It has affected the theatre and well-nigh driven the drama of satire from the stage. Every judge knows that it goes with him to the bench; every physician knows that it accompanies him into the sick-room; every teacher knows that he must reckon with it as he tries to govern and direct the young; every minister knows that it ascends with him into his pulpit and takes wing with his prayer.
And thus we come back around a great circle of the world's endeavor to the simple ceremony of this hour and place. There is but one thing to be said; it is all that need be said; it is an attempt to burnish one corner of a hero's dimmed shield.
It is autumn now, the season of scythe and sickle. Time, the Reaper, long ago reaped from the field of this man's life its heroic deed; and now after so many years it has come back to his grave and thrown down the natural increase. On the day when King Solomon was laid here the grass began to weave its seamless mantle across his frailties; but out of his dust sprang what has since been growing—what no hostile hand can pluck away, nor any wind blow down—the red flower of a man's passionate service to his fellow-men when they were in direst need of him.
And so, long honor to his name! A new peace to his ashes!
THE LAST CHRISTMAS TREE[3]
[From The Saturday Evening Post (Philadelphia, December 5, 1908)]
The stars burn out one by one like candles in too long a night.
Children, you love the snow. You play in it, you hunt in it; it brings the tinkling of sleighbells, it gives white wings to the trees and new robes to the world. Whenever it falls in your country, sooner or later it vanishes: forever falling and rising, forming and falling and melting and rising again—on and on through the ages.
If you should start from your homes and travel northward, after a while you would find that everything is steadily changing: the air grows colder, living things begin to be left behind, those that remain begin to look white, the music of the earth begins to die out; you think no more of color and joy and song. On you journey, and always you are traveling toward the silent, the white, the dead. And at last you come to the land of sunlessness and silence—the reign of snow.
If you should start from your homes and travel southward, as you crossed land after land, in the same way you would begin to see that life was failing, colors fading, the earth's harmonies being replaced by the discords of Nature's lifeless forces, storming, crushing, grinding. And at last you would reach the threshold of another world that you dared not enter and that nothing alive ever faces—the home of the frost.
If you should rise straight into the air above your housetops, as though you were climbing the side of an unseen mountain, you would find at last that you had ascended to a height where the mountain would be capped with snow. All round the earth, wherever its mountains are high enough, their summits are capped with the one same snow; for above us, everywhere, lies the upper land of eternal cold.
Some time in the future, we do not know when, but some time in the future, the Spirit of the Cold at the north will move southward; the Spirit of the Cold at the south will move northward; the Spirit of the Cold in the upper air will move downward to meet the other two. When the three meet there will be for the earth one whiteness and silence—rest.
A great time had passed—how great no one knew; there was none to measure it.
It was twilight and it was snowing. On a steep mountainside, near its bald summit, thousands of feet above the line that any other living thing had ever crossed, stood two glorious fir trees, strongest and last of their race. They had climbed out of the valley below to this lone height, and there had so rooted themselves in rock and soil that the sturdiest gale had never been able to dislodge them; and now the twain occupied that beetling rock as the final sentinels of mortal things.
They looked out toward the land on one side of the mountain; at the foot of it lay a valley, and there, in old human times, a village had thriven, church spires had risen, bridal candles had twinkled at twilight. On the opposite side they looked toward the ocean—once the rolling, blue ocean, singing its great song, but level now and white and still at last—its voice hushed with all other voices—the roar of its battleships ended long ago. One fir tree grew lower down than the other, its head barely reached up to its comrade's breast. They had long shared with each other the wordless wisdom of their race; and now, as a slow, bitter wind wandered across the delicate green harps of their leaves, they began to chant—harping like harpers of old who never tired of the past.
The fir below, as the snowflakes fell on its locks and sifted closely in about its throat, shook itself bravely and sang:
"Comrade, the end for us draws nigh; the snow is creeping up. To-night it will place its cap upon my head. I shall close my eyes and follow all things into their sleep."
"Yes," thrummed the fir above, "follow all things into their sleep. If they were thus to sleep at last, why were they ever awakened? It is a mystery."
