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literary history

Illustration from Bill Nye’s Comic History of the United States

Ten Takes on New England History by Maine Humorist Bill Nye

Edgar Wilson Nye left Maine (he was born in the small town of Shirley) as a small child, but somehow the dry humor that Maine is so famous for stayed with him. Publishing under the name “Bill Nye,” not to be confused with the other Bill Nye. Nye grew up in Wisconsin and launched his career as a humorist there while still serving as a judge and lawyer.

He began publishing a comic newspaper, The Boomerang, which circulated throughout the country. At the urging of publishers, he moved east to Staten Island, publishing a series of highly successful books: “Bill Nye and the Boomerang,” 1881; “The Forty Liars,” 1883; “Bailed Hay,” 1884; “Bill Nye’s Blossom Rock,” 1885, and “Remarks,” 1886.

Illustration from Bill Nye’s Comic History of the United States

His last works were and Bill Nye’s Comic History of the United States, published in 1894 Bill Nye’s Comic History of England, published in 1896 (posthumously). By 1895, Nye’s work was appearing in numerous newspapers via syndication and he was an active and sought-after public speaker. His income reached well into the tens of thousands of dollars. Nye told friends he was growing weary of his reputation as one of America’s leading humorists because no one took anything he said seriously. He had a goal of transitioning away from comic to serious writing, but he never got the chance. He died at age 45.

By his death in 1896 from meningitis, his health had suffered greatly; he had moved to North Carolina for the warmer climate. Some of Nye’s work would be considered politically incorrect by today’s audiences, but below are 10 excerpts from his Comic History of The United States:

On the increasing number of colonists in the 1620s:

The Mayflower began to bring over quantities of antique furniture, mostly hall-clocks for future sales. Hanging them on spars and masts during rough weather easily accounts for the fact that none of them have ever been known to go.

On the establishment of the Plymouth Colony:

In the fall of 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth during a disagreeable storm, and, noting the excellent opportunity for future misery, began to erect a number of rude cabins. This party consisted of one hundred and two people of a resolute character who wished to worship God in a more extemporaneous manner than had been the custom in the Church of England.

The Mayflower, laden with antiques, as imagined by Bill Nye.

They found that the Indians of Cape Cod were not ritualistic, and that they were willing to dispose of inside lots at Plymouth on reasonable terms, retaining, however, the right to use the lands for massacre purposes from time to time.

Early agricultural success of New Englanders:

Money-matters, however, were rather panicky at the time, and the people were kept busy digging clams to sustain life in order to raise Indian corn enough to give them sufficient strength to pull clams enough the following winter to get them through till the next corn crop should give them strength to dig for clams again. Thus a trip to London and the Isle of Wight looked farther and farther away.

Puritan pastimes:

During dull times and on rainy days it was a question among the Puritans whether they would banish an old lady, bore holes with a red-hot iron through a Quaker’s tongue, or pitch horse-shoes.

On the Opening of “witch hunting season.”

The year 1692 is noted mostly for the Salem excitement regarding witchcraft. The children of Rev. Mr. Parris were attacked with some peculiar disease which would not yield to the soothing blisters and bleedings administered by the physicians of the old school, and so, not knowing exactly what to do about it, the doctors concluded that they were bewitched. Then it was, of course, the duty of the courts and selectmen to hunt up the witches. This was naturally difficult.

Fifty-five persons were tortured and twenty were hanged for being witches;

“Be you a witch?” asked one of the judges of Massachusetts, according to the records now on file in the State-House at Boston.

“No, your honor,” was the reply.

“Officer,” said the court, taking a pinch of snuff, “take her out on the tennis-grounds and pull out her toe-nails with a pair of hot pincers, and then see what she says.”

It was quite common to examine lady witches in the regular court and then adjourn to the tennis-court. A great many were ducked by order of the court and hanged up by the thumbs, in obedience to the customs of these people who came to America because they were persecuted.

On his home state of Maine’s early history…

A visitor seeking refreshment at Bar Harbor.

Shortly after the landing of the Pilgrims, say two years or thereabouts, Gorges and Mason obtained from England the grant of a large tract lying between the Merrimac and Kennebec Rivers. This patent was afterwards dissolved, Mason taking what is now New Hampshire, and Gorges taking Maine. He afterwards sold the State to Massachusetts for six thousand dollars. The growth of the State may be noticed since that time, for one county cost more than that last November.

