Early Vermont Minstrelsy
By Walter J. Coates
Vermonters of the twentieth century are prone to belittle, with a deprecatory shrug and an apologetic cough, the minstrels and minstrelsy of their own state. An educated and influential friend of mine—a Judge, interested, or supposedly interested, in literature—well illustrated the general business and professional public attitude of our present-day Vermonters when, in a conversation on literary topics the other day, he remarked: “Of course our state has never produced anything very extraordinary in the line of poetry—nothing to compare with the productions of other states.”
Never was a remark so unfounded. Never was an attitude of mind so mistaken and unjust as that of our present-day parvenus who are thus content to issue unfounded ex-cathedra judgments on a literary question whose merits very few Vermonters of the present generation have studied, even casually. For I found, on questioning my judicial friend, that, of the list of more than one hundred Vermont poets of the nineteenth century, he was even remotely familiar with only three or four; and, of the more than one hundred books published by Vermont bards in that same period, he was familiar with only two; namely, with Saxe’s and Dorr’s. I mentioned Eastman to him;—Eastman, whose poems were the first American lyric productions to gain favorable notice and recognition in England, from the critical Edinburgh Review,—Eastman, who was known, over the waters, as “the Burns of New England”,—who had a trans-Atlantic reputation before Bryant or Longfellow, or Lowell, even, could boast of such; but my friend knew him not—had, indeed, scarcely heard of such a poet. I directed him to the nearest public library, where I knew a copy of Eastman was available; and my appreciative but poetically misguided friend has since expressed keen delight over “discovering” an author whose work—the foremost production of Vermont poesy in the nineteenth century—ought (in part, at least) to be in the mind of every Vermont student and every intelligent Vermont citizen. It is a crushing comment on the present-day drift of Vermont culture away from the æsthetic and inspirational ideals of its past history, that its own fine poetry, great as that of any state in the Union, should be so little known and so little appreciated by the average descendant of a virile and intellectual ancestry. The “Green Mountain State” of Ethan Allen and Thomas Rowley; of Royall Tyler and Selah Gridley and William C. Bradley; of Charles G. Eastman and Achsa Sprague and James Buckham; of the progressive free-thinkers, and venturesome individualism, the political and social vitality and literary appreciativeness of former days, is almost wholly lacking in this present generation of herd culture, rotarian commercialism and success-serving idolatry. Not that we want for sweet singers or trenchant iconoclasts or rare idealists today: We have them all in full measure—as witness Wendell P. Stafford and Arthur W. Hewitt, and Cleghorn and Flower and Goodenough and Peach, and others, here and there, who keep the fires of intellectual freedom, social uplift and artistic expression alive on the hill-tops of a cowed and imitative civilization. What we lack is not genius; but the public mind and will to appreciate and encourage genius. And we will always and ever lack this public alertness, this public appreciativeness of Vermont genius, just so long as our youth-mind is obsessed by commercial ideals, harnessed to economic and industrial standards, and our educational system made subservient to the policies mapped out by chamber-of-commerce geographers and rotarian culture and idealism. The moral and intellectual and esthetic greatness of a people depend, as in the days of Pericles and of Queen Elizabeth, upon their general attitude of mind; and the attitude of mind is determined by the ideals of those who prescribe instruction for the young and set limits to the activities of the old. The intellectual liberalism of Washington’s era, and the political and religious democracy of Jefferson’s epoch, will produce one kind of culture: the monopolistic and paternalistic commercialism of the present age will produce quite another kind.
It is like going from the roily waters of a mill-pond to the fresh and invigorating current of a mountain brook, to go back from much of the vapid versification of the present generation to the vigorous and lively, the imaginative and naive productions of the early Vermont poets.
Vermont literary activity, including its minstrelsy, begins where, in Literature, the Colonial period left off. Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards and the early Puritan theological writers had passed away; Benjamin Franklin’s career was drawing to a close; Paine and Hamilton were in the zenith of their glory, and their literary stars were now on the decline. Trumbull and Brockden Brown, Freneau and Joel Barlow had become the leading literary lights of the day; while Irving, Drake, Cooper and Bryant were not yet full-fledged, their great work almost a generation in the future.
