The Great Mount Vernon Poetry Book Battle of 1817 was fought in print

MOUNT VERNON — Now, this is my kind of story!

In the course of writing these columns, I sometimes find important stories, sometimes forgotten ones. Some are haunting or tragic, others are low-key but with significant connections.

Today’s story strikes me as being just as funny as it is utterly unimportant to anything, but the delight it brings me is considerable.

It delights me because I get it. When you have a favorite creative thing, whether it’s a particular song, movie, or book, you can get very attached to it. You want other people to share it, and you want them to enjoy it in the same way you did.

In the present case, early Mount Vernon resident Robert Buchanan tried to do exactly that, but found that his intention to share an enthusiasm backfired.

Buchanan was apparently a huge fan of the poetry of Scottish writer Thomas Campbell, who was big in the early 1800s, and had a copy of Cambell’s collection The Pleasures of Hope in his Mount Vernon home.

I find it pleasant to think that so-called luxuries like books and pianos made it to frontier towns with rapidity. For a good life, settlers built three shelters: a barn for their animals, a house for their family, and a collection of books, art, and music for the soul.

It must be remembered that even though Mount Vernon wasn’t platted until 1808, within a couple years of its founding, it had a book club – what was known then as a literary society – operating with enthusiastic participants.

Within a few years of the founding of Mount Vernon, Robert Buchanan must have been extolling the virtues of Campbell’s collection of erudite verse. Thomas Campbell was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1777.

His father was a tobacco merchant who lost his fortune when the American Revolution erupted. Some of Thomas’ older brothers, working in the colonies, committed to the revolutionary cause, one of them even marrying Patrick Henry’s daughter.

Thomas himself, though, was stuck at home in school. He became known in college for his intellect, and started writing patriotic and heroic poetry, which became moderately successful.

Campbell kept a day job as a newspaper editor to make ends meet. His greatest claim to fame is probably that one of his poems, “The Soldier’s Dream,” was used as a song text by Ludwig can Beethoven.

Cambell died in 1844.

As a writer and reader of modern poetry, I was curious to experience what triggered Buchanan’s enthusiasm.

Suffice it say that poetry styles don’t necessarily transfer well over the centuries.

I started with every intention of reading the whole thing, but didn’t make it far before the rhyming heroic couplets of the poem began to distract me into guessing the next rhyme before it came.

Also, I suspect that Buchanan liked Campbell’s poem because it contained references to apparently all the historical and classical items the author knew and was determined to demonstrate that he knew. I guess it would be cheaper than having to purchase an encyclopedia.

I tackled the first stanza enthusiastically enough. While the writing manner is low on efficiency, and high in pomposity, it does have a sort of lofty hauteur in its observations:

At summer eve, when Heav’n’s aerial bow
Spans with bright arch the glittering hills below,
Why to yon mountain turns the musing eye,
Whose sunbright summit mingles with the sky?
Why do these cliffs of shadowy tint appear
More sweet than all the landscape smiling near?
‘Tis Distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

Okay, fair enough. Eight lines down. A bit stuffy, but doable. Then I wondered how many more lines it ran and skipped ahead.

Gulp.

The poem runs, in two parts, to almost 1,000 lines.

The later lines are full of references to “Loxian murmurs” and the “Dneiper’s swampy shore” and the like. I began to feel a headache coming on. They sure don’t write ‘em like that anymore.

Thank God.

So, anyway, Robert Buchanan was really chuffed on this stuff, and he made the momentous error of loaning the book to a friend somewhere around 1815 or so, who promised to return it soon.

Now, spoiler alert, if I had committed to reading this poem and others like it, I surely wouldn’t promise to return the book for at least 15 years, possibly 20, because it would take that long to plod through it, because I’d be able to read, on average, one stanza per day before falling into a heavy, confused slumber.

But the friend apparently said, no problem, Bob, I’ll speed read it this weekend and get it back to you.

That didn’t happen.

In the June 18, 1817 issue of one of the area’s earliest newspapers, the Register, Robert Buchanan – already having worked himself into a considerable lather – placed an imperious notice:

In the month of November, I advertised a volume of Campbell’s poems, which I had lent some considerable time before to an acquaintance of mine.

The principal poem in this work is entitled, “The Pleasures of Hope,” and I had entertained a HOPE of obtaining it long ere this; but this hope, like some other of my expectations, has perished.

I now only WISH it may be returned to me.

When that haughty complaint failed to be answered by the book borrower, Buchanan decided to up the ante and threaten public shaming in another message placed on June 18, 1817.

This notice not having the desired effect, on July 16 the following pointed addition is made to it:

“If Mr. J—n W—k—r, who was entrusted to deliver the above volume to me, by the person to whom I lent it, does not return it within two weeks the date hereof, I will give his name to the public, together with some trails of his character, which have not much the appearance of HONESTY!

As I am credibly informed that you have refused FIVE DOLLARS for those poems, I think you ought not to object paying me $1.50 for them. You may send or bring me this amount, or the book, at your own option.

I am determined to have it or its worth from you – PEACEABLY IF I CAN, FORCIBLY IF I MUST.

I’m not entirely sure why Buchanan thought he was being coy by rendering the borrower’s name as J—n W—k—r, as there aren’t too many ways to complete that. I mean, the guy’s name clearly wasn’t going to be “Fred.”

Unsurprisingly, this ponderously delivered threat did nothing whatsoever to provoke the borrower to return the book, which — if we’re being honest — he was almost certainly using by this time to prop up his kitchen table.

So, Buchanan decided to officially name the borrowing scalawag once and for all:

To Mr. John Walker:

Sir — The two weeks in which I allowed you to return the above poems, have now elapsed unheeded by you.

At the expiration of that time, I promised to give the public your name and an exposition of your conduct in retaining this book in your own possession after having POLITELY proffered your services to convey it to me from the young lady to whom I had lent it; but being blessed with a pretty good share of CHARITY, I have omitted the exposition for the present, and inserted your NAME only – giving you one week further to decide whether or not ‘HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY!’

So, what happened after Buchanan chose the nuclear option, despite the nuclear bomb having not yet been invented? And who the heck is the “young lady” Buchanan has suddenly brought into the one-sided discussion?

This is getting interesting!

Unfortunately, we don’t know. This surviving fragment of frontier life was reported by A. Banning Norton in his 1862 history of Knox County, apparently including only those fragments of early newspapers which had survived up to that time.

Whatever happened next in the Great Poetry Book War of 1817 has not survived into recorded history.

Either John Walker finally relented and returned the ponderous tome to Buchanan – or perhaps threw it at him, with great force – or maybe he had lost the book long before and paid Buchanan to shut up.

Or maybe the matter was never settled at all, leaving us to wonder about it over 200 years later.

Personally, I’m hoping Walker used it to prop up that kitchen table, then denied any knowledge of the book’s whereabouts.

As for myself, I have an uneven desk in my office, so I’m hoping a modern reprint will soon be made of “The Pleasures of Hope.”