In 1820 Maine was separated from Massachusetts. Maine is noted for being the easternmost State in the Union, and has been utilized by a number of eminent men as a birthplace. White-birch spools for thread, Christmas-trees, and tamarack and spruce-gum are found in great abundance. It is the home of an industrious and peace-loving people. Bar Harbor is a cool place to go to in summer-time and violate the liquor law of the State.

On the Puritans and their taxes…

Having banished Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson to be skinned by the Pequods and Narragansetts over at Narragansett Pier, they went on about their business, flogging Quakers, also ducking old women who had lumbago, and burning other women who would not answer affirmatively when asked, “Be you a witch?”

Then when Roger began to make improvements and draw the attention of Eastern capital to Rhode Island and to organize a State or Colony with a charter, Plymouth said, “Hold on, Roger: religiously we have cast you out, to live on wild strawberries, clams, and Indians, but from a mercantile and political point of view you will please notice that we have a string which you will notice is attached to your wages and discoveries.

Afterwards, however, Roger Williams obtained the necessary funds from admiring friends with which to go to England and obtain a charter…

On the New England Colonists’ contribution to the capture of Cape Breton…

King George’s War, which extended over four years, succeeded, but did not amount to anything except the capture of Cape Breton by English and Colonial troops. Cape Breton was called the Gibraltar of America; but a Yankee farmer who has raised flax on an upright farm for twenty years does not mind scaling a couple of Gibraltars before breakfast; so, without any West Point knowledge regarding engineering, they walked up the hill, and those who were alive when they got to the top took it. It was no Balaklava business and no dumb animal show, but simply revealed the fact that brave men fighting for their eight-dollar homes and a mass of children are disagreeable people to meet on the battle-field.

On Dictionary publisher Noah Webster’s darkest secret…

I might add, though I dislike to speak of it now, that Mr. Webster was at one time a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts. I believe that was the only time he ever stepped aside from the strait and narrow way. A good many people do not know this, but it is true.

On the Puritan influence in Boston…

Salem and Charlestown were started by Governor Endicott, and Boston was founded in 1630. To these various towns the Puritans flocked, and even now one may be seen in ghostly garments on Thanksgiving Eve flitting here and there turning off the gas in the parlor while the family are at tea, in order to cut down expenses.

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Captain Kidd’s Treasure and the Secrets of the Astor Fortune

John Jacob Astor made a fortune. But did he do it as a fur trader, as he told everyone? Or, did he actually base his fortune on buried pirate treasure discovered in Deer Isle, Maine? And did he keep it secret so he didn’t have to return it to its rightful owners?

That’s what Franklin Head told the world.

Well, in actuality Astor built his fortune on fur trading. But the myth that he discovered buried treasure on the coast of Maine has persisted – ever since it was created by a Chicago lawyer and bon vivant who liked to entertain his rich friends with fanciful historical spoofs.

John Jacob Astor by John Wesley Jarvis

Franklin Harvey Head was the lawyer who invented the story. Born in New York, he went west to Wisconsin to practice law. His career took him to California and Utah, where he had mining and cattle interests. And finally he landed back in Chicago as a bank director and president of the Chicago Malleable Iron Company.

During his off hours, Head liked to socialize with Chicago’s literary society. To entertain his wealthy friends, he published humorous books based upon fanciful tales.

Shakespeare’s Insomnia

Franklin Head (inset)

For example, Head noticed that William Shakespeare’s characters frequently express their wish for a restful sleep to ease their minds. He then published: Shakespeare’s Insomnia and the Causes Thereof. In the parody he included “newly-discovered” correspondence between the playwright and Sir Walter Raleigh, actor William Kempe and money lender “Mordecai Shylock.” The fictitious letters highlighted Shakespeare’s money and marital difficulties. Head argued they caused the insomnia that influenced his plays.

Head had wealthy friends who founded the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, a retreat off the Georgia coast. For their entertainment, Head published Studies in Early American History: The Legends of Jekyll Island. The fictitious history interweaves real and fake historical names and stories with the names and photographs of Head’s friends. Yet many took the book as truth, and incorporated into later histories of the island.

Jekyll Island clubhouse

A Head book dealing with Maine spawned the Astor story. Head was dining with the daughter of landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted when the subject of his Maine property came up. Olmsted owned an estate on Maine’s Deer Isle and spent one summer there before his death.

