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This article was originally published in two parts in Manuscripts magazine, volumes LIV-number 4 2002 and LV number 1 winter 2003. The cover page of both issues are titled, "Twas the night before Christmas..." 

The Case of the Christmas Poem by Joe Nickell, Ph.D.

    On December 23, 1823, a newspaper in Troy, New York, published a lighthearted, verse narrative titled “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” The Troy Sentinel’s editor stated that he found in it “a spirit of cordial goodness” and “a playfulness of fancy” that he thought most appropriate for his “little patrons.”[1] It began with a fairy-tale style opening, “’Twas the night before Christmas . . . . ” In time it would become arguably the best known and most loved children’s poem in the English language.

It would also become the subject of a very adult controversy over its authorship. The Troy Sentinel editor, Orville L. Holley, admitted he did not know who had composed the piece,[2] and—although in time the author was identified as a well-known scholar—much later the descendants of another man began to assert it was their forebear who deserved credit. Thus began a mystery that culminated in 2000 with the claim of “literary sleuth” Don Foster that he knew whodunit.[3] Foster arrived on the scene, picked up a seemingly smoking gun, and promptly shot himself in the foot.

    As we shall see, the mystery can be solved, but doing so requires an unbiased look at all the evidence, a reliance on the best evidence, and a willingness to let the chips fall where they may. We begin by looking at the backgrounds of the two figures in the controversy.

The Usual Suspects

    One of two men—an initially reluctant claimant and a posthumous challenger—wrote the children’s classic popularly known as “The Night Before Christmas.” Here is a brief look at the life of each.

Clement C. Moore

    Son of an Episcopal Bishop, Clement Clarke Moore was born July 15, 1779, in New York City. He graduated from Columbia College in 1798 and prepared for the ministry. However, he instead became a professor of biblical study at the General Theological Seminary, of which he was both a founder and benefactor. Later he served as professor of Oriental and Greek literature. His two-volume Compendious Lexicon of the Hebrew Language (1809) established him as a pioneer lexicographer in America.

    Although his detractors portray him as a humorless curmudgeon (hoping to convince others he would never have written light-hearted verse), a biographical reference work characterized him as “a man of rare beauty and simplicity of character, kindly disposed and generous to a fault.”[4] His book of Poems (1844) was compiled at the request of his children and contained not only the St. Nicholas poem—the authorship of which he then publicly acknowledged—but also the comparable children’s verse, “The Pig and the Rooster.” These were included in part because he believed in the healthful effects of “a good honest hearty laugh.”[5]

Moore died July 10, 1863, just five days short of his eighty-fourth birthday. His wife (whom he married in 1813), Catharine Elizabeth Taylor, had preceded him in death; indeed he included a poem “by my late wife” in his little family-oriented volume.[6]

Henry Livingston Jr.

    Unlike Clement Moore, whose accomplishments led to his inclusion in such reference works as The National Cyclopædia of American Biography and The Dictionary of American Biography,[7] Henry Livingston Jr. is a relatively obscure figure. His life and works are now largely promoted by his descendents who are eager to prove his authorship of the famous poem.

However, Livingston’s life was fruitful in its own right. Born October 13, 1748, into a prominent colonial American family at Poughkeepsie, New York, he became a farmer, lumberman, surveyor, and occasional contributor of light verse and prose satires to local newspapers. In 1774 he married Sarah (“Sally”) Welles and the following year, the day after his first child was born, he became a soldier in the American Revolution. After his wife died in 1783, Major Livingston raised their four children; then—on the tenth anniversary of her death—remarried. With his second wife Jane Patterson he had eight more children.

On February 29, 1828, at the age of eighty and still in Poughkeepsie, Major Henry Livingston died.[8] In death he has become a figure in a controversy he probably never could have imagined.

