street was a favorite place of meeting for +the Club which recognized Simms as king by divine right. From these +pleasant gatherings grew the thought of giving to Charleston a medium +through which the productions of her thought might go out to the +world. In April, 1857, appeared _Russell's Magazine_, bearing the +names of Paul Hamilton Hayne and W.B. Carlisle as editors, though upon +Hayne devolved all the editorial work and much of the other writing +for the new publication. He had helped to keep alive the _Southern +Literary Messenger_ after the death of Mr. White and the departure of +Poe for other fields of labor, had assisted Richards on the _Southern +Literary Gazette_ and had been associate editor of Harvey's +_Spectator_. For Charleston had long been ambitious to become the +literary centre of the South. The object of _Russell's Magazine_ was +to uphold the cause of literature in Charleston and in the South, and +incidentally to stand by the friends of the young editor, who carried +his partisanship of William Gilmore Simms so far as to permit the +publication of a severe criticism of Dana's "Household Book of Poetry" +because it did not include any of the verse of the Circle's rugged +mentor. _Russell's_ had a brilliant and brief career, falling upon +silence in March, 1860; probably not much to the regret of Paul Hayne, +who, while too conscientious to withhold his best effort from any +enterprise that claimed him, was too distinctly a poet not to feel +somewhat like Pegasus in pound when tied down to the editorial desk. + +This quiet life, in which the gentle soul of Hayne, with its delicate +sensitiveness, poetic insight, and appreciation of all beauty, found +congenial environment, soon suffered a rude interruption. As +Charleston was the first to throw off the yoke of Great Britain and +draw up a constitution which she thought adapted to independent +government, so did she first express the determination of South +Carolina to break the bonds that held her turbulent political soul in +uncongenial association. + +Hayne heard the twelve-hour cannonade of Fort Sumter's hundred and +forty guns echoing over the sea, and saw the Stars and Bars flutter +above the walls of the old fort. He saw Generals Bee and Johnson come +back from Manassas, folded in the battle flag for which they had given +their lives, to lie in state in the City Hall at the marble feet of +Calhoun, the great political leader whom they had followed to the +inevitable end. General Lee was in the old town for a little while. A +man said to him, "It is difficult for so many men to abandon their +business for the war." The general replied, "Believe me, sir, the +business of this generation _is_ the war." In the spirit of this +answer Charleston met the crisis so suddenly come upon her. + +All the young poet's patriotic love and inherited martial instinct +urged him to the battle, but his frail physique withheld him from the +field, and he took service as an aide on the staff of Governor +Pickens. + +At the close of the war, wrecked in health, with only the memory of +his beautiful home and library left to him, with not even a piece of +the family silver remaining from the "march to the sea," Hayne went to +the pine-barrens of Georgia, eighteen miles from Augusta, to build a +new home. + +When the first man and woman were sent out from their garden home, it +was not as a punishment for sin, but as an answer to their ambitious +quest for knowledge and their new-born longing for a wider life. It +was not that the gate of Eden was closed upon them; it was that the +gates of all the Edens of the world were opened for them and for the +generations of their children. One of those gates opened upon the Eden +of Copse Hill, where the poet of Nature found a home and all friendly +souls met a welcome that filled the pine-barrens with joy for them. Of +Copse Hill the poet says: + + A little apology for a dwelling was perched on the top of a + hill overlooking in several directions hundreds of leagues of + pine-barrens there was as yet neither garden nor inclosure near + it; and a wilder, more desolate and savage-looking home could + hardly have been seen east of the prairies. + +What that "little apology of a dwelling" was to him is best pictured +in his own words: + + On a steep hillside, to all airs that blow, + Open, and open to the varying sky, + Our cottage homestead, smiling tranquilly, + Catches morn's earliest and eve's latest glow; + Here, far from worldly strife and pompous show, + The peaceful seasons glide serenely by, + Fulfil their missions and as calmly die + As waves on quiet shores when winds are low. + Fields, lonely paths, the one small glimmering rill + That twinkles like a wood-fay's mirthful eye, + Under moist bay-leaves, clouds fantastical + That float and change at the light breeze's will,-- + To me, thus lapped in sylvan luxury, + Are more than death of kings, or empires' fall. + +Here with "the bonny brown hand" in his that was "dearer than all dear +things of earth" Paul Hayne found a life that was filled with beauty, +notwithstanding its moments of discouragement and pain. We like to +remember that always with him, helping him bear the burdens of life, +was that wifely hand of which the poet could say, "The hand which +points the path to heaven, yet makes a heaven of earth." + +On sunny days he paced to and fro under the pines, the many windows of +his mind opened to the studies in light and shade and his soul attuned +to the music of the drifting winds and the whispering trees. When +Nature was in darkened mood and gave him no invitation to the open +court wherein she reigned, he walked up and down his library floor, +engrossed with some beautiful thought which, in harmonious garb of +words, would go forth and bless the world with its music. + +The study, of which he wrote: + + This is my world! within these narrow walls + I own a princely service + +was perhaps as remarkable a room as any in which student ever spent +his working hours, the walls being papered wholly with cuts from +papers and periodicals. The furniture was decorated in the same way, +even to the writing desk, which was an old work bench left by some +carpenters. All had been done by the "bonny brown hands" that never +wearied in loving service. + +Many of his friends made pilgrimages to the little cottage on the +hill, where they were cordially welcomed by the poet, who, happy in +his home with his wife and little son, lived among the flowers which +he tended with his own hands, surrounded by the majesty of the pines +whose + + Passion and mystery murmur through the leaves,-- + Passion and mystery touched by deathless pain, + Whose monotone of long, low anguish grieves + For something lost that shall not live again. + +Hither came Henry Timrod, doomed to failure, loss, and early death, +but with soul eternally alive with the fires of genius. In the last +days of his sad and broken life William Gilmore Simms came to renew +old memories and recount the days when life in old Charleston was +iridescent as the waves that washed the feet of the Queen of the Sea. +Congenial spirits they were who met in that charming little study +where Paul Hayne walked "the fields of quiet Arcadies" and + + ... gleamings of the lost, heroic life + Flashed through the gorgeous vistas of romance. + +Hayne had the subtle power of touching the friendliness in the hearts +of those who were far away, as well as of the comrades who had walked +with him along the road of life. Often letters came from friends in +other lands, known to him only by that wireless intuitional telegraphy +whereby kindred souls know each other, though hands have not met nor +eyes looked into eyes. Many might voice the thought expressed by one: +"I may boast that Paul Hayne was my friend, though it was never my +good fortune to meet him." Many a soul was upheld and strengthened by +him, as was that of a man who wrote that he had been saved from +suicide by reading the "Lyric of Action." His album held autographed +photographs of many writers, among them Charles Kingsley, William +Black, and Wilkie Collins. He cherished an ivy vine sent him by +Blackmore from Westminister Abbey. + +Hayne's many-windowed mind looked out upon all the phases of the +beauty of Nature. Her varied moods found in him a loving response. He +awaited her coming as the devotee at the temple gate waits for the +approach of his Divinity: + + I felt, through dim, awe-laden space, + The coming of thy veiled face; + And in the fragrant night's eclipse + The kisses of thy deathless lips, + Like strange star-pulses, throbbed through space! + +Whether it is drear November and + + But winds foreboding fill the desolate night + And die at dawning down wild woodland ways, + +or in May "couched in cool shadow" he hears + + The bee-throngs murmurous in the golden fern, + The wood-doves veiled by depths of flickering green, + +for him the music of the spheres is in it all. Whether at midnight + + The moon, a ghost of her sweet self, + + * * * * * + + Creeps up the gray, funereal sky wearily, how wearily, + +or morning comes "with gracious breath of sunlight," it is a part of +glorious Nature, his star-crowned Queen, his sun-clad goddess. + +To no other heart has the pine forest come so near unfolding its +immemorial secret. That poet-mind was a wind-harp, and its quivering +strings echoed to every message that came from the dim old woods on +the "soft whispers of the twilight breeze," the flutterings of the +newly awakened morn or the crash of the storm. "The Dryad of the Pine" +bent "earth-yearning branches" to give him loving greeting and receive +his quick response: + + Leaning on thee, I feel the subtlest thrill + Stir thy dusk limbs, tho' all the heavens are still, + And 'neath thy rings of rugged fretwork mark + What seems a heart-throb muffled in the dark. + +"The imprisoned spirits of all winds that blow" echoed to his ear from +the heart of the pine-cone fallen from "the wavering height of yon +monarchal pine." + +When a glorious pine, to him a living soul, falls under the axe he +hears "the wail of Dryads in their last distress." + +In the greenery of his loved and loving pines, with memories happy, +though touched to tender sadness by the sorrows that had come to the +old-time group of friends, blessed with the companionship of the two +loving souls who were dearest to him of all the world, he sang the +melodies of his heart till a cold hand swept across the strings of his +wonderful harp and chilled them to silence. + +In his last year of earth he was invited to deliver at Vanderbilt +University a series of lectures on poetry and literature. Before the +invitation reached him he had "fallen into that perfect peace that +waits for all." + + + + +"THE FLAME-BORN POET" + +HENRY TIMROD + + +A writer on Southern poets heads his article on one of the most gifted +of our children of song, "Henry Timrod, the Unfortunate Singer." + +At first glance the title may seem appropriate. Viewed by the standard +set up by the world, there was little of the wine of success in +Timrod's cup of life. Bitter drafts of the waters of Marah were served +to him in the iron goblet of Fate. But he lived. Of how many of the +so-called favorites of Fortune could that be said? Through the mists +of his twilit life, he caught glimpses of a sun-radiant morning of +wondrous glory. + +Thirty years after Timrod's death a Northern critic, writing of the +new birth of interest in Timrod's work, said: "Time is the ideal +editor." Surely, Editor Time's blue pencil has dealt kindly with our +flame-born poet. + +In Charleston, December 8, 1829, the "little blue-eyed boy" of his +father's verse first opened his eyes upon a world that would give him +all its beauty and much of its sadness, verifying the paternal +prophecy: + + And thy full share of misery + Must fall in life on thee! + +In early childhood he was destined to lose the loving father to whom +his "shouts of joy" were the sweetest strain in life's harmony. + +Henry Timrod and Paul Hayne, within a month of the same age, were +seat-mates in school. Writing of him many years later, Hayne tells of +the time that Timrod made the thrilling discovery that he was a poet; +that being, perhaps, the most exciting epoch in any life. Coming into +school one morning, he showed Paul his first attempt at verse-writing, +which Hayne describes as "a ballad of stirring adventures and +sanguinary catastrophe," which he thought wonderful, the youthful +author, of course, sharing that conviction. Convictions are easy at +thirteen, even when one has not the glamour of the sea and the romance +of old Charleston to prepare the soul for their riveting. + +Unfortunately, the teacher of that school thus honored by the presence +of two budding poets had not a mind attuned to poesy. Seeing the boys +communing together in violation of the rules made and provided for +school discipline, he promptly and sharply recalled them to the +subjects wisely laid down in the curriculum. Notwithstanding this +early discouragement, the youthful poet, abetted by his faithful +fellow song-bird, persevered in his erratic way, and Charleston had +the honor of being the home of one who has been regarded as the most +brilliant of Southern poets. + +When Henry Timrod finished his course of study in the chilling +atmosphere in which his poetic ambition first essayed to put forth its +tender leaflets, he entered Franklin College, in Athens, the nucleus +of what is now the University of Georgia. A few years ago a visitor +saw his name in pencil on a wall of the old college. The "Toombs oak" +still stood on the college grounds, and it may be that its whispering +leaves brought to the youthful poet messages of patriotism which they +had garnered from the lips of the embryonic Georgia politician. Timrod +spent only a year in the college, quitting his studies partly because +his health failed, and partly because the family purse was not equal +to his scholastic ambition. + +Returning to Charleston at a time when that city cherished the +ambition to become to the South what Boston was to the North, he +helped form the coterie of writers who followed the leadership of that +burly and sometimes burry old Mentor, William Gilmore Simms. The young +poet seems not to have been among the docile members of the flock, for +when Timrod's first volume of poems was published Hayne wrote to +Simms, requesting him to write a notice of Timrod's work, not that he +(Timrod) deserved it of Simms, but that he (Hayne) asked it of him. It +may be that Timrod's recognition of the fact that he could write +poetry and that Simms could only try to write it led to a degree of +youthful assumption which clashed with the dignity of the older man. +The Nestor of Southern literature seems not to have cherished +animosity, for he not only noticed Timrod favorably, but in after +years, when the poet's misfortunes pressed most heavily upon him, made +every possible exertion to give him practical and much needed +assistance. + +Upon his return from college, Timrod, with some dim fancies concerning +a forensic career circling around the remote edges of his imagination, +entered the office of his friend, Judge Petigru. The "irrepressible +conflict" between Law and Poesy that has been waged through the +generations broke forth anew, and Timrod made the opposite choice from +that reached by Blackstone. Judging from the character of the rhythmic +composition in which the great expounder of English law took leave of +the Lyric Muse, his decision was a judicious one. Doubtless that of +our poet was equally discreet. When the Club used to gather in +Russell's book-shop on King Street, Judge Petigru and his recalcitrant +protege had many pleasant meetings, unmarred by differences as to the +relative importance of the Rule in Shelley's Case and the flight of +Shelley's Lark. + +Henry Timrod was thrust into the literary life of Charleston at a time +when that life was most full of impelling force. It was a Charleston +filled with memories quite remote from the poetry and imaginative +literature which represented life to the youthful writers. It was a +Charleston with an imposing background of history and oratory, +forensic and legislative, against which the poetry and imagination of +the new-comers glittered capriciously, like the glimmering of +fireflies against the background of night, with swift, uncertain +vividness that suggested the early extinguishing of those quivering +lamps. But the heart of Charleston was kindled with a new ambition, +and the new men brought promise of its fulfilment. + +Others have given us a view of the literary life of Charleston, of her +social position, of her place in the long procession of history. To +Timrod it was left to give us martial Charleston, "girt without and +garrisoned at home," looking "from roof and spire and dome across her +tranquil bay." With him, we see her while + + Calm as that second summer which precedes + The first fall of the snow, + In the broad sunlight of heroic deeds + The City bides the foe. + +Through his eyes we look seaward to where + + Dark Sumter, like a battlemented cloud, + Looms o'er the solemn deep. + +We behold the Queen City of the Sea standing majestically on the +sands, the storm-clouds lowering darkly over her, the distant thunders +of war threatening her, and the pale lightnings of the coming tempest +flashing nearer, + + And down the dunes a thousand guns lie couched, + Unseen, beside the flood-- + Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched + That wait and watch for blood. + +We see her in those dark days before the plunge into the darkness has +been taken, as + + Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade, + Walk grave and thoughtful men, + Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade + As lightly as the pen. + +Thus he gives us the picture of the beautiful city of his love as + + All untroubled in her faith, she waits + The triumph or the tomb. + +Hayne said that of all who shared the suppers at the hospitable home +of Simms in Charleston none perhaps enjoyed them as vividly as Timrod. +He chooses the word that well applies to Timrod's life in all its +variations. He was vivid in all that he did. Being little of a talker, +he was always a vivid listener, and when he spoke, his words leaped +forth like a flame. + +Russell's book-shop, where the Club used to spend their afternoons in +pleasant conversation and discourse of future work, was a place of +keen interest to Timrod, and when their discussions resulted in the +establishment of _Russell's Magazine_ he was one of the most +enthusiastic contributors to the ambitious publication. + +While Charleston was not the place of what would be called Timrod's +most successful life, it was the scene in which he reached his highest +exemplification of Browning's definition of poetry: "A presentment of +the correspondence of the universe to the Deity, of the natural to the +spiritual, and of the actual to the ideal." + +In the environments of Charleston he roamed with his +Nature-worshipping mother, who taught him the beauties of clouds and +trees and streams and flowers, the glory of the changeful pageantry of +the sky, the exquisite grace of the bird atilt on a swaying branch. +Through the glowing picture which Nature unfolded before him he looked +into the heart of the truth symbolized there and gave us messages from +woods and sky and sea. While it may be said that a poet can make his +own environment, yet he is fortunate who finds his place where nature +has done so much to fit the outward scene to the inward longing. + +In Charleston he met "Katie, the Fair Saxon," brown-eyed and with + + Entangled in her golden hair + Some English sunshine, warmth and air. + +He straightway entered into the kingdom of Love, and that sunshine +made a radiance over the few years he had left to give to love and +art. + +In the city of his home he answered his own "Cry to Arms" when the +"festal guns" roared out their challenge. Had his physique been as +strong as his patriotism, his sword might have rivaled his pen in +reflecting honor upon his beautiful city. Even then the seeds of +consumption had developed, and he was discharged from field service. +Still wishing to remain in the service of his country, he tried the +work of war correspondent, reaching the front just after the battle of +Shiloh. Overcome by the horrors of the retreat, he returned to +Charleston, and was soon after appointed assistant editor of the +_Daily South Carolinian_, published in Columbia. He removed to the +capital, where his prospects became bright enough to permit his +marriage to Kate Goodwin, the English girl to whom his Muse pays such +glowing tribute. + +In May, 1864, Simms was in Columbia, and on his return to "Woodlands" +wrote to Hayne that Timrod was in better health and spirits than for +years, saying: "He has only to prepare a couple of dwarf essays, +making a single column, and the pleasant public is satisfied. These he +does so well that they have reason to be so. Briefly, our friend is in +a fair way to fatten and be happy." + +This prosperity came to an