The pirate William Kidd was a favorite of Head’s. He had also worked him into his Jekyll Island history. From his Olmsted conversation came Studies in Early American History: A Notable Lawsuit. The story described how Olmstead’s descendants had sued the Astor family to recover William Kidd’s pirate treasure.

Frederick Law Olmsted

The Astor Fortune

According to Head’s account, a trapper had discovered a buried treasure chest from William Kidd on land that Olmsted’s ancestors owned on Deer Isle. The trapper stole the chest and, not knowing its actual value, sold it to Astor. It then formed the basis for the Astor fortune.

Barred Island, part of the Deer Isle property owned by Frederick Law Olmsted

In Head’s account, generations later the Olmsteds discovered the theft and sued Astor for compensation. That includED back rent on all his Manhattan real estate, which he could not have purchased without the stolen treasure.

The book is full of tipoffs that it is not factual, including references to Olmsted ancestors Cotton Mather Olmsted and Oliver Cromwell Olmsted. Perhaps the most glaring indicator that the story was not true was the absence of any lawsuit that the book was supposedly based upon.

Nevertheless, the appetite for news of the wealthy was so strong the story came to be taken as truth. Liberty Magazine then published it as fact. People would tell and it would be told and reprinted many times over the years.

William Kidd

The Hoax Has Legs

Originally printed in 1892, the story then surfaced in 1926 when a California historian presented it as true. It then made its way into newspapers around the world. Not to be outdone, newspapers in the state of Maine even postulated that the state could recover the treasure. After all, selling stolen goods was illegal.

There’s no indication that Head, who died in 1914, intended his stories to be taken seriously — or even that they would be distributed beyond his circle of friends.

This story about the Astor fortune last updated in 2021. Images: Jekyll Island clubhouse by By Lawrence G. Miller (Lawrence G. Miller on en.wikipedia) – Photograph created by Miller using a Casio QV-2000UX digital camera., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8489632.

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Edwin Arlington Robinson – The Poet Who Created Maine’s Tilbury Town

Why did Richard Cory shoot himself? Because Maine’s Edwin Arlington Robinson wanted it that way.

Robinson was born in Gardiner, Maine in 1869 and spent most of his first 30 years there. He formed impressions about how men and women pursued their lives and overcame adversity – or didn’t.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

His focus on these themes arose from his own family’s circumstances. Robinson’s father, a prosperous banker, lost much of his wealth in the recession of 1893. His eldest brother, a physician, ruined his health through addiction to laudanum. A second brother disappointed him by marrying the girl Edwin had his eye on.

The family downfall shaped Edwin’s world view as he delved deeper and deeper into the life of a poet. He later earned the nickname “America’s poet laureate of unhappiness.” Yet the title doesn’t quite fit Robinson, more reserved than unhappy,

Robinson came by his name through chance. His mother expected a girl and didn’t pick out a name for him before his birth. Her illness following his birth distracted her from turning her attention to the task of naming him.

Summering in Harpswell, Maine, some visitors from away pressured her to name the six-month-old baby and so they drew names from a hat. Edwin was the first name and Arlington the second because the lady who drew the name came from Arlington, Mass.

Robinson’s second volume of poetry, Children of the Night, had modest success, but he struggled to publish subsequent volumes. Convinced he needed a change of scenery, Robinson moved to New York in 1899, His career, however, didn’t really take off until President Teddy Roosevelt discovered him.

Edwin Arlington Robinson (painting by Lilla Cabot Perry)

Children of the Night impressed Roosevelt’s son when he read it at school in Groton, Mass., and he gave a copy to his father. Roosevelt persuaded a publisher to reissue the volume and personally reviewed it. Roosevelt also found Robinson a spot on the public payroll at New York’s Customs House.

Tilbury Town

With that income to prop him up, Edwin published another book of poems, paid for by his old friends from Gardner who had faith in the town’s favorite son. Eventually, Edwin achieved that rarest of literary feats: He made a living from his poetry, much of which included allusions to the fictional Tilbury Town (in reality Gardiner).

In 1922 he won a Pulitzer Prize for his Collected Poems. He won it again in 1928 for his The Man Who Died Twice.

People often viewed Robinson as reclusive. His partial deafness and poor vision made him seem standoffish. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, either. But he was neither isolated nor dour. He summered at New Hampshire’s MacDowell Colony, and chums from Gardiner recall him as a funny, mischievous young man. Though never married, Robinson had several romances. He had one with a young woman he tutored and another with artist Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones.

