Word: septimus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...issue of TIME, May 24, contains a review of Charles Eugene Claghorn's The Mocking Bird in which credit for writing the song, Listen to the Mocking Bird, is given to the late Septimus Winner. The review does go on to state that "Sep" got the idea for his most famous song from "Whistling Dick," a Negro beggar who used to strum his guitar and whistle like a bird...
...song that asks "Oh where! Oh where! is my little dog gone?" and What Is Home Without a Mother? Almost nobody knows the name of the author of any of them. It so happens that the same man wrote all three, and 112 more besides. His name was Septimus Winner, he was born no years ago last week (May 11) and some Philadelphia antiquarians took that occasion to issue a little monograph,* largely documented by Winner's diary, to bring one of the nation's notable old songsmiths back into the nation's memory...
James Madison was still living, New York State was about to abolish slavery, passenger railroads were about to be realized when Septimus Winner was born in Philadelphia in 1827. Joseph Winner, his father, made violins and Septimus studied music almost from the cradle. "Sep" got out of the Philadelphia High School at 20, began to give lessons on the banjo, guitar and violin, and married a watchman's daughter named Hannah Guyer. He played at balls and parades, was a member of the Philadelphia Brass Band. Hit by the hard times, he wrote in his diary: "Delightful...
...Septimus Winner was a plain man who, on the side, wrote blank verse for which he had no talent, worried discreetly over his drunken father. He was also responsible for 200 texts on how to play instruments, 2,000 piano and violin arrangements. His brother Joseph determined to write song hits too, resoundingly succeeded once with Little Brown Jug, Don't I Love Thee. As Septimus was more prolific, so was his end more picturesque. On a fine November day in 1902 he attended the dedication of a new building for his alma mater, the old High School, shook...
...than any other critic has done. Says TIME: "The lives of human beings are even less observable indications of the same pattern but serve to mark the wavelike motion of life's force." Doesn't this serve as the final and complete explanation of Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith...