USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume I > Part 17
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Whatever may be other or final judgment as to the relative merits of these men, considered as writers, for the purpose of this volume, Wyman Spooner is placed first. He thought with deliberate care, and wrote like a master of that classic English prose of which his long study and great love had availed him much, preferring "high seriousness," but not scornful of oc- casional lighter graces of literary composition. Mr. Church wrote of the earlier schools of Walworth, in newspaper articles preserved in the Historical Society's much-containing scrap-books. Mr. Hand, a nearly self-taught teacher and very thorough in the rudiments, had also read the English classics with pleasure and profit: but his written matter was less weighty than Spooner's. He had some eccentricities in conversation, but he wrote candidly and clearly. His friend. Eastman. loved paradox so well that his simpler- minded friends knew not when he was sincere. Dr. Samuel Wirt Henderson wrote in the spirit of the duelist who fires to kill, and sometimes illustrated with his own jack-knife on white pine, as wickedly funny as Nast's pictorial persecutions, though in other ways quite unlike. Menzie wrote with much ability and vigor, but as if duly retained, like a practical lawyer. Mr. Simmons was possessed of nearly all the mental, moral and personal qualities,
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and in not noticeably lower degree. that he so generously ascribed to Judge Baker. It is not unlikely that he had a finer, nicer literary sense than his friend ; though one would not willingly compare these men to the lessening of either. He wrote with a natural grace of his own and with seeming ease, though his materials were often enough collected with patient care. He could write in terms of partisan warfare, but that was not his chosen task. In his later life he was employed in "digesting" the vast bulk of decisions of the higher courts of New York and of Wisconsin. His older fellow citizens had long hoped that whenever Judge Golder should lay off the burden of the county judgeship its honors and salary would pass to such a worthy suc- cessor; but a little-revering generation gave a small plurality to a younger man, a nearly newcomer, though Mr. Simmons was second among four candi- dates. The other aforenamed writers wrote with much ability. and with more or less vigor and elegance, like decently educated gentlemen, but with no strongly marked distinctiveness of style.
In newspaper editorship the highest place must be accorded. as his birth- right and his conquest, to Edwin Delos Coe. He was equipped for duty by various experiences, as student, soldier, lawyer, before he began "to turn the crank of an opinion mill" at Whitewater. The Register had always been one of the best village newspapers in the state. Mr. Coe soon placed it beside the "first among equals." Ilis well-filled local page reflected his most likable personality, and he was not hidden or disguised in his incomparable editorial column. He wrote with no air of superior wisdom or authority, but bestowed freely upon his fellow editors his professional and personal courtesy, which fell like the dew of Hermon upon the half-deserving and the nearly undesery- ing. Hle affected nothing, not even modesty, though never a man with a press at his back was less self-assertive. When the sterner duty of a party organ called upon him to smite and spare not, his pen became indeed a weapon of offense. Ile was wholly free from editorial or literary jealousy, but over- generously gave others "more praise than niggard truth would willingly im- part." In short, he brought to his work learning, world-knowledge. judg- ment, tact, insight, wide-ranging fellow feeling, humor, and with these all the armory of wordy war.
Major Shepard S. Rockwood, an infant settler of Lafayette, ex-soldier, normal school professor of literature and mathematics, poet, elocutionist and scholar in politics, was in his own way as editorially forceful as Coe and more industrions and laborious. He wrote with the precision, directness and conclusiveness of geometrical demonstration. As a means to his political ad- vancement he bought the senior paper at Elkhorn, in 1882, and for one year
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edited every line of it, even to its stereotype plates. He made the Independent a positive quantity and an appreciable force in Wisconsin newspaperdom. His hope was to sit in the Assembly of 1883 and in the forty-ninth and sub- sequent Congresses ; but the men of the district which he had left in boyhood and to which he had but lately returned, knew little of him, except that he seemed "too far up the gulch" for them. Besides, 1882 was a politically bad year for many another honorably aspiring citizen. He passed early . in 1883 to a daily paper at Janesville, and thence to the Register, at Portage, where he died in 1905.