The Historical Record

    As far as anyone can demonstrate, “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was first published in the Troy Sentinel on December 23, 1823. Henry Livingston’s descendants claim he wrote it in 1808[9] (or earlier, either in 1807 or “about 1804 or 1805,”[10] possibly “1803–1810,” or even as early as “between 1780 and 1800”[11]); however, there is no proof, and the disparity of dates does not inspire confidence. Livingston champion Don Foster, a Vassar College English professor, concedes that “The Major’s heirs could supply no manuscript copy of the poem, no document of any kind associating the name Livingston with ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’” and that “The external evidence for Henry Livingston’s authorship of the poem depended on the recollections and anecdotes of his children and grandchildren . . . . ”[12]

    Indeed, “one cornerstone” of the claim for Livingston’s authorship is his children’s recollection that he published the poem in one of the several newspapers in his hometown of Poughkeepsie, yet no such early text has been found. And it is not for want of looking. One local historian, hoping to support the claim of a native son, searched in vain for the alleged earlier publication. He was followed by a Livingston heir, William S. Thomas, who spent forty years (according to Foster) in a Grail-like quest for the reputed Livingston text. And he in turn was followed by his son, W. Stephen Thomas, who had no better success.[13]

    If there had been a circa-1808 publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” why did the poem not invite the kind of favorable response accorded the poem when it appeared in 1823? That text was reprinted in succeeding years in the Troy Sentinel and, in time, other publications—even the Poughkeepsie Journal in early 1828, six weeks prior to Livingston’s death.[14] Why did not the Major—or at least a member of his family—take the opportunity to set the record straight? Again, Foster must concede, “There is no indication that the Journal’s editor, Paraclete Power, received the poem from the Livingston family, nor any indication that Mr. Power or anyone else in Poughkeepsie knew the original to have been written by Henry Livingston.”[15]

    While acknowledging that “There is not extant a single written document which shows that Henry Livingston himself ever laid claim to authorship,”[16] Henry Litchfield West presented Livingston family claims in The Bookman in 1920. A great-granddaughter of Livingston said that her grandmother Catherine (Livingston’s eldest daughter) had told her about the origin of the poem. Supposedly the major read it one Christmas morning to his family and a female guest. The latter asked for a copy, the great-granddaughter claimed, and upon leaving “this young lady went directly to the home of Clement C. Moore, where she filled the position of governess to his children.”[17] Unfortunately the source of this tale, Catherine, died in 1808, at which time Clement Moore remained a bachelor. He would not have needed a governess until 1815, when his wife gave birth to their first child.

    Livingston’s descendants have maintained that there had been an album of his manuscript poems, including “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Alas, they report, it perished when the home of Livinstgon’s daughter Susan burned in Wisconsin “about 1847 or 1848.”[18] Yet they apparently never made copies of the poem for family members, and never published it in newspapers or otherwise publicly showed any interest in the poem until long after Moore’s death in 1863. Indeed their claim stems from Livingston’s daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Brewer. She supposedly read Moore’s poem half a century later (perhaps in a book in 1848 or in Harper’s Weekly in 1861) and—according to a still later source, writing in 1918—told a descendant: “Some one has made a mistake! Clement Moore did not write the ‘Night Before Christmas.’ Your grandfather, Henry Livingston wrote it.”[19] The “some one” who made the mistake could well have been Mrs. Brewer who apparently had nothing but her memory to compare Moore’s poem with, and could easily have confused it with some Livingston Christmas poem dimly recollected.

    In contrast to the lack of historical evidence for Livingston’s authorship is the poem’s provenance which clearly supports Moore as the true author. First of all, while Troy Sentinel editor Holly who first published the poem did not know who had written it, six years later (in 1829) he had new information: “by birth and residence,” he stated, the author belonged to New York City, and was “a gentleman of more merit as a scholar and writer than many of more noisy pretensions.”[20] Now this cannot describe the non-scholar Livingston who lived in Poughkeepsie, but the characterization does precisely fit Professor Clement C. Moore. Foster admits this, but seems to think it is of no consequence. In fact, it is a clear indication from the outset that the paper trail leads to Moore.

