George Henry Boker

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George Henry Boker

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SOURCE: Krutch, Joseph Wood. “George Henry Boker.” Sewanee Review 25, no. 4 (October 1917): 457-68.

[In the following essay, Krutch maintains that Boker deserves a far more prominent place in the history of American drama than is generally accorded him.]

When the history of the American drama comes to be written, there will emerge from obscurity no man of more interest to the general reader than the Philadephian, George Henry Boker; for although he exerted little influence on his contemporaries his plays especially possess a real intrinsic merit. In the first half of the nineteenth century, romantic tragedy was the type to which the best native American drama belonged, and the work of Boker represents the climax in the development of this form. In spite of this fact he has not, for some reason, attracted biographical writers, and a Philadelphia newspaper man complained that if Mr. Boker had been born in Boston, his posthumous fame would have been aided, by this time, by at least a two-volume biography. Nor was this the only occasion when Philadelphia has been rebuked for the neglect of the author. Mr. T. B. Aldrich once remarked, apropos of a compliment paid Mr. Boker, that he was glad to hear of Philadelphia's “treating one of its own distinguished men of letters as if he had been a distinguished man of letters from somewhere else.” Even if we are inclined to absolve his native city from blame, the fact remains that a biographical and critical treatment of Boker is still a desideratum.

In some respects, Philadelphia was a more important centre in the development of the early American drama than New York, and it was with the former city that Boker was all his life closely associated. His forefathers, being Quakers, were naturally attracted there when they first came from England, and by 1823, the year of the poet's birth, the family was already established as one of the most prominent in the city. His father, Charles Boker, won local fame by the way in which he carried the Gerard National Bank through the troublous years of 1838-40, when specie payments were suspended, and finally placed it on its feet again. He thus bequeathed to his son a very considerable fortune and the best of social positions. The career of the young man was accordingly watched with great interest, but, owing to his very prominence, he was destined to have the same experience which prophets are said to have, for he was slow in persuading his fellow-townsmen to give him the kind of recognition which he deserved. Charles Boker died in 1857 and left, besides the poet, a son who was a Philadelphia physician.

Young Boker was brought up in the quiet and dreamy atmosphere which surrounded his native city at that time, but which has been since swept away by the cosmopolitanism that has taken possession of it. His youth fell in a period when, as one writer has described it, “young ladies worked their samplers, warbled Tom Moore's melodies, and fainted on the slightest provocation.” He attended a school kept by Joseph Walker in an old house on Eighth Street, and had for one of his closest friends Charles Godfrey Leland, afterwards well known as the author of the Hans Breitmann Ballads. These two continued friends throughout their schoolboy and college days, and the latter, in after years, wrote something of his friendship with young Boker, noting particularly his constant attendance on places of amusement and the awe which his familiarity with actors occasioned his companion. Both were exceedingly fond of poetry, and, between them, knew Percy's Reliques and Don Quixote almost by heart. Even in his school days, Boker had attained a reputation for being distingué and was rallied on the nil admirari air which he adopted. All through life he stood out as a finely polished gentleman, characterized by a certain aloofness and by a marked degree of reserve. He went to Princeton and acquired much the same reputation there as he had enjoyed at school. He was, moreover, regarded at this time as the college poet, as also preëminently the college “swell.” He lived in what was then considered unexampled style, although that was far from meaning what it would to-day. Princeton was in the hands of the strict Presbyterians, and that the standard of luxury there was not particularly high is sufficiently shown by the fact that it was a distinction of Boker's room to have been adorned by a carpet. He was also fitted for the rôle just indicated by his handsome physique which he retained throughout life. Leland reports that he was the very counterpart of a bust of Byron, but one is inclined to ascribe this impression more to the fact that Byron was Boker's ideal than to any real likeness, for in later life he was said to resemble Hawthorne greatly and his pictures furnish abundant proof of the justice of this observation. At nineteen he graduated from Princeton, and four or five years later received the Master's degree, which Princeton was then accustomed to award to all its graduates who received honors in letters. Shortly after graduation he married Miss Julia Riggs of Maryland, and together they went to Europe. Not long after their return their first son, George, was born. They had only one other child, also a boy, who died early. Mrs. Boker was a charming woman, excellently suited to be the wife of a man of Boker's social position.

