Ohio History Journal

Who Wrote

"The Harp of a Thousand Strings"?

 

By GEORGE KUMMER*

 

 

OF THE ECCENTRICS who flourished in the backwoods areas of

America in the first half of the nineteenth century, the Hardshell

Baptist preachers were among the most amusing to outsiders. Trav-

elers through the South and West found diversion in contemplating

the oddities of these sermonizers, who, unlike the clergy of most

other denominations, made no bones about chewing tobacco or

drinking whiskey in public.¹ Dead set against reformers who

wished to deprive man of his innocent worldly comforts like mint

juleps, they were sometimes called "Ten-Gallon Baptists" or "Whis-

key Baptists." According to Edward Eggleston, who was both

literary local colorist and social historian, the travesty of Calvinism

by which they justified their liberal principles was expressed some-

what as follows: "Ef you're elected you'll be saved; ef you a'n't

you'll be damned. God'll take keer of his elect. It's a sin to run

Sunday-schools or Temp'rence s'cities, or to send missionaries. You

let God's business alone. What is to be will be, and you can't

hender it."2

Depending for a livelihood on such secular activities as trading

on the Mississippi and its confluents, most Hardshell preachers

were only part-time clergymen. As a rule they were poorly trained

and their sermons were frequently so fantastic that the temptation

to mimick them was irresistible. Of the many burlesques which

resulted, perhaps the best known is "The Harp of a Thousand

Strings." The scene of this harangue was the reputedly rowdy

 

* George Kummer is assistant professor of English at Western Reserve University.

His last contribution to the Quarterly was "Specimens of Ante-Bellum Buckeye

Humor," published in the October 1955 issue.

1 J. S. Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, 1842), 1, 197.

2 Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier School-Master (New York, 1883), 102.

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222     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

village of Waterproof, Louisiana (then in Mississippi), and the

preacher was an old flatboat captain, who had brought his broad-

horn there to trade with the gamblers, river pirates, and other

reckless characters said to infest the place. As a preacher he may

have been somewhat deficient in homiletics, but as a businessman

he had a deep understanding of the great science of advertising.

The subtlety with which he departed from his text to remark that

speaking of liquor, he had on board "as good an artikel uv them

kind uv sperits . . . as ever was fotched down the Mississippi" is

proof that he knew almost as much about the technique of the

commercial as present-day radio and television sponsors know.

His sermon enjoyed widespread and long-drawn-out popularity.

During the late 1850's it appeared in newspapers in every section

of the Union. Versions of it crossed two oceans and circulated in

both England and Australia.³ In 1882 Henry Watterson declared

that it was "one of the notable stories which have gone the rounds

of the American press in the last forty years, which yet linger on

the stage, appearing and reappearing at intervals, as if to take a

fresh lease on life, and which are thoroughly characteristic in

tone, color, and action of the era to which we owe Simon Suggs

and Sut Lovingood."⁴ Even in our own day, oral versions of "The

Harp" are still extant in rural areas; as recently as the summer of

1946 one folklorist heard it preached in Moberly, Missouri.5

Authorities disagree as to the authorship of the sermon. The in-

fluential Literary History of the United States gives the piece to the

Rev. Henry Taliaferro Lewis, a Methodist minister from Missis-

sippi;6 but Jay B. Hubbell, in his careful and accurate The South

in American Literature, 1607-1900, says it is by William Penn

Brannan.⁷ Though the piece has been claimed for still other

writers, among them Andrew Harper and Joshua S. Morris, most of

 

3 Edward William Cole, comp., Cole's Fun Doctor: The Funniest Book in the

World (Melbourne and London, 1886), 193-198.

4 Henry Watterson, Oddities in Southern Life and Character (Boston, 1882), 474.

5 Jack Conroy, Midland Humor: A Harvest of Fun and Folklore (New York,

1947), 2.

6 Robert E. Spiller and others, eds., Literary History of the United States (New

York, 1948), II, 741.

7 Jay Broadus Hubbell, The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 (Durham,

N. C., 1954), 661.

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WHO WROTE "THE HARP"?               223

 

the evidence points to either Lewis or Brannan. The present paper

attempts to show that Brannan, an itinerant portrait painter and

journalist from Cincinnati, has the better title.8

Probably the earliest appearance of "The Harp" in book form

occurred in Thomas Powell's Chit-chat of Humor, Wit, and

Anecdote in 1857.⁹ Powell indicated no source, but William Evans

Burton, who printed the sermon the following year in his Cyclopae-

dia of Wit and Humor, said that it "first appeared in a New Orleans

paper."¹⁰ Both Powell and Burton seem to have reproduced the

version found in the Spirit of the Times for September 29, 1855,

which attributes the waif to "a New Orleans paper." This was

likely the Daily Crescent; at least "The Harp" appeared there

with no indication of its source on September 10, 1855. But it had

appeared elsewhere before that. As early as July 10, 1855, it had

found its way into the Ohio State Journal, where it was credited to

the Brandon, Mississippi, Register, certainly an error, as the only

paper published in Brandon at that time was called the Republican.

