This essay was originally published in the 1944 OCHS Yearbook. Please note that this essay was published over 80 years ago. While still useful for general education, language may be outdated and at times offensive. The Oswego County Historical Society does not stand by the language used in this essay. To view the original document, please visit NYHeritage.org.
Paper Given Before Oswego County Historical Society at Oswego, April 18, 1944, by Dr. Lida S. Penfield, Former Director of the English Department of the Normal School.
Henry Cuyler Bunner, editor of the famous comic weekly, Puck, poet, and master of the art of the short story, was of the third generation of his family to live in Oswego. Father, son, and grandson, all three came to feel themselves to belong to New York City, rather than to our small northern city by Lake Ontario, to which the first Rudolph Bunner, in 1818, brought his family, attracted, as his grandson, Rudolph III (brother of Henry) told Mr. Gerard E. Jensen, author of “The Life and Letters of Henry Cuyler Bunner”, because he thought “Oswego was destined to be a growing. city, but the railroads diverted the grain trade.” The large investments—at one time Mr. Bunner owned some 40,000 acres here about,—proved disastrous, so that at last after the death of Rudolph Bunner I* the family moved from the spacious stone mansion he had built on the bluff overlooking the lake, to a frame house further to the west, on Bronson St., where his widow** and his daughter, Catherine, resided for a number of years.
As Mrs. Karl Kellogg has told us in her memorable account of the old houses in Oswego, Mr. F. A. Emerick now lives in the stone house, facing south on Bronson Street.Those magnificent oaks must have been part of the virgin forest Rudolph Bunner had cleared so that he might crown that rise of land with his new home. All that now remains of the second home where Mrs. Elizabeth Bunner lived, are tall poplar trees, a lilac hedge, overgrown terraces, long neglected, and the stones of the walk leading, in old limes from the two gates in the lilac hedge to the doorstep. All trace of the once lovely garden has vanished. Mrs. Kellogg named it as the Dudley Miller place, recalling that fire had destroyed the dwelling within recent years.
*Rudolph Bunner I, was elected in 1827 to Congress from Oswego County. He died in 1836. He was one of the organizers of the Oswego Canal Company and of the Oswego Cloth and Carpet Company.
**Mrs. Rudolph Bunner died in Oswego in 1869. She with other members of the family is buried in Riverside cemetery. The second house on Bronson street in which she lived with her daughter for many years was afterwards occupied by Dudley Miller. It was standing unoccupied in 1930 but was destroyed by fire a few years later.
Street Names Given By Bunner
“But Bunner Street,” you ask, “How did it get that name?” In “Landmarks of Oswego County” Judge Churchill tells the story. In the south eastern part of Oswego City, there is a considerable area known as the “Hamilton Tract”. It formed part of a much more extensive territory, shown on the old maps as the “Hamilton Gore.” In 1838 the Tract was divided among the heirs of the original proprietors, and laid out in city blocks. The new streets were named, in many cases, for the families who had shared in the development of the land. By capitalization we can more readily see how the names of the streets recall the story. ALEXANDER HAMILTON, his brother-in-law, JOHN B. CHURCH, and their friend Judge JOHN LAURENCE**, together in partnership, bought the Gore from two of the ROSAVELT family, a few years after the time that George SCRIBA secured title to his huge holdings on the east side of the Oswego river in 1794. When Alexander Hamilton was killed in his duel with Aaron Burr, his sudden death made it expedient for his friends to become subscribers to a fund to hold all his real estate, that it might be protected from forced sale, and thus secure themselves and Mrs. Hamilton from serious loss. (These subscribers are listed in the records at the Oswego County Clerk’s Office, as well as the many real estate transactions of the Bunner family). Now notice how the Bunners were related to some of the proprietors of the Hamilton Tract. Mrs. Elizabeth BUNNER was the daughter of the John B. CHURCH***, the niece of Alexander HAMILTON, and of CATHERINE COCHRAN,**** and the mother- in-law of John DUER. These street names reveal that family interests provided additional reasons why the Bunners were interested in Oswego lands.
*This house is noteworthy for the fact that this is the only Oswego mansion which has the distinction of having been the residence at diverse periods of three representatives in Congress.
**Judge Laurence was Judge of the United States District Court of New York and United States Senator from New York 1796 1800. He was connected with the McWhorter family of Oswego, one of the sons of which was named John Laurence McWhorter after him.
***Church is reputed to have been one of the wealthiest men in America during the Revolutionary war period. He was a man of much prominence. He was Hamilton’s brother in law.
