Stedman

“ Stedman possesses the first and highest of qualities—that of spontaneity. The thought leaps at a bound into expression. So rapid is the flow of ideas, and so fluent its delivery, that one thought sometimes trips on the heels of the next. His talk, in its range, its variety, and the multiplicity of subjects touched upon, even more, perhaps, than his work, is an unconscious betrayal of his many-sided life. The critic, the poet, the man of business and the man of the world, the lover of nature, and the keen observer of the social machinery of life, each by turn takes the ascendant. ”

“ Stedman, in spite of his grayish beard and mustache, is a singularly young-looking man for his years. He is slight, with slender figure and delicate features. His motions and gestures are full of impulse and energy. He has the bearing of a man who has measured his strength with the world. The delicate refinement and finish of his work, as well as its power and vigor, are foreshadowed in his personnel. ”

“ But in a large square room at the top of the house is the library proper—workshop and study together. This building his poet’s nest under the eaves of his own cornice is the one evidence of the recluse in Stedman’s character. When he is about to pluck his own plumage that his fledglings may be covered, he turns his back on the world. All the paraphernalia of his toil are about him. The evidences of the range and the extent of his reading and scholarship are to be found in taking down some of the volumes on the shelves. ”

“ It was intolerable to him to be cut off from all direct communication with Miss Stedman, and one day he went boldly to Chesnut Hill. He went there, not under cover of the darkness, as cowardly lovers do, but in the broad openness of such daylight as is ever to be seen in Sootythorn. I think, however, that it would have needed still greater courage on his part to present himself there about eight o'clock in the evening; for in the day-time Mr. Stedman was usually at his factory, whereas about eight in the evening a friend might count upon the pleasure of finding him at Chesnut Hill. ”

“ Stedman's speech was hot and wild enough to suit a critical and feverish audience before a barricade in Paris. And when he was through, Gordon and Bradley punctuated his oration by firing off the two Winchester rifles in the air, at which the people jumped and fell on their knees, and prayed to their several gods. The fighting men of the village followed the four white men to the outskirts, and took up their stand there as Stedman told them to do, and the four walked on over the roughly hewn road, to meet the enemy. ”

“ Going by himself seemed to promise chances of complete recovery of health; the unexplored and the unknown beckoned to him with promise of excitement and adventure.
As he wrote to Mr. Stedman: “I am a student of much else besides literature. Life in all its manifestations is of passionate interest for me, and I cannot rest from incessant study and writing. Yet I feel that I am but on the threshold of my literary life. I have a life-time of ambitious schemes before me; I may perhaps live to fulfil a tenth part of them.” ”

“ Edmund Clarence Stedman was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on the 8th of October, 1833. He entered Yale College at the age of sixteen and distinguished himself in Greek and English Composition. He was the editor of several papers in Connecticut and in 1856 removed to New York City—a larger field for his literary abilities. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair, Putnam's Monthly, Harper's Magazine and other periodicals. ”

“ Another—whom, because he has so foully outraged the moral sense of all mankind, we prefer not to name until he has made reparation, and who, if he had not cast from him all sense of the beautiful and the true, might have been perhaps the greatest poet of the age—is as remarkable for the originality and unstudiedness of his expression as for the brilliance and fecundity of his imagination.
Mr. Stedman literally limits poetry to expression. ”

“ The best of Stedman’s nature poems are directly drawn from boyhood reminiscence or from a voyage and vacation in the West Indies, and many of his songs and ballads are derived from contemporary backgrounds and episodes.
Stedman did his work as a poet, however, in full consciousness of all the wealth of continental literature and the splendors of Old World tradition. Perhaps there was no single work into which he put more ambition than into his uncompleted metrical version from the Greek of the Sicilian Idyllists. ”

“ Rising from her seat with amazing celerity, she whisked into the house before Doctor Stedman's astonished eyes, and closed the door smartly after her.
With a low whistle, Doctor Stedman turned to William Jaquith.
"Our old friend seems agitated," he said. "What has happened to distress her?"
Jaquith made no reply. He was tying up a rosebush with shaking fingers, and his usually pale face was flushed, perhaps with exertion.
Doctor Stedman's bushy eyebrows came together.
"Hum!" he said, half aloud. "Lily Bent! why,—ha! yes. How is your mother, Will? I have not seen her for some time." ”

“ Stedman is a great artist, and some day all the world will think so, too!"
Lee made no answer. Not because he disagreed with her estimate of Mr. Stedman's genius-he made no pretense of being an art critic—but because her vehement admiration had filled him with sudden panic. He was not jealous. For that he was far too humble. Indeed, he thought himself so utterly unworthy of Frances Gardner that the fact that to him she might prefer some one else was in no way a surprise. ”

“ They will land men and then shell the town, and the land forces will march here and co-operate with the vessel, and everybody will be taken prisoner or killed. We have the centre of the stage, and we are making history."
"I'd rather read it than make it," said Stedman. "You've got us in a senseless, silly position, Gordon, and a mighty unpleasant one. ”

“ This suggested to Gordon that this would be a good time to make a speech, which he accordingly did, Stedman translating it, sentence by sentence. At the conclusion of this effort, Albert distributed a number of brass rings among the married men present, which they placed on whichever finger fitted best, and departed delighted.
Albert had wished to give the rings to the married women, but Stedman pointed out to him that it would be much cheaper to give them to the married men; for while one [28] woman could only have one husband, one man could have at least six wives. ”