The whirling wind caught the words and bore them to the right and to the left over land and over sea:
"Mystery—mystery—mystery."
Twilight deepened. The snow scarcely fell; the clouds trailed through the trees so close and low that the flakes were formed amid the boughs and rested where they were created. At intervals out of the clouds and darkness the low musings went on:
"Where now is the Little Brother of the Trees—him of the long thoughts and the brief shadow?"
"He thought that he alone of earthly things was immortal."
"Our people, the Evergreens, were thrust forth on the earth a million ages before he appeared; and we are still here, a million ages since he left, leaving not a trace of himself behind."
"The most fragile moss was born before he was born; and the moss outlasted him."
"The frailest fern was not so perishable."
"Yet he believed he should have eternal youth."
"That his race would return to some Power who had sent it forth."
"That he was ever being borne onward to some far-off, divine event, where there was justice."
"Yes, where there was justice."
"Of old it was their custom to heap white flowers above their dead."
"Now white flowers cover them—the frozen white flowers of the sky."
It was night now about the mountaintop—deep night above it. At intervals the communing of the firs started up afresh:
"Had they known how alone in the universe they were, would they not have turned to each other for happiness?"
"Would not all have helped each?"
"Would not each have helped all?"
"Would they have so mingled their wars with their prayers?"
"Would they not have thrown away their weapons and thrown their arms around one another? It was all a mystery."
"Mystery—mystery."
Once in the night they sounded in unison:
"And all the gods of earth—its many gods in many lands with many faces—they sleep now in their ancient temples; on them has fallen at last their unending dusk."
"And the shepherds who avowed that they were appointed by the Creator of the universe to lead other men as their sheep—what difference is there now between the sheep and the shepherds?"
"The shepherds lie with the sheep in the same white pastures."
"Still, what think you became of all that men did?"
"Whither did Science go? How could it come to naught?"
"And that seven-branched golden candlestick of inner light that was his Art—was there no other sphere to which it could be transferred, lovely and eternal?"
"And what became of Love?"
"What became of the woman who asked for nothing in life but love and youth?"
"What became of the man who was true?"
"Think you that all of them are not gathered elsewhere—strangely changed, yet the same? Is some other quenchless star their safe habitation?"
"What do we know; what did he know on earth? It was a mystery."
"It was all a mystery."
If there had been a clock to measure the hour it must now have been near midnight. Suddenly the fir below harped most tenderly:
"The children! What became of the children? Where did the myriads of them march to? What was the end of the march of the earth's children?"
"Be still!" whispered the fir above. "At that moment I felt the soft fingers of a child searching my boughs. Was not this what in human times they called Christmas Eve?"
"Hearken!" whispered the fir below. "Down in the valley elfin horns are blowing and elfin drums are beating. Did you hear that—faint and far away? It was the bells of the reindeer! It passed: it was the wandering soul of Christmas."
Not long after this the fir below struck its green harp for the last time:
"Comrade, it is the end for me. Good-night!"
Silently the snow closed over it.
The other fir now stood alone. The snow crept higher and higher. It bravely shook itself loose. Late in the long night it communed once more, solitary:
"I, then, close the train of earthly things. And I was the emblem of immortality; let the highest be the last to perish! Power, that put forth all things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explaining it, that purpose. I follow all things into their sleep."
In the morning there was no trace of it.
The sun rose clear on the mountaintops, white and cold and at peace.
The earth was dead.
