James F. Otis aka Gemotice

Some while back I was wondering who covered Shakespeare for the New York Express in May 1849, during the Astor Place riots. As explained in a couple of earlier posts

• Looking for Lost 1849 report

• Three Macbeths 

contemporary reports in the Express, conflated in the 20th century by Percy Hammond, placed--well, may have placed--Herman Melville at Macready's first performance in the company of Henry J. Raymond, Richard Grant White, and Washington Irving.

So, the unnamed "correspondent" in newspaper accounts quoted or paraphrased by Hammond might have been James Frederick Otis (1808-1867), aka "Gemotice" (= Jim Otis). In any event, James F. Otis was definitely the chief music and theater critic for The New York Express c. 1843-1853.

We learn that Mr. James F. Otis, formerly an editor of the Brother Jonathan, and recently a Washington Correspondent of the Commercial Advertiser, is engaged as a musical and dramatic critic in the New-York Express. We hope this gentleman will not fail to favor the public at large with his opinion on two points of considerable interest, viz: the architectural pretensions of the new façade of the Park Theatre and the guilt of Hamlet's mother.  --The New World, September 30, 1843

The Great Metropolis, or, New-York Almanac for 1851 names James F. Otis as "musical and dramatic" editor of The New-York Express, immediately after "Principal Editors, James and Erastus Brooks."

 In the days of Jenny Lind, Parodi, and Catherine Hayes there was a very influential critical trio, who controlled, to a certain extent, the concerts and operas. These were C. B. Burchardt, Jim Otis and Jottic, the music seller and publisher of Broadway. Jim Otis (whose nom de plume was Gemotice) was the musical critic of the Express, and hand in glove with all the writers and bohemians of the press. Their favorite rendezvous was Windust's tavern, on Park Row, or Albert Maretzek's restaurant, in Broadway, just above Grand street. --The Art Collector

Augustin Daly succeeded as

"dramatic reviewer for The Express, a position the late James Otis ("Gemotice") had filled with marked ability for many a year. That position on The Express in which Otis was so honored has always been richer in remote opportunities than in immediate cash...."  --New York Clipper, September 22, 1877

In New York Naked (1850) George G. Foster identifies James F. Otis as a third "principal editor of the Express":

Beside the two Messrs. Brooks, the other principal editor of the Express, is James F. Otis, formerly a poet of considerable distinction, and now an indefatigable, sprightly paragraphist, reporter and general critic. He is one of the most popular out-door editors we have in New York; is always "about " whenever there is anything going on, and for his lively qualities in social life is sought for on all occasions of good companionship. His incessant occupations on the innumerable editions of the journal to which he is attached, renders all serious and continuous effort of his mind hopeless, and he is one of a thousand instances of a fine genius being wasted, frittered, and squandered, for want of time, opportunity, and compensation, to justify its higher exercise. Like the great body of us poor scribblers, he is obliged to eke out his salary by contributions of hasty value to all sorts of papers, and by any kind of temporary literary labor that turns up. But he is always in a good humor, and always apparently contented with himself, the world, and everybody around him.

From a chapter on New York critics in Squints through an Opera Glass (1850):

That rough-looking customer whom we saw to-day at Mercer's, in an immense drab pea-jacket, which he had evidently borrowed of a New Jersey pilot, is "Gemotice," of the Spirit of the Times, and Jim Otis, of the Express. The public know him as James F. Otis, a poet of some standing; but his principal labors have been for some years past devoted to the Express, where he has employed himself alternately in every department of the paper. He is not a musician; but his keen appreciation and long experience as listener and writer, make up in a great measure for the want of professional knowledge, and his judgment on musical matters, is generally just and genial. We miss him this winter from the Express, whose musical notices betray a malicious ignorance as awkwardly manifested as it is harmless. We do not know who is Mr. Otis's successor—nor can we say that we very greatly desire to make that accession to our list of friends.

James F. Otis (born Tristram Coffin Otis in Newburyport, Massachusetts on August 18, 1808) was the son of Elizabeth Coffin and Samuel Allyne Otis, and thus a nephew of Samuel's brother Harrison Gray Otis. James was an early admirer of Whittier, and an abolitionist. Extant letters to William Lloyd Garrison show the enthusiasm Otis had for the anti-slavery cause in the 1830's, as a young lawyer in Portland, Maine. In 1833 Otis published A sketch of the character and defence of the principles of William Lloyd Garrison. Five years later, his disavowal of abolitionism after a trip to Virginia earned Otis a bitter rebuke in the Herald of Freedom, reprinted in The Liberator (September 14, 1838). Circumstances and politics of his public withdrawal from the Abolition Society are criticized in the September 1835 Extra Globe.

As "Gemotice" James F. Otis contributed regularly in the latter 1840's to The Spirit of the Times, edited by his friend William T. Porter.

