Attributions of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" to deceased portrait artist Josph Wood and the late Rev. John W. Curtis

Attributions of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" to deceased portrait artist Joseph Wood and the late Rev. John W. Curtis by Scott Norsworthy

Two posthumous claims, both of them wrong, issued during the lifetime of Clement C. Moore

Read on Substack

 

Francis P. Lee casually mentions the poem by his Hebrew prof Clement C. Moore about St. Nicholas, dressed all in fur. New Year's Eve, 1834!

On New Year's Eve 1834, young Francis Prioleau Lee (1814-1847) attended a holiday party and fund-raiser at the Court Room in Morristown, NJ. The future Episcopal minister was visiting friends while on break from classes at General Theological Seminary in NYC. Jolly old St.… pic.twitter.com/wA0HZYA7Oh

— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) December 31, 2025

 

James Hetfield: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas

Twas the Night Before Christmas

 

Clement C. Moore, teaching Hebrew in 1822-1823

Clement C. Moore wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1822, to entertain his children. 🎅🎄 As everyone knows the famous Christmas poem was first published anonymously on December 23, 1823 in the Troy NY Sentinel. Besides composing "'Twas the night before Christmas," what else… pic.twitter.com/TcBmnsTL8i

— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) December 14, 2025

 

Santa Claus in the Morristown, New Jersey Court-house on New Year's Eve, 1834

On New Year's Eve 1834 the enterprising ladies of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Morristown, New Jersey hosted a fun holiday fair at the splendid "Court room" occupying half the second story of the now historic Morris County Courthouse. Jolly old St. Nicholas himself made a personal appearance, possibly the first ever witnessed at an organized public event. 

As reported beforehand in the Newark Daily Advertiser (December 18, 1834): 

Newark Daily Advertiser - December 18, 1834
via genealogybank.com

"The Ancient patron-saint of children, St. Nicholas, is announced to attend the Fair of the Ladies of the Morris Episcopal Church at the Court room on New Years eve."

Courtroom #1 - Morris County Courthouse

More details of the festivities in store had been shared in the Morristown Jerseyman on December 17, 1834. For any readers who might have been unfamiliar with St. Nicholas as midwinter gift-giver, the local newspaper gave his better known alias, "Santaclaas."

Morristown Jerseyman - December 17, 1834
via genealogybank.com

A Happy New Year. 

The Ladies of the Episcopal Society will give a Fair at the Court Room, on Wednesday, 31st inst. at 4 o'clock P. M. A profusion of refreshments will be provided, with a variety of toys, books, and articles suited for New Years Eve. It is expected that St. Nicholas, commonly called Santaclaas, will honor the meeting with his personal presence, in ... to purchase various articles to be ... to the stockings of good children.

Should the weather prove unfavorable, the Fair will be postponed to the [next?] fine day.

Of all the seasons, this is peculiarly ... as to good cheer, social habits ... cultivation of liberal sentiment. ...foregoing notice it seems that...will be united at the Court house...last evening of this year. ...hope to see our fellow citizens ...y [of any?] age and sex, party and...ing in that direction at the appointed hour.

The meeting deserves public patronage for this additional motive; that its pecuniary profit is destined to aid in purchasing a Parsonage for the Episcopal Church in this Town. 

Besides the usual fun and games and the big draw, Santa Claus, attendees could look forward to "a profusion of refreshments" and plenty of attractive books, toys, and other items suitable for gifting to friends and family members. Back then Santa happily delivered on New Year's Eve. Really "good children" might expect to find their stockings loaded with presents the next morning, on New Year's Day, instead of or in addition to Christmas morning. Profits from this particular event, as explained at the end of the published announcement in the Morristown Jerseyman (December 17, 1834), would be donated to the fund already established for building a parsonage at the Episcopal Church. 

Undeterred by the furious snowstorm in Morristown on the 29th of December, St. Nicholas aka "Santaclaas" did in fact make his scheduled court date on New Year's Eve, 1834. Independent verification of Santa's appearance is provided in the manuscript diary of a young visitor named Francis Prioleau Lee (1814-1847), then a student at General Theological Seminary (GTS) in New York City. Lee, age 20, had been staying at the famous Ford Mansion ("once the headquarters of Gen. Washington") as a guest of his classmate and best friend Alfred Edmund Ford (1808-1893), a grandson of its builder Colonel Jacob Ford, Jr. There at "the White house," as Lee called it, prep for the upcoming fest and fundraiser began the day after Christmas. Lee's considerable literary skills were enlisted in composing versified predictions or "fortunes" to be offered for sale as unique New Year's gifts.  

"Friday 26.  Rained again. I read Miss Hannah Moore's Memoirs, and a part of Mrs. Jameson's works. The evening we spent very pleasantly around the center table making poetical fortunes to be sold at the approaching fair."

Party business continued to occupy Lee as a guest in the Ford household, right up to fair-day.

Francis P. Lee Papers; Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835

Special Collections Research Center, William & Mary Libraries

Wednesday 31. Spent the day in helping to make articles for the fair and in the evening went to attend it. It was held in the court room and under the auspices of a figure called St. Nicholas who was robed in fur, and dressed according to the description of Prof Moore in his poem. Here I met most of my friends and passed a very pleasant evening.

New Years day. Thursday. Ford and I went out in the sleigh and paid 17 or 18 calls and then dined on venison at his Brother's....

Francis P. Lee Papers, Mss. 65 L51. Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835; Box: 11, Folder: 2. William and Mary Libraries, Special Collections Research Center. https://scrcguides.libraries.wm.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/330840

Francis P. Lee's 1833-1835 diary is rich with intrinsic value as autobiography and cultural history. Quoted above, the entry for Wednesday, December 31, 1834 also provides strong documentary support for the traditional attribution of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" ("'Twas the night before Christmas....") to Lee's Hebrew teacher at GTS, Clement C. Moore. First published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823, the now classic Christmas poem had already been linked to Moore in print, through a cagey and allusive statement in the same newspaper by Sentinel editor Orville L. Holley:

Santa Claus.--A few days since, the Editors of the N. Y. Courier, at the request of a lady, inserted some lines descriptive of one of the Christmas visits of that good old Dutch saint, St. Nicholas, and at the same time applied to our Albany neighbors for information as to the author. That information, we apprehend, the Albany editors cannot give. The lines were first published in this paper. They came to us from a manuscript copy in possession of a lady in this city. We have been given to understand that the author of them belongs, by birth and residence, to the city of New York, and that he is a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer than many of more noisy pretensions. We republish the lines in a preceding column, just as they originally appeared, because we still think of them as at first, and for the satisfaction of our brethren of the Courier, one of whom, at least, is an Arcadian.

-- Troy Sentinel for January 20, 1829; accessible online via NYS Historic Newspapers.

Holley had not explicitly identified the poet by name, although his 1829 remarks did contain a fairly obvious pun on Moore's surname, ranking him as "a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and a writer" than other pretenders (likewise unnamed) and revealing him to be a New Yorker "by birth and residence." In print, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" would not be formally ascribed to Clement C. Moore until Moore himself submitted it along with three other poems to Charles Fenno Hoffman for inclusion in the New York Book of Poetry (New York: George Dearborn, 1837). However, as the private testimony of Francis P. Lee casually discloses, Moore's authorship of "The Night Before Christmas" was already known to Lee and presumably other of Moore's students, friends, and faculty colleagues at the General Theological Seminary. 

