First - if you read last week's post, you may recall that I was unable to include several photos because the Blogger photo uploader was being uncooperative. This has been corrected and the post has been updated, so if you'd like to see my pictures of things like George Washington's real hair, check it out.
As new as the month is, it's already been a busy one. I'm almost finished with the first MQ book and hope to have an announcement about that fairly soon, which is of course very exciting for me. And somehow, people keep finding this blog and seem to be taking an interest, because I'm now averaging more than 2,000 visits per day - September, with just shy of 50k hits, was my all-time biggest month, but October is on track to beat it.
It's a little daunting. I know that the blog is a bit niche, so I didn't exactly expect it to ever become incredibly popular, but it's starting to genuinely surpass even my wildest hopes.
That being the case, I have some work to do. If people are going to come and read what I'm writing, I'd better deliver, yes? So without further ado, let's dive into a fresh Chester County quest and learn about one of Pennsylvania's more obscure writers. I don't know if you could say he's even more obscure than I am, but on the other hand, he didn't have the advantage of the internet, so maybe he is. I had certainly never heard of him until I collected his marker.
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| The marker stands at the intersection of Horseshoe Pike (US 322) and Corner Ketch-Lyndell Road. |
In this safer and more stable environment, Thomas began to flourish and make use of his natural artistic talents. He took a job painting signs, and also found employment as an actor; the area's stage company found him useful for playing female parts, on account of him being small and slight for his age. He further indulged his art by apprenticing himself to a sculptor named Shobal Vail Clevenger, whose works are now found in some of the country's most notable museums. Clevenger is probably best remembered for having sculpted a bust of Daniel Webster which was later printed on the 15-cent postage stamp, back when we had such things. (Some of my readers might be too young to remember the days before Forever stamps, but we used to buy them in all sorts of denominations.)
Anyway, in addition to sculpting, Thomas got into painting portraits and writing poetry. He started to become famous in 1840, when he painted a portrait of the presidential candidate William Henry Harrison, which earned him some national recognition. Although he'd set up his own portrait studio in Cincinnati, he and his patron, a rich wine maker named Nicholas Longworth, had a falling out. So in 1841, Thomas moved to Boston, where he became friends with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - the same one whose childhood home I visited on my recent trip - and Washington Allston. Longfellow was a brother poet, Allston was a fellow painter, and Thomas felt at home with friends who shared his passions. Longfellow even commissioned Thomas to paint a portrait of his three daughters, with a beautiful result that is largely considered to be one of Thomas's best paintings. Thomas also published some poems in a Boston newspaper, which he later incorporated into one of his bound collections. During this period he married for the first time; he and his first wife, Mary Pratt, had three children, daughters Mary Alice and Lily and a son whose name I can't find.
Thomas continued to write and paint for the rest of his life. He painted portraits of Abraham Lincoln, the Queen of Naples, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, among many others. He also did a self-portrait, which today hangs in the National Gallery of Art. His painting of the Longfellow daughters can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Other works are in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As for his writing, he composed new pieces and re-published many of his prior works in new collections. These include the war songs from his soldier days, a prose romance called The Pilgrims of the Great St. Bernard, and a lyrical poem called A New Pastoral, which is basically a love letter to the beauty of Pennsylvania's country landscapes. He never lost his affection for the commonwealth where he was born.
Thomas remarried in 1867 to Harriet Denison, but they had no children together. While traveling in Europe in 1871, he was in a serious carriage accident and badly injured. He never fully recovered, and after boarding a ship back to the United States the following year, Thomas developed pneumonia. He lived long enough to reach New York City, but died there on May 11, 1872. He was interred in the famous Laurel Hill East Cemetery in Philadelphia, where Harriet joined him following her own death in 1935, having never remarried. What became of Thomas's only surviving child, Mary Alice, I haven't yet uncovered as of this writing.
The home where Thomas was born is long gone, but the marker reminds passersby that the man who was once celebrated as being among America's greatest portraitists and poets of the 19th century first came into the world in Chester County.
Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.
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