From Henry Livingston, Jr.'s Music Manuscript - "Yanky Doodle" - late 1700's

YouTube ^

[mairdie]

If you didn’t have a TV and the buses weren’t running to get you into town on a snowy night, a house full of children could probably be entertained with a lot of home made music.

I know the Publicus issue you’re referencing. Talked to Mac about that once. My personal belief is that most college professors are sloppy and would be well served with a circle of retired nitpickers to shove data to them to analyze. I had to talk Don Foster into starting the research. Mac came to me. But professionals can be pulled into your obsession. You just have to be prepared to be the grunt that does the massive scut work, because they won’t and their grad students pass through too quickly for long term projects.

[mairdie]

>>James McClure ring a bell?

No. Afraid not. What’s the connection? I’m always interested in mysteries.

Mac is one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. He’s gentle, kind and relentless in his dedication to doing things right. Don was sloppy, and he had problems because of that. In fact, if I remember right, it was Mac who caught out Don’s inaccurate attribution of a Shakespearean sonnet.

[DiogenesLamp]

I should think you would be. She undoubtedly still misses you!

:)

https://youtu.be/oblF9EqE9RA

[IronJack]

The actual name of the poem is “A Visit From St. Nick.”

[mairdie]

Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas

I tend to just call it the Christmas poem.

[DiogenesLamp]

>>James McClure ring a bell?

No. Afraid not. What’s the connection? I’m always interested in mysteries.

Back in October 1 or 1811, a letter was published from a man calling himself "Publius" in which he discusses the case of James McClure.

James McClure was at that time being held in French custody as an agent of the British, with which the French at that time were at war. The US Ambassador (John Armstrong) had disavowed his American Citizenship on the basis that he was born before his father took the oath of naturalization.

"Publius" wrote of the circumstances surrounding the case, and the legal argument for denying James McClure the protection of US Citizenship. "Publius" appears to know very much whereof he spoke, and displayed an insiders knowledge as to the details of the case.

"Publius" was one of the pseudonym under which many of the Federalist papers were written, but there were three known authors that used that pseudonym, one of which was James Madison, who at that time was President of the United States.

Here is an excerpt from the page of one newspaper at that time.

You can see the entire letter here.

http://naturalborncitizen.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alexandria-herald.pdf

There is currently no known proof that Madison wrote this, but if it could be established that he did, it would turn a lot of legal arguments regarding US Citizenship on their head.

Mac is one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known. He’s gentle, kind and relentless in his dedication to doing things right. Don was sloppy, and he had problems because of that. In fact, if I remember right, it was Mac who caught out Don’s inaccurate attribution of a Shakespearean sonnet.

He sounds like a wonderful scholar, but to do this analysis he would likely need the complete works of James Madison in a text format so that the computer could learn James Madison's vocabulary, style, and idiosyncrasies.

But it is a good mystery, and it would certainly attract some attention from some quarters if it proves Madison wrote that. :)

[mairdie]

For history, this is Mac’s email to me that got the second phase of the attribution research started. He thought it was a small job until I started shoving data to him. First he was overwhelmed, then he got excited. Then he went to town on it. It was the most exciting period since the 2000 period when I was criss-crossing the country to collect data. But this time I got to stay at home and do it all on the computer.

************

8 DEC 2011

Dear Ms Van Deusen,

Henry Livingston certainly comes across as a thoroughly likable man. And that is true of the personality implicit in his poetry. His moving “God Is Love” sums him up: he was full of love for everything and everybody in the world around him. I admire his warmth, empathy, bonhomie, eye for detail, and good-hearted wit. There’s an endearing delicacy about the poems on the death of the pet wren (in the tradition of Catullus’s on the death of Lesbia’s sparrow - a poem that he refers to in one of his own) and
of the little dog Belle. He is a poet who relishes the essential being of all living creatures. He refers to Lawrence Sterne, the author of {Tristram Shandy}, as “The author of Shandy, all laughter and glee / Whose pencil from gall was forever kept free”. He himself is not ALL “laughter and glee” - his epitaphs and elegies are heartfelt, and his accounts of the year’s events in his New Year addresses are realistic - but he is remarkably free from “gall”.