While a college student at William & Mary, Sandra D. Hayslette first discovered Lee's previously unknown reference to the Morristown appearance of Santa Claus, "dressed according to the description of Prof Moore in his poem." Hayslette is duly credited for this wonderful find by Stephen Nissenbaum in a note to chapter 4 (page 345 note 85) of The Battle for Christmas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996). For Nissenbaum, the importance of Lee's diary account lay in its early observation (perhaps the earliest on record) of a living Santa impersonator. At the time, Nissenbaum was naturally unconcerned with defending Clement C. Moore in the authorship dispute that would be revived and rehashed a few years later by supposed Literary Forensics Expert Don Foster in the last chapter of Author Unknown (Henry Holt and Company, 2000). 

Overlooked by Moore's defenders as well as doubters in subsequent considerations of the authorship question, the manuscript diary of Francis P. Lee merits a closer inspection. My first aim, herein accomplished, was simply to find the thing. Nissenbaum in the back of the Battle for Christmas pointed me to the archive at GTS library. These days even getting there virtually feels something like that scene in National Lampoon's Vacation where Chevy Chase and fam finally arrive at Wally World.

The Keller Library building and collections are currently closed.

Fortunately, however, excellent support is available "through the GTS affiliation with Virginia Theological Seminary." Vincent Williams, User Services Librarian with the Bishop Payne Library at Virginia Theological Seminary kindly informed me that the cited material was not currently inventoried in the GTS library holdings and referred me back to William & Mary. For generous assistance with locating it there, finally, and with obtaining scanned images of its contents, I am grateful to Carolyn Wilson, Research Assistant; and Kaitlyn G. Weathers, Digitization Specialist with the Special Collections Research Center in Earl Gregg Swem Library, William & Mary Libraries. 

Here and now I can offer one correction and several words not supplied in the 1996 transcription by Stephen Nissenbaum: 

• Correction: Diary and advance newspaper notices of the event agree, the date of Lee's visit to the fair in Morristown was definitely Wednesday, December 31, 1834. New Year's Eve 1834, not 1833.

• Missing words: Ellipses in Nissenbaum's version indicate five omitted words: "in the court room and." Lee's word court in "court room" may have seemed difficult to decipher with confidence, and a strange place to put Santa Claus outside of Miracle on 34th Street. But court is right, as doubly confirmed in two different newspaper announcements, published in the Morristown Jerseyman on December 17, and the Newark Daily Advertiser on December 18, 1834. 

Numerous mentions of Clement C. Moore by name appear in the 1833-1835 manuscript diary of Francis P. Lee. Most of these (not counting the time Lee "missed Dr. Moore's" lecture on February 4, 1835) are short notations of studying and reciting Bible texts in Hebrew. Throughout the month of December 1834 (until the 23rd when Lee departed for Morristown with his "Chum" Alfred E. Ford) Lee briefly noted his coursework with Moore and other seminary professors including Bishop Benjamin T. Onderdonk, Bird Wilson, and Samuel H. Turner. For example:

• On Wednesday, December 3rd Lee "Recited Law's letter to Hoadley to Bp Onderdonk for 1 hour, and Hebrew to Prof. Moore one more." 
• One week later on the 10th Lee again recited from Law's Letters to Bishop Hoadley to Onderdonk and "Hebrew to Dr. Moore."
• On December 11, 1834 Lee "Recited Hebrew to Prof. Moore."

Early in the New Year 1835, Lee visited Moore in person after tea with "Mrs. Turner" (Mary Esther Beach Turner, wife of GTS professor Samuel Hulbeart Turner). As Lee recorded on Tuesday, January 20, 1835:

"I next called Prof. Moore and took tea again here had some delightful music from his daughter Margaret talked about female writers &c."

Next day, Jan. 21, Lee "Studied a lesson in Hebrew for Dr. Moore." At the end of the month Lee specifically resolved "to study Hebrew with more devotion." On Sunday Feb. 1, 1835 he extended this pledge: 

"I am determined at all accounts to be more attentive to my duties. How will this resolution be regarded a week hence?"

On the following Sunday, February 8, 1834 Lee felt reasonably satisfied with his turnaround:

"The resolution recorded page 138 has been in some degree persevered in. I have risen early and have studied Hebrew, both of them hard duties for me."

The manuscript diary of Francis P. Lee offers a valuable record of his youthful friendships and flirtations; one long and often frustrating romantic infatuation; his reading of Shakespeare and popular works like the Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah Moore, Scott's Peveril of the Peak, and Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii along with assigned Bible chapters, sermons, and other religious texts; some of his travels and adventures during breaks; bouts with "the blues" and endurance of occasionally debilitating physical illness. For many reasons, and from many perspectives, the whole volume will doubtless reward further study. Thanks again to all the fine librarians and staff persons at William & Mary, Earl Gregg Swem Library for access to digital copies that make this ongoing research possible.

Title: Francis P. Lee Papers; Francis P. Lee Diary, 1833-1835
Series 2: Acc. 2011.285 Addition, 1827-1933
Author: Francis P. Lee
Volume/Box: Box: 11, Folder: 2

For one more sample in closing, here below is an excerpt from Lee's diary entry on Saturday, February 7, 1835 recounting his experience of Shabbat services in nearby Manhattan synagogues. After consecutive days of hard study during the first week of February, Lee "was examined in Hebrew" on Friday, February 6th. On Saturday, February 7, 1835 Lee 

"... went with Babbit and Germain [classmates Pierre Teller Babbitt and Reuben I. Germain] to the Jewish Synagogue near foot of Canal St. large room with galleries around 3 sides. The fourth occupied by a semicircular enclosure, with a vail hung before it. This contains their different Rolls of Parchment highly ornamented, dressed in satin with silver knobs and bells. We soon became tired of the monotonous tone in which the reader cantillated, and went up to Crosby street, where there is another in a much superior style. Tho there were the same arrangement in both. both having in the middle of the Room a raised platform, square, railed, contained a reading desk. This was of the Ionic order. The galleries were appropriated to Females, and under them were long parallel pews for the spectators, leaving a wide space between them and the central enclosure. The ceremony of depositing the Law soon commenced. A procession was formed from the central enclosure, led by a man bearing the Scroll; they proceeded by a motion so slow as to be imperceptible, and all the while the congregation chaunted. The voices were very musical, and I think I never heard such wild thrilling sounds in my life. They ring in my ears yet. A young man gave me his book and I followed them as they sang. My mind was deeply impressed, and it made me melancholy to see this relic of what once was so grand."

Crosby Street Synagogue Exterior
via Congregation Shearith Israel

Related posts

• Santa Claus comes on New Year's Eve
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/santa-claus-comes-on-new-years-eve.html

• Francis P. Lee on Moore's authorship of The Night Before Christmas https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/francis-p-lee-in-1833-on-clement-c.html

Ten YUGE WINS for Melvilliana in 2024

Greetings from the Minnesota bank of beautiful Lake Pepin, otherwise known as the Mississippi River.

