Show L I The Author of Sweet Home Payne was a boy prodigy upon the stage but not a remarkable actor in his maturity Then he was a manager mana-ger a writer and adapter of plays a general utility man in translating translat-ing and arranging He lost money as a manager and was imprisoned in London He opened his prison door with a successful translation played Richard the Third for a few nights and left the stave Then he sent some plays in manuscript to Charles Kemble and among them was Clan and if Kemble would give him 50 he would have Bishop arrange the play with music for the stage Kemble sent the money Bishop arranged the music Ellen Trees sister sang it One song in it melted the heart of London and of the world and the plaintive melody IS everywhere familiar and everywhere every-where its tender pathos invests with affectionate regard the name of John Howard Payne It was in Italy that he heard the melody sung by a peasant girl carry ing flowers and vegetables TbV wandering Goldsmith might have heard it and trilled it at twilight from his flute for it is the very pensive pen-sive motive of the Deserted Village Vil-lage To the loitering playwright the melody suggested the words which he has associated with it and jotting down the notes of the air he sent both words and music to Bishop who duly arranged them and after the immediate and great success of the song it was pub lished as sung by Miss Tree sister sis-ter of Ellen Tree composed and partly founded upon a Sicilian air by Henry R Bishop But Paynes name is not even mentioned Clari the Maid of Milan was the rage For many years it was often sung and its performance is a pleasant pleas-ant reminiscence of theatregoers I of thirty and forty years ago Payne continued to write tragedies and comedies operas and farces and in 1832 he returned to America A complimentary benefit was given to him at the Park Theatre which produced seven thousand dollars And Mr Jones says a recent report re-port whoever Mr Jones was sang Home Sweet Home Alas I here again is the untoward fate of the actorwhoever Mr Jones was Why sir Mr Jones was long the dulcet tenor of the old Park and in the English version of Masanidlo his singing of the aria Morning its sweets is flinging was the delight of the lovely belles of long ago whose grandchildren are the matrons of today For ten years Payne led the same Bedouin life full of literary and humane hu-mane and romantic projects but he never again wrote or did anything memorable In 1843 he was appointed ap-pointed consul at Tunis where in 1852 an exile from home he died There is an inevitable melancholy in the impression of such a life yet it is not clear that Payne was especially es-pecially unhappy But he was always al-ways a rover and was never married mar-ried and often knew the pinch of poverty After thirty years Mr Corcoran of Washingten who personally per-sonally knew rhim obtained permission per-mission to remove his remains and in June they will be laid finally in Oak Hill Cemetery near Washington Washing-ton Except for the song the name of Payne would be preserved only in biographical bi-ographical dictionaries and in some perishing traditions of the theatre the-atre But his song is that one touch of nature which makes the world kin It is the frailest thread of which fame was ever spun For the poetry is but a rude expression of a common sentiment and it would hardly have aroused attention atten-tion except for the pathetic melody to which it was adapted Tnat touches every hearer as it touched Payne when he heard it sung by the Italian girl He vindicated his claim to the name of poet by his perfect interpretation of the sentiment senti-ment of the music Its was in tbe year that he died that New York heard Jenny Lind sing his song There was a simple honest generous gener-ous peasant air in her aspect and when her marvelous voice broke into a ringing shower of limpid thrills in The bird rdrging gayly that come amy a-my call it was as if all the birds of spring warbled together or a choir of larks sang at heavens gate There are a hundred monuments of distinguished men in Washington Washing-ton who were very conspicuous and some of whom performed great and memorable services But no monument mon-ument there will be visited by a greater throng of pilgrims and no memory will appeal more tenderly to all of them than those of the widewandering actor who lived and died alone and of whom nothing noth-ing is remembered but that he wrote one songHarpers Magazine |