    Norman Tuttle, the former owner of the Troy Sentinel, recalled (in an 1844 letter to Moore, who was then putting together his book of poetry) how the poem had been obtained by his editor. “I understood from Mr. Holley that he received it from Mrs. Sackett, the wife of Mr. Daniel Sackett who was then a merchant in this city.”[21] She probably obtained it from a Miss Harriet Butler, daughter of a Troy church rector, who had visited the Moores in 1822 and, hearing the poem read, obtained a copy to share with her Sunday school class.[22] According to a writer who interviewed Moore when he was eighty-three, Miss Butler “had copied the poem from another copy furnished by one of Dr. Moore’s female relatives.”[23]

    Moore had not intended the poem to be published and was chagrined when it appeared.[24] He considered it one of his “mere trifles”[25]—in this instance one simply intended for the amusement of his children (six of his nine having been born by Christmas 1822). Christmas, says Moore’s biographer Samuel White Patterson, “was the great festival of the winter” at Moore’s home. Bundling himself up on Christmas eve, the doting family man had made a sleigh ride to a Greenwich Village market for the necessary turkey, and, writes Patterson, “on his way to and fro he turned some verses over and over in his mind for recital after dinner when the whole family would be assembled in his big living-room.”[26]

    Years later in his letter to Moore, Norman Tuttle told the professor that at the time of the poem’s “first publication” in 1823 he had not known “who the author was—but have since been informed that you were the author.” Tuttle noted that the Troy Sentinel had twice published “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and—it “being much admired and sought after by the younger class,” he said—he procured an engraved version which he published several times.[27] Once launched, the poem was republished elsewhere: in two almanacs in 1825, a Philadelphia magazine in 1826, and (as we have seen) again in the Troy Sentinel in 1829 by which time Orville Holley had obviously identified the author as Moore.[28]

    In time, as the poem’s popularity grew and the mystery of its creator deepened, Moore’s authorship went from being hinted at to being confirmed. According to one authority: Moore’s name was first attached to The Visit of Saint Nicholas [sic] in The New York Book of Poetry in 1837. This was edited by Charles Fenno Hoffman, editor of The New York Mirror. The inclusion of The Visit was the result of strong urging by mutual friends. This publication inspired Robert Walter Weir, a teacher of drawing and painting at the West Point Military Academy, to paint his picture of Santa Claus, copies of which are now owned by the New York Historical Society and by a private collector. Weir was a friend of Moore. The Troy Budget published The Visit at Christmas time in 1838 with a prefatory paragraph in which it is ascribed to Moore. In 1840, William Cullen Bryant, another friend of Moore and a highly competent poet, literary critic and editor, produced his Selections from the American Poets and included The Visit with the Clement C. Moore by-line. Up to 1844 there is no recorded claim by Moore to authorship of the poem, but all publishers thereafter regard him as the author.[29]

    In publicly admitting authorship in 1844, Moore prefaced his Poems, “My Dear Children: In compliance with your wishes, I here present you with a volume of verses, written by me at different periods of my life.” He decided to present a variety, including “even the trifling; such as relate solely to our own domestic circle, and those of which the subjects take a wider range.” He extols the benefits of “a good honest hearty laugh” and writes, almost certainly with “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in mind: “Another reason why the mere trifles in this volume have not been withheld is, that such things have been often found by me to afford greater pleasure than what was by myself esteemed of more worth.”[30]

    In a perversion of the evidence, Livingston promoter Don Foster suggests that Moore shrewdly waited until “the coast was clear,” that is, until “Henry Livingston, Mrs. Sackett, and Moore’s own wife were dead” in order to steal credit for the poem.[31] In fact, however, Moore did no such thing. There were still many people who could attest to his authorship including, if not his wife, then their children. Indeed, his daughter Mary Moore Ogden produced an artistically calligraphed manuscript of the poem in 1855, with floral borders, small pictorials of subjects from “A Visit,” and “a representation of the Moore homestead, where the poem had first been read, that has become famous in many reproductions.”[32] A scholar who defended Moore drew the obvious inferences from her devoted efforts: “The ‘Livingston claim,’” he wrote, “requires that Clement Clarke Moore had misled his child daughter in 1822, carried the lie along through thirty-three years of life, and now looked on with a lively consciousness of guilt as his daughter naively produced this lovely testimonial to his supposed literary skill.”[33]

    In short, the historical record not only identifies Clement Moore as the author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” but—far from indicting him as one who coveted undue credit for it—actually exonerates him of the charge. Besides, if Moore were stealing credit for a poem not his own, how would he know “the coast was clear”? How would he know the true author would not turn up, or at least that that person’s family members or others would not come forward? How could he know there were no pre-1823 printings?