Mrs. Nancy Huston Banks, novelist, was born at Morganfield, Kentucky, about 1850. She is the daughter of the late Judge George Huston, who for many years was an attorney and banker of her native town. When a young woman Miss Huston was married to Mr. James N. Banks, now a lawyer of Henderson, Kentucky. Mrs. Banks's first book, Stairs of Sand (Chicago, 1890), has been forgotten by author and public alike, but shortly after its publication, she went to New York, and there she resided at the Hotel St. James for many years. At the present time she is living in London. She became a contributor to magazines, her critical paper on Mr. James Lane Allen and his novels, which appeared in The Bookman for June, 1895, being her first work to attract serious attention. A few years later Mrs. Banks dropped her magazine work in order to write her charming novel of life in southern Kentucky, Oldfield (New York, 1902). This story was highly praised in this country and in England, the critics of London coining a descriptive phrase for it that has stuck—"the Kentucky Cranford." Her next novel, 'Round Anvil Rock (New York, 1903), was a worthy follower of Oldfield. One reviewer called it "a blend of an old-fashioned love story and an historical study." Mrs. Banks's most recent novel is The Little Hills (New York, 1905). The opening words of this story: "The air was the breath of spice pinks," was seized upon by the critics and set up as a sign-post for the book's tone. Mrs. Banks has been a great traveler. She was sent to South Africa during the Boer war by Vanity Fair of London, and her letters to that publication were most interesting. She knew Cecil Rhodes and George W. Steevens, the war correspondent, and, with her beauty and charm, she became a social "star" in the life about her. Mrs. Banks's one eccentricity—according to the literary gossips of New York—is her distaste for classical music; and that much of her success is due to the fact that she knows how to handle editors and publishers, we also learn from the same source. At least one of her contemporaries once held—though he has since wholly relented and regretted much—that, in a now exceedingly scarce first edition, she out-ingramed Ingram! But, of course, that is another story.
Bibliography. The Critic (September, 1902); The Nation (February 5, 1903); The Bookman (February, 1904).
ANVIL ROCK[4]
[From 'Round Anvil Rock (New York, 1903)]
The courage and calmness which he had found in himself under this test, heartened him and made him the more determined to control his wandering fancy. Looking now neither to the right nor the left, he pressed on through the clearing toward the buffalo track in the border of the forest which would lead him into the Wilderness Road. Sternly setting his thoughts on the errand that was taking him to the salt-works, he began to think of the place in which they were situated, and to wonder why so bare, so brown, and so desolate a spot should have been called Green Lick. There was no greenness about it, and not the slightest sign that there ever had been any verdure, although it still lay in the very heart of an almost tropical forest. It must surely have been as it was now since time immemorial. Myriads of wild beasts coming and going through numberless centuries to drink the salt water, had trodden the earth around it as hard as iron, and had worn it down far below the surface of the surrounding country. The boy had seen it often, but always by daylight, and never alone, so that he noted many things now which he had not observed before. The huge bison must have gone over that well-beaten track one by one, to judge by its narrowness. He could see it dimly, running into the clearing like a black line beginning far off between the bordering trees; but as he looked, the darkness deepened, the mists thickened, and a look of unreality came over familiar objects. And then through the wavering gloom there suddenly towered a great dark mass topped by something which rose against the wild dimness like a colossal blacksmith's anvil. It might have been Vulcan's own forge, so strange and fabulous a thing it seemed! The boy's heart leaped with his pony's leap. His imagination spread its swift wings ere he could think; but in another instant he reminded himself. This was not an awful apparition, but a real thing, wondrous and unaccountable enough in its reality. It was Anvil Rock—a great, solitary rock rising abruptly from the rockless loam of a level country, and lifting its single peak, rudely shaped like a blacksmith's anvil, straight up toward the clouds.
THE OLD-FASHIONED FIDDLERS
[From the same]
Those old-time country fiddlers—all of them, black or white—how wonderful they were! They have always been the wonder and the despair of all musicians who have played by rule and note. The very way that the country fiddler held his fiddle against his chest and never against his shoulder like the trained musician! The very way that the country fiddler grasped his bow, firmly and squarely in the middle, and never lightly at the end like a trained musician! The very way that he let go and went off and kept on—the amazing, inimitable spirit, the gayety, the rhythm, the swing! No trained musician ever heard the music of the country fiddler without wondering at its power, and longing in vain to know the secret of its charm. It would be worth a good deal to know where and how they learned the tunes that they played. Possibly these were handed down by ear from one to another; some perhaps may have never been pent up in notes, and others may have been given to the note reader under other names than those by which the country fiddlers knew them. This is said to have been the case with "Old Zip Coon," and the names of many of them would seem to prove that they belonged to the time and the country. But there is a delightful uncertainty about the origin and the history of almost all of them—about "Leather Breeches" and "Sugar in the Gourd" and "Wagoner" and "Cotton-eyed Joe," and so on through a long list.