A new republic had sprung up in northern New England; and, with it, a fresh and exuberant culture arose and blossomed luxuriantly—in politics, in statesmanship and jurisprudence, in agricultural and mechanic industry, in education, literature and song. This new culture of the (then) new North—the meeting and mingling of minds from many colonies, in the common purpose of building a new state or commonwealth, was distinguished by the activity of the federated manhood of the territory, under the name of the “Green Mountain Boys”; and thus the amalgamating process began which eventually forged into one white flame of patriotism and common idealism the mentality of those scattered early settlers of our rugged hills and narrow but verdant vales which we now know as Vermont. This earliest epoch of our literary life, so far as it relates to poetry, may be called:
THE REVOLUTIONARY, OR EARLY
NATIONAL PERIOD
1760—1812
The period includes poetical productions, published and unpublished, from such men—all of them being among the original settlers or pioneers of our state—as Jabez Fitch, Thomas Rowley, Nathaniel Niles, Josias Lyndon Arnold, and, last but not least, Royall Tyler, with his coterie of pupils, whom we may denominate as “The Guilford School.” Thomas Green Fessenden and Selleck Osborn also belong properly within this period.
The life-story of Jabez Fitch is most unusual, interesting and romantic. He was born February 26, 1737, at Norwich, Conn. At the age of nineteen, in 1756, he enlisted in the British army, and served through three campaigns of the French and Indian Wars, one of these being the campaign against the French at Crown Point. Here he first became acquainted with the possibilities of Vermont. He was made a deputy sheriff and Justice of the Peace at New London, Conn.; and became an early advocate of the abolition of slavery. He had married, in 1760, and was the father of five sons and three daughters; but at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, he enlisted in the American Army and received the commission of Major. In the battle of Long Island he was taken prisoner, August 27, 1776, and was confined, with many others, on board the British prison ships in New York harbor. Here, and during later imprisonment on Long Island, he suffered untold hardships, and contracted a disease which in later life disabled him for a period of twenty years. In due time he was exchanged for other prisoners; and he retired to Connecticut. In 1787 he came to Vermont and surveyed unsettled land in the town of Hyde Park. He came again in 1788 with two of his sons; and in 1791 his wife and daughters also came.
Of particular interest is the fact that Fitch kept a diary—a minute and circumstantial record of his life, his experiences, his observations and his travels, from 1749 till his death in 1812. This diary contains valuable descriptive, biographical and historical data, especially that part of it having to do with his pioneer experiences in Hyde Park; but, unfortunately, when Fitch applied, later in life, for a pension, this invaluable book was given up to the U. S. Pension Department as a voucher, and whether it is in existence today is a matter of uncertainty. Besides this diary he wrote a MSS. book of verse, containing 109 pages of closely written poetry which was never published. Two of these poems were printed in Hemenway’s Gazetteer, Vol. two, pages 783–96; and the whole volume was extant, we are told, in 1871, being at that time in the hands of his descendants at Hyde Park. Fitch died February 29, 1812, the last twenty years being an invalid. His “Poems On Various Subjects, Serious and Satirical”, if now extant, would become a most valuable acquisition to the literary archives of the state. One of the poems in Hemenway is entitled “The House of Prayer Becomes a Den of Thieves”; and the other, which we reprint here is:
ON THE WOMEN’S ENORMOUS HEAD-DRESS
Written June 10, 1780.
If women’s true virtue consists in their length,
As some have conjectured concerning their strength,
What vast disproportion appears in this age
Compared with those matrons who late left the stage!
Those ancient chaste heroines, so clothed with renown,
Whose stature extended full just to the crown
Can ne’er be supposed with the moderns to vie,
With top-gallant royals extended so high.
Those ancient examples of virtue, it seems,
Compared with the moderns were phantoms of dreams;
The former like plants of low stature appear—
The latter, like cedars, quite darken the air.
Those feminine virtues, arising so high,
Like clouds without rain ascending the sky,—
Cannot their admirers a temple afford
Where these female deities may be adored!
Let some skillful barber, from taxes released,
Endowed with a reverence, serve as a priest—
With bundles of horse-manes and tails to resign,
With zeal, at the new-fangled deity’s shrine.
While the career of Jabez Fitch is both interesting and instructive to the student of early Vermont poesy—while he deserves mention in any adequate review of our literary activity during Revolutionary times; yet, after all, the real value of his poetic contributions remains uncertain, because only a very few of his compositions were ever put into print.
