Mrs. Amelia B. Welby, Kentucky's most famous female poet of the mid-century, was born at St. Michael's, Maryland, February 3, 1819. When she was fifteen years old her family removed to Louisville, Kentucky, the city of her fame. In 1837, George D. Prentice, with his wonderful nose for finding female verse-makers, added Amelia to his already long and ever-increasing list. He printed her first poem in his Journal, and crowned her as the finest branch of his poetical tree. His declaration that she possessed the divine afflatus meant nothing, as he had said the same thing about many another sentimental single lady, pining upon the peaks of poesy. But Edgar Allan Poe and Rufus W. Griswold soon separated her from the versifiers and placed her among the poets, and thus her fame has come down to us with fragrance. In June, 1838, Amelia was married to George Welby, a Louisville merchant, who also held her to be a poet born in the purple. Mrs. Welby's verse became well-known and greatly admired in many parts of the country, and, in response to numerous requests for a volume of her work, she collected her Journal verse and published it under the title of Poems by Amelia (Boston, 1845). A second edition was published the following year, and by 1860 the volume was said to be in its seventeenth edition! Robert W. Weir's illustrated edition of her poems was issued in 1850, and this is the most desirable form in which her work has been preserved. These various editions will at once convey some idea of her great popularity. With Poe, Prentice, and Griswold singing her praises, and the public purchasing her poems as rapidly as they could be made into books, Amelia's fame seemed secure. To-day, however, no one has read any of her verse save The Rainbow, which has been set down as her best poem, and she has become essentially an historical personage, the keepsake of Kentucky letters. While the greater number of her poems are quite unreadable, her elegy for Miss Laura M. Thurston, a sister versifier, is well done and her finest piece of work. Mrs. Welby died at Louisville, May 3, 1852, when but thirty-three years of age. Had she lived longer, and the poetic appreciation of the American people suffered no change, the heights to which she would have attained can be but vaguely guessed at.
Bibliography. Female Poets of America, by R. W. Griswold (Philadelphia, 1856); The Poets and Poetry of the West, by W. T. Coggeshall (Columbus, 1860).
THE RAINBOW
[From Poems by Amelia (Boston, 1845)]
ON THE DEATH OF A SISTER POET
[From The Poets and Poetry of the West, edited by W. T. Coggeshall (Columbus, Ohio, 1860)]
Charles Wilkins Webber, the foremost Kentucky writer of prose fiction and adventure of the old school, was born at Russellville, Kentucky, May 29, 1819, the son of Dr. Augustine Webber, a noted Kentucky physician. In 1838 young Webber went to Texas where he was with the Rangers for several years. He later returned to Kentucky and studied medicine at Transylvania University, Lexington, which he soon abandoned for a brief course at Princeton Theological Seminary, with the idea of entering the Presbyterian ministry. A short time afterwards, however, he settled at New York as a literary man. Webber was connected with several newspapers and periodicals, being associate editor of The Whig Review for about two years. His first book, called Old Hicks, the Guide (New York, 1848) was followed by The Gold Mines of the Gila (New York, 1849, two vols.). In 1849 Webber organized an expedition to the Colorado country, but it utterly failed. Several of his other books were now published: The Hunter-Naturalist (Philadelphia, 1851); Tales of the Southern Border (1852; 1853); Texas Virago (1852); Wild Girl of Nebraska (1852); Spiritual Vampirism (Philadelphia, 1853); Jack Long, or the Shot in the Eye (London, 1853), his masterpiece; Adventures with Texas Rifle Rangers (London, 1853); Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie (London, 1854); and his last book, History of Mystery (Philadelphia, 1855). In 1855 Webber joined William Walker's expedition to Central America, and in the battle of Rivas, he was mortally wounded. He died at Nicaragua, April 11, 1856, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. Webber's career is almost as interesting as his stories. In fact, he put so much of his life into his works that all of them may be said to be largely autobiographical.
Bibliography. Cyclopaedia of American Literature, by E. A. and G. L. Duyckinck (New York, 1856); Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography (New York, 1888, v. vi).
