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diff --git a/old/53876-0.txt b/old/53876-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d2f614f..0000000 --- a/old/53876-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9460 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nathaniel Parker Willis, by Henry A. (Henry -Augustin) Beers - - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - - -Title: Nathaniel Parker Willis - - -Author: Henry A. (Henry Augustin) Beers - - - -Release Date: January 3, 2017 [eBook #53876] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS*** - - -E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading -Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - -Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this - file which includes the original illustration. - See 53876-h.htm or 53876-h.zip: - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53876/53876-h/53876-h.htm) - or - (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53876/53876-h.zip) - - - Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/nathanielparkerw00beeruoft - - - - - -American Men of Letters. - -Edited by - -Charles Dudley Warner. - - -[Illustration: S. Lawrence, 1837. Illman & Sons. - -N. P. Willis.] - - -American Men of Letters. - -NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. - -by - -HENRY A. BEERS. - - - - - - - -[Illustration] - -Boston: -Houghton, Mifflin and Company. -New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. -The Riverside Press, Cambridge. -1890. - -Copyright, 1885, -By Henry A. Beers. - -All rights reserved. - -The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. -Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. - - - - -PREFACE. - - -The materials for a life of Willis are rich enough to be embarrassing. -Most of his writings are, in a greater or less degree, autobiographical; -and it would be possible to make a very tolerable life of him, by -arranging passages from these in the right order, and linking them -together with a few paragraphs of cold facts. Then, he lived very much in -the world’s eye, and was constantly talked and written about, so that -there is abundant mention of him in newspaper files, and in volumes of -“Recollections,” etc., by his contemporaries. In addition to these printed -sources, I have been furnished, by the kindness of Mrs. N. P. Willis, Miss -Julia Willis, and Mrs. Imogen Willis Eddy, with private letters, journals, -and other MS. memoranda by Willis, which extend from his school days at -Andover down to a few weeks before his death--of course not without -_lacunæ_. Although I have not quoted very freely from these letters, they -have been of the greatest service, by supplying facts which I have -incorporated with the body of the narrative, and by correcting or -verifying data otherwise obtained. A biography of Willis could have been -written without them, but this particular biography could not; and I take -occasion hereby to acknowledge my debt to the ladies whose courtesy gave -me access to this material. - -There are many others who have helped my undertaking in various ways--too -many for me to thank them all by name. But I cannot withhold mention of my -obligations to Mr. Richard S. Willis and to Mr. Morris Phillips, the -editor of the “Home Journal.” - - HENRY A. BEERS. - - - - -CONTENTS. - - - PAGE - - CHAPTER I. - - ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS 1 - - CHAPTER II. - - COLLEGE LIFE 31 - - CHAPTER III. - - BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY 71 - - CHAPTER IV. - - LIFE ABROAD 107 - - CHAPTER V. - - LIFE ABROAD CONTINUED 154 - - CHAPTER VI. - - GLENMARY--THE CORSAIR--THE NEW MIRROR 219 - - CHAPTER VII. - - THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND--THE HOME JOURNAL 283 - - CHAPTER VIII. - - IDLEWILD AND LAST DAYS 326 - - BIBLIOGRAPHY 353 - - INDEX 357 - - - - -NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. - - - - -CHAPTER I. - -1806-1823. - -ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. - - -Willis was born January 20, 1806, in the little old seaport city of -Portland, Maine, celebrated by the “Autocrat” for its great square -mansions, the homes of retired sea-captains. The town had already made -some noise in literature, as the residence of that wild genius, John Neal; -and on February 27, 1807, little more than a year after the date with -which this biography begins, it witnessed the birth of its most -illustrious citizen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. - -A comparison at once suggests itself between the subsequent fortunes in -the republic of letters of these two infant poets, fellow townsmen for -some five years. Willis was the earlier in the field. In 1832, when -Longfellow, then a young professor at Bowdoin College, began to -contribute scholarly articles to the “North American Review,” the former -had been five years before the public, and was already well known as a -poet, a magazine editor, and a foreign correspondent. When “Outre-Mer” was -issued in 1835, Willis had won a reputation as a prose writer on both -sides of the Atlantic by his “Pencillings” in the “New York Mirror;” and -by 1839, when Longfellow published his first volume of original poetry, -“Voices of the Night,” his senior by a year had printed five books of -verse. But there is no question as to which has proved the better -continuer. Longfellow is still the favorite poet of two peoples; a singer -dearer, perhaps, to the general heart than any other who has sung in the -English tongue. His brilliant contemporary, after being for about fifteen -years the most popular magazinist in America, has sunk into comparative -oblivion.[1] This is the fate of all fashionable literature. Every -generation begins by imitating the literary fashions of the last, and ends -with a reaction against them. At present “realism” has the floor, -sentiment is at a discount, and Willis’s glittering, high-colored pictures -of society, with their easy optimism and their unlikeness to hard fact, -have little to say to the readers of Zola and Henry James. - -Without presuming any native equality between Willis and the Cambridge -poet, it is fair to add that the former never found opportunity to deepen -and ripen such gift as was in him. His life was passed not “in the quiet -and still air of delightful studies,” but in the rush of the gay world and -the daily drudgery of the pen; in the toil of journalism, that most -exhausting of mental occupations, which is forever giving forth and never -bringing in. His best work--all of his work which claims remembrance--was -done before he was forty. His earlier writings are not only his freshest, -but his strongest and most carefully executed. - -Willis is a glaring instance of inherited tendencies, being the third -journalist in succession in his line of descent. The founder of the family -in this country, and the progenitor of our subject in the seventh -generation, was a certain George Willis, born in England in 1602, who -arrived in New England probably about 1630. He was a brickmaker and -builder by trade, and is described as “a Puritan of considerable -distinction,” who resided in Cambridge, Massachusetts, some sixty years, -having been admitted to the Freeman’s Oath in 1638 and elected a deputy to -the General Court. Probably the most noteworthy of the poet’s forbears, at -least upon the father’s side, was the Rev. John Bailey, his ancestor in -the fifth generation, a non-conforming Independent minister in Lancashire, -who, having been silenced and afterwards imprisoned, escaped to -Massachusetts in 1684, and was settled, first as minister over the church -in Watertown, and later as associate minister over the First Church in -Boston, where he died in 1697. Increase Mather preached his funeral -sermon. His tomb is in the Granary Burying Ground, adjoining Park Street -Church, and his portrait in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical -Society. What more could a man ask for in an ancestor? No New England -pedigree which respects itself is without one or more fine old Puritan -divines of this kind. Accordingly, when Willis began to take that mild, -retrospective interest in his own genealogy which foretokens the oncoming -of age,--when new twigs upon the family tree give an unthought-of -importance to the roots,--he bestowed the name of this particular -forefather upon his youngest boy, Bailey Willis. - -The poet’s great-grandmother Willis, born Abigail Belknap, was -granddaughter to this Rev. John Bailey, and had some traits which cropped -out in her posterity. At the time of the destruction of the tea in Boston -harbor, she cannily saved a little for private use. She used to say, “I -have got some Belknap pride in me yet;” and among her favorite maxims -were, “Never go into the back door when you can go into the front,” and -“Never eat brown bread when you can get white.” The husband of this lady -was Charles Willis, a sail-maker and patriot, who was present on the -occasion when tar and feathers and hot tea were administered to his -Majesty’s tax-collector in Boston. His position and action in the affair -were represented in an ancient engraving, bought long afterwards by his -grandson, Deacon Nathaniel Willis, our Willis’s father. A copy of the same -is now in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The son of -Charles and Abigail Willis was Nathaniel, the third, though by no means -the last, Willis with that baptismal name; the first literary man in the -family, and the poet’s grandfather. He conducted in Boston, during the -Revolutionary War, the “Independent Chronicle,” a Whig newspaper, -published from the same building in which Franklin had worked as a -printer. This Nathaniel senior, as we may call him, was an active man. He -was a fine horseman, took part in the Boston tea-party, and was adjutant -of the Boston regiment sent on an expedition to Rhode Island under General -Sullivan. In 1784 he sold his interest in the “Independent Chronicle,” and -became one of the pioneer journalists of the unsettled West. He removed -first to Winchester, Virginia, where he published a paper for a short -time; then to Shepardstown, where he also published a paper; and thence in -1790 to Martinsburg, Virginia, where he founded the “Potomac Guardian” and -edited it till 1796. In that year he went to Chillicothe, Ohio, and -established the “Scioto Gazette,” the first newspaper in what was then -known as the Northwestern Territory. He was printer to the government of -the territory, and afterwards held an agency in the Post Office -Department. He bought and cultivated a farm near Chillicothe, on which he -ended his days April 1, 1831. His wife was Lucy Douglas, of New London, -Connecticut. - -His son and the poet’s father, Nathaniel Willis, Junior,--the fourth -Nathaniel in the family,--was born at Boston in 1780, and remained there -until 1787, when he joined his father at Winchester and was employed in -his newspaper office, and subsequently at Martinsburg on the “Potomac -Guardian.” In the infancy of American journalism, the editor and publisher -of a paper was usually a practical printer. Young Nathaniel was put to -work at once in folding papers and setting types. At Martinsburg he used -to ride post, with tin horn and saddle-bags, delivering papers to -scattered subscribers in the thinly settled country. N. P. Willis himself -served a year’s apprenticeship at his father’s press in Boston, in an -interval of his schooling; and in his letters home from England alluded -triumphantly to his having once been destined by his parents to the trade -of a printer. His particular duty was to ink the types. “We remember -_balling_ an edition of ‘Watts’s Psalms and Hymns,’ and there are lines in -that good book that, to this day, go to the tune we played with the -ink-balls, while conning them over.” A sketch of the old office of the -“Potomac Guardian,” made by “Porte Crayon,” is in the possession of Mr. -Richard Storrs Willis of Detroit. - -At the age of fifteen young Nathaniel returned to Boston and entered the -office of his father’s old paper, the “Independent Chronicle,” working in -the same press-room in Court Street where his father had once worked, and -the great Franklin before him. He also found time, while in Boston, to -drill with the “Fusiliers.” In 1803, invited by a Maine congressman and -other gentlemen of the Republican party, he went to Portland and -established the “Eastern Argus” in opposition to the Federalists. Here the -subject of this biography was born three years later. “Well do I remember -that day,” his father wrote to him fifty-seven years after the event, “and -the driving snow-storm in which I had to go, in an open sleigh, to bring -in the nurse from the country. Francis Douglas boarded with us at that -time. He was a very pleasant young man, and had a half promise (if it was -a boy) it should be called _Francis_. But your mother soon overruled that, -and decided that you should have both of our names, for fear she should -never have another son! You was a fine fat baby, with a face as round as -an apple.” - -Party spirit ran high at this time, and political articles were -acrimonious. Libel suits were brought against the publisher of the -“Argus,” which involved him in trouble and expense; and six years after -its establishment it was sold for four thousand dollars to the same -Francis Douglas who had come so near imposing his Christian name on the -infant Willis. At Portland Nathaniel Willis came under the ministrations -and influence of the Rev. Edward Payson, D. D.,--on whose death, many -years after, his son composed some rather perfunctory verses,--and began -henceforth to devote himself to the cause of religion. From 1810 to 1812 -he sought to establish a religious newspaper in Portland, but met with no -substantial encouragement. At the latter date he returned to Boston, -where, after years of effort, during which he supported himself by -publishing tracts and devotional books, he started, in January, 1816, the -“Boston Recorder,” which he asserted to be the first religious newspaper -in the world. It was in this periodical that the earliest lispings of -Willis’s muse reached the ear of the public. The “Recorder” was conducted -by his father down to 1844, in which year it was sold to the Rev. Martin -Moore. It still lives as the “Congregationalist and Boston Recorder.” - -Nathaniel Willis also originated the idea of a religious paper for -children. “The Youth’s Companion,” which he commenced in 1827 and edited -for about thirty years, was the first, and remains one of the best, -publications of the kind in existence. In a letter to his son he gave the -following account of its inception: “He was in the habit of teaching his -children, statedly, the Assembly’s Catechism, and to encourage them to -commit to memory the answers, he rewarded them by telling them stories -from Scripture history without giving names. The result was that the -Catechism was all committed to memory by the children, and the idea -occurred of a children’s department in the ‘Recorder.’ This department -being much sought for by children, it suggested the experiment of having a -paper exclusively for children.” Around the fireplace where Mr. Willis sat -with his children were some old-fashioned Dutch tiles, representing scenes -from the New Testament, and it was in answer to their questions about -these that he began his narrations. One sees in this little domestic -picture the beginnings of the young Nathaniel’s literary training and the -germ of his “Scripture Sketches.” Years after, a college lad, when shaping -into smooth blank verse the story of the widow of Nain or the healing of -Jairus’s daughter, his memory must have gone back to their rude figures -about his father’s hearth, seeming to move and stir in the flickering -light of the wood fire; and the recollection of his father’s voice and the -listening group of brothers and sisters gave tenderness to the strain. - -He was only six when the family removed from Portland to Boston, and he -appears to have kept little remembrance of his birthplace. The noble -harbor, with its islands, which were the Hesperides of Longfellow’s boyish -dreams, the old fort on the hill, the mystery of the ships, the Spanish -sailors with bearded lips, the noise of the sea fight far away, and the -faces of the dead captains as they lay in their coffins, did not enter -into Willis’s experience. Indeed, the period of childhood, which has been -to many poets so fruitful in precious memories, seems to have left few -deep traces on his mind, if we except its religious impressions. The life -of his father’s household, though rich in domestic affections, was -probably not stimulating to the imagination. It was the life of a Puritan -home, of what is called in England a “serious family,”--that life which -oppresses Matthew Arnold with its _ennui_; its interests divided between -“business and Bethels;” its round of long family devotions, strict Sabbath -observances, catechisms, and visiting missionaries. Dancing, card-playing, -and theatre-going were, of course, forbidden pleasures. The elder Willis, -though a thoroughly good man and good father, was a rather wooden person. -His youth and early manhood had been full of hardship; his education was -scanty, and he had the formal and narrow piety of the new evangelicals of -that day, revolting against the latitudinarianism of the Boston churches. -He was for twenty years deacon of Park Street Church, profanely nicknamed -by the Unitarians “Brimstone Corner.” “My recollection of a particular -occasion,” says an old member of that society, “when, at a conference -meeting in the church, he, as presider, was expounding John xv., is that I -regarded it as a memorable illustration of a man’s attempting to expound -without ideas. I hear him saying,--more than fifty years ago,--‘v. 4. -Abide in me. Abide is to dwell,’ in a most monotonous tone, and the rest -in the same manner of appreciation.” His rigidity was, perhaps, more in -his principles than in his character, and his austerity was tempered by -two qualities which have not seldom been found to consist with the -diaconate, namely, a sense of humor--“dry,” of course, to the correct -degree--and an admiration for pretty women, or, in the dialect of that -day, for “female loveliness.” These tastes he bequeathed to his son, as -also a certain tenacity of will, which, latent throughout the latter’s -career, came to the surface in an astonishing way during the trials of his -last years. This trait is amusingly illustrated in the senior Willis’s -correspondence with his son by his allusions to an interminable litigation -that he was carrying on in his eighty-fourth year. “I should have written -you sooner,” he says, “but that Irishman, Garbrey, has sued me the -_fourth_ time about that old drain which he dug up before my front door, -in Atkinson Street, that we never knew before was there. He has lost his -case in three different courts, and now sends to the Supreme Court a ‘Bill -of Exceptions,’ which all my friends think he cannot recover. It has been -a great trouble and expense to me. But I have carried the case in prayer -to God, constantly, and He has three times defeated the extortioner.” -Willis always retained a cordial affection and respect for his father, but -between two such different natures and divergent lives there could be -little genial sympathy or real intellectual intimacy. The tough old deacon -outlived the inheritor of his name and calling by some three years, and -died May 26, 1870, at the age of ninety. - -For his mother Willis cherished, as boy and man, a devotion that may well -be called passionate, and which found utterance in many of his most -heartfelt poems, such as his “Birth-Day Verses,” “Lines on Leaving -Europe,” and “To my Mother from the Apennines.” Her maiden name was Hannah -Parker. She was born at Holliston, Massachusetts, and was two years -younger than her husband. She was a woman whose strong character and -fervent piety were mingled with a playful affectionateness which made her -to her children the object of that perfect love which casteth out fear. -Like many another poet’s mother,--like Goethe’s, for example,--she -supplied to her son those elements of gayety and softness which were -wanting in the stiffer composition of the father:-- - - “Von Mutterchen die Fröhnatur, - Die Lust zu fabuliren.” - -He inherited from her the emotional, impulsive part of his nature as well -as his physical constitution, his light complexion, full face, and -tendency, in youth, to a plethoric habit. “My veins,” he wrote, “are -teeming with the quicksilver spirit which my mother gave me. Whatever I -accomplish must be gained by ardor, and not by patience.” She was his -confidant, his sympathizer, his elder sister. The testimony to her worth -and her sweetness is universal. The Rev. Dr. Storrs of Braintree, in an -obituary notice written on her death, in 1844, at the age of sixty-two, -spoke of her as “the light and joy of every circle in which she moved; the -idol of her family; the faithful companion, the tender mother, the -affectionate sister, the fast and assiduous friend.” - -Willis was the second in a family of nine children, all of whom reached -maturity, and two of whom, besides himself, achieved literary reputation. -These were Sarah Payson Willis, afterwards famous, under the _nom de -plume_ of “Fanny Fern,” as a prolific and successful writer for children, -and Richard Storrs Willis, his youngest brother, formerly editor of the -“Musical World,” the author of “Our Church Music,” and known both as a -musical composer and a poet. Julia Willis, his favorite sister and -constant correspondent, was also a woman of remarkable talent, with a gift -of tongues and a sounder scholarship than her more showy brother. She -wrote many of the book reviews in the “Home Journal,” but always declined -to renounce her anonymity. - -Such were the influences which surrounded Willis’s early years. And if, at -the first touch of the world, the youthful members of the household flew -off like the dry seeds of the _Impatiens_, it need not therefore be -hastily concluded that the home training, though perhaps too repressive -and severe, was without lasting effect for good. Among the children and -grandchildren of Nathaniel Willis are Catholics, Episcopalians, -Unitarians, and representatives of other shades of belief and unbelief. -But this is the history of many a New England Puritan family, and such are -the disintegrating forces of American life. In the case of the eldest -brother, it may be affirmed that, from a career which was certainly -worldly, and in some of its aspects by no means edifying, the light that -shone from his mother’s face uplifted in prayer for him never altogether -faded away. - -Willis began school life under the tuition of the Rev. Dr. McFarland, of -Concord, New Hampshire. “I have forgotten every circumstance,” he wrote -long after, “of a year or two that I was at school at Concord, New -Hampshire, when a boy, except the natural scenery of the place. The faces -of my teacher and my playmates have long ago faded from my memory, while I -remember the rocks and eddies of the Merrimac, the forms of the trees on -the meadow opposite the town, and every bend of the river’s current.” -Later he was brought home and sent to the Boston Latin School, then under -“its well-remembered Pythagoras, Ben Gould.” A few reminiscences of his -slate-and-satchel days are scattered here and there through his writings. -Thus he vaguely recalled Ralph Waldo Emerson as “one of the boys whose -fathers were Unitarians,” and he was greatly impressed by Edward Everett, -then a young Harvard professor, whose stylishly dressed figure used to -appear occasionally in Atkinson Street, at No. 31, in which thoroughfare -the Willises dwelt. He remembered “the rousings before daylight,” on -May-day, “to go to Dorchester Heights, and the shivering search after -never found green leaves and flowers; the buttoning up of boy-jacket to -keep out the cold wind, and pulling out of penknife to cut off the bare -stems of the sweet-brier in search of the hidden odor of the belated -bud.” In “The Pharisee and the Barber,” one of the two or three stories of -Willis whose scenes are laid in Boston, the description of Sheafe Lane is -evidently from the life. The Pharisee of that tale, Mr. Flint, an “active -member of a church famed for its zeal,” who “dressed in black, as all -religious men must (in Boston),” was doubtless a sketch from memory of -some pious familiar of his father’s house, whose black eyes and formal -talk left upon the lad a mixed impression of awe and distrust. - -Harvard was the natural destination of a Boston Latin School boy intending -college. But the line between the Orthodox and the Unitarians was drawn -more sharply in 1820 than in 1884. Even now stray youths from Boston are -found at other colleges than Harvard, attracted elsewhere by family ties -or theological affinities. But at that time the cleavage made by the -schism in Eastern Massachusetts was still raw, and Deacon Willis would -almost as soon have sent his boy into the jaws of hell as into such a -hot-bed of Unitarianism as the Cambridge college. - - “Larry’s father,” wrote Willis in “The Lunatic’s Skate,” “was a - disciple of the great Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of uncommon - zeal; and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard were in the hands - of most eminent men of either persuasion, and few are the minds - that could resist a four years’ ordeal in either. A student was as - certain to come forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist from the - other; and in the New England States these two sects are bitterly - hostile. So to the glittering atmosphere of Channing and Everett - went poor Larry, lonely and dispirited; and I was committed to the - sincere zealots of Connecticut, some two hundred miles off, to learn - Latin and Greek, if it pleased Heaven, but the mysteries of - ‘election and free grace,’ whether or no.” - -Of the two great fitting-schools founded by Samuel and John Phillips -respectively at Andover and at Exeter, the latter had been captured by the -Unitarians. But the Andover academy, under the sheltering wing of the -famed theological seminary in the same town, though barely thirty miles -from Boston, remained an insoluble lump of Calvinism, a wedge of defiant -Orthodoxy _in partibus infidelium_. To Andover, accordingly, young Willis -was sent, after a course in the Latin School, to complete his preparation -for Yale. The academy was then under the headship of that sound classical -master, John Adams, who was principal from 1810 to 1833. It gave an -excellent fit in the classics, insomuch that Willis, though the reverse of -diligent in college, was carried along a good way, with little study, by -the impetus acquired at Andover. At Andover, too, he began to give signs -of literary tastes and in particular to scribble verses, which had already -given him the reputation of a poet among his fellows before he came up to -college. A letter dated July 3, 1823, and addressed to his elder sister -Lucy, about a fortnight before her marriage, incloses a copy of verses -which is perhaps the earliest poem of Willis now extant. It has no merit, -but as containing hints of his later manner and the unformed germs of that -smooth, diffuse blank verse in which his “Scripture Sketches” were -written, the opening lines may be not without interest:-- - - “There was a bride, and she was beautiful - And fond, affectionate; her soul did love. - ’Twas not the transient feeling of an hour, - That loves and hates, and loves and hates again,-- - Oh, no; it was a purer, kindlier feeling,-- - A something rooted, grafted on the soul, - That cannot help but live and bud and blossom.” - -He also began to wreak thought upon expression in that common vent to the -_cacoethes scribendi_, of young writers,--keeping a diary, “a red morocco -volume, of very ornate slenderness and thinness, in which I recorded my -raptures at spring mornings and blue sashes, my unappreciated -sensibilities, my mysterious emotions by moonlight, and the charms of the -incognita whom I ran against at the corner. This precious record shared -in the final and glorious conflagration of Latin themes, grammars, -graduses, and old shirts, on leaving academy for college.” - -“The Lunatic’s Skate” opens with some reminiscences of school life at -Andover:-- - - “In the days when I carried a satchel on the banks of the Shawsheen - (a river whose half-lovely, half-wild scenery is tied like a silver - thread about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the farthest - boarders from school, in a solitary farmhouse on the edge of a lake - of some miles square, called by the undignified title of Pomp’s - Pond. An old negro, who was believed by the boys to have come over - with Christopher Columbus, was the only other human being within - anything like a neighborhood of the lake (it took its name from - him), and the only approaches to its waters, girded in as it was by - an almost impenetrable forest, were the path through old Pomp’s - clearing and that by our own door. Out of school Larry and I were - inseparable. We built wigwams together in the woods, had our - tomahawks made in the same fashion, united our property in - fox-traps, and played Indians with perfect contentment in each - other’s approbation.” - -One of his school-fellows here was Isaac McLellan, who afterwards became a -contributor to Willis’s “American Monthly.” He published a long poem, “The -Fall of the Indian,” which Willis reviewed in the same periodical, -referring to the poet as “the very boy that has tracked the woods with -us, and called us by our nickname over a hedge, and cracked nuts with us -by the fire in the winter evenings. Which of us dreamed, as we read in our -blotted classic, ‘Quam sit magnum dare aliquid in manus hominum,’ that he -should ever be guilty of a book? How it would have swelled our idle veins, -as we lay half asleep, bobbing our lines over the bank of the Shawsheen on -those long Saturday afternoons, that we should ever play for each other -the gentle office of critic!” - -In after years the rice fields of Georgia, with their embankments and -green surfaces, reminded Willis of “the gooseberry pies which formed part -of my early education at Andover, and which are among the warmest of my -recollections of that classic academy.” “We have fine times picking -berries here,” he wrote to his sister Julia. “Every kind grows in -profusion in Andover,--raspberries, black, blue, thimble, and whortle -berries. The woods are crowded with them. After tea we generally start, -and after we have eat enough go and bathe in the Shawsheen, our Andover -river.” - -This Indian Ilyssus was the scene of an adventure recorded in certain -“Tête-à-tête Confessions” in the “American Monthly,” doubtless with some -exaggerations for literary effect and with a _dénoûment_ suspiciously -dramatic. The passage may be given, however, for what it is worth:-- - - “Cytherean Venus! How I did love Miss Polly D. Low, the pride of the - factory on the romantic Shawsheen! I saw her first in the tenderest - twilight of a Saturday evening, washing her feet in the river. I was - a lad of some impudence, and I sat down on a stone beside her, and - by the time it was dark we were the best friends possible. She was - beautiful. I think so _now_. She was about eighteen, and, though - four years older than I, my education had more than equalized us. At - least, if not the wiser of the two, I was the most skilled in the - subtlety of love, and practiced with great success _les petites - ruses_. She was a tall brunette, and I sometimes fancied, when her - eye exhibited more than ordinary feeling, that there was Indian - blood under that dark and glowing skin. The valley of the Shawsheen, - just below the village where I was at school, is a gem of solitary - and rich scenery, and the overhanging woods and long meadows - afforded the most picturesque and desirable haunts for ramblers who - did not care to be met. There on Sunday afternoons, when she was - released from her shuttle and I from my Schrevelius, did we meet and - stroll till the nine o’clock bell of the factory summoned her - unwillingly home. I could go without my supper in those days, though - I doubt if I would now on such slight occasion. By the time vacation - came, I found myself seriously in love, declared my passion, and - left her with my heart half broken. We were gone four weeks, and - when I returned the butcher’s boy was engaged to Miss Low, and I was - warned to avoid the factory at the peril of a flogging.” - -In his last year at Andover Willis experienced religion and joined the -church. Any one who has witnessed one of those spiritual epidemics, called -“revivals,” in some school or college needs no description of the kind of -pressure brought to bear on the thoughtless but easily excited young -consciences there assembled. At the first rumor of an unwonted -“seriousness” abroad, occasioned perhaps by the death of a fellow-student, -by a general sickness, or the depression of gloomy weather in a winter -term, the machinery is set in motion. Daily prayer-meetings are held, in -which the elders play part,--the movement at Andover was taken in hand by -the “Seminarians,” that is, the students of the Divinity School;--the -unregenerate are visited in their rooms by classmates who are already -church members, and are prayed with and urged to attend the meetings and -submit themselves to the outpourings of the Spirit. Under this kind of -stimulus there follows a great awakening. Many are “under conviction,” the -air becomes electric, and there is a strange spiritual tension which is -felt even by the resisting. Momentous choices are made in an instant and -under the stress of contagious emotions. The awful issues of eternity are -set before a roomful of boys in the midst of prayers and sobs and eloquent -words, exhorting the sinner not to let pass this opportunity of -salvation,--perhaps his last. And then the movement subsides, leaving an -impression which endures with some, and with others quickly wears off. -Those who believe that the Christian character and the Christian life are -the result of nurture and slow endeavor look with distrust upon these -sudden conversions. The hardened sinner may need some such violent call to -repentance, but there is a sort of indecency in this premature forcing -open of the simple and healthful heart of a boy, substituting morbid -self-questionings, exaggerated remorse, and the terrors of perdition for -his natural brave outlook on a world of hope and enjoyment. The story of -Willis’s conversion is fully told in his letters home, and it reads like a -chapter of “Doctor Johns.” - -In 1821, being then fifteen years of age, he had written to his father:-- - - “I can plainly see an answer to prayer in the delay of my admission - to the church. I prayed that God would, if I was in danger of making - a hasty step, by some means or other prevent it. I doubted, till it - became almost a certainty, whether it was proper. I doubted myself, - my pretensions to a change of heart; and my very heart seemed to - sink under me every time I thought of the solemn engagement I was - unhappy, extremely unhappy, when in Boston, and have been, I might - say, miserable ever since.” - -And again in 1822:-- - - “As to becoming a Christian, it is morally _beyond my power_. I have - not an objection against it that would weigh a feather, and yet I - feel no more solicitude than I ever did about my eternal welfare.” - -In a letter of the same year to his mother, who had his conversion much at -heart, he says:-- - - “I do have times when the tears of regret flow, and I make the - resolution of attending to the subject of religion. But my light - head and still lighter heart dismisses the subject as soon as - another object arrests my attention, and my resolutions and regrets - are soon lost in the mazes of pleasure and folly.” - -It is curious to reflect that these “mazes of pleasure and folly” meant -nothing more than innocent school-boy diversions, such as black-berrying -and swimming parties, or at worst a juvenile flirtation with some rural -belle. The oldness and gravity of the phrase, in contrast with the boyish -tone of other parts of his letters, illustrate well that moral -precocity--precocity of the conscience as distinguished from the -mind--developed in New England boys of the last generation by the Puritan -training. - -In January, 1823, the great revival which had been in progress at Boston -struck the Andover academy. Mr. Willis made his son a visit, and urged him -to join the church. After his return to Boston he received the following -letter:-- - - ANDOVER, MASS., _January 12, 1823_. - Sunday afternoon. - - DEAR FATHER,--I received your package last evening, with my - Testament, etc., inclosed. As the word of God I prize it, and as the - gift of my affectionate father I love it, and shall always look upon - it as a remembrance of an era in my feelings which I hope I shall - always be thankful for. You cannot imagine how much your visit and - advice strengthened me in my resolutions, and spurred me forward in - the good work I had begun. I hope I have now the assurance of being - an heir of life and a recipient of the protection which the wings of - a Saviour’s mercy must afford to those who are gathered under them. - My hope is sometimes shaken when I find my thoughts wandering to - other subjects while the ordinances of God are administering before - my eyes. But the moment that I get upon my knees and pray for - strength I feel my assurance renewed, and rise happier and happier - from every renewal of my supplications.… Saturday evening I attended - our usual meeting in the academy for the _first time_ since I have - been in Andover. It is conducted by the pious scholars of the - academy in succession, and is very interesting. This evening Dr. - Shedd preached the lecture, and after meeting there is to be another - at Mr. Adams’s house. So you see, pa, we are engaged here, and have - reason to hope that _many_ will be inquiring the way to the foot of - the cross.…--_Nine o’clock._ I have been to meeting at the chapel, - and after that attended a prayer-meeting at Mr. Adams’s. They were - both very solemn. Louis Dwight led the last.--_Monday evening, 12 - o’clock._ I have truly spent an evening of happiness, and I thought - I must open my letter and tell you. At half-past six William Adams - and I had appointed a meeting, to be conducted wholly by ourselves. - We had invited only a few, but when we got there it was so crowded - that I could scarcely make my way through the room to the - Bible-stand. I believe nearly all our unconverted brethren were - there.… After it was dismissed, many seemed to linger, as if they - did not want to go, and we conversed with some of them. I then went - into Cutler’s room, and Allen and I stayed there till almost eleven - o’clock. There were several of the Seminarians there, and we prayed - and sung, _prayed and sung_, till it seemed a little heaven on - earth. The seriousness increases; many more are deeply impressed, - and the academy presents solemn countenances generally. It is late, - and my eyes smart badly. - - Your affectionate son, - - N. P. WILLIS. - -The William Adams here mentioned was a son of the principal of the -academy, and was afterwards Willis’s classmate at Yale. Louis Dwight was a -theological student, who a year later was married to Willis’s second -sister, Louisa. The subsequent progress of the revival is related in the -following letter, written two or three days later:-- - - ANDOVER, MASS., _January 15_. - Wednesday evening, 12 o’clock. - - MY DEAR FATHER,--My heart is so overflowing with joy and gratitude - and happiness that I could not rest till I had sat down and told you - _all_. We have had a meeting in Allen’s room to-night. Mr. Styles - was there, and talked so that I thought I could almost see a halo - round his head, and expected him to turn into St. Paul come down - again from heaven. After meeting Mr. S. told them the meeting was - closed, but if any wished to converse with him or the other - professors of religion in the room, they might tarry. The room was - crowded, body and all, so that you could not have got through, but - no one stirred. Sobbing and weeping was heard all round the room. - William Adams, Allen, Styles, and I then went round and conversed - with them. They all burst into tears immediately, and listened with - the greatest eagerness, and when I got up to go to the next one, - they held on to me as though salvation depended on my talking with - them. _Isaac Stuart_ sobbed aloud the whole meeting time. _Joseph - Jenkins was in tears_, and came down to my room after meeting and - asked me to pray for and with him. He said he _could not_ pray - himself; he _dared_ not. I gave him the best advice I could and - prayed with him, and he is now in his room, as I _hope praying for - himself_. I talked with little Joshua Huntingdon, and told him about - his father. He wept, and promised to go home and pray. J. C. Alvord, - a member of my class and a _fine fellow_, was in the greatest - misery. He could not sit upon his chair, and took me out of the - meeting to go to my room and pray with him. Jno. Tappan of Boston - was very deeply affected. I conversed with Darrach of Philadelphia, - Carter of Virginia, King of Convers, and several others. They all - seemed to feel very deeply, and all begged me earnestly to pray for - them. We could not get them away. They stood round weeping and - looking for some one to say something to them. Oh, my dear father, - what _can_ we render to God for all his mercies! Allen has been down - in my room several times to pray for some _particular one_. There - were so many to pray for that we have been on our knees from seven - o’clock till now almost all the time. Kennett, my room-mate, is very - much affected. He fears to delay repentance, but says his father - won’t like it when he goes back to Russia, and that there are no - Christians in Russia.… Prayer ascends continually, sinners are - repenting, and I am as proud as Lucifer. I feel as if I was going to - do all myself; as if I could convert a thousand without God, if I - only told them the truth. Oh, pray that I may have humility! It is - and must be the burden of my supplications. - -Of the names mentioned in this letter, that of Isaac Stuart is not unknown -to fame. Joseph Jenkins afterwards became Willis’s brother-in-law, -marrying his sister Mary in 1831. He was from Boston, and was graduated at -Yale the year after Willis. - - - - -CHAPTER II. - -1823-1827. - -COLLEGE LIFE. - - -In the fall of 1823, Willis entered Yale. Commencement was then held in -September and first term opened late in October. College life left a more -enduring impress upon Willis than upon almost any other American writer. -It furnished him with a fund of literary material. It brought him into the -sunshine, and changed the homely school-boy chrysalis into a butterfly of -uncommon splendor and spread of wing. During freshman year he lodged in -the family of Mr. Townsend, opposite South College, with other members of -the Andover contingent. One of these was Henry Durant, who was Willis’s -chum all through the four years of the course. He was a serious-minded -lad, a hard student, who took high rank in the appointment list, and his -influence over his less steady room-mate was always for good. He became in -time the founder and first president of the University of California, and -a man of wide influence in educational and religious matters on the -Pacific coast. Among Willis’s other intimates in his own class were Joseph -H. Towne, also a Boston boy, and afterwards a doctor of divinity; and -“Bob” Richards, of New York, who took him home with him in vacations, and -introduced him to the gayeties of the metropolis. Class lines were not -drawn very sharply then, and one of his best friends in college was George -J. Pumpelly of Owego, New York. Their friendship was continued or resumed -in later life, when Willis bought from Pumpelly the little domain of -Glenmary; and settled in his neighborhood on Owego Creek. - -Next after Willis himself, the most distinguished member of the class of -1827 was Horace Bushnell. In senior year the two roomed in the same -hall--the north entry of North College; and in 1848, on the occasion of -Bushnell’s preaching a sermon at Boston to the Unitarians, which excited -much public comment, Willis gave some reminiscences of his quondam -classmate in the “Home Journal,” telling, among other things, how Bushnell -once came into his room and taught him how to hone a razor. He described -him as a “black-haired, earnest-eyed, sturdy, carelessly dressed, -athletic, and independent good fellow, popular in spite of being both -blunt and exemplary.” Bushnell was a leader in his class; Willis decidedly -not. They belonged to different sets, and there was little in common -between the elegant young poet and ladies’ man and the rough, strong -farmer lad from the Litchfield hills. They met once more in after -years,--in 1845, on the Rhine, both in pursuit of health. - -Henry Wikoff of Philadelphia--afterwards, with the titular embellishment -of “Chevalier,” a familiar, not to say flamboyant, figure in several -European capitals, and the winner of fame at home as the importer of Fanny -Elssler and founder of the “New York Republic”--happened to be in New -Haven during the summer of 1827. He was preparing to enter college, which -he did with the class of ’31, but was prematurely graduated by reason of -sundry irregularities. In his amusing “Reminiscences of an Idler,” -published in 1880, he gave the following description of two undergraduates -with whom he was subsequently more nearly associated:-- - - “I also remember two men who graduated in the class of 1827, that - were frequently pointed out to me as its most conspicuous members. - One was the son of a very prominent statesman, which, in fact, - explained the notice he attracted; but there was enough of - individuality about John Van Buren to command attention. He had - already revealed the traits which distinguished him in after - life,--easy and careless in manner, bold in character, and of an - aggressive turn of mind. His rival in notoriety had no hereditary - claims to support him, but he was gifted with a rare poetical talent - that had already secured him distinction both in and out of college. - His tone and bearing were aristocratic, not unmixed with _hauteur_, - and though admired for his abilities he never commanded the - sympathies of his comrades. Such was N. P. Willis, and such he - remained to the end of his life. Neither of these graduates, if I - remember, bore off ‘honors;’ but Willis was requested by his class, - with the approval of the faculty, to deliver a poem at the - Commencement of 1827. I was too young to approach these Titans, as I - regarded them, and was content to gaze on them with deference as - they swept by me in the street. In after years I became intimate - with them both.” - -The genial chevalier’s memory misled him slightly in placing “Prince -John,” as he was called, in the same class with Willis. He was a member of -’28, which he joined in junior year, and like Willis was a great wit and a -great beau. These three contemporaries, senior, junior, and sub-freshman, -were strangely juggled together again by Time, the conjurer. They met in -the famous Forrest trial, where Van Buren figured as the defendant’s -counsel, and Willis as a _particeps criminis_ and witness for the -plaintiff. Wikoff, who had known Forrest intimately before and after his -marriage, and had traveled extensively with him in Russia and elsewhere, -was at first made a party in the actor’s charges against his wife, but his -name was withdrawn from the case before it came to trial. - -Yale was then under the mild government of President Day. Silliman, -Knight, Kingsley, Fitch, and Goodrich were among the professors, and among -the tutors were Theodore Woolsey and Edward Beecher. The last afterwards -sustained another relation to Willis, as pastor of Park Street Church. -Student life in the twenties was a much simpler existence than it is in -the eighties. That network of interests which makes the college world of -to-day such a stirring microcosm,--with its athletic and social clubs, its -regattas, promenade concerts, and class-day gayeties, its undergraduate -newspapers and magazines, and its lavish expenditure upon society halls, -boat-houses, ball-grounds, etc.,--was all undreamed of. Far from owning a -yacht or a dog-cart, the Yalensian of those days seldom owned a carpet or -a paper-hanging. When those unwonted luxuries were introduced into his -room by Freshman Wikoff, the rumor of this offense against the unwritten -sumptuary laws of the college reached the ear of Professor Silliman. He -visited the apartment, and after inspecting it gravely said, with a frown, -to its abashed occupant, “All this love of externals, young man, argues -indifference to the more necessary furniture of the brain, which is your -spiritual business here.” The time-honored paragraph in the catalogue on -“necessary expenses” gave the annual maximum as two hundred dollars. That -paragraph has always been oversanguine, but probably four or five hundred -a year was the average cost of a college education in 1825. During each of -his last two years Willis spent about six hundred. Life in college was not -only plain, but decidedly rough. It was the era of “Bully Clubs,” town and -gown rows, “Bread and Butter Rebellions,” etc. It was the thing to paint -the president’s horse red, white, and blue, and to put a cow in the -belfry. In 1824 a mob threatened the Medical School because a body had -been dug up by resurrectionists. The Southerners, then a large element at -Yale, were particularly wild and turbulent. Christmas, which the Puritan -college refused to make a holiday of, was their recognized Saturnalia. - - “The day,” wrote Willis in a freshman letter to his father, “is the - greatest of the year at the South, and our Southern students seem - disposed to be restless under the restriction of a lesson on - playday. There were many of them drunk last evening, and still more - to-day. Christmas has always been, ever since the establishment of - the college, emphatically a _day of tricks_: windows broken, - bell-rope cut, freshmen squirted, and every imaginable scene of - dissipation acted out in full. Last night they barred the entry - doors of the South College, to exclude the government, and then - illuminated the building. This morning the recitation-room doors - were locked and the key stolen, and we were obliged to knock down - the doors to get in; and then we were not much better off, for the - lamps were full of water and the wicks gone. However, we procured - others, and went on with the lesson.” - -Wikoff tells of a fight in a college room, in which a dirk was used, -between a South Carolina student named Albert Smith and another -Southerner, which resulted in the expulsion of both. Smith, who stood at -the head of his class, afterwards changed his name to Rhett, and became a -member of his state’s legislature, but died prematurely. - -New Haven in 1823-27 was not the considerable manufacturing city of -to-day, but a rural town with a population of about nine thousand. West of -the college yard only two streets were laid out. Beyond these, along the -Derby turnpike, stretched a level of sandy pastures, alive with -grasshoppers, where the young orators, practicing for debates in “Linonia” -or “Brothers,” or for declamations before the Professor of Rhetoric, used -to go to “explode the elements.” Down by the bay, in a region now occupied -by great factories, stood the old “Pavilion,” a famous seaside hotel much -resorted to by Southern families. The first railroad from New Haven was -laid in 1839. As yet even the Farmington Canal was only projected. Willis -and the Boston contingent used to come all the way by stage-coach, passing -through Framingham, Worcester, and Hartford,--in which last he had -acquaintances, with whom he sometimes spent a day _en route_. Anthracite -coal was not in use in New Haven before 1827. Citizens and students alike -depended on wood, the latter buying theirs at the regular wood-stand near -South College, and having it _cut_ in the yard behind the colleges, -wood-saws not being in general vogue. The habits of the collegians, from a -hygienic point of view, were usually bad. They sat up late drinking strong -coffee in their rooms, rose very early perforce, prayed and recited on an -empty stomach, and took little regular exercise. Dyspepsia was naturally -rife. - -But _en revanche_ New Haven was a beautiful little city, with a -homogeneous population and a charming society, and better fitted in some -respects for the seat of a university than it is to-day. It was already, -thanks to the public spirit of Governor Hillhouse, the City of Elms; and -it is hard to walk through Temple Street of a moonlight evening without a -regretful recollection of Willis’s “Rosa Matilda description,” in “Edith -Linsey,” of a place that must have been all Temple Streets,--a dream-city -of shaded squares and white--piazzaed mansions shining among cool green -gardens. In “The Cherokee’s Threat” he has recorded his first eager -impressions of the new community that he was entering, as he stood and -looked about him in the side aisle of the old chapel on the opening day of -the term: “It was the only republic I have ever known,--that class of -freshmen. It was a fair arena.