William Benjamin Smith, perhaps the greatest scholar ever born on Kentucky soil, first saw the light at Stanford, Kentucky, October 26, 1850. Kentucky (Transylvania) University conferred the degree of Master of Arts upon him in 1871; and the University of Göttengen granted him his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1879. Dr. Smith was professor of mathematics in Central College, Missouri, from 1881 to 1885, when he accepted the chair of physics in the University of Missouri. In 1888 he was transferred to the department of mathematics in the same institution, which he held until 1893, when he resigned to accept a similar position at Tulane University. In 1906 Dr. Smith was elected head of the department of philosophy at Tulane, which position he holds at the present time. He was a delegate of the United States government to the first Pan-American Scientific Congress, held at Santiago, Chile, in 1908. Dr. Smith is the author of the following books, the very titles of which will show his amazing versatility: Co-ordinate Geometry (Boston, 1885); Clew to Trigonometry (1889); Introductory Modern Geometry (New York, 1893); Infinitesimal Analysis (New York, 1898); The Color Line (New York, 1905), a stirring discussion of the Negro problem from a rather new perspective; two theological works, written originally in German, Der Vorchristliche Jesus (Jena, Germany, 1906); and Ecce Deus (Jena, Germany, 1911), the English translation of which was issued at London and Chicago in 1912. These two works upon proto-Christianity have placed Dr. Smith among the foremost scholars of his day and generation in America. Besides his books he wrote two pamphlets of more than fifty pages each upon Tariff for Protection (Columbia, Missouri, 1888); and Tariff Reform (Columbia, Missouri, 1892). These show the author at his best. And his biography of James Sidney Rollins, founder of the University of Missouri, was published about this time. During the month of October, 1896, Dr. Smith published six articles in the Chicago Record, on the sliver question and in defense of the gold standard, which were certainly the most thorough brought out by the presidential campaign of that year. Among his many public addresses, essays, and articles, The Pauline Codices F and G may be mentioned, as well as his articles on Infinitesimal Calculus and New Testament Criticism in the Encyclopaedia Americana (New York, 1906); and he compiled the mathematical definitions for the New International Dictionary (New York, 1908). Dr. Smith's fine poem, The Merman and the Seraph, was crowned in the Poet Lore competition of 1906. As a mathematician, philosopher, sociologist, New Testament critic, publicist, poet, and alleged prototype of David, hero of Mr. James Lane Allen's The Reign of Law—which he most certainly was not!—Dr. Smith stands supreme among the sons of Kentucky.
Bibliography. Current Literature (June, 1905); The Nation (November 23, 1911).
A SOUTHERN VIEW OF THE NEGRO PROBLEM[5]
[From The Color Line (New York, 1905)]
It is idle to talk of education and civilization and the like as corrective or compensative agencies. All are weak and beggarly as over against the almightiness of heredity, the omniprepotence of the transmitted germ-plasma. Let this be amerced of its ancient rights, let it be shorn in some measure of its exceeding weight of ancestral glory, let it be soiled in its millenial purity and integrity, and nothing shall ever restore it; neither wealth, nor culture, nor science, nor art, nor morality, nor religion—not even Christianity itself. Here and there these may redeem some happy spontaneous variation, some lucky freak of nature; but nothing more—they can never redeem the race. If this be not true, then history and biology are alike false; then Darwin and Spencer, Haeckel and Weismann, Mendel and Pearson, have lived and laboured in vain.
