PUBLICATIONS
OF
THE
Mississippi Historical Society
Edited by
FRANKLIN L. RILEY
Secretary
Reprinted 1919
BY
DUNBAR ROWLAND, LL. D.
Secretary
VOL. II.
OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI:
PUBLISHED BY THE SOCIETY.
1899.
OFFICERS FOR 1899
PRESIDENT:
GENERAL STEPHEN D. LEE, Columbus, Mississippi.
VICE-PRESIDENTS:
PROFESSOR R. W. JONES, University of Mississippi.
JUDGE B. T. KIMBROUGH, Oxford, Mississippi.
ARCHIVIST:
CHANCELLOR R. B. FULTON, University of Mississippi.
SECRETARY AND TREASURER:
PROFESSOR FRANKLIN L. RILEY, University of Mississippi.
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
(IN ADDITION TO THE ABOVE OFFICIALS)
PROFESSOR J. M. WHITE, Agricultural and Mechanical College of Mississippi.
PROFESSOR CHARLES HILLMAN BROUGH, of Mississippi College.
PROFESSOR W. L. WEBER, of Millsaps College.
PRESIDENT J. R. PRESTON, of Stanton College.
* * * * *
All persons who are interested in the work of the Society and desire to
promote its objects are invited to become members.
There is no initiation fee. The only cost to members is, annual dues,
$2.00, or life dues, $30.00. Members receive all publications of the
Society free of charge.
Donations of relics, manuscripts, books and papers are solicited for
the Museum and Archives of the Society.
Address all communications to the Secretary of the Mississippi State
Historical Society, University P. O., Mississippi.
CONTENTS
PAGE
TITLE, 1
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY FOR 1899, 3
CONTENTS, 5
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN RECENT SOUTHERN LITERATURE,
by _Prof. C. Alphonso Smith_, 7
IRWIN RUSSELL--FIRSTFRUITS OF THE SOUTHERN ROMANTIC
MOVEMENT, by _Prof. W. L. Weber_, 15
WILLIAM WARD, A MISSISSIPPI POET ENTITLED TO DISTINCTION,
by _Prof. Dabney Lipscomb_, 32
SHERWOOD BONNER, HER LIFE AND PLACE IN THE LITERATURE
OF THE SOUTH, by _Prof. Alexander L. Bondurant_, 43
'THE DAUGHTER OF THE CONFEDERACY,' HER LIFE, CHARACTER
AND WRITINGS, by _Prof. Chiles Clifton
Ferrell_, 67
SIR WILLIAM DUNBAR, PIONEER SCIENTIST OF MISSISSIPPI,
by _Prof. Franklin L. Riley_, 85
HISTORY OF TAXATION IN MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. Charles
Hillman Brough_, 113
TERRITORIAL GROWTH OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof. J. M. White_, 125
THE EARLY SLAVE LAWS OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Alfred H.
Stone, Esq._, 135
FEDERAL COURTS, JUDGES, ATTORNEYS AND MARSHALS IN
MISSISSIPPI, by _Thomas McAdory Owen, Esq._, 147
RUNNING MISSISSIPPI'S SOUTH LINE, by _Peter J. Hamilton,
Esq._, 157
ELIZABETH FEMALE ACADEMY--THE MOTHER OF FEMALE
COLLEGES, by _Bishop Chas. B. Galloway_, 169
EARLY HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COLLEGE, by _Mr. J. K.
Morrison_, 179
THE RISE AND FALL OF NEGRO RULE IN MISSISSIPPI, by
_Dunbar Rowland, Esq._, 189
GLIMPSES OF THE PAST, by _Mrs. Helen D. Bell_, 201
THE HISTORICAL OPPORTUNITY OF MISSISSIPPI, by _Prof.
R. W. Jones_, 219
NANIH WAIYA, THE SACRED MOUND OF THE CHOCTAWS, by
_Mr. H. S. Halbert_, 223
INDEX, 235
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN RECENT SOUTHERN LITERATURE.
BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH, A. M., PH. D.
The year 1870 marks an epoch in the history of the South. It
witnessed not only the death of Robert E. Lee but the passing also
of John Pendleton Kennedy, George Denison Prentice, Augustus Baldwin
Longstreet, and William Gilmore Simms. In literature it was not only
the end of the old but the beginning of the new, for in 1870 the new
movement in Southern literature may be said to have been inaugurated in
the work of Irwin Russell. I have attempted elsewhere to trace briefly
the chronological outlines of this literature from 1870 to the present
time. In this paper, therefore, I shall discuss not the history of this
literature but rather the history in this literature.
When we compare Southern literature of ante-bellum days with that
produced since 1870 we note at once certain obvious differences of
style and structure. In the older literature the sentences are longer,
the paragraphs less coherent, adjectives more abundant, descriptions
more elaborate, plots more intricate and fanciful. In the newer
literature the pen is held more firmly; there are fewer episodes;
incidents are chosen to illustrate character rather than to enhance the
plot; the language is more temperate; the pathos and humor more subtle;
some fixed goal is kept in view and the action of the story converges
steadily toward this end.
