USA > Vermont > Vermonters : a book of biographies > Part 8
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ROBERT FROST
By Dorothy Canfield Fisher
NY state, even a self-contained, reticent state like Vermont A feels proud when out of all the other places in the world it is chosen for a home by a man of genius. But more than this natural human pleasure was felt by Vermonters when Robert Frost, in 1920, settled on a farm in South Shaftsbury, in Ben- nington County. There was a deep unspoken feeling that he belongs with us, that he alone in the world of poets puts into . words what we Vermonters feel and what we had thought im- posible to say or to have said for us. Even the way he says it, his style, that much-admired Frost style seems to us to spring naturally from what we have always thought of as, "the Vermont
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way of saying things," indirectly, unemphatically, obliquely, suggesting much with a few plain words, leaving most of the emotion unsaid, and all the more deeply felt and shared.
Now when-after eleven years of life with him-we know more about his life and his folks and himself, we feel more than ever that our state and the poet are blood-kin. Like Ver- mont he comes of a long line of old-American stock, being in the ninth generation of Frosts living in New England. And again like Vermont, with all our fine Scotch Vermonters in Caledonia County and elsewhere, this Frost line is crossed with a recent strain of Scotch blood, Robert Frost's mother having been born and brought up in Edinboro'.
Robert Frost himself was born in San Francisco, March 26, 1875, where his father was then editing a newspaper. But on his father's death in 1885 he returned, a ten-year-old boy, with his mother and sister to live with his father's father in Lawrence, Massachusetts.
He began to write poems when he was fifteen, and at seven- teen wrote MY BUTTERFLY which was printed at the time by THE INDEPENDENT. But before this poem re-appeared in the first published collection-A BOY's WILL-the poet had lived through nearly twenty-one long years of almost complete lack of recognition.
The events of those years are not dramatic. He went to college for a time at Dartmouth, he taught Latin in a school run by his mother, he did some writing for a newspaper in Lawrence, he even briefly tried working in the mills there. Later he studied for two years at Harvard (his father's college) where he learned to love Greek and Latin poetry. He married young, (1895) and very fortunately a beautiful, brilliant girl, Elinor White who had been in his class at High School. People who know the Frosts personally often feel that their marriage has been one of the finest of the Frost poems ..
In 1900, they went to live on a farm in Derry, New Hamp- shire, a poor, thin-soiled mountain-farm. By 1905 it was plain
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that it would not yield a living for the poet and his wife and the four children who had been born to them, and in 1906 the farmer-poet of thirty-one became professor of English at the academy at Derry, where he showed that native ability in teaching which has since made him, in his original and unusual way, one of the most vital educators of America. In 1911, the principal of Pinkerton Academy was appointed head of the New Hamphire Normal School at Plymouth, and taking the best of his faculty with him, drew the Frosts along to Plymouth, where the poet repeated his success as a stirring, odd and sing- ularly living influence in the school.
In 1912-he was then thirty-seven years old-he had a feel- ing natural and as events proved well justified, that he must now or never give himself wholly to the writing of poetry which was his real reason for being in the world. The sale of the farm in Derry brought in enough money to live on, frugally, for several years, especially abroad where living is cheaper. In 1912, the Frosts sailed for England, where they lived for three years, the ex-teacher from the rural academy finding a warm welcome and warmer admiration in the English literary world.
In 1915, when the Frosts returned to this country, the long- deferred recognition had come, like the sun rising. NORTH OF BOSTON was published and had-for poetry-a marvellous sale of twenty thousand copies. Critics everywhere, here as in Eng- land and France, heaped praise on the poet. And everywhere a new kind of reader, who till then had sought vainly in poetry the food for the inner life that poetry should give, took the New England farmer-teacher to their very hearts in a deep and quiet devotion.
The collection called MOUNTAIN INTERVAL appeared in 1916 and was greeted with the same affectionate enthusiasm called forth by the two earlier books. NEW HAMPSHIRE, 1923, is read everywhere. And in 1930 a complete collection was issued which has had a remarkable success.