end when the capital city fell a victim to +the fires of war, and Timrod returned to the city of his birth, where +for a time the publication of the _South Carolinian_ was continued, he +writing editorials nominally for fifteen dollars a month, practically +for exercise in facile expression, as the small stipend promised was +never paid. With the paper, he soon returned to Columbia, where after +a time he secured work in the office of Governor Orr, writing to Hayne +that twice he copied papers from ten o'clock one morning till sunrise +of the next. + +With the close of the session, his work ended, and in the spring he +visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill. Hayne says: "He found me with my +family established in a crazy wooden shanty, dignified as a cottage, +near the track of the main Georgia railroad, about sixteen miles from +Augusta." To Timrod, that "crazy wooden shanty," set in immemorial +pines and made radiant by the presence of his poet friend, was finer +than a palace. On that "windy, frowzy, barren hill," as Maurice +Thompson called it, the two old friends spent together the spring days +of '67--such days as lingered in golden beauty in the memory of one of +them and have come down to us in immortal verse. + +Again in August of that year he visited Copse Hill, hoping to find +health among the pines. Of these last days Paul Hayne wrote years +later: + + In the latter summer-tide of this same year I again persuaded him + to visit me. Ah! how sacred now, how sad and sweet, are the memories + of that rich, clear, prodigal August of '67! + + We would rest on the hillsides, in the swaying golden shadows, + watching together the Titanic masses of snow-white clouds which + floated slowly and vaguely through the sky, suggesting by their + form, whiteness, and serene motion, despite the season, flotillas + of icebergs upon Arctic seas. Like lazzaroni we basked in the + quiet noons, sunk into the depths of reverie, or perhaps of yet + more "charmed sleep." Or we smoked, conversing lazily between the + puffs, + + "Next to some pine whose antique roots just peeped + From out the crumbling bases of the sand." + + But the evenings, with their gorgeous sunsets, "rolling down like + a chorus" and the "gray-eyed melancholy gloaming," were the + favorite hours of the day with him. + +One of those pines was especially his own, by his love and his choice +of its shade as a resting place. Of it Paul Hayne wrote when his +friend had passed from its shadows for the last time: + + The same majestic pine is lifted high + Against the twilight sky, + The same low, melancholy music grieves + Amid the topmost leaves, + As when I watched and mused and dreamed with him + Beneath those shadows dim. + +Such dreams we can dimly imagine sometimes when we stand beneath a +glorious pine and try to translate its whisperings into words, and +watch "the last rays of sunset shimmering down, flashed like a royal +crown." Sometimes we catch glimpses of such radiant visions when we +stand in the pine shadows and think, as Hayne did so often after that +beautiful August, "Of one who comes no more." Under that stately tree +he + + Seemed to drink the sunset like strong wine + Or, hushed in trance divine, + Hailed the first shy and timorous glance from far + Of evening's virgin star. + +In all his years after, Paul Hayne held in his heart the picture of +his friend with head against that "mighty trunk" when + + The unquiet passion died from out his eyes, + As lightning from stilled skies. + +So through that glowing August on Copse Hill the two Southern poets +walked and talked and built their shrine to the shining Olympic +goddess to whom their lives were dedicated. + +When summer had wrapped about her the purple and crimson glories of +her brilliant life and drifted into the tomb of past things, Timrod +left the friend of his heart alone with the "soft wind-angels" and +memories of "that quiet eve" + + When, deeply, thrillingly, + He spake of lofty hopes which vanquish Death; + And on his mortal breath + A language of immortal meanings hung + That fired his heart and tongue. + +[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE TIMROD LIVED DURING HIS LAST YEARS +1108 Henderson Street, Columbia, S.C.] + +Impelled by circumstances to leave the pines before their inspiring +breath had given him of their life, he had little strength to renew +the battle for existence, and of the sacrifice of his possessions to +which he had been forced to resort he writes to Hayne: "We have eaten +two silver pitchers, one or two dozen silver forks, several sofas, +innumerable chairs, and a huge bedstead." + +We should like to think of life as flowing on serenely in that pretty +cottage on Henderson Street, Columbia, its wide front veranda crowned +with a combed roof supported by a row of white columns. In its cool +dimness we may in fancy see the nature-loving poet at eventide looking +into the greenery of a friendly tree stretching great arms lovingly to +the shadowy porch. A taller tree stands sentinel at the gate, as if to +guard the poet-soul from the world and close it around with the beauty +that it loved. + +But life did not bring him any more of joy or success than he had +achieved in the long years of toil and sorrow and disappointment, +brightened by the flame of his own genius throwing upon the dark wall +of existence the pictures that imagination drew with magic hand upon +his sympathetic, ever responsive mind. On the sixth of October, after +that month of iridescent beauty on Copse Hill, came the days of which +he had written long before: + + As it purples in the zenith, + As it brightens on the lawn, + There's a hush of death about me, + And a whisper, "He is gone!" + +On Copse Hill, "Under the Pine," his lifelong friend stood and +sorrowfully questioned: + + O Tree! have not his poet-touch, his dreams + So full of heavenly gleams, + Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark, + And all thy nature dark + Stirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fire + Of faint, unknown desire? + +Near the end of his last visit he had told Paul Hayne that he did not +wish to live to be old--"an octogenarian, far less a centenarian, +like old Parr." He hoped that he might stay until he was fifty or +fifty-five; "one hates the idea of a mummy, intellectual or physical." +If those coveted years had been added to his thirty-eight beautiful +ones, a brighter radiance might have crowned our literature. Or, would +the vision have faded away with youth? + +On the seventh of October, 1867, Henry Timrod was laid to rest in +Trinity Churchyard, Columbia, beside his little Willie, "the Christmas +gift of God" that brought such divine light to the home only to leave +it in darkness when the gift was recalled before another Christmas +morn had gladdened the world. The poet's grave is marked by a shaft +erected by loving hands, but a memorial more fitting to one who so +loved the beautiful is found in the waving grasses and the fragrant +flowers that Nature spreads for her lover, and the winds of heaven +that breathe soft dirges over his lowly mound. + +In Washington Square, Charleston, stands a monument erected in 1901 by +the Timrod Memorial Association of South Carolina to the memory of the +most vivid poet the South has given to the world. On the west panel is +an inscription which expresses to us the mainspring of his character: + + Through clouds and through sunshine, in peace and in war, amid + the stress of poverty and the storms of civil strife, his soul + never faltered and his purpose never failed. To his poetic + mission he was faithful to the end. In life and in death he was + "not disobedient unto the Heavenly vision." + +On the panel facing the War Monument are three stanzas from his own +beautiful Ode, sung at the decoration of Confederate graves in +Magnolia Cemetery in 1867--such a little time before his passing that +it seems to have mournful, though unconscious, allusion to his own +early fall in the heat of earth's battle: + + Sleep sweetly in your humble graves; + Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause, + Though yet no marble column craves + The pilgrim here to pause. + + In seeds of laurel in the earth + The blossom of your fame is blown, + And somewhere, waiting for its birth, + The shaft is in the stone. + + Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! + There is no holier spot of ground + Than where defeated valor lies, + By mourning beauty crowned! + +The shaft which the prophetic eye of Timrod saw "in the stone" was in +time revealed, and years later that other shaft, awaiting the hour for +doing homage to the poet, found the light. To-day the patriot soldiers +asleep in Magnolia, and their poet alike, have stately testimonials of +the loving memory of their people. + + [Note: The quotations from Henry Timrod found in this book are + used by special permission of the B.F. Johnson Publishing Company, + the authorized publishers of Timrod's Poems.] + + + + +"FATHER ABBOT" + +WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS + + +Woodlands, near Midway, the half-way stop between Charleston and +Augusta, was a little kingdom of itself in the years of its greatness +when William Gilmore Simms was monarch of the fair domain. It was far +from being a monastery, though its master was known as "Father Abbot." +The title had clung to him from the pseudonym under which he had +written a series of letters to a New York paper, upholding the view +that Charlestonians should not go north on health-seeking vacations +when they had better places nearer home, mentioning Sullivan's Island +where the hospitable Fort Moultrie officers "were good hands at +drawing a cork." Of course, he meant a trigger. + +Rather was Woodlands a bit of enchanted forest cut from an old +black-letter legend, in which one half expected to meet mediaeval knights +on foaming steeds--every-day folk ride jogging horses--threading their +way through the mysterious forest aisles in search of those romantic +adventures which were necessary to give knights of that period an +excuse for existence. It chanced, however, that the only knights known +to Woodlands were the old-time friends of its master and the youthful +writers who looked to "Father Abbot" for literary guidance. + +Having welcomed his guests with the warmth and urbanity which made him +a most enjoyable comrade, Father Abbot would disperse them to seek +entertainment after the manner agreeable to them. For the followers of +old Isaac Walton there was prime fishing in the Edisto River, that +"sweet little river" that ripples melodiously through "Father Abbot's" +pages. To hunters the forest offered thrilling occupation. For the +pleasure rider smooth, white, sandy bridle-paths led in silvery curves +through forests of oak or pine to the most delightful of Nowheres. + +[Illustration: WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS +By courtesy of D. Appleton & Company] + +Having put each guest into the line of his fancy, the master of +Woodlands would betake himself to his library to write his thirty +pages, the daily stint he demanded from the loom of his imagination. +Sometimes he had a companion in Paul Hayne who, not so much given to +outdoor life as many of the frequenters of Woodlands, liked to sit in +the library, weaving some poetic vision of his own or watching the +flight of the tireless pen across the page. + +By and by the pen would drop upon the desk, its task finished for that +morning, and the worker would look up with an air of surprise at +becoming aware of his companion and say: "Near dinner time, old boy. +What do you say to a sherry and soda?" As there was only one thing to +be said to a sherry and soda, this was the signal for repairing to the +dining room. By the time the sherry and soda sparkled hospitable +welcome the sportsmen returned and after doing justice to the genius +of the host in mixed drinks, they were seated around a generous table, +most of the good things with which it was laden having come from the +waters and fields and vines of Woodlands. For if a world-wide war had +closed all the harbors of earth Woodlands could still have offered +luxurious banquets to its guests. The host beguiled the time with +anecdotes, of which he had an unfailing store that never lost a point +in his telling, or declaimed poetry, of which his retentive memory +held an inexhaustible collection. + +The feast was followed by cigars, Simms having begun to smoke of late +years to discourage a tendency to stoutness. Then all would join in +the diversions of the afternoon, which sometimes led to the "Edge of +the Swamp," a gruesome place which the poet of Woodlands had +celebrated in his verse. Here + + Cypresses, + Each a great, ghastly giant, eld and gray + Stride o'er the dusk, dank tract. + +Around the sombre cypress trees coiled + + Fantastic vines + That swing like monstrous serpents in the sun. + +There are living snakes in the swamp, yet more terrifying than the +viny serpents that circle the cypresses, and + + The steel-jaw'd cayman from his grassy slope + Slides silent to the slimy, green abode + Which is his province. + +Now and then a bit of sunny, poetic life touches upon the gloomy place, +for + + See! a butterfly + That, travelling all the day, has counted climes + Only by flowers ... + Lights on the monster's brow. + +An insecure perch for the radiant wanderer. The inhospitable saurian +dives with embarrassing suddenness and dips the airy visitor into the +"rank water." The butterfly finds no charm in the gloomy place and +flies away, which less ethereal wanderers might likewise be fain to +do. Now and then the stillness that reigned over that home of malign +things was broken by the sound of a boat-horn on a lumber raft +floating down the Edisto. + +A song written by Simms chants the charms of a grapevine swing in the +festoons of which half a dozen guests could be seated at once, all on +different levels, book in one hand, leaving the other free to reach up +and gather the clusters of grapes as they read. After supper they sat +on the portico, from which they looked through a leafy archway formed +by the meeting of the branches of magnificent trees, and discussed +literature and metaphysics. + +The Christmas guests at Woodlands would be awakened in early morning +by the sound of voice and banjo and, looking from their windows, could +see the master distributing gifts to his seventy dusky servitors. In +the evenings host and guests met in the spacious dining room where +Simms would brew a punch of unparalleled excellence, he being as +famous for the concoction of that form of gayety as was his friend, +Jamison, down the river, for the evolution of the festive cocktail. + +Life flowed on pleasantly at Woodlands from October till May in those +idyllic years before death had made a graveyard of the old home and +fire had swept away the beautiful mansion. + +William Gilmore Simms first opened his eyes upon the world of men in +Charleston, at a time when to be properly born in Charleston meant to +be born to the purple. William Gilmore, alas! did not inherit that +imperial color. He sprang from the good red earth, whence comes the +vigor of humanity, and dwelt in the rugged atmosphere of toil which +the Charleston eye could never penetrate. Politically, the City by the +Sea led the van in the hosts of Democracy; ethically, she remained far +in the rear with the Divine Right of Kings and the Thirty-Nine +Articles of Aristocracy. + +So Charleston took little note of the boy whose father failed in trade +and fared forth to fight British and Indians under Old Hickory and to +wander in that far Southwest known as Mississippi to ascertain whether +that remote frontier might offer a livelihood to the unfortunate. The +small William Gilmore, left in the care of his grandmother, was +apprenticed to a druggist and became a familiar figure on the streets +of Charleston as he came and went on his round of errands. Small +wonder that the Queen of the Sea, having swallowed his pills and +powders in those early days, had little taste for his literary output +in after years. + +In Charleston he not only learned the drug business, but took his +first course in the useful art of deception, reading and writing +verses by the light of a candle concealed in a box, to hide its rays +from his thrifty grandmother, who was adverse not only to the waste of +candles but to the squandering of good sleep-time. + +Fortunately, she had no objection to furnishing him with entertainment +in off hours. For the material of much of his work in after life was +he indebted to the war stories and ancient traditions that she told +her eager little grandson in those 'prentice days. But for her olden +tales, the romances of Revolutionary South Carolina and the shivery +fascination of "Dismal Castle" might have been unknown to future +readers. + +All the region around Charleston, so rich in historic memories, was an +inspiration to the future romance writer. The aged trees festooned +with heavy gray moss lent him visions of the past to reappear in many +a volume. In his boat in Charleston harbor, and on the sands looking +out over the ocean, he gathered that collection of sea pictures which +adorned his prose and verse in the years to come. + +Over on Morris Island glowed the Charleston light, "the pale, +star-like beacon, set by the guardian civilization on the edges of the +great deep." Lying on the shore he watched "the swarthy beauty, Night, +enveloped in dark mantle, passing with all her train of starry +servitors; even as some queenly mourner, followed by legions of gay +and brilliant courtiers, glides slowly and mournfully in sad state and +solemnity on a duteous pilgrimage to some holy shrine." He saw "over +the watery waste that sad, sweet, doubtful light, such as Spenser +describes in the cathedral wood: 'A little glooming light, most like a +shade.'" Drifting about in his boat he might pass Long Island, where +in 1776 the ocean herself fought for Charleston, interposing an +impassable barrier to the advance of Sir Henry Clinton. + +While sea and shore and sky and earth were giving him of their best, +his father came back with innumerable stories of adventure that would +of themselves have set up a young romancer in business. Having talked +his mind dry of experiences he returned to Mississippi to make another +collection of thrilling tales, leaving William Gilmore, Jr., with a +mental outlook upon life which the glories of Charleston could never +have opened to him. + +Drugs, considered as a lifelong pursuit, did not appeal to the youth +who had been writing verses ever since he had arrived at the age of +eight years and now held a place in the poet's corner of a Charleston +paper. He went into the law office of his friend, Charles E. Carroll, +where his perusal of Blackstone was interspersed with reading poetry +and writing Byronic verses. + +While thus variously engaged he received an invitation to visit his +father in the wilds of Mississippi, a call to which his adventurous +spirit gave willing response. Were there not Indians and other wild +things and the choicest assortment of the odds and ends of humanity +out there, just waiting to be made useful as material for the pen of +an ambitious romancer? Through untrodden forests he rode in a silence +broken only by his horse's feet and the howl of wolves in the +distance. To all the new views of the world he kept open the windows +of his mind and they were transmitted to his readers in the years to +come. If he did not sleep with head pillowed upon the grave of one of +De Soto's faithful followers, he at least thought he did, and the +fancy served him as the theme of verse. And those varying types of +human nature and beast nature--do they not all appear again upon the +printed page? + +When the end of his visit came his father pleaded: + +"Do not think of Charleston. Whatever your talents they will there be +poured out like water on the sands. Charleston! I know it only as a +place of tombs." + +There came a time when he, too, knew it only as a place of tombs. Just +now he knew it as the home of the Only Girl in the world, so--what was +the use? And then, Charleston is born into the blood of all her sons, +whether she recognizes them or not. It is better to be a door-keeper +in Charleston than to dwell in the most gorgeous tents of outside +barbarians. So he who was born to the Queen City would hang on to the +remotest hem of her trailing robe at the imminent risk of having his +brains dashed out on the cobble-stones as she swept along her royal +way, rather than sit comfortably upon velvet-cushioned thrones in a +place unknown to her regal presence. Simms came back to his native +city with her "unsociable houses which rose behind walls, shutting in +beautiful gardens that it would have been a sacrilege to let the +public enjoy." + +Soon after his return he was admitted to the bar and proved his +forensic prowess by earning $600 in the first year of his practice, a +degree of success which enabled him to unite his destiny with that of +the Only Girl, and begin housekeeping in