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| Joel Barlow painted by Robert Fulton, 1805. |
Joel Barlow was an ambitious man, not for himself, but for his infant nation which he fervently believed was destined to be the shining hope of the world and a model civilization which would inspire the “uniting of all mankind
in one religion, one language and one Newtonian harmonious whole,” and that “the
American Revolution as the opening skirmish of a world revolution on behalf of the rights of all humanity.” What the
country really needed, he decided was its own national epic poem along the classical lines of the Greek Homeric epics and the Roman Virgil.
A Yale scholar of note he considered himself to be just the man to fill the need and write the saga
which would inspire the nation
and win it international cultural
respect. He took Christopher Columbus as his theme and as an allegory for rising New
World. He imbued The Mariner with prophetic powers to
envision that new civilization to be born.
The Vision of Columbus was published
in 1787 and much of the educated American Public was duly impressed. Among the
poem’s fans was Thomas Jefferson,
the Secretary of State and author of the Declaration of Independence, who was also eager to establish the
cultural independence and influence of the new Republic. Jefferson would first enlist his friend in diplomatic affairs as he traveled in France. After many years and adventures abroad including becoming an ardent French Revolutionary, accepting
French citizenship, and serving
in the French Assembly as well as
becoming an American diplomat, Barlow returned to the United States where he greatly expanded—many would say inflated—The Vision of Columbus into an even
grander epic re-titled The Columbiad which he published in
1808 along with voluminous notes and
essays of interpretation.
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| Barlow wrote in his notes on The Columbiad that he had a copy of this famous portrait painted from the original likeness hanging in Italy. |
Once
again his efforts were widely hailed, but one suspects that his new book was most
often laid aside half-read to molder on dusty, neglected shelves. The poem was turgid beyond belief and a stultifying
read. Within a generation it was largely
neglected and forgotten. Aside for one other poem, the mock heroic satire The Hasty-Pudding which celebrated humble corn as the basis
of a new civilization and a mark of
its Republican simplicity and virtue and which is a staple of
American poetry anthologies,
Barlow’s memory and reputation rested on his diplomatic
career.
Barlow
was a Connecticut Yankee born on
March 24, 1754 at Redding. His family were upstanding members of a New England Standing Order congregation
which retained all of the ferocity of Cotton
Mather hell-fire-and-damnation Puritanism that was already disappearing in the old Boston and eastern Massachusetts churches. Evidence
suggests that as a very young man he
was taking those long Sunday sermons
with a grain of salt.
He
came from a well established family that
was prosperous enough to give him a good education. He started at Dartmouth but soon moved on the Yale College from which he graduated
in 1778 and where he continued graduate
studies for two more years.
While
in school he became a passionate
patriot. He was with the Connecticut
Militia which was sent to reinforce the Continental Army for the disastrous Battle of Long Island. He managed
to avoid getting killed there, or worse captured
and subjected to the brutal conditions of a prisoner of war.
Barlow
returned to his studies. He made his
first mark as a writer with the publication of The Prospect for Peace in
1778, which made a bold statement against slavery. He became acquainted pamphleteer Thomas
Paine whose Common Sense rallied the nations to the Patriot cause early in
the War of Independence and whose continuing
pamphlet series The American Crisis was very
influential. Paine became a close friend to the young man despite
their different class and education backgrounds. Their association would resume in England
and revolutionary France where Barlow would work to get Paine released from prison. Paine also helped
move Barlow away from the shreds of Puritanism
and toward the most radical end of the Deist
spectrum.
In
1780 despite his new unorthodoxy and
lack of ordination as clergy, Barlow
became Chaplin with the 4th
Massachusetts Brigade of
the Continental Army and served through the rest of the war.
Afterwards
Barlow returned to the Nutmeg State and
settled in Hartford where he
established the American Mercury, a newspaper not to be confused with the 20th
Century literary magazine founded by
H. L. Menken. His association with the
paper only lasted a year, but helped him establish a reputation as a
writer. He fell in with other young pen men—Lemuel Hopkins, David Humphreys, and John
Trumbull—who became known as the Hartford
Wits. With them he contributed to Anarchiad,
a series of satirico-political papers.
In
1786 Barlow was admitted to the Bar. He practiced
law and had various business dealings,
but his passion continue to be writing.
It was just a year after hanging
out his shingle that he published The
Vision of Columbus which gave him a national reputation and brought him to
the attention of Jefferson.
About
the same time he became involved in a project
to recruit French settlers to emigrate and found a community in the Ohio country. He drafted the brochure which circulated in France and then in 1788 was sent to Paris as an agent of the Scioto Land Company. Barlow was unaware that the company was
an elaborate swindle and had no legitimate claims on the lands it
was selling. A group of aristocrats
fleeing France after Bastille Day invested. When they arrived at their wilderness
destination on the Ohio River, they
discovered they did not own the land they had purchased and promised
improvements had not been made. They
were bailed out by George Washington’s
Ohio Land Company which sent men to fell
timber, clear plots, and erect cabins at what became Gallipolis, Ohio. Scioto Company collapsed in a scandalous
failure that bankrupted many on
both sides of the Atlantic.
Despite
the disaster, Barlow emerged with his reputation
relatively unsullied. More
importantly, he was in Paris at the right time to become a participant observer of the unfolding
French Revolution. His commitment to
the Revolution deepened and he became identified with the most “advanced Republicans.” Barlow was made a French citizen in 1792 and was elected to the Assembly where he
supported the execution of Louis
Dividing
his time between Paris and London he re-connected with Thomas Paine and became
involved with the radical Whigs of
the London Society for Constitutional
Information which was busy supporting
the French, advocating a British Republic, and scaring the hell out the British ruling
classes. He published Conspiracy
of Kings, a Poem addressed to the Inhabitants of Europe from another Quarter of
the Globe in 1792 which was
suppressed along with other London Society publications by the British
Authorities.
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| Barlow's friend and political and religious inspiration, Thomas Paine. |
Meanwhile in Paris, the Reign of Terror was getting
out of hand. Tom Paine was arrested
and jailed. If Barlow had been in Paris,
at the time he might have suffered the same fate. In London he arranged for the publication of
Paine’s latest work, the Deist manifesto
An Appeal to Reason in
popular cheap editions. It became a best
seller in France and America, but was suppressed in England. He also worked to get Paine released. About this time Jefferson began enlisting Barlow as an unofficial
agent and entrusting him with back channel communications with the
French.
Barlow kept his name before the American public by
sending home The Hasty-Pudding to be published in New York City in 1773.
In 1775 Jefferson prevailed upon the somewhat
reluctant President George Washington to appoint Barlow to the sensitive position of American Consul to Algiers charged with
freeing American seamen captured by
the so called Barbary Pirates and
secure a treaty protecting American
shipping in the Mediterranean. At the time the U.S. had no Navy to speak of and was incapable of
defending shipping in the area.
Somewhat controversially, Barlow used State Department funds to pay ransoms and bribes to obtain the release of some imprisoned sailors.
But his conduct and contacts eventually built enough trust
to begin serious negotiations on a
treaty. He concluded negotiations on
November 4, 1796—coinciding with the election of Federalist President John Adams on the Treaty of Tripoli, a Treaty of
perpetual peace and friendship with the Bey of Tripoli, then a self-governing part of the Ottoman Empire. Despite his Republican political connection in the U.S. and closeness to the despised
Revolutionary French, and Adams and his Secretary of State Thomas Pickering had little choice but to submit the treaty Barlow made to Congress.
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| Adams usually gets the credit but the words were Barlow's. |
The Treaty included the clause often attributed to Adams but drafted by Barlow and approved
by Adams that, “the
Government of the United States of
America is not, in any sense, founded
on the Christian religion.” Despite
an uproar it passed the Senate.
After
years abroad, Barlow returned to the U.S. in 1805 and moved to Washington. He bought
and land in the District of Columbia just outside the
original boundaries of the city. He
named his estate Kalorama—Fine View—and had Architect of the Capitol Benjamin Latrobe enlarge and beautify an existing home there into a suitable mansion.
He
finished and published The Columbiad there
in 1808 and also published books of political
essays and economics.
In
1811 President James Madison called
Barlow back into the diplomatic service with one of the most prestigious of all appointments—Minister Plenipotentiary to France. He was given one main charge, negotiating a commercial
treaty with Napoleon and securing the restitution of confiscated American property—mostly shipping trying
to trade with Britain and her allies against France.
Although
there was a sort of caretaker government
in Paris, initiatives like this could only be taken up directly with the Emperor—who was busy invading and then retreating from Russia by
the time Barlow arrived in Europe. That
sent the Minister chasing the Army east.
He almost had an appointment for an audience at Wilno (Vilnus) in what
is now Lithuania but military reverses sent the Grand Armee reeling in a disorganized
retreat. Barlow followed in snow and cold and generally miserable
conditions. He contracted pneumonia and died on December 12, 1812
in the village of Żarnowiec in Austrian Poland. He was 58 years old. His death was considered a national tragedy.
What
academic interest in Barlow’s epic
might have had for modern readers is
pretty much destroyed by his disastrous
choice for a hero. No major historical figure has fallen from
grace to disgrace so far and so fast.
