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Contemporary with 'A Lady from Maine' was John Neal (1793-1876), son of a local schoolmaster. Neal has been termed a "strange genius," and is considered to have been one of the most versatile and startling figures in all American literature; Edgar Allen Poe ranked Neal second among the great writers of that day. John Neal was thrown on his own resources at the age of 12, serving a short period in a local dry goods store before studying law. Admitted to the bar, he turned to writing and composed verse and prose with equal facility. When 33 he became the most original
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and arresting American writer in the literary world of his day. Neal was the first American writer to break into the conservative British mazagines, and had the added distinction of being the first to attempt a history of American literature. Using a natural style of writing, Neal's works were full of Maine 'Yankeeisms,' which were new to the English who found him most enjoyable and received him in London literary salons with great en- thusiasm, calling him 'Yankee Neal.' He wielded a vigorous and trenchant pen in the cause of Americanism in art and letters, urging loyality and pride in the achievements of his own country. Van Wyck Brooks in The Flowering of New England refers to Neal as "a Down-Easter-a typical Yankee Handy-Andy."
Neal's first book, Keep Cool, was published in 1817; he described the story as having two objects in view: "one to discourage duelling; and an- other was-I forget what." During this period his 3,000-line Niagara was written, a poem that has been called a "swash of magnificence." Some of its passages give vivid word pictures of the atmosphere of impending battle, as the following stanza:
The shadows deepen. Now the leaden tramp Of stationed sentry-far-and flat-and-damp Sounds like the measured death-step, when it comes With the deep minstrelsy of unstrung drums; In heavy pomp-with pauses-o'er the grave When soldiers bury soldiers; where the wave Of sombre plume-and darkened flags are seen- And trailing steeds with funeral lights between: And folded arms-and boding horns-and tread Of martial feet descending to the bed, Where Glory-Fame-Ambition lie in state.
Neal's Logan, or the Mingo Chief, a two-volume work published in 1822, has been described as "a prose rhapsody of surcharged language, dealing with apparitions and the passion of death." A year later his three-volume Seventy-Six appeared; this work is a novelized version of Allen's History of the American Revolution, a third of which was written by Neal himself. His work Randolph (1823) commented on men in American public life- novelists, poets, painters, and statesmen; because of his criticism in this book of a statesman Neal was challenged to a duel, and as he refused to fight was posted as a coward. On the heels of this episode came his Errata, which was supposedly the "confessions of a coward."
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While abroad, Neal's articles published in 1824 in Blackwood's, a British magazine, received harsh criticism from his fellow writers in America, as did many of his later contributions to various other English periodicals. During his years in England the friendship between Neal and Jeremy Bentham, the "aged philosopher and writer of jurisprudence," was firmly cemented. Neal's Principles of Legislation, published in 1830, is a biography of Bentham; this and a later candid sketch of his friend John Pierpont, which appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, are quoted as being "two of the most delightful things Neal ever wrote."
John Neal was never considered a genius by his native townspeople; to them he was 'Crazy Neal,' a prolific eccentric who had caused them grevious offense with the publication of Errata, part of which was based on his early boyhood experiences in Portland. At the start of his career Neal had re- marked "that he had no more idea of settling down in the village of Port- land for life, than he had of establishing a Cape Elizabeth Daily Advertiser or teaching horsemanship on the Isle of Shoals." In spite of this precocious utterance, he decided to settle in Portland, where he spent the greater part of his later years actively engaged in journalism. Longfellow influenced him to write Wandering Recollections of a Somewhat Busy Life, an auto- biography published in 1869. This work is rated by Van Wyck Brooks as Neal's only book of value, for it described the "American Grub Street" of his day and gives a word picture of Jeremy Bentham, with whom he lived in London from 1824 to 1827. Neal's Portland Illustrated, a valuable source guide to the city, is, ironically, the only book of all of his extensive writings by which he is locally remembered; it was published two years prior to his death.
During the early years of the 19th century various groups of local peo- ple formed "literary improvement" clubs; among these was the Paah Deu- wyke Society, which derived its name from the croacking of bullfrogs in a Munjoy Hill marsh. The formation of the Ugly Club in 1817 caused much merriment in Portland. Once debating the admission of a local lady to the club membership, the Ugly Club's decision was that she might be admitted if the following epigram applied to her:
With eyes so gray, and hair so red, With tusks so sharp and keen, Thou'lt fright the shades, when thou art dead, And Hell won't let thee in.
