History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 17
CHAPTER 17
Sam. L. Simpson
Let those who never erred forget
His worth, in vain bewailings;
Sweet Soul of Song!—I own my debt
Uncanceled by his failings!
As in the case of William Cullen Bryant and Edwin Markham, Sam. L. Simpson's first poem was his best, at least the most famous, although he continued to write for 31 years. "Beautiful Willamette" or "Ad Willametam", as he originally called it, was written when he was about half way along in his twenty-second year. He had just severed a law partnership with J. Quinn Thornton in Albany. The section of the river often pointed out, correctly or not, as the place of the poem's composition, is just below the Albany bridge, across from the town. It was first printed in the Albany Democrat for April 18, 1868. It was reprinted by several papers of Oregon, by the leading papers of California, and by some eastern papers. It was not actually his first published poem, however, since as a student at Willamette University he had contributed verse to the Pacific Christian Advocate.
No comprehensive essay on Sam. L. Simpson's life has been written. There are three pages of biography and comment in Horner's Oregon Literature and a short biographical sketch in the introduction to his volume of poems The Gold-Gated West, published in 1910, eleven years after his death.
He was six months old when he was brought across the plains in 1846 from Missouri to Oregon City. His parents later settled in Polk and Marion Counties, where he attended the log-cabin schools of that pioneer period until he was fifteen. At this time he was employed for a while in his father's store on the Grande Ronde Indian Reservation. He frequently saw and talked with Grant and Sheridan. The latter gave him a copy of Byron's poems. It is interesting alike that Sheridan, who was living with a beautiful squaw wife, should have owned this book with its philosophy of love in confirmation of his own, and that a fifteenyear-old frontier boy should have sufficiently impressed a soldier with his sensitiveness and his interest in poetry to make such a gift seem suitable.
At the age of 16 he entered Willamette University at Salem with his elder brother Sylvester, and was graduated in 1865, a few months before he was twenty. In 1866, his father, Benjamin Simpson, bought the Salem Statesman. This opportunity, however, did not immediately attract him to journalism as a profession. Instead, he continued to study law and was admitted to the bar. From December 28, 1867, to April 11, 1868—a week before he wrote "Beautiful Willamette"—he practiced with J. Quinn Thornton at Albany, and later for about two years at Corvallis. His "characteristic timidity" was not a happy quality in such an aggressive calling as the law, and in 1870 he quit it for good.
In the meantime, in 1868, he had married Miss Julia Humphrey, whom he had met while both were students at Willamette and of whom he wrote in one of his verses, "O she was fair as a red-lipped lily, a rosy marble of moulded song." Their marriage did not remain happy.
In 1870 he took up journalism, at which he made his living the remaining twenty-nine years of his life. He bought the Corvallis Gazette and became its editor. The respect that "Beautiful Willamette" and his other literary contributions had brought him, is indicated by the following notice in the Oregon State Journal, Eugene City, March 19, 1870:
It is reported that the Corvallis Gazette has been bought by the Union men of Benton County, and will be conducted henceforth in the interest of the Republican party. Mr. S. L. Simpson is to be editor....We congratulate the people of Benton on the change. Mr. Simpson is one of the ablest and most pleasing writers in the State, and he will make a No. 1 paper.
The Oregon State Journal continued to have such a high opinion of him that H. R. Kincaid selected him as editor of that paper during his absence of a year in Washington, D. C. Meanwhile, the Gazette had not been a successful venture financially and his father had been appointed United States Surveyor General of Oregon, with headquarters at Eugene. Kincaid, wielder of a trenchant pen, chose the poet to carry on while he was away, and after Simpson's death remembered his brilliancy but irresponsibility as follows:
The weeks without editorials were probably the weeks when he was not sober enough to write them, for he takes front rank, with Burns and Poe, among the drinking poets. It was the habit, inescapably fastened upon him at 29 and 30, that was to cause it to be said of him in newspaper obituaries after his death, "But the genius of Oregon's singer and poet laureate was dimmed by the besetting sin of his life."Sam Simpson lived in Eugene when his father, Hon. Ben Simpson, was U. S. Surveyor General of Oregon and had his office here. For a year in 1874 and 1875 while he resided here, Sam was engaged, during the absence of the editor in Washington, to write editorials for the Journal. His writings were brilliant but irregular and could not be depended upon, as some weeks little or nothing was furnished. He had been editor of the Corvallis Gazette before he came to Eugene and has since been connected with various newspapers in Oregon.