Boker made his first appearance as a professional author with a small volume called The Lesson of Life, and Other Poems, which was published by Appleton in 1848. It is a youthful work, devoid of individuality, the pieces being smooth but conventional and unimpassioned. They seem a strange performance for one who was supposed to be a particular admirer of Byron, since there is in them no spirit of revolt and nothing which, by the wildest stretch of imagination, could he called Byronic. As a matter of fact, a certain conservatism is evident in much of Boker's work. He later wrote better poetry than anything that appeared in this volume, but he never reached the same excellence in the lyric which he attained in dramatic poetry; his art was primarily objective.

In the same year that The Lesson of Life appeared, his first tragedy, Calynos, was published in Philadelphia, and in the following year it was acted at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. This drama marks a great advance over Boker's previous work, and with it he emerges as a man of far greater powers than were even remotely hinted at in the poetry which he had previously printed. Calynos is a poetic tragedy filled with passion and fire. As time went on, Boker developed a greater power of subtle characterization, but in this, his first play, he already shows, in a marked degree, two of his most striking characteristics: ability to tell a highly colored story effectively, and a remarkable aptness of phrase which he utilized for both tragic and comic effect. The scene of the story is laid in mediæval Spain and the events turn on the discovery by the wife of Lord Calynos that there flows in his veins some of the hated Moorish blood. The revelation is made to her by a false friend of Calynos, who hopes in this way to persuade her to leave her husband for him. On the discovery of the truth she faints, and the tempter, taking advantage of her momentary helplessness, bears her away. The end is tragic but the play is relieved throughout by courtly comedy. Particularly amusing is Martina, a saucy serving-maid. Her exclamation of disgust for a studious secretary who refuses to warm to her advances is a good illustration of the type of Boker's wit:—

“I would not be the oyster that you are
For all the pearls of wisdom in your shell.”

Calynos was not acted in this country until 1851, when it was performed in Philadelphia. It does not seem to have been so successful in America as it was in England, although its merits were recognized by such men as Bayard Taylor and Leland. Taylor expressed his admiration in a letter to a friend, and Leland some time later published a rather extensive critical article on Boker in Sartain's Magazine. The comparative failure of Calynos on the American stage is hard to explain, and Leland's article concerns itself largely with what he regards as a refusal on the part of Boker's countrymen to recognize native talent.

Boker's next play was a comedy, The Betrothal, which, like all his plays, was in blank verse. It was performed in New York, but did not achieve any great success. It is said to have been badly acted and is certainly a play that would require careful handling, if its best points were to be brought out. Boker's comedies (he published one other) are not equal to his tragedies. The dialogue is gay and witty, but the intrigue is often forced, and one scene of the Betrothal, in which a young lady is overheard by her lover when she confesses her love to the empty air, is outrageously reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet.

He next returned to the field of tragedy with the historical drama, Anne Boleyn, which was published in 1850 and reprinted a year or two later, but which was not acted. It is less melodramatic than Calynos and perhaps for that reason was not produced, but it does show an advance in the greater subtlety of its characterization. This excellence is particularly noticeable in King Henry, whose will, weakened by his long indulgence, is shown in his half-hearted struggle with the desires that he realizes are wicked. The whole action is very delicately motivated—too delicately so to be fully appreciated without careful study. In 1853 Boker's work was again seen on the stage when Leonore de Guzman, a play more in the style of Calynos, was produced in Philadelphia. It, also, was performed in New York, but, like Boker's previous plays, was a practical failure on the stage. Few dramatic authors have had to battle so long for success, and in fact, the history of the stage career of Francesca da Rimini is one seldom matched.

In 1862 Boker issued another volume of verse under the title of The Podesta's Daughter and other Miscellaneous Verse. Here again he demonstrated that as a lyric poet he ranks lower than as a dramatist. This volume contains several pieces of merit, especially “The Ivory Carver,” “The Ballad of Sir John Franklin,” and the sonnet “To England”; but there is nothing in it that strikes one as unforgettable. He exhibited a facile command of any style of expression which he chose to attempt, but it cannot be said that he ever seemed moved to the depths. As a lyrist he never went far beyond the mark which he set for himself in this volume. Of the lyrics of his which are best known, only one or two, notably the “Dirge for a Soldier,” were yet to be written. Perhaps one reason for his lack of success in this field is to be found in his characteristic reserve; he was not the kind of man to open his heart to all who cared to read its secrets, but preferred to express his feelings through the mask of the dramatist.