Following Maine's separation from Massachusetts in 1820 Portland en-
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joyed considerable literary reputation as the intellectual center of the new State. Through the columns of a local newspaper a few young Portland writers had inaugurated a series of brilliant essays called 'Abracadabra,' which were fashioned after Washington Irving's Salmagundi papers. These Portland articles, with their quips and jests written over such signatures as 'Pilgrim,' 'Prowler,' 'Night-hawk,' and 'Torpedo,' kept the town in good humor. Perhaps the most brilliant of these writers was Nathaniel Deering (1791-1881), a leading business man and social leader, and acknowledged as the "wit and gentleman poet" of the town. He also dabbled in play writ- ing; one of his works was Carabasset, based on the tragic assassination of Father Sebastian Rale. The play was produced in Portland in 1831. Deer- ing satirized the poets of his day in such ingenious devices as the following, employed to parody the tone of Longfellow's Hiawatha:
Have you read the misty poem Of the mystic Hiawatha Read about the wild Dakotas And the brave Humbugawampums In the vales of Hifaluten In the vales of Wishy-Washy
In the vales of Skimmy-Dishy?
No, Sir-e, Sir, that I did not, And I would not for a hundred Dollars paid in silver, or in Gold by the Inflated teller Of a bank called the Manhattan.
I looked in the book a moment, And my spine is really aching, At the hard words of Mr. Longfel- Low puts in his learned verses. Rumor says that Mr. Ripley, Critic of the New York Tribune,
Hired by a bob called Greeley, Labors with an awful lock-jaw, Got in reading "Hiawatha." Guess he got afoul of this word, Obejayawayekooteayea!
Portland claims brilliant Seba Smith (1792-1868), nationally famous humorist and satirist of the 19th century, because he first entered the news- paper field on the staff of Portland's Eastern Argus. Born in Turner, Seba
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Smith joined the staff of the local paper shortly after his graduation from college in 1818. Following his departure to New York City in 1837 he gained renown for his characterizations of the down-East Yankee. His 'Jack Downing Letters' appeared in newspapers of the period; these semi- political and semi-satirical writings convulsed America during the stormy period of Andrew Jackson's term of office, and brought forth a swarm of literary imitators. In addition to poetry, Smith also wrote Away Down East, a humorous book about Maine. Seba Smith's wife, Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-93), became a lesser literary light, and contributed much material to the old Boston Miscellany of Literature, predecessor of the present At- lantic Monthly. She is best remembered for her poem, 'The Sinless Child.'
Another Portland journalist who started his career on the long-lived Eastern Argus, was Nathaniel Willis, Jr. (1780-1870), who in 1827 founded the Youth's Companion in Boston. This magazine was characterized in its day as "the most important single educational agency in America." Editor Willis was the father of two remarkable literary personages: Nathaniel P. Willis (1806-67) and Sarah Payson Willis (1811-72).
N. P. Willis (see Newspapers) became a poet and a critic of great con- temporary influence in New York newspaper circles. During his years of literary activity he was the most successful and the highest paid essayist in America.
Sarah Payson Willis, who became the wife of James Parton, the his- torian, wrote under the pen name of 'Fanny Fern.' She was not only one of the best known newspaper writers in America but gained world-wide reputa- tion as an author. Such was the popularity of 'Fragrant Fanny Fern,' so- called because of her flowery literary style, that her first book of sketches reached a sale of 70,000 copies, a remarkable record for those times. Many of her books were translated into foreign languages. Her style of writing was described as somewhat lachrymose, if not maudlin. 'Fanny Fern' at- tracted much attention by the use of Biblical phrases to shock or amuse her audiences. Such expressions as "hot as Shadrach's furnace" and "dress that might have been made for Noah's great grandmother" sur- prised her readers, who were unaccustomed to such unusual adaptations of sacred texts. An amusing example of her journalistic efforts is shown in the following portrayal: "The Boston woman draweth down her mouth, rolleth up her eyes, foldeth her hands, and walketh on a crack. She re- joiceth in anatomical and chemical lectures. She prateth of Macaulay and Carlyle; belongeth to many and divers reading-classes, and smileth in a
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chaste, moonlight kind of way on literary men. She dresseth (to her praise be it spoken) plainly in the street, and considereth India-rubbers, a straw bonnet, and a thick shawl, the fittest costume for damp and cloudy weather. She dresseth her children more for comfort than show, and bringeth them up also to walk on a crack. She maketh the tour of the Common twice or three times a day, without regard to the barometer. She goeth to church twice or three times on Sunday, sandwiched with Bible-classes and Sabbath- schools. She thinketh London, Vienna, or Paris-fools to Boston; and the 'Boulevards' and 'Tuileries' not to be mentioned with the Frog Pond and the Common. She is well posted up as to politics-thinketh as Pa does,' and sticketh to it through thunder and lightning. When asked to take a gentleman's arm, she hooketh the tip of her little finger circumspectly on to his male coat sleeve. She is as prim as a bolster, as stiff as a ram-rod, as frigid as an icicle, and not even matrimony with a New Yorker could thaw her."
