Text: Minna Angeir, “Three-Quarters of the Nineteenth Century,” The Dial (Chicago, IL), November 16, 1899, pp. 359-362

[page 359, column 2, continued:]

THREE-QUARTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.*

Mr. John Sartain's “Reminiscences of a Very Old Man” cover the most magnificent period of the world's history; for surely never was more done for civilization than during a life which includes the years from 1808 to 1897.

Mr. Sartain was born in London, and there spent his youth. His keen memory runs back to his sixth year, when he was carried by his father to the Peace Jubilee of 1814, to view the gay scenes by day and the fireworks at night. And then to school. Why children were sent to such cruel masters — one of Sartain's was Tom Crib, ex-champion pugilist of England — stands as a mystery to us to-day. By the time the lad was ten years old, flogging — not for demerit, but on the principle laid down by Solomon — had so embittered him with school that nothing could induce him to go further with it. His life-work began two years later. While digging in a trench in a neighbor's garden, overlooked by the laboratory of the Italian pyrotechnist and scene-painter Mortram, that worthy's attention was attracted to the vigorous manner in which young Sartain was handling his shovel — the truth being that the boy was in a fit of temper at the time. Mortram bespoke the services of so diligent ap assistant, and Sartain went to work for him.

Among other things, Mortram was in charge of the department of “steam, smoke, and fire” at Charles Kemble's play-house, the Theatre [page 360:] Royal, Covent Garden; and the life with him was hard but not monotonous. The boy was im daily contact with the popular players of the day, Farren, Abbott, Mrs. Chatterton, Mr. and Mrs. Faweett, and the accomplished songstress Miss Stephens, who was to become Countess of Essex. Occasionally Kemble's lovely daughter Fanny was to be seen by the admiring lad, but she was too young for any professional connection with the theatre. Always fond of his pencil, it was behind the scenes that Sartain's abilities obtained their first recognition, Mortram sending him to make a sketch of the “ White Horse Cellar” in Piccadilly, a view of which was wanted for a piece in rehearsal.

Though sufficiently contented with his work under Mortram, after various changes John Sartain was apprenticed, at the age of fourteen, to John Swaine, in order to learn the art of engraving. The work was purely commercial, — cutting names on door-plates, dog-collars, and the like. But William Young Ottley chanced to see some scraps of line-work from the boy's hand, and borrowed him from his master to aid him in completing a work begun thirty years before in Rome — a piece of splendid good-luck for his pupil. This was nothing less than “The Early Florentine School,” a folio of engravings from the works of the masters of Florence, including examples of their best compositions during two centuries and a half. Ottley was known not only as a most learned antiquary in art matters but as an accomplished artist, and within the year Sartain had engraved three plates throughout, two after Bennozo Gossoli and the third after Giotto. This work, naturally congenial, was performed in Ottley's gallery, amid surround. ings which were in themselves an education.

Mr. Sartain presently returned to Swaine and his task-work, but was permitted to take erders outside, and finally succeeded in buying eff the rest of his time. He then became the pupil of Richter for eight months, escaping from that taskmaster with considerable difficulty to set up for himself, engraving fancy subjects on order from publishers, but finding his greatest profit in individual portraits. The chance meeting with a young engraver in stipple, who urged going to America, turned Sartain's thoughts in that direction; and, after marrying the daughter of Swaine, he embarked for Philadelphia July 4, 1830, taking with him an abundance of letters of introduction.

After satisfying himself that a livelihood was obtainable in Philadelphia, and being greatly [column 2:] encouraged thereby, Sartain went to New York and delivered his letters there. Among many others he met Sully, the portrait painter, who was warm in his commendation of Penn's capital, and urged him to settle there, at the same time giving him his portrait of Bishop White to engrave. With orders from Henry C. Carey and Thomas T. Ash, both publishers, and from John Neagle the artist, as well, success was already assured a man of Sartain's abilities, and he henceforth reckoned Philadelphia as his home. There are interesting tales of his fellow-artists, and of the somewhat deplorable condition of the Academy of Fine Arts in Chestnut street; and we are reminded that Rebecca, the beautiful daughter of Herman Gratz, for many years Sartain's colleague on the board of the Academy, was the original of the Rebecea in Sir Walter Scott's “Ivanhoe,” Washington Irving having told the great novelist of her many beauties of mind and body.

In January, 1841, George R. Graham published the first number of “Graham's Magazine.” One of its features was an original engraving from Sartain's hand, a new plate to accompany each number. The success of the enterprise was a surprise to Graham himself, and it brought him so many offers to engage in enticing schemes that he soon left the magazine to run itself. As a result, in 1848 everything was sold to satisfy his creditors, leaving the engraver the opportunity to begin the publication of “Sartain's Union Magazine.”