Manuscript Evidence

    In addition to the historical evidence, there is, stated Dr. Niel Sonne, librarian of the General Theological Seminary, “the manuscript written by Clement Clarke Moore himself.”[34] Recall that the earliest proven publication of “A Visit”—in the Troy Sentinel in 1823—was from a copy of an original that, as we have seen, appears to trace back to Moore’s home; certainly it is consistent with his claimed time of composition (1822) but not that alleged for Livingston (some time between 1780 and 1810).

While the original manuscript is no longer available, Moore said he had written “A Visit” for his daughters (Margaret, then seven; Charity, six; and Mary, three), “and,” Sonne concludes, “it may very well have fallen prey to their youthful enthusiasms.”[35] Another possibility is that his original was used for the larger manuscript of his Poems and was thus sent to his New York publishers (Bartlett & Welford) and never reclaimed.

    Moore did later pen four autograph manuscript copies—one in 1853 (now in the Strong Museum), 1856 (in the Huntington Library), 1860 (privately owned, Kaller’s America Gallery, Inc.), and 1862 (in the New-York Historical Society). And there is the beautifully calligraphed copy produced by his daughter as a gift in 1855.

    Compared to the manuscript evidence in favor of Moore’s authorship, consider the lack of evidence for Livingston’s: There are no manuscripts or autographic copies extant; no copies made by his children or others; no printed versions bearing his name, which would have inferred a manuscript original; no connection whatsoever to the earliest (1823) publication—in fact nothing but belated claims, based on the half-century recollection of a daughter-in-law who supposedly recalled some poem in an album long before burned. Even Foster writes of the claim, “Word of this injustice passed from the Major’s children to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, none of whom, however, was able to prove that the attribution to Moore was indeed erroneous. It was more a matter of faith.”[36]

The Santa Context

    Whoever wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas” did so at some point in time and therefore in a certain cultural context. Evidence bearing on this can help us determine whether the poem was more likely written in the 1780–1810 period, and thus favoring Henry Livingston as the author, or circa 1822, and thus corroborating Clement Moore’s authorship.

    To appreciate this evidence, we must understand that a variety of St. Nicholas traditions began to coalesce in America in the nineteenth century in the melting pot of New York. In 1809 Washington Irving published his satiric History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, supposedly written by one Diedrich Knickerbocker, and published on St. Nicholas Day (December 6). It contained numerous allusions to the saint, and Christmas scholar Charles Jones concluded, “Without Irving there would be no Santa Claus.”[37] Certainly the “Knickerbocker” History promoted the gift-giving St. Nicholas, who brought presents on the eve of his feast day.

    Irving’s popular work inspired others. In the New York Spectator of December 15, 1810, appeared what Charles W. Jones has identified as “the first American Santa Claus poem.”[38] Beseeching “Oh good holy man! whom we Sancte Claus name,” the anonymous writer entreats, “Oh! come with your panniers and pockets well stow’d, / Our stockings shall help you to lighten your load . . . . ”[39] The pro-Livingston forces in the who-wrote-“A Visit” controversy would give him credit for the first Santa poem, despite the absence of a published text of “A Visit” before 1823. Besides, there is no credible evidence that Henry Livingston actually wrote any poem about St. Nicholas.

    Of crucial significance, however, is the fact that Clement Clarke Moore did write a poem—independent of “A Visit”—about Santa Claus. In Moore’s unmistakable neat penmanship, it is titled “From Saint Nicholas,” and may well be the first American poem written as a letter from Santa! It is addressed (on the reverse of the manuscript, which has been folded like a letter) “For Charity Elizabeth Moore.”[40] This was Moore’s daughter Charity who was six at the time her father is credited with writing “A Visit.” In “From Saint Nicholas” she is referred to as a very young child, a “little Sis” with a “nursy,” who is just “beginning so nicely to spell.” Therefore she may have been younger than six, and if so the verse actually antedates “A Visit.” In any case, it is even written in the same metrical form.