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Honors of all kinds shower down on him now. His readings and lectures are celebrated. He is sought as professor of lit- erature in many universities. He is in demand everywhere, a famous man, a renowned poet, a figure of whom all America is proud. But as I said at the beginning of this sketch it is not only as a famous literary man that Vermonters welcome Robert Frost, but as a poet who can put their deepest thoughts and emo- tions into words so simple, real and true that they do not seem to us mere words on a page, but part of ourselves.
RUFUS WILMOT GRISWOLD
By Vrest Teachout Orton
R UFUS GRISWOLD, by two flukes of circumstance, translated himself as permanently into posterity as did Edgar Allan Poe. First, living in the golden age of Poe, Lowell, Leland, Thoreau, Emerson, Simms and Longfellow-Griswold, by assid- uous labour and by pertinaciousness of character, became a powerful magazine editor and the first compiler of anthologies, -- wielding great influence in a great literary period. And second, because from his relations with Poe, Griswold created a legend through which school-boys have subsequently looked with fasci- nated horror upon Edgar Allan Poe. Griswold must have pos- sessed remarkable qualities to cut two such niches for himself in the hall of fame.
The Reverend Rufus Griswold was born in Benson, Vermont, February 15, 1815. Little is known of his early life except (as he told early compilers of encyclopaedias) he traveled ex- tensively in America and central Europe, was a printer's appren- tice and later a Baptist minister. It is known, however, that he became connected with the printing trade in Vermont in 1833
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and in 1838 founded the VERGENNES VERMONTER, a weekly. Slated for larger fields, Griswold went to New York in 1839 and became associated with Horace Greeley. He was on the staffs of the magazines: BROTHER JONATHAN, THE NEW WORLD and THE NEW YORKER. In April, 1842, he took Poe's place as editor of GRAHAM'S MAGAZINE, the most influential literary organ of the day. He founded in 1850, and edited THE INTERNA- TIONAL MAGAZINE until 1852, when it was merged with HARPER'S.
Apart from periodical work, Griswold's first bid for fame was in his compilation of anthologies of American and English literature. The first, THE POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA, of which eighteen editions were published, he began in 1841 and through it first met Poe. These compilations and edited volumes were many, among them: GEMS FROM AMERICAN FEMALE POETS, THE POETS AND POETRY OF ENGLAND, THE PROSE WRITERS OF AMERICA, CURIOSITIES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, THE SACRED POETS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA. He wrote two books of verse, one published anonymously in 1841. He wrote THE REPUBLICAN COURT OR AMERICAN SOCIETY IN THE DAYS OF WASHINGTON; was editor of the first American edition of the prose works of Milton, and in 1850 edited (as literary exe- cutor of Poe with N. P. Willis and James Russell Lowell) Poe's collected works. In editing and compiling the works of others he was heavily praised and even Poe once lauded him for a "vigour of comment and force of style." But Griswold's taste was effusive, partial and prejudiced. He gave lavish praise to fourth- rate authors and as a contemporary said of him, "his perception is keenly intelligent but too mercurial, fugitive and 'hasty . · he does not linger long enough to develop " But he could not linger, since he had to make a living by editing books. Today " .these tomes are forgotten but not Griswold, nor his influence upon his epoch.
But Griswold's greatest hold on fame, whether from our perspective or his, was his relationship to Edgar Allan Poe. The
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two met in 1841. From this time on, they were actively engaged in damning each other with faint praise, in calling names or in doing each other sudden favors. Such a hectic, chaotic and vitriolic relationship could only end in disaster for both. Gris- wold was stung by Poe's criticisms and never forgave him. Griswold retaliated in good measure in the anonymous Poe obituary (which he signed "Ludwig") and in the sketch to the collected edition of Poe's work, in which he created the infamous legend that Poe was a drunkard, morally loose and, in general, a low creature. Griswold is even accused of stealing from Mrs. Clemm (Poe's heir) the copyright of Poe's books. Griswold's influence for seventy-five years thereafter kept black the picture of Poe-now modern investigators are beginning to see Gris- wold in the same dark hue.