Summerville, a suburban +village where living was cheap. For, though "Love gives itself and is +not bought," there are other essentials of existence which are not so +lavish with themselves. + +The pen-fever had seized upon Simms with great virulence and he +followed his fate. Soon after his return from Mississippi, General +Charles Coates Pinckney died and Simms wrote the memorial poem for +him. When LaFayette visited Charleston the pen of Simms was called +upon to do suitable honor to the great occasion. Such periodical +attacks naturally resulted in a chronic condition. Charleston was the +scene of his brief, though not wholly unsuccessful, career as a +play-wright. In Charleston he edited the _Daily Gazette_ in the +exciting tunes of Nullification, taking with all the strength that was +in him the unpopular side of the burning question. In the doorway of +the Gazette office he stood defiantly as the procession of Nullifiers +came down the street, evidently with hostile intentions toward the +belligerent editor. Seeing his courageous attitude the enthusiasts +became good-natured and contented themselves with marching by, giving +three cheers for their cause. + +In that famous bookshop, Russell's, on King Street he was accustomed +to meet in the afternoons with the youthful writers who looked upon +him as their natural born leader. In his "Wigwam," as he called his +Charleston home, he welcomed his followers to evenings of brightness +that were like stars in their memory through many after years of +darkness. When he made his home at Woodlands he often came to the +"Wigwam" to spend a night, calling his young disciples in for an +evening of entertainment. His powerful voice would be heard ringing +out in oratory and declamation so that neighbors blocks away would say +to Hayne or Timrod next morning, "I noticed that you had Simms with +you last night." In 1860 the "Wigwam" was accidentally burned. + +At Woodlands, Simms awaited the coming of the war which he had +predicted for a number of years. There he was when the battle of +Fredericksburg filled him with triumphant joy, and he saw in fancy +"Peace with her beautiful rainbow plucked from the bosom of the storm +and spread from east to west, from north to south, over all the sunny +plains and snowy heights." Unfortunately, his radiant fancy wrought in +baseless visions and the fires of the storm had burned away that +brilliant rainbow before Peace came, as a mourning dove with shadowy +wings hovering over a Nation's grave. + +In May, 1864, Simms went to Columbia and was there when the town was +destroyed by fire, the house in which he was staying being saved by +his presence therein. "You belong to the whole Union," said an +officer, placing a guard around the dwelling to protect the sturdy +writer who counted his friends all over the Nation. He said to friends +who sympathized with him over his losses, "Talk not to me about my +losses when the State is lost." + +Simms describes the streets of Columbia as "wide and greatly protected +by umbrageous trees set in regular order, which during the vernal +season confer upon the city one of its most beautiful features." + +The _Daily South Carolinian_ was sent to Charleston to save it from +destruction. Its editors, Julian Selby and Henry Timrod, remained in +the office on the south side of Washington Street near Main, where +they prepared and sent out a daily bulletin while bomb-shells fell +around them, until their labors were ended by the burning of the +building. + +From the ashes of the _Carolinian_ arose the _Phoenix_ and Simms was +its editor through its somewhat brief existence. Selby relates that +Simms offended General Hartwell and was summoned to trial at the +General's headquarters on the corner of Bull and Gervais Streets. The +result of the trial was an invitation for the defendant to a sumptuous +luncheon and a ride home in the General's carriage accompanied by a +basket of champagne and other good things. The next day the General +told a friend that if Mr. Simms was a specimen of a South Carolina +gentleman he would not again enter into a tilt with one. "He outtalked +me, out-drank me, and very clearly and politely showed me that I +lacked proper respect for the aged." + +The _Phoenix_ promptly sank back into its ashes and Simms returned to +Charleston to a life of toil and struggle, not only for his own +livelihood but to help others bear the burden of existence that was +very heavy in Charleston immediately succeeding the war. Timrod wrote +to him, "Somehow or other, you always magnetize me on to a little +strength." + +In 1866 Simms visited Paul Hayne at Copse Hill, the shrine to which +many footsteps were turned in the days when the poet and his little +family made life beautiful on that pine-clad summit. Hayne welcomed +his guest with joy and with sorrow--joy to behold again the face of +his old friend; sorrow to see it lined with the pain and losses of the +years. + +Of all their old circle, Simms was the one whose wreck was the most +disastrous. He had possessed so many of the things which make life +desirable that his loss had left him as the storm leaves the ruined +ship which, in the days of its magnificence, had ridden the waves with +the greatest pride. The fortnight in Copse Hill was the first relief +from toil that had come to him since death and fire and defeat had +done their worst upon him. His biographer says, "He was as eager as +ever to pass the night in profitless, though pleasant, discussions +when he should have been trying to regain his strength through sleep." +To a later visitor Paul Hayne showed a cherished pine log on which +were inscribed the names of Simms and Timrod. + +Upon the return of Simms he wrote to his friend at Copse Hill that no +language could describe the suffering of Charleston. He said that the +picture of Irving, given him by Hayne, served a useful purpose in +helping to cover the bomb-shell holes still in his walls. "For the +last three years," he writes, "I have written till two in the morning. +Does not this look like suicide?" He mentions the fact that he shares +with his two sons his room in which he sleeps, works, writes and +studies, and is "cabin'd, cribbed, confined"--"I who have had such +ample range before, with a dozen rooms and a house range for walking, +in bad weather, of 134 feet." The old days were very fair as seen +through the heavy clouds that had gathered around the Master of +Woodlands. + +In 1870, June 11th, the bell of Saint Michael's tolled the message +that Charleston's most distinguished son had passed away. His funeral +was in Saint Paul's. He was buried in Magnolia Cemetery, at the +dedication of which twenty-one years earlier he had read the +dedication poem. The stone above him bears simply the name, "Simms." + +On the Battery in Charleston a monument commemorates the broken life +of one who gave of his best to the city of his home and his love. +Verily might he say: I asked for bread and you gave me a stone. + + + + +"UNCLE REMUS" + +JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS + + +Seeing the name of Joel Chandler Harris, many people might have to +stop and reflect a moment before recalling exactly what claim that +gentleman had upon the attention of the reader. "Uncle Remus" brings +before the mind at once a whole world of sunlight and fun, with not a +few grains of wisdom planted here and there. The good old fun-loving +Uncle has put many a rose and never a thorn into life's flower-garden. + +Being in Atlanta some years ago, when Mr. Harris was on the editorial +staff of the _Constitution_, I called up the office and asked if I +might speak to him. The gentleman who answered my call replied that +Mr. Harris was not in, adding the information that if he were he would +not talk through the telephone. I asked what time I should be likely +to find him in the office. + +"He will be in this afternoon, but I fear that he would not see you if +you were the angel Gabriel," was the discouraging reply. + +"I am not the angel Gabriel," I said. "Tell him that I am a lady--Mrs. +Pickett--and that I should like very much to see him." + +"If you are a lady, and Mrs. Pickett, I fear that he will vanish and +never be found again." + +Notwithstanding the discouragements, I was permitted to call that +afternoon in the hope that the obdurate Uncle Remus might graciously +consent to see me. I found him in his office in the top story of the +building, an appropriate place to avoid being run to covert by the +public, but inconvenient because of the embarrassment which might +result from dropping out of the window if he should have the +misfortune to be cornered. To say that I was received might be +throwing too much of a glamour over the situation. At least, I was not +summarily ejected, nor treated to a dissolving view of Uncle Remus +disappearing in the distance, so I considered myself fortunate. I told +him that I had called up by telephone that morning to speak to him. + +"I never talk through the telephone," he said. "I do not like to talk +in a hole. I look into a man's eyes when I talk to him." + +When Uncle Remus was fairly run to earth and could not escape, he was +quite human in his attitude toward his caller; his only fault being +that he was prone to talk of his visitor's work rather than his own, +and a question that would seem to lead up to any personal revelation +on his part would result in so strong an indication of a desire for +flight that the conversation would be directed long distances away +from Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. He was a born story-teller, and +had not the made author's owl-like propensity to perch upon high +places and hoot his wisdom to the passing crowd. The expression +"literary" as applied to him filled him with surprise. He called +himself an "accidental author"; said he had never had an opportunity +of acquiring style, and probably should not have taken advantage of it +if he had. He was always as much astonished by his success as other +people are by their failures. + + * * * * * + +I met him once at a Confederate reunion in Atlanta, where I took my +little grand-children, who had been brought up on Uncle Remus, to see +him. Having heard their beauty praised, he cautioned them not to think +too much of their looks, telling them that appearance was of little +consequence. He gave each of them a coin, saying, "I don't believe in +giving money to boys; I believe in their working for it." + +"Well," said little George, "haven't we earned it listening to Uncle +Remus?" + +"If that is so, I'm afraid I haven't money enough to pay you what I +owe you." + +He was at ease and natural and like other people with children. He +invited them to come to his farm and see the flowers and trees, +telling them how his home received the name of "The Wren's Nest." As +he sat one morning on the veranda, he saw a wren building a nest on +his letter-box by the gate. When the postman came he went out and +asked him to deliver the mail at the door, to avoid disturbing Madam +Wren's preparations for housekeeping. The postman was faithful, and +the Wren family had a prosperous and happy home. + +"You must never steal an egg from a nest," he told the boys. Curving +one hand into an imitation nest holding an imaginary egg, he hovered +over it with the other hand, rubbing it gently, explaining to the +boys, who watched him with absorbing interest, how the egg would +change to a beautiful fluff of feathers and music, and after a while +would fly away among the trees and fill the woods with sweet sounds. +"If you destroy the egg, you kill all that beauty and music, and there +will be no little bird to sit on the tree and sing to you." The boys +assured him that they had never taken an egg, nor even so much as +looked into the nest, because some birds will leave their nests if you +just look into them. + +At the reception given to Mrs. Jackson, Mrs. Stuart, Winnie Davis, and +myself, Mr. Harris was invited to stand in line, but declined. It +would be difficult to imagine him as standing with a receiving party, +shaking hands with the public. He was asked to speak, but that was +even less to be expected. The nearest he ever came to making a speech +was once when he sat upon the platform while his friend, Henry O. +Grady, was addressing a large assemblage with all that eloquence for +which he was noted. When he had finished, the call for "Harris" came +with great volume and persistency. He arose and said, "I am coming," +walked down from the platform and was lost in the crowd. + +[Illustration: JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS +At Home] + +Uncle Remus wrote his stories at "Snap Bean Farm," in West End, a +suburb of Atlanta. They filled his evenings with pleasure after the +office grind was over. If no one but himself had ever seen them, he +would have been as happy in the work as he was when the public was +delighting in the adventures of Br'er Wolf and Br'er B'ar. In that +cosy home the early evening was given to the children, and the later +hours to recording the tales which had amused them through the +twilight. + +A home it was, not only to him but to all who came in friendship to +see him in his quiet retreat. There was no room in it for those whom +curiosity brought there to see the man of letters or to do honor to a +lion. The lionizing of Uncle Remus was the one ambition impossible of +achievement in the literary world. For everything else that touched +upon the human, the vine-embowered, tree-shaded house on Gordon Street +opened hospitable doors. + + * * * * * + +Joel Chandler Harris was born in Eatonton, the county-seat of Putnam +County, Georgia, and in his early days attended the Eatonton Academy, +where he received all the academic training he ever had. His vitally +helpful education was gained in the wider and deeper school of life, +and few have been graduated therefrom with greater honors. + +At six years of age he had the good fortune to encounter "The Vicar of +Wakefield," than whom, it is safe to assert, no boy of such tender +years had ever a better and more inspiring friend. This beloved +clerical gentleman led young Joel into a charmed land of literature, +in which he dwelt all his life. + +In the post-office at Eatonton was an old green sofa, very much the +worse for wear, which yet offered a comfortable lounging place for the +boy Joel, adapted to his kittenish taste for curling up in quiet +retreats. There he would spend hours in reading the newspapers that +came to the office. In one of them he found an announcement of a new +periodical to be published by Colonel Turner on his plantation nine +miles from Eatonton. In connection with this announcement was an +advertisement for an office boy. It occurred to the future "Uncle +Remus," then twelve years old, that this might open a way for him. He +wrote to Colonel Turner, and a few days later the Colonel drove up to +town to take the unknown boy to his plantation. So beside the editor +Joel Chandler Harris rode to the office of the _Countryman_ and to his +happy destiny. It has been said that but for the Turner plantation +there would have been no Uncle Remus, but what would have become of +the possibilities of that good old darky if the little Joel had not +enjoyed the acquaintance of a good-natured post-master who permitted +him to occupy the old green sofa and browse among the second-class +mail of the Eatonton community? + +Surely there was never a better school for the development of a +budding author than the office of the _Countryman_, and the +well-selected library in the home of its editor, and the great +wildwood that environed the plantation. + +Best of all, there were the "quarters," where "Uncle Remus" conducted +a whole university of history and zooelogy and philosophy and ethics +and laughter and tears. Down in the cabins at night the printer's boy +would sit and drink in such stores of wit and wisdom as could not lie +unexpressed in his facile mind, and the world is the richer for every +moment he spent in that primitive, child-mind community, with its +ancient traditions that made it one with the beginning of time. + +At times he joined a 'coon hunt, and with a gang of boys and a pack of +hounds chased the elusive little animal through the night, returning +home triumphant in the dawn. He hunted rabbits in the woods, and, +maybe, became acquainted with the character of the original Br'er +Rabbit from his descendants in the old plantation forest. + +From the window near which his type-case stood he saw the squirrels +scampering over trees and roofs, heard the birds singing in the +branches, caught dissolving views of Br'er Fox flitting across the +garden path, and breathed in beauty and romance to be exhaled later +for the enchantment of a world of readers. + +In Colonel Hunter's library, selected with scholarly taste, he found +the great old English masters who had the good fortune to be born into +the language while it was yet "a well of English undefiled." In that +well he became saturated with a pure, direct, simple diction which +later contact with the tendencies of his era and the ephemeral +production of the daily press was not able to change. + + * * * * * + +It was in the office of the _Countryman_ that Joel Chandler Harris +made his first venture into the world of print, shyly, as became one +who would afterward be known as the most modest literary man in +America. When Colonel Hunter found out the authorship of the bright +paragraphs that slipped into his paper now and then with increasing +frequency, he captured the elusive young genius and set it to work as +a regular contributor. In this periodical the young writer's first +poem appeared: a mournful lay of love and death, as a first poem +usually is, however cheerful a philosopher its author may ultimately +become. + +This idyllic life soon ceased. When the tide of war rolled over +central Georgia, it swept many lives out of their accustomed paths and +destroyed many a support around which budding aspirations had wound +their tendrils. The "printer's boy" sat upon a fence on the old Turner +plantation, watching Slocum's Corps march by, and amiably receiving +the good-natured gibes and jests of the soldiers, who apparently found +something irresistibly mirth-provoking in the quaint little figure by +the wayside. Sherman was marching to the sea, and the Georgia boy was +taking his first view of the progress of war. + +Among the many enterprises trampled to earth by those ruthless feet +was the _Countryman_, which survived the desolating raid but a short +time. It was years before the young journalist knew another home. For +some months he set type on the Macon _Daily Telegraph_, going from +there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of the +_Crescent Monthly_. When the _Crescent_ waned and disappeared from the +journalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, +compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force on the Forsyth +_Advertiser_. + +A pungent editorial upon the abuses of the State government, which +appeared in the _Advertiser_, attracted the attention of Colonel W.T. +Thompson and led him to offer Mr. Harris a place on the staff of the +Savannah _Daily News_. Happily, there lived in Savannah the charming +young lady who was to be the loving centre of the pleasant home of +"Uncle Remus." The marriage took place in 1873, and Mr. Harris +remained with the _News_ until '76, when, to escape yellow fever, he +removed to Atlanta. He was soon after placed on the editorial staff of +the _Constitution_, and in its columns Uncle Remus was first +introduced to the world. + + * * * * * + +In his home in West End, "Snap-Bean Farm," he lived in calm content +with his harmonious family and his intimate friends, Shakespeare and +his associates, and those yet older companions who have come down to +us from ancient Biblical times. Some of his intimates were chosen from +later writers. Among poets, he told me that Tom Moore was his most +cherished companion, the one to whom he fled for consolation in +moments of life's insufficiencies. + +Mr. Harris had no objection to talking in sociable manner of other +writers, but if his visitor did not wish to see him close up like a +clam and vanish to the seclusion of an upper room it was better not to +mention Uncle Remus. Neither had he any fancy for the kind of talk +that prevails at "pink teas" and high functions of society in general. +Anything that would be appropriate to the topics introduced in such +places would never occur to him, and the vapory nothingness was so +filled with mysterious terrors for him that he fled before them in +unspeakable alarm. + +[Illustration: SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA +The residence of Joel Chandler Harris] + +"Snap-Bean Farm" was all the world that he cared for, and here he +lived and wove his enchantments, not in his well-appointed study, as a +thoroughly balanced mind would have done, but all over the house, just +where he happened to be, preferably beside the fire after the little +ones had gone to bed, leaving memories of their youthful brightness to +make yet more glowing the flames, and waves of their warmth of soul to +linger in enchantment about the hearth. + +It was a sunny, happy day when I visited "Snap-Bean Farm." A +violet-bordered walk led me to the pretty frame cottage, built upon a +terrace quite a distance from the street--a shady, woodsy, leafy, +flowery, fragrant distance--a distance that suggested infinite beauty +and melody, infinite fascination. When the home was established there, +the rumbling and clang of the trolley never broke the stillness of the +peaceful spot. A horse-car crept slowly and softly to a near-by +terminus and stopped, as if, having reached Uncle Remus and his woodsy +home, there could be nothing beyond worth the effort. There were wide +reaches of pine-woods, holding illimitable possibilities of romance, +of legend, of wildwood and wild-folk tradition. It was a country home +in the beginning, and it remained a country home, regardless of the +outstretching of the city's influences. Joel Chandler Harris had a +country soul, and if he had been set down in the heart of a metropolis +his home would have stretched out into mystic distances of greenery +and surrounded itself with a limitless reach of cool, vibrant, amber +atmosphere, and looked out upon a colorful and fragrant wilderness of +flowers, and he would have dwelt in the solitudes that God made. + +As I walked, a fragrance wrapped me around as with a veil of radiant +mist. It came straight from the heart of his many-varied roses that +claimed much of his time and care. The shadow of two great cedar trees +reached protecting arms after me as I went up to the steps of the +cottage hidden away in a green and purple and golden and pink tangle +of bloom and sweet odors; ivy and wistaria and jasmine and +honeysuckle. Beside the steps grew some of his special pet roses. +Their glowing and fragrant presence sometimes afforded him a congenial +topic of discourse when a guest chanced to approach too closely the +subject of the literary work of the host, if one may use the term in +connection with a writer who so constantly disclaimed any approach to +literature, and so persistently declined to take himself seriously. + +In the front yard was a swing that appealed to me reminiscently with +the force of the olden days when I had a swing of my very own. As I +"let the old cat die," we talked of James Whitcomb Riley's poem, +"Waitin' fer the Cat to Die," and Mr. Harris told me of the visit +Riley had made to him not long before. Two men with such cheerful +views of life could not but be congenial, and it was apparent that the +visit had brought joy to them both. + +I did not see the three dogs and seven cats--mystic numbers!