University of Virginia Library

Howells Bibliography: A "Find" and a Clarification
by
Edwin H. Cady

Before the publication of A Bibliography of William Dean Howells by William M. Gibson and George Arms, with its clear and impressively accurate record of "about 200 books wholly or in part by Howells and 1200 periodical pieces," Howells bibliography was a tangled morass. Now one may depend confidently on a reliable map for the exploration of Howells—and may take a sporting pleasure in poking into the few odd corners left. Among the six "highly desirable" items "not found" by Gibson and Arms are two Italian publications,[1] a piece of sheet-music, Don't Wake the Children, and a History of the Western Reserve. The purpose of this note is to remove these last two items from the "not found" list, leaving only "the MacDowell lyrics . . . and the 1916 edition of Garland's They of the High Trails"[2] to be searched for.

I

Don't Wake the Children turned up in the piano-seat of the home in Jefferson, Ohio, of a lady who said she had once played and sung it for Howells himself.[3] The bibliographical description, following the method of Gibson and Arms, would be:

Howells' poem, not elsewhere printed, was a product of the reflowering of his impulse to verse in the late '80's and early '90's. The reference to the death of his daughter Winifred, which had profound effects on his psyche and his art, dates it as after March 3, 1889. Perhaps the poem was a reject from the gathering of his new poetic output published in October 1895 as Stops of Various Quills.[4]

Howells was not a major poet, though he sometimes was a sound and moving minor one. This verse, however, is far from his best, strengthening the suspicion that it was a cull from the Stops of Various Quills collection. Clarence Wilber Bowers' music for it is, unfortunately, inferior to the verse. Bowers, an "organist, conductor, composer, teacher," may have made contact with Howells either through Ohio relationships, for he was born in Norwalk, Ohio, or through New England, where he studied at the New England Conservatory and taught at Andover Theological Seminary before beginning a complex westward trek of teaching stints in small colleges which seems to have ended in San Diego.[7] In any case, he wrote a rather catchy tune in the tradition of "She's Only a Bird In a Gilded Cage" which is sadly out of key with Howells' poem in spite of musical directions such as "Con moto e patetico" and "Con dolore."

Without poetic distinction, "Don't Wake the Children" does have a certain biographical significance to underscore its bibliographical rarity. In the mode of domestic sentimentality popular in the nineteenth century, it seeks to arouse in its audience emotions of a quality and an excess upon which Howells would normally have turned his back. Perhaps his lapse into sentimentality shows him trying to heal the wounds to his wife and himself—and to the united psyche of their marriage—caused by the protracted illness and shocking death of their lovely daughter and first child. From that point of view there is a pathos Howells could not have intended in the sight of the old realist and ironist seeking refuge in sentimentality from fate's triumph over him—and perhaps the pathos is deepened by the fact that somehow he was persuaded that such an instrument of autotherapy would make a successful popular song.

The publisher, "J. A. Howells & Co.," was of course Howells' elder

brother, Joseph Alexander Howells, who had continued the family newspaper and printing business in Jefferson, Ohio. With his usual familial conscientiousness Howells threw advantages in the way of J. A. Howells & Co. whenever he could. It may be speculated that Joe, who had once made good money publishing songs, recruited the composer and Will acquiesced in permitting them to use a poem he did not wish to include in his latest volume for whatever the venture would bring. At any rate, the venture appears to have been a thorough failure. With an inferior poem, worse music, and J. A. Howells & Co.'s handicaps in promoting and publishing it, perhaps that failure was foregone. In any event, it seems to have been so thorough that, to the best of my knowledge, my crumbling copy of "Don't Wake the Children" is the only one extant.

II

The "History of the Western Reserve" of Gibson and Arms (p. 7) is almost the only bit of confusion in their book. As its # 10-E on page 64 the matter is more clearly put:

Thus p. 64 corrects the impression left by p. 7 that Howells wrote a lost history of the Western Reserve, and a potential ghost is laid.

Gibson and Arms' item #10-E might better read:

Since Howells' letter forms a very brief part of the volume, and other volumes with Howells letters at least as long are not included by Gibson and Arms, there is reason to doubt that #10-E should appear at all.

The only other thing the student of Howells should know is that there is not much reason for him to refer to Mrs. Upton's book. Her other materials and views upon Howells are of little worth. She edited his quite valuable letter to her of March 9, 1910, leaving out comments of some real biographical interest concerning his mother. The full text, that is, the holograph letter itself, is readily available to students at the Library of the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland.

Notes