St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1883-03-30
John Howard Payne.

John Howard Payne.
The writers of national songs have a
common heritage of wretchedness.
loneliness and neglect. The noble an
them, "GOd Save the King" sung with
patriotic fervor the world over wherev-
er Englishmen are in festal mood, was
written in words and music, by an un-
happy London poet whose life seemed
a signal failure. He was equally un-
successful as a verse writer and as
composer, and his death was a despair
ing release from melancholy and dis
appointment as well as from abiect
poverty. The anthem published in
the closing year of his life attracted
little attention, and nothing was fur
ther from his thoughts in his last hours
than the consciousness that he had
given voice to the patriotism and 10y
atty of unborn generations of English
men. His name was speedily forgot
ten, words and music were assigned
to an Elizabethan Organist, and it has
not been until a recent time that musi-
cal antiquaries have settled the ques-
ton of authorship. In like manner
the Marseillaise was the work of a
profoundly unhappy man, whose en-
bittered life came to a tragic end dur
ing the stormy years of the Revolution
and modern critics have denied 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 adapting his wild
words to it. 1t was in garret of the
same Paris, where Rouget de Lisle's
battle hymn heated the blood of the
populace in 1892, that the most charac-
teristic of American songs was written.
John Howard Payne, having failed as
an actor and an author in England as
well as in his native country, was
starving, despairing and homeless in a
strange city, where the loneliness of
his soul and the hOmesick sinking of
his heart found an echo in "There's no
place like home"
New York was Payne's birth place
and the theatre of his maiden triumph
on the stage Boston was the home Of
his childhood and the scene of his earli-
est ventures in literature and jourpsl-
ism Washington was the e13itls,
where his happiest days were passed
and his merits appreciated bya diplo =
matte appointment from PresiielH Ty-
Ter but his was always fcnely fife
harassed by penury and oppressed with
heartaching and melancholy. In Eng
land and France he led Bohemian eX-
isteDce, some times acting in the thea
tres, Oftener writing unsuccessful PLAYS
and poems, always struggling in dark
waters. There were few triumphs in
his life, as when his tragedy of ''Bru-
tus" made profound impression in
London owing largely to the genius of
Edmund Kean, or when he was hOnOred
with complimentary benefits in New
York and Boston after his first return
from England. Before he died, more
over, the words which he had written
when faint and sick in Paris had be-
come IA household song throughout
England and America. But his was at
best a sombre, sad and wearisome life
The same ironical fate which had in
spired him, a homeless man, to write
the worlds hymn of home pursued him
to the end. He died in Tunis among
strangers and was buried there home
less to the last.
1t was a generous thought that
pTOHlpJeu one Oh Jne lnOSU puDllc-Splflt-
ed citizens of Washington 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 Tunis was
mainly an English memorial, and so
was the window in the Protestant
church hard by. 1t was meet that
Americans should honor his memory
by reburying the author of CLONE,
Sweet Home" somewhere in the land of
his birth. A Tribune correspondent
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 "A sweet-vOiced American
lady sang, ga charm from the sky
seems to hallow us there" There was
"A painful lack of pathos or even of hu-
man interest in Thursdays scene at the
City hall when those ashes were
brought home. But the mechanical
ceremonial Of the lying-in-state and
the monument to be erected in Wash
ingtOn compensate in some measure for
the neglect from which his memory has
suffered. New York Tribune.