Why was all this so? Because, we believe, Griswold, a moral- ist, was utterly unable to divorce morals from art and to under- stand that alien, strange and great genius, Edgar Allan Poe. A man, Griswold quite naturally reasoned, could not act as Poe acted and be a gentleman, and a man ought to be a gentleman even though an author. Poe, it is true, was irresponsible, flighty, quick to anger, quick to forgive. Thus he believed that when their quarrels were patched up, Griswold would forgive him. But Griswold could not. It was not Griswold's publication of the facts of Poe's life that made Griswold wrong, for most of the facts were true. Rather it was Griswold's moral attitude toward the facts that brings him condemnation. Griswold thought he was right and he believed that he was doing a Christian duty in declaring against Poe and Poe's habits. Doctor Griswold neglected to count on the different moral view of posterity.
But, by no means, was Rufus Griswold a villain. He was a scintillating and amusing conversationalist and with all except Poe was amiable, charming and open-hearted. He often aided young authors. He was a leading figure in the literary world of the mid-nineteenth century. His anthologies made America poetry-conscious and their forgotten contents with the bio-
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graphical minutia are invaluable to us in re-creating the period. Mrs. Oakes Smith to whose famous soireés Griswold often went has said of him (quoted from Hervey Allen's ISRAFEL) :
. .. Mr. Griswold was tall with a slight stoop of the shoulders and unbecoming to him; his head was picturesque, and his eyes large, soft and beautiful. A general sensuousness rather than intellectuality was observable in his makeup. He was capable of a caustic satire in con- versation, mingled with a playful writ ... the absence of any marked positivity in his character made his humors not only to be tolerated but admired ... that he was capricious and allowed his personal pre- dilections and prejudices to sway him is most true, for he had the whims of a woman coupled with a certain spleen which he took no pains to conceal . . . he had the laugh of a child and was strangely unable to see the world as an arena for forms, ceremonies and proprieties.
Rufus Griswold in his personal life was unfortunate. Ten years after his first wife died he was induced by the aunts of the girl to marry a Jewess named Charlotte Meyers. At three in the morning after the wedding they separated, never to live together again as man and wife. The woman would not consent to a divorce and continued to harass poor Griswold in all manner of ways, even going as far as to publish diatribes against him. Finally, a divorce was granted and Griswold, deluded by long suffering, wrote and published a pamphlet attempting to estab- lish his innocence in denying her curious accusations. A most amazing document! It is quickly evident that the poor Doctor had been greatly imposed upon and was much more sinned against than sinning. Perhaps this is the best thing that can be said about Rufus Griswold. He was most certainly the victim of a smothering morality. Worn out by toil and trouble, he died in New York in 1857. In Vermont, if he was ever known, he has long been forgotten as not a single one of the " many "biographical" volumes of Vermonters has ever given him mention. But in the literary history of America his place is secure for, as James Russell Lowell once said of him, "he rend- ered valuable service in making Americans acquainted with the
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authors of the time." William Prescott, the historian, calls his work "important." In this sense it was.
HILAND HALL
By Charles E. Crane
H ILAND HALL made history in two senses of the word, for he was not only one of the early writers of Vermont history, but his political life was so prominent that he helped to create history both in state and nation.
He dates about an even century ago. Although born July 20, 1795, it was in 1833, at Bennington, Vermont, at the age of thirty-eight, that he stepped into the full limelight. In that year he was elected Representative, as a Whig, to the United States Congress to fill the vacancy left by the death of Jonathan Hunt of Brattleboro, and he remained a member of the twenty- fourth, twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh Congres- ses, and probably would have served longer had he not refused to run. Hall had earlier been conspicuous in Bennington in his patriotic leadership, for at the age of eighteen he had helped to organize the Sons of Liberty, a Society formed to uphold the rigorous prosecution of the War of 1812, and to protest against the pro-British sentiment then so rampant throughout New Eng- land. This, despite the fact that young Hall was thoroughly Eng- lish in his family tree. This, too as an indication of his subse- uent patriotism and hatred of British aristocracy both of which colored his career and his historical writings.
