(The story of American Army lieutenant Philip Nolan, who r...)
The story of American Army lieutenant Philip Nolan, who renounces his country during a trial for treason and is consequently sentenced to spend the rest of his days at sea without so much as a word of news about the United States
Edward Everett Hale was an American Unitarian clergyman, social reformer, author, and editor of the last half of the nineteenth century. He wrote sermons, biographies, novels, and essays, a wide range of fiction, in various settings, for both children and adults.
One of his most well-known short stories is ‘The Man without a Country’.
Background
Edward Everett Hale was born on April 3, 1822, in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was a son of Nathan Hale, a journalist, owner and editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser, and Sarah Preston Everett, an author.
Born into one of the most prominent families in Boston, Hale had famous relatives from both sides. So, he was a nephew of Edward Everett, a politician and orator, and grand-nephew of Nathan Hale, a hero of the American Revolutionary War. Richard Everett and Helen Keller were also his ancestors.
Lucretia Peabody Hale, Susan Hale, and Charles Hale, three of six Edward’s siblings, became notable personalities as well.
Education
Edward Everett Hale had a happy childhood in a warm and loving atmosphere. The home was the setting for many pleasant memories concerning time spent with his siblings and such notable visitors as Congressman Daniel Webster. Sarah Hale, Edward’s mother, created all the opportunities for the spiritual and physical growth of children. Hale flew kites, swam, and spent a lot of time with both his siblings and such friends as Edward Webster, Daniel Webster’s son.
A two-year-old boy, Edward Everett Hale began his education at Miss Whitney’s private school. Revealing remarkable literary abilities, he entered Boston Latin School at the age of nine. The young boy developed his skills helping his father in his newspaper and book business.
After graduation in 1835, Hale enrolled at Harvard College. He was disappointed with the curriculum but enjoyed the access to a huge library. He received Bowdoin prizes and was named the Class Poet.
He graduated four years later as the youngest member of the Class with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Then, he studied theology with private tutors, such as ministers Samuel Kirkland Lothrop and John Gorham Palfrey.
In 1879, Edward Everett Hale received an honorary Master of Arts and Doctor of Sacred Theology degrees. It was followed by Doctor of Laws degree from Dartmouth College in 1901, and three years later from Williams College.
Edward Everett Hale started his career while still studying in Harvard College. He taught Latin at his former Boston Latin School. After graduating, he supported himself contributing articles on politics and travels for periodicals of his father. Soon, he tried his hand as a fiction writer. The first written story of Hale, entitled ‘Jemmy’s Journey’, appeared in about 1839. Three years later, The Boston Miscellany magazine published his next work, ‘A Tale of a Salamander’.
The same year, on October 24, the Boston Association of Ministers authorized him to preach. He first delivered his sermons at Newark, New Jersey and at Henry Whitney Bellow’s First Congregational Church of New York City. He also preached at Northampton, Massachusetts, and Washington, D. C.
On April 29, 1845, Hale began a ten-year association with the Church of Unity in Worcester, Massachusetts. He then continued his career in Boston at the South Congregational Church, where he served as a minister at the church for forty-three years.
Actively involved in the ecclesiastical activity, he didn’t drop editing and writing. So, in 1848, he edited the collection of biblical poems and essays ‘The Rosary of Illustrations of the Bible’ and published a book ‘Margaret Percival in America’ two years later.
He was also a regular contributor to Unitarian periodicals, such as The Christian Inquirer and The Christian Register, and wrote editorials, essays, and book reviews. From 1857 to 1961, he worked on an edition of The Christian Examiner.
In fact, many of his writings were sermons that he delivered to congregations throughout his ministry. Although he had been writing fiction and short stories since his youth, Edward Everett Hale was noticed as a writer due to a humorous story ‘My Double and How He Undid Me’ that he published in 1859 in the Atlantic Monthly.
During the American Civil War, Hale collaborated with the United States Sanitary Commission and its president Henry Whitney Bellows in order to help wounded soldiers and army camps residents. To strengthen patriotism, he wrote one of his best-known works titled ‘The Man Without a Country’ featured in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863. The following stories which appeared in the same periodical provided him with a status of one of the prominent American short-story authors of the nineteenth century.
The amount of his preaches, essays, and publishing stories increased during the next decade. At its beginning, with the financial support of his friend, a textile manufacturer William B. Weeden, and the America Unitarian Association, Edward Everett Hale applied his writing skills founding a magazine ‘Old and New’. It published another Hale’s most popular story, ‘Ten Times Ten is One’. Unfortunately, having a lack of audience, the periodical was absorbed by Scribner’s Monthly in 1875.
Edward Everett Hale devoted the last two decades of the century to denominational duties within American Unitarian Association and other Unitarian organizations and initiatives. He pursued his writing and editing activity as well which wasn’t limited by his own publications.
