Another Stove Poem -- Constance Fenimore Woolson, "The Morning Star is All the Rage," n.d.

Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) doesn't need much of an introduction from me.  She has a Wikipedia page and even her own Society dedicated to memorializing her life and work, as well as plenty of books and journal articles written about her.  I had never heard of her, though, before I came across this; but I did know that her father Charles, and grandfather Thomas, had been pioneers in US stove making, which explains why The Metal Worker, the leading journal of the trade, marked her death with this article.





"Early Stove Advertising Poetry," The Metal Worker 5 May 1894, p. 46:

The following letter from the Cleveland Co-operative Stove Company of Cleveland, Ohio, will doubtless be read with interest by many members of the trade:

The recent almost tragic death abroad of the well-known writer, Miss Constance Fennimore Woolson, calls to mind the fact that probably her first literary efforts were in connection with the stove manufacturing business. Mr. Woolson, the father of the celebrated writer, was really the pioneer in the stove manufacturing business in the West. He established himself in a small way in the then village of Cleveland, and met with success. At the time of his death the firm of Woolson, Hitchcock & Carter were among the leading stove manufacturers of the country.  After the death of Mr. Woolson and Mr. Carter, one of his partners, the concern was merged into the Franklin Stove Works, who later were succeeded by the present Cleveland Co-operative Stove Company. Almost the initial stove of Mr. Woolson’s production was known as the Morning Star, which had a very large sale, and in the advertising of this the first literary efforts of the poetess, then a mere child, were exerted. There were some eight or ten stanzas, which were printed and used by the trade as an advertising medium for the sale of the stove. Among the archives of the old concern have been found only three stanzas, reading as folows:

The Morning Star is all the rage,
Because it suits in every age.
The people come both near and far,
Just to buy the Morning Star.

It suits the farmer’s wife, they say,
Because it bakes well every day.
It suits the townsman just as good,
Because it burns so little wood.

If you’d have peace, comfort and bliss,
And at home enjoy each cherished wish,
And shun the rocks and clear the bar,
Then fail not to buy the Morning Star.

A part of the third line of the last stanza quoted is not legible and may not be entirely accurate. Perhaps some of the older stove dealers can supply the missing verses.

* * *

The following posts are about her father, Charles Jarvis Woolson, and grandfather Thomas Woolson's careers as stovemakers.

A Chilly February in Troy, NY, 1855

A reader of and contributor to The Knickerbocker explains why inhabitants of the northern United States were so enthusiastic about the technology of comfort.  'Paul Martindale' reports on how a bitter winter has exposed the inadequacy of his old Nott stove, state of the art when it was first introduced more than twenty years earlier, and seems to express regret or dissatisfaction about his decision to respond to the advice of Andrew Jackson Downing and others, and return to using an open fire.

-- 0 -- 

'Paul Martindale,' "Thermometer Twenty-Three Degrees Below Nothing," The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, 45:3 (March 1855): 320, http://books.google.com/books?id=9McGAQAAIAAJ.

[Troy Carpet-Mills, 27 Feb 1855]

DEAR KNICK: 

I thaw my ink to say / The weather's on a spree: / Thermometers have burst their bulbs, / Quicksilver's 'duty free.'

Business is dead -- all liquids are / Solidified stagnation; / And e'en the Hudson River can't / Go on in liquidation.

The water-fall's no more a fall, / So winterish is the weather; / And all the drops are dropping up / In frozen mist together.

My wheels have wheeled into line, / As one vast solid column; / And all my works are bound at last / In one stupendous volume.

The race-way's run its final race, / The waste-weir's now no waste wear: / While in my flume the anchor-ice / Is anchored everywhere.

My colors now are colorless -- / My dyeing all is dead: / And though I'm bothered with the blues, / My nose is very red.

My boiler's quit of all its boils, / The fireman's nose is frozen: / And my hot-water pails have kicked / The bucket by the dozen.