Ely B. Dewing's education was of common schools and printing offices. He had an early liking for the best in literature, and his style was formed, not by conscious or unconscious imitation of any of the masters, but by catch- ing something of the breath and finer spirit of many. He never accepted him- self as a great writer, and thence, perhaps, was a greater than he knew. His knowledge of men best worth knowing was not so state-wide as that of Coc, Rockwood or Cravath ; but his work and ways were not provincial. To these contemporary editors he was not a jealous rival, but a kindred soul. As act- ing editor of the Independent from mid-1884 to the end of 1888. he gave that paper some distinction in Wisconsin pressdom. His was within that golden period when Horace Rublee. John Nagle, Governors Iloard and Peck. Lite Niemann, James Monahan, Nicholas Smith, Champion Ingersoll and Colonel Watrous gave wholesome substance and variously pleasing and stinmu- lant flavor to editorial discussion and local commentary.
In most ways different from these three rare spirits, though in his own way fit to make them four, was Pitt Noble Cravath. Apparently unlike his father and mother in body, mind and spirit. though, no doubt, he was in some way their true heir, he seemed rather Gallic than Anglo-Saxon. He was readily drawn to new things in politics, but not disposed to overturn the social order, and he loved the clamor of partisan discussion-himself one of the noisiest, but least likely to degenerate to demagogism or fanaticism. The work of party organization was very much to his liking. His paper, at first named the "Puddingstick." was edited with sufficient vivacity and originality, but did not much reflect his personal qualities. His tongue, organ of his impulsiveness, might move him to much radical utterance ; but his pen sub- clued him to editorial decorum. A second newspaper at a city or village of Walworth may bring a little fleeting fame, but it requires more than brilliant editorship to make it live and support a family. Cravath had other abilities. and the county was not yet ready for political revolution and reconstruction.
In their own day it was good fortune to know these four editors, and it
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is yet pleasant to such as live and remember, though it be regretfully, to have known them. It was not editorship that passed away with their death or re- tirement, but only the quality or flavor that each gave it from his own person- ality. Men whose shadows now lengthen in the low westering sun may re- call, without morbidness, the memory of things that "come not back with time and tears."
It would be as easy to tell who first broke the surface of the county with a factory-made garden spade as to name the first to "build the lofty rhyme." She may have been one of the Misses Bigfoot, in AAlgonquin elegiacs, not translatable without damage to its sense and beauty. He may have been Christopher Payne, whose life was a Homeric epic, and whose precious manu- script may have been destroyed in the war with Brink. Since chronological order is impossible, no order at all may answer here.
If this county ever really had a poet the critics must determine between George W. Steele and Shepard S. Rockwood. In 1904 Mr. Steele published a small volume. "Dierdre, a Tale of Erin, and Other Verse." The legends of the Celtic maiden are as numerous as those of the Arthurian heroines, and the lawyer of Whitewater owed nothing to Mr. Yeats. It is not the general purpose here to assort, grade or appraise the poetic product of the county, but a few words may not be useless. The diction and idiom of these poems are English and intelligible, neither "gaudy nor inane." There is in them neither Greek nor Browningese, no affectations of obsolete words and grammar, even those of Chancerian or Spenserian kind or flavor, no ingenions coinages, no new licenses or excess of old ones, no patent-applied-for philosophy of life. nebulous metaphysics, questioning of omnipotent purpose, and not too much of Arnoldian high seriousness. Neither is there more echo of the ancient and modern classics than one likes to meet in reading new authors. If these nega- tives do not prove this volume poetry, they may indicate that the author wrote with judgment and taste, and that his work may claim fairly thus much notice in this compilation.
The total sum of Major Rockwood's published poetry would not fill more than a vest-pocket volume. He was not unknown as a paid contributor to Eastern magazines, and wrote poems for great occasions. One of his more notable efforts of the latter kind, recited in his intense manner of declama- tion to a state mass meeting of Republicans at Madison in 1880, was said to have drawn iron tears down Zachariah Chandler's cheeks. In his not too frequent lighter moods Rockwood dropped into politico-satirical lyrics ; but. in general, his muse was a well behaved, sober-minded member of the sacred nine. He had strong common sense and well-controlled feeling. and also sense
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of poetic form with feeling for the sweetness of unheard melody. Thus, his thought was not commonplace, his expression mawkish, nor his lines left half-filled.