The real Pioneer of Song in Vermont—the first Poet Laureate of the state (rightfully so styled)—was Thomas Rowley, who, born at Hebron, Conn., 1721, came to Danby, Vermont, in 1768. He settled, as was customary in those days, on a farm, acted as clerk and surveyor for the original proprietors of the town; was first town clerk of Danby; served as a member of the Revolutionary “Committee of Safety”, was Danby’s first representative in the State Legislature, and was twice re-elected to that position; became very prominent and influential on the legislative committees of the time; and served later as Judge of the Special Court at Rutland. He was a member of Ethan Allen’s “Green Mountain Boys”, by whom his genius as a poet was quickly discovered; and he was soon recognized, far and wide, as the official bard of that organization. For many years Rowley was known as “The Shoreham Bard”, an epithet which is applied to him to this present day. Many of his verses were printed in the Rural Magazine (Rutland), and in the Vermont Gazette, (Bennington) and were published and republished widely by other periodicals throughout the state. His songs were many of them improvisations, composed on the spur of the moment; and, while most of them lack elegance and finish, they were roughly rythmical, trite and spicy—exactly suited to the spirit and culture of a pioneer people.
It is said of Rowley that he was a phenomenal extemporizer, being able and ready, at a moment’s notice, to compose a poem on any subject that might be proposed to him. This rare faculty added tremendously to his popularity; and we are not surprised, therefore, to find that his verse is generally marked by a spirit of camaraderie or bonhommie. One of his most noted poems, beginning “Come All Ye Laboring Hands”, is an invitation to the evicted tenants of New York state to come make their homes in Vermont, where there would be no landlords to disposses them of their hard-earned lands or homesteads. It had its effect in populating some of the fertile hillsides of south-western Vermont. Rowley’s poetry did much toward building up among our early settlers that spirit of local state pride and fealty which has since distinguished the sons and daughters of the “Green Mountain State.” He made his early readers feel that, first of all, they were Vermonters—members of a homogeneous and democratic community—that their interests were one, their aspirations mutually dependent. It was this spirit of loyalty to the little nation-state that finally preserved its political and social unity, achieved its independence, keeping it respected at home and abroad till it at last achieved an honored and distinct place in the Union in 1791. Rowley died at Cold Springs in West Haven, Vt., August, 1796. Six years later, 1802, some of his verse, “Selections and Miscellaneous Works of Thomas Rowley”, was published, (Pamphlet, 23 pp.) The following excerpts are typical of his genius:
Come all ye laboring hands
That toil below
Among the rocks and sands—
That plow and sow
Upon your hired lands.
*****
West of the Mountains Green
Lies Rutland fair—
The best that e’er was seen
For soil and air:
Kind Zephyr’s pleasant breeze
Whispers among the trees,
Where men may live at ease,
With prudent care.
Here stands the lofty pine
And makes a show:
As straight as Gunter’s line
Their bodies grow.
Their lofty heads they rear
Amid the atmosphere,
Where winged tribes repair
And sweetly sing.
Here little salmon glide,
So neat and fine,
Where you may be supplied—
With hook and twine;
They are the finest fish
To cook a dainty dish—
As good as one could wish
To feed upon.
The pigeon, goose and duck,
They fill our beds;
The beaver, coon and fox
They crown our heads;
The harmless moose and deer
Are food and clothes to wear—
Nature could do no more
For any land!
This is that noble land
By conquest won—
Took from a savage hand
With sword and gun:
We drove them to the west,
They could not stand the test,
And from the Gallic pest
This land is free!
Also, from his “Ode On Predestination:
If I withhold my hand
From what I am forbid,
Why then should I be damned
For what I never did?
If I let loose my hand
And say it was decreed,
You say I shall be damned
Because I don’t take heed.
If all things are decreed,
As some good people say,
Why should I spend my time
Or make attempts to pray?
Ref.: For Rowley’s verse see J. C. Williams’ “The History and Map of Danby”, 1869, pp. 240–53. Also Pliny White’s “Early Poets of Vermont”, 1860.
While Rowley was stirring the minds and imaginations of western Vermont, the eastern part of the state was not without its inspiring singer. For what Rowley did for song in the south and west of the state, Nathaniel Niles did for those who lived east, in the valley of the Connecticut. He wrote one poem, or song, that attained even wider recognition, and exerted a more extended influence, than anything that Rowley ever composed. His choral chant, “The American Hero”, was set to music and was very generally sung throughout all New England during the stirring times of the Revolutionary War.
Niles was born at South Kingston, R. I., April 3, 1741, attended Harvard College for a while, but, before graduating, left for Princeton College in New Jersey, where he graduated in 1766. He entered the Congregational ministry and for some time lived at Norwich, Conn. Toward the close of the Revolution he moved to West Fairlee, Vermont, becoming one of the first settlers of that town. He was an exceptionally able and intelligent man, exerting a wide and powerful influence upon the people of that region for many years. He served several terms in the State Legislature from Fairlee (1784–5; 1801–3; and 1812–14); was first Member of Congress elected from Vermont; and, in 1784–8, was a Judge of the Vermont Supreme Court. He died in 1828.
