| When last we met, dear reader, we were exploring two gambling poems by the Belle of Amherst (HERE), and the only thing at stake was her soul! Two high rollers, Mable Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, placed their bets on a pair of titles for the poems, “Rouge Et Noir” (for “Soul, wilt thou toss again?”) and “Rouge Gagne” (for “’Tis so much joy! ’Tis so much joy!”), and pit boss Cristanne Miller -- in her book Emily Dickinson Poems as She Preserved Them -- made the following observation: “TWH titles this poem ‘Rouge Gagne,’ after a poem by Julia Ward Howe about a woman gambling for love; Howe’s poem was not published until about six years after ED copied this one.” |  |
Yet another gambling poem? And written by the woman who proclaimed, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord”? That was a long shot, for sure!
Below: Thomas Wentworth Higginson & Julia Ward Howe starred in "The Las Vegas Story," inspiration to the film, "Viva Las Vegas." I had only a supporting role in the Higginson-Howe flick, but starred as "that 'Go-G0' guy" in the remake!
Below: Thomas Wentworth Higginson & Julia Ward Howe starred in "The Las Vegas Story," inspiration to the film, "Viva Las Vegas." I had only a supporting role in the Higginson-Howe flick, but starred as "that 'Go-G0' guy" in the remake!
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As a novice card sharp* myself, though, I wagered that I could win big and find Howe's poem to share in today’s post – but it was a risky game of chance!
*Card sharp came first in the late 1800s. It comes from the old slang word "sharp" or "sharper," which meant a cheat or swindler. Card shark became popular later because people associated aggressive gambling with the predatory nature of a shark.
Imma be honest: I first thought that Higginson had only been inspired by Howe’s gambling poem to title Dickinson’s work; I didn’t realize that Howe had actually named her own poem “Rouge Gagne.” Therefore, when I first set out to find Howe’s poem, I ran a Google search for a “Julia Ward Howe poem about a woman gambling,” and I got this:
My trust with Google’s AI Overview is VERY LOW, so I rephrased my question and got this:
I checked the Poetry Foundation site, and it included two selections from Lyrics of the Street (below left); however, when I researched that particular work, I discovered that it was actually a six-part poem published in The Atlantic between from May 1862 through September of 1863 (below right) – so NOT a work written “six years” after Dickinson’s poem.
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Hmm…could the mystery poem have been “Coquette et Froide” (on the PF site above)? Nope – that one was written in 1854 – so five years before Dickinson’s poem.
Well, I kept shuffling the cards, tossing unwanted poems into the discard pile, and re-dealing my search parameters, and lo and behold – I finally hit the jackpot! I found Howe’s poem, but it was NOT in the six-poem cycle Lyrics of the Street. No, it was from a later work – published about six years after Dickinson’s poem, just as Cristanne Miller had said – and it was called Later Lyrics. There in the section “Poems of Study and Experience” was “Rouge Gagne":
Well, I kept shuffling the cards, tossing unwanted poems into the discard pile, and re-dealing my search parameters, and lo and behold – I finally hit the jackpot! I found Howe’s poem, but it was NOT in the six-poem cycle Lyrics of the Street. No, it was from a later work – published about six years after Dickinson’s poem, just as Cristanne Miller had said – and it was called Later Lyrics. There in the section “Poems of Study and Experience” was “Rouge Gagne":
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An online copy of the complete book, Later Lyrics, is HERE.
Below: Julia Ward Howe's six-part Lyrics of the Street
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