Hale’s widely variant interests often found their way into stories. He wrote dozens of stories that focus on the Christmas season. Also, his fondness for history manifested itself in such tales as ‘From Generation to Generation,’ featuring details about how Christmas was celebrated in the 1620s, and ‘The First Grain Market,’ which focuses on an imagined encounter between a Native American tribe and French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier de La Salle.
In addition to short stories, Hale wrote biographies of such figures as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, published some of his public addresses, and penned treatises on history and politics. He sometimes collaborated with family members, including his sisters and his children, when writing books.
Even after his retirement in 1899 from the South Congregational Church, Hale was actively involved in the ecclesiastical activity and continued to write. In 1903, he was named Chaplain of the United States Senate and served in that capacity till his death.
Edward Everett Hale was introduced to Unitarianism when he was christened by John Gorham Palfrey a month after his birth.
Views
Throughout his life, Edward Everett Hale was involved in numerous political and philanthropic movements. He supported abolitionist interests during the fight to make Kansas free state and favored Texas’s fight to enter the Union. Involvement in the Civil War prompted Hale to take further interest in national concerns. His religious background contributed to his participation in several philanthropic organizations, including The Christianity Unity, established in 1858, and Lend a Hand Society, founded in 1886 in memory of one of his friends, Edward Greenleaf.
A leader of the Social Gospel movement, Hale was a strong advocate of emigrant aid, African American education, worker's housing, and world peace. Many of his writings were also focused on such concerns as popular education (in particular, the Chautauqua adult-education movement), and Irish immigration of the middle 19th century.
Quotations:
"The making of friends, who are real friends, is the best token we have of a man's success in life."
"I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do. And by the grace of God, I will."
"If you have accomplished all that you have planned for yourself, you have not planned enough."
"In the name of Hypocrites, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival."
"I can't do everything, but that won't stop me from doing the little I can do."
"Together – one of the most inspiring words in the English language. Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."
"Look up and not down, look forward and not back, look out and not in, and lend a hand!"
"Make it your habit not to be critical about small things."
"Nineteen centuries would have been worth very little if we had not made some advance in welcoming the stranger, in feeding the hungry, in clothing the naked, and in caring for the prisoner."
"Never bear more than one kind of trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds of trouble – the ones they've had, the ones they have, and the ones they expect to have."
"Wise anger is like fire from a flint: there is great ado to get it out; and when it does come, it is out again immediately."
"War – hard apprenticeship of freedom."
Membership
Edward Everett Hale joined the American Antiquarian Society in 1847. He was its active member till the end of his life holding various posts, including a recording secretary, vice-president, president, and board of councilors member. Later, he was appointed a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Literary Society of Washington, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Besides, Hale worked in many other organizations during his lifetime, including the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Philosophical Society, and the Unitarian Historical Society.
He was an active participant in multiple philanthropic organizations. Among such institutions were The Christianity Unity, established in 1858, and Lend a Hand Society, founded in 1886 in memory of one of his friends, Edward Greenleaf.
American Antiquarian Society
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United States
1847 - 1909
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
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United States
1865
Literary Society of Washington
,
United States
1903
American Academy of Arts and Letters
,
United States
1908
Massachusetts Historical Society
,
United States
American Philosophical Society
,
United States
Unitarian Historical Society
,
United States
Lend a Hand Society
,
United States
American Unitarian Association
,
United States
Personality
Edward Everett Hale was forceful and had remarkable organizing skills.
He considered the world as the family whose members had to love and care for each other. He followed his own theory helping people in need.
Physical Characteristics:
Edward Everett Hale was a man with a robust figure and a Homeric head.
Quotes from others about the person
"Probably no man in America aroused and stimulated so many minds as Hale, and his personal popularity was unbounded."
"Dr. Edward Everett Hale is one of my very oldest friends. I have known him since I was eight, and my love for him has increased with my years. His wise, tender sympathy has been the support of Miss Sullivan and me in times of trial and sorrow, and his strong hand has helped us over many rough places; and what he has done for us he has done for thousands of those who have difficult tasks to accomplish. He has filled the old skins of dogma with the new wine of love, and shown men what it is to believe, live and be free. What he has taught we have seen beautifully expressed in his own life – love of country, kindness to the least of his brethren, and a sincere desire to live upward and onward. He has been a prophet and an inspirer of men, and a mighty doer of the Word, the friend of all his race – God bless him!" Helen Keller, American writer and social activist
Connections
Edward Everett Hale married Emily Baldwin Perkins on October 15, 1852. The Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher was her grandfather and Harriet Beecher Stowe who authored ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ was her aunt.
Emily and Edward had nine children the first of whom, Alexander, died soon after his birth. The names of other children were Arthur, Charles Alexander, Edward Everett Jr., Herbert Dudley, Henry Kidder, Robert Beverly, Ellen Day, and Philip Leslie Hale. Ellen and Philip became Impressionist painters.
At the beginning of the 1880s, Harriet Elizabeth Freeman became a volunteer secretary of Hale. During their cooperative work, they developed a romantic relationship which they shared through their letters.