[Article]
[p. 4]Eighteen Eighty-three: A Landmark Year for Badger Writers
By Richard Boudreau
The year was 1883, the thirty-fifth year of statehood for Wisconsin. Jeremiah "Uncle Jerry" Rusk was in his second year as governor. The west and south wings of the state capitol were being rebuilt. The new Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics began collecting and analyzing data on the state's workforce and industrial practices. The Knights of Labor were agitating, particularly in the Milwaukee area, for an eight-hour workday. The Appleton Edison Light Company --- the first hydroelectric-powered central lighting system in the world --- went into operation. William Horlick of Racine developed a dried milk product he named Malted Milk. And there was a devastating fire at the Newhall House Hotel in Milwaukee that killed over seventy people.
These developments were interesting, even in one case shocking, but they were not of tremendous lasting importance to Wisconsinites. In spite of that, 1883 turned out to be a remarkable year in our state's history, though not recognized at the time nor made much of since. During those twelve months Wisconsin letters came of age. Not just one, but three Wisconsin writers --- Ella Wheeler (later known by her married name Wilcox), Charles King, and George W. Peck --- found themselves, each for the first time, projected onto the national scene. Their books became best-sellers, attracting large numbers of readers across the United States and demanding attention. Wisconsin writers and writing had entered the mainstream of American popular literature suddenly --- and for the first time --- with a bang.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Courtesy State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Ella Wheeler (1850-1919) had already gained a modest following as a writer of temperance and occasional verse, and her long narrative love poem, Maurine, published during the nation's centennial year, had enjoyed some success. Her individual poems, referred to as "waifs" in the parlance of the time, had been printed singly in various periodicals --- like those of most versifiers of the era --- and she wanted them "legitimized" in a collection. Early in 1883 she presented a sheaf of such poems, all previously published, to the Chicago firm Jansen & McClurg, which had printed a second edition of Maurine the previous year. Imagine her astonishment when they not only turned down her new manuscript but suggested that some of its poems were immoral. She revealed the publisher's reaction in a letter to friends in Milwaukee; a local newspaper somehow [p. 6] learned of it, and, according to Wheeler (Worlds and I, p. 80), immediately blazoned out the news:
Too Loud for Chicago
The Scarlet City by the Lake Shocked
By a Badger Girl, Whose Verses
Out-Swinburne Swinburne and
Out-Whitman Whitman
Such notoriety was too good to pass up, and a rival Chicago publisher seized the advantage, promptly soliciting her manuscript and publishing it as fast as possible. It bore the title Poems of Passion that Ella Wheeler had wanted. The words, splattered in gold across its scarlet cover, seemed a bit racy for Victorian America --- and readers couldn't wait to get their hands on it. Charles A. Dana of the New York Sun (perhaps unaware that his paper had printed her poem "Solitude" only a few weeks before) severely criticized the book, citing lines in which she had used the risqué word "kiss." "This brought me scores of letters, asking where the book could be purchased," Wheeler remembered (Worlds and I, p. 82). So she wrote a letter of thanks to editor Dana. He was not pleased. Sixty thousand copies of the book were sold during the first two years.
To add to the titillation, the public soon learned of her engagement to a Connecticut man who was in the silver business, Robert Wilcox --- they had met by chance in a Chicago jewelry store. Following their marriage a year later, the "Badger Girl" left her home state for the East Coast. Over the years that followed, from her "too prolific pen" (preface to Poems of Passion, p. 1) came several books with similar titles: Poems of Pleasure, . . . Power, . . . Love, . . . Reflection, . . . Sentiment, . . . Progress, and . . . Problems, besides other collections, essays, and articles concerning new age thought and spiritualism, and, finally, an autobiography, The Worlds and I. But nothing she ever did equaled the success of that first Poems of Passion. During the American involvement in World War I, she went to France to entertain the troops, reading patriotic poems and doling out advice to the love-lorn young doughboys. She returned in 1919 in ill health and died soon after. The great passion had run its course --- at least in this world.
Captain Charles King in his uniform for the "Carnival of Authors," 1883. Courtesy State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Charles King (1844-1933) never intended to make writing his career; he was bent on becoming a professional soldier. After an initial taste of the military at the beginning of the Civil War when he served his father, General Rufus King, along the Potomac near Washington, D.C., he entered West Point. By the time he graduated, the Civil War was over, and he was attached to the army of occupation in Louisiana, headquartered in New Orleans. Eventually he transferred to the U.S. Cavalry and was posted west to pursue Indians. In 1874, during a skirmish with Apaches at Sunset Pass, Arizona Territory, his right arm was shattered by a bullet. Though the wound healed slowly, he participated in the 1876 campaign against the Sioux, before and after the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the following year against Chief Joseph's Nez Perce.