The next play which he produced was Francesca da Rimini, the work with which his name is most closely associated, partly because it is superior to anything else that he has done, and partly because it alone of all his plays had a really remarkable success on the stage. It was produced in New York in September, 1855, by E. L. Davenport and ran for a few nights, but, like all of his previous plays, it was dropped as a comparative failure. For more than a quarter of a century, it was absent from the stage, but—and this is a tribute to its power—it did not drop from the mind of all those who had seen it. About 1880 Lawrence Barrett was seeking for some vehicle in which he could impress the public more powerfully than he had been able to do with any of the plays of his repertory, and at the suggestion of Mr. William Winter he revived Francesca da Rimini. Mr. Winter undertook to help make a new version of the play, shearing it of what he regarded as a superabundance of rhetoric, and Barrett had an elaborate setting provided. After such preparations it was presented in Philadelphia on September 14, 1882, and achieved an immediate success. The Philadelphia Press was wildly enthusiastic, declaring that the stage had been “enriched by a genuine success, the influence of which can hardly stop with the effort itself.” From this time on Barrett carried Francesca in his repertory for a number of years. He first brought it out in New York in the summer of 1883, but returned there in the winter, again in the following year, and on a number of other occasions, the last being in 1891. Otis Skinner appeared with him in the rôle of Paolo and revived it after Barrett's death.

The reason for the final success of Francesca is not so puzzling as the reason for its original failure. Davenport's interpretation of the part is said to have been bad, and William Winter suggests as another reason for its failure to hold the stage the possibility that the popular taste of the period was not accordant with the spirit of a work so impassioned. Whatever the cause, it was unfortunate that it had to wait so long for its recognition, and thus deprive Boker of the stimulus which success would have offered. When success finally did come, more than twenty-five years of busy life had intervened for him since its composition, and it was almost too late for him to take up the pen again for a new effort. He himself lamented bitterly the fact that he had but little taste of success in the period of his life when it would have been most valuable to him. At the time of writing he realized that Francesca was the best thing he had done and wrote to R. H. Stoddard to that effect. Its failure, coming as it did as a sort of a climax to a series of discouragements, must have been disheartening indeed, and it is not to be wondered at if he gave up writing tragedies designed for the stage.

His treatment of the Rimini story is fresh and impassioned. Differing from other writers on the subject, he has chosen to make the story more that of the wronged husband than of Paolo and Francesca. Lanciotto, as he calls the husband, is a man whose deformed body has set him apart from other men, and has left him with a heart longing for a love which he feels he can never attain. With this figure in the foreground we have a play which is not an idyll of guilty love, but the tragedy of a lonely soul which stirs for a moment in ecstasy when it believes itself loved, only to sink into a deeper despair when it realizes itself betrayed. Nothing could be more objective than the method which the poet has used in this tragedy. He takes no side and passes no judgment; he merely gives a picture of human passion and makes no comment. Another of its most striking qualities is the appearance of inevitableness in the whole story which makes one feel that the characters have been caught in a net from which there is no escape.

The characterization is excellent. The moody Lanciotto, brooding on his own deformity until it seems greater than it is, and finding vent for his fury only on the battlefield, makes a sombre and pitiful picture. We feel that the consciousness of his deformity has embittered all his thoughts and moulded his whole life; we cannot imagine what he would have been, if his body has been like other men's. What is it to him that his prowess in battle can win him honor? He can only say to himself:—

                                                                                “Crown my head,
Pile Cæsar's Purple on me—and what then?
My lump shall shorten the imperial robe,
My leg peep out beneath the scanty hem,
My broken hip shall turn the gown awry;
And pomp, instead of dignifying me,
Shall be by me made quite ridiculous.”

