John Howard Payne
Encyclopedia
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. He is today most remembered as the creator of "Home! Sweet Home!
Home! Sweet Home!
"Home! Sweet Home!" is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari, Maid of Milan, the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by Payne...
", a song he wrote in 1822 that became widely popular in the United States, Great Britain, and the English-speaking world. After his return to the United States, Payne spent time with the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
Indians. He published accounts' claiming their origin as one of the Ten Lost Tribes
Ten Lost Tribes
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...
of ancient Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Payne was appointed American Consul to Tunis
Tunis
Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....
in 1842, where he served for nearly 10 years until his death. Payne was a distant cousin of American parlor song composer Carrie Jacobs-Bond
Carrie Jacobs-Bond
Carrie Minetta Jacobs-Bond was an American singer, pianist, and songwriter who composed some 175 pieces of popular sheet music from the 1890s through the early 1940s....
, born 10 years after Payne's death.
Early life and education
John Howard Payne was born in New York City on June 9, 1791, one of the eldest of nine children and seven sons. Soon after his birth his father moved the family to BostonBoston
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...
, where he headed a school. The family also spent time at his grandfather's colonial-era house in East Hampton, New York
East Hampton (town), New York
The Town of East Hampton is located in southeastern Suffolk County, New York, at the eastern end of the South Shore of Long Island. It is the easternmost town in the state of New York...
, which was later preserved in honor of Payne. As a youth, Payne showed precocious dramatic talent, but his father tried to discourage that path. After the death of an older brother, his father installed young Payne, age 13, in the brother's position at the same accountants' firm in New York, but the boy did not have a mind for commerce.
His interest in theater was irrepressible. He published the first issue of The Thespian Mirror, a journal of theater criticism, at age 14. Soon after that, he wrote his first play, Julia: or the Wanderer, a comedy in five acts. Its language was racy, and it closed quickly. Payne then caught the attention of John E. Seaman, a wealthy New Yorker who recognized his talent and paid for his education at Union College.
There Payne started a college paper called the Pastime, which he kept up for several issues.
When Payne was 16, his mother died and his father's business failed. Payne thought he could best assist his family by leaving college and going on stage, and made his debut as Young Norval in the play by the same name, at the old Park Theatre in New York on February 24, 1800. He was a brilliant success, and played in other major cities to acclaim. In a brief interval away from the theatre, he founded the Athenaeum
Athenaeum
-Educational institutions, museums, libraries:* Melbourne Athenaeum, Melbourne, Australia* Limerick Athenaeum, Limerick, Ireland* Romanian Athenaeum, Bucharest, Romania* Warminster Athenaeum, a theatre in Warminster, Wiltshire, UK* Glasgow Athenaeum, Glasgow, UK...
, a circulating library and reading room.
Payne was friends with Sam Colt and his brother John C. Colt
John C. Colt
John Caldwell Colt , the brother of Samuel Colt, was a fur-trader, book keeper, law clerk, and teacher. He became an authority on double-entry bookkeeping system and published a textbook on the subject. He was convicted of the murder of a printer named Samuel Adams, to whom Colt owed money over...
. Payne was a character witness at John Colt's murder trial and acted as a witness in Colt's wedding ceremony to Caroline Henshaw on the morning of Colt's scheduled execution.
Career
After Payne's father's death, the English tragedian George Frederick CookeGeorge Frederick Cooke
George Frederick Cooke was an English actor. As famous for his erratic habits as for his acting, he was largely responsible for initiating the romantic style in acting that was later made famous by Edmund Kean.-Career:Although he claimed to have been born in Westminster, it seems likely that he...
came to America and became interested in the young actor, appearing with him in King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
at New York's Park Theatre. He encouraged Payne to go to London for its theatre world, which the young man did in February 1813.
Payne's first engagements as an actor in London were very successful, and he played at Drury Lane
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the eastern boundary of the Covent Garden area of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of Camden and the southern part in the City of Westminster....
and Covent Garden
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St. Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit and vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and the Royal Opera House, which is also known as...
theatres. Payne also went to Paris, where he attended much theater and met people in the circles. He decided to try writing, which he did easily and quickly, both in English, and translating from French to English. He was paid to translate several French plays for production in London. In 1818 he wrote his own play Brutus, which he sold. Wanting to branch out, he produced some of his own pieces at Sadler's Wells Theatre, but as a theater manager, struggled to make ends meet.
