Nathan Haskell Dole was born August 31, 1852 in Chelsea, Massachusetts He was the second son of his father Reverend Nathan Dole (1811—1855) and mother Caroline (Fletcher) Dole.Dole grew up in the Fletcher homestead, a strict Puritan home, in Norridgewock, Maine, where his grandmother lived and where his mother moved with her two boys after his father died of tuberculosis.
Sophie May wrote her Prudy Books in Norridgewock, which probably showed the sort of life Nathan and his older brother Charles Fletcher Dole (1845—1927), lived. A newspaper article about Nathan in the Boston Evening Transcript, February 8, 1929, suggested that Nathan, lively from the start, may have offered good material for the mischievous boys who acted as foil for the goody-good ones in the Prudy Books. The same Boston Evening Transcript article said that Nathan was an omnivorous reader, who soon taught himself to read in French, German, Greek and Latin. He studied at the Eaton School in Norridgewock, and then under private tutors. Later he went to the Phillips Exeter Academy and Phillips Andover Academy, graduating in 1870, and then to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1874. Years later he received an L.H. Doctorate and Honorary Alumnus from Oglethorp University in Atlanta, Georgia.
After college, Dole taught at De Veaux College from 1874 to 1875, and at Worcestor High School from 1875 to 1876. From 1876 to 1878, he was preceptor at Derby Academy, in Hingham, Massachusetts. In 1881, he left teaching to work for the Philadelphia Press, where he was Musical Art and Literary Editor until 1878. (For a time his work appeared in both the morning and evening edition of the Press, affording him the opportunity of contradicting in the evening paper what he had said in the morning edition, and vice versa. From 1887 to 1901 he was literary advisor to T. Y. Crowell Publishing Company. He was Secretary of the department of publicity at D. Appleton and Co. for five months in 1901.
In 1892, Dole married Helen James Bennett. They moved to Boston, where he concentrated on writing, translating, editing and lecturing. He and his family lived in Jamaica Plain for many years, spending their summers in Ogunquit, Maine. They were popular members of the Boston social and literary set. Their home was full of both music and literature, and was well known for good conversation at the four o'clock teas every afternoon.
In 1928, when he was seventy-six, they moved to New York City to be near their daughter and grandchildren and lived in Riverdale-on-Hudson.
Dole knew such literary giants as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (who was his father's instructor in Bowdoin College), Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., William Cullen Bryant, James Russell Lowell, Charles Anderson Dana, Walt Whitman, William Dean Howells, John Greenleaf Whittier, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Edward Everett Hale, Julia Ward Howe, Louise Chandler Moulton and many others.
Dole died May 9, 1935 at Yonkers, New York of a heart attack. Nixon Waterman had this to say about Dole in his article in the
Boston Evening Transcript:
“For while the versifying strain in the Dole family made its first striking and lasting presence felt in the publishing of Michael Wigglesworth's Day of Doom, certainly Nathan Haskell Dole has never given the world the slightest reason to believe that his mind was dwelling on Doomsday. Anyone who has ever sought to interview him seriously must retain the sparkling, mirthful impression that the result was about the same as it would prove if grandmother were to attempt to pin a bevy of dancing, multicolored soap-bubbles on her Sunday hat. His is a many-track mind, and while he entertains solid, serious thought, as is so amply proved by his splendid work in life and literature, there usually accompanies them a flight of word-winged butterflies of flashing wit and wisdom. Naturally such interpolated brilliancy is likely to cause one to be credited with (or shall I say, blamed for?) possessing a fondness for punning that someone has said is the lowest form of wit and someone else had added, 'Yes, because puns are at the foundation of all wit.’ But it is with puns as it is with everything else, there are good puns and bad puns. As a maker of good puns, doubtless Mr. Dole is more famous (cynics who do not possess the nimbleness of wit to make puns may insist 1 should say ‘notorious’ instead of ‘famous’) than any other recent citizen of 'The Athens of America.’ His most notable predecessor in the art of pun-making, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, is still most kindly remembered for his many clever plays upon words. Mr. Dole has so long been considered the ‘ace’ of Boston's punsters that it is a common saying that —
