Inspiration for Work

Not many weeks after the interview with Dr.
Jones, he called me to the office one day
and said,
“You are not to write a line of poetry
for three months.”

This decision came as a bolt of lightning out of a clear sky; and I was overwhelmed with astonishment, but for six weeks he resolutely enforced his command to the very letter, and at the end of this period I fell into a state of listlessness. My teachers soon noticed that my lessons were unlearned, the result of which was a third summons before the superintendent. Dr. Jones said,

“Fanny, what is the trouble with your lessons? The teachers report that you do not recite as well as you did during the last term. Are you ill?” Before he had fairly finished questioning me, my reply was ready because I had been expecting just such an interview, and so I had made up my mind what to say. I replied,

“I find it impossible to keep my mind on my lessons, for poetry occupies my thoughts in spite of all efforts to think of other things. I cannot help it.”

“Well,” said the superintendent, “write as much as you like, but pay a little more attention to the morning lectures.”

They had been trying me. In those days phrenology was in high favor and as a last attempt to find out whether I was a “born poet” or not, the “science” was brought to bear upon my case, when a favorable opportunity came. This was very soon, the occasion being a visit of the celebrated Dr. Combe of Boston for the purpose of examining the craniums of some of our pupils. There was one boy among them who could listen to two stories, sing a song, and solve a hard problem in mathematics at the same time, — at least it was said he could do all that. When the doctor come to him, he exclaimed, “Here is a great mathematician; and some day you will hear from him.” Daniel Webster was always greatly admired for his brain power, but he said of himself that he could think of only one thing at once. But our pupil was unlike him in this respect, and also in one other, — he never did become famous, as the phrenologist predicted he would.

When Dr. Combe came to look at my head he remarked, “And here is a poetess; give her every possible advantage. Read the best books to her, and teach her to appreciate the best poetry.” This was certainly welcome news to me, and it must have had some little effect upon my teachers; for they now encouraged me in all the ways wherein they had before tried to dishearten me.

Mr. Hamilton Murray, who at that time was a member of the Board of Managers of the Institution, soon took me into his charge; and I became known to my friends as his “little protege.” His knowledge of the classics was broad, his natural talents superior, and his command of the mother tongue excellent. He read to me from the classics by the hour and advised me to commit long passages to memory; and frequently he gave me the lines of favorite poets to imitate. Most of these, of course, were means to an end; and consequently were soon forgotten. I can, in fact, recall but one, a scrap of verse in the style of Nathaniel P. Willis, whom I was told to imitate in such a way that “it cannot be told from his original poem.” The specimen from Willis is called “Morning,” and runs as follows, —

“O could we wake from sorrow,
Were it all a changeful dream like this:
To cast aside like an untimely garment of the morn;
Could the long fever of the soul be cooled
By a sweet breath from nature,
How lightly were the spirit reconciled.”

My parody is:

“O could we with the gloomy shades of night Chase the dark clouds of sorrow from the brow; Could pure affection feel no withering blight, But heart to heart in one sweet tie be linked, How were the soul content to fold her wings, And dwell forever in such loveliness.”

The political campaigns in the years between 1840 and 1850 called forth a great amount of versifying. In the autumn of the first-named year General Harrison was elected to the presidency. Everybody loved the hero of Tippecanoe; and the opposing party hunted high and low, but they could find not one thing in his record that might be used against him. He was the candidate of the Whig party; and I was an ardent Democrat. One of the interesting ditties used during the campaign is now remembered by many,

“Did you ever hear of a farmer,
Whose cabin’s in the West,
Of all the men for President
The wisest and the best?
To put him in the Capitol
We’ve found a capital way;
O we’ll sing our Harrison song by night,
And beat his foes by day.”

In my zeal for the Democratic party, I felt it proper to change the last line into

And scratch his eyes by day.

Perhaps the best- remembered song is “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too,” the first lines of which are,

“Oh what has caused this great commotion,
motion, motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball that’s rolling on
For Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”

But the hero of Tippecanoe lived but a single month to serve his country as president. Evidently the new surroundings at Washington did not agree with him; and he passed away on April 4, 1841. In memory of the sad event I wrote some eulogistic stanzas, which have already been mentioned, in connection with my grandfather’s eight-mile walk. As this poem was the best that I had written previous to 1841, I quote it in part: —

“He is gone: in death’s cold arms he sleeps.
Our President, our hero brave,
While fair Columbia o’er him weeps,
And chants a requiem at his grave;
Her sanguine hopes are blighted now,
And weeds of sorrow veil her brow.