… Of the feelings that stir the heart in our -youth,--of the few, the _very_ few, that have no recoil and leave no -repentance,--this leaping from the starting post of mind, this first -spread of the encouraged wing in the free heaven of thought and knowledge, -is recorded in my own slender experience as the most joyous and the most -unmingled.” - -This was in the retrospect. He did not employ such fine language in 1823. -His first letters from college are like those of any other freshman, -simple in style, filled with affectionate messages to the folks at home, -thanks for bundles, etc., received, requests to mother touching shirts -and suspenders, and details of his daily routine. They describe the -prayers at early candlelight and the meals in Commons Hall, with its -twenty long tables, its big dumb-waiter, and its too abstemious tutor, -who, from the vantage-ground of a raised platform, returns thanks when the -dinner is only half done. “You may sit down afterwards _if you wish_, but -it is not generally the case. There is an old woman who has been in the -college kitchen twenty years, and in all this time done nothing but make -pies. We have them Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the worst of it is we -can only get one piece. I have fared rather better than the rest -generally, for Durant seldom eats pie, and most always sends me his -piece.” Then there was the round of study and recitation: Livy in the -morning, mathematics at eleven, and Roman antiquities at four. “At -recitation I have one of the descendants of the Dutch settlers in New York -on each side of me. Their ancestors are mentioned by Knickerbocker in his -history of New York.” These were doubtless Cortlandt Van Rensselaer of -Albany, and Washington Van Zandt from Long Island. Between study hours -there is foot-ball on the green in front of the colleges, “which game is -not generally very edifying to the shins of the freshmen.” These last -have subscribed twenty-five cents apiece “to support the lamps in the -entry,”--a venerable trick of the sophomores, who “collected in this way -five or six dollars, and had a scrape upon it, and the conclusion of the -matter was their getting so intoxicated as to be unable to reach home.” -The freshmen have likewise had their windows broken, and Willis’s chum has -been smoked out, during the former’s absence from his room, by cigars -inserted in the keyhole. A somewhat distant and impersonal form of the -persecution this will seem to modern freshmen. But Sophomore Kneeland, -from Georgia, having been collared by Tutor Stoddard, red-handed, in the -act of breaking windows, and having knocked down the tutor and run, has -been publicly expelled, the president reading out his mittimus in chapel -to the whole college. Willis has joined the Linonian Society,--“Calhoun, -the candidate for the presidency, was once a member of it” (an ancient -“campaign” argument); also a freshman debating club, the officers of which -“are almost all professors of religion,” and in which he has been chosen, -in his absence, “critic on composition and speaking.” He has drunk tea at -Miss Dunning’s. He has called upon Mrs. Daggett and Mrs. T. Dwight, -finding the former of these two ladies to be “a very pious woman, and a -woman of uncommon understanding,” and the latter “a woman of noble mind, -though plain in person.” He has taken a walk to the Cave of the Regicides -on West Rock,--time out of mind the goal of the freshman’s first -pilgrimage. He has been appointed one of the committee to solicit -subscriptions in his own class for the Greeks, and is also one of the -managers of the Bible Society, and active at the Friday evening -prayer-meetings, there being just at present considerable “engagedness” -among “professors” in the several classes. Meanwhile Tutor Twining has -been hissed and scraped at while conducting services in chapel. The -government “are growing more and more rigorous. Almost every member of the -freshman class is called up and questioned. Many are dismissed, and an -examination is made of everything, from the stealing of a sugar-bowl out -of the hall to the prostration of a tutor. Tutor Woolsey was smoked the -other evening by two fellows who were too drunk to make their escape, and -were caught without any difficulty. They did it at twelve o’clock at -night, wrapped in sheets, and are both dismissed.” The disturbances -between the sophomores and freshmen culminated for Willis in a short -suspension in the winter of 1823-24 for honorably refusing to disclose the -names of sophomores by whom he had been smoked and squirted, or the names -of persons in whose rooms he had seen a squirt,--an instrument of torture -whose possession involved expulsion. The letter in which he announced his -suspension is very long and filled with heroic sentiments. - - “All my friends have been to see me, and justify me in my conduct. - There are two professors of religion in the sophomore class who have - done exactly so, and will be treated accordingly. And though it is a - matter of policy with the government to pursue this course, it is - said, and justly, that they despise an informer. My meeting with - this squirt was entirely unavoidable, not originating (as perhaps - you may suppose) from being in company where I ought not to be.” - -Willis suffered frequently from homesickness and low spirits during the -winter of his freshman year. He had the poetic temperament, and was -subject to his moods, easily elated and easily depressed. His chum was -away somewhere teaching, and Willis, in his loneliness, had recourse to -his pen. - - “I find but few among the students,” he wrote to his father, “whom I - should choose as companions. Most of them are profane and - dissipated, and their highest ambition seems to be to show off as a - high fellow, and one who can overreach the government and laugh at - its officers. The pious students in my class are mostly _men_, - without any refinement either of manners or feeling,--fresh from - the country,--whose piety renders them respectable, and who without - it would be but boors. But there are a few students who have both - piety and refinement, and some who, though not professors of - religion, respect it, and who are moral in their outward conduct, - whatever be the state of their hearts. These I can generally - associate with, but when they are _all_ out of the way, and I am in - need of something to brighten my feelings, I can find in the flow of - fancy a forgetfulness of the darker side. I have written a great - deal in this way since my college life commenced, and my writing - will _always_ depend on the thermometer of my feelings.” - -As the youthful scribe gained readier power of expression his home -correspondence became fuller and more effusive. He wrote with much -minuteness a narrative of an evening spent at a country parsonage in West -Haven, of a walk to the light-house, a visit to the cave of the hermit of -East Rock, and of a trip by steamboat to New York. He dwelt at length upon -all the impressions which the varying seasons and his daily experiences -made upon his mind. There is, of course, no literary art in most of these -juvenile confidences. The language is apt to be sophomorical, and the -letters, as a whole, will seldom repay quotation, but an extract may be -given here and there as a specimen of his epistolary style. The following -is from a letter of July 11, 1824, to his sister Julia, with whom he was -always particularly unreserved:-- - - “I wish you were here to walk with me these beautiful moonlight - evenings. I have seldom gone to bed and left the mild Queen of the - Night riding in the heavens, for it seems a waste of noble feelings. - When I am walking on such evenings as we have had this week past, - and amidst such scenery as New Haven presents, chastened and - softened in its beauty by the pure and quiet light of the moon, I - have an elevation of thought and sentiment which I cannot drown in - sleep without reluctance. I really think we had better lay it down - as a rule never to go to sleep while the moon is shining. In fact, - Julia, I suspect (for I find no one who sympathizes with me in this - feeling) that I am something of a lunatic,--affected by the rays of - that beautiful planet with a kind of happiness which is the result - of a heated imagination, and which is not felt by the generality of - the common-sense people of the world. Last Friday evening, you know, - was beautiful. I attended a meeting of the professors of religion, - statedly held on that evening in the theological chamber, and when - it was out went alone to walk. I strolled along upon the shore of - the bay towards the light-house a mile or more, and never did I meet - with so delightful a scene. There was no wind stirring, or not - enough to make a ripple on the wave, and the hardly perceptible - swell of the tide cast its waters upon the pebbles without a sound. - You know the appearance of a bay when the light is shed obliquely - upon it--looking like one immense sheet of liquid silver, and if - you have ever seen a boat pass across it at such a moment, and seen - that beautiful phenomena of the phosphorus dripping like fire from - the oars and gilding the foam before the prow, you can have some - idea of the scene I then witnessed. Now and then a sloop stole - languidly across the bay, hardly appearing to move, and presenting - an alternate light and shade as the moon struck upon the flapping - sail or the helmsman tacked to take advantage of the hardly - perceptible breeze which swept him slowly from the land. I declare - it did seem like enchantment. The clock struck one, but I felt no - disposition to go home, and, as the air was pure and balmy, the - thought struck me that it would be a pleasant hour to bathe. - Accordingly I undressed, and swam along the shore slowly for about - half a mile in the cool, refreshing waters, with sensations which - must be felt to be understood. After this delightful exercise I - walked home, and, seating myself by the window where I could look at - the moon, fell asleep, and did not wake till near morning.” - -This fancy, that he was peculiarly affected by the light of the moon, was -the first suggestion of his wild tale, “The Lunatic’s Skate,” one of his -most imaginative stories, and not unworthy of comparison with the weird -fictions of Edgar Poe. - -In the summer term of his sophomore year Willis was again suspended for a -few weeks, this time in common with a majority of his class and in -consequence of what was known as “the Conic Sections Rebellion.” The class -had been assured by the tutors that they would not have to learn the -corollaries to the propositions in that branch of mathematics, and when -the objectionable corollaries were, notwithstanding, imposed upon them, -the mercury then standing at 90° and the annual examinations at hand, -eighty-four members bound themselves by a solemn pledge not to recite -them. The government were firm, and the recalcitrant sophomores were -suspended in platoons, day after day. Horace Bushnell was a ring-leader in -this revolt, which included the “professors” equally with the worldly. All -the suspended men were taken back at the end of the term. - -In some recollections of Willis by his classmate, Hugh Blair Grigsby, -published in the latter’s journal, the “Norfolk Beacon,” in the autumn of -1834, he says:-- - - “The first notice that the public had of his budding genius was a - little poem in six verses, the two first lines of the first verse - being,-- - - ‘The leaf floats by upon the stream - Unheeded in its silent way,’ - - We cannot recall the whole stanza; but our fair readers may remember - that their albums contained, some time since, a beautiful vignette - representing a lady resting in her bower, listening to the notes of - a pretty songster perched above her. This engraving was taken from - these lines in this poem:-- - - ‘The bird that sings in lady’s bower, - To-morrow will she think of him?’” - -Grigsby says that this poem took the prize offered by the “New York -Mirror.” He also recalls a division-room composition, of a humorous -character, read by Willis in the winter of 1824-25, about an old man -planting a cabbage on his wife’s grave, which produced great merriment in -the class. In the same year verses signed “Roy,” mainly on scriptural -subjects, began to appear in the poet’s corner of the “Boston Recorder,” -where they jostled the selections from Watts or original contributions -from the pens of “Maro,” “Eliza,” and “The Green Mountain Bard.” Some of -these _juvenilia_ were too imperfect to merit preserving, and were never -put between covers. Others, like “Absalom,” “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” -and “The Burial of Arnold,” were among his most successful things. They -were widely quoted and admired, copied about in the newspapers, inserted -in readers and collections of verse, and have done as much to upbear his -memory as any of his later writings. They were not all contributed to the -“Recorder.” Some came out in “The Christian Examiner,” “The Memorial,” -“The Connecticut Journal,” “The Youth’s Companion,” and “The Telegraph.” -It was customary for the editors of weekly and monthly periodicals, who -ordinarily paid their contributors nothing, to stimulate Columbia’s infant -muse by an annual burst of generosity in the shape of a prize for the best -poem printed in their columns during the year,--a device now relegated to -the juvenile and college press. Several of these honors fell to Willis’s -share. Lockwood, the publisher of an annual gift-book, “The Album,” paid -him fifty dollars for a prize poem, and he got unknown sums for his -“Absalom,” “prize poem designated by the judges of original poetry in the -‘Christian Watchman,’” as announced in the issue of that paper for March -30, 1827; and for “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” similarly designated by the -judges in the “Boston Recorder” for 1826. He was also invited to write for -the “Atlantic Souvenir,” published in Philadelphia, Goodrich’s “Token,” -and Hill’s “Lyceum” in Boston, Bryant’s new magazine in New York, and a -paper recently started in the same city and edited by a brother of -Professor Silliman; for the “Bristol Reporter,” a “newspaper in Rhode -Island,” and other publications. - -All this literary glory gave the young undergraduate great _éclat_ in New -Haven. He received many invitations out, and was teased for verses by the -owners of countless albums. He began to frequent the society of the town, -where his rapidly developing social gifts soon made him a favorite. He was -at this time a tall, handsome stripling, with an easy assurance of manner -and a good deal of the dandy in his dress. His portrait, painted by Miss -Stuart of Boston, a daughter of the famous portrait-painter, Gilbert -Stuart, shows him with a rosy face, very fair hair hanging in natural -curls over the forehead, a _retroussé_ nose, long upper lip, pale gray eye -with uncommonly full lid (a family trait), and a confident and joyous -expression. He carried himself with an airy, jaunty grace, and there was -something particularly spirited and _vif_ about the poise and movement of -his head,--a something which no portrait could reproduce. With naturally -elegant tastes, an expansive temper, and an eagerness to see the more -brilliant side of life, Willis could at all times make himself agreeable -to those whom he cared to please. But he was quick to feel the chill of a -hostile presence, and toward any one, in especial, who seemed to -disapprove of him he could be curt and defiant. He had a winning way with -women, who were flattered by his recognition of their influence over him -and grateful for _les petits soins_ which he never neglected. - -Taken up more and more with social distractions, he ceased to apply -himself to his college duties. Indeed, he had never felt much interest in -the studies of the curriculum, excepting Latin, for which he had a taste -and in which his scholarship was fairly good. Mathematics was his pet -aversion. He did considerable miscellaneous reading, and cultivated a -liking for the old British dramatists and Commonwealth prose writers, like -Burton, Taylor, and Browne; his studies in whom he afterwards imparted to -the readers of the “American Monthly.” He wrote to his father, shortly -before graduation, that he had devoted his whole time in college to -literature. - -Always more of a ladies’ man than a man’s man, fastidious too in the -choice of acquaintances, he took small part in college affairs, and -preferred the social life of the town. He was not a frequenter of Linonia, -that forum whose decay furnishes an annual theme for lamentation to -returning graduates at Commencement. But once he debated that perennial -question, “Were the Crusades a Benefit to Europe?” and once he composed a -comedy, which was acted in the society with applause, though not without -scandal. The following reminiscences will find an echo in the breast of -many an alumnus who in his salad days has sparkled out in some “Coffee -Club” or “Studio,” or other Ambrosial experiment of the kind:-- - - “I sunk some pocket money in a blank book on reading Wilson’s - ‘Noctes.’ Celestial nights I thought _we_ had of it, at old black - Stanley’s forbidden oyster house in New Haven; and it struck me it - was robbery of posterity (no less!) not to record the brilliant - efflorescence of our conviviality. Regularly on reaching my chambers - (or as soon after morning prayers as my head became pellucid), I - attempted to reduce to dialogue the wit of our Christopher North, - ‘Shepherd’ and ‘Tickler;’ but alas! it became what may be called - ‘productive labor.’ Either my memory did not serve me, or wit (I - shouldn’t be surprised) reads cold by repentant daylight. It was - heavy work, as reluctant as a college exercise, and after using up - for cigar-lighters the short-lived ‘Noctes,’ I devoted the remainder - of the book to outlines of the antique (that is to say, of old - shoes), my passion just then being a collection of French slippers - from the prettiest feet in the known world (‘known,’ to me).” - -Among the uncollected “Recorder” verses is a series of three divertingly -Byronic performances, “Misanthropic Hours,” from which it would seem that -the poet, in his junior year, had a momentary attack of cynicism, produced -by his discovery of the soullessness of “woman.” Most boys who tag lines -have gone through this species of measles. - - “I do not hate, but I have felt - Indifferent to woman long: - I bow not where I once have knelt, - I lisp not what I poured in song. - They are too beautifully made - For their tame earthliness of thought; - Ay, their immortal minds degrade - The meaner work His hands have wrought.” - -The specifications of this painful charge were several. He had been -walking with a beautiful girl one glorious night, with his soul uplifted -by the influences of the hour, when she rudely jarred upon his mood by -remarking that “their kitchen chimney smoked again.” Another young woman, -with whom he was viewing a Crucifixion in a picture gallery, had “coldly -curled her lip and praised the high priest’s garment.” A third had -profaned one of his religious hours. - - “I turned me at the slow Amen - And wiped my drowning eyes, and met - A trifling smile! Think ye of _men_? - I tell you _man_ hath heart:--no, no, - It was a woman’s smile. They tell - Of her bright ruby lip, and eye - That shames the Arabic gazelle; - They tell of her cheek’s glowing dye, - Of her arch look and witching spell: - But there is not that man on earth - Who at that hour had felt like mirth.” - -Worse than all, he had been watching by a corpse, in company with a young -lady of his acquaintance, when - - “She trifled, ay, that _angel_ maid, - She _trifled_ where the dead was laid!” - -These misogynistic musings called forth a remonstrance,--“Woman--to -Roy,”--by one of the “Recorder’s” poetesses, who signed herself “Rob.” “Ye -know her not,” she sang, - - “An idle name - Ye give to toys of fashion’s mould, - And well ye scorn those guilty ones - Who curl their smiles of pride to heaven. - Oh, seek her not in halls of mirth, - But in those calm dwellings of earth,” etc. - -Meanwhile, rumors of his idleness and dissipation began to reach Boston, -and caused his family much distress. These reports were absurdly -exaggerated, and were warmly denied by his friends, who asserted that the -head and front of his offending were an occasional moonlight drive to “the -Lake” and a supper, with a glass of ale at “Barney’s.” Willis was gay in -college, but very far from dissipated. In the select circles where he was -made at home nothing like dissipation was tolerated. The society of the -little university town was as simple as it was refined. He was cordially -welcomed in such families as the Whitings, the Bishops, the Hubbards, and -the entire Woolsey, Devereux, and Johnson connection in New Haven, -Stratford, and New York. His winter holidays were spent partly at New York -with his classmates Rankin and Richards, partly at Stratford with the -Johnsons, once at New London among the kinsfolk of his grandmother, Lucy -Douglas; and once he traveled as far as Philadelphia. His “dissipations” -in New Haven were picnics to East Rock, rehearsals of “The Lady of the -Lake” at a seminary for young ladies, pie-banquets in Thanksgiving -week,--paid for with verses,--and New Year’s calls with their -accompaniments of a cooky and a glass of wine. - -That his head was a little turned by his literary and social successes is -not wonderful. He had his share of vanity, and in his confidential letters -to his parents and sisters he made no effort to conceal his elation. A -passage from one of these, dated January 7, 1827, will give a good idea of -his occupations and his frame of mind at this point in his senior year:-- - - “I stayed in Stratford till Friday, and then the Johnsons offered me - a seat in the carriage to New York. This, of course, was - irresistible; and Friday night at ten o’clock I was presented to the - mayor of the city, at a splendid levee. It was his last before - leaving his office, and I never saw such magnificence. The fashion - and beauty and talent of the city were all there, crowding his - immense rooms to show their respect for his services.… I found many - old acquaintances there and made some new ones,--among the latter, a - Mrs. Brunson, as beautiful a woman as I ever saw, and her sister, - Miss Catherine Bailey, also a most beautiful woman. I met the very - accomplished Adelaide Richards there, who patronized me and played - my dictionary, and from whose father and mother I received an - invitation to dine on New Year’s day. At two or three o’clock I went - _home_ to Mr. William Johnson’s (who married Miss Woolsey’s sister), - and in a glorious bed, with a good coal fire by my side, slept off - the fatigues of a sixty miles’ ride and four hours’ dissipation. - - “On Saturday evening I went to a genuine _soirée_ at the great Dr. - Hosack’s. This man is the most luxurious liver in the city, and his - house is a perfect palace. You could not lay your hand on the wall - for costly paintings, and the furniture exceeds everything I have - seen. I met all the literary characters of the day there, and - Halleck, the poet, among them. With him I became quite acquainted, - and he is a most glorious fellow. More of him when we meet.… You - know on New Year’s day in New York all the gentlemen call on all - their acquaintances. I began at twelve o’clock at the Battery, and - went up to St. John’s Park, merely running in and right out again - till four, the dinner hour. I called on everybody. William Woolsey - went with me, and, by appointing a rendezvous in every street, we - kept along together. At four I went to Mr. George Richards’s to - dine. He is no relative of Robert’s, and lives in the best style in - a large house on St. John’s Park. We sat down to dinner between five - and six, and sat several hours with a very large party. I got a seat - next to the beautiful Miss Adelaide, and enjoyed it much. They live - in the French style, and the last course was sugar-plums!” - -In another letter he says:-- - - “I was much flattered in vacation by the attentions of literary men - and women; the latter more particularly, who seemed to consider it - quite the thing to find a poet who was not a bear, and who could - stoop so much from the _excelsa_ of his profession as to dress - fashionably and pay compliments like a lawyer. I heard of a very - _blue_ young lady who said, ‘La, how I should love to see Mr. - Willis! I am sure I should fall in love with a man who writes such - sweet poetry.’ She is both belle and bluestocking, they say.” - -One of the families in which Willis was an _habitué_ was the household of -Mrs. Apthorp, a widow with four lovely daughters, who conducted one of the -seminaries for young ladies for which New Haven was famous. This was the -original of Mrs. Ilfrington’s school in “The Cherokee’s Threat.” Willis -was much ridiculed by the reviewers for his very high-colored description -of this educational establishment, and in particular for declaring that -“in the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Raphael” he had “scarcely -found so many lovely women, of so different models and so perfect, as were -assembled in my sophomore year,” in this Connecticut “sugar-refinery.” His -lines “On the Death of a Young Girl” were written on the occasion of the -death of one of this family, some years after. The “Lines to Laura W----, -Two Years of Age”--one of two selections from Willis in Emerson’s -“Parnassus”--were addressed to a little New Haven girl, the sister and -biographer of Theodore Winthrop. Another friend of Willis’s was a Mrs. De -Forest, widow of the American consul at Buenos Ayres, a lady of fortune, -who came to New Haven, and bought a house facing the green, where she gave -fashionable parties. She was herself a beautiful woman, and her daughters, -Julia and Pastora--_matre pulchra filiæ pulchriores_--were great belles -among the students in Chevalier Wikoff’s day, who describes one of them as -a “perfect blonde,” and the other as a “matchless brunette.” - -The religious impressions which had been stamped upon Willis’s mind by the -Andover revival were gradually obliterated by the preoccupations of -undergraduate life. He did not definitely renounce his profession, and -remained till graduation in communion with the college church. But the -state of his soul gave deep anxiety to his good parents, who looked upon -him, as he did upon himself, as a backslider. In a letter to his father -during a season of “ingathering” in the college, stimulated by the -eloquent preaching of Professor Fitch, he wrote as follows:-- - - “My own experience makes me very much alive to the frequent fallacy - of the hopes which are experienced in revivals. I understand your - anxiety for me, and I understand the feelings which prompted - mother’s most tender and affectionate addition to your letter. If I - perish it will not be because I do not _know_ my duty, for there are - few who have been better instructed. But my feelings are most - peculiar and most trying. I am under one ceaseless and enduring - conviction of sin; one wearing anxiety about my soul, without making - any visible progress. I know what you will write about it. I could - anticipate every word you can say upon the point. But so it is, and - I have done with _all_ discussion of it.” - -At the completion of the senior examinations Willis delivered the -valedictory poem to his class, “with a simplicity and feeling which -thrilled the audience,” says one who was present. Portions of this were -printed in his “Sketches” and in subsequent editions of his poems. It is -one of the hardest things in the world to write a good occasional poem, -and Willis’s Class Day address does not differ much from other -performances of the kind. It is in blank verse, laboriously didactic, and -expresses the usual conventional sentiments and noble moral reflections -proper to the occasion. It is by no means as good as another occasional -poem of his, “The Death of Arnold,” written upon the burial of the class -champion, and first printed in the “Connecticut Journal.” - -Willis spent the senior vacation--a halcyon period of six weeks that -formerly intervened between Class Day and Commencement--in a trip through -New York State and Canada; taking what is now known as the grand tour, and -gathering impressions which he ultimately worked into the texture of his -vivid sketches of “Niagara, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence.” He -traveled by the Erie Canal, then newly opened through an almost unbroken -wilderness, dotted here and there with stripling cities, Utica, Palmyra, -Rochester,--the last only a few years old. - - “The burnt stumps of the first settlers are all over the town: you - find them close by the doors and in the yards of the people, and you - may look between elegant blocks of stone and brick buildings and see - the _natural forest_ within five minutes’ walk. It is complete - mushroom. We saw Colonel Rochester, who first settled it. He and his - wife were sitting at their front door, enjoying the evening under - trees which twelve years ago were the depth of the wilderness.” - -There was a perpetual novelty in these contrasts. He saw the country, as -it were, in the making. The canal-boat went only four miles an hour, and -the voyager could get out, when so minded, to stretch his legs and pick -the wild flowers along the tow-path. Odd experiences relieved the -monotony of this quiet sail along the amber Mohawk, “bonniest stream that -ever dimpled.” One Sunday, at the request of old General Wadsworth of -Geneseo, who happened to be aboard and took a great fancy to Willis, the -latter preached a sermon to the passengers assembled in the cabin, and -passed among them, in consequence, as a young minister who “had geten him -yet no benefice.” And here is a little idyl perhaps worth recording:-- - - “On Sunday morning I saw a girl on a hillside in the wildest part of - the Mohawk Valley, milking. So I leaped ashore, to the great - amusement of the passengers, and ran up to give her a lecture. She - was quite pretty, and blushed when I asked her if she knew it was - wicked to milk on Sunday. She had a pretty little clean foot, - probably washed by the wet grass, and held up the milking-pail for - me to drink with considerable grace. I should have begged a kiss if - the boat had not been in sight. I have just been called up to look - at Palmyra. It is curious to sail through the centre of a town, and - see people in the windows above you and on the steps of the houses, - crowding to see the strange faces on board. They look so much at - home and you come so near them that you can hardly believe you shall - be in ten minutes in the depth of the forest again.” - -At Utica he found a host of friends, was received with Western -hospitality, and had twenty or thirty invitations to dinners and parties. -A Utica belle whom he had known in New Haven made up a picnic in his -behoof to Trenton Falls, the scenery of which he described so admirably in -“Edith Linsey.” It was his hap to visit Trenton on the very day when a -Miss Suydam, a young lady from New York, fell over the falls and was -killed. From Auburn he drove out on a visit to another fair acquaintance, -Miss Adele Livingston, whose country house on Skaneateles Lake he found to -be a “little palace of cultivation and refinement” dropped down -unexpectedly in the wilderness. This was “Fleming Farm” in “Edith Linsey,” -though it would probably be a mistake to identify the heroine of that tale -with Willis’s hostess. With her he took a horseback ride round the head of -the lake, and then he returned to his canal. At Niagara he encountered a -pleasant party of Boston and Salem people, and was asked to attach himself -to their train on the way up Ontario and down the St. Lawrence. Among them -was a “Miss E. M----” (Emily Marshall?), a famous beauty, who figures in -Willis’s “Niagara” sketch in a romantic and perilous adventure behind the -fall. “I am sorry I may not mention her name,” he says, “for in more -chivalrous times she would have been a character of history. Everybody -who has been in America, however, will know whom I am describing.” At -Montreal he fell in with Chester Harding, the artist, with whom he -afterwards became intimate at Boston, and who painted an excellent -portrait of Willis, now owned by Mr. Charles A. Dana. In September he went -back to New Haven to take his degree and say good-by, and then college -life was over and the world before him. - -Willis always looked back with tenderness to his college days. Years -after, in his “Slingsby” papers, contributed to an English magazine, he -made New Haven and the university the scene or background of some of his -best stories and sketches of American life, such as “Edith Linsey,” “F. -Smith,” “Scenes of Fear,” “Larks in Vacation,” and “The Cherokee’s -Threat.” These, however, are not college stories in the common meaning of -the term. The heroes of these amusing and often incredible adventures are -undergraduates, but they have the easy _savoir faire_ of men of the world, -and the incidents of the narrative are mainly enacted outside the college -fence, and consist for the most part of love-making, driving stanhope, and -touring about the country in an independent manner. The academic life of -the time offered but a meagre field to the romancer, nor indeed is the -case much altered since. There have been loud calls, at present -subsiding, for an “American Tom Brown.” A few patriotic Harvard graduates -have responded, but their success has been such that the alumni of other -colleges have congratulated themselves that no one has been moved to -perform the same office for their own _Almæ Matres_. It may be doubted -whether the four years of a college course are a broad enough base to -support a full-length novel. A man is not born in college, and he seldom -dies or marries there. The struggle which decides his final success or -failure is fought on other fields. As to the life itself, though -engrossing enough to those who lead it, as stuff for fiction it is -scant,--a life of pleasant monotony, varied by contests for honors and -prizes which seem paltry to the man, and made exciting by that most -fatuous of pursuits, college “politics.” Nevertheless, it has unique -features of its own, peculiar developments of sentiment and humor which -appeal to the imagination. To these, the man who has lived it and found it -sweet will often attempt to give shape, as he looks back upon it in less -happy years, even though he may understand well enough that such -fragmentary experiences want the unity and importance required in a -continuous fiction. As experiments of this nature, Willis’s college -stories should be regarded. It must be confessed that he idealized a good -deal. His geese were always swans, and he practiced an airy exaggeration -provoking to the statistician or the literal minded. He speaks, for -example, in an off-hand way of “the thousand students of the university,” -though the number never reached half a thousand at any time when he was a -student. But in the incidental glimpses of the life which he described, in -the atmosphere which he flung around it, he was true to the spirit of that -life,--the gay, irresponsible existence of half-idle, half-earnest youth, -whose friendships are warm and unquestioning, to whom the world is new, -the future full of promise, and every girl a Venus. There is a glamour -over it all--“the golden exhalations of the dawn”--and romance is the -proper medium in which to present it. - - “Bright as seems to me this seat of my Alma Mater, however,” wrote - Willis in “Edith Linsey,” “and gayly as I describe it, it is to me a - picture of memory, glazed and put away; if I see it ever again it - will be but to walk through its embowered streets by a midnight - moon. It is vain and heartbreaking to go back after absence to any - spot of earth, of which the interest was the human love whose home - and cradle it had been. There is nothing on earth so mournful and - unavailing, as to return to the scenes which are unchanged, and look - to return to ourselves and others as we were when we thus knew - them.” - -On leaving college, Willis signalized his entrance upon a literary career -of forty years by collecting and publishing a score of his juvenile poems, -in a thin volume entitled “Sketches,” and dedicated to his father. It -contained, among other things, four of the scriptural pieces which had -done more than anything else to give him reputation. This vein he -continued to cultivate, and added others in later volumes till they -reached the number of eighteen. Even in his last years he wrote one more -scriptural poem for the “New York Ledger,” at the persuasion of the -enterprising Mr. Bonner, reinforced by the proffer of a hundred dollars. -As there is little difference in value between the earliest and latest of -these, it may be well to speak of them here collectively. It is not hard -to explain the vogue which they obtained, or the reason why many people at -this day, who know nothing else of Willis, have read his Scripture poems. -One still encounters, here and there, a good old country lady who reads -little poetry, but who can quote from “Absalom” or “Jephthah’s Daughter” -and thinks them quite the best product of the American Parnassus. They -made good Sunday reading. They appealed to an intensely biblical and not -very literary constituency; to a public familiar with the Old and New -Testaments alike, and familiarized also with the life and scenery of the -East through Bible commentaries and the lectures of missionaries who had -traveled in Palestine. They were pleased to meet again the most striking -episodes and affecting situations in the sacred narratives, set forth in -easy verse, embroidered prettily, and with the sentiments and reflections -proper to the subject all duly marshaled before them. It lent concreteness -to the story to learn that in the room of Jairus’s daughter, - - “The spice lamps in the alabaster urns - Burned dimly and the white and fragrant smoke - Curled indolently on the chamber walls;” - -or that the Shunamite’s little son, on his way to the field, passed - - “Through the light green hollows where the lambs - Go for the tender grass;” - -or that the scene of Christ’s baptism - - “Was a green spot in the wilderness - Touched by the river Jordan. The dark pine - Never had dropped its tassels on the moss - Tufting the leaning bank, nor on the grass - Of the broad circle stretching evenly - To the straight larches had a heavier foot - Than the wild heron’s trodden. Softly in - Through a long aisle of willows, dim and cool, - Stole the clear waters with their muffled feet, - And, hushing as they spread into the light, - Circled the edges of the pebbled tank - Slowly, then rippled through the woods away.” - -For the merely literary quality of these poems, independent of their -sacred associations, not very much can be said. They were certainly -remarkably mature work for a college boy, pure in taste, delicate and -correct in execution. But there is a slightly hollow ring to them, as of -verse exercises on set themes. The inspiration is at second hand, from -books and not from life. As other juvenile poets have gone to their -classics for a subject, Willis went to his Bible. He drank at Siloa’s -fount instead of Helicon, and tuned the psaltery instead of the lyre. We -have evidently not reached the real Willis yet. In general the experiment -of paraphrasing the narrative portions of the Scriptures has not been -successful. Something is lost when the impressive simplicity of the -original is blown out into wordy and sentimental verse. This process of -spinning rhetorical commonplaces from brief texts is well illustrated in -the following passage from “Lazarus and Mary:”-- - - “But to the mighty heart - That in Gethsemane sweat drops of blood, - Taking for us the cup that might not pass-- - The heart whose breaking chord upon the cross - Made the earth tremble and the sun afraid - To look upon his agony--the heart - Of a lost world’s Redeemer--overflowed, - Touched by a mourner’s sorrow! Jesus wept!” - -This is what Lowell called “inspiration and water.” Alfred de Vigny, a -fine spirit and good poet, has tried the same thing in French and -succeeded little, if at all, better than the Yankee collegian. The -inadequacy of Willis’s Scripture renderings is made more apparent by the -fact that his blank verse is not a good vehicle for strong feeling. It is -correct and flowing, sometimes musical, but seldom energetic. It favored -his tendency to diffuseness and it often degenerates into a kind of -accentless _oratio soluta_, which is only verse because it scans, and only -blank verse because it does not rhyme. - -Upon the whole the most genuine expression of Willis’s talent in this -early volume was in the piece entitled “Better Moments,” which remains one -of his best, because one of his most spontaneous poems. - -It makes one realize the startling growth of the United States in the last -fifty years, to remember that Willis had already won a “national -reputation” by his poetry when he left college. The air was much thinner -then, American literature much scantier, the population so small and so -comparatively homogeneous, that the suffrages of a few hundreds of readers -in New York, Boston, New Haven, and Philadelphia, and the praises of a few -dozen journals were enough to bestow fame. What undergraduate nowadays, -however clever or precocious, could hope to make his voice heard beyond -the limits of the college yard? - -It remains only to mention that the presence in New Haven of the two poets -Percival and Hillhouse, when Willis was a student there, was not without -influence on his literary development. Percival went to West Point as -Professor of Chemistry in 1824 and did not come back to New Haven until -1827, but Hillhouse resided constantly at his beautiful home in the -outskirts of the city, “Sachem’s Wood.” His Master’s Oration, “The -Education of a Poet,” and his Phi Beta Kappa poem, “The Judgment,” had -given him great fame in the university as an orator and poet. “‘Hadad’ was -published in 1825,” wrote Willis, “during my second year in college, and -to me it was the opening of a new heaven of imagination. The leading -characters possessed me for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious -language was, for a long time, constantly in my ears.” Of its author he -said, “In no part of the world have I seen a man of more distinguished -mien.… Though my acquaintance with him was slight, he confided to me, in a -casual conversation, the plan of a series of dramas, different from all he -had attempted, upon which he designed to work with the first mood and -leisure he could command.” - - - - -CHAPTER III. - -1827-1831. - -BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. - - -The profession of letters was Willis’s manifest destiny. Family tradition, -his inborn tastes and talents, the course of his studies, and his -achievements hitherto, all pointed that way. Yet in the then state of the -American press it took no small amount of self-confidence to decline a -paying profession and launch upon the uncertain currents of literary life. -His next four years were spent in Boston and were years of apprenticeship -in his life-work as an editor and journalist. He continued to write and -publish verses, but his hand was acquiring cunning, through constant -practice and frequent failure, in the production of that light, brilliant -prose which made him the favorite periodical writer of his day; and he was -also learning how to conduct a magazine. He still made occasional -contributions to the “Recorder”--among others the New Year’s verses, then -essential to every well-regulated paper--for 1828 and 1829. But his first -editorial engagement was with Samuel G. Goodrich, the well-known -bookseller and publisher, who had removed from Hartford to Boston in 1826. -One of the first books which he had published in Boston was Willis’s -“Sketches,” and he now employed the author of it to edit “The Legendary” -for 1828 and “The Token” for 1829. Goodrich was a fine example of Yankee -enterprise and versatility. He was one of the pioneers of “the trade” in -America, entering the field at the same time with the Harpers. Under the -pen-name of “Peter Parley,” he wrote or edited a long list of books for -the young, histories, travels, biographies, tales, works of natural -history, school text-books, etc. He had himself some pretensions as a -poet, by virtue of “The Outcast and Other Poems,” 1841. He was an -extensive traveler, and he became in 1851 United States consul at Paris. -It was the fashion among a certain set in Boston to abuse “Peter Parley” -and laugh at his literary claims. But he was a very successful publisher, -and in selecting his editorial assistants, he had a keen eye for the kind -of talent that takes, and the kind of work that pays. In his interesting -“Recollections of a Lifetime” he gives contrasted sketches of the two -principal contributors to his annuals--Willis and Hawthorne. Goodrich’s -perceptions were, perhaps, not of the finest, but he was a shrewd -observer of matters within his ken, and his recollections of Willis are -worth repeating. - - “The most prominent writer for ‘The Token’ was N. P. Willis. His - articles were the most read, the most admired, the most abused, and - the most advantageous to the work. In 1827 I published his volume - entitled ‘Sketches.’ It brought out quite a shower of criticism, in - which praise and blame were about equally dispensed: at the same - time the work sold with a readiness quite unusual for a book of - poetry at that period. One thing is certain, everybody thought - Willis worth criticising. He has been, I suspect, more written about - than any other literary man in our history. Some of the attacks upon - him proceeded, no doubt, from a conviction that he was a man of - extraordinary gifts and yet of extraordinary affectations, and the - lash was applied in kindness, as that of a school-master to a loved - pupil’s back. Some of them were dictated by envy, for we have had no - other example of literary success so early, so general, and so - flattering. That Mr. Willis made mistakes in literature and life, at - the outset, may be admitted by his best friends; for it must be - remembered that before he was five-and-twenty he was more read than - any other American poet of his time; and besides, being possessed of - an easy and captivating address, he became the pet of society and - especially of the fairer portion of it. As to his personal - character, I need only say that, from the beginning, he has had a - larger circle of steadfast friends than almost any man within my - knowledge. It is curious to remark that everything Willis wrote - attracted immediate attention and excited ready praise, while the - productions of Hawthorne were almost entirely unnoticed. Willis was - slender, his hair sunny and silken, his cheek ruddy, his aspect - cheerful and confident. He met society with a ready and welcome hand - and was received readily and with welcome.” - -It is needless to pursue the contrast which the writer goes on to draw -between Willis and the other and greater Nathaniel, who was then “the -obscurest man of letters in America.” The publisher’s sympathies were -obviously with his more lively and popular contributor, and he is puzzled -to understand why such articles as “Sights from a Steeple,” “Sketches -beneath an Umbrella,” “The Wives of the Dead,” and “The Prophetic -Pictures,” should have “extorted hardly a word of either praise or blame” -when originally published in “The Token,” while “now universally -acknowledged to be productions of extraordinary depth, meaning, and -power.” He is inclined to attribute it to a “new sense” in a portion of -the reading world--obtained unluckily too late to profit the publisher of -“The Token”--“which led them to study the mystical.” To Goodrich’s -personal description of Willis may be added the following little portrait -by Dr. Holmes, who remembers him well, as he looked during this Boston -period. - - “He came very near being very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of - light brown color, waved in luxuriant abundance, and his cheek was - as rosy as if it had been painted to show behind the footlights, and - he dressed with artistic elegance. He was something between a - remembrance of Count d’Orsay and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde. - There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of - Hippolytus and Phædra, in which the beautiful young man, who had - kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked stepmother, always - reminded me of Willis.” - -“The Legendary” described itself as consisting of original pieces in prose -and verse; tales, ballads, and romances, chiefly illustrative of American -history, scenery, and manners. It was designed as a periodical, but only -two volumes were issued, one in the early, and one in the later part of -1828. “The work proved a miserable failure,” said Goodrich, though -numbering among its contributors Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Sedgwick, Halleck, -Pierpont, Willis, Gaylord Clark, George Lunt, Grenville Mellen, and others -less known to this generation. Willis wrote the two prefaces and -contributed half a dozen poems of no importance, unless we except “The -Annoyer,” which had considerable currency, and three prose papers, -“Unwritten Poetry,” “Unwritten Philosophy,” and “Leaves from a Colleger’s -Album.” These last were very juvenile and he never reprinted them. The -first two were tales with a moral, one depicting the restorative -influences of nature on a heart crushed by bereavement, the other -describing a scholarly recluse, who lived alone with nature and his books, -and finally educated and married his landlady’s daughter. The story in -both instances is very slight, overladen with sentiment, descriptive -digressions, and philosophy, that might better have stayed “unwritten.” In -short, they are tedious--which Willis in his later work never was. -“Unwritten Poetry” included, however, a description of Trenton Falls and a -fine rhapsody about water which he rehabilitated afterwards and -incorporated with “Edith Linsey.” Both of these had the honor--in the then -paucity of our literature--to be selected by Mary Russell Mitford for her -“Stories of American Life by American Authors.” “Leaves from a Colleger’s -Album” was a first experiment of another kind, a humorous sketch of a trip -on the Erie Canal, utilizing the experiences of his senior vacation, and, -in particular, the incident of his reading a sermon in the cabin of the -canal boat on Sunday. It contains, in the person of Job Clark, the nucleus -of Forbearance Smith in the “Slingsby” papers--the nearest approach that -Willis ever made to the genuine creation of a character. He was always -thus economical of his material, repeatedly working over the same stuff -into new shapes. - -“The Token” belonged to the class of illustrated publications known as -Annuals. It was the age of Annuals, Gift Books, Boudoir Books, Books of -Beauty, Flowers of Loveliness, and Leaflets of Memory. The taste for these -ornate combinations of literature and art was imported from England, where -the Ackermans had published “The Forget-Me-Not,” the earliest specimen of -the kind, in 1823. