{"id":8666,"date":"2016-06-08T17:45:56","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T17:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lichen.csd.sc.edu\/sce\/entries\/legare-james-mathewes\/"},"modified":"2022-08-09T18:37:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-09T18:37:02","slug":"legare-james-mathewes","status":"publish","type":"entry","link":"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/legare-james-mathewes\/","title":{"rendered":"Legar\u00e9, James Mathewes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poet, artist, inventor. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, Legar\u00e9 could trace his American ancestry on his father\u2019s side of the family through six generations. The son of John D. Legar\u00e9, founding editor of the farm journal Southern Agriculturalist, <\/em>and Mary Doughty Mathewes, Legar\u00e9 came from enterprising stock, and from an early age, he was expected to work hard and bring honor to the family name.<\/p>\n

In 1841, as part of a twenty-member freshman class, he entered the College of Charleston where he matriculated for one year before transferring to St. Mary\u2019s College in Baltimore, perhaps to be closer to his influential cousin Hugh Swinton Legar\u00e9, who was then serving as U.S. Attorney General. Whatever benefit the family anticipated might accrue to the young Legar\u00e9 from this connection came to naught when Hugh S. Legar\u00e9 died suddenly while on a trip to Boston with other members of President Tyler\u2019s cabinet in 1843.<\/p>\n

Despite the loss of his cousin\u2019s hoped-for patronage, Legar\u00e9 returned to Charleston, empowered by his undergraduate experience in Baltimore, to take up the duties of law clerk. He also began showcasing his creative talent by exhibiting his paintings in local exhibitions and submitting poems to local periodicals. It was also during this period that a series of lung hemorrhages gave early indication that he had contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. In quest of a healthier climate and greater financial opportunity, his parents and he moved to Aiken, which then had a reputation as a therapeutic resort, especially for those suffering from consumption.<\/p>\n

Once settled in a small cottage, which still stands at the bottom of Laurens Street, his father took up his duties as the local postmaster, and James Legar\u00e9 tried his hand at a number of activities that he hoped would add to the family\u2019s coffers and also enhance his reputation as a man of intellectual promise. He set up a painting school for the young ladies of the area; apparently not only his teaching skills but also his dark good looks soon attracted the attention of a number of female admirers, among them was to be numbered his future wife, Anne Andrews of Augusta, Georgia.<\/p>\n

Legar\u00e9 also focused considerable time and energy on mechanical invention, including the development of a new type of encaustic tile, an inexpensive glazier\u2019s putty, and a material he called \u201clignine\u201d or \u201cplastic cotton\u201d from which he fashioned shingles and furniture. Several of his furniture pieces ornamented with plastic cotton decorative elements, including a corner cupboard and a library screen, are in the permanent collection of the Charleston Museum.<\/p>\n

Legar\u00e9 also sought recognition for his poetry and fiction. In 1848, he published the slim volume of verse by which he is best known. Entitled Orta-Undis, <\/em>roughly translated as \u201cSprung from the Waves\u201d\u2013a probable reference to the birth of Venus\u2013the book, published by William Ticknor of Boston, attracted good reviews, including the endorsement of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who became a faithful correspondent. He also published seventeen stories in some of the most popular national periodicals of the day, including the Knickerbocker Magazine <\/em>and both Graham\u2019s <\/em>and Putnam\u2019s Monthly Magazines. <\/em>Often he was the only southern contributor.<\/p>\n

Despite his fragile health, Legar\u00e9 had a head full of ambitious schemes, most of which remained untried when he died of consumption in 1859 at the age of thirty-five. He is buried in the churchyard of St. Thaddeus Episcopal Church in Aiken; the grave is marked by a memorial stone financed by local high school students in 1942.<\/p>\n

Orta-Undis <\/em>clearly establishes Legar\u00e9 as a southern poet in the Romantic tradition. Therein are echoes of two versifiers that he especially admired and from whom he derived inspiration: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, particularly in their shared tendency to moralize, and Edgar Allan Poe, especially in their shared devotion to the transforming power of the imagination. Of the poems published during his lifetime, most modern critics give highest marks to those that describe his engagement with the southern landscape, especially the native flora of his home state, like \u201cHaw-Blossoms\u201d and \u201cTo Jasmines in December.\u201d Some critical praise has also been lavished on the longest poem in his personal canon,\u201cOrnithologoi\u201d or \u201cBird Voices,\u201d which celebrates bird song and laments the practice of shooting birds for sport.<\/p>\n

Legar\u00e9\u2019s verse certainly compares favorably to the compositions of other southern poets of his age, including Henry Timrod and Paul Hamilton Hayne. Had his life not been cut short by illness, he may have made a greater claim to literary celebrity. As it is, like the English poet Thomas Chatterton, whose early death and misunderstood genius made him a Romantic icon, Legar\u00e9 stands as an exemplar of largely unfulfilled promise.<\/p>\n

Davis, Curtis Carroll. That Ambitious Mr. Legar\u00e9: The Life of James M. Legar\u00e9 of South Carolina, Including a Collected Edition of His Verse<\/em>. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971.<\/p>\n

Mack, Tom. Hidden History of Aiken County. <\/em>Charleston: The History Press, 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poet, artist, inventor. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1823, Legar\u00e9 could trace his American ancestry on his father\u2019s side of the family through six generations. The son of John D. Legar\u00e9, founding editor of the farm journal Southern Agriculturalist, and Mary Doughty Mathewes, Legar\u00e9 came from enterprising stock, and from an early age, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","class_list":["post-8666","entry","type-entry","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ecms-a-z","ecms-art","ecms-charleston-county","ecms-encyclopedia","ecms-l","ecms-literature","ecms-lowcountry","ecms-the-antebellum-south-1816-1860"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLegar\u00e9, James Mathewes - South Carolina Encyclopedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scencyclopedia.org\/sce\/entries\/legare-james-mathewes\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Legar\u00e9, James Mathewes - South Carolina Encyclopedia\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Poet, artist, inventor. 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