🏆 #1. As you probably heard by now, November of the present year 2024 came with a bang of a W = WIN for Melvilliana and the free world. I'm talking, obviously, about the exciting discovery of the long-lost Chilton copy of A Visit from St. Nicholas ("'Twas the night before Christmas....") in the handwriting of its author, Clement C. Moore. The very existence of this rare and valuable manuscript had been forgotten when I called attention, five years ago, to the facsimile reproduction of the first page in the January 1875 issue of St. Nicholas: A Monthly Magazine for Boys and Girls. 

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/12/chilton-manuscript-of-visit-from-st.html 

Recovery of the Chilton copy brings the total number of extant manuscripts (that we know about) to five. Only four were generally acknowledged at the time of my blog post back in December 2019. 

I was thrilled to learn from Peter Klarnet, Senior Specialist for manuscript and printed Americana at Christie's, that the Chilton copy turned up this year in excellent condition, along with a signed note from Moore and supporting documents that definitively establish the provenance of this particular manuscript version. As reported in the New York Times and on Spectrum News NY1, the Chilton copy was acquired by distinguished collector Adrian Van Sinderen before his death in 1963, and since then has been held by family members. 

Now offered for private sale by Christie's, the newly discovered Chilton copy of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" is presented with fine images and enticing descriptive details, here:

• https://www.christies.com/en/private-sales/privateitems/private-item-SN00675158-012 

For me, the unexpected and highly gratifying discovery or re-discovery of the Chilton manuscript has to be the biggest win for Melvilliana in 2024. And to think I almost deleted my original 2019 post about it, after being told the 1875 facsimile in St. Nicholas was most likely a poor reproduction of the known copy owned by the Huntington Library. 

Listed below are nine more YUGE WINS racked up on Melvilliana this year, so many wins you might get tired of all the winning before the ball drops at midnight. 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆

🏆 #2 is my discovery that James Clarke Welling took over the regular column of "Notes on New Books" in the Washington National Intelligencer in late 1850 or early 1851 which means that Welling wrote the splendid review of Moby-Dick long and wrongly attributed in previous Melville scholarship to William Allen Butler. Friends, do you know how hard it is to legit correct Hugh Hetherington, Perry Miller, AND Hershel Parker on a matter of fact?!

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/08/james-c-welling-his-notes-on-new-books.html
• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/08/unabridged-wellings-review-of-moby-dick.html

Wait, there's more! Number two comes with a bonus win at no extra charge. Although Butler in reality never reviewed Moby-Dick, he did contribute the friendly notice of Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, not counted in the published inventory by Gary Scharnhorst, Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Annotated Bibliography of Comment and Criticism Before 1900 (Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1988). 

🏆 #3 is my highly satisfying find of the Cincinnati Daily Times review of Melville's 1858 lecture on "Statues in Rome."

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/found-cincinnati-daily-times-review-of.html

In the 1950's Merton M. Sealts, Jr. and professional librarians duly searched then-available archives but never found it. Not recorded in the 1987 Northwestern-Newberry edition Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860, edited by Harrison Hayford, Alma A. MacDougall, G. Thomas Tanselle, and others. To my mind, the coolest thing here is the unique record of something Melville said about the sculpted visage of Tiberius. Only this one review of "Statues in Rome" in the Cincinnati Daily Times finds Melville drawing directly from his journal, word-for-word, in the descriptive phrase "intellect without manliness."

🏆 #4 began with my humble attempt to compose a requested footnote on pelican-beach and ended up disclosing the probable source-text for Melville's Civil War poem "In the Prison Pen (1864)." So what? So the pitiable meagreness exhibited by Melville's prisoner does not necessarily indicate his physical death, but rather his severely emaciated condition as one of the "living skeletons" released from rebel prisons, so described by the U. S. Sanitary Commission in the 1864 Narrative of Privations and Sufferings.

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/03/meagerness-on-pelican-beach.html

🏆 #5 broke new ground with a cluster of posts on the newspaper syndication of Herman Melville's poem "The Admiral of the White" in 1885. As uncovered on Melvilliana, Allen Thorndike Rice arranged for the simultaneous publication of Melville's poem in more U. S. newspapers than we knew, including the Cincinnati Times-Star and St. Paul Sunday Pioneer Press. 

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/syndicated-in-cincinnati-and-beyond.html
• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/01/more-on-thorndike-rice-and-his-1885.html
• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/02/abridged-admiral-of-white-in-st-paul.html
• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/02/1885-check-endorsed-by-herman-melville.html

In the coming New Year 2025 I hope somebody will verify the promised appearance of "The Admiral of the White" in one or more of the following newspapers: the Chicago Times, Detroit Press, and Philadelphia Post. 

🏆 #6. Hershel Parker in a footnote for the 3rd Norton Critical Edition of Moby-Dick correctly if a bit vaguely identified "the carved Roman slave" referenced in Chapter 126, The Life-Buoy as that

"famous statue, which is in the Tribune of the Uffizi Museum, in Florence, Italy."

More specifically named L'Arrotino, the Knife-Grinder, as discussed in this blog post from February 2024:

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-arrotino-knife-grinder-aka.html

Besides the added precision, what makes #6 really great is my discovery of another, formerly popular but now forgotten name for this famous work of art.

The other name of the Knife-Grinder perfectly explains Melville's choice of words in the Life-Buoy chapter, when Ishmael depicts startled sailors as "transfixedly listening" and then compares them in that regard to the statue of a Roman slave known as THE LISTENING SLAVE. 

As I write this on New Year's Eve 2024 the Melville Electronic Library still misidentifies "the carved Roman slave" of chapter 126 The Life-Buoy as the famous “Dying Gaul” or “Dying Gladiator." Let's hope they read this and get it right in 2025!

🏆 #7 potentially adds another illustrated book of travel and adventure in the Middle East by William Henry Bartlett to the three already listed in the catalog of books owned and borrowed by Herman Melville at Melville's Marginalia Online. That would be Footsteps of Our Lord and His Apostles, “From the library of Herman Melville,” offered by bookseller Noah Farnham Morrison of "Noah's Ark" in Elizabeth, New Jersey the year before Allan Melville's daughters (Mrs. Maria G. Morewood and Katherine G. Melville) sold Arrowhead and unspecified books from Herman Melville's library in 1927.

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/05/w-h-bartletts-footsteps-of-our-lord-and.html

🏆 #8 reveals the exact date (February 16, 1868) and place (the regimental armory then located on the corner of Hall Place and Seventh street) Herman Melville gifted "a beautiful portrait of the late private" Malcolm Melville to the New York State Militia unit in which his deceased son had proudly served.

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/03/portrait-of-late-private-malcolm.html

Strong finishers who persevere to the end of #8 are rewarded with this fun fact not down in Jay Leyda's great Melville Log or any Melville biography, yet nonetheless true: Malcolm Melville's good friend and fellow member of Company B, George O. Starr later became world-famous as the managing director of Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth.

🏆 #9 locates a late, casual allusion to Moby-Dick in Charles G. Whiting's newspaper tribute to Louis Moreau Gottschalk, published shortly after Gottschalk's death in Rio de Janeiro. Signed "C. G. W." the reminiscence in the Springfield MA Daily Republican (January 29, 1870) refers specifically to Chapter 54: The Town-Ho's Story. After the Civil War and rumors of a scandalous romance in San Francisco, the brilliant New Orleans-born pianist had left the United States for South America, touring in Peru, Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. As Whiting chose to put it, echoing one of Ishmael's supposed listeners/drinking companions at the "Golden Inn" in Lima, Peru, Gottschalk

"found more luxurious rest in the city of the Incas, whose wickedness has become a proverb,--"Corrupt as Lima,"--or among the orange groves around Rio Janeiro."

