James Mathewes Legare
Sometimes referred to as Aiken’s nineteenth-century man of genius, James Mathewes Legare packed a great deal of activity into his relatively short adult life. Born in Charleston in 1823, Legare moved to Aiken with his parents and two siblings in 1846 after a diagnosis of consumption; the town was during that period touted as a health resort especially for those suffering from respiratory problems.
For the next thirteen years—he died in 1859 at the age of thirty-five—Legare tried to carve out a reputation as an arts educator, an inventor, and, most importantly, a poet. From his cottage on Laurens Street, Legare taught painting classes; among his students was his future wife Anne Andrews of Augusta, Georgia. In the same makeshift home studio and laboratory, he conducted scientific experiments, including his invention of a substance he called lignine or plastic cotton. By combining cotton fiber with certain chemical agents, Legare created a material that could be molded to make shingles, picture frames, statues, and furniture. In fact, several pieces of his plastic cotton furniture are part of the permanent collection of the Charleston Museum.
By far his most important achievement, however, was his single volume of poetry published in 1848 and entitled Orta-Undis or "Sprung from Waves." An ostensible reference to the birth of the Roman goddess Venus—Legare had a classical education, earning an honorary certificate from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore in 1843—the book’s title effectively signals the subject areas most prominently covered in its pages: love and the beauty of nature.
Roughly during the same period (1845-47) that Henry David Thoreau was conducting his experiment in human ecology at Walden Pond, Legare was confronting the flora and fauna of the South Carolina woods just outside his cottage door. Of his nature poems, “To a Lily,” “Haw-Blossoms,” and “Ornithologoi” (“Bird Voices”) are considered his most successful because they have been most consistently anthologized.
The book, published by William Ticknor of Boston, did not sell well; but it did attract a number of important admirers. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described Legare’s poetry as “full of tenderness and the dew of youth.” William Gilmore Simms called him a “true poet.” Certainly it can be said that Legare’s role as a Romantic poet in the American South offered an effective regional counterbalance to the work of the Northern writers who dominated the period.
-- Tom Mack
For the next thirteen years—he died in 1859 at the age of thirty-five—Legare tried to carve out a reputation as an arts educator, an inventor, and, most importantly, a poet. From his cottage on Laurens Street, Legare taught painting classes; among his students was his future wife Anne Andrews of Augusta, Georgia. In the same makeshift home studio and laboratory, he conducted scientific experiments, including his invention of a substance he called lignine or plastic cotton. By combining cotton fiber with certain chemical agents, Legare created a material that could be molded to make shingles, picture frames, statues, and furniture. In fact, several pieces of his plastic cotton furniture are part of the permanent collection of the Charleston Museum.
By far his most important achievement, however, was his single volume of poetry published in 1848 and entitled Orta-Undis or "Sprung from Waves." An ostensible reference to the birth of the Roman goddess Venus—Legare had a classical education, earning an honorary certificate from St. Mary’s College in Baltimore in 1843—the book’s title effectively signals the subject areas most prominently covered in its pages: love and the beauty of nature.
Roughly during the same period (1845-47) that Henry David Thoreau was conducting his experiment in human ecology at Walden Pond, Legare was confronting the flora and fauna of the South Carolina woods just outside his cottage door. Of his nature poems, “To a Lily,” “Haw-Blossoms,” and “Ornithologoi” (“Bird Voices”) are considered his most successful because they have been most consistently anthologized.
The book, published by William Ticknor of Boston, did not sell well; but it did attract a number of important admirers. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow described Legare’s poetry as “full of tenderness and the dew of youth.” William Gilmore Simms called him a “true poet.” Certainly it can be said that Legare’s role as a Romantic poet in the American South offered an effective regional counterbalance to the work of the Northern writers who dominated the period.
-- Tom Mack
