IRWIN RUSSELL
His father, Dr. William Russell, who had also remained in Port Gibson during the scourge, staying nobly at his post of duty, sank under the strain and died.
This left young Russell entirely dependent upon himself. Joel Chandler Harris says: “Russell always had warm personal friends from whom he could command everything that affection could suggest.” Going to New York, he took some literary matter to Charles Scribner’s Sons, who received him with great personal kindness and encouraged him to adopt the profession of authorship.
The climate, however, was too severe to allow him to work in New York and he fell ill with a low fever. He determined to return to the South and before he was quite recovered, set out to work his passage on a boat bound for New Orleans. He arrived in port very weak and almost penniless, but secured employment on the Times, and with characteristic disregard of health or personal comfort, threw himself, heart and soul into his work.
Although young, Russell gave remarkable evidence of training in the best of literature. He gave his work hard, painstaking study, and his insight into the peculiarities and pathos and poetry of the negro character was truly wonderful.
Thomas Nelson Page says: “Personally I owe him much. It was the light of his genius, shining through his dialect poems that led my feet in the direction I have since tried to follow.”
Dr. C. A. Smith says: “The appearance of ‘Christmas Night in the Quarters’ meant that Southern literature was now become a true reproduction of Southern conditions.”
Joel Chandler Harris says: “Irwin Russell’s negro character studies rise to the level of what, in a large way, we term literature. I do not know where there could be a more perfect representation of negro character than his operetta, ‘Christmas Night in the Quarters.’ It is inimitable.”
Beginning with the arrival of the negroes who are coming to “Uncle Johnny Booker’s Ball,” this poem says: