Individuals >> House, Edward Howard (1836-1901)

Playwright, Journalist, Essayist, Novelist, Theatrical Manager.

A friend of Henry Clapp and a journalist for the New York Tribune and the Saturday Press, Edward House, also known as "Ned," is characterized by Julius Browne as a dilettante bachelor who was rumored to be the agent for Bocicault’s plays in the United States. A musician who studied orchestral composition, House moved to New York City in 1854 to take a position as the music and dramatic critic for the Tribune. He traveled to Paris around 1860 and while there he met Georges Clemenceau. When Clemenceau later went to visit House at the Tribune, he was told initially that no such person worked there. The clerk could not understand the Frenchman’s accent, and he was forced to write down House’s name in order to be understood (Baldensperger 18).

During the Civil War, House became the Tribune’s war correspondent. After the war, he turned to theatrical management for about three years. In 1868 he returned to the staff of the Tribune and he joined the New York Times staff two years later.

While in New York, House visited Pfaff’s and became acquainted with Richard Hildreth, author of Japan As It Was and Is (1885). Hildreth inspired House to seek employment as an English professor at a university in Tokyo where he studied Japanese theater. A. L. Rawson states that House did "brilliant work as a war writer, and later went to Japan as a professor in a college or university, where he wrote a very spicy article on the missionaries there" (103). Rawson may be referencing House’s novel Yone Santo, a Child of Japan which satirizes missionaries. It was serialized in the Atlantic Monthly in 1888 prior to its publication as a book. In addition to teaching, House also accompanied his friend Shigenobu Okuma, an imperial councilor, on a punitive expedition to Formosa. House wrote about this venture in dispatches to the Herald (Wildes).

Upon his return to America in 1880, House discovered that only a “few besides his old-time comrades remembered him" (Current Literature 479). House relocated to London in 1881 living with Charles Reade, assisting actor Edwin Booth (one of William Winter’s favorite thespians) with his British tour, and aiding in the management of Saint James’s Theater in London.

After suffering a stroke, House returned to Japan and remained there for the rest of his life. He received honors from the Japanese government and worked to popularize Western music. He facilitated the formation of what became the Imperial Conservatory of Music.

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References & Biographical Resources

Baldensperger, Fernand. "Introduction." American Reconstruction: 1865-1870. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969. 13-31. [more about this work]

Clemenceau met House in Paris around 1860. When he went to visit House at the Tribune he was initially told that no such person worked there; a clerk could not understand the Frenchman's accent and he was forced to write down the name in order to be understood (18). [pages: 18]

Browne, Junius Henri. The Great Metropolis; A Mirror of New York. Hartford: American Publishing, 1869. 700 p. [more about this work]

House is mentioned as a being "for years connected to the Tribune," a friend of Clapp, and a contributor to the Saturday Press (154).

At the time of Browne's writing "He has quitted journalism, at least for the time, and made a good deal of money, it is said, by sharing the authorship of some, and being the agent in this country of Boucicault's plays" (154).

By Browne's description: "House is a good fellow, handsome, well-bred, winning in manners; is still a bachelor; does little work and gets a good deal for it; and enjoys himself as a man of the World ought" (154). [pages: 154]

C. B. S. [Seymour, Charles Bailey]. "Dramatic Feuilleton." New York Saturday Press. 23 Dec. 1865: 328-329. [more about this work]

C.B.S. notes that De Walden and House have prepared a special piece for De Walden's upcoming benefit (329). [pages: 329]

Eytinge, Rose. The Memories of Rose Eytinge: Being Recollections & Observations of Men, Women, and Events, during Half a Century. New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1905. [more about this work]

Refers to House as part of the Bohemian "group of men and women, all of whom had distinguished themselves in various avenues, — in literature, art, music, drama, war, philanthropy" who met at Ada Clare's house on West 42nd Street in New York on Sunday evenings (21-22).

