CHAPTER VII
HOSEA BIGLOW, YANKEE HUMORIST
In December, 1844, Lowell felt that his income from his literary work, though very small and precarious, was sufficient to justify him in marrying, and accordingly he was united to Miss White. She was delicate in health, and after their marriage the couple went to Philadelphia, where they spent the winter in lodgings. Lowell became a regular contributor to the Freeman, an antislavery paper once edited by Whittier. From this he derived a very small but steady income; and the next year he was engaged to write every week for the Anti-Slavery Standard on a yearly salary of five hundred dollars. This connection he maintained for the next four years.
In June, 1846, the editor of the Boston Courier, a weekly paper well known in the "Hub" for its literary character even to this day, received a strange communication. It was a letter signed "Ezekiel Biglow," enclosing a poem written by his son Hosea. This is the way the letter began:
Jaylem, June, 1846.
Mister Eddyter:—Our Hosea wuz down to Boston last week, and he see a cruetin Sarjunt a struttin round as popler as a hen with 1 chicking, with 2 fellers a drummin and fifin arter him like all nater, the sarjunt he thout Hosea hedn't gut his i teeth cut cos he looked a kindo's though he 'd jest cum down, so he cal'lated to hook him in, but Hosy woodn't take none o his sarse for all he hed much as 20 Rooster's tales stuck onto his hat and eenamost enuf brass a bobbin up and down on his shoulders and figureed onto his coat and trousis, let alone wut nater hed sot in his featers, to make a 6 pounder out on.
The letter was rather a long one, and closed thus. Referring to the verses enclosed, the writer says:—
If you print em I wish you'd jest let folks know who hosy's father is, cos my ant Kesiah used to say it's nater to be curus ses she, she aint livin though and he's a likely kind o lad.
Ezekiel Biglow.
The poem itself began with this stanza:
Thrash away, you'll hev to rattle
On them kittle-drums o' yourn,—
'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle
Thet is ketched with mouldy corn;
Put in stiff, you fifer feller,
Let folks see how spry you be,—
Guess you'll toot till you are yeller
'Fore you git ahold o' me!
The letter and the poem were printed together in the Courier, and immediately were the talk of the town. You will remember that in 1846 the war with Mexico was just beginning, and many people were opposed to it as the work of "jingo" politicians, controlled in some degree by the slavery power. Southern slaveholders wished to increase the territory of the United States in such a way as to enlarge the territory where slavery would be lawful. The antislavery people of New England were violently opposed to the war, and this poem by the Yankee Hosea Biglow immediately became popular, because it put in a humorous, common-sense way what everybody else had been saying with deadly earnest.
Charles Sumner saw the common sense of the poem, but didn't see the fun in the bad spelling. Said he, "This Yankee poet has the true spirit. He puts the case admirably. I wish, however, he could have used good English." Evidently Sumner did not suspect that so cultured and polished a poet as James Russell Lowell was the author of a stanza like this:
'Wut 's the use o' meetin'-goin'
Every Sabbath, wet or dry,
Ef it's right to go amowin'
Feller-men like oats and rye?
I dunno but wut it's pooty
Trainin' round in bobtail coats.—
But it's curus Christian dooty,
This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats.
The fact is, however, Lowell had written all this, even the letter with bad spelling purporting to come from Ezekiel Biglow. He was deeply interested in the antislavery cause, in good politics and sound principles; yet he saw that it would be useless for him to get up and preach against what he did not like. There were plenty of other earnest, serious-minded men like Garrison and Whittier who were fighting against the evil in the straightforward, blunt way. Lowell was as interested as they in having the wrongs righted; but he was more cool-headed than the rest. He considered the matter. A joke, he said to himself, will carry the crowd ten times as quickly as a serious protest; and people will listen to one of their own number, a common, every-day, sensible fellow with a spark of wit in him, where they would go away bored by polished and cultured writing full of Latin quotations. This is how he came to begin the Biglow papers. Their instant success proved that he was quite right.
Of course it was not long before shrewd people began to see that this fine humor, with its home-thrusts, was not in reality written by a country bumpkin. Through the rough dialect and homely way of stating the case, there shone the fine intellect of a cultivated and skillful writer. The Post guessed that James Russell Lowell was the real author. This was regarded only as a rumor, however, and many people scouted the idea that a young poet, whose books sold only in small numbers and were known only to literary people, could have written anything as good as this.
"I have heard it demonstrated in the pauses of a concert," wrote Lowell afterward, "that I was utterly incompetent to have written anything of the kind."
It was early in this same summer of 1846 that Lowell made his contract to write regularly for the Anti-Slavery Standard; and he soon began sending the "Biglow" poems to that paper instead of to the Courier.
The most popular of the whole series of poems by Hosea Biglow was the one on John P. Robinson. Robinson was a worthy gentleman who happened to come out publicly on the side of a political wire-puller. Immediately Hosea caught up his name and wrote a comic poem on voting for a bad candidate for office. Looked at in that light, the poem applies just as well to political candidates to-day as it did then. Here are a few stanzas of the poem. You will want to turn to "Lowell's Poetical Works" and read the whole piece.
WHAT MR. ROBINSON THINKS.
Guvener B. is a sensible man;
He stays to his home an' looks arter his folks;
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can,
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
My! aint it terrible? Wut shall we du?
We can't never choose him o' course—thet's flat;
Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't you?)
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all that,
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man:
He's ben on all sides thet give places or pelf;
But consistency still wuz a part of his plan—
He's been true to one party—an' thet is himself;
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
Gineral C. he goes in fer the war;
He don't vally principle more'n an old cud;
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer,
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood?
So John P.
Robinson he
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C.
The side of our country must ollers be took,
An' President Polk, you know, he is our country.
An' the angel that writes all our sins in a book
Puts the debit to him, an' to us the per contry;
And John P.
Robinson he
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T.
There is a story that Mr. Robinson couldn't go anywhere after this poem was published without hearing some one humming or reciting,
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
School children shouted it everywhere, people on the street repeated it as they met, and the funny rhyme was heard even in polite drawing-rooms, amid roars of laughter. Mr. Robinson went abroad, but scarcely had he landed in Liverpool before he heard a child crooning over to himself,
Fer John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B.
In Genoa, Italy, it was a parody, telling what John P.—Robinson he—would do down in Judee.