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia brought out the first -American Annual, “The Atlantic Souvenir,” for which Willis had been asked -to write, when in college, and to which he actually did contribute a copy -of birthday verses, “I’m twenty-two--I’m twenty-two,” in the volume for -1829. These were written, he affirmed, “in a blank leaf of a barber’s -Testament, while waiting to be shaved.” They were also inserted in the -“London Literary Souvenir” for the same year, by Alaric A. Watts, a -copious editor of Annuals, whose middle initial was cruelly asserted by -Lockhart to stand for _Attila_. The rage for Annuals soon became general -and lasted for about twenty years. Goodrich enumerates some forty of -them, bearing such fantastic titles as The Gem, The Opal, The Wreath, The -Casket, The Rose, The Amulet, The Keepsake, Pearls of the West, -Friendship’s Offering. And these are probably not half the list. There -were religious Annuals, juvenile Annuals, oriental, landscape, botanic -Annuals. Most rummagers among the upper shelves of an old library have -taken down two or three of them, blown the dust from their gilt edges, -ruffled the tissue papers that veil “The Bride,” “The Nun,” “The Sisters,” -and “The Fair Penitent,” and wondered in what age of the world these -remarkable “embellishments” and the still more remarkable letterpress -which they embellish could have reflected American life. There is a faded -elegance about them, as of an old ball dress: a faint aroma, as of -withered roses, breathes from the page. Those steel-engraved beauties, -languishing, simpering, insipid as fashion plates, with high-arched marble -brows, pearl necklaces, and glossy ringlets--not a line in their faces or -a bone in their bodies: that Highland Chieftain, that Young Buccaneer, -that Bandit’s Child, all in smoothest _mezzotint_,--what kind of a world -did they masquerade in? It was a needlework world, a world in which there -was always moonlight on the lake and twilight in the vale; where drooped -the willow and bloomed the eglantine, and jessamine embowered the cot of -the village maid; where the lark warbled in the heavens and the -nightingale chanted in the grove ’neath the mouldering ivy-mantled tower; -where vesper chimes and the echoes of the merry bugle-ugle-ugle horn were -borne upon the zephyr across the yellow corn; where Isabella sang to the -harp (with her hair down) and the tinkling guitar of the serenader under -her balcony made response; a world in which there were fairy isles, -enchanted grottoes, peris, gondolas, and gazelles. All its pleasantly -_rococo_ landscape has vanished, brushed rudely away by realism and a -“sincere” art and an “earnest” literature. - -In these Gems and Albums, the gemmy and albuminous illustrations -alternated with romantic tales of mediæval or eastern life and with “Lines -on Seeing----,” or “Stanzas occasioned by” something. “The May-Flowers of -Life,” for example, “suggested by the author’s having found a branch of -May in a volume of poems which a friend had left there several years ago.” -In the Annual dialect a ship was a “bark,” a bed was a “couch,” a window -was a “casement,” a shoe was a “sandal,” a boat was a “shallop,” and a -book was a “tome.” Certain properties became gemmy by force of -association, as sea-shells, lattices, and Æolian harps. In England L. E. -L. and in America Percival and Mrs. Sigourney were perhaps the gemmiest -poets. But much of Willis’s poetry was album verse, with an air of the -boudoir and the ball-room about it, a silky elegance and an exotic perfume -that smack of that very sentimental and artificial school. This passage -from “The Declaration” is in point:-- - - “’Twas late and the gay company was gone, - And light lay soft on the deserted room - From alabaster vases, and a scent - Of orange leaves and sweet verbena came - From the unshuttered window on the air, - And the rich pictures, with their dark old tints, - Hung like a twilight landscape, and all things - Seemed hushed into a slumber. Isabelle, - The dark eyed, spiritual Isabelle, - Was leaning on her harp.” - -“The Token,” begun in 1828 and continued to 1842, was edited by Goodrich -every year except 1829, when Willis had charge of it. Like other Annuals -it contained, in spots, some good art and good writing. There were -delicately designed and engraved vignette titles or presentation plates by -Cheney, the Hartford artist. There was an occasional contribution, in -prose, from Longfellow or Mrs. Child--then Miss Francis, and likewise a -contributor to “The Legendary.” Many of Hawthorne’s “Twice-Told Tales” -came out in “The Token.” Mrs. Sigourney’s “Connecticut River” divided -with Willis’s “The Soldier’s Widow” the $100 prize offered by the -publisher for 1828. Among the contributors to Willis’s volume (1829) were -John Neal, Colonel William L. Stone, Mrs. Sigourney, Mrs. Hale, the Rev. -T. H. Gallaudet, Willis’s Albany friend, J. B. Van Schaick, and Goodrich -himself. The Rev. G. W. Doane--afterward Bishop Doane--gave his well known -verses, “What is that, Mother?” Willis gave five poems of his own, the -only noteworthy one among which was “Saturday Afternoon,” written to -accompany the frontispiece, engraved by Ellis from a painting by Fisher, -and representing children swinging in a barn. This had more the character -of a simple, popular ballad than anything else which he had written, and -was liked by many readers who cared little about his more elaborate verse. -Another poem in “The Token,” “Psyche before the Tribunal of Venus,” he -wrote for the engraving by Cheney from a drawing of Fragonard. A college -tale, “The Ruse,” was a slight advance on the experiments in “The -Legendary;” the dialogue was handled more freely, but the story was weak -as a whole, hardly worth mentioning, certainly not worth preserving. -Willis continued to contribute verses to “The Token” after he had resigned -its editorship. “To a City Pigeon,” “On a Picture of a Girl leading her -Blind Mother through the Woods,” and doubtless other pieces were printed -in subsequent numbers. He wrote for other Annuals, at various times: “The -Power of an Injured Look,” for “The Gift,” a Christmas book, 1845; an -article “On Dress,” for “The Opal,” 1848, and edited “The Thought -Blossom,” a memorial volume, as late as 1854. “The Torn Hat” was -contributed to “The Youth’s Keepsake” for 1829, and “Contemplation” was -written in 1828 to accompany an engraving in “Remember Me,” a religious -Annual published in Philadelphia. But he had no very high opinion of the -class of literature that they cultivated, and spoke of them as “yearly -flotillas of trash.” - -In the spring of 1829 he entered upon his first serious venture as a -journalist, by starting the “American Monthly Magazine,” which ran two -years and a half--from April, 1829, to August, 1831. Mr. Thomas Gold -Appleton describes Willis’s undertaking as “a slim monthly, written -chiefly by himself, but with the true magazine flavor.” Appleton and his -friend Motley, then students in Harvard, were both contributors. For a -young _littérateur_, only a year and a half out of college, without -capital, without backing, almost without experience, the establishment of -a monthly magazine was certainly an enterprise of some boldness. His -expectations, however, were modest enough, and his preliminary card, “To -the Public,” casts some light on the conditions of literary journalism at -that time. He says that he cannot pay much for contributions, like the -English magazines which he took for his model. “The difficulties of -transmission over such an immense country and the comparatively small -proportion of literary readers limit our circulation to a thousand or two, -at the farthest.” He had, moreover, “the ebb of a boyish reputation” -against him. Notwithstanding he launched upon his voyage with excellent -pluck and vigor. He conducted his magazine with little assistance, writing -himself from thirty to forty pages of printed matter every month in the -shape of tales, poems, essays, book reviews, and sketches of life and -travel. Boston was not yet the Boston of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and -Holmes, but it had already as fair a claim to the title of literary -metropolis as New York. Everett and Channing were great names. Dana, -Pierpont, and Sprague were among its poets. These men were not available -for Willis’s purposes, but he rallied to his support a number of younger -men, such as Richard Hildreth, the historian, George Lunt, the poet, Park -Benjamin, Isaac McLellan, the Rev. George B. Cheever, Albert Pike, -afterwards the Arkansas poet and fire-eater, and Rufus Dawes,--then a -budding genius, subsequently a preacher of erratic doctrines,--J. O. -Rockwell, Mrs. Sigourney, and others whose names have fallen silent. Next -to the editor’s own graceful work, the most notable things given to the -public through the columns of the “American Monthly” were Pike’s “Hymns to -the Gods,” poems of a richly classical inspiration, which have often -provoked comparison with Keats’s odes; and which, if their workmanship -were equal to their imaginative fervor, would justify the comparison. - -Willis led off in the opening number with a carefully written, but not -very characteristic, essay on “Unwritten Music.” It was thought monstrous -fine by his friends, but suggests, it must be confessed, that dreariest -product of the human mind,--a prize composition. As a study of the -harmonies of nature, it was much too general in its reflections and -descriptions to please a modern taste, wonted to the sharp and full detail -of Thoreau and his successors. The editorial articles, prose and verse, in -the “American Monthly” were too many to be mentioned here individually. -There were stories, “The Fancy Ball,” “The Elopement,” “P. Calamus, Esq.,” -and others which their author never recognized so far as to give them any -place in his collected writings. Others, as “Baron von Raffloff,” -“Captain Thompson,” “Incidents in the Life of a Quiet Man,” etc., were the -rough drafts of later tales, such as “Pedlar Karl,” “Larks in Vacation,” -and “Scenes of Fear.” “Albina M’Lush” was the best of these. “The Death of -the Gentle Usher” contained an eloquent passage on the night heavens, -which obtained a better setting in “Edith Linsey.” “An Inkling of -Adventure” lent its name and nothing else to the first published -collection of Willis’s “Slingsby” stories. Then there were sketches of -travel in New York State and Canada, partly reminiscences of senior -vacation and partly memorials of holidays from the editorial desk, spent -at Saratoga, Lebanon Springs, or elsewhere: “Notes upon a Ramble,” -“Letters of Horace Fritz, Esq.,” and “Pencillings by the Way,”--a title -afterward used to better advantage. Parts of these were similarly -refurbished for later employment. The secret of that skillful blending of -gayety and sentiment, the quick, light transitions, which make much of the -charm of Willis’s best stories and sketches, like “F. Smith,” or -“Pasquali,” he had not yet learned. In these earlier efforts the serious -parts drag and the humorous parts are flashy and thin. Besides the monthly -“table” there were editorial articles of that rambling, chatty description -peculiar to the period, and which the “Noctes” had done as much as -anything to introduce: “Scribblings,” “The Scrap Book,” “The Idle Man,” -“Tête-à-tête Confessions,” etc., in which the editor takes the reader into -his confidence and his sanctum, makes him sit down in his red morocco -_dormeuse_, reads him bits of verse from his old scrap-books and his -favorite authors, calls attention to his japonica, his smoking pastille, -his scarlet South American trulian (a most familiar bird with Willis--he -gets it in again in “Lady Ravelgold”), and his two dogs Ugolino and L. E. -L., whose lair is in the rejected MSS. basket. He fosters an agreeable -fiction that he writes with a bottle of Rudesheimer and a plate of olives -at his elbow, and he says now and then in a hospitable aside “Take another -olive,” or “Pass the Johannisbergh”; this to his imaginary interlocutor, -Cousin Florence, or Tom Lascelles, or The Idle Man, an epicure and dandy, -“who eats in summer with an amber-handled fork to keep his palm cool.” - -These amiable coxcombries of Willis gave dire offense to the critics, and -especially to Joseph T. Buckingham, the veteran of the Boston press and -editor of the “Courier,” then the most influential Whig newspaper in -Massachusetts. He published epigrams on Willis, with very blunt points, -administered fatherly rebukes to him for his affected English, and -objected strongly to Ugolino, L. E. L., and the trulian. Willis retorted -in kind, and a good-natured war raged between the “Courier” and the -“American Monthly,” though their editors were privately the best of -friends. In his “Specimens of Newspaper Literature,” Buckingham paid a -glowing and, indeed, extravagant compliment to the talents of his young -adversary. Willis’s experience in editing the “American Monthly” was of -great advantage to him. He had a natural instinct for journalism, and he -soon acquired by practice that personal, sympathetic attitude toward his -readers, and that ready adjustment of himself to the public taste, which -made him the most popular magazinist of his day and defined at once his -success and his limitations. For its purposes Willis’s crisp prose was -admirable: “delicate and brief like a white jacket,--transparent like a -lump of ice in champagne,--soft-tempered like the sea-breeze at night.” It -had an easy, conversational grace, the air of “the town,” the tone of good -society. In his review of Lady Morgan’s “Book of the Boudoir,” he made a -plea for that _negligé_ style which he practiced so daintily himself. “We -love this rambling, familiar gossip. It is the undress of the mind. There -are few people who possess the talent of graceful trifling, either in -writing or conversation. Study may make anything but this. It is like -_naïveté_ in character,--nature let alone.” There was a great deal of good -writing in Willis’s “American Monthly” articles; bright thoughts expressed -in exquisite English, here and there a page which Charles Lamb or Leigh -Hunt might have been glad to claim. Some of these he rescued from the old -files of the magazine and inserted in his later work. The chapter on -“Minute Philosophies,” “A Morning in the Library,” and “The Substance of a -Diary of Sickness” were used again in “Edith Linsey,” and a spirited -description of Nahant in one of the “tables” did duty in “F. Smith.” But -many a nice bit was too small for resetting and remained lost in the -ephemeral context,--many such a scrap as this little picture of summer in -town: - - “Was ever such intense, unmitigated sunshine? There is nothing on - the hard, opaque sky but a mere rag of a cloud, like a handkerchief - on a tablet of blue marble, and the edge of the shadow of that tall - chimney is as definite as a hair, and the young elm that leans over - the fence is copied in perfect and motionless leaves like a very - painting on the broad sidewalk.” - -The “New England Galaxy,” which was also under Buckingham’s management, -was edited for a time by one William Joseph Snelling, who made quite a -stir in Boston newspaper circles. He had been an under-officer in the army -and stationed somewhere in the Northwest, but came to Boston about 1830 -and devoted himself to sensational journalism and in particular to a -crusade against gamblers. His life was threatened for this, and he -converted his office into a sort of arsenal. In 1831 he published a -slashing lampoon, “Truth: a New Year’s Gift for Scribblers,” in which he -blackguarded American writers in general and paid his respects to Willis -as follows:-- - - “Muse, shall we not a few brief lines afford - To give poor Natty P. his meet reward? - What has he done to be despised by all - Within whose hands his harmless scribblings fall? - Why, as in band-box trim he walks the streets, - Turns up the nose of every man he meets, - As if it scented carrion? Why of late - Do all the critics claw his shallow pate? - True he’s a fool;--if that’s a hanging thing, - Let Prentice, Whittier, Mellen also swing.” - -Some of this delicate banter was exhumed and quoted a few years later by -Captain Marryat, in the article in the “Metropolitan” which led to the -affair of honor between that warrior and Willis. The latter answered -Snelling “contemptuously but effectively,” Goodrich reports, “in some half -dozen verses inserted in the ‘Statesman,’ and addressed to _Smelling_ -Joseph. The lines stuck to poor Smelling for the remainder of his life.” -The pasquinader himself afterwards went to New York and conducted a -meat-axe publication, “The Censor.” Goodrich adds, that he “fell into -habits of dissipation, which led from one degradation to another, till his -miserable career was ended,”--a victim, no doubt, to the angry muse. -Willis also contrived to offend Mrs. Lydia Maria Child by a satirical -review of her “Frugal Housewife” and by harping on a sentence from that -authority, “hard ginger-bread is nice.” She took this very much to heart, -and when she afterwards had charge of the literary department of the -“Traveller” showed an abiding hostility toward her whilom critic. He early -attained to the dignity of parody. “The Annoyer” was travestied in the -“Amateur” and a humorous imitation of “Albina M’Lush” was also printed. -Mere literary criticism, however unfair, need not greatly disturb any one. -But Willis was subjected, in Boston, to personalities of a very annoying -character. He was constantly in receipt of anonymous letters calling him a -puppy, a rake, etc. He was attacked in the newspapers for his frivolity, -his dandyism, and his conceit. Private scandal, circulated by word of -mouth, concerning his debts and his alleged immoralities, sometimes got -into print. It would not be easy to explain why so kind a man as Willis, -one always so eager to oblige and so prone to say good-natured things -about everybody, should have excited so much wrath, not only at this time, -but all through his life, by his harmless literary fopperies and foibles, -did we not remember that he was successful, that he was a favorite in -society, and, above all, that he wore conspicuously good clothes. There -was also something about his airy way of writing and the personality it -suggested that was and is peculiarly exasperating to a certain class of -serious-minded people who resent all attempts to entertain them on the -part of any one whom they cannot entirely respect. Willis carried it off -lightly enough, though, of course, it must have stung him. He knew, he -said, “how easy it is to despise the ungentlemanly critic and forget the -poor wrong of his criticism.” - -In intervals of work on the “American Monthly” he contributed frequently -to the “Boston Statesman,” having been engaged, together with Lunt and -Dawes, to write something for it every week, “short or long, prose or -verse,” at the rate of five dollars an article, an arrangement that lasted -for some months. This seems now beggarly pay, but Nathaniel Greene of the -“Statesman” was, according to Willis, the only editor in the country who, -as early as 1827, paid anything at all for verse. During these early -years of journalistic life Willis sojourned awhile in the pleasant land of -Bohemia. He was a member of a supper club, which included two -representatives of each profession. Washington Allston and Chester Harding -were the artists; Willis and Dawes the men of letters; Horace Mann and -five or six more completed the tale. Willis was a frequent lounger in -Harding’s studio, and some years after he was delighted to come across his -tracks at Gordon and Dalhousie castles, where Harding was known. Willis -was fond of fast horses, and used to drive his friends out to Nahant, for -a spin on the hard beach along the edge of the surf. This was the scene of -“F. Smith,” one of his most perfect and characteristic stories. With Dawes -and others he resorted, not seldom, for a game supper, to an ancient and -once somewhat stately hostelry, known as the “Stackpole House,” where the -wines were excellent and the landlord good-humored and disposed to -trust,--the original, doubtless, of Gallagher in “The Female Ward,” a -story written long afterwards, but whose incidents and descriptions are -assignable to this period. - -Willis’s position in Boston was in some respects a difficult one. His -family connection were plain, good folks, not “in society,”--not, at -least, in the literary society, which was Unitarian, or in the so-called -aristocratic society, which was mainly either Unitarian or Episcopalian. -He himself was socially ambitious, and these were the circles which he -wished to frequent. “The pale of Unitarianism,” he wrote, “is the limit of -gentility.” He was a great favorite with Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis, the -“lady autocrat” and leader of the _ton_ in the Puritan capital for many -years. He was constantly at her house when she was in town, and was -invited to be one of her party when she went to Saratoga in the summer. -Nor was this a passing fancy with Mrs. Otis, but stood the test of time -and separation. She made him a long visit at Idlewild during the latter -years of his life. But the Park Street Church people, among whom he had -been brought up, looked askance upon his fashionable associations. The old -stories of his college dissipations were revived, while rumors of his -Boston irregularities reached the ears of his New Haven acquaintances. -Willis himself took no notice of these slanders, but they were warmly -resented by his friends. His brother-in-law, Joseph Jenkins, wrote to Mr. -D. W. Whiting of New Haven: “Nat is a good fellow. He is not dissipated in -any way; nor traveling the Tartarean turnpike, as the good New Haven -people suppose. He is attending to his magazine, and doing his duty as -well as any of us.” Though Willis did not make the impression of a man of -very scrupulous morality, he was certainly not given to any serious -dissipations. It was not in his temperament to run into physical excesses. -His senses were delicate, and he always respected them. He never, for -example, used tobacco; he was never a hard drinker. In youth he affected a -moderate conviviality and had an æsthetic liking for champagne. In middle -age he was accustomed to mix a little spirit with his water, expressing a -horror for the pure element, on the whimsical ground that it tasted of -sinners ever since the flood. In this Boston period, his offenses were -probably limited to running up bills at livery stables and inns, with a -too sanguine expectation of being able to pay them from the proceeds of -his literary work. Edward Beecher, who had been a tutor at Yale during his -college course, was at this time pastor of the Park Street Church. Finding -himself unwilling to conform his life to the strict rules of that society, -Willis called on Mr. Beecher and stated the manner of his supposed -conversion in a revival at Andover, and the influences that had induced -him to join the church. He said that he was sincere in the act, but was -convinced afterward that he was mistaken in his conviction, and that he -had not experienced the change that qualified him for church membership; -and he requested Mr. Beecher to obtain for him an honorable dismission. -Mr. Beecher sympathized with him in his feelings, and made an effort to -satisfy his request, but failed, as the church then believed that there -were but three ways out of it, death, dismissal to another church, or -excommunication. Accordingly, at a church meeting on April 29, 1829, in -which Mr. Beecher took no part, the following sentence was passed:-- - - “Whereas certain charges have been made against Brother N. P. - Willis, which, in the opinion of this church has been fully proved, - namely: Absence from the communion of this church and attendance at - the theatre as a spectator; and whereas he has neglected to appear - before the church to answer the said charges, although duly - notified; and has not given to the church satisfactory evidence of - penitence, but has evinced by a letter laid before the church an - entirely different state of feeling; therefore voted, That Mr. - Nathaniel P. Willis be, and he hereby is, in the name and by the - authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, excommunicated from this - church.” - -Deacon Willis was naturally grieved by this turn of affairs, although he -acquiesced silently in the church’s decision. Theatre going, indeed, was -an offense against family, as well as church discipline. Naturally, also, -the object of this _significavit_ always afterwards thought and spoke -with some bitterness of “the charity of a sect in religion.” He never -renounced definitely his Christian belief. He never became skeptical; was -not at any time, in fact, a thinker on such themes and subject to the -speculative doubts which beset the thinker. He remained through life -easily impressible in his religious emotions. “Worldling as I am,” he -wrote many years after, “and hardly as I dare claim any virtue as a -Christian, there is that within me which sin and folly never reached or -tainted.” But this ended his connection with organized Christianity, and -he ceased for a long time to be a church-goer. - -His position in Boston was also made painful by an unsuccessful love -affair. He had paid court to Mary Benjamin, a woman of uncommon beauty of -person and graces of mind and character, the sister of Park Benjamin and -afterwards the wife of the historian Motley. She returned his feeling and -the two were engaged to be married, but the engagement was broken through -the determined opposition of the lady’s guardian, Mr. Savage. Willis -carried this thorn in his side for years, and it gave him many hours of -bitter homesickness while abroad. In a letter written a few days after -landing in England, in the summer of 1834, he said:-- - - “I loved Mary B., and never think of her without emotion; but with - all the world in France, Italy, and England treating me like a son - or a brother, I am not coming home to fight my way to her through - bitter relatives and slander and opposition. They nearly crushed me - once, and I shall take care how they get another opportunity. Still, - after three years’ separation, I think I never loved any one so - well, and if my way were not so hedged up, it would draw me home - now.” - -To Mary Benjamin was addressed the lovely little poem, “To M----, from -Abroad,” with its motto from Metastasio,-- - - “L’alma, quel che non ha, sogna et figura.” - -By 1829 Willis had accumulated verses enough to fill another slender -volume of “Fugitive Poetry.” Of the forty-three pieces in this, the -“Dedication Hymn,” written to be sung at the consecration of the Hanover -Street Church in Boston, has the best title to remembrance. It possesses a -brief energy seldom attained by Willis. As late as 1856, his old English -friend, Dr. William Beattie, wrote to him: “Your beautiful ‘Hymn’ was sung -in one of our cathedral towns, at the consecration of a new church, by an -overflowing congregation. Surely this is a fact worth noting. Miss Rogers -was the first who told me of it, and often have I repeated ‘The perfect -world by Adam trod,’ etc.” “The Annoyer” and “Saturday Afternoon” have -been already mentioned. “Contemplation”-- - - “They are all up, the innumerable stars”-- - -had the feeling, though not the artistic touch, of Tennyson’s “St. Agnes,” -and came near to being a fine poem. There were five sonnets, one of -them--an acrostic to Emily Marshall--with a good closing couplet,-- - - “Life in thy presence were a thing to keep, - Like a gay dreamer clinging to his sleep.” - -“A Portrait,” also, which Willis did not republish, contained an effective -passage, beginning - - “I go away like one who’s heard, - In some fine scene, the prompter’s word,” etc. - -There were two more scriptural pieces, and the remainder of the book was -of no importance. Many of its contents were written before those of the -earlier volume of “Sketches.” - -The “American Monthly” proved a failure financially, owing, doubtless, to -a lack of the right business management, for which Willis had no faculty, -and with which, in truth, he had nothing to do. At the close of the summer -of 1831 the magazine suspended publication, and its editor, shaking off -the dust of his feet against the New England metropolis, fled to more -genial climes. He left behind him the squibs of his brother journalists, -the cackle of the tea-tables, and some $3,000 of debts incurred through -the failure of his enterprise. He never quite forgave Boston. In a letter -to his mother from England, September 12, 1835, he wrote:-- - - “They have denied me patronage, abused me, misrepresented me, - refused me both character and genius, and I feel that I owe them - nothing. I have never suffered injustice except from my countrymen, - and I have in every other land found kindness and favor. I would not - write this for another human eye, but you know how unjustly I have - been treated, and can understand the wound that rankles even in so - light a heart as mine. The mines of Golconda would not tempt me to - return and live in Boston.” - -The “New York Mirror” of September 10, 1831, contained the following item: -“We take much pleasure in announcing to our readers that the ‘American -Monthly Magazine’ has been united to the ‘New York Mirror,’ and that -Nathaniel P. Willis, Esq., will, from this period, be an associate editor -of the joint establishment.” This announcement was followed in the next -week’s issue by “A Card to the Public,” in which the new editor promises -that, “having transferred the only literary undertaking in which he has -any interest to the proprietor of the ‘Mirror,’ his whole time and -attention will hereafter be given to this work.” The “Mirrors” of -September 10th and 17th published, furthermore, two letters from -Saratoga, written by Willis in August, and containing some characteristic -verses, “The String that tied my Lady’s Shoe,” and “To----,”-- - - “’Tis midnight deep: I came but now - From the bright air of lighted halls;” - -as also a “Pencilling by the Way,” descriptive of Providence and Brown -University, where he had just been delivering a Commencement poem. On -September 25th the editorial page for the first time bore the heading, -“Edited by George P. Morris, Theodore S. Fay, and Nathaniel P. Willis.” - -The journal with which he had now connected himself--and with whose -successors, under different names, he continued to be identified until his -death, thirty-six years later--was a weekly paper, published on Saturdays, -and “devoted to literature and the fine arts.” It had been founded in 1823 -by Samuel Woodworth, author of “The Old Oaken Bucket,” and General George -P. Morris, but Woodworth had withdrawn some time before Willis joined it. -Morris, with whom Willis now began a business partnership that lasted, -with slight interruptions, for the rest of their lives, and a personal -friendship almost romantic in its tenderness and fidelity, was the most -popular song writer of his generation in America,--a sort of cis-Atlantic -Tom Moore, whose songs, adapted to the piano, were on all the music-racks -in the land. “Near the Lake where droops the Willow” was a universal -favorite in the days of gem-book minstrelsy. “My Mother’s Bible” was dear -to the great heart of the people, and the air of “Woodman, spare that -Tree” was heard by wandering Americans ground out from every hurdy-gurdy -in the London streets. Unless a clever letter in the “Mirror” of March 2, -1839, is wholly a hoax, this last-mentioned song compared in popularity -with “Home Sweet Home,” having suffered translation into French -(“Bûcheron, épargne mon arbre”), German (“Haue nicht die alte Eiche -nieder”), Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch; the German version being even -introduced by an essay, “Ueber Morris’s Entwickelung, Denken und Wirken.” -“The Amaranth” for 1840, an annual, edited by Nathaniel Brooks and -dedicated to Morris, contains Greek and Latin renderings of his “Woodman,” -as well as of Wilde’s almost equally familiar and far better lyric, “My -Life is like the Summer Rose.” Morris was a bustling, affable little man, -with a shrewd, practical side to him. He was a good business manager, and -as Willis had no talent in that kind, the association was mutually -advantageous. Morris’s intellectual stature was not great, and Willis, -who loved the man, was unable to admire the poet. He praised his songs in -print, but there was more of friendship than critical sincerity in his -praise. He had been in correspondence with Morris before, and had -contributed occasionally to the “Mirror,” having sent it a poem in -competition for a twenty-dollar prize when he was still in college. He now -began to decant into its columns a number of his “American Monthly” -articles, a circumstance which not only shows how local the circulation of -the latter must have been, but sheds a curious light on the methods of -journalism at that epoch. The old “New York Mirror” had a reputation for -brightness in its time and a circulation then considered large, but as -compared with the great magazines of to-day it seems a very primitive -affair, with its “Original Essays,” its “Popular Moral Tales,” “Desultory -Selections,” and “Extracts from an Unpublished Tragedy,” its poems “For -the ‘Mirror,’” by Isidora and Iolanthe, and its solemn “Answers to -Correspondents.” Now and then there is a contribution of more pronounced -individuality, a poem by Halleck, a story by Paulding or Fay. Theodore S. -Fay, the other editor, was a man of parts. He was the author of several -once popular novels, “The Countess Ida” and “Hoboken,” _tendenz_ romances -against dueling, “Ulric,” a poetical romance, and “Norman Leslie,” which -was afterwards dramatized, and was founded on a famous murder trial in -which Burr and Hamilton had figured as counsel. Fay contributed to the -“Mirror” satirical letters on New York society, “The Little Genius,” and -in 1832 published a volume of his “Mirror” articles under the title of -“Dreams and Reveries of a Quiet Man.” In 1833 he went abroad, and his -letters from Europe, “The Minute Book,” appeared in the paper side by side -with Willis’s “Pencillings.” He was appointed secretary of legation at -Berlin in 1837, and minister resident at Berne in 1853. His novels have -now gone quite out of sight, but many of his short tales are really very -clever,--written in a rattling style, with abrupt, jerky dialogues,--and -may be read even now without much effort. Another name connected with the -“Mirror” was that of William Cox, an English printer employed upon the -paper, whose “Crayon Sketches by an Amateur,” published in 1833, were -highly commended by Willis. He, too, was abroad during Willis’s and Fay’s -sojourn in Europe, and wrote letters from England to the “Mirror,” whose -foreign correspondence was thus uncommonly varied. The first thought of -sending Willis abroad occurred while the three editors were supping -together at Sandy Welsh’s oyster saloon. Long and earnestly they revolved -the question of ways and means. At length $500 were scraped together as -_viaticum_, and it was agreed that Willis was to write weekly letters at -ten dollars the letter. The investment proved a good one both for the -“Mirror” and for its traveling editor. With this slender capital in his -pocket he embarked at Philadelphia October 10th, the only passenger on the -merchant brig Pacific, bound for Havre. He was young, sanguine, eager to -see life, but in his most hopeful mood he could hardly have foreseen the -dazzling experiences of his next four years, or the far-reaching -consequences which the trip thus lightly undertaken were to have for him. - -Before sailing he had found time to visit Philadelphia, Baltimore, -Washington, and Mount Vernon, and make a “Pencilling” of them for the -“Mirror.” Another letter gave his impressions of New York, now become his -American address. He had also put to press the poem delivered before the -“Society of United Brothers,” at Brown University, on September 6th, the -day before Commencement, together with a few other pieces written since -1829. The dedication was “To one of whom, in this moment of departure for -a foreign land, I think sadly and only--to my mother.” The name-poem was -one of those conventional performances with which unlucky recipients of -invitations to “speak a piece” before Phi Beta Kappas, United Brothers, -or other such academic bodies, are wont to dazzle the young alumni. It was -in blank verse, of course, and dealt with the usual commonplaces about -ambition, content, the beauty of human love, and the folly of skepticism -and contempt. It showed more maturity than the poem delivered before his -own Alma Mater four years before, but it was much the same sort of thing. -Of the remaining contents of the book two were Scripture sketches and four -were of a more ambitious description than Willis had previously attempted. -These were “Parrhasius,” “The Dying Alchemist,” “The Scholar of Thebet Ben -Chorat,” and “The Wife’s Appeal” to her husband to “awake to fame.” The -theme of all these and the central thought of this whole volume is the -vanity of an inordinate thirst for knowledge, power, or fame. -“Parrhasius,” the story of an old Olynthian captive who was tortured to -death by the Athenian painter that he might catch the expression of his -last agony for his picture of Prometheus, comes the nearest to success. -Willis had read the tale in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” “The Scholar -of Thebet Ben Chorat” was the story of a young Bedouin who grew mad and -died from too close application to astrology, on which science Willis -seems to have crammed up for the nonce, if one may judge from the -profusion of his foot-notes. But in truth these poems were little better -than wax-work. The sweet and natural lines, “To a City Pigeon,” were worth -all the rest of the book. - - - - -CHAPTER IV. - -1831-1834. - -LIFE ABROAD. - - -Whatever may have been the effect of Willis’s career in Europe upon his -character, its influence on his literary fortunes was most propitious. -Foreign travel furnished just the stimulus that he wanted. As a writer he -was at all times very dependent on his supplies. If they were fresh and -abundant his writing was correspondingly so; if life stagnated with him -his writing wore thin. Place is comparatively indifferent to men of deep -or intense genius, to a philosopher like Emerson or a brooding idealist -like Hawthorne. They strike root anywhere, and it is no great matter from -what corner they look forth upon the world. The life of the soul, the life -of nature, the problems of the conscience, may be studied in Concord or -Salem as well as anywhere else. A profound insight, a subtle imagination -will interpret the humblest environment into philosophy and poetry. And -yet even these are not quite free of their surroundings. To all but sworn -Emersonians “English Traits” is probably the most intelligible and -satisfactory of Emerson’s writings. “The Marble Faun” is not Hawthorne’s -greatest romance, but there is a richness about it, a _body_, that comes -simply from its material, and is not to be found in “The Scarlet Letter” -or “The House of the Seven Gables.” - -As for Willis, his genius, such as it was, was frankly external. His -bright fancy played over the surface of things. His curiosity and his -senses demanded gratification. He needed stir, change, adventure. He was -always turning his own experiences to account, and the more crowded his -life was with impressions from outside, the more vivid his page. He had -the artist’s craving for luxury, and was fond of quoting a saying of -Godwin: “A judicious and limited voluptuousness is necessary to the -cultivation of the mind, to the polishing of the manners, to the refining -of the sentiment, and to the development of the understanding.” This taste -for the sumptuous had been starved in Willis at home. Not only were -literature and society in America far more provincial then than now, but -life was plainer in every way. The rapid growth of wealth has obliterated -the most striking contrasts between cities like New York and Boston, on -the one hand, and cities like London and Paris, on the other. In every -foreign capital nowadays one finds his simple republican compatriots -grumbling at the absence of American conveniences, cursing the steamboats, -the railway carriages, the hotels, the luggage system, the portable baths -and bed-room candles, and proclaiming loudly that the Americans are the -most luxurious people on the face of the earth. In Europe, and especially -in England, circumstances threw Willis into a new world. He shared for a -time in the life of the titled aristocracy and the idle rich, and he took -to it like one to the manner born. He was at home at once amid all that -gay ease and leisure. The London clubs, the parks, the great country -houses, Almack’s and the Row, the beautiful haughty women, the grace, -indolence, and refinement, hereditary for generations, seemed no more than -the birthright of this New England printer’s son, from which some envious -fairy had hitherto shut him out. - - “I have now and then a fit of low spirits,” he says, in a letter - from Marseilles, April 28, 1832, “though generally the excessive - excitement of new scenes and constant interest occupies me quite. It - is like an intoxication to travel in Europe. I feel no annoyance, - grumble at no imposition, am never out of temper. Fatigue is the - only thing that bears me down. I want leisure and money. I shall - come back, I think, to America after my engagement with Morris is - over, and marry and come out again. As to settling down for these - ten years, I cannot think of it without a sickness at my heart. I - wish to heaven I could keep a journal and publish after I got home. - This writing and sending off unrevised is the worst thing in the - world for one’s reputation. However, I see a world of things that I - cannot put into letters, and I feel every day that my mind is - ripening and laying up material which I could get nowhere else. You - can have no idea of the stirring, vivid habit one’s mind gets into - abroad. Living at home forever would never be of half the use to - me.” - -Willis arrived at Havre November 3d, and went on by diligence to Paris, -where he spent between five and six months. He had taken out with him a -number of good letters, some from Martin Van Buren among the rest. The -American colony in Paris was then small and select. It was under the wing -of Lafayette, who was very polite to Willis during his stay. Cooper was -there and his _protégé_, Horatio Greenough, the sculptor, who had come -from Florence to execute a bust of Lafayette. Morse, the artist, too, who, -on his return trip to America in a Havre packet, in the year following, -was to hit upon his invention of the electric telegraph. And lastly, -Willis’s fellow-townsman, Dr. Howe, then a zealous young philanthropist, -who had won much glory by his recent campaign in Greece, and was now -attending medical lectures at the French capital. Willis took lodgings -with Howe until the latter, having been appointed president of the -American committee for the relief of the Poles, went off on his dangerous -mission of distributing supplies among the insurgent bands in Polish -Prussia, an enterprise which ended in his capture and confinement for six -weeks in a Prussian prison. All these gentlemen Willis had the good -fortune to meet in familiar and cordial intercourse. Cooper asked him to -breakfast with Morse and Howe, and walked and talked with him in the -gardens of the Tuileries. The acquaintance thus pleasantly begun between -the two authors was afterwards renewed at home, though, from accidents of -geography, they never became really intimate. - -Willis also made desirable acquaintances among the foreigners resident in -Paris. Morse took him to call upon Sir John Bowring, editor of the -“Westminster Review,” the translator of much of the national poetry of the -Russians and Hungarians, and afterwards the English governor of Hong Kong -at the time of the Opium War. He made acquaintance, too, with Spurzheim, -the phrenologist, who took a cast of his head; with General Bertrand, who -had been with Napoleon at St. Helena; and with the Countess Guiccioli, -who presented him with a sonnet by herself, and an autograph note from -Shelley. The glamour of “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” was still over -Europe, and everywhere the American traveler looked eagerly for his -footprints. Mr. Rives, the minister of the United States at Paris, was -very attentive to his young countryman, and presented him to the king, -with two other American gentlemen, Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Carr. The latter -was American consul at Tangiers. He took a great liking to Willis, made -him a number of presents, and offered to appoint him his secretary, and -take him to Morocco. This offer Willis was at first inclined to accept. It -was a tempting one in many particulars, and in a birthday letter to his -mother, January 20, 1832, he thus explained its advantages:-- - - “Mr. Carr takes me into his family and pays all my expenses. We go - to the old palaces of the Abencerrages, perhaps the most romantic - country in history, and one very little written about, and it will - double the value of my journey to Morris at the same time that it - secures me from any reverse of fortune. He means to spend his - summers in Spain, which is right opposite Tangiers at two hours’ - sail, and next fall he will run down to Italy and the Sicilies, thus - giving me every opportunity I want. I have letters from Lord James - Hay to his brother-in-law, the governor of Gibraltar, and one from - Lord Fife to the governor of the Ionian Islands.” - -Why he did not embrace this golden chance remains uncertain, though he -hints at a possible difficulty in the fact that his friend, the consul, -was a notorious duelist, who had shot seven or eight men and had a very -pretty wife. However, before he left Paris, Mr. Rives attached him to his -own embassy, a courtesy which proved of the greatest service to him. It -entitled him to wear the uniform of a secretary of legation, and the -diplomatic button gave him the _entrée_ to the court circles of every -country he visited. - -Willis saw Paris at an interesting moment. The Polish revolution had just -failed, and the city swarmed with refugees. Louis Philippe was already -growing unpopular, and there were continual small _émeutes_ on the -Boulevard Montmartre, at the Porte Saint Denis, and in other quarters, led -by Polytechnic students and put down without much trouble by the troops. -It was a cholera year and people were dying by the hundreds daily. -Meanwhile the gay world went on much as ever. Carnival was kept with the -usual elaborate follies. There were masked balls at the palace. Malibran -and Taglioni were on the stage. Paris, with its novelties and splendors, -exercised the same fascination over Willis that it exercises proverbially -over his compatriots. He was never tired of promenading and sight-seeing. -His lodgings were in the Rue Rivoli, facing the Tuileries. Sismondi, the -historian, had the apartment under him. In a private letter he thus -describes his daily occupations:-- - - “I have bought a coffee maker and cups, and a loaf of sugar and a - pan, etc., etc., and my hostess’s daughter, Christine, brings me my - bread and butter, and I breakfast gloriously alone, the doctor - (Howe) being always at the hospitals in the morning. I breakfast and - write all along the forenoon till twelve, and then see sights and - hear lectures till dark, dine at five or six, and either go to some - party in the evening, or stay at home and study with Zelie.” - -He had no fear of the cholera and firmly believed that it was not -contagious. He was advised that good living, frequent bathing, a cheerful -frame of mind, and regular habits were the best preventives. He even went -boldly through the cholera wards of the Hôtel Dieu, and sent a harrowing -description of them to the “Mirror.” But towards spring the pestilence -gained more and more. The theatres were shut, all gayeties suspended, and -thousands fled the city daily. The upper classes, who had thus far -escaped, began to be attacked. The streets were almost deserted, people -went about holding camphor bags to their nostrils, and the panic became -universal. Finally, toward the middle of April, while dancing at a party, -Willis was seized with violent pains in the stomach, vomiting, and chills. -He ran out of the room to an apothecary’s, swallowed thirty drops of -laudanum, took a carriage home, and a prescription of camphor and ether, -and went to bed. These instant remedies, he had no doubt, were all that -saved him, and on April 16th he started for Italy. - -It is unnecessary for the biographer to follow him step by step in his -saunterings through Europe. These are fully recorded in his letters to the -“Mirror,” which covered a period of four years, the first appearing in the -issue of February 13, 1832, and the last on January 14, 1836. He began -them on the voyage out, as soon as he had recovered from his first -seasickness, and he continued them until about six months before his -return home. The title “Pencillings by the Way,” he had used before, but -he retained it and added the sub-caption, “First Impressions of Europe.” -Both described well the character of these letters, which were written -hastily, often on the wing, and sent off in many cases without revision, -to catch the next packet for America; in which, moreover, the writer aimed -to “record impressions, not statistics.” There were one hundred and -thirty-nine of them in all, and they were designed to appear weekly so far -as possible. But by reason of irregular postal facilities, they averaged -less than one a fortnight, and sometimes a month or more elapsed between -two of them. They were read with eagerness in America, and Morris asserted -that they were copied into five hundred newspapers. Their popularity is -explained in part by the fact that Europe was much farther off from us in -those days than it is now. The voyage by sailing-vessel was tedious, and -few Americans went abroad for pleasure. Willis, to be sure, professed -himself astonished by the numbers of his countrymen whom he met in Italy -and elsewhere, but these were but a handful compared with the annual horde -of tourists who rush back and forth in the steamers, and do Great Britain -and the continent in three months. It is also true that the literature of -travel was not then so abundant. The time has gone by for first -impressions of countries. The reader now demands a more minute and -authoritative study of some single corner of the map. Yet this does not -serve to account altogether for Willis’s success in his “Pencillings.” -There were already plenty of books by American travelers in Europe, such -as they were, which have long been obsolete. Who ever hears nowadays of -James’s “Travels,” for instance, published in 1820; or of Austin’s -“Letters from London,” 1804; or of “A Journal of a Tour in Italy by an -American,” 1824; to say nothing of innumerable “Americans in Paris,” and -“Americans in London,” of later dates? The truth is that Willis’s rapid -sketches were capital writing of their kind, and the work of a born -“foreign correspondent.” He was a quick and sympathetic, though not a -subtle observer, had an eye for effect, and a journalist’s instinct for -seizing the characteristic features of a scene and leaving out the lumber. -Few of his letters are in the least guide-bookish. His raptures in stated -places for admiration, such as galleries, palaces, and cathedrals, are -sometimes conventional, and doubtless his passing judgments on famous -works of art are often either at second hand or incorrect. His education -had not prepared him to pronounce on these, and he had not the patience to -cultivate a critical appreciation of them. But in the crowd and out of -doors--whither he gladly escapes--he is always happy, and there are many -pictures, scattered here and there through these excellent letters, which -for sharpness of line and brightness of color have not been excelled -either by Hawthorne, in his “Note-Books,” or by Bayard Taylor, in his -numerous views, afoot or otherwise, or by Henry James, in his more -penetrating and far more carefully finished studies. - -Willis did not sit down in Europe, like Longfellow, and become the -interpreter to the New World of the Old World’s romantic past. He was -never much of a scholar. The literature and legends of the countries he -traveled had little to give him, though he possessed just enough of the -historic imagination for the proper equipment of a picturesque tourist. In -general it was the present that interested him: all this stirring modern -life, the strange manners and dresses, the changing landscapes, the gay -throngs in the streets, the pretty women and notable men at the drive or -the ball. Nor was his attitude that of criticism, but rather of intense -personal enjoyment. He had gone out ready to be pleased, and he was -pleased. He gave, in consequence, a somewhat rose-colored view of Europe -to his readers at home. Not that the disagreeable side escaped his notice, -but he was having his holiday and he gave a holiday account of it, and his -engaging egotism lent a personal interest to his descriptions. The -“Edinburgh Review,” in a just but rather heavy notice of “Pencillings,” -complained of the scantiness of useful information in them. Useful -information was a thing which Willis eschewed. He took small interest in -politics, public institutions, industrial conditions, etc.; and he knew -that they would bore nine out of ten among his readers. He lumped them -jauntily under the head of “statistics,” referred the anxious inquirer -concerning them to the cyclopædias, acknowledged with delightful candor -that he himself was an ornamental person, and went on with his sketches of -people and places. Yet “Pencillings by the Way” was a book which so solid -a man as Daniel Webster carried with him on a journey, and which, says his -biographer, “he read attentively and praised. He said the letters were -both instructive and amusing and evinced great talents on the part of the -author.” They inspired the young Bayard Taylor with his first longing to -travel. Thousands of Americans have taken their impressions of Europe from -them; and in spite of all that has since been written by more leisurely -and better instructed observers, they retain their freshness wonderfully, -and present to the reader of to-day vivid glimpses of the outside of -European life, at a time when steam had not yet made the byways of all -countries accessible. - -Willis spent the summer and autumn of 1832 in the north of Italy, making -Florence his headquarters. Dr. Bowring had given him in Paris a letter to -Count Porro at Marseilles. The latter had been with Byron in Greece, where -Count Gamba, the Guiccioli’s brother, was of his corps and served under -him. He gave Willis letters to “half the rank of Italy:” among others, to -the Marquis Borromeo, who owned the “Isola Bella” in Lake Maggiore. Porro -assured Willis that Borromeo would give him the use of one of his -palazzos, “as he has five or six and is happy when people he knows occupy -his servants.” The nominal position of _attaché_ to the American legation -at Paris obtained for him a private presentation to the Grand Duke of -Tuscany, and an invitation to the ducal balls and the receptions at the -Casino, both of which were given weekly. The Florentines did not entertain -much at their houses, but the foreign residents did, and especially the -English. Willis was dined by Jerome Bonaparte, the ex-King of Westphalia, -who was living at the Tuscan capital with the title of Prince Montfort, -and giving very exclusive parties. He resorted to the Saturday _soirées_ -of Prince Poniatowski, who professed love for Americans, and whose august -name was afterwards borne by the favorite pony of the Willis children at -Idlewild. In short, he was freely admitted to Florentine society and took -part in its fashionable intrigues and dissipations. He secured lodgings in -Florence in the same palazzo with Greenough, in the apartment just vacated -by Cole, the American landscape painter. Through Greenough he saw a great -deal of artist life in Italy. At Rome Greenough subsequently introduced -him to Gibson, the English sculptor, who presented him with a cast of his -bas-relief, Cupid and Psyche. Under the guidance of the two, Willis amused -himself by trying his hand, in an amateurish fashion, at moulding in clay. -He was flattered by their assurances that he had a good touch, and felt -half inclined, for a moment, to exchange his dilettantish pursuit of -letters for an equally dilettantish pursuit of art. His dreams of the -possibilities of such a career took shape long after in the novel of “Paul -Fane.” Greenough had moulded a bust of Willis at Florence, and some years -after he cut it in marble and gave it to him. There is a story about this -which is authentic, and too pretty to leave untold. Mr. Joseph Grinnell of -New Bedford happened to be in Florence in the spring of 1830 and had -employed Greenough to make him a statue of his niece Cornelia,--then a -child of five years,--who became in time Willis’s second wife. It was from -a remnant of the same block used for her statue that the sculptor, -unconscious of the omen, afterwards carved the bust of her future husband. -The two fragments thus strangely reunited stand now in the same -drawing-room, the head of the youthful poet, with its Hyperion curls, and -the full-length figure of the demure little Quaker maiden, holding in one -hand a drinking-cup and in the other a bird. From this portrait-bust of -Willis is taken the engraving by Halpin in the illustrated edition of -Willis’s poems published by Clark, Austin & Smith, 1859. It was a fair -likeness, but somewhat heavy and unideal. Its original had grown quite fat -abroad. His inherited tendency to _embonpoint_ was counteracted in later -life by the emaciation of long illness. Even as a young man his height -gave him a look of slenderness, though his face was full. The “Autocrat,” -apropos of dandies whose jaws could not fill out their collars, affirms -that “Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier ambrotypes.” - -August found him at the Baths of Lucca, “The Saratoga of Italy,” flirting, -and recuperating from the exhausting effects of an Italian summer. In a -private letter dated on the 20th, he announces his intention of starting -for England to-morrow by way of Switzerland and the Rhine, returning to -Italy in a few months in time for the Roman season. - - “In London I mean to make arrangements with the magazines, and then - live abroad altogether. It costs so little here and one lives so - luxuriously too, and there is so much to fill one’s mind and eye, - that I think of returning to naked America with daily increasing - repugnance. I love my country, but the _ornamental_ is my vocation, - and of this she has none. I shall pass the next summer, perhaps, in - Germany at a university, and I mean to learn German thoroughly. You - would be astonished at the facility of learning a language _in the - country_. I speak French well and Italian passably, and you know how - little I knew and how short a time I have been abroad.” - -This programme was altered for some reason. Instead of starting for -England, he made a second visit to Venice, then returned to Florence, and -when the autumn was far enough advanced to make it safe went on to Rome. -In the letter just quoted he mentions that he has made the acquaintance of -a young Mr. Noel, a cousin of Byron. - -The winter of 1832-33 and