Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA
Philip Henry Savage (February 11, 1868 - June 4, 1899) was an American poet born on February 11, 1868, in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, to the
well-known Unitarian minister Minot Judson Savage and Ella A. Dodge. Following moves to Framingham, Chicago, and ultimately Boston in 1874, he graduated
from the English High School of Boston in 1885. Before pursuing higher education, he spent several years working in the leather and shoe industry for
Bachfelder and Lincoln as a traveling sales representative across the northeastern states. Entering Harvard University at the age of twenty-one in 1889,
he graduated with his bachelor's degree in 1893 and later earned a Master of Arts degree in 1896. During his student years, he immersed himself in
literary pursuits, editing The Harvard Monthly for three years and helming the Boston-based literary periodical The Mahogany Tree. After a year at
Harvard Divinity School from 1893 to 1894, he taught as an English instructor in Harvard's English department and released his debut collection, First
Poems and Fragments, in 1895.
Declining an offer to teach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Savage took a position at the Boston Public Library as Secretary to the
Librarian, Herbert Putnam, and advanced to Clerk of the Corporation in 1899. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was struck with appendicitis on
May 31, 1899. After a week of illness, he passed away at Massachusetts General Hospital on June 4, 1899, at the age of thirty-one. Following his death,
very simple and solemn funeral services were held at the Kensington on Boylston Street, featuring scripture readings and a prayer by family friend Dr.
Edward Everett Hale, alongside touching remarks from his father, Minot J. Savage. True to his requested wishes, the ceremony omitted singing, eulogies,
and pallbearers, with only a small display of flowers. The high attendance reflected the deep appreciation of his colleagues and community, drawing every
member of his family, acting librarian J. L. Whitney and various trustees and staff from the Boston Public Library, Harvard professor Charles C.
Copeland, publishers F. Holland Day and Herbert Copeland, Herbert
Small, writer Lillian Whiting, artist Charles Hopkinson, and several of his Harvard '93 classmates. After the service, his body was taken to Forest Hills
to be cremated, and he was later buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Posthumously, his close friend, the composer and musicologist Daniel Gregory Mason, edited and
published his collected works as the Poems of Philip Henry Savage in 1901, highlighting Savage's signature delicate idealism. Contemporary critics
reserved their highest praise for his sensitive nature poetry. Savage was deeply embedded in elite literary circles of the late nineteenth century. He
was closely connected to the "Visionists," an influential artistic collective that championed the philosophy of "art for art's sake" and elevated
artistic production above commercial or social endeavors. Alongside Savage, this circle included prominent literary figures such as
Alice Brown, Herbert Copeland, Ralph Adams Cram,
Louise Imogen Guiney, and the photographer and publisher F. Holland Day. Furthermore, Savage was a close
friend of fellow Harvard poet William Vaughn Moody and is frequently associated with the "Harvard poets" or "Harvard Pessimists"—a cohort of brilliant
turn-of-the-century writers that included Trumbull Stickney, George Cabot Lodge, Thomas Parker Sanborn, and Hugh McCulloch, many of whom experienced
similarly untimely deaths.
References:
Other references:
- First Poems and Fragments (1895) – His debut volume of poems published during his lifetime.
- Poems of Philip Henry Savage (1901) – His collected poems, posthumously edited and published by his friend Daniel Gregory Mason.
- The Harvard Monthly – Edited by Savage for three years during his time at Harvard University.
- The Mahogany Tree – A Boston-based bi-weekly literary periodical that he edited.
- Vital records and burial documentation detailing his birth in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, and his final resting place at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
- Contemporary newspaper reporting, specifically the historical account covering his funeral service ("Funeral of Philip H. Savage") held at the Kensington on Boylston Street, detailing attendees from the Boston Public Library, Harvard University, and local publishing circles, as well as services led by Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Rev. Minot J. Savage.
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