My old NOTT's stove is not a stove, / It's just a ventilator; / And my new grate has proved to be / A great refrigerator.

The watchman's fires all 'end in smoke'; / Even daylight is ice-bound: / For the shadow of the chimney-stack / Is frozen to the ground.

'Tis thus obtuse, we 're left, dear Knick, / Opaque, dull, lifeless, stolid: / No breath of life -- no genial warmth --  / In fact, I'm frozen solid!

Is This The Worst Stove Poem Yet? Sylvester Judd's "Philo: An Evangeliad"

Sylvester Judd (1813-1853) was a very minor literary figure, but not without interest -- Wikipedia supplies the basic facts and even a picture, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvester_Judd.

His huge prose-poem Philo: An Evangeliad (Boston: Phillips, Sampson & Co., 1850), http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ygAAAAAYAAJ,  is almost unreadable.  But Judd, like many of his contemporaries, evidently had a thing about stoves.  He described himself ("the Poet") as "A man like other men" -- he "hates / An air-tight stove, but cannot buy a better." (p. 125).  On p. 181 he really goes to town on mid-C19th stoves.  I can do no better than to quote him in full:

ANNIE. "This man unearths a stove, all arabesqued, / And daintily inlaid with birds and flowers."

PHILO. "Its history forenote; that stove doth plait / The Borean zone with tissue of the Line; / Our snowbound parlors, windows intersprigged / With frost, it renders quite Arcadian; / It shelters poverty, and tends the sick, / Relieves the body, purifies the soul; / In winter nights those iron birds will sing / Unto our Poet, and the flowers distil / Castalian sweets."

CHARLES. "Like taxes, toothache, tides / A stove has no respect of persons. Once, / At a vendue, I saw a horse-faced preacher, / A skipjack transcendentalist, a lean / And muzzy artist, barbers, scullions, trulls, / Bidding against each other for an Olmsted."

* * *

Much of this makes no sense to me, but Judd's voices are mostly just talking about recognizable mid C19th parlor stoves. 

• The 1840s was the first great age of decorated cast iron, and Annie sounds as if she is just quoting from a design patent (e.g. Ezra Ripley, Troy, NY, "Stove," Patent D377 (1851), http://www.google.com/patents/USD377?printsec=drawing). 
• Philo's reply is very pro-stove: "plaiting the Borean zone with tissue of the Line" means bringing the warmth of the Equator or at least the Tropics to the northern latitudes of New England.  Stove makers played on this promise in the way they named stoves -- e.g. the Madeira stove, to warm New England interiors until they were as good for consumptives and other invalids as the atmosphere of the Canary Islands to which they'd otherwise have to travel.  See Nahum Capen, ed., The Massachusetts State Record and Year Book of General Information. 1848. Vol. 2  (Boston: James French, 1848), p. 2, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gb8TAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA326 for a Madeira Stove advertisement, or http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EqQtAAAAYAAJ p. 132 (including a picture); and John A. Dix, A Winter in Madeira: and a Summer in Spain and Florence (New York: William Holdredge, 1851). 2nd. ed., pp. 9, 81 esp., on Victorian health tourism, http://books.google.com/books?id=eNZ5gS1XoVcC&pg=PA81.
• An Olmsted was a very popular anthracite-fueled heating stove, invented by Prof. Denison Olmsted of Yale.  The patent for his "Stove or Furnace for Burning Anthracite Coal," 9167X (1835), http://www.google.com/patents/USX9167?printsec=drawing lacks his text but has a nice picture.  And he described his stove in full elsewhere -- Denison Olmsted [Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy, Yale College], "Observations on the Use of Anthracite Coal," American Almanac and Repository of Useful Knowledge for the Year 1837 (Boston: Charles Bowen, 1837), pp. 61-9, http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vq00AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA61.