****Catherine Cochran was a daughter of General Philip Schuyler and sister of Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. She was the mother of Captain William S. Malcolm of Oswego. She lived many years in Oswego and died here August 26, 1857.
Born In West Seneca Home
Where did Henry Cuyler Bunner live in Oswego? The Oswego City Residence and Business Directory for 1854—1855 published by William Hancock, and printed by Richard Oliphant, lists thus Henry’s father: (p. 44) Bunner, Rudolph,* 71 West Seneca Street. Here, in 1855, Henry Cuyler was born. Mr. Jensen speaks of the house as small. Because several years later the houses of the city were renumbered, it is impossible to identify the house today, but comparing the number with that of other known residences in the neighborhood, 71 was on the south side of the street, to the west of Seventh Street.**
Sometime in the 1860s Mr. Bunner removed his family to New York city. They did not return to Oswego to reside. Henceforth Henry lived near or in the great city.
*Rudolph Bunner II was at that time an editor of the “Oswego Palladium.” For a period from February 26, 1852 until Dudley Farling assumed control in 1853, he was the publisher as well as the editor of that paper, having purchased it from Beman Brockway.
**Mrs. Albert F. McCarthy of Oswego whose maiden name was Nell LaFaivre, is authority for the statement that the house, occupied by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen LaFaivre, until it was destroyed by fire, was designated as 71 West Seneca street in early days and was at one time reputed to have been occupied by the family of Rudolph Bunner II. After a fire which razed it a new house was built upon the site, now designated as 92 West Seneca street, by Albert F. McCarthy. This house is now owned and occupied by Golden Romney of the Faculty of the Oswego State Teachers’ College.
Early Editor of Puck
After the death of his father Henry served briefly as a reporter taking up his chosen profession of letters. He was asked to come as assistant in the newly organized comic weekly “Puck”, and soon was advanced to the post of editor. Witty, brilliant, and versatile, he often wrote, according to his good friend, Brander Matthews, half the good things in an issue. He was tireless as a worker, contributing regularly to the leading magazines, sometimes his delightful verses, sometimes his entertaining, deft stories. Anyone who owns bound volumes of Harper’s. Scribner’s, or the Century Magazine of the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties may find in any of them a rich treat in the verses and short stories of Henry Cuyler Bunner.
The volumes of his works are now out of print, so that only through the large public libraries like those in Syracuse or Albany can we get his books to read, unless, indeed, we are fortunate enough to find a volume or two in the library of a friend. Mrs. Karl Kellogg and her sister, Mrs. Phillip R. Ward, own several of Bunner’s books and have been most generous in sharing them with me. Miss Kersey tells me that when she first came to Oswego there were one or two copies of H. C. Bunner’s books at the library, but they were already so worn by constant reading that they were hopelessly beyond repair and soon passed out of circulation. However, there is still in our library a copy of Bunner’s first volume of verse, Airs from Arcady. A reader will find the poems a delightful introduction to Henry Bunner’s way of thought.
Poem Recalls Life in Oswego
In “My Shakspere” Mr. Bunner writes of himself as a small boy when he read “Shakspere” in his grandmother’s garden that surrounded the second home on Bronson street. It is charmingly done, and we especially enjoy the verses because they reveal his pleasant memory of life in Oswego. The poet has received a new richly bound copy of the Works of William Shakespere. He contrasts its fresh elegance, with the worn shabbiness of the volume from which he first came to know the plays of the great Elizabethan dramatist.
MY SHAKSPERE
With beveled binding, with uncut edge, With broad white margin and gilded top,
Fit for my library’s choicest ledge, Fresh from the bindery, smelling of shop,
In tinted cloth, with a strange design Buskin and scroll work and mask and crown,
And an arabesque legend tumbling down
“The Works of Shakspere” were never so fine.
Fresh from the shop!
I turn the page Its “ample margin is wide and fair,
Its type is chosen with daintiest care;
There’s a New French Elzevir” strutting there, That would shame its prototypic age.
Fresh from the shop! O Shakspere mine,
I’ve half a notion you’re much too fine!
There’s an ancient volume that I recall, In foxy leather much chafed and worn;
Its back is broken by many a fall, The stitches are loose and the leaves are torn;
And gone is the bastard title, next To the title page scribbled with owners’ names,
That in straggling old style type proclaims That the work is from the corrected text
Left by the late Geo. Steevens, Esquire.
