[DANIEL HENRY HOLMES]
Daniel Henry Holmes is, with the possible exceptions of Theodore O'Hara and Madison Cawein, the foremost lyric poet Kentucky can rightfully claim, although he happened to be born at New York City, July 16, 1851; and that single fact is the only flaw in Kentucky's fee simple title to his fame. His father, Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, was a native of Indiana; his mother was an Englishwoman. Daniel Henry Holmes, Senior, settled at New Orleans when a young man as a merchant; but a year after the birth of Daniel Henry Junior—as the future poet always signed himself while his father lived—or in 1852, he purchased an old colonial house back of Covington, Kentucky, as a summer place for his family, and called it Holmesdale. So Daniel Henry Junior Holmes became a warm-weather Kentuckian when but one year old; and he spent the following nine summers at Holmesdale, returning each fall to New Orleans for the winter. When the Civil War began his father, whose sympathies were entirely Southern, removed his family to Europe, where eight years were spent in Tours and Paris. In 1869, at the age of eighteen years, Daniel Henry Junior, with his family, returned to the United States, and entered his father's business at New Orleans. His dislike for commercialism in any form became so great that his father wisely permitted him to return to Holmesdale, which was then in charge of an uncle, and to study law at Cincinnati. In the same year that he returned to Holmesdale (1869), the house was rebuilt; and it remains intact to-day. His family shortly afterwards joined him, and Holmesdale became the manor-place of his people for many years. Holmes was graduated in law in 1872, and he practiced in a desultory manner for some years. In 1883 he married Miss Rachel Gaff, of Cincinnati, daughter of one of the old and wealthy families of that city. He and his bride spent the year of their marriage at Holmesdale, and, in 1884, went abroad.
Holmes's first and finest book of poems, written at Covington, was entitled Under a Fool's Cap: Songs (London, 1884), and contained one hundred and forty-four pages in an edition that did not exceed five hundred copies. The poet whimsically placed his boyhood name of "Daniel Henry Junior" upon the title-page. This little volume is one of the most unique things ever done by an American hand. Holmes took twenty-four old familiar nursery jingles, which are printed in black-face type at the top of the lyrics relating to them, and he worked them over and turned them over and did everything but parody them; and in only one of them—Margery Daw—did he discard the original metres. He employed "three methods of dealing with his nursery rhymes; he either made them the basis of a story, or he took them as an allegory and gave the 'modern instance,' or he simply continued and amplified. The last method is, perhaps, the most effective and successful of all," the poems done in this manner being far and away the finest in the book. Holmes spent the seven years subsequent to the appearance of Under a Fool's Cap, in France, Italy, and Germany. In 1890 his father gave him Holmesdale. He returned to Kentucky, and the remaining years of his life were spent at Covington, save several winters abroad.
Holmes's second book of lyrics, A Pedlar's Pack (New York, 1906), which was largely written at Holmesdale, contained many exceedingly clever and charming poems, but, with the exception of some fine sonnets, A Pedlar's Pack is verse, while Under a Fool's Cap is genuine poetry. Holmes was an accomplished musician, and his Hempen Homespun Songs (Cincinnati, 1906), mostly written in Dresden, contained fourteen songs set to music, of which four had words by the poet. Of the other ten songs, three were by W. M. Thackeray, two by Alfred de Musset, and Austin Dobson, Henri Chenevers, W. E. Henley, Edgar Allan Poe, and Alfred Tennyson were represented by having one of their songs set to music. This was his only publication in the field of music, and his third and final book. Holmes's last years were spent at the old house in Covington, devoted to arranging his large library, collected from the bookshops of the world, and to his music. His life was one of endless ease, the universal pursuit of wealth being neither necessary nor engaging. He had lived parts of more than forty years of his life at Holmesdale when he left it for the last time in the fall of 1908 to spend the winter at Hot Springs, Virginia, where he died suddenly on December 14, 1908. He had hardly found his grave at Cincinnati before lovers of poetry on both sides of the Atlantic arose and demanded word of his life and works. This demand has been in part supplied by Mr. Thomas B. Mosher, the Maine publisher, who has exquisitely reprinted Under a Fool's Cap, and written this beautiful tribute to the poet's memory:
"One vital point of interest should be restated: the man who took these old tags of nursery rhymes and fashioned out of them some of the tenderest lyrics ever written was an American by birth and in the doing of this unique thing did it perfectly. That he never repeated these first fine careless raptures is nothing to his discredit. That he did accomplish what he set himself to do with an originality and a proper regard to the quality of his work rather than its quantity is the essential fact; and in his ability to touch a vibrating chord in the hearts of all who have come across these lyrics we feel that the mission of Daniel Henry Holmes was fulfilled both in letter and in spirit."
Bibliography. The Hesperian Tree, edited by J. J. Piatt (Cincinnati, 1900); The Cornhill Magazine (August, 1909), review of Under a Fool's Cap, by Norman Roe; The Bibelot (May, 1910); Under a Fool's Cap (Portland, Maine, 1910; 1911), lovely reprints of the 1884 edition, with Mr. Roe's review and foreword by Mr. Mosher; letters from Mrs. Holmes, the poet's widow, who has recently reopened Holmesdale.
BELL HORSES
[From Under a Fool's Cap (London, 1884)]
Bell horses, Bell horses,
What time of day?
One o'clock! Two o'clock!
Three! and away.