Charles Warren Stoddard
Encyclopedia
Life and works
Charles Warren Stoddard was born in RochesterRochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
on August 7, 1843. He was descended in a direct line from Anthony Stoddard of England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, who settled at Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, in 1639. While he was still a child his parents moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, where they lived until 1855, when they migrated to San Francisco, California. In 1857 he returned alone to New York, lived with his grandparents for two years, and then rejoined his family in San Francisco. In a short time he began writing verses, which he sent anonymously to a local newspaper. They met with great success and were later published with the modest title Poems by Charles Warren Stoddard. Poor health compelled him to give up his plans for a college education. He tried the stage, but soon realized that such a life was not his calling.
Polynesia
In 1864 he visited the South Sea Islands and from there wrote his Idyls — letters which he sent to a friend who had them published in book form. "They are," as William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells
William Dean Howells was an American realist author and literary critic. Nicknamed "The Dean of American Letters", he was particularly known for his tenure as editor of the Atlantic Monthly as well as his own writings, including the Christmas story "Christmas Every Day" and the novel The Rise of...
said, "the lightest, sweetest, wildest, freshest things that were ever written about the life of that summer ocean." He made four other trips to the South Sea Islands, and gave his impressions in Lazy Letters from Low Latitudes and The Island of Tranquil Delights. Several times he visited Molokai
Molokai
Molokai or Molokai is an island in the Hawaiian archipelago. It is 38 by 10 miles in size with a land area of , making it the fifth largest of the main Hawaiian Islands and the 27th largest island in the United States. It lies east of Oahu across the 25-mile wide Kaiwi Channel and north of...
, and became well acquainted with Father Damien
Father Damien
Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai, SS.CC. , born Jozef De Veuster, was a Roman Catholic priest from Belgium and member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, a missionary religious order...
, the Apostle to the Lepers, and a Catholic saint as of 2009, and wrote his interesting little book, The Lepers of Molokai, which, with Stevenson's famous letter, did much to establish Father Damien's true position in public esteem. In 1867, soon after his first visit to the South Sea Islands, he was received into the Catholic Church, for which he had a most tender devotion. The story of his conversion he has told in a small book interestingly written: A Troubled Heart and How it was Comforted. Of this book he has said: "Here you have my inner life all laid bare."
California
In 1873 he started on a long tour as special correspondent of the San Francisco ChronicleSan Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...
. His commission
Roving commission
A roving commission details the duties of a commissioned officer or other official whose responsibilities are neither geographically nor functionally limited....
was a roving one, without restrictions of any kind. He was absent for five years, during which he traveled over Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and went as far east as Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. He sent considerable matter to his newspaper, much of which was never reprinted, though some of it was among his best work.
Around 1880, Stoddard was co-editor of the Overland Monthly
Overland Monthly
Overland Monthly was a monthly magazine based in California, United States, and published in the 19th and 20th century.The magazine's first issue was in July 1868, and continued until the late 1875. The original publishers, in 1880, started The Californian, which became The Californian and Overland...
with Bret Harte
Bret Harte
Francis Bret Harte was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.- Life and career :...
and Ina Coolbrith
Ina Coolbrith
Ina Donna Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community...
.
Notre Dame
In 1885, having decided to settle down, he accepted the chair of English literatureEnglish literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
in the University of Notre Dame
University of Notre Dame
The University of Notre Dame du Lac is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States...
, Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
; but owing to ill-health he soon resigned. The same reason caused him to resign a corresponding position which he held in the Catholic University, Washington, D. C., from 1889 to 1902. In a short time he moved to Cambridge, Mass., intending to devote himself exclusively to literary work. A serious and almost fatal illness interfered with his plans, yet he was not idle. He put forth his Exits and Entrances, a book of essays and sketches which he called his favourite work, probably because it told of his intimate friend Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....
and of others among his host of literary acquaintances.
A novel
At this time he also wrote his only novel, For the Pleasure of His Company, of which he said, "Here you have my Confessions." So strictly biographical are most of his writings that Stoddard hoped by supplying a few missing links to enable the reader to trace out the whole story of his life. In 1905 he returned to California and settled in Monterey with a hope of recovering his health. He lingered on till 1909, when he died in his sixty-sixth year. To superficial observers he was a man of contradictions. He was essentially Bohemian, but of the higher type, a man who could not resist the call of the far-away land, his home, as he himself said, being always under his hat. And yet he was a mystic and a recluse even in his travels. "Imaginative and impressionable", two epithets which he applied to his South Sea friends, are particularly appropriate to Stoddard himself.Private life
Stoddard has been discussed to be homosexual, since he praised the South Sea folk's receptiveness to homosexual liaisons, and lived in friendships with men. However, to characterise him as having been "homosexual" or "a homosexual" is anachronistic, since the term did not exist before 1892, coined in C.G. Chaddock's translation of Krafft-Ebing's "Psychopathia Sexualis," (a coinage that Krafft-Ebing disapproved).From San Francisco late in 1866, Stoddard sent his newly published Poems to Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
, along with news that in Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
he had found no traces of Melville. A homosexual who had written even more fervently to Walt Whitman
Walt Whitman
Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...
, Stoddard had been excited by Typee
Typee
Typee is American writer Herman Melville's first book, a classic in the literature of travel and adventure partly based on his actual experiences as a captive on the island Nuku Hiva in the South Pacific Marquesas Islands, in 1842...
, finding the Kory-Kory character so stimulating that he wrote a story celebrating the sort of male friendships to which Melville had more than once alluded. From the poems Stoddard sent, Melville may have sensed no homosexual undercurrent, and the extant draft of his reply in January 1867 is noncommittal.
Other works
That charm of his traits which may be described as "sweetness, peacefulness, tenderness, gentleness" he imparted to his writings. Noted English authors have given the highest praise to some of his work, and have taken to task the American public for their lack of appreciation of him. Besides the books already mentioned he wrote: Summer Cruising in the south Seas (1874); Marshallah, a Flight into Egypt (1885); A Trip to Hawaii (1885); In the Footprints of the Padres (1892); Hawaiian Life (1894); Saint Anthony, The Wonder-Worker of Padua (1896); A Cruise under the Crescent (1898); Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska (1899); Father Damien, a Sketch (1903); With Staff and Scrip (1904); Hither and Yon; The Confessions of a Reformed Poet (1907); The Dream Lady (1907).External links
- 1905 Article with photos
- Guide to the Collection of Charles Warren Stoddard at The Bancroft Library