--but felt +confident that my genial host could not have been satisfied with any +less. + +The charmed circle in which Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit shone as social +stars is yet with us, and we shall not let it go out from our lives. +The mystic childhood of a dim, mysterious race is brought to us +through these beings that have come to us from the olden time "when +animals talked like people." + +"The Sign of the Wren's Nest" is peopled by these legendary forms with +their never-dying souls. They lurk in every corner and peer out from +every crevice. They hide behind the trees, and sometimes in the +moonlight we see them looking out at us as we walk along the path. +They crouch among interlacing vines and look at us through the lacy +screen with eyes in which slumber the traditions of the ages. + +We look for the Magician who, with a wave of the hand, made all these +to live and move before us. We know he must be there. We "cannot make +him dead"; but he can make himself and us alive in the life of the +past. A little door, with one shutter of Memory and one of Faith, +opens before us, and he comes to dwell again in the world which he +created in "The Sign of the Wren's Nest." + + + + +"THE POET OF THE FLAG" + +FRANCIS SCOTT KEY + + +Away back in the years, Terra Rubra, the colonial home of John Ross +Key, spread out broad acres under the sky of Maryland, in the northern +part of Frederick County. Girt by noble trees, the old mansion, built +of brick that came from England in the days when the New World yet +remained in ignorance of the wealth of her natural and industrial +resources, stood in the middle of the spacious lawn which afforded a +beautiful playground for little Francis Scott Key and his young +sister, who lived here the ideal home life of love and happiness. +Among the flowers of the terraced garden they learned the first +lessons of beauty and sweetness and the triumph of growth and +blossoming. At a short distance was a dense line of forest, luring the +young feet into tangled wildernesses of greenery and the colorful +beauty of wild flowers in summer, and lifting great gray arms in +solemn majesty against the dun skies of winter. Through it flowed the +rippling silver of Pipe Creek on its sparkling way to the sea. At the +foot of a grassy slope a spring offered draughts of the clear pure +water which is said to be the only drink for one who would write epics +or live an epic. Beyond a wide expanse of wind-blown grass the young +eyes saw the variant gray and purple tints of the Catoctin Mountains, +showing mystic changes in the floodtide of day or losing themselves in +the crimson and gold sea of sunset. + +In this stately, old, many-verandaed home, looking across nearly three +thousand acres of fertile land as if with a proud sense of lordship, +the wide-browed, poet-faced boy with the beautiful dreamy eyes and the +line of genius between his delicately arched brows passed the golden +years of his childhood. + +It is said that President Washington once went to Terra Rubra to visit +his old friend. General John Ross Key, of Revolutionary fame. It may +be that the venerated hand of the "Father of His Country"--the hand +that had so resolutely put away all selfish ambitions and had reached +out only for good things to bestow upon his people and his nation--was +laid in blessing upon the bright young head of little Francis Scott +Key, helping to plant in the youthful heart the seed that afterward +blossomed into the thought which he expressed many years later: + + I have said that patriotism is the preserving virtue of Republics. + Let this virtue wither and selfish ambition assume its place as + the motive for action, and the Republic is lost. + + Here, my countrymen, is the sole ground of danger. + +Seven miles from Annapolis, where the Severn River flows into Round +Bay, stands Belvoir, a spacious manor-house with sixteen-inch walls, +in which are great windows reaching down to the polished oak floor. In +this home of Francis Key, his grandfather, the young Francis Scott Key +spent a part of the time of his tutelage, preparing for entrance into +St. John's College, the stately buildings of which were erected by a +certain early Key, who had come to our shore to help unlock the gates +of liberty for the world. + +The old college, with its historic campus, fits well into the +atmosphere of Annapolis, standing proudly in her eighteenth-century +dignity, watching the rest of the world scramble in a helter-skelter +rush for modern trivialities. Its old walls are in pleasing harmony +with the colonial mansions poised on little hillocks, from which they +look down on you with benevolent condescension and invite you to climb +the long flights of steps that lead to their very hearts, grand but +hospitable, which you do in a glow of high-pitched ambition, as if you +were scaling an arduous but fascinating intellectual height. Having +reached the summit, you stop an instant on the landing, partly for +breathing purposes, but more especially to exult a moment on the +height of triumph. + +The four-storied college at the end of Prince George Street--regal +Annapolis would not be content with a street of less than royal +dignity--looks down with pleased approval on its wide expanse of green +campus, for that stretch of ground has a history that makes it worthy +of the noble building which it supports. It spread its greenery to the +view of those window-eyes decades before the Revolution, and when that +fiery torch flamed upon the country's record the college green +furnished a camping place for the freedom-loving Frenchmen who came +over the sea to help set our stars permanently into the blue of our +national sky. In 1812 American troops pitched their tents on the +famous campus, and under the waving green of its summer grasses and +the white canopy of its winter snows men who died for their country's +honor lie in their long sleep. + +On the grounds east of the college buildings stands the Tulip Tree +which sheltered the first settlers of Annapolis in 1649, and may have +hidden away in the memory-cells of its stanch old heart reminiscences +of a time when a bluff old Latin sailor, with more ambition in his +soul than geography in his head, unwittingly blundered onto a New +World. Whatever may be its recollections, it has sturdily weathered +the storms of centuries, surviving the tempests hurled against it by +Nature and the poetry launched upon it by Man. It has been known by +the name of the "Treaty Tree," from a tradition that in the shade of +its branches the treaty with the Susquehannoghs was signed in 1652. In +1825 General La Fayette was entertained under its spreading boughs, +and it has since extended hospitable arms over many a patriotic +celebration. + +In "the antiente citie" Francis Scott Key found many things which +appealed to his patriotic soul. On the State House hill was the old +cannon brought to Maryland by Lord Baltimore's colony and rescued from +a protracted bath in St. Mary's River to take its place among the many +relics of history which make Annapolis the repository of old stories +tinged by time and fancy with a mystic coloring of superstition. He +lived in the old "Carvel House," erected by Dr. Upton Scott on +Shipwright Street. Not far away was the "Peggy Stewart" dwelling, +overlooking the harbor where the owner of the unfortunate _Peggy +Stewart_, named for the mistress of the mansion, was forced by the +revolutionary citizens of Annapolis, perhaps incited by an +over-zealous enthusiasm but with good intentions, to burn his ship in +penalty for having paid the tax on its cargo of tea. + +If Francis Key had a taste for the supernatural, there was ample +opportunity for its gratification in this haven of tradition. He may +have seen the headless man who was accustomed to walk down Green +Street to Market Space, with what intention was never divulged. Every +old house had its ghost, handed down through the generations, as +necessary a piece of furniture as the tester-bed or the sideboard. +Perhaps not all of these mysterious visitants were as quiet as the +shadowy lady of the Brice house, who would glide softly in at the hour +of gloaming and, with her head on her hand, lean against the mantel, +look sadly into the faces of the occupants of the room, and vanish +without a sound--of course, it is undeniable that Annapolis would have +only well-bred ghosts. + +After graduation from St. John's, in that famous class known as the +"Tenth Legion" because of its brilliancy, Francis Scott Key studied +law in the office of his uncle, Philip Barton Key, in Annapolis, where +his special chum was Roger Brooke Taney, who persuaded him to begin +the practice of his profession in Frederick City. In 1801 the youthful +advocate opened his law office in the town from which the +Revolutionary Key had marched away to Boston to join Colonel +Washington's troops. Francis Key invited his friend to visit Terra +Rubra with him, and Mr. Taney found the old plantation home so +fascinating that many visits followed. Soon there was a wedding at +beautiful Terra Rubra, when pretty, graceful Ann Key became the wife +of the future Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. + +In 1802, at Annapolis, in the mahogany wainscoted drawing-room of the +old Lloyd house, built in 1772, Key was married to Mary Tayloe Lloyd. + +After a few years of practice in Frederick City, Francis Scott Key +removed to Georgetown, now West Washington. Here at the foot of what +is known as M Street, but was Bridge Street in the good old days +before Georgetown had given up her picturesque street names for the +insignificant numbers and letters of Washington, half a block from the +old Aqueduct Bridge, stands a two-storied, gable-roofed, +dormer-windowed house, bearing in black letters the inscription, "The +Key Mansion." Below is the announcement that it is open to the public +from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily, excepting Sunday. On a placard between +two front doors are printed the words, "Home of Francis Scott Key, +author of The Star-Spangled Banner," the patriotic color-scheme being +shown in the white placard and blue and red lettering. + +For more than a century the house has stood there, and the circling +years have sent it into remote antiquity of appearance, the storms of +time having so swept it with their winds and beaten it with their +rains and bombarded it with snow and sleet and hail as to make +difficult the realization that it was once the home of bounding, +scintillant life, and that its walls in the years gone by were radiant +with the visions and hopes and ambitions of a happy group of youthful +souls. It stands at the foot of what is now a street of shops, and the +wearing away of the decades have taken from it all suggestion of home +surroundings. + +Through a door at the left I passed into a wide hall, on the walls of +which are some patriotic inscriptions. There is one, a quotation from +President McKinley, that conveys an admonition the disregard of which +leads to consequences we often have occasion to deplore: "The +vigilance of the Citizen is the safety of the Republic." + +At the right of the hall are two rooms, locked now, but serving as +parlors when the sad old house was a bright, beautiful home. A steep +Colonial stairway leads to a hall on the second floor, where again +there are inscriptions on the walls to remind the visitor of his +duties as a citizen of the nation over which the Star-Spangled Banner +yet waves. + +On the second floor the first sign of life appeared. A door stood +slightly ajar, and in answer to a touch a tall woman with a face of +underlying tragedy and a solitary aspect that fitted well with the +loneliness of the old house appeared and courteously invited me to +enter. She is the care-taker of the mansion, bears an aristocratic old +Virginia name, and is wrapped around with that air of gloomily +garnered memories characteristic of women who were in the heart of the +crucial period of our history. I am not surprised when she tells me +that she watched the battle of Fredericksburg from her window as she +lay ill in her room, and that she witnessed the burning of Richmond +after the surrender. I recognize the fact that life has been a harder +battle, since all her own have passed over the line and left her to +the lonely conflict, than was ever a contest in those days of war. + +She tells me that the Key relics have all been taken to the Betsy Ross +house in Philadelphia. What they were she does not know, for they were +all packed in boxes when she first came to the Key mansion. The only +object left from the possessions of the man who made that old dwelling +a shrine upon which Americans of to-day ought to place offerings of +patriotism is an old frame in a small room at the end of the hall. On +the bottom of the frame is printed in large black letters the name, +Francis Scott Key. Some jagged fragments within the frame indicate +that something, either picture or flag, has been hastily and +carelessly removed. + +Finding no relic of the man whose life once glorified the now dark and +gloomy house, I hold with the greater tenacity the mental picture I +have of the old flag I used to see in the National Museum. Faded, +discolored, and tattered, it is yet the most glorious piece of bunting +our country owns to-day--the flag that floated over Fort McHenry +through the fiery storm of that night of anxious vigil in which our +national anthem was born. + +In this old house on Bridge Street Francis Scott Key lived when he was +Attorney for the District of Columbia, and in a small brick office +adjoining his home he did the work that placed him in the front rank +of the American bar. + +St. John's Episcopal Church, not far away, where he was vestryman, has +a tablet to the memory of Reverend Johannes I. Sayrs, a former rector, +on which is an inscription by Key. In Christ Church is a memorial +window dedicated to Francis Scott Key. + +"It is a pity that the old house is to be sold," said a resident of +Georgetown. + +"Is it to be sold?" I asked. For a long time this fate has been +hovering over the old Key home, but I had hoped, even when there was +no hope. + +"Yes," was the reply. "The ground is wanted for business buildings." + +"A pity?" I said. "It is more than a pity; it is a national shame." Is +there not patriotism enough in our land to keep that shrine sacred to +historic memory? + +It was from this house that Key set out September 4, 1814, to +negotiate for the release of Dr. Beanes, one of his friends, who, +after having most kindly cared for British soldiers when wounded and +helpless, was arrested and taken to the British fleet as a prisoner in +revenge for his having sent away from his door-yard some intoxicated +English soldiers who were creating disorder and confusion. Key, in +company with Colonel John S. Skinner, United States Agent for Parole +of Prisoners, arrived at Fort McHenry, on Whetstone Point, in time to +witness the effort of General Ross to make good his boast that he "did +not care if it rained militia, he would take Baltimore and make it his +winter headquarters." + +They were on the ship _Surprise_, and, upon making their plea for +their captive friend, were told that he had inflicted atrocious +injuries upon British soldiers, and the Admiral had resolved to hang +him from the yard-arm. The eloquence of Mr. Key, supplemented by +letters written by British officers to Dr. Beanes, thanking him for +the many kindnesses which they had received from him, finally won +Admiral Cochrane from his vengeful decision. After the release of the +captive the Americans were not permitted to return to land, lest they +might carry information detrimental to the British cause. Thus Admiral +Cochrane, who enjoyed well-merited distinction for doing the wrong +thing, placed his unwilling guests in their own boat, the _Minden_, as +near the scene of action as possible, with due regard for their +physical safety, in order that they might suffer the mortification of +seeing their flag go down. Two hours had been assigned, in the British +mind, for the accomplishment of that beneficent result, after which +"terms for Baltimore" might be considered. + +For three days Key and his companions watched the landing of nine +thousand soldiers and marines at North Point, preparatory to the +attack on the fort, which was defended by a small force of raw +militia, partly composed of the men who had been so easily defeated at +Bladensburg. They were under command of Colonel George Armistead, who +faced a court-martial if he should not win, for the Washington +administration had peremptorily ordered him to surrender the fort. + +Through the long hours of the 13th Key paced the deck of his boat, +watching the battle with straining eyes and a heart that thrilled and +leaped and sank with every thunder of gun and flash of shell. The day +was calm and still, with no wind to lift the flag that drooped around +its staff over Fort McHenry. At eventide a breeze unfurled its folds, +and as it floated out a shell struck it and tore out one of its +fifteen stars. + +Night fell. His companions went below to seek rest in such unquiet +slumbers as might visit them, but there was no sleep in the heart of +Key. Not until the mighty question which filled the night sky with +thunder and flame and surged in whelming billows through his own soul +found its answer in the court of Eternal Destiny could rest come to +the man who watched through the long hours of darkness, waiting for +dawn to bring triumph or despair. + +Silence came--the silence that meant victory and defeat. Whose was the +victory? The night gave no answer, and the lonely man still paced up +and down the deck of the _Minden_. Then day dawned in a glory in the +east, and a glory in the heart of the anxious watcher. In that first +thrill of joy and triumph our majestic anthem was formed. + +Key took from his pocket an old letter, and on its blank page +pencilled the opening lines of the song. In the boat which took him +back to Baltimore he finished the poem, and in his hotel made a copy +for the press. The next day the lines were put into type by Samuel +Sands, an apprentice in the office of the _Baltimore American_, who +had been deserted in the general rush to see the battle as being too +young to be trusted at the front, and that evening they were sung in +the Holliday Street Theatre. The next day the air was heard