But apart from these stylistic and structural differences there are
differences that appeal to the student of history equally as much
as to the student of pure literature. Since 1870 Southern writers
have begun to find their topics and their inspiration in the life
that is round about them. They are resorting not so much to books
as to memory, observation and experience. They are not rising into
solitary and selfish renown; they are lifting the South with them.
They are writing Southern history because they are describing Southern
life. The writings of Irwin Russell, Sidney Lanier, Joel Chandler
Harris, Miss Murfree, George W. Cable, Thomas Nelson Page, James Lane
Allen, Miss Grace King, Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart, and John Fox, Jr.,
are spreading a knowledge of Southern life and Southern conditions
where such knowledge has never penetrated before. And though we call
this literature Southern, it is neither sectional in its appeal nor
provincial in its workmanship. This, then, is what I mean by the
historical element in recent Southern literature.
It has long seemed to me that much of the immediate influence of _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ both in this country and in England was due to the fact
that the South could not show in all of its ante-bellum literature
a single novel treating the same themes treated by Mrs. Stowe, but
treating them from a different point of view. It was the first attempt
to portray in vivid colors the social and institutional conditions of
the South. None of our writers had utilized the material that lay ready
to their hands. There was no story written in the spirit of _Marse
Chan_ or _Uncle Remus_ which the South could hold up and say,
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."
The reception accorded Mrs. Stowe's book in the South teaches a
valuable lesson, and a lesson which Southern writers have for thirty
years profited by _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ was met by bitter criticism, by
argument, by denunciation, by denial, or by contemptuous silence. But
the appeal made by a literary masterpiece, however deficient or faulty
in its premises, is not thus to be negatived. The true answer to _Uncle
Tom's Cabin_ and the most adequate answer that could be given is to
be found in the historical note that characterizes the work of Irwin
Russell and those who have succeeded him.
I wish to state, therefore, in somewhat broader terms than I have yet
seen it stated, what seems to me the historical importance of Irwin
Russell in American literature. His priority in the fictional use
of the negro dialect has been frequently emphasized, but I wish to
emphasize his priority in utilizing for literary purposes the social
and institutional conditions in which he himself had lived. Skill in
the use of a dialect is a purely literary excellence, but when a writer
portrays and thus perpetuates the peculiar life of a people numbering
four million, he is to that extent an historian; and Irwin Russell's
example in this respect meant a complete change of front in Southern
literature. He did not go to Italy for his inspiration as Richard Henry
Wilde had done. You find no _Rodolph_, or _Hymns to the Gods_, or
_Voyage to the Moon_ among his writings; but you will find that deeper
poetic vision that saw pathos and humor and beauty in the humble life
that others had contemned.
The appearance of _Christmas-Night in the Quarters_ meant that
Southern literature was now to become a true reproduction of Southern
conditions. Our writers were henceforth to busy themselves with
the interpretation of life at close range. They were to produce a
kaleidoscopic body of fiction, each bit of which, sparkling with its
own characteristic and independent color, should yet contribute its
part to the harmony and symmetry of the whole.
I would not for a moment compare the genius of Irwin Russell with
that of Chaucer or of Burns; and yet when Chaucer in the latter part
of his life turned from French and Italian sources to find an ampler
inspiration in his own England, the England that he knew and loved, he
was but illustrating the change that Irwin Russell was to inaugurate in
Southern literature; and when Robert Burns broke through the classical
trammels of the eighteenth century and lifted the poor Scotch cotter
into the circle of the immortals, he was but anticipating your own
Mississippian in proving that poetry, like charity, begins at home.
To the student of literature, there is a wide difference between the
_Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_, _The Cotter's Saturday Night_, and
the _Christmas-Night in the Quarters_; but to the student of history
the poems stand upon the same plane because each is a transcript of
contemporary life.
Irwin Russell represents, therefore, a transition of vital significance
in our literature, a transition that had been partly foretold in the
work of Judge Longstreet and Col. Richard Malcolm Johnston. There is
as much local coloring in the _Georgia Scenes_ and the _Dukesborough
Tales_ as in the work of Irwin Russell; but I do not find the same deft
workmanship; I miss in the older works the sympathy, the pathos, and
the self-restraint that enable Irwin Russel to be local in his themes
without being provincial in his manner.
I do not say that the poet or the novelist must never revert to past
history or to historical documents for his topics. His own genius and
taste must be his surest guide to both as to topic and to treatment;
but I do say that a nation is unfortunate if the builders of its
literature invariably draw their material from foreign sources or from
the history that was enacted before they were born.
"I have no churlish objection," says Emerson in his _Essay on
Self-Reliance_, "to the circumnavigation of the globe for the
purposes of art, of study and benevolence, so that the man is first
domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat
greater than he knows____ The soul created the arts wherever they
have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his
model. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty,
convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to
us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love
the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil,
the length of the day, the wants of the people, ... he will create a
house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and
sentiment will be satisfied also."
