A Wreath Of Virginia Bay Leaves Part 1

A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves.

by James Barron Hope.

INTRODUCTION.

It has been claimed for James Barron Hope that he was "Virginia's Laureate." He did not deal in "abstractions, or generalized arguments,"

or vague mysticisms. He fired the imagination purely, he awoke lofty thoughts and presented, through his n.o.ble odes that which is the soul of "every true poem, a living succession of concrete images and pictures."

James Barron, the elder, organized the Virginia Colonial Navy, of which he was commander-in-chief during the Revolution, and his sons, Samuel and James, served gallantly in the United States Navy. It was from these ancestors that James Barron Hope derived that unswerving devotion to his native state for which he was remarkable, and it was at the residence of his grandfather, Commodore James Barron, the younger, who then commanded the Gosport Navy-yard, that he was born the 23d of March, 1829.

His mother, Jane Barron, was the eldest daughter of the Commodore and most near to his regard. An attractive gentlewoman of the old school, generous, of quick and lively sympathies, she wielded a clever, ready pen, and the brush and embroiderer's needle in a manner not to be scorned in those days, and was a personage in her family.

Her child was the child not only of her material, but of her spiritual being, and the two were closely knit as the years pa.s.sed, in mutual affection and confidence, in tastes and aspirations.

His father was Wilton Hope of "Bethel," Elizabeth City County, a handsome, talented man, a landed proprietor, of a family whose acres bordered the picturesque waters of Hampton River.

He gained his early education at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and at the "Academy" in Hampton, Virginia, under his venerated master, John B. Cary, Esq.,--the master who declares himself proud to say, "I taught him"--the invaluable friend of all his after years.

In 1847 he graduated from William and Mary College with the degree of A.B.

From the "Pennsylvania," upon which man-of-war he was secretary to his uncle, Captain Samuel Barron, he was transferred to the "Cyane," and in 1852 made a cruise to the West Indies.

In 1856 he was elected Commonwealth's attorney to the "game-c.o.c.k town of Virginia," historic and picturesque old Hampton, which was the centre of a charming and cultivated society and which had already claimed him as her "bard." For as Henry Ellen he had contributed to various southern publications, his poems in "The Southern Literary Messenger" attracting much gratifying attention.

In 1857 Lippincott brought out "Leoni di Monota and Other Poems."

The volume was cordially noticed by the southern critics of the time, not only for its central poem, but also for several of its minor ones, notably, "The Charge at Balaklava," which G.P.R. James--as have others since--declared unsurpa.s.sed by Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade."

Upon the 13th of May, 1857, he stood poet at the 250th anniversary of the English settlement at Jamestown.

As poet, and as the youthful colleague of Henry A. Wise and John R.

Thompson, he stood at the base of Crawford's statue of Washington, in the Capitol Square, Richmond, Virginia, the 22d of February, 1858.

That same year these recited poems, together with some miscellaneous ones were published.

Congress chose him as poet for the Yorktown Centennial, 1881, and his "brilliant and masterly poem was a fitting companion piece to the splendid oration delivered upon that occasion by the renowned orator, Robert C. Winthrop."

This metrical address "Arms and the Man," with various sonnets was published the next year. As the flower of his genius, its n.o.ble measures only revealed their full beauty when they fell from the lips of him who framed them, and it was under this spell that one of those who had thronged about him that 19th of October cried out: "Now I understand the power by which the old Greek poets swayed the men of their generation."

Again his State called upon him to weave among her annals the laurels of his verse at the laying of the cornerstone of the monument erected in Richmond to Robert E. Lee. The corner-stone was laid October, 1887, but the poet's voice had been stilled forever.

He died September the 15th, as he had often wished to die, "in harness," and at home, and Death came swift and painless.

His poem, save for the after softening touches, had been finished the previous day, and was recited at the appointed time and place by Captain William Gordon McCabe.

"Memoriae Sacrum," the Lee Memorial Ode, has been p.r.o.nounced by many his masterpiece, and waked this n.o.ble echo in a brother poet's soul:

'Like those of whom the olden scriptures tell, Who faltered not, but went on dangerous quest, For one cool draught of water from the well With which to cheer their exiled monarch's breast;'

'So thou to add one single laurel more To our great chieftain's fame--heedless of pain Didst gather up thy failing strength and pour Out all thy soul in one last glorious strain.'

"And when the many pilgrims come to gaze Upon the sculptured form of mighty Lee, They'll not forget the bard who sang his praise With dying breath, but deathless melody."

"For on the statue which a country rears, Tho' graven by no hand, we'll surely see, E'en tho' it be thro' blinding mists of tears, Thy name forever linked with that of Lee."

