FRANCIS H. UNDERWOOD
Francis Henry Underwood, "the editor who was never the editor" of _The Atlantic Monthly_, though he was indeed the projector and first associate editor of that famous magazine, was born at Enfield, Massachusetts, January 12, 1825, the son of Roswell Underwood. He spent the year of 1843-1844 at Amherst College, and in the summer of 1844 he came out to Kentucky and settled at Bowling Green as a school teacher. Underwood read law at Bowling Green and was admitted to the bar of that town in 1847. On May 18, 1848, he was married to Louisa Maria Wood, of Taylorsville, Kentucky, to whom he afterwards dedicated his Kentucky novel. While in Kentucky Underwood wrote verses which he submitted to N. P. Willis, who was then at Washington. The celebrated critic wrote him: "Your poetry is as good as Byron's was at the same stage of progress--correct, and evidently inspired, and capable of expansion into stuff for fame." None of it, however, has come down to us. Underwood's intense hatred of slavery caused him to quit Kentucky, in 1850, after having lived for six years in this State, and to return to Massachusetts, where he was admitted to the bar of Northampton. He enlisted in the Free-soil movement with heart and soul. In 1852 he was clerk of the Massachusetts Senate, which position he left to become literary adviser for the then leading publishers of New England, Phillips, Sampson and Company. In 1853 Underwood conceived the idea of a Free-soil literary magazine, but a publisher's failure delayed its appearance. In November, 1857, however, the first issue of _The Atlantic Monthly_ appeared, Dr. Holmes having christened the "baby,"
with James Russell Lowell as editor-in-chief, and Underwood as assistant editor. Lowell and Underwood were great friends and they worked together with pleasure and harmony. For two years they were the editors, when the breaking up of the firm of Phillips, Sampson and Company, and the passing of the periodical into the hands of Ticknor and Fields, caused Underwood to resign. From 1859 to 1870 he was clerk of the Superior Criminal Court of Boston; and from 1861 to 1875 he was a member of the Boston School Committee. Underwood's first three works were a _Handbook of English Literature_ (Boston, 1871); _Handbook of American Literature_ (Boston, 1872); and _Cloud Pictures_ (Boston, 1872), a group of musical stories. Then came his Kentucky novel, entitled _Lord of Himself_ (Boston, 1874), which was really a series of pictures of life at Bowling Green in 1844. This tale was well received by the Kentucky press and public, the background and characters were declared realistic, and the author's effort to make something pathetic out of the old system of slavery was smiled at and dismissed in the general pleasure his story gave. In his imaginary Kentucky county of Barry, Underwood had a merry time rehabilitating the past. The character of Arthur Howard is the author himself. _Lord of Himself_ is a work of high merit, and it does not deserve the oblivion into which it has fallen. In 1880 Underwood's second novel, _Man Proposes_, was published, together with his _The True Story of Exodus_. Two years later his biographies of Longfellow and Lowell were issued; and in 1883 his study of Whittier was published. In 1885 President Cleveland named Underwood United States Consul at Glasgow; and three years later the University of Glasgow granted him LL.D.
During Cleveland's second administration Underwood was consul at Edinburgh. While in Scotland he wrote his last two novels, called _Quabbin_ (Boston, 1892), and _Dr. Gray's Quest_. In _Quabbin_ he described his native town of Enfield in much the same manner that he had years before written of Bowling Green, Kentucky. Underwood died at Edinburgh, August 8, 1894.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Biographical Catalogue of Amherst College_; _The Author of "Quabbin,"_ by J. T. Trowbridge (_Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1895); _The Editor who was Never the Editor_, by Bliss Perry (_Atlantic Monthly_, November, 1907). Mr. Perry's paper is especially notable for the great number of letters reproduced which Underwood received from the celebrities of his time.
ALOYSIUS AND MR. FENTON
[From _Lord of Himself_ (Boston, 1874)]
It was at this juncture that the youth of many locks and ample Byronic shirt collar appeared on the scene. Aloysius Pittsinger was his name.
He was a consolation. His very name, Aloysius, had a sweet gurgle in the sound, resembling the anticipatory and involuntary noises from children's mouths at the sight of sugar lollipops. He was a clerk in Mr. Goldstein's store. There he dispensed tobacco, both fine-cut and plug, assorted nails, New Orleans sugar, Rio coffee, Porto Rico molasses, Gloucester mackerel, together with foreign cloths and homespun jeans, and all the gimcracks which little negroes coveted and the swarms of summer flies had spared.