Later he worked on newspapers in Salem, Astoria and Portland, but success, as men measure it, did not come to him. In the later period of his life, instead of being the powerful voice of a great metropolitan journal as his talents warranted, he was editor for two years of the Ilwaco Tribune. Author of "Beautiful Willamette" at 22, with the future beckoning brightly before him, and in charge of a small country weekly at 50—it was not much distance run in the practical scheme of turning up a career. Though his irregular habits disenfranchised him for places of high responsibility, he retained his dignity and his status as an important literary man while earning his living in modest journalistic positions. Merle R. Chessman, present publisher of the Astorian-Budget, tells how, during the Spanish-American War, the business men of Astoria made up a purse to pay the telegraph tolls to send his poem, "Launching of the Battleship Oregon", to San Francisco. It is a poem of 78 lines that may be found in his published volume. Wiring it to San Francisco at their expense was the idea of his Astoria neighbors, not his. They had that much admiration of his poem and that much pride in him, and their attitude is characteristic of the respect he commanded as a journalist and a poet throughout his life and in all the communities where he lived. It was not a small triumph for a man who was not always sober to be so well thought of when he was, and to have the one condition affect the other so little in public opinion.
As has been mentioned, his poems were not published in book form until after his death. During his lifetime they were contributed to newspapers and magazines, and he was mainly content to leave them there. He was associated, however, in the making of a few books.
In the 70's, Dr. A. W. Patterson of Eugene entered into contract with A. L. Bancroft & Company of San Francisco to furnish a speller and a set of five school readers in a Pacific Coast series. After doing three of the readers and the speller, he recommended to the publishers that the fourth and fifth readers be assigned to Sam. L. Simpson. These he ably prepared. Though once widely used from San Diego to Seattle, they have become scarce like all old school-books of half a century ago, and are now collector's items.
In the preface to the fifth reader, he stated the wise principle that had governed his selection of material: "The literature of the Pacific Coast has received, as is believed to be proper, some special recognition, but not to the extent of being sectional or exclusive." Of 77 lessons in prose, five were from Pacific Coast writers: "The Fate of Vasco Nunez", by Hubert H. Bancroft; "David C. Broderick", by Col. E. D. Baker; "Select Passages—Loyalty, Science, Freedom, The Comet", by Col. E. D. Baker; "An Old Edition of Shakespeare", by Matthew P. Deady; "An Address Delivered at the Interment of Col. E. D. Baker", by Thomas Starr King. Of 78 lessons in poetry, four were from Pacific Coast poets: "Dickens in Camp", by F. Bret Harte; "Across the Plains", by Joaquin Miller; "The Wreck of 'The Wright'", by Samuel L. Sampson; "Tamalpais", by Charles Warren Stoddard. Even in the light of an advanced pedagogy, the selections are excellent, except the over-emphasis on Col. E. D. Baker, a sample of whose eloquence is given in the chapter "Websters of the Columbia." It is a little disappointing to find that Simpson's judgment was distorted by the echoing fame of this magic speaker, but he was not alone. Dr. J. B. Horner, many years later, over-emphasized him in his Oregon Literature. The selection from Judge Deady was then and would still be almost a perfect piece for a Pacific Coast reader. It tells about a 1773 Theobold edition of Shakespeare picked up at auction in Oregon City in the early 70's.
Sam. L. Simpson's work on the readers was satisfactory enough so that he was employed for sometime by the same firm in the preparation of the History of the Northwest Coast, at a salary of $150 a month.
In 1878, What Come of It, a novel by Mrs. H. V. Stitzel, was published in Portland by George H. Himes. Mrs. Stitzel had died before it was finished, and to Simpson came the assignment of completing it and editing it. His part is modestly explained in the preface:
...Shortly after the death of Mrs. Stitzel, in January last, her unfinished manuscript, in the crude and imperfect condition of the first writing, was placed in the hands of Mr. Sam. L . Simpson, who has simply conducted the story to a natural conclusion, and prepared the whole for publication. The author herself, had her life been spared, had undoubtedly made a better book of it; but her husband and friends were unwilling that even the unripe fruits of her toil should perish utterly, and thus, under exceptional conditions, What Came of It is submitted to a generous and sympathizing public.