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/10/gottschalk-reminiscence-by-charles-g.html

Although widely regarded as an invented proverb, something Melville made up, the repeated expression "Corrupt as Lima" in Moby-Dick derives from one of Melville's earliest source-books, A Visit to the South Seas Volume 1 (New York: John P. Haven, 1831) by Charles S. Stewart:

"Lima is said to be the most corrupt city on the continent—so much so that along the whole coast, I am told, the name alone is a proverb of sin."

🏆 #10 corrects an exceedingly rare misreading by Herman Melville's best biographer Hershel Parker in his published transcription of the letter that Herman's older sister Helen Melville wrote from Lansingburgh, New York to younger sister Augusta Melville (then in Bath, a town in Steuben County, New York) on October 10, 1841. 

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2024/06/charles-cromwell-ingham-portrait.html

Helen tells of socializing with Lemuel Shaw and family in Lenox, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. As triumphantly shown in this the tenth major WIN for Melvilliana in 2024, Charles Cromwell Ingham not Henry Inman was "the portrait painter" then making "a professional visit" to the Sedgwicks in Lenox. 

Skeptical readers who harbor any doubts about its being all that YUGE of a win are invited to transcribe one or more letters in the awesome collection of Augusta Melville papers, digitized and accessible online courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections. And to ponder the remarkable fact that right before the arrival of 1841, the same year in which Herman Melville's sister Helen and brother Gansevoort partied with "the portrait painter" C. C. Ingham, this very same artist had drawn St. Nicholas coming down the chimney. On New Year's Eve! 

The New York Mirror of January 2, 1841 featured an amazing engraving based on Ingham's commissioned portrait of St. Nicholas at his work. Printer and publisher Daniel Fanshaw explained how it came about:

"... having a very great reverence for the good old Saint who so often made our hearts jump with joy when we were boys, we prevailed upon our friend Ingham to give us a sketch of him, just as he saw him one bright, frosty, moonlight night, as he was returning home late from a party of friends."

So much winning! If you're not yet sick of it, truck on by Melvilliana on Substack and check out the second chapter of my work in progress:

Tokens of Ghostwriting

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year everyone!!!! 🥳🎉🍾

Author of THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS glimpsed at Newport, 1855

"That mild, delicate-looking, elderly gentleman, benevolently gazing from his rocking chair, has rejoiced more children than PETER PARLEY; it is the venerable and benign author of The Night before Christmas, &c."

-- Henry Theodore Tuckerman writing "From Newport" to the New York Daily Times (August 6, 1855) over the pseudonym, CANONICUS. 

06 Aug 1855, Mon The New York Times (New York, New York) Newspapers.com

Clement C. Moore had been a summer resident in Newport, Rhode Island since 1850 when he retired from teaching Hebrew at the General Theological Seminary in New York City. "Canonicus," the Newport correspondent who espied the "venerable and benign author of The Night before Christmas" on his rocker, was Herman Melville's friend Henry Theodore Tuckerman. As stated in the Cyclopædia of American Literature Volume 2, edited by Evert A. Duyckinck and George L. Duyckinck (New York: Charles Scribner, 1856), Tuckerman often summered in Newport. In 1854-1855 Tuckerman contributed letters with news and gossip "From Newport" to the New York Times, printed there over the pseudonym,"Canonicus." This was one of several aliases Tuckerman used when writing for newspapers and magazines. As shown previously on Melvilliana, Henry T. Tuckerman was also "KNICK," the New York correspondent of the Boston Evening Transcript. 

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/10/h-t-tuckerman-knick-in-boston-evening.html

Under another nom-de-plume, "Theodore Clarence," Tuckerman wrote for The Galaxy: A Magazine of Entertaining Reading, as he revealed in a letter to Evert A. Duyckinck dated May 12, 1868. The article on Essays and Essay Writing in the Galaxy for August 1866 is by Theodore Clarence =  Tuckerman.

Henry T. Tuckerman confided his secret identity as "Canonicus" to Evert A. Duyckinck in a letter from Newport dated August 13, 1855. 

"If you see the N. Y. Times you may have noticed some letters from here signed 'Canonicus'--by your humble servant--but this is strictly inter nos, remember."

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Letters to E.A. Duyckinck and G. Duyckinck" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1845 - 1861. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/d8454190-efa3-0133-7e83-00505686a51c 

Subsequently in the letter from Newport published in the New York Daily Times on August 15, 1855, the "old-fashioned courtesy" modeled by former newspaper editor Charles King (by then President of Columbia College) would prompt "Canonicus" to reminisce about

the palmy days of the New-York American, when CHARLIE HOFFMAN wrote letters from the West in its columns, and "Ianthe" impassioned poetry," and its editor was, indeed, a gentleman of the press.

Charles King was still editor when the New York American (March 1, 1844) published a letter from Clement C. Moore, affirming his already well-known authorship of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas." King was an old friend of Clement C. Moore, and also of Herman Melville's parents before 1830, when the family lived in New York City. 

Ianthe was the pseudonym of New York poet Emma C. Embury.

Charlie Hoffman is of course Charles Fenno Hoffman, another mutual friend (along with Dr. John Wakefield Francis) of Melville and Tuckerman. Hoffman edited the New-York Book of Poetry, the 1837 collection with the famous Christmas poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" on pages 217-219, rightly attributed to Clement C. Moore. 

• https://archive.org/details/newyorkbookpoet00moorgoog/page/n232/mode/2up

Clement C. Moore
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections

🎅🎄🤶

Related posts

• H. T. Tuckerman = KNICK in the Boston Evening Transcript
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2015/10/h-t-tuckerman-knick-in-boston-evening.html

• Tuckerman aka Knick on ISRAEL POTTER
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/07/tuckerman-aka-knick-on-israel-potter.html

• Tuckerman remembers the smiling face of dear old Clement Moore
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/06/henry-t-tuckerman-remembers-smiling.html

• Dr. Francis and Clement C. Moore
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2016/11/dr-francis-and-clement-c-moore.html
  

Troy's Holiday Whodunnit 2024

Copy of Christmas classic for sale at auction house

Copy of Christmas classic for sale at auction house https://t.co/H8SUDeYD3V

— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) December 10, 2024

 

Chilton copy, found!

“There it is, the beginning of the modern Christmas” - read more about the story of this handwritten version of “A Visit From St. Nicholas” in the New York Times: https://t.co/a3jVI6bGz5

— Christie's Books (@ChristiesBKS) December 6, 2024

The Night Before Christmas (Cartoon) 1968

Early praise for Clement C. Moore's 1825 lecture on the Hebrew Bible

The professor shows that he has entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry....

With "Philo-Hebrœus," as the Christian contributor of this forgotten letter to the editors of the New York American subscribed himself--alluding perhaps to the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, sometimes called Philo Judaeus (Philo the Jew) or Philo Hebraeus, and self-identifying more generally as a friend or lover of the Hebrew language and people--I would heartily recommend Clement C. Moore's wonderful Lecture introductory to the course of Hebrew instruction as, among its many virtues, a strong inducement "to the study of Hebrew poesy." Although two centuries now have passed, the pseudonymous writer's insight that Professor Moore had "entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry" remains suggestive and potentially valuable I think for a better understanding of Moore's own poetry, including the world-famous rhymes describing A Visit from St. Nicholas.