TROUTING ON JESSUP'S RIVER
[From Wild Scenes in the Forest and Prairie, or the Romance of Natural History (London, 1854)]
"The Bridge" at Jessup's River is well known to sportsmen; and to this point we made our first flyfishing expedition. The eyes of Piscator glistened at the thought, and early was he busied with hasty fingers through an hour of ardent preparation amongst his varied and complicated tackle. Now was his time for triumph. In all the ruder sports in which we had heretofore been engaged, I, assisted by mere chance, had been most successful; but now the infallible certainty of skill and science were to be demonstrated in himself, and the orthodoxy of flies vindicated to my unsophisticated sense.
The simple preparations were early completed; the cooking apparatus, which was primitive enough to suit the taste of an ascetic, consisted in a single frying-pan. The blankets, with the guns, ammunition, rods, etc., were all disposed in the wagon of our host, which stood ready at the door. It was a rough affair, with stiff wooden springs, like all those of the country, and suited to the mountainous roads they are intended to traverse, rather than for civilized ideas of comfort. We, however, bounded into the low-backed seat; and if it had been cushioned to suit royalty, we could not have been more secure than we were of such comfort as a backwood sportsman looks for. We soon found ourselves rumbling, pitching, and jolting, over a road even worse than that which brought us first to the lake. It seemed to me that nothing but the surprising docility of the ponies which drew us, could have saved us, strong wagon and all, from being jolted to atoms. I soon got tired of this, and sprang out with my gun, determined to foot it ahead, in the hope of seeing a partridge or red squirrel.
We arrived at the "bridge" about the middle of the afternoon. There we found an old field called Wilcox's clearing, and, like all places I had seen in this fine grazing region, it was still well sodded down in blue grass and clover. Our luggage having been deposited in the shantee, consisting almost entirely of boards torn from the old house, which were leaned against the sides of two forks placed a few feet apart, we set off at once for the falls, a short distance above. This was merely an initial trial, to obtain enough for dinner, and find the prognostics of the next day's sport in feeling the manner of the fish.
At the falls the river is only about fifteen feet wide, though its average width is from twenty-five to thirty. The water tumbles over a ledge of about ten feet, at the bottom of which is a fine hole, while on the surface sheets of foam are whirled round and round upon the tormented eddies, for the stream has considerable volume and power.
We stepped cautiously along the ledge, Piscator ahead, and holding his flies ready for a cast, which was most artistically made, not without a glance of triumph at me, then preparing to do the same with the humble angle-worm. The "flies" fall—I see the glance of half a dozen golden sides darting at them; but by this time my own cast is made, and I am fully occupied with the struggles of a fine trout.
My companion's success was again far short of mine, and seeing him looking at my trout lying beside me, I said: "Try the worms, good Piscator—here they are. This is not the right time of day for them to take the flies in this river, I judge."
Improving the door of escape thus opened to him, he took off the flies and used worms with immediate and brilliant success, which brought back the smile to his face; and he would now and then as calmly brush away the distracting swarm of flies from his face, as if they had been mere innocent motes. But later that evening came a temporary triumph for Piscator. The hole at the falls was soon exhausted, and we moved down to glean the ripples. It was nearly sunset, and here the pertinacious Piscator determined to try the flies again. He cast with three, and instantly struck two half-pound trout, which, after a spirited play, he safely landed. Rarely have I seen a prouder look of triumph than that which glowed on his face as he bade me "look there!" when he landed them.
"Very fine, Piscator—a capital feat! but I fear it was an accident. You will not get any more that way."
"We shall see, sir," said he, and commenced whipping the water again, but to no avail, while I continued throwing them out with great rapidity.
I abstained from watching him, for I had no desire to spoil his evening sport by taunting him to continue his experiment. I soon observed him throwing out the fish with great spirit again. I merely shouted to him across the stream—"the angle-worm once more, Piscator?"
"Yes!" with a laugh.
As the sun went down the black gnats began to make themselves felt in their smarting myriads, and we forthwith beat a hasty retreat to the shantee.
We had taken about ten pounds of trout; and the first procedure, after reaching the camp, was to build a "smudge," or smoke-fire, to drive away these abominable gnats, which fortunately take flight with the first whiff of smoke, and the next was to prepare the fish for dinner, though not till all had been carefully dressed by the guide, and placed in the cold current of the little spring near, that they might keep sound. Now came the rousing fire, and soon some splendid trout were piled upon dishes of fresh pealed elm bark before us. They were very skillfully cooked, and no epicure ever enjoyed a feast more thoroughly than we did our well-flavored and delicious trout, in that rude shantee.
