History of Oregon Literature/Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
Edwin Markham
But because our favored city, while 'twas just a frontier town,
Was the place our God selected when He thought to send you down
To live on earth.
F. W. PARKER OF OREGON CITY.
Edwin Markham is not in the true sense an Oregon poet. Some citizens of the state have dramatically claimed him at various times, and he seems to have been pleased that the claim was made, particularly that in 1921 it was made to the extent of crowning him poet laureate. His poems have not been about Oregon, and he left the state permanently at the age of five, his Oregon City birth and residence up to that age having a limited chance to influence him.
Oregon, however, has undoubtedly contributed a flavor to him beyond what would be expected of a place where he merely spent his first five years of existence. Possibly it can be accounted for by the fact that he was a precociously impressionable child, but it is more likely that Oregon seeped into him vicariously through his mother. She spent ten years in Oregon, from 1847 to 1857, and that frontier decade must have been the most vivid period of her life. The reasonable explanation is that her Oregon experiences became his with great verisimilitude, all the more so because she was poetic herself and he was an imaginative, poetic boy.
In any case, Oregon City takes much pride in having been his birthplace. An erroneous report was circulated in the early part of 1935 that he was born on a farm on Abiqua Creek, which caused the Oregon
City chamber of commerce, at the trouble of consid- erable research, to locate the exact place in the town where he was born. In 1921 the poet had done this himself, with the help of Mrs. Eva Emery Dye and F. W. Parker, but he had picked out the wrong house, a cottage which now stands on an alleyway, where the Markham family had later lived. Oregon City presents an interesting cultural study. Vancouver, under the Hudson's Bay Company, was founded on beaver-skins and profits. Oregon City, mecca of the pioneers and settlers, started out with churches, libraries, debating societies, schools, poets, orators, novelists and a literary newspaper. Apparent- ly if a town begins with a sufficient cultural bent the odds are in favor of its remaining that way. All of which is preliminary to saying that Edwin Markham's having been born in Oregon City is much less sig- nificant than the fact that the commercial body of that town should be interested and active to such a degree about it 8 3 years afterwards. "He was born," they tell us, "in a little yellow house which stood at Fifth and Water Street in this city, facing the Willamette River, and which went out in the flood of 1861-2." The time of his birth was April 23, 1852. He was the youngest of 12 children. The brother just older than himself was a deaf mute and his mother was "a strangely silent woman." Could this soundless environ- ment in his infant years have accustomed him to hearken to inner voices? His father found work on a ranch in the mountains, leaving his mother in Oregon City to run their little store and conduct a fruit-tree nursery.
In 1857 they sold out and moved to California, but, young as he was, he had started to school before they left Oregon City. During his youth in California he worked at farm- ing, blacksmithing and herding sheep and cattle. Then he attended the San Jose Normal School and became a principal and superintendent of schools—writing, al- ways writing on the side. As a boy he was hungry for books but the household had not the money to buy them. At the age of 14 he plowed a 20-acre field for a neighbor. His hire was a $20 goldpiece. He gave this to his mother and asked her to invest it all in books of poetry for him on her annual visit to San Francisco. Previously, a brother who was a printer had gone back to Oregon City to work on a newspaper, leaving behind in a cupboard, where the eager Edwin found them, an Iliad, a Scott and a Byron. "Thereafter Byron and I were insepar- able!" Is it not a little strange—or is it—the important part that Byron has played in Oregon literature? He started Simpson, he started Markham, and Joaquin Miller dreamed of Nottingham "for years and years." This noble of polite sophistication had an influence greater than that of any other writer on the three lead- ing poets of a far frontier commonwealth. Was it for the reason given by Miller: "The free can understand the free"? Under the impact of Byron, Edwin Markham be- gan to write, composing "literally thousands of brief poems" before he had one published. This was in the Calif ornian at the age of 28. Paradoxically, he was
precocious but ripened to fullness late. He was 47 be- fore he wrote "The Man With the Hoe", by which he was suddenly lifted from obscurity to fame. Life tardily vouchsafed its rewards, but granted him longevity in recompense, so, although he was mar- ried at 45 and became able to live by his pen at 47, his years subsequent to these events have been as long as given to most men of normal schedules. It is all quite contrary to the lessons taught by psychology and biography. Brighter always than most boys of his age, remaining brighter in succeeding periods of growth than other men, destiny nevertheless held him to a longer apprenticeship. It is unorthodox, but it is his case exactly, and it seems a reasonable way to great achievement. During his creative period of 36 years, stretching with sustained freshness into advanced old age, he has published several volumes of poetry and a few volumes of prose, in addition to editing a number of books, which call for no detailed listing in this history, since they do not deal with Oregon. For a long time he has resided in New York. At the age of 83 he finds Ore- gon City coveting its reputation as the place of his birth, and the pride is mutual. He has talked about Oregon more than he has written about it, and in this way has heartily acquiesced in its claim of ownership. At least the state can cherish the confirmation that it has a lush soil for genius—from it have risen three men who have given to American literature three of its great poems: "Columbus", "Beautiful Willamette" and "The Man With the Hoe". Here will be given, instead of any of Edwin Mark-
ham's poetry, two selections about Oregon in prose, both from California the Wonderful, published in 1915: Oregon City and Oregon Apples Realizing the worth and beauty of the Willamette Val- ley, McLoughlin took possession of the Willamette Falls and the domain round about, built his home on the river shore and this became the seed of Oregon City. To this beautiful place my own parents drifted in 1847, after a long struggle with the wilderness. Here I was born, and here I spent my first years, picking up pebbles on the shore, watching the white waterfalls, gaz- ing on the high mysterious bluffs that look down upon the young city. And I well remember going again and again with a group to gather baskets of hazelnuts in the flaming Autumn woods. And even more vivid is my memory of the delectable apples I ate in an orchard in a high mountain valley. I picked them up from the cool grass of the ground, the dew still upon them. Were there ever such apples any- where else in the world? The tang and smack of them had the keen flavor of the apples of Hesperides. Portland from Council Crest If you happen to be wandering in the wonderful William- ette Valley in June, do not fail to see the Rose Festival in Portland. For months the roses hold their glory in her soft warm air. Nor must you fail to climb her Council Crest, a sort of an Acropolis; because from this lofty elevation you can see the city of Portland below you, spread out, trim and trig, like a corner in New England. There are the quiet Co- lonial houses, there are the clean busy streets, all engirdled by groves of fir and cedar, all brightened by rose gardens that are roses all the year. This is the celebrated Council Crest, the high place where the Indian chieftains used to gather for their councils. All around us are the fir-clad hills; yet, looking afar, yo see the Columbia for long miles, see also in the southeast the summit of Mt. Hood rising like a cloud of pale rose in the evening heavens. And there to the north is Mt. St. Helens, and farther still we get a glimpse of the ghost of imperious Rainier.