[ 164 ] VERA BRODSKY LAWRENCE creativity. "When the typhus fever carried him off!' wrote William Sidney Mount, who was with him "in his last moments at his residence in New York, [he] was engaged in writing a play, and had it nearly completed!'47 The play was not found—we already have Mount's testimony on the unhappy fate of Hawkins' manuscripts in his widow's kitchen fire. In accordance with his will, dated May 17, 1810, Letty Hawkins became the sole inheritor of her husband's considerable fortune.48 "Hawkins died wealthy" a contemporary wrote, "and we consider this fact a healthy sign of his genius being properly balanced by business prudence!' Yet, this writer was forced to admit that for all Hawkins' material success, he had not realized his full potential: "There is no telling what he might have become if he had been more favored in the blessings of an early education!'49 Hawkins, despite his natural optimism, was painfully aware of his handicap. In his letter to Thompson apropos The Saw-Mill, he wrote, with characteristic honesty: "You have ever encouraged me in my feeble attempts at literature—pretensions I had never any legitimate claims to, seeing that I had never any education, the very vitals ever, of an author of the smallest degree!' But he refused to be defeated: "However as there has, since time began, I believe, been many such fools as myself, [I] feel no alarm from being disgraced as the first pretender!'50 Abiding by this clear-eyed philosophy, Micah Hawkins, the self- made Renaissance Man, uninhibitedly and devotedly served his personal muse throughout his extraordinary existence. With the simple inevitability of birdsong, he showered his home-made plays, songs, and poems—and his charisma—upon his circle of enraptured friends. "... Micah Hawkins was a hero in friendship, in graphic humor, and in musical excellence!' one of them declared, and transposing to Hawkins a tribute intended for a vastly different breed of musician belonging to a later generation, he accurately assessed Hawkins' musical contribution as being of small importance to those who customarily fre- 47 Mount to Cady, November 24, 1853, quoted in Frankenstein, William Sidney Mount, 91. 48 The will is found at the library, The Museums at Stony Brook. 49 "Sable Minstrels and American Opera!' 50 Hawkins to Thompson, December 7, 1824, Library of Congress. Quoted in Wegelin, "Micah Hawkins and The Saw-Mill" 155-56.