PAGE, THOMAS NELSON (1853–), American author, was born at Oakland Plantation, Hanover county, Virginia, on the 23rd of April 1853, the great-grandson of Thomas Nelson (1738–1789) and of John Page (1744–1808), both governors of Virginia, the former being a signer of the Declaration of Independence. After a course at Washington and Lee University (1S69–1872) he graduated in law at the university of Virginia (1874), and practised, chiefly in Richmond, until 1S93, when he removed to Washington, D. C, and devoted himself to writing and lecturing. In 1884 he had published in the Century Magazine “Marse Chan,” a tale of life in Virginia during the Civil War, which immediately attracted attention. He wrote other stories of negro life and character (“Meh Lady,” “Unc’ Edinburg’s Drowndin’,” and “Ole ’Stracted”), which, with two others, were published in 1887 with the title In Ole Virginia, perhaps his most characteristic book. This was followed by Befo’ de War (iS88), dialect poems, written with Armistead Churchill Gordon (b. 1855); On Newfound River (1891); The Old South (1891), social and political essays; Elsket and Other Stories (1892); The Burial of the Guns (1894); Pastime Stories (1894); The Old Gentleman of the Black Stock (1897); Social Life in Old Virginia before the War (1897); Two Prisoners (1898); Red Rock (1898), a novel of the Reconstruction period; Gordon Keith (1903); The Negro: the Southerner’s Problem (1904); Bred in the Bone and Other Stories (1904); The Coast of Bohemia (1906), poems; The Old Dominion: Her Making and her Manners (1907), a collection of essays; Under the Crust (1907), stories; Robert E. Lee, the Southerner (1908); John Marvel, Assistant (1909), a novel; and various books for children. He is at his best in those short stories in which, through negro character and dialect, he pictures the life of the Virginia gentry, especially as it centred about the mutual devotion of master and servant .
PAGE, WILLIAM (1811–1885), American artist, was born at Albany, New York, on the 3rd of January 1811. He studied for the ministry at the Andover Theological Seminary in 1828–1830 and in later life became a Swedenborgian. He received his training in art from S. F. B. Morse and in the schools of the National Academy of Design, and in 1836 became a National Academician. From 1849 to 1860, he lived in Rome, where he painted portraits of his friends Robert and Elizabeth Browning. The first collection of Lowell’s Poems (1843) was
dedicated to Page, who was also a friend of W. W. Story. In 1871–1873 he was president of the National Academy of Design.
He died at Tottenville, Staten Island, New York, on the 1st
of October 18S5. Besides numerous portraits he painted
“Farragut at the Battle of Mobile,” belonging to the Tsar of
Russia; a “Holy Family,” in the Boston Athenaeum; and “The
Young Merchants,” at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts, Philadelphia. He modelled and painted several portraits
of Shakespeare, based on the Becker “death mask.” He wrote
A New Geometrical Method of Measuring the Human Figure
(1860).
PAGE, (1) A term used of a boy, lad or young male person in various capacities, positions or offices. The etymology is doubtful; the word is common to the Romanic languages; cf. O. Fr. and Span, page, Port, pagem, Ital. paggio. The Med. Lat. pagius has been commonly referred to Gr. παιδίον, diminutive of παῖς, boy, but the connexion is extremely doubtful. Others refer the word to the pueri paedagogiani, young slaves trained to become paedagogi (Gr. παιδαγωγοί), or tutors to young boys attending school. Under the empire,
numbers of such youths were attached to the imperial household
for the purposes of ceremonial attendance on state occasions,
thus occupying much the same position as that of the pages
of a royal or noble household in medieval and modern times.
In fact the term paedagogiani became equivalent to pueri
honorarii, qui in palatio ministerio principis militabant (so
Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v.). Littré refers pagius to pagensis,
i.e. rustic, belonging to the country districts (pagus), and adduces
from this the fact that the pagii were not necessarily boys or
youths; and quotes from Claude Fauchet (1530–1601) the
statement (Lib. I. Orig. milit. cap. i.) that up to the time of
Charles VI. (1368–1403) and Charles VII. (1403–1461) “le
mot de Page . . . . sembloit être seulement donné a de
viles personnel, comme à garçons de pied.” Skeat (Etym.
Dict.) points out that the form of the word in Portuguese,
pagem, indicates the derivation from pagensis. The word
“page” was applied in English to a boy or youth who was
employed as an assistant to an older servant, acting as it
were as an apprentice and learning his duties. In present
usage the chief applications are: (a) to a boy or lad, generally
wearing livery, and sometimes styled a “buttons,” who is
employed as a domestic servant; and (b) to a young boy who,
dressed in fancy costume, forms part of the bridal procession
at weddings. The word is also used (c) as the title of various
officials of different rank in royal and other households; thus
in the British royal household there are pages of honour, a page
of the chambers, pages of the presence, and pages of the back
stairs. These, no doubt, descend from the pueri paedagogiani
of the Roman imperial household through the young persons
of noble or gentle birth, who, during the middle and later ages,
served in the household of royal and noble persons, and received
a training to fit them for their future position in society. In
the times of chivalry the “page” was one who served a knight
and was trained to knighthood, and ranked next to a squire.
(See Knighthood and Valet.)
(2) In the sense of one side of a leaf of printed or written matter, the word is derived through Fr. from Lat. pagina (pangere, to fasten).
PAGEANT, in its most general sense a show or spectacle; the more specific meanings are involved in the etymology of the word and its connexion with the history of the early mystery plays (see Drama). In its early forms, dating from the 14th century, the word is pagyn or pagen, the excrescent i or d, as in “tyrant,” “ancient,” not appearing till later. The Med. Lat. equivalent is pagina, and this, or at least the root from which it is formed, must be taken as the source. The senses, however, in which the word is used, viz. stage, platform, or scene played on a stage, are not those of the classical Lat. pagina, a page of a book, nor do they apparently occur in the medieval Latin of any language other than English. Further, it is not clear which meaning comes first, platform or scene. If the last, then “scene,” i.e. a division of a play, might develop out of “page” of a book. If not, then pagina is a fresh formation from the root pag of pangere, to fix or fasten, the word meaning a fastened framework of wood forming a stage or platform; cf. the classical use of compago, structure. Others take pagina as a translation of Gr. πῆγμα, platform, stage, a word from the same root pag-. Du Cange (Glossarium) quotes a use in Med. Lat. of pegma in this sense, Machina lignea in qua statuae collocabantur, and Cotgrave gives “Pegmate, a stage or frame whereon pageants be set or carried.”
As has been said, “pageant” is first found in the sense of a scene, a division or part of a play or of the platform on which such scene was played in the medieval drama. Thus we read of Queen Margaret in 1457 that at Coventry she saw “alle the pagentes pleyde save domesday which myght not be pleyde for lak of day,” and in the accounts of the Smiths' gild at Coventry for 1450, five pence is paid “to bring the pagent into gosford-stret.” A clear idea of what these stages were like when the mystery plays became processional (processus), that is, were acted on separate platforms moving along a street, is seen in Archdeacon Roger’s contemporary account of the Chester plays about the end of the 16th century. “The maner of these playes weare, every company had his pagiant, or parte, which pageants weare a high scafolde with 2 rowmes, a higher and a lower, upon 4 wheeles” (T. Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Mysteries at Coventry, 1825, which contains most of the early references to the word). The movable platform, filled with emblematic or allegorical figures, naturally played an important part in processional shows with no dialogue or dramatic action. An instance (1432) of the practice and the use of the word is found in the Munimenta gildhallae londiniensis (ed. Riley), “Parabatur machine. . . . . in cujus medio stabat