In 1823 Payne worked on a play proposal with Charles Kemble
Charles Kemble
Charles Kemble was a British actor.-Life:The youngest son of Roger Kemble, and younger brother of John Philip Kemble, Stephen Kemble and Sarah Siddons, he was born at Brecon, South Wales. Like John Philip, he was educated at Douai...
, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, out of a number he sold to him as a group for £230. Because the one Kemble chose was being produced elsewhere, Payne easily changed the plot, added lyrics for songs and duets to it, and transformed it into an opera he called Clari; or the Maid of Milan. This included his poem and ballad "Home, Sweet Home", which helped make the opera an instantaneous success and Payne a famous man. Sir Henry Bishop wrote the music, based on an Italian folk song.
When the song was published separately, it quickly sold 100,000 copies. The publishers made a considerable profit from it, net £2100 in the first year, and the producer of the opera did well. Only Payne did not really profit by its success. "While his money lasted, he was a prince of bohemians", but had little business sense.
While in Europe, Payne was reportedly romantically infatuated with Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
, the author of Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
. She had nothing but a literary interest in him. Payne never married.
After spending nearly twenty years in Europe, Payne returned to New York and the United States in 1832. Friends arranged a benefit concert in New York to try to help him give him a stake. He also toured the country with artist John James Audubon
John James Audubon
John James Audubon was a French-American ornithologist, naturalist, and painter. He was notable for his expansive studies to document all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations that depicted the birds in their natural habitats...
. Payne developed a strong interest in the Cherokee
Cherokee
The Cherokee are a Native American people historically settled in the Southeastern United States . Linguistically, they are part of the Iroquoian language family...
Indians, whose fate had become a public issue. Acknowledged as one of the Five Civilized Tribes
Five Civilized Tribes
The Five Civilized Tribes were the five Native American nations—the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole—that were considered civilized by Anglo-European settlers during the colonial and early federal period because they adopted many of the colonists' customs and had generally good...
, they had developed self-government, a constitution, and written language, but they were under extreme pressure from the US government for removal to the trans-Mississippi West from the southeastern United States. Payne was taken by their story, and lobbied Congress against their removal.
In 1836 Payne went to Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
as the guest of the Cherokee Chief John Ross
John Ross (Cherokee chief)
John Ross , also known as Guwisguwi , was Principal Chief of the Cherokee Native American Nation from 1828–1866...
, who opposed removal. There were great tensions within the tribe and state at the time. Major Ridge supported removal. Payne visited with Ross to collect and record the myths, religious traditions, foodways and other aspects of the Cherokees. While staying with Ross, Payne was arrested and briefly imprisoned by Georgia authorities as his arrival was considered suspicious. Intercession by General Edward Harden of Athens
Athens, Georgia
Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...
, to whom Payne had a letter of introduction, accomplished his release.
Payne reported his findings in popular newspaper articles, and also had considerable work that was never published. Payne's collected, unpublished papers from the 1830s have served as important source material for scholars. The writer had visited with the nation as it was on the verge of dramatic change. In 1838 most of the Cherokee did go west on the Trail of Tears
Trail of Tears
The Trail of Tears is a name given to the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from southeastern parts of the United States following the Indian Removal Act of 1830...
. Removal meant the Cherokee Nation was split and transformed, with eastern and western groups developing independently after that time.
Payne believed his research demonstrated that the Cherokee were one of the Ten Lost Tribes
Ten Lost Tribes
The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel refers to those tribes of ancient Israel that formed the Kingdom of Israel and which disappeared from Biblical and all other historical accounts after the kingdom was destroyed in about 720 BC by ancient Assyria...
of ancient Israel. Payne was reflecting historians and other researchers who still proposed this theory in the nineteenth century. It was at a time when historians tried to correlate their ideas with the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and classical texts, and were trying to fit the Native Americans into a biblical scheme of origin. Some scholars criticized Payne for his refusal to accept that Cherokees had their origins in North America. Others considered his work biased by his attempt to show the "Hebrew" origins of Cherokee religion. When coming upon elements he seemed to recognize from Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
, rather than seeing these as organic forms that could have arisen independently in numerous religions (Eliade), Payne claimed they were derived from Judaism.
The work of archaeologists, linguists and anthropologists has confirmed that Cherokee were descended from prehistoric indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples
Indigenous peoples are ethnic groups that are defined as indigenous according to one of the various definitions of the term, there is no universally accepted definition but most of which carry connotations of being the "original inhabitants" of a territory....
of North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
. Scholars have concluded that these prehistoric peoples originated from eastern Asia and migrated across the Bering Straits to North America more than 15,000 years ago. Although Payne's theory of Cherokee origins related to Biblical tribes has been replaced by the facts of Asian origin, his unpublished papers are useful to researchers as a rich source of information on the culture of the Cherokee in the early decades of the 19th century.