The feast being over, then to recline back upon the fresh couch of soft spruce boughs, and, with a cigar in mouth, watch the gathering night-shades brooding lower and more low upon the thick wild forest in front, far into the depths of which the leaping flames of our crackling fire go, darting now and then with a revealing tongue of quick light, and listening to the owl make hoarse answer to the wolf afar off—to think of wild passages in a life of adventure years ago amidst surroundings such as this; with the additional spice of peril from savages and treacherous foes, and then, as the hushed life subsides into a stiller mood, see the faces of loved ones come to you through the darkness, with a smile from out your distant home, and while it sinks sweetly on your heart, subside into happy and dream-peopled slumber! "This is bliss!" the bliss of the shantee to the wearied sportsman! a bliss unattainable by the toiler, and still more by the lounger of the city.
We were on foot with the sun next morning, and after another feast, which we appreciated with unpalled appetites, we set off for some deep spring holes nearly a mile above the falls. The morning set cloudy, and rain fell piteously for several hours. But if this change detracted from our sport, it at least served to give zest to the evening's shelter and repose.
I never felt more delightfully than I did when I sat down to a fine dinner that evening in the old tavern, and very much of this pleasurable feeling of entire comfort I attributed to the prompt use of the cold bath, on reaching our temporary home, wet, weary, and shivering with cold. This, with a change of clothes, restored me to a healthy glow of warmth, ready to enjoy whatever our host might provide.
Dr. Lewis Jacob Frazee, author of a little volume of travels of considerable charm, was born at Germantown, Kentucky, August 23, 1819. He was prepared for college at the Maysville Academy, celebrated as the school at which young U. S. Grant spent one year. He was graduated from Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky, in the class of 1837; and four years later he graduated in the medical department of the University of Louisville. On April 9, 1844, Dr. Frazee left Maysville, Kentucky, for a long sojourn in Europe, spending most of his time in Paris studying subjects then untaught in this country. He also visited England and the continent before returning home. These travels Dr. Frazee related in a book of nearly three hundred pages, entitled The Medical Student in Europe (Maysville, Kentucky, 1849), which is now an exceedingly rare work. The style is natural and clear and exhibits genuine literary flavor. He settled at Louisville in 1851. His only other publication was The Mineral Waters of Kentucky (Louisville, 1872), a brochure. Dr. Frazee took a keen interest in the Filson Club of Louisville, and one of his finest papers was read before that organization: An Analysis of the Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie. He was sometime professor in the medical school of the University of Louisville, and in the Kentucky School of Medicine; and he edited The Transylvania Medical Journal for several years. Old age found the good doctor surrendering his practice and professorships to establish the Louisville Dental Depot, designed to furnish the local dentists with supplies. He died at Louisville, Kentucky, August 12, 1905, eleven days before his eighty-sixth birthday.
Bibliography. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky, August 13, 1905); letters from Dr. Thos. E. Pickett, the Maysville historian, to the present writer.
HAVRE
[From The Medical Student in Europe (Maysville, Kentucky, 1849)]
Havre is a place of about 25,000 inhabitants, has fine docks, which are accessible in high tide, and a considerable amount of shipping. Many of the streets are narrow and crooked, with narrow sidewalks and in many cases none at all. The houses are stuccoed, and generally present rather a sombre aspect. Three-fourths of the women we saw in Havre wore no bonnets, but simply a cap. Some of them were mounted upon donkeys, with a large market basket swung down each side of the animal; these of course were the peasants. My attention was attracted by the large sumpter horses here, which draw singly from eight to ten bales of cotton, apparently with considerable ease.
On the day after we arrived at Havre we ascended the hill which rises at one extremity of the city. The various little winding pathways up the hill, have on each side massive stone walls, with now and then a gateway leading to a private residence almost buried in a thicket of shrubbery and flowers. Upon the hill are situated some most delightful and elegant mansions, with grounds beautifully ornamented with shade trees, shrubbery, flowers and handsome walks. These salubrious retreats have a double charm when compared with the thronged, narrow, and noisy streets of the city below. Beyond these Villas were fields of grass and grain undivided by fences, with here and there a farm house surrounded by a clump of trees.
