The “Bard” of Philadelphia and his Wife

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Generals Grant & Lee "the Surrender"

On November 2, 1833 the Reverend William Henry Furness and his wife Annie Jenks Furness welcomed their son Horace Howard Furness into their Philadelphia home. His father was serving as a minister of the First Unitarian Church and was a leading abolitionist. He was such a fierce supporter in the abolition movement and a vocal critic against the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, he “captured the attention at one of President Buchanan’s cabinet meetings, where consideration was given to indicting Furness for treason!” {1} December 2, 1859 found the Reverend gathered with like-minded supporters as they held a prayer vigil for John Brown as he faced the gallows in Virginia.

Horace Furness attended his father’s alma mater Harvard University graduating in 1854. He spent the next two years touring Europe, Asia and Africa. Returning to Philadelphia he studied law receiving his license in 1859. Although he studied law he discovered another interest during this time period which would shape his life: the study of Shakespeare and it’s in this field he would be remembered. In 1860, he joined the Shakespeare Society of Philadelphia, an amateur study group that took its scholarship seriously. As he later wrote:

"Every member had a copy of the Variorum of 1821, which we fondly believed had gathered under each play all Shakespearian lore worth preserving down to that date. What had been added since that year was scattered in many different editions, and in numberless volumes dispersed over the whole domain of literature. To gather these stray items of criticism was real toil, real but necessary if we did not wish our labour over the text to be in vain.” {3}

But before he could begin a serious scholarly study, he found himself a wife and a war.

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Mrs. Horace Howard Furness

Helen Kate Rogers was born in Philadelphia on July 26, 1837 the daughter and heir to an ironmaking fortune. Kate Rogers, as she preferred to be called, was described as a “lady of great loveliness of character, of a very sweet and gentle nature, and of rare charms of mind and person”. {4}

The couple married in 1860 and on June 7, 1861 they welcomed their son Walter. For this couple the next few years would be a time of challenge Both had brothers that served in the war and in time Furness would do his part in the effort and their relationship unfolds through their letters.​

“It is dreadfully hard, but I grin and bear it.” {5}

By October of 1862, Kate wrote that her husband was leaving for Washington to serve with the Sanitary Commission. He was supposed to return home, however circumstances forced him to be dispatched to “Frederick in a large army wagon”. While there he tended the wounded from Antietam.

Letters between the parted lovers have been preserved during the war. Horace was at first delivering food and medicals supplies to the soldiers and engaged in fund raising for the Union war effort. He writes to Kate during this time:

“I should despise myself as the meanest dastard if I allowed any personal considerations to influence my conduct. Could I ever look little Walter on the face when in the future years (which God vouchsafe to us!) he asks me about these times and what I did? It will be little enough, God knows, but ought I not to do what seems to lie so near my hand and is thus apparently thrust upon me?” {7}

It was during the war where the views of William Furness were magnified as he wrote to his wife his views on the Confederate soldiers.

“It is very singular how different my emotions are on looking at the loyal and the rebel wounded. With the former when I look at a gaping wound in the arm or leg I involuntarily exclaim “That d***ed bullet!” but when I look at the latter I cannot for the life of me help thinking Ah! that was a good hit and came from a hero’s gun. It is wholly apart from them as men that I look upon them; it is simply a question of honorable or dishonorable wounding.” {7}

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Sanitary Commission at Belle Plain Landing, Va., May 1864

He saw Oliver Wendell Holmes after he was wounded at Antietam telling his wife that is was badly wounded in the neck. He had two encounters with President Abraham Lincoln as he worked with the Sanitary Commission. He tells his wife he heard a speech on October 5, 1862 and described Lincoln as “his most serene excellency” (though he was not particularly impressed with his words. Again he visited with the president in November with a group of female members of the Sanitary Commission and that visit left him “unimpressed”.

Horace Howard Furness time at the Sanitary Commission was very successful. It has been estimated that he helped raise as over $1.5 in cash and supplies for the war effort. The Philadelphia branch hosted the Great Central Fair from June 7 to June, 1864 one of the largest seen during the war. The branch also managed a volunteer hospital, a supply department, a pension agency and an employment bureau. While he was busy on the Commission, Kate lived at her father’s house. She wrote that she - - ​

“felt better now that Horace is actually gone than I did just before, as he had been uneasy and anxious to do something.” {5}

He did have one reason to be impressed with the President and that was when his brother was awarded the Medal of Honor.​

Frank Heyling Furness (1839-1912) was the younger brother of Horace Howard but unlike his father and brother he attended the University of Pennsylvania where he excelled in civil engineering. Frank put his career on hold during the civil war where he served in the United States Army Corps of Engineers. One of his assignments was surveying and mapping the Potomac River.

He saw action at various battles but it was on June 12, 1964 when he was serving with Company F, 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry he received the highest honor as he was awarded the Medal of Honor. Captain Furness “voluntarily carried a box of ammunition across an open space swept by the enemy’s fire to the relief of an outpost whose ammunition had become almost exhausted, but this was thus enabled to hold its important position” . {6}

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Confederate Charge Battle of Trevilian Station


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After the war Furness returned to Philadelphia but not to his law practice. He and Kate had three more children two more sons and finally a daughter. He was now dealing with deafness so he directed his time in pursuit to his love of all things Shakespeare. He eventually was internationally respected as the Shakespearean scholar.

