“Lorena” was Miss Ella Blocksom, of Zanesville, Ohio. She was a member of Mr. Webster’s church—the Universalist—also a leading member of the choir, with a beautiful and highly cultivated voice. She was as lovely in face and person as her voice was sweet and touching; and it was but natural that the fine-looking, intelligent young divine should be attracted to that face that was each Sunday opposite him and listened so interestedly to his preaching.
One describes her as “nineteen,” short in stature and petite, with blue eyes and light brown hair and features that took hold upon “the poetry of heaven.”
She was the sister-in-law of one of the “pillars of the church,” a successful manufacturer, and of course the preacher found he often must consult this brother about ecclesiastical matters and see his pretty, charming sister-in-law.
What real love affair ever ran smoothly? This one did not, for Lorena’s sister had better “game” for her to bring down than a poor, though handsome, intellectual preacher; so, like many another worldly-wise elder sister, she, after repeated efforts, made “Lorena” see that she and “Paul Vane,” as Mr. Webster called himself in one of his songs, must part.
On a certain cloudless Sabbath in May these two lovers walked after the morning service, to Hamline Hill and lingered until twilight was closing her wind in the west, and “Lorena” told “Paul Vane” farewell.
The next day she wrote him a letter, in which she said, “if we try, we may forget,” and he knew “’twas not thy woman’s heart that spoke,” but her sister’s through her.
Finding that this world was a blank world to him without “Lorena’s” loving look and smile, he resigned his charge, where, as a minister, he had been so successful and, as a lover, such a failure, and left for parts unknown.
Time went by and he was heard of in the West. He developed the “poetic fire,” and, in 1860, his song “Lorena,” appeared—one hundred months after his farewell to Ella Blocksom.
The song was almost famous before she realized it was a tribute to her from her old and loyal lover. She is accused of having no sentiment, or of being a “namby-pamby,” as she never wrote him one line of thanks for the song, or for his constancy to her, as he had a right to expect. Three years later, he wrote “Paul Vane”—the answer one would think a “Lorena” would have made:
“The years are creeping slowly by, dear Paul,