Still lauded as the Great Discover through the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, in monumental sculpture, novels, and motion pictures (at least 5 silent
movies and a 1949 bio-pic staring Fredrick
March) well into the 20th Century, a
reassessment began preceding the 500th
anniversary of the San Salvador landfall
in 1992. Native American and aboriginal
groups across the Western Hemisphere
began protesting homage to a man who
claimed land that was not his or his monarchs’; brutally enslaved, tortured, and exterminated native peoples as Viceroy; destroyed native culture and imposed an alien religion. In addition historians were increasingly convinced that he was not the first European to find what we now call the Americas—there were multiple “discoveries” over hundreds of
years and even confirmed Viking attempts
at colonization. More over Columbus didn’t know where the hell he was when he got
there. He was still convinced he had
found outlying islands of Asia.
By the time of his fourth voyage when
almost everyone had concluded that a land
mass lay between Europe and Asia
he remained delusional about it and nearly killed his entire
crew in mad schemes to prove himself right.
Shortly after his brutality against the native Caribs sickened even the Catholic
missionary priests and his greed and
arrogance offended would-be Conquistadores and he was stripped of his titles, taken to Spain in chains, and imprisoned in
a dungeon.
Protests to honoring
Columbus have led many cities to abandon Columbus Day parades and
observance and to celebrate Native Americans that day instead. Movements are well along to abolishing the state and Federal holidays. Statues and monuments have been taken down on both sides of the ocean. As early as 1992 two competing bio-epics both
failed at the box office while several documentaries
in the U.S., Latin America, and
Europe retold Columbus’s story through anti-colonialist
lenses.
Barlow,
who did extensive archival research, started
his epic with Columbus in that dungeon in disgrace. But it paints him as the virtuous
victim of a rotten and corrupt monarchy and of the Catholic Church of the Inquisition. Very surprising for a man who had reveled in Royal patronage and who was
to the end a super devout Catholic—even
if possibly a secret converso.
More over Barlow gave Columbus visions in which he saw a rising, liberal civilization and put in
his mouth the noble ideas of the Rights of Man, universal Brotherhood, and even Deist free thought. Never was
a more unsuitable messenger selected
for such notions. Yet Barlow, generally gob smacked with hero worship, saw no conflict in projecting his own high post-Enlightenment values on the wicked old scoundrel.
So
if the poetry is turgid and the
subject revolting, why are we spending
time here?” Well there is always the fascination with a train wreck. And there is
much to learn about Americans as a
people and how we got this way.
What
follows is a relatively brief passage from the opening of The Columbiad, Book 1 in which ol’ Chris is cooling his heels in
that dungeon. I cut it short to spare
you greater pain.
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| The Columbiad, first edition. |
The
Columbiad
Book 1
I sing the
Mariner who first unfurl’d
An eastern banner o'er the western world,
And taught mankind where future empires lay
In these fair confines of descending day;
Who sway’d a moment, with vicarious power,
Iberia’s sceptre on the new found shore,
Then saw the paths his virtuous steps had
trod
Pursued by avarice and defiled with blood,
The tribes he foster’d with paternal toil
Snatch’d from his hand, and slaughter’d for
their spoil.
Slaves, kings, adventurers, envious of his
name,
Enjoy’d his labours and purloin’d his fame,
And gave the Viceroy, from his high seat
hurl'd.
Chains for a crown, a prison for a world
Long overwhelm’d in woes, and sickening there,
He met the slow still march of black despair,
Sought the last refuge from his hopeless
doom,
And wish’d from thankless men a peaceful
tomb:
Till vision’d ages, opening on his eyes,
Cheer’d his sad soul, and bade new nations
rise;
He saw the Atlantic heaven with light o’ercast,
And Freedom crown his glorious work at last.
Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice
belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my
way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest
lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant
knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee.
Night held on old Castile her silent reign,
Her half orb’d moon declining to the main;
O’er Valladolid's regal turrets hazed
The drizzly fogs from dull Pisuerga raised;
Whose hovering sheets, along the welkin
driven,
Thinn’d the pale stars, and shut the eye from
heaven.
Cold-hearted Ferdinand his pillow prest,
Nor dream’d of those his mandates robb’d of
rest,
Of him who gemm’d his crown, who stretch’d
his reign
To realms that weigh’d the tenfold poise of
Spain;
Who now beneath his tower indungeo’'d lies,
Sweats the chill sod and breathes inclement
skies.
His feverish pulse, slow laboring thro his
frame,
Feeds with scant force its fast expiring
flame;
A far dim watch-lamp's thrice reflected beam
Throws thro his grates a mist-encumber’d
gleam,
Paints the dun vapors that the cell invade,
And fills with spectred forms the midnight
shade;
When from a visionary short repose,
That nursed new cares and temper’d keener
woes,
Columbus woke, and to the walls addrest
The deep felt sorrows bursting from his
breast:
Here lies the purchase, here the wretched
spoil
Of painful years and persevering toil.