Equally futile is the reply, so often made by our opponents, that miscegenation has already progressed far in the Southland, as witness millions of Mulattoes. Certainly; but do not such objectors know in their hearts that their reply is no answer, but is utterly irrelevant? We admit and deplore the fact that unchastity has poured a broad stream of white blood into black veins; but we deny, and perhaps no one will affirm, that it has poured even the slenderest appreciable rill of Negro blood into the veins of the Whites. We have no excuse whatever to make for these masculine incontinences; we abhor them as disgraceful and almost bestial. But, however degrading and even unnatural, they in nowise, not even in the slightest conceivable degree, defile the Southern Caucasian blood. That blood to-day is absolutely pure; and it is the inflexible resolution of the South to preserve that purity, no matter how dear the cost. We repeat, then, it is not a question of individual morality, nor even of self-respect. He who commerces with a negress debases himself and dishonours his body, the temple of the Spirit; but he does not impair, in anywise, the dignity or integrity of his race; he may sin against himself and others, and even against his God, but not against the germ-plasma of his kind.
Does some one reply that some Negroes are better than some Whites, physically, mentally, morally? We do not deny it; but this fact, again, is without pertinence. It may very well be that some dogs are superior to some men. It is absurd to suppose that only the elect of the Blacks would unite with only the non-elect of the Whites. Once started, the pamnixia would spread through all classes of society and contaminate possibly or actually all. Even a little leaven may leaven the whole lump.
Far more than this, however, even if only very superior Negroes formed unions with non-superior Whites, the case would not be altered; for it is a grievous error to suppose that the child is born of its proximate parents only; it is born of all its ancestry; it is the child of its race. The eternal past lays hand upon it and upon all its descendants. However weak the White, behind him stands Europe; however strong the Black, behind lies Africa.
Preposterous, indeed, is this doctrine that personal excellence is the true standard, and that only such Negroes as attain a certain grade of merit should or would be admitted to social equality. A favourite evasion! The Independent, The Nation, The Outlook, the whole North—all point admiringly to Mr. Washington, and exclaim: "But only see what a noble man he is—so much better than his would-be superiors!" So, too, a distinguished clergyman, when asked whether he would let his daughter marry a Negro, replied: "We wish our daughters to marry Christian gentlemen." Let, then, the major premise be, "All Christian gentlemen are to be admitted to social equality;" and add, if you will, any desired degree of refinement or education or intellectual prowess as a condition. Does not every one see that any such test would be wholly impracticable and nugatory? If Mr. Washington be the social equal of Roosevelt and Eliot and Hadley, how many others will be the social equals of the next circle, and the next, and the next, in the long descent from the White House and Harvard to the miner and the ragpicker? And shall we trust the hot, unreasoning blood of youth to lay virtues and qualities so evenly in the balance and decide just when some "olive-coloured suitor" is enough a "Christian gentleman" to claim the hand of some simple-hearted milk-maid or some school-ma'am "past her bloom?" The notion is too ridiculous for refutation. If the best Negro in the land is the social equal of the best Caucasian, then it will be hard to prove that the lowest White is higher than the lowest Black; the principle of division is lost, and complete social equality is established. We seem to have read somewhere that, when the two ends of one straight segment coincide with the two ends of another, the segments coincide throughout their whole extent.
THE MERMAN AND THE SERAPH[6]
[From Poet-Lore (Boston, 1906)]
Anderson Chenault Quisenberry, historical writer, was born near Winchester, Kentucky, October 26, 1850. He was educated at Georgetown College, Georgetown, Kentucky. In 1870 Mr. Quisenberry engaged in Kentucky journalism, being editor of several papers at different periods, until 1889, when he went to Washington to accept a position in the War Department; but he has continued his contributions to the Kentucky press to the present time. His first volume was The Life and Times of Hon. Humphrey Marshall (Winchester, Kentucky, 1892). This was followed by his other works: Revolutionary Soldiers in Kentucky (1896); Genealogical Memoranda of the Quisenberry Family and Other Families (Washington, D. C., 1897); Memorials of the Quisenberry Family in Germany, England, and America (Washington, D. C., 1900); Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, 1850-51 (Louisville, Kentucky, 1906), one of the most attractive of the Filson Club publications; and History by Illustration: General Zachary Taylor and the Mexican War (Frankfort, Kentucky, 1911), the most recent volume in the Kentucky Historical Series of the State Historical Society. Mr. Quisenberry resides at Hyattsville, Maryland, going into Washington every day for his official duties.
Bibliography. Letters from Mr. Quisenberry to the present writer; Who's Who in America (1912-1913).