Nobody could say the same about Clement Moore’s verse, which, in contrast, is that of a satirist and moralizer. And whereas Livingston?s poems teem with detailed concrete references to individual persons, animals, birds, insects, and things, Moore’s tend towards the abstract and generalized. Livingston’s verse shows many signs of the lively, whimsical fancy, and the narrative skill that could create ?The Night Before Christmas?. Moore’s, at least in {Poems} (1844), does not. Livingston knows how to shape a poem - beginning, middle, and end - whereas Moore is inclined to just meander on and on, when he should have stopped long ago.

I don?t see how anybody with a shred of literary-critical judgment could imagine that Moore?s undated ?From Saint Nicholas? (”What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone”) piece could strengthen his case. It is about as different in every way from ?The Night Before Christmas? as chalk from cheese. Livingston doesn’t deal in “moral lessons”: he deals in joy, compassion, and celebration. He doesn’t “instruct” children, he blesses them. And Moore’s “piece of fun”, “The Pig and the Rooster”, isn’t “fun” at all.

No doubt Moore loved his wife and children, made generous philanthropic use of his wealth, and was much less of a Grinch than Don portrayed him (and the accusation that he claimed to be the translator of the Merino book evidently won?t stand up), but there is no evidence in his verse of the imaginative zest of ?The Night Before Christmas?.

May I ask a few questions?

(1) Moore’s champions mention several of his pieces of light verse - including some in anapaests - in The Museum of the City of New York. Do you happen to have copies of any of these? Or have any idea how I could get copies without travelling to New York? I could ordewr photocopies but I don’t know what I’d be requesting photocopies of.

(2) How certain are you that the {Sentinel} broadsheet served, though presumably indirectly, as printer’s copy for “The Night Before Christmas” in Moore’s {Poems}? The reindeer names are italicized in both, but is this italicization peculiar to broadsheet and {Poems}? Moore penned in the Blixem/Blitzem change on the broadsheet. Did he pen in his other substantive changes - “leaves” to “leaves that”, “was flung” to “he had flung”?

(3) Are the HL poems on your website available in any form that might enable me to download them and run them through a Concordance programme?

Incidentally, there are quite a few errors in the texts of the poems, some perhaps going back to original printings. Would there be any point in my compiling a list of these for you?

Sorry to be so long-winded. But your website has given me a great deal of pleasure, and I have a habit of getting interested in authorship problems.

Yours sincerely

Mac Jackson

[DiogenesLamp]

Trying to explain how you decide which phoneme groups are valid for comparison twists your tongue in your mouth. I always thought the simplest way to prove the matter was to make people read Moore. He was the worst poet imaginable! Ghastly. Every time I had to go through data to analyze for yet another pass, I would absolutely SUFFER through Moore’s writing. Livingston’s floats like a dream.

I have noticed a similar phenomena in my reading over the years. Some authors are horrible, and some just flow through your mind with ease.

[mairdie]

Then imagine having to read the identical poems up to 40 to 50 times taking different types of notes on every pass and trying to make sure you’re as fair at the start of analysis as at the end, and that you’re as fair to the one who bores you as to the one who entertains you. And if you aren’t sure, then you just do it all again. Mac was a master at questioning criteria and checking and rechecking me. And whereas you can close the book on an author you’re not enjoying, there was no option with Moore.

[mairdie]

Moore

What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone;
No light in your room! And your nursy too gone!
And you, like a good child, are quietly lying,
While some naughty ones would be fretting or crying?
Well, for this you must have something pretty, my dear;
And, I hope, will deserve a reward too next year.
But, speaking of crying, I’m sorry to say
Your screeches and screams, so loud ev’ry day,
Were near driving me and my goodies away.
Good children I always give good things in plenty;
How sad to have left your stocking quite empty:
But you are beginning so nicely to spell,
And, in going to bed, behave always so well,
That, although I too oft see the tear in your eye,
I cannot resolve to pass you quite by.
I hope, when I come here again the next year,
I shall not see even the sign of a tear.
And then, if you get back your sweet pleasant looks,
And do as you’re bid, I will leave you some books,
Some toys, or perhaps what you still may like better,
And then too may write you a prettier letter.
At present, my dear, I must bid you good bye;
Now, do as you’re bid; and, remember, don’t cry.