upon the +streets of Baltimore from every boy who had been gifted with a voice +or a whistle, and "The Star-Spangled Banner" was soon waving over the +musical domain as victoriously as it had floated from the ramparts of +Fort McHenry. + +[Illustration: FRANCIS SCOTT KEY +At the age of 35] + +It is in the great moments of life that a man gives himself to the +world, and in the giving parts from nothing of himself, for in the +gift he but expands his own nature and keeps himself in greater +measure than before. May not he to whom our great anthem came through +the battle-storm smile pityingly upon the futile efforts of to-day to +supply a national song that shall eclipse the noble lines born of +patriotism and battle ardor and christened in flame? + +Thus it was that Francis Scott Key reached the high tide of life +before the defences of the Monumental City, and to Baltimore he +returned when that tide was ebbing away, and in view of the old fort, +under the battlements of which he had fallen to unfathomable depths of +suffering and risen to immeasurable heights of triumphant joy, he +crossed the bar into the higher tide beyond. On a beautiful hill +Baltimore has erected a stately monument to the memory of the man who +linked her name with the majestic anthem which gives fitting voice to +our national hopes. + +Away on the other edge of our continent, in Golden Gate Park, San +Francisco, another noble shaft tells the world that "the Star-Spangled +Banner yet waves" over all our land and knows no distinctions of +North, South, East, or West. + +In Olivet Cemetery, in the old historic city of Frederick, Maryland, +is the grave of Francis Scott Key. Over it stands a marble column +supporting a statue of Key, his poet face illumined by the art of the +sculptor, his arms outstretched, his left hand bearing a scroll +inscribed with the lines of "The Star-Spangled Banner," while on the +pedestal sits Liberty, holding the flag for which those immortal lines +were written. + +Thus, perpetuated in granite, the noble patriot stands, looking over +the town to which he long ago gave this message: + + But if ever, forgetful of her past and present glory, she shall + cease to be "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and + become the purchased possession of a company of stock-jobbers and + speculators; if her people are to become the vassals of a great + moneyed corporation, and to bow down to her pensioned and + privileged nobility; if the patriots who shall dare to arraign + her corruptions and denounce her usurpations are to be sacrificed + upon her gilded altar,--such a country may furnish venal orators + and presses, but the soul of national poetry will be gone. That + muse will "never bow the knee in mammon's fane." No, the patriots + of such a land must hide their shame in her deepest forests, and + her bards must hang their harps upon the willows. Such a people, + thus corrupted and degraded, + + "Living, shall forfeit fair renown, + And, doubly dying, shall go down + To the vile dust from whence they sprung, + Unwept, unhonored, and unsung." + + + + +"THE POET-PRIEST" + +FATHER RYAN + + +My first meeting with Father Ryan was at the Atlantic Hotel in +Norfolk, in which town he had spent the first seven years of his life, +his parents having emigrated from Limerick and found a home there a +short time before his birth. He has been claimed by a number of +cities, and the dates of his nativity, as assigned by biographers, +range from 1834 to 1840, 1839 being the one best established. He told +me that his early memories of his Norfolk home were especially +associated with figs and oysters, the oysters there being the largest +and finest he had ever seen, they and the figs seeming to "rhyme with +his appetite." Then he told me an oyster story: + +"A negro boatman was rowing some people down the river, among them two +prominent politicians who were discussing an absent one. 'He has no +more backbone than an oyster,' said one. The boatman laughed, and +said, 'Skuse me, marsers, but if you-all gemmen don' know no mo' 'bout +politicians dan you does 'bout oyschers you don' know much. No mo' +backbone dan a oyscher! Why, oyschers has as much backbone as folks +has, en ef you cuts into 'em lengfwise a little way ter one side en +looks at 'em close you'll see dar backbone's jes' lak we all's +backbone is. De only diffunce is de oyscher's backbone is ter one +side, jes' whar it ought ter be, 'stead er in de middle. Dat's de +reason I t'ink de debbil mus' er tuck a han' en he'ped ter mek we +alls, en you know de Lord says, Let _us_ mek man; dat shows dat He +didn' do hit all by Hese'f; ef He had He'd a meked we all's backbone +ter de side whar de oyscher's is, ter pertect us, en put our shin +bones behime our legs, whar dey wouldn't all de time git skint, en put +our calfs in de front.'" + +My impression of Father Ryan was of being in the presence of a great +power--something indefinable and indescribable, but invincibly sure. +He was of medium height, and his massive head seemed to bend by its +own weight, giving him a somewhat stooped appearance. His hair, brown, +with sunny glints touching it to gold, was brushed back from his wide, +high forehead, falling in curls around his pale face and over his +shoulders. I recall with especial distinctness the dimple in his chin, +a characteristic of many who have been very near to me, for which +reason it attracted my attention when appearing in a face new to me. +His eyes were his greatest beauty,--Irish blue, under gracefully +arched brows, and luminous with the sunshine that has sparkled in the +eyes of his race in all the generations, caught by looking skyward for +a light that dawned not upon earth. His expression was sad, and the +beautiful smile that illumined his face, radiating compassion, +kindness, gentleness and the humor of the Kelt, made me think of a +brilliant noontide sun shining across a grave. + +We discussed Folk Lore, and he said that some of the best lessons were +taught in the Folk Lore of the plantation negro. One of his sermons +was on "Obstinacy," illustrated by a story told him by an old colored +man: + +"Marser, does you know de reason dat de crab walks back'ards? Well, +hit's dis away: when de Lord wuz mekin' uv de fishes He meked de +diffunt parts en put 'em in piles, de legs in one pile, de fins in +anudder, en de haids in anudder. Do' de crab wan't no fish, He meked +hit at de same time. Afterwards He put 'em tergedder en breaved inter +'em de bref er life. He stuck all de fishes' haids on, but de crab wuz +obstreperous en he say, 'Gib me my haid; I gwine put hit on myse'f.' +De Lord argufied wid him but de crab wouldn' listen, en he say he +gwine put hit on. So de Lord gin him his haid en 'course he put hit on +back'ards. Den he went ter de Lord en ax' Him ter put hit straight, +but de Lord wouldn' do hit, en He tole him he mus' go back'ards all +his life fer his obstinacy. En so 'tis wid some people." + +[Illustration: FATHER RYAN +From the portrait in Murphy's Hotel, Richmond, Virginia] + +Father Ryan told me that one of the greatest obstacles with which he +had to contend in his dealings with people was the lack of ethic +sensitiveness which rendered them oblivious to the harm of deviations +from principle which seemed not to result in great evil. People who +would not steal articles of value did not hesitate to cheat in +car-fare, taking the view that the company got enough out of the +public without their small contribution. He said, "They are like two +very religious old ladies who, driving through a toll-gate, asked the +keeper the rate. Being newly appointed, he looked into his book and +read so much for a man and a horse. The woman who was driving whipped +up the horse, calling out, 'G'lang, Sally, we goes free. We are two +old maids and a mare.' On they went without paying." + +When Abram Ryan was seven years old the family moved to St. Louis, +where the boy attended the schools of the Christian Brothers, in his +twelfth year entering St. Mary's Seminary, in Perry County, Missouri. +He completed his preparation for the work to which his life was +dedicated, in the Ecclesiastical Seminary at Niagara, New York. Upon +ordination he was placed in charge of a parish in Missouri. + +On a boat going down the canal from Lynchburg to Lexington, where he +was a fellow-passenger with us, he met his old friend, John Wise, and +entered into conversation with him, in the course of which he made the +statement that he came from Missouri. "All the way from Pike?" quoted +Mr. Wise. "No," replied Father Ryan, "my name is _not_ Joe Bowers, I +have _no_ brother Ike," whereupon he sang the old song, "Joe Bowers," +in a voice that would have lifted any song into the highest realms of +music. + +He recited his poem, "In Memoriam," written for his brother David, who +was killed in battle, one stanza of which impressed me deeply because +of the longing love in his voice when he spoke the lines: + + Thou art sleeping, brother, sleeping + In thy lonely battle grave; + Shadows o'er the past are creeping, + Death, the reaper, still is reaping, + Years have swept and years are sweeping + Many a memory from my keeping, + But I'm waiting still and weeping + For my beautiful and brave. + +The readers of his poetry are touched by its pathetic beauty, but only +they who have heard his verses in the tones of his deep, musical voice +can know of the wondrous melody of his lines. + +When I said to him that I wished he would write a poem on Pickett's +charge at Gettysburg, he replied: + +"It has been put into poetry. Every flower that blooms on that field +is a poem far greater than I could write. There are some things too +great for me to attempt. Pickett's charge at Gettysburg is one of +them." + +A lady who chanced to be on the boat with us repeated Owen Meredith's +poem of "The Portrait." At its close he said with sad earnestness, "I +am sorry to hear you recite that. Please never do it again. It is a +libel on womanhood." + +It may be that he was thinking of "Ethel," the maiden whom, it is +said, he loved in his youth, from whom he parted because Heaven had +chosen them both for its own work, and his memories deepened the +sacredness with which all women were enshrined in his thought. She was +to be a nun and he a priest, and thus he tells of their parting: + + One night in mid of May their faces met + As pure as all the stars that gazed on them. + They met to part from themselves and the world; + Their hearts just touched to separate and bleed; + Their eyes were linked in look, while saddest tears + Fell down, like rain, upon the cheeks of each: + They were to meet no more. + +The "great brown, wond'ring eyes" of the girl went with him on his way +through life, shadowed like the lights of a dim cathedral, but +luminous with love and sacrifice. How much of the story he tells in +pathetic verse was his very own perhaps no one may ever know, but the +reader feels that it was Father Ryan himself who, after "years and +years and weary years," walked alone in a place of graves and found +"in a lone corner of that resting-place" a solitary grave with its +veil of "long, sad grass" and, parting the mass of white roses that +hid the stone, beheld the name he had given the girl from whom he had +parted on that mid-May night. + + "ULLAINEE." + +Those who were nearest him thought that the vein of sadness winding +through his life and his poetry was in memory of the girl who loved +and sacrificed and died. When they marvelled over the mournful minor +tones in his melodious verse he made answer: + + Go stand on the beach of the blue boundless deep, + When the night stars are gleaming on high, + And hear how the billows are moaning in sleep, + On the low-lying strand by the surge-beaten steep, + They're moaning forever wherever they sweep. + Ask them what ails them: they never reply; + They moan on, so sadly, but will not tell you why! + Why does your poetry sound like a sigh? + The waves will not answer you; neither shall I. + +At the beginning of the war Father Ryan was appointed a chaplain in +the Army of Northern Virginia, but often served as a soldier. He was +in New Orleans in 1862 when an epidemic broke out, and devoted himself +to the care of the victims. Having been accused of refusing to bury a +Federal he was escorted by a file of soldiers into the presence of +General Butler, who accosted him with great sternness: + +"I am told that you refused to bury a dead soldier because he was a +Yankee." + +"Why," answered Father Ryan in surprise, facing the hated general +without a tremor, "I was never asked to bury him and never refused. +The fact is, General, it would give me great pleasure to bury the +whole lot of you." + +Butler lay back in his arm-chair and roared with laughter. "You've got +ahead of me, Father," he said. "You may go. Good morning, Father." + +One of the incidents of which Father Ryan told me occurred when +smallpox was raging in a State prison. The official chaplain had fled +and no one could be found to take his place. One day a prisoner asked +for a minister to pray for him, and Father Ryan, whose parish was not +far away, was sent for. He was in the prison before the messenger had +returned and, having been exposed to contagion, was not permitted to +leave. He remained in the prison ministering to the sick until the +epidemic had passed. + +Immediately after the war he was stationed in New Orleans where he +edited _The Star_, a Roman Catholic weekly. Afterward he was in +Nashville, Clarksville, and Knoxville, and from there went to Augusta, +Georgia, where he founded and edited the "_Banner of the South_," +which was permanently furled after having waved for a few years. + +Unlike most Southern poets, Father Ryan did not take his themes from +Nature, and when her phenomena enters into his verse it is usually as +a setting for the expression of some ethic or emotional sentiment. He +has been called "the historian of a human soul," and it was in the +crises of life that his feeling claimed poetical expression. When he +heard of Lee's surrender "The Conquered Banner" drooped its mournful +folds over the heart-broken South. In his memorial address at +Fredericksburg when the Southern soldiers were buried, he first read +"March of the Deathless Dead," closing with the lines: + + And the dead thus meet the dead, + While the living' o'er them weep; + And the men by Lee and Stonewall led, + And the hearts that once together bled, + Together still shall sleep. + +June 28, 1883, I was in Lexington and saw the unveiling of Valentine's +recumbent statue of General Lee in Washington and Lee University. At +the conclusion of Senator Daniel's eloquent oration Father Ryan +recited his poem, "The Sword of Lee," the first time that it had been +heard. + +In Lexington I was at a dinner where Father Ryan was a guest. He told +a story of a reprobate Irishman, for whom he had stood godfather. Upon +one occasion the man took too much liquor and, under its influence, +killed a man, for which he was sentenced to a term in the +penitentiary. Through the efforts of the Father he was, after a time, +pardoned and employment secured for him. One evening he came to the +priest's house intoxicated and asked permission to sleep in the barn. +"No," said the Father, "go sleep in the gutter." "Ah, Father, sure an' +I've shlept in the gutter till me bones is all racked with the +rheumatism." "I can't help that; I can't let you sleep in the barn; +you will smoke, you drunken beast, and set the barn on fire and maybe +burn the house, and they belong to the parish." "Ah, Father, forgive +me! I've been bad, very bad; I've murdered an' kilt an' shtole an' +been dhrunk, an' I've done a heap of low things besides, but low as +I'm afther gettin', Father, I never got low enough to shmoke." The man +slept in the barn and the parish suffered no loss. + +One evening at a supper at Governor Letcher's we were responding to +the sentiment, "Life." I gave some verses which, in Father Ryan's +view, were not serious enough for a subject so solemn. He looked at me +through his wonderfully speaking eyes and answered me in his melodious +voice: + + Life is a duty--dare it, + Life is a burden--bear it, + Life is a thorn-crown--wear it; + Though it break your heart in twain + Seal your lips and hush your pain; + Life is God--all else is vain. + +"Yes, Father," I said, and there was silence. + +[Illustration: ST. MARY'S CHURCH, MOBILE. +FATHER RYAN'S LATE RESIDENCE ADJOINING +By courtesy of P.J. Kenedy & Sons] + +Always a wanderer, our Poet-Priest found his first real home, since +his childhood, when pastor of St. Mary's Church in Mobile. To that +home he pays a tribute in verse. + +It was an enchanting solitude for the "restless heart,"--the plain +little church with its cross pointing the way upward, the front +half-hidden by trees through which its window-eyes look out to the +street. A short distance from the church and farther back was the +priest's house, set in a bewilderment of trees and vines and shrubbery +from which window, chimney, roof, and cornice peep out as if with +inquisitive desire to see what manner of world lies beyond the forest. + + Up into the silent skies + Where the sunbeams veil the star, + Up,--beyond the clouds afar, + Where no discords ever mar, + Where rests peace that never dies. + +Here, amid the "songs and silences," he wrote "just when the mood +came, with little of study and less of art," as he said, his thoughts +leaping spontaneously into rhymes and rhythms which he called verses, +objecting to the habit of his friends of giving them "the higher title +of poems," never dreaming of "taking even lowest place in the rank of +authors." + + I sing with a voice too low + To be heard beyond to-day, + In minor keys of my people's woe, + But my songs will pass away. + + To-morrow hears them not-- + To-morrow belongs to fame-- + My songs, like the birds', will be forgot, + And forgotten shall be my name. + +But a touch of prophecy adds the thought: + + And yet who knows? Betimes + The grandest songs depart, + While the gentle, humble, and low-toned rhymes + Will echo from heart to heart. + +So the "low-toned rhymes" of him to whom "souls were always more than +songs," written "at random--off and on, here, there, anywhere," touch +the heart and linger like remembered music in a long-gone twilight. + +In 1872 Father Ryan travelled in Europe, visited Rome and had an +audience with the Pope, of whom he wrote: + + I saw his face to-day; he looks a chief + Who fears nor human rage, nor human guile; + Upon his cheeks the twilight of a grief, + But in that grief the starlight of a smile. + +In 1883 he began an extended lecture tour in support of a charity of +deep interest in the South, but his failing health brought his effort +to an early close. + +The fiery soul of Father Ryan soon burned out its frail setting. In +his forty-eighth year he retired to a Franciscan Monastery in +Louisville, intending to make the annual retreat and at its close to +finish his "Life of Christ," begun some time before. He arrived at the +Convent of St. Bonifacius March 23, 1886. The environment of the old +Monastery, the first German Catholic establishment in Louisville, +built in 1838, is not attractive. The building is on a narrow side +street filled with small houses and shops crowded up to the sidewalk. +But the interior offered a peaceful home for which the world-weary +heart of the Poet-Priest was grateful. From a balcony where he would +sit, breathing in the cool air and resting his soul in the unbroken +silence, he looked across the courtyard shaded by beautiful trees, +filled with flowers and trellised vines, his heart revelling in the +riot of color, the wilderness of greenery, all bathed in golden floods +of sunshine and canopied with an ever-changing and ever-glorious +stretch of azure sky. + +Father Ryan was never again to go out from this peaceful harbor into +the tumultuous billows of world-life. He had been there but a short +time when his physician told him that he must prepare for death. +"Why," he said, "I did that long years ago." The time of rest for +which he had prayed in years gone by was near at hand. + + My feet are wearied and my hands are tired, + My soul oppressed-- + And I desire, what I have long desired-- + Rest--only rest. + + * * * * * + + The burden of my days is hard to bear, + But God knows best; + And I have prayed--but vain has been my prayer + For rest--sweet rest. + +In his last days his mind was filled with reminiscences of the war and +he would arouse the monastery and tell the priests and brothers, "Go +out into the city and tell the people that trouble is at hand. War is +coming with pestilence and famine and they must prepare to meet the +invader." + +On Thursday of Holy Week, April 22, 1886, the weary life drifted out +upon the calm sea of Eternal Peace. + + + + +"BACON AND GREENS" + +DR. GEORGE WILLIAM BAGBY + + +We, the general and I, were the first to be informed of the supernal +qualities of bacon and greens. All Virginians were aware of the prime +importance of this necessary feature of an Old Dominion dinner, but +that "a