“Home, Sweet Home”
“Clari; or, The Maid of Milan,” produced in 1823, contains one piece that is known in every English-speaking country,—“Home, sweet home.” Clari is a beautiful peasant girl, who has exchanged her father’s lowly cottage for the splendor of the duke’s palace and become his bride. But she pines for the simple life she has led, and as she enters, fatigued and melancholy, she sings this song. The words are by John Howard Payne, an American, and though the music was called by Bishop a “Sicilian air,” it is now generally agreed that it was really composed by him. “It is the song,” says Clari, “of my native village,—the hymn of the lowly heart, which dwells upon every lip there, and like a spell-word brings back to its home the affection which e’er has been betrayed to wander from it. It is the first music heard by infancy in its cradle; and our cottagers, blending it with all their earliest and tenderest recollections, never cease to feel its magic till they cease to live.” The air is heard again during the play; a chorus of villagers sing it when Clari revisits her home.
About a year before Payne’s death at Tunis, where he was serving as American Consul, he wrote the following letter:
Washington, March 3, 1851.
My Dear Sir,—It affords me great pleasure to comply with your request for the words of “Home, Sweet Home.” Surely there is something strange in the fact that it should have been my lot to cause so many people in the world to boast of the delights of home, when I never had a home of my own, and never expect to have one, now—especially since those here at Washington who possess the power seem so reluctant to allow me the means of earning one! In the hope that I may again and often have the gratification of meeting you, believe me, my dear sir,
Yours, most faithfully,
John Howard Payne.
Hon. C. E. Clarke.