In Boston, if one makes a pun,And it's a truly clever oneSomebody's sure to say he stole The quip from Nathan Haskell Dole;
Mr. Dole has, himself, termed the habit of punning to be 'the St.Vitus dance of the mind ' While he is always most kindly in his purpose, Mr. Dole spares no one, no matter how high his station or solemn the occasion, when it seems fitting that a pun should be forthcoming.A number of years ago Mr. Dole was visiting the Berkeley School in New York City, a very select school for boys, so select that boys applying for admission were required to bring references from bishops of their diocese, and from other eminent persons. On a table in the reception room and under a glass bell, Mr. Dole saw a large volume labeled, 'Holy Bible with References,’ when he remarked to the school president: 'Mercy on us! Do you make your Bible, as well as the boys attending your school give references?';
One of Nathan's famous puns, made in relation to his work on Omar Khayyám was: ;O-mark-I-am an Omar Khayyamiculturist.;
A newspaper article in August 1922 said this about Nathan: Nathan Haskell Dole, who ought to have the office of social secretary for the city of Boston created for him to fill, for the reason that he knows more worth-while people here and everywhere, than anybody else, is summering up at his summer home, ‘The Moorings,’ at Ogunquit, Maine... People distinguish him from his brother, the Rev. Charles Fletcher Dole, by remarking that Charles is the reverend Mr. Dole, while Nathan is the irreverent Mr. Dole... Nathan has written and edited a whack of interesting books — poetry, history, biography and everything, and he translates from almost every known language and from many unknown to most of us. Think of his satisfaction, when some flivverist nearly runs over him, of telling him what he thinks in 17 different tongues.
It was a shock to those in Boston, when Nathan planned to move from Boston to New York City. In an article in the Boston Transcript, Nixon Waterman wrote: “As well, almost, propose removing the Boston Common or the Bunker Hill monument from this city and its environs as to suggest transferring Mr. Dole from Boston's Literary interests.” and “There is about to be sensed a feeling of lonesomeness in Boston's social and literary circles for some time to come till the people of their 'old home town’ have resignedly accustomed themselves to the absence of Mr. and Mrs. Nathan Haskell Dole.
Nathan was a prolific author and translator and edited many books. He translated nearly all of the Russian Count Tolstoi’s novels. Starting in 1899, he edited Tolstoi's complete works in twenty volumes for Charles Scribner's Sons. He won world-wide recognition for his work in connection with Omar Khayyám, his multivariorum (sic) edition of which, containing carefully collated translations in English. French. German and Danish, brought him a medal from the Shah of Persia and led to his being president of the Omar Khayyam Society of America until 1919. Besides that two-volume work he edited no less than five other editions of the famous poem, including that published in the smallest book ever made.
In addition he also translated works of Valdes, Von Scheffle, Von Koch, Daudet, Verga, Santangelo, the Baroness von Luttner and other European authors. He edited Rombaud's History of Russia in 1882, the Greek Poets in 1904, and the Latin Poets in 1905. He translated the Cavelleria Rusticana, Samson and Dalila, and other operas and hundreds of songs for music. (When I, EDP, was at Vassar, his name was often listed as the translator of the songs we sang in chapel.)
Nat also lectured on Russian, French, Italian and English literature and other subjects. Nat was president of the Bibliophile Society from 1901-1902, the Omar Khayyam Club of America (President from its beginning to 1919), and was a member of the Twentieth Century Club, The New England Poetry Club, Boston, the Brookline Arts and Letters Club, the Ruskin Club, the Poetry Society of America, the Craftman Poetry Group in N.Y. (Member and Vice-President), the Dante Society in N.Y. He was also a member and advisor of the Council of the Simplified Spelling Board.