The lecture so warmly endorsed by "Philo-Hebrœus" was delivered by Clement C. Moore at Christ Church in New York City on November 14, 1825, nearly three years after he wrote "Visit" aka "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" to entertain his kids.

New York Evening Post - November 14, 1825

In 1798 Clement C. Moore graduated from Columbia College, first in his class. In 1809 he published his important two-volume work, A compendious lexicon of the Hebrew language, duly honored as the "first work of the kind in America" in Allibone's Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors Volume 2 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1874) page 1351. In 1813 "Clem" married Catherine Elizabeth Taylor, called "Eliza" in the family circle, after a courtship that Moore allegorized in a seven-page manuscript poem, 

• Biography of the heart of Clement C. Moore
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/01/biography-of-heart-of-clement-c-moore.html

The bride's version may be found in verses she wrote titled 

• Clement C. Moore, My Reasons for Loving
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/12/clement-c-moore-my-reasons-for-loving.html

Upon receiving his honorary degree of L. L. D. from Columbia College in 1829, Moore was identified in at least one newspaper listing as "Clement C. Moore, Professor of Hebrew literature in the General Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary, New-York" (Middlebury, Vermont American, August 19, 1829). When first appointed his formal title was "Professor of Biblical Learning." Later on, "Professor of Oriental and Greek Literature."

Here then is the full text of the published endorsement by "Philo-Hebrœus," transcribed below from the New-York American, for the country of Friday, December 16, 1825; found on genealogybank.com. At this time the editors being addressed were David Johnston Verplanck and Charles King, Moore's good friend and later president of Columbia College.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE AMERICAN.

Messrs. Editors— As I observe that you often appropriate a column of the first page of your paper to subjects connected with literature, and am persuaded that this contributes to make the American acceptable to a large class of your readers, I beg the favor of an insertion of the following remarks, if they should meet your approbation. If the object of them be not strictly and exclusively literary, it is however so closely associated with the best interests of learning, as to merit the attention of our enlightened and discriminating citizens.

The cause of literature and science is evidently gaining ground among us, and taking a stand somewhat proportioned to its elevated character and intrinsic value. The style of education in the more common schools is improving, and Columbia College is becoming better known, and consequently more highly appreciated, not only for the ability of its professors, but for the practical efficiency of its course of instruction; which, to say the least, in classical literature, yields the palm to none of her sister colleges in the United States. And there is in our city another institution which in time will have no little influence on its literary character—I mean the Episcopal Theological Seminary. I have silently, Messrs. Editors, watched the origin and progress of this school with no little interest; and although I freely acknowledge that the direct effect which it must produce upon the interests of the Episcopal church (of which I am a member,) in raising the literary and religious character generally of our clergy, constitutes in my mind its highest value, yet I beg leave to express the opinion that in a literary view merely, it is deserving of consideration. I have attended all its public exercises, and seldom have I come away without satisfaction, mingled however, (let me add without offence,) with no small portion of regret when I saw so few comparatively of the learned men of our city giving to those exercises the sanction of their presence. It is to me a gratifying circumstance that the necessary effect of the establishment of this Theological College will be to lessen the facilities of admission into the ministry to the unworthy, and to give the friendly hand of encouragement to the destitute and pious youth who is willing to pursue a laborious course of study, alike honourable to its projectors, and to those whose diligence and perseverance enable them to surmount its difficulties. I am glad to see that the faculty of this institution require, in addition to testimonials of moral and religious character, that the applicant for admission shall be able to read and analyze Latin and Greek classics, and possess a general knowledge of the principles of rhetoric and of natural and moral philosophy. This is as it should be. I hope they will never diminish their terms of admission; for in proportion to the requisitions not only demanded ostensibly, and on paper, but really secured by a careful and rigid examination in our higher schools, will be the attainments actually made in the lower. If this remark needed any illustration, it were easy to prove its truth by comparing the present state of our grammar schools with what it was some years ago, and tracing the difference to the increased requisitions of admission into Columbia College.

My attention has been directed to the subject of the Theological Seminary, from having lately read a "Lecture introductory to the course of Hebrew instruction," given in it by Professor Moore. In the present day, when so few of the middle-aged clergy of all denominations are well skilled in the language of the Old Testament, it is a circumstance both of surprise and gratification, that a layman of wealth, and family, and character, induced by no other considerations than the love of learning and of the Bible, should have acquired such accurate and extensive acquaintance with this most venerable and ancient tongue, as we know to be the case with this gentleman. Nor is it in Hebrew literature only that Mr. Moore's attainments are of the most respectable character. The purity and elegance of his composition, the soundness of his views, and the practical good sense of his reflections, mark the man of classical taste, of discriminating mind, and of sober judgment; and it is hoped that the example of one who can appreciate the excellencies of Greek tragedians and orators, and enjoy in his own language the author who is distinguished by a judge altogether competent, as "the greatest of all Italian and of all Christian poets,"🞷 will excite to the study of Hebrew poesy, not only the candidates for the ministry among us, but young gentlemen of leisure and literary taste.

It is with the view of promoting this object, that I beg leave to invite attention to the professor's lecture. It will abundantly repay the trouble of perusal. He examines some of the objections which are frequently urged against the study of Hebrew, makes some remarks on the origin and nature of the language, and notices the characteristics of its prose and poetry.

To every Christian who is persuaded of the divinity and inspiration of the scriptures, it must be undoubtedly a source of great satisfaction, that those sacred records are receiving increased attention in our country. The whole genius and character of the authors respectively, taken in connexion with their public and private history, as far as the imperfect remains of olden times will permit it to be investigated, and with the vast world of contemporary antiquity, is becoming more and more developed, opening before the inquirer a new scene of variegated attraction of splendid sublimity, which no one can enjoy but the indefatigable traveller who has mounted to the summit of this, to most men, new and glorious creation. As curious and interesting records of antiquity, the various works which the Old Testament contains are worthy of attention by the student, even if his object is confined to literary fame and mental improvement, "the volume of Hebrew Scriptures," as the lecturer well remarks in his introduction, "is a book, whose antiquity surpassing that of all others, should alone be a powerful title to the respect of mankind; a book, which has for ages excited the liveliest interest and keenest curiosity among the profane as well as the religious; among its opponents as well as its defenders; which affords to the curious rich treasures in various departments of literature, and which, even under all the disadvantages of translation, calls forth the admiration of the orator and the poet." And if this is the case, under the acknowledged disadvantages of a version, however excellent as a whole, our own confessedly is,✝ "what must have been the enjoyment of those to whom the lofty effusions of Isaiah, the divine strains of the royal Psalmist, and the unrivalled imagery of the book of Job, were addressed in their native language!" The professor shows that he has entered intimately into the spirit of Hebrew poetry, when he tells us, that its "blaze of magnificence arises not from the selection of words or arrangement of phrases, but is due to the subjects treated of, to the imagery employed, to the feelings which are expressed and awakened, to the boldness of its flights, the awfulness of the idea it presents, and to the immensity of its range, 'as high as heaven'—'deeper than hell.' The effect of this poetry upon the mind, resembles that produced by the view of the great works of nature; it is irregular, but with an irregularity which could not be changed without destroying its effect. It is the voice of the thunder or of the whirlwind which strikes our ear; it is the expanse of the firmament which meets our eye: all creation rises before us; it is the voice of nature inspired by nature's God."

