 Miss Bates,
long-time professor at Wellesley College, couldn't have known that those
four stanzas, hastily scribbled into a notebook on a trip West in 1893,
would attain such fame. Atop Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, Colo., she
was electrified by the beauty that was her country, and In writing what
later became America the Beautiful, passed on that intense love for her
country to all Americans. Miss Bates, who was lecturing at the summer
session at Colorado College, joined an expedition to the summit of Pikes
Peak In a prairie wagon. She wrote, "It was then and there, as I was
looking out over the sea-like expanse..." She rewrote some sections,
and the new version was published In The Boston Evening Transcript on Nov.
19, 1904 Perhaps the most intense criticisms centered on the word "beautiful,"
which some called hackneyed. But Miss Bates refused to change that word,
for she claimed it best described America. Following the 1904 publication,
part of the third stanza was altered, thereafter, the poem stayed the same,
for Miss Bates retained the copyright, protecting it from misprints and
deliberate changes. The only payment Miss Bates ever received for her
efforts was a small check from The Congregationalist when America the Beautiful
was first published. In 1926, the National Federation of Music Clubs
held a contest to put the poem to music, but none of the entries was deemed
suitable. The poem has been sung to a variety of music, and Miss Bates never
admitted publicly which music she liked best. Today, America the Beautiful
is almost exclusively sung to Samuel A. Ward's Materna. Also in 1926,
a strong push was made to adopt the hymn as the national anthem. But the
older, more established Star-Spangled Banner instead won official status
when on March 3, 1931, President Herbert Hoover signed a bill proclaiming
It so. Even today, advocates of the hymn push for official anthem status. Familiar
as the words from America the Beautiful are, many do not recognize the name
of Miss Bates. Not so in Falmouth, where a street is named after her, a
plaque is erected, her birthplace Is restored, and where the Shining Sea
Bike Path honors a line from her most famous poem. Sculptor Lloyd Lillie
has memorialized her by creating a life-size bronze statue for the Falmouth
Main Library grounds. In her own circles, Miss Bates was a noted scholar,
poet and writer. She was a prolific author, publishing many volumes of poetry,
books on her travels to Europe and the Middle East, and stories, verses
and plays for children. She enjoyed writing about animals and for children,
but felt such writings were incongruous with her professorship, so she published
books on Shakespeare and pre Shakespearean English religious drama. Nevertheless,
critics of the day acclaimed her book, Sigurd: Our Golden Collie. Miss
Bates was often photographed with her collie Hamlet, successor to Sigurd,
and her parrot Polonius. A feather from Polonlus is on display at the Katharine
Lee Bates house on the Village Green. She never forsook her birthplace,
says Dudley Hallett*, president of the Falmouth Historical Society. ``Miss
Bates returned to Falmouth every year of her life, and corresponded regularly
with her childhood friend, Hattie Gifford." She is also buried here,
in Oak Grove Cemetery. For the first 12 years of her life, Miss
Bates lived in Falmouth. The first record of her writing is a small, red
notebook that became a diary of sorts. She was 9 when , she wrote her first
entries. Miss Bates was the fifth child born to William and Cornelia
Frances Lee Bates. The family had come to Falmouth in 1858. The Rev. Bates
served as pastor of the First Congregational Church on the Village Green. Born
on Aug. 12, 1859, Miss Bates was a month old when her father died from a
tumor in his spine. "Katie" was said to have eased the pain of
her mother's first years of widowhood. Life in Falmouth ended when
the family moved to GranitviIle, now known as Wellesley Hills. She attended
Wellesley High School, graduating in 1874. In 1878, She graduated from the
more advanced Newton High School. Miss Bates then entered Wellesley College,
graduating with a bachelor of arts degree in 1880 >From 1880 to
1925, Miss Bates taught, first at Dana Hall preparatory school for Wellesley
College, and then, beginning in 1886, as an instructor at Wellesley College,
where she advanced to full professor In charge of the English literature
department. She also studied at Oxford, England, and earned a master's
degree in arts from Wellesley College. Over the years, Miss Bates took four
year-long sabbaticals to travel abroad. In 1925, the bespectacled Miss
Bates retired, spending the remaining four years of her life at home on
Curve Street in Wellesley. She died March 28, 1929. Eleanor Conant
Yeager of Falmouth, who knew Miss Bates well, called her "childlike
but intellectual", Hallett says. "She had great rapport with her
students at Wellesley, because of her rare sense of humor. She was serious
when she needed to be, but realized the Importance of humor." Miss
Bates wrote many poems about her home town, including, The Falmouth Bell,
The Falmouth Church, and Home (For the Old Home Festival at Falmouth), When
Captain Tom Comes Home, and Ode to Falmouth. But it's America the Beautiful
that became an anthem for a nation. |