Internal Evidence

    Foster admits the external evidence is in favor of Clement Moore. He states: “Moore, at least, had tradition on his side. The documentary evidence for a Livingston attribution was at best unreliable, at worst fraudulent; and in the view of many capable scholars laughable.” He concluded, “If a case could yet be made for Major Henry Livingston it would have to be made on the internal evidence . . . . ”[41] Unfortunately that evidence reveals a scholar behind its creation and certain conventions that did not originate until as late as 1821; this is fully consistent with Moore’s composition after that (in 1822) but not with the claim that Livingston wrote the poem long before (between 1780 and 1810).

    The borrowings may include the structure of the poem which some have attributed to seventeenth-century clergyman Michael Wigglesworth’s “The Day of Doom.”[42] And Don Foster cites the tradition of eighteenth-century verse satires, written in anapests[43] (metrical feet of three syllables with the accent on the last: “’Twas the NIGHT / be‑fore CHRIST‑ / mas when ALL / through the HOUSE . . . ”). In particular, William King’s “The Toast: An Heroick Poem” (1747) was almost certainly familiar to the author of “A Visit”—not merely for its common four-foot anapestic lines and quatrains rhyming aabb, but more significantly its words and phrases (e.g., “coursers” that “prance”) and especially its image of a soaring team-drawn stage.

    Such sources, however, long predate both Livingston and Moore, as does the poem’s allusion to Shakespeare. Scholars have noted that the second line of “A Visit”—“Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse”—echoes one of the opening lines of Hamlet. (A guard being relieved of his post and sent off to bed is asked about the quietness of his watch: He replies, “Not a mouse stirring.”)[44] Although any of these influences might have been adopted by either Livingston or Moore, the collective weight of them seems to favor the theologian and scholar.

    In any event, much more telling evidence comes from specific conventions in “A Visit”—two of which provide striking confirmation that the poem was written when Moore said it was. One convention is clearly taken from Irving’s “Knickerbocker” History. It is found near the end of the poem when the jolly old elf makes a farewell gesture by “laying a finger aside of his nose”—a nearly verbatim reproduction of Irving’s “laying his finger beside his nose.”[45] However, this Santa motif is not in Irving’s original “Knickerbocker” History (1809) but rather in a later revised edition of 1819.[46] So Moore could easily have used the source in 1822 as he stated, but not Livingston, who supposedly composed the poem in the 1780–1810 period.

    Another telling convention involved St. Nicholas’ mode of transportation. In that case the poem does not follow tradition (like Irving) by providing Santa with a horse-drawn wagon. Instead, the author of “A Visit” adopted a very new motif: reindeer. That element first appeared in a small volume published by New York bookseller William Gilley in 1821. Titled The Children’s Friend: A New-Year’s Present to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve, it featured a single poem that began, “Old Santeclaus with much delight / His reindeer drives this frosty night . . . . ” One of eight color illustrations depicted Santa atop a roof in a sleigh drawn by a single bounding reindeer.[47]

    The author of “A Visit” obviously turned the lone reindeer into eight, and thus was composing the poem sometime between 1821 (when Gilley’s book appeared) and 1823 (when “A Visit” made its first known appearance). Again, Clement Moore stated he wrote the poem in 1822. Moore was likely familiar with the “Old Santeclaus” poem: He not only lived in New York, but he was a frequent customer, friend, and neighbor of Gilley.[48] On the other hand there is no indication that Henry Livingston of Poughkeepsie ever saw the little book, and in any case he supposedly wrote “A Visit” many years before this first known instance of Santa having a reindeer-drawn sleigh.

