Oh, God of dreams and sleep,
Dreamless they sleep—'tis we, the sleepless, dream,
Defend us while our vigil dark we keep,
Which knows no morning beam!
Bloom, gentle spring-tide flowers—
Sing, gentle winds, above each holy grave,
While we, the women of a desolate land,
Weep for the true and brave.
Memphis, Tennessee.
[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)]