It was a far call from the school readers to another book to which he gave his poetic talents. This was The Guide, published in Portland in September, 1894, as a paper-bound pamphlet of 44 pages. It is said that about 20,000 copies were sold at twenty-five cents each. Both the author and the publisher were anonymous but the former has been pretty definitely identified as Sam. L. Simpson. He supplied a preface in rhyme and eight mildly esoteric verses.
He lacked five months of being 54 when he died in Portland on June 14, 1899. "He slipped and fell when out walking, and struck the back of his head violently on the sidewalk. He was brought to his room at the St. Charles Hotel." It was only the man, prematurely old, who died on that summer day. The poet had been gone for some time—the light that had still shone at odd moments in his dreaming eyes was a gracious and lingering radiance from the past. His grave is in the Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland.
He had two sons, Eugene and Claude, both of whom are now dead, and he has no descendant living. Other men leave an affectionate and influential lineage to carry on propaganda for their fame but, with his family extinct, he has only the friends of his poetry to keep alive his memory; and these have not been diligent, for it has been singularly difficult to find exact information about him. The few brief biographical accounts of him are vague and conflicting in their facts, being unfortunately consistent only in giving the year of his death as 1900 instead of correctly as 1899.
Although not much has been written about him biographically, there is considerable published comment on his poetry, his attitude towards it and his manner of writing it.
Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor said of him:
Among the poets of the Willamette Valley, Samuel L. Simpson deserves a high rank, having written some of the finest lyrics contributed to local literature, though his style is uneven.
Joseph Gaston in his Centennial History of Oregon referred to him briefly in his summary of Oregon literature:
Samuel L. Simpson is the popular poet of Oregon. He had the happy faculty of embodying in his lyrics the beau ties of Oregon, and will for this reason be longer remembered than those who appealed to sentiment. While not born in Oregon, he came to the state in childhood and was educated at Willamette University. His lines on the Oregon river made his fame.
Fred A. Dunham in the Pacific Monthly for July, 1899, told about the poet's indifference, even his objection, to a published volume:
When asked one day by the writer why he did not publish his poetry in a volume, and strive for the fame and incident financial reward, he answered: "I have not even acopy of my poems. I have never written anything that satisfied me. There are so many half-way poets deluging the world with so-called poetry that I am disgusted, and do not wish to add to the burdens of the long-suffering public. I believe my sister has the most of my writings, but they shall never be published while I am alive."
In an obituary editorial, presumably written by Harvey W. Scott, the Oregonian for June 18, 1899, described the vacant place he left in Oregon letters:
The death of Sam. L. Simpson leaves Oregon no poet of merit or reputation. Singular it is that so much of poetic inspiration, as we have in the splendors of nature and in the romantic suggestions of pioneer life, should have found so few tongues. Men of intellect we have in plenty, as our professional and business life bears witness; but the world of artistic interests finds here few recruits or none at all. It has long been hoped that there might rise, among us, a mind combining enthusiasm for Oregon and its history with the insight of literary art and the gift of dramatic portrayal, and that these powers might be devoted to preservation, in the forms of historic or romantic fiction, the tone, color, sentiment and spirit of the older Oregon, now passing away. Thus far this hope has been vain. The atmosphere which produces the artistic mind is wanting here, as in every new country where practical affairs claim all the energies of life. The writer who shall voice the romance of Oregon must come, if at all, at a later time.
Wm. W. Fidler of Grants Pass, under date of February 20, 1900, wrote the following letter, which was published in the March number of the Pacific Monthly for that year:
To Editor Pacific Monthly—
Since the death of Oregon's gifted poet, S. L. Simpson, I notice a revival of interest in his charming poesy. To help it along, I enclose some specimens that I believe have never been in print. During the winter of 1 879, I had the honor and pleasure of entertaining our "poet laureate" at my bachelor quarters on Williams creek, Josephine county, and he then and there, through my urging and advice, under took and carried through the work of collecting and prepar ing a volume of his poems for publication. He did not have in his possession a single scrap of the many gems he had scattered broadcast to our Western breezes. 1 had many of his choicer poems, however, carefully pasted away in a scrap-book, which, with others procured from different sources, formed the nucleus for an interesting volume.