Though we cannot claim for Vermont poesy that Niles’ greatest lyric was produced in the state; still we can justly consider him as a true Green Mountain Bard and put him alongside Rowley and Tyler as one of the formative personalities of Vermont poetry. His magnum opus, “The American Hero”, a Sapphic ode, was composed directly after the battle of Bunker Hill, before he moved to Vermont, and immediately became immensely popular. It was published first in the Connecticut Gazette, February, 1776, (having been printed in broadside form at Norwich, Ct., in 1775), and was at once copied by other papers, set to music, and sung by the American people, as before stated. The ode, as first published, contains 15 verses, of which the following, are specimens:—
Why should vain mortals tremble at the sight of
Death and destruction in the field of battle,
Where blood and carnage clothe the ground in crimson,
Sounding in death-groans!
Death will invade us by the means appointed,
And we must all bow to the King of Terrors;
Nor am I anxious, if I am prepared,
What shape he comes in.
*******
Up the black heavens let the spreading flame rise,
Breaking, like Ætna, through the smoky columns,
Lowering like Egypt o’er the falling city,
Wantonly burnt down.
While all their hearts quick palpitate for havoc,
Let slip your blood-hounds, named the British Lions,
Dauntless Death stares, nimble as the whirlwind,
Dreadful as demons!
*******
Still shall the banner of the King of Heaven
Never advance where I’m afraid to follow:
While that precedes me, with an open bosom,
War, I defy thee!
Life for my Country and the Cause of Freedom
Is but a trifle for a worm to part with;
And, if preserved in so great a contest,
Life is redoubled.
This first, or national, period was in some ways the golden epoch of Vermont poetic activity. The “Spirit of ’76”, with the mental and spiritual excitement it engendered among those who were conquering a new land and carving out a new nation in the northern fastnesses of nature, amid the liberty-breathing hills and fertile valleys of Vermont, led to a literary activity little less than marvelous. Idealism—greater than any that we have since experienced—was rampant in the land. The spirit of freedom and candor, of activity and questioning thought and inventive daring, walked abroad among these newly settled sons and daughters of Liberty.
In this day of ferment and active idealism there sprung up what Vermont has never since produced—a distinct Local School of Expression, comparable in a sense, to such later schools as that of N. P. Willis in New York—a literary association or coterie which, because of its location in the oldest town of the state, we will call
THE GUILFORD LITERARY SCHOOL
This movement revolved around the personality and directing genius of Judge Royall Tyler of Guilford, later of Brattleboro. He has the distinction, so far as we know, of being the only Vermont poet who, in his own day, directed a distinct school of literary, or poetic, expression; the only one, at least, who consciously established such a school. But during the period between 1790 and 1805 he gathered about him in Guilford a number of friends and pupils who made an enduring impress on both the poetry and prose of later generations, in the state. His influence, in fact, through the Phelps, Hampden, Cutts and Bradley families, as well as through the Pecks and Elliotts, may be traced down even to this generation of the twentieth century.
Royall Tyler was born in Boston, July 18, 1757, of an old and wealthy family. His father, Royall Tyler, Sr., was a graduate of Harvard and became a prominent merchant in Boston. Young Tyler entered Harvard in 1772, graduating in 1776. He studied law with Hon. Francis Dana of Cambridge, and was admitted to the bar in 1779. He fought in Sullivan’s army in the Revolution; and, later, in 1787, when Shays’ Rebellion broke out, he served under General Lincoln as aide, with the rank of Major. When Shays fled into Vermont, Tyler pursued him as far as Bennington; but was brought to a halt here by the authority of Gov. Chittenden and the opposition of Ethan Allan, who not only refused to help in intercepting Shays, but declared the governing officials of Massachusetts to be “a set of damned rascals.” Though failing in his official mission, Tyler became acquainted with Vermont and with many prominent people who were later to become his neighbors.
Tyler’s father had died in 1772, at the age of 48; but despite this loss, he pursued his college course; and at the time of his graduation, his reputation for wit, genius and scholarship was recognized by a wide circle. Yale College, in recognition of his scholarship and abilities, in 1776, conferred on him (then only nineteen years old) the degree B. A.—an unprecedented honor. In Boston he mingled with a remarkably brilliant set of young men, who formed a Club, meeting at the rooms of John Trumbull, the young painter. Among these men were Rufus King, Christopher Gore, William Eustis, Aaron Dexter and Thomas Dawes—all personages of distinction in later life.