The few specimens from professor Moore's Lecture which I have given, will I trust, excite sufficient interest in your readers to peruse the whole of it, and at the same time awaken an attention to Hebrew literature. While the poets of Italy receive from an enlightened community that attention which is due to the models of elegance and taste; while the range of German literature, as splendid as it is immense, is beginning to be traversed; while the monuments of Greek and Roman composition are advancing daily to that honorable station among us, which their unrivalled excellence demands, let us not pass unnoticed the less known and less eulogized but not less meritorious Hebrew poet. He will astonish by the grandeur of his conception and the splendour of his imagery; he will awaken feeling by the tenderness and resignation with which he opens the depths of his grief; and what must ever raise his value in the estimation of every one who thinks it important to mingle the utile with the dulce, he will communicate that instruction which will elsewhere be sought in vain; that wisdom which "is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness." 

PHILO-HEBRŒUS.

🞷 This is Schlegel's eulogy of Dante. See Lect. IX.

✝ On this point Mr. Moore has expressed himself with feeling and strength; and his remark cannot but give satisfaction to the mere English writer. 

New-York American for the country
December 16, 1825

Related posts: 

• Moore's 1825 Lecture Introductory to the Course of Hebrew Instruction, full text
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-lecture-introductory-to-course-of.html 

• Clement C. Moore on Hebrew poetry
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/03/clement-c-moore-on-hebrew-poetry-and.html

• Flash of Expression
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2019/08/flash-of-expression.html 
  

Evert Duyckinck on Christmastime festivities in Manhattan

Excerpted below from Life in New York City in its Later Colonial Days by Evert A. Duyckinck, as posthumously published in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly Volume 17, June 1884 page 691. This installment was part of 

"a series of articles which present in a style full of attraction and charm the early annals of the City of New York. They were the literary work of one who was acknowledged for many years the finest literary scholar and critic of the city, and a work, too, for which he devoted the best gifts of his intellect, for he claimed descent from one of the earliest settlers of the city."

The series began in the January 1884 issue and was there represented as Duyckinck's "last work and one of which he felt a just pride." The Christmas matter would be reprinted two years later in Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine for March 1886, on pages 203-6 of the article titled "The Origin of the New York Churches."

By Manhattoes Duyckinck means "New Yorkers":

There were several national or religious festivals kept by the Dutch in New Amsterdam: Christmas, New Year's Day, Paas or Easter, Pinxter at Whitsuntide, and Santa Claus or St. Nicholas Day. Some of the peculiar Dutch honors of the last have been transferred to Christmas ; particularly the visit of St. Nicholas, who, to the wondering children of Manhattan, on the eve of the sacred day, still, as of yore, a burly, benevolent figure, clad in his ancient furry habiliments, a pipe in his mouth, a capacious, well-filled hamper of toys on his back, rides in his airy sleigh, swiftly borne by his reindeer-team, over the roofs of the houses, descending, spite of narrow flues and modern contracted chimneys, to fill the stockings suspended, in expectation of his gifts, at the mantel corner.

The faith in the old legend of St. Nicholas, patron of the Manhattoes, would, with other superstitions of the past, doubtless have died out long ago were it not invigorated by these perennial gifts and bounties. There is practically no discrediting a belief which is backed by such unfailing beneficence. We,"children of a larger growth," hoodwink our perceptions and act upon it every day in our intercourse with society and estimate of character, feigning to believe in more doubtful virtues than those of the boy-saint. Besides, has not Weir painted the scene? and has it not been described by one of the best of men in most exquisite rhymes ?—

"The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of midday to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. 

*        *        *        * 

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof—

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound,

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow:

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath,

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlfull of jelly." *

* Poems by Clement C. Moore, LL.D.: 1844, pp. 125-6.

This is the children's saint of the Manhattoes, fixed in his great lineaments for all time.

Saint Nicholas Day, if lost to the juveniles, is not forgotten by the elders, the representative men of the race of the older dynasty, the members of the venerable St. Nicholas Society of the city, who annually meet on the Saint's day—the 6th of December—to feast on the old dainties, and continue the old festive observances of the fatherland. The Society, as we learn from an oration delivered at one of its anniversaries by that worthy descendant from the old stock, Mr. James W. Beekman, had its public observance of the day in New York immediately preceding the Revolution, when the impending war, as in the season of struggle in Holland, taught men the virtue of joining hands in friendly association and of uniting their sympathies in cheerful enjoyment.

The old Dutch observance of New Year's Day also happily survives in the modern metropolis. It was, as it is now, a day peculiarly dedicated to family congratulations and the renewal of friendships in expressions of sympathy and goodwill, which, following so closely upon the sacred festival of Christmas, may well be inspired with a peculiar significance. On that day, in old New York, the citizens thronged to the Fort to pay their respects to the Governor, with their "compliments of the season"—a familiar and convenient phrase in use on these occasions time out of mind.* The clergy, too, were similarly honored, and with something more substantial in various hospitable gifts. The English," says Chaplain Wolley, in his narrative already cited, "observed one anniversary custom, and that without superstition. I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents every New Year's Day. Some would send me a sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle or two of wine. In a word, the English merchants and factors were very unanimous and obliging." In the olden time, with the compact, neighborly arrangement of the town, hemmed in by its two rivers and clustering round the Fort, when an easy stroll of the pedestrian carried him in a few minutes from one end to the other of its fashionable streets, the friendly calls of the day were easily maintained.

New York, as Washington Irving has said, was then "a handy city," and "any one who did not live over the way was to be found round the corner." The good people of Manhattan were, in fact, almost as near to one another as the occupants of a modern mammoth hotel, and a regard for one another's feelings was essential to home comfort. The city has outgrown many old usages, and, it must be confessed, has in its "magnificent distances" rendered the observance of New Year's Day in the old style rather onerous, but still it is maintained in perhaps the most thoroughly kept holiday of the year. Nor, as a genuine record of these antique observances, should we forget the New Year cake handed down in its primitive shapes from our forefathers. 

* See a notice of the usage in a letter of Governor Colden to the Earl of Hillsborough, January 6th, 1770. Col. Doc. VIII., 200.

The Google-digitized volume 17 of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly with Duyckinck's "Life in New York City in its Later Colonial Days" is accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000000492084?urlappend=%3Bseq=710%3Bownerid=13510798895696212-722

Evert A. Duyckinck
via NYPL Digital Collections

Related post:

• Evert Duyckinck on Clement C. Moore: "one of the best of men"
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/02/evert-duyckinck-on-clement-c-moore-one.html 

Champ prevails! "Experts" foiled, Truth wins in a knockout. Review of THE FIGHT FOR "THE NIGHT"

This is the book for any reader on Santa's nice-list who ever cared or wondered who really wrote "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as "The Night Before Christmas." More broadly, I imagine The Fight for "The Night" by Tom A. Jerman will appeal to mystery buffs, poetry lovers, holiday traditionalists, fans of children's lit, students of American literary history, 19th century specialists, and the growing number of persons who relish true stories about college English professors behaving badly. 