The broad sky burns like a great blue fire,
And the Lake shines blue as shimmering steel, And it cuts the horizon like a blade;
And behind the poplar’s a strip of shade— The great tall Lombardy on the lawn.
And, lying there in the grass, I feel The wind that blows from the Canada shore,
And in cool sweet puffs comes stealing o’er, Fresh as any October dawn.
I lie on my breast in the grass, my feet Lifted boy fashion, and swinging free, The old brown Shakspere in front of me. And big are my eyes, and my heart’s abeat;
And my whole soul’s lost—in what ?—who knows ?
Perdita’s charms or Perdita’s woes— Perdita fairy-like, fair and sweet.
Is any one jealous, I wonder, now, Of my love for Perdita?
For I vow I loved her well. And who can say
That life would be quite the same life today— That love would mean so much, if she Had not taught me its A B C ?
The Grandmother, thin and bent and old, But her hair still dark and her eyes still bright, Totters around among the flowers— Old fashioned flowers of pink and white;
And turns with a trowel the dark rich mold
That feeds the bloom of her heart’s delight.
Ah me! For her and for me the hours go by, and for her the smell of earth—
And for me the breeze and a far love’s birth,
And the sun and the sky and all the things
That a boy’s heart hopes and a poet sings.
Fresh from the shop! O Shakespere mine,
It wasn’t the binding made you divine!
I knew you first in a foxy brown, In the old, old home, where I laid me down,
In the idle summer afternoons, With you alone in the odorous grass,
And set your thoughts to the wind’s low tunes,
And saw your children rise up and pass—
And dreamed and dreamed of the things to be, Known only, I think, to you and me.
I’ve hardly a heart for you dressed so fine—
Fresh from the shop, O Shakespere mine!
His Gift For Parody
An unusual example of Bunner’s gift for parody is his “Home, Sweet Home, With Variations Being Suggestions of the Various Styles in Which an Old Theme Might have Treated by Certain Metrical Composers.”
“FANTASIA”
Of the six divisions, the first is, “The original theme, as John Howard Payne wrote it,” The second, “As Algernon Charles Swinburne might have wrapped it up in variations”: the third is in dialect, “As Mr. Francis Bret Harte might have woven it into a touching tale of a western gentleman in a red shirt.” The fourth is a double parody dealing with an Englishman of Bunner’s day and a Roman of the times of the Emperor Augustus; “As Austin Dobson might have translated it from Horace, if it had ever occurred to Horace to write it.” Moreover, for good measure, the skit is cast in the French verse form of the Rondeau! Part five turns with equal ease, to the eighteenth century; “As it might have been constructed in 1744,” Oliver Goldsmith, at 19, writing the first stanza, and Alexander Pope, at 52, the second.” The sixth, last, and longest, pokes genial fun at the “good grey poet of Camden Town”, “As Walt Whitman might have written all around it.” This engaging play of wit and fancy swings to the very beat of the rhythm, and the flavor of the style of each of the subjects of the parody, showing how thoroughly well Bunner knew his poets.
Stories Cleverly Adapted
In the volume of short stories called “Made in France” another type of clever adaptation is exhibited. Henry Bunner admired the skillful art of Guy de Maupassant, the French writer of short stories, and believed that in translation much of the life and flavour of the originals were lost through the difference in idiom, usually ignored by the translator. Bunner undertook to render into American idiom some of the de Maupassant stories, with delightful success: He calls them, “French Tales Retold with a United States Twist”. There is “Tony” the simple, big, fat good natured glutton of a French Inn keeper in a small country town. After a stroke has made him bed fast, his sharp money grasping wife, utilizing the heat of his heavy body, lays beside him a clutch of eggs to hatch; the interest of the whole town centers in the experiment. When the chicks finally emerge from the shells there is great rejoicing. A friend, who has just called to congratulate Tony, replies to the query of a neighbor as to how Tony is, “He’s as well as can be expected.” If the story calls for country half witted stupidity, Bunner, in “A Pint’s a Pound” uses characters and dialect from the settlements back from the Hudson River. He shows ingenuity in finding an American setting that would make French character and speech natural; as in “Father Dominick’s Convert”, the scene is a village in Lower Canada, near Quebec.
Another story is laid in New Orleans. In “The Pettibone Brolly” he adapts a New York setting in a shabby neighborhood for the scrimping and determined wife who wangled a new umbrella out of the Insurance Company. “Uncle Atticus” is a satire on the immaculate atheist and rich businessman with the two passions gluttony and outbursts against all clericals, his nephew, avid for his uncle’s money, and a rumpled evangelistic missionary, who outwits his nephew and wins the good graces of the uncle.
