The End of Stephen Foster

I’m been working on a couple of western books this morning and humming a Stephen Foster tune. Many people don’t know who Foster was and I thought I’d make him the subject of the journal entry today. He was no great composer, but Stephen Foster had a way with sentimental words and catchy melodies that had kept his songs popular for more than a century. There is something pleasantly wholesome and irresistibly old-fashioned about songs like “Jennie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Oh! Suzanna.” Two have been adopted by states, “My Old Kentucky Home” and Florida’s “Old Folks at Home.” (Swanee River) What is ironic is that the composer of such unabashed sentimentality – born on the fiftieth birthday of the nation – ended up so miserably. Forster, who grew up singing but had very little musical training near Pittsburgh, was successful almost from his first published songs in 1848. He earned more than $1,000 a year in royalties and married in 1850. But he always spent more than he made and the marriage was unhappy. He wrote fewer songs each year until he left his wife and daughter in 1860 and moved to New York City. There, desperate for cash, he churned out 105 songs – more than half of his entire work – in the last three and a half years of his life. Most were soon forgotten, and his previously lucrative publishing arrangement deteriorated to the point that Foster was selling songs outright for a quick $25. The composer, who drank heavily and suffered symptoms of tuberculosis, grew bitter and lonely as he lived in a series of rooming houses. On January 10, 1864, bedridden with fever, Foster got up to wash himself. Apparently as he stood over the washbasin he fell, shattering the porcelain bowl, which cut his neck deeply. He was found by a chambermaid delivering towels later that day. George Cooper, one of his few friends, was summoned to hear Foster whisper, “I’m done for,” and plead for a drink. Foster was taken to the city-run Bellevue Hospital, where he died, alone and unrecognized, three days later. The hospital, which had registered the 37-year-old composer as Stephen Fosters, put his body in a morgue for unknown corpses until Cooper retrieved it. Unlike nearly all that he wrote in his final years. Foster’s last song, which he penned just a few days before he died, joined his earlier classics: Beautiful dream, wake unto me. Starlight and dew-drops are waiting for thee. Sounds of the rude world heard in the day. Lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away.