[We thank Mr. Maddison and heartily agree with him.—Ed.]
Editor Trotwood’s:
In your March issue, reprinting the familiar poem, “The Old Canoe,” which the anthology-makers so persistently ascribe to the late Gen. Albert Pike, you say: “Like many other good poems, it was, perhaps, the only one some poet wrote, and, never thinking it would be immortal, or that it had any special merit, failed to sign his name to it.... Its authorship has never before, perhaps, been publicly corrected.”
Both these statements are erroneous.
Nine years ago, when Miss Jennie Thornley Clarke’s “Songs of the South” was published, it contained this poem, marked “anonymous.” As I chanced to know its real authorship, and hence knew that it lacked several hundreds of miles, geographically speaking, of being a “song of the South,” I sent a communication to the New York Critic, which was printed in its issue of March 13, 1897, giving the facts. I have several times since publicly corrected the statement that General Pike was the author of the poem. The actual author was Miss Emily Rebecca Page, who was born in Bradford, Vt., in 1834, and died in Chelsea, Mass., in 1862. “The Old Canoe” was written in 1849, and appeared in the Portland Transcript in that year. It was not by any means “the only one the poet wrote.” Miss Page was a voluminous writer of both verse and prose, having been a constant contributor to many New England periodicals. She was later assistant editor of “Gleason’s Pictorial” and “The Flag of Our Union,” two Boston literary publications which were very popular forty or fifty years ago. She also published several volumes of poetry.
R. L. C. WHITE.
Nashville, February 26, 1906.
[We knew there must be a history for this poem, and we thank Dr. White for his letter.—Ed.]