Springfield Tour

[Rob Wick]

Concerning the Ann Rutledge gravestone, Masters's biographer, Herbert K. Russell, writes:

"A large stone was subsequently purchased and placed on her Petersburg grave in 1921, and after the appropriate permission was granted, Masters's Spoon River epitaph concerning her was chiseled into the stone. It was perhaps the second-most enduring event of his career--the first being the writing of Spoon River--but Masters did not go to the ceremony because in 1921 he was busy with his long-term problems with Lillian Wilson. (Lillian Wilson was a woman that Masters was having an affair with. RGW)

"But perhaps he should have observed this moment of emergent Americana or more closely monitored how his work was handled. When the poem was chiseled into the granite, the title was omitted and two of the lines were altered. One might assume these changes were accidental, or a matter of making the poem fit the stone, but the explanation was much simpler than that (as anyone who has lived in a village would know): the chairman of the group in charge of the activity made the changes, the "better," Masters said, "to conform to that man's ideas of the use of words." (The same individual, local historian Henry B. Rankin, later altered another of Master's poems, "William H. Herndon," and reprinted it.)" Source: Herbert K. Russell, Edgar Lee Masters: A Biography (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001) pgs. 270-271.


In his notes, Russell cites an article written by Masters in the January, 1933 edition of H.L. Mencken's American Mercury titled "The Genesis of Spoon River" (pg. 52). In the remaining note, Russell writes "see also 'Ann Rutledge Monument,' Petersburg Observer, January 14, 1921,[p. 4], regarding monument; ELM to Mr. [Henry] Rankin, July 31, 1920 (grants permission for use of poem), Illinois College. Rankin's authority for changing the Rutledge poem was based on the four years he spent while a law student working the Springfield office of Lincoln and Herndon and his apparent belief that he had a better feel for Lincoln material than Masters did. Rankin was never shy about telling others what he knew of Lincoln--or about rewriting other people's poems. Three years after changing Master's poem on Rutledge, Rankin published Intimate Character Sketches of Abraham Lincoln (Lippincott, 1924) and appropriated Masters's poem "William H. Herndon" from Spoon River Anthology. Although Rankin mentioned Masters in this book, it is doubtful that Masters knew in advance how Rankin would use the poem; Rankin removed words and lines from "William H. Herndon" in addition to rearranging lines and adding new words, new punctuation, and a new format." (Russell, notes to pages 271-74, pgs. 417-8)

Russell's book is the standard biography of Masters. I knew Herb during my newspaper days (although he didn't remember me) and corresponded with him on some Masters-Sandburg questions. As for Henry B. Rankin, there is someone who merits his own biography. Rankin corresponded with most of the Lincoln biographers of his day and while Ida Tarbell accepted what Rankin said about himself (even writing the foreword to Rankin's book), William E. Barton dismissed Rankin as a fraud in his book Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman (1928). For a more recent critique of Rankin, see Appendix 2 of Michael Burlingame's edition of Jesse Weik's The Real Lincoln ("A Hard-Hearted Conscious Liar and Oily Hypocrite": Henry B. Rankin's Reliability as a Lincoln Informant" pgs. 391-397).

Best
Rob