Payne, JOHN HOWARD

Payne, JOHN HOWARD, born in New York City on 9th June 1792, had for thirty years a successful career as actor and author of plays, chiefly adaptations. The best known were Brutus, Charles II., and Clari, which contains Payne's famous song, Home, Sweet Home. The music (to which perhaps its success was mainly due) is said to have been adapted from a Sicilian air by Sir Henry Bishop. Payne was appointed American consul at Tunis in 1841, and died there, 10th April 1852. It is a singular fact that the man who wrote Home, Sweet Home had never a home during the last forty years of his life, and died in a foreign land. His remains were, however, taken to America, and buried at Washington in 1883. See his Life and Poems, edited by G. Harrison (Albany, 1875; new ed. 1885), and C. H. Brainard's J. H. Payne (1885).