William Cullen Bryant praises Rhode Island, especially its anthracite (1826)

http://books.google.com/books?id=su0RAAAAYAAJ 

From The New-York Review, and Atheneum Magazine 2 (April 1826): 386-8, and see 
http://books.google.com/books?id=Etv1DU4uPgoC&pg=PA33 for the context -- one of Bryant's closest friends was a hopeful (and, as it turned out, unlucky) investor in Rhode Island anthracite mines, which some people believed to have much better prospects than those of Pennsylvania, mostly because of their proximity to water transportation.  They seemed to have a great future, as fuel sources for coastal New England in particular.  Misplaced optimism on this score would recur throughout the 19th and into the 20th century.  What's most interesting about this poem is that it comes from a time when people still had not learned how to burn anthracite properly, and Bryant is trying to overcome this consumer resistance with his vision of a literally glowing future.

* * *

A MEDITATION ON RHODE-ISLAND COAL.

Decolor obscurus, vilis, non ille tepexam
Cesariem regum, non candida virginis ornat
Colin, nec insigni splendet per cingula morsu.
Sed, nova si nigri videas miracula saxi,
Tunc superat pulchros cultus, et quicquid Eois
Indus litonbus rubra scrutalur in alga.—Claudian.


I Sat beside the glowing grate, fresh heaped
With Newport coal, and as the flame grew bright—
The many-coloured flame—and played and leaped,
I thought of rainbows and the northern light,
Moore's Lalla Rookh, the Treasury Report,
And other brilliant matters of the sort.

And last I thought of that fair isle which sent
The mineral fuel. On a summer day
I saw it once, with heat and travel spent,
And scratched by dwarf oaks in the hollow way;
Now uragged through sand, now jolted over stone—
A rugged road through rugged Tiverton.

And hotter grew the air, and hollower grew
The deep-worn path, and honor-struck, I thought,
Where will this dreary passage lead me to ?—
This long, dull road, so narrow, deep, and hot ?
I looked to see it dive in earth outright;
I looked—but saw a far more welcome sight.

[p. 387] 


Like a soft mist upon the evening shore,
At once a lovely isle before me lay;
Smooth, and with tender verdure covered o'er,
As if just risen from its calm inland bay;
Sloped each way gently to the grassy edge,
And the small waves that dallied with the sedge.

The barley was just reaped—its heavy sheaves
Lay on the stubble field—the tall maize stood
Dark in its summer growth, and shook its leaves—
And bright the sunlight played on the young wood—
For fifty years ago, the old men say,
The Briton hewed their ancient groves away.

I saw where fountains freshened the green land,
And where the pleasant road, from door to door,
With rows of cherry trees on either hand,
Went wandering all that fertile region o'er—
Rogue's Island once—but, when the rogues were dead.
Rhode Island was the name it took instead.

Beautiful island! then it only seemed
A lovely stranger—it has grown a friend.
I gazed on its smooth slopes, but never dreamed
How soon that bright beneficent isle would send
The treasures of its womb across the sea,
To warm a poet's room and boil his tea.

Dark anthracite! that reddenest on my hearth.
Thou in those island mines didst slumber long, 
But now thou art come forth to move the earth,
And put to shame the men that mean thee wrong ; 
Thou shalt be coals of fire to those that hate thee, 
And warm the shins of all that under-rate thee.

Yea, they did wrong thee foully—they who mocked 
Thy honest face, and said thou wouldst not burn;
Of hewing thee to chimney-pieces talked,
And grew profane—and swore, in bitter scorn,
That men might to thy inner caves retire,
And there, unsinged, abide the day of fire.

Yet is thy greatness nigh. I pause to state,
That I too have,seen greatness—even I—
Shook hands with Adams—stared at La Fayette,
When, barehead in the hot noon of July.

[p. 388]

He would not let the umbrella be held o'er him,
For which three cheers burst from the mob before him.

And I have seen—not many months ago —
An eastern governor, in chapeau bras
And military coat, a glorious show !
Ride forth to visit the reviews, and ah,
How oft he smiled and bowed to Jonathan!
How many hands were shook, and votes were won !