[mairdie]

Henry

Believe me, dear patrons, I have wand’red too far,
Without any compass, or planet or star;
My dear native village I scarcely can see
So I’ll hie to my hive like the tempest-tost bee.
Hail home! sacred home! to my soul ever dear;
Abroad may be wonders but rapture is here.
My future ambition will never soar higher
Than the clean brushed hearth and convivial fire;
Here I lounge at my pleasure, and bask at my ease,
Full readily sooth’d, and desirous to please,
As happy myself as I happy can be,
I wish all the circle as happy as me.

But hark what a clatter! the Jolly bells ringing,
The lads and the lasses so jovially singing,
Tis New-Years they shout and then haul me along
In the midst of their merry-make Juvenile throng;
But I burst from their grasp: unforgetful of duty
To first pay obeisence to wisdom and Beauty,
My conscience and int’rest unite to command it,
And you, my kind PATRONS, deserve & demand it.
On your patience to trespass no longer I dare,
So bowing, I wish you a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Jan. 1. 1819. FREDERICK T. PARSONS

[mairdie]

Try this one I just put up. The melody is a little more complicated. It's one of my favorites.

Farewell to Lochabor - YouTube

Farewell to Lochabor - Music Manuscript

[mairdie]

I hope someone does follow up. The citizenship issue is so fundamental. That’s a fascinating catch. Another of Henry’s brothers - Gilbert - published Antifederalist No. 65 with NY Chancellor John Lansing. I own Lansing’s published notes. Blessed be ebay.

And I LOVED seeing the newspaper. When I first collected the poetry of Henry, my husband got me this gigantic microfilm scanner that went directly into our computer. I lived for a year in the newspapers of the time that were sent from the NY State Archives and it became more real to me than today was. Today I just subscribe to all the old newspapers and the scanner collects dust.

[minnesota_bound]

Yankee Doodle Dandy - Jimmy Cagney
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8wxb-wwQnA

[mairdie]

Oh, that was wonderful, minneosta! Brilliant of you to remember it. I really loved it. Thank you. I’d forgotten how nifty tap-dancing was.

[sparklite2]

What? Shame on you.
Oh wait, you said tap-dancing,
not lap-dancing. Never mind.

[kalee]

For later

[mairdie]

This is the type of treasure I found in that first year of searching. 7 Feb 1787

Translated from a Fragment of Anacrean, lately found among the ruins of a Theater in Epirus.

With the ladies' permission, most humbly I'd mention
How much w'ere obliged by all their attention;
We sink with the weight of the huge obligation,
Too long, and too broad, to admit compensation.
For us -- (and I blush while I speak I declare)
The charming enchanters be-torture their hair,
Till gently it rises, and swells like a knoll,
Thirty inches at least from the dear little pole;
On the tip-top of which, all peer out together,
The ribband, the gauze, and the ostritche's feather,
Composing a sight for an Arab to swear at,
Or huge Patagonian a fortnight to stare at.
Then hoops at right angles that hang from the knees
And hoops at the hips in connection with these,
Set the fellows presumptuous, who court an alliance,
And ev'ry pretender, at awful defiance.
And I have been told (tho' I must disbelieve,
For the tidings as fact, I would never receive)
That billets of cork have supplied the place,
Of something, the fair ones imagine a grace;
But whether 'tis placed behind or before;
The shoulders to swell, or the bosom to shoar,
To raise a false wen, or to expand a false bump,
Project a false hip, or protrude a false r--p,
Was never ascertain'd; and fegs I declare
To make more enquiry I never will dare.

[minnesota_bound]

Bob Hope was pretty good too.

Great Dance Routine: James Cagney and Bob Hope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28