Though Robinson had a relatively optimistic world view and published a book a year the last few years of his life, history best remembers him for his struggles as a young poet and two of his short poems. Miniver Cheevy describes a man hopelessly trapped in his nostalgia for a past age. And Richard Cory, a short poem about a handsome, wealthy banker who abruptly shoots himself in the head without further explanation.

Richard Cory

Countless generations of schoolchildren and artists have analyzed the motivations and meaning of Richard Cory. And the poem has been dissected many times for the various poetic devices it employs. The story inspired plays, imitations, and songs – including Simon and Garfunkel’s Richard Cory.

Comedian Garrison Keillor proposed his own alternate version of the poem, concluding Cory’s suicide made sense if you’d known his difficult wife. As for the actual inspiration for Richard Cory, two theories are proposed.

Robinson’s biographer suggests he drew the character from Sedgewick Plummer, a Gardiner lawyer and banker who lost his fortune and home. His brother’s widow suggested he drew him from his brother. who lost most of his wealth and succumbed to alcoholism.

Robinson himself stayed silent on the matter – much to the consternation of young students of literature – and died in 1935 of cancer.

This story was updated in 2022. Portrait of Edwin Arlington Robinson courtesy Colby College Special Collections, Waterville, Maine.

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The 1773 Old Librarians Almanack: The Literary Fraud That Fooled the Critics

In 1773, librarian Jared Bean published his Old Librarians Almanack in New Haven, Conn., following the traditional format of Poor Richard’s almanac. On one page it contained weather predictions and advice on the next. But rather than advice for farmers, Bean’s almanac contained advice for librarians. It dealt with such topics as protection of books, books to be burned, organizing books and strict rules for who should be allowed in the library.

Old Librarians Almanack

One quick read through the Old Librarians Almanack and you might think: This is too good to be true. And you’d be right. The almanac was a work of satirical fiction written by librarian and author Edmund Lester Pearson.

The Man Behind the Old Librarians Almanack

Pearson, born in Newburyport on Feb. 11, 1880, later served the library there as trustee. He graduated from Harvard and then earned an M.L.S. from the New York State Library School at Albany. Over his career he worked at the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the Military Information Division of the War Department.

Rose Reading Room in the New York Public Library.

He also wrote books. He published his most famous book (aside from the Old Librarians Almanack), Studies in Murder, in 1924. It had a signature essay on Lizzie Borden.

From 1906 to 1920, Pearson wrote a humorous weekly column for the Boston Evening Transcript called The Librarian. It gave him the idea for the Old Librarians Almanack, as it featured the fictional Ezra Beesly Free Public Library of the town of Baxter.

Pearson swore that he never intended anyone to take his almanac seriously. But when first published in 1909, people viewed it as a true, historic almanac that shed light on library practices in colonial times.

‘Keep out the light-witted’

Jared Bean displayed a fiercely protective attitude toward library books.

“Keep your books behind stout Gratings, and in no wise let any Person come at them to take them from the Shelf except yourself,” Bean cautioned.

He had a long list of people to keep out of his precious library.

“Let no Politician be in your Library, nor no man who Talks overmuch,” he wrote. “It will be difficult for him to observe Silence, and he is objectionable otherwise, as well.”

Newburyport Public Library

Also verboten: “No Astrologer, Necromancer, Charlatan, Quack, nor Humbug; no Vendor of Nostrums, nor Teacher of false Knowledge, no fanatick Preacher nor Refugee. Admit no one of loose or evil Life; prohibit the Gamester, the Gypsy, the Vagrant. Allow none who suffers from an infectious Disease; and none whose Apparel is so Gaudy or Eccentrick as to attract the Eye.”

Finally, he advised, “Keep out the Light-witted, the Shallow, the Base and Obscene. See to it that none enter who are Senile, and none who are immature in their Minds, even tho’ they have reach’d the requir’d Age.

Shun them as the devil

When it came to women, Bean, apparently a bachelor, held generally unfavorable views.

“Matrimony, so maintained worthy Master Peleg Gudger, is no fit Diversion for the Librarian, and in truth, I commend his Wisdom in the Matter.”

Women also caused concern as library patrons.

“Be suspicious of Women. They are given to the Reading of frivolous Romances, and at all events, their presence in a Library adds little,” Bean wrote. “You will make no error in excluding them altogether.”