the spring of 1833 were spent between Florence, -Rome, and Naples. - -Wherever he traveled he made friends. He was not without a title to his -secretary’s button, for his whole progress through Europe was a ticklish -feat of diplomacy. Few of the people whom he met in society suspected what -thin ice he was skating on, or dreamed for an instant that the dashing -young _attaché_ was dependent for his bread and butter on weekly letters -to a newspaper. The failure of remittances from Morris sometimes put him -in an awkward predicament, but he always managed to find a way out. In one -of the letters which he made it a religion to write his mother on each -recurring birthday--this one dated at Florence, January 20, 1833--he -relates some of his experiences of the kind:-- - - “I have dined with a prince one day and alone for a shilling in a - cook-shop the next. I have twice been entirely destitute of money in - places where I had not an acquaintance, and the instant before the - last coin was out of my pocket, chances too improbable for a dream - have provided for me. One was at Marseilles. I had relied on - receiving a letter of credit when I got there. I was disappointed - and was at the hotel a week, wondering whether I should find fate - working its usual miracle for me. I had only two francs remaining, - when a gentlemanly man, who had commenced conversation with me at - table, asked me to his room and ended with offering me a seat in his - carriage to Nice. The quarantine drove him back, but he had brought - me two hundred miles on my route, and knowing my disappointment by - my inquiries at the post office, he offered me the use of his banker - to any amount and took drafts for the money on my partner in New - York. This now is a thing that does not occur once in a century. I - have corresponded with Doyne (that was his name) ever since. I find - that he is a _religious man_, and from one of the first families in - Dublin.” - -With all his taste for luxury, Willis knew how to make economies, and -living was much cheaper then. He never affected a mystery, and in one of -his letters to the “Mirror” he explained how it was that he could live in -Florence on three hundred dollars a year “exclusive of postage and -pleasure,” paying four dollars a month for his apartment and attendance, -breakfasting for six cents, and dining “quite magnificently” for -twenty-five. Meanwhile a deal of gossip about him was in circulation in -America, and the editor of the “Mirror” had to contradict, _inter alia_, a -rumor that his foreign collaborator had married the widow of a British -nobleman and was faring sumptuously in Rome. - -Having been invited by the officers of the frigate United States to join -them in a six months’ cruise up the Mediterranean, he repaired to Leghorn, -from which port the United States, with her consort the Constellation, set -sail on the 3d of June, 1833. Commodore Patterson of Baltimore commanded -the former ship and Captain Reed of Philadelphia the latter. Both -gentlemen were accompanied by their wives and the commodore by his three -beautiful daughters. These were all old friends of Willis, and he had made -acquaintance with the other officers of the squadron in Italy. He could -not have seen the East under pleasanter auspices, and the next half year -was the richest in literary fruit of his entire sojourn upon the -continent. The squadron loitered along like a pair of pleasure yachts, -touching at all the more interesting ports. The bright shores of the -Mediterranean and the Levant passed in a magic panorama before the eyes of -the passengers, who sailed and danced and ate the lotus day after day. -Elba, Naples, and Sicily; Trieste and Vienna; the Ionian Islands, Greece, -and the shores of the Dardanelles were visited in turn, and at length in -October the frigate dropped anchor in the Golden Horn. Willis’s -“Pencillings” of Constantinople are among the best in his portfolio, among -the best, indeed, that have ever been made of the surface of Oriental -life. Italy was hackneyed: the Rialto and Saint Mark’s, the Coliseum and -the Vatican, Pompeii and the Bay of Naples, had been described a thousand -times. But here he was off the track of common tourists. His nature -reveled in the barbaric riches of the East and cheerfully blinked the -discomforts and the dirt. The mysteries of the seraglio and the slave -market and the veiled women in the bazaars piqued his curiosity, and the -poetry of the Turkish cemeteries and mosques appealed to his sentiment. He -was never weary of wandering through the grand bazaar. “I have idled up -and down in the dim light and fingered the soft henna, and bought small -parcels of incense wood for my pastille lamp, studying the remarkable -faces of the unconscious old Mussulmans, till my mind became somehow -tinctured of the East, and my clothes steeped in the mixed and agreeable -odors of its thousand spices.” Willis was a born shopper and had a -feminine eye for the niceties not only of costume, but of upholstery, -pottery, and all kinds of purchasable knick-knacks. He relished a fine -appeal to his senses and his fancy all in one. So he liked to go through -the street of the confectioners and taste the queer sweetmeats with -flowery names, “peace to your throat” and “lumps of delight,” and to -inventory the merchants’ stock in trade, their gilded saucers, brass -spoons, and vases of rose water. He liked the opium-eating druggists, -smoking their narghiles and fingering their spice wood beads, the edges of -their jars “turned over with rich colored papers (a peculiar color to -every drug), and broad spoons of box-wood crossed on the top.” He -delighted to cheapen amber and embroidered slippers in the Bezestein, and -best of all to lounge on the cushioned divan, taking sherbet and aromatic -coffee and bargaining for attar of roses in the octagonal shop of -Mustapha, the perfumer to the Sultan, whom he has introduced as a _deus ex -machina_ into his story, “The Gypsy of Sardis.” In the “Letters from under -a Bridge,” he affirms, whether seriously or not I cannot say, that the -English artist Bartlett, who was his collaborator in “American Scenery,” -encountered old Mustapha in Constantinople, and that the latter showed him -Willis’s card “stained to a deep orange with the fingering of his fat -hand, unctuous from bath hour to bath hour with the precious oils he -traffics in.” He questioned Bartlett about America, “a country which to -Mustapha’s fancy is as far beyond the moon as the moon is beyond the gilt -tip of the seraglio,” and finally gave him a jar of attar of jasmine to -send to Willis. “The small gilt bottle, with its cubical edge and cap of -parchment, lies breathing before me.” Then there was the street of the -booksellers, where “the small brown reed stood in every clotted inkstand,” -and the bearded old Armenian bookworm, interrupted in eating rice from a -wooden bowl, took down an illuminated Hafiz, “and opening it with a -careful thumb, read a line in mellifluous Persian.” Willis also struck up -an acquaintance with Dr. Millingen, the Sultan’s physician, who had -attended Byron in his last illness. He spent two days with him, by -invitation, at his house on the Bosphorus, and picked up a smattering of -Romaic from Mrs. Millingen, who was a Greek. - -After five weeks at Constantinople, the frigate weighed anchor for Smyrna. -There he found an old schoolmate, Octavus Langdon, a Smyrniote merchant, -who entertained him very hospitably, and invited him to join a party for a -few days’ tour in Asia Minor. The party consisted of Willis and his host, -an American missionary named Brewer, and two other gentlemen, and their -adventures included a night in a real Oriental khan at Magnesia, and a -visit to the site of ancient Sardis. A beautiful girl, of whom Willis -caught a glimpse, through a tent door, in a gypsy encampment on the plain -of Hadjilar, was the original of his “Gypsy of Sardis.” At Smyrna he said -good-by to Commodore Patterson and his other friends on the United States; -and the ship which had been his home for more than six months sailed away -to winter at Minorca, leaving him “waiting for a vessel to go--I care not -where. I rather lean toward Palestine and Egypt, but there are no vessels -for Jaffa or Alexandria.” - -By this time Willis’s literary reputation had penetrated to the London -press, though not as yet to the London public, possibly through scattered -copies of his “Mirror” letters; and while staying at Smyrna he received -“an offer of a thousand dollars a year to write for the London ‘Morning -Herald.’ But the articles were to be _political_, and that I had modesty -enough to think beyond my calibre. I was to live abroad, however, and go -wherever there was a war or the prospect of one. I would much rather -write about pictures and green fields.” The not unpleasant hesitation as -to his next move was ended at last by the departure from Smyrna of the -Yankee brig Metamora, bound for his native Portland with a cargo of figs -and opium. The skipper, a Down-Easter, agreed to take him as a passenger, -and land him at Malta. At Malta, accordingly, he arrived late in December, -after being nearly shipwrecked in a Levanter, and was put ashore through a -heavy sea in the brig’s long boat, narrowly escaping being carried all the -way to America. The letter to the “Mirror” in which this part of his -travels was recorded was lost, and the “Pencillings” leap at once from -Smyrna to Milan. He afterwards rewrote the episode, turning it into a -capital story (“A Lost Letter Rewritten,” in the “Mirror” for May 14 and -June 11, 1836), which figures in his collected writings as “A Log in the -Archipelago.” The startling conjunction of East and Down East on board the -Metamora suggested, no doubt, some of the incidents in “The Widow by -Brevet,” a tale which moves between the poles of Constantinople and Salem, -Massachusetts. - -From Malta he made his way _via_ Italy, Switzerland, and France to -England, arriving at Dover on the 1st of June, 1834. - -While at Florence, Willis had been introduced by Greenough to Walter -Savage Landor, who was then living in his villa at Fiesole. Landor -entertained him hospitably, and, at parting, made him a present of a Cuyp, -for which Willis had expressed admiration, and gave him some valuable -letters to people in England. One of these was to the Countess of -Blessington, and with it Landor intrusted to his American guest the -manuscript of his “Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare,” for -delivery to the same lady, under whose superintendence it was duly -published the following autumn. He also put into his hands a package whose -temporary disappearance was the cause of some blame attaching to Willis. -Landor’s own story of the transaction, told in an addendum to the first -edition of “Pericles and Aspasia,” is as follows:-- - - “At this time an American traveler passed through Tuscany and - favored me with a visit at my country seat. He expressed a wish to - reprint in America a large selection of my ‘Imaginary - Conversations,’ omitting the political. He assured me they were the - most _thumbed_ books on his table. With a smile at so energetic an - expression of perhaps an undesirable distinction, I offered him - unreservedly and unconditionally my only copy of the five printed - volumes, interlined and interleaved in most places, together with - my MS. of the sixth, unpublished. He wrote to me on his arrival in - England, telling me that they were already on their voyage to their - destination.” - -It seems from Willis’s public explanation in “Letters from under a -Bridge,” that he received the volumes, which were in a dilapidated -condition, at the moment of starting, and not knowing how to add them to -his baggage he--rather carelessly, perhaps--“sent them with a note to -Theodore Fay, who was then in Florence, requesting him to forward them to -America by ship from Leghorn.” Fay accordingly committed them to a Mr. -Miles, an American straw-bonnet-maker, who did send them to New York, -where Willis expected to follow in the course of the summer and take -charge of them. Instead of doing this, he spent the next two years in -England, and meanwhile wrote to Landor that the package had been left with -Miles, to forward it to America. Landor “called in consequence at the shop -of this person, who denied any knowledge of the books.” These, however, -after a brief stay in New York, were consigned to Willis at London, “and -Fay and Mr. Landor both happening there together, the explanation was -made, and the books and manuscripts restored unharmed to the author,” but -not in time to keep Willis from going down “to posterity astride the finis -of ‘Pericles and Aspasia.’ I trust,” he continues, “that his [Landor’s] -biographer will either let me slip off at Lethe’s wharf, by expurgating -the book of me, or do me justice in a note.” In spite of which trust the -biographers have been a little hard on Willis in the matter. Sidney -Colvin, heartened, probably, by the “Quarterly’s” onslaught, denounces him -as “that most assiduous of flatterers and least delicate of gossips,” and -says that he gave Landor occasion to repent of his hospitality by -consigning his books to America and then basely lingering on in England -“in obsequious enjoyment of the great company among whom he found himself -invited:” while Forster, after declaring that Willis’s “fuss and fury of -boundless hero-worship found in Landor an easy victim,” adds that “Landor -will perhaps be thought not without excuse for the way in which he always -afterwards spoke of Mr. N. P. Willis.” But whatever inconvenience the -latter may have caused in this business, he certainly made the _amende -honorable_ in the letter to Landor from which Mr. Forster quotes:-- - - “I have to beg,” he writes, “that you will lay to the charge of - England a part of the annoyance you will feel about your books and - manuscripts. I was never more flattered by a commission and I have - never fulfilled one so ill. They went to America _via_ Leghorn, and - I expected fully to have arrived in New York a month or two after - them.” - -Landor was a man of noble courtesy and most generous nature, although, to -put it mildly, often unreasonable. The delay and uncertainty about his -precious manuscripts were certainly vexatious and may, very likely, as his -biographer implies, have influenced “the way in which he always afterwards -spoke” of the man who, innocently enough, made him the trouble. But up to -the time of this little misunderstanding, his feelings toward Willis, as -expressed in their correspondence, were exceedingly cordial; as will -sufficiently appear from the following letter, undated, but written, -probably, during the winter of 1834-35:-- - - MR DEAR SIR,--By a singular and strange coincidence, I wrote this - morning and put into the post office a letter directed to you at New - York. And now comes Mr. Macquay, bringing me one from you, - delightful in all respects. I know not any man in whose fame and - fortunes I feel a deeper interest than in yours. Pardon me if I am - writing all this illegibly in some degree, for certainly I shall - scarcely be in time for the post with all the agility both of hand - and legs. For I am resolved to transcribe an ode to your President - in spite of the resistance his [MS. illegible] has met - with,--indeed, the more am I resolved for this very reason. I envy - you the evenings you pass with the most accomplished and graceful of - all our fashionable world, my excellent friend, Lady Blessington. Do - not believe that I have written any paper in the magazine. Whatever - I write I submit to Lady B. My “Examination of Shakespeare” I - published for a particular and private purpose, which, however, it - has not answered. I should not be surprised if it procured me a - hundred pounds or more within seven years. Had I known of your being - in England I should have ordered a copy to have been sent to you. - Pray tell Lady Blessington I have at last received her Byron from - Colonel Hughes. It came a week ago. I think better of him than I - did, and thank her for it. Nevertheless, I suspect she has given him - powers of ratiocination which he never attained. I must now try to - recollect my verses. So adieu, and believe me, - - Ever yours most sincerely, - - W. S. LANDOR. - - Pray write to me when you find time. - -The verses accompanying this letter were the rough draft of the ode “To -Andrew Jackson,” numbered CCLXXXVIII. in Landor’s miscellaneous poems. On -his side Willis could not thank Landor enough for his introduction to Lady -Blessington. “She is my lode star and most valued friend,” he writes, “for -whose acquaintance I am so much indebted to you that you will find it -difficult in your lifetime to diminish my obligations.” - -In England Willis fell at once upon his feet. While traveling on the -Continent, his intimacies had been principally among Englishmen and -Americans, and though well received in the native society of Florence by -virtue of his diplomatic credentials, he had remained, after all, a -stranger and a looker-on. A foreign language imperfectly learned is a -barrier to complete intercourse even in the most cosmopolitan society. In -France and Italy he had made acquaintances; in England he made friends and -formed domestic ties which bound him to the country as long as he lived. -He did not fancy the French and Italians, though he found their cities -interesting to visit; but he liked the English and they treated him well. -No American author except Irving and Cooper had received from them a tithe -of the attentions which they accorded to Willis; and Cooper, though -personally well liked, had offended British prejudices by his pugnacious -writings and was more popular in Paris than in London. The next two years -of Willis’s life were perhaps the acme of his social and literary career, -and he always looked back to them as the brightest spot in his memory. The -experience was not altogether healthy for him, though it was stimulating -at the time. He was not spoiled by success, but he was naturally a little -intoxicated by it, and a little dazzled by the courtly splendors of the -circles to which he was now admitted. When he went back to America, he did -so reluctantly, and with the hope of returning soon to make his home in -England. He found the change to the plainer conditions of American life a -chilling one, and he had acquired habits and standards which did not fit -in easily with the requirements of a journalist’s career in a new country. - -As soon as he reached Dover he began to have that feeling of being at home -once more which is familiar to American travelers who make their first -entrance to England by way of the Channel. Everything was new, and yet -nothing was strange. The blazing coal fires--it was June--the warm -carpets, the quiet coffee-room with the London newspapers on the table, -the subdued, respectful servants, the mother-tongue again, the plain -richness of the furnishings, the snugness and comfort,--the Anglo-Saxon -knows by these that he is once more in Anglo-Saxondom. Arrived at London, -he lost no time in delivering his note of introduction from Landor to Lady -Blessington, who immediately asked him to dinner and presented him to the -_beaux esprits_ who frequented Seamore Place. For this charming woman her -young _protégé_ conceived at once the strongest admiration, tinctured, it -may be, by a tenderer sentiment. Her wit and beauty, her cordiality and -social graces, had drawn about her a court of statesmen, authors, and -notabilities of all kinds, over whom she presided like the queen of a -Parisian _salon_. It was natural that Willis should have formed, or at -least should have politely expressed, an exaggerated estimate of her -literary gifts. To posterity, who have not the advantage of her personal -acquaintance, Lady Blessington’s writings seem of very little importance, -with the possible exception of her “Conversations with Lord Byron,” whose -subject lends it a certain claim to remembrance. At her house Willis met -Bulwer, Moore, Lord Durham, Disraeli, James Smith, Galt, Procter, -Fonblanque of the “Examiner,” and many other distinguished men whose -portraits he has given in the “Pencillings” with a sharpness of outline -which makes them increasingly valuable as their figures recede into -history. It is not at all strange that an enthusiastic and fanciful young -American, without antecedents, ushered all at once into a roomful of -people about whom all the world was talking, should have been a little -imposed upon by these exalted personages. He was not in a critical mood, -and it may be freely conceded that he had too high an opinion of Barry -Cornwall’s poetry, and of the electroplated novels of the authors of -“Pelham” and “Vivian Grey;” and that he exclaimed more than was necessary -over the varied accomplishments of that gorgeous dandy--Byron’s _Cupidon -déchainé_--the Count d’Orsay. - -Still he kept his head fairly well. Fortunate in his introductions, he was -the man to make the most of his chances. His talent for society and his -easy assurance put him quickly _de niveau_ with his new acquaintances. He -was not at all above owning that the English nobility, for example, -impressed his imagination. He liked to stay at their houses; he enjoyed -the wealth, the grandeur, the historic associations that surrounded them. -His appetite for luxury was gratified by the perfection of all their -appointments in the art of living. The fineness of their manners pleased -his aristocratic tastes and he could not sufficiently admire the high-bred -women and the simple, cordial, dignified gentlemen with whom he dined or -drove through the cultivated landscapes. But Willis was no snob or vulgar -tuft hunter. His enjoyment of his privileges was accompanied with an -entire reserve of his self-respect. He liked the company of those whom Dr. -Johnson was wont to call “the great.” But though he loved a lord, he -preferred a commoner, if the commoner was preferable. The Duke of -Richelieu, whom he had met at Lady Blessington’s, and previously at the -French court, he described as “the inheritor of nothing but the name of -his great ancestor, a dandy and a fool.” - - “What a star is mine!” he wrote in a letter to his sister Julia, - three days after his landing in England. “All the best society of - London exclusives is now open to me--_me!_ a sometime apprentice at - setting types--_me!_ without a sou in the world beyond what my pen - brings me, and with not only no influence from friends at home, but - a world of envy and slander at my back. Thank heaven, there is not a - countryman of mine, except Washington Irving, who has even the - standing in England which I have got in _three days_ only. I should - not boast of it if I had not been wounded and stung to the quick by - the calumnies and falsehoods of every description which come to me - from America. But let it pass! It reconciles me to my exile at - least, and may drive me to adopt the mother country for my own. In a - literary way, I have had already offers from the ‘Court Magazine,’ - the ‘Metropolitan Monthly,’ and the ‘New Monthly’ of the first price - for my articles. I sent a short tale, written in one day, to the - ‘Court Magazine’ yesterday, and the publishers gave me eight guineas - for it at once. They all pay in this proportion, and you can easily - see, with my present resources of matter, how well I can live. I - lodge in Cavendish Square, the most fashionable part of the town, - paying a guinea a week for my lodgings, and am as well off as if I - had been the son of the President, with as much as I could spend in - the year. Except my family now, I have forgotten everybody in - America. [Here follows the passage about Mary Benjamin already - quoted in chapter III.] I never can return, however, till I can pay - my debts, and it will take me long to lay up three thousand - dollars. When I can do it, I shall, and make America a farewell - visit for years.” - -Willis followed up his advantages assiduously. He went constantly to Lady -Blessington’s, exchanged calls with Moore, breakfasted with Procter and -also with that entertaining diarist, Henry Crabb Robinson, to whom he -brought a letter from Landor, and in whose rooms in the Temple he met -Charles and Mary Lamb. His Parisian acquaintance, Dr. Bowring, was back in -London and introduced him to a number of people. At an evening party at -the Bulwers’ he met Sir Leicester Stanhope, who had been with Byron in -Greece, and with whose beautiful wife Willis became quite a favorite, -composing his verses “Upon the Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope” to -accompany an engraving of her in Lady Blessington’s “Book of Beauty.” At -the Stanhopes’ he met that famous pair of beauties, “the Sheridan girls,” -Mrs. Norton and her sister, Lady Dufferin, to the former of whom he had -addressed a poem written at Paris in 1832 and printed in the “Mirror” of -July 7, 1834. - -It was the height of the London season, and the opera was in full blast, -with Grisi singing and Fanny Elssler in the ballet. Willis was admitted to -the Alfred Club, and invitations to dinners and parties began to pour in -upon him. All these gayeties he described in his letters to Morris, -which, losing somewhat, it may be, in picturesqueness, gained greatly in -personal interest during his stay in England. It was in the course of this -first summer in London that he got acquainted with Mary Russell Mitford, -who invited him to spend a week at Reading, and with whom he maintained -for some time a friendly correspondence. A letter to Miss Jephson, July -23, 1834, gives her first impression of him:-- - - “I also liked very much Mr. Willis, an American author, whose - ‘Unwritten Poetry’ and ‘Unwritten Philosophy’ you may remember in my - American book,[2] and who is now understood to be here to publish - his account of England. He is a very elegant young man, and more - like one of the best of our peers’ sons than a rough republican.” - -The generally agreeable impression which Willis made in English society -was not without its exceptions. During this same summer in London he had -been taken by a friend to see Miss Harriet Martineau. She was then on the -point of embarking for that trip in America, her very outspoken narrative -of which afterwards caused so many heart-burnings in this country. Her -vinegary reminiscences of Willis, as recorded in her autobiography, though -rather long, are perhaps worth reproducing here, not only for their -liveliness, but because any contemporary impression, however unjust and -mistaken, helps to fill out a complete picture of the man, and there were -plenty of people who disliked Willis cordially. - - “I encountered,” she says, “one specimen of American oddity before I - left home, which should certainly have lessened my surprise at any - that I met afterwards. While I was preparing for my travels, an - acquaintance one day brought a buxom gentleman, whom he introduced - to me under the name of Willis. There was something rather engaging - in the round face, brisk air, and _enjouement_ of the young man; but - his conscious dandyism and unparalleled self-complacency spoiled the - satisfaction, though they increased the inclination to laugh. Mr. N. - P. Willis’s plea for coming to see me was his gratification that I - was going to America, and his real reason was presently apparent: a - desire to increase his consequence in London society by giving - apparent proof that he was on intimate terms with every eminent - person in America. He placed himself in an attitude of infinite - ease, and whipped his little bright boot with a little bright cane, - while he ran over the names of all his distinguished countrymen and - countrywomen, and declared he should send me letters to them all. - This offer of intervention went so very far that I said (what I have - ever since said in the case of introductions offered by strangers), - while thanking him for his intended good offices, that I was - sufficiently uncertain in my plans to beg for excuse beforehand, in - case I should find myself unable to use the letters. It appeared - afterwards that to supply them and not to have them used suited Mr. - Willis’s convenience exactly. It made him appear to have the - friendships he boasted of without putting the boast to the proof. It - was immediately before a late dinner that the gentleman called; and - I found on the breakfast-table next morning a great parcel of Mr. - Willis’s letters, inclosed in a prodigious one to myself, in which - he offered advice. Among other things, he desired me not to use his - letter to Dr. Channing if I had others from persons more intimate - with him; and he proceeded to warn me against two friends of Dr. and - Mrs. Channing’s, whose names I had never heard and whom Mr. Willis - represented as bad and dangerous people. This gratuitous defamation - of strangers whom I was likely to meet confirmed the suspicions my - mother and I had confided to each other about the quality of Mr. - Willis’s introductions. It seemed ungrateful to be so suspicious: - but we could not see any good reason for such prodigious efforts on - my behalf, nor for his naming any countrywomen of his to me in a way - so spontaneously slanderous. So I resolved to use that packet of - letters very cautiously, and to begin with one which should be well - accompanied. In New York harbor newspapers were brought on board, in - one of which was an extract from an article transmitted by Mr. - Willis to the ‘New York Mirror,’ containing a most audacious account - of me as an intimate friend of the writer. The friendship was not - stated as a matter of fact, but so conveyed that it cost me much - trouble to make it understood and believed, even by Mr. Willis’s own - family, that I had never seen him but once, and then without having - previously heard so much as his name. On my return the acquaintance - who brought him was anxious to ask pardon if he had done mischief, - events having by that time made Mr. Willis’s ways pretty well known. - His partner in the property and editorship of the ‘New York Mirror’ - called on me at West Point, and offered and rendered such - extraordinary courtesy that I was at first almost as much perplexed - as he and his wife were when they learned that I had never seen Mr. - Willis but once. They pondered, they consulted, they - cross-questioned me, they inquired whether _I_ had any notion what - Mr. Willis could have meant by writing of me as in a state of close - intimacy with him. In like manner, when, some time after, I was in a - carriage with some members of a picnic party to Monument Mountain, a - little girl seated at my feet clasped my knees fondly, looked up in - my face, and said, ‘O Miss Martineau! You are _such_ a friend of my - Uncle Nathaniel’s!’ Her father was present; and I tried to get off - without explanation. But it was impossible,--they all knew how very - intimate I was with Nathaniel; and there was a renewal of the - amazement at my having seen him only once. I tried three of his - letters; and the reception was in each case much the same,--a - throwing down of the letter with an air not to be mistaken. In each - case the reply was the same, when I subsequently found myself at - liberty to ask what this might mean. ‘Mr. Willis is not entitled to - write to me: he is no acquaintance of mine.’ As for the two ladies - of whom I was especially to beware, I became exceedingly well - acquainted with them, to my own advantage and pleasure; and, as a - natural consequence, I discovered Mr. Willis’s reasons for desiring - to keep us apart. I hardly need add that I burned the rest of his - letters. He had better have spared himself the trouble of so much - manœuvring, by which he lost a good deal, and could hardly have - gained anything. I have simply stated the facts, because, in the - first place, I do not wish to be considered one of Mr. Willis’s - friends; and, in the next, it may be useful, and conducive to - justice, to show, by a practical instance, what Mr. Willis’s - pretensions to intimacy are worth. His countrymen and countrywomen - accept, in simplicity, his accounts of our aristocracy as from the - pen of one of their own coterie; and they may as well have the - opportunity of judging for themselves whether their notorious - ‘Penciller’ is qualified to write of Scotch dukes and English - marquises and European celebrities of all kinds in the way he has - done.” - -The simple American reader will have a chance to make up his mind, on -independent evidence, of how far Willis was qualified to write of Scotch -dukes, etc.; but meanwhile it is not true that the audacious article in -the “Mirror” of September 6, 1834 (which was not an “article,” by the way, -but an extract from a private letter to Morris), conveyed any implication -of an intimacy between Willis and Miss Martineau. On the contrary, it -expressly says that his acquaintance with the lady was of only one day’s -standing. - - “I was taken yesterday,” it begins, “by the clever translator of - ‘Faust’ to see the celebrated Miss Martineau. She has perhaps at - this moment the most general and enviable reputation in England, and - is the only one of the literary _clique_ whose name is mentioned - without some envious qualification.” - -After some entirely respectful mention of her manner and appearance, the -letter then goes on to say:-- - - “There is no necessity of bespeaking for so distinguished a visitor - as Miss Martineau the warmest attentions of our country. She goes - with high anticipations, and whatever she may find to object to in - our society and institutions, it will be done, there cannot be a - doubt, in a spirit of womanly and simple candor. She is sped on her - way by the best wishes of the best hearts in England. I trust she - will be met over there by wishes and welcomes as warm and as many.” - -Any one who knew Willis would have felt sure that his “prodigious efforts” -on Miss Martineau’s behalf sprang from his always good-natured and -sometimes even officious eagerness to be of service. And most who knew him -would probably have admitted that there was some mixture of a “desire to -increase his consequence” in his offer of introductions. Motives are -usually mixed in this bad world and Willis was seldom indifferent to -opportunities for ingratiating himself with people worth knowing. But even -so, it would have been more gracious in the lady if, after accepting his -offers and the attentions of his partner at West Point, she had taken his -professions for what they were worth, and omitted this spiteful mention of -him in her book. Had he lived to read the passage, he would probably have -consoled himself with the reflection that it was better to win smiles from -beauty than approbation from a strong-minded Unitarian female with an -ear-trumpet, or, as he politely paraphrased it in his letter to Morris, a -“pliable, acoustic tube.” - -The last fortnight in August he was ill of a bilious fever, during which -his new friends proved very kind. Lady Blessington called daily in her -carriage at his lodgings (over the shop of a baker, who gratified Willis -by being overwhelmed at her ladyship’s condescension), and Dr. William -Beattie, the king’s physician, attended his interesting patient devotedly -and refused to take any fee. This excellent gentleman, who was the -anonymous author of “Heliotrope” and a prolific contributor to the -Annuals, became a firm friend of Willis and his correspondent for many -years after his return to America. He was an intimate of Samuel Rogers and -of Thomas Campbell, whose life he afterwards wrote, and he introduced -Willis to both of them. - -By September the latter was sufficiently convalescent to be ordered into -the country. He had received an invitation from the Earl of Dalhousie, -whom he had met in Italy, to make him a visit at Dalhousie Castle, near -Edinburgh, and accordingly he set out for Scotland on the second of the -month. Lady Charlotte Bury, a “scribbling woman,” had given him a letter -to her brother, the Duke of Argyle, and he carried a score beside to other -people in Scotland. At Dalhousie, the feudal castle of the Ramsays, nobly -situated on a branch of the Esk, Willis was heartily welcomed, and passed -a most agreeable fortnight. The earl had been governor of the Canadas in -1831; Lady Dalhousie was an invalid, and both of them were quiet, domestic -people, kindly and simple, living with the profuse and even splendid -hospitality proper to their rank, but without ostentation of fashion or -gayety. The house was full of guests, among them the countess’s niece, -Lady Moncrieff, a lovely widow of twenty-five, who was very polite to -Willis during his next winter in London. The earl’s son, Lord Ramsay, was -home from Oxford and initiated Willis into the mysteries of shooting over -the stubble. This young gentleman succeeded to his father’s title in 1838, -was a member of Sir Robert Peel’s ministry from 1843 to 1847, and in the -latter year was made Governor-General of India. It was during his -viceroyalty that the Burmese war was fought, the Punjaub annexed, and the -railway begun from Calcutta to Bombay. - -After leaving Dalhousie, Willis spent a few days in Edinburgh, where he -breakfasted with Professor Wilson, dined with Jeffrey, and danced till -three o’clock in the morning at the Whig ball given in honor of Lord Grey. -An attack of scrofula in his left leg, which he chose to describe in his -correspondence with his English friends as “gout,” was aggravated by this -last dissipation, and after two or three days more of poultices and -plasters at Edinburgh, he took steamer to Aberdeen. “The loss of a wedding -in Perthshire, by the way, a week’s deer-shooting in the forest of Athol, -and a week’s fishing with a noble friend at Kinvara (long standing -engagements all), I lay at the door of the Whigs.” He was laid up four -days at Aberdeen, but finally recovered so far as to take coach seventy -miles across country to Lochabers, a small town on the estates of the Duke -of Gordon, to whom he brought a letter from Dalhousie. At Gordon Castle he -found a distinguished company and passed ten days of unmixed enjoyment. -There were thirty guests, among whom were Lord Aberdeen, who had been -foreign secretary under Wellington; his son, Lord Claude Hamilton, a -handsome young Cantab, who invited Willis to visit him at the university -for a day’s hunt; Lord Aberdeen’s daughter, Lady Harriet Hamilton, -“eighteen and brilliantly beautiful;” Lord and Lady Stormont, Lord -Mandeville, Lord and Lady Morton, the Duchess of Richmond and her -daughter, Lady Sophia Lennox, “the palest, proudest, and most high-born -looking woman I ever saw.” This Lady Sophia Lennox was probably the -original of Mildred Ashly, the disdainful beauty in “Paul Fane.” She seems -to have impressed Willis as the type and embodiment of English -aristocracy. In a letter to Lady Blessington, written from Gordon Castle -and printed in Madden’s “Life of Lady Blessington,” he says, “There is a -Lady Something, very pale, tall and haughty, twenty-three and sarcastic, -whom I sat next at dinner yesterday,--a woman I came as near an antipathy -for as is possible, with a very handsome face for an apology.” The same -letter gives his opinion of his host and hostess more unreservedly than he -could venture to do in “Pencillings.” The duke he describes as “a -delightful, hearty old fellow full of fun and conversation.” Willis’s -letters from Gordon Castle were perhaps more criticised than any other -part of his “Pencillings” for their alleged violation of the sanctities of -private life. They are, nevertheless, among the very best passages in his -correspondence and, taken together, they present a brilliant picture of -what is, doubtless, so far as material conditions go, the most perfect -life lived by man; the life, namely, of a chosen party of guests, in late -September, at the country seat of a great British noble. - -From this pleasant province in the land of Cockayne, Willis departed -toward the last of the month and, after a tour of the Highlands, returned -October 6th to Dalhousie, where he passed a few days more and then set out -for England. He had meant, on his way back to London, to call upon -Wordsworth and Surrey, having letters to both of them, and to pass some -days by appointment with Miss Mitford at Reading. But continued trouble -with his ankle altered his plans, and, after spending a few weeks at the -country house of a friend in Lancashire--whose acquaintance he had made -in Italy--and of another in Cheshire, he returned hastily to London by way -of Liverpool and Manchester, and on the 1st of November took up his -quarters there for the winter. At this stage of his journeyings -“Pencilling by the Way” come to an end. A number of supplementary letters -descriptive of London life, of the Isle of Wight, of Stratford-upon-Avon, -Charlecote, Kenilworth, Warwick Castle, etc., were published at irregular -intervals in the “Mirror” under the general heading “Loiterings of -Travel.” With letters from Washington and the paper on “The Four Rivers,” -they make up the “Sketches of Travel” in their author’s collected works. - - - - -CHAPTER V. - -1834-1836. - -LIFE ABROAD (CONTINUED). - - -Willis took lodgings at No. 2 Vigo Street. During the next ten months, -which he spent in London and its vicinity, he found himself something of a -lion. His articles in the English magazines had begun to be talked about -in the clubs, and society people who had known him abroad or in London -only as a dandy _attaché_ were surprised to learn that “that nice, -agreeable Mr. Willis” was identical with “Slingsby,” the brilliant -American _raconteur_ of the “New Monthly.” He had contributed in the -summer and autumn of 1834 a number of sketches--“By a Here and -Thereian”--to the “Court Magazine:” “Love and Diplomacy,” “Niagara and So -On;” to Captain Marryat’s “Metropolitan:” an episode of Italian travel, -“The Madhouse of Palermo;” and to Colburn’s “New Monthly:” “Incidents on -the Hudson,” “Tom Fane and I,” “Pedlar Karl,” “The Lunatic,” and “My -Hobby--Rather” (the same as “The Mad Senior” in “Scenes of Fear”). The -_nom de plume_ of Philip Slingsby he borrowed from the luckless wanderer -in Irving’s “Sketch-Book.” He followed these up during 1835-36 with “F. -Smith,” “Love in the Library” (“Edith Linsey”), “The Gypsy of Sardis,” -“The Cherokee’s Threat,” “The Revenge of the Signor Basil,” and “Larks in -Vacation.” For his “Slingsby” papers Willis got double pay: Colburn gave -him a guinea a page, and Morris, in his contract with whom he had reserved -the right to print twelve sketches a year in the English magazines, -published them simultaneously in the “Mirror,” and paid for them at the -same rate as for original articles. They were forwarded to him in -proof-sheets or in duplicate MSS., so as to arrive in advance of the -English periodicals, which sometimes, however, reached America first, -because of the uncertainties of the mail-carriage by sailing packet. To -the “New Monthly” Willis also contributed a number of short poems, -“Thoughts in a Balcony at Daybreak,” “The Absent,” “Chamber Scene,” and -“To ----” (“Were I a star,” etc.). He wrote for it after his return to -America and after it was united with “The Humorist” in 1837, under the -editorship of Theodore Hook. His last contribution to it was “The Picker -and Piler,” in the April number for 1839. - -Lady Blessington’s kindness continued after his return to London, and he -was taken up by other fashionable bluestockings, dined and wined, fêted -and caressed to a degree that may well have made him giddy. The two rival -_salons_ to Lady Blessington’s were Holland House and the residence of the -Dowager Lady Charleville in Cavendish Square. It does not appear that -Willis was invited to the former, but he went to the reunions at -Charleville House, though not so constantly as to Seamore Place. Through -Lady Blessington’s influence he was admitted to the Travellers’ Club, -which was the resort of the ultra fashionable; and, on Sir George -Staunton’s nomination, to the Athenæum, which had more of a literary tinge -than the Alfred or the Travellers’. Sir George Staunton also presented him -at court, a favor which Mr. Vail, the American minister, who disliked -Willis for some reason, had declined to render. Another friend gave him a -perpetual ticket to the opera. Among his patronesses were the Countess of -Arundel and Lady Stepney, who wrote bad novels but gave good dinners. Lady -Blessington’s biographer, Madden, who saw a great deal of him in those -days, has recorded his recollections of him as follows:-- - - “I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Willis on many occasions at Gore - House, to which reference is made in the rather too celebrated - ‘Pencillings by the Way,’ and also at the _soirées_ of the late Lady - Charleville in Cavendish Square. Mr. Willis was an extremely - agreeable young man in society, somewhat overdressed and a little - too _demonstratif_, but abounding in good spirits, pleasing - reminiscences of Eastern and Continental travel and of his residence - there for some time as _attaché_ to a foreign legation. He was - observant and communicative, lively and clever in conversation, - having the peculiar art of making himself agreeable to ladies, old - as well as young, _dégagé_ in his manner, and on exceedingly good - terms with himself and with the _élite_ of the best society, - wherever he went.” - -The secret of Willis’s agreeableness to ladies lay in his unfailing -deference. It is extraordinary how many women much older than himself -cherished a warm affection for him. He had considered the meaning of -Bacon’s saying, “No Youth can be comely, but by Pardon,” and several of -his stories are studies on the thesis that there is a beauty in age which -may inspire passion. One in particular, not found among his collected -writings, deals with this speculation: “Poyntz’s Aunt,” published in “The -Ladies’ Companion” of December, 1842, where the hero falls violently in -love with a woman of sixty, to whose niece the family expected him to pay -his court. - -Willis saw more “life” in London than was quite good for him, and went -into companies which were less select than the Gore House coterie, -although, to say truth, Lady Blessington herself was looked upon by “the -best people” as a trifle off color. Her house was frequented by men who -were entirely irreproachable, but the English ladies were shy of visiting -there. This was due mainly to her rather unusual relations with the Count -d’Orsay. In obedience to the wishes of the Earl of Blessington, his -daughter by a former marriage had been compelled to wed the count under -penalty of forfeiting her inheritance. The poor girl reluctantly espoused -the brilliant stranger provided for her by her father’s eccentric caprice; -but the match was unhappy, and was almost immediately followed by a -separation; notwithstanding which, D’Orsay continued to live in the -closest intimacy with his wife’s stepmother after the earl’s death, and in -time under the same roof with her. This last arrangement, which was, to -say the least, odd, and caused much scandal in British society, had not, -however, gone into effect when Willis first came to London. Lady -Blessington had not as yet moved to Gore House, but was living in Seamore -Place, while D’Orsay had lodgings in Curzon Street. Nor did the latter’s -formal separation from his wife take place till 1838. Another intimate -friend of Willis in London was that very unconventional, not to say rapid, -woman, Lady Dudley Stuart, the daughter of Lucien Bonaparte, “a lady of -remarkably small person, with the fairest foot ever seen,” under whose -bonnet “burn the most lambent and spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever -hid from the world.” She had about her a semi-foreign society, not without -its fascinations, of artists, actors, opera-singers, refugee nobles, and -adventurers of more or less shady antecedents. In his “Sketches of Travel” -Willis described a very free and easy supper party, following a private -concert given by Lady Antrobus, at which he and Lady Dudley Stuart -assisted, together with Grisi, Lablache, Rubini, and other members of the -Italian opera troupe then in London. Of course neither Lady Antrobus nor -Lady Stuart was mentioned by name in this account. - -But Willis’s acquaintance was by no means confined to the Blessington set, -or to the Bohemian circle that surrounded Lady Dudley Stuart, but included -many families of unquestioned position. The Ramsays, for instance, were -solid people, above any suspicion of queerness, and the earl’s niece, Lady -Moncrieff, whom Willis visited in London, was decidedly “evangelical.” -There were two households in particular which were like homes to him -during the last year and more of his stay in England. These were Shirley -Park, near Croydon in Surrey, the residence of the Skinner family, and the -Manor House of the Shaws at Lee, in Kent, only a ten miles’ drive across -country from Shirley Park. The Hon. Mrs. Fanny Shaw was a daughter to Lord -Erskine and a sworn friend of Willis. Mrs. Mary Skinner was wife to an -Indian nabob, a leader of fashion, and a woman of intellectual tastes, who -patronized letters and entertained literary people, a kind of Mrs. Leo -Hunter, in short. Willis was introduced to her at Lady Simpkins’s by Sir -John Franklin, in February, 1835, and met her again at a dinner given by -Longman, the publisher, at Hampstead, where were present, among others, -Moore, Joanna Baillie, Jane Porter, and Miss Pardoe. The last was a very -pretty woman, author of “Beauties of the Bosphorus,” and other books more -remarkable for their sumptuous illustrations than for their literary -quality. She was a poetess, too, after her fashion, and once addressed a -tribute in verse “To the Author of Melanie,” which was printed in the -“Mirror” of October 17, 1835. Both Mrs. Shaw and Mrs. Skinner treated -their young guest with the most delicate and considerate kindness. They -made him offers of pecuniary help, of which, fortunately, he had no need -to avail himself, as his letters to the “Mirror” and his “New Monthly” -stories (which added fifteen or twenty guineas a month to his “poor two -hundred a year”) brought him in returns which were ample for his -occasions. The Skinners had a town house in Portland Place, and their -carriage in London was always at Willis’s service. Both of these ladies -regarded him as a son or a younger brother. Bruce Skinner, a son of -Willis’s hostess, named one of his children after him. At Shirley Park and -at the Shaws’ he met a number of very charming people, and his time there -was spent in drives, lawn-parties, etc. In the library at Shirley Park two -nieces of Walter Scott, the Misses Swinton, copied for him “Melanie” and -“Love in the Library,” which he was preparing for the press. An extract -from a very confidential letter from Willis to Mrs. Skinner may be worth -transcribing, to show the terms of frank and cordial familiarity on which -he lived with these excellent people. After a brief history of his life -and a statement of his financial situation, the letter concludes as -follows:-- - - “There is a passage in your note which pleased me. You say if you - had a daughter you would give her to me. If you _had_ one I - certainly would take you at your word, provided this _exposé_ of my - poverty did not change your fancy. I should like to marry in - England, and I feel every day (more and more) that my best years - and best affections are running to waste. I am proud to _be_ an - American, but as a literary man, I would rather live in England. So - if you know any affectionate and _good_ girl who would be content to - live rather a quiet life, and could love your humble servant, you - have full power of attorney to dispose of me, _provided_ she has - _five hundred_ a year, or as much more as she likes. I know enough - of the world to cut my throat sooner than bring a delicate woman - down to a dependence on my brains for support, though in a case of - exigency I could always retreat to America, and live comfortably by - my labors. Meantime I am the only sufferer by my poverty, and am - _not_ poor, for no man is so who lives upon his income. - _Comprends-tu?_ My dear friend, I have told you what I have told no - other person in the world. Most men and women would think it - incredible that an _attaché_ to a legation could keep up appearances - on two hundred a year, or pity him if he could; and I never thought - anybody worth the confidence--save only yourself. I would tell Miss - Porter just the same, or Mr. Swinton, but who else? No one! so - _gardez cela_! - - “I enjoyed the ball at the Ravenshaws’ exceedingly, and am so much - obliged to you for introducing me to Praed, whom I like.” - - “I have one or two homes in England,” wrote Willis to his mother, - July 22, 1835, “where I am loved like a child. I had a letter the - other day from Honorable Mrs. Shaw, who fancied I looked - low-spirited at the opera. ‘Young men have but two causes of - unhappiness,’ she says, ‘_love_ and _money_. If it is money, Mr. - Shaw wishes me to say, you shall have as much as you want; if it is - _love_, tell us the lady, and perhaps we can help you.’ Where could - be kinder friends? I spend my Sundays alternately at their splendid - country house and Mrs. Skinner’s, and they never can get enough of - me. I have a room always kept for me at both places, and there is - universal rejoicing when I come and mourning when I go. I am often - asked whether I carry a love philter with me; yet with all the - uncommon honors and favors shown me in England, I assure you I never - asked or made interest directly or indirectly for any acquaintance - or any favor since I landed at Dover. _What has come_ has come of - its own accord.” - -Miss Porter and Miss Pardoe were both domesticated at Shirley Park, and he -met there at different times, as fellow guests, Lady Franklin, Lady Sidney -Morgan, author of once popular French and Italian travels, and the -brilliant young orator, poet, and wit, Winthrop Mackworth Praed. Of the -latter Willis wrote in the “Home Journal” many years later: “We were -followers together in the train of the admired belle (a visitor under the -same hospitable roof) whom I afterward brought home with me to Glenmary.” -Willis attributed to his religious poetry the honor of his first -acquaintance with Joanna Baillie, Jane Porter, and the Byrons. For the -authoress of “The Scottish Chiefs,” especially, he formed an enduring -attachment, and she regarded him with an almost motherly affection. A -lifelong correspondence was kept up between them, and at the death of -Admiral Robert Ker Porter at St. Petersburg in 1842, among the MSS. found -in his sea-chests were ninety letters from Willis to his sister. The -letters from Miss Porter, among Willis’s private papers, show that she was -an equally indefatigable, through a not very legible correspondent. Willis -encountered Ada Byron at an evening party in London, and thought her -“earnest and sweet.” Lady Byron, who was a Unitarian, was much interested -by the spirited sketch of Dr. Channing in a series of papers on American -literature which Willis had contributed to the “Athenæum,” and she -expressed her favorable opinion of them in a letter to Miss Baillie, as -also her pleasure that her daughter had made the author’s acquaintance. -Miss Baillie gave this note to Willis for his autograph book. Byron’s -sister, Augusta Leigh, he also met in London society. She gave him an -autograph letter of Byron, and on the appearance of “Melanie and Other -Poems,” in March 1835, he sent her a copy, and received an acknowledgment -in which she said that the book contained “some of the most touching and -exquisite lines I ever read.” The venerable Joanna Baillie wrote him, on -the same occasion, a letter filled with the most graceful compliments. - -Among other London acquaintances of Willis’s at this time were John Leech, -the artist, and Martin Farquhar Tupper, the proverbial philosopher, who -afterwards visited him in America. A few extracts from a manuscript diary -irregularly kept by Willis from June, 1835, to March, 1836, will serve to -show the nature of his daily engagements and occupations:-- - - “June 30. Breakfasted with Samuel Rogers. Met Dr. Delancey, of - Philadelphia, and Corbin, _ditto_. Talked of Mrs. Butler’s book, and - Rogers gave us suppressed passages. Talked of critics, and said that - ‘as long as you cast a shadow, you were sure you possessed - _substance_.’ Coleridge said of Southey: ‘I never think of him but - as mending a pen.’ Southey said of Coleridge: ‘Whenever anything - presents itself to him in the shape of a duty, that moment he finds - himself incapable of looking at it.’ - - “Went to the opera with Hon. Mrs. Shaw and heard Grisi in ‘I - Puritani,’ and saw Taglioni: both divine. Visited Lady Blessington’s - box and Lady Vincent. - - “After to a party at Mrs. Leicester Stanhope’s. Saw Guiccioli, and - was stuffed to the eyelids by Lady Mary Shepard about my shorter and - scriptural poems. - - “July 1. Mrs. Skinner drove Jane Porter and myself to Harrow to hear - the speeches.… - - “In the evening to a party at Lady Cork’s, and after to Lady - Vincent’s _soirée_.” - -Lady Cork was the aged but still beautiful Dowager Countess of Cork and -Derry; who in her youth, as Miss Moncton, had been a favorite of Dr. -Johnson, and whose _soirées_ in New Burlington Street, between 1820 and -1840, were crowded with talent and fashion. - - “2. Sat to Rand for my picture. Went to Lady Dundonald’s _fête - champêtre_ at her beautiful villa in Regent’s Park. D’Orsay and all - the world there. - - “3. Dined with Tyndale and Greenfield at the Wyndham Club. Took tea - with Jane Porter and went to a ball at the Longmans’, Hampstead. - - “4. Went to Lee on a visit to Hon. Mrs. Shaw. - - “5. Drove to Lady Hislop’s to tea. - - “6. Duke de Regina, Vail, Gen. and Mrs. Talmadge dined with the - Shaws. - - “7. Returned to town. Dined with Mrs. Channon. Lady D. Stuart, - Counts Battaglia, Vodiski, De Grognon, and Miss Cockaine present. - Came home ill. - - “8. Dined with Mrs. S., and went to Lady Dudley Stuart’s _soirée_. - - “9. Dined with Dr. Beattie and met Thomas Campbell. Praised my - poetry to the skies and quoted from ‘Melanie,’-- - - ‘She died - With her last sunshine in her eyes.’ - - Spoke of Scott’s slavishness to men of rank, and after said it did - not interfere with his genius. Said it sank a man’s heart to think - he and Byron were dead and there was nobody left to praise or - approve. Why should he write now? Told story of the man at the deaf - and dumb who did not know him as a poet. Abused the nobility - bitterly. Said they were ungrateful, and thought they honored you by - receiving a favor from you. Said he was sorry for his vindication of - Lady Byron. Story of dining with Burns and a Bozzy friend who, when - C. proposed the health of _Mr._ Burns, said, ‘Sir, you will always - be known as _Mr._ Campbell, but posterity will talk of _Burns_.’ He - was playful and amusing, and drank gin and water. Went after in - uniform to the grand Coliseum ball. Seven thousand people present. - - “10. Grand review in Hyde Park. Went to a _déjeuner_ at Mrs. Wyndham - Lewis’s on the Park. Talked to Miss Caton and the Duchess of St. - Albans. Music after the review. Malibran sang. - - “Received a congratulatory letter from Edward Everett. - - “Party at Mrs. F.’s, Lady Franklin’s sister. Stupid. - - “11. Went to the Duchess St. Albans’s _fête_ at Holly Lodge. The - duke flew a falcon and killed a pigeon. Fireworks, dinner in a tent, - dancing, singing, etc., etc., there. Mrs. Marjoribanks brought me - home.” - -This _fête_ furnished some items for Willis’s story of “Lady Ravelgold.” - - “12. Dined with Mrs. Joanna Baillie at Hampstead. She gave me some - of the wedding cake of Ada Byron. Said that her husband, Lord King, - was hated by his own father and mother and often in want of money, - but an excellent person and beloved by his own second brother, who - had received from the father all that was not entailed. On the death - of the father, Lord K. had nine thousand a year. Mrs. Baillie said - that Lady Byron had given to the present Lord B. her whole jointure - when he came to the title. - - “Went to Lady Blessington at ten, and had a long talk with Countess - Guiccioli, who said she wished nevermore to be spoken of in good or - ill. The evil was remembered and the good forgotten. She made a - point of never reading the papers. - - “Thence to Charles Kemble’s _soirée_. Countess d’Orsay there.” - -And thus the journal proceeds with its daily count of dinners, balls, -_soirées_, garden parties, and opera-going, the diarist finally recording -himself as “fatigued to death with dinners and dissipations.” In fact the -pace began to tell upon him. Following the last entry that I have copied -here, for July 12th, comes the first draft of a poem, “Thoughts on the -Balcony of Devonshire House at Sunrise after a Splendid Ball:” - - “Morn in the East! How coldly fair - It breaks upon my fevered eye! - How chides the calm and dewy air; - How chides the pure and pearly sky! - The stars melt in a brighter fire,-- - The dew in sunshine leaves the flowers,-- - They from their watch in light retire, - While we in sadness pass from ours.” - -This is one of Willis’s most genuine utterances. The same revulsion of -feeling is expressed in “Better Moments” and “She was not There.” There -were two men in him, the worldling and the poet; and when worn with -fashionable dissipation he was sensitive to the rebuke of the midnight -heaven or of that “awful rose of dawn” which God makes for himself in the -“Vision of Sin.” But the mood, though sincere, was not lasting. “Recovered -my spirits,” runs the entry for July 15th, “after a causeless depression -for a week.” - -Toward the end of July he escaped to the country and “passed a month at -Shirley Park and the Manor, Lee, alternately reading and lying on the -grass in delightful idleness, with the kindest friends and the greatest -contentment.” At Shirley Park there were archery _fêtes_, the -Archbishopess of Canterbury, “lords and ladies in abundance, and poets and -travelers _ad libitum_. It is midsummer,” continues the letter from which -I quote (August 5th), “in cool and breezy England, five o’clock in the -afternoon, and a beautiful day. The house is in the middle of a park -(nothing but grass and trees) as large as the Common in Boston, the soft -velvet greensward closely shaven all around the house, and a lovely -archery ground on the edge of the lake just beneath my window, with red -and gold targets, and a dozen young girls and beaux with beautiful bows -and quivers shooting with all the merriment conceivable. There is a -beautiful daughter of Sir Henry Brydges beating everybody, and my friend -Mrs. Shaw, and Lady Encombe, and quantities of nice people.” - -At Shirley Park he had a letter from Jane Porter, inclosing an invitation -to him from Sir Charles Throckmorton, a Catholic gentleman in -Warwickshire, at whose country seat she was staying. Willis joined her -there on September 10th, but meanwhile something else of great importance -to him had happened. While visiting at the Skinners’ he had met his fate -in the person of Miss Mary Stace, a daughter of General William Stace of -Woolwich. He saw her first at a picnic on the grounds of Lord Londonderry, -at North Cray, and “thought her the loveliest girl he had ever seen.” At -Shirley Park--whither she came as a guest--he was thrown much in her -company, and after a week’s acquaintance made her a proposal of marriage, -and was accepted. On the 1st of September he went to Woolwich on a visit -to the Staces, and in the course of a day or two asked the general for his -daughter’s hand. It was agreed that the engagement should be short, like -the courtship, and that the wedding should come off on the 1st of -October. Mary Stace, who became Mrs. Willis on the day fixed, was a girl -of uncommon beauty and sweetness. In appearance she was of the purest -Saxon type, a blonde, with bright color, blue eyes, light brown hair, and -delicate, regular features. She had a gentle, clinging, affectionate -disposition, adored her husband, had been religiously and carefully -educated, and possessed the true Englishwoman’s sense of the importance of -the male sex and the due subordination of woman. Her family were most -worthy and substantial people, and strictly evangelical. General Stace was -the Royal Ordnance Storekeeper at Woolwich Arsenal. He had been commissary -to the British navy in Egypt, and commissary of ordnance at the battle of -Waterloo, and had been rewarded for gallant service in that famous action. -He gave Willis, as a souvenir, a military cloak and an eagle clasp taken -from the body of a French officer after the battle, which are still -preserved in the family. His son-in-law described him as honest, hearty, -and plain-spoken, with the common soldierly weakness for telling -post-prandial stories of his campaigns. Mrs. Stace was Irish, a great -singer, and a friend of Tom Moore, who used to listen to her songs by the -hour. There were five other children besides Mary. Two of the sons were -in the army, and afterwards there were three Colonels Stace. The general -agreed to give his daughter £300 a year, which, with the £300 or £400 -which Willis counted upon making by literary work, would do, wrote the -latter to Mrs. Skinner, for a poet. Having completed the arrangements for -his marriage, he set out from London, September 10th, by the Tantivy coach -for Sir Charles Throckmorton’s seat of Coughton Court. This was a fine old -Elizabethan mansion near Alcester, and Willis spent ten days there very -agreeably, visiting, in company with Miss Porter and his host, Warwick -Castle, Kenilworth, Stratford, and other points of interest in the -neighborhood. Of these jaunts an ample narrative is given in “Sketches of -Travel,” originally communicated to the “Mirror.” Thence he returned to -Woolwich, receiving on his departure an invitation from the hospitable -baronet to bring his wife and stay a fortnight with him. At Woolwich he -was again joined by Miss Porter, on the 25th, who came for a week’s visit -to the Staces and to be present at the wedding. From Coughton Court the -expectant groom had written to his friends announcing his engagement, and -received in reply many expressions of good wishes. Among others, Lady -Blessington wrote as follows:-- - - ANGLESEY-NEAR-GOSPORT, _September 19, 1835_. - - MY DEAR MR. WILLIS,--Yours of the 16th has been forwarded to me - here, and I lose not an hour in replying to it. I congratulate you - with my whole heart on your approaching marriage, and wish you all - the happiness you so well deserve, and which a marriage well - assorted will alone bestow. I predict the happiness I wish you, for - you would not, I am sure, make an unworthy choice, and the distaste - which the scenes you have gone through during the last year must - have engendered in your mind will have taught you still more highly - to appreciate the society and affection of a pure-minded and amiable - woman, on whom your future happiness will depend. I think you have - acted most wisely, and am sure that the rational plans you have laid - down will insure your felicity. A residence _near_ London, which - gives you the opportunity of enjoying its numerous advantages, - without weakening your mind by a too frequent contact with its - dissipations, is, of all others, the one I would select for a - literary man, and I shall look forward with pleasure to seeing you - at Seamore Place in your new and more respectable character of a - Domestic Man, which, be assured, will bestow more happiness on you - than all the futile successes ever acquired in the heartless maze of - fashion and folly, in whose vortex you have been whirled during so - many months. A Man of Genius is out of his natural sphere in such a - circle; he loses his identity and blunts the fine edge of his - sensibility. You have retired in time, and will, I am persuaded, - have reason to bless the gentle and benign influence that has - attracted you from it to the pure and healthy atmosphere of domestic - life. Be assured, my dear Mr. Willis, that out of the circle of your - immediate family you have no friend more truly interested in your - welfare or more anxious to promote it than I am, of which no proof - in my power shall ever be wanting. I shall be in London on the 22d, - and shall have great pleasure in seeing you. Your secret shall be - safe with me, you may be sure. I hope the little tale will be sent - for your correction in a day or two. Pray have “Ion” left at my - house. Mr. Talfourd requested that it might not leave my possession, - so that in lending it to you I disobeyed his request. - -The old Earl of Dalhousie wrote a letter of hearty congratulation. - - “Wherever you go or sit down at last,” it said, “think of us as - being with you in our minds’ eye at least, and if it shall please - God that, in the course of time, we ever meet again, it will be - truly a day of joy here, for from hence I move no more.” - -His son, the young Lord Ramsay, had jestingly promised to be Willis’s -groomsman some day at Niagara, and the former now reminded him of it, and -asked him to stand up with him, and Ramsay sent the following excuses some -three weeks after the wedding:-- - - YESTER, _October 23, 1835_. - - I promised to play my part as best man, my dear Willis, at - _Niagara_, and to have descended from that to Woolwich would have - been a sad _bathos_, so that it was perhaps as well that your notice - was too short to allow of the possibility of my being with you - before the 1st of October. Still I can congratulate you as well at a - distance as with my own lips, and though the romance which we - proposed for ourselves is gone, I am very happy to congratulate you - on the prose reality. - - I had written all this to you three weeks ago, and directed my frank - to the Athenæum Club, a place which I took it into my head you - frequented, when, this morning, the letter was returned by the - porter with a “_non est inventus_” written on it. This to save my - character. - - Furthermore, your example was so good an one, and, fortunately, so - _contagious_, that I have fallen a victim, and am going to be - married, and as this is _not_ a lady’s letter, it will be as well - not to keep the most important part of the intelligence for the - postscript, but to tell you at once that it is to Lady Susan Hay. If - I were to dash out into a rhapsody you, whose experience of such a - situation is of so recent a date, might easily forgive me, but I - will take mercy even on you. I am happy,--happy now, and if I am not - happy always in time to come, Heaven knows how utterly it will be my - own fault. - - When next summer brings visiting time we shall meet, I trust, in - Scotland, and exchange at once news, visits, and congratulations. - - May I beg, even though a stranger, my compliments to Mrs. Willis, - and believe me - - Ever yours sincerely, - - RAMSAY. - -Mrs. Skinner wrote, in a letter to Jane Porter:-- - - “Mary Stace is a sweet, gentle, affectionate, lively girl,--natural, - so that you may see at once there is no deceit in her and no guile. - She is religious, accomplished, sings sweetly, is pretty, and will - make Willis more happy than any other woman I know. He will have no - heart-burnings, no misgivings with her, for she is true and sincere. - You will love her. She was so religious, good, and depend-on-able - that I told her she should be my daughter-in-law.” - -In his letters to his folks at home announcing his betrothal, Willis -insisted a good deal on this point of his _fiancée’s_ religiousness, and -he evidently shared the belief commonly held and proclaimed among men of -the world, that religion, like a low voice, is an excellent thing--in -woman; a theory which some women resent as a covert insult to their -understandings, and some men as an open insult to their religion, and -which may be described as the converse of the proposition that a reformed -rake makes the best husband. - - “I should never have wished to marry you,” he wrote to his - betrothed, about a fortnight before the wedding, “if you had not - been religious, for I have confidence in no woman who is not so. I - only think there is sometimes an excess in the ostentation of - religious sanctity, and of that I have a dread, as you have - yourself, no doubt. Miss Porter,” he adds, “is sincere and _refined_ - as few professedly religious people are.” - -In another letter he says:-- - - “Mine is not a love such as I have fancied and written about. It is - more sober, more mingled with esteem and respect, and more fitted - for every-day life. It had well need be, indeed, for I have taken it - in lieu of what has hitherto been the principal occupation of my - life. I am to live for you, dear Mary, and you for me,--if you like! - That is to say, henceforth dissipation (if we indulge in it) will be - _your_ pleasure, not mine. I have lived the last ten years in gay - society, and I am sick at heart of it. I want an apology to try - something else. I am made for something better, and I feel sincerely - that this is the turning-point of both mind and heart, both of which - are injured in their best qualities with the kind of life I have - been leading. Do not understand me that I am to make a hermit of - myself, however, or a prisoner of you. You will have always friends - enough, and society enough, and change of place and scene enough. In - short, I shall exact but one thing,--four or five hours in my study - in the morning, and you may do what you like with the rest.” - -They were married in Plumstead Church, by the Rev. Mr. Shackleton, on the -1st of October. “It was a kind of April day,” writes Willis, “half -sunshine, half rain,”--recalling, somehow, the coincidence in Julia -Mills’s diary between the checker-board tavern-sign and checkered human -existence on a similar occasion in David Copperfield’s life,--“but -everybody was kind, the villagers strewed flowers in the way, the church -was half full of people, and my heart and eyes were more than full of -tears.” The bridal pair were driven in Mr. Stace’s carriage to Rochester, -posted next day to Dover, and crossed the Channel on the 3d. They passed a -fortnight at the Hôtel Castiglione in Paris, and then returned to England, -where they spent the winter, partly in London and partly at Woolwich, and -in visits to the Shaws, Skinners, and other friends. Willis was busy in -getting out the first and second English editions of “Pencillings” and the -“Inklings of Adventure.” He presented his bride to his “swell” -acquaintances in London, and was himself introduced by his brothers-in-law -to numbers of military people, dined at the Artillery Mess, and was given -the freedom of the Army and Navy Club. He set up an “establishment,” a -cabriolet and a gray cab-horse, “tall, showy, and magnificent.” He had -taken into service a young fellow named William Michell, the son of his -landlady, a bright and handsome lad, who now made a very presentable -tiger. William went to America with his master in the spring, remained in -his service during his residence at Glenmary, and came back with him, in -1839, to England, where he ultimately got employment as a machinist, -having a good education and a knack at mechanics. - -In May, 1836, after many leave-takings, Willis sailed with his wife for -America. His “Lines on Leaving Europe,”-- - - “Bright flag at yonder tapering mast,”-- - -dated in the English Channel, express the feelings at once of regret and -of hope with which he set his face homeward after an absence of four years -and a half. These spirited lines are among the very few poems of Willis -which seem destined to last. They have the real lyrical impulse, and it is -not easy to read them without emotion. Emerson, who gives part of the poem -in “Parnassus,” omits the closing stanza, in which the poet touchingly -bespeaks a welcome for his English bride. - - “Room in thy heart! The hearth she left - Is darkened to lend light to ours. - There are bright flowers of care bereft, - And hearts--that languish more than flowers. - She was their light--their very air; - Room, mother, in thy heart! place for her in thy prayer!” - -Willis published three books while in England. “Melanie and Other Poems” -appeared March 31, 1835. It was divided into three parts and included a -selection from the three volumes of verse published in America, but -unfamiliar to the British public, besides some half dozen new poems, -dated, said the author, in his prefatory note, from “the corner of a club -[the Travellers’] in the ungenial month of January.” It was introduced by -Barry Cornwall, who speaks of the poet as “a man of high talent and -sensibility,” and then goes on with some reflections of a friendly nature -on American literature and the desirableness of cultivating kinder -feelings between England and America. Wilson, who reviewed “Melanie” very -favorably in “Blackwood’s,” made Procter’s introduction to it the theme of -much elaborate ridicule, in the well-known style of “Maga,” when rending a -cockney author. He affected to have gathered an impression from the -title-page,--which described the poems as “edited” by Barry -Cornwall,--that Willis was dead, and that Procter was performing the -office of literary undertaker for “poor Willis’s remains.” “Alas! thought -we, on reading this title-page; is Willis dead? Then America has lost one -of the most promising of her young poets. We had seen him not many months -before in high health and spirits and had much enjoyed his various and -vivacious conversation.… But why weep for him, the accomplished -acquaintance of an hour?” He goes out on the street and tells the first -friend he meets that Willis is dead. “Impossible,” answers the friend; -“day before yesterday he was sitting very much alive in the Athenæum Club: -here is a letter from him franked Mahon,” etc. Another Scotch -professor--Aytoun--who belonged, like Wilson, to the Tory light artillery, -was moved to write a parody of “Melanie.” The same humorist also paid his -respects to Willis in one of his “Ballads of Bon Gaultier,”--a strenuous -piece of North British playfulness, in which Willis and Bryant are -represented as sallying forth like knights errant on the Quest of the -Snapping Turtle:-- - - “Have you heard of Philip Slingsby-- - Slingsby of the manly chest? - How he slew the snapping turtle - In the regions of the west?” - -The two longest and most ambitious poems in this volume were “Melanie” and -“Lord Ivon and his Daughter.” The first is the story “told during a walk -around the cascatelles of Tivoli,” of an English girl, “the last of the De -Brevern race,” who betroths herself in Italy to a young painter of unknown -parentage; but at their bridal at St. Mona’s altar a nun shrieks through -the lattice of the chapel:-- - - “The bridegroom is thy blood--thy brother! - Rudolph de Brevern wronged his mother,” - -and the bride thereupon “sunk and died, without a sign or word.” The -stanza and style are taken from Byron’s and Scott’s metrical romances. The -very first line-- - - “I stood on yonder rocky brow”-- - -is a reminiscence of “The Isles of Greece.” The second poem, which is -equally melodramatic in its catastrophe, is in blank verse and in the form -of a dialogue between the Lady Isidore and her father, Lord Ivon. He tells -his daughter (with a few interruptions from her, such as “Impossible!” and -“Nay, dear father! Was’t so indeed?”) how he had in vain wooed her -grandmother with minstrelsy and feats of arms, and then her mother more -successfully with gold: marrying whom, he had begotten Isidore, and -afterwards, in remorse for having dragged his young bride to the altar, -had been on the point of draining a poisoned chalice, when she had -anticipated him by running away with a younger lover, leaving to his care -the babe, now grown to a woman, who dutifully concludes the dialogue with, -“Thank God! Thank God!” Both of these poems were imitative and artificial, -and the last not a little absurd. Willis had no genius for narrative or -dramatic poetry, and when he tried to be impersonal and “objective,” he -wrought against the grain. The lyrical pieces in the book were almost all -of them graceful and sweet. He himself thought that the best thing in the -volume was “Birth-Day Verses,” addressed to his mother on January 20, -1835. Similar in theme were the lines, “To my Mother, from the Apennines,” -written at an _auberge_ on the mountains, August 3, 1832. The verses to -Mary Benjamin, written in Scotland in September, 1834, have been already -mentioned. They stand in his collected poems as “To M----, from Abroad,” -and were also incorporated in “Edith Linsey,” under the title “To Edith, -from the North.” “The Confessional,” dated Hellespont, October 1, 1833, -was also meant for Mary Benjamin. This and “Florence Gray” had the note of -travel. But a Boston poem, “The Belfry Pigeon,” was the most popular of -anything in the book and has retained a place in readers and collections -to the present day. These shorter pieces, like all of Willis’s truest -poetry, were purely poems of sentiment. His description, in “Edith -Linsey,” of Job Smith’s verses as “the mixed product of feeling and -courtesy” applies consciously to his own. They were “the delicate -offspring of tenderness and chivalry,” airy, facile, smooth, but thin in -content: not rich, full, concrete, but buoyed up by light currents of -emotion in a region, to quote his own words again, of “floating and -colorless sentiments.” This disembodied character is a mark of almost all -the American poetry of the Annual or _Gemmiferous_ period, and is seen at -its extreme in the unsubstantial prolixity of Percival and the drab -diffuseness of Mrs. Sigourney. It was the reflection on this side the -water from Shelley, from Byron’s earlier manner, from Wordsworth’s most -didactic passages, and from the imitations of all these by secondary -poets, like Mrs. Norton and L. E. L. Willis’s verses were much better than -Percival’s or Mrs. Sigourney’s--defter, briefer, more pointed. But they -had a certain poverty of imagery and allusion which belonged to the -school, a recurrence of stock properties, such as roses, stars, and bells. -He was ridiculed by the critics, in particular, for his constancy to the -Pleiades, which would almost seem to have been the only constellation in -his horizon. - -Toward the last of November, 1835, the first edition of “Pencillings by -the Way” was published. It was an imperfect one, made up hastily for the -London market from a broken set of the “Mirror,” and gave only -seventy-nine out of the one hundred and thirty-nine letters since printed -in the complete editions. From this imperfect copy the first American -impression (1836) was taken, and all in fact down to 1844. The book -reached a second English edition in March, 1836, and a seventh in 1863. -For this first edition Willis received £250. He afterwards testified, -that from the republication of the original “Pencillings,” for which -Morris had paid him $500 a year, he had made, all told, about $5,000. -Their appearance in book form had been anticipated by a severe criticism -of the original “Mirror” letters, written by Lockhart for the “London -Quarterly” of September, 1835. This was echoed by the Tory press -generally, and it was their attacks which led to the issue of the London -edition and greatly stimulated its sale. There were several reasons why -the Tory papers were “down on” Willis. In the first place he was an -American. In the next place he had been admitted and made much of in -English social circles, where English men of letters, who were merely men -of letters, did not often go. And, finally, he had spoken disrespectfully -in these letters of the editor of the “Quarterly” himself. “Do you know -Lockhart?” Wilson is made to ask in Willis’s report of their conversation -at Edinburgh. “No, I do not,” replies his interlocutor. “He is almost the -only literary man in London I have not met; and I must say, as the editor -of the ‘Quarterly,’ and the most unfair and unprincipled critic of the -day, I have no wish to know him. I never heard him well spoken of. I -probably have met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen -one who pretended to be his friend.” - -This paragraph was enough to account for the “Quarterly” article; but the -personal grievance was kept well out of sight, and Willis was taken to -task for his alleged abuse of the rights of hospitality in reporting for a -public journal private conversations at gentlemen’s tables. The article -was a very offensive one, written with ability and with that air of cold -contempt of which Lockhart was master. It sneered at Willis as a “Yankee -poetaster,” and a “sonneteer of the most ultra-sentimental delicacy;” -intimated that his surprise and delight at the manners of the English -aristocracy came from his not having been familiar with the usages of the -best society at home, and accused him of “conceited vulgarity” and -“cockneyism” (an awful word, under which the Scotch Tories connoted all -possible offenses against sound politics and good literature). The -passages that seem to have given most offense to the critic were the report -of the conversation with Lord Aberdeen at Gordon Castle and the remarks -of Moore about O’Connell at Lady Blessington’s. “It is fortunate in this -particular case,” wrote Lockhart, “that what Lord Aberdeen said to Mr. -Willis might be repeated in print without paining any of the persons his -lordship talked of; but what he did say, he said under the impression that -the guest of the Duke of Gordon was a gentleman, and there are abundance -of passages in Mr. Willis’s book which can leave no doubt that, had the -noble earl spoken in a different sense, it would not, at all events, have -been from any feeling of what was due to his lordship, or to himself, that -Mr. Willis would have hesitated to report the conversation with equal -freedom.” The article concludes as follows: “This is the first example of -a man creeping into your home and forthwith printing,--accurately or -inaccurately, no matter which,--before your claret is dry on his -lips,--unrestrained _table-talk on delicate subjects, and capable of -compromising individuals_.” Lockhart, as usual, contrived to insult -Willis’s country, through her representative. “We can well believe,” he -said, “that Mr. Willis has been depicting the sort of society that most -interests his countrymen. - - ‘Born to be slaves and struggling to be lords,’ - -their servile adulation of rank and title, their stupid admiration of -processions and _levées_, and so forth, are leading features in almost all -the American books of travels that we have met with.” - -To this censure Willis replied, in substance, in the preface to the first -London edition of “Pencillings,” first, that from “the distance of -America, and the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical -correspondence,” he had never expected that the “Mirror” letters would -reach England; nor would they have done so, had not the “Quarterly” “made -a long arm over the water,” and reprinted all the offending portions; -thereby forcing the author’s hand and compelling him to publish the entire -collection in justification of himself. Secondly, that his sketches of -distinguished people were neither ill-natured nor untrue; that he had said -nothing in them which could injure the feelings of those who had admitted -him to their confidence or hospitality. “There _are_ passages,” he allows, -“I would not rewrite, and some remarks on individuals which I would recall -at some cost,” but “I may state as a fact that the only instance in which -a quotation by me from the conversation of distinguished men gave the -least offense in England was the one remark made by Moore, the poet, at a -dinner party, on the subject of O’Connell. It would have been harmless, as -it was designed to be, but for the unexpected celebrity of my -‘Pencillings;’ yet with all my heart I wish it unwritten.” And finally, -that whatever violations of delicacy and good taste might have been -committed in the “Pencillings,” the author of “Peter’s Letters to his -Kinsfolk” was not the one to throw a stone at them. The first plea in this -defense was sincerely made, as might be easily proved from Willis’s -private letters. It _was_ a disagreeable surprise to him when the -“Quarterly” reprinted passages from the “Mirror” letters. And it is true -that America was much farther away from England than England was from -America. Still, if Willis had published anything that he should not have -published, it was not a perfect excuse to say that he had done it in a -corner. As the event showed, foreign correspondence in an American -newspaper might reach England. But this apology was not needed, for his -second plea covered the ground. There was, in truth, nothing malicious or -slanderous in “Pencillings;” almost nothing that could give pain even to -the most sensitive. The people described were, nearly all of them, in a -sense, public characters, accustomed to seeing themselves gossiped about -in print. In one or two instances Willis had been indiscreet, as he freely -admitted. But it is hard for one living in these times of society journals -and “interviewers” to understand why the papers should have made such a -pother over a comparatively trifling trespass upon the reserves of private -life. The best proof of Willis’s innocence in the matter is that the -people whose hospitality and confidence he was charged with abusing took -no kind of umbrage at the liberty. On the contrary, Lord Aberdeen, Wilson, -Dalhousie, and others wrote to him in warm approval of his book. “With -what feelings,” said the “Quarterly” article, apropos of the description -of Gordon Castle, “the whole may have been perused by the generous lord -and lady of the castle themselves, it is no business of ours to -conjecture.” This point, however, need not be left to conjecture, as it is -amply answered in the following letter to Willis from the Earl of -Dalhousie, dated February 25, 1836:-- - - … In the long evenings of winter we have beguiled the time with - “Pencillings by the Way,” and whatever critics and reviewers may - say, I take pleasure in assuring you that we all agree in one - sentiment, that a more amusing or more delightful production was - never issued by the press. In what we know of it, it is true and - graphic, and therefore in what is foreign to us, we think, must be - so also. _The Duke and Duchess of Gordon were here lately and - expressed themselves in similar terms._ - - Lady D---- desires me to say that the reviews could not have done - more for its success by their amplest praises, for it is now in - every hand. - - Our family has been much occupied by Ramsay’s marriage this winter, - he following your steps so closely. He has added greatly to his - parents’ happiness, and, I hope, to his own in life. Lady Susan Hay - is a handsome woman, and an amiable, pretty creature. They have - settled themselves at Coalstown, until called into a more active - life, which I hope he looks forward to, and you have thought him - fitted for. It is not unlikely that he will be chosen member for the - East Lothian, in which he has made his residence, triangular between - me and his father-in-law, Lord Tweeddale, about sixteen miles from - me. - - Pray let me hear from you, as your sincere attached friend, - - DALHOUSIE. - -Lady Dalhousie had written some two mouths before:-- - - I feel that it is positive ingratitude not to offer our united - thanks for your book, which we received in safety, and Miss Hathorne - and I are now reading it aloud to Lord Dalhousie in the evening, - with very great pleasure and amusement. Your descriptions recall to - my mind admirably what I have seen, and paint to my mind’s eye what - I wish to see, and the happy sunshine which your own mind has shed - over every person and thing you have met is refreshing and - enlivening to us, living now much alone in this dark and gloomy - December. The “Quarterly” we read with extreme wrath and - indignation, and, believe me, it will afford us the most sincere - pleasure if you will take, if you find them worthy of it, a few more - of your spirited pencillings from D. Castle.… Believe me always very - sincerely yours. - - C. B. DALHOUSIE. - -It has been said above that there was almost nothing in “Pencillings” that -could give pain to any one; but to this statement there are one or two -exceptions. The first was the instance of Moore and O’Connell, in which -Willis acknowledged and regretted his imprudence. “This publication, to my -knowledge,” says Madden in his “Life of the Countess of Blessington,” “was -attended with results which I cannot think Mr. Willis contemplated when he -transmitted his hasty notes to America,--to estrangements of persons who, -previously to the printed reports of their private conversations, had been -on terms of intimate acquaintance. This was the case with respect to -O’Connell and Moore. Moore’s reported remarks on O’Connell gave offense to -the latter, and aroused bad feelings between them which had never -previously existed, and which, I believe, never ceased to exist.” - -It also appears from a letter from Willis to Lady Blessington, and an -unsigned note from a friend of hers to Willis, both of which are printed -in Madden’s “Life,” that Fonblanque resented the description of himself in -“Pencillings,” and had written the author a note in terms which the latter -thought “very unjustifiable.” Fonblanque was an able and estimable man, -and Willis’s portrait, or caricature, of him, though not unkindly meant -and applying merely to his personal appearance, was certainly not pleasant -for the subject of it to see in print. - - “I never saw,” it runs, “a much worse face; sallow, seamed, and - hollow, his teeth irregular, his skin livid, his straight black - hair uncombed and straggling over his forehead; he looked as if he - might be the gentleman ‘whose coat was red and whose breeches were - blue.’ A hollow, croaking voice, and a small, fiery black eye, with - a smile like a skeleton’s, certainly did not improve his - physiognomy. He sat upon his chair very awkwardly, and was very ill - dressed, but every word he uttered showed him to be a man of claims - very superior to exterior attraction.” - -With the exception of Lockhart, Moore, Fonblanque, and Captain Marryat, -whose case will be mentioned presently, it does not appear that anyone -took offense at anything in “Pencillings.” As to Lady Blessington, -Lockhart’s misgiving as to whether she would ever “again admit to her -table the animal who has printed what ensues” was needless. It was she who -saw the book through the press while Willis was in France on his wedding -journey. He went to see her frequently during the remainder of his stay in -London, and called upon her on his two subsequent visits to England; and -their friendship and correspondence continued unbroken till her death in -1849. His poem, “To a Face Beloved,” originally printed in the “Mirror” of -November 14, 1835, was addressed to her. It may well have been, however, -that the noise made about the book, and the cause for complaint given to a -few of the _habitués_ of Gore House, put a certain constraint upon his -visits there, and he probably absented himself from the dinners and -receptions given by the mistress of the mansion, and which it had formerly -been his chief pleasure to attend. In a letter to her from Dublin, January -25, 1840, he says: “I have, I assure you, no deeper regret than that my -indiscretion (in ‘Pencillings’) should have checked the freedom of my -approach to you. Still my attachment and admiration (so unhappily -recorded) are always on the alert for some trace that I am still -remembered by you.… My first pleasure when I return to town will be to -avail myself of your kind invitation, and call at Gore House.” - -In spite of the “Quarterly’s” attack--partly no doubt in consequence of -it--“Pencillings by the Way” met, on the whole, with a generous reception -from the English public, and even from the English press. Literary -criticism in those days was largely influenced by political prejudice. It -was useless for a Whig, a “Cockney,” or an American, to hope for justice -from the Tory reviews. The “Westminster” (Radical) was edited by Willis’s -friend, Dr. Bowring; the “Edinburgh” (Whig), by his acquaintance, Lord -Jeffrey. The former accordingly greeted his book with warm approval, and -the latter praised it with faint damns. On the other hand, “Fraser’s,” the -lightest and brightest of the Tory organs, received it with uproarious -contempt. The notice of “Pencillings” in the February number of the -magazine for 1836 was by Maginn,--the “Odoherty” of the “Noctes,”--a witty -Irish blackguard, the hired bravo of the Tory press, who spent his time, -except when drunk or in jail for debt, in writing lampoons and rollicking -songs for “Blackwood” and “Fraser,” expressive chiefly of convivial joys -and of boisterous scorn of the Whigs. There was a flavor of whiskey and -Donnybrook about whatever Maginn wrote, and he wielded his blackthorn with -such droll abandon that his victims could hardly help laughing, while -rubbing their heads. His onslaught on “Pencillings” began, “This is really -a goose of a book, or if anybody wishes the idiom to be changed, a book of -a goose. There is not a single idea in it, from the first page to the -last, beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.” He then -goes on to call the author a lickspittle, a “beggarly skittler,” a -jackass, a ninny, a haberdasher, a “namby-pamby writer in twaddling -albums, kept by the moustachioed and strong-smelling widows or bony -matrons of Portland Place;” a “fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited -sonnets,” a “windy-gutted visitor,” and a “sumph,” whatever that mystic -monosyllable may import.[3] His writing is characterized as “chamber-maid -gabble,” “small beer,” “penny-trumpet eloquence,” “Willis’s bray,” and -“Niagara in a jordan.” President Jackson, whom Maginn supposes to have -appointed Willis _attaché_ to the French embassy, is “that most -open-throated of flummery-gulpers, Old Hickory.” Alluding to a passage in -Willis’s “slimy preface,” the reviewer says, “that Willis should literally -set his foot on Lockhart’s head is what we think no one imagines the silly -man to have meant. The probabilities are that if the imposition of feet -should take place between them, the toe of Lockhart would find itself in -disgusting contact with a part of Willis which is considerably removed -from his head, and deemed to be the quarter in which the honor of such -persons is most peculiarly called into action.” Such were the amenities of -criticism half a century ago. Of course this animated billingsgate could -not hurt Willis in anybody’s esteem, and called for no reply. Maginn was a -wretched creature and no one minded what he said; though, to be sure, the -Hon. Grantley Berkeley thought it necessary, in this same year, 1836, to -call him out for a scurrilous attack upon himself and his cousin, Lady -Euston, in a notice of Berkeley’s novel, “Castle Berkeley.” The latter, -in his very diverting “Life and Recollections,” gives a circumstantial -history of this duel and of the flogging which he administered to Fraser -for publishing the article, and of Maginn’s shameful treatment of poor -Miss Landon. - -But one of the notices provoked by “Pencillings” came near having serious -consequences for Willis. In a letter in the “Mirror” of April 18, 1835, he -had inserted a postscript, after his signature, as he claimed, and meant -only for Morris’s private eye, giving some information about the sales of -books in London. In this occurred, among other things, the sentence -following: “Captain Marryat’s gross trash sells immensely about Wapping -and Portsmouth, and brings him five or six hundred the book, but that can -scarce be called literature.” Morris printed it with the rest of the -letter, and when it reached England the gallant captain was naturally -displeased by it. His revenge was to publish in his magazine, the -“Metropolitan” for January, 1836, a review of “Pencillings,” or rather a -grossly personal review of the author of “Pencillings.” The article was -less telling than the “Quarterly’s,” simply because Marryat did not drive -so sharp a quill as the editor of the “Quarterly.” But the latter knew his -business as a reviewer and confined himself to the book in hand. Marryat, -on the contrary, traveled outside the record and helplessly allowed his -private grievance to appear. He declared that Willis was a “spurious -_attaché_,” who had made his way into English society under false colors. - - “He makes invidious, uncharitable, and ill-natured remarks upon - authors and their works; all of which he dispatches for the benefit - of the reading public of America, and, at the same time that he has - thus stabbed them behind their backs, he is requesting to be - introduced to them--bowing, smiling, and simpering.” “Although we - are well acquainted with the birth, parentage, and history of Mr. - Willis, previous to his making his continental tour, we will pass - them over in silence; and we think that Mr. Willis will acknowledge - that we are generous in so doing.” “It is evident that Mr. Willis - has never, till lately, been in good society, either in England or - America.” - -Finally he exhumed from some quarter the pasquinade of poor Joe Snelling, -referred to in our third chapter, from which he printed the following -lines by way of showing Willis’s standing at home:-- - - “Then Natty filled the ‘Statesman’s’ ribald page - With the rank breathings of his prurient age, - And told the world how many a half-bred Miss, - Like Shakspere’s fairy, gave an ass a kiss; - Long did he try the art of sinking on - The muddy pool he took for Helicon; - Long did he delve and grub with fins of lead - At its foul bottom for precarious bread.… - Dishonest critic and ungrateful friend, - Still on a woman[4] thy stale jokes expend. - Live--at thy meagre table still preside, - While foes commiserate and friends deride; - Yet live--thy wonted follies to repeat, - Live--till thy printer’s ruin is complete; - Strut out thy fleeting hour upon the stage, - Amidst the hisses of the passing age.” - -Marryat’s article was a stupid one, ungrammatical and coarsely written. -But its clumsy malice made it all the more exasperating. Lockhart was a -gentleman and Maginn was an Irishman. The former took care not to say too -much, and what the latter said was of no consequence. Both of them, -besides, were clever writers, and a man of wit and spirit had rather be -pricked by a rapier in the hand of a dexterous adversary than pounded on -the head by an awkward bully with a bludgeon. Willis made a mistake in -noticing Marryat’s article at all, but he was stung by the implied insult -to his parents, and his military friends persuaded him that his honor was -touched. Accordingly he prepared an elaborate reply in the shape of a -letter, dated January 10th, and sent it to Marryat at Brussels, whither -the latter had gone about the middle of December, while his article was -still in proof. - -“Of that part of the paper which refers to the merits of my book,” Willis -wrote, “I have nothing to say. You were at liberty, as a critic, to deal -with it as you pleased. You have transcended the limits of criticism, -however, to make an attack on my character, and your absence compels me to -represent, by my own letter, those claims for reparation which I should -have intrusted to a friend, had you been in England.” The letter then -proceeds to answer, in detail, the charges and innuendoes of the -“Metropolitan.” As to his seeking introductions, Willis declares, “I have -never, since my arrival in England, requested an introduction to _any -man_.… In the single interview which I had with yourself, I was informed -by the lady who was the medium of the introduction, that _you wished_ to -know me.” The letter concludes, apropos of Marryat’s slur on Willis’s -birth and parentage, “You will readily admit that this dark insinuation -must be completely withdrawn. My literary reputation and my position in -society are things I could outlive. My honesty as a critic is a point on -which the world may decide. But my own honor and that of my family are -sacred, and while I live, no breath of calumny shall rest on either. I -trust to receive, at your earliest convenience, that explanation which you -cannot but acknowledge is due to me on this point, and which is most -imperatively required by my own character and the feelings of my -friends.” As to the remark which had drawn the “Metropolitan” article upon -him, Willis confesses that it was an unjust one, but says that “it -occurred in a private communication to the editor of the ‘Mirror’ and was -never intended for publication.” - -Willis had this letter lithographed and sent copies to seven of his -particular friends, to clear his character, as he said, in his own -immediate circle, of the aspersions in Marryat’s article. The reply to -this demand was a long letter, under date of January 21st, declining to -make any apology until Willis had publicly withdrawn his remark in the -“Mirror” about Marryat’s gross trash selling about Wapping, etc., which, -said the latter, amounted by implication to an attack on his private -character; denying, furthermore, that _he_ had attacked _Willis’s_ private -character. “The observations made by you upon my writings must be -considered as more or less injurious in proportion to the rank in society -and estimation of the person who made them.… It was therefore necessary, -in this instance, to point out that the critic had not been accustomed to -good society.