THE DEATH OF CRITTENDEN[7]
[From Lopez's Expeditions to Cuba, 1850-1851 (Louisville, Kentucky, 1906)]
The victims, bound securely, were brought out of the boat twelve at a time; of these, six were blindfolded and made to kneel down with their backs to the soldiers, who stood some three or four paces from them. These six executed, the other six were put through the same ghastly ceremony; then twelve others were brought from the boat; and so on, until the terrible and sickening tragedy was over. As each lot were murdered their bodies were cast aside to make room for the next lot.
An eyewitness says of these martyrs to liberty: "They behaved with firmness, evincing no hesitation or trepidation whatever." Among those shot was a lad of fifteen who begged earnestly on his knees that some one be sent to him who could speak English, but not the slightest attention was paid to him. One handsome young man desired that his watch be sent to his sweetheart. After the first discharge those who were not instantly killed were beaten upon the head until life was extinct. One poor fellow received three balls in his neck, and, raising himself in the agonies of death, was struck by a soldier with the butt of a musket and his brains dashed out.
Colonel Crittenden, as the leader of the party, was shot first, and alone. One of the rabble pushed through the line of soldiers, and rushed up to Crittenden and pulled his beard. The gallant Kentuckian, with the utmost coolness, spit in the coward's face. He refused to kneel or to be blindfolded, saying in a clear, ringing voice: "A Kentuckian kneels to none except his God, and always dies facing his enemy!"—an expression that became famous. Looking into the muzzles of the muskets that were to slay him, standing heroically erect in the very face of death, with his own hands, which had been unbound at his request, he gave the signal for the fatal volley; and died, as he had lived, "Strong in Heart." Captain Ker also refused to kneel. They stood up, faced their enemies, were shot down, and their brains were beaten out with clubbed muskets.
Robert Burns Wilson, poet of distinction, the son of a Pennsylvania father and a Virginia mother, was born in his grandfather's house near Washington, Pennsylvania, October 30, 1850. When a very small child he was taken to his mother's home in Virginia; and there the mother died when her son was but ten years old, which event saddened his subsequent life. Mr. Wilson was educated in the schools of Wheeling, West Virginia, after which he went to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to study art. When but nineteen he was painting portraits for a living. In 1871 he and John W. Alexander, now the famous New York artist, chartered a canoe and started down the Ohio river from Pittsburgh, hoping in due course to dock at Louisville, Kentucky. They had hardly reached the Kentucky shore, however, when they disagreed about something or other, and young Alexander left him in the night and returned to Pittsburgh. The next day Mr. Wilson ran his boat into a bank in Union county, Kentucky; he lived in that county a year, when he went up to Louisville. He gained more than a local reputation with a crayon portrait of Henry Watterson, and he was actually making considerable headway as an artist when he was discovered by the late Edward Hensley, of Frankfort, Kentucky, who persuaded him to remove to that town. Mr. Wilson settled at Frankfort in 1875, and he lived there for the following twenty-five years. His literary and artistic labors are inseparably interwoven with the history and traditions of that interesting old town, for he was its "great man" for many years, and its toast. As painter and poet he was heralded by the folk of Frankfort until the outside world was attracted and nibbled at his work. The first public recognition accorded his landscapes was at the Louisville and New Orleans Expositions of 1883 and 1884.
Mr. Wilson's first poem, A Wild Violet in November, was followed by the finest flower of his genius, When Evening Cometh On, which was originally printed in Harper's Magazine for October, 1885. This is the only Southern poem or, perhaps, American, that can be mentioned in the same breath with Gray's Elegy. Many of his poems and prose papers were published in Harper's, The Century, and other periodicals. His first book, Life and Love (New York, 1887), contained the best work he has ever done. The dedicatory lines to the memory of his mother were lovely; and there are many more poems to be found in the volume that are very fine. Chant of a Woodland Spirit (New York, 1894), a long poem of more than fifty pages, portions of which had originally appeared in Harper's and The Century, was dedicated to John Fox, Jr., with whom Mr. Wilson was friendly, and who spent a great deal of his time at the poet's home in Frankfort. His second and most recent collection of lyrics, The Shadows of the Trees (New York, 1898), was widely read and warmly received by all true lovers of genuine poesy. Mr. Wilson's striking poem, Remember the Maine, provoked by the tragedy in Havana harbor, was printed in The New York Herald; and another of his several poems inspired by that fiasco of a fight that is remembered, Such is the Death the Soldier Dies, appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. The Kentucky poet's battle-hymns to the boys in blue were excelled by no other American singer, unless it was by the late William Vaughn Moody. Mr. Wilson's fourth and latest work, a novel, Until the Day Break (New York, 1900), is unreadable as a story, but the passages of nature prose are many and exquisite.
