John Godfrey Saxe

John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887). Courtesy Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry.

John Godfrey Saxe (June 2, 1816 - March 31, 1887) was an American poet. He is perhaps best known for his re-telling of the Indian parable "The Blind Men and the Elephant", which introduced the story to a Western audience.

Life

Youth and education

Saxe was born in 1816 in Highgate, Vermont, at Saxe's Mills, where his settler grandfather, John Saxe (Johannes Sachse), a German immigrant and Loyalist to the Crown, built the area's earliest gristmill in 1786. Saxe was the son of Peter Saxe, miller, judge and periodic member of the Vermont General Assembly; and Elizabeth (Jewett) of Weybridge, Vermont.

Raised in a strict Methodist home, John Godfrey Saxe was sent in 1835, to Wesleyan University which he left after a year.

He then attented Middlebury College, from which he graduated in 1839.

Career

In 1841 Saxe married Sophia Newell Sollace, a sister of a Middlebury classmate with whom he had a son, John Theodore Saxe.

He was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1843, and tried to run a business with his dutiful and pious older brother, Charles Jewett Saxe.

The words "dutiful" and "pious" never applied to the aspiring satirist. Bored by his legal work, Saxe began publishing poems for The Knickerbocker, of which "The Rhyme of the Rail" is his most famous early work. He soon caught the attention of prominent Boston publishing house, Ticknor & Fields. Though he received no royalties for his debut volume, it ran to 10 reprintings and eventually outsold works by Nathaniel Hawthorne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson.Template:Cn His poem "The Puzzled Census-Taker" amused many and "Rhyme of the Rail" was possibly the most admired poem of the period about rail travel.

Saxe was editor of the Burlington, Vermont Sentinel from 1850 to 1856. He became a sought after speaker, toured frequently, and stayed prolific throughout the 1850s. In 1859 he ran unsuccessfully for Governor of Vermont. As a northern Democrat, he advocated a non-interference policy on slavery and supported Illinois Senator Douglas's policy of "popular sovereignty", a position which rendered the poet extremely unpopular in Republican Vermont. After his second, and even more punishing electoral defeat, Saxe left his home state in 1860 for neighboring Albany, New York.

Saxe spent his summers in Saratoga, contributed articles for the Albany Evening Journal and Albany Morning Argus, and published poems in Harper's, The Atlantic, and the Knickerbocker and remained popular on the lecture circuit. "The Proud Miss McBride" and "Song of Saratoga" were some of famous works in this period. However, his attempts to re-enter politics remained unsuccessful.

The 1870s, while living in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, began a series of woes for the poet. His youngest daughter died of tuberculosis. In 1875 he suffered head injuries in a rail accident near Wheeling, West Virginia, from which he never fully recovered, and then over the next several years his two oldest daughters, his eldest son, and daughter-in-law also died of tuberculosis. In 1879 his wife, under the strain of so many tragedies, burst a blood vessel in her brain and collapsed and died. Including a young son who died in the 1840s, Mr. Saxe had buried five of his six children as well as his wife.

Saxe sank deep into depression and was moved back to Albany to live with his last surviving child, Charles. His decline from the rollicking poet to grieving recluse earned the sympathy of the people of Albany and when he died in 1887, the New York State Assembly ordered his likeness to be chiseled into the "poet's corner" of the Great Western Staircase in the New York State Capitol.

The poet's orphaned grandson, John Godfrey Saxe II, became a New York State senator, President of the New York Bar, and counsel of Columbia University.

Writing

The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition said that Saxe "was best known as a writer of humorous verse and a lecturer. His travesties and satires found many readers or listeners, and some of his love lyrics and other poems combine sparkle with real feeling. His "Rhyme of the Rail," "The Proud Miss McBride," "I'm Growing Old" and "Treasures in Heaven" were once very popular."

His best remembered poem "The Blind Men and the Elephant", a version of the ancient tale Blind men and an elephant, was not his most famous in his day. Though a satirist, his poems written during more somber periods remain some of his most beautiful and enduring, including "Little Jerry the Miller" about his father's mill assistant. Few of the satirical works which had made him famous are read today.

Quotations

According to Fred Shapiro, author of the Yale Book of Quotations, the Daily Cleveland Herald in its issue of March 29, 1869, quotes Saxe as saying: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made."

Recognition

File:John Godfrey Saxe at 32.jpg

Saxe at age 32

When Saxe died in 1887, the New York State Assembly ordered his likeness to be chiseled into the "poet's corner" of the Great Western Staircase in the New York State Capitol.

Publications

Poetry

• Progress: A satirical poem. New York: J. Allen, 1846; New York: J. Allen; Boston: Jordan & Wiley, 2nd ed., 1847.
• Poems (New enlarged edition). Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, 1850.
  • (new ed., Ticknor & Fields, 1852) (5th ed., 1854) (8th ed., 1855) (11th ed., 1860) (29th ed., 1864) (31st ed., 1866) (32nd ed., 1866)
  • 37th edition), Boston: Fields, Osgood, , 1869.
• The Money-King, and other poems. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1860.
• The Fly-ing Dutchman; or, The wrath of Herr Vonstoppelnoze. New York: Carleton, 1862.
• Clever Stories of Many Nations (Rendered into rhyme). Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1865.
• The Masquerade, and other poems. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1866.
• The Poems of John Godfrey Saxe. Boston: J.R. Osgood & Co., 1868
  • Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869 (Highgate ed., 1871)(Complete ed., 1873)(Highgate ed., 1873)(Highgate ed., 1876); Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Company, 57th ed., 1879.
• The Proud Miss MacBride: A legend of Gotham. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1874.
• Leisure-Day Rhymes. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1875.
• The Poetical Works of John Godfrey Saxe (Household Edition). New York & Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1882.
  • (Cabinet Edition). New York & Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1900; Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press, 1900.
• Selections from the Poems of John Godfrey Saxe. New York & Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1905.

Non-fiction

• A Treatise on the New York Laws Relating to Elections. New York: Baker, Voorhis, 1913.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy West Virginia University.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "The Blind Men and the Elephant"
• John Godfrey Saxe at Poets' Corner
• John Godfrey Saxe at PoemHunter (18 poems)

About

• John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) at Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poetry
• "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made"

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at John Godfrey Saxe