To the clarion calls of the early New England writers for a purely American school of literature, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82), Portland's greatest contribution to the world of letters, remained serenely indifferent. From childhood Longfellow had immersed himself in studies of the "genteel foreigner Dante," the flamboyant works of Byron, and the German and Scandinavian authors. In 1820 he timorously deposited the precious manuscript of his first poetic effort in the mailbox of the Port- land Weekly Gazette. The joy of seeing his poem printed in that paper under the title, "The Battle of Lovewell's Pond,' was short-lived, for it drew the severe criticism of Prentiss Mellen, a judge and close friend of the Longfellow family. Ignorant of its authorship, Mellen severely called the poem "a very stiff piece, remarkably stiff-moreover it is all borrowed every word of it." Young Longfellow had adopted the theme and color of his first printed work from an earlier poem on the same subject. In later years Longfellow was again reproached and criticized for his "imitative qualities" by John Neal, his contemporary, who wrote: " ... as for Mr. Longfellow he has a fine genius and a pure safe taste and all he wants we believe is a little more energy and a little more stoutness." Neal's attitude was that Longfellow, who copied the style of others, lacked originality. "Why imi- tate?" Neal admonished, "be yourself!" Possibly Neal had not forgotten nor forgiven Longfellow's caustic remarks concerning his own books, for the 'Bard of Portland' had once said of Neal's novel Randolph, "I judge
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it to be a compound of reason and nonsense, drollery and absurdity, wit and nastiness."
Longfellow's Voices of the Night, published by John Owen in 1839 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, established him as one of the leading American poets; included in this volume was 'A Psalm of Life,' known to thousands of poetry lovers. During the same year Samuel Coleman brought out in New York the romantic poem, Hyperion. This work was read and dis- cussed in all literary circles, for it was a thinly veiled disguise for Long- fellow's love for Frances Appleton, the "dark Ladie" whom he later mar- ried. The panic of 1837 caused the usual slump in all lines of endeavor, and most publishers were loathe to risk their money in launching untried authors, and, as a result, Longfellow received no encouragement when he attempted to interest them in his three-act play, The Spanish Student. Reputedly in- spired by the exotic Fanny Elssler and her sensational dancing in New York, the plot of Longfellow's play was woven around the love of a Spanish nobleman for a gypsy maiden. The play was later printed in serial form in a magazine, and in 1843 it appeared in book form. Published in the mid- dle of the 19th century were: Longfellow's pathetic Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie, the story of an Acadian girl's search for her lover; The Song of Hiawatha, which tells of an Indian lad's love of nature; The Courtship of Miles Standish, with its background of puritanical Pilgrims; and Tales of a Wayside Inn, as told by weary travelers who frequented the old hostelry at Sudbury, Massachusetts. The appearance of Evangeline in 1847 estab- lished Longfellow as the most widely read and universally beloved poet of his time, although his popular poems, "The Reaper,' 'The Flowers,' 'A Psalm of Life,' 'Excelsior,' and the 'Wreck of the Hesperus' had brought him earlier fame.
Although Longfellow spent most of his productive years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Portland can fairly claim him as her own; the love and veneration for his birthplace is indelibly stamped upon much of his work. In 'My Lost Youth' and many of his most popular poems, much of his early local life is vividly and feelingly described. Casco Bay is the location of "the islands that were the Hesperides"; the "black wharves and the slips" and "the Spanish Sailors" are reminiscent of his youthful adventures on the water front in the picturesque days of the West Indies trade. "O faithful indefatigable tides" was inspired by the tidewaters that flow below Martin's Point Bridge, a few steps from the Veranda Hotel where Longfellow spent one or two summers, during which he is said to have finished the proofs of
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Evangeline. According to George Thornton Edwards in Youthful Haunts of Longfellow, his poems 'Keramos' and 'The Rope Walk' present familiar pictures of the scenes of his childhood: remembrances of the ancient potter's wheel, pedaled by Benjamin Dodge in his pottery near the vicinity of Port- land's new post office, and the long, low rope-making factory that stood at Park and Spring streets in the 1820's.