Sick-in-the-head authorship obsessives like me already bought it, probably, but won't object to receiving an extra copy. Meticulously documented yet super enjoyable to read, being refreshingly free of academese, Fight for "The Night" thoroughly examines the disputed authorship of the now famous rhymes that first appeared, anonymously, in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823. The timing of Jerman's follow-up to Santa Claus Worldwide (McFarland & Company, 2020) is perfect since this year marks the 200th anniversary of the classic Christmas poem's debut in Troy. 

Non-obsessives I'm told genuinely love to recall 'Twas the night before Christmas and hear it recited in the family circle, year after year, no matter the author. Still, I have to believe that even the happiest and mentally healthiest of my fellow mortals will be pleased to know for sure which guy deserves credit for our present-day notion of Santa as a "right jolly old elf" who lands on lawns and flies to rooftops in a "sleigh full of toys" propelled by eight reindeer. Alright then, who described Santa Claus and his magical mystery "Visit" on Christmas Eve so memorably, going down the chimney "with a bound," then up again and away "like the down of a thistle"? Esteemed Bible scholar Clement C. Moore

Clement C. Moore (1779-1863)

or Poughkeepsie farmer, surveyor, and local magistrate Henry Livingston Jr? 

Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828)

Before continuing, some necessary disclosures and disclaimers. Transparency here seems all the more desirable in view of Jerman's illuminating comparisons of participants in authorship debates to "corners" in a boxing match and (in a pleasing diversion from the controlling "prize fight" metaphor) "expert witnesses" called by opposing attorneys to testify in court. With respect to authorship of "The Night Before Christmas" I'm squarely in Moore's corner. You can check out my chief reasons in the 2017 post on How we know Clement C. Moore wrote The Night Before Christmas.

• https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/05/how-we-know-that-clement-c-moore-wrote.html 

I feel honored indeed to have been counted in Tom Jerman's book with Niels H. Sonne, Nancy H. Marshall, Stephen Nissenbaum, Pat Pflieger, Seth Kaller, and Joe Nickell as a public defender of Clement C. Moore and the merits of his longstanding claim to have written the beloved Christmas poem. 

Lately, however (and independently of Jerman's Fight) the claim for Henry Livingston, Jr. appears to have lost much of the traction it had in years past. Major Livingston's descendant and most dedicated advocate Mary Van Deusen declared victory in 2016 after the publication by McFarland & Company of MacDonald P. Jackson's monograph, Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? But Van Deusen's great Henry Livingston website has not been updated with fresh authorship-related content for a good while now. In the meantime, here on Melvilliana I have documented a number of discoveries that support the traditional attribution to Clement C. Moore. On their Red-Pilled America podcast, storytellers Patrick Courrielche and Adryana Cortez have incorporated some of my findings in highly entertaining Christmas episodes. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Justin Fox has convincingly defended Moore from the false charges of keeping enslaved persons and endorsing slavery. Link here to the Bloomberg site with his 2021 article A Gift for America's Christmas Poet: Rehabilitation:

• https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-12-22/-night-before-christmas-author-clement-c-moore-s-shot-at-rehabilitation

ColumbiaDC in December 2023 hosted a A Bicentennial Celebration of the Poem by Clement Clarke Moore with a featured presentation by historian, writer and publisher Pamela McColl, author of 'Twas the Night: The Art and History of the Classic Christmas Poem. 

More than fittingly, Clement Clarke Moore will be inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame on December 19, 2023. Ceremony to be held at Hoffman Hall of the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

• https://www.issuewire.com/world-famous-new-york-poem-twas-the-night-before-christmas-bicentennial-1823-2023-1780746561062468

Amidst all this bicentennial buzz, it might be well to note that the "tale of the tape" with regard to the long-running authorship debate has not been fully presented anywhere in any format. Until now, that is. The Fight for "The Night" brings it, with easily the most complete and persuasive account in print of the contest for authorship credit. Of course I'm pleased by the good use made of findings originally posted on Melvilliana. Three prime examples would be 

1. the 1844 letter to the editor of the New York American in which Moore unambiguously claimed authorship of the Christmas verses "not for publication, but to amuse my children" (quoted and discussed by Jerman in Fight, pages 27-28); 
   
   
2. the previously overlooked fact that T. W. C. Moore (the fellow who obtained a manuscript copy of the poem for the New York Historical Society in 1862 after a personal interview with Clement C. Moore) was a first cousin of Henry Livingston, Jr (Fight, pages 216-219); and 
   
   
3. the anonymous publication in the Troy Sentinel of another poem by Moore, later titled Lines Written after a Snow-Storm on February 20, 1824, just 2 months after "The Night Before Christmas" (Fight, pages 19-20). 

I'm very glad also to find my five Livingston "deal-breakers" inventoried on pages 314-316; and naturally gratified by the serious attention given on pages 316 and 351 to my Eight Great favorite expressions of Clement C. Moore which turn out to be more useful than Jackson's relatively dreary set of six for the purpose of distinguishing Moore's verses from Livingston's. 

As he did also in his previous book Santa Claus Worldwide, Jerman not only provides a valuable synthesis of published work on his chosen subject, he makes original contributions of his own that significantly enrich our understanding of that subject. There, the history of St. Nicholas and other midwinter gift-bringers; here, authorship of "The Night Before Christmas." For one of many original insights here, check out Jerman's lawyerly explanation for Moore's much-discussed delay in publishing his Christmas poem (Fight, pages 29-32). Jerman reasonably proposes that Moore took the most "prudent course" by waiting until William Gilley's copyright on The Children's Friend (the "Old Santeclaus" poem therein being an obvious literary source for "The Night Before Christmas") expired in 1835 before authorizing its reprinting the following year in The New-York Book of Poetry. 

Another highlight for me is the full transcription of Moore's comical poem The Pig and the Rooster, together with the excellent analysis thereof (Fight, 257-265). Jerman takes Moore's lighthearted exercise as "a witty and enjoyable piece," contra haters for the last hundred years. In a fine appreciation of Moore's Seussian verve, Jerman concludes: 

The closest analogy to "The Pig and the Rooster," however, is probably "The Big Brag," one of the "other stories" in Yertle the Turtle, about a rabbit and a bear who boast that they are the "best of the beasts" because of the range of their hearing and smelling abilities, respectively. In the course of their obviously bogus brags, they are interrupted by a worm who explains in an utterly condescending tone that he can see so well his vision actually circles the world, allowing him to see the backsides of the rabbit and bear, "the two biggest fools that have ever been seen." In both sound and sense, Moore's "The Pig and the Rooster" is comparable to "The Big Brag" and many other Dr. Seuss stories. (Fight, page 262) 

Challenging naive acceptance of hearsay on the Livingston side (by Jackson, for example, in Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? pages 110-112) Jerman develops a strong argument against taking so-called "witness letters" from distant Livingston descendants as evidence of anything bearing on authorship of "The Night Before Christmas," other than beliefs (erroneous and conflicting, often) of the writers. See especially the sections in Chapter 10 of Fight for "The Night" under sub-headings "The Unreliability of the Livingston Witness Letters" at pages 227-229 and "Witness Letters Are Second-, Third-, and Fourth-hand Hearsay" at pages 229-236). 