It was a part of the programme that he was to indite some new pieces to go with it; but so dilatory was he in getting his muse in right temper for the fray, that I began to think the additions from this source would not be large. When he did get down to work, however, his industry was what amazed me. I thought he would never stop. Many of his best poems were written on that occasion, with anything but poetical surroundings to inspire his verse, so that when he left Josephine county he carried with him a completed volume of resplendent song. My own valued usufruct of the performance consisted in several first-draft copies of the new pieces. This will explain how I came to be custodian of so much of his manuscript. The finished product which he intended for publication, of course, was often different from the first-draft copy but in the absence of the ripened fruit some idea of its quality may be formed from the specimens we have at our command. But his book, so far as I am advised, never saw the light of publication day. The printing-house that undertook its publication, I believe, failed after it had the entire volume in type.
Dashings of Oregon was to have been the title of the book, suggested by Bryant's beautiful lines....
His preface you will find enclosed with this communication.
Very truly yours,
WM. W . FIDLER.
Wm. W . Fidler also contributed to the issue of the Oregon Historical Quarterly for December, 1914, an article entitled "Personal Recollections of Samuel L. Simpson," in which he said, "Somebody has already described him in print as 'the most drunken poet, and the most poetical drunkard that ever made the Muses smile or weep'." The article, which goes into more detail than was contained in the letter, describes the poet's activities, particularly his methods of composition, while he was a sober guest at the cabin on Williams Creek. It is here quoted in part:
On our return to my place of residence, I prevailed on Sam to stop over with me for the winter and try to get out an edition of his poems.... As a preliminary he started in reading all the books in my library.... He very soon made me aware of the fact that he was an omniverous reader. Book after book was gone through, yet no addition to the volume of original verse. I tried to encourage him to get down to business, even though he didn't produce anything equal to his best.
"You think you must not write anything unless it is as good as 'Beautiful Willamette'," I remarked to him one day.
"That has exercised a sort of tyranny over me," was the reply.
For the first time, perhaps in many years, our favorite bard was thoroughly sobered up and continued so all winter....He took a notion at one time that he would help me in my work of making rails....He also wanted to try his hand at mining.... At last, however, he got settled down to writing poetry and was then in his proper element.
...He worked as I have seldom seen men work before or since, barely stopping long enough to eat and help with the culinary chores....Often, on going in at noon or night, I would hear him, long before I got near the house, going over his numbers to be sure they had the right sound and rhythm before he would transmit them to paper. When once he had his lines put down, they were apt to be in every way correct and as he wanted them to remain. Seldom was it that he had to interline or reconstruct a stanza after it was written, though he often threw away a good verse containing an excellent poetical idea, because of his failure to get a similar rhyme.
This was in 1879. Not only did the collected volume Dashings of Oregon, as planned at that time, fail to materialize but he never had his poems brought together in a book while he lived. This was finally done in 1910 by his sister and his sons. It was published by J. B. Lippincott, Philadelphia, as The Gold-Gated-West, and was edited, with an introductory preface, by W. T. Burney. The book contains 81 poems grouped as "Poems of Nature", "Historical and Narrative Poems", "Memories of the West", "Occasional Poems", "Poems of Sentiment", "Poems of Patriotism", "Miscellaneous", "In Memoriam", "Life and Death".
The over-editing of this book, by an "alleged literary expert" of the East, had "ruined much of Sam Simpson's work" by presenting it in "this distorted form," according to Colonel R. A. Miller in a report in 1935 to the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers.
Most people, to their loss, know only his one famous poem. What an unhappy situation it is in many ways for an author to write one thing of supreme popularity is cleverly explained in Frank R. Stockton's story His Wife's Deceased Sister, and is confirmed by Sam. L. Simpson's own statement to Wm. W. Fidler that "Beautiful Willamette" had exercised a sort of tyranny over him. This is given here because no book on the literature of Oregon would be complete with out it, but there is also included "The Pioneer Ox" to show how far he was from being a one-poem poet.