England has long revered Longfellow's genius, and it has been said that Englishmen today have a greater esteem for the Portland-born poet than poetry lovers of America. On March 2, 1884, two years after Longfellow's death, England honored the poet by unveiling a bust in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. So great a fund poured in at the time of the sub- scription list to purchase the bust, that two replicas were made-one for Harvard University and one for the Maine Historical Society. Today in England prizes are still awarded in colleges and universities for essays on Longfellow, but in his native land appreciation for his genius usually does not extend beyond the elementary schools. Regardless of the more intel- lectual argument as to whether Longfellow was the "greatest of the minor poets" or "the least of the great poets," it still remains that he was the most brilliant literary product of Portland and of Maine.
An excellent example of Portland authorship contemporary with Long- fellow's period of literary development is The Portland Sketch Book, an anthology compiled by Mrs. Ann S. Stephen (1813-86), local author of more than forty minor novels. Included in this anthology, published in 1830, is Longfellow's 'The Village of Auteuil,' a poem by John Neal, Seba Smith's amusing description of Jack Downing's visit to Portland, and con- tributions of various types by James S. Otis, Edward Payson, Ashur Ware, and Jason Whitman, all local literary craftsmen. In a preface to the an- thology, Mrs. Stephen states that the purpose of the book is "to collect literary specimens of such writers as have a just claim to be styled local authors. Too many have been mere transients."
Nearly 50 years after The Portland Sketchbook was published, John Neal recorded in his Portland Illustrated that Portland's "prose writers are numberless and almost without exception above what may be called the aver- age," but of these "numberless" writers there is little or no trace, for hardly any of their work exists in print today. That the city's burst of prosperity during the decades following the War of 1812 had its baneful influence on local literary production was noted by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who wrote in Elsie Venner: "As for the last of these three ports, or Portland, it is get-
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ting too prosperous to be as attractive as its less northerly neighbors. Meant for a fine old town, to ripen like a Cheshire cheese within its walls of an- cient rind, burrowed with crooked alleys and mottled with venerable mould, it seems likely to sacrifice its mellow future to a vulgar material prosperity."
Portland has fostered a host of lesser literary luminaries, most of whom are familiar only to careful students of American literature. Ichabod Nichols, co-pastor with the Reverend Samuel Deane in the First Parish Church, wrote Natural Theology in 1829; John White Chickering, for 20 years pastor of the High Street Church, issued several religious tracts and funeral discourses from 1838 to 1859; Sylvester B. Beckett, who published at least ten successive directories of Portland between 1846 and 1881, wrote Hester, a narrative poem brought out in 1860; and Dr. Isaac Ray was the author of a Treatise on the Medical Jurisprudence of Insanity and Conversations on the Animal Economy, published in 1829 and later adapted to textbook use.
A small group of local historians have prepared valuable volumes on the city's early history. Notable among these is the journal of the venerable Thomas Smith of the First Parish Church, the civic-minded parson who kept a daily account of the happenings of old Falmouth in the lively, piquant style of Pepys. The journal of Smith's assistant, Samuel Deane, throws still more light on the early years of the settlement. No chronicle of early literature in Portland would be complete without a mention of Samuel Freeman (1743-1831). Although there is no record of any creative work by him, Freeman did have the remarkable foresight to detect the historical value latent in the Smith journal, and he performed the prodigious task of editing its recordings of nearly seventy years. Of William Willis (1794- 1870), author of the valuable History of Portland, John Neal commented: "Simply a trustworthy annalist, wholly destitute of imagination, with not a few strong prejudices which he could not always forget or smother." In more recent years several historical books on Portland have been published by local authors; among these are Portland in the Past (1886) by Nathan Goold, and Portland By The Sea (1926) by Augustus F. Moulton. Neal Dow in his Reminiscences (1898) portrayed a fascinating picture of the social and political life of the city, together with the background that was the basis of Maine's prohibitory law. Among the several tourist guides to Portland are John Neal's Portland Illustrated (1874), Edward Elwell's Portland and Vicinity (1876), and John T. Hull's Portland and Old Or- chard (1888).