Studying law, Hall was admitted to the bar in 1819, and con- tinued to practice many years. From 1927 he represented Ben- nington in the Vermont Assembly and served in 1828 as clerk of the Supreme Court and of the county courts, being re-elected
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until 1831. In Congress he became conspicuous first for his speech attacking President Jackson's removal of government de- posits from the United States Bank, and then for another speech in favor of distributing the proceeds from the sale of public lands among the several states, whereby Vermont came into about $700,000 which sum was added to the school fund of Vermont towns. Both Hall's speeches were printed and widely circulated as Whig propaganda. But he was probably strongest as a com- mittee worker and as author of many reports which were very effective in accomplishing his purposes. In one of the prelim- inary struggles over the slavery question, Hall presented a strong minority report on "incendiary publications." This was in di- rect opposition to the message of the President and the advice of the Postmaster General and it constituted an attack on Senator Calhoun of South Carolina. So thoroughly did Hall's minority report answer the position of the slave party, led by Calhoun and others, that the majority of the committee did their best to sup- press it by failing to make a majority report. But Hall's report found its way into the newspapers and was widely published and discussed.
Still more sensational in Congress was Hall's great single- handed and triumphant fight against the fraudulent claims which had been made by Virginians, which claims were founded on alleged promises of the state of Virginia or the Continental Con- gress to Virginian officers of the Revolutionary Army. Already some three million dollars had been granted these pay claimants, when Hall, the Vermont congressman, after long study of the Revolutionary archives, succeeded in exposing the invalidity of these claims. He rendered a report which caused several days fight in Congress, but he sustained his position and forced the greedy Virginians to abandon further raids on the Federal treas- . ury. He won the plaudits of former President Adams and of the entire country. He was always strong in his numerous fights against graft and dishonesty in politics, being sincere and forth- right in his ideas of reform.
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Hiland Hail was president of the large Whig convention held in Burlington, Vermont, in 1840, and he made the opening speech in presenting Daniel Webster at the famous Whig con- vention held on Stratton Mountain, Vermont, on August 16 of the same year, where 15,000 persons gathered in this small re- mote town in Windham County.
Mr. Hall was bank commissioner of Vermont for four years from 1843, and a justice of the Supreme Court for a like period until 1850, when he was appointed second comptroller of the United States Treasury. In 1851 he was appointed by Presi- dent Fillmore as chairman of the land commission of California, in which post he had much to do with adjustment of the land claims under the treaty with Mexico. His written opinion in the noted Mariposa claim of John C. Fremont involved millions of dollars. He then resigned from the commission and came back to his farm in Bennington.
Hiland Hall was a member of the convention which met at Philadelphia in 1856. This convention established the Repub- lican party as a national political force by nominating candidates for the presidency and vice presidency. In 1858 Hall was elected governor of Vermont, by the same party, with a good majority over Henry Keyes, Democrat, and in 1859 was re-elected by a slightly larger majority over John Godfrey Saxe, the poet, and a Democrat. Hall was outspoken in his inaugural message against slavery. He scoffed at a decision of the Supreme Court to legal- ize slavery in the territories, and he pronounced the decision in the Dred Scott case as "extra judicial, and as contrary to the plain language of the constitution, to the facts of history and to the distastes of common humanity." His prophecy that slavery would have to go had only to wait half dozen years for fulfillment. He announced his retirement from politics after a second term as governor but he served the nation once more as a commissioner to the Peace Congress at Washington in 1861.
Notwithstanding his very active life in law and politics, Hiland Hall found time to indulge his great interest in the history of
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Vermont. He was for six years president of the Vermont His- torical Society, and was active in the preparation of material for the first two published volumes of Collections of the Vermont Historical Society to which he contributed editorial notes. He contributed historical articles to magazines and newspapers of that day and in 1868 finished his EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT, a work which stood for years as one of the most comprehensive documents on Vermont history but one that by present researches is being disputed in parts for its bias and prejudice. Henry Steele Wardner, who in his book, THE BIRTHPLACE OF VER- MONT refers many times to Hall's history, does in several in- stances comment upon Hall's shortcomings as a historical writer. To quote Mr. Watdner who is speaking of Sir Harry Moore, the new Royal Governor in 1765 of New York, a state and an offi- cial Governor Hall lost no love on:
. Governor Hiland Hall, in his EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT, de- . precatingly adds that "though well meaning he (Sir Harry Moore) was indolent and frivolous and addicted to social pleasures and amusements, and was consequently in the ordinary affairs of his government influ- enced and led by those about him." The gravity of these changes need not cause tears . . . he preferred to say as little as possible in the way of making Moore appear attractive. For anything pertaining to what Governor Hall called "aristocracy" he had an almost childish aversion . . . a careful checking of the EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT with the documents on which Governor Hall relied will reveal too many in- stances of partisan and unjust interpretations to permit unmixed con- fidence in his book. Yet his history is the result of earnest and pains- taking work and contains a notable collection of historical matter. Its value, though, is that of the brief or argument rather than that of a history.
