William Henry Drummond
Encyclopedia
William Henry Drummond (April 13, 1854 – April 6, 1907) was an Irish-born Canadian poet
Canadian poetry
- Beginnings:The earliest works of poetry, mainly written by visitors, described the new territories in optimistic terms, mainly targeted at a European audience...

 whose humorous dialect poems made him "one of the most popular authors in the English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

-speaking world," and "one of the most widely-read and loved poets" in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

.

"His first book of poetry, The Habitant (1897), was extremely successful, establishing for him a reputation as a writer of dialect verse that has faded since his death."

Life

He was born near Mohill
Mohill
Mohill is a town in County Leitrim, Ireland. The town is located in the south of the county, north of the midlands of Ireland. The town of Carrick-on-Shannon is approximately 16 km away....

, County Leitrim
County Leitrim
County Leitrim is a county in Ireland. It is located in the West Region and is also part of the province of Connacht. It is named after the village of Leitrim. Leitrim County Council is the local authority for the county...

, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 in 1854, as William Henry Drumm, the oldest of four sons of George Drumm and Elizabeth Morris Soden. The family emigrated to Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 in 1864, settling in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

.

George Drumm died in 1866, leaving the family facing poverty. Mrs. Drumm opened a store, and the boys all delivered newspapers. When he was 14, William was apprenticed as a telegraph operator. He trained and worked at L'Abord-à-Plouffe, now in Laval
Laval, Quebec
Laval is a Canadian city and a region in southwestern Quebec. It is the largest suburb of Montreal, the third largest municipality in the province of Quebec, and the 14th largest city in Canada with a population of 368,709 in 2006...

, on the Lake of Two Mountains, "a Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

 lumber town where he had his first encounters with the habitants
Habitants
Habitants is the name used to refer to both the French settlers and the inhabitants of French origin who farmed the land along the two shores of the St. Lawrence Gulf and River in what is the present-day Province of Quebec in Canada...

 and voyageurs
Voyageurs
The Voyageurs were the persons who engaged in the transportation of furs by canoe during the fur trade era. Voyageur is a French word which literally translates to "traveler"...

 who were to inspire (and even to preoccupy) the poet." In 1875 (when he was 21, legally the head of the household), he changed the family name to Drummond.

In 1876, Drummond went back to high school. He then studied medicine (unsuccessfully) at McGill College and (successfully) at Bishop's College
Bishop's College
Bishop's College in Colombo, Sri Lanka was founded by the Anglican Church of Ceylon in February 1875.It is a fee-levying private school, with over 2000 students at all grades from Kindergarten to Grade 14. The current principal is Mrs...

. After interning in 1885, he practised medicine first in the Eastern Townships
Eastern Townships
The Eastern Townships is a tourist region and a former administrative region in south-eastern Quebec, lying between the former seigneuries south of the Saint Lawrence River and the United States border. Its northern boundary roughly followed Logan's Line, the geologic boundary between the flat,...

 and then in Montreal starting in 1888. He became professor of hygiene
Hygiene
Hygiene refers to the set of practices perceived by a community to be associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. While in modern medical sciences there is a set of standards of hygiene recommended for different situations, what is considered hygienic or not can vary between...

 at Bishop's in 1893, and of medical jurisprudence
Medical jurisprudence
Medical jurisprudence, or forensic medicine in the broad sense , now embraces all matters which may bring the physician into contact with the law...

 in 1894.

In 1894, Drummond married Miss May Harvey, of Savanna-la-Mar
Savanna-la-Mar
Savanna-la-Mar is the chief town and capital of Westmoreland parish, Jamaica.It is a coastal town and contains a fort, constructed in the 18th century for defence against pirates....

, Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

. Their first child was born in 1895, but died just hours after birth. "Their second son, Charles Barclay, was born in July 1897, just before the publication of The habitant and other French-Canadian poems, the volume that transformed Drummond into one of the most popular authors in the English-speaking world."