Most spontaneous, facile, fluent of home poets was in the fifties, a young man of Elkhorn, at once, and in proportions about equal, a poet, mechanical inventor, journalist and critic. Horace Lucian Arnold's fast-driven pen dropped eight-syllable rhymed couplets as if their flow were endless, and no verse form was beyond its achievement. This promising young man's poetical reading had given him a standard for measurement of his own product. and he was too self-critical to print his clever crudities. Nor would he revise. recast, or redress them. It was easier to write a wholly new poem tonight than to perfect last night's work. In the course of more than fifty years he has contributed poems, stories, reporter work, reviews, mechanical and scien- tific discussion to the press of Chicago. New York. Edinburgh and elsewhere. Though his work has never quite reached greatness, it is virile, and it usually compels some reader's attention. A collection. with due selection, of his lyrics would show that here was one more of Walworth to whom poetry was not a thing of rhyme-ends only.
The county has known and sometimes honored its own song writers, poets of occasions and casual contributors to the poet's corner. Rev. Henry De Lancey Webster, Ely B. Dewing. John L. Forrest. John T. Wentworth. James Simmons, S. Fillmore Bennett. Charles H. Burdick and Mrs. Harriet Marion ( Perkins ) Leland are among the best remembered. Of the living there are many more. no doubt, than can be named here ; and their modest merit is known to a few friendly readers. Though the wide world may never find out these younger children of the muse, the sweetness of a well- remembered line. stanza, or poem may linger yet long in some kindly memory.
Seth Knapp Warren, son of the pioneer mill owner, had more education and a better reading habit than most of his schoolmates at Lake Geneva, and in later life turned more than they to the story of the universe, as told by the older and the later scientists. Ile digested his reading at least partially, and the result of his reading and thinking or musing was a bound volume of eighty-four small pages, printed at home in 1888. His matter is chiefly a compact and generally fairly and temperately worded. though possibly in accurate restatement of the theory of evolution as to the origin of stars and solar systems. His own attitude is indicated in few words at page 14: "But until some theory is advanced which can show clearly that these natural powers * * could form solar systems, with all their motions, from chaos we would better follow and teach the biblical account of creation : as it
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is, even in its literal sense, the most reasonable that has ever been written." He objects to science that while it has found much of the laws of the universe, it has wholly failed to find the law-giver ; and he shrewdly takes into his ac- count the differences he finds among scientists. His work had the approval of the late Rev. Isaac N. Marks, of the Episcopal church at Lake Geneva. It is at least easy to read. for it is seasoned with fewest technical terms and is wholly free from mathematical formulae and scientific tabulations. Mr. Warren wrote and talked like an intelligent gentleman, and he had, moreover, some artistic tastes and aspirations.
In the art of musical composition the county for long heard but one name, that of Joseph P. Webster, who came from Racine to Elkhorn in 1857 as a teacher of music. Between that year and his death in 1875. it is believed, he produced most of his songs, cantatas and other compositions. His pub- lishers were Higgins & Company, Lyon & Healy and Root & Cady, of Chi- cago, and Ditson, of Boston. A flood of newer music has half-effaced the recollection of his once familiar titles, though not all have thus been retired from public favor. The little story of one of these seems worth preserving.
In 1865. L. J. Bates, of Detroit, submitted to Lyon & Healy the words of a song and asked for a suitable composer. He was advised to write to Mr. Webster, and in the same year these publishers put forth "It Will Be Summertime, By and By," words by L. J. Bates, music by J. P. Webster. It is not here known how much favor this song found, but it is recalled that it was sung at the dedication of the Normal School at Whitewater in 1870. Five four-line stanzas, with each a varying five-line chorus, contained these lines, the second of each chorus : "Wait we the dawn of the bright by and by: Watch for the day-star of the dear by and by : Pray for the dawn of the sweet by and by: Is there, oh! is there a glad by and by : Herald the dawn of the blest by and by." The closing lines of these choruses were: "It will be summertime by and by : Earth will be happier, by and by : Truth will be verified, by and by: Faith will be justified, by and by; Right will be glorified, by and by." The principal lines recited the several wrongs endured by poor humanity.