The historical element, therefore, of which I am speaking is not
synonymous with the historical novel. The critics apply the term
historical novel to those novels that attempt to reproduce the past.
These novels are retrospective and essentially romantic. In the work of
Sir Walter Scott this form of literature attained its florescence. But
I contend that while the historical novel may have a genuinely human
interest, its value as history is almost inappreciable as compared with
the historical value of the literature that portrays contemporary life.
We do not study ancient history in Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_,
but there would be a deplorable gap in our knowledge of fourteenth
century England if _The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales_ had never
been written.
A hundred years from now Dickens' _Tale of Two Cities_ will not have
the historical significance that _David Copperfield_ will have; because
the _Tale of Two Cities_ is based on records that are accessible to
all students of the French Revolution. It is not an interpretation of
life at first hand; it is an interpretation only of books. Then, too,
historical investigation is even today far more accurate and scientific
than when Dickens wrote. But _David Copperfield_, which the critics
have never called an historical novel, has an historical element
that time cannot take away, for it is the record of what an accurate
observer saw and felt and heard in the first half of the nineteenth
century. The historical novel, therefore, in the current acceptation
of the term, contributes nothing to the sources of historical study,
though it does popularize history and thus help to prepare an audience
for the scientific historian.
Now, the South has produced her full share of historical novels. From
_Horse-Shoe Robinson_ in 1835 to _The Prisoners of Hope_ in 1898,
Southern writers have shown themselves by no means insensible to
the literary possibilities latent in our colonial and revolutionary
history. But it was not until 1870 that the South may be said to have
had a school of writers who, while not neglecting the historical novel
proper, began to find the scenery and materials of their stories
chiefly in local conditions and in passing or remembered events. Much,
it is true, has been lost to our literature, but much has been saved.
It has often been said that the new movement in Southern literature
was due to the influence of Bret Harte's works, but such a statement
hardly deserves refutation. The cause lies deeper than this. The events
of 1861-65 not only broke the continuity of Southern history but
changed forever the social and political status of the Southern states.
The past began to loom up strange and remote, but "dear as remembered
kisses after death." Men seemed to have lived a quarter of a century in
four years. They moved as in a world not realized. Now it is just at
such periods that literature finds its opportunity, for at such periods
a people's historic consciousness is either deepened or destroyed, and
this national consciousness finds expression in historical literature.
The South, then, is slowly writing her history in her literature.
Hardly a year passes that some new state or some new period does not
find a place in the onward movement. Only in the last year, hundreds
of readers who care nothing for formal histories have pored over Mr.
Page's _Red Rock_ and learned for the first time the inside history
of Reconstruction; in the pages of Miss Murfree's _Story of Old Fort
Loudon_, they have seen the heroism with which the Tennessee soldier
won his state from the wilderness and the Indian; in Miss Grace King's
_De Soto and his Men in the Land of Florida_, they have followed the
discoverer of the Mississippi on a journey as marvelous and romantic as
the fabled voyage of Jason; in _The Kentuckians_ of John Fox, Jr., they
have read again of that undying feud between highlander and lowlander
that has found expression in more than a hundred English and Scotch
ballads; in _Chalmette_ of Mr. Clinton Ross, they have stood again with
Jackson on an immortal battlefield; in _The Wire Cutters_ of Mrs. M.
E. M. Davis, they have witnessed a hitherto unexplored region, that of
West Texas, added to the growing map of Southern literature; in _The
Prisoners of Hope_, by Miss Mary Johnston, they have heard the first
mutterings of insurrection under the colonial tyranny of Governor
Berkeley,--mutterings that a century later were to be reinforced by the
pen of Jefferson and the sword of Washington. And these books mark the
record of but twelve months.
Need I say that the significance of this historical movement in our
literature is vital and profound for every man and woman before me? or
that it merits the earnest consideration of every historical society
organized to preserve and perpetuate the facts of our history.
Let me remind you that the literary significance of the Civil War is
as noteworthy as its purely historical significance. That struggle
meant far more to the South than to the North. To the North it meant
the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery. To the
South it meant decimated families, smoking homesteads, and the passing
forever of a civilization unique in human history. But LITERATURE LOVES
A LOST CAUSE, PROVIDED HONOR BE NOT LOST. Hector, the leader of the
vanquished Trojans, is the most princely figure that the Greek Homer
has portrayed; the Roman Virgil is proud to trace the lineage of his
people not back to the victorious Greeks but to the defeated Trojans;
the English poet-laureate finds his deepest inspiration not in the
victories of his Saxon ancestors over King Arthur but in King Arthur
himself, the fated leader of a losing cause. And so it has always been:
the brave but unfortunate reap always the richest measure of literary
immortality.
In conclusion, I believe that in the organization of the Mississippi
State Historical Society and in the beneficent work that it has
wrought during its career of nine years, I see another indication of
that growing historic consciousness without which we cannot stand
unabashed before the bar of future history. "Deeds of prowess and
exalted situations cannot of themselves" says Schlegel (_History of
Literature_, Lecture I) "command our admiration or determine our
judgment. A people that would rank high in our esteem must themselves
be conscious of the importance of their own doings and fortunes." The
invaluable work that is being done by this Society for the history of
Mississippi is a part of that larger movement of which I have spoken.