… Now this, if true, is no crime, and therefore the remark -can be no attack upon private character.” Willis accepted this -explanation, in a second letter to Marryat, and then sent the entire -correspondence to the “Times” for publication. Marryat was furious at -this, and wrote at once to Willis, “I refuse all explanation--insist upon -immediate satisfaction--and that you forthwith repair to Ostend to meet -me.” If the captain thought that his opponent was a dandy poet, who would -be afraid to face his pistol, he mistook his man. “The puppies will -fight,” said the Duke. Willis was no shot, and the only weapon that he -knew how to handle was his pen, but he never showed any want of personal -courage. The correspondence that followed this challenge was long and -tedious. The documents in the case are a score in number and need not be -reproduced here. The substance of these various protocols and formalities -was as follows. Willis answered Marryat’s letter, explaining why he had -thought right to publish the first three letters that had passed between -them, accepting his challenge, in case he found this explanation -insufficient, but claiming his privilege, as the challenged party, to name -some place in England for the meeting. Meanwhile a duplicate of Marryat’s -challenge had been handed to Willis by the former’s “friend,” a Mr. F. -Mills, and Willis had referred him to _his_ friend, Captain Walker, and -had agreed to waive his right to name a place, and to meet Marryat at -Ostend. Mr. Mills and Captain Walker finally adjusted the matter and -arranged a basis for an amicable settlement. But while these negotiations -were pending, Marryat, on the receipt of Willis’s letter of explanation, -withdrew his challenge in a letter dated February 9th, which he sent to -the “Times,” along with his challenge and Willis’s reply to it. The terms -of this withdrawal Willis considered insulting, and the publication of the -challenge after it had been agreed upon between the friends of the parties -that Marryat “should entirely withdraw the offensive letter containing his -challenge,” he regarded as a further insult. He therefore wrote to the -“Times,” on the day following the appearance of these letters, that the -differences between himself and Captain Marryat were _not_ at an end; and -on February 17th he wrote to Marryat that his challenge still stood -accepted, insisting on his right to name England as the place of meeting, -but offering in case of interruption there to give him a meeting on the -other side of the Channel. Marryat accordingly came to England and--Mr. -Mills having withdrawn from the affair--named as his second Captain Edward -Belcher of the Royal Navy. Captain Belcher’s ship was at Chatham and -thither all parties repaired on the 27th of February. Willis’s second -declared to Captain Belcher that his principal “had come to fight, not to -negotiate,” but on a little discussion Captain Belcher found his principal -in the wrong, and made him concede what was necessary, the following -pronunciamento being signed by both seconds:-- - - CHATHAM. - - Captain Marryat and Mr. Willis having placed the arrangement of the - dispute between them in our hands, and both parties having repaired - hither with the intent of a hostile meeting; we have, previously to - permitting such to take place, carefully gone through the original - grounds of quarrel, which do not appear to us of sufficient - importance to call for a meeting of such a nature. - - We are perfectly borne out in this opinion by the arrangement of the - 8th of February entered into by the mutual friends of the parties, - and on which we think Captain Marryat ought to have withdrawn his - challenge of the 4th inst. - - That the new quarrel arises from the publication of the challenge - and subsequent letters, in which, in our opinion, Captain Marryat - was not justified. We are further of opinion that both parties - should mutually withdraw the offensive correspondence, the terms on - either side being unjustifiable, and we conceive that they more - honorably act in so doing than in meeting in the field. - - EDWARD BELCHER. - F. G. WALKER. - -Thus peacefully ended this tempest in a teapot. Willis had carried his -point and had acted throughout in a high-spirited and creditable -manner--barring the folly of entering into “an affair of honor,” in the -first place. His letters to Marryat are those of a gentleman, while his -adversary’s language is invariably hectoring and coarse. The quarrel, of -course, made a great deal of noise at the time in London literary and -social circles. “The United Service Gazette,” the organ of the British -Army and Navy, took Willis’s side in a long editorial in which much of the -correspondence was reprinted from the “Times.” The latter journal, -however, probably voiced the true sentiment of the community when it said: -“We confess that we have a great distaste for this sort of squabbling, -which exhibits, to say the least, an extraordinary want of judgment in the -disputing parties.” - -From Chatham Willis posted at once to Woolwich, thirty miles away, where -he found his wife in convulsions. He had left a farewell letter for her, -fully expecting to be killed in a duel with Marryat, who was reputed a -crack shot. Two days later Willis went to London and called out Mr. F. -Mills, who had acted as Marryat’s “mediator,” for an offensive letter in -the “Times.” Mr. Mills named W. F. Campbell of Islay and Willis named John -Tyndale, between whom this subsidiary quarrel was soon patched up, in a -manner honorable to both. The assaults in the English magazines and the -rumors of the Marryat affair of course found their way speedily to -America, and were circulated and commented upon in the American -periodicals according to their various prepossessions. “The cultivated old -clergymen of the ‘North American Review,’” as Poe used to call them, lent -the support of that influential quarterly to Willis in an article by C. C. -Felton, a very friendly review of the “Pencillings,” and a defense of -their author--a favor which Willis gratefully appreciated. - -In March, 1836, he published in London “Inklings of Adventure,” consisting -of thirteen stories and sketches of American and European life, reprinted -from the “New Monthly,” “The Metropolitan,” and the “Court Magazine,” -together with “Minute Philosophies” (from the “American Monthly”) and “A -Log in the Archipelago,” from the “Mirror.” The book was handsomely -published in three volumes, and dedicated to Edward Everett. For an -edition of 1,200 copies Willis was paid £300, reserving to himself the -copyright; and as he had received a guinea a page for the original -articles, besides what Morris gave him for their republication in the -“Mirror,” they may be said to have been fairly profitable. - -These “Slingsby” papers are exceedingly clever. With the possible -exception of “Letters from under a Bridge” and portions of “Pencillings by -the Way,” they are the best work that Willis ever did; and they compare -well with such lighter fiction, in the way of short tales or sketches of -travel and adventure, as has been produced in America since Willis’s day. -Whatever else they are, they are never dull and always readable. They are -not read now only because the readers of light fiction habitually follow -the market and inquire merely for the last thing out. Many of them were -worked over from his “American Monthly” _juvenilia_, but his touch had -grown firmer and he had purchased experience, as his motto declared, by -his “penny of observation.” These “Inklings” do not penetrate to the -stratum of real character, of strong passion, and of the interplay of -motives and moral relations in which all vital fiction has its roots. -Their plots are commonly slight, their persons sketchy, their incidents -not seldom improbable, their coloring sometimes too high. As transcripts -of actual life such stories as “Pedlar Karl,” “The Cherokee’s Threat,” and -“Tom Fane and I,” with the easy optimism of their conclusions and their -cheerful avoidance of all the responsibilities imposed upon the dwellers -in this workaday world, are of course misleading and false. Their air is -the air of every day, but their happenings are those of the wildest -romance. Their charm--and they have for many old-fashioned readers a quite -decided charm--does not lie in truth to life, but in the vivacious -movement of the narrative, the glimpses of scenery by the way, the -alternations of sentiment and gayety, neither very profound, but each for -the time sincere and passing quickly into one another; and finally in the -style, always graceful, and in passages really exquisite. It has recently -been announced that style is “increasingly unimportant,” but can this be -true? Not surely, unless fiction is to become hereafter a branch of social -science and valuable only for its accurate report of life. It will then be -the novelist’s duty to obliterate himself in his message, and any -intrusion of his personality between the reader and the subject will be an -impertinence. But it is hard to believe that the personal element is to -lose its place in fiction and be banished to the realm of autobiography -and lyric poetry. Style may be a purely external part of an artist’s -equipment, but it is a necessary part all the same. A bad man or a weak -man may have it, but that does not make it any the less indispensable for -the good man intending literature. Willis was born with it; it showed in -his manners, in his dress, in his writing. Whatever he did was done with -an air. - -The American parts of “Inklings,” written for the English reader, are the -best. They reproduce for us the life of gay society, when society was, or -seemed, gayer, or at least fresher than at present. It was the era of -expansion and hope before the financial panic of 1837. The great waterway -lately opened through the state of New York had set people traveling. The -beauties of American lakes, forests, and rivers were being discovered, but -were as yet unhackneyed. Lake George, The Thousand Isles, and the St. -Lawrence, did not swarm with tourists. Nahant was still a fashionable -seaside resort and Niagara a watering-place, where people actually went to -spend months, and not a fleeting show for bridal couples and a mill-race -for manufacturers. Saratoga, and Ballston, and Lebanon were rival spas, -the first a “mushroom village” merely,--“the work of a lath and plaster -Aladdin,”--when Congress Hall, with its big wooden colonnades, was in its -glory. “A relic or two of the still astonished forest towers above the -chimneys, in the shape of a melancholy grove of firs, and five minutes’ -walk from the door, the dim old wilderness stands looking down on the -village.” In which wilderness was embosomed Barhydt’s once famous -hermitage, with its ear-shaped tarn and columnar pine shafts, whither one -resorted for trout dinners, and where “the long, soft mornings, quiet as a -shadowy elysium, on the rim of that ebon lake were as solitary as a -melancholy man could desire.” - -This newness in life at the Springs, this background of primitive -wilderness against which the drives and dances and piazza promenades of -the fashionable frequenters were projected, has long since disappeared, -and with it has gone a certain old school exclusiveness which once marked -the society at American baths. That society, if not more aristocratic than -at present, was at all events more select, simply by virtue of being -smaller. Fewer people were in the habit of going into the country in -summer, and fashionable circles in the cities were not so large but that -“the best people” from all over the States might know each other at least -by name. A reigning belle or a distinguished beau had a national -reputation. Southern planters brought their families to Northern resorts -and supplied an element which has been missed since the war. - - “In the fourteen millions of inhabitants in the United States,” - Willis explains, “there are precisely four authenticated and - undisputed aristocratic families. There is one in Boston, one in - New York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore. With two - hundred miles’ interval between them, they agree passably, and - generally meet at one or another of the three watering-places of - Saratoga, Ballston, or Lebanon. Their meeting is as mysterious as - the process of crystallization, for it is not by agreement. As it is - not known till the moment they arrive, there is, of course, great - excitement among the hotel-keepers in these different parts of the - country, and a village that has ten thousand transient inhabitants - one summer, has, for the next, scarcely as many score. The vast and - solitary temples of Pæstum are gay in comparison with these halls of - disappointment.” - -It is, for the most part, the life of this society which Willis so -engagingly portrays in the “Slingsby” sketches. His heroes are -devil-may-care young fellows, who wander about from one fashionable resort -to another, composing love verses, flirting, dancing, eloping, or -assisting at elopements. It was the era of the buck or beau, a joyous, -flamboyant creature who wore figured waistcoats, was a knowing whip, -danced with vigor, loved pink champagne, serenaded the ladies, was gallant -in speech, dashing and confident in bearing, and never in the least -_blasé_. - -This freshness and youthfulness, this air of stir, adventure, excitement, -hope, which was impressed upon American life, books, and society of that -date are reflected from Willis’s sparkling pages and give them even a sort -of historical interest, apart from their claims as literature. There is a -breath of morning wind in them. With the homelier side of life he had -little concern, and his writing lacks gravity and simplicity. Whenever he -grows serious, it is to grow sentimental. “F. Smith” is perhaps the most -artistic of these sketches, and the most representative of its author’s -talent, in its quick interchange of poetic description, bright dialogue, -light, malicious humor, and natural sentiment; neither mood in excess, nor -dwelt on long enough to fatigue. It is a trifling episode--the caprice of -a summer belle at Nahant. Its hero is the same “gentle monster” who -reappears in many of the “Inklings”--in “Edith Linsey,” “The Gypsy of -Sardis,” and “Niagara,” a Green Mountain Frankenstein and Quixote in one, -absent-minded and uncouth of aspect, but with a soul filled with -enthusiasm for beauty and a delicate, chivalrous devotion to women. He is -half hero and half butt, and introduced as a constant foil to Slingsby, -the dandy exquisite and man of the world. - -“Edith Linsey” was the most ambitious of the American sketches. It was a -novel in outline, and had an original plot, the intellectual passion of a -young student for a girl who is thought to be dying of consumption, and -whose disease has imparted an exaltation to her feelings, and a nervous, -spiritual intensity to her thoughts. The anti-climax comes when she -unexpectedly recovers her health, and with it her worldly ambitions, and -coolly jilts her quondam lover. There are passages in “Edith -Linsey”--particularly in the scenes between the lovers in the library--of -unusual thoughtfulness, eloquence, and emotional depth, but the story is -loosely put together, and interrupted by digressions, and in the latter -part of it the author seemed more concerned to deliver himself of college -reminiscences and descriptions of scenery than to carry on his narrative -with a firm hand. - -“The Gypsy of Sardis” was the best of the European sketches, and had a -very moving, though slightly melodramatic, conclusion. It was a more -highly finished study of Eastern scenery and life than Willis had had -leisure to give in his “Pencillings.” A comparison of the two shows from -what slight hints he worked up the romance,--a momentary glimpse of a -gypsy girl at a tent door, and of an Arab in the slave market at Stamboul, -a ride up the Valley of Sweet Waters, and a morning in the shop of old -Mustapha, the perfumer. “Love and Diplomacy” and “The Revenge of the -Signor Basil” were less successful, because more remote from their -author’s experience. He had not the kind of imagination necessary to -transport him into alien characters and situations. His fancy required -some contact with its object before it would take off the electric spark. - -Willis’s English had many excellent qualities. It was crisp, clean cut, -pointed, nimble on the turn. He was good at a quotation, deftly brought -in, unhackneyed, and never too much of it, a single phrase or sentence or -half a line of verse maybe. There is a perpetual twinkle or ripple over -his style, like a quaver in music, which sometimes fatigues. Is the man -never going to forget himself and say a thing plainly? the reader asks. -But the verbal prettinesses and affectations which disfigured his later -prose do not abound in his earlier and better work. He had at all times, -however, a feminine fondness for italics and exclamations, and his figures -had a daintiness which displeased severe critics. Thus: “The gold of the -sunset had glided up the dark pine-tops and disappeared, like a ring taken -slowly from an Ethiop’s finger.” “As much salt as could be tied up in the -cup of a large water-lily” is an instance of his superfine way of putting -things. He likened Daniel Webster’s forehead, among the heads at a Jenny -Lind concert, to “a massive magnolia blossom, too heavy for the breeze to -stir, splendid and silent amid fluttering poplar leaves.” The “crushed -orange blossom, clinging to one of the heels” of Ernest Clay’s boots, was -a touch which greatly amused Thackeray. And others have been amused by the -fantastic headings which he invented for certain columns in the “Home -Journal”: “Sparklings of Tenth Waves: or Bits Relished in Recent -Readings,” “Breezes from Spice Islands, passed in the Voyage of Life,” and -the like, which read like the title of a sixteenth century pamphlet. An -old lady in Hartford used to say that “Nat Willis ought to go about in -spring, in sky-blue breeches, with a rose-colored bellows to blow the buds -open.” It is remarkable with what consent all who have had occasion to -characterize Willis’s diction hit upon the metaphor of champagne. “The -wine of Bacon’s writings,” said Dr. Johnson, “is a dry wine.” The wine of -Willis’s writings was certainly a _Schaumwein_. It had not the rich, still -glow of burgundy, but a fizz and an up-streaming of golden bubbles, and -when the spirit had effervesced the residue, as in his later writings, was -rather flat. - -During his stay abroad he made a few other contributions to literature -which have not yet been mentioned. Among these were some miscellaneous -papers in the “Mirror”: “Notes from a Scrap Book” and “Fragments of -Rambling Impressions,” portions of which he afterwards republished in -“Ephemera.” Also a short tale of no value, “The Dilemma,” from which he -rescued the verses “To Ermengarde” for his collected poems. He contributed -to the London “Athenæum” for January and February, 1835, a series of four -articles on American literature, which do not appear in his “Complete -Works.” That pioneer of literature in the West, the Rev. Timothy Flint, -some time editor of the “Cincinnati Monthly Review,” author of a novel -called “Francis Berrian,” and of a work on the Mississippi Valley, had -agreed to supply the required papers, but he having left New York for -Louisiana Territory, and failed to come to time, Willis was invited to -take his place. He wrote the articles hastily, though he asserted that he -had “read the productions of two hundred poets and seventy-two prose -writers whose works have been printed in America since the settlement of -New England.” He made no approach to an exhaustive treatment of the -subject, but gave a number of graphic personal sketches of American -authors, one in particular, of Channing as a pulpit orator, which excited -Lady Byron’s interest, as has been mentioned, and another of Cooper, whom -he indignantly defended against the slanders of a portion of the American -press. The literary judgments are not always sound (Poe said that Willis -had good taste, but was not a good critic), but they were the current -opinions of the day rather than of Willis individually. They were in the -air. Thus he pronounces Bryant’s “Evening Wind” the best thing he had -written, and prefers Percival to Bryant, saying that he is “the most -interesting man in America. He has not written anything equal to the -‘Evening Wind’ of Bryant, but his birthright lies a thousand leagues -higher up Parnassus.” Timothy Flint afterwards supplemented these papers -by a dozen of his own, which amply made up in heaviness for any want of -ballast in Willis’s, and were full of “general views,” which, if not -correct, were harmless because unreadable. Willis’s “Athenæum” articles -first introduced the English public to “The Culprit Fay,” long passages of -which he gave from a manuscript in his possession, the poem having not as -yet appeared in print. Miss Mitford, who took a warm interest in American -literature, wrote him a note of thanks on the publication of this series, -praising it in the highest terms. - -It appears by a letter to Willis from Carl August, Freiherr von Killinger, -dated Carlsruhe, April 13, 1836, that some of the “Inklings” had already -attained to the honors of translation. The Freiherr, it seems, was -engaged in translating “Pencillings” also, and wanted material for a -biographical notice. - - “To the author of the ‘Slingsby Papers,’” he wrote, “It is, perhaps, - flattering to hear that his ‘Lunatic,’ his ‘Incidents on the - Hudson,’ ‘Adventures on the Green Mountains,’[5] his ‘Niagara and So - Forth,’ etc., etc., which I had translated into a little periodical - of mine, or, rather, a choice collection of interesting articles - from English periodicals and annuals, have been read with much - interest, and repeatedly been reprinted in Germany.… I could wish to - be favored by you with some biographical notices _of your own_ in - token, as it were, of your consentment to my translatory attempt.” - - - - -CHAPTER VI. - -1836-1845. - -GLENMARY--THE CORSAIR--THE NEW MIRROR. - - -Willis was now fully committed to the profession of letters, but he wished -to connect it with foreign residence, if possible. His sojourn abroad had -been pleasant and successful, and when he sailed for home it was with a -strong expectation of returning before long to the Old World in some -diplomatic capacity. This hope he did not cease to entertain for several -years. In a letter to Mrs. Skinner, written from Niagara October 12, 1836, -he said that he had missed the secretaryship to France by a -hand’s-breadth, and that he wanted the next diplomatic mission that turned -up; that the climate of the United States did not agree either with him or -with Mrs. Willis; that he was constantly subject to the rheumatism, etc. -During the winter of 1836-37, while in Washington, he made interest to -secure the post of secretary of legation at St. Petersburg, with the view -of writing a book on Russia, but Mr. Dallas, the newly-appointed minister -to that country, had promised the place to a kinsman. Later, in a letter -to Mrs. Willis at Glenmary, written from Boston, where he had just met -Sumner and Longfellow and was about to dine with the latter, he speaks of -a letter from a friend who says that the President had told him that “no -young man in Washington had impressed him so favorably. It _looks_ like -going abroad,” he adds, “and not for six or nine months merely.” This -letter is dated simply “February,” but was written, probably, in 1842, -during Tyler’s administration. To the same year, doubtless, may be -referred another, dated at New York, July 9th, in which he speaks of -having made the rounds of the men-of-war in the harbor with John Tyler, -the President’s son, “who seems very much my friend,” and of being invited -to dinner by Dakin, to meet Tyler, Halleck, and Bryant. “A politician,” he -says, tells him that he will be appointed abroad soon. These hopes were -all doomed to disappointment, and to the end of his career his pen was -destined to be his best reliance. - -The first few months after his return to America were spent in visiting -his home and friends, and in presenting his young English bride to her new -relatives. He stayed some time at the Astor House, in New York, then newly -opened under the hosting of the genial Stetson, and regarded as the -greatest wonder on the continent in the way of metropolitan caravansaries. -On September 20th he signed an agreement with the agent of George Virtue, -the London publisher, to furnish the letterpress for a big illustrated -work on American scenery, the drawings for which were to be supplied by -Bartlett, the English artist, who was then in America for the purpose. The -work was to come out in monthly numbers, each containing four plates and -eight pages of letterpress, and Willis was to receive fifteen guineas a -number. The first installment, containing descriptions of twenty drawings, -was to be ready November 1st. It was in pursuance of this agreement that -Willis went to Niagara in the autumn of 1836, retracing ground which he -had visited eight years before. A part of the winter of 1836-37 and the -early spring of 1837 he passed in Washington, whence he contributed to the -“Mirror” the four letters afterwards included in “Sketches of Travel.” He -found Washington society agreeable, and Mrs. Willis was greatly admired -and became an especial favorite with Henry Clay. But the national capital -was then a raw, straggling town, built, said Willis, “to please nobody on -earth but a hackney coachman.” It had not begun to grow up to the -ambitious plan on which it was projected, and there was a ludicrous -contrast between the wide, radiating avenues, with their imposing public -buildings scattered here and there, and the wastes between, dotted at -intervals with naked brick houses or mean negro cabins. The large shifting -population, which fled as soon as Congress rose, lodged uncomfortably in -hotels and boarding-houses. In short, Washington was a dismal place to -live in. Willis set his practiced observation at work to describe the -picturesque and humorous social aspects of this unfinished city. He never -took more than the most casual interest in politics, but he lounged about -the rotunda and lobbies of the Capitol, climbed up into the stifling -galleries of the old House and Senate chambers, whence the ladies’ toilets -could be observed, though the voices of speakers on the floor, owing to -the acoustic defects in the building, reached the ear “as articulate as -water from a narrow-necked bottle.” He was present at Van Buren’s -inauguration, went to a levee at the White House, and to a dinner with -Power the comedian, at which several Indian chiefs were present who -behaved in an extraordinary manner. In the summer of 1837 he traveled -about with Bartlett, who was making his sketches for “American Scenery.” -In the course of these peregrinations he found a lovely spot on the banks -of Owego Creek near its junction with the Susquehanna, which so took his -fancy that he decided to pitch his tent there. He bought from his college -friend Pumpelly, who lived near by, a domain of some two hundred acres, -which he named Glenmary, in honor of his wife, and there in the fall of -1837 he set up his household gods. In his paper on “The Four Rivers,” -contributed to one of the September “Mirrors” of that year, he thus -announces his discovery:-- - - “Owego Creek should have a prettier name, for its small vale is the - soul and essence of loveliness. A meadow of a mile in breadth, - fertile, soft, and sprinkled with stately trees, furnishes a bed for - its swift windings; and from the edge of this new Tempé, on the - southern side, rise three steppes or natural terraces, over the - highest of which the forest rears its head, and looks in upon the - meeting of the rivers; while down the sides, terrace by terrace, - leap the small streamlets from the mountain springs, forming each - again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of Nature.… Here - would I have a home! Give me a cottage by one of these shining - streamlets, upon one of these terraces that seem steps to Olympus, - and let me ramble over these mountain sides, while my flowers are - growing and my head silvering in tranquil happiness.” - -In this secluded Arcadia his Penates had rest for five years, and hence he -wrote his “À l’Abri, or the Tent Pitched,” contributed to the “Mirror” as -“Letters from under a Bridge,” the first one appearing July 7, 1838. This -is Willis’s happiest book, and reflects the happiest part of his life. -There was a side of him which turned gladly to rural repose and simple -household pleasures. He imagined it to be “the kind of life best suited to -his disposition as well as to his better nature,” and it had at the time -the zest of novelty. For the last five years he had been a vagabond “in -the gayest circles of the gayest cities in the world.” - - “There is a curious fact,” he writes, “I have learned for the first - time in this wild country; that, as the forest is cleared, new - springs rise to the surface of the ground, as if at the touch of the - sunshine.… You have yourself been in your day, dear doctor, ‘a - warped slip of wilderness,’ and will see at once that there lies in - this ordinance of nature a beautiful analogy to certain moral - changes that come in upon the heels of more cultivated and - thoughtful manhood. There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us - at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.… You can scarce - understand with what pleasure I find this new spring in my path, the - content with which I admit the conviction that, without effort or - self-denial, the mind will slake its thirst and the heart be - satisfied with but the waste of what lies so near us.” - -The “dear doctor” to whom these letters were addressed was Dr. T. O. -Porter, with whom their author afterwards formed a literary partnership. -The little bridge under which they were written, with its stone seat, its -“floor of running water,” its nest of swallows, and its diminutive -fresh-water lobster--which reminded Willis of Talleyrand--deserves -remembering with Pope’s famous grotto at Twickenham. Like Cowley, Willis -acknowledged himself fond of little things. He disliked the ocean and -great rivers,--though he finally came to live on the banks of one. He -loved small streams and narrow valleys. The lawny, homelike scenery of the -Owego was just suited to his taste. Above all things in nature, he -delighted in running water, which had an affinity with his own lively and -sparkling temper. “À l’Abri” was, and remains, a thoroughly enjoyable -book, chatty, pleasantly digressive, and filled with sunshine and the air -of out-doors. It must be confessed that Willis was something of a cockney -in the presence of great Nature. He viewed her more as a landscape -gardener than as a naturalist. He had not the intense passion for her, the -rapt communion with her, of elect spirits like Wordsworth and Thoreau. She -furnished him rather with a hundred pretty and playful analogies, a -hundred texts for little sermons on cheerfulness and content, in which he -rode his fancy sometimes too far and let his sentiment answer too quickly -to trifling provocations. He must have been but an amateurish farmer, too, -ordering his breakfast served under a balsam fir, and selling his crops -“for the oddity of the sensation.” Naturally, except in literary harvests, -his farm did not pay, though he was always exclaiming with grateful -surprise at the bounty of nature in yielding him actual buckwheat, in -addition to the health, amusement, and moral lessons derived in the -process of cultivating that interesting grain. One suspects that he grew -more flowers of speech than any grosser product from his two hundred -acres. If the crows ate his corn in the blade, he merely philosophized, -“Think what times we live in, when even the crows are obliged to -anticipate their income!” If the red heifer chewed up a lace cape -bleaching on the lawn, he humorously excused the heifer on account of the -drought. If the boys reported that the deer were browsing in troops on his -buckwheat, by the light of the moon, he answered, “Let them!” One is -reminded by this last discouragement to agriculture that Owego was still -in the backwoods. Some of the most interesting passages in the letters -describe the wild life of the lumbermen, whose rafts glided past the -Glenmary meadows “like a singing and swearing phantom of an unfinished -barn,” and whose fires by night lit up the bends of the Susquehanna, -where their huge flotillas lay moored. Willis once descended the river on -the top of a freshet in a steamboat of light draught, but his usual way of -coming and going was by stage over very rough roads, the Erie railway -having not as yet penetrated those solitudes. Another picturesque feature -of the neighborhood were the forest fires, the “blazing and innumerable -pillars swept by the wind till they stood in still and naked redness, -while the eye could see far into their depths.” This phenomenon furnished -a vivid description for his story, “The Picker and Piler,” contributed to -the “Corsair” of March 16, 1839, and to the April number of the “New -Monthly” for the same year, the plot of which seems to have been furnished -him by Rand, the portrait painter, to whom Willis sat in London in 1835, -and who regaled him during the sittings with stories of wild adventure. -Willis kept up communication with the great world by frequent trips to New -York, and by frequent visits from his metropolitan friends to Glenmary. -Neither was he by any means cut off from civilization at home. He explains -to the doctor in one of his letters that Owego, two miles away, and even -the village of Canewana, a mile nearer, are within the latitude of silver -forks and their accompanying vanities, morning calls, cards, dinner -giving, champagne, and French bonnets. R. H. Stoddard, the poet, who -visited Glenmary in the fall of 1841, with Mr. Mackay, a congressman from -New York, has given a pleasant reminiscence of his pilgrimage, from which -I quote the following interior:-- - - “The cottage,” he says, “had within it and about it the evidences of - a subtle, nice, clear refinement; of a thought that, even out of the - solitude of a rural life, could frame the pleasant things that make - the four and twenty hours turn to soft and kindly ways.… Mr. Willis - opened the door, received us cordially; and we found, in his - conversation and in such observation of all around us as a guest - might in propriety make, the hours of the evening as brilliant - in-doors as without. That thoroughly well-bred lady, so unpretending - and gentle, was at the table; at her feet, a large greyhound. On the - side table stood a large tulip-shaped vase of stained glass, whose - burden was, of course, bright flowers. There was everywhere copious - evidence that it was a home for literature. The books were abundant - and were gayly set.… And there was a miniature of lovely Mrs. - Willis. It was painted by Saunders, who had been a pet of the King - of Hanover. His exquisite work deserved the smile of royalty and, - what is better, of beauty. Amidst such scenes and the conversation - which came of such associations, our night went on. We left the lawn - of Glenmary with the memories of a night of romance.… Mr. Willis - belonged to a past school of men. He had the ways and tastes of a - more isolated and restricted society than belongs to our day, when - fortunes are fusing men and manners into one great glittering ball - that rolls through the year, before us and over us; but Mr. - Willis--whether in his early days, when the prince regent ruled, or - in our day, when we all rule, monarchs of ephemera--was an author - whose writings have added to what Doctor Johnson calls ‘the gayety - of mankind.’ He believed them better and higher and more - philosophical than this; and I believe there was truth and right in - his thought.” - -The “Letters from Under a Bridge” are so heartsome in feeling and so much -mellower and more leisurely in style than Willis’s later work, that one -naturally speculates, in reading them, as to what might have been the -effect upon his literary product had fortune granted his wish, to be -allowed to end his days at Glenmary. Would study and the quiet of nature -have ripened it to something deeper and richer than anything that he has -left? Or would he have grown rusty with absence from the stir of cities -and the gay society that had hitherto seemed his congenial element? It is -impossible to answer this question with confidence. Undoubtedly his later -work would have been other and better than it was if he had had the time -to select and condense. He would have written more and scribbled less. -But whether he would ever have excelled the best parts of his earlier -writings is doubtful. His talent was of the kind which discipline does not -always improve. It was the expression of his temperament, fresh, facile, -spontaneous, but impatient of continuance. He was best at a dash--a -sketch, or a short tale. His gift was of the sort that shows more -gracefully in youth than age. _Idem manebat neque idem decebat._ It is not -improbable that, even under the most favoring conditions, he would have -kept on writing Jottings, Loiterings, Hurrygraphs, etc., lacking, as he -evidently did, the power of construction required for a large and serious -work. But this speculation is perhaps an idle one. Whether or not it lay -in his nature to sing or to say that “something” of which Ben Jonson -tells, “that must and shall be sung high and aloof,” fate denied him the -proof. His necessities drove him back to the city and the editor’s chair, -to write hastily and incessantly for a livelihood. Possibly the finer work -might have shaped itself in silence, but “not in these noises.” Meanwhile -his present content found utterance in his “Reverie at Glenmary,”--a -single breath of gratitude to God,--the most sincerely devout of all his -religious poems, and pathetic when one reflects how soon the sheltered -happiness for which it gives thanks was to pass away. - -Not long after his return to America, he had begun to try his hand at play -writing. The “Mirror” of August 19, 1837, gave passages from a five act -tragedy that he had lately completed, “Bianca Visconti, or the Heart -Overtasked,” with the announcement that it was to be acted at the Park -Theatre on the 24th instant. It was founded upon the life of Francesco -Sforza, a soldier of fortune in the fourteenth century, who obtained the -hand of Bianca, daughter to the Duke of Milan, and thereby succeeded to -the duchy. The play was composed expressly for Josephine Clifton, a -popular actress of some talent, and of great physical force and beauty of -the large, queenly type, who took the part of the heroine. The _rôle_ of -Pasquali, “a whimsical poet,” was written for Harry Placide, a favorite -player in his generation, whose “Grandfather Whitehead” and other -impersonations, humorous or pathetic, are still affectionately remembered -by old play-goers. When this tragedy was published in the spring of 1839, -with some changes in the fifth act, the “Mirror” declared that its success -upon the stage had been complete. This was an overstatement, but whatever -partial success or qualified failure it may have met with on its first -representation, Willis felt sufficiently encouraged to persevere in his -dramatic experiments. In a private letter from New York, December 15, -1838, he said that Colman had just given him $300 for an edition of -“Bianca,” which he considered a good price, as Epes Sargent had sold his -“Velasco” for $60. Wallack, he continues, who managed the National, the -rival theatre to the Park, was full of admiration of it, and was coming to -see the whole play rehearsed. Willis was going to charge him $1,000 for -the use of it, and a benefit which, he calculated, would be equal to from -$500 to $700 more. On the 1st of September, 1837, just after the first -representation of “Bianca” at the Park, Willis entered into an agreement -with its manager, Turner Merritt, by which the latter agreed to pay him -$1,000, one year from date, provided he should write a comedy for Miss -Clifton, pronounced successful by her after three months’ acting. In -pursuance of this agreement, he had ready in two months “The Betrothal,” a -comedy, which was announced in the “Mirror” of November 25th as to be -acted at the Park on the Monday following. The notice added that the play -would probably take with the public, as it had pleased the actors,--a good -criterion. “The Betrothal,” however, was unequivocally damned, much to -Willis’s mortification, though not to his permanent discouragement. The -text of this play was never published, nor was that of another comedy, -“Imei, the Jew,” with which he was busy in January, 1839, and of which he -seems to have finished only a few scenes. Rumors were in circulation that -Willis had sued Miss Clifton for failing to complete the engagement in the -matter of “The Betrothal,” but these were officially contradicted in the -“Mirror.” He had better luck with another comedy, successively entitled -“Dying for Him,” “The Usurer Matched,” and “Tortesa the Usurer,” based on -the Florentine story of Genevra d’Amori and written with more care than -his two previous attempts. He prepared the way for its representation by -printing four installments of it in the “Mirror;” and about a year after -the first of these appeared it was put on at the National, April 8, 1839, -with Wallack cast for Tortesa, the principal character. It ran four times -the first week, and kept the stage to the 20th, “being received,” said the -“Mirror,” “with acclamations by one of the most crowded and fashionable -audiences ever assembled within the walls of a theatre.” In spite of this -glowing language, “Tortesa” seems to have had a _succès d’estime_ merely. -Wallack had agreed to pay the author one half the proceeds of the fourth, -ninth, thirteenth, and eighteenth nights, after deducting $300 each night -for expenses. If it was produced in England, Willis was to have one third -of the proceeds of the fourth, eighth, and twelfth performances there. -Wallack did bring it out at the Surrey Theatre in London, in August of -this same year. Willis was in England at the time and wrote to Dr. Porter -that it had had “a splendid run--crammed houses every night.” It shared -the honors of the “first night” with Willis’s old adversary, Captain -Marryat, whose “Phantom Ship” was the afterpiece. All this brought the -author nothing but empty glory, as Wallack was distressed for money and -could not afford to pay him his one third share of the profits. “So I gave -it up,” wrote Willis, “and he pocketed the whole. By the way,” he adds, “I -have two more nights at the National which I authorize you to look after -and receive for me. The thirteenth and eighteenth representations remain -for me. Will you see if you can get Kean or Vandenhoff in for Angelo on -those nights? I have seen a great deal of Kean since I have been here, and -he is truly a good fellow and a great actor. He breakfasted with us a day -or two ago and Mary was very much interested that he should do well in -America. I have given Vandenhoff ‘Bianca’ for himself and daughter to -play in America. She is a fine, handsome girl, but I have not seen her -play.” - -These two plays of Willis did not add many leaves to his laurels. His -genius was undramatic; in his stories the dramatic element is not the most -pronounced. Both “Bianca” and “Tortesa” have passages which are good as -poetry or declamation, and here and there occur bits of spirited dialogue; -but in general the characters are only half vitalized, the situations are -not firmly grasped and presented, and the language is stilted. In short, -they are book plays merely, with nothing to distinguish them from the -numerous experiments of other American literary gentlemen who have essayed -to feed the stage with manuscripts from their library tables. In “Bianca -Visconti” the main situation--the heroine’s connivance at her brother’s -murder, in order that her husband might become Duke of Milan--is strongly -imagined but feebly carried out. One cannot help thinking how Victor Hugo, -for instance, would have dealt with this motive. “Tortesa the Usurer” -seems to be made up of hints from Shakespeare. The hero has some slight -resemblance to Shylock; the heroine drinks a sleeping potion, like Juliet, -to escape an odious marriage; and in the last act, which is constructed -with some skill, she stands in the frame of a picture, like Hermione in -“Winter’s Tale,” though with a different purpose. - -Willis’s official connection with the “New York Mirror” had stopped with -the termination of his “Pencillings,” and after January 16, 1836, his name -ceased to appear at the head of the editorial column. His contributions, -however, as we have seen, went on, and included not only “Letters from -Under a Bridge,” but poems and miscellaneous correspondence, besides a -half dozen of stories, afterwards collected in “Romance of Travel.” The -verse contributions were added to the American edition of “Melanie,” 1837, -which contained a number of things written since the appearance of the -English edition two years previous. Notable among these were “Lines on -Leaving Europe,” “To a Face Beloved,”--both of which have been -mentioned,--“To Ermengarde,” and a song-like little piece entitled -“Spring,” the opening lines of which are especially Willisy:-- - - “The Spring is here, the delicate-footed May, - With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers; - And with it comes a thirst to be away, - Wasting in wood-paths its voluptuous hours.” - -There are evidences in Willis’s private correspondence, about this time, -of some coolness between himself and General Morris, which appears to have -originated, or perhaps to have found expression in a series of three -letters signed “Veritas,” written from London and printed in the “Mirror,” -in the fall of 1838. These letters, after taking the “Mirror” to task for -misleading the American public by the false pictures of London society -given in the “Pencillings,” proceeded to set its readers right, in a -series of the coarsest and most slanderous little biographies of English -men and women of letters, retailing with unction all the gossip of the -clubs about Lady Blessington, Count d’Orsay, the Bulwers, Disraeli, Mrs. -Norton, Miss Landon, Fraser, and many others. Some of these had been -Willis’s friends; others he had never met; but he wrote an indignant -rejoinder to the “Mirror” of November 10th, denying, out and out, many of -the lies in “Veritas’s” communication, and explaining away some of the -misrepresentations and exaggerations. This letter Morris prefaced with an -editorial note in which he said that he had been much censured on account -of the “Pencillings,” and, therefore, “the object of these letters was to -disabuse the public mind in this country of what seemed to the author a -wrong and injurious impression with regard to the position in English -society of certain distinguished but unworthy characters, whose example -and many of whose writings are of a pernicious tendency. With one or two -exceptions, we believe that our correspondent has merely stated well -attested facts.” One of these exceptions was the slander upon Miss Landon, -for printing which Morris apologized. This partial indorsement of -“Veritas” by the editor naturally displeased Willis; and naturally, too, -he was pleased by an answer to it by Dr. Porter, in the “Spirit of the -Times,” which was then edited by his brother, William T. Porter, “the tall -son of York,” and with which Dr. Porter himself was editorially connected. -“The Skylight letter,” Willis writes to the latter, “was capitally done, -and the ‘Mirror’ was touched on all its sore places to a charm. My brother -was in New York just after and called at the office, and the fury the -General was in will amuse him for the next six months. Morris called you a -gallipot, said it was a poor article, and will hurt your paper, and all -that; but sits down and writes _me_ a most affectionate letter of four -foolscap pages, denying all possible thought of me in the London matter, -and swearing he was my defender and best friend.” Elsewhere in his -correspondence with Dr. Porter, Willis expresses some doubts as to the -sincerity of Morris’s friendship, and seems to suspect that it was more -than half policy and a desire to exploit him. It does not appear that this -little misunderstanding ever came to a breach. The “Mirror” continued -most courteous in its tone towards Willis, and its editor became and -remained, till his death, one of his closest friends. But for a time -Willis felt inclined to draw off, and to find some other avenue through -which to address his public. This feeling took shape in December, 1838, in -his acceptance of a proposal from Dr. Porter to join him in establishing a -weekly paper. The “Corsair,” which was the outcome of this arrangement, -was, like “Brother Jonathan” and the “New World,” one of the crop of -weeklies which sprang up in the wake of the first transatlantic steamers. -On May 19, 1838, the Great Western, the first steam vessel that had -crossed the ocean, weighed anchor in New York harbor for her return trip. -A company of gentlemen, among whom were Chevalier Wikoff and General -Morris, were on board by invitation and accompanied the ship as far as -Sandy Hook, where they were taken off by a pilot. It may perhaps have -occurred to the general at the time, that here was what would work a -change in the conditions of American journalism. It was now possible to -get the freshest supply from the London literary market within a -fortnight, and the news of Europe before it was cold. Willis and Porter -proposed frankly to live on the plunder of this foreign harvest; and since -there was no international copyright, to raise the black flag, and take -reprisals wherever they could find them. In a letter to his intending -partner, dated at Owego, Christmas eve, 1838, he proposed to call their -venture the “Pirate,” and sent the following draft of a prospectus:-- - - THE PIRATE, - - A GAZETTE OF LITERATURE, FASHION, AND NOVELTY. - - T. O. Porter and N. P. Willis propose to issue weekly, in the city - of New York, a paper of the above designation and character. It is - their design, as editors, to present as amusing a paper as can be - made from the current wit, humor, and literature of the world; to - give dramatic criticisms without fear or favor; to hold up the age - in its fashions, its eccentricities, and its amusements; to take - advantage, in short, of the privilege assured to us by our piratical - law of copyright; and in the name of American authors (for our own - benefit) “convey” to our columns, for the amusement of our readers, - the cream and spirit of everything that ventures to light in France, - England, and Germany. As to original American productions, we shall, - as the publishers do, take what we can get for nothing (that is - good), holding, as the publishers do, that while we can get Boz and - Bulwer for a thank-ye or less, it is not pocket-wise to pay much for - Halleck and Irving. - - “If anybody says the name is undignified,” writes Willis, - “tell them there are very few dignified people in the world, - and still _fewer lovers_ of dignity, and by the Lord, we - must live by the _many_. Then again we want a root, a - reason, a rail, a runner to start upon, and this bloody - copyright will answer the purpose. People will say, ‘Why, - damme, Willis can’t get paid for his books because the law - won’t protect him, so he has hauled his wind, and joined the - people that robbed him.’” - -Willis felt very bitterly the absence of an international copyright. By -the act of 1838, the English Parliament, acting in self-defense, had -refused to protect any longer the literary property of American authors, -until America should have the decency to reciprocate. This cut double upon -the American author. It deprived him of any gain from the circulation of -his writings in England, and it discouraged native literature by flooding -this country with cheap reprints of English books, for the copy of which -the American publisher paid nothing. The former loss would not have been -serious to many American writers at that date, possibly not to so very -many even now. But England had been Willis’s best market, literary work in -America was wretchedly paid, and he saw starvation staring him in the -face. - -The “Pirate” was finally toned down into the “Corsair,” and a prospectus -which was a modification of the one drafted by Willis in the above letter -was printed and circulated in January, 1839. He sent one to Henry Clay, -and begged him to mention the “Corsair” in his argument on the copyright, -as a good comment on the state of the law. Mr. Clay replied in a very -polite letter, giving his views upon the copyright question, and inclosing -his subscription. The office of the “Corsair” was in the Astor House, No. -8 Barclay Street. The first number was published March 15, 1839, and the -last (No. 52) March 7, 1840. At the head of the sheet was a rakish looking -craft under full sail, and Willis led off with a truculent editorial, “The -Quarter Deck” proclaiming the policy of the new paper. To the earlier -numbers he contributed art notes and miscellaneous chat, “The Pencil,” -“The Gallery,” “The Divan,” etc.; two papers on autographs; a “Letter from -Under a Bridge,” a generic name that he gave to much correspondence about -this time, not comprised in the original “Letters”; some reminiscences of -Miss Landon as “The Departed Improvisatrice,” and a very harsh review, -“Paulding the Author Disinterred.” This last was unlike Willis, who was -almost always kind in his notices of brother authors, and it provoked much -unfavorable comment, particularly a rejoinder in the “Courier and -Enquirer,” by Colonel James Watson Webb, a gentleman who afterwards fell -foul of Willis in various ways. In this article he held him up to scorn -as a writer “who revels on the cut of a coat or the ottomans of a lady’s -boudoir, and delights in the soft shades of a glen;” and whose works were -only fit to “make the papillotes of ladies’ chambermaids.” Willis had an -unaffected disrelish for Paulding’s writings, which he thought coarse and -pointless. But the Secretary of the Navy was an old man, whose books -belonged already to the past, and it was ungracious to disturb his age -with taunts about their obsoleteness. One suspects, in reading this -review, that its writer had some personal grudge against the author of -“The Dutchman’s Fireside.” - -Willis also contributed to the “Corsair” “A Story Writ for the Beautiful,” -which he described as a “gay, off-hand tale,” and never reprinted. It is a -rather nonsensical yarn, but has one pretty passage in it descriptive of -the end of a ball,--perhaps at Devonshire House?