For these damp caves, this hideous haunt of
pain,
I traced new regions o’er the chartless main,
Tamed all the dangers of untraversed waves,
Hung o’er their clefts, and topt their
surging graves,
Saw traitorous seas o’er coral mountains
sweep,
Red thunders rock the pole and scorch the
deep,
Death rear his front in every varying form,
Gape from the shoals and ride the roaring
storm,
My struggling bark her seamy planks disjoin,
Rake the rude rock and drink the copious
brine.
Till the tired elements are lull’d at last,
And milder suns allay the billowing blast,
Lead on the trade winds with unvarying force,
And long and landless curve our constant course…
—Joel Barlow
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| A 19th Century edition of The Hasty-Pudding. |
The Hasty-Pudding
A Poem in Three Cantos
Canto 1
Ye Alps
audacious, through the heavens that rise,
To cramp the day
and hide me from the skies;
Ye Gallic flags,
that o’er their heights unfurled,
Bear death to
kings, and freedom to the world,
I sing not to
you. A softer theme I choose,
A virgin theme,
unconscious of the muse,
But fruitful,
rich, well suited to inspire
The purest
frenzy of poetic fire.
Despise it not,
ye bards to terror steeled,
Who hurl your
thunders round the epic field;
Nor ye who
strain your midnight throats to sing
Joys that the
vineyard and the stillhouse bring;
Or on some
distant fair your notes employ,
And speak of
raptures that you ne’er enjoy.
I sing the
sweets I know, the charms I feel,
My morning
incense, and my evening meal,
The sweets of
Hasty Pudding. Come, dear bowl,
Glide o’er my
palate, and inspire my soul.
The milk beside
thee, smoking from the kine,
It's substance
mingled, married in with thine,
Shall cool and
temper thy superior heat,
And save the
pains of blowing while I eat.
Oh! could the
smooth, the emblematic song
Flow like thy
genial juices o'er my tongue,
Could those mild
morsels in my numbers chime,
And, as they
roll in substance, roll in rime,
No more thy
awkward unpoetic name
Should shun the
muse, or prejudice thy fame;
But rising
grateful to the accustomed ear,
All bards should
catch it, and all realms revere!
Assist me first
with pious toil to trace
Through wrecks
of time thy lineage and they race;
Declare what
lovely squaw, in days of yore,
(Ere great Columbus
sought thy native shore)
First gave thee
to the world; her works of fame
Have lived
indeed, but lived without a name.
Some tawny
Ceres, goddess of her days,
First learned
with stones to crack the well-dried maize,
Through the
rough sieve to shake the golden shower,
In boiling water
stir the yellow flour:
The yellow
flour, bestrewed and stirred with haste,
Swell in the
flood and thickens to a paste,
Then puffs and
wallops, rises to the brim,
Drinks the dry
knobs that on the surface swim;
The knobs at
last the busy ladle breaks,
And the whole
mass its true consistence takes.
Could but her
sacred name, unknown so long,
Rise, like her
labors, to the son of song,
To her, to them,
I’d consecrate my lays,
And blow her
pudding with the breath of praise.
If ‘twas Oella,
whom I sang before,
I here ascribe
her one great virtue more.
Not through the
rich Peruvian realms alone
The fame of Sol’s
sweet daughter should be known,
But o’er the
world's wide climes should live secure,
Far as his rays
extend, as long as they endure.
Dear Hasty
Pudding, what unpromised joy
Expands my
heart, to meet thee in Savoy!
Doomed o’er the
world through devious paths to roam,
Each clime my
country, and each house my home,
My soul is
soothed, my cares have found an end,
I greet my long-lost,
unforgotten friend.
For thee through
Paris, that corrupted town,
How long in vain
I wandered up and down,
Where shameless
Bacchus, with his drenching hoard,
Cold from his
cave usurps the morning board.
London is lost
in smoke and steeped in tea;
No Yankee there
can lisp the name of thee;
The uncouth
word, a libel on the town,
Would call a
proclamation from the crown.
For climes
oblique, that fear the sun's full rays,
Chilled in their
fogs, exclude the generous maize;
A grain whose
rich luxuriant growth requires
Short gentle
showers, and bright ethereal fires.
But here, though
distant from our native shore,
With mutual glee
we meet and laugh once more.
The same! I know
thee by that yellow face,
That strong
complexion of true Indian race,
Which time can
never change, nor soil impair,
Nor Alpine
snows, nor Turkey’s morbid air;
For endless
years, though every mild domain,
Where grows the
maize, there thou art sure to reign.
But man, more
fickle, the bold incense claims,
In different
realms to give thee different names.
Thee the soft
nations round the warm Levant
polanta
call, the French
of course
polenta;
Ev’n in thy
native regions, how I blush
To hear the
Pennsylvanians call thee
mush!...
—Joel Barlow
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