stars, dashing into the Orient doors of dawn—this brought my love of song to the surface. And now I travelled, Mexico, South America; I had resolved as I rode to set these unwritten lands with the banner of song.”
His first little book, “Joaquin, et al.,” printed by George H. Himes in Portland in 1869, was laughed at, derided, and from it he was ever afterward called “Joaquin.” He had studied law, made some success, and sought a place on the Supreme Bench of Oregon, only that he might find more time to write. “Better stick to poetry,” was the taunting answer. Three months later Joaquin Miller was in Europe at the grave of Robert Burns.
With all the freshness of the western winds upon him, Joaquin Miller went to Europe, a stranger and alone. With a little thin volume of poems in hand, he went boldly to the most aristocratic publisher in London. He says, “The songs my heart had sung as I galloped alone under the stars of Idaho—make up about half of my first book in London.”
England looked upon Joaquin Miller as a young barbarian come out of the West, with a new harp and a new song. The Oregon boy became the lion of London. After his first poems were out, various great people wrote to him. The Archbishop of London[ua 1] invited him to take breakfast with him, and meet Browning, Dean Stanley, Lord Houghton, and others. The poor poet actually had not fit clothes to wear among the great folks, so he went to an old Jew to hire a dress suit. While he was fitting the clothes on, “Hurry,” said Joaquin, “I am in haste to go to a great breakfast.” The Jew looked at him sharply. “No,” he said, “you must not wear that, you must have a suit of velvet.” The good Jew never stopped until he had Miller in great state, with cane, silk hat, gloves and all. And after that, at all the great dinners, the good Jew fixed him up, and never would take a cent of pay. “I have a son of my own at college,” that was all he said, but he went on fixing up Miller as if he had been that beloved son.
Lord Houghton, who was first to discover and encourage Keats, became Joaquin’s friend. George Eliot, Rosetti, Anthony Trollope, Dean Stanley, Prince Napoleon, became his associates. His triumphs were borne across the seas, and America discovered for the first time that she had a new poet in one of those homespun lads who had followed the immigrant trail to Oregon. Jean Ingelow gave him a letter of introduction to a Boston publisher. So our Poet of the Pacific reached America through foreign introductions. In Boston, Longfellow, John Boyle O’Riley, and other great singers of our time, were his friends.
He did write in the Scottish Highlands, on his back in a hospital at Rome, at Naples, where he once thought he would settle down. Some of his poems were written in the wilderness of Honduras, at Yosemite, and in the Shasta land where he fought the Modocs. His “Isles of the Amazons” was written at the instance of Dom Pedro, the last Emperor of Brazil, who invited Joaquin to make his home in that land. His magnificent “From Sea to Sea,” was written during his first railroad ride from New York to San Francisco, and is full of the sweep and whirr of the flying train and changing scene. Some of his poems were written in the wilds of Washington, on the banks of the Columbia, on De Soto’s River, the Misissippi, at the tomb at Mt. Vernon, in Mexico City, Alaska, wherever his roving fortunes led him. He tried all lands and came back to the Pacific. He lives now on the heights above Oakland, overlooking San Francisco and opposite that wonderful harbor entrance that Fremont named the Golden Gate.
Perhaps even nearer to the popular heart is Sam L. Simpson,[ua 2] sometimes called the Burns of Oregon, who crossed the plains, an infant in his mother’s arms, in 1845. While yet a youth, wandering on the banks of the river, his “Beautiful Willamette” leaped into deathless melody. As on the banks of “Bonnie Doon”
“Love could wander
Here and ponder—
Hither poetry would dream.”
Sensitive to the charms of the emerald state, his genius blossomed lux-
- ↑ The (arch)bishop of London at this time was John Jackson; the archbishop of Westminster (which may have been intended) was Henry Edward Manning. (Wikisource contributor note)
- ↑ His works are harder found than Joaquin’s. I find The Gold-Gated West: Songs and Poems (1910) (external scan), although many poems may be separated from this collection. I find also several articles: “Sam Simpson, the Poet of Oregon,” from The Pacific Monthly, vol. 15, p. 582; “Sam. L. Simpson—Oregon’s Poet,” by Frederick V. Holman, from Bonville’s Western Monthly, vol. 4, p. 58; “Sam L. Simpson,” by Manche Irene Langley, from The Lariat, vol. 2, pp. 423 ff.; “Sam L. Simpson,” from Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, vol. 1, p. 118; “A Mystery of the Deep,” from Oregon Native Son and Historical Magazine, vol. 1, pp. 266–267 (which gives context to, and prints, Simpson’s poem “She Sailed One Day”); “Sam. L. Simpson,” in the History of Oregon Literature (1935) (external scan), pp. 289 ff. (Wikisource contributor note)
