Eben Francis Thompson
Eben Francis Thompson, one of the most interesting literary
figures that Worcester has produced, died December 2, 1939. He
was born in Worcester, January 29, 1859, the son of Francis
Henry and Fannie H. (Thomas) Thompson. He attended the
local public schools, took a short course at the Harvard Law
School, and was admitted to the bar in 1884. From that time until
a few years before his death he practiced in Worcester, making
a specialty of corporation law. He married, November 20, 1895,
Mary L. Johnson, daughter of William W. Johnson. She died in
1907 and he was survived by two children. Rev. Harold H. R.
Thompson and Mary Frothingham, wife of James H. Colton.
Although Mr. Thompson was for over half a century a lawyer, it
was for his literary pursuits that he was most widely recognized.
Early in his career, in 1886, he compiled The Student^s Kent, an
Abridgment of KenCs Commentaries, which he once stated was
written with the temerity of youth. For years he collected the
varying editions of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam, including
the immortal translation by Fitzgerald. With the full realization
of the magnificence of Fitzgerald's English verse, he wondered
whether he could essay a poetical translation of the Persian text,
but one which would more closely follow the original. Stimulated
by the advice of his friend, Nathan Haskell Dole, he began to
learn Persian. By 1906 he had finished his monumental task,
bringing out in a volume of 290 pages his own translation of 878
quatrains of Omar, an achievement remarkable both for his
poetic ability and his diligence. This volume he followed in 1907
with a work reproducing Fitzgerald's text, the Persian original
with a transliteration, and his own versified translation. Finally,
in 1910, he published a little volume of verse. The Rose Garden of
Omar Khayyam, Founded on the Persian. This trilogy of Omar
books brought him into close touch with many admirers of
Persian literature. In 1900 he founded the Omar Khayyam Club
of America, of which he was secretary for twenty years, and
later, president.
Another hobby of Mr. Thompson's was his interest in Shakespeare.
As early as 1887 he had published the text of "A Midsummer
Night's Dream" for public reading. Long an actor in
amateur dramatics, and especially conversant with all of Shakespeare's
plays, he travelled several times to England to study
Shakespeare traditions and scenes, to search for manuscripts,
and to acquire what early printed works his purse would allow.
He owned the second and fourth folios and possessed a respectable
Shakespearian library. He wrote a brochure in 1923 entitled
"Bacon Not Shakespeare, being an Argument to Show that
Francis Bacon, not William Shakespeare, Wrote the Plays and
Poems Commonly Attributed to the Latter, by Adam Nutt, with
an Introduction by Way of Dissent by Eben Francis Thompson,"
which really was an ingenious and amusing refutation of the
Baconian theory. In his later life, Mr. Thompson compiled for
his own use what he called a "reading translation" of Shakespeare,
in which he marked on all of the hundred thousand lines
of Shakespeare's plays with accents to show the correct pronunciation
of Elizabethan words. In 1938, the year before his
death, he wrote a pamphlet entitled Some Hints on Public Speaking,
and in the introduction referred to his early attempts to
perfect himself in Shakespearian speech, modelling his pronunciation
upon that of Edwin Booth. In the meetings of the Worcester
Shakespeare Club, organized in 1887, he participated for over fifty
years.
His third interest was miniature books. He owned a large
collection, with over two hundred examples. His crowning
achievement in this field was the production of the smallest
printed book in the world, which in conjunction with Hamilton B.
Wood of the Commonwealth Press, he issued in 1933. This tiniest
of volumes, six-sixteenths by three-sixteenths inches in size,
contained the printing of forty-six quatrains of The Rose Garden of
Omar Khayyam, and can be read only with the aid of a magnifying
glass. After seven years of trial and error, the book was produced,
a triumph of printing, but chiefly the result of Mr. Thompson's
imagination and persistence.
Mr. Thompson belonged to many Worcester social organizations.
He was secretary of the Worcester Club for a total period of
twenty-five years. He revived the Worcester Association of
Mutual Aid in Detecting Thieves, which was formed in 1795,
but had lapsed into a rather passive state, and almost alone
conducted its meetings for many years. He published an interesting
historical sketch of the Society in 1929. He also arranged
for the meetings of the Rufus Putnam Memorial Association, and
wrote in 1930 ^ Brief Chronicle of Rufus Putnam and his Rutland
Home. He was elected to the American Antiquarian Society in
1933 and maintained a constant interest in the Society.
C. S. B.
http://www.americanantiquarian.org/proceedings/44807011.pdf I.S. 1/9/2018