Directly after being admitted to the bar, Tyler moved to Portland (then Falmouth), Maine, where he practiced law for two years. With the coming of peace, 1781, he returned to Boston, which offered better opportunities for him, making his home at Quincy. After vainly pursuing Shays to Vermont, he had been entrusted with a mission to New York; but, on returning to his law practice, at the end of the rebellion, he kept up a correspondence with personages he had met in Vermont, including Ethan Allen.
At this time (1778) Goldsmith and Carrick having brought about a revival of comedy drama in England, the old Federal Street Theatre in Boston became a centre for wit and fashion. No American play of the kind had as yet been written or staged in the colonies; and Tyler, urged by his friends, resolved to attempt such a play. The result was “The Contrast”, the first American comedy-drama ever produced, which is said to have been conceived and written in three weeks. It was the first literary attempt, in America to set up and portray a distinctly Western or “Yankee” type of civilization or character; and, as such, it marks the first step toward originality in our native literature. It was brought out, in the spring of ’89, at Park Theatre, New York, attaining instant and wide success. It was published in Philadelphia by Thomas Wignell, a comic actor of the time, and was played at many theatres throughout the country.
At this same time, Tyler also wrote another farce entitled “May Day in Town”, which likewise had a large run of popularity. As his biographer says: “He was petted, caressed, feasted and toasted, and no doubt lived too freely.” At any rate, a sudden change came over his spirits at this time, and he seemed unusually depressed. He, for some reason, determined to start life anew; and, in this frame of mind, he made in 1790 a tentative visit to Vermont. The short and stormy career of this little nation-state was now drawing to a promising climax; and it became clearly evident that it would soon be admitted to full sisterhood in the confederation of states. It offered many advantages to settlers—low taxes, cheap lands, freedom of initiative; and at the time in it could be found many congenial and enlightened minds. In the summer of 1791 Tyler, accordingly settled in Guilford, then the most populous and one of the most flourishing towns of the state. In the center of the town he opened his law office, and soon became one of the most powerful factors in the social, political and intellectual life of the region round-about. He attended courts far and near. In 1794 he married Mary Palmer—a congenial helpmeet—and one who entered sympathetically into his literary activities—during a long and busy career. About this time, too, he met and established a friendship with Joseph Dennie—the beginning of a literary association which was to have a profound effect on the future journalistic and poetical literature of Vermont. Dennie was editor of the Farmer’s Weekly Museum, or New Hampshire and Vermont State Journal, at Walpole, N. H. Tyler became associate editor of the Journal; and, under the joint management it soon established a circulation extending from Maine to Georgia. It became the foremost literary journal of its day, furnishing an outlet not only for Tyler’s essays and sketches, but for the poetic and prose works of his many pupils and associates. Dennie was the foremost essayist of the day in America; and Tyler was the first dramatist, keenest wit, and most pungent paragrapher of the times.
It was at this period that there swept over the north a mania for speculation in Georgia land (very similar to the present-day craze over Florida); and, in ridicule of this furore of speculation, Tyler brought out (1797) his third comedy drama, “The Georgia Spec, or Land in the Moon.” This, like his two previous plays, was repeatedly staged at Boston and New York.
In 1797 he wrote and published at Walpole, N. H., “The Algerine Captive”—a work of real merit, and the first novel ever published by a Vermont author in the course of which he graphically portrays the horrors of the African slave trade. It was re-printed in London, 1802, and in Hartford, 1816. A copy of this book may be seen in the State Library at Montpelier.
But, if Tyler’s prestige and influence on his own and succeeding generations rest primarily on his dramatic comedies, and secondarily upon his journalistic’ partnership with Dennie, his influence on the poetic history and idealism of Vermont rests almost solely upon his activities as founder and leader of that remarkable coterie of literary associates and pupils whom we have denominated “The Guilford School.” Tyler was not only the father of this school, but he was their inspirer, patron and guide. For he was not only a prodigious worker himself; he inspired others to work. While he composed a very large number of poems himself (most of which, unforunately, became lost after his death), his genius is to be traced through the lives and products of his pupils. Among these pupils were Samuel Elliot, orator, humanitarian and poet; James Elliot, brother to Samuel, who published in 1798 his “Poetical and Miscellaneous Works”, the second book of verse ever issued by a Vermont author, consisting of essays, sketches and poems, and who later honored his state as its representative in Congress; John Phelps, an honored lawyer and poet of Guilford; Almira Phelps, his wife, who not only wrote excellent verse, but was author of a very fine text-book on botany, and many other works; Elizabeth Peck, also a poet; John Shepardson; and, finally Henry Dennison, whose verse (fine in quality) has come down to us only through the fragmentary portion put into print after his death in “The Columbian Lyre”, a small volume, published in Glasgow, in 1828. Some of the poetical works of this coterie of poets may be found in Hemenway’s Gazetteer, Volume 5; but most of it has become lost to us through the ravages of time, change and neglect.