From the beginning to the end . . . Governor Hall's book has the tone of a lawyer's plea.
That Hiland Hall was an outspoken partisan in his attitude toward the many controversial points in the history of Vermont goes without saying. Not only was this a natural attitude for a man who had fought in the political arena of party prejudice and personal bias and who had, all his life, so forcibly opposed
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the disturbing issues of slavery, graft and land-grabbing, but it was in direct line with the common attitude of Vermont historians from Ethan Allen down to Hall himself. It must also be re- membered chat Hiland Hall lived and wrote in a period, during the mid-nineteenth century, which was not far removed from the stirring days of Vermont's struggle for independence and which, indeed, had just witnessed the end of another internecine struggle in the Civil War. It was a period in which it was the rule, rather than the exception, for historians to wax indignantly and sincerely against facts or surmises which might do harm to pa- triotism. Regardless of Hall's dogmatic partiality in his EARLY HISTORY OF VERMONT, he is, however, now chiefly remembered for this and other valued contributions to the history of the state rather than for his long service to it as Representative in the Congress for five terms and as governor for two.
JAMES HARTNESS
By Ralph E. Flanders
F ORMER Governor James Hartness, sixty-first in the line, was born in Schenectady, New York, on September 3, 1861.
His father, John Williams Hartness, had been in business in Schenectady, but not succeeding very well, and being naturally interested in mechanics, he became a machinist in the railroad shops of that town. In 1863 he moved the family to Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked as foreman in various machine shops.
.. Young James followed his father into the machine shop at the age of sixteen. When he was twenty-one years old, he ob- tained a position as foreman in a newly organized bolt and nut plant in Winsted, Connecticut. In Winsted he met, and on
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May 13, 1885, married, Lenna Sanford Pond, who was born of old Connecticut ancestry.
The young couple moved to Torrington, Connecticut, in 1886 where Mr. Hartness spent three years with the Union Hard- ware Company as toolmaker and foreman. This new line of work and the new methods of working stimulated his already developing inventive faculty, and here he began the long line of inventions which have marked his career from that day to this.
In 1888, Mr. Hartness felt dissatisfied with the prospects in Torrington, and tried three other openings in rapid succession- in Hartford, in Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, and in Bridgeport. Meanwhile the Jones & Lamson Machine Company of Windsor, Vermont, had fallen on evil days. It had seen a long interesting history since its founding in the 1830's. It had made mechanical history for the United States, and for Europe as well, under the old name of Robbins & Lawrence. The greatest achieve- ment of this firm was the development of the "turret lathe," the first manufacturing machine tool in the modern sense. But times changed. Competition increased, and a varied line made it difficult to manufacture cheaply, and finally the management of the company found itself deeply indebted to the local bank. Leading Springfield citizens had meantime been looking for an industry to bring to the town to help build it up and furnish op- portunities for its young men.
The Windsor company was purchased, and moved to Spring- field, Vermont.
The next task was to find a superintendent. There had been some correspondence with James Hartness about certain in- ventions, one of which the company had bought. The con- nection was picked up again, the young man was hired, and .. he came to Springfield in March, 1889.
Mr. Hartness insisted on a three-year contract, because he was determined on radical changes which might not be im- mediately successful. Within that three years he radically altered
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the policy of the company and carried the changes through to a financial success. These changes included a re-design on highly original lines which changed the old "high turret" lathe into the present day "flat turret," and the concurrent invention of a tool equipment for it which vastly extended its field of use- fulness and multiplied its output as well.
With the assistance of W. D. Woolson, the company was reorganized, and Mr. Hartness was assigned a large interest in the firm-much to the advantage of the stockholders. He became manager in 1896 and president in 1901 which position he has held to the present time.
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