    Don Foster gets the proverbial cart before the horse—or the sleigh before the reindeer—by suggesting that the “Old Santeclaus” poem followed “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” He has another revelation: “Giving credit where credit is due,” Foster opines, “I think Moore may be credited with having written one of America’s first Santa Claus poems—not “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” but “Old Santeclaus.”[49] But to believe this scenario we must believe either that the respective poets each separately invented the reindeer motif; or that they tapped a common, unknown source; or that “Moore” (Foster’s supposed “Old Santeclaus” poet) somehow saw an earlier, pre-1821 copy of “A Visit” which no one else has ever been able to find.

    Professor Foster seems unaware of the principle of “Occam’s razor” (after the fourteenth-century philosopher William of Occam). Also known as “the maxim of parsimony,” it holds that the simplest tenable explanation—that is, the one involving the fewest assumptions—is most likely to be correct and thus to be preferred. In the matter at hand, Occam’s razor favors the argument that “Old Santeclaus” published in 1821 provided the first reindeer for Santa’s sleigh and that “A Visit” borrowed that element, thus having been composed subsequently, just as the publishing record indicates.

Style

    As we have seen, Livingston’s supporters are bereft of objective proof that he wrote “A Visit.” As one historian told a Livingston descendant, the circumstantial evidence she had provided “seems as conclusive as that which has taken innocent men to the gallows . . . . ”[50] So they have turned to Don Foster who claims to overturn the evidence for Moore largely by comparing his and Livingston’s writing style with that of “A Visit.”

    In attempting this, however, Foster violates the precept of “best evidence.” The broad principle is that evidence should be “the best which can be had,” and indeed the great jurist William Blackstone required “the best evidence the nature of the case will admit of.” Today the legal application of the rule is limited but it still has appeal “as a moral argument.” The noted American legal expert James Bradley Thayer cautioned, “[T]he fact that a man does not produce the best evidence in his power must always afford strong ground of suspicion.”[51]

    Now, stylistic evidence can be useful in many cases of literary attribution, but it fails to represent the best evidence in this instance in which there are strong historical indications of Moore’s authorship. As well, the analysis of style is problematic for many reasons, especially when applied to poetry. There, word choice and other factors may be affected by the strictures of cadence, the demand for rhyme, the influence of other works, the sheer temptation of whim and fancy, etc. Therefore in considering style, before looking at such subtle variables as vocabulary and phrasing we should first consider more substantive factors.

    For example, the form of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” is a ballad (a rhythmical story poem). Its opening line sets the scene: “’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house . . . . ” Similarly, Clement C. Moore’s “The Pig and the Rooster”—also a ballad—begins, “On a warm sunny day in the midst of July . . . . ”[52] However, the Henry Livingston poem that his champions emphasize (the only one that Don Foster quotes in full), “Mistress Van Kleeck’s Tenant’s Letter,” is, as its title indicates, a verse epistle (i.e., one in letter form). Its opening line is a greeting to the addressee. Foster speaks of “this and similar epistles written over a fifty-year spread” by Henry Livingston, and he quotes another “verse epistle” of Livingston’s that begins, “To my dear brother Beekman I sit down to write . . . . ”[53] But he does not cite a Livingston ballad that is comparable to “A Visit.”

    In addition, like “A Visit,” Moore’s “The Pig and the Rooster” is a children’s ballad which has magical elements. While its subject matter precludes an elf with flying reindeer, it is nevertheless a fable (in this case a narrative with talking animals). In contrast, Livingston’s epistle, “Mistress Van Kleeck’s Tenant’s Letter,” is an off-color work—an earthy versification about fornicating pigs—intended for an adult audience. To be sure, Livingston did write for children, but—like a poem addressed “To my niece, Sally Livingston, on the death of a little serenading wren she admired”—the works were often verse epistles or short stories. If the Livingstonites have a magical children’s ballad that was penned by Major Henry and that they feel is similar to “A Visit,” they should exhibit it for comparison.