In Havre we found delightful cherries and strawberries, as well as a variety of vegetables; the oysters and fish here though in abundance are of rather an inferior quality, the oysters are very small and of a decided copperish taste. At breakfast, which we took at any hour in the morning that we thought proper, we ordered such articles as suited our fancy, generally however a cup of coffee, a beef steak, eggs, an omelet or something of this sort. We dined about five in the evening upon soups, a variety of meats and vegetables, well prepared, and a dessert of strawberries and other fruits, nuts, etc. The meats and vegetables were not placed upon the table, but each dish was passed around separately—the table being cleared and clean plates placed for each course. We were compelled to eat slowly or wait for some time upon others.
This would not suit one of our western men who is for doing everything in a minute, but the plan certainly has its advantages—one, of promoting digestion by giving time for the mastication of the food, and another, of no small moment for an epicure, that of having things fresh from the oven. My own objection to the plan was, that I never knew how much of an article to eat, as I did not know what would next be introduced. Such an objection fails, of course, in many of the hotels where the bill of fare is stereotyped, and where with more precision than an almanac-maker you can foretell every change that will take place during the ensuing year. Our table was well supplied with wine, which is used as regularly at dinner as milk by our Kentucky farmers. When our bill was made out, each item was charged separately, so much for breakfast, mentioning what it consisted of—so much for dinner—so much per day for a room, so much for each candle we used, and so on. A French landlord in making out your bill goes decidedly into minutiae.
Theodore O'Hara, author of the greatest martial elegy in American literature, was born at Danville, Kentucky, February 11, 1820. He was the son of Kane O'Hara, an Irish political exile, and a noted educator in his day and generation. O'Hara's boyhood days were spent at Danville, but his family settled at Frankfort when he was a young man. He was fitted for college by his father, and his preparation was so far advanced that he was enabled to join the senior class of St. Joseph's College, a Roman Catholic institution at Bardstown, Kentucky. Upon his graduation O'Hara was offered the chair of Greek, but he declined it in order to study law. In 1845 he held a position in the United States Treasury department at Washington; and a few years later he proved himself a gallant soldier upon battlefields in Mexico, being brevetted major for meritorious service. After the war O'Hara practiced law at Washington for some time; and he went to Cuba with the Lopez expedition of 1850. After his return to the United States he edited the Mobile, Alabama, Register for a time; and he was later editor of the Frankfort, Kentucky, Yeoman. O'Hara was a public speaker of great ability, and his address upon William Taylor Barry, the Kentucky statesman and diplomat, is one of the climaxes of Southern oratory. During the Civil War he was colonel of the twelfth Alabama regiment. After the war Colonel O'Hara went to Columbus, Georgia, and became a cotton broker. He died near Guerrytown, Alabama, June 6, 1867. Seven years later his dust was returned to Kentucky, and re-interred in the State cemetery at Frankfort. If collected Colonel O'Hara's poems, addresses, political and literary essays, and editorials would make an imposing volume. His real fame rests upon his famous martial elegy, The Bivouac of the Dead, which he wrote at Frankfort in the summer of 1847, to remember young Henry Clay, Colonel McKee, Captain Willis, and the other brave fellows who fell in the war with Mexico. When their remains were returned to Frankfort and buried in the cemetery on the hill, Colonel O'Hara, their old companion in arms, wrote his stately in memoriam for them. He did not read it over them, as Ranck and the others have written, but he did publish it in The Kentucky Yeoman, a Democratic paper of Frankfort. The Bivouac of the Dead is the greatest single poem ever written by a Kentucky hand, is matchless, superb, and is read in the remotest corners of the world. Its opening lines have been cut deep within memorial shafts in many military cemeteries. Colonel O'Hara sleeps to-day on the outer circle of his comrades, one with them in death as in life, with the lofty military monument, which Kentucky has erected to commemorate her sons slain in the battles of the republic, casting its long shadows across his grave. His elegy in honor of Daniel Boone was written at the "old pioneer's" grave in the Frankfort cemetery before his now much-mutilated monument was erected. It was originally printed in The Kentucky Yeoman for December 19, 1850. Two other poems purporting to be his have been discovered, but there must be others sealed over and forgotten in the scattered and broken files of Southern newspapers and periodicals. So the poet has come down to us, like he who wrote The Burial of Sir John Moore, with one slender sheaf under his arm. But it is enough, enough for both of them.