The appearance of Aloysius happened in this wise. Mr. Fenton was an early riser, but was loath to go to his shop without his breakfast. On the fateful morning he had come down rather earlier than usual. After due search and discussion, it was announced to him that there was nothing at once appetizing and substantial in the house that could, within the desired period, be got ready for the table; and his wife made bold to ask if in this emergency he wouldn't go out and get something. To a hungry man, in the faint interval after a "nipper" and before a solid bit, such a proposition is an unpleasant surprise. But, after devoting the cook and the household generally to immediate pains and inconveniences, and to something more hereafter, Mr. Fenton put on his slouched hat and started out. He mused also.
If I were ambitious of the fame of the great American novelist, or were contending for the fifty thousand dollar prize offered by the publishers of the Metropolitan Album, and hoped to have my thrilling descriptions read by its subscribing army of three hundred and fifty-one thousand chambermaids, I might paint the current of his swift thought thus:
"The air bites shrewdly. Ha, by the mass! Shall I to the _abattoir_ and ask the slayer of oxen for a steak? or a chop from the loin of sheep, a bell-wether of Kentucky's finest flock--Kentucky, state renowned for dainty mutton? Or does the slayer of oxen yet sleep, supinely stertorous, heavy with the lingering fumes of the mighty Bourbon? Perchance he has no steak, no chop!--all gone to feed an insatiable people! Bethink me. Ay--and the _abattoir_ is far, though its perfume is nigh; it is thrice a hundred yards from hence. I will go to the house of the Israelite, Goldstein, and get a fish--a fish dear to losel Yankees, and not scorned by the sons of the sun-land either. 'Tis well. I will make the trial. Haply I shall find that the young man, Pittsinger, whose praenomen is Aloysius, has arisen, and is even now combing his ambrosial locks."
What he _did_ think was something like this:
"It's doggon cold this mornin'. I wonder whether that derned old drunken Bill Stone's got ary bit of fresh meat--and if he's up yet. I don't b'lieve it, for he was drunk's an owl last night at old Red Eye.
Besides, it's fer to the slaughter-house. Le's see. I might get a mackerel at Goldstein's. I'll do it. B'iled a little, to take the salt out, and then het with cream, it ain't bad, by a derned sight."
He walked out to the square, occasionally blowing his cold fingers. The shutters were not taken down from Goldstein's front windows, but Mr.
Fenton knew that the clerk slept in a little room in a ruinous lean-to back of the store, and he rattled the door to call him. There was no answer, nor sound of any one stirring, and he rattled again. His powerful shake made the square resound. He called, endeavoring to throw his voice through the key-hole, "Aloysius, ain't you up yit? I want a mackerel."
The silence was aggravating, and there were internal qualms that made Fenton doubly impatient.
"Aloysius, you lazy bones! Do you hear? I want a mackerel for breakfast. You're thest the no-countest boy I ever see! If 'twan't for your father, you'd thest starve."
Fenton sadly meditated, and was about to give it up, when he heard a voice within, saying, "Never too late, Mr. Fenton. You shall have your mackerel. You needn't wait. As soon as I get my clothes on I'll tote you over one."
AN AMAZING PROPHECY
[From the same]
"The hardest strain upon the republic is yet to come," said Mr.
Pierrepont. "God only knows how the slavery question is to be settled; but no change in policy will be adopted without a severe struggle. If the South is worsted, it will have the terrible problem of the status of the negroes to solve, and it will be a tumultuous time for a generation. The danger to the North in the event of success, or of defeat either, will arise from its wealth. The accumulations at the commercial centres are to make them enormously rich. Money is a power, and never a quiescent one. Your rich men will put themselves into office, or they will send their paid attorneys to legislate for them.
They will so touch the subtle springs of finance as to make every affair of state serve their personal advantage. They will make corruption honorable, and bribery a fine art. It is now a mark of decency and a badge of distinction for a public man to be poor.
Everyone knows that a public man can't be rich honestly; but you will live to see congressmen going to the capital carrying travelling-bags, and returning home with wagon loads of trunks, and with stocks and bonds that will enable them to snap their fingers at constituents."
