Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.โ
The words are so familiar that it is hard to imagine a time before they were grouped together into that well-known phrase: โWe three kings of Orient are.โ
Even a century ago many people erroneously assumed the song of that name was an ancient work. Members of the Episcopal Church, who should have known better, often labeled the song as being of primeval origin, the name of its creator lost to history.
In reality, the song is much newer than many in the hymnal. It is the work of John Henry Hopkins Jr. Huge swaths of the English-speaking world know his song, while the people of his church, and of his home state, have largely forgotten his name.
When a John Henry Hopkins is remembered in Vermont, it is invariable his father that people recall. Thatโs perhaps understandable. Hopkins Sr. had an outsized personality, innumerable gifts (ranging from music to writing to architecture), and a prestigious job โ Episcopalian bishop of Vermont. But Hopkins Sr., a native of Ireland, also held some beliefs that have not aged well. The elder Hopkins was vehemently anti-Catholic โ he wrote a screed in 1834 about Catholicism entitled โPrimitive Creed.โ He was also pro-slavery, citing scripture to argue that blacks were inferior to whites.
Growing up in his shadow, and with his name, could not have been easy for the younger Hopkins. But he seems to have loved his father and emulated him in many ways, though he didnโt share all of his beliefs. The younger Hopkins also couldnโt repress his own more light-hearted nature.
The family moved to Burlington from Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831 when Hopkins Sr. was named rector of St. Paulโs Church and the next year bishop of Vermont. In Vermont, the younger Hopkins found a home. Only 11 years old when he arrived in the state, he would adopt Vermont as his own despite living most of his adult years elsewhere.
When Bishop Hopkins founded the Vermont Episcopal Institute, he needed an assistant to help run it, so he picked his teenaged son to become the tutor and the occasional administrator of the floggings that were a part of 19th century school discipline. Hopkins also played flute and bugle in the school orchestra, taught Sunday school and sang in the church choir.
By the age of 15, Hopkins was enrolled at the University of Vermont, not an uncommon age to start higher education at the time. He was a strong student, particularly when it came to languages and literature. Like many educated men of the era, Hopkins began to write verse, a habit he continued throughout his life. A Hopkins biographer says he developed a clear writing style that could be understood even by people whom Hopkins jokingly called โthe stupids.โ Like his father, he also became an accomplished musician and artist.
Upon graduating in 1839, Hopkins returned to help his father at the school while also studying law with a small Burlington firm. When a financial crisis hit the United States that year, the Hopkins familyโs finances suffered. Soon they had to close the school and find a home they could afford. They had to settle for a house so rundown that they were the last people to live there.
John Hopkins felt an obligation to his parents and his siblings โ he had 11 who lived to adulthood โ so he moved to New York City to earn money for the family. There, he became a journalist and continued his law studies. But he felt drawn back to Burlington and wanted to find a way to make a living there.
โI am such an indispensable article at home,โ he wrote his brother Edward in 1840. โMother is so unhappy when I am away, and my brothers so uncomfortable, that they will never willingly consent to my going off again.โ
During one visit home, Bishop Hopkins had apparently shared with his namesake a plan for the family to launch a business. โFatherโs plans,โ he wrote Edward, โโฆ will as we so confidently hope be so money-making, that the chance of my earning my living at home seems stronger than by going abroad again.โ
The plan called for the two John Henry Hopkins to print and sell books of their lithographs. Edward, who was then stationed in South America with the U.S. Navy, could return home to run the familyโs dairy farm with another brother. Hopkins was ecstatic, seeing the venture as promising a freer, more prosperous life. He promised Edward he could โhave as many sail-boats and as much fishing as you want. Isnโt it a glorious plan? No tarnation boarding schools to bother a body eternally with other peoplesโ children; and not near enough the village to be curtailed in our liberty of doing whatever we please for fear of other people seeing us.โ
The plans included the family finding a better place to live. Hopkins found it one day while walking with his brothers near Lake Champlain in the Rock Point area of Burlington. The view of the lake and the Adirondacks was inspiring. This was where they would build.
Soon afterward, Hopkins developed a throat ailment. Doctors suggested he live for a time in a warmer climate, so he ventured south to Georgia. There, living in the home of another Episcopalian bishop, he found an eager audience for the humorous caricatures he liked to draw. He made the mistake of telling his father how funny people found his drawings. The Bishop Hopkins was not amused and sent a scathing letter to his son.
Hopkins wrote back to his father that โIt was with great shame and sorrow that I read your last and severe letter โฆ and discovered how far I had unthinkingly been led astray.โ He explained that he had shown Bishop Hopkinsโ letter to his host. The Georgia bishop agreed with the criticism.
โHe said, too, that he had for some time felt that the thing was going too far, and had often thought he ought to tell me that I was devoting too much time and trouble to trifles, and growing lazy about what was of more importance โฆโ
Bishop Hopkinsโ letter had a strong effect on his 23-year-old son. He soon returned home and, two years later, completed his masterโs degree at UVM. He ventured back to New York City to study at the General Seminary, from which he graduated in 1850 and became a deacon and later a priest in the Episcopal Church.
His work with the church (he led congregations in Plattsburgh, New York, and later in Williamsburg, Pennsylvania) allowed him to explore his interest in music. He began writing hymns to replace the drab pieces he tired of hearing during services. His biographer, the Rev. Charles Sweet, explained that at the time โ(g)ood, hearty, congregational singing was not expected, and if lay people tried to sing in church they were looked upon as โqueer,โ or, it may be, as Methodists away from home.โ
Hopkins looked to German chorales and ancient church music for inspiration โ perhaps that is why โWe Three Kings of Orient Areโ sounds so timeless.
โThe only way to test a hymn is not merely to read it silently, but to sing it, over and over again, to its own tune,โ he wrote in preface to a collection of his hymns, carols and songs. โThe reason why we have so much unsatisfactory material thrust upon the Church is that, for the most part, the writers of the words have known little about music, and the writers of music have had little taste or power in the poetic field, and therefore there was no felt organic connection betwixt the two.โ The observation may lack modesty, since Hopkins was an exception to this rule, but it might help explain the lasting power of โWe Three Kings.โ
The song, which Hopkins composed in 1857 and originally entitled โThe Gift of the Magi,โ begins: โWe three kings of Orient are,/ Bearing gifts we traverse afar,/ Field and fountain, moor and mountain,/ Following yonder Star.โ
Some have read the lyrics and noted that โfield and fountain, moor and mountainโ could describe the family homestead at Rock Point. Whether he was picturing Vermont while writing about the three kingsโ trek is unclear, but the state was always part of his own journey. He continued to return to Vermont throughout his life and was buried at Rock Point.