The Habitant and Other Poems

According to his wife's unpublished biography, Drummond wrote "The Wreck of the Julie Plante" in 1879. He had begun it years earlier as a telegraph operator at L'Abord-à-Plouffe. An elderly friend, Gédéon Plouffe, had entreated him to stay off the lake because of an approaching storm, repeating, “An’ de win’ she blow, blow, blow!” Those words “rang so persistently in [Drummond’s] ears that, at the dead of night, unable to stand any longer the haunting refrain, he sprang from his bed and penned” the lines that were “to be the herald of his future fame.” He supposedly used Lac St. Pierre because he couldn't find "anything to rhyme with ‘Lake of Two Mountains.’”

"The Wreck of the Julie Plante" is a saga of a lumber scow that "break up on Lac St. Pierre." It has the same stanza form as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

's 1842 poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus
The Wreck of the Hesperus
"The Wreck of the Hesperus" is a dramatic poem by American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, first published in Ballads and Other Poems in 1842.-Overview:...

,
and in places reads like a parody of the latter: for example, just as the captain of the Hesperus tied his daughter to the mast, the captain of the Julie Plante tied Rosie the cook.

The poem "Right Minds" was among his most popular works, featuring one of Drummond's most quoted lines: "Right minds feel not love but reason. And what reasonable man truly loves"

The poem "was an instant success... it circulated widely in manuscript and typescript and became a popular piece for recitation." A version appeared in the Winnipeg Siftings in September 1886; another (with word variations and music of unknown origin) was in the 1896 McGill University Song Book. "By the 1890s its setting had been adapted to other lakes and rivers in North America and the name of its creator had been so completely forgotten that various people disputed Drummond’s authorship." It has been Drummond's most anthologized poem.

Drummond composed other occasional poems for private circulation. "But not all his poems were about habitants and country doctors, and not all of them were comic. Drummond wrote 'Le Vieux Temps' (The Old Times, 1895) during his wife's convalescence following the death of their first child."

Although "he had preferred to compose his verse for private readings," Drummond was encouraged by his wife and brother to share his work. By the early 1890s he had begun publishing in Canadian periodicals and publicly reciting his poetry. In the middle of the decade he began planning a volume. Publishers were courting him by 1896.

The Habitant and Other Poems appeared in 1897, with a New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 publisher, illustrations by Canadian landscape artist F.S. Coburn, and an enthusiastic introduction (in French) by prominent poet Louis Fréchette. Fréchette "passed on a compliment that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

 had paid to Drummond, calling him 'The pathfinder of a new land of song.'" With
Fréchette's assurance that Drummond's dialect poetry did not mock them, French-Canadians "whole-heartedly supported his verse."

The book "was both a popular and a critical success. Before the end of December 1897 four impressions of the edition had been issued.... The volume was widely and favourably reviewed in the periodical press of Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 and North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

." By the time of Drummond's death, 38,000 copies had been printed.

Later life

Drummond found himself besieged with requests for speaking engagements, for magazine submissions, for more books. He did as much as he could. Three more volumes of Habitant verse were issued by 1905. "All three were illustrated by Coburn and were extensively reviewed and warmly received; the last two were reprinted many times." In addition, Drummond "undertook various lecture tours in the United States and Canada," and visited British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

 in 1901 and Great Britain in 1902.

In August 1904, Drummond's only daughter, Moira, was born. That September his third son, William Harvey, died at three years of age. One of William Henry Drummond's "most famous poems, 'The last portage,' which appeared in The voyageur and other poems, came to him as a result of a dream that he had on Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

 1904 while he was still mourning the boy’s death."

In 1905, Drummond closed his Montreal medical practice. He began spending extensive time in Cobalt, Ontario
Cobalt, Ontario
Cobalt is a town in the district of Timiskaming, province of Ontario, Canada, with a population of 1,223 In 2001 Cobalt was named "Ontario's Most Historic Town" by a panel of judges on the TV Ontario program Studio 2, and in 2002 the area was designated a National Historic Site.-History:Silver was...