“Short Sixes” Best Known Collection
“Short Sixes, Stories to be Read while the Candle Burns,” takes its name from the trade name for short candles that used to be sold six to the pound. This is the best known collection of Bunner’s stories. It was published in 1891. Every one of these compact, agreeably ironic vignette moves with lively precision to a surprise ending. “The Tenor” is an 1890 version of an adored matinee idol. In these days he would be a movie star. The denouement is a big splash. “The Two Churches of ”Quawket” deals amusingly with two rival churches in a village of New England. “The Love Letters of Smith” takes us to the top floor of the kind of old time shabby boarding house New York used to have on some of the cross streets. Bunner here brings romance to two shy, lonely people.
“Zenobia’s Infidelity” has been made into a movie. It is the hilarious account of the embarrassing devotion of a grateful elephant to the country doctor, who has healed her burns. The strategy the doctor uses to free himself from Zenobia’s unwelcome attentions, how it reacts like a boomerang, and Zenobia’s downfall are extremely comic. “The Nice People” begins in a summer hotel, and ends in a shower of rice, but the story could not be told without spoiling it for the reader. “Hector” is a huge mastiff sent to a family of women utterly ignorant of dogs and their ways. The ladies learn several things, especially when Hector has puppies.
Naturally, as we read these deft and laughter waking tales, we look to find some trace of Oswego; for we know that Oswego has had unusual characters and good stories worth telling too. “Short Sixes” has one story unmistakably laid in this locality. Perhaps some of you may have heard of such an incident here; it might have happened here or somewhere else—or so Mr. Bunner would have us believe. The story is called “A Round Up”; the heroine is Rhodora Boyd. The city is Trega. Rhodora Pennington came to Trega as the guest of her uncle, the Commandant at the Fort—for Trega was a garrison town. She was beautiful and was an accomplished, delightful, impartial flirt. There was much social gaiety in her honor.
Oswego Locale For “Round Up”
“The Shakespeare Club and the Lake Picnic, which had hitherto divided the year between them, were submerged in the ‘flood of social entertainments — Trega’s square stone houses were lit up night after night, and the broad moss grown gardens about were made trim and presentable, and Chinese lanterns turned them into a paradise for young lovers.
“It was a great year for Trega! The city had been dead, commercially, ever since the New York Central Railroad had opened up the great West; but the unprecedented flow of champagne and Apollinaris actually started a little business boom, based on the inferable wealth of Trega, and two or three of Trega’s remaining firms went into bankruptcy because of the boom. And Rhodora Pennington did it all.”
Could this Trega be Oswego? There were nine engagements at the end of the season. “The only union of the nine which came as a surprise to the community was the engagement of Rhodora to Charley Boyd. The beauty of the season had picked up the one crooked stick in the town—a dissolute, ne’er do well hanger on of Trega’s best society, who would never have seen a dinner card if he had not been a genius at amateur theatricals, an artist on the banjo, and a half bred Adonis.
“Rhodora’s Adonis deserted her. Rhodora nursed her bedridden mother until she died, supporting them both by teaching music and French at the Trega Seminary, down by the Falls. (Falley Seminary,? we ask)—and so at last, Rhodora Boyd died. The conclusion of the story is in dialog, reminding us that Mr. Bunner also wrote plays. Each of the eight men who had been refused by Rhodora in the year of her triumph, found himself summoned to be a pallbearer at her funeral. Without exception, the eight wives were indignant and the men embarrassed by “The Round Up”.
Another Oswego Plot
“Squire Five Fathom” is a story about experiences in Oswego. Mr. Jensen says that Henry’s brother, Rudolph, who helped Mr. Jensen, while he was writing his book about Henry, told him: “There was a family legend that my grandfather cut down some trees on a point and the land was washed away in consequence.”
This is practically the only tragic story among the many. A serious undercurrent is often an element, but disaster is not usually a part of his plots.