Last years in Africa
In 1842 President John TylerJohn Tyler
John Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...
appointed Payne as the American Consul in Tunis
Tunis
Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....
, due in part from support from statesman
Statesman
A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...
William Marcy and Secretary of State
Secretary of State
Secretary of State or State Secretary is a commonly used title for a senior or mid-level post in governments around the world. The role varies between countries, and in some cases there are multiple Secretaries of State in the Government....
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster
Daniel Webster was a leading American statesman and senator from Massachusetts during the period leading up to the Civil War. He first rose to regional prominence through his defense of New England shipping interests...
, who were moved by his famous song and wanted to help him. Payne served twice in North Africa (the area of present-day Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
). He died in Tunis in 1852 and was buried there in St. George's Protestant Cemetery.
Late celebration
"[N]ever was a dead poet so famous for a single song, or so honored."Payne's song was widely sung during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, when it was treasured by troops of both the North and the South. It was also a particular favorite of President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
. He asked Italian opera star Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
to perform it for him and his wife when she appeared at the White House in 1862. The Lincolns were still mourning the death of their son Willie.
In February 1883, Payne's ashes were disinterred and brought to the U.S. by steamer, at the suggestion and expense of the philanthropist W.W. Corcoran of Washington, DC, who arranged reinterment in his home city. (He was the founder of the Corcoran Gallery.) In New York, the coffin with Payne's ashes was received with honors and transported by black funeral hearse to City Hall, where it was held in state while several thousand people visited the hall to pay respects. For a day all the papers were filled again with the story of his life, for
"his song is that one touch of nature which makes the world kin. It is the frailest thread of which fame was ever spun."The ashes were transported to Washington, DC, and held for services on the anniversary of Payne's birth in June.
Arrangements were made for a memorial service to mark the reinterment of Payne's ashes at Oak Hill Cemetery in the Georgetown
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Georgetown is a neighborhood located in northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River. Founded in 1751, the port of Georgetown predated the establishment of the federal district and the City of Washington by 40 years...
neighborhood. (Corcoran had created this cemetery, where many Civil War veterans were buried.) The memorial service was held on the 91st anniversary of Payne's birth and was attended by President Chester A. Arthur
Chester A. Arthur
Chester Alan Arthur was the 21st President of the United States . Becoming President after the assassination of President James A. Garfield, Arthur struggled to overcome suspicions of his beginnings as a politician from the New York City Republican machine, succeeding at that task by embracing...
, members of his cabinet, the State Department and the Supreme Court
Supreme court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...
; the Marine Band, and a crowd of 2,000-3,000, filled with literary and other prominent people. Organizers arranged for a full choir to sing "Home, Sweet Home."
Legacy and honors
- 1873: A bronze bust of Payne was installed with a public ceremony in Prospect ParkProspect Park (Brooklyn)Prospect Park is a 585-acre public park in the New York City borough of Brooklyn located between Park Slope, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Kensington, Windsor Terrace and Flatbush Avenue, Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden...
, BrooklynBrooklynBrooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. - 1883: Payne's ashes were brought back to the United States, received with honors, held in state at New York's City Hall, and reinterred in a ceremony in Washington, DC on the 91st anniversary of his birth.
- Circa 1890s: Payne's grandfather's home on James Lane in East Hampton was preserved by Mr. Buck, a wealthy admirer of the poet, and identified as "Home Sweet HomeHome! Sweet Home!"Home! Sweet Home!" is a song that has remained well-known for over 150 years. Adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari, Maid of Milan, the song's melody was composed by Englishman Sir Henry Bishop with lyrics by Payne...
" in Payne's honor. Payne spent time there as a child. Across the street is Mulford FarmhouseMulford FarmhouseMulford Farm in East Hampton, Long Island, New York, is one of America's most significant, intact English colonial farmsteads. The Mulford farmhouse was built in 1680 by High Sheriff Josiah Hobart, an important early official of the first New York Royal Province government. Samuel "Fish Hook"...
, a significant English colonial farmstead, listed on the National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic PlacesThe National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
. - 1970: John Howard Payne was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of FameSongwriters Hall of FameThe Songwriters Hall of Fame is an arm of the National Academy of Popular Music. It was founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer and music publishers Abe Olman and Howie Richmond. The goal is to create a museum but as of April, 2008, the means do not yet exist and so instead it is an online...
.
External links
- "John Howard Payne", at Find a Grave,