--where the servants raise -the balcony awnings to let in the dawn, and the ladies walk in the garden, -“sprinkling their gloves with picking wet roses.” - -On May 20, 1839, Willis sailed for England on the packet ship Gladiator. -His wife accompanied him, and, on landing, they were met by the news that -her father, General Stace, had died a week before their arrival. This -made their stay in England, which was protracted to April, 1840, a sad -one in many respects, and of course a quiet one. They passed most of the -time with relatives of Mrs. Willis at Old Charlton, Kent, after a short -visit to her sister Anne, who was married to the Rev. William Vincent, son -of the vicar of Bolney Priory, in Sussex. Willis had his hands full of -literary business which required his presence frequently in London, -Ireland, and elsewhere. Among other things, he had contracted with Virtue -to furnish the letterpress for an illustrated work on Canada, and another -on Ireland, uniform with the “American Scenery.” He was to write 240 pages -for each, and to be paid in all £950. By some five or six weeks of hard -work he finished the Canadian book in August, and then started for a tour -in Ireland preparatory to writing up its scenery. He left Mrs. Willis at -Dublin, while he recrossed to Scotland, and took in the famous tournament -at Eglintoun Castle, which filled the land for months with its noise of -preparation, and ended in fizzle and rain-water. Of this he gave a capital -description in his letter to the “Corsair,” “My Adventures at the -Tournament.” Mrs. Willis remained with some kinsfolk of her mother, at -Borrmount Lodge, near Enniscorthy, County Wexford, while her husband spent -a fortnight in doing the Lakes of Killarney and other show places in the -south of the island. He wrote to her there from Tarbert-on-the-Shannon, -September 13th:-- - - “The poverty on this side Ireland makes me sick at the stomach. Such - a God-and-man-abandoned collection of disease and misery I never - believed possible. Death and disease seem clutching their victims - away in your very sight, and you see them struggle and go through - their last agony in the streets--unpitied. How people can ride in - carriages and wear white gloves and smile and look happy, in this - great lazar-house, is beyond my conception. I keep my great cloak - pocket full of pence, and shut my eyes while I give them into their - skinny hands,--poor devils!” - -Madden sings the wrath of Campbell over this literary undertaking of -Willis: “What could he know of Ireland? How could any American know -anything about it? Fourteen days! All the knowledge he possesses of -Ireland might have been acquired in fourteen hours.” Willis might have -retorted by asking what a Scotchman could know about the Valley of -Wyoming. Or he might have pointed out that, even as early as 1839, -Americans had fuller sources of information about Ireland than they found -altogether comfortable. After three weeks more of touring in that ragged -commonwealth, he returned with his wife to England. - -Bolney was but twelve miles from Brighton, where the Wallacks were -staying, and while visiting at the former place Willis had run across -country and taken dinner with them. In November he spent a few days at -Brighton, where he lodged at the Ship Hotel, found several old -acquaintances,--Lady Stepney and Lady Georgiana Fane among them,--and made -some new ones. At a dinner at Lady Macdonald’s he met Charles Kemble, the -actor, and Horace Smith, of the “Rejected Addresses,” whose brother James -he had known at Lady Blessington’s four years ago. One of Willis’s -cherished plans had been to spend the winter in Spain, a country rich in -matter for future pencillings, but this scheme he had to forego, Ireland -proving a longer job than he had anticipated. The last day of 1839 found -him still at Charlton, working four hours a day on the book, and in -January and February he had to make another trip to Ireland, visiting the -Giant’s Causeway and other celebrated bits of scenery in the north. Lady -Georgiana Fane had procured him a letter from her father, the old Earl of -Westmoreland, to Lord Ebrington, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, in which -Willis was described as “a gentleman of fortune, likely to attain to the -presidency”! He dined with Lord Ebrington at Dublin, and, happening to be -there at the time of the ball given in honor of the queen’s wedding, he -made a letter of it for the “Corsair,” afterwards included in “Sketches of -Travel.” - -The three books on American, Canadian, and Irish scenery were hack work, -and there is, of course, little of personal or purely literary interest in -them. They were written, however, with more taste and animation than the -run of subscription books of the kind. Willis was a natural traveler, with -a good eye for landscape effects, and the best chapters are those -descriptive of spots with which he was already familiar, Niagara, the -Hudson, Trenton Falls, Saratoga, and the like. Here he occasionally drew -on his “Inklings.” For places that he had not visited he trusted to the -narratives of former travelers, such as President Dwight, John Bartram, -and Peter Kalm. The description of the White Mountains was taken mainly -from a friend’s manuscript diary; and for statistics and local legends he -went to the authorities. The American book contained, among its two -hundred and forty-two engravings, a view from Glenmary lawn and another of -Undercliff, General Morris’s place on the Hudson. The last gave Willis -opportunity for a eulogy on his former partner, and quotations from his -songs. “Canadian Scenery” was “lifted,” almost entire, from the narratives -of Charlevoix, Adair, Heriot, Hodgson, Murray, Talbot, Cockburn, and -other travelers and historians--of course with ample acknowledgments. It -was not so purely descriptive as the American book, but contained chapters -on the native Indians, the history of the settlement of the country, the -present condition of the inhabitants, sporting, immigration, etc. In fact, -there is very little of Willis in the book. In “The Scenery and -Antiquities of Ireland” he had the assistance of Mr. J. Sterling Coyne, -who prepared the whole of the second volume and a part of the first, -Willis’s share consisting only of descriptions of the North of Ireland, a -portion of Connemara, the Shannon, Limerick, and Waterford. - -Before leaving America he had arranged with Colman for the publication of -“The Tent Pitched” (“À l’Abri”), “Tales of Five Lands” (“Romance of -Travel”), and “The Usurer Matched.” He was to have twenty per cent. on -sales, and received $2,000 on account in advance. Meanwhile the Longmans -offered him £200 for “Romance of Travel,” if published in advance of the -American edition. Willis wrote to Dr. Porter, July 26, 1839, to delay the -Colman publication. “If it is printed in America before I get the sheets -here, I lose exactly $1,000. I trust in Heaven you have not forgotten my -earnest injunctions on this subject. A London publisher will buy it if a -published copy has not come over, else he may have it for nothing.” The -book was accordingly published first in London, in January, 1840, in three -volumes, with the title “Loiterings of Travel,” and, later in the same -year, in America, as “Romance of Travel,” in a single volume, very -shabbily printed. Virtue also paid him £50 for an English edition of “À -l’Abri,” with illustrations by Bartlett. A fourth London edition of -“Pencillings,” with four illustrations, was coming out, and, finally, -Cunningham, Macrone’s successor, printed an English edition of “Bianca -Visconti” and “Tortesa” as “Two Ways of Dying for a Husband.” This was -published on half profits, and Willis expected to make about £50 from it. -Serjeant Talfourd, the author of “Ion,” wrote him a complimentary letter -on its appearance. “My literary receipts in England this year,” wrote -Willis to Dr. Porter, on the last day of 1839, “will amount to $7,500, all -gone for expenses, back debts, etc.” - -“Romance of Travel” was a collection of seven stories contributed to the -“Mirror,” the “New Monthly,” and the “Corsair.” They were crowded with -duels, intrigues, disguises, escapades, assassinations, masked balls, lost -heirs, and all the stock properties of the romancer’s art. The view of -life which they presented was unreal to the verge of the fantastic, but -they abounded in descriptions of great elegance and even beauty, and the -narrative went trippingly along. Willis had many of the gifts of the born -_raconteur_. He lacked a large constructiveness, but in the minor graces -of the story-teller he was always happy. He was skillful in managing the -_callida junctura_, good at a start, a transition, or a finish. One must -not look in these artificial fictions for truthful delineation of -character, or expect to have his emotions deeply stirred. The tragic -incidents, especially, fail in the time-honored Aristotelian requirement. -They are exciting enough, in a way, but move neither pity nor terror. The -high spirits of the narrator carry his readers buoyantly along over the -bloodiest passages with scarcely an abatement of their cheerfulness. -Willis did not take room enough to develop character and motive to the -extent required in order to give his thick-coming events an air of -_vraisemblance_. “This tale of many tails,” he said of “Violanta -Cesarini,” “should have been a novel. You have in brief what should have -been well elaborated, embarrassed with difficulties, relieved by -digressions, tipped with a moral, and bound in two volumes, with a -portrait of the author.” From this defect and from the author’s light way -of telling his stories, it followed that the more serious of these carried -no conviction of reality to the reader’s mind. “Violanta Cesarini” is the -history of a humpbacked artist, who turns out to be the heir to the -estates of a Roman noble, thereby supplanting his sister, but enabling her -to marry his chum, a poor artist, with whom she was secretly in love. The -outlines of the plot were from a true story told him by Lady Blessington, -but he added the love passages and, of course, all the particulars in the -development of the tale. “Paletto’s Bride” was the legend of a Venetian -gondolier, who made--and as suddenly lost--a fortune in a single night’s -play, figured as a mysterious unknown in the high society of Florence, and -carried off a titled beauty to share his home among the lagoons. “The -Bandit of Austria” was a modification of a story related to Willis by -D’Orsay. The heroine was a Hungarian countess, who had run off with a -famous outlaw. The latter having been killed by the Austrian police, the -lady, without wasting much time in unavailing regrets, falls in love with -the narrator’s handsome English page (a glorified William Michell?), and -is wedded to him after a series of extraordinary adventures. Willis worked -in here a striking description of the grotto of Adelsberg, in which the -most effective scene of the story takes place. “Lady Ravelgold” is a tale -of English high life. The hero is a young London banker, who proves in the -end to be a count of the Russian Empire, and the inheritor of vast -possessions in that conveniently indefinite country. Three high-born -beauties are desperately enamored of him, among them a mother and -daughter, the latter of whom ultimately gets him. As in “Ernest Clay,” -and, in fact, in nearly all Willis’s stories of high life, it is the women -who make love to the men. The scene of the garden party at “Rose Eden” was -suggested by a _fête champêtre_ at Gore House, and the delicious picture -of Lady Ravelgold’s boudoir was doubtless borrowed from the same mansion. -The high-piled luxuriance of the upholstery in these “Romances of Travel,” -their _nonchalant_ young heroes, their jeweled and embroidered heroines, -with Aladdin-like resources in the way of palaces, gardens, retainers, and -stalactite caverns, point to “Vivian Grey” and the other expensive -fictions of the youthful Disraeli as Willis’s nearest models. Upon the -whole, the best story in the book is “Pasquali, the Tailor of Venice,” -which was more within the natural compass of Willis’s talent. It has a -malicious irony that reminds one of “Beppo” and the “Decameron,” and it is -not without an undercurrent of pathos. - -In spite of his other literary preoccupations he found time to write a -series of weekly or fortnightly letters to the “Corsair,”--“Jottings down -in London,”--a portion of which stand in his collected writings as -“Passages from an Epistolary Journal.” They are naturally not as fresh as -the earlier “Pencillings,” though very good foreign correspondence of an -ephemeral sort. In search of matter for these letters, Willis went about a -good deal in London. He visited the theatres and the House of Commons, -looked up his old acquaintances of 1835, was present at a reception to the -Persian ambassadors at Lady Morgan’s,--where he saw Mrs. Norton -again,--dined with the Nawaub of Oude, went to a public dinner given to -Macready at the Freemasons’ Tavern,--where he sat next Samuel Lover,--to a -ball at Almack’s, and a tournament in St. John’s Wood. Disraeli walked -home with him from a ball and said he was going to Niagara on his wedding -trip. Willis noted some changes in England since his first visit. Among -other things William IV. was dead and Victoria on the throne, and the -London shops had increased greatly in splendor. - -One of the most interesting results of this second stay in England was his -meeting with Thackeray--then a young and comparatively unknown writer--and -his engaging him as a contributor to the “Corsair,” a stroke of -journalistic enterprise which ought to have prolonged the life of that -piratical journal, but did not. In a private letter to Dr. Porter, dated -July 26th, Willis wrote:-- - - “I have engaged a contributor to the ‘Corsair.’ Who do you think? - The author of ‘Yellowplush’ and ‘Major Gahagan.’ I have mentioned it - in my jottings, that our readers may know all about it. He has gone - to Paris, and will write letters from there, and afterwards from - London, for a guinea a _close column_ of the ‘Corsair’--cheaper than - I ever did anything in my life. I will see that he is paid for a - while to see how you like him. For myself, I think him the very best - periodical writer alive. He is a royal, daring, fine creature, too. - I take the responsibility of it. You will hear from him soon.” - -The mention in the jottings here referred to appeared in the “Corsair” of -August 24th. - - “One of my first inquiries in London was touching the authorship of - ‘The Yellowplush Papers’ and the ‘Reminiscences of Major - Gahagan,’--the only things in periodical literature, except the - ‘Pickwick Papers,’ for which I looked with any interest or - eagerness. The author, Mr. Thackeray, breakfasted with me yesterday, - and the ‘Corsair’ will be delighted, I am sure, to hear that I have - engaged this cleverest and most gifted of the magazine-writers of - London to become _a regular correspondent of the ‘Corsair.’_ He - left London for Paris the day after, and having resided in that city - for many years, his letters thence will be pictures of life in - France, done with a bolder and more trenchant pen than has yet - attempted the subject. He will present a long letter every week, and - you will agree with me that he is no common acquisition. Thackeray - is a tall, athletic man of about thirty-five, with a look of talent - that could never be mistaken. He has taken to literature after - having spent a very large inheritance; but in throwing away the - gifts of fortune, he has cultivated his natural talents very highly, - and is one of the most accomplished draftsmen in England, as well as - the cleverest and most brilliant of periodical writers. He has been - the principal critic for the ‘Times,’ and writes for ‘Fraser’ and - ‘Blackwood.’ You will hear from him by the first steamer after his - arrival in Paris, and thenceforward regularly.” - -The same number contained Thackeray’s first letter, dated at Paris, Hôtel -Mirabeau, July 25, 1839, and concluding with a characteristic little -address to the editor, in which he speaks of his feelings “in finding good -friends and listeners among strangers far, far away--in receiving from -beyond seas kind crumbs of comfort for our hungry vanities.” These letters -were signed T. T. (Timothy Titcomb), and eight of them in all were -published in the “Corsair.” A few appear in Thackeray’s collected works in -a volume entitled “The Paris Sketch Book,” and all of them, with a few -changes, in “The Student’s Quarter; or Paris Five and Thirty Years since,” -published by Hotten after Thackeray’s death. Thackeray humorously alludes -to this episode in his early literary struggles in his novel of “Philip,” -the hero of which contributes a weekly letter, signed “Philalethes,” to a -fashionable New York journal entitled “The Gazette of the Upper Ten -Thousand.” “Political treatises,” writes the excellent Dr. Firmin to his -son, “are not so much wanted as personal news, regarding the notabilities -of London.” This description of the “Mirror” pointed, of course, at -Willis’s authorship of the phrase, “The Upper Ten Thousand.” - -It may be not uninteresting to compare Thackeray’s opinion of Willis with -Willis’s impressions of Thackeray. The author of the “Book of Snobs” paid -his respects twice, at least, in print to the author of “Pencillings by -the Way:” once in a review of “Dashes at Life” in the “Edinburgh” for -October, 1845, and again in an article “On an American Traveler,” being -the sixth number of “The Proser,” contributed to the nineteenth volume of -“Punch” (1850), and occasioned by Willis’s “People I have Met.” In both of -these papers he quizzes Willis, though not unkindly. He laughs especially -at his fashion in “Ernest Clay,” of representing the aristocratic English -dames as all throwing themselves at the head of the conquering young -genius who writes for the magazines. - - “The great characteristic of high society in England, Mr. Willis - assures us, is admiration of literary talent. As some captain of - free lancers of former days elbowed his way through royal palaces - with the eyes of all womankind after him, so in the present time, a - man by being a famous _Free Pencil_ may achieve a similar - distinction. This truly surprising truth forms the text of almost - every one of Mr. Willis’s ‘Dashes’ at English and Continental life.” - - “That famous and clever N. P. Willis of former days, whose - reminiscences have delighted so many of us, and in whose company one - is always sure to find amusement of one sort or the other. Sometimes - it is amusement at the writer’s wit and smartness, his brilliant - descriptions and wondrous flow and rattle of spirits, and sometimes - it is wicked amusement, and, it must be confessed, at Willis’s own - expense.… To know a duchess, for instance, is given to very few of - us. He sees things that are not given to us to see. We see the - duchess pass by in her carriage and gaze with much reverence on the - strawberry leaves on the panels and her Grace within; whereas the - odds are that the lovely duchess has had, at one time or the other, - a desperate flirtation with Willis the conqueror.… He must have - whole mattresses stuffed with the blonde or raven or auburn - memories of England’s fairest daughters. When the female English - aristocracy reads this title of ‘People I have Met,’ I can fancy the - whole female peerage of Willis’s time in a shudder: and the - melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the - heart-stricken baroness trembling, as each gets the volume, and - asking of her guilty conscience, ‘Gracious goodness! Is the monster - going to show up _me_?’” - -Especially does he chaff Willis about his story of “Brown’s Day with the -Mimpsons,” the hero of which adventure, an American who is hand in glove -with noble dukes, etc., is asked home to dinner by Mimpson, a plain, blunt -British merchant, whose wife snubs Mr. Brown, mistaking him for a plebeian -person. The latter avenges himself by a somewhat cavalier deportment, and -by obtaining, through his dear friend Lady X., a ticket to Almack’s for -Mrs. M.’s companion, the pretty Miss Bellamy; while the matron herself and -her haughty daughter, who are dying for a ticket, are left out in the -cold. Thackeray remonstrates as follows with Mr. Brown, under whose modest -mask he fancies that he sees the “features of an N. P. W. himself:”-- - - “There’s a rascal for you! He enters a house, is received coolly by - the mistress, walks into chicken-fixings in a side room, and, not - content with Mimpson’s sherry, calls for a bottle of champagne--not - for a glass of champagne, but for a bottle. He catches hold of it - and pours out for himself, the rogue, and for Miss Bellamy, to whom - Thomas (the butler) introduces him. Come, Brown, you are a stranger - and on the dinner list of most of the patricians of May Fair, but - isn’t this _un peu fort_, my boy? If Mrs. Mimpson, who is described - as a haughty lady, fourth cousin of a Scotch earl, and marrying M. - for his money merely, had suspicions regarding the conduct of her - husband’s friends, don’t you see that this sort of behavior on your - part, my dear Brown, was not likely to do away with Mrs. M.’s little - prejudices?” - -In April, 1840, Mr. and Mrs. Willis sailed for America, taking with them -Miss Bessie Stace, a younger sister of Mrs. Willis, who was to make them a -visit at Owego. The “Corsair” had not been a success financially, and Dr. -Porter had become discouraged and discontinued publication in March, -transferring his subscription list to the “Albion.” Since the -establishment of the paper, a year before, Willis had ceased his -contributions to the New York “Mirror,” and he did not resume them until -the end of 1842. But meanwhile he was not left without a market for his -literary wares. Just before leaving England he had received a letter from -Mr. J. Gregg Wilson, the publisher of “Brother Jonathan,” a new weekly -printed in New York, with a circulation of some twenty thousand, -informing him of the “Corsair’s” suspension, expressing a warm admiration -for his talents, and inviting him to write the “Brother Jonathan” a weekly -letter, a column in length, for which he promised to pay him at the -highest current rates. To this paper Willis contributed about a year and a -half, or up to September, 1841. His humorous poem, “Lady Jane,” was -published in installments in the “Dollar,” the monthly edition of “Brother -Jonathan.” With both of these periodicals he had a _quasi_ editorial -connection, though the real editor was Mr. H. Hastings Weld. He received -similar invitations from the two monthlies, “Graham’s Magazine” and -“Godey’s Lady’s Book,” which were paying their contributors--among whom -were nearly all the principal writers in the country--prices hitherto -unknown to American periodicals. Willis was paid at the rate of $50 for an -article of four printed pages of the “Lady’s Book,”--less, no doubt, than -a writer of equal reputation could command now, but regarded as wildly -munificent in 1841. Twelve dollars a page were the regular rates of both -these magazines. “The burst on author-land of Graham’s and Godey’s liberal -prices,” said Willis, “was like a sunrise without a dawn.” Mr. Charles T. -Congdon, in his interesting “Reminiscences of a Journalist,” says that -“Mr. Willis was the first magazine writer who was tolerably well paid. At -one time, about 1842, he was writing four articles monthly for four -magazines, and receiving $100 each.” This means an income of $4,800 a -year, but the strain required to keep up such a rate of production must -tax the powers of the readiest writer, and it was no wonder if the product -was of very uneven excellence. The four magazines here referred to were -undoubtedly the “Mirror,” “Graham’s,” “Godey’s,” and “The Ladies’ -Companion,” of which Mrs. Sigourney was for a time the editor, and to -which Willis contributed in 1842 and 1843 a half dozen stories and a few -“Passages from Correspondence” and “Leaves from a Table Book.” Two of -these stories are not found among his collected writings: “Poyntz’s Aunt,” -a Saratoga tale, which has been mentioned before, and “Fitz Powys and the -Nun, or Diplomacy in High Life,” a very impossible fiction, and not worth -describing. Such of the “Leaves” and “Scraps” as deserved preserving found -their way into “Ephemera.” His contributions to “Godey’s” began with the -January number for 1842, and continued, though with greatly diminished -frequency, till January, 1850. During the first year he had an article in -nearly every number, most of them stories. For “Graham’s” he began to -write in January, 1843, and contributed occasionally as late as 1851. -“The Marquis in Petticoats” and “Broadway; A Sketch” were published in -1843 in Epes Sargent’s short-lived magazine; “The Power of an Injured -Look” in the “Gift” for 1845, an annual issued in Philadelphia. He edited -another annual, the “Opal” for 1844, and wrote articles of various kinds -for other periodicals. During the two years and a half from January, 1842, -to June, 1844, he published, all in all, some forty stories, collected, -with two or three exceptions, in “Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil.” -Willis was at this time, beyond a doubt, the most popular, best paid, and -in every way most successful magazinist that America had yet seen. He -commanded the sympathy of his readers more than any other periodical -writer of his day, and his reputation almost amounted to fame. Colonel -Higginson tells a story, illustrating his vogue, about a solid commercial -gentleman in Boston, who, finding himself by chance at some literary -dinner or tea, is reported to have entered into the spirit of the occasion -by saying that “he guessed Gō-ēthe was the N. P. Willis of Germany.” - -Willis lived at Owego till 1842, and continued to date his letters to -“Brother Jonathan,” “Graham’s,” etc., “from under a bridge.” He had -expected something like £1,000 from General Stace’s estate, but it yielded -him nothing. His publisher failed about this time, and his arrangement -with “Brother Jonathan” coming to an end, he engaged with a Washington -paper, the “National Intelligencer,” to send it fortnightly correspondence -from New York. All these causes combined made it necessary for him to take -up his residence in the city and to offer Glenmary for sale; which he did -with a heavy heart, taking the public into his confidence, as usual, in -his affecting “Letter to the Unknown Purchaser and Next Occupant of -Glenmary,” first printed in “Godey’s” for December, 1842, and included in -all subsequent editions of “Letters from under a Bridge.” - - “I thought to have shuffled off my mortal coil tranquilly here; - flitting at last in some company of my autumn leaves, or some bevy - of spring blossoms, or with snow in the thaw.… In the shady depths - of the small glen above you, among the wild flowers and music, the - music of the brook babbling over rocky steps, is a spot sacred to - love and memory. Keep it inviolate, and as much of the happiness of - Glenmary as we can leave behind stay with you for recompense!” - -This sacred nook--reserved from purchase--was the spot where his own hands -had broken the snow and frozen earth to bury the little body of his first -child, a daughter, born dead December 4, 1840. The father’s grief and -disappointment found a voice in one of the most naturally and simply -written of his poems, “Thoughts while making the Grave of a New-Born -Child.” On June 20, 1842, a second daughter, Imogen, was born, his only -surviving child by his first wife. Later in the same summer he broke up -his home at Glenmary and removed to New York. For a while he “pitched his -uprooted tent” in Brooklyn lodgings; then he went to housekeeping for a -time, and afterwards took rooms at the Astor. When in London in 1836, -Willis had accompanied his publisher, Macrone, on a visit to Dickens, then -“a young paragraphist for the ‘Morning Chronicle,’” living in lodgings at -Furnivall’s Inn. This visit he afterwards described in his “Ephemera,” and -Forster says that he and Dickens “laughed heartily at the description, -hardly a word of which is true.” Be this as it may, when Mr. and Mrs. -Dickens came to America in 1842, Willis ran down to New York to be present -at the “Boz” ball. He wrote to his wife at Glenmary that he had spent an -afternoon in showing Mrs. Dickens the splendors of Broadway, and had -danced with her at the ball, where, encountering Halleck, the two poets -“slipped down about midnight to the ‘Cornucopia’ and had rum toddy and -broiled oysters.” Among Willis’s private papers is a cordial letter from -Dickens, dated at Niagara, April 30, 1842, regretting that he should not -have time to accept his invitation to make him a visit at Owego. - -A _rapprochement_ now took place between Willis and his former associate -General Morris. The “New York Mirror” of December 31, 1842, announced -that, expenditures having largely exceeded receipts, the paper would -henceforth be discontinued, but that a new series would begin in a few -weeks. The issue of the 17th of the same month had contained two short -sketches, “Imogen and Cymbeline” and “A Charming Widow of Sixty,” which -were afterwards joined into one and worked up into “Poyntz’s Aunt.” These -were of no importance except as being his first direct contributions to -the “Mirror” since the establishment of the “Corsair,” over two years and -a half before. On Saturday, April 8, 1843, the first number of the “New -Mirror” was issued under the joint editorship of Morris and Willis. The -latter had now entered upon an active career of journalism which lasted, -with a single brief interruption, for nearly a quarter of a century, till -his death in 1867. With the “New Mirror” he resumed the duties of an -editor, which he had laid down when he sold out the “American Monthly” in -1831. He had been, it is true, a nominal editor of the old “New York -Mirror” and of the “Corsair,” but virtually he was merely a contributor -and foreign correspondent of both these papers, and had felt no real -responsibility for their conduct. In the three periodicals which Morris -and Willis now edited successively, the “New Mirror,” the “Evening -Mirror,” and the “Home Journal,” the business management remained in the -hands of the former, but the literary policy was largely shaped by Willis, -and almost the entire time and energies of both partners were given to -their enterprises. The office of the new journal was at No. 4 Ann Street, -and its title in full ran as follows:-- - - “The New Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction: - Containing Original Papers, Tales of Romance, Sketches of Society, - Manners, and Everyday Life; Domestic and Foreign Correspondence; Wit - and Humor; Fashion and Gossip; the Fine Arts and Literary, Musical, - and Dramatic Criticism; extracts from New Works; Poetry, Original - and Selected; the Spirit of the Public Journals, etc., etc., etc.” - -Willis could not afford to give up all the other strings to his bow until -he saw how the new venture was going to succeed. He retained his position -as New York correspondent to the “National Intelligencer,” and his -“Daguerreotype Sketches of New York,” published in that paper, were -regularly reprinted in the “New Mirror.” His stories in “Graham’s” and -“Godey’s” went on up to January, 1844, after which time he announced that -he should write in future exclusively for his own paper. His contributions -to the “Mirror,” while editor, included tales, poems, sketches, -reminiscences, letters, book notices, besides editorial papers of a -miscellaneous sort, such as “Jottings,” “Slipshoddities,” “Diary of Town -Trifles,” “More Particularly,” “Just You and I,” “While We hold You by the -Button,” and what not, in which he set himself to catch and reflect the -passing humors and picturesque surfaces of town life. He might have said -of his muse at this time, as the psalmist of his soul, _Adhæsit -pavimento_. He wrote a number of “City Lyrics,” signed “Down Town Bard,” -celebrating beauties in white chip hats, whom he had helped into -omnibuses: Broadway odes, inviting his sweetheart to a moonlight walk up -to Thompson’s for an ice; or mock heroic lamentations in blank verse, that -the lady in the chemisette with black buttons, whose sixpence he had -passed up to the driver, might be doomed to pass him forever without -meeting,-- - - “Thou in a Knickerbocker Line, and I - Lone in the Waverley.” - -It might have been expected that Willis, with his peculiarly dainty -instinct, would excel in this carving of cherry stones. But his society -verses in this kind were too hurriedly done and fell short of that -perfect workmanship and fineness of taste which float many a trifle of -Praed or Dobson. Willis’s city poems are flimsy and sometimes a little -vulgar, and their place is mid-way between really artistic society verse -and such metropolitan ballads as “Walking Down Broadway” and “Tassels on -the Boots,” which Lingard used to sing. The best of them, perhaps, is -“Love in a Cottage,” a charmingly frank expression of a preference for the -artificial, a quatrain from which has got into common quotation:-- - - “But give me a sly flirtation - By the light of a chandelier, - With music to play in the pauses, - And nobody very near.” - -These “City Lyrics” were not all humorous, however. The bitter contrasts -which forced themselves upon Bryant walking “slowly through the crowded -street” appealed also to the “Down Town Bard,” who expressed them in “The -Pity of the Park Fountain,” and more successfully in “Unseen Spirits,” -first printed in the “New Mirror” of July 29, 1843. This little -poem--suggested, perhaps, in some mood of abstraction when the poet was -strolling listlessly up Broadway, his spirits low and his eternal -watchfulness for effects asleep--has, for that very reason doubtless, the -sudden touch of genius, the unconsciousness and careless felicity which -seem likely to keep it alive and to make it, possibly, the only work of -Willis destined to reach posterity. It was a favorite with Edgar Poe, who -used to recite it at reading clubs and the like, and who said that, in his -opinion and that of nearly all his friends, it was “the truest poem ever -written by Mr. Willis. There is about this little poem,” he continues, -“(evidently written in haste and through impulse) a true imagination. Its -grace, dignity, and pathos are impressive, and there is more in it of -earnestness of soul than in anything I have seen from the pen of its -author.”[6] - -Willis took advantage of his new facilities to become his own publisher, -issuing successively, as shilling extras in the “Mirror Library,” his -“Sacred Poems,” “Poems of Passion,” and “Lady Jane and Humorous Poems;” -following these up with the first complete editions, from the “Mirror” -press, of “Letters from Under a Bridge,” and “Pencillings by the Way.” -The poems contained few notable additions to “Melanie” and earlier -volumes, except those just mentioned as printed in the “New Mirror,” and -the lines on the death of President Harrison, which were much admired at -the time. They were in anapestics, an unusual metre with him, but one -which he handled not without fire in this excellent elegy. “Lady Jane” was -a society poem in some two hundred “Don Juan” stanzas and was by no means -the worst of the many imitations of Byron’s inimitable masterpiece--if the -bull may be pardoned. The hero was the inevitable dandy poet,--this time -he was twenty-two,--and the heroine who doted on him with a half motherly -affection was a well preserved English countess of forty, wedded to a -decrepit but accommodating earl. The noble pair go traveling, with the -boyish poet in their train, and coming to Rome, the latter becomes -enamored of an Italian marchioness and cuts loose from Lady Jane, who, -“having loved too late to dream of love again,” grows old as best she may. -This is all, but the poet has caught, as successfully as was possible for -him, the alternate irony and sentiment, the rattling digressiveness, and -the eccentric rhyming and audacious punning of his original. There is a -delicate suggestion of Lady Blessington in the heroine; but Willis’s -English acquaintances could hardly have felt pleased at being served up -by name in the picture of a London _soirée_, as “Savage Landor, wanting -soap and sand,” as “frisky Bowring, London’s wisest bore,” or even as -“calm, old, lily-white Joanna Baillie.” Willis was now in considerable -request for lectures and occasional poems. On August 17, 1841, he -delivered a poem before the Linonian Society of Yale College, extracts -from which appear in his collected poems as “The Elms of New Haven.” This -address was not without touches of fancy and tender reminders to the -assembled scholars of - - “The green tent where your harness was put on,” - -and of summer nights in Academus, when the bird - - “Sang a half carol as the moon wore on - And looked into his nest.” - -But the blank verse carried him along into that smooth diffuseness which -was his besetting sin, and the poem, as a whole, did not rise above -commonplace. It compares but poorly with Dr. Holmes’s noble “Astræa,” -delivered in 1850 before the Phi Beta Kappa society at New Haven by a poet -who, though the son of another Alma Mater, gracefully acknowledged himself -the grandson of Yale. At another time, in response to an invitation from -James T. Fields to recite a poem in Boston, Willis wrote: “I took the -time to consider whether there _could be_ such a thing as an effective -_spoken_ poem. I am satisfied now, that my style depends so much on those -light shades which would be lost on more ears than two at a time, that I -should make an utter failure.” In 1843 he lectured on the formation of -character before the Mercantile Library Association of Baltimore, and the -audience--a large one--was disappointed by the serious nature of the -address. A “Lecture on Fashion” given before the New York Lyceum and -published in 1844 was more characteristic, at least in subject. He -lectured also in Boston and Albany, perhaps in other places, but without -marked success, being an indifferent orator and not at home on the -platform. “The calling on a hen for an egg, while she stands on the fence, -would seem to me reasonable,” said he, “in comparison with asking for my -sentiments, to be delivered on my legs.” - -In the issue of the “New Mirror” for September 28, 1844, the editors -announced that they had been driven out of the field of weekly journalism -by the United States Post Office. The “Mirror,” being stitched, could not -go at newspaper rates, but was taxed, at the caprice of postmasters, from -two to fifteen cents a copy. This more than doubled the price to country -readers and killed the mail subscription. Remonstrances addressed to the -authorities at Washington only brought, in reply, a letter of -“sesquipedalian flummery.” Accordingly the editors decided to change the -shape of the paper and publish it as a daily. The first number of the -“Evening Mirror” came out October 7, 1844. It was published every day in -the week but Sunday, and ran till the close of the following year, under -the joint conduct of Morris, Willis, and Hiram Fuller. The last was a -young man, and a far-away cousin of Margaret Fuller. He continued the -paper, under the same name, for years after his partners had left him. It -was of Fuller that Bennett said, “We saw the editor of the ‘Evening -Mirror,’ the other day, treating his subscribers to an excursion; he drove -them all down Broadway to the Battery in an omnibus.” Edgar Poe was -engaged upon the “Evening Mirror” as critic and sub-editor in the autumn -of 1844, and remained upon it about six months. His relations with Willis -were of the pleasantest. The latter tried to befriend him in various ways -and lent him the hearty support of his paper. His recollections of his -former associate were given in the “Home Journal” for October 13, 1849, -shortly after Poe’s death, in an article bearing generous testimony to his -perfect regularity, reasonableness, and courtesy, while engaged upon the -“Mirror.” Poe’s own estimate of Willis is given at some length in his -series of papers on “The Literati of New York.”[7] It is friendly in tone, -but quite impartial and discriminating. Its literary criticism need not be -here repeated, but Poe’s personal impressions of Willis are worth -giving:-- - - “Mr. Willis’s career,” he writes, “has naturally made him enemies - among the envious host of dunces whom he has outstripped in the race - for fame; and these his personal manner (a little tinctured with - reserve, _brusquerie_, or even haughtiness) is by no means adapted - to conciliate. He has innumerable warm friends, however, and is - himself a warm friend. He is impulsive, generous, bold, impetuous, - vacillating, irregularly energetic, apt to be hurried into error, - but incapable of deliberate wrong. He is yet young and, without - being handsome in the ordinary sense, is a remarkably well-looking - man. In height he is perhaps five feet eleven and justly - proportioned. His figure is put in the best light by the ease and - assured grace of his carriage. His whole person and personal - demeanor bear about them the traces of ‘good society.’ His face is - somewhat too full or rather heavy in its lower proportions. Neither - his nose nor his forehead can be defended. The latter would puzzle - phrenology. His eyes are a dull bluish gray and small. His hair is - of a rich brown, curling naturally and luxuriantly. His mouth is - well cut, the teeth fine, the expression of the smile intellectual - and winning. He converses little, _well_ rather than fluently, and - in a subdued tone.” - -It was after Morris and Willis had dissolved their connection with the -“Evening Mirror” that that journal published the article, by Thomas Dunn -English, reflecting severely on Poe’s character, for which he sued Fuller -and recovered $225 damages. His “Raven” was written while he was on the -paper, and first published anonymously in the “American Review.” Willis -reprinted it in the “Mirror” over Poe’s name, with a send-off, in which he -said, “We regard it as the most effective single example of fugitive -poetry ever published in this country.”[8] - -The year 1844-45 was a sad one for Willis. In the preface to “Poems of -Passion,” 1843, he had written, “We are accused daily of writing nothing -that is not frivolous. These poems are from the undercurrent of our -frivolity; and they run as deep, we are inclined to think, as a man ever -sees into his heart till it is rent open with a calamity--and calamity as -yet, we never knew.” But in March, 1844, he lost that admirable mother -whose love had been to him both a stay and an inspiration. His youngest -sister, Ellen, had died the month before. And a year later, March 25, -1845, at the Astor House, his wife died in childbirth. “An angel without -fault or foible” is the comment which the broken-hearted husband wrote -against the record of her death in his note-book. The child, a girl, for -whom he had chosen the name of Blanche, was born dead. The labor of -editing a daily paper had proved unexpectedly burdensome and, added to the -grief of his bereavement, left him greatly exhausted and under the need of -breaking away from work for a time. In the early summer of 1845 he sailed -on the Britannic for Liverpool, taking with him his little daughter -Imogen, and the faithful colored woman, Harriet Jacobs, who had been the -child’s nurse during Mrs. Willis’s lifetime. Before starting for England -he had gathered up his recent story contributions to the magazines and -published them, together with “Inklings of Adventure,” and “Romance of -Travel,” in a single large volume, “Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil.” -This was divided into three parts: “High Life in Europe and American -Life,” “Inklings of Adventure,” and “Loiterings of Travel.” A fourth part, -“Ephemera,” was added in 1854. The tales which he had written since 1840, -and which now appeared for the first time in book form, exhibited more -range and variety of subject than his two previous collections, but a -decided falling off in literary quality. Those who had seen promise in -some of the earlier stories--such as “Edith Linsey,” “The Picker and -Piler,” and “The Lunatic’s Skate”--of a capacity for stronger and graver -work were disappointed by these later “Dashes.” None of them was without -clever strokes, but they were, as a whole, very light. The “High Life” -stories were mostly repetitions of Willis’s favorite plot. Sometimes the -hero is a spoiled child of genius, as in “Countess Nyschriem and the -Handsome Artist,” and “Leaves from the Heart Book of Ernest Clay.” -Sometimes, as in “The Revenge of the Signor Basil,” he is a designing -villain. Again, as in “Love and Diplomacy,” he turns out to be a very -great person in disguise, who flings off his cloak in the _dénouement_ and -confounds his adversaries. In “Getting to Windward,” he is a French -adventurer, for whom three English peeresses contend--like the Goddesses -on Ida. In “Flirtation and Fox Chasing,” he is a Kentucky lady-killer, -sojourning at an English country house. In “Lady Rachel,” he is nobody in -particular. But in each and all of these protean shapes, he is equally -fascinating and invincible. In “Beware of Dogs and Waltzing,” the author -entered the confessional with even less precaution than usual. It is -quite plain to one reading between the lines, that the hero, Mr. Lindsay -Maud, with his _retroussé_ nose, sanguineous tint, curly hair, and dimpled -chin, is no other than Willis himself; that the Surrey manor where the -scene is laid is Shirley Park; that its hospitable occupants, the -Becktons, are in truth the Skinner family; that Mabel Brown, the heroine, -is identical with Miss Mary Stace; and, lastly, that Miss Blakeney, the -dazzling but heartless heiress, whose hand Mr. Maud’s hostess kindly -destines for her young _protégé_, but whom, yielding to his better angel, -he flings overboard in favor of the gentler and sweeter Mabel, is a -certain belle of fortune, who figures in Willis’s private correspondence -as “trotted out” by Mrs. Skinner for his inspection with a view to his -making a rich marriage. - -In “A Revelation of a Previous Life” and “The Phantom Head upon the -Table,” the supernatural is introduced, but not with success. Willis had -not the weird, haunting imagination of Hawthorne or Poe. He does not -prepare the reader’s belief by creating the atmosphere of mystery required -for illusion. In the midst of the fashionable, real life where they are -set, his supernatural incidents lose their effect, and have no -_vraisemblance_. Nor was he more at home in broad comedy. His humor--and -he had humor--was delicate rather than robust; was made out of irony, -pleasantry, and gay spirits, and depended more upon situation than -character. If the situation was droll, the humor was good; otherwise not. -“Miss Jones’s Son,” “The Spirit Love of Ione S----,” “Nora Mehidy,” “Meena -Dimity,” and “Born to love Pigs and Chickens” were all _manqué_. The best -of the humorous tales is “The Female Ward,” which tells of the -embarrassments of a rather fast young gentleman in Boston, who receives an -unexpected consignment, in the shape of a raw heiress, from a Southern -plantation; her confiding parents intrusting her to his guardianship, with -a request that he place her at school in some high-toned seminary. His -difficulties in trying to perform this commission, ending with his lodging -her temporarily in a private lunatic asylum, are very happily imagined. -“The Female Ward” would lend itself nicely to the dramatizer, and make up -into a most amusing little farce. “Those Ungrateful Blidginses” was funny, -but wicked. It was Willis’s way of avenging himself upon two maiden ladies -with whom he had fallen in, and subsequently fallen out, during his -travels in Italy, and who, on returning to America, had circulated reports -not to his credit. He had another hit at them in “Ernest Clay,” as “two -abominable old maids by the name of Buggins or Blidgins, representing the -_scan. mag._ of Florence.” The story caused a good deal of scandal. The -victims (whose names were thinly disguised) were high in Knickerbocker -social circles, and the doors of many of the best houses in Albany and New -York were closed forever against Willis, as a consequence of this -indiscretion. There was even some rumor in the Albany newspapers to the -effect that he had been challenged by a friend of the injured ladies, and -had declined the challenge, but this he denied. “Kate Crediford” is a -clever specimen of anti-climax. The writer sees an old love at the theatre -and, fancying that she looks unhappy, his flame revives, and he goes home -and writes her an impassioned declaration. His letter is answered by the -lady’s husband, who informs him of her recent marriage, and explains her -pensiveness by the fact that she had eaten too heartily of unripe fruit -before going to the play. In “The Poet and the Mandarin” and “The Inlet of -Peach Blossoms,” the descriptions are richly fanciful. But the most truly -imaginative of all these tales is “The Ghost Ball at Congress Hall.” The -theme is one that would have delighted Hawthorne, and though he might have -treated it more meaningly, he could not have improved upon its wild, -half-eerie gayety, with its undercurrent of regret--the old Horatian -regret for the shortness of life and vanished youth. A superannuated beau, -lingering in the empty colonnade of Congress Hall after the close of the -Saratoga season, sees a spectral procession of coaches drive up to the -door and deposit, one after another, their loads of ladies with escorts -and baggage. Later in the evening, peering in through the ball-room -windows, his brain reels as he beholds the well-remembered belles and -dandies--apparently grown no older--of the golden age of the springs, the -days of “the Albany regency.” They dance to the same old waltz music, -played by the same old negro fiddlers, by the light of spermaceti tapers -that floods the dusty evergreens “with a weird mysteriousness, an -atmosphere of magic, even in the burning of the candles,” and drink -champagne of “the exploded color, rosy wine suited to the bright days when -all things were tinted rose.” - -It is needless to say that there is an abundance of pretty and clever -things scattered through these tales of Willis. “Flirtation”--as an -instance of his epigrams--“is a circulating library in which we seldom ask -twice for the same volume.” “His politeness,” he says of one of his -characters, “had superseded his character altogether.” He tells of “a -person of excellent family, after the fashion of a hill of potatoes, the -best part of it under ground;” and of the Frenchman who could trace his -lineage back to “the man who spoke French in the confusion of Babel.” “Mr. -Potts’s income was a net answer to his morning prayer: it provided his -daily bread.” “Wigwam _vs._ Almacks,” which follows out the suggestions of -a true story told in “À l’Abri,” is not very satisfactory as a fiction, -but is worth noticing for the lovely description, with which it opens, of -a wayside spring in the valley of the Chemung. - - - - -CHAPTER VII. - -1845-1852. - -THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND--THE HOME JOURNAL. - - -On his arrival in London, Willis was attacked with a brain fever, which -confined him to his bed for a fortnight. As soon as he could get about he -brought his little daughter to see Lady Blessington, and then took her and -her nurse to Steventon Vicarage, near Abingdon, in Berkshire, to stay with -her aunt, the wife of Rev. William Vincent, formerly of Bolney Priory. He -took lodgings for himself in the village near by, and, after a short trip -to Bath, returned to London and spent some time in visiting, dining out, -sight-seeing, and making new acquaintances. He met a Mr. Stiles of -Georgia, an old schoolmate, who was passing through England on his way to -Vienna, where he had lately been appointed _chargé d’affaires_, and who -gave him a complimentary appointment as _attaché_ to his legation, an -addition to his passport of the kind that had proved so serviceable in the -days of his “Pencillings.” This determined him to shape his course for -the capital of Austria, taking in Germany, which was new to him, on the -way. Leaving his daughter at Steventon, he crossed the Channel, went up -the Rhine, and joined his brother Richard, who was studying music at -Leipsic. Here he passed a month, and then, accompanied by his brother, -went on to Dresden. There the two parted, and Willis traveled alone to -Berlin, where he was again seriously ill, and was kindly ministered to by -his old friend and associate on the “New York Mirror,” T. S. Fay, at that -time secretary of legation at Berlin. Mr. Henry Wheaton, the American -minister, attached Willis also to the Prussian mission. But of these -appointments and the opportunities they promised he was unable to avail -himself. Continued ill health forced him to abandon his journey to Vienna, -and to make his way back to England, whence he sailed for home in the -spring of 1846. He had meant to leave Imogen with her mother’s family for -a time, to be put to school in England. But his heart failed him at the -last, and he brought her back with him to America, sending her, still in -charge of her nurse, to live with his sister, Mrs. Louis Dwight, in -Boston. He himself took rooms in New York until other arrangements could -be made. His child’s nurse, Harriet Jacobs, who was in his employ from -1842 to 1861, was a remarkable woman, whose career, if fully told, would -form an interesting chapter in the history of American slavery. She was an -escaped slave from a plantation near Edenton, North Carolina. She had run -away from her master when a young woman, and taken refuge with a family of -free negroes, her kinsfolk. They kept her hidden for five years in a cubby -under the roof, during which time she supported herself by fine needlework -which her friends sold for her in town. At last she escaped to the North, -and was engaged by Willis as a house servant when he went to Glenmary. Her -attachment to the interests of the family during the whole period of her -service was a beautiful instance of the fidelity and affection which -sometimes, but not often, distinguish the relation of master and servant -even in this land of change. Mrs. Jacobs’s former owners, having got wind -in some way of her whereabouts, came North in quest of her, and spared no -pains to reclaim the runaway. Several times she had to leave the Willises -and go into hiding at Boston and elsewhere. At last, tired of these -alarms, Willis sacrificed whatever scruples he might have had against such -a step, and bought her freedom out and out. When the civil war began she -went to Washington, and employed her practical abilities, which were of a -high order, in the post of matron to a soldiers’ hospital. In that city -she is still living, at an advanced age. - -Though ill nearly all the time of this his third trip abroad, Willis -managed to write a number of “Invalid Letters” to the “Evening Mirror,” -which were collected in “Famous Persons and Places” and in “Rural -Letters.” They were scarcely worth preserving. England was now a -twice-told tale, and in Germany, which was a pasture new, he was too tired -and sick and borne down by his recent bereavement to take much interest in -anything. His articles about the great fair at Leipsic--“What I saw at the -Fair,” in “Godey’s” for October, 1847; and “On Dress,” in “The Opal” for -1848, and “Godey’s” for June, 1849--were the most considerable literary -results of the journey. He also superintended the publication of an -English edition of “Dashes at Life,” in three volumes, and came home under -engagement to write for the London “Morning Chronicle.” - -Meanwhile the editorial corps of the “Evening Mirror” had tapered down to -Hiram Fuller. Willis had practically retired from any active share in its -management when he left the country in the spring of 1845. He was still -abroad when Morris withdrew from it and started a new paper, the “National -Press,” toward the close of the same year. Willis joined him in this -enterprise as soon as he got back from England. During the spring and -summer of 1846 he was often in Washington, as correspondent of the -“National Press” and the “Morning Chronicle,” and while there he met Miss -Cornelia Grinnell, the niece and adopted daughter of the Hon. Joseph -Grinnell, who was then representative in Congress from New Bedford, -Massachusetts. To this lady he was married on October 1, 1846, the -eleventh anniversary of his first marriage. She was his junior by nearly -twenty years, but she united to her graces of person and character a -penetrating mind and an uncommon energy and firmness of will, which made -her an invaluable helpmate through the years of trial that were in store -for both. On the 21st of November following, the name of the “National -Press” was changed to the “Home Journal,” under which title the paper has -ever since been published. This was Morris’s and Willis’s final and most -prosperous experiment in journalism. They both remained connected with it -till death: in Willis’s case a service of twenty-one years, during which -his literary toil was devoted almost exclusively to building up the paper. -“For the cultivation of the memorable, the progressive, and the -beautiful,” ran the legend upon its title-page, followed by a sentence -from Goethe, which still stands as the motto of the paper, and would have -served well enough as the motto of Willis’s own career: “We should do our -utmost to encourage the beautiful, for the useful encourages itself.” It -was not a very solid type of literature which was fostered by the “Home -Journal,” but it made for itself a peculiar constituency, and a place in -the world of letters which it still successfully occupies, under the -editorship of Morris Phillips, General Morris’s adopted son, who has -carried out the traditions of the paper as established by his -predecessors. It was and is the organ of “japonicadom,” the journal of -society and gazette of fashionable news and fashionable literature, -addressing itself with assiduous gallantry to “the ladies.” - -Willis set himself more especially in both the “New Mirror” and the “Home -Journal” to portray the town. He became a sort of Knickerbocker Spectator, -and his “Ephemera,” published in 1854, is a running record of the -notabilities of New York for a dozen years. He chronicled the operas and -theatres: Ole Bull, Jenny Lind, and Macready; the shops, the omnibuses, -the endless procession of Broadway, the museum, the art galleries, the -Tombs, the Alhambra, the Five Points, the Croton water, the cafés, the -hotels, the balls and receptions, the changes in equipages, customs, -dress. He grew to be a recognized _arbiter elegantiarum_, and his -correspondence columns were crowded with appeals on knotty points of -etiquette or costume. His decisions