“ Stedman looked at him fixedly and seemed absorbed in his own thoughts. "You love my girl, young man, but you don't love her as I do. Ever since I have got this fear into my heart and into my brain I can neither eat nor sleep. I think sometimes I shall go out of my mind. A man loves a daughter, Mr. Stanburne, differently from the way he loves a son. If I'd had a son, I shouldn't have felt so anxious, for it seems that a lad should bear illnesses and run risks; but a tender little girl, Philip Stanburne—a tender little girl, and a great rough fellow like me to take care of her!" ”

“ He wouldn't shoot at a school of porpoises. He's not—"
"Here comes a message to Leonard T. Travis, American consul, Opeki," read Stedman. "It's raining messages to-day. 'Send full details of massacre of American citizens by German sailors.' Secretary of—great Scott!" gasped Stedman, interrupting himself and gazing at his instrument with horrified fascination—"the Secretary of State."
"That settles it," roared Gordon, pulling at his hair and burying his face in his hands. "I have got to kill some of them now."
"Albert Gordon, Correspondent," read Stedman, impressively, like the voice of Fate. ”

“ Stedman had entered the house. The heavy steps passed the drawing-room door, and became gradually less and less audible as they ascended the stairs.
"Mr. Stedman is gone to see his daughter," said Mr. Blunting. "He always goes straight to her room when he returns from the mill. He is a most affectionate father."
"Where his prejudices are not concerned," added Philip Stanburne.
"Where his conscience is not involved, you ought to say. His objection to your suit is strictly a conscientious objection. Personally, he likes you, and your position would be an excellent one for Miss Alice ”

“ Stedman’s quarter of a century of productiveness is only an earnest of his future work. He has doubly pledged himself hereafter to the performance of strictly original creative writing. As critic he has completed the work which he set himself to do—that of rounding the circle of contemporaneous poetry. In giving to the world such masterpieces of critical writing as the “Victorian Poets” and “Poets of America,” he owes it to his own muse to prove that the critic leaves the poet free. ”

“ Every moment increased my impatience. "She will probably spend the morrow at Stedman's," said I, "and possibly the next day. Why should I wait for her return? Why not seek her there, and rid myself at once of this agonizing suspense? Why not go thither now? This night, wherever I spend it, will be unacquainted with repose. I will go; it is already near twelve, and the distance is more than eight miles. I will hover near the house till morning, and then, as early as possible, demand an interview."
I was well acquainted with Stedman's villa, having formerly been there with Mrs. Fielding. ”

“ The most of the men living in the town were honest fellows, doing their work faithfully, when they could get it, and when they had socially asked Stedman to have a drink with them, he had refused in rather a scornful manner. “That infernal city chap,” he was called, and their hate and envy increased in strength when Albert Kelsey had employed him in preference to any of themselves. As time went on, the story of Stedman’s admiration for Margaret Kelsey had gone afloat, with the added{39} information that his employer’s daughter had repulsed him, saying that she would not marry a common laborer. ”

“ New forms may fold the speech, new lands Arise within these ocean-portals, But Music waves eternal wands,— Enchantress of the souls of mortals! So thought I,—but among us trod A man in blue, with legal baton, And scoffed the vagrant demigod, And pushed him from the step I sat on. Doubting I mused upon the cry, "Great Pan is dead!"—and all the people Went on their ways:—and clear and high The quarter sounded from the steeple. Edmund Clarence Stedman [1833-1908]
UPON LESBIA—ARGUING My Lesbia, I will not deny, Bewitches me completely ”

“ Russell speaks thus of the fugitives: "Faces black and dusty, tongues out in the heat, eyes staring,—it was a most wonderful sight." If Mr. Russell had ever read Stedman's account of his own countrymen's twenty-mile run from Concord to Bunker's Hill, he would have learned that they "were so much exhausted with fatigue, that they were obliged to lie down for rest on the ground, their tongues hanging out of their mouths, like those of dogs after a chase." One rout is as much like another as the scamper of one flock of sheep like that of all others. ”

“ The later West-Indian society in its worst forms is probably a mere dilution of the utter profligacy of those early days. Greek or Roman decline produced nothing more debilitating or destructive than the ordinary life of a Surinam planter, and his one virtue of hospitality only led to more unbridled excesses and completed the work of vice. No wonder that Stedman himself, who, with all his peculiarities, was essentially simple and manly, soon became disgusted, and made haste to get into the woods and cultivate the society of the Maroons. ”

“ I, the under-subscribed, do pledge my word of honour, (being all I possess in the world besides my pay) as bail, that if my late ardent request to the court for the emancipation of my dear boy Johnny Stedman be granted, the said boy shall never to the end of his life become a charge to the colony of Surinam. ”

“ The interview with the New York reporters passed off very well. I went through the operation like a man.
After lunch, I went to see Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, who had shown me a great deal of kindness during my first visit to America. I found in him a friend ready to welcome me.
The poet and literary critic is a man of about fifty, rather below middle height, with a beautifully chiseled head. In every one of the features you can detect the artist, the man of delicate, tender, and refined feelings. ”

“ Here the conditions surrounding Stedman’s home life have been necessarily changed. The arduous literary labor attendant on the publishing of his recently completed volume on the “Poets of America,” which completes the series of contemporaneous English and American poets, together with his work on the “Library of American Literature” (of which he and Miss Hutchinson are the joint editors) , the writing of magazine articles, poems and critiques, and the [Pg 283] increased cares of his business struggles, make him too hard-worked a man to be available for the lighter social pleasures. ”

“ At the present moment we have a living, breathing, practical contradiction of the oft-repeated assertion that a poet cannot also be a man of business. Edmund Clarence Stedman is one of the active members of the Stock Exchange, and although of slight, delicate organization, with an excess of nervous force, he finds opportunity and mental strength for some of the finest poetical productions in the language. ”