Both testify to the advent of that historical spirit which "cannot
be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price
thereof." If I read aright the signs of the times, the new century will
not have been many years old before the history of the South will be
enshrined not only in annals and chronicles but in the living letters
of a nation's song and story.
IRWIN RUSSELL--FIRST FRUITS OF THE SOUTHERN ROMANTIC MOVEMENT.
BY W. L. WEBER.
So wide is the connotation of the word Romanticism, we may make up
almost any conceivable definition and be sure we have respectable
authority in agreement with the view we have taken. The fault to be
found with the current definitions is that they stress the source, at
the expense, of the character of that influence which transformed "the
age of prose and reason" into the "Renascence of Wonder." The influence
to be stressed in the use I shall wish to make of the word Romanticism
is protest against the settled, conservative, classical order of
things. Secondarily, it will be remembered that the source of much of
the literary material used by the protestants is to be found in the
remote past--remote whether in time or in charge of mental attitude.
In order to be able to throw a clearly defined portrait of Irwin
Russell on the canvas of Southern literature, it will be necessary
rapidly to review the main outlines of this Romantic movement in the
development of English thought a period which may be shown to be the
prototype of our own after-the-war literary life.
We shall not go into details. First we should recall to mind the
main literary currents of English thinking from the time of Dryden
to the end of the dictatorship of the great Cham himself. It will be
readily remembered that fashion in literature had changed soon after
Shakespeare's death and his native wood-notes wild were forgot for a
time. The age of prose and reason followed. Self-consciousness was a
characteristic note of the Augustan, the eighteenth century literature.
Narrowness of imagination, and faithfulness in copying made up the
main classical elements in many an English poet under the regime of
Formalism.
"Back to nature!" was the rallying cry of a protest against this
formalism--an inarticulate protest which culminated in the Romantic
movement. Under the leadership of Dryden and for more than a century
after him, canons of literary art based on classical models had almost
undisputed sway. Aristotle filtered through Horace and Horace diluted
by Boileau were prescribed by doctors who would correct and amend
English speech and literature. From these masters were drawn rules so
minute and so inflexible as to put to the death budding originality
by the demand for "correctness." If the poet were moved to describe
pastoral scenes, he must needs go to Theocritus for the names of
his characters, to Virgil for the contour of his scenery. But all
this classicism was counterfeit. It was "more Latin than Greek, and
more French than Latin." The classical poet, as he misnamed himself,
followed with slavish persistence the creed which he had adopted. It
was an accepted law that "the best of the modern poets in all languages
are those that have the nearest copied the ancients." He would have
nothing of country life. Rough and irregular scenery were distasteful
to him. Mountains he described by Gothic--his pet term of opprobrium.
Scenery as well as thought must conform to the level. "Decent
conformity," then, characterized the Augustan age and enthusiasm had no
place in the age of Dryden and of Pope.
Some of the characteristic features of the Romantic movement may
be readily got at, by prefixing a negative to the qualities of the
classical school. The country, out door life, rugged mountains,
folk-songs, ballads in every form, the picturing of English people
in English scenery were used as subject-matter--in other words, the
telling what the writer had himself seen and, therefore, what he
really knew, instead of what he had read. It was this reaction against
formalism which produced such men as Chatterton, Burns, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Scott.
It is not within the purpose of this paper to give a full list of
the writers who may be said to be the forerunners of this movement
which dominated English poetry during the first quarter of the
Nineteenth Century. Nor is it needful to enter into the controversy
as to who first gave evidence of the changing attitude. So careful
a critic as Theodore Watts assigns the place of priority to Thomas
Chatterton, styles him the Father of the Romantic School, and insists
that to his influence may be traced some of the best work of Keats
and of Coleridge. It will always be well to remember that changes in
literary habit do not take place in a year, rarely in a decade. It
will, therefore, be easy to point out poets as early as Gray who gave
prophecy of the new era. This much at least is noteworthy--putting
aside the question as to who comes first of all--that the new current
of ideas began very early to flow through poets who were hardly more
than boys. Professor Beers has already reminded us that in Joseph
Warton as well as in Thomas Chatterton--neither of whom was more than
eighteen years of age--we may see the set of the literary current.
It may not be insisting too strongly on a parallel to see in the
history of Southern literature a state of affairs much like that we
have just sketched. It will be remembered that in 1818 Bryant sounded
his protest against a "sickly and affected imitation of the peculiar
manner of the late popular poets of England." As late as 1848 Lowell
did not hesitate roughly to assert:
They stole Englishmen's books and thought Englishmen's thought,
With English salt on the tail our wild Eagle was caught.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that Sydney Smith should
have asked with suggestion of truth even if with evidence of venom,
"Who reads an American book?" American literature in the Northern and
Middle sections escaped from bondage many years before the South came
into its own literary inheritance. Just as unreasoning worship of a
pseudo-classicism had its death-grip on Eighteenth Century writers so
a like uncritical devotion to the usually read classic writers and to
earlier English authors had checked the growth of the budding Southern
literature of the first half of the Nineteenth Century. Conservative as
the South has always been in matters of thought it was not surprising
that this should be so. Paul H. Hayne tells what contemptuous
references were made by the literary coterie of Charleston to the early
efforts of Simms because he dared aspire to cultivate the Muses, when
he must needs get his Homer through the medium of Chapman or of Pope.