With such thoughts as these it is no wonder that he becomes convinced that his marriage, for the purposes of state, with Francesca is wrong; and that although, urged by her father, she seems willing to accept him, his first ecstasy is soon over when he realizes that she cannot really love him. Strangely enough, the secret of the character of Pepe, the venomous fool who betrays the guilty lovers, is the same as that of Lanciotto. In him, too, the realization of his deformity and the meanness of the profession it has thrust upon him, moulds his character. He feels that mankind has mistreated him and that any pain which he can inflict is merely an item in the revenge which is his due.1

Although Lanciotto is the central figure, Paolo and Francesca are well drawn. The former is handsome—perhaps a bit spoiled—and as good a courtier as his brother Lanciotto is warrior. He loves Lanciotto and wishes to be true to him; he pleads his brother's merits to Francesca though the temptation to speak for himself is strong, and he proves traitorous only after a long struggle. Francesca also is really noble. She marries Lanciotto because she feels it her duty to sacrifice herself for the sake of her native city, and she gives herself to Paolo when mastered by passion. Both she and her lover fall, not through inherent treachery, but from the irresistible influence of the moment, and both are ready to abide the consequences of the act.

When the play at last attained such a striking success, a quarrel arose between Boker and Barrett over the question of royalties. There had been only an oral agreement at first, and Boker thought that, owing to the success of the piece, the royalty should be increased. After a period of dispute the parties agreed on a certain division of profits, but for some time did not speak to one another. Finally, however, the quarrel was made up and Barrett asked Boker to write another play for him. As he requested something spectacular, Boker chose the Last Days of Pompeii for a basis, although he resolved to treat the story freely. This play was written, but it was never acted and it remained in manuscript. The best of Boker's literary work was done while he was a comparatively young man, the latter part of his life being devoted to the public service, first in connection with the Civil War, and then as ambassador.

During the period when he was writing his plays he was one of the principal literary figures of Philadelphia and an especial friend of Bayard Taylor. The beginning of this friendship was told in a speech by Taylor himself. He was working in a newspaper office when Boker's first volume appeared and he was directed by his superior to criticise it adversely. Taylor saw nothing to do but to obey, although he afterwards said that the limitations which his superior affected to perceive in the volume, were less apparent to himself. Not long after that he met young Boker, took an immediate liking for him, and soon confessed the whole story to him. Then Taylor's first volume appeared and Boker was given it to review, which he did, neglecting the excellent opportunity for revenge which was thus offered, and praising it most highly. Boker became a visitor to the little coterie of which R. H. Stoddard and Taylor were the chief members, and the friendship between him and the latter rapidly ripened until the closest sympathy was established between them. Taylor dedicated his Poems at Home and Abroad (1855) to Boker, and his letters contain many expressions of the tenderest regard.

In 1856 the first edition of Boker's collected Plays and Poems appeared. It consists of two substantial volumes containing four tragedies, two comedies, almost everything that had appeared in the 1852 volume, together with a number of new pieces, including seventy-nine new sonnets. This collection went through five editions, the last being in 1891. The number of reprints, especially since most of the material had been previously brought out in other forms, seems to indicate a considerable interest in the author on the part of the reading public during the last half of the nineteenth century, although all his works, with the exception of Francesca da Rimini (Dramatic Publishing Company, Chicago) are now out of print.

In his own generation, Boker was regarded as one of the best of American sonneteers. The American edition of The Book of the Sonnet, of which Leigh Hunt had been co-editor, was dedicated to him, and an essay in it by S. Adams Lee contains the phrase “such sonnets as those of Wordsworth in English and George Henry Boker in American literature.” Boker himself told a story in connection with one of his sonnets, “To England,” which was published in the 1852 volume. He was at a dinner in Washington at which Daniel Webster made a speech concerning the relations between the United States and England. Suddenly turning to Boker he said, “I think you, Mr. Boker, have expressed the true sentiment concerning this subject in that admirable sonnet of yours.” He then went on to quote the whole, and, even though Webster's literary taste was sometimes rather astonishing, it is not strange that the youthful poet was much flattered.

If the earlier years of Boker's life were spent in composition and leisure, his latter years were full of active public service. He ceased to be primarily an author and became a busy man of affairs, and when once drawn into public life he proved so vigorous that only in his last years was he permitted to become a man of leisure again. It was as a leading spirit in the Philadelphia Union League Club that he first appeared as a public man. He was not only one of its founders, but served as secretary of the organization during the years 1863-71 inclusive, and as president from 1879 until he resigned in 1884, about six years before his death. The various later publications of the League are full of tributes to him. He is called the “life and backbone” of the organization during its dark days, and characterized as “if not the soul, in a large degree the brain and hand of the club and league.” Throughout the reports which, as secretary, Boker wrote, his spirit emerges as that of a fierce partisan. He began life as a democrat or, as he expressed it, had upon his conscience the fact that he cast his first vote for James Buchanan. “After that the sword was drawn,” he wrote, “it struck me that politics had vanished entirely from the scene—that it was now merely a question of patriotism or disloyalty.” He seems to have felt pretty bitterly on the subject, and was the author of one or two of the pamphlets which the League distributed.