No file of the Republican for 1854 or 1855 has survived, but in

1879 Colonel A. J. Frantz, then editor of that paper, reprinted "The

Harp" there with the following introduction:

 

This celebrated Hard-Shell sermon was first published in the Brandon

Republican in the year 1854--twenty-five years ago. Its authorship has been

claimed by various persons in all sections of the country, but it was first

written out in full for the press by Rev. Henry T. Lewis in our office, and

first made its appearance in the Republican. Mr. Harper [the editor in

1854] only assisted in "fixing up the description of the preacher," which

accompanied the publication.11

8 I wish to thank the following persons for supplying helpful information for

this paper: Professor Walter Blair, Mrs. H. F. Broyles, Miss Norma Cass, Mr.

H. H. Crisler, Mr. John F. Fierson, Miss Edna Grauman, Mrs. Alice P. Hook, Mr.

William D. McCain, Mr. Franklin J. Meine, Mrs. Adlia Morgan, and Mr. W. C.

Morris. Officials at the University of Kentucky Library, the Louisville Free Public

Library, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and the Western

Reserve Historical Society Library were especially helpful.

9 Thomas Powell, Chit-chat of Humor, Wit, and Anecdote (New York, 1857),

190-191.

10 William E. Burton, ed., The Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humor (New York, 1858),

476.

11 Charles B. Galloway, "Henry T. Lewis--Humorist, Poet, Preacher, Reformer,"

Quarterly Review of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, new series, XV (1894),

375.

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224    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

That Colonel Frantz's phrase, "first written out in full for the

press," implies that oral versions of "The Harp" were in circulation

before its appearance in the Republican will, I believe, become clear

in the course of the discussion.

The chief source of information about the Rev. Henry Taliaferro

Lewis is a small book entitled Harp of a Thousand Strings, with

Waifs of Wit and Pathos, compiled by Lewis' daughter, Mrs. Anne

Roberts, copyrighted in 1907, but printed without indication of

place. From this we learn that Lewis (1823-1870) was not only a

Methodist minister of parts but also a successful temperance lec-

turer, and that though he "never provoked a smile" in the pulpit,

he was an irresistible comedian on the lecture platform (pp. 7-10).

In support of her father's claim to "The Harp," a version of which

she printed in her volume, Mrs. Roberts cited the following clip-

ping, which she says appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal in

the summer of 1881:

 

A resident of Frankfort, writes to This and That: "I am satisfied that

the author of 'The Harp of a Thousand Strings' sermon, was the Rev.

Henry T. Lewis, formerly living in Memphis, Tenn., but afterwards a

citizen of Homer, La.

Mr. Lewis was a gentleman of rare ability; a poet, and a wit and humorist

of the first order. He was also a Methodist clergyman of the highest stand-

ing; of unimpeachable integrity. He has hosts of friends, all over the

Southern States and South West; from Tennessee to the Gulf, and from

Florida to Texas, in many parts of which region he labored, as lecturer

and preacher. When he resided in Memphis, a few years before the war,

I heard him repeatedly say (or rather, admit, in answer to the direct ques-

tion), that he was the author of that sermon.

In answer to an inquiry of my own, he made substantially, the following

statement: As a matter of fact, he supposed that an old Hardshell Baptist

preacher, navigating a trading broadhorn, or flat boat, down the Mississippi

to New Orleans, away back in the second or third decade of the Nine-

teenth Century, did tie up one Sunday, at Waterproof, La., and delivered

[sic] a sermon, something like, or rather having a distant resemblance to

the one written out by Mr. Lewis, and published in a Mississippi paper.

At all events, such was the purport of an anecdote that circulated from

mouth to mouth, for a long time in that region, previous to any publication.

