Happy birthday, William Allen White

It is the birthday of newspaper editor and Progressive political leader William Allen White (1868), who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for editorial writing, wrote numerous novels about small-town ideals, and biographies of Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge. He also wrote non-fiction political and social commentary, including The Old Order Changeth (1910), Politics: A Citizen’s Business (1924), Forty Years on Main Street (1937), and The Changing West (1939). He was a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt and supported him politically. He never voted for President Franklin D. Roosevelt but staunchly supported his New Deal policies, though he considered them haphazard. His autobiography, published in 1947 three years after his death, won a Pulitzer Prize.

Happy birthday, Booker T. Washington

It is the birthday of African-American educator Booker T. Washington (1856), who grew the Tuskegee Institute to be one of the most significant institutions of higher education for black students in the nation. Washington established relationships in both black and white communities throughout the country aimed toward improving and developing black education. He secured donations to help start thousands of small rural schools throughout the South. He grew in stature and became an adviser to presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Washington wrote 14 books, some with the help of ghost writers Robert E. Park and Max Bennett. Among them are The Story of My Life and Work (1900), Up From Slavery (1901), The Story of the Negro: The Rise of the Race from Slavery (two volumes) (1909), My Larger Education (1911), and The Man Farthest Down (1912).  He was honored with a U.S. postage stamp in the 1940s, on a Liberty Ship in 1942, and on a half dollar coin in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

America's poet laureate of unhappiness

Edwin Arlington Robinson

It is the birthday of poet Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869), whose dark and pessimistic poetry won the Pulitzer Prize three times: Collected Poems (1922), The Man Who Died Twice (1925), and Tristram (1928). He has been called America's poet laureate of unhappiness. Robinson may be remembered most for his poems Richard Cory (1897) and Miniver Cheevy (1910).

Robinson was born to parents who wanted a girl and didn't even give him a name for six months, and then had a stranger draw it out of a hat when they were on vacation. His childhood in a tiny town in Maine was stark and unhappy, he said. His oldest brother, Dean, became a doctor, treated himself for neuralgia and became a drug addict. His middle brother, Herman, was good looking and outgoing and seemed destined for success. Herman married Emma, a woman Edwin loved. Edwin was so distraught he refused to go to the wedding. Instead, he stayed home and wrote a poem to protest the marriage. Herman failed in business, became a drunk, split up with Emma and their children, and died alone in poverty.

Later, Edwin proposed to Emma twice, was turned down twice and moved from Maine to New York, where he self-published his first two volumes of poetry, The Torrent; and the Night Before (1896) and The Children of the Night (1897). The second book came to the attention of President Theodore Roosevelt, who arranged for Robinson to work at the New York Customs Office with the understanding that he write poetry and contribute to the betterment of American letters instead of doing customs work. Robinson kept the job during Roosevelt's presidency.

Emma, brother Herman's widow, believed that the poem Richard Cory was really about her late husband. Robinson wrote it during the depression after the Panic of 1893, when the economy was in shambles and there was great disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Scholars suggest that its message is to not judge people by outward appearances.

RICHARD CORY

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich – yes, richer than a king –
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Miniver Cheevy first appeared in The Town Down the River (1910). Scholars suggest that Robinson is poking fun at his own anachronistic tendencies as well as the dreamers with which he surrounded himself. In any case, Miniver Cheevy seems bent on slow self-destruction.

MINIVER CHEEVY

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.

Richard Harding Davis, war correspondent

Richard Harding Davis

It is the birthday of writer Richard Harding Davis (1864), the famed war correspondent, whose coverage of the Spanish-American War, the Second Boer War (from both sides) and World War I, made his reputation. He was the best known reporter of his era. He wrote for the New York Evening Sun, the New York Herald and The New York Times. He served as managing editor of Harper's Weekly and wrote for Scribner's Magazine. His short story, Gallagher, about a streetwise newspaper copyboy who ferrets out the culprit in a notorious murder case, drew the admiration of Theodore Roosevelt, and they became fast friends when Davis covered the Spanish-American War embedded with the Rough Riders in Cuba. The dashing and dapper Davis was the model for the Gibson Man, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson's handsome masculine counterpart of his famed Gibson Girl, the late 19th century epitome of feminine beauty. Gibson was a friend and also illustrated some of Davis' books. Davis wrote more than 35 novels, short story collections and travel books based on his experiences.