"It is the old story of republics," said Mr. Howard. "They are founded by valor, reared by industry, with frugality and equal laws. Wealth follows, then corruption, then the public conscience is debauched, faith is lost, and justice thrust out. Then the general rottenness is shaken by the coming of a new Caesar, and an empire is welcomed because liberty had already been lost, and anything is better than anarchy.
However, let us hope this is far away."
STEPHEN C. FOSTER
Stephen Collins Foster, the celebrated song writer, was born at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1826. At the age of fifteen years he entered Jefferson College, at Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, but music had set its seal upon him and he soon returned to Pittsburgh to pursue it.
The next few years were almost entirely devoted to his musical studies, though he had a living to make. The year of 1842 found Foster clerking in a Cincinnati store; and during this time his first song, _Open Thy Lattice, Love_, was published at Baltimore. _Uncle Ned_, and _O Susannah!_ followed fast upon his first effort, and the three launched him upon his career. He relinquished his business cares, and surrendered his life to song. In 1850 Foster married Jane McDowell of Pittsburgh, and they lived at New York City for a short time before settling at Pittsburgh. His _Camptown Races_, and _My Old Kentucky Home, Goodnight_, appeared in 1850. It is surely a regrettable fact that the most famous Kentucky song was not written by a Kentucky hand. Foster's only child, Mrs. Marion Foster Welsh, of Pittsburgh, has recently repudiated the ancient tale that is told of the origin of _My Old Kentucky Home_, but as she declined to furnish the real history of the song, saying she would make it known at the proper time, nothing better than the often repeated story can be told here. Foster was visiting his kinsman, Judge John Rowan, at his home, "Federal Hill," near Bardstown, Kentucky, and on this typical Southern plantation, with its negroes and their cabins, _My Old Kentucky Home_ was written. The story is usually elaborated, but as it has been set aside by the author's daughter, further comment is not worth while. It is enough to know that it was written in Kentucky.
Foster went to New York City in 1860, and the same year _Old Black Joe_ appeared. _Old Folks at Home_, _Nelly was a Lady_, _Nelly Bly_, _Massa's in the Cold, Cold Ground_, _Old Dog Tray_, _Don't Bet Your Money on the Shanghai_, _We Are Coming, Father Abraham_, and dozens of other songs have kept Foster's fame green. His beautiful serenade, _Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming_, is his highest note in genuine scientific music.
Foster died at New York, January 13, 1864, and he was buried in Allegheny cemetery, Pittsburgh. In 1906 the Kentucky home-comers never seemed to tire of _My Old Kentucky Home_, and a fitting memorial was unveiled at Louisville by Foster's daughter in honor of the song's maker. It is known and sung in the remotest corners of the world. Mr.
James Lane Allen's fine tribute to the poet's memory may be found in _The Bride of the Mistletoe_:
"More than half a century ago the one starved genius of the Shield [Kentucky], a writer of songs, looked out upon the summer picture of this land, its meadows and ripening corn tops; and as one presses out the spirit of an entire vineyard when he bursts a solitary grape upon his tongue, he, the song writer, drained drop by drop the wine of that scene into the notes of a single melody. The nation now knows his song, the world knows it--the only music that has ever captured the joy and peace of American home life--embodying the very soul of it in the clear amber of sound."
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Atlantic Monthly_ (November, 1867); _Current Literature_ (September, 1901). Strangely enough no formal biography of Foster has been written.
MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME, GOOD-NIGHT
[From _Stephen Collins Foster Statue_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1906, a pamphlet)]
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, 'Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn-top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom, While the birds make music all the day; The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, All merry, all happy, and bright, By'n-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door, Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
CHORUS:
Weep no more, my lady, O weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away.
They hunt no more for the 'possum and the coon, On the meadow, the hill, and the shore; They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the old cabin door; The day goes by, like a shadow o'er the heart, With sorrow, where all was delight; The time has come when the darkies have to part, Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
CHORUS:
Weep no more, my lady, O weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away.
The head must bow and the back will have to bend, Wherever the darkey may go; A few more days and the trouble all will end In the field where the sugar-cane grows; A few more days for to tote the weary load-- No matter, 'twill never be light; A few more days till we totter on the road, Then my old Kentucky home, good-night!
CHORUS:
Weep no more, my lady, O weep no more to-day!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away.
ZACHARIAH F. SMITH