But by then the effects of his wound forced him to consider retirement. He returned to his hometown of Milwaukee in 1879. At a men's luncheon he overheard some disparaging remarks about the easy life of the cavalryman on the Indian frontier. Fired up, he put together an account of a rearguard action against the Sioux at Slim Buttes, Dakota Territory, in which he [p. 8] had fought, and presented it as a talk to the same lunch group. Someone from the Sentinel, his father's old newspaper, heard him, asked for a written version, and printed it in the new Sunday supplement. His narrative was well written, graphic, and thrilling. It was an immediate success, and more articles followed. A year later, the Sentinel Press published the popular series, which comprised King's eyewitness accounts of the war against the Sioux, as a book, Campaigning with Crook.
From that point on King used his frontier and military experiences as background for a number of novels and short stories. Unexpectedly, he found writing congenial, and it was something he could do even with his maimed right arm, though with some discomfort. His first published novel, The Colonel's Daughter by "Captain Charles King, U.S.A.," appeared early in 1883, became a best-seller, and subsequently remained the most popular of all his novels. A review at the time noted that "the author's style entitles him to rank among the best of modern novelists." After completing several more books himself, he hired an amanuensis and went on to publish well over sixty books in his active career. More than fifty of these were novels, produced at a rate of nearly two a year; the last, Lanier of the Cavalry, appeared in 1909. In addition, he published some 250 short stories during the same time period. His national reputation persisted throughout, founded as it was on the realism and authenticity of his accounts of army life in peace and war.
Through all of this he maintained his involvement in the military. He served in the old state guard, in the National Guard, and in the University of Wisconsin Military Science Department during the administrations of Governors Rusk and Hoard and into the beginning years of that of Governor Peck, at which time he retired from such duties. In 1895 the newly elected Governor Upham, an old army comrade, named him adjutant general of Wisconsin and promoted him to brigadier general. General King was activated during the Spanish-American War and saw action in the Philippines, then retired again. In 1904 he was recalled by the La Follette administration to head the Wisconsin National Guard. It was largely through his work that the guard earned its outstanding reputation --- so outstanding that it was sent to Texas in the summer of 1916 to protect against border incursions by Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary. The guard was called up again within days of America's entry into World War I, when it was combined with the Michigan National Guard to form the famous 32nd "Red Arrow" Division. General King remained active in state military matters almost up to his death at the age of 88.
George W. Peck
The writings of George Wilbur Peck (1840-1916) were in quite a different vein. A journalist with a knack for satire and ridicule, he was unable to indulge himself fully until he owned his own newspaper, The Sun, which he began publishing in La Crosse in 1874. "The funniest newspaper in America. What vaccination is to the smallpox, Peck's Sun is to the Blues," the banner proclaimed. And though he was on the right track to success, he was in the wrong city. In 1878 he moved to the more populous Milwaukee, where his satire and humor began to attract notice and his readership grew. In 1882 he began sketches about a character named Hennery, his "Bad Boy," who perpetrated practical jokes on anyone available, but particularly on his Pa. Some of the humor was cruel and unfeeling, but the series caught on and circulation numbers increased. In 1883 Chicago publishers Belford, Clarke & Co. brought out both a first and, later the same year, a second collection of Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa. Before the year was out, the books had become best-sellers, and Peck's name was a household word.
Peck, who was born in New York State, had come to Wisconsin with his family in 1843. He began his newspaper career with the Whitewater Register and worked for several other papers before enlisting in the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry in 1863, where he served until 1866. Following his mustering out he returned to Wisconsin, started the Ripon Representative, soon sold out, then hired on to Brick Pomeroy's staff to run the New York Democrat. After the demise of the New York paper, he returned to La Crosse to work on [p. 10] Pomeroy's original and still successful Democrat. Eventually he was able to buy out Pomeroy and set up his own newspaper, The Sun.
Though he had been chief of police in La Crosse, he had not entered politics to any extent. But in Milwaukee, in 1890, he became a vocal critic of the Bennett Law, a piece of legislation that had been passed the previous year and was taking up everyone's attention. The law, requiring all Wisconsin schools to instruct in English, seemed to threaten the independence of parochial schools, many of which conducted classes in German. The reaction was ferocious, especially from Lutherans and Catholics. Peck, a popular editor and a good Democrat, was endorsed as a candidate for mayor. With condemnation of the Bennett Law his primary issue, he won the April election handily. That same stand plus his great popularity then propelled him into the office of the governor in November. The Democrat-controlled legislature repealed the hated law early in 1891, and Peck served two terms --- the only Democrat to do so between 1876 and 1933. In those years the governorship was not proactive, and his administration was benign throughout. But the depression of 1893 severely damaged the parochial coalition that had carried him into office, and the Republicans led by William Upham defeated Peck in 1894. He tried for the governorship once more, in 1904, but this time was defeated by Robert La Follette.