This respect unto classical authority was of long continuance among
cultured men and showed itself, also, in the dry and tedious essays of
Legare who was reputed a great scholar.
It was, indeed, not until 1870 that the South may be said to have
achieved literary independence. As the sway of Greece and Rome passed
away, the South came to be a literary dependency of England. Kennedy
and Sims are dominated by Scott, just as Wirt and his friends of
the "Old Bachelor" group got their inspiration from the Spectator.
Of course there were poets as Hayne and Timrod and story-writers as
Johnston and Thompson who sang and wrote clearly and with a note of
individuality. But Lowell might have described the greater part of
Southern literary work in the words:
Your literature suits its each whisper and motion
To what will be thought of it over the ocean.
With the same thought in mind Poe wrote that "one might suppose that
books, like their authors, improve by travel, their having crossed the
sea is with us so great a distinction."
This natural conservatism was upheld by the fact that many Southerners
of means sent their sons to England to be educated. The South
being settled for the most part by emigrants of English blood, it
is not surprising that the controlling influence should be from
mother-country.
Before the war, Sydney Smith's cutting question might have been
answered with greater suggestion of truth in the form, "who reads a
Southern book?" A not untruthful answer would have been, "Southerners
do not." We have never adequately supported our own writers. We have
added to the tragedy of nations by allowing Poe to die the death of an
outcast; Timrod to break his heart, without a crust to eat or a penny
to buy food; Lanier not to have time to record the strains that were
demanding utterance, in order to spend his wasting strength seeking
support for wife and children; Russell broken in courage and in fortune
to find not even a resting-place in the soil of his native State.
Before the war the Southern library shelves were weighed down with
Fielding, Smollett, Addison, Johnson, Scott and Dickens. Charleston had
a public meeting to congratulate Macaulay on the issuance of one of the
later volumes of his History. Simms and Timrod lived in the City by the
Sea in obscurity and neglect. We have not yet reached the place where
we turn first to our own writers.
To say we had no writers, no books is not true. We had a plentiful
supply of books whose writers with a kind of literary metonymy
transferred the conventionalities and commonplaces of English life to
the atmosphere of the South. The result was not English and it was not
Southern but it had the worst features of both. Wax flowers were long
a popular form of domestic art and the literary amateur caught the
unreality of the maker of flowers.
There was, indeed, abundant material in the South and much of it was
made use of. A distinct weakness in our workmanship arose from the fact
that too much material was used for a given purpose. The stage was
overcrowded with characters, the plot was weakened by using too much
incident. This surplus-age of incident seems to have distracted the
writer's attention from the details of his craft. The value of the work
of art was lost in carelessness of workmanship. The new order of things
was to see a renaissance of simplicity. It was to be expected that in
order to bring about a re-crystallization of Southern literary canons a
shock was essential. That shock came in the form of the war between the
States. New ideas, newly expressed was the inheritance.
The new school of Southern writers found their material near at hand
and yet from a past growingly remote. They delighted to tell of the
days of slavery--to idealize that period, perhaps--and with some
acquaintance with slavery as it actually existed. While it has not
been a half century since the master and his slave lived together in
Southern lands, yet the number of those who have had experiential
knowledge of slave-life in the South is increasingly small. To be
accurate the picture of master and man had need to be painted quickly.
Perhaps the very first of our writers to give a true picture of
negro life in negro dialect was Irwin Russell of Mississippi. He was
certainly the first to make use of verse to put before us the negro
as he saw him. Russell's negro is for the most part not the slave but
the negro who is reconstructed in his legal relations, but altogether
unreconstructed in habits of thought and of action. That negro, a
picture of whom was to be had only during the decade immediately after
the war, is the hero of much of Russell's verse. That he has pictured
the character faithfully is evidenced by the fact of the life of his
work. Despite encouragements to die, the slender volume of posthumous
verse still lives and seems destined to have permanent place in
American literature.
Russell's place in our literary history does not depend solely on
the estimation put on his own work but is assured by the fact of
his influence on those he preceded in this new field. Joel Chandler
Harris was one of the first to recognize the genius of Russell and
he doubtless looks upon the power of the young poet as one of the
formative influences of his life. Likewise Thomas Nelson Page delights
to ascribe to the Bard of the Quarters the inspiration of his own
literary life.
It will be remembered that in sketching the English Romantic Movement
the fact was recorded that the boys Warton and Chatterton occupied a
place of prescience with regard to these new ideas. It will be worth
while calling to mind that Irwin Russell's relation to the Southern
Romantic Movement was much the same. Already at sixteen years of age,
he had begun to write and ten years later he had completed his work and
returned his talents to him who gave them.