These lines seemed to Mr. Webster to express the thought which he had no skill to utter but in music, and their writer became at once his dear friend. One of these phrases he repeated so often that another song-writer in 1868 followed its hint and gave it a new setting. Mr. Webster went home, and choosing from his store of musical memoranda that which best suited his sense of the occasion's propriety, he worked out with his habitual care and patience the "Sweet By and By." on which the world has been pleased to rest his
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fame as a composer. For him there was no such word as "impromptu" in art. Passages, long of short, might be "inspired," but the entire and perfect work must be reached by the methods of other artists. He worked by the laws of his own intellect and feeling, which he obeyed because he could not suspend or change them. He was self-critical, and he knew well when he could work and when he must wait. NNo publisher could urge him, no fellow-composer advise him, no friend lead him. He was little critical as to the literary quality of songs offered him, but only required that their sentiment should be humane and decent, and that harsh consonantal sounds should be filed to smoothness.
Frank S. Harrington ( 1854-1909), a son of Nicholas M. Harrington, of Delavan and Darien, became at an early age a singer of more than usual prom- ise. Encouraged by the friendly appreciation and advice of Professor Web- ster, he subjected himself to thorough training in the principles of musical composition, and for several years was known to eastern publishers as a com- poser of organ music. At the time of his death he seemed on the way to greater distinction in his art.
The schools of Boston, London, Paris and Rome have drawn from the county several pupils of the higher culture and instruction in vocal and instru- mental music. The art of hearing music is also cultivated, and the lights of the operatic or lyric stage draw yearly hundreds of hearers to Chicago and Milwaukee, each for at least one evening's soul-felt delight. Such singers and performers of national fame as do not scorn the smaller audiences find ap- preciative hearers at the cities of Walworth. Local philharmonic clubs lend their not negligible influence to elevate the public taste for immortal music. In olden time, too, the county has had its string bands, cornetists, flutists, pianists and vocalists, their various performances, once thought incompara- ble, yet recalled as remembered pleasures.
The palette and brush have drawn many young men and maidens aside from commoner things, though few have persevered, and fewer are within any one person's present recollections. This, of course, by reason of their long absence. One of these was John Bullock, at Lake Geneva, who painted landscapes with some success and who seemed born for further achievement had not fate been untoward. David Walling Humphrey, a school boy at Elkhorn and art student at Chicago, has won recognition among artists. William T. Thorne, of Delavan, has reached a high place as a portrait painter. and has his studio at New York. Adolph T. Schultz. also of Delavan, hangs his landscapes at the Chicago Art Institute. Clifford Francis Snyder, of Elk- born, practiced as a doctor of dental surgery for some years at Berlin, having, though a young man, imperial patronage, for American dentistry was then in
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high favor there. He sold his business and placed himself under Benjamin Constant's instruction at Paris, and later under that of Albert Nieuwhuis, at Laren, Holland. From boyhood his aptness in portrait drawing was marked. He went in 1900 to Munich, there to sojourn, it may be, until overtaken by fame, wealth, or death.
Oratory, as an art, has had here but one true votary, namely, John Luther Lamkin ( 1854-1896), of that part of Sharon town called South Grove. He wedded himself to a possibly original theory of his art: in effect, that voice and action are all .- if, only the voice be trained to the hoarseness of thunder and the action be suited to the orator's conception of the beauti- fully terrific in muscular motion. His words need have no meaning, if but polysyllabic and sonorous. lle imagined or boasted that he could crack a plate glass window by an abrupt emission of sound from the lower cells of his lungs. But Lamkin threw thunderbolts gracefully, and his meeting, saluting, passing, parting, even on the street, were fine-art illustrations. For the rest, he was a thrifty farmer and a worthy citizen.
Since 1856 the only lawyers who seem to have cultivated a great forensic style were Norton and Ingalls. William C. Norton was son of a farmer of Lafayette. His voice and manner were somewhat dramatic, but he was re- garded as a forceful speaker. None better than he could raise an ant-hill matter to the height of the tree tops, and none could better move his client to self-pitying. Wallace Ingalls, a native of Linn, acquired an agreeable and effective delivery and never forgot to adjust his words and actions to the needs of his carefully considered matter. Alphonso G. Kellam, Alfred D. Thomas, Thompson D. Weeks and Charles B. Sumner never attempted the higher flights; but they are favorably remembered for their clear, candidly persuasive and gentlemanly manner of laying their cases before jurors-often the most effective eloquence. Each of these men was often called upon as speaker for more public occasions. None of them, except Ingalls, now at Racine, is yet living.