'Twas a great governor—thou too shalt be
Great in thy turn—and wide shall spread thy fame,
And swiftly—farthest Maine shall hear of thee,
And cold New-Brunswick gladden at thy name,
And, faintly through its sleets, the weeping isle
That sends the Boston folks their cod, shall smile.

For thou shalt forge vast rail-ways, and shalt heat
The hissing rivers into steam, and drive
Huge masses from thy mines, on iron feet,
Walking their steady way, as if alive,
Northward, till everlasting ice besets thee,
And south as far as the grim Spaniard lets thee.

Thou shalt make mighty engines swim the sea,
Like its own monsters—boats that for a guinea
Will take a man to Havre—and shalt be
The moving soul of many a spinning jenny,
And ply thy shuttles, till a bard can wear
As good a suit of broadcloth as the mayor.

Then we will laugh at winter when we hear
The grim old churl about our dwellings rave:
Thou from that " ruler of the inverted year,"
Shalt pluck the knotty sceptre Cowper gave,
And pull him from his sledge, and drag him in,
And melt the icicles from off his chin.

Heat will be cheap—a small consideration ,
Will put one in a way to raise his punch,
Set lemon-trees, and have a cane plantation—
'Twill be a pretty saving to the Lunch.
Then the West India negroes may go play
The banjo, and keep endless holiday.  B.

But in 1867 Frances Dana Gage Doesn't Salute HER Stove

Frances Dana Gage, like William Ray, is also a lesser-known C19th American whose acquaintance it's worth making.  She was a great reformer -- abolitionist, equal rights campaigner, temperance advocate -- and also somebody with quite a public life, as a lecturer, journalist, author of children's books, etc.  (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Dana_Barker_Gage or search for her in Google Books.)

I came across her 1867 poem "The Fire On the Hearth" in The New England Farmer 1:11 [new series] (No. 1867): 521, http://books.google.com/books?id=ggAPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA521 but you can also get it in her collected Poems (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1867), http://books.google.com/books?id=tNotAAAAMAAJ, pp. 45-47.  It strikes me as a classic of mid-Victorian nostalgia.  The interesting thing is that this kind of nostalgia for the dear departed open fire first appears in print years -- decades! -- before stove ownership and use became general, though by the time of Gage's poem these things had already happened, in the Northern states at least, and were advancing fast even in the back country of the ex-Confederate South.


[p. 45] There is a luxury rare in the carpet of Brussels, /
And splendor in pictures that hang on the wall, /
And grace in the curtain, with rainbow-hued tassels, /
And brilliance in gas-light, that flashes o'er all; /
But give me the glow of the bright-blazing fire, /
That sparkles and snaps as it echoes your mirth, /
And leaps, in its joy, up the chimney still higher, /
When the cold winds without make us draw near the hearth; /
The old-fashioned fire, the cheerful wood fire, /
The maple-wood fire, that burns on the hearth.

As I feel its warm glow, I remember my childhood, /
And the circle of loved ones that drew round our board; /
The winter eve sports, with the nuts from the wild /
The apples and cider from cellars well stored; /
I hear in its roar the wild shout of my brothers, /
And the laugh of my sisters, in innocent mirth, /
And the voice of my sire, as he reads to my mother, /
Who knits by the firelight that glows from the hearth; /
[p. 46] The old open fire, the health-giving fire, /
The home-cheering fire that glows on the hearth.

Like the strong and true-hearted, it warms its surroundings, /
The jamb and the mantle, the hearth-stone and wall, /
And over the household gives out its aboundings, /
Till a rose-tinted radiance is spread over all. /
If you lay on the fuel, it never burns brightly, /
Till the day's work is done, and we lay by our mirth; /
Then we gather the embers and bury them lightly, /
At morn to renew the fresh fire on the hearth -- /
The old fashioned fire, the life-giving fire, /
The broad-glowing fire that burns on the hearth.