Virginian could not be a Virginian without bacon and greens" +was unknown to us until the discoverer of that ethnological fact. Dr. +George William Bagby, read us his lecture on these cheerful +comestibles. We were the first to see the frost that "lies heavy on +the palings and tips with silver the tops of the butter-bean poles, +where the sere and yellow pods are chattering in the chilly breeze." + +In the early days after the war Dr. Bagby had a pleasant habit of +dropping into our rooms at the Exchange Hotel in Richmond, and as soon +as the ink was dry on that combination of humor and pathos and wisdom +to which he gave the classic title of "Bacon and Greens" he brought it +and read it to us. I can still follow the pleasant ramble on which he +took us in fancy through a plantation road, the innumerable delights +along the way never to be appreciated to their full extent by any but +a real Virginian brought up on bacon and greens, and the arrival at +the end of the journey, where we were taken possession of as if we +"were the Prodigal Son or the last number of the _Richmond Enquirer_." +My eyes were the first to fill with tears over the picture of the poor +old man at the last, sitting by the dying fire in the empty house, +while the storm raged outside. + +Though so thoroughly approving of "bacon and greens," there was +another feature of Virginia life, as well as of Southern life +generally, that met with Dr. Bagby's stern opposition--the duel. I +once had opportunity to note his earnestness in trying to prevent a +meeting of this kind. Two young men of whom General Pickett was very +fond, Page McCarty, a writer for the press and an idol of Richmond +society, and a brilliant young lawyer named Mordecai became involved +in a quarrel which led to a challenge. The innocent cause of the +dispute was the golden-haired, blue-eyed beauty, Mary Triplett, the +belle of Richmond, who had long been the object of Page McCarty's +devotion but had shown a preference for another adorer. Page wrote +some satiric verses which, though no name was given, were known by all +Richmond to be leveled at Miss Triplett. Mr. Mordecai resented the +verses and the dispute which followed resulted in a challenge. Dr. +Bagby came to our rooms when Page McCarty was there and made an +unavailing effort to secure peace. Both he and the general were +unsuccessful in their pacific attempts, the duel took place and Page +McCarty, who bore a name that had in former times become famous in the +duelling annals of Virginia, killed his antagonist at first shot. + +Though so strongly opposed to the practice, Dr. Bagby twice came near +taking a principal part in a duel. Soon after the close of the war he +wrote an editorial on prisoners of war, in which he took the ground +that more Southern soldiers died in Northern prisons than Northerners +in Southern prisons, giving figures in support of his statement. A +Northern officer in Richmond answered the article, questioning its +veracity. The doctor promptly sent a challenge to combat which the +officer declined, saying that he had fought hard enough for the +prisoners in war-time, he did not intend to fight for them now that +hostilities were over. + +The second time that our genial humorist came near the serious reality +of a duel he was the party challenged. The cause of the +misunderstanding that promised to result so tragically was a magazine +article in which the doctor caricatured a peculiar kind of Virginia +Editor. The essay was a source of amusement to all its readers except +one editor, who imagined himself insulted. Urged on by misguided +friends, he challenged the author of the offending paper who, +notwithstanding his opposition to the code, accepted. A meeting was +arranged and the belligerents had arrived at historic Bladensburg with +blood-thirsty intent, when one of those sunny souls, possessed of a +universality of mind which rendered him a friend to all parties, +arrived on the scene and a disastrous outcome was averted. + +Dr. Bagby has been called "a Virginia realist." To him, receiving his +first views of life from the foot of the Blue Ridge, one realism of +the external world was too beautiful to admit of his finding in the +ideal anything that could more nearly meet his fancy-picture of +loveliness than the scenes which opened daily before his eyes. Years +later a memory of his early home returns to him in the dawn: + + Suddenly there came from thicket or copse of the distant forest, + I could not tell where, a "wood-note wild" of some bird I had not + heard for half a century nearly, and in an instant the beauty, + the mystery, the holiness of nature came back to me just as it + came in childhood when sometimes my playmates left me alone in + the great orchard of my home in Cumberland. + +He avows himself + + --a pagan and a worshipper of Pan, loving the woods and waters, + and preferring to go to them (when my heart was stirred thereto + by that mysterious power which, as I conceive, cares little for + worship made stately and to order on certain recurring calendar + days) rather than to most of the brick and mortar pens that are + supposed to hold in some way that which the visible universe no + more contains than the works of his hands contain the sculptor + who makes them; for I take it that the glittering show revealed + by the mightiest telescope, or by the hope mightier even than the + imagination of the highest mind, is but as a parcel of motes + shining in a single thin beam of the great sun unseen and hidden + behind shutters never to be wide opened. + +Our "Virginia Realist" needed not to call upon his imagination for +personalities with which to fill his free-hand sketches of nature, for +there was in his kindly humor and geniality a charm which drew forth +from all he met just the qualities necessary to fill in his world with +the characters he desired. A wide and deep sympathy enabled him to +make that world so real and true that his readers entered it at once +and found therein such entertaining companionship that they were fain +to abide there ever after. + +In 1835, when a boy fresh from Parley's History of America, the future +humorist made a journey from Cumberland County to Lynchburg, hearing +by the way alarming sounds which the initiated recognized as the +report of the blasting of rocks on the "Jeems and Kanawha Canell." To +the boy, with second-hand memories of Washington and his men tramping +confusedly about his mind, the noises signified a cannonade and he +waited in terrified excitement for the British bullet that was to put +him beyond the conflicts of the world, trying to postpone the evil +moment by hiding between two large men who were fellow-passengers with +him. This was in the days when the celebrated "Canell" was a subject +for the imagination to contemplate as a triumph of futurity and an +object for hope to feed upon--a period in which the traveller embarked +upon a fascinating batteau and spent a week of dreamy beauty in +sailing from Lynchburg to Richmond and ten days back to the hill city. +Time was not money in those days, it was vision and peace and color +and sunshine and all wherein the soul of man delighteth itself and +reveleth in the joy of living. The stream of imagination was no more +dammed than the river in which "shad used to run to Lynchburg," +showing a highly developed aesthetic taste on the part of the shad. The +youthful traveller went to the Eagle Hotel and took a view of Main +Street and dared not even wonder if he should ever be big enough to +live in Richmond. Rapt soul of youth's dawn, with myriad dreams all to +vanish when the sun rises upon the morning! + +On his return from an absence of two years in the North the great +Canal was completed and, while his early impression of the +unparallelled magnitude of the Queen City had suffered revision, his +visions of journeying by canal were yet to be realized. At the foot of +Eighth Street, Richmond, he took the packet-boat, passed under Seventh +Street bridge, and with the other passengers lingered on deck to see +Richmond slowly disappear in the distance. That night the doleful +packet-horn, contrasted with his memory of the cheerful, musical note +of the old stage-horn, brought to the lad his first realization of the +inadequacies of modern improvements. + +Ascending the James the traveller had a view of the best of the old +Virginia life, its wealth of beauty, its home comfort, its atmosphere +of serenity, of old memories, rich and vivid, like the wine that lay +cob-webbed in ancestral cellars, of gracious hospitality, of a softly +tinted life like the color in old pictures and the soul in old books. +The gentle humorist lived to see that life pass away from the Old +Dominion and all too soon he vanished into another world where, like +all true Virginians, he expected to find the old home-life again. + +These canal days were in the early Dickens period, and occasionally +the youthful traveller could not resist the temptation to go below and +lose himself in those pages which had then almost as potent a charm in +their novelty as they have now in their friendly familiarity. But the +river-isle, which held an interest in futurity for him because of his +intention to found a romance there when he should be "big enough to +write for the papers," would draw him back to the deck. There was a +path across the hills that the passengers must follow, disembarking +for that purpose. Near Manchester was a haunted house which he looked +upon with those ghostly shivers that made a person so delightfully +uncomfortable, for he, like the rest of us, did believe in ghosts, +whatever he might say to the contrary. There was the ruined mill and, +best of all, the Three-Mile Lock, inspiring him with the highest +ambition of his life, to be a lock-keeper. Then came Richmond; the +metropolis of the world, to the young voyager. + +[Illustration: DR. GEORGE W. BAGBY +From the portrait in the possession of the family] + +Dr. Bagby studied for his profession at the Medical College of the +University of Pennsylvania and from there went to Lynchburg, opening +an office where now stands the opera house. Unfortunately for his +professional career but happily for the cause of the literature of +Virginia life, the office of the _Lynchburg Virginian_ was near, and +its editor, Mr. James McDonald, proved a kindred soul to the young +physician. In the absences of the editor, Dr. Bagby filled his chair +and fell a victim to the fascination with which the Demon of the +Fourth Estate lures his chosen to their doom. In Lynchburg he first +found his true calling and there, too, he met with his first failure, +the demise of the _Lynchburg Express_, of which he was part owner, and +which went to the wall by reason of the well-known weakness of genius +in regard to business matters. + +Upon the collapse of the _Express_ Dr. Bagby went to Washington as +correspondent for a number of papers, and while there attained +distinction as a humorist through the "Letters of Mozis Addums," +written for the _Southern Literary Messenger_, of Richmond. + +His abiding place is of hazy uncertainty, one of his kinsmen +saying--"He didn't live anywhere," He might as well have dwelt in his +own "Hobgoblinopolis." His wanderings had taught him the peculiar +charm of the Virginia roads of that day, as evidenced by the +aspiration of "Mozis Addums" when contemplating the limitations of his +"Fifty Millions": + + I want to give Virginia a perfect system of county roads, so that + one may get off at a station and go to the nearest country-house + without breaking his neck, and it would take five hundred + millions to do that. + +It may be, as the doctor laments, that "The old Virginia gentleman, +All of the olden time," has passed away, the colonial house is +modernized, and the ghost, the killing of whom would be "an enormity +far greater than the crime of killing a live man," has been laid to +rest for half a century, but the old scenes and the old-time life come +back to us who once knew it, in the pages of the perennial boy who +recalls the time when "me and Billy Ivins and the other fellows set +forth with six pine poles and a cymling full of the best and biggest +fishing worms," to fish in the Appomattox where it "curves around the +foot of Uncle Jim's plantation," and where there is a patriarchal +beech with a tangle of roots whereon the Randolphs of historic note +were wont to repose in the days long gone. This fishing party is under +the fair October skies when "the morn, like an Eastern queen, is +sumptuously clad in blue and gold; the sheen of her robes in dazzling +sunlight, and she comes from her tent of glistening, silken, celestial +warp, beaming with tender smiles." "It is a day of days for flatback, +provided the moon is right." But "Billy Ivins swears that the +planetary bodies have nothing to do with fish--it's all confounded +superstition." So they cast in their hooks, "Sutherland's best," and +talk about Harper's Ferry and "old Brown" until one of the party +"thinks he has a nibble" and begs for silence, which at once +supervenes out of respect for the momentous interests hanging in the +balance. When the excitement is over the frivolous Bagby takes +advantage of the relief from suspense to make an exasperating pun, +after the manner of a newspaper man, and "Billy Ivins swears he will +kill him for a fool." + +Oh, there were great old times on the Appomattox in the olden days, +before its waves had turned battle-red and flashed that savage tint +along the river-bank for all coming time. + +[Illustration: "AVENEL" +The home of the Burwells, where Dr. Bagby spent many happy days] + +A part of the conversation shows us that this fishing expedition took +place in the autumn of 1859, not a year before Dr. Bagby was called to +the post of editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_, taking the +place of the poet, John R. Thompson, who was sent to England to lead +the forlorn hope of a magazine to represent the Southern cause in +London. A banquet was given at Zetelle's restaurant as a farewell to +Mr. Thompson and welcome to Dr. Bagby. + +The office of the _Messenger_ was in the Law Building, a four-storied +structure erected in 1846 on the southeast corner of Capitol Square, +fronting on Franklin Street. Here he was hard at work, making the +_Messenger_ worthy of its former editors, his predecessor, Mr. +Thompson, Mr. White, of early days, Edgar A. Poe, and a succession of +brilliant writers, only less widely known, when the guns before Sumter +tempted the new editor to the field, a position for which he was ill +fitted as to physical strength, whatever might be the force of his +patriotism. He was soon running risks of pneumonia from the effects of +over-drilling and the chilling breezes from Bull Run Mountain, and +making up his mind "not to desert, but to get killed at the first +opportunity," that being the most direct route he could think of to +the two prime essentials of life, a clean shirt and solitude. He +neither deserted nor was killed, but was detailed to write letters and +papers for one of the officers, and slept through the fight of the +18th at Manassas as a result of playing night orderly from midnight to +morning. + +Under the cloudless sky of the perfect Sunday, the twenty-first, he +watched the progress of the battle till the cheer that rang from end +to end of the Confederate line told him that the South had won. After +midnight that night he carried to the telegraph office the message in +which President Davis announced the victory and, walking back through +the clear, still night, saw the comet, forerunner of evil, hanging +over the field, as if in recognition of a fiery spirit on earth akin +to its own. At headquarters on Monday, the 22d, he looked out at the +pouring rain and raged over the inaction which kept the victorious +army idle on the field of victory instead of following up the +advantage by a march into the enemy's Capital, a movement which he +thought could have been carried through to complete success. + +Having watched over his wounded friend, Lieutenant James K. Lee, until +death came with eternal peace. Dr. Bagby was sent with the dead +soldier to Richmond and soon afterward was discharged because of ill +health, "and thus ended the record of an unrenowned warrior." + +He returned to his work on the _Messenger_ and the editorial sanctum +became the meeting place of the wits of Richmond. It was here that the +celebrated Confederate version of "Mother Goose" was evolved from the +conjoined wisdom of the circle and written with the stub of the +editorial pencil on the "cartridge-paper table-cloth," one stanza +dealing with a certain Northern general thus: + + Little Be-Pope came on with a lope, + Jackson, the Rebel, to find him; + He found him at last, then ran very fast, + With his gallant invaders behind him. + +The various authors were astonished to find their productions in the +next issue of the _Messenger_ and were later dismayed when the verses +were read at a meeting of the Mosaic Club, each with the name of the +writer attached. + +While editor of the _Messenger_, Dr. Bagby wrote occasionally for the +_Richmond Examiner_, thereby becoming associated in a friendly way +with its editor, John M. Daniel, whose brilliant and continuous fight +upon the administration at Richmond kept him vividly before the +public. Though the genial doctor deplored the aggressiveness of the +_Examiner_, he could not resist the temptation to employ his trenchant +pen in treating of public affairs. This led to his possession of the +famous latchkey which "fitted the door of the house on Broad Street, +opposite the African Church," a key of which he wrote that it "has its +charm," and certainly one which he made more enchanting to his readers +than any other such article has ever proved. + +These two men, so different in view-point and expression, so similar +in principle and purpose, met in Washington in 1861 at Brown's Hotel, +that famous old hostelry dear to the Southern heart in the years +before the tide of war swept the old Washington away forever and +brought a new South to take the place of the old plantation life. +Congenial as they were in many ways, the possession of the latchkey, +Dr. Bagby tells us, did not argue an intimate personal relation, as +the fancy of the brilliant editor of the _Examiner_ was apparently +changeable, and wavered when he discovered that his assistant neither +played chess nor talked sufficiently to inspire him to conversational +excellence. But the key opened to the younger man, whenever he so +willed, the pleasant three-storied brick house on Broad Street where +the valiant editor kept bachelor's hall in a manner that would suggest +the superfluity of complicating the situation with a wife and family. + +That latchkey gave to its holder entrance to the first floor front +room parlor where hung two fine paintings, the special treasures of +the fastidious owner, and if he could not play chess upon the handsome +mosaic chess-table he could at least enjoy its artistic beauty. The +dining-room contained a set of solid antique-patterned tables to which +Mr. Daniel was wont to refer as the former property of "old +Memminger," that is, Secretary Memminger of the Confederate Treasury, +who had sold his household effects on leaving his home on Church Hill. +Over the mantel in the bachelor's chamber hung a miniature on ivory, +"the most beautiful I have ever seen," said the doctor, an unknown +beauty whose charms mystified as well as enchanted the observer; a +wondrously accomplished lady of title and wealth whom Mr. Daniel had +known abroad. The visitor must have viewed with some degree of +curiosity the effective arrangement of mirrors in the dressing-room, +whereby the owner of the mansion surveyed himself front, rear, head +and foot, as he made his toilet, perhaps reflecting humorously upon +the dismay of his manager, Mr. Walker, upon being advised as to the +necessity of wearing a white vest to a party: "But, Mr. Daniel, +suppose a man hasn't got a white vest and is too poor these war times +to buy one?" "---- it, sir! let him stay at home," was the decisive +answer. + +On a second floor passage was an object which must have excited more +envy than the magnificent mirrors and solid old furniture were capable +of arousing--a bag of Java coffee, and coffee thirty dollars a +pound--the latter fact not deterring the luxurious owner of this +stately abode from imbuing his pet terriers with the coffee-drinking +habit. A little room cut off from a passage in the third story was a +library of old and rare editions of the classics. A back room, sunlit +and warm, gave a view of James River, the Henrico Hills, and the +spacious dells and forests of Chesterfield. To the mind of Dr. Bagby +all these things were represented by "John M. Daniel's Latchkey" and, +for all the charm of "Home, Sweet Home," is it not better to have the +privileges without the responsibilities of a latchkey? + +Next to the editorial office of the _Messenger_ that of the _Daily +Examiner_ was the place with which Dr. Bagby was, perhaps, best +acquainted in