James Mathewes Legare: Nearly Forgotten but Not Lost
1972; University of North Carolina Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1534-1461
Autores Tópico(s)Literature: history, themes, analysis
ResumoWhat is a reviewer to do when the author of the book reviewed is the sole authority on the subject? He can measure the work against an ideal model, or he can escape evaluation by describing what the work does instead of complaining about what it doesn't do. I have chosen the latter approach for the simple reason that I do not know what, if anything, might have been used to amplify Curtis Carroll Davis's brief biography of James Mathewes My own first awareness that an antebellum poet named Legare had existed came more than thirty years ago when I encountered a few graceful lyrics in the late Edd Winfield Parks's AWS anthology, Southern Poets (1986). Since then, I have seen the name of this Legare only three or four times, in every instance but one in essays written by Mr. Davis. The sole exception was in Jay B. Hubbell's massive history of Southern literature (1954). Mr. Hubbell in his five page essay on Legare makes this acknowledgement, Until Curtis Carroll Davis began his investigations, very little was known about Legare apart from his one published volume, Orta-Undis, and Other Poems (Boston, 1848). Quite literally, then, the subject of James Mathewes Legare belongs to Mr. Davis. His first essay on Legare was published in 1944, and the book we have today, so he tells us in his preface, is the result of a quarter century's chiseling away at the wall of obscurity of J. M. Legare. The biographical portion of Mr. Davis's book is only 148 pages long, but as far as this reviewer is concerned he has indeed brought his subject out of obscurity into the light. Now at last we know a great deal about James Mathewes Legare who was not only one of the better antebellum Southern poets but who was also a writer of fiction, a painter, and a talented inventor who no doubt would have become very rich had he lived in another time and place. Legare's inventions, like those of Franklin and Edison, were practical--useful. One, a plastic material made from cotton fiber (he called it lignine), could be molded like putty and when hardened properly was waterproof and virtually fireproof. One could mold furniture out of it or use it for roofing or siding in the construction of houses. One's imagination boggles at the thought of what might have happened if this material could have been mass produced and its various uses exploited widely. Houses made of cotton might have covered the South, furnished with cotton chairs and bedsteads, with cotton busts of Cicero and Demosthenes on stands made of cotton in libraries whose very shelves were made of cotton! Cotton would have indeed been King, and perhaps a war which impoverished the South would never have been fought as the builders of the world screamed for more cotton plastic. At it happened, however, the invention was patented on the eve of the war; it was never thoroughly demonstrated and backed financially; and all that remains for us to see of Legare's miracle material today is some elaborate plastic cotton furniture on display at the Charleston Museum in South Carolina. Legare's other inventions, a superior glazier's putty, a type of inlaid tile that had its colors through and through instead of merely on the surface, a superior ivory frame for pictures, a remarkably comfortable easy chair, and a design for a much more efficient steam engine, all testify to the fact that the young South Carolinian, if not a scientist, was at least an inspired tinkerer who elsewhere and elsewhen would have become abominably rich. But inventions that win prizes at the Charleston Industrial Fair don't make fortunes unless backed by ample capital; and capital was one commodity never available to James Mathewes Legare He tried to get capital to back a magazine, but none was forthcoming. He even tried to obtain his own Maecenas, in the person of James Henry Hammond, ex-Governor, ex-Congressman, and owner of Silver Bluff, a three-thousand acre domain along the Savannah River; but Hammond didn't think much of Legare's writings and William Gilmore Simms gave Hammond his opinion that this branch of the Legares, father and son, were little more than conniving rascals. …
Referência(s)