My posts just before Christmas centered on poems by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Aldrich was an editor at “The Atlantic Monthly” in the 1890s, and in his review of early editions of Emily Dickinson, he referred to her poetry as “poetic chaos.” He predicted “oblivion” for her.
| I wrote about Aldrich after I’d come upon a rather lengthy list of 19th century American poets. The plan was to explore and write about some of these unknown men and women of letters selected at random, and I started with TBA because I knew I recognized his name. Yep, soon into a bit of research, I remembered that in a past post I had focused on him and his hyper-critical remarks on Dickinson. I read and reviewed a handful of poems by Aldrich just before my holiday break, and I’m now ready to move on to other names from the list of poets. Up next: Charles Dickinson. I suspect you can guess why. When I saw the name, I had to find out if there were any connection to Emily Dickinson, and… Turns out “no.” Dickinson was not a direct relative to the Dickinsons of Amherst. Though they share a common surname, they belong to different branches of the Dickinson family, and there is no close familial link to Emily's immediate line that I could uncover. |  |
Surprisingly, Dickinson’s bio on Wikipedia states that he was a lawyer, diplomat, and newspaper editor, and it does not list “poet.” However, it then states, “he wrote ‘The Children,’ which Hezekiah Butterworth called the second most popular American poem and Rossiter Johnson ranked as one of the world's most famous poems.”
Well, there’s quite a bit to unpack there, no? First of all, who the hell was Hezekiah Butterworth? Second, what did Butterworth consider the first most popular American poem? Finally, who was Rossiter Johnson?
I’ll get to the names Hezekiah Butterworth and Rossiter Johnson in future posts, and I suspect I’ll never quite know which poem Butterworth believed to be the most popular American poem, but I’ve provided a link below to Dickinson’s “The Children.” Interestingly, there’s a bit of scandal associated with the poem. For a time, it was widely believed to have been written by Charles Dickens when the poem was found in the late author's desk. However, when Dickinson published The Children and Other Verses in 1889, he included a letter from Dickens' son Charles Dickens, Jr., where he insisted the poem was not written by his father.
Well, there’s quite a bit to unpack there, no? First of all, who the hell was Hezekiah Butterworth? Second, what did Butterworth consider the first most popular American poem? Finally, who was Rossiter Johnson?
I’ll get to the names Hezekiah Butterworth and Rossiter Johnson in future posts, and I suspect I’ll never quite know which poem Butterworth believed to be the most popular American poem, but I’ve provided a link below to Dickinson’s “The Children.” Interestingly, there’s a bit of scandal associated with the poem. For a time, it was widely believed to have been written by Charles Dickens when the poem was found in the late author's desk. However, when Dickinson published The Children and Other Verses in 1889, he included a letter from Dickens' son Charles Dickens, Jr., where he insisted the poem was not written by his father.
Charles Dickinson's poem "The Children is below and linked HERE. I’ve paired it with a rather humorous take on the end of the school day by Emily Dickinson. Which poem do you think more accurately depicts children at the end of a school day? LOL.
 | A link to Charles Dickinson's collection of poems, The Children and Other Verses is HERE. It’s very saccharin-y sentimental and with more than a bit of excessive religious fervor. Much too misty-eyed piety for me.  |
Finally, here’s an odd bit of trivia associated with Charles Dickinson: In the 1896 presidential election, Dickinson was a presidential elector for William McKinley. In 1897, McKinley appointed him consul-general of Istanbul, in the Ottoman Empire. In 1902, he negotiated what has been often dubbed "America's first modern hostage crisis,” the “Miss. Stone Affair,” after American missionary Ellen Maria Stone and Bulgarian missionary Katerina Cilka had been kidnapped by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.
| Below: A vintage postcard depicting the kidnapping of Stone and Cilka.  | Below: The kidnappers, Sava Mihaylov, Yane Sandanski, Krastyo Asenov and Hristo Chernopeev.  |
RSS Feed