, where he and his brothers had acquired interest in silver mines. "He served for a year as the town's first doctor, was vice-president of Drummond Silver Mine, and wrote poetry of life in the north."

In the early spring of 1907 Drummond returned to Montreal, and took his wife on a trip to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. By April, though, he had returned to Cobalt, where he died of a cerebral hemorrhage on the morning of April 6. "Probably no other Canadian poet has been so widely mourned." His funeral was held at St. George's Anglican Church (Montreal)
St. George's Anglican Church (Montreal)
St. George's Anglican Church is a heritage church located in downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The church is officially located at 1101 Stanley Street on the corner of De la Gauchetière Street, although it also faces Peel Street and is opposite Place du Canada....

, where he had worshipped for much of his life, and he was buried in that city's Mount Royal Cemetery
Mount Royal Cemetery
Opened in 1852, Mount Royal Cemetery is a 165-acre terraced cemetery on the north slope of Mount Royal in the borough of Outremont, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The burial ground shares the mountain with the much larger adjacent Roman Catholic cemetery -- Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges...

.

Recognition

Drummond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

 of the United Kingdom in 1898 and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
Royal Society of Canada
The Royal Society of Canada , may also operate under the more descriptive name RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada , is the oldest association of scientists and scholars in Canada...

 in 1899.

He received honorary degrees from the University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...

 in 1902 and from Bishop's University in 1905.

"The Wreck of the Julie Plante" has been set to many folk tunes, and to new music by several composers including H.H. Godfrey, Geoffrey O'Hara
Geoffrey O'Hara
Geoffrey O'Hara was a Canadian American composer, singer and music professor.O'Hara was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada. He initially planned a military career. O'Hara entered the prestigious Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario at age 18 and he trained with the 1st Hussars...

, and Herbert Spencer.

The Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest, one of the longest-running national poetry contests in Canada, was established in 1970 in Cobalt, Ontario
Cobalt, Ontario
Cobalt is a town in the district of Timiskaming, province of Ontario, Canada, with a population of 1,223 In 2001 Cobalt was named "Ontario's Most Historic Town" by a panel of judges on the TV Ontario program Studio 2, and in 2002 the area was designated a National Historic Site.-History:Silver was...

. "The Drummand Poetry Contest features $1000 in prizes, an anthology, a new trophy, and award ceremony at the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Cobalt" in May.

Poetry

  • The Habitant and Other French-Canadian Poems. Louis Fréchette intr. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897
    1897 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Canada:* Jean Blewett, Heart Songs...

    .
  • Phil-o-rum’s Canoe and Madeleine Vercheres: Two Poems, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1898
    1898 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-The "Generation of '98" in Spain:...

    .
  • Johnnie Courteau and Other Poems. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901
    1901 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* a small plaque is set on the Statue of Liberty to display Emma Lazarus' 1883 poem, "The New Colossus"...

    .
  • The Voyageur and Other Poems. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905
    1905 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Ezra Pound presents Hilda Doolittle with a sheaf of love poems with the collective title Hilda's Book...

    .
  • The Great Fight: Poems and Sketches. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908
    1908 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Ezra Pound leaves America for Europe...

    .
  • The Poetical Works of William Henry Drummond. Louis Fréchette intr. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912
    1912 in poetry
    Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore takes a sheaf of his translated works to England, where they impress William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Robert Bridges, Ernest Rhys, Thomas Sturge Moore, and others...

    . Reprinted as: Dr. W.H. Drummond's Complete Poems. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1926.
  • Habitant Poems. Arthur Leonard Phelps ed. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1959. repr. 1970. ISBN 0771091117

Prose

  • The Ideal Life: Addresses Hitherto Unpublished. Toronto: J. Revell, 1898.
  • Montreal in halftone: a souvenir giving over one hundred illustrations, plain and colored, showing the great progress which the city has made during the past seventy years. Montreal: W.J. Clarke, 1898.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Dictionary of Canadian Biography.

External links

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