Bibliography. George W. Ranck's little books: O'Hara and His Elegies (Baltimore, 1875); The Bivouac of the Dead and Its Author (1898; 1909); Daniel E. O'Sullivan's paper in The Southern Bivouac (Louisville, January, 1887); Robert Burns Wilson's fine tribute in The Century Magazine (May, 1890). The late Mrs. Susan B. Dixon, the Henderson historian, left a MS. life of O'Hara that is to be issued shortly.
THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD
[From O'Hara and His Elegies, by George W. Ranck (Baltimore, 1875)]
THE OLD PIONEER
[From the same]
SECOND LOVE
[From The Southern Bivouac (Louisville, Kentucky, January, 1887)]
A ROLLICKING RHYME
[From the same]
THE FAME OF WILLIAM T. BARRY
[From Obituary Addresses (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1855)]
On his accession to the Presidency, General Jackson—with that discerning appreciation of the most available ability and worth in his party which characterized him—called Mr. Barry into his cabinet to the position of Postmaster General. Here, as one of the most distinguished of the council of Jackson, during the greater part of his incumbency, he is entitled to his full share of the fame of that glorious administration. His health, however, failing him under the wasting labors of the toilsome department over which he presided, he was forced to relinquish it before the administration terminated; and General Jackson, unwilling entirely to lose the benefit of his able services, appointed him, in 1835, Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to Spain, a post in which, while its dignity did not disparage his civil rank, it was hoped that the lightness of the duties, and the influence of a genial climate, might serve to renovate his impaired health. But it was otherwise ordained above. He had reached Liverpool on the way to his mission, when the great conqueror, at whose summons the strongest manhood, the noblest virtue, the proudest genius, and the brightest wisdom must surrender, arrested his earthly career on the 30th of August, 1835; and here is all that is left to us of the patriot, the orator, the hero, the statesman, the sage—the rest belongs to Heaven and to fame.
Such, fellow-citizens, is a most cursory and feeble memento of the life and public services of the illustrious man in whose memory Kentucky has decreed the solemn honors of this day. It is well for her that she has felt "the late remorse of love," and reclaimed these precious ashes to her heart, after they have slumbered so many years unsepultured in a foreign land; that no guilty consciousness of unworthy neglect may weigh upon her spirit, and depress her proud front with shame; that no reproaching echo of that eloquent voice that once so sweetly thrilled her, pealing back upon her soul amidst her prideful recollections of the past, may appal her in her feast of memory, and blast her revel of glory; that no avenging muse, standing among the shrines of her departed greatness, and searching in vain for that which should mark her remembrance of one she should so devoutly hallow, shall have reason to sing of her as she has sung:
Here, beneath the sunshine of the land he loved, and amid the scenes which he consecrated with his genius, he will sleep well. Sadly, yet proudly will his fond foster-mother receive within her bosom to-day this cherished remnant of the child she nursed for fame; doubly endeared to her, as he expired far away in a stranger land, beyond the reach of her maternal embrace, and with no kindred eyes to light the gathering darkness of death, no friendly hand to soften his descent to the grave, no pious orisons to speed his spirit on its long journey through eternity. Gently, reverently let us lay him in this proud tabernacle, where he will dwell embalmed in glory till the last trump shall reveal him to us all radiant with the halo of his life. Let the Autumn's wind harp on the dropping leaves her softest requiem over him; let the Winter's purest snows rest spotless on his grave; let Spring entwine her brightest garland for his tomb, and Summer gild it with her mildest sunshine. Here let the marble minstrel rise to sing to the future generations of the Commonwealth the inspiring lay of his high genius and his lofty deeds. Here let the patriot repair when doubts and dangers may encompass him, and he would learn the path of duty and of safety—an oracle will inhabit these sacred graves, whose responses will replenish him with wisdom, and point him the way to virtuous renown. Let the ingenuous youth who pants for the glories of the forum, and "the applause of listening Senates," come hither to tune his soul by those immortal echoes that will forever breathe about this spot and make its silence vocal with eloquence. And here, too, let the soldier of liberty come, when the insolent invader may profane the sanctuary of freedom—here by this holy altar may he fitly devote to the infernal gods the enemies of this country and of liberty.
We will now leave our departed patriot to his sleep of glory. And let no tear moisten the turf that shall wrap his ashes. Let no sound of mourning disturb the majestic solitude of his grand repose. He claims no tribute of sorrow. His body returns to its mother earth, his spirit dwells in the Elysian domain of God, and his deeds are written on the roll of Fame.