While some librarians held that a man’s duties to his marriage and his library could co-exist, Bean turned to his trusted guide, fellow librarian Enoch Sneed, for the final word on the matter:

“Steer a straight course, he says, away from feminine Blandishments. These Females are as Leeches or Bloodsuckers, hardly to be torn off. They would make you take your Victuals at certain fix’d seasons to conform to their rules of Housekeeping, regarding not that you may wish to read at those Hours; while again they will Babble & Complain should it chance that after a hard night’s reading you ask that a hot Supper be served at Daybreak. Shun them as you would the Devil.”

Most of Bean’s writings deal with the proper care of books and the library, along with his disdain for those who would misuse them. For example, he wove this poem among the weather forecasts.

On gallows fifty cubits high

Hang the wretch and let him die

A dozen of my books he stole

May God have mercy on his soul

A Curse for Book Thieves

And he offers an earlier perspective on thievery, as well – one which has been quoted as true many times:

“What condemnation shall befit the accurst Wretch (for he cannot justly claim the title of Man) who pilfers and purloins for his own selfish ends such a precious article as a book? I am reminded of the Warning display’d in the Library of the Popish Monastery of San Pedro at Barcelona. This is the version Englished by Sir Matthew Mahan, who saw it writ in Latin in the Monastery, as he himself describes in his leam’d Book, ‘Travels in Spanish Countries, 1712.” The Warning reads thus:

“For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change to a Serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted.”

If that didn’t seem hard-hearted enough, Bean went on: “Let him languish in Pain, crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let Book-worms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment let the Flames of Hell consume him forever and aye.”

Throughout, Bean draws liberally from the wisdom of his learned colleague, librarian Enoch Sneed. He does, however, take umbrage at Sneed’s suggestion that the domestic mouse is the greatest enemy to libraries. Rather, he proposes, “Of the enemies of Books, I especially esteem the cockroach.” And he provides a recipe for cockroach poison.

Snakebite Cure

In another section of the almanac, Bean offers: “A sure and Certain cure for the Bite of a Rattlesnake made Public by Abel Puffer of Stoughton.”

The recipe calls for an improbable collection of ingredients to mix into a plaster and apply to the snakebite.

“If the sufferer be bit in the Leg (as it is very likely to happen), let him be placed in reversed position; That is with his head down and his Feet in the Air. It may be most convenient to lean him against a Wall or Fence, or if neither be at hand, then against a tree or bush.”

“The plaister should be applied on the wound, and mark that all depends that this is done within ten minutes from the time the sufferer was Bitten,” Bean wrote. And for insurance, he advised, “It may be well that a Minister of the Gospel be sent for, if so be it that one is at hand.”

“Then require the Sufferer to move his limbs about, at first slowly, now with increasing speed with all the Vigour and Rapidity in his power. After this, let him rise and run in a circle, or nearly so, first giving him to drink a half glass of Jamaica Rum.

“When he be ready to fall from Dizziness (which flushed the brain with Blood) again apply a second plaister, like the first.

“Tokens of improving Health are sure to be seen in the Sufferer: if not Prayers had better be addressed to Providence.”

Hints Not Taken

The book includes hints that it’s a parody, such as its improbable weather predictions. “I guess there will be a storm of snow about this time, then clear,” reads one. Nevertheless, critics reviewed the almanac as an actual historical reprint.

The Outlook magazine, The Nation, The New York Times and the New York Sun praised the rediscovered gem. The Bulletin of Pharmacy reprinted the snake bite remedy as historical fact.

Not a Hoax

Pearson and publisher John Cotton Dana of Woodstock, Vt., insisted they didn’t intend the publication as a hoax. Rather they saw it as a send-up of old-fashioned thinking among some librarians. Those old timers viewed library patrons as nuisances who distracted librarians from their true calling – their own personal reading.

The two men were probably at least somewhat disingenuous in claiming they never intended the book to fool anyone. Perhaps, though, it succeeded beyond their expectations.

As the hoax gathered steam in the first few months of 1910, Pearson did take steps to prevent embarrassment of several reviewers. He also warned off an historical association that wanted to reprint the almanac as an actual, historical document.

But he did enjoy the furor the book caused, whether he intended it or not. He noted that some libraries still catalogued it under the heading “literary frauds.”

To read the complete almanac, click here. This story about the Old Librarians Almanack was updated in 2022. Images: Rose Reading Room By Diliff – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=533750.

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