In 1853 Otis joined the New Orleans Picayune as associate editor. In March 13, 1864 a New York correspondent of the New Orleans Daily True Delta reported that Otis was back in New York City, "flourishing at the 'Express' office." He soon returned to New Orleans though, finally leaving in November 1866 in hopes of restoring his health. Otis died in Boston on the first day of February 1867. The Boston Journal obit of February 2, 1867 remembered him as "a gentleman of kindly feelings and most courteous bearing."

Boston Journal - February 2, 1867

Rev. Edward Taylor on board the steamer Mohegan, 1840

In our last we caught the New York Spectator in November 1839 proposing to name the newest steamboat on Long Island Sound, The Pequod. And we learned too, this same steamer would be christened instead, the Mohegan. The following summer, one likely original of Melville's Father Mapple was sighted on board this same Mohegan. Still on everybody's mind was the tragic destruction of the steamer Lexington on January 13, 1840.

Correspondence of the N. Y. Express.
BOSTON, July 2^nd

INTERESTING INCIDENT ON BOARD THE MOHEGAN.

Among a numerous company of passengers on board the steamer MOHEGAN, Capt. Vanderbilt, from New York to Providence, on the evening of the 1^st inst. was the Rev. Mr. Taylor, the Seamen’s friend and preacher in Boston.  Many of the passengers were much interested in having pointed out to them the spot where the ill-fated Lexington was burnt some few months since, when a whole hecatomb of victims were sacrificed to the destroying elements of fire and water.  Mr. Taylor was invited by some of the passengers to address them as the Mohegan passed over this never to be forgotten spot.  With the permission of the captain, the request was granted.  I listened in common with a great many others, with deep interest to the extemporaneous discourse made by the pious and eloquent preacher.  The evening, hour, the place, the reflections naturally arising from hearing from one whose home had been so long upon the deep,—the acquaintance of the preacher, with many who had made their graves beneath the “deep waters of the [dark] blue sea,”—all the associations of the place and the occasion, made the scene one of peculiar interest.— 

 

The discourse was brief, simple and affecting.  No attempt was made to excite the hearer, but an appropriate commentary was made upon the words of the Apostle Paul,— “For me to die is gain.”  The preacher spoke enthusiastically of his fondness for the sea,—a delight which had grown up with him from childhood, and which rather increased than diminished as he grew in years.  His language and figures and illustrations were at times beautifully eloquent and descriptive.  He spoke of the lamented FOLLEN with deep feeling and respect.  Though differing widely in opinion, he believed him to be a model of a man; always modest, affable, affectionate, pious, he was a man he loved; he was a brother in his religious attachments.  His body rested beneath the boat, among the sea-weeds of the ocean, but his spirit had ascended to God who gave it.  For him to die was gain, and so he hoped of many who received at an unseemly hour the summons of death.

“The sea their bodies, Heaven their spirits hold[s].”

The allusions to the sailors and to the ocean, to the voyage of life, to the mariner’s home, to the return to the objects of affection left behind after an absence of years—to the grandeur of the sea, the Maker of the Ocean, awakened a sensation which no man but a son of “Old Ocean,” could have called up.—  As the boat passed over these hallowed and beautiful waters, and all was still, save the voice of this man of God, who has done as much good in his day and generation as any uninspired man ever did, I could but think of the appropriate lines of Dimond.

“On a bed of green sea flowers thy limbs shall be laid,

         Around thy bones red coral shall grow,

Of thy fair yellow locks threads of amber be made,

       And every part suit to this mansion below.

No tomb shall ere plead to remembrance for thee,

       Or redeem power or fame from the merciless surge,

But the white foam of waves shall thy winding sheet be,

       And winds in the midnight of winter thy dirge.”

The winter’s night was the time of the sacrifice, and the poor victims, without a tomb-stone, but not without remembrance,

                     “lie where pearls lie deep.
They were the beloved of all,
But none o’er their lone grave may weep.”

Yours, &c. 

E.   

As reprinted from the New York Daily Express (July 4, 1840) in the Albany Evening Journal, Monday, July 6, 1840; and Schenectady Cabinet, July 14, 1840.

Update 7/08/2015. The signature of the Boston correspondent might possibly be the upper case sigma Σ, and not "E" as I first thought. (Well, looking again it does look like "E" in both the Albany and Schenectady versions.) One Boston correspondent known to have written over the pseudonym Sigma is Lucius Manlius Sargent. Sargent's activism in the temperance movement befits the writer's tone and approving treatment of Father Taylor in reporting this "Interesting Incident on Board the Mohegan."  Found at Fulton History, the article as it originally appeared in the New York Daily Express:

New York Daily Express (July 4, 1840)

Related post

• Call it The Pequod
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2012/07/call-it-pequod.html