Text: Thomas Dunn English, “He is Tired of Trilby,” Washington Post (Washington, DC), March 10, 1895, p. 15, cols. 1-2

[page 15, column 1:]

“TRILBY and Sweet Alice, ‘Ben Bolt,’ are becoming titles a trifle wearying to me.” It was Dr. Thomas Dunn English who thus, in a tone a bit irritated and spiteful, confessed to this double reason for ennui. I had found him at 2:30 o’clock last Sun- day morning in the lobby at the rear of the House of Representatives. He was stretched full length on a plush sofa and regaling himself with a thin and narrowed view of an oil paining of Henry Clay which clung to the lobby wall above. The doctor is now seventy-six years old. His eyes are so dimmed by many books that, as he said: “I can no longer recognize my friends until they speak. I can see the form of a man, but it's all a blur. I can’t tell one from another.”

Dr. English was a figure familiar about the halls of Congress, where, representing the Newark (N. J.) district, he has been faithfully in his seat. He is sour, sharp, apt to bite with retort; but his honesty and kindness of heart are house proverbs. Unlike most old men, he is open-handed as a prince, and gives his money to any who ask, smooth or shabby, good or bad.

“Have I read ‘Trilby?’ I’ve looked it over. And,” continued the old doctor, sitting up and lighting a cigar, “I don’t think much of it. ‘Alice, Ben Bolt’ is the best thing in it, and I’ve never had much of an opinion of ‘Alice, Ben Bolt. ‘”

At this crisis a confused roar arose from within the chamber of the House, where legislation threatened by the coming 4th of March — the next day-was made to rage all night.

“What's that?” demanded the doctor fiercely, as one voice rose like the howling of a high wind above the general hub- bub. He got up and stepped to the House door; the same, by the way, by which Kilgore gained fame. In a moment the doctor returned to his sofa with an air of disgust.

“It's only Boutelle,” he said. And he had all of the tones of a man who identified some portentious uproar as after all only the harmless vocalisms of some particular stentor of a tomcat.

“What is the story which goes with “Sweet Alice; Ben Bolt? Well,” went on the doctor, “it isn’t much of a story, and in that behalf a fair match for the song. I wrote it when I was quite young, a fact one might have guessed from the poem. I had started in an idle moment to write a sea song, something like the conversation which might occur between boyhood friends separated for years-one at sea and the other ashore in the old village where they both were boys. I wrote the first three stanzas and then threw it down. It didn’t seem to go right, and I didn’t like it. A month or two later N. P. Willis, who was running the old New York Mirror, under the name of the New Mirror, wrote and asked me to do him up some verses. He said he had no money, and I must write them for love and fame. I picked up the unfinished ‘Alice, Ben Bolt,’ and wrote two more stanzas. I sent it to Willis, and he published it in his magazine. I thought no more of it; nor did Willis.

“Still,” went on the doctor, while a retrospective look dwelt in his face like a haze, as the men and scenes of almost three score years ago came back to his memory; “still, the verses must have had the touch of something, sad or natural, too, for they were copied and read quite widely.

“The music came about in this way. Wilson Knease, a Philadelphian, was a tenor singer, who, to their notion, had disgraced his family by singing in the theaters. His brother, Hon. R. Knease, was a great lawyer. Wilson Knease was penniless; a not uncommon dramatic condition even to this day. He went to Porter's Theater in Pittsburg for something to do. He was starving. The manager, who knew Knease could sing, told him there was nothing about the play then running — it was ‘The Battle of Buena Vista,’ I believe — that he could do.

“‘But,’ added the manager, ‘if you had a good, new song, Knease, I’d let you sing it between the acts.’

“An Englishman named Hunt suggested ‘Alice, Ben Bolt,’ to Knease. He looked over the lines, and, taking an old German air which they fairly fitted, he began to mix the words with the music, until he had warmed the whole thing over into ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,’ as you have heard it. Knease made a hit, and the song became very popular. One time and another in that day everybody who could sing at all had a shot at it. That was the last of it until du Maurier — I think that's his name — looking about for a thread whereon to string his glass beads, seized on the song.”

“What became of Knease?” I asked.

“Oh! poor Knease,” replied the old doctor, “died and is buried at the little town of Chillicothe, Mo. He was with a barn-storming company which stranded there. Knease was out of money and fell sick and died. On his tomb-stone, which was put up by strangers, is written under his name:

“‘The author of ‘Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt.’”

Comes of Quaker Stock.

Dr. English was born in Philadelphia in 1819. He is of English-Irish stock. His great-great-great grandfather — a Quaker — came to this continent with William Penn. This ancestor's farm, twenty miles north of Philadelphia, has been for 200 years, and still is known as the English farm. The doctor graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838. Then he studied law, a fellow student in the same law office being Ben Brewster, afterward in Garfield's cabinet. It was then that Dr. English wrote “Alice, Ben Bolt.” He soon discovered a taste to write which far out-ran his taste to study law. He wrote poetry, short stories, dramas; and the magazine and newspaper of that day saw much of his work. He was a bright member of that literary set which included Willis, Morris, Bryant, Graham, Hurst and Edgar Allan Poe. These had head-quarters in New York and Philadelphia. By the doctor's own story neither then nor in after years did he see much of Holmes, Emerson, Lowell, Thoreau, the Alcotts and members of the strictly New England set. Some reason for this might lie in the politics which was afire at the time. Dr. English is and always was a remorseless Democrat. He was not an abolitionist, and, while a Union man, had no sympathy with the war. And by the way, Dr. English is one of the two men from north of Mason and Dixon's line on whom that venerable university, the William and Mary College, was conferred the title of doctor of laws. Senator George F. Hoar is the other.