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James Phinney Baxter (1831-1921) was the most prolific historical writer Portland, and perhaps Maine, has yet produced. In 1885 he pre- pared George Cleeve of Casco Bay, which was printed for the Gorges So- ciety; his historical papers are included in The Proceedings and Collections of the Maine Historical Society of 1889-1914; the Trelawny Papers (1884) is one of 19 volumes of letters and legal documents of the Documentary History of the State of Maine. Among other works by Baxter are Chris- topher Levett (1893), The Pioneers of New France in New England (1894), and A Memoir of Jacques Cartier (1906). His largest single volume is The Greatest of Literary Problems, the Authorship of the Shake- speare Works (1915), written against a background of prodigious and patient research. Baxter's love of Portland is shown in his Collected Ad- dresses, 1877-1920, his editing in 1887 of William Digby's The British Invasion From the North, Sir Ferdinando Gorges and His Province of Maine (1890), and in many magazine articles, poems, and pamphlets.
No American poem written during the 1860's received wider distribu- tion and more publicity than 'Rock Me To Sleep, Mother,' by Elizabeth Akers (1832-1911), wife of Benjamin Paul Akers, the sculptor. The fol- lowing first stanza of this poem is universally quoted:
Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again just for tonight! Mother, come back from the echoless shore, Take me again to your heart as of yore; Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care, Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair; Over my slumbers your loving watch keep ;- Rock me to sleep, mother,-rock me to sleep!
The publication of the poem occasioned one of the most bitter and ludi- crous pen battles in the literary world and became a minor cause célèbre when a New Jersey harness maker named Bell claimed the authorship, but failed to establish proof. The history of the affair is related at length in Burton E. Stevenson's Famous Single Poems. Born in Strong, Elizabeth Akers joined the staff of the Portland Transcript after the publication in 1856 of her first book of poetry, Forest Buds. Published under the pseu- donym of 'Florence Percy,' 'Rock Me To Sleep Mother' originally appeared in the June issue of the Saturday Evening Post of 1860. For her contribu- tion the author was paid $5, and this was the only income she received from a work from which others have derived thousands of dollars. It was set
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to music, and as a song was popularized from coast to coast by Christy's Minstrels. The poem attained great popularity in the army and prison camps during the Civil War, its fame lasting up to the Cuban and South African campaigns of 1898-1900.
Although born in Fryeburg, Caroline Dana Howe (1820-1907) lived almost all of her life in Portland. Her first poem appeared in the Port- land Transcript. About 36 of her poems have been set to music, the best known probably being 'Leaf By Leaf the Roses Fall.'
Portland-born Elizabeth Jones Pullen (1849-1926) is best remembered for Mr. Whitman (1902), a story of brigands. Early in her career she wrote verse, sketches, and book and music reviews for the Portland Press. Her parody of Algernon Swinburne's 'Atlanta' in Algernon in London brought acclaim from members of the Century Club in New York, who sent her a card of admission, believing her literary effort was the work of a man. In 1885 she married Signor Nino Cavazzo and went to reside in Modena, Italy; seven years after taking up her Italian residence she brought out Don Finimondome, a volume of Calabrian sketches. After the death of Cavazzo she returned to America and married Stanley Pullen, proprietor and editor of the Portland Press.
Augusta Hale Gifford (1842-1915) published most of her historical works abroad during the years her husband, George Gifford, served in the diplomatic service. Best known of her writings are Germany, Her People and Their Story (1899), and Italy, Her People and Their Story (1905) .
Portland's scenic background has been featured in many books, both fic- tion and non-fiction. Many of these stories are treated fictionally, but ad- here faithfully to historical facts. Such books are Edward Elwell's Boys of '35, Otis Kaler's Story of Falmouth, Ella Mathews Bangs' The King's Mark, and Elizabeth Hill's When Kitty Comes To Portland. At an earlier period the Reverend Elijah Kellogg penned his remarkable Elm Island series of boys' stories, which during the last of the 19th century made his name famous in juvenile literature. Within recent years Kenneth Roberts has portrayed the early locale in his Arundel, which gives a brief scene of old Falmouth town about 1760, and Lively Lady, which glimpses the busy scene of the water front during the bustling days of 1811-12.
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