Ben Bolt

Thomas Dunn English wrote the poem "Ben Bolt" in 1842 at the specific request of Nathaniel Parker Willis.{{cite book |last1=Gilder |first1=Joseph Benson |author-link1=Joseph Benson Gilder |last2=Gilder |first2=Jeannette Leonard |author-link2=Jeannette Leonard Gilder |date=1895 |title=Trilbyana: The Rise and Progress of a Popular Novel |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32887/32887-h/32887-h.htm#page_030 |location=New York |publisher=The Critic Co. |page=30}} While he was then an active participant in the New York City literary scene and lived much of his life in New Jersey, English is popularly believed to have written the poem while visiting Tazewell, Virginia on a hunting trip, as claimed by regional folklorists.{{cite news |last=Kish |first=Kathy |date=July 28, 2006 |title=More history comes to light about 'Ben Bolt,' its author |url=https://www.bdtonline.com/more-history-comes-to-light-about-ben-bolt-its-author/article_232dc10e-20cc-5f1c-99ae-6e7d5254ec33.html |work=Bluefield Daily Telegraph |access-date=August 30, 2020}}

The poem was published in the New-York Mirror, appearing in print for the first time on September 2, 1843.{{cite journal |last=Krohn |first=Ernst C. |date=1971 |title=Nelson Kneass: Minstrel Singer and Composer |journal=Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical |volume=7 |issue=1971 |page=37 |doi=10.2307/779859 |jstor=779859}}

The most popular musical arrangement of "Ben Bolt" was composed by Nelson Kneass in 1848. A widely reported story is that Kneass produced the song as accompaniment to a play about the recent Battle of Buena Vista, borrowing the music from a German melody.{{cite book |last=Kobbé |first=Gustav |author-link=Gustav Kobbé |date=1906 |title=Famous American Songs |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hc1hnv&view=1up&seq=142 |location=New York |publisher=Thomas Y. Crowell Co. |page=90}} However, a search through Ludwig Erk's folk song compilation Deutscher Liederschatz produced no songs with similar melodies, and it is much more likely that the tune was an original composition by Kneass.Krohn, p. 38.

The poem, which is five stanzas long, describes nostalgic scenes from the life of the anonymous narrator. The narrator, who addresses each memory to the title character, begins the first stanza by describing the life and death of a woman named Alice.

{{quote|

Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt,—

Sweet Alice whose hair was so brown,

Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,

And trembled with fear at your frown?

In the old church-yard in the valley, Ben Bolt,

In a corner obscure and alone,

They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray,

And Alice lies under the stone.}}

Some variation occurs in the beginning of the poem's fourth stanza. In the original manuscript, the stanza begins as follows:

{{quote|

And don’t you remember the school, Ben Bolt,

With the master so cruel and grim,

And the shaded nook in the running brook

Where the children went to swim?}}

However, when the poem was arranged to music, the lyrics of that section were changed slightly, so that the relevant lines were as follows:

{{quote|

With the master so kind and so true.

And the little nook by the clear-running brook,

Where we gathered the flowers as they grew?}}

This mild bowdlerization met with some annoyance from the author. Thomas Dunn English, writing to Harper's Bazaar, commented: "I must protest against this change, because the school-masters of between sixty and seventy years since were, to my memory, 'cruel and grim'; they were neither kind nor true. They seemed to think the only way to get learning into a boy's head was by the use of the rod. There may have been exceptions, but I never met them."[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32887/32887-h/32887-h.htm#page_031 Gilder & Gilder], p. 31.

{{Quote|text=I am feeling very well and enjoying life as well as an old man can, but this eternal 'Ben Bolt' business makes me so infernally weary at times that existence becomes a burden. The other night, at a meeting of a medical association at my home in Newark, some one proposed that all hands join in singing 'Ben Bolt,' whereupon I made a rush for the door, and came very near forgetting the proprieties by straightway leaving home. However, I recovered my equilibrium and rejoined my friends. I don't think that General Sherman ever grew half so tired of 'Marching Through Georgia' as I have of that creation of mine, and it will be a blessed relief to me when the public shall conclude to let it rest. |author=Thomas Dunn English |source=circa 1895{{cite news |author= |title=Said Dr. Thomas Dunn English, the author of "Ben Bolt", the other day... |url=https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=CWJ18950524.1.6 |work=Crawfordsville Weekly Journal |date=May 24, 1895 |page=6 |access-date=August 30, 2020}}}}