The parallel to be drawn between the life of Chatterton and of Russell
is interesting if not suggestive of actual brotherhood of thought.
As mere boys they both began to write verse. They both made use of a
medium other than mother tongue. Chatterton manufactured for himself a
speech we cannot do better than describe as the Rowley dialect; Russell
put into form the rude speech of the negro with whom he had grown up;
yet he had no help in the difficult work of transcriber.
Chatterton found the tasks set for him in a lawyer's office unbearable
while there was poetry in his mind to be written down; Russell was
actually admitted to the bar but the Muse of Letters had marked him
for her own and the courtroom knew him no more. Breaking away from the
bondage of legal drudgery, Chatterton went with high hopes from Bristol
to London where for a few short months "the unhappy boy" strove against
starvation only at last to be overcome in the struggle for living.
Russell left Port Gibson and went to New York to enter upon a literary
life but after buffetings not a few, he at last entered into the
eternal rest not vouchsafed on earth to that weary, outworn body.
Chatterton may be granted place as forerunner of that noble body of
poets who have had part in making the poetry of the Nineteenth Century
as distinct contribution to English literature. Before Irwin Russell
there were, indeed, fore-gleams of the day that was to dawn, but it may
not unfairly be urged that he was the first to turn his camera on one
section of our Southern life and give us a picture that has cause to
be enumerated among the monuments which must be consulted as primary
authorities by the historian who will picture the life and thought of
the Southern people.
WILLIAM WARD, A MISSISSIPPI POET ENTITLED TO DISTINCTION.
BY DABNEY LIPSCOMB
A gentleman of advanced age, ripe culture, and extensive knowledge
of the literature of the State, was asked, "Who is the best poet
Mississippi has produced?" Promptly he replied, "William Ward of
Macon." Respect for the opinion of the one who so unhesitatingly
adjudged this pre-eminence among the poets of the State led to a study
of William Ward's life and poetry, the result of which is now presented.
At the outset, however, let it be understood that the purpose of
this essay is not to establish Mr. Ward's supremacy as a poet.
Classifications of this kind in literature and elsewhere are generally
unsatisfactory and often invidious, for excellencies that vary greatly
in kind are not to be measured in degree. Some would doubtless accord
pre-eminence to Irwin Russell for his humorous, sympathetic pictures
of the quaintly sage and irrepressibly happy old-time plantation
negro. Others would as likely claim this honor for James D. Lynch of
West Point, who, against over two hundred poets of America, won for
himself and his State, by unanimous vote of the committee of awards,
the proud distinction of welcoming the nations of the world to the
great Columbian Exposition, and afterward of having his salutation ode
adopted as the Press Poem of America. Of him and his works more will be
said on another occasion. Other classes in attempts at gradation would
prefer this one or that one for reasons as different as the peculiar
merits of the poet or the tastes of the admirers.
Panegyric cannot perpetuate a reputation. If so, Tupper, whose fame was
predicted, would live as long as the language, would now be more than
a name. Joanna Baillie, too, whom even Sir Walter Scott describes as
sweeping her harp
Till Avon's swans--
Awakening at the inspired strain,
Deemed their own Shakespeare lived again,
--where is she? Mindful of the futility of claiming for an author
more than is warranted, no eulogy will be offered, extravaganza will
be avoided. On the contrary, that criticism will be eschewed which
"damns with faint praise" what is cordially admired, fearful lest
others may not assent. William Ward and his poems shall speak largely
for themselves; knowledge of the man and his work being sufficient,
it is believed, to justify the claim that he is a poet entitled to
distinction.
Like many others who have reflected honor on the State, he was a son
of Mississippi by adoption, a New Englander by birth. Son of William
and Charlotte Ward, he was born in August, 1823, at Litchfield,
Connecticut, an historic village, the early home of the Beechers; once
noted also for its famous law school, attended by many from the South,
John C. Calhoun among the number. Scarcely less was it famous for
the beauty of the surrounding scenery and for the aristocracy of its
leading families, who boasted their descent from old English houses as
much as did the Virginians of their Cavalier and the Carolinians of
their Huguenot ancestry. Social aristocracy in New England was a more
prominent feature of life there than is commonly supposed. Among the
leading families of Litchfield was that of the Wards. William, father
of the subject of this sketch, was a jeweler by occupation, a man of
integrity and unusual intelligence; wealthy until middle life, when
it appears that reverses overtook him. For this reason his children,
excepting one, perhaps, did not receive a college education as was
intended. John became an Episcopal clergyman; Elias a jeweler, like his
father; Henry, sorely disappointed in not being able to attend Yale
College, scholarly, poetic, took reluctantly to printing an editorial
work; Mary Charlotte, literary in her tastes, married a wealthy
gentleman, traveled in Europe, and wrote sketches of travel and a
number of poems. Of Henry Ward, a word more in passing to indicate more
fully the literary leaning of the family. At the age of thirteen, his
poem, "Novel Reading; or The Feast of Fiction," published in the local
paper, gave him notoriety and raised great expectations. Thwarted in
his college aspirations looking toward the ministry, he grew melancholy
and excessively reserved. After forty years of life as a practical
printer and editor, he left at his decease manuscripts in Greek, Latin
and Hebrew, versification of the Books of Job and Lamentations, and a
volume of hymns. His claim to the well-known hymn, "I Would Not Live
Always," generally accredited to William Augustus Muhlenberg, and also
to the poem, "Tell Me Ye Winged Winds," usually ascribed to Charles
Mackay, is set forth in Harpel's Poets and Poetry of Printerdom. In it,
too, may be found other poems by him and several by his sister Mary,
then Mrs. Webster.