--_Rev. Beverly D. Tucker_.

His genius had flowered not out of opulence, or congenial occupation, but out of the tread-mill of newspaper life, and under such conditions from 1870-1887 he delivered the poem at Lynchburg's celebration of its founding; at the unveiling of the monument raised to Annie Lee by the ladies of Warren County, North Carolina; memorial odes in Warrenton, Virginia, in Portsmouth, and Norfolk, and at the Virginia Military Inst.i.tute. He was the first commander of Norfolk's Camp of Confederate Veterans, the Pickett-Buchanan, but through all his stirring lines there breaks no discordant note of hate or rancor. He also sent into print, "Little Stories for Little People," and his novel "Madelon," and delivered among various masterly addresses, "Virginia--Her Past, Present and Future," and "The Press and the Printer's Devil."

During these years he had suffered a physical agony well-nigh past the bearing, but which he bore with a wonderful patience and fort.i.tude, and not only bore, but hid away from those nearest to him.

He had brought both broken health and fortunes out of the war; for when in 1861 the people of Hampton left the town,[1] "Its men to join the Southern army, and its women to go in exile for four long weary years, returning thence to find their homes in ashes, James Barron Hope was among the first who left their household G.o.ds behind to take up arms for their native State, and he bore his part n.o.bly in the great conflict."

When it ended he did not return to Hampton, or to the practice of his profession. Instead of the law he embarked in journalism in Norfolk, Virginia, and, despite its lack of entire congeniality, made therefrom a career as brilliant as it was fearless and unsullied.

[Footnote: A: "They themselves applying the torch to their own homes under the patriotic, but mistaken idea that they would thus arrest the march of the Invaders." ("Col. Cary's address at unveiling of monument to Captain Hope.")]

_Introduction_.

He was a little under six feet in height, slender, graceful, and finely proportioned, with hands and feet of distinctive beauty. And his fingers were gifted with a woman's touch in the sick-room, and an artist's grasp upon the pencil and the brush of the water-colorist.

It was said of him that his manner was as courtly as that of "Sir Roger de Coverly." Words which though fitly applied are but as the bare outlines of a picture, for he was the embodiment of what was best in the Old South. He was gifted with a rare charm. There was charm in his pale face, which in conversation flashed out of its deep thoughtfulness into vivid animation. His fine head was crowned with soft hair fast whitening before its time. His eyes shone under his broad white forehead, wise and serene, until his dauntless spirit, or his lofty enthusiasm awoke to fire their grey depths. His was a face that women trusted and that little children looked up into with smiles. Those whom he called friend learned the meaning of that name, and he drew and linked men to him from all ranks and conditions of life.

Beloved by many, those who guard his memory coin the very fervor of their hearts into the speech with which they link his name.

"A very Chevalier Bayard" he was called.

Of him was quoted that n.o.ble epitaph on the great Lord Fairfax:

'Both s.e.xes' virtues in him combined, He had the fierceness of the manliest mind, And all the meekness too of woman kind.'

'He never knew what envy was, nor hate, His soul was filled with worth and honesty, And with another thing quite out of date, called modesty.'

No sketch could approach justice toward Captain Hope without at least a brief review of his domestic life.

In 1857 he had married Miss Annie Beverly Whiting of Hampton. Hers were the face and form to take captive his poet's fancy, and she possessed a character as lovely as her person; a courage and strength of will far out of proportion to her dainty shape, and an intellect of masculine robustness. Often the editor brought his work to the table of his library that he might avail himself of his wife's judgment, and labor with the faces around him that he loved, for their union was a very congenial one, and when two daughters came to bless it, as husband and father, he poured out the treasures of his heart, his mind and soul. To his children he was a wise teacher, a tender guide, an unfailing friend, the most delightful of companions. His sympathy for and his understanding of young people never aged, and he had a circle of dear and familiar friends of varying ages that gathered about him once a week. There, beside his own hearth, his ready wit, his kindly humor sparkled most brightly, and there flowed forth most evenly that speech accounted by many well worth the hearing. For his was also the art of listening; he not only led the expression of thought, but inspired it in others.

His own roof-tree looked down upon James Barron Hope at his best and down upon a home in the sacred sense of the word, for he touched with poetry the prose of daily living, and left to those who loved him the blessed legacy of a memory which death cannot take from them.

I have said that in his early years Old Hampton claimed him. He became the son of the city of his adoption and sleeps among her dead.

Above his ashes rises a shaft, fashioned from the stones of the State he loved so well which proclaims that it is "The tribute of his friends offered to the memory of the Poet, Patriot, Scholar, and Journalist and the Knightly Virginia Gentleman."

JANEY HOPE MARR,

LEXINGTON, VA.