At last, after having heard the story, told in a hundred different ways, by a

hundred different people, Mr. Lewis concluded to write it out and make it

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WHO WROTE "THE HARP"?              225

 

as absurdly humorous as he could. After having done so, he read it to the

editor of a country paper (Andrew Harper), of the "Brandon Republican,"

Brandon Miss., 1854, who was living on the circuit, that he was then

traveling. Finding it such a grand hit, others claimed its authorship, but

Mr. Lewis cared nothing for this; his ambition was to do good to his

fellow men and not to win renown as a humorist." (pp. 19-20)

 

On the basis of "a resident of Frankfort's" testimony Professor

Arthur Palmer Hudson in his Humor of the Old Deep South gave

the sermon to Lewis.12 But the text of "The Harp" which Professor

Hudson reproduced in this anthology is from the Spirit of the Times

rather than from Mrs. Roberts' book, a puzzling inconsistency in

view of the fact that Mrs. Roberts' text contains several passages

not found in the Spirit of the Times. Thus at the end of the seventh

paragraph of the sermon as printed by Professor Hudson,13 Mrs.

Roberts presented the following text:

 

And then thar's the Presbyterians; they ar' a high-minded kind uv folks.

They bleeve in edicating their preachers, and so they remind me uv a

paper kite, fur the stronger the wind blows the higher the kite flies, until

the string breaks or it loses its tail, and then it dashes headlong, down,

down, slap dash right into a brier patch; and that is just the way uv the

Presbyterians, my brethring, fur the more edication they have the higher

they fly, an' you know a kite has to have ballast to make it fly level; and,

my dear brethring, that's just the way uv the Presbyterians, for their

salary is their ballast, and the more you give 'em the levelar are their heads

an' the higher they fly, an' ef you lighten their ballast they kick up a dust

and skedaddle away like a wild hoss running away in harness until they

find some place whar thar's plenty uv ballast, fur the text says: "He played

on a harp of a thousand strings--sperits uv just men made perfeck." (p. 18)

 

Hitherto, the word "skedaddle" as used in this passage has not

been found in print before 1861, though it may have existed in the

vocabulary for some time.¹⁴ The passage, therefore, looks like an

accretion. In any event, Professor Hudson is to be congratulated

on his fine literary taste in choosing to reproduce the shorter text

12 Arthur Palmer Hudson, Humor of the Old Deep South (New York, 1936), 234.

13 Ibid., 236-237.

14 See H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement I (New York, 1945),

239; see also "skedaddle" in William A. Craigie, ed., A Dictionary of American

English on Historical Principles (Chicago, 1938-44).

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226    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

from the Spirit of the Times rather than the longer and less effec-

tive one given by Mrs. Roberts. Indeed, there is reason to think that

Professor Hudson may have had some doubt about Lewis' claim. At

least in commenting on still another burlesque sermon, "Brother

Crafford's Farewell Sermon," which he printed under the name of

"Bill Easel," he stated that in diction, style, and organization,

"Brother Crafford's Farewell" is so like "The Harp" as "to suggest

the same author for both."¹⁵

Like Professor Hudson, Professor Walter Blair in anthologizing

"The Harp" reproduced under Lewis' name the version of the

sermon which had been printed anonymously in the Spirit of the

Times.16 In a cautionary note, however, he said he doubted Lewis'

authorship, pointing out that Lewis "showed little of the [same]

skill in his other writings."17 But some influential later books over-

look this warning; B. A. Botkin's A Treasury of Southern Folklore,

for example, attributes the sermon to Lewis without caveat.l⁸

Let us now examine the case for William Penn Brannan. An

obituary in the Cincinnati Commercial for August 10, 1866, says

that he was born in 1825 in Cincinnati, the son of a farmer, and

that he became a self-taught portrait painter, who devoted his

leisure to literature.l9 As an itinerant artist, according to the same

source, he traveled up and down the Mississippi Valley from

Maysville to New Orleans, and it was on one of these journeys

through the deep South that he wrote the famous sermon "The

Harp of a Thousand Strings," a masterpiece of humor, which "will

carry his name to posterity." Another Cincinnati newspaper, the

Daily Union, on which Brannan had been an associate editor in

1865, said that he was the author not only of "The Harp" but

also of many other "waifs still floating on the sea of literature,"

that he had published pieces under various pen names, and that

some of his best work had been signed either Van Dyke Brown

or Bill Easel.²⁰

15 Humor of the Old Deep South, 234.

16 Walter Blair, Native American Humor (New York, 1937), 388-389.

17 Ibid., 557.

18 B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of Southern Folklore (New York, 1949), 100.

19 See also William T. Coggeshall, Poets and Poetry of the West (Columbus,

1860), 186.