Eytinge includes an anecdote about House's visit to the Boston Theatre during a production of "The Lady of the Lake" when he is drafted into writing lines to add to the play in order to move Roderick's body offstage. At first House refuses "pleading utter lack of preparation, and unfavourable conditions for wooing the Muse" (51). Yet he is "besought and bullied and urged, and finally was hustled into a little room on the stage, half dressing-room, half office, where, after having been provided with paper and pencil, the door was locked upon him . . . his release depended upon his production of the required lines" (51-2). Eytinge reports that "at last he complied with the rigorous demands of his captors" and he produced the following lines for the play: "Now hard by Coilantogle Ford / The chieftain's corse lies on the sward;/ It is not meet so great a foe / Untended by his clan should go. / Summon his henchmen tried and true, / To bear away brave Roderick Dhu" (52). [pages: 22,51-52]

Figaro [Clapp, Henry Jr.]. "Dramatic Feuilleton." The New York Saturday Press. 12 Aug. 1865: 25. [more about this work]

Figaro credits House with writing the final verse of "The Wearing of the Green" from Arrah-na-Pogue. Figaro credits Boucicault for the first two verses (25). [pages: 25]

"General gossip of authors and writers." Current Literature. 1888: 476-480. [more about this work]

Mentioned as one of the Bohemians at Pfaff's "gossiped" about by Rufus B. Wilson in a "reminiscent letter to the Galveston News." The blurb gives "updates" on the whereabouts of many of the former Bohemians.

"Ned House spent fifteen or twenty years as American Consul at some port in Japan. When he came back, not long ago, he found that few besides his old-time comrades remembered him." [pages: 479]

Greenslet, Ferris. The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1908. 303 p. [more about this work]

Is mentioned as reaching Washington ahead of Aldrich when Aldrich was separated from their traveling party in the woods in Virginia. The index also mentions that House was the war correspondent for the Tribune (page 56 cannot be viewed on Google books). [pages: 56,57]

"In and about the City: Death of Charles I. Pfaff. Something about the Proprietor of the Once Famous "Bohemia."." New York Times. 26 Apr. 1890: 2. [more about this work]

The obituary identifies him as one of the "Knights of the Round Table" of the "lions of Bohemia." [pages: 2]

John. "Dramatic Feuilleton." New York Saturday Press. 25 Nov. 1865: 264-265. [more about this work]

[pages: 265]

"Literary News." The Literary World. 1 May 1873: 189-192. [more about this work]

The article mentions that he is in Japan, working as a Professor of English Literature. [pages: 192]

Miller, Tice L. Bohemians and Critics: American Theatre Criticism in the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1981. [more about this work]

A regular at Pfaff's. House worked as the dramatic editor and critic for the New York Tribune (82).

House was present during a confrontation between Edwin Forrest and dramatic critic Andrew C. Wheeler (149). [pages: 16, 82, 149]

"Notes of the Week." New-York Saturday Press. 19 May 1866: 4. [more about this work]

The column reports that E.H. House will be sailing for Liverpool in June 2 on the same ship as Artemus Ward (4). [pages: 4]

"Obituary: Henry Clapp." The New-York Times. 11 Apr. 1875: 7. [more about this work]

He is described as a regular at Pfaff's. At the time of Clapp's death, House is said to be in Japan, "an officer in the Educational Department of that Government." [pages: 7]

Rawson, A. L. "A Bygone Bohemia." Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly. 1896. 96-107. [more about this work]

[pages: 103, 107]

Sentilles, Renee M. Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [more about this work]

A regular in the bohemian circle at Pfaff's. [pages: 142]

Starr, Louis Morris. Bohemian Brigade; Civil War Newsmen in Action. New York: Knopf, 1954. 367 p. [more about this work]

Starr writes that in the days prior to the Civil War, like many others in New York, the "Pfaffians were exposed increasingly to the clamour of a world beyond their ken. Something like a revolution was afoot in the realm of journalism, a revolution that would lift these light-hearted pranksters from their subterranean retreat ad whirl them in its vortex. Soon O'Brien, Aldrich, Thomson, Williams, and Stedman, together with others in Clapp's happy coterie--Charles G. Halpine (who stammered to fame at Pfaff's, speaking inadvertantly of 'H-H-Harriet Beseecher Bestowe'), William Conant Church, William Swinton, E.H. House, Charles Henry Webb, a couple of artists, Frank H. Bellew and Thomas Nast: in all more than half of the identifiable clientele at the Cave--would take the field along with hundreds of other youths of like mind to participate in the greatest undertaking in the history of journalism" (9).

