THE UNPUBLISHED LETTER

New York Times Review of Books,

It has been my great pleasure and satisfaction to sit with Young E. Allison of Louisville in business intimacy and friendship for many years, and to have seen the inception of his “Derelict” in three verses based on Billy Bones’ song of “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest” from “Treasure Island.” During this intimacy also I have observed those original three stanzas grow to six and viewed the adjustment and balance and polish he has given to what I now consider a masterpiece.

No one who ever read “Treasure Island” with a mind, but feels there is something lacking in Billy Bones’ song. It left a haunting wish for more and if the book was closed with a single regret it was because Billy Bones had not completed his weird chant. So it affected Mr. Allison, a confirmed novel reader and a great admirer of Stevenson. Henry Waller, collaborating with Mr. Allison in the production† † Incubation at that time. Production in 1893. of the “Ogallallas” by the Bostonians along back in 1891, declared he had a theme for that swashbuckling chant and Allison, who wrote the libretto for the “Ogallallas,” agreed to work it out. That same night with Waller’s really brilliant musical conception in his mind, Mr. Allison wrote what might be considered the first three verses of the present revision, which were set to Waller’s music, written for a deep baritone, and published by Pond. Thereafter during the rehearsal of the “Ogallallas” no session was complete until Eugene Cowles, in his big, rich bass, had sung Allison’s three verses of “Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest” to Waller’s music, as “lagniappe,” while cold chills raced up and down the spines of his hearers—more or less immune to sensations of that character.

As I write I have before me a copy of the music, the title page of which reads as follows: “A Piratical Ballad. Song for Bass or Deep Baritone. Words by Young E. Allison. Music by Henry Waller. New York. Published by William A. Pond & Co. 1891.”

Later it occurred to Mr. Allison that he had done scant justice to an idea full of great possibilities, and another verse was added, and still later another, making five in all, when in a more polished condition it was submitted to the Century for publication, and accepted, though later the editor asked to have the closing lines re-constructed as being a bit too strong for his audience. Mr. Allison felt that to bring back those drink-swollen and weighted bodies “wrapp’d in a mains’l tight” from their “sullen plunge in the sullen swell, ten fathoms deep on the road to hell” would cut the heart out of the idea—while admitting to the Century’s editor that such a sentiment might not be entirely fitted for his clientele—and so declined to make the alteration.

About this time Mr. Allison had “Derelict” privately printed for circulation among friends. I have in my possession his printer’s copy, and the various revisions in his own handwriting—probably a dozen in all.

Six years after the first verses were written, Mr. Allison decided to inject a woman into his “Reminiscence of Treasure Island,” as he styles it, which was most adroitly done in the fifth verse—last written—and in the private copies it is set in Italics as a delicate intimation that the theme of a woman was foreign to the main idea which he attempted to carry out just as he believed Stevenson might have done. There was no woman on Treasure Island yet she passes here without question.

Shortly after the sixth verse had been added, the editors of the Rubric—a Chicago magazine venture of the late 90’s†† Vol. I No. 1, 1901.—asked Mr. Allison for permission to publish the five verses which had fallen into their hands, and in granting the request he furnished the later revision in six verses. This was published on eight pages of the Rubric in two colors, very happily illustrated, I thought, and was captioned “On Board the Derelict.”

It is the fine adjustment, the extreme delicacy, the very artfulness of the whole poem, I might say, which has led you into believing it “a rough, unstudied sailor’s jingle” and in stating editorially, “it is not likely however that he [Mr. Allison] wrote the famous old chanty.” Were it not that you hazarded this speculation I would not feel called upon to recite this history, in justice to Mr. Allison, who is one of the most honorable, modest and original men of letters and who would scorn to enter the lists in an effort to prove that what he had created was his own. Among those who know him like Henry Watterson, Madison Cawein, James H. Mulligan, (who was one of Stevenson’s friends, present in Samoa when he died), James Whitcomb Riley, and a host of others he needs no defense.

Mr. Mason’s comment in your issue of October 4, 1914, is a very fine tribute to the work of a stranger to him and testifies to his artistic judgment, for a study of this “old chanty” will prove it to be a work of art, not only for the tremendous lines of which Mr. Mason speaks, but because it creates the impression of antiquity while being entirely modern by every rule of versification.

If you take the pains to scan the lines you must soon admit how subtle and delicate are the alternating measures, prepared purposely to create the very idea of age and coarseness and succeeding with every almost matchless line and selected word.

Just a word more. Of course I cannot pretend to say how the version published in your issue of September 20, 1914, got copied into the “Old Scrap Book” to which “W. L.” refers, but violence to the text and the meter—which you may determine by reference to the authentic copy inclosed herewith—would indicate that it had been “expurgated” for drawing room recital by an ultra-fastidious†† And non-poetic. who nevertheless recognized its great force.

By the way, Mr. Allison wrote “The Passing of Major Kilgore,” not “Major Galbraith,” one of the first really good newspaper stories “from the inside” then written, though since there have been many.

Yours very truly,

C. I. Hitchcock

Louisville, October 6, 1914.