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!"
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!"
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 dreamsSo full of heavenly gleams,Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark,And all thy nature darkStirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fireOf faint, unknown desire?
O Tree! have not his poet-touch, his dreamsSo full of heavenly gleams,Wrought through the folded dulness of thy bark,And all thy nature darkStirred to slow throbbings, and the fluttering fireOf faint, unknown desire?
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 cravesThe pilgrim here to pause.In seeds of laurel in the earthThe 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 groundThan where defeated valor lies,By mourning beauty crowned!
Sleep sweetly in your humble graves;Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause,Though yet no marble column cravesThe pilgrim here to pause.
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 earthThe blossom of your fame is blown,And somewhere, waiting for its birth,The shaft is in the stone.
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 groundThan where defeated valor lies,By mourning beauty crowned!
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.
"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 mediæval 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.
WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
WOODLANDS, THE HOME OF WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMSBy 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 grayStride o'er the dusk, dank tract.
Cypresses,Each a great, ghastly giant, eld and grayStride o'er the dusk, dank tract.
Cypresses,
Each a great, ghastly giant, eld and gray
Stride o'er the dusk, dank tract.
Around the sombre cypress trees coiled
Fantastic vinesThat swing like monstrous serpents in the sun.
Fantastic vinesThat swing like monstrous serpents in the sun.
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 slopeSlides silent to the slimy, green abodeWhich is his province.
The steel-jaw'd cayman from his grassy slopeSlides silent to the slimy, green abodeWhich is his province.
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 butterflyThat, travelling all the day, has counted climesOnly by flowers ...Lights on the monster's brow.
See! a butterflyThat, travelling all the day, has counted climesOnly by flowers ...Lights on the monster's brow.
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 theDaily Gazettein 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."
TheDaily South Carolinianwas 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 theCarolinianarose thePhoenixand 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."
ThePhoenixpromptly 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 theConstitution, 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.
Joel Chandler Harris
JOEL CHANDLER HARRISAt 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 theCountrymanand 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 theCountryman, 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 zoölogy 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 theCountrymanthat 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 theCountryman, 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 MaconDaily Telegraph, going from there to New Orleans as private secretary of the editor of theCrescent Monthly. When theCrescentwaned and disappeared from the journalistic sky, he returned to Georgia and became editor, compositor, pressman, mailing clerk, and entire force on the ForsythAdvertiser.
A pungent editorial upon the abuses of the State government, which appeared in theAdvertiser, attracted the attention of Colonel W.T. Thompson and led him to offer Mr. Harris a place on the staff of the SavannahDaily 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 theNewsuntil '76, when, to escape yellow fever, he removed to Atlanta. He was soon after placed on the editorial staff of theConstitution, 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.
SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
SNAP-BEAN FARM, ATLANTA, GEORGIAThe 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 unfortunatePeggy 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 9A.M.to 5P.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 shipSurprise, 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, theMinden, 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 theMinden. 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 theBaltimore 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.