    Turning now to the subtleties of vocabulary and phrasing, we must realize the dangers of subjectivity and bias. (Like Livingston, Foster is a resident of Poughkeepsie and had been enlisted by a Livingston descendant.) It is easy to fall into the trap of starting with the desired answer and working backward to the evidence, picking and choosing that which best fits. Style can even be affected by one’s choice of text. For example, Don Foster, in focusing quite understandably on the first known publication of “A Visit” (the one in the 1823 Troy Sentinel) concludes from a single phrase that he hears therein the voice of a Dutchman—Livingston having been largely of Dutch ancestry.

    The phrase, comprising the names of two of St. Nick’s reindeer, is represented in the 1823 text as “Dunder and Blixem,” the Dutch form of the old exclamation, “Thunder and Lightning!”[54] But Blixem fails to fully rhyme with the preceding Vixen and would be the only example of such “off-rhyme” in the entire poem. Most likely, therefore, a copyist or editor had simply “corrected” the text to the common Dutch form. In his later Poems, and in all of his manuscript copies, Clement C. Moore apparently reinstated the original Germanic form, Donder and Blitzen, at the same time restoring the rhyme as well.

Foster makes much of other vocabulary and phrasing choices in the famous poem including the word all being used both as a pronoun (“dash away all!”) and as an adverb (“all snug”). He finds the usage “about evenly divided” in both “A Visit” and in Livingston’s writings but finds the adverbial use scant in Moore’s (only about one in ten).[55] Yet there are many instances of the adverbial all in Moore (e.g. “all ripe,” “in ice all clad,” etc.), especially in Moore’s unpublished papers, an obvious source which Foster apparently has not

consulted. Also, given the short (56-line) text of “A Visit,” such a statistic means little if anything.

    Indeed, such statistics are especially doubtful when applied to verse. Foster’s own research demonstrated that when Moore turned from prose to poetry his adverbial use of all increased tenfold![56] And statistical comparisons can be a double-edged sword. For example, 12 of the 56 lines of “A Visit” (21.4%) begin with “And.” A similar occurrence (17 of 86 lines, or 19.8%) is found in Moore’s “The Pig and the Rooster,” yet Livingston’s “Mistress Van Kleeck’s Tenant’s Letter” has little more than half the amount (3 of 26 lines, or 11.5%). Again, we could count similes (comparisons such as “his nose like a cherry”), finding 12 in “A Visit” (which, expressed as a percent of line length, is 21.4%). In comparison, Moore’s “The Pig and the Rooster” has only about 5% (4 per 86 lines) but Livingston’s “Mistress Van Kleeck’s Tenant’s Letter” has none—0%. Obviously, larger samples from each poet might yield different results, but just how do we select our samples? Foster cites Livingston’s prose when it suits him[57]; when he cites Moore’s prose he does not specify what that consists of.[58] Obviously there would be stylistic differences between a children’s poem and a Hebrew lexicon or even a letter.

    Another of Foster’s observations concerns the non-standard use of exclamation points that interrupt the meter of “A Visit” as found in the 1823 printing: “Now! Dasher, now! Dancer . . . . ” Foster cites Livingston’s “same odd practice of peppering his verse with offbeat exclamation marks,”[59] but fails to mention that Clement C. Moore does likewise (for example, “That once, ah! let not truth offend” and “Home! home! whose very name has magic power”). There is even an instance in Moore’s “From Saint Nicholas.” Besides, in 1829 the same newspaper changed the punctuation to the standard form (“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer!” etc.).

    The accompanying chart (Table 1) demonstrates a similarity between words and phrases in “A Visit” and other writings of Moore. For example the title, “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” is echoed by Moore’s “From Saint Nicholas” (supposedly left on a visit by the elf). Similarly, such relatively distinctive words as “brains” (for mind), “flash,” the adjective “wondering,” “coursers” (poetic for steed), and many others, are common to Moore’s vocabulary. So are many phrases: “mount to the sky,” for example, being represented in Moore’s poems as “mounts . . . to the skies.”[60] The similarities are such, in my opinion, as not only to make the case that Moore could have written the famous poem but also that he did.