But to William Ward, the youngest son, attention must now be turned
exclusively, with a glance first at the brief but important period
of his life spent in his boyhood home. Of those early days which
evidently left deep impression on his after life, less can be said
than could be wished. The beauty of the country about Litchfield must
have impressed him as it did Henry and Harriet Beecher, born amid
the same surroundings, ten or twelve years before him. Like them, no
doubt, he gazed with delight on the glorious sunsets which Mrs. Stowe
so enthusiastically describes, and roamed in perhaps the same mood the
woods in which they speculated whether Apollo had not there once built
his altars. He, too, wandered along the banks of crystal Bantam River
and dreamily watched the clouds as they hooded and un-hooded Mount Tom
in the hazy distance. Nature there surely must have been "meet nurse
for a poetic child."
His scholastic education was completed under the tuition of a
learned Episcopal clergyman whose private academy for boys was well
patronized. He was an insatiable reader and a fairly good student,
though his mind ran in literary lines rather than to the study of the
exact sciences. The classics he must have especially preferred, and
in them been carefully instructed, judging from the familiarity he
manifests in his poems with the mythology and literature in general of
Greece and Rome. Astronomy seems to have laid strong hold upon him; for
it held high place in his esteem in later life. He early gave evidence
of a poetic tendency, and some of his boyish effusions are said to
have possessed considerable merit. Intuition, environment, and reading
apparently combined to make of this New England lad a poet. What the
experiences of active life contributed in this direction, a look ahead
will show.
When only sixteen years of age, a great and unexpected change in his
plans and prospects occurred. He was urged by his brother Elias who had
gone South and set up in business at Columbus, Mississippi, to come
and learn under him the watch repairing and jewelry business. Though
his tastes and aptitudes led in opposite direction, the opening seemed
too favorable to be set aside. The invitation was accepted and bidding
adieu forever to the home of his love, with mingled enthusiasm and
trepidation the young man set out on his long journey to the South.
Embarking at New York on a sailing vessel, he reached Mobile, Alabama,
after a safe but lengthy voyage. Of the experiences of that voyage
which afterward gave coloring to some of his most poetic lines and of
the amusing incident attendant upon his arrival at Mobile notice cannot
now be taken.
Ten or twelve years of quiet busy life at Columbus, Mississippi
constitute the second distinct period in William Ward's comparatively
uneventful life. His letters home indicate that many of the sights and
incidents connected with life in that almost frontier land were new and
startling to the scholarly youth from staid Connecticut. By degrees
he became accustomed to his surroundings, and identified himself with
the society and business of the place. Modest and reserved in public,
with his friends he was ever a genial and interesting companion.
More student than mechanic, he would doubtless have preferred a
literary career. As it was, his literary tendency continued to assert
itself, and before attaining his majority verses from his pen began
to appear in print. At twenty or earlier he became a contributor to
the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, to which for ten years or more
thereafter he continued to furnish poems or themes chiefly classical
and patriotic. First in order of time of those that have been preserved
is "The Grave of Hale," which appeared in the issue of June 3, 1843. In
smooth and vigorous Spenserian stanzas, he protests against the neglect
of the martyr-patriot's grave.
"Alas! and hath no gentle honoring hand,
But that of Nature decked his tomb with flowers,
We mourn the heroes of some storied land,
And leave a cold and barren grave to ours."
Among other published poems of his early period indicative of his
devotion to the classic Muse, and of his ardent patriotism, may be
named "The Egean," "Greece," "The Bellman of '76," and "Our Own New
England."
These lines from the first two poems, written respectively in 1844 and
1845, but for the dates might seem to have been inspired by the result
of the late sad struggle between the Greeks and Turks:
"Bright sea! no more the naiad haunts
Thy pearl founts with a syren spell,
No sea-nymph on thy foam-bed pants,
Within her rainbow spawning cell,
The halo of departed years--
Sleeps like a dream upon thy sky,
While the dark curse of blood and tears
Is echoed back with freedom's sigh."
* * * * *
"Oh Greece! could ye but boast of Greeks the shame
That gathers o'er thee now would make thy altars flame."
For the tenderness and warmth of sentiment expressed therein, the
poem, "Our Own New England," merits more than simple reference to it.