Even while serving as mayor and governor he continued his Bad Boy adventures (amounting in all to about fourteen volumes), published the comic Civil War novel How Private George W. Peck Put Down the Rebellion, and remained publisher of The Sun. At one point after leaving office his path and General King's crossed publicly. During a night of entertainment at the Academy of Music in Milwaukee, Peck introduced his fellow Wisconsin author, Charles King; the two men shared the stage with, among others, Hoosier poet Eugene Field. Peck's words, humorous or not, were not recorded, but King read his short story "Van." Although his presentation was well received, there is no evidence that either Peck or King continued on the lecture circuit.
Times and tastes change. Ella Wheeler Wilcox's voluminous effusions were jumbled together in retrospect and categorized by many critics as "sentimental trash." In the new century her faithful use of traditional poetics of rhythm and rhyme soon went the way of the horse and buggy (though even today she remains popular: there are thirty-two selections from her poems in the 1996 collection Quotations by Women, edited by Rosalie Maggio). General King's novels were criticized as formulaic and melodramatic, but in any case tales of the Civil War and Indian conflicts lost their appeal in a country that was moving toward world involvement in trade and war. Peck's Bad Boy's antics and jokes began to be regarded as lowbrow and vulgar, and his popularity waned, too. All three writers retain short entries in the Oxford Companion to American Literature, but they and their works have been relegated to literary footnotes.
Such is fame and fortune. But during their heyday --- or hey-year --- of 1883, Wheeler, King, and Peck were the most outstanding writers the state had yet produced. And Wisconsin was proud and supportive of them. Ella Wheeler was honored in Milwaukee some months after the appearance of Poems of Passion with a testimonial dinner, an evening of appreciation, and a purse of five hundred dollars. Charles King retained his great popularity in Milwaukee and Madison, and in a final gesture of appreciation Governor Walter J. Kohler promoted King to the rank of major general in 1929. Bennett Law or no Bennett Law, George W. Peck would not have been elected as mayor or governor without the prior popularity of his Sun and its mischievous Bad Boy.
So 1883 turned out to be not only a good year, but a momentous year --- for Wisconsin letters, for its three newly, and now nationally, renowned writers, and for the encouragement their successes offered to fledgling writers of their state.
Sources
Sidebar
[p. 5]From Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler
Attraction
Gazed on each other, till a fierce unrest
Surged 'neath the meadow's seemingly calm breast,
And all the mountain's fissures ran with fire.
What could the mountain do but gaze and burn?
What could the meadow do but look and yearn,
And gem its bosom to conceal despair?
Till lo! the lands a sudden earthquake shook,
The river fled: the meadow leaped, and took
The leaning mountain in a close embrace.
"Sweet whispered words of passion." Reprinted from Maurine by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, with life studies by Jans Matzene and views by Eugene J. Hall (Chicago: W.B. Conkey Co., 1901), p. 141.
Solitude
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air,
The echoes bound to a joyful sound.
But shrink from voicing care.
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all, ---
There are none to decline your nectar'd wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
Ella Wheeler roughed out a draft of 'Solitude," her most remembered poem, while she was on the way to Governor Rusk's inaugural ball in early 1883. She finished it while staying at Judge Braley's house, 422 N. Henry St., in Madison.
Sidebar
[p. 7]Excerpt from Campaigning with Crook by Captain Charles King, U.S.A.
Chapter Nine: The Fight of the Rear Guard
Ragged and almost starving, out of rations, out at elbows and every other exposed angle, out of everything but pluck and ammunition, General Crook gave up the pursuit of Sitting Bull at the head of Heart River. The Indians had scattered in every direction. We had chased them a month, and were no nearer than when we started. Their trail led in as many different directions as there are degrees in the circle; they had burned off the grass from the Yellowstone to the mountains, and our horses were dropping by scores, starved and exhausted, every day we marched. There was no help for it, and only one thing left to do. At daybreak the next morning the orders came, "Make for the Black Hills --- due south by compass --- seven days' march at least," and we headed our dejected steeds accordingly and shambled off in search of supplies.