While he has always been a writing-man of very clear and definite gifts, Mr. Wilson has painted many portraits and landscapes, working with equal facility in oils, water-color, and crayon. He is held in esteem by many competent critics as an artist of ability, but nearly all of his work in any of three mediums indicated, is exceedingly moody and pessimistic; and his water-colors, especially, are "muddy." It is greatly to be regretted that he did not remain the poet he was born to be, instead of drawing his dreams—many use a stronger word—in paints.
As has been said, Mr. Wilson was the presiding genius of the town of Frankfort during his life there; and he was a bachelor! Thereby hangs a tale with a meaning and a moral. For many years the widows and the other women past their bloom, burned incense at the shrine of the mighty man who could wrap himself in his great-coat, dash through a field and over a fence, punching plants with his never-absent stick, and return to town with a poem pounding in his pulses, and another landscape in his brain. Ah, he was a great fellow! But the tragedy of it all: after all these years of adoration from ladies overanxious to get him into their nets, they awoke one morning in 1901 to find that little Anne Hendrick, schoolgirl, and daughter of a former attorney-general of Kentucky, had married their heart's desire, that their dreams were day-dreams after all. The marriage took place in New York, after which they returned to Frankfort. The following year their child, Elizabeth, was born; and a short time afterwards he removed to New York, where he has lived ever since. Rumors of his art exhibitions have reached Kentucky; but the only tangible things have been prose papers and lyrics in the magazines.
A short time before his death, Paul Hamilton Hayne, the famous Southern poet, sent Wilson this greeting: "The old man whose head has grown gray in the service of the Muses, who is about to leave the lists of poetry forever, around whose path the sunset is giving place to twilight, with no hope before him but 'an anchorage among the stars,' extends his hand to a younger brother of his art with an earnest Te moriturus saluto." These charming words were elicited by June Days, and When Evening Cometh On.
Bibliography. The Recent Movement in Southern Literature, by C. W. Coleman, Jr. (Harper's Magazine, May, 1887); Who's Who in America (1901-1902); Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta, v. xv, 1910), an excellent study by Mrs. Ida W. Harrison.
LOVINGLY TO ELIZABETH, MY MOTHER[8]
[From Life and Love. Poems (New York, 1887)]
Frankfort, Kentucky, October 6, 1887.
WHEN EVENING COMETH ON
[From the same]
Daniel Henry Holmes is, with the possible exceptions of Theodore O'Hara and Madison Cawein, the foremost lyric poet Kentucky can rightfully claim, although he happened to be born at New York City, July 16, 1851; and that single fact is the only flaw in Kentucky's fee simple title to his fame. His father, Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, was a native of Indiana; his mother was an Englishwoman. Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, settled at New Orleans when a young man as a merchant; but a year after the birth of Daniel Henry Junior—as the future poet always signed himself while his father lived—or in 1852, he purchased an old colonial house back of Covington, Kentucky, as a summer place for his family, and called it Holmesdale. So Daniel Henry Junior Holmes became a warm-weather Kentuckian when but one year old; and he spent the following nine summers at Holmesdale, returning each fall to New Orleans for the winter. When the Civil War began his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, removed his family to Europe, where eight years were spent in Tours and Paris. In 1869, at the age of eighteen years, Daniel Henry Junior, with his family, returned to the United States, and entered his father's business at New Orleans. His dislike for commercialism in any form became so great that his father wisely permitted him to return to Holmesdale, which was then in charge of an uncle, and to study law at Cincinnati. In the same year that he returned to Holmesdale (1869), the house was rebuilt; and it remains intact to-day. His family shortly afterwards joined him, and Holmesdale became the manor-place of his people for many years. Holmes was graduated in law in 1872, and he practiced in a desultory manner for some years. In 1883 he married Miss Rachel Gaff, of Cincinnati, daughter of one of the old and wealthy families of that city. He and his bride spent the year of their marriage at Holmesdale, and, in 1884, went abroad.