Richmond. There, with the fiery editor, he spent his +evenings in reading proof, comforted by a mild cigar and protected by +a Derringer which Mr. Daniel would put on the table when he first +arrived, a not unnecessary precaution, for if there was one place more +dangerous than another in the Richmond of war days it was almost any +point in the near vicinity of the belligerent editor of the +_Examiner_. + +Dr. Bagby was married to Miss Parke Chamberlayne of Richmond, and we +may be sure that she was the model from which he drew his charming +study of "the Virginia lady of the best type," who accompanies "The +Old Virginia Gentleman" in his pages. + +After the close of the war Dr. Bagby attained high distinction as a +lecturer on Southern topics and later served his State as assistant +secretary. But in all that he did there was with him the lost dream of +the nation he had served so well through the dark and stormy years of +strife, and in August, 1883, he passed beyond into the land where +earth's broken hearts are renewed to youth. + +It was written of him: "There is no man left in Virginia fit to lift +the lid of his inkstand." + + + + +"WOMAN AND POET" + +MARGARET JUNKIN PRESTON + + +"Whoever has the good fortune to follow its trails and shimmering +waters is already half a poet," wrote Professor Harris of the road +that leads down from the verdant hills of the Alleghanies over +picturesque gorge and crag and fissure into the quiet of the valley +and brings us by exquisite stages to the beautiful town of Lexington, +Virginia. Making that journey in taking my boy, fourteen years old, to +the Virginia Military Institute, I entered at once two charming +regions--Lexington with its romantic environment, and the heart of +Margaret Junkin Preston. + +When I spoke of the beautiful scenery Mrs. Preston asked me if I had +read Professor Maury's description of it. I replied that I had not. "I +am glad," she said, "because now that you have seen our +Nature-pictures you will enjoy the description so much more." + +Though the name and work of Margaret Preston had long been shrined in +the hearts of a host of known friends and endeared to many unknown +readers whose lives had been cheered by the buoyant hopefulness +expressed in her writings, she was very modest in regard to her +productions, yet held it a duty to continue writing for others the +thoughts which had helped her. When we were at supper in the home of +Professor Lyle, who was gifted with an unusually poetic mind, he +repeated passages from favorite authors. On being asked if he did not +sometimes write poetry, he replied that he had often written rhymes +and loved to do it, but when he would afterward read Virgil and +Shakespeare and Tennyson he would tear up his own verses, feeling that +he ought not to make the effort. + +"Then," replied Mrs. Preston, "the gardener should not plant the seeds +that bring forth the little forget-me-nots and snowdrops. He should +plant only the great multiflora roses and the Lady Bankshires and +magnolias." + +Mrs. Preston spent much of her time in knitting because the weakness +of her eyes made reading and writing difficult. "Are you never tired +of knitting?" I asked. She replied that it did not tire her, and told +me that Mrs. Lee said she loved to knit because she did not have to +put her mind on the work. She could think and talk as well when she +was knitting for the reason that she did not have to keep her eyes nor +her attention upon what she was doing. She knew perfectly well when +she came to a seam. In a letter from a soldier to Mrs. Lee he thanked +her for the socks she had sent him, and wrote; "I have fourteen pairs +of socks knitted by my mother and my mother's sisters and the Church +Sewing Society, and I have not a shirt to my back nor a pair of +trousers to my legs nor a whole pair of shoes to my feet." "But," said +Mrs. Lee as she concluded the story, "I continued to knit socks just +the same." + +The first open-end thimble I ever saw was one Mrs. Preston used when I +was with her at the Springs. I remarked upon it and she said that when +she used a thimble she always had that kind. "I feel about a thimble +as I do about mitts, which I always wear instead of gloves, because I +like to see my fingers come through. So I like to see my finger come +through my thimble. It is a tailor's thimble. Tailors always use that +kind. I do not know whether they like to see their fingers come +through or not." I had heard it said that it takes nine tailors to +make a man and now I reflected that it would take eighteen tailors to +make a thimble. Upon presenting this mathematical problem to Mrs. +Preston she told me about the origin of the old saying: + +"It was not that kind of tailor at first. In old England the custom +was to announce a death by tolling a bell. After the bell had ceased +tolling, a number of strokes, called 'tailers,' indicated whether the +death was of a child, a woman or a man; three for a child, nine for a +man. People counting would say, 'Nine tailers, that's a man,' which in +time became colloquially 'Nine tailers make a man.' When the custom +became obsolete the saying remained, its application was forgotten, +_o_ was substituted for _e_ and it was used in derogation of a most +worthy and necessary member of the body politic." + +Margaret Preston was very small, in explanation of which fact she told +me there was a story that she had been tossed on the horns of a cow. +There was Scotch blood in the Junkin family and with it had descended +the superstition that this experience dwarfs a child's growth. When +she sat upon an ordinary chair her little feet did not touch the +floor. She had a way of smoothing the front of her dress with her +hands as she talked. + +Knowing her as she was then and remembering her devotion to the South +and the sacrifices she had made for her home through the dark years, +one might have thought that she was a native daughter of Virginia. In +the village of Milton, Pennsylvania, where her father, Reverend George +Junkin, was pastor of the Associate Reformed Church, Margaret Junkin +was born on the 19th of May, 1820, in a small, plain, rented house, a +centre of love and harmony, with simple surroundings, for the family +finances did not purchase household luxuries, but were largely +expended in assisting those less fortunately placed. + +In this little home, where rigid economy was practised and high +aspirations reigned, our future poet entered upon the severe +intellectual training which caused her at twenty-one, when the door of +scholastic learning was closed upon her by the partial failure of her +sight, to be called a scholar, though she sorrowfully resented the +title, asking, "How can you speak of one as a scholar whose studies +were cut short at twenty-one?" + +She received her first instruction from her mother, passing then under +the tutorship of her father, who fed his own ambition by gratifying +her scholarly tastes, teaching her the Greek alphabet when she was six +years old and continuing her training in collegiate subjects until she +was forced by failing sight to give up her reading. + +When she was ten the family removed to Germantown, where her father +had charge of the Manual Labor School, and Margaret enjoyed the +advantages at that time afforded by the city of Philadelphia, +gathering bright memories which irradiated her somewhat sombre life +then and lightened her coming years. + +In Lafayette, a new college in Easton, Pennsylvania, Dr. Junkin soon +found opportunity to carry on his system of training for practical and +religious life and here Margaret spent sixteen happy and busy +years--happy but for the gray veil that fell between her and her loved +studies before those years had passed. She was obliged to prepare her +Greek lessons at night, and the only time her father had for hearing +her recitations was in the early morning before breakfast, which in +that household meant in the dim candlelight of the period; not a +wholesome time for perusing Greek text. For Margaret Junkin it meant +seven years of physical pain, a part of the time in a darkened room, +and the lifelong regret of unavailing aspirations. It was in Easton +that she began to write in any serious and purposeful fashion, the +result of her semi-blindness, as, but for that, she would have devoted +her life to painting, for which she had decided talent. In the +beautiful environment of Easton the young soul had found the poetic +glow that tinged its early dawn. Hills crowned with a wealth of +forests, fields offering hospitality to the world, glimmering of the +Delaware waters rippling silverly along their happy way, auroral dawns +and glorious sunsets, all inspired the youthful poet's imagination to +melodious effort. Of Margaret as she was in the Easton days in 1836, a +Lafayette freshman thus writes: + + A taste for literary pursuits soon drew us together and a warm + friendship sprang up, which continued unbroken to the day of her + death. Her remarkable poetic talent had even then won the + admiration of her associates, and to have been admitted into the + charmed circle of which she was the center, where literature and + literary work were discussed, admired and appreciated, I have + ever counted a high privilege. + +Her next home, in Oxford, Ohio, where Dr. Junkin had been elected to +the presidency of Miami University, was not a dream of delight to the +poetic soul of the young girl, for Scotch Calvinism, perhaps more +rigid than the Calvinism of Calvin himself, which did not admit of +fitting square dogmatic nails into round theological holes, insured a +succession of oft-recurrent tempests for the family, as well as for +the good doctor. The one letter which remains from the correspondence +of Margaret Junkin at that time, though indicating a buoyant nature on +the part of the writer, gives a sad view of financial difficulties, +her mother's fragility, uncongenial climate, and the persecution +directed against her father. Some of these misfortunes were obviated +by a return to Easton, Dr. Junkin having been recalled to the +presidency of Lafayette College, from which he had withdrawn a few +years before because of a disagreement with the trustees on a question +of government. + +Not long afterward the failing health of Margaret's young brother +Joseph led Dr. Junkin to accept the presidency of Washington College, +Lexington, Virginia, in the hope that change of climate might bring +health to the invalid. Thus in the fall of 1848 the step was taken +which made Margaret Junkin one of our Southern poets, devoted to her +adopted State and a loved and honored daughter thereof. + +On the arrival in Lexington a younger member of the family wrote: + + My first memory of Lexington is of arriving, at midnight, in a + December snowstorm, after a twelve hours' ride from Staunton in + an old stage coach. This was before there was a turnpike or plank + road, and the ups and downs we had that night made an impression + on our bodies as well as our minds. + +A later memory gives us a pretty glimpse of daily life as it went on +in that charming little Virginia town: + + From the time we went to Lexington we all used to take delightful, + long rambles, rather to the surprise of Lexington people, who were + not quite so energetic. We found the earliest spring flowers on the + "Cliffs," and "Cave Spring" was a favorite spot to walk to (several + miles from town) stopping always for a rest at the picturesque + ruins of old "Liberty Hall." + +"Liberty Hall" was the name of an old school building outside of +Lexington. + +Writing reproachfully to a friend for not coming to visit her, +Margaret tells of the "sweet pure air of our Virginia mountains," of +the morning "overture of the birds," "such as all the Parodis and +Linds and Albonis in the world could never equal." She tantalizes her +friend with a glowing picture of a gallop "over misty hills, down into +little green shaded glens, under overhanging branches all sparkling +with silvery dew." She tells her that they might take a walk "to 'The +Cliffs,' to see the sun go down behind yon wavy horizon of mountains, +if its setting promised to be fine, and saunter back in the gloaming, +just in time to have coffee handed in the free and easy social +Virginia style in the library." + +In Lexington, Margaret's first sorrow came to her, the death of her +brother Joseph, whose health had not improved with the change to +Lexington and who had been sent to Florida, where he found a "far-off +lonely grave." + +A description of the young poet at this time is given by a girl +admirer: + + Miss Maggie was the object of my secret, enthusiastic worship. + She was not exactly pretty, but her slight figure, fair + complexion and beautiful auburn curls furnished a piquant setting + for her refined, intelligent countenance which made up for the + lack of mere beauty. I used to thrill with admiration as I + watched her riding at a swift gallop, a little black velvet cap + showing off her fairness, the long curls blowing about her + face.... + + We wondered that a person who could write poetry, which seemed + to our limited experience a sort of miraculous gift, should + condescend to talk to us about our studies and games as if she + were one of us. + +It was in Lexington that her power reached its full development, and +she even took prizes in magazines and newspapers for some stories with +what her friends called "prim heroes and pasteboard heroines," +classifications which she good-naturedly accepted, as she readily +acknowledged that she had no gift for story-telling. + +In Lexington, Margaret's sister, Eleanor, met the grave and dignified +Major T.J. Jackson, Professor of Mathematics in the Virginia Military +Institute, and in 1853 was married to him. Here the death of the sweet +and gentle mother brought to the life of Margaret Junkin its crowning +sorrow, and shortly afterward the lovely young wife of Major Jackson +left the earthly home. + +The Professor of Latin in the Virginia Military Institute was Major +J.T.L. Preston, grandson of Edmund Randolph. He was a man of great +dignity of character and manner and of unusual scholarship. Though +Margaret Junkin had at times requested her nearest of kin to seclude +her in an asylum for the insane should she ever manifest a tendency to +marry a widower with children, she proceeded quite calmly and with +reason apparently unclouded, to fall in love with and marry Professor +Preston, notwithstanding his possession of seven charming and amiable +sons and daughters left over from a former congenial marriage. She +proved a most devoted mother to her large family, who returned her +affection in full measure. A volume of her poetry is dedicated to her +eldest stepdaughter who, after the death of Margaret, was her most +loving and appreciative biographer. To her great sorrow, one of the +sons was killed in battle. + +The marriage was followed by a visit to "Oakland" on the James River, +the home of Major Preston's sister, Mrs. William Armstead Cocke, where +at first the ornately dignified style of living rather dazed the bride +accustomed as she had been to the simplicity of a home in which the +only luxury was in giving help to others. Colonel William C. Preston, +the eloquent South Carolina orator, met the "little red-headed Yankee" +with distinct aversion to her "want of style and presence," but was +soon heard to declare with enthusiastic admiration that she was "an +encyclopedia in small print." Here among ancestral trees she found +inspiration and in the society of her new sister she enjoyed the most +delightful soul companionship. + +In the early years of her married life writing was laid aside while +she devoted herself to the care of her family, the entertainment of +the many visitors who came to the Preston house and the beautification +of her new home, finding plenty of space in the attractive house and +extensive grounds with their noble trees, orchard, garden and meadow +for the outlet of all her imagination. In this ideal home she was +living her peaceful and happy life when the bugle call destroyed the +serenity of the country. She suffered one of her greatest sorrows in +the difference of political opinion between her Northern father and +her Southern husband. The latter, holding that while secession was +unwise, coercion was tyranny, followed Virginia when she cast in her +lot with the seceding States. Dr. Junkin and his widowed youngest +daughter, Julia, returned to Philadelphia, while Colonel Preston +joined Stonewall Jackson's army. + +Margaret Preston's worship of the muses was woven in with her devotion +to the household goddesses, and in her journal the receiving of the +first copy of her new volume of poems is sandwiched in between the +making of twenty-two gallons of blackberry wine and thirty-three +bottles of ketchup. House-cleaning and "Tintoretto"; pickles and "Mona +Lisa"; hearth-painting and "Bacharach wine" were all closely connected +in her every-day experience. From a ride through the blue hills she +would return with a poem singing in her heart, radiant with sun, +shaded with the mists of the darkening heights, and when it had +bubbled over in laughter and dreams and tears and was safe upon the +written page, she would go into the kitchen and produce such marvels +of cookery as made her a housewife of more than local fame. + +One of her dearest friends was Commodore Matthew F. Maury, who was +connected with the Military Institute in the early years after the +war. On his death-bed his wife asked him if she might bury him in +Hollywood near Richmond. "As you please, my dear," he said, "but do +not carry me through the pass until the ivy and laurel are in bloom +and you can cover my bier with their beauty." When the burial service +was read over him lying in state in the Institute library, Mrs. +Preston was not able to venture over the threshold, so she remained in +the shelter of the porch, and when the family returned from the +funeral she read them the lines she had composed in the hour that they +had been gone: + + THROUGH THE PASS + + "Home, bear me home at last," he said, + "And lay me where my dead are lying; + But not while skies are overspread, + And mournful wintry winds are sighing. + + "Wait till the royal march of Spring + Carpets your mountain fastness over,-- + Till chattering birds are on the wing, + And buzzing bees are in the clover. + + "Wait till the laurel bursts its buds, + And creeping ivy flings its graces + About the lichened rocks, and floods + Of sunshine fill the shady places. + + "Then, when the sky, the air, the grass, + Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender, + Then bear me through the Goshen Pass + Amid its flush of May-day splendor." + + So _will_ we bear him! Human heart + To the warm earth's drew never nearer, + And never stooped she to impart + Lessons to one who held them dearer. + + Stars lit new pages for him; seas + Revealed the depths their waves were screening; + The ebbs gave up their masteries, + The tidal flows confessed their meaning. + + Of ocean paths the tangled clue + He taught the nations to unravel; + And mapped the track where safely through + The lightning-footed thought might travel. + + And yet unflattered by the store + Of these supremer revelations, + Who bowed more reverently before + The lowliest of earth's fair creations? + + What sage of all the ages past, + Ambered in Plutarch's limpid story, + Upon the age he served, has cast + A radiance touched with worthier glory? + + His noble living for the ends + God set him (duty underlying + Each thought, word, action) naught transcends + In lustre, save his nobler dying. + + Do homage, sky, and air, and grass, + All things he cherished, sweet and tender, + As through our gorgeous mountain pass + We bear him in the May-day splendor! + +The summer of 1884 Margaret Preston spent abroad in the places of +which she had read with a loving enthusiasm which made them her own. +"Don't show me; let me find it," she would say, and go straight to the +object of her quest. Her reading had brought her into companionship +with all the beautiful minds of the world, and all the places that had +been dear to them were sacred to her heart. Windermere was "redolent +all over with the memories of Wordsworth, Southey, Kit North, Hartley +Coleridge, Harriet Martineau, Dr. Arnold." "Ambleside--Wordsworth's +Ambleside--Southey's; and such hills, such greenery, I never expect to +see again. Then we took carriage to Grasmere Lake, a lovely little +gem." + +"I walked to Wordsworth's grave without being directed, and on reading +his name on his stone, and Mary Wordsworth's on his wife's, I am free +to confess to a rush of tears, Dora Quillinan, his daughter's, and +dear old Dorothy, whom Coleridge, you know, pronounced the grandest +woman he had ever known. Suddenly turning I read the name of poor +Hartley Coleridge and again I felt my eyes flow." + +Perhaps few travellers have seen as much in a summer's wandering as +did Margaret Preston, yet it was on her "blind slate" that she was +forced to write of these things and of the "crowning delight of the +summer," the