For the next forty years Horace along with his wife Kate dedicated their lives to Shakespeare. He collected over three hundred of references, antecedent works, influences and commentaries into a single source he called the “Furness Variorum”. With his wife he authored “A Concordance to Shakespeare’s Poems” published in 1874.

His Medal of Honor brother, Frank went on to become a premier architect designed the University of Pennsylvania Library with Horace selecting the Shakespearean quotes for the 1891 leaded glass windows.

Perhaps the greatest honor bestowed upon Horace Howard Furness were the words from the British critics in a 1890 review in Blackwood’s Magazine:

"In what is called 'The Variorum Edition of Shakespeare,' America has the honor of having produced the very best and most complete edition, so far as it has gone, of our great national poet. For text, illustration (happily, not pictorial), commentary and criticism, it leaves nothing to be desired. The editor combines with the patience and accuracy of the textural scholar, an industry which has overlooked nothing of value that has been written about Shakespeare by the best German and French, as well as English commentators and critics; and what is of no less moment he possesses in himself a rare delicacy of literary appreciation and breadth of judgment, disciplined by familiarity with all that is best in the literature of antiquity as well as of modern times, which he brings to bear on his notes with great effect.” {7}

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On October 30, 1883 Kate Furness died. On November 1, 1883 The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote:​

"There will be general and profound sorrow for the death of Helen Kate Furness, and a common and deep sympathy will go out to her husband Horace Howard Furness, in his sore trouble. Mrs. Funness was a lady of great loveliness of character, of a very sweet and gentle nature, and of rare charms of mind and person.

Her life was bountiful in its charity, refinement and usefulness, they who happily were best acquainted with its noble hospitality of thought and act will best appreciate the beauty of it. She was the most womanly of women, of a most gracious presence and refined spirit. It was not only her own home, nor only those of her household that in life she so greatly blessed. Her generous affections, her fine intelligence, her noble courtesy and warm sympathies blessed all who happily came within the circle of her beneficent influence.

In the great literary work in which her husband was engaged, Mrs. Furness wrought with him, inspiring and encouraging him, and in her "Concordance of the Poems of Shakespeare" going hand in hand with him, sharing his labor and his fame. Not only that but in all usefulness of their lives they were as one, though now one be taken and the other left.” {4}

The man who studied William Shakespeare for most of his life had a Shakespearean flair when he wrote from his heart after the passing of his beloved wife.

“One week ago tonight! Oh my darling, my darling. It is heavier now than ever. The waters have gone over my head, I am just heartbroken. I keep up before the children and the world but when bedtime comes and I am alone in my room – our room – my agony is greater than I can bear. Why can’t I die. Dear God grant it, grant it. Give her to me or me to her. My life is utterly shattered. Deafen my ears and blind my eyes but only once more let me feel her – only touch the tip of her finger. Only one week ago! Millions of years cannot pass more slowly. {7}

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Howard Furness saw his first view of war death at Antietam and he never forgot what he witnessed as he wrote his wife:

“It was ghastly and ghostly, although all the dead have been buried, every tree and branch proclaims a deadly struggle.” {5}

Perhaps in this case, William Shakespeare put the most eloquent words in his play “Julius Caesar”
when Caesar says to his wife Calpurnia:

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Illustration from Antietam - Burying the Dead



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Sources
1. http://www2.hsp.org/collections/manuscripts/f/Furness0224.html
2. http://www.civilwarphilly.net/johnbrown/tourstops.pdf
3. http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Horace_Howard_Furness?View=embedded
4. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/94847914/helen-kate-furness
5. https://www.portal.hsp.org/subject-guides/subject-guide-27
6.
https://www.cmohs.org/recipients/frank-furness
7. https://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid1903furnessbullitt.pdf
(LOC - Photos - No Known Copyright Restrictions)

Quotes in the pictures William Shakespeare in these various plays:
{a} “As You Like It”
{b} “Henry VI”
(c} “Henry V”
{d} “Julius Caesar”
 
That is the first time I have seen the photo of the Sanitary Commission at Belle Plain.
I have to state humbly that so many coincidental lines along my footsteps on this earth of trodden a printed description based on a man named Bullitt. The southern half, or maybe call it the left foot has always been the Kentucky bred Judgeship, whose son was the mediator between Bragg and Walker at Munfordville. Stanton declared he was a wanted man when he evaded the dragnet early on in Kentucky as the Union forces moved in. The right foot I was never able to discover, making me wary of my steps, and always pausing for the surety of foundation. Now I come upon this (7), https://hsp.org/sites/default/files/legacy_files/migrated/findingaid1903furnessbullitt.pdf
and every name has an association with signs and wonders I found along the meeting places with my past. It is an answer I do not yet embrace, and appreciate the opportunity for knowing where the right footfall in my dreams of Dickens' delightful tales and ghostly passages may resound. The belated Christmas from an Easterland.
Lubliner.
 
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