Holmes's first and finest book of poems, written at Covington, was entitled Under a Fool's Cap: Songs (London, 1884), and contained one hundred and forty-four pages in an edition that did not exceed five hundred copies. The poet whimsically placed his boyhood name of "Daniel Henry Junior" upon the title-page. This little volume is one of the most unique things ever done by an American hand. Holmes took twenty-four old familiar nursery jingles, which are printed in black-face type at the top of the lyrics relating to them, and he worked them over and turned them over and did everything but parody them; and in only one of them—Margery Daw—did he discard the original metres. He employed "three methods of dealing with his nursery rhymes; he either made them the basis of a story, or he took them as an allegory and gave the 'modern instance,' or he simply continued and amplified. The last method is, perhaps, the most effective and successful of all," the poems done in this manner being far and away the finest in the book. Holmes spent the seven years subsequent to the appearance of Under a Fool's Cap, in France, Italy, and Germany. In 1890 his father gave him Holmesdale. He returned to Kentucky, and the remaining years of his life were spent at Covington, save several winters abroad.
Holmes's second book of lyrics, A Pedlar's Pack (New York, 1906), which was largely written at Holmesdale, contained many exceedingly clever and charming poems, but, with the exception of some fine sonnets, A Pedlar's Pack is verse, while Under a Fool's Cap is genuine poetry. Holmes was an accomplished musician, and his Hempen Homespun Songs (Cincinnati, 1906), mostly written in Dresden, contained fourteen songs set to music, of which four had words by the poet. Of the other ten songs, three were by W. M. Thackeray, two by Alfred de Musset, and Austin Dobson, Henri Chenevers, W. E. Henley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Tennyson were represented by having one of their songs set to music. This was his only publication in the field of music, and his third and final book. Holmes's last years were spent at the old house in Covington, devoted to arranging his large library, collected from the bookshops of the world, and to his music. His life was one of endless ease, the universal pursuit of wealth being neither necessary nor engaging. He had lived parts of more than forty years of his life at Holmesdale when he left it for the last time in the fall of 1908 to spend the winter at Hot Springs, Virginia, where he died suddenly on December 14, 1908. He had hardly found his grave at Cincinnati before lovers of poetry on both sides of the Atlantic arose and demanded word of his life and works. This demand has been in part supplied by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, the Maine publisher, who has exquisitely reprinted Under a Fool's Cap, and written this beautiful tribute to the poet's memory:
"One vital point of interest should be restated: the man who took these old tags of nursery rhymes and fashioned out of them some of the tenderest lyrics ever written was an American by birth and in the doing of this unique thing did it perfectly. That he never repeated these first fine careless raptures is nothing to his discredit. That he did accomplish what he set himself to do with an originality and a proper regard to the quality of his work rather than its quantity is the essential fact; and in his ability to touch a vibrating chord in the hearts of all who have come across these lyrics we feel that the mission of Daniel Henry Holmes was fulfilled both in letter and in spirit."
Bibliography. The Hesperian Tree, edited by J. J. Piatt (Cincinnati, 1900); The Cornhill Magazine (August, 1909), review of Under a Fool's Cap, by Norman Roe; The Bibelot (May, 1910); Under a Fool's Cap (Portland, Maine, 1910; 1911), lovely reprints of the 1884 edition, with Mr. Roe's review and foreword by Mr. Mosher; letters from Mrs. Holmes, the poet's widow, who has recently reopened Holmesdale.
BELL HORSES
[From Under a Fool's Cap (London, 1884)]