“Edgar Allan Poe,” said Dr. English in response to a query, “was well known to me for years. At one time we were close friends, or as much so as Poe could be a close friend of anybody. Poe was a peculiar [column 2:] makeup. All sense of moral obligation was left out of Poe. He might borrow your watch in the blandest way, and when you got it again you would receive it from the pawnbroker where Poe had borrowed all he could on it. Nor did this abash him. He was a freely in your presence afterward, never offering to repay your loss or explain the phenomenon of his pawning your watch. He appeared to regard and relish it as the most natural good and proper thing to do. You could always tell when Poe had been drinking by his slouchy, unkempt dress. When sober, Poe was a vast fop, a great dandy. He was a lion among women, and they saw a great deal in his dark, melancholy, sensitive, but exceedingly weak face which was veiled to men. Indeed, it was from women whom Poe as a rule did his borrowing, and it was their jewelry which he regularly pawned. Poe was born in Bos- ton, but preferred to have it believed that his native place was Baltimore, he never failed to refer slightingly to the Yankees and their literature. After Poe had attained a good deal of fame he was asked to attend a dinner in Boston and read a poem written for the occasion. He spoke to me about it at the last moment.

“‘I don’t know whether to go or no,’ he said.

“‘What's the matter?” I asked.

“‘I’ve not written any poem,’ he replied. “At this I suggested that he’d better say he was sick. This he might fairly do; as I’d just rescued him from one of his sprees.

“‘But,’ said Poe at the suggestion that he stay away from the dinner, ‘I can’t remain away. I must go, you see, because they are going to give me $100.’

“He went,” continued the doctor, “and read a poem which he’d written when he was a boy, and which had never been regarded as worth publishing. It was a weak, puerile thing. But Poe read it, having collected first his $100. Some one of the company ventured to say that it was far below Poe's other poems then published. Poe arose at this and told the party that he had written the poem they had heard when he was fourteen years old, and read it to them to try the accuracy of their taste and poetic knowledge. He got very little fame out of this scrape and was roasted and scorched in the papers without mercy. I only tell it as showing the shallow vanity and lack of honest worth in Poe's nature.

“What do I think of Poe's ‘Raven?” It is more wonderful as verse than as poetry. At the time it was written many thought it was the work of Hurst, a clever Irishman, who, while not much of a poet, was the most finished versifier of the day. But Poe wrote it, and Hurst didn’t. The idea of the Raven and its climbing and perching was obtained from one of the conversations in Kit North's ‘Noctes Ambrosiana.’ The style of the verse itself was gained from Mrs. Browning's poem, ‘Lady Geraldine's Courtship.’ Oh no! there was no intended plaigarism in it. Poe got $30 for ‘The Raven’ and $5 a verse for ‘The Bells,’ which was written and published one verse at a time. No; they didn’t pay much to your poets. They paid more for prose. Graham, who founded Graham's Magazine, once paid Fennimore [[Fenimore]] Cooper $1,000 for a short story called ‘The Lost Handkerchief.’”

“How did ‘Lady Geraldine's Courtship’ run?” I asked as the doctor paused. I’d never heard it being Poe's model for ‘The Raven,’ and was anxious to make a comparison.

“It canters like this,” replied the doctor, “and would scarcely fail to remind you of Poe's masterpiece, which was written after.

Thrashed Edgar Allan Poe.

“Didn’t you and Poe have a fistic encounter?” I asked.

“I gave him a thrashing once,” retorted the doctor with a sort of wrath which showed that he still applauded the deed.

“Poe, who, as I stated, was in the sadly too frequent habit, had pawned certain jewels he had borrowed from a lady. She complained. Poe made some remark about her which reached the ears of her brother, who soon came after Poe with a crab-tree cane. Poe walked into my office where I was writing, and asked for a pistol, saying that the brother in question was looking for him with a cane intending to beat him. I expressed a sincere hope that the brother might find Poe and flail him to death. This opened up the avenue of a discussion between Poe and myself to which I gave a climax by whipping Poe. But he was as bad as ever afterward; it did him no good.” And here the Doctor, as he reposed on the plush sofa, heaved a sigh as he thought of how invincibly unregenerate the author of “the Raven” was.

The old writer of “Sweet Alice,” has in his time printed many novels and dramas, which in their day had great success. He was as much with stage folk as he was with politicians; and was as closely the friend of Edwin Forrest and the elder Booth as he was with Presidents Polk and Tyler, during whose terms the White House was as familiar to the young poet-politician as his own home.

“Joe Jefferson is reckoned our greatest comedian,” replied the old Doctor, “and I think so myself. Still, Jefferson is by no means the actor which Charlie Burke, Jefferson's half brother, was. Burke did this same ‘Rip Van Winkle’ business as a German specialty. Jefferson imitated him. Charlie Burke created ‘Rip Van Winkle,’ Joe Jefferson learned it from Burke.

While stretched on the sofa the caustic doctor scribbled the following on the Congress dying a few feet away. It is tart as a lemon, and would indicate that while the old doctor may not be able to see his colleagues, he is quite capable of appreciating them:

A New Litany

It was 3:15 o’clock a.m., and having completed the foregoing litany as setting forth the impressions of Congress he was carrying to his home at Newark, the old author of “Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,” went calmly to sleep on the lobby sofa while the House stormed on inside.