House, of the Tribune is mentioned as a member of a Decembember dinner party led by Sam Wilkeson (also of the Tribune) who had a valuable reporting connection to the War Department through Cameron, who was present at the dinner. John W. Forney of the Philadelphia Press was also present (73).

General McDowell suggested that the reporters covering the war "had best stay out of the way by keeping together," prompting the correspondents to travel in a large group. Starr describes the group that rode through Virginia as "such a calvalcade as had never before been seen." House, "a dramatic critic and fixture af Pfaff's," with Adam S. Hall and William A. Croffut "ready to give their all for the Tribune (43). During a "preliminary skirmish" House was assited by Hill Stedman wrote to his wife that House had "one ball whiz by his ear, got frightened, falloped 22 miles to Washington, and there reported 500 killed, and that the press had fled the field." House was also with Stedman and Villard when Villard decided to climb a tree for some cherries "when a terrific roar burst out from the woods seemingly within a few steps of us" and he fell from the tree with a mouthful of cherries. Villard later wrote, "I can truly say the music of the bullet, ball and grapeshot never had much terror for me thereafter" (44).

Starr writes that during Bull Run, there is "ample ground for the observation that the men who write 'history on the run,' as some dramatists styled reporters, sometimes make it." Starr writes that House was "roused at one in the morning to join Tyler's advance in the moonlight" and he, Stedman, and others witnessed the "opening cannonade at sunrise" (45). Of the events of the late afternoon, Starr writes: "What happened next military historians still debate, but there is no question what happened to the newspapermen. They were engulfed in a wild panic among teamsters, spectators, and horses naer th Stone Bridge. From there, confusion billowed like smoke from the mouth of a cannon. 'A perfect frenzy was upon almost every man,' House wrote. 'Some cried piteously to be lifted behind those who rode horses, and others sought to clamber onto wagons, the occupants resisting them with bayonets...Drivers of heavy wagons dashed down the steep road, reckless of the lives they endangered all the way...Every impediment to flight was cast aside. Rifles, bayonets, pistols, haversacks, cartridge boxes, canteens, blankets, belts and overcoats lined the road.'" Russell attempted to stop the drivers from being reckless, while Stedman was seen attempting to rally the Massachusetts Fifth, waving their standard "in vain." The Philadelphia Inquirer reporter lost his horse and took off bareback on a Conferderate horse while Villard atempted to calm the men (46-47). House was among a group that arrived at Centerville to see if McDowell "would be able to check the retreat" and learned that McDowell had given up hope of making a stand and ordered a general retreat (47-48). When the reporters present were allowed to write their stories, Starr reports that "some accounts read like transcriptions of nightmares" while "reporters caught in the panic enormously exaggerated its significance." House wrote in the Tribune: "All was lost to the American army, even its honor...The agony of this overwhemling disgrace can never be expressed in words" (50). [pages: 9,43-48,50,73]

Stovall, Floyd. The Foreground of Leaves of Grass. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1974. [more about this work]

It is possible that House acted as an intermediary in order to get Whitman published in the Tribune. [pages: 6,7]

"The Young Men of the New York Press." The Independent. 7 Jun. 1866: 4. [more about this work]

“It is a striking fact that the number of young men prominently connected with the New York press as writers is greater now than at any former period… the chief editorial work in these journals is done by men between the years of twenty-five and forty” (4).

"Then, too, in the same office, are Clarence Cook, waging war against all bad pictures and some good; Edwin H. House and William Winter, dramatic critics; Nathan Urner and Kane O’Donnel, comparatively new arrivals in Gotham…” (4). [pages: 4]

Wildes, Harry Emerson. "Edward Howard House." Dictionary of American Biography. Base Set. American Council of Learned Societies, 1928-1936. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2006. http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC. [more about this work]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume III, Grinnwell-Lockwood. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

Among his works for the Japanese government, House worked to secure the return of the "Simonoeski Indemnity" From the US government, which was effected in 1882. [pages: 272]

[Clapp, Henry Jr.]. "[Editorial Comments]." New-York Saturday Press. 2 Jun. 1866: 4. [more about this work]

The Editorial Comments lists Mr. E.H. House as one of the passengers sailing for Liverpool from Boston today (4). [pages: 4]