Beautiful Willamette
Leaping like a child at play,
Winding, widening through the valley,
Bright Willamette glides away;
Onward ever,
Lovely River,
Softly calling to the sea,
Time, that scars us,
Maims and mars us,
Leaves no track or trench on thee.
Braid and border for thy side;
Grace forever haunts thy journey,
Beauty dimples on thy tide;
Through the purple gates of morning
Now thy roseate ripples dance
Golden then, when day, departing,
On thy waters trails his lance,
Waltzing, flashing,
Tinkling, splashing,
Limpid volatile and free—
Always hurried
To be buried
In the bitter, moon-mad sea.
Swings a picture of the sky,
Like those wavering hopes of Aidenn,
Dimly in our dreams that lie;
Clouded often, drowned in turmoil,
Faint and lovely, far away—
Wreathing sunshine on the morrow,
Breathing fragrance round today.
Love would wander
Here and ponder,
Hither poetry would dream;
Life's old questions,
Sad suggestions,
Whence and whither? throng thy stream.
Shall thy scattered waves be tossed.
'Mid the surge's rhythmic thunder
Shall thy silver tongues be lost.
O! thy glimmering rush of gladness
Mocks this turbid life of mine!
Racing to the wild Forever
Down the sloping paths of Time.
Onward ever,
Lovely River,
Softly calling to the sea;
Time, that scars us,
Maims and mars us,
Leaves no track or trench on thee.
The Pioneer Ox
This was published in the Oregon Native Son for July, 1899, and is not included in his collected volume The Gold-Gated West.
Where the rivers in solitude somber were flowing
In the distant and dimly remembered days,
When the pioneer rifle-shots, resolute, ringing,
The first notes of conquest and progress were singing
In the dusk of wilderness ways.
Has over and over again been repeated
In the grand bivouacs of the pioneers,
When they yearly assembled to call up the story
Of battles and toils that preceded the glory
Of victories won in the long-faded years.
No gleam from the camp-fire upon it reflected,
As story and song were passing around;
It is strange, it is sad, that the aids of endeavor
Are so easily dropped in the sea called Forever,
And never recalled from their slumber profound.
And honor returned to a friend we have slighted
In the songs that are sung and the tales that are told;
The mirage of the plains looms up as I ponder,
And away, far away, over Laramie yonder,
Is a picture of something familiar of old.
Gray-tented, a slow and mysterious dragon
To the Sioux and Shawnee, as they circle afar
On their sable-maned coursers, and muttered and wondered
If the lands of their people were thus to be sundered
By a mystery following the sun and star!
The cries of the children are lonesome and dreary;
And the men, with set lips, stalk on by their teams
As the endless white road goes winding and winding
Through wastes that are songless, with dust that is blinding,
To Oregon, golden with argonaut dreams.
So sluggish, yet sure, to the dreamland before them,
Are bowing scarred necks to the pitiless yoke—
So awkward and grim, so huge and ungainly,
And yet with a strength that was never called vainly—
Who yet for these oxen a fitting word spoke?
They lay on the plain and moaned as they rested,
All thankful for shadows on sad, purple eyes;
With never a dream or delusion to cheer them,
And only the wolf-haunted silence to hear them,
They moaned as they slept under gold-flowered skies.
Like mists that were clearing, like hopes that were drifting,
They gave all their might to the yokes and the chains;
With hunger and thirst and the driver's keen scourging
(As if duty embodied should need such harsh urging!)
They bore the state-builders o'er mountains and plains.
They hauled the great logs for the homes they defended
Who founded this emerald empire of ours;
And, glad of the greenness of nature surrounding,
Of a region with rivers and forests abounding,
They drew the first plows through wild tangles of flowers.
Your thinned ranks assemble for good-bye and greeting,
And dimmed eyes are moistened with thoughts of the past,
Let the ox be remembered, the patient, enduring,
True servant of fortune to you so alluring—
Let the ox be remembered, his service held fast.
That far-reaching myth in which nations have gloried,
To the toils of the ox in all ages and lands?
And so, pioneers, when at your next meeting
Some will give the good-bye as they give the glad greeting,
Let his work be recalled with a clasping of hands.