Two punches late in this "literary prize fight" dropped Livingston cold. Delivered in chapters 10 and 11, these particular hits are so devastating to the contender's chances that a more compassionate reader-ref might have stopped the figurative Fight then and there. The first blow exposed a known but insufficiently exploited weakness in the story of Henry Livingston's writing "The Night Before Christmas" years before its main sources were published. Livingston partisans who say their man wrote "The Night Before Christmas" sometime between 1807 and 1809 (roughly guesstimated) fail to account in any satisfactory way for the twin influences of Washington Irving's A History of New-York (1812 ed. or later) and the illustrated poem Old Santeclaus (1821). In Fight for "The Night" Jerman persuasively frames these works as inescapable precedents and literary sources for specific details in "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (pages 209-212; 224-227; and 329). 

Other investigators have pointed out the big problem of chronology (awfully hard to credit Livingston with writing a poem around 1808 that is demonstrably indebted to two different literary works not yet printed, hence inaccessible until 1812 and 1821) but none so effectively. Practically regarded, the need of Livingston supporters to make their candidate a time-traveler invalidates the claim. So effectively that I might want to appropriate it some day, if Tom Jerman would let me, for a sixth Livingston "deal breaker." 

Same goes for the second heavy blow dealt to the contender in round-chapter 11, pages 273-280. This one also would make a devastating deal-breaker, perhaps the future #7 on my list. Simply put, Clement C. Moore's immediate family and church celebrated Christmas in high style, Livingston's did not. The contender's corner has failed to show that Henry Livingston, Jr. gave a fig for Christmas and related holiday festivities, apart from belatedly wishing his sweetheart and future wife "Happy Christmas" in a letter to Sally Welles dated December 30, 1773. Surprisingly, the Poughkeepsie patriarch represented as the embodiment of pure Christmas joy has never been caught decking the halls, baking Christmas cookies, caroling with the family, or (most tellingly of all) even once acknowledging St. Nicholas, Santa Claus, or any other midwinter gift-giver. In Jerman's words, aptly channeling Theodor Geisel aka Dr. Seuss: "Like the Whos down in Whoville, the Livingston family had no presents, no ribbons, no wrappings, no tags, no tinsel, no trimmings, no trappings, no Christmas pudding, and no Who roast beef" (Fight, page 278). As clarified on the back cover of Fight for "The Night" "Livingston's religion, Dutch Reformed, prohibited celebration of Christmas or veneration of saints whereas Moore, a devout Episcopalian, celebrated in traditional English style and treated St. Nicholas as the Christmas gift-giver." 

The middle rounds of Jerman's Fight, chapters 7 ("Basic Principles of Authorship Attribution" and 8 ("Best Practices for Authorship Attribution"), establish ground rules that could and ideally should have governed the contest--when conducted, that is, by highly trained academic "experts." These sections are a wonderful gift to anybody interested in all kinds of authorship questions, not only pertaining to "The Night Before Christmas." Jerman delves into the nitty-gritty of authorship attribution as a distinct field of scholarship. Chapter 7 summarizes important work by Samuel Schoenbaum, Harold Love, Janet Ainsworth, Carole E. Chaski, Patrick Juola, and other leading scholars. Traditional and non-traditional varieties of evidence are weighed and helpfully discussed, along with the virtue of "validity testing" your method. Reviewing best practices, chapter 8 further highlights the good advice of Patrick Juola that "experts in the field 'prevalidate' methods of authorship attribution through the establishment of appropriate, formal protocols" (as distilled by Jerman in Fight, page 173). 

Fans of "English Professors Behaving Badly" can skip the ground rules and proceed straight to round-chapter 9 in Fight for the Night, itemizing "Foster's and Jackson's Violations of the Best Practices." I know that Don Foster's meanest and nastiest attacks on the character of Clement C. Moore were convincingly rebutted long ago by Nissenbaum, Kaller, and Nickell. The trouble, as Jerman rightly perceives, was the attempted rescue of Foster's awful arguments by distinguished Shakespeare scholar and authorship expert MacDonald P. Jackson. In postmortems on the Funeral Elegy fiasco, Foster's method of authorship attribution had just become a textbook example of high profile failure when Jackson backed him on the Livingston side. Jackson inadvertently revealed his bias for Livingston throughout Who Wrote "The Night Before Christmas"? despite the posture of cool scientific objectivity that he tried to maintain. As Jerman demonstrates, Jackson like Foster before him employed a seriously flawed methodology. Each expert committed multiple violations of the "best practices" handbook according to Jerman, including failure to test for accuracy (Fight, pages 175-176); use of inaccurate corpora (176-181); failure to use independent researchers (181-185); failure to provide a profile of the likely author (185-187); adopting the role of "hired gun" (187-192); and unacknowledged sources of scholarly bias (192-196). 

I'm a little disappointed tbh that (unless I missed it?) Jerman did not mention my favorite exhibit of confirmation bias, the place in Who Wrote where Jackson acknowledged eight instances of the Moore-word "like" then quickly discounted their significance. 

Fortunately, however, my trivial loss is more than compensated in Jerman's 13th and final chapter (no more rounds, the "fight" metaphor is exhausted by this point). Don't be fooled by its boring title, "The Use of Nontraditional Analysis." Chapter 13 is way more than a stocking stuffer. It's more like a plain box or carelessly wrapped package that contains your dream-present, something fantastically grand you never really expected to get. Say a first edition of Herman Melville's epic religious poem Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1876), both volumes; or the smart-remote-key-fob to a new Firecracker Red 2023 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Jerman's gift to me and every truth-seeker in the last section of the last chapter of Fight for "The Night" involves "The Use of JGAAP in the Moore-Livingston Dispute." JGAAP stands for the Java Graphical Authorship Attribution Program, described by EVL Labs on evllabs.com as "a Java-based, modular, program for textual analysis, text categorization, and authorship attribution i.e. stylometry / textometry." Jerman really has two surprises in store for the patient and attentive reader. The first would be his discovery of previously unreported results from one earlier trial of Moore v. Livingston using JGAAP. 

The second surprise is the good and equally unexpected news that "with some friendly advice from Juola," Tom Jerman was able to perform another series of 17 tests in JGAAP using the same bodies of texts or "corpora" as before. Jerman identifies the clear winner and his Endnotes list categories of specific tests for both trials. Relative numbers and percentages within each test are not provided, and not really needed I suppose by general readers. Here, then, a fine opportunity opens up for further research. Future investigations using JGAAP can confirm if Jerman's findings are repeatable. Even better, researchers could try the same battery of tests with more realistic corpora, minus unsubstantiated attributions to Livingston of some Carriers' Addresses and other poems that should have been rejected as incompatible with best practices. 

This line of legitimate research makes a great gift for anybody in the Livingston corner. That would include me, too, since I never had anything against him, personally. Henry Livingston, Jr. did not and could not have written "The Night Before Christmas" but saying so does not make me Anti-Livingston or Anti-anything (excepting bad faith and worse arguments by College English Professors). With the Christmas business finally out of the way, I imagine it could be lots of fun in the coming New Year to tackle new and different authorship problems. For a start, maybe someone will try to determine if Major Livingston of Poughkeepsie ever wrote more than one New Year's Day "Carrier's Address." If he did, then which ones, and how exactly would we know (or even reasonably conjecture) that he wrote them? Until then, many thanks to Tom for the blessing of his excellent new book The Fight for "The Night" and Happy Christmas to all!!!