20 Daily Union, August 9, 1866.

• 6
 

WHO WROTE "THE HARP"?            227

 

Now Professor Hudson thinks, as we have seen, that Bill Easel's

"Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon" and "The Harp" are so

alike in diction, style, and organization as "to suggest the same

author for both." If, then, the Bill Easel who wrote "Brother

Crafford's Farewell Sermon" and William Penn Brannan were one

and the same man, Brannan's title to "The Harp" would seem to

be very strong indeed. Such is the case; in 1856 Brannan, who was

then living in Louisville, where he had a studio at the corner of

Fifth and Jefferson streets,21 contributed frequently to the Courier,

sometimes using his own name, sometimes his pseudonym, "Bill

Easel." On January 10, 1856, under the name of Easel, he pub-

lished "Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon" there; and on January

30, 1856, that paper, apropos of a parody on "Hiawatha" by

"Easel," noted that "Easel" was the author of "The Harp":

 

"Fire Water":--Our correspondent, "Bill Easel," enables us to present

to the readers of the Courier this morning by all odds the best thing in the

season. It is entitled "Fire-Water," is done up in genuine Longfellow

"Hiawatha" fashion, and is full of capital hits. By the way, our readers

are not probably aware that "Bill Easel" is the author of the sermon of the

Hard Shell Baptist who "played upon a harp of a thousand strings, sperits

of just men made perfect." . . . His "Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon,"

which appeared in the Courier a few weeks ago, is going the rounds of the

press, and promises to have a run equal to the "Harp of a Thousand

Strings."

 

This claim was challenged by Joshua S. Morris, editor of the

Port Gibson (Mississippi) Reveille, who claimed the paternity of

"The Harp" for himself. In answer to Morris the Louisville Daily

Democrat printed the following letter, July 28, 1856:

 

"The Harp of A Thousand Strings"

Messers Editors: As I have seen one or two paragraphs going the

rounds of the papers lately questioning the authorship of the "Sermon"

bearing the above title, I desire, with your permission, to lay a few facts

before your readers, which are well known, not only to myself, but to every

gentleman of Mr. Brannan's acquaintance, who resided in the South during

1851, '52, '53. The authorship of the sermon is, perhaps of no consequence

21 Louisville Courier, May 27, 1856.

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228     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

to Mr. Brannan, as he has written too many beautiful things to care for so

small a matter; but when this man, Morris, charges him, through prominent

papers, with being a "literary" thief and "plagiarist" it is due to himself

and his friends that some correction be made. On my own part, I have

found Mr. B's writings remarkable for originality--and I am intimately

acquainted with almost everything he has written. The "Harp of a Thou-

sand Strings" was written in August 1853. I saw the manuscript. It was first

entitled the "Arkansas Preacher." It was produced for the benefit of a

few friends and preached on festive occasions.

When Mr. B. left Mississippi, his numerous friends wished copies of the

"Sermon," and he gave the manuscript to Morris for publication, and he

has ever since claimed it as his own. There is a bit of revenge at the bottom

of the affair, on the part of Morris. He took offense at some harmless

satires, which occurred in a series of articles called the "Sharpsburgh

Letters," written by Mr. Brannan for the Port Gibson Herald in 1851.

In conclusion, we would advise Mr. Morris to be more sparing of his

delicate epithets in future; and, if he wishes to lay claim to literary dis-

tinction, to send some of his own productions forth to the world.

Maulstick.

As I have been unable to find a complete file of the Port Gibson

Herald for 1851, I cannot substantiate Maulstick's statement about

the "Sharpsburgh Letters." Several items in the available numbers

of the newspaper do, however, bear out Maulstick to the extent of

placing Brannan in the vicinity of Port Gibson in the summer of

1851.22

Maulstick was not alone in his defense of Brannan. The Courier

vigorously protested against the "vain, braggart, and indecent card"

in which Morris had urged his claim and asserted:

 

We have the most irrefragable testimony that Mr. W. P. Brannan, now

of this city, is the author, having conceived and executed that masterpiece

of humor alone. This is the assurance we have from a gentleman of the

South and from documentary evidence.

Mr. Brannan appears in our paper this morning in a card relative to

the matter. He considers it a small affair, and is disposed to treat it as

22 On August 1, 1851, the Herald noted that "Mr. William P. Brannan is in the

vicinity for the summer painting landscapes and fancy pieces. He expects to return

to New Orleans after the sickly season passes." The Herald also published "Song

of the Inebriate," a poem by Brannan (June 27, 1851), and "Frank Sommers," a

burlesque novel by Bill Easel (August 15, 1851).

• 8
 

WHO WROTE "THE HARP"?             229

 

such. It is well, however, to crush out Morris's pretentions [sic] at once.