“Ah, Indiana, where is he,
Who once thy sons to battle led?
The red man quailed beneath his eye,
And from his camp disheartened fled.
With steady hand he bent the bow
And laid the warlike savage low.

“The forest with his praises rung,
His fame was echoed far and wide, — With loud hurrah his name was sung,
Columbia’s hero and her pride.
The tuneful harp is now unstrung
And on the drooping willow hung.”

One afternoon at the commencement of our summer vacation our superintendent came in and said that President Tyler, who succeeded General Harrison, was in the reception room; and that the Mayor and Common Council were with him. Well did I know what that meant; and said, “Now, give me ten or fifteen minutes and I shall have the best welcome that I can prepare in so short a time.” I recited my poem; then sang a piece; and concluded by reading a song, which I had composed for the previous Fourth of July, all of which I remember is two lines of the chorus,

“And this the glad song of our Nation shall be, Hurrah for John Tyler and liberty’s tree.”

As memory rolls back the curtain of the years I behold again the Institution with its spacious halls that ring with mirth and song, its school-rooms filled with happy hearts and smiling faces; the chapel where at morn and eve and on Sabbath days we gathered for religious worship; and the beautiful playgrounds, from which the clear sound of the bell called us from our fun to our duty, — but a shade of sadness steals over me, and I ask,

“Where are the friends of my youth,
Oh, where are those treasured ones gone?”

Instantly the names of Cynthia Bullock, Catherine Kennedy, Mary Mattox, Anna Smith, Imogene Hart, and Alice Holmes are on my lips. They were among my earlier associates and their voices come back mingled with sweet memories of the sunny past: the murmur of the afternoon breeze; the echo of the woodland; and the quietness of the twilight. And now I fancy that we are hastening from the school -room for a fifteen - minute recess; again we stand together in a group in some remote corner, repeating the lessons we have learned, and striving not to forget any of them before tomorrow morning’s class, when they will be reviewed. Thus does the past indeed blend with the present. Life in those years had few changes for us, and we trusted the many hopes for the future to a wiser guidance than our own. Of all this happy company of girls who were at the New York Institution before 1840, only Imogene Hart and Alice Holmes and I are living. Miss Hart possessed a deep love for music, inherited from her father, under whose judicious training she was able to sing from many classical authors before she was ten years old, and I am glad to know that her voice still retains its sweetness. Judging from the music and poems she sends me from time to time I am confident that she has not lost her old fondness for the “divine arts.”

Alice Holmes was a deep thinker, and her genius for mathematics carried her far beyond most of her companions. She was also gifted with a poetic fancy, and has written two beautifid little volumes of poetry since she was with us at the Institution.

I well remember the day she came to us from her home in Jersey City. We were apprised of her coming and determined to give her as good a reception as we could, lest she should become homesick as many of us had been. She was to occupy a portion of my room, and it devolved upon me to make her feel at home; and very soon we were conversing about all sorts of things.

I found that she was a member of the Episcopal Church, while I was an adherent of the Methodist; and the contrast between us in this respect suggested a bit of doggerel. Walking demurely toward her couch in the farther end of the room, just as she was about to retire, I said, “Alice, I have a piece of poetry, which I would like you to hear; and will you please tell me how it sounds?” Then I repeated my lines —

“Oh, how it grieves my poor old bones,
To sleep so near that Alice Holmes,
I will inform good Mr. Jones,
I can’t sleep with a churchman.”

In the course of five or six years our school increased rapidly. When I entered in 1835, I was the thirty-first pupil; before the end of ten years the number was more than one hundred; and in the old building we were packed away in close quarters, but were happy as the birds of a May morning. The new school edifice was completed early in 1841.

Thanksgiving Day was always one of peculiar interest to us, for besides a hearty dinner and reunion of the pupils in the morning, in the evening there was an entertainment to which the Board of Managers were also invited. At one of these social gatherings seven of us girls recited a dialogue that I had written for the occasion. The subject was “New England and New York,” and it was dedicated to Mr. James F. Chamberlain, our superintendent, who was a native of Rhode Island.

Part of the last chorus, as it was sung to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,” follows:

“Should ancient customs be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
In what our fathers loved so well
Can we no pleasure find?
They weave a charm around the heart,
That cannot pass away,
Thanksgiving Day, we love its name,
The dear Thanksgiving Day.

“A social band are gathering now
Around the blazing hearth,
And gaily rings their merry laugh
And songs of artless mirth.
Bright moments of unsullied joy,
Oh, could ye longer stay!
Thanksgiving Day, we love its name,
The dear Thanksgiving Day.”