Category: Edgar Lee Masters

 Edgar Lees Masters’ “Deacon Taylor,” “Sam Hookey,” and “Cooney Potter”

These three very short epitaphs from Edgar Lee Masters’ American Classic Spoon River Anthology feature diverse characters making bizarre confessions.

Introduction:  A Motley Trio

Edgar Lee Masters’ “Deacon Taylor,” “Sam Hookey,” and “Cooney Potter” from Masters’ American classic Spoon River Anthology portray characters of little depth, so they are presented here together.  These three very short epitaphs feature very diverse characters making bizarre confessions.

Each character features the complaining mind-set of most the after-death reporters; however, this trio gives few details about each of their stories.  They just want to chime in with a short quip about their lives., so it seems.

Deacon Taylor’s confession reveals his hypocrisy, being a churchman and a member of the “prohibition” party, yet dying of cirrhosis of the liver. 

Sam Hookey’s report may be one of the most bizarre as it remains unclear his purpose for revealing the odd appearance of “Robespierre” to him after Hookey’s death.

Cooney Potter’s description of his death is odd, but his purpose is clear.  He needs to show that he died while working, not from a frivolous enjoyment of tobacco.

Deacon Taylor

I belonged to the church,
And to the party of prohibition;
And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. 
In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,
For every noon for thirty years, I slipped behind the prescription partition
In Trainor’s drug store
And poured a generous drink
From the bottle marked
“Spiritus frumenti.”

Commentary on “Deacon Taylor

This speaker wants to get a dirty little secret off his chest.

First Movement:  Member of Church and Prohibition Party

Taylor says he was a church member as well as belonging to the “party of prohibition.”   And so when he died the villagers thought he “died of eating watermelon.”

Second Movement:  Died of Cirrhosis

But the Deacon confesses that he actually died of cirrhosis of the liver, because for thirty years he “slipped behind the prescription partition / In Trainor’s drug store” and gulped down a large portion of “Spiritus frumenti.”

Sam Hookey

I ran away from home with the circus,
Having fallen in love with Mademoiselle Estralada,
The lion tamer.
One time, having starved the lions
For more than a day,
I entered the cage and began to beat Brutus
And Leo and Gypsy.  
Whereupon Brutus sprang upon me,  
And killed me.  
On entering these regions
I met a shadow who cursed me,
And said it served me right….  
It was Robespierre!

Commentary on “Sam Hookey

Sam Hookey offers a bizarre admission about the events leading to his ultimate demise.

First Movement:  For the Love of a Lion Tamer

Sam reports that he left home to join the circus after he fell in love the lion tamer, Mademoiselle Estralada.

Second Movement:  Karmic Lions

In his bizarre confession, Sam reveals that he starved three lions, Brutus, Leo, and Gypsy, and then stepped into their cage and began beating them, whereupon Brutus “sprang upon me / And killed me.”

Third Movement:  Chickens Coming Home to Roost

Upon his death, Sam found himself confronted by “a shadow” that cursed him and told him that he got what he deserved.  He concludes by saying the “shadow” was Robespierre, the famous politician who is credited with the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution.

Cooney Potter

I inherited forty acres from my Father
And, by working my wife, my two sons and two daughters
From dawn to dusk, I acquired  
A thousand acres. But not content,
Wishing to own two thousand acres, I bustled through the years with axe and plow,
Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters.  
Squire Higbee wrongs me to say
That I died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.
Eating hot pie and gulping coffee
During the scorching hours of harvest time
Brought me here ere I had reached my sixtieth year.

Commentary on “Cooney Potter”

Cooney Potter simply wants to refute the contention made by Squire Higbee about Potter’s death.

First Movement:  Farm Expansion

Sam states that his father left him “forty acres.”  By hard work, including that of his wife and four children all laboring from “dawn to dusk,” Sam was able expand his farm from forty acres to “a thousand acres.”

Second Movement:  Striving for Two Thousand

Sam was not satisfied with his thousand acres, and therefore kept his family busy, “Toiling, denying myself, my wife, my sons, my daughters” striving to acquire a second thousand acres.  He does not make it clear that he succeeded in reaching the two-thousand-acre goal.

Third Movement:  Death before Sixty

Sam complains, “Squire Higbee wrongs me” when he claimed Sam “died from smoking Red Eagle cigars.”  Sam insists he died from “eating hot pie and gulping coffee / During the scorching hours of harvest time.”  Finally, he reveals that he died before he had attained the age of sixty.

Edgar Lee Masters’ “Lucius Atherton”

The “Lucius Atherton” epitaph reveals a truly depraved and delusional man who decries his aging body simply because it no longer attracts women.

Introduction and Text of “Lucius Atherton”

A disgusting poseur, “Lucius Atherton,” from Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, complains about the loss of his earlier handsomeness as well as the loss of his ability to draw to himself women of whom he could take advantage. 