Indeed it is wrong that he should aspire to the production of anything,

having never published a line worthy of reprint, whereas Mr. Brannan's

effusions form a delightful portion of our current literature.²³

 

In his own defense, Brannan asked Morris to produce a list "of

the thousand and one wonderful productions of his able and witty

pen" and sarcastically thanked him "for not claiming all the other

writings that have appeared over his [Brannan's] signature and

nom de plume ('Bill Easel')." Then to show that he could produce

writings in the same vein as "The Harp," whereas Morris couldn't,

Brannan added the following letter from Jabez Flint, the Hardshell

preacher himself:

 

Peggys holler Injeanar, July 21, 1856

Mr. Branan--Sir: My nabor squire jinkins, who is a scholar--i never

had no edication--tells me that you and a man named Mor-ass ar claimin

to be orthors of my great sarmont which I preached from the tex And he

played on the harp of a thousand strings--sperits uv just men made perfek.

Squire jinkins is a man of larnin and a good hard shell baptist. He says

i o it to myself to speak out in meatin and let the people no that i am

the only orthor of that selybrated sarmont. When I preached it to the

benighted heathen of Waterproof i didn't know that you writin chaps was

thar--and it's well for you I didn't; I wouldn't have left a hold bone in

ure bodies--for i play on the harp of a thousand strings, sperits uv

just men made perfek.

Sence i quit flatboatin, i have kep a respectable grocery in peggy's holler,

where hard shell baptists and them as isn't will find me constantly on hand.

In the first place, i hev a leetle of the best corn meal, a leetle of the best

bacon, a leetle of the best whisky, and a leetle of the best saft soap--

made by my wife, betsey--that perhaps you ever seed--and i play on the

harp of a thousand strings, sperits uv just men made perfek.

Now don't understand by my keepin' sperits that i hold any communion

with the whisky baptists. No, sir! The whisky baptists are a low-flung,

drunken set that like unto the hogs that wallow in the mire return again

to their vomick. I am no sech a person as to drink sperits and throw 'em

up to the man who sold 'em--for i play on the harp of a thousand strings,

sperits of just men made perfek.

Now i want you and that Mor-ass man to own up that you stole my grate

 

23 Louisville Courier, July 29, 1856.

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230     THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

sarmont, for the commandment expressly says, render unto ceaser the

things that is ceasers, and they went and done so likewise--for the time

will cum when u will both go to that lake where the fire never dies and

the worm is not squenched. Then will i be rejoicing in the land of Canaan,

playn' on the harp of a thousand strings world without end.

JABEZ FLINT

hard-shell baptist.

 

Since Morris was unable to answer Brannan's challenge by

pointing to other writings of his comparable to "The Harp," his

claim may--until further evidence is forthcoming--be disregarded.

As for Lewis' claim, the fact that he wrote out the sermon in the

office of the Brandon Republican is no proof of his authorship. "A

resident of Frankfort," the staunchest witness on Lewis' side, ad-

mits that the story "had circulated from mouth to mouth for a

long time in that region, previous to any publication" and that

Lewis had heard it "told in a hundred different ways by a hundred

different people" before writing it out for Harper.

If Maulstick is correct about the sermon's having been circulated

in manuscript after August 1853, Lewis might well have picked it

up for use in his temperance lectures. This theory is strengthened

by the fact that "Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon" was used in

just that way by another temperance lecturer, John B. Gough, who,

after altering the title to "Brother Watkins" and making several

other changes, convulsed large audiences with Brannan's mutilated

sketch.²⁴

Whether or not this conjecture as to how Lewis came to know

"The Harp" is correct, Brannan's claim to the sermon seems much

stronger than Lewis'. Certainly the testimony of old and generally

trustworthy reference books like Howe's Historical. Collections of

Ohio and Sabin's A Dictionary of Books Relating to America,²⁵

both of which attribute the piece to Brannan, ought to carry as

 

24 "Brother Watkins" is printed in Phineas Garrett, ed., One Hundred Choice

Selections, No. 7 (Philadelphia, 1903), 50. The most convenient text of "Brother

Crafford's Farewell Sermon" is that found in Hudson, Humor of the Old Deep South,

236.

25 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1900), I, 858; Joseph

Sabin and others, eds., Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to

America (New York, 1868-1936), II, 417.

• 10
 

WHO WROTE "THE HARP"?          231

 

much weight as the clipping cited in Mrs. Roberts' volume. Further-

more, the text of the sermon in Mrs. Roberts' book is garbled.

Moreover, in "Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon" Brannan pro-

duced a burlesque whose diction, style, and organization are, as

Professor Hudson has said, so like those of "The Harp" as "to

suggest the same author for both." Finally, in his known writings

Lewis shows no skill comparable to that seen in "The Harp."

Professor Blair's doubt as to Lewis' title, therefore, seems well-

founded. Indeed, the weight of the evidence thus far accumulated

points to Brannan's authorship.

• 11