New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1883-03-23
.yOUy HOV1RD P1YNL

| The writer's oinatiOn al songs have n common
heritage of wretchedncss, loneliness and neg
| lect The noble anthem, "God Save the
King" sung with patriotic fervOr the world
over wherever EnglishmeD are in festal mood,
was written in words and music, by AZ unhappy
London poet whose life seemed n siguS,l fail
ure. He WAS equally unsuccessful as n verse
writer and as a composer. and his death was a
despairing release from melancholy aEd dIsap-
pointment as well rs from abject poverty.
The anthem published in the closing year of his
life attracted little attention, and nothing was
further from his thoughts in his last hours than
the consciousness that he had given voice to
the patriotism and loyalty OF unborn genera
tons of Englishmen. His name was speedily
forgotten, words and music were assigned to an
Eizabethan organst, and it has not been until
a recent time that musical antiquaries have set
tied the question of authorship In like man
ner the Marseillaise was the work of pro-
fOundly unhappy man. whose embittered life
came to Il tragic end during tile stormy years of
the Revolution and modern critics have de-
MED him the honor Of composing the music to
which the Republican armies marched to their
first victories, and charged him with stealing
his melody from a mass and audacIously adapt
ing his wild words to it. 1t was in garnet of
the same Paris, where Rouget de Lisle's battle
hymn heated the blood of the populace in 1892,
that the most characteristic of American songs
WAS written. John Howard Payne, having
tailed as All actor and an author in England
as well as In his native country, was starving,
despairing and homeless in strange city,
where the loneliness Of his soul and the home
sick sinking of his heart found an echo III
"There's no place like home"
New-York was Payne's birthplace and the
theatre Of his maiden triumph on the stage;
Boston was the home of his childhood and the
scene of his earliest ventures in literature aud
Journalism; Washington was the capital where
his happiest days were passed and his merits
appreciated by a diplomatic appointment from
President Tyler; but his was always lonely
life harassed by penury and oppressed with
heartachins and melancholy. In England and
France he led Bohemian existence, some
times acting In the theatres, oftener writing un-
successful plays and poems, always struggling
in dark waters. There were a few triumphs in
his life, as when his tragedy of Brutus made
profound impression in London owing
largely to the genius of Edmund Kean, or
when he was honored with complimentary ben
eGts in New York and Boston after his first re-
turn from England. Before he died, moreover,
the words which he had written when faint and
sick in Paris had become household song
throughout England and America. But his
was at best sombre, sad and wearisome life |
The same ironcal fate which had inspired him, |
homeless man, to write The worlds hymn of |
home pursued him to the end. He died in |
Tunis among strangers and was buried there !
homeless to the last.
1t was generous thought that prompted one
of the most philosophical citizens Of Washing
ton to send for the ashes of this neglected |
singer buried so far from his own country
The simple monument bearing his name In the
cemetery at TuDis was mainly an English
and so was the window in the Prot
estant church hard by. 1t was meet that
Americans should honor his memory 10y rebury-
ing the author of Home, Sweet Homo some
where in the land of his birth. A TRIBUNE cor
respondent from Tunis described not long ago
the pathetic scene when Payne's ashes were
tenderly carried INTO the church after the
silence and neglect of thirty years, and sweet
voiced American lady sang, :" A charm from
the sky seems to hallow us there.n There
was painful lack of pathos OF oven of human
interest in yesterdays scene at the City Hall
when those ashes were brought home. But the
ceremonial of the lyng-in-statc
and the monument to be erected in Washington