In 1800 Tyler, after ten years of life in Guilford, moved to Brattleboro, then becoming the business center of the county; and, in 1801, was appointed by the legislature a member of the Vermont Supreme Court, and, in 1806, he was appointed Chief Justice, retaining this position until 1812, party strife and ill health causing him to be retired in that year. He had been appointed by an adverse political legislature solely on his merits, he being a Democrat in a Federalist state. He was one of the first patrons and founder of the University of Vermont. From 1815 to 1821, he was Register of Probate for Windham County. His later years were made miserable by the presence of a cancer on the left side of the nose, near the eye. This disease hastened his death, which occurred August 16, 1826. His widow survived till 1865, dying at the age of 94.
In the realm of poesy, Tyler’s reputation (aside from his dramas) rests principally on the few lyrics that were rescued from oblivion by reason of their having been printed in periodicals. It is doubtless a great loss to the literature of this state that his voluminous collection of poetic MSS. were not retained in the family and given to the press after his death. Some of them are now in possession of Helen Tyler Brown, of Brattleboro; but most of them have disappeared, no one knows whither. His “Ode”, delivered at Windsor, 1799, is doubtles his best known production; but his little lyric, “Love and Liberty”, is a work of far greater merit, showing the finish and imagination of the practised poet. This lyric is one of the first (perhaps the first) instances we have in Vermont poesy of finished and melodious versification.
LOVE AND LIBERTY
Royall Tyler, Guilford
In briery dell or thicket brown,
On mountain high, in lowly vale,
Or where the thistle sheds its down,
And sweet fern scents the passing gale,
There hop the birds from bush to tree;
Love fills their throats,
Love sweils their notes—
Their song is love and liberty.
No parent birds their love direct;
Each seeks his fair in plumy throng,
Caught by the luster of her neck,
Or kindred softness of her song;
They sing and bill from bush to tree;
Love fills their throats,
Love swells their notes,—
Their song is love and liberty.
Some airy songster’s feathered shape,
O, could my love and I assume:—
The ring-dove’s glossy neck he take,
And I the modest turtle’s plume—
O, then we'd sing from bush to tree—
Love fill our throats,
Love swell our notes,
Our song be love and liberty.
Of the very few persons who may properly be denominated “major poets” of Vermont, Royall Tyler must certainly be included as one—the first in time and first in influence, although, owing to the fragmentary character of his surviving verse, there are several others who outrank him in the excellence of extant lyrics. He was, as has been truly said, “one of the fathers of American literature”. His “Memoirs”, consisting of some 300 MSS. pages, and written by his son, Thomas P. Tyler, have never been published except in the form of excerpts, as in Hemenway’s Gazetteer, Vol. 5; but he left an enduring record on the ideals, culture and institutions of his state which will endure as long as our literature. Tyler wrote, in The Farmers’ Weekly Museum, under the pseudonym of “Spondee”. In T. Buckingham’s Palyanthus,. (Boston, 1806) he wrote under the heading “Trash”. In Joseph Dennie’s Portfolio (Philadelphia, 1801–12) he wrote “An Author’s Evenings” and “Original Poetry”. He contributed also to The Federal Orrery and the Columbia Centinel, Boston; to the Boston Eagle, the Dartmouth Centinel, the New England Galaxy, the Brattleboro Reporter and Yeoman. Unpublished MSS. left by Tyler include three sacred dramas, an “Oration on the Death of Washington”, 1800; “The Mantle of Washington”, 1800; “Ode to Night”, 1792. Other plays, written for the Boston Theatre, include “The Dualists”, a farce in three acts; “Barataria, or the Governor of a day”, and others.
See Duyckink’s “Encycl. of Amer. Lit.,” 1853; Stedman & Hutchinson’s “Libr. of Amer. Lit”; Hem. Vt. His. Gaz., Vol. 5; and Brown & Tupper’s “Grandmother Tyler’s Book,” 1925.
With the passing of the Guilford School the Early National Period of Vermont Poetry really came to an end; but it remains to mention several singers of the state who stood somewhat apart from this movement. These are Josias Lyndon Arnold, Thomas Green Fessenden, Anthony Haswell and Selleck Osborn.