Through eleven days of pouring, pitiless rain we plodded on that never-to-be-forgotten trip, and when at last we sighted Bare Butte and halted, exhausted, at the swift-flowing current of the Belle Fourche, three-fourths of our cavalry, of the Second, Third, and Fifth regiments, had made the last day's march afoot. One-half our horses were broken down for good, one-fourth had fallen never to rise again, and dozens had been eaten to keep us, their riders, alive.
Enlivening incidents were few enough, and --- except one --- of little interest to Milwaukeeans. That one is at your service. On the night of September 7th we were halted near the headwaters of Grand River. Here a force of one hundred and fifty men of the Third Cavalry, with the serviceable horses of that regiment, were pushed ahead under Major Anson Mills, with orders to find the Black Hills, buy up all the supplies he could in Deadwood, and then hurry back to meet us. Two days after, just as we were breaking up our cheerless bivouac of the night, a courier rode in with news that Mills was surrounded by the Indians twenty miles south, and every officer and man of the Fifth Cavalry whose horse had strength enough to trot pushed ahead to the rescue. Through mud, mist, and rain we plunged along, and by half-past ten were exchanging congratulations with Mills and shots with the redskins in as wealthy an Indian village, for its size, as ever we had seen. Custer's guidons and uniforms were the first things that met our eyes --- trophies and evidence at once of the part our foe had taken in the bloody battle of the Little Big Horn. Mills had stumbled upon the village before day, made a magnificent dash, and scattered the Indians to the neighboring heights, Slim Buttes by name, and then hung on to his prize like a bulldog, and in the face of appalling odds, till we rode in to his assistance. That afternoon, reinforced by swarms of warriors, they made a grand rally and spirited attack, but 'twas no use. By that time we had some two thousand to meet them, and the whole Sioux nation couldn't have whipped us. Some four hundred ponies had been captured with the village, and many a fire was lighted and many a suffering stomach gladdened with a welcome change from horse meat, tough and stringy, to rib roasts of pony, grass-fed, sweet, and succulent. There is no such sauce as starvation. . . .
Crook's column on the Tongue River. Reprinted from Campaigning with Crook and Stories of Army Life by Captain Charles King, U.S.A, illustrated (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1890), facing p. 68
Sidebar
[p. 9]Excerpt from Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa by George W. Peck
Chapter 33: His Pa Jokes with Him
"What on earth is that you have got on your upper lip?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in and began to peel a rutabaga, and his upper lip hung down over his teeth, and was covered with something that looked like shoemaker's wax, "You look as though you had been digging potatoes with your nose."
"O, that is some of Pa's darn smartness. I asked him if he knew anything that would make a boy's mustache grow and he told me the best thing he ever tried was tar, and for me to rub it on thick when I went to bed, and wash it off in the morning. I put it on last night, and by gosh I can't wash it off. Pa told me all I had to do was to use a scouring brick, and it would come off, and I used the brick, and it took the skin off, and the tar is there yet, and, say, does my lip look very bad?"
The grocery man told him it was the worst looking lip he ever saw, but he could cure it by rubbing a little cayenne pepper in the tar. He said the tar would neutralize the pepper, and the pepper would loosen the tar, and act as a cooling lotion to the lacerated lip. The boy went to a can of pepper behind the counter, and stuck his finger in and rubbed a lot of it on his lip, and then his hair began to raise, and he began to cry, and rushed to the water-pail and ran his face into the water to wash off the pepper. The grocery man laughed, and when the boy had got the pepper washed off, and had resumed his rutabaga, he said:
"That seals your fate. No man ever trifles with the feelings of the bold buccaneer of the Spanish main, without living to rue it. I will lay for you old man, and don't you forget it. Pa thought he was smart when he got me to put tar on my lip, to bring my mustache out, and today he lays on a bed of pain, and to-morrow your turn will come. You will regret that you did not get down on your knees and beg my pardon. You will be sorry that you did not prescribe cold cream for my bruised lip, instead of cayenne pepper. Beware, you base twelve ounces to the pound huckster, you gimlet-eyed seller of dog-sausage, you sanded sugar idiot, you small potato three card monte sleight of hand rotten egg fiend, you villain that sells smoked sturgeon and dogfish for smoked halibut. The avenger is on your track."
Hunting for the Bad Boy. Reprinted from Peck's Compendium of Fun (Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co., 1883), p. 45.
"Look here, young man, don't you threaten me, or I will take you by the ear and walk you through green fields, and beside still waters, to the front door, and kick your pistol pocket clear around so you can wear it for a watch pocket in your vest. No boy can frighten me, by crimus! But tell me, how did you get even with your Pa?" . . .
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