Aside from his writings in connection with the League, Boker issued two publications inspired by the war, one an anonymous satire on General McClellan, called “Tardy George,” and the other his popular volume, Poems of the War. The satire was privately printed in New York in 1865, but had probably appeared in a newspaper before that. Its authorship became known and his social relations with the McClellan family were broken off on its account. The poems in this volume are very uneven in quality, but, probably on account of their timely subject-matter, were very popular. One, the “Dirge for a Soldier,” is really effective in its simplicity, and is now to be found in many American anthologies. Some others, especially the “Black Regiment,” were equally popular, but are of indifferent literary merit. One couplet from the latter is realistic, if nothing else. It runs,—

Down the long, dusky line
Teeth gleam and eyeballs shine.

A number of the pieces do not attempt much, but merely describe some land or naval battle in simple verse to strike the popular fancy of the time.

In 1865 he read a poem, “Our Heroic Themes,” before the Phi Beta Kappa society at Harvard. After this he appeared only twice more as a poet, once when his volume Königmark, the Legend of the Hounds, and other Poems, appeared in 1869, and again in 1882, when he published the “Book of the Dead,” a poem having its origin in the unsuccessful attempt to deprive his family of some money that his father had earned. The 1869 volume is of especial interest, not on account of the tame tragedy which gives the first part of its title, but on account of the vigorous verse tale, “The Legend of the Hounds.” In Poems of the War he had included one tale, “Prince Adeb,” which was promising; but in the “Legend of the Hounds” he showed conclusively that his versatility included a decided skill for the telling of a rapidly moving verse tale in vigorous couplets. Some of his poetry may possibly stand closer analysis, but, aside from his plays, nothing that he wrote will carry the reader along with the same sort of interest as this legend. The description of the iron furnace and of the brutal country squire, “strong of sinew and dull of mind,” which opens the poem, strikes the attention immediately. It is a matter of regret that Boker did not spend more time in the cultivation of this species of composition, for it seems likely that he might have achieved still further success in this line. When he had apparently failed as a dramatist, he confined himself largely to lyric poetry, but the chances are that the verse tale would have proved for him a more appropriate form.

On November 4th, 1871, President Grant, no doubt in recognition of Boker's service to his country during the war as well as to Grant himself during his presidential campaign, appointed him United States Minister to Constantinople, although, to use his own words, he had “no experience in diplomacy, no knowledge even of the routine of business, and not the smallest acquaintance with the Turkish language.” (Quoted from letter published in Mrs. E. L. Pennell's Charles Godfrey Leland, a Biography.) In spite of these deficiencies, however, he was not only popular at Constantinople, but was so successful as a diplomat that he received the thanks of the United States Government and a transfer to St. Petersburg in 1875. He did not like the East and years later wrote, “I hate the East so profoundly that I should not return to it if there were no other land in which I could live.” (Quoted from letter published in Mrs. E. L. Pennell's Charles Godfrey Leland, a Biography.) Neither did St. Petersburg entirely satisfy him, although here, too, he was popular. He was so much of a favorite, indeed, that when he resigned in 1877, because of the change in administration, the Czar telegraphed to Washington to request that he might be retained, and Prince Gortschakoff is said to have remarked to Boker's successor: “I can not say that I am glad to see you. In fact I'm not sure that I can see you at all for the tears that are in my eyes on account of the departure of our friend.”

He returned home, and in 1879 was elected President of the Union League Club, which position he held until his resignation in 1884. In 1882 came the successful revival of Francesca, which I have already described, and which must have been extremely gratifying to him, since success on the stage had been so long denied him. He did not publish any new literary work after 1882, and died at his home in Philadelphia on January 2, 1890.

Note

  1. Boker was a reader of printed plays, and it is probable that he got suggestions for the characters of both Lanciotto and Pepe from Triboulet, in Hugo's Le Roi S'Amuse.

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