It reminds us of friends that we draw to the nearer, /
When winds of misfortune blow heavy and chill, /
And feel with each blast, they are warmer and dearer, /
And ready to help us and comfort us still! -- /
Friends that never grow cold till the long day is ended, /
And the ashes are laid to their rest in the earth, /
And the spirit, still glowing, to God hath ascended, /
To rekindle new fires, like the coal on the hearth; /
Then give me the fire, the fresh-glowing fire. /
The bright open fire, that burns on the hearth.

[p. 47]

You will tell me a stove heats a room in a minute, /
Expels the cold air, and I know it is so; /
But open a door, is there anything in it? -- /
Your warmth is all gone -- there's not even a glow; /
Just like modern friends, one is every day meeting, /
All professions and smiles, as the impulse gives birth, /
But as black and as cold, at the next hour of greeting, /
As your stove that has banished the fire from the hearth; /
Then give me the fire, the old-fashioned fire, /
The bright-glowing fire, that burns on the hearth.

190 Years Ago -- William Ray Salutes the New Year Around His Stove

William Ray (1771-1827) of Onondaga County, NY (i.e. he lived, farmed, served as a magistrate, was a shopkeeper on a number of occasions, went bankrupt, edited local papers, etc., etc., in the small towns like Geneva and Auburn along what's now Highway 20 but used to be the Cherry Valley Turnpike, the main road west from Albany, on the northern edge of the Finger Lakes) was, according to the Albany Register, “a self-taught genius.”  Even if that's a bit of a steep compliment, he certainly rates as an interesting man -- author, poet, Jeffersonian Democrat, freethinker, somebody who lived a hard and varied life even including a spell of naval service where he had the misfortune to be captured by Barbary pirates (about which he wrote a wonderful account -- see http://books.google.com/books?id=UYRK0xK6gA0C and http://books.google.com/books?id=TCD4PAAACAAJ for a couple of editions; much of the text is also included with his Poems).


Anyway, he rates an entry here because, 190 years ago, he also wrote the first poem that I have found that makes it clear that stoves had begun to enter the lives of ordinary Americans, even those living in communities just a generation beyond the frontier in what Whitney Cross would remind us all to call The Burned-Over District.  [Subtitle: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1950; a great book.]  

In 1816,  he had celebrated the role of the open fireplace at the heart of the American home in entirely conventional terms.  What he wanted was “Domestic peace, a mansion tight, / Health, competence, and Fire”; and by fire he meant, unambiguously, the blazing open hearth:

When from the chilling toils of day,

The lumb'ring sled, or pleasure sleigh,

We to our homes retire;

To warm our limbs, prepare our food,

How welcome is a stick of wood,

How charming is a Fire!

Men have ador'd thee, well they might,

Great source of heat! great source of light!

But five years later, stoves must have become more familiar to Ray and the readers for his occasional verse, and he had no difficulty fitting the new technology alongside the old iconic fireside in his celebrations of rural contentment and New Year's Eve hospitality, perhaps not least because of the easy sight-rhyme it offered with “love”:

Roast the spare-rib, spread the board,

Well can you the feast afford:

Call your neighb'ring plough boys in,

Wives and daughters, all akin;

Seated round the parlor stove,

Warmer than the heart of love...

Thus while round the hearth or stove

Doubly warm'd by fire and love,

While the luscious banquet flows,

Till the midnight watch-cock crows,

Think how wretched millions are,

While such blessings freemen share;

So there it is -- 190 years ago, the pleasures of sitting around the stove in the dead of winter had been added to William Ray's notion of the blessings of being an American.

If you (if there ever is a "you"...) should wish to read more about Ray, or read more of his poems, including the full texts of those excerpted above, go to his Poems, on Various Subjects: Religious, Moral, Sentimental and Humorous (Auburn, NY: U.F. Doubleday, 1821), http://books.google.com/books?id=6gcUAAAAIAAJ&pg=118 for "Fire" (1816), p. 160 for "The Carrier of the Plough Boy [his newspaper] to His Patrons," and p. 169 for "A New-Year's Address for January 1, 1821."