tour through Switzerland. She said, "My picture gallery +of memory is hung henceforth with glorious frescoes which blindness +cannot blot or cause to fade." + +Life in Preston House with all its enchantments came to an end for +Margaret Preston with the passing of the noble and loving man who had +made her the priestess of that home shrine. The first two years after +his death she spent with her stepdaughter, Mrs. Allan, who lived near +the old home. Then she went to the home of Dr. George J. Preston, of +Baltimore, where she was the centre of the home and took great delight +in his children with their pretty "curly red heads." She never walked +again except to take a few steps with a crutch. + +From 819 North Charles Street she wrote: "Here my large airy room +faces brick walls and housetops and when I sit at the library windows +I only see throngs of passers-by, all of whom are strangers to me." +Her life was beautiful and content, but she must often have longed for +the old friends and the "laureled avenues" and the "edges of the +glorious Goshen Pass lit with the wavering flames of the July +rhododendrons." + +March 29, 1897, Margaret Preston died as she had wished when she +expressed her desire in her poem "Euthanasia," written in memory of a +friend who had passed away unconscious of illness or death: + + With faces the dearest in sight, + With a kiss on the lips I love best, + To whisper a tender "Good-night" + And pass to my pillow of rest. + + To kneel, all my service complete, + All duties accomplished--and then + To finish my orisons sweet + With a trustful and joyous "Amen." + + And softly, when slumber was deep, + Unwarned by a shadow before, + On a halcyon billow of sleep + To float to the Thitherward shore. + + Without a farewell or a tear, + A sob or a flutter of breath, + Unharmed by the phantom of Fear, + To glide through the darkness of death! + + Just so would I choose to depart, + Just so let the summons be given; + A quiver--a pause of the heart-- + A vision of angels--then Heaven! + + + + +"THE 'MOTHER' OF 'ST. ELMO'" + +AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON + + +Let me introduce to you Augusta Evans Wilson as I first met her when +she was a bride, when her soul, like mine, was allied to love, faith +and romance, when every day was made perfect with its own contentment +and to-morrow's hope, when we were happy because we loved and were +loved. + +I do not know why, when she clasped my hand and said, "How young you +are," I thought of the poem of Lucas, "The land where we lay +dreaming," or why those lines should come back to me now when her feet +are treading the path where silence is. It may have been because of +her sweet voice, "Which did thrill until at eve the whip-poor-will and +at noon the mocking-birds were mute and still," or because of the +exchange of memories of those days of shot and shell and red meteors, +of the camp, of the march, of the sick and wounded to whom she +ministered, and of the realization that "All our glorious visions fled +and left us nothing real but the dead, in the land where we lay +dreaming." + +When she remarked upon my youth the fancy drifted through my mind that +she was rather old for a bride, or at least looked so, for I was +accustomed to seeing very youthful brides, being only half her years +when I was one, while she had passed through ageing experiences, had +written many books, and looked older than she really was. I had not +formed the habit of thinking of her as Mrs. Wilson, and in the +confusion of the old name and the new could not recall either, so +called her "Mrs. Macaria." She laughed and told me that she was +accustomed to being called "Beulah," but this was the first time that +she had been addressed as "Mrs. Macaria." + +She told me of the many adventures of "Macaria" in its early days. +Camp "Beulah," named in honor of her second book, which appeared not +long before the opening of the war and brought her at once into +prominence as a writer, was near Summerville, the girlhood home of +Augusta Evans, and in that camp and its hospital, as well as in the +many others which soon sprang up around the Evans residence, she took +a Southern woman's share in the work, the darkness and the heartache +of the time. Her friend, Mr. Thomas Cooper De Leon, of Mobile, gives a +picture of her in those days: + + The slim, willowy girl, with masses of brown hair coiled in the + funnel depths of a poke bonnet, a long check apron and a pair of + tin buckets, became the typical guardian angel of the nearby + hospitals. + +She was amanuensis, as well as nurse, cook and general purveyor of +light and comfort, and she sent many a cheering letter to waiting +hearts at home, and never was the power of her glowing pen used more +nobly and helpfully than when, forced to write the last dread message +of all, it wove into the sorrowful words a golden thread of love and +faith and hope. + +In the pauses of her work she wrote most of her war-novel, "Macaria," +which, to a great extent, shared the uncertainties and excitements of +the period. It was published in 1864 by West & Johnson, of Richmond, +being printed on wrapping paper, and soon became a favorite with the +Southern soldiers, who probably found in it more human nature and more +of the logic of possible events than it revealed to the general +reader, their own experience in those days having led them to grave +doubts as to the accuracy of the philosophic theory that not all +conceivable things are possible. At that time it stood to reason that +the kind of literature popular in Southern camps would not appeal +forcibly to the approval of the Northern army, and a Federal officer +captured and burned all the copies of "Macaria" that he could find. + +Miss Evans contrived to slip a copy of her new book across the lines +to a publisher friend who, being unable at that time to bring out a +new edition, took it to the J.B. Lippincott Company and arranged for +its publication. Immediately afterward it was found that another +publisher had come into possession of a copy and had an edition of +five thousand ready to issue but, upon inquiry, expressed his +intention of paying no royalty to the author. Through the efforts of +Mr. Lippincott he was induced to allow a royalty. Miss Evans afterward +wrote to her friend: + + I have always felt profoundly grateful to Mr. Lippincott, but fate + has never indulged me in an opportunity of adequately thanking + him for his generous and chivalrous action in behalf of an unknown + rebel, who at that period was nursing Confederate soldiers in a + hospital established near "Camp Beulah." + +In telling me of this she said that the kindness of Mr. Lippincott did +not surprise her, as she remembered with gratitude the generosity of +the Lippincott Company in regard to Southern obligations at the +opening of the war. + +With the beautiful voice which so enchanted me she once took captive +General Bragg's army on Lookout Mountain. With her mother she had gone +to visit her brother, Captain Howard Evans, just before the battle of +Chickamauga. It chanced that he had been sent to the front before they +arrived, but they were hospitably received and given a hut on the +slope. At midnight they were awakened by steps and whispers and upon +inquiry found that their unexpected visitors were soldiers who had +crept through the lines to see Miss Evans and hear her sing. The +mother was disposed to object to her appearing at a time and place not +conventionally appropriate to artistic performances, but, wrapping her +travelling coat and robe about her, she went out into the moonlight +with her mass of hair streaming in the wind like a flying cloud, and +sang that thrilling song written by her friend, Randall, "Maryland, my +Maryland." As the melodious tones swelled out upon the night and came +floating back in echoes from the rugged peaks and mountain walls, they +filled the audience with rapt delight. When the song was finished the +sobs and cheers that burst from the soldier-hearts formed an encore +not to be denied, and again that battle-cry thrilled out upon the air. +The moment of silence that followed was broken by the high, shrill, +quavering, penetrating note of the rebel yell. + +The singer has passed into the land of the higher music and most of +those who thrilled to the sound of her battle-song on that war-crowned +height have passed away from the melodies of earth, but somewhere in +this wide land there may be hearts through which yet pulses the music +of that midnight song. + +Among the most valued possessions of Mrs. Wilson were the rings, +bracelets and baskets fashioned from buttons and fruit-seeds by her +soldiers in hospital, tokens of their grateful remembrance of her. I +showed her a little cross cut from a button in a prison and given to +me by my uncle, Colonel Phillips, of the Confederate Army, who had +been a captive on Johnson's Island. The prisoners used the cross to +certify to the validity of secret messages. It was sent with the +message and returned with the answer, carrying conviction of the +truthfulness of both. + +I told her the story of another cross, connected with the surrender of +the Army of Northern Virginia. Colonel Aylett, of the Fifty-Third +Virginia, a very religious man, was talking with some friends when a +letter came bringing the sad tidings. "I do not believe it," he said. +"If it could be true I should not have faith in God or in prayer." As +he talked he took from his pocket a letter folded in the way that was +followed when we had no envelopes, and, cutting it, let it fall to the +floor. One of his companions took it up, placing the pieces on the +table to look for an address, and found that the fragments formed a +crucifix, the cross at each side to which the thieves were nailed, the +block supporting the crucifix, the block on which the dice were +thrown, the sponge and the reed, as if in imitation of a celebrated +painting of the Crucifixion. + +"And this beautiful cross," said Mrs. Wilson, touching the one I wore, +"it must have a story, too." I replied that it had been in my family +for nearly three centuries, that General Pickett had worn it at the +battle of Gettysburg, and that it had been blessed by the Pope three +times. The last time, it was taken to Rome by Father Walter who, in +his long service as Rector of Saint Patrick's Church in Washington, +had by his sweet spirit of kindness and liberality endeared himself to +the whole community, regardless of religious differences. Mrs. Wilson +said that when she was in Washington she went to see Father Walter +because of his great kindness to the people of the South. She spoke, +too, of the most pathetic and tragic service of his life, his faithful +attendance upon Mrs. Surratt to the last awful moment. + +In 1868 Augusta Evans was married to Mr. Lorenze M. Wilson, President +of the Mobile & Montana Railroad, and became mistress of the beautiful +home on the Spring Hill shell road near the picturesque city of +Mobile. The house looked toward the road through aisles of greenery +across a yard filled with flowers diffusing a perfume blended of +geraniums, roses, tropical plants and the blossoms of the North. A +chorus of birds filled the air with music. Majestic old live-oaks with +twilight veils of gray moss were like tall and stately nuns pausing +suddenly to count their beads to the music of vesper bells. Magnolia +trees in dense white blossom gave the impression that winter had +aroused from his summer sleep and unfolded his blanket of snow to add +his most beautiful touch to the charms of the golden days. A handsome +driveway led across a lawn to a veranda, vine-wreathed and hidden in a +crush of flowers. The house, divided by a wide hall, opened upon broad +piazzas. Leading up to it through brilliant blossoming was a white +path between sentinel lines of oak trees that reached out friendly +hands to clasp each other above the broad footway. Amid such beauty +one felt lost in a mystic world of which he had never dreamed and +revelled in a vision from which he might hope that there would be no +waking. + +Augusta Jane Evans was born May 4, 1835, near Columbus, Georgia. "The +Queen City of the Chattahoochee" is enthroned in a pine forest amid a +range of hills that form a semi-circle about the city with its fine +wide streets and magnificent shade trees. The St. Elmo Institute for +girls, with its great oak grove and its beautiful lake, was the model +for the school in the book, "St. Elmo." Sweet memories of the +beautiful home in Columbus remained in the heart of Miss Evans and she +said in after years that many of the happiest days of her girlhood +were spent there. In later years she had here her "White Farm," on +which all the animals and fowls were white. + +In her childhood the family removed to Galveston, Texas, going +afterward to San Antonio. In the two years spent here she studied +under the tutorship of her mother, who never gave up her charge to the +care of a professional teacher, though the responsibility of seven +other children might have furnished her with an excuse for doing so. + +In the most enchanting city of Texas the future novelist was +surrounded by the romantic myths of Indian lore. On a day long past, +the miracle of the San Antonio River and its valley had burst upon the +enraptured eyes of Tremanos, the young Apache brave, from the hilltop +to which he had climbed with weary footsteps, followed by the gaunt +shadow of death, dazed by the phantoms on the distant horizon, lured +on by mystic spirit music brought to him on the wings of the scorching +winds; and he had gone with glad heart down into the rich and verdant +plains of "Tejas, the Beautiful." + +Not far from the picturesque old city of San Antonio was the Huisache, +one of the three springs which join to form the San Antonio River. +Along its banks the gray dove's sad note was heard. When the two +Indian sisters, "Flower of Gladness" and "Flower of Pity," used to +come down to drink from the Spring of the Huisache the song of the +dove was all of joy. A youthful Indian brave of rare enchantment came +into their lives and brought love and treachery, and the assassin's +knife felled the Indian youth on the brink of the Huisache. "Flower of +Pity," coming to the spring, found the lifeless form of the young +warrior and snatched the knife from the wound and plunged it into her +own heart. A little later "Flower of Gladness" found her sister and +the Indian brave dead by the water's edge and straightway went mad. +Manitou graciously allowed the poor lost soul to find a voice for its +woes in the note of the dove and henceforth she was the mourning dove. +The lives of the youth and maiden, floating out in white clouds of +mist, descended into the earth and became two living springs which +united with the Huisache to form the San Antonio River. + +In her story of "Inez," founded upon the most tragic event in the +history of the Lone Star State, the defence of the Alamo, Miss Evans +thus described the scene from the viewpoint of the newly arrived +immigrant: + + The river wound around the town like an azure girdle, gliding + along the surface and reflecting in its deep blue waters the + rustling tule which fringed the margin. An occasional pecan + or live-oak flung a majestic shadow athwart its azure bosom. + Now and then a clump of willows sigh low in the evening breeze. + Far away to the north stretched a mountain range, blue in the + distance; to the south lay the luxuriant valley of the stream. + The streets were narrow and laid out with a total disregard of + the points of the compass. + +By this river of romantic beauty and old-time myth Augusta Evans spent +two of youth's impressionable years. On Main Plaza, near the Alamo, +where the Frost National Bank now stands, was the Evans store, where +she, the daughter of the store-keeper, lived. Almost under the shadow +of the tragically historic old mission, by the park near which Santa +Ana had his headquarters, she received the incentive and gathered the +material for her first novel, "Inez," written in her own room at night +as a gift with which to surprise her father and mother. The work of a +girl of fifteen, it did not appeal to many readers, but it contained a +vivid description of the inspired heroism and self-sacrifice of the +men whose deeds crowned the history of Texas with the sanctity of the +supreme glory of self-immolation upon the altar of patriotism. We have +fallen upon commercial days now, and the traditions of the old Alamo +circle around a warehouse. Alamo Plaza is now the scene of the annual +"Battle of the Flowers," a joyous and beautiful occasion which throws +a fragrant floral veil about the terrible memories that gloom over the +place. + +At the close of the two years spent in San Antonio, the family +returned to Columbus and later found a home in Mobile, Alabama, the +town of the "Maubila," Choctaw, Indians. It is a pleasant town of +shaded streets, romantic drives and beautiful homes. Its history +reaches back through the centuries to a time long before the United +States had being, and it is the only American city that has seen five +flags wave over it: French, English, Spanish, United States and +Confederate. + +While in this home Augusta Evans became widely known through the +publication in 1859 of her second novel, "Beulah." Then came the war, +bringing forth her one war-novel, "Macaria." "Vashti," "St. Elmo," +"Infelice," "At the Mercy of Tiberius," the latter being her best, +followed in quick succession, until her marriage put a close to her +work, for Mr. Wilson was unwilling that she should tax her strength by +close application. Life in the delightful home furnished interest +enough to make resort to fiction unnecessary as an entertainment. In +1879 the death of Mr. Wilson ended the idyllic home life and she +returned to her desk, writing "The Speckled Bird" and "Devota," with a +pen that had lost much of its charm in the days of happy absorption. + +Having no children of her own, Mrs. Wilson gave her devoted affection +to the children and grandchildren of her husband, who was a widower at +the time of their marriage. + +It has been observed that the stories of Augusta Evans have no +location. They happen in any place where the people chance to be and, +given that kind of people, the story would evolve itself in the same +way anywhere else. But for her there was always a place in which +flowers grew and trees waved their branches to the breeze and made +mystic aisles of purpled glooms, shot through with glimpses of sun +amid silences broken happily by the songs of birds. There were always +the wide sky and dim reaches of space and great walls of majestic +mountains against the horizon. However gifted might be her maidens in +roaming amid the stars or delving in philosophic depths, they, like +herself, had always eyes for the beauties which Nature sets in place, +and why should all these things be geographically bounded and +designated by appellations to be recorded in the Postoffice Guide? + +Being in Mobile some years ago, I called upon Mrs. Wilson after her +husband had passed on and left her alone in the charming home. She was +in her work-room, if a place so decoratively enchanting can be +connected with a subject so stern and prosaic, so crowded with +every-day commonplaceness, as work. It was a bower of beauty, with +light, graceful furniture, and pots of plants making cheerful greenery +at every available spot. Vases of flowers cut from her garden, tended +by her own care and love, were on desk and table and in sunny alcoves, +filling the room with a glory of color and a fragrance as of incense +from jewelled censers swung in adoration of the goddess of the +exquisite shrine. + +Remembering that charming study as I saw it then, blossoming and +redolent with the flowers beloved of the heart of its mistress, I +wonder at times if all that beauty is still there and if some bright +soul, as in the dead days, is sunning itself in that warmth and glow. + +The old home has passed into stranger hands, as Mrs. Wilson was +persuaded to sell it after the death of her husband and her removal to +the city. + +In Magnolia Cemetery in the home city so dear to her, Augusta Evans +Wilson rests beside the brother whom she was seeking when her midnight +song thrilled the hearts of the defenders of the Stars and Bars on +Look-out Mountain. On her laurel-wreathed monument are the lines +written by Mr. De Leon when the dawn of one May morning brought him +the sad tidings that his friend of many years had passed from earth: + + Dead, in her fulness of years and of fame, + What has she left? + High on the roll of fair Duty, a name: + Love, friends devoted as few mortals claim: + A Nation bereft! + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Literary Hearthstones of Dixie +by La Salle Corbell Pickett + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LITERARY HEARTHSTONES OF DIXIE *** + +***** This file should be named 16622.txt or 16622.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/6/2/16622/ + +Produced by Mark C. 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