For eighteen months Edgar Allan Poe was assistant editor of “Graham's Magazine,” with a salary of eight hundred dollars a year; and there is nothing in the book of more interest than the intimacy which grew up between Sartain and Poe. This lasted through the establishment of the “Union Magazine,” and many of Poe's most notable works found publication in its pages, “ The Bells” among others. Mr. Sartain tells us that “Annabel Lee” was the last poem Poe ever wrote. It was bought for his periodical, but before publication it was found that it had already been sold to three other publishers. A most unhappy glimpse of the poet's compounded misfortunes is told in these words:

Mr. Sartain tried to reassure his guest by telling him that he had imagined all these things. He did more: he took Poe home with him, gave him his slippers to take the place of shoes too much worn for further service, and after supper took him out to walk. Poe was at the point of suicide, and in no respect his own master. While they were together that evening, others of the poet's imaginary experiences were confided to his friend, one of them in this language, as nearly as Mr. Sartain can recollect it:

“I was confined to a cell in Moyamensing Prison, and through my grated window was visible the battlemented granite tower. On the topmost stone of the parapet, between the embrasures, stood perched against the sky a young female brightly radiant, like silver dipped in light, either in herself or her environment, so that the cross-bar shadows thrown from my window were distinct on the opposite wall. From this position, remote as it was, she addressed to me a series of questions in words not loud but distinct, and I dared not fail to hear and make response. Had I failed once either to hear or to make pertinent answer, the consequences to me would have been something fearful; but my sense of hearing is wonderfully acute, so that I passed safely through this ordeal, which was a snare to catch me.’”

These imaginings of Poe are told at great length, and are all of the same character. Sartain kept the perturbed spirit with him until rest and good food had worked a partial recovery, when Poe resumed his interrupted journey to New York. Sartain never saw him again. Within a month he lay dead in the hospital at Baltimore. Of the last days of Edgar Allan Poe on earth, Sartain has this to say — a statement which contradicts much that has been written of him, notably the memoir of Professor Woodbury [[Woodberry]]:

“In those [last] few weeks how much had happened, and how hopeful seemed the prospects for his future. [column 2:] He [Poe] had joined a temperance society, delivered lectures, resumed friendly relations with an early flame of his, Mrs. Sarah E. Shelton, and become engaged to her. Dr. John J. Moran, who attended the poet in his last moments, says that Poe parted from her at her residence in Richmond at four in the afternoon of October 4, 1849, to go north. She states that when he said ‘good-bye’ he paused a moment as if reflecting, and then said to her, ‘I have a singular feeling amounting to a presentiment, that this will be our last meeting until we meet to part no more,’ and then walked slowly and sadly away. Reaching the Susquehanna, he refused to venture across because of the wildness of the stormdriven water, and he returned to Baltimore. Alighting from the cars, he was seen to turn down Pratt street on the south side, followed by two suspicious looking characters as far as the south-west corner of Pratt and Light streets. A fair presumption is that they got him into one of the abominable places that lined the wharf, drugged him, and robbed him of everything. After daybreak, on the morning of the sixth, a gentleman found him stretched unconscious upon a broad plank across some barrels on the sidewalk. Recognizing him, he obtained a hack and gave the driver a card with Mr. Moran's address on it and on the lower right-hand corner the name of ‘Poe.’

Mr. Sartain has an interesting paragraph on the honoraria paid to authors while he was publishing his magazine. He says:

“Dr. Bethune's four-page articles on ‘Aunt Betsy’ brought him fifty dollars each. Nathaniel P. Willis and Joseph R. Chandler received fifty dollars each for their five or six page articles, and Francis J. Grund sixty-five dollars for his article on Kossuth. John Neal was paid twenty-five dollars for ‘What is Poetry?’ and Professor Joseph Alden averaged thirty-five dollars for each of his contributions. Miss Brown and Edith and Caroline May averaged about ten or twelve dollars a poem, and William Dowe was content to receive four dollars a page for his prose, a page holding nearly nine hundred words. Many poems of merit were printed that cost only five dollars each, it being well understood that the name is valued as well as the writing.”

Of a most interesting journey abroad in 1863, of the founding of the art schools of the Pennsylvania Academy, of the part taken in the art collections of the Centennial Exposition, and of many other matters which have left America greatly in John Sartain's debt, there is no room to speak. The book deserves to be read as a whole. It is well written, delightfully illustrated, and an excellent compendium of art extending over many years. Mr. Sartain died in Philadelphia, universally regretted, October 25, 1897.

MINNA ANGIER.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 359,column 2:]

* RECOLLECTIONS OF A VERY OLD MAN: 1808-1897. By John Sartain. New York: D. Appleton & Co.