Shortly after being published, "Ben Bolt" vaulted to nationwide popularity, single-handedly establishing Thomas Dunn English's literary reputation and remaining relevant as a classic American song throughout the nineteenth century. It swiftly became the subject of both tribute and parody, with many sets of variant lyrics.{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/amss.as100110.0/ |title=AH! YES, I REMEMBER. An Answer to "Ben Bolt." |last=Scroggy |first=Thomas M. |date=1852 |via=Library of Congress |access-date=August 30, 2020}}{{cite magazine |author= |title=At Cromer |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46930/46930-h/46930-h.htm |magazine=Punch, or the London Charivari |volume=109 |date=October 5, 1895 |page=160 |access-date=August 30, 2020}} "Ben Bolt" circulated widely in unauthorized broadside format and was selected by Rufus Wilmot Griswold for his anthology The Poets and Poetry of America.{{cite journal |last=McGill |first=Meredith L. |date=September 2016 |title=What Is a Ballad? Reading for Genre, Format, and Medium |jstor=26377165 |doi=10.1525/ncl.2016.71.2.156 |journal=Nineteenth-Century Literature |volume=71 |issue=2 |page=166}} The ballad was a particular favorite of Abraham Lincoln during his lifetime.{{cite book |last=Lamon |first=Ward Hill |author-link=Ward Hill Lamon |date=1911 |title=Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eQ41EHEN0kIC&pg=PA152 |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher= |page=152|isbn=9780722287804 }}{{cite news |author= |title=180-year-old piano likely heard by Abraham Lincoln to play again |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/180-year-old-piano-likely-heard-by-abraham-lincoln-to-play-again/ |work=CBS News |agency=Associated Press |date=February 5, 2016 |access-date=August 30, 2020}}{{cite news |last=Dettro |first=Chris |date=February 14, 2016 |title=Lincoln-era piano in tune for concerts |url=https://www.sj-r.com/news/20160214/lincoln-era-piano-in-tune-for-concerts |work=The State Journal-Register |access-date=August 30, 2020}}

"Ben Bolt" was first adapted into a two act play by the actor and playwright John Beer Johnstone. Johnstone's Ben Bolt premiered at the Surrey Theatre in London on March 28, 1854 in a production by the company of Richard Shepherd and William Creswick with Shepherd in the title role.{{cite book|chapter=Ben Bolt|title=A Dictionary of the Drama: A Guide to the Plays, Playwrights, Players, and Playhouses of the United Kingdom and America, from the Earliest Times to the Present. A-G.|first=William Davenport|last= Adams|year=1904|page=144}} It was performed widely on stages internationally during the 19th century. An excerpt from Johnstone's play was published in Frank Leslie's The New York Journal in February 1857.{{cite journal|editor-first=Frank|editor-last=Leslie|date=February 1857|journal=The New York Journal|page=173-180|first=John B.|last=Johnstone|title=Ben Bolt}} It was later published by Samuel French, Inc. in 1899.{{cite book|title=Ben Bolt: An Original Drama in Two Acts|publisher=S. French|year=1899|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VxaIQjQBC5AC&q=%22John%20B.%20Johnstone%22%20%22Ben%20Bolt%22}}

In 1894 George du Maurier published his novel Trilby, which uses the song "Ben Bolt" as a plot point. The title character Trilby O'Ferrall is portrayed as incapable of skillful singing when she delivers a tone-deaf version of "Ben Bolt" near the novel's beginning. Later, the failure of Svengali's hypnotic powers is revealed when Trilby is once again incapable of singing "Ben Bolt" with any degree of skill. The success of the novel and the subsequent Trilbyana craze promoted interest in the songs of Trilby. In his old age, Thomas Dunn English contributed a manuscript copy of "Ben Bolt" to an 1895 Trilby-themed charity auction for the benefit of the New York Kindergarten Association.[https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32887/32887-h/32887-h.htm#page_020 Gilder & Gilder], p. 20.

As a widely known song of the nineteenth century, "Ben Bolt" was popularly used as a cultural reference in books set during that era, whether published in the nineteenth century or decades later. It is quoted in the novel Dr. Sevier by George Washington Cable and by Laura Ingalls Wilder in By the Shores of Silver Lake.{{cite book |last=Cable |first=George W. |author-link=George Washington Cable |date=1897 |title=Dr. Sevier |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29439/29439-h/29439-h.htm#Page_145 |location=New York |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |page=145}}{{cite book |last=Wilder |first=Laura Ingalls |author-link=Laura Ingalls Wilder |others=Illustrated by Garth Williams |date=1953 |orig-year=1939 |title=By the Shores of Silver Lake |location=New York |publisher=HarperCollins |page=213 |isbn=0-06-026416-0 |lccn=52-7529}} Leopold Bloom contemplated Ben Bolt along with other stories about long-lost loves in James Joyce's Ulysses.{{cite book |last=Schwaber |first=Paul |date=1999 |title=The Cast of Characters: A Reading of Ulysses |jstor=j.ctt1dszzxc.9 |publisher=Yale University Press |chapter=5: The Odd Couple |page=177 |isbn=0-300-07805-6 |lccn=99-013446 |quote=Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way.}}