The last stanza shows how thoroughly Southern in ten years he had
become. Friendships strong and lasting had been formed, and he was now
prominent among the citizens of a town that even then prided itself
on its culture. One of the intimate friends of Alexander K. McClung,
he has left an appreciative tribute to that powerful, but somber and
erratic genius.
In 1850 Mr. Ward removed to Macon; Mississippi, and there lived
till his death in 1887. Early in the fifties he married Miss Emilie
A. Whiffen, an estimable and highly cultured young lady of English
parentage, then teaching in a female institute at Crawford, Miss. The
Philadelphia _Courier_ contained a pleasant notice of the marriage,
from which this extract is taken: "We sincerely congratulate our
esteemed correspondent, William Ward, Jr., Esq., whose delightful
verses have enriched but too seldom our Poet's Corner, upon the
agreeable fact reported in our hymeneal department last week." These
were his halcyon days, during which he was prosperous and serenely
joyful in his home. In 1856, he built in the woods skirting the eastern
edge of the town the modest but tasteful little cottage in which he
spent the remainder of his days. To verse he seems to have given but
little time during those busy years; though occasionally he still
contributed a poem to the _Courier_ and to the Macon and Columbus
papers. Three daughters and a son came to increase his pleasures and
his cares. Meanwhile the war cloud lowered and the tempest broke in
fury on the land he had learned to love and call his own. But this
was little heeded in comparison with the calamity which befell him
in the midst of those dreadful days in the loss of his devoted and
helpful wife. His life "cleft in twain," as he expressed it, from
that time forward is thus described by one who knew and loved him:
"To his half-orphaned children he became father and mother. We have
seen him in his cottage home spending his evenings in the bosom of
his little family, assisting his daughters with their lessons, amusing
the children, looking after their comfort, and doing all in his power
to make them happy. Proud and sensitive, he bravely struggled through
poverty that came to so many Southern families; and though at times
obliged to add the office of housekeeper to that of bread-winner for
his young family, he never sank the dignity of a gentleman to the
servility of a drudge."
Under these circumstances, all the more honor is due to him that
after the war he spurned the offers of place and wealth extended by
carpet-bag leaders of the Republican party who knew of his Northern
birth. Instead of such a course, he became in 1870 editor of the Macon
_Beacon_, and was as pronounced a Democrat as he had been Whig in
former years. During intervals of work in his little shop he hurriedly
wrote his editorials; and might often be seen walking up and down
behind the counter evolving a poem or a prose reverie, oblivious to
his surroundings. But to poetry he gave no more time than, as he said,
he _must_. Outside the joys of companionship with books and with his
children, he could truly have exclaimed with Burns:
"Lease me on rhyme! it's aye a treasure,
My chief, amaist my only pleasure."
With his little ones, on Sundays, he walked in the woods hard by his
house; and on clear nights he often pointed out to them the stars and
constellations, and told them of the myths that cluster about Orion,
the Pleiads and other denizens of the nightly firmament. He had his
own telescope and frequently searched the heavens with it for hours.
"It is well," he says, "to look upon the Christmas skies when the most
glorious constellations of the year are gathered as at the world's
great festival. It will give us higher conceptions of life and tone
down excesses we too often indulge in through the anniversary week that
closes up the year."
But let us look more closely at the man himself and then give his work
such examination as time left us will admit. Tall, slender, erect in
carriage, clean shaven, with dark brown hair and eyes, rapid in his
movements, the scholar and the gentleman written unmistakably on every
lineament, and William Ward, the man, is as nearly portrayed as can
now be done; for except a little daguerreotype taken for his wife,
which has been lost, he sat for no other picture. Singularly reserved
and almost shy in public, with his children and with his intimate
friends he was delightfully communicative, a vein of quiet humor often
outcropping in his words and deeds.
Public life he generally avoided; offices which he might have held, he
would not accept, although urged upon him. A loyal, ardent Odd Fellow,
like Abou Ben Adhem, he "loved his fellow-man," and was loved by them
in turn. His addresses and poems on the anniversaries of this order,
and at decorations of the soldiers' graves were much admired. Though
educated for an Episcopal clergyman, he never united with the church,
at least in the South, more than as a vestryman for a time. It is to
be regretted that, with outward eye so quick to see and interpret the
true and beautiful, his eyes of faith could not discern more clearly
the full truth and beauty of God's written Revelation. If so, his
pathetic lines on "Hope," composed a few years after his wife's death,
would have had a more triumphant ring than is contained in the last two
stanzas. Elsewhere hopes shines brighter and faith soars on stronger
wings, as when in his "In Memoriam" poem to his wife, he sings:
"Still for this grief so desolate, so lone,
A solace for unmated hearts is given,
Another hand, another voice hath known
The symphonies of heaven."
In the sixty-fourth year of his age, at the season he loved best, the
Christmas-tide, December 27, 1887, the gentle spirit of William Ward
softly slipped from its earthly moorings. His body by loving hands was
tenderly laid to rest in the cemetery at Macon, his home for nearly two
score years.