DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Your object is not to tell what you do on any walk that you choose to take, nor is it to tell what you see. You are not to try to inform people concerning facts. You are to give them pleasing impressions that come to you as you meditate on something that has changed.
In order to do this you must, first of all, have a real experience, both in visiting a place and in feeling emotion. Then you must make a plan for your writing, so that you will take your reader just as easily and just as naturally as possible over the ground that you wish him to visit in imagination.
Make many allusions to people, to books, to events, and to anything else that will bring back the past vividly. Make that past appear in all its charm. You can do this best if your emotion is real, and if you pay considerable attention to your style of writing. Use many adjectives and adjective expressions. Above all, try to find words that will be highly suggestive.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Henry James (1843-1916). An American novelist noted for strikingly analytical novels. His boyhood home was on Washington Square.
[66] Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Perhaps the most widely known American poet and short story writer. The Raven is the best-known poem by any American poet. Poe wrote the poem while he was living in New York City.
[67] Washington Irving (1783-1859). The genial American essayist, biographer and historian. He spent much of his time in New York City.
[68] James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). The first great American novelist, best known for his famous “Leatherstocking Tales.”
[69] William Dean Howells (1837-1920). A celebrated modern novelist, noted for his realistic pictures of life.
[70] F. Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). An American civil engineer, artist and short story writer. Colonel Carter of Cartersville is one of his best-known books.
[71] O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) (1867-1910). A popular American short story writer, noted for originality of style and treatment.
[72] “Windows in Thrums”. The title of a novel by James Matthew Barrie (1860.—) is A Window in Thrums, Thrums being an imaginary village in Scotland, inhabited principally by humble but devout weavers.
[73] Sir Richard Whittington (1358-1423). Three times Lord Mayor of London; the hero of the legend of Whittington and His Cat.
[74] Petrus Stuyvesant (1592-1672). The last of the Dutch governors of New York. In 1664 he surrendered New York to the English. His farm was called “The Bouwerij”.
[75] Hamlet. While the date of Hamlet can not be told with certainty it is reasonably sure that Shakespeare wrote his version of an older play about 1592.
[76] Rialto. A celebrated bridge in Venice, Italy. It has a series of steps.
[77] Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886). An American lawyer, at one time Governor of New York. As candidate for the Presidency he won 250,000 more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, but lost the election in the Electoral College.
[78] John Jacob Astor (1763-1848). A German immigrant who, through the founding of a great fur business, established the Astor fortune. He bequeathed $400,000 for the Astor Library.
[79] James Lenox (1800-1880). An American philanthropist who founded the great Lenox Library.
[80] John Tyler (1790-1862). Tenth President of the United States.
[81] James Monroe (1758-1831). Fifth President of the United States; originator of the “Monroe Doctrine” policy designed to prevent foreign interference in affairs in North or South America.
[82] Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). A great American statesman and financier. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr (1756-1836), an American politician.
[83] The Bodleian Library. The great library of Oxford University, England, named after Sir Thomas Bodley, one of its founders.
[84] Magdalen College. One of the colleges of Oxford University, England. It is noted for an especially beautiful tower.
[85] Clement C. Moore (1779-1863). A wealthy American scholar and teacher who wrote the poem, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas.
[86] Edwin Forrest (1806-1872). A great American actor, noted for his rendition of Shakespeare.
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR[87]
By BRANDER MATTHEWS
(1852—). One of the most influential American critics and essayists, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University. He was one of the founders of The Authors' Club, and The Players, and a leader in organizing the American Copyright League. He is a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is the author of works that illustrate many types of literature, including novels, short stories, essays, poems and plays. Among his books are: A Story of the Sea, and Other Stories; Pen and Ink; Americanisms and Briticisms; The Story of a Story; Vignettes of Manhattan; His Father's Son; Aspects of Fiction; Essays in English; The American of the Future.
When companionable people meet in pleasant converse, whether before the open fire at home, or in chance gatherings at any place, they tell one another about the interesting experiences that they have had or the discoveries that they have made. If you could place on paper what any one of them says, except in narration, and if you could, at the same time, show the feeling and the spirit of the speaker,—if you could in some way transfer the personality of the speaker to the paper,—you would, in all probability, produce an essay.
The author of The Songs of the Civil War has learned some interesting facts concerning our national songs. He communicates those facts as he would to a company of friends, indicating throughout his remarks his own interests and beliefs. His words are the pleasant words of friendship,—not the formal giving of information that characterizes most encyclopedia articles. That part of his essay which is given here is sufficient to indicate the charm of his presentation.
A national hymn is one of the things which cannot be made to order. No man has ever yet sat him down and taken up his pen and said, “I will write a national hymn,” and composed either words or music which a nation was willing to take for its own. The making of the song of the people is a happy accident, not to be accomplished by taking thought. It must be the result of fiery feeling long confined, and suddenly finding vent in burning words or moving strains. Sometimes the heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the song does not suspect the abiding value of his work; he has wrought unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result of the conjunction of the hour and the man. Monarch cannot command it, and even poets are often powerless to achieve it. No one of the great national hymns has been written by a great poet. But for his single immortal lyric, neither the author of the “Marseillaise”[88] nor the author of the “Wacht am Rhein”[89] would have his line in the biographical dictionaries. But when a song has once taken root in the hearts of a people, time itself is powerless against it. The flat and feeble “Partant pour la Syrie,” which a filial fiat made the hymn of imperial France, had to give way to the strong and virile notes of the “Marseillaise,” when need was to arouse the martial spirit of the French in 1870. The noble measures of “God Save the King,” as simple and dignified a national hymn as any country can boast, lift up the hearts of the English people; and the brisk tune of the “British Grenadiers” has swept away many a man into the ranks of the recruiting regiment. The English are rich in war tunes and the pathetic “Girl I Left Behind Me” encourages and sustains both those who go to the front and those who remain at home. Here in the United States we have no “Marseillaise,” no “God Save the King,” no “Wacht am Rhein”; we have but “Yankee Doodle” and the “Star-spangled Banner.” More than one enterprising poet, and more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as yet no one has succeeded. “Yankee Doodle” we got during the revolution, and the “Star-spangled Banner” was the gift of the War of 1812; from the Civil War we have received at least two war songs which, as war songs simply, are stronger and finer than either of these—“John Brown's Body” and “Marching Through Georgia.”
Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth but little trace is now to be detected in literature except by special students. In most cases neither words nor music have had vitality enough to survive a quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two things only survive, one Southern and the other Northern; one a war-cry in verse, the other a martial tune: one is the lyric “My Maryland” and the other is the marching song “John Brown's Body.” The origin and development of the latter, the rude chant to which a million of the soldiers of the Union kept time, is uncertain and involved in dispute. The history of the former may be declared exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did the deed—for the making of a war song is of a truth a deed at arms—I am enabled to state fully the circumstances under which it was written, set to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the South.
“My Maryland” was written by Mr. James R. Randall, a native of Baltimore, and now residing in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a professor of English literature and the classics in Poydras College at Pointe Coupee, on the Faussee Riviere, in Louisiana, about seven miles from the Mississippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the New Orleans Delta the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. “This account excited me greatly,” Mr. Randall wrote in answer to my request for information; “I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my mind. About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of 'My Maryland.' I remember that the idea appeared to first take shape as music in the brain—some wild air that I cannot now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be called a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect. I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my name with that of my native State, if not 'with my land's language'. But I never expected to do this with one single, supreme effort, and no one was more surprised than I was at the widespread and instantaneous popularity of the lyric I had been so strangely stimulated to write.” Mr. Randall read the poem the next morning to the college boys, and at their suggestion sent it to the Delta, in which it was first printed, and from which it was copied into nearly every Southern journal. “I did not concern myself much about it, but very soon, from all parts of the country, there was borne to me, in my remote place of residence, evidence that I had made a great hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the Confederacy, the song would survive it.”
Published in the last days of April, 1861, when every eye was fixed on the border States, the stirring stanzas of the Tyrtæan bard[90] appeared in the very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat in the minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it form, and held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped in the ear of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song, in which all may see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own thought was shapeless and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to be the instrument through which the South spoke. By a natural reaction his burning lines helped to fire the Southern heart. To do their work well, his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike the authors of the “Star-spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise,” the author of “My Maryland” had not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It was left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric the musical wings it needed to enable it to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To the courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Cary, and now the wife of Professor H. Newell Martin, of Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted for a picturesque description of the marriage of the words to the music, and of the first singing of the song before the Southern troops.
The house of Mrs. Martin's father was the headquarters for the Southern sympathizers of Baltimore. Correspondence, money, clothing, supplies of all kinds went thence through the lines to the young men of the city who had joined the Confederate army. “The enthusiasm of the girls who worked and of the 'boys' who watched for their chance to slip through the lines to Dixie's land found vent and inspiration in such patriotic songs as could be made or adapted to suit our needs. The glee club was to hold its meeting in our parlors one evening early in June, and my sister, Miss Jenny Cary, being the only musical member of the family, had charge of the program on the occasion. With a school-girl's eagerness to score a success, she resolved to secure some new and ardent expression of feelings that by this time were wrought up to the point of explosion. In vain she searched through her stock of songs and airs—nothing seemed intense enough to suit her. Aroused by her tone of despair, I came to the rescue with the suggestion that she should adapt the words of 'Maryland, my Maryland,' which had been constantly on my lips since the appearance of the lyric a few days before in the South. I produced the paper and began declaiming the verses. 'Lauriger Horatius!'[91] she exclaimed, and in a flash the immortal song found voice in the stirring air so perfectly adapted to it. That night, when her contralto voice rang out the stanzas, the refrain rolled forth from every throat present without pause or preparation; and the enthusiasm communicated itself with such effect to a crowd assembled beneath our open windows as to endanger seriously the liberties of the party.”
“Lauriger Horatius” had long been a favorite college song, and it had been introduced into the Cary household by Mr. Burton N. Harrison, then a Yale student. The air to which it is sung is used also for a lovely German lyric, “Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,” which Longfellow has translated “O Hemlock Tree.” The transmigration of tunes is too large and fertile a subject for me to do more here than refer to it. The taking of the air of a jovial college song to use as the setting of a fiery war-lyric may seem strange and curious, but only to those who are not familiar with the adventures and transformations a tune is often made to undergo. Hopkinson's[92] “Hail Columbia!” for example, was written to the tune of the “President's March,” just as Mrs. Howe's[93] “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was written to “John Brown's Body.” The “Wearing of the Green,” of the Irishman, is sung to the same air as the “Benny Havens, O!” of the West-Pointer. The “Star-spangled Banner” has to make shift with the second-hand music of “Anacreon in Heaven,” while our other national air, “Yankee Doodle,” uses over the notes of an old English nursery rhyme, “Lucy Locket,” once a personal lampoon in the days of the “Beggars' Opera,”[94] and now surviving in the “Baby's Opera” of Mr. Walter Crane.[95] “My Country, 'tis of Thee,” is set to the truly British tune of “God Save the King,” the origin of which is doubtful, as it is claimed by the French and the Germans as well as the English. In the hour of battle a war-tune is subject to the right of capture, and, like the cannon taken from the enemy, it is turned against its maker.