James Thurber illustrated "Ben Bolt" as part of a poetry illustration series for The New Yorker.{{cite magazine |last=Thurber |first=James |date=August 5, 1939 |title=Famous Poems Illustrated--VII: "Ben Bolt" |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1939/08/05/famous-poems-illustrated-vii-ben-bolt |url-access=subscription |magazine=The New Yorker |page=22}}

The song is referenced in the P. G. Wodehouse novels Uncle Fred in the Springtime, when Mr Pott quotes the opening verse to Lord Ickenham,{{cite book |last=Wodehouse |first=P. G. |author-link=P. G. Wodehouse |date=1939 |title=Uncle Fred in the Springtime |url=https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.24282/page/211/mode/2up |location=London |publisher=Herbert Jenkins |page=212 |oclc=906183201}} and Full Moon where we are told that "trembling—like Ben Bolt's Alice—with fear at her frown" was a common reaction to Lady Hermione Wedge.{{cite book |last=Wodehouse |first=P. G. |author-link=P. G. Wodehouse |date=1947 |title=Full Moon |url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.126310/page/n9/mode/2up |location=London |publisher=Herbert Jenkins |page=12}}

Robert W. Service wrote the poem "Afternoon Tea" in which the narrator, a veteran of World War I, relates an anecdote of his wartime experiences and repeatedly notes humming "Ben Bolt" during the charge.{{cite book |last=Service |first=Robert |author-link=Robert W. Service |date=1916 |title=Rhymes of a Red Cross Man |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=taKVjqwROdAC&pg=PA181 |location=New York |publisher=Barse & Hopkins |page=181}}

The song is also cited in the 1881 novel The Sins of the Cities of the Plain, the alleged memoirs of male prostitute Jack Saul and one of the first works of homosexual pornographic literature published in English. In it, one of the characters is said to play and sing a parody of "Ben Bolt" as it had appeared in "The Pearl", a pornographic monthly magazine issued in London during the mid-Victorian period by William Lazenby.

• Norma Talmadge would have the song played in order to get in character for tearful scenes.{{cite journal |last=Berg |first=Charles |date=1995 |title=Music on the Silent Set |jstor=43796658 |journal=Literature/Film Quarterly |volume=23 |issue=2 |page=132}}
• In Svengali (1931), Marian Marsh as Trilby O'Ferrall performs the song.
• In Gone with the Wind, Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara briefly sings several lines from "Ben Bolt."
• In Girls About Town, Lilyan Tashman as Marie Bailey sings several lines, complaining about having to sing such an "old-fashioned song" to make her much older boyfriend happy.Girls About Town, at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr0dLkCyzqk&t=41m28s 41:28].

• James Bellak, Ben Bolt's Waltz (1850){{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/resource/sm1850.140710.0 |title=Ben Bolt's waltz, no. 1460 |last=Bellak |first=James |date=1850 |via=Library of Congress |access-date=July 18, 2021}}
• Charles Grobe, [Variations on] "Ben Bolt" (1850){{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1850.650680/ |title=Ben Bolt, op. 151 |last=Grobe |first=Charles |date=1850 |via=Library of Congress |access-date=August 30, 2020}}
• William Vincent Wallace, Grande fantaisie de concert sur la ballade Americaine "Ben Bolt" (1853){{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1853.700870/ |title=Grande fantaisie de concert sur la ballade Americaine "Ben Bolt" |last=Wallace |first=William Vincent |date=1853 |via=Library of Congress |access-date=August 30, 2020}}
• John Philip Sousa, "Ben Bolt" March (1888){{cite book |last=Bierley |first=Paul E. |author-link=Paul E. Bierley |date=1984 |title=The Works of John Philip Sousa |location=Columbus, OH |publisher=Integrity Press |page=42 |isbn=0-918048-04-4 |lccn=84-080665}}
• Charles Ives, Central Park in the Dark (1906){{Cite book|last=Sinclair|first=James B.|author-link=James Sinclair (conductor)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hk4KnCDyk9AC&pg=PA103|title=A descriptive catalogue of the music of Charles Ives|date=1999|publisher=Yale University Press|page=103|isbn=0-300-07601-0|location=New Haven, Conn.|oclc=39905309}}

Popular vocalists have also recorded covers of "Ben Bolt," from Geraldine Farrar and John McCormack to Joe Dolan and Johnny McEvoy.

{{Reflist}}

• "[https://web.archive.org/web/20210510131407/https://www.bartleby.com/248/380.html Ben Bolt]" at Bartleby.com
• "[https://web.archive.org/web/20200209071040/http://www.contemplator.com/america/bbolt.html Ben Bolt]" (includes MIDI sound file)

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Category:1848 songs

Category:1843 poems

Category:1842 poems

Category:Poems about death

Category:Works subject to expurgation