Arnold was born in Providence, R. I., in 1765, was a graduate of Dartmouth College, and undertook the study of law; but soon abandoning this, he became a tutor at Brown University. His father, having become settled in Vermont (one of the original settlers of St. Johnsbury), and having acquired a large estate there, died in 1792. Young Arnold, though fond of literary pursuits and already interested in the production of verse, repaired to the north and made his home there, applying himself to the care of the family estates. Here he continued his literary activities, giving his main energies to the problems of a settler. He married in 1795, but the following year was taken sick with enteric fever and died. His widow issued his collected poems in book Island College, Providence, 1797,”—this beArnold, Esq’r, of St. Johnsbury, Vt., formerly of Providence, and a tutor in Rhode Island College, Providence, 1797,—this being the first book of poetry, so far as we know ever published by a Vermont poet. Specially noteworthy among these lyrics are his “Odes” written on the banks respectively of the Passumpsic and Connecticut Rivers, and the “Lines To Aspasia, Sailing”. His work shows a polish and mastery of metre not common to the singers of his day.
Contemporaneous to the Guilford School, and probably somewhat influenced by it (since he was a contributor to Dennie’s Weekly Museum or Journal, along with Royall Tyler) was Thomas Green Fessenden. His career was spectacular, and his genius like a meteor across the horizon of his time. He was a son of Rev. Thomas K. Fessenden of Walpole, N. H., being thus a native of the very town in which The Weekly Museum (Dennie’s and Tyler’s periodical) was published. It is probable that he here came under the influence of Judge Tyler and his school; for we find that, after graduating from Dartmouth in 1796, he was already contributing to the columns of the Museum, under the nom-de-plume of “Simon Spunky.” He was very diffident and sensitive about publicity; but his contributions to the Museum and to the Eagle of Dartmouth were generally admired. Humor, satire, and patriotic lyrics were his forte. He was the first American poet to give us humorous descriptive portraits of New England character, manners and customs; being in this the forerunner of James Russell Lowell.
See his “Jonathan’s Courtship”, a broadside, 1795. (In Porter G. Perrin’s “Life and Works” of Thomas Green Fessenden”, 1925).
Fessenden removed to Rutland, after graduating, and began the study of law under Nathaniel Chipman. In 1801 he went to London to engage in the construction of a mill, being encouraged thereto by prominent British capitalists; but being deserted by these associates before the mill could be fairly tested and proved, he was forced to abandon it for lack of funds. This nearly ruined him financially; but seemed to stimulate his literary powers; and being driven by necessity, he undertook, and completed in the space of four weeks, 1803, the first edition of his famous satire, “Terrible Tractoration”, which the English press compared favorably with Butler’s “Hudibras”. This work was inspired by contact with a son of Dr. Elisha Perkins of Plainfield, Conn., whose celebrated cure-all, or nostrum, the “metallic tractors” were then being introduced into England. (See Perrin, as above). After going through several editions in England, this work was also published, 1805, in America. Fessenden was a man of strong Federalist or “Tory” convictions; and in elucidation of his rabid anti-Jeffersonian doctrines, he brought out, on his return to America, in 1805, a political satire, entitled “Democracy Unveiled”.
He is next found in New York City, editing a newspaper caled the Weekly Inspector, 1806–7; but in this enterprise he fails, owing largely to his unpopular politics and to the rivalry of Irving’s newly established magazine, Salmagundi. In this year (1806) he issued an American edition of his “Original Poems” (first published in London in 1804), it being a collection of his verse from early Dartmouth days up to that time. This book of 203 pages received a very favorable reception from such prominent English Reviews as the British Critick, Literary Journal, Anti-Jacobin Review, Monthly Review and Critical Review; demonstrating Fessenden’s hold on the literary esteem of his own age. The volume contains a number of fine odes, some caustic and witty satires and a few splendid humorous burlesques in rhyme. Fessenden next went to Philadelphia, where, in 1809, appeared his third important satire, entitled “Pills, Political, Poetical, Philosophical.”
Returning in 1812 to Vermont, and settling at Bellows Falls, he practised law there till 1815. This latter year he was called, by the death of his brother William, to the editorship of the Brattleboro Reporter, but remained with it only a short time. He was back in Bellows Falls very soon, editing there the Bellows Falls Intelligencer from 1816 to 1822; and here, in 1818, he issued his fourth and last volume of satire, didactic in nature, entitled “The Ladies’ Monitor”.