CHAPTER XIX.
MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST.
The formation of local temperance societies began at Spring Prairie as early as 1838. In this work the men and women of Delavan, Elkhorn, Geneva, and Whitewater were but a few weeks or months behind Mr. Dwinnell's neighbors. At Lake Geneva, December 25, 1839. a temperance society was formed by fifty citizens, at Mr. Baker's house: Benjamin Ball, president ; John Chapin, vice-president ; Charles M. Baker, secretary ; Charles MI. Good- sell, William K. May and Morris Ross, executive committee. In the autumn of 1843 a county society of Washingtonians was formed at a meeting as- sembled at the court house. Its officers were Doctor Mills, president ; William A. Bartlett and Jarvis K. Pike, vice-presidents ; James Simmons, secretary ; George Gale, treasurer: James O. Eaton, Solomon A. Dwinnell and Expe- rience Estabrook, executive committee. No further record of this society is found, but among well-remembered and oft-repeated names of organizers and sympathizers are those of Ball. Baker, the Goodsells, Hall, Lake, McNish. the Phoenixes, Potter, the Spooners, Sturtevant, Topping and Vail.
These early movements were followed by a continuous line of societies similar in form and devoted to like purpose, namely : By moral suasion to induce men to become total abstainers from the products of the distillery, brewery, wine-vat and cider-press. Closely after them came, first, the Sons of Temperance, then the Good Templars, both continuing with varying activity and energy until all such societies, with their doctrines and rituals, became supplanted by or merged in politically organized prohibitionism. But the growth of total abstinence. as a habit of life rather than as a moral dogma professed, is not exactly measurable by the number of votes counted for the Prohibitionist party ticket.
Until 1871 the statutory fee for bar-room license was not less than twen- ty-five nor more than forty dollars. In 1873 the higher limit was made one hundred dollars, and in 1874 one hundred and fifty dollars. In September. 1889. pursuant to a new statute, the villages voted separately to determine if the fee should be two hundred and fifty dollars, three hundred and fifty dollars, or five hundred dollars, and the highest sum prevailed. When the
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license fee was lowest it went, appropriately enough, to the poor fund : when increased it went to road and street fund: it is now part of the general fund of cities, villages and towns. The effect of the higher fee has not been to reduce the number of drinking places-nor, perhaps, to increase it, though there are more licenses issued than before.
CIVIC SOCIETIES.
The several affiliated societies, fraternal and benevolent, found here at once a friendly atmosphere; for, within and without the lodge rooms, Wal- worth is sociable and neighborly. Freemasonry began almost with the villages, and, though it has felt some alternations of zeal and luke-warmth, it has with- stood the assaults of well-meaning opponents at home and of wandering apostles from Wheaton. It was never healthier in body and spirit than it is here in 1911. Its feminine ally, the Order of the Eastern Star, also finds favor here as elsewhere about the states. The list of lodges, past and present, is shown as follows :
Harmony No. 12, Delavan ( with Elkhorn ), discontinued in 1859.
St. James No. 41, East Troy, chartered in 1853.
Geneva No. 44, Lake Geneva, chartered in 1853.
St. John's No. 57, Whitewater, chartered in 1855. Elkhorn No. 77. Elkhorn, chartered in 1856. Sharon No. 116, Sharon, chartered in 1859. Delavan No. 121, Delavan, chartered in 1860.
Darien No. 126, Darien, chartered in 1860.
Spring Prairie No. 136, Spring Prairie, discontinued 1904.
Geneva Junction No. 256, Geneva Junction, chartered in 1894.
Walworth No. 286, Walworth, chartered in 1903.
There are four Royal Arch chapters: Elkhorn No. 17. Union ( at Lake Geneva ) No. 28, Delavan No. 38. Whitewater No. 66. A commandery of the Masonic degrees of knighthood, at Delavan, is numbered 33.
Odd Fellowship had also an early foothold, and has not yet yielded wholly to the rivalry of the younger orders. Knights of Pythias, Modern Woodmen, Catholic Knights and Knights of Columbus have each established their claim to recognition as a part of modern social life.
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