I. Lee Masters. Elsa Wertman. Hamilton Green.

Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), a Chicago lawyer who had grown up in the downstate communities of Petersburg and Lewistown.

In 1915 Edgar Lee Masters published Spoon River Anthology, which became an immediate commercial success.

Spoon River Anthology is a collection of epitaphs of residents of a small town of Spoon River (named after the real river in Western Illinois). Unconventional in both style and content, it shattered the myths of small town American life. A full understanding of Spoon River requires the reader to piece together narratives from fragments contained in individual poems.

Masters employs the highly effective strategy of having people speak frankly from the grave, where no further harm can befall them. Most of the speakers in the imaginary town of Spoon River have suffered some indignity, treachery, or injustice during their lifetime. On the whole, these are not happy utterances. Nearly every citizen has gone to the grave with some dark secret, like Elsa Wertman, the "peasant girl from Germany," who was seduced by her master (Thomas Greene) while she was working in the kitchen. After her "secret began to show," Mrs. Greene successfully schemed to pass off the baby (Hamilton Greene) as her own. Hamilton becomes a famous and eloquent politician, and the poem concludes with Elsa's poignant admission that she cried during his speeches, apparently having been moved by his powers of speech, but

That was not it.
No! I wanted to say:
That's my son! That's my son!

I WAS a peasant girl from Germany,

Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.

And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.

On a summer's day when she was away

He stole into the kitchen and took me

Right in his arms and kissed me on my throat,

I turning my head. Then neither of us

Seemed to know what happened.

And I cried for what would become of me.

And cried and cried as my secret began to show.

One day Mrs. Greene said she understood,

And would make no trouble for me,

And, being childless, would adopt it.

(He had given her a farm to be still.)

So she hid in the house and sent out rumors,

As if it were going to happen to her.

And all went well and the child was born--

They were so kind to me.

Later I married Gus Wertman, and years passed.

But-- at political rallies when sitters-by thought I was crying

At the eloquence of Hamilton Greene--

That was not it. No! I wanted to say:

That's my son!

That's my son.

The epitaph Hamilton Greene is the next after Elsa Wertman’s story. He is the son of Elsa. He didn’t know who his real mother is, and the irony, of course, is that he said that he has inherited his "vivacity, fancy, and language" from his mother, though Elsa had no vivacity, no fancy or language, and his father had terrible judgment.

I WAS the only child of Frances Harris of Virginia

And Thomas Greene of Kentucky,

Of valiant and honorable blood both.

To them I owe all that I became,

Judge, member of Congress, leader in the State.

From my mother I inherited

Vivacity, fancy, language;

From my father will, judgment, logic.

All honor to them

For what service I was to the people!

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