Background

John Gardiner Calkins Brainard was born on October 21, 1796 in New London, Connecticut. He was the youngest son of Sarah (Gardiner) Brainard and Jeremiah G. Brainard, a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1779, and a judge of the superior court of Connecticut. His father was also a descendant of Lion Gardiner, an early English settler and soldier, who founded the first English settlement in what became the state of New York.

Education

Brainard was tutored at home by an elder brother and entered Yale College at the age of 15 in 1811. His taste for poetry appeared early in boyhood, and at Yale, where he was graduated in the class of 1815. The traditions of his family (the Brainards or Brainerds, of Flemish origin, had come to Hartford about 1649) led into the practise of the law, a profession for which he was temperamentally unsuited. His lovable nature which had made him a favorite at college shrank from the rough professional business of the day.

Career

After studying faithfully in the law office of his brother, William F. Brainard, John Brainard was admitted to the bar (1819) with honor; he developed a small clientele in Middletown, Connecticut; but he was, throughout this unlucky episode, thoroughly unhappy. In his own words he could not endure the "personal altercation, contradiction and hard collision" of his contemporaries. To understand this, one needs only to look at his portrait which mirrors clearly his gentle and introspective spirit. He retired from the law, and returned to his birthplace, New London, where, had he possessed energy, he might have matured his gift for verse.

Yet, though his mild nature recoiled from the world, he needed its stimulus, and in the winter of 1822 he became associated with P. B. Goodsell, the Hartford publisher, as editor of the Connecticut Mirror. This was a compromise, for Brainard was ruffled by the severe tasks of journalism.

It was so in college that he had interested his classmates; even as a lawyer he had written "The Memoirs of Gabriel Gap" for a New Haven paper, the Microscope; and he now composed steadily for the Connecticut Mirror. He had all the ambition of the sensitive man, and in this period was to be the crisis of his career. It occurred in 1825, in the publication of his Occasional Pieces of Poetry, an attractive volume made up of some fifty pieces culled from the Mirror. The book made a stir, and might have stimulated anyone save Brainard to further effort.

It was now that Brainard's friends rightly urged a second volume to solidify his reputation. He tried to respond to this sensible advice, but as usual procrastinated, and the only other volume brought out in his lifetime was the unimportant Fort Braddock Letters (1827).

The literary fulfilment came in the spring of 1827 when Brainard resigned from the Connecticut Mirror because of ill health, and again settled in New London. Never endowed with robust animal spirits, he now fell into moods of deep dejection. These coupled with his piety lent a religious gloom to his later poetry, such as, "The Invalid on the East End of Long Island. "

By the spring of 1827, he was in failing health, suffering from tuberculosis, and he died on September 26, 1828.

For the weakness of Brainard's life there is confirmation in the revised edition of his poetry (1832), in Fugitive Tales (1830), and in the new gleanings from his verse in the Mirror (1842).

Achievements

• John Gardiner Calkins Brainard's literary achievements were undoubtful for his time. His successful collaboration with the Connecticut Mirror resulted in the publication of his Occasional Pieces of Poetry in 1825, an attractive volume made up of some fifty pieces. His other famous literary work called "The Invalid on the East End of Long Island. " The story of the last months before his death reads, with pathetic but rather sentimental deathbed scenes, like a page from the religious annuals during America's epoch of the mezzotint and weeping willow to which epoch Brainard, along with his admirer, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, indubitably belonged. He wrote with the same gentle elegance of Niagara Falls which he had not seen and the Connecticut River which he beheld daily. Yet in his vein of natural pathos, as in "The dead leaves strew the forest walk, " he is superior to most of his school, and in other passages on Connecticut scenery his nature, so sensitive to sorrow, shows a corresponding exaltation in the presence of beauty.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The poems of John G.C. Brainard : a new and authentic collection, with an original memoir of his life

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • The Poems of John G. C. Brainard: A New and Authentic Collection, with an Original Memoir of His Lif

    (This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curat...)

  • Occasional Pieces of Poetry

    (This is a reproduction of a classic text optimised for ki...)

  • Fort Braddock Letters: Or A Tale Of The French And Indian Wars, In America, At The Beginning Of The Eighteenth Century

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • The Literary Remains Of John G. C. Brainard: With A Sketch Of His Life (1882)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

  • Letters Found in the Ruins of Fort Braddock: Including an Interesting American Tale

    (This Elibron Classics book is a reprint of a 1824 edition...)

Religion

At his father's home in New London John Brainard studied the doctrines of Christian grace; he became a communicant in the First Congregational Church.

Views

The militant politics of the age aroused in Brainard no enthusiasm for editorial or controversy. Yet the necessity of regular writing overcame his timidity, and he had now in the periodical a medium for his delicate poetic talent. Thus he found, in spite of recurrent indolence and excessive sensibility, his vocation: to write was, if we consider his life as a whole, his one passion. He also had that curious temperament, often found in literary men, of extravagant ambition inhibited by the profound and disheartening conviction of failure.

All that he wrote reveals his carelessness, and lack of self-control. His poetry imitated sentimental models.

Quotations: Brainard could not, he told S. G. Goodrich despairingly, sustain the necessary continuity of thought to hold to his purpose. "There was, " says an intimate friend, "a sad prophecy in this presentiment--a prophecy which he at once made and fulfilled. "

Personality

Brainard was well-known as a clumsy little man with paddling walk, pale sensitive face, abstracted air, careless dress, and great personal charm. Towards the end of his life he was in failing health, suffering from tuberculosis. The image of his personality had always been clearly reflecting his gentle and introspective spirit.

Connections

Sister :

Lucretia Brainard

1798–1831

admirer:

Lydia Huntley Sigourney

colleague:

P. B. Goodsell

Hartford publisher

mother :

Sarah Gardiner Brainard

1767–1830

Brother :

William Fowler Brainard

1784–1844

Brother :

Dyar Throop Brainard

1790–1863

Father :

Jeremiah Gates Brainard

judge 1759–1830

ancestor:

Lion Gardiner

founder of the first English settlement that became the state of New York

Friend:

McDonald Clarke

poet Brainard is known to have been a friend of McDonald Clarke, the so-called "Mad poet of Broadway".

associate:

John Greenleaf Whittier

poet

References

• The Literary Remains of J.G.C. Brainard : With a Sketch of His Life