The story of the Squire is to be found in a collection named from the first story in the book “Zadoc Pine and Other Stories.” There are names of Oswego in the story, like “Gerrit’s Landing.” There is the city a father and son have come to found on Lake Ontario, “that shall rival Rochester and Oswego in commerce.” There is a fine mansion built upon a bluff overlooking the Lake, afterwards lost to the man who built it. There is great expectation of the protecting value of a new extensive breakwater. When the breakwater is completed, the son, now elderly and poverty stricken, again has hope that his settlement will grow and prosper, but soon a terrible storm out of the northwest sweeps away the breakwater and completely erases the settlement. The distracted old man rushes into the whelming breakers and is drowned. The whole narrative has a tantalizing legendary flavor, and is recounted as the memory of a small boy who saw and made friends with the old son when he was living in a log hut that had survived earlier washouts on the land his father had bought with such bright hope of riches, before his losses and death.
Wrote Few Long Stories
Several of the stories Bunner wrote about New York City show that he enjoyed recalling the days of his acquaintances with the open country of the upper Bronx, no longer country like. His “Tieman’s to Tubby Hook” is an example of such reminiscence.
“The Story of a New York House” is proof that possibly Mr. Bunner might have enjoyed some phases of an historical society, for he traces imaginatively the changes in a house and its neighborhood through the lives of three generations of the New York family for whom the house was built.
“The Midge”, one of his few long stories, is set in the old French quarter of the city. The story is about a man who found himself with the responsibility of caring for an orphaned French child, left friendless in this country. Their efforts at housekeeping, the problems of education and training of a young girl, as well as the studies of the people who are concerned with the action are freshly imagined and convincingly wrought.
“Puck” Aided Cleveland
Mr. Bunner was held in high esteem for his work as an editor. The political influence of the periodical “Puck”, especially during the campaigns of Grover Cleveland, was immense. Frederick Keppler was the cartoonist, forthright and vigorous. Mr. Jensen indicates that often the subject of the cartoon was suggested by Mr. Bunner, notably the successful Museum of Freaks, in which James G. Blaine, among others, was presented as “the tattooed man”, bearing on his person labels recalling politically useful transactions in his varied colorful career. Another act of high value to “Puck” suggested by Mr. Bunner was the special building, designed by the famous Stanford White, and built at the First World’s Fair at Chicago.
As His Friends Saw Him
In conclusion, let us hear what some of his best friends had to say of the man of whom we have been speaking. Mr. Jensen quotes them in his study of H. C. Bunner. A description of his personal appearance is given by Henry Gallup Paine in “The Bookman,” June, 1912,: “Of medium height and slight of frame, a smooth upper lip and close cropped side whiskers, he looked, when his face was inrespose, more like a clergyman than the editor of a comic weekly. He was a man of dignity—but he bubbled with humor. Among the tributes paid to him, his friend and associate in letters, Brander Matthews, has written, “A cheery helpfulness was the keynote of his character. He was honest and open in opinion, witty in conversation, considerate, a good listener, of wide erudition in literature, possessing an excellent memory, especially in poetry.” Jensen sums up his character thus: “Bunner was a gentleman, a scholar, a good man, and a good American and his fame rests equally on what he wrote and what he was.”
For a twinkle or two of the fun he provided for his friends here are a couple of signs posted in his house, copied by a visitor and printed in “The Book buyer,” July, 1896:
Please! Everybody
This is the Home of Harmony and Quiet. It loves no personal and no Club riot.
Come! and be WELCOME!!—but let this remind you, You’ve prayed to leave your Grievances behind you. The following lines were posted in the bath room: No one in this household oughter Leave these faucets running water; And no one, I am certain would Who was entirely kind and good.
Bunner Died Yet A Young Man
Born August 3, 1855 in Oswego, New York. Died May 11, 1896, in Nutley, New Jersey. A short life, untimely ended, we say, remembering that it was constant overwork, and a driving energy that sapped his strength beyond recovery. These were years filled to the brim with eager living, creative writing, the give and take of newspaper work. He had a wide circle of friends, both personal and professional!. Eleven years before he died, he married Miss Alice Learned, sister of his friend, Walter Learned. Most happily married he was. Each book he wrote after the wedding bears the inscription, “to A. L. B.” We of Oswego are proud to recall that he began life here. Through his delightful books we should know him, and enjoy him. How shall we furnish our Library with copies of his books? It is a challenge to us.
Sources: Jensen, Gerard, “The Life and Letters of Henry Cuyler Bunner,” Duke University Press, 1939. “Dictionary of American Biography.” Article on Bunner by Brander Matthews. Pord, James D., Forty Odd Years in the Literary Shop;” Matthews, Brander, “Essay on H. C. Bunner,” in The Historical Novel and other Essays; Churchill, John C, “Landmarks of Oswego County.”
