Читать книгу Children's Stories in American Literature 1861-1896 - Henrietta Christian Wright - Страница 6
Оглавление1825-
The first recollections of Richard Henry Stoddard, like those of so many of our American men of letters, are of the sea. He was born at Hingham, Mass., a little seaport town, where his ancestors had lived for generations, and whence his father, Captain Stoddard, sailed away in his ship one day never to return. Somewhere between New York and the coast of Norway the brave little brig in which Captain Stoddard had invested all his fortune went down. Perhaps it struck an iceberg, or in the darkness of the northern sea mists came into collision with another vessel; no one ever heard its fate, and the widow and fatherless children only knew that to them had come that bitter portion which the sea gives to so many of its followers. For the first few years of his life young Stoddard had hardly any settled home, his mother moving from place to place, whenever a chance of bettering her fortunes presented itself. For a year or two he was at his grandfather's house at Hingham, which was situated on a hill overlooking the ocean, and below which was the graveyard where generations of seafaring folk lay buried. Among the memories which shine out from these earliest years are those of the old church at Hingham, where he solemnly sat in the old-fashioned high-backed pew, and of the admiring friends who, perhaps, on that same Sunday afternoon, pressed round him while he gravely recited one of Watts's hymns or some other of the pieces of which he had store. There is also a remembrance of a trip to Boston in his grandfather's schooner, an adventurous voyage no doubt to the small seafarer. From Hingham he went to live in several other New England towns, never staying long in one place, and settling at last in Boston, from which place, in his tenth year, he removed to New York on his mother's second marriage.
In all his sojournings he had never been quite out of sight and sound of the sea, and it was from this teacher no doubt that he learned to be a worshipper of beauty. Years afterward, when he began to translate his thoughts and emotions into verse, we find much of it touched with that indefinable, haunting mystery which is found only in the poetry of sea-lovers. And this quality is no doubt a reminiscence of those childish impressions which sank into his mind and became a part of it.
Stoddard's life in New York was varied in experience, although he had for the first time a settled home. The family was poor, and Stoddard went to school or became a bread-winner alternately, as their fortunes ebbed or flowed. At the age of fifteen he found himself confronted with the fact that the boy who eats bread and butter sometimes has to help pay for it to the extent of all his small might, and young as he was even then, he had no notion of shirking his duty. He became first the office-boy to a firm of two young lawyers, who had few clients, but who, nevertheless, advised him to forget poetry and study law. He worked for a time in a newspaper office; then he became book-keeper in a factory. For three or four days he tried earnestly to become a blacksmith, and at last, after much shifting of scene, he settled in a foundry and learned the trade of iron-moulding.
But to his mind the actual boy neither copied lawyers' briefs, nor handled an anvil, nor moulded iron. For in that world which he had created for himself he did nothing the livelong day but think and write poetry. Sometimes the poetry would be scribbled down in the short noon recess, but oftener the hours of the night were given to writing, rewriting, correcting, and revising the verse which he was sure must lead into the pleasant ways of life at last.
Whatever odd moments he had that were not given to writing poetry were spent in reading it. Out of his small salary his mother allowed him a little spending money, and with this he bought books. Usually they were second-hand volumes, picked up on streetstands, but occasionally a new book found its way to the library, which grew year by year, and was a mute record of the boy's ambitions. In this way Stoddard became familiar with the best English poetry, and so got an education not then to be had in many schools.
After several books of manuscript poetry had been filled and destroyed, for he seems to have understood that this writing was only a training, he at last ventured to offer a poem to a weekly magazine, which accepted it, and the young poet actually saw himself in print. About the same time he received some encouraging criticisms from the poet N. P. Willis, who saw a little volume of his manuscript. His most valuable acquaintance at this time was Mrs. Kirkland, the editor of a magazine, who not only praised the young poet, but bought some of his work for her magazine. Other successes followed, and finally Stoddard had saved enough money to have a volume of his poems published; although he only sold one copy of these poems, which was published under the title Footprints, it yet tended to help him materially, for it brought him to the notice of literary people. Like many another poet, Stoddard owed much of his success to the kindly and generous sympathy of older and successful writers. This little volume led to his being introduced to the best literary society of New York, and that was of inestimable value to the then unknown poet. In 1852, being then in his twenty-eighth year, Stoddard published a second volume of poems, and a year later, through the influence of Hawthorne, he obtained a position as clerk in the Custom House, a place which brought him an assured income, and yet gave leisure for his literary work.
In this same year he published two dainty volumes for children, Fairy Land and Town and Country. They are full of delightful humor and show the poet in one of his happiest moods.
The life of Stoddard has been emphatically that of the poet and student. His whole career has been colored by one ambition, the highest that can govern any writer, to succeed in his chosen calling and do honor to American literature. Besides his poems, which have passed through many editions since the appearance of his first little volume, he has been connected with various newspapers and has been the editor of a magazine. Among other things he has also edited Griswold's Poets of America, The Female Poets of America, an edition of the Late English Poets, and a collection of reminiscences of well-known writers known as the Bric-a-Brac Series. Since 1880 he has been editor of the literary department of the New York Mail and Express.
To all this miscellaneous work Stoddard has brought the trained intellect and artistic perception of the poet and student, and he has stamped much of it with more than an ephemeral value. His work on the Mail and Express is a weekly review of the literary work of the world, and is a good summary of the intellectual field of the day.
Some of the finest examples of his poems are found in the collections, Songs of Summer, The King's Bell and The Book of the East. Single examples, such as the Vanished May, Up in the Trees, The Grape Gatherer, Dead Leaves, show his sense of beauty, mingled with the old Greek love of the earth, in perfect poetic union. In these moods he is a true descendant of the early poet worshippers of nature. Wratislaw, the story of a little hero prince, whose brave spirit wrought noble deeds in the days when the Turk overran Europe, is a beautiful specimen of the poet's art in dealing with legendary subjects. So also is his Masque of the Three Kings, in which the old Bible Christmas Story is told anew. A Wedding Under the Directory is a quaint picture of a day, relived by another generation. In 1876 Stoddard was asked for a poem to celebrate the opening of the Centennial Exposition, and responded with his Guests of the State, a noble composition, full of that large sympathy, which made the occasion a memorable one in the history of the nation.
The fact that most impresses one in regard to his work is his intense feeling for beauty. And in this sense one can trace his literary career from his earliest years. Such a nature must have unconsciously been nurtured in those exalted moods which are revealed only to the poet born. Through all his best work there is an undertone which is felt rather than seen, and which hints of a deeper current underneath.
Some of his most charming work appears in transcriptions of the poetry of the East—love-songs of the Tartar and Arab, of the Persian and the Sclav. With true poetic sympathy he has wrought these pictures of Eastern life into English verse that reveals all their own wild force and fire.
Stoddard's life has been spent almost entirely in New York. As he has devoted all his talent to his chosen work, so he has reaped the reward that comes from such high endeavor, and won in its best sense the poet's fame.