Humbuggery

    When Foster and the other Livingstonites fail to find convincing evidence in favor of their candidate, they resort to the unfortunate tactic of an ad hominem attack. Foster suggests Moore was “a curmudgeon” who would not have written such a poem. “From Clement Moore’s point of view,” he states, “Christmas was not time to be jolly, but a season for worship, for repentance from sin.”[61] In fact, Moore’s unpublished “From Saint Nicholas” gives the lie to that view. Moore wrote many lighthearted verses for his children, whom he

obviously adored, including the already mentioned “The Pig and the Rooster.” In “Lines Written After a Snow-Storm,” he invites, “Come children dear, and look around; / Behold how soft and light / the silent snow has clad the ground / In robes of purest white.” The snows “That dance upon the air” are described to “my darlings” as a “fairy scene” that is nevertheless a “fleeting vision.”[62] He continued the tradition with his grandchildren, even writing a poem for his grandson Clement to send to a little girl on Valentine’s Day, and one to his granddaughter Eliza in England, confessing: “The house is all too dull and quiet; / I long to hear you romp and riot.”[63]

    Indeed, in the preface to his Poems he says he has provided “the melancholy and the lively, the serious, the sportive, and even the trifling” so as to represent his true character. He tells his now-grown children (referring to himself in third person):

For you are all aware that he is far from following the school of Chesterfield with regard to harmless mirth and merriment; and that in spite of all the cares and sorrows of this life, he thinks we are so constituted that a good honest laugh, which conceals no malice, and is excited by nothing corrupt, however ungenteel it may be, is healthful both to body and mind.[64]

    Foster, continuing his attack on Moore, misquoting an early, supposedly derogatory remark about him by philanthropist John Pintard, but concedes that “in the years to come Pintard learned to think of Clement Moore as a friend.”[65] Indeed he did: In a private letter to his daughter in 1830, Pintard wrote, “ . . . I attended the funeral of Mrs. Clement C Moore, cut off in the bloom of life not much beyond 30 years, leaving several children with a most aff[ectionate] husband to bemoan her death.” He says of Moore that “We have been always on the most friendly terms” and wishes, “God bless and prosper him.”[66]

To the unfair characterization of Moore as “Professor Scrooge” and an alleged versenapper, Foster adds a final indignity: He claims to have caught the devout theologian, the dedicated teacher, the devoted benefactor, and the doting father and grandfather in a baldface deception: “he lays claim,” asserts Foster, “to an entire book that was the work of another man.”[67] It is, of all things, a literarily insignificant work, A Complete Treatise on Merinos and Other Sheep. Nevertheless, when Moore donated the copy to the New-York Historical Society, beneath the notice on the title page, “Translated from the French,” he added—“in his own hand,” states Foster—“by Clement C. Moore.” Yet Foster discovers in an appendix the name of the true translator and pounces on what he believes is the smoking gun of Moore’s thievery.

    Alas, however, Foster is too quick to pounce, providing further evidence that he began with an agenda against Moore. In fact, the handwriting is definitely not Clement C. Moore’s. Instead, it resembles that of the library’s cataloguer, Reverend Timothy Alden, who was obviously noting, as he did with many other such donations, that the gift was “by Clement C. Moore.” In short, it is proof, not of Moore’s thievery, but once again of his generosity.

    It is time now for the pro-Livingston crowd to stop the slanders and concede what all of the evidence demonstrates—the evidence from the historical record, the manuscripts, the cultural history, and the testimony of contemporary witnesses, even the stylistic evidence—that Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” Quite the opposite of seeking false credit, he modestly refused acclaim for what he regarded as trivial. His friends and later his grown children prevailed on him to consider that he had actually wrought better than he knew.

Acknowledgments

    I am grateful to Myron Kaller, Kaller’s America Gallery, Inc. (New York, N.Y.), for commissioning my research into this fascinating and important case. I appreciate the extensive input of Seth Kaller and researchers under his direction including Marilee Scott. I am also grateful to Tim Binga, director of the Center for Inquiry Libraries, Amherst, N.Y., for additional asistance, and Ranjit Sandhu for manuscript assistance.

Table 1. Phraseology and Imagery in “A Visit” Compared with Writings of Clement Moore.