Readers will remember that “Aner Clute” had named Atherton as the man who jilted her, leaving her to take up the life of a prostitute.  Aner had claimed the Lucius was a rich man and that they had been engaged.

Although Lucius’ epitaph offers no evidence that the two had been engaged or even that he was a rich man, it does confirm the fact the two star-crossed lovers had huge egos.

Aner and Lucius also like many other Spoon River reporters from the grave possess a penchant for making excuses regarding their own excesses and debauchery.

Lucius Atherton

When my moustache curled,  
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers  
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.
But when the gray hairs began to appear—
Lo! a new generation of girls  
Laughed at me, not fearing me,  
And I had no more exciting adventures
Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
Of other days and other men.  
And time went on until I lived at Mayer’s restaurant,  
Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan….
There is a mighty shade here who sings
Of one named Beatrice;  
And I see now that the force that made him great
Drove me to the dregs of life.

Commentary on “Lucius Atherton”

Formerly a dandy, Atherton begins his report as he reminisces about the man he had been earlier in his life.  He had a curling mustache and black hair, no doubt kept perfectly combed.

First Movement:   Regrets Aging

When my moustache curled,  
And my hair was black,
And I wore tight trousers  
And a diamond stud,
I was an excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.

The fatuousness of Lucious Atherton’s nature begins to appear early in his monologue.  His choices in behavior and dress suggest that he was likely little more than a male prostitute, who, however, instead of for money, compromised his integrity because of his vanity.

Atherton sported “tight trousers / And a diamond stud.”  He describes himself as an “excellent knave of hearts and took many a trick.”  He had the ability to attract any woman he might have fancied.

Second Movement:   Decrying Loss of Good Looks

But when the gray hairs began to appear—
Lo! a new generation of girls  
Laughed at me, not fearing me,  
And I had no more exciting adventures

The sole purpose of Atherton’s soliloquy is to decry his loss of good looks as the reason that a “new generation” of women were not attracted to him; in fact, these new “girls” would ridicule him openly.  

Atherton bemoans the fact that these new women showed no “fear” of him.  That he desired to have them fear him reveals the depraved nature of this despicable man.  He likely raped and beat the women that he had so easily attracted.

Atherton’s aging body lost for him the ability to engage in “exciting adventures.”  The many “tricks” he had taken started to dwindle as the years piled up on his physique, and he is deeply disturbed by that loss.

Third Movement:   No Long Worth Attention

Wherein I was all but shot for a heartless devil,
But only drabby affairs, warmed-over affairs
Of other days and other men.

While the process of aging was gripping savagely his physique, Atherton began to realize that he was no longer deemed to be worth the attention of this new generation of women.

These new women considered him a “heartless devil,” and he devolved into a ridiculous humiliation to his former self.  Instead of good-looking women, he could pick up only what he describes as “drabby affairs” and “warmed-over affairs.” 

With his decrepitude, Atherton had the ability to attract only women who had been with many “other men.”  He is filled with self-pity for his loss of his former handsome body with its magnetism to the female sex.

Fourth Movement:  Whining Self-Pity

And time went on until I lived at Mayer’s restaurant,  
Partaking of short-orders, a gray, untidy,
Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan….

Throughout Atherton’s caterwauling screed of whining self-pity, nowhere does he suggest that he offered any service to the community of humankind.  It remains unclear that he ever had a job.  He seems to hint that whatever means of support he formerly possessed he had also lost that. 

Atherton claims he finally ended up “liv[ing] at Mayer’s restaurant,” where he ate, “short-orders.”  He is likely exaggerating, not actually saying that he resides at the restaurant but just takes most or all of his meals there.

Likely the fact that Atherton leaves his listeners in the dark about how he met expenses and where he lived indicates a blurred mind, possibly being eaten up by syphilis.  

Atherton then gives a truly pathetic description of himself:  “a gray, untidy, / Toothless, discarded, rural Don Juan.”  No doubt a grave insult to the real “Don Juan.”

Fifth Movement:  Arrogant Popinjay

There is a mighty shade here who sings
Of one named Beatrice;  
And I see now that the force that made him great
Drove me to the dregs of life.

Finally, with an arrogance to rival that of the pathetic popinjay Barack Obama, who liked to brag that he wrote two books all by himself, Atherton compares himself to the great poet Dante Alighieri, composer of The Divine Comedy.    

Atherton would have us believe, “that the force that made [Dante] great / Drove me to the dregs of life.” Dante’s driving force was spiritual love, symbolically portrayed by the beautiful Beatrice.

Atherton’s driving force was his penchant only for physical lust, demonstrated by his emphasis on his good looks and the pain that losing his physical appearance has caused him as he could no longer attract women for his exciting adventures.  

While Lucius Atherton does belong to the same class of men that includes Bill Clinton, Atherton has nothing in common with Dante Alighieri.