After leaving Bellows Falls in 1822, Fessenden settled in Boston, Mass., and began there, and continued till his death in 1837, the publication of The New England Farmer, which became one of the foremost agricultural papers of the land. He also issued for a number of years The New England Farmer’s Almanac, 1828–36, which attained an extensive sale throughout New England. Here, in Boston, he passed the remaining days of his life, dying of apoplexy on November 11, 1837. The Massachusetts Agricultural Society erected a monument to his memory in Mount Auburn Cemetery. Fessenden, as Hemenway says, “Belongs to New Hampshire by birth, to Vermont by his education, and the larger part of his literary life, and by his last labors and death to Massachusetts”. He published many valuable and useful books during his busy career. But his chief distinction is, aside from his connection with agriculture, his rank as the first really great American satirist—the “American Butler”, (so-called by English critics), and the legitimate forerunner of Saxe and Holmes in this field, as of Lowell in the field of New England descriptive humor.
EULOGY ON THE TIMES (1800)
Thomas Green Fessenden
Let poets scrawl satirick rhymes,
And sketch the follies of the times,
With much caricaturing;
But I, a bon-ton bard, declare
A set of slanderers they are,
E’en past a Job’s enduring.
Let crabbed cyniks snarl away,
And pious parsons preach and pray
Against the vices reigning;
That mankind are so wicked grown,
Morality is scarcely known,
And true religion waning.
Societies, who vice suppress,
May make a rumpus; ne’ertheless,
Ours is the best of ages;
Such hum-drum folks our fathers were,
They could no more with us compare,
Than Hottentots with sages.
It puts the poet in a pet
To think of them, a vulgar set;
But we, thank God, are quality!
For we have found, this eighteenth century,
What ne’er was known before, I’ll venture ye,—
Religion’s no reality!
Tom Paine, and Godwin, both can tell
That there is no such thing as hell!
A doctrine mighty pleasant;
Your old-wives’ tales of a hereafter
Are things for ridicule and laughter,
While we enjoy the present.
We’ve nought to do but frisk about
At midnight ball and Sunday rout
And Bacchanalian revel;
To gamble, drink, and live at ease,
Our great and noble selves to please,
Nor care for man nor devil.
In these good times, with little pains,
And scarce a penny-worth of brains,
A man with great propriety—
With some small risk of being hung—
May cut a pretty dash among
The foremost in society.
Another Vermont poet—Selleck Osborn (born 1783; died 1826), about whom very little is known, but whose “Poems”, published in 1823, are mainly of this epoch—should here receive passing mention. He wrote, under the pseudonym of “Lorenzo” in the Hartford Mercury, and other papers, and his verse, like Fessenden’s, is of unusual interest and quality.
And Anthony Haswell (1756–1816) should also receive honorable mention. The Vermont Gazette, established by him at Bennington, June, 1783, was the most powerful newspaper in Vermont for many years, and his ballads are among the best of that early period.
(See John Spargo’s fine monograph, “Anthony Haswell, Printer, Patriot, Ballader”).
Thus we bring to a close the remarkable opening epoch of Early Vermont Minstrelsy. It was distinguished for the freshness and vigor of its spirit, and for the spontaneity and originality of its expression, as evidenced in the works of Rowley, Niles, Tyler and his Guilford School, and by the odes of Arnold and the humorous satires and characterizations of Fessenden.
The next epoch (extending roughly from 1812 to 1860) will exhibit the fruits of this pioneer era as brought forth in the no less remarkable outburst of song, in various parts of the state, before the dark clouds of civil war obscured the vision and quenched the spirit of our Green Mountain minstrelsy. Tyler and his “school” furnished a fit ground of preparation for the three major singers and the many secondary bards who are to distinguish this opening period. Eastman, Saxe and Lynch-Botta were to be worthy successors of the “Guilford School.”
TO ROYALL TYLER
James Elliot, Guilford
Oh, thou! my early and my constant friend;
In thee the fruits of early knowledge shine;
In thee the graces and the virtues blend—
A soul sincere, a feeling heart, are thine.
In thee has nature various powers displayed:
Art, eloquence and taste, alike to grace
The bar, the senate or the studious shade—
To wield the sword or tread the walks of peace.
On thee long may the rays of science fall,
And in thy life and writings greatly glow:
Long be thy useful life—and thine be all
The bliss that conscious virtue can bestow.
Be thine throughout life’s variegated year
The meed of genius and the poet’s bays;
And in thy autumn may bright suns appear
To gild the happy winter of thy days!