of these social problems were always -marked by good sense and good taste. There are many nice bits in -“Ephemera,” and some little wholes,--like the letter from Saratoga, “To -the Julia of Some Years Ago,”--which deserve to be rescued from the -oblivion of a book of scraps and trifles. He was a skillful paragrapher; -he had unfailing tact and knew when to stop. Above all, he was eminently -human; his gregariousness and his cheerful philosophy cast a gleam of -their own on this looking-glass of urban life. He imported a rural air -into the city; watched how April greened the grass in the public squares, -and June spread the leaves in Trinity Churchyard; stopped to pick “a -clovertop or an aggravating dandelion ’twixt post office and city hall;” -and discovered even in the stream that washed the curbstone, “a clear -brook--a brook with a song, tripping as musically (when the carts are not -going by) as the beloved brook” in Glenmary. Pan, we know, has been found -in Wall Street; and Willis contrived to find something like a nymph in the -waste of the Park fountain. When his work kept him at the desk all through -the hot summer, he borrowed a breeze from “the outermost bastion of -Castle Garden,” and made the Jersey ferryboat his “substitute for a -private yacht.” - -When he came to New York to live, in 1842, and during his continued -residence there for more than ten years from that date, Manhattan was by -no means the metropolis that it is to-day, though it had begun to assume -already that cosmopolitan and intensely commercial character which -distinguishes it from all other American cities. It had a considerable and -swiftly growing foreign population, and its society was marked by a -liveliness and extravagance which contrasted with the plainer and more -earnest tone prevailing in Boston, and with the somewhat provincial cast -of Philadelphia life. The Battery was still the fashionable promenade, -Canal Street was “up town,” Hoboken, a rural suburb, Pine, Ann, and -William Streets, and the Bowling Green were genteel residence quarters. -The old Park Theatre was--after the burning of the National--the only -respectable playhouse, until Niblo’s was opened in what was then the -outskirt of the town. New York prided itself, moreover, on being a -literary centre. The term “Knickerbocker School,” which has been invented -to describe a group of metropolitan writers who owed their inspiration, in -some sort, to Washington Irving, is of uncertain application; and there -was no such cohesion among the members of the group as to warrant the name -of a school. But if the term be extended to cover all the authors whose -birth or long residence identified them with New York city, it may include -Bryant and Halleck, who were the most prominent literary figures when -Willis went there to live, though both of them, like him, were of New -England birth and breeding. Bryant had been since 1826 editor of the -“Evening Post” and Halleck, who had almost ceased to write and was -devoting himself exclusively to his duties as secretary to Mr. John Jacob -Astor, left the city in 1849, and retired to his old home in Guilford, -Connecticut. With both of these Willis was more or less intimate, meeting -them frequently at dinners and in general society. Irving himself, the -starting-point of the Knickerbocker writers, was out of the country when -Willis settled in New York, having gone as minister to Spain in 1842. He -came back in 1846 and took up his residence at Sunnyside. Cooper was -living at Cooperstown, where Willis made him a flying visit and renewed -the acquaintance so pleasantly begun at Paris in 1832. This was in the -summer of 1848, which Willis spent at Sharon Springs, recovering from an -attack of rheumatism. Theodore Fay too was abroad, filling diplomatic -posts in Germany and Switzerland. Years after, on his return to America, -he visited Willis at Idlewild, and the latter found him greatly aged and -saddened since the days when he wrote mild town satires and humorous -sketches for the “New York Mirror.” Eastburn, Sands, and Drake were all -dead, and Paulding had signalized the close of his literary career by -publishing a collection of his works in numerous volumes. He too had been -a contributor to the old “Mirror,” and so had another of the -Knickerbockers, Charles Fenno Hoffman, who had once edited the paper for a -month, before Willis had any connection with it. Hoffman, who died just -the other day, is known to this generation almost solely by his still -popular song, “Sparkling and Bright,” and his hardly less popular -“Monterey.” The former is sung by collegians and the latter declaimed by -school-boys. He was the first editor of the “Knickerbocker Magazine.” His -“Winter in the West” and his novel, “Greyslaer,” founded on the famous -Beauchamp tragedy in North Carolina, had wide currency in their time, and -his amusing story, “The Man in the Reservoir,” may still be read with -enjoyment. He was a man of many friends, greatly beloved for his frank and -cordial nature. By 1846 he had already begun to show symptoms of the -mental disease which issued in his chronic insanity. He kept on writing -up to 1850, when it was found necessary to send him to an asylum, in which -confinement he lived for over thirty years. Hoffman once said of Willis’s -eyes that they “always seemed to have nothing but cold speculation in -them,--to be two holes, looking out through a stone wall.” Then there were -Verplanck, the editor of Shakespeare, and Duyckinck the compiler of the -“Cyclopædia of American Literature,” and many forgotten worthies, whose -names may be read in such limbos of departed fame as Poe’s “Literati of -New York.” Many of these literati used to meet each other informally at -the weekly receptions given by Miss Anne Lynch (now Mrs. Botta) the -poetess, and author of the “Handbook of Universal Literature,” whose -hospitable parlors have been for forty years a rallying place for -interesting and distinguished people. With this lady Mr. and Mrs. Willis -formed a close and lasting friendship. Willis used to go often to Horace -Greeley’s, where he got interested for a time in spirit rappings, and -wrote some papers on the subject in the “Home Journal.” Greeley once urged -him in a letter (November 18, 1854) to publish a volume of selections from -his lifelong writings. “I want such a one,” he wrote, “for my boy, so -that, should I live to see him sixteen, I may try ‘Unwritten Music’ on -him and see if it impresses him as it did me at about that age, when it -appeared.” - -During the first winter and spring after their marriage, Willis and his -wife lived in lodgings. In the autumn of 1847 they went to housekeeping at -No. 19 Ludlow Place, where their eldest son, Grinnell, was born, April 28, -1848. In the fall of that year they bought the house No. 198 Fourth -Street, where they remained till the fall of 1852. A daughter, Lilian, was -born April 27, 1850. - -For ten years Willis’s tall and elegantly dressed figure was a familiar -sight on Broadway, and was often pointed out to strangers at public -assemblages, or in private society, where his agreeable manners made him a -general favorite. He was never what is called a brilliant -conversationalist, but he was an easy talker and quick at an impromptu, -many of his “good things” in which kind are remembered and quoted by his -contemporaries. Thus, on one occasion, at a dinner party in Washington, a -young lady who sat between Willis and a gentleman named Campbell was -rather too partial in her attention to the former. Her mother sitting -opposite, and considering Mr. Campbell a desirable _parti_, slipped her a -note across the table, “Pay more attention to your other neighbor.” This -being shown to Willis, he wrote on the back of it,-- - - “Dear Mamma don’t essay my flirtation to trammel: - I but strain at a Nat while you swallow a Campbell.” - -When in Germany, he went with some gentlemen to visit a deaf and dumb -asylum which had an inscription over the gate, _Stiftung_, etc. -“Stifftongue,” said Willis, looking up; “very appropriate.” - -Like most men who overwork their pens, he was impatient of private -correspondence. When in England, he excused his brevity on the plea that -he was paid a guinea a page for everything he wrote, and could not afford -to waste manuscript. “Private Letters,” he declared in a note to Edgar -Poe, “are the ‘last ounce that breaks the camel’s back’ of a literary -man.” And he once answered a friend who proposed a correspondence, that to -ask him to write a letter after his day’s work was like asking a penny -postman to take a walk in the evening for the pleasure of it. His letters -to his family and friends have seldom any literary quality, though they -contain, now and then, characteristically quaint or playful touches. “Kiss -mother on her sad expression” is a message in one of them; and in another -he refers to one of his little nieces as the most charming “copy of -Willis” extant. Having been invited to sit on the stage, at the -Commencement of Rutgers Female College, as “the author of ‘Absalom’ and -‘Hagar,’” he wrote, “I shall try to have the air of the Old Testament, but -have my doubts as to success.” - -The easy _dégagé_ air of his writing was, as is usually the case with -seemingly ready writers, the result of laborious care. It appears from the -testimony of Poe, Parton, Phillips, and others who were his associates on -the “Mirror” or “Home Journal” and knew his habits of composition, that -his manuscript was full of erasures and interlineations. He blotted, on an -average, one line out of every three, but his copy was so neatly and -legibly prepared that the compositors preferred it to “reprint,” even his -erasures having “a certain wavy elegance.” He was likewise very particular -about having his articles printed just as he wrote them. “My copy _must_ -be followed,” he wrote to an offending foreman. “If I insert a comma in -the middle of a word, do you place it there and ask no questions.” Once a -slight alteration by Morris in the wording of a paragraph in Willis’s -manuscript came near causing a quarrel between the two old friends, -“probably the only misunderstanding or disagreement,” says Mr. Phillips, -“which occurred during the whole of their literary life and business -association.” “I would not stay one week a partner with a man who -ventured to alter a word of my copy and send it to press without my -knowledge,” wrote Willis in his angry note to Morris on this occasion. Mr. -Phillips adds that “General Morris proved his love for Mr. Willis by not -replying to this letter, but simply wrote on the back of it, ‘I would have -received this from no other man living.’” From similar testimony it -appears that Willis took no share in the business management of the paper, -never examined the books, nor asked any questions as to the circulation. -He felt or affected a horror of figures, and confided the matter of -receipts and expenditures entirely to General Morris, between whom and -himself, during the entire period of their partnership, no statement of -account was ever rendered. In money matters Willis was liberal,--not to -say reckless,--and his hospitality knew no limit. Nor was it only his roof -and his table that were at his friends’ service; his literary latch-string -was always out to every new-comer in the field of letters. It was an -honorable trait in his character, and should never be forgotten in casting -his account, that, whatever may have been his foibles, the jealousy which -is the besetting sin of authors and artists was not among them. He was -perpetually on the lookout for young writers of promise, and was the first -to praise them, and to give circulation to their good things by copying -them into his columns. He was the introducer and literary sponsor of many -reputations now fallen silent, and of some which have survived. Among the -last were Mr. T. B. Aldrich--who succeeded James Parton as assistant -editor of the “Home Journal”--and Bayard Taylor. The latter was greatly in -Willis’s debt. His desire for travel was first awakened by reading the -“Pencillings by the Way” when he was a lad of sixteen. And afterwards when -he came to New York to seek the means for foreign travel he applied at -once to the author whose brilliant pictures of European life had roused -his young enthusiasm. Willis befriended him in every way; gave him letters -to wealthy gentlemen in New York, and bestirred himself to interest people -in his adventure and raise the sum necessary to start him on his journey. -On his departure he gave him a letter to his brother Richard, in -Frankfort, with whom the young _handwerksbursch_ tarried for a time, while -he was picking up the German language. His “Views Afoot”--the fruits of -this venture--were dedicated to Willis, who contributed the preface. This -patronage was unkindly referred to in Duganne’s “Parnassus in Pillory,” a -little Dunciad of the old downright “English Bards and Scotch Reviewers” -variety, which made some noise in New York in the year 1851:-- - - “What time Nat Willis, in the daily papers, - Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers; - What time, in sooth, his ‘Mirror’ flashed its rays, - Like Barnum’s ‘drummond’ on the Broadway gaze, - When lisping misses, fresh from seminaries, - Worshiped ‘mi-boy’ and ‘brigadier’[9] as _lares;_ - Then Bayard Taylor--_protégé_ of Natty, - Dixon-like walked into the ‘literati;’ - And first to proper use his genius put, - Like ballet-girls, by showing ‘Views Afoot.’” - -In another part of his squib the lampooner returns to the charge against -Willis as follows:-- - - “I almost passed by Willis--‘ah, _mi-boy!_ - Foine morning! da-da!’ Faith I wish him joy-- - He’s forty-three years old--in good condition-- - And, positively, he has gained ‘position.’ - Gad! what a polish ‘upper-ten-dom’ gives - This executioner of adjectives; - This man who strangles English worse than Thuggists, - And turns ‘the trade’ to trunk-makers or druggists; - Labors on tragic plays that draw no tiers-- - Writes under bridges, and tells tales of peers; - His subjects whey--his language sugared curds; - Gods! What a dose!--had he to ‘eat his words!’ - His ‘Sacred Poems,’ like a rogue’s confessions, - Gain him indulgence for his worst transgressions: - His ‘Fugitive Attempts’ will doubtless live-- - Oh! that more works of his were fugitive! - Fate to his fame a ticklish place has given, - Like Mahomet’s coffin, ’twixt the earth and heaven; - But be it as it will--let come what may-- - Nat is a star, his works--the Milky Way! - - “‘Why so severe on Willis?’ Julia cries - (Who reads _De Trobriand_ in an English guise). - Why so severe? Because my muse must make - Example stern for injured Poesy’s sake. - Not that Nat Willis curls his yellow hair-- - Not that his sense can breathe but perfumed air-- - Not that he plays the ape or ass I mourn, - For ape and ass are worth not even my scorn. - But that, with mind, and soul, and haply heart, - He yet hath stooped to act the fopling’s part; - Trifled with all he might have been to be - The _blasé_ editor--at forty-three; - Flung off the chaplet which his boyhood won, - To wear the fool’s cap of a ‘man of ton,’ - I lash not Willis even for this his crime-- - Through him I strike the bastard tribe of rhyme; - The race o’er whom, in his own native power, - Jove-like mid satyrs might this Willis tower!” - -Another young poet whose career Willis watched with interest was J. R. -Lowell. There was a friendly correspondence between the two in 1843-44, -the younger writer thanking the older for his encouragement, sending him -his new volume of verse, and promising to contribute to the “Mirror,” but -remonstrating with him upon his declared intention--in a very appreciative -review of Lowell’s poems in the “Mirror”--to omit the _James_ from his -“musical surname” and call him simply Russell Lowell:-- - - “Suppose I, dropping the ‘N.,’ should call you by that mysterious - middle letter--whose signification, without reference to the Parish - Register (or perhaps Griswold’s equally entertaining bead-roll) no - man can fathom--and call you ‘P. Willis.’ Under such painful - circumstances you could imagine how I feel, when you amputate one - sound limb of my name. - - “However, it is too cold to say any more about it. What I have left - unsaid shall be frozen up in me like the tune in Munchausen’s bugle, - and thaw out eloquently and startlingly when I meet you in the - warmer atmosphere of New York--as I shall before long.”[10] - -In point of fact--if the item is not below the dignity of biography--this -threat of Lowell’s to mind Willis’s P’s for him was without terror for the -latter, who favored his middle initial at the expense of his scriptural -and baptismal _prænomen_, and used to figure on the title-pages of his -later books as N. Parker Willis. He disliked to be called Nathaniel; -respecting which prejudice, his wife and brothers and sisters, as well as -his intimate friends, were accustomed to address him simply as Willis. -“Truly one’s sponsors,” said he, “have much to answer for.” In Lowell’s -smart pasquinade, “A Fable for Critics,” published in 1848, which contains -not only headlong fun, but good poetry and just criticism, there is a -passage on Willis, from which I venture to quote a few lines,--in spite of -its familiarity to many readers,--because its spirit is kindly and it is -one of the best estimates of Willis ever written:-- - - “There’s Willis so _natty_ and jaunty and gay, - Who says his best things in so foppish a way, - With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o’erlaying ’em, - That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying ’em.… - His prose had a natural grace of its own, - And enough of it, too, if he’d let it alone, - But he twitches and jerks so one fairly gets tired, - And is forced to forgive where he might have admired. - Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced - It runs like a stream with a musical waste, - And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep. - ’Tis not deep as a river, but who’d have it deep?… - No volume I know to read under a tree - More truly delicious than his À l’Abri, - With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book, - Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook; - With June coming softly your shoulder to look over, - Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over, - And Nature to criticise still as you read-- - The page that bears that is a rare one indeed.… - His nature’s a glass of champagne with the foam on ’t, - As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont; - So his best things are done in the flush of the moment: - If he wait, all is spoiled: he may stir it and shake it, - But, the fixed air once gone, he can never remake it.… - He’d have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid, - Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the bar-maid, - His wit running up as canary ran down,-- - The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town.” - -One proof of popularity is parody. Until a statesman’s face is so familiar -to the public that its caricature in the comic papers needs no label, and -until an author’s style is so easily recognized that a travesty of it hits -the sense of the reader, neither statesman nor author may consider himself -as really popular. “Excelsior,” and “The Raven,” and “Abou ben Adhem” are -by no means the best poems in the English tongue, but their currency is -attested and doubtless kept up by the innumerable burlesque imitations of -them that swarm the press. Willis had a share of these left-hand honors: -his epistolary style in particular was often caricatured in the -newspapers. In “Godey’s Lady’s Book” for December, 1849, he was selected -together with Poe, Morris, Whittier, and John Neal for humorous imitation. - - “My dear Sir:” he is made to write in response to an imaginary - request for a contribution, “to be obliged to penetrate with the - pump-buckets of necessity, prompted by the piston of a fifty-dollar - compensation, with a publisher as the pump-handle, in search of a - poem, is, of itself, annoying enough. To draw one up with the rope - and bucket of gratuity, is a labor which qualifies one for a long - residence in fatiguedom. Your letter found me fagging away over my - work-desk--chasing a brilliant idea in and out of the myriads of - convolutions of my brain. All the while that I was aping Prometheus - (the window being half-opened), I could sniff the delightful odors - of a rose which a fair neighbor will insist on keeping,” etc., etc. - -The requested poem is annexed--a scriptural poem, “The Fishwoman’s Son:”-- - - “Night on the market. Through the colonnade - Of red-brick pillars not a sound was heard, - Save of some whistling urchin as he strode - With stamping footfalls, listening to the noise - Which wore his shoe-soles and the hearer’s patience; - Or the low mutter of the drunken man, - As his wild song, proclaiming fix’d resolve - Not to go home till morning, sank to low - And nearly inarticulate murmurs.” - -The fishwoman’s son sings a song, whose first stanza runs:-- - - “I will not go, - Like a whipt dog, unto the public school, - To wear the cap and tokens of a fool, - While Mexico - Invites me on to glory and to fame,-- - Or a cracked crown, which after all’s the same.” - -Willis was forty when the “Home Journal” was begun--an age at which -writers who have thought and studied deeply are often no more than ripe, -and have their most productive years before them. But his best work was -already done. After 1846 he wrote hardly any more stories or poems--none -at all of any value. His pen was devoted more and more steadily to -editorial duties, to ephemeræ and paragraphs and fragments of all kinds, -and his well-wishers lamented that wit and fancy which, if properly -directed, might have produced something that would live and delight -future generations, were wasted in dissertations upon the cut of a beard -or the fashion of a coat. To all remonstrances of his friends over his -literary trifling and their exhortations to write for posterity, his -invariable answer, in and out of print, was that the public liked trifles, -and that posterity would not pay his bills--that he must go on “buttering -curiosity with the ooze of his brains.” That this answer satisfied -himself, or that he was without those aspirations after a more enduring -fame which are natural to all, cannot be believed. It is probable that he -sadly acknowledged in his inner consciousness that the best part of his -career was over. His talent, as has been said before, was the result of, -or was closely dependent upon, his physical temperament. When health began -to decay, and youth was over, and his animal spirits had effervesced, life -commenced to have a flat taste. The bloom was off. His writing, too, as we -have seen, was always closely related to his personal experiences; and as -these grew tamer, he had less and less to report, and his writing grew -tame in proportion. With some, mere study and contemplation supply, to a -degree, the ravages which time makes upon the freshness of young -impressions. But it had been Willis’s misfortune in youth that a premature -success had deprived him of the discipline of early rebuffs, and had made -a painful self-culture needless. He never drew much inspiration from -books, and in later life he read very little. He said that he could not -afford to read, partly for want of time, partly from a notion that much -reading would be fatal to originality. Neither was it his privilege to -command, at this or at any time, the stimulating and bracing association -with men of high serious intellects and strenuous aims, such as he might, -perhaps, have had if he had remained in Boston. The occasional hasty -meetings with men of brains and literary tastes in general society did not -at all take the place of that intimate communion with a circle of gifted -spirits which has been so stimulating to others. Moreover it should be -borne in mind, as accounting largely for the mediocrity of his later work, -that for the last fifteen years of his life Willis was a chronic invalid. -Indeed, he was never really a well man after his illness of 1845. - -Next to Cooper, Willis was the best abused man of letters in America. It -is easy to understand how the former, who was pugnacious and struck hard, -should have been always in hot water. But why a man of Willis’s urbanity -should have been a target for the newspaper critics is more difficult of -explanation. “Colonel” William L. Stone of the “Commercial Advertiser,” -and “Colonel” James Watson Webb of the “Courier and Enquirer,” -distinguished themselves especially by their stern condemnation of -Willis’s literary affectations, and of what they were pleased to consider -the weaknesses of his private character and life. It is suggestive, by the -way, of the militant disposition of the New York press at that time, that -so many editors were generals and colonels--or at least were breveted such -by public consent, and graced with titular embellishments of a warlike -character. Henry J. Raymond, who joined the “Courier and Enquirer” in -1842, proved his zealous adhesion to the traditions of the paper by an -onslaught upon Willis, in which he asserted that the latter had snobbishly -represented himself as received in the best circles abroad, “when in truth -’twas no such matter.” Willis replied to this in an editorial which Poe -mentions as a clever specimen of skill at fence. An effort was afterwards -made by friends of both to bring them together, at a time when Willis was -living at Idlewild and Raymond was visiting in the neighborhood. The plan -miscarried for some reason or other, though Willis, who seldom cherished a -resentment, was quite ready for a reconciliation. - -In 1850 Willis became unpleasantly involved in the famous divorce suit -between Edwin Forrest and his wife. He had known Forrest as early as -1836, admired his acting, and praised it constantly in the “Mirror” and -“Home Journal,” preferring it to the more studied performances of his -English rival, Macready. He had seen little of Forrest for a number of -years; but after his return to New York, in 1846, the two families grew -quite intimate, exchanging visits and dinners. Mrs. Willis and Mrs. -Forrest especially became fast friends, and on one occasion, when the -former was seriously ill, she sent for Mrs. Forrest to come and stay with -her. Mrs. Forrest was the daughter of Sinclair, the great English singer. -She was a lady of refinement, beauty, and social accomplishments. Her -sister Mrs. Voorhies, who lived with her for a time, had inherited her -father’s musical talents, and Mrs. Forrest soon got about her a pleasant -circle of friends, which included many persons of literary and artistic -tastes, editors, authors, professors, clergymen, and their wives. The -Bryants, the Godwins, Dr. Dewey, Henry Wikoff, and Samuel Raymond, the -actor, were among the frequenters of the house. When Richard Willis -returned from his musical studies in Germany in 1848, his brother -introduced him there, and he found so much enthusiasm for his art, that he -called repeatedly, to practice his compositions with Mrs. Voorhies. - -Edwin Forrest was a tragedian of great natural force and genius, endowed -with a wonderful voice and a magnificent physique. But he was a man of -passionate and overbearing temper; his education was defective, his -language and manners sometimes offensively coarse, and he had little -relish for intellectual society. He does not appear, however, to have felt -any objection to his wife’s hospitalities, or to have suspected any -impropriety in her receiving her friends, during his frequent absences -from home on professional engagements, until long after other causes of -estrangement had arisen between them. At Cincinnati, in the spring of -1848, he thought that he had discovered evidence of a guilty intimacy -between Mrs. Forrest and an actor named Jamieson; and although she -solemnly protested her innocence and her husband agreed to accept her -oath, his jealousy smouldered and occasionally broke out in scenes of -violence. At length, in April, 1849, they agreed to separate. Mrs. Forrest -made her home for a time with Mr. and Mrs. Parke Godwin, and Forrest took -up his residence in Philadelphia, where in February, 1850, he made an -application for divorce to the Pennsylvania legislature, based upon -affidavits, charging his wife with adultery. This application was -ultimately denied, but meanwhile the lady’s friends in New York had taken -the matter up. She had the sympathy and moral support of such men as -William C. Bryant and his son-in-law, Mr. Parke Godwin, and Dr. Orville -Dewey, the eminent Unitarian divine. Up to this time Forrest had not -implicated Willis in his charges, but hearing that he was among those who -were taking sides with Mrs. Forrest, he had stopped him in the street one -day in January, 1850, and warned him against intermeddling between him and -his wife, denouncing her unfaithfulness in the strongest terms. Willis -replied that he did not believe a word of the slanders against her. The -next day Mrs. Willis received an anonymous letter, accusing her husband of -criminal relations with Mrs. Forrest. On March 28th the “Herald” published -extracts from the evidence on which Forrest had based his application to -the Pennsylvania legislature, which compromised, among others, Mr. Richard -Willis. This drew from his brother a letter of explanation, printed in the -“Herald” of the following day. - - “It was not my intention,” wrote Willis, “to say a word in this - letter upon the merits of the case to which this evidence belongs. - To rescue the good name of an absent brother, who, in moral conduct - is irreproachably correct, was my only object. A court of justice - will soon sift the testimony, and better inform the public as to its - credibility on other points. But the mention of my wife’s name, as - a friend and visitor of Mrs. Forrest, makes it incumbent on me to - add that the description of Mrs. Forrest’s manners and style of - hospitality which is given in that evidence is totally at variance - with all we have ever seen and known of that dignified, well-bred, - and delicate mannered lady.” - -And in the “Home Journal” for April 6th he published a severe review of -the “Forrest testimony,” warmly defending Mrs. Forrest, expressing the -belief that her husband’s chief motive in the late proceedings had been to -rid himself of the expense of her support; that the real cause of their -separation had been his jealousy of her intellectual superiority; and -condemning indignantly his attempt to “enlist kitchen and brothel against -her, and so sully her fair name by cheap and easy falsehood that he can -throw her off like a mistress paid up to parting.” The article concluded -as follows:-- - - “We have written the above under the editorial plural, but the facts - being mostly of personal knowledge, and wishing to evade no manner - of responsibility, we close with the writer’s individual signature, - - “N. P. WILLIS.” - -These two articles, coupled with testimony elicited from Forrest’s -household servants, decided him to drag Willis into the case. His bill -filed in Philadelphia contained the names of nine co-respondents, among -them a clergyman, Mrs. Forrest’s family doctor, and Forrest’s old friend -and traveling companion, Chevalier Wikoff. The last three were afterwards -dropped from the case. Mrs. Forrest, having been served with a copy of the -application and the process issued by the Pennsylvania legislature, filed -a bill in the New York Supreme Court in September, 1850, and obtained an -injunction to restrain her husband from proceeding with his suit in -Philadelphia. She then began suit against him in New York for a divorce on -the ground of adultery, which he defended with cross-accusations; and in -New York the case was finally tried and decided. Meanwhile Forrest was -prowling about his wife’s lodgings in New York, threatening people who -went in or out, and stopping others in the street to warn them against -interference. - -On the 17th of June, while Willis was walking in Washington Square, near -his own residence in Fourth Street, Forrest came up to him quickly and -knocked him down with a blow from his fist. He then stood over him, and, -holding him down by the coat collar with one hand, beat him with a -gutta-percha whip till the police came up and interfered. To the group of -spectators which had rapidly assembled, he said, “That is the seducer of -my wife.” Willis would at no time have been physically the equal of his -antagonist, who was a man of powerful frame; but when this assault was -made it was doubly safe from the fact that the victim of it had been ill -for months with a rheumatic fever, and was in an unusually feeble -condition of body. Two days after this heroic action, Forrest met Bryant -and Godwin walking down Broadway and furiously demanded who had put the -account of it into the “Evening Post,” in which he was represented as -having struck Willis from behind. - - “I told him,” said Mr. Godwin, in his testimony, “I was responsible - for the article. He then turned round to me in a very ferocious way, - and said there were several things that he was going to hold me - responsible for; he said the article was a damned lie from beginning - to end; he said he meant to attack Mr. Willis, and he believed that - he had told me so formerly. I replied that these were not just the - terms that he used, and that he told me formerly that he meant to - cut his damned heart out; to which Mr. Forrest muttered something in - reply--I don’t know what it was distinctly; I think he said - something about what he would have done if they had not taken him - off.” - -Willis brought an action against Forrest for this assault, in the superior -court of the city of New York, and secured a verdict in March, 1852, for -$2,500 and costs. The case was appealed on exceptions, and, upon the new -trial which was ordered, the damages were reduced to one dollar. Forrest -sued Willis for libel in the “Home Journal” article, and got $500 damages. -But in the mean time the suit for divorce had come to trial, in December, -1851, and had been decided in Mrs. Forrest’s favor. The jury found the -defendant guilty of adultery, found the plaintiff innocent, and granted -her the decree prayed for with $3,000 a year alimony. This was one of the -_causes célèbres_ of the last generation. The trial occupied the then -extraordinarily long period of six weeks, and the printed testimony fills -two large volumes. Charles O’Conor, who was Mrs. Forrest’s counsel, dated -his great reputation as an advocate from his conduct of this case. For -eighteen years he fought the battle for his fair client relentlessly and -triumphantly. The case was appealed five times, and judgment affirmed -every time with an increase of alimony. It was not till 1868 that the -defendant tired of resistance, and paid over to the plaintiff the sum of -$64,000. His costs and expenses of litigation, additional to this, were of -course enormous. It is unnecessary to review the evidence given at the -trial, by which it was sought to incriminate Willis in this affair, -further than to say that it consisted almost solely of the testimony of -servants, who were thoroughly discredited in their cross-examination. One -of these witnesses was a man who had been discharged from Willis’s employ. -Another was an ex-chambermaid in the Forrest household, who was brought -all the way from Texas to testify, and who was shown to be a thief, and -the mother of an illegitimate child by a friend of the defendant. Public -opinion, it is needless to say, was divided about the verdict. Forrest was -the idol of the Bowery, and the asserter of the American stage against the -“dudes” and “Anglo-maniacs” of that day. “The boys,” who had stuck by him -in his quarrel with Macready till its upshot in the bloody Astor Place -riot of May 10, 1849, stuck by him now in his domestic tribulations, and -gave him a rousing ovation on his first appearance at the Broadway -Theatre, following the close of the trial. A number of people in society, -too, of those who “demen gladly to the badder end,” made up their minds to -Mrs. Forrest’s guilt. But it is not unfair to say that the great majority -of the decent people and respectable newspapers greeted the verdict with -acclamation. A large party maintained that Forrest was a selfish and -licentious brute, who was tired of his wife and wanted to be rid of her; -that, knowing he had no valid cause of action against her, he trumped up -charges and suborned witnesses. It is not necessary to go so far as this -in order to assert the innocence of Mrs. Forrest and of those who were -made parties to the accusations against her. Alger, in his big “Life of -Edwin Forrest,” after acknowledging that “the innocence of Mrs. Forrest is -publicly accredited, and is not here impugned;” that she “was believed by -her intimate and most honored friends to be innocent, was vindicated by a -jury after a most searching trial, and is now living in modest and -blameless retirement,” simply urges in Forrest’s behalf that he honestly -believed himself a wronged man, and acted with his usual fury and -unforgivingness upon that conviction. Willis and his brother were both -among the witnesses for the plaintiff on the trial, and both, of course, -denied peremptorily the charges against them. But the one circumstance -which more than all else influenced the decision of the jury was the -constant presence in court of Mrs. N. P. Willis, side by side with Mrs. -Forrest, and the brave, clear, and simple way in which she testified in -her friend’s behalf. No one could believe that a spirited and refined -lady, like Mrs. Willis, would have consented, for an instant, to put -herself into such a position, without a full assurance of her husband’s -innocence; and no one who listened to her testimony could have thought her -a woman likely to be deceived. John Van Buren, who was Forrest’s lawyer -in all these cases, was quite generally censured for the needlessly -abusive way in which he handled the witnesses for the other side. In the -trial of the assault and battery case, “Willis _v._ Forrest,” his -personalities went so far beyond the limits usually set to the licensed -insolence of the bar, that on the termination of the suit Willis, who was -about starting on a trip to the South, and had learned from an item in the -“Herald” that Van Buren was going South too, sent him a letter demanding -an apology. In case he should decline to make such apology, the letter -proposed a hostile meeting at Charleston or any other convenient point in -the Southern States. This note the recipient returned (after carefully -making a copy of it) with a short reply, describing it as a “silly and -scurrilous communication.” This it certainly was not, but, on the other -hand, a very dignified and gentlemanly letter; rather too long, it must be -owned, for on these occasions Willis’s pen generally ran away with him. -However, on the receipt of this answer to it, which was forwarded to him -at the South, he replied with sufficient brevity: “I now pronounce you a -coward, as well as a proper companion for the blackguards whose -attorneyship constitutes your career.” - -This challenge was something of a flourish on Willis’s part, and his -experience with Marryat might have taught him the folly of such attempts -to get “the satisfaction of a gentleman” from railing editors and -attorneys. He took little by his motion, which simply gave Van Buren an -opportunity to publish the correspondence in a New York morning paper with -comments of his own, characteristically ugly and characteristically smart. -The fact remained, however, that Van Buren had been challenged to fight -and had declined, and the general note made upon the affair by a venal -press was to the effect that “Prince John had shown the white feather.” Of -the many letters of sympathy and congratulation received by Mr. and Mrs. -Willis after the Forrest verdict, the following, from Mr. J. P. Kennedy, -the author of “Swallow Barn,” will serve as an example:-- - - BALTIMORE, _February 2, 1852_. - - MY DEAR WILLIS,--I have often resolved during the war--the _late_ - war, I hope I may call it--to assume the privilege of a friend and - send you the only succor I could supply, a word of comfort and a - cheer or two, to let you see that there was some sympathy abroad for - your sufferings, which I know were pungent enough to make a very - respectable saint, if your ambition lay in that way. Now that you - have got through certainly the worst part of your Iliad in the - termination of that horrible trial, I think it a good time to - redeem my promise to myself, and to say to you that I have felt a - friend’s part in the whole progress of your troubles, and the - confidence of a friend that the end would bring you a bright sky and - a pleasant outlook for the future. I particularly congratulate Mrs. - Willis on this result, as I know, or can imagine, the full measure - of her griefs. We _all here_--I mean our household, with whom Mrs. - Willis is associated in so many affectionate remembrances--unite - very sincerely in this message to her. Your defense in the “Home - Journal” of an injured woman, which I noted and applauded from the - first, was, at its least, a manly and generous act, and it became - the more worthy of your manhood as it grew to be perilous. I use - this word much more in reference to the social clamor than to the - ruffian assault it brought you. I trust you are now to triumph very - signally over both. Present Mrs. Kennedy and her sister very kindly - to your wife, as also Dr. Gray, and believe me - - Very truly yours, - - J. P. KENNEDY. - -The result of the Forrest trial was, in a sense, a triumph for Willis. Yet -in all affairs of the kind, although the charges are disproved, the very -fact that they have been made leaves, illogically and unfairly, perhaps, -but still inevitably, a sediment of prejudice in the public mind. It is in -the nature of such cases that the inmost truth about them can seldom be -known to more than two persons. To all others there remains nothing -beyond inference and suspicion. Hence the uncertainty which survives the -judicial decision of the cause and works injustice to the innocent who -have been unlucky enough to be drawn into compromising situations. An -impression has always obtained in many quarters that Willis was profligate -in his relations with women. Rumors to this effect were industriously -circulated by his ill-wishers, and, in one instance, they got into print -in the shape of an accusation publicly brought against him by his ancient -foe, Colonel James Watson Webb of the “Courier and Enquirer.” It is -needless to revive this venerable scandal or any of the less tangible, -miscellaneous gossip once afloat on the current of New York society. It is -no part of a biographer’s duty to “vindicate” his subject from any and all -charges of the kind. I have read the published documents in the -Webb-Willis affair with a sincere effort to be impartial, and they left -upon my mind no impression of anything worse on Willis’s part than vanity -and indiscretion in permitting himself to be drawn into a half literary, -half sentimental correspondence with a very romantic young woman, without -her parents’ knowledge. He was easily flattered by attentions from female -worshipers of genius. He maintained in print and in person a constant -attitude of gallantry toward the sex, which doubtless stimulated the -rumor of his immoralities, and led the reader to identify him with the -Lotharios of his tales. Moreover, it is not to be denied that when a young -man in Italy, and in the fast set of his London acquaintances, he was -exposed to temptations which he did not always resist, and probably had -his share of those adventures which the French indulgently call _bonnes -fortunes_, but less liberal shepherds of Anglo-Saxon race give a grosser -name; and which always turn out the reverse of good fortunes for everybody -concerned. As to his later life, one who knew him well but had quarreled -with him and had small cause to like him, writes: “My belief is that N. P. -Willis was, as he said, perfectly free from fault in that business [the -Forrest affair], and had _no_ intrigues with women after his marriage.” - -The spring of 1852 found him much broken in health. He had a wearing -cough, and it was thought that his lungs were diseased. He waited only the -termination of his assault and battery case in March, to start on a -journey to the South with his father-in-law, Mr. Grinnell. The trip -included a cruise to Bermuda and the West Indies, a short stay in -Charleston, Savannah, and New Orleans, a visit to the Mammoth Cave, and a -sojourn at the neighboring watering-place of Harrodsburg Springs. His -letters to the “Home Journal” from these and other points in the South -were reissued in book form as “A Health Trip to the Tropics.” During the -years covered by this chapter he published a number of volumes similarly -made up of periodical correspondence and miscellaneous contributions to -his paper. “Rural Letters” contained his “Invalid Letters from Germany;” a -reprint of “Letters from under a Bridge,” with two additional to those in -the earlier editions; “Open Air Musings in the City;” letters from Sharon -Springs and Trenton Falls in the summer of 1848; and one story, “A Plain -Man’s Love.” “Hurrygraphs” comprised a series of letters from Plymouth, -New Bedford, Cape Cod, and places on the Delaware and Hudson rivers; -besides sketches--often very acute pieces of mental portraiture--of public -men, authors, and other celebrities, and a good deal of chit-chat about -society, the opera, etc., from the columns of the “Home Journal.” - -All that can be said of these traveler’s letters is that they are fairly -good reporting. They hardly attain the rank of literature, and were as a -whole not worth putting between covers. But Willis sold well and, -therefore, found his account in continued book-making, bringing out, -usually, simultaneous editions in London and New York. It is instructive -to compare his letters from Cape Cod--a journey on which Mr. Grinnell was -again his companion--with Thoreau’s book on the same piece of geography. -Both men had quick eyes, and had taught themselves the art of observation. -But Willis’s letters were the notes of an “amateur casual,” or -“here-and-thereian,” on a flying trip over a sand-spit inhabited by queer -people, who was always on the lookout for points which would interest the -lady readers of a metropolitan journal. Thoreau, on the contrary, was like -a palmer on a solemn pilgrimage to one of nature’s peculiar shrines, with -loins girt up and staff in hand, tramping along the heavy sands, with the -eternal thunder of “The Reverend Poluphloisboio Thalasses” in his ear; in -serious and vigilant mood, watching every least token of the ways of the -sea, but careless of men and reading publics. - -Now and then there is a quaint or poetic fancy in these itineraries of -Willis which recalls his youthful manner; as where, speaking of the -absence of an atmosphere in the tropic seas, he says: “As to the horizon, -it seems so near that, if you were washing your hands on deck, you might -try to throw the slops over it, as you would over the ship’s side. The sun -goes down, as it were, next door.” In the letters from Trenton -Falls--which he had visited twenty years before and described in “Edith -Linsey”--occurs a startling anticipation of the most admired figure in -Tennyson’s “Queen Mary:”-- - - “As we stood gazing at this, last night, a little after midnight, - the moon threw the shadow of the rock slantwise across the face of - the fall. I found myself insensibly watching to see whether the - delicate outline of the shadow would not vary. There it lay, still - as the shade of a church window across a marble slab on the wall, - drawing its fine line over the most frenzied tumult of the lashed - and agonized waters, and dividing whatever leapt across it, foam, - spray, or driving mist, with invariable truthfulness to the rock - that lay behind. Now, my song-maker, if you ever have a great man to - make famous--a hero who unflinchingly represents a great principle - amid the raging opposition, hatred, and malice of mankind--there is - your similitude: _Calm as the shadow of a rock across the foam of a - cataract_.” - -Willis was induced by Mr. Moore, the proprietor and landlord, to edit a -small illustrated guide-book to Trenton Falls; his own contributions to -which consisted of descriptions reproduced from these letters and from -“Edith Linsey,” and a short biography of the Rev. John Sherman, the first -settler and a grandson of Roger Sherman. In the same way and in the same -year (1851) he put together a little “Life of Jenny Lind,” for whom he had -an ardent admiration, and whom he had been privileged to meet often and -familiarly during her first visit to America. This was, of course, not a -formal biography, but was made up from articles that he had written about -her from time to time for the “Home Journal,” and extracts from the -English papers. He also issued selections from his former volumes under -new names. Such were “People I have Met,” and “Life Here and There,” which -were stories from “Dashes at Life,” and contained little or nothing new, -and “A Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean,” which was a mere reprint of a -part of “Pencillings by the Way.” - - - - -CHAPTER VIII. - -1853-1867. - -IDLEWILD AND LAST DAYS. - - -Mr. and Mrs. Willis, with their children, had passed the summer of 1850 at -Cornwall, in the highlands of the Hudson, boarding at the farmhouse of a -Mrs. Sutherland. They grew so attached to the beautiful neighborhood that -they resolved to make it their home some day, and with this in view, in -the fall of the same year, they had bought the fifty acres of land which -afterwards became widely known as Idlewild. This little domain lay upon a -shelf or terrace on the western bank of the Hudson, lifted some two -hundred feet above the level of the river, at the point where its waters -received the slender tribute of Moodna Creek. Behind the site chosen for -the house was a wild ravine, shaded by hemlocks, at the bottom of which a -brook, swollen to sizable rapids and cascades by the spring freshets, but -a mere trickle in midsummer, ran down to join the creek. The location -seemed destined by nature for a gentleman’s country seat, from its -variety of surface, its contrasting prospects, and its noble timber. The -outlook in front was upon a wide bend of the river and the opposite -heights and distant mountain perspectives of the eastern shore. Behind the -house was a private landscape of glen and forest, sunk away quite out of -sight of the sails and steamers that passed continually up and down the -watery highway before the front door. To the south, a mile away, was the -imposing shape of Storm King, a mountain which owes its baptism to Willis, -having previously figured in geography as Butter Hill. Four miles below -this were West Point and the gate of the highlands, and on the other bank -General Morris’s summer home of Undercliff. Four miles above Idlewild was -the considerable town of Newburg, for a market; and only a mile from his -door, the post office village of Moodna. - -Willis’s trip to the tropics had been of small benefit to his health, and, -on his return in the summer of 1852, he joined his family at their -boarding place at Cornwall. His doctor warned him that a return to New -York would be at the risk of his life. He had grown tired, himself, of the -city and of gay society, and longed for the repose of the hills. _Levavit -oculos ad arces._ In the hope that rural quiet and the drier air of the -highlands might restore his health, he decided that autumn to begin -building at once, and to take up his permanent abode in the country. -During the winter and spring he remained with his family at the -Sutherlands’, and busied himself in superintending the erection of his -house, laying out roads and paths, cutting vistas through his trees, -building stone walls, constructing a dam for his brook, and reporting -progress in gossipy letters to the “Home Journal.” In the spring of 1853 -the New York house was sold, and on the 26th of July Idlewild received its -tenants. - -Willis had a happy knack at inventing names, and if everything that he -wrote should become obsolete, he will still have left his sign manual on -the American landscape and the English tongue. “Idlewild” was an apt and -beautiful name, and like Sunnyside, the place became and remains one of -the historic points of the scenery of the Hudson. The story that Willis -tells of the origin of the word is this: The old farmer and fisherman who -owned the land--uncle of the “Ward boys,” of aquatic fame--was showing him -over the property, and Willis, inquiring the price of this particular -piece, was answered that it had little value, being “an idle wild of which -nothing could ever be made.” I fancy that this little anecdote is in part -a myth, invented after the fact to give the name a history and a -justification. Willis was particular, not to say fussy, in such matters, -and the title finally chosen was obtained by a process of elimination from -a list that I have seen, of several hundred “pretty, fond, adoptious -christendoms,” such as Everwild, Mieux-ici, Lodore, Loudwater, Idle-brook, -Wanderwild, Up-the-brook, Shadywild, Loiterwild, Demijour-brook, etc. - -Thus ten years after the break-up of his home at Glenmary, he had again -pitched his pavilion--this time for good--by green pastures and running -waters. Henceforth he abjured fashionable life and devoted himself to the -domesticities; to the care of his health and his grounds, the -entertainment of his guests, and the preparation of his weekly letter to -the “Home Journal.” There was little left in him of that dandyism which -had distressed his critics. But the old coats and hats which he loved to -wear were worn with a certain grace peculiar to the man. He could not put -on the seediest garment without straightway imparting to it an air of -jauntiness. He was fond of pets and was a most playful and affectionate -companion to his children, the number of whom gradually increased to five -by the birth of a third daughter, Edith, on September 28, 1853, and a -second son, Bailey, on May 31, 1857. All of these survive, but his last -child, a daughter, born October 31, 1860, lived only a few minutes. - -From early spring till after Christmas the family at Idlewild kept open -house, having almost always company staying with them, and in summer -constantly receiving transient guests. The place had become celebrated -through Willis’s descriptions in the “Home Journal.” Cornwall was growing -to be a summer resort, and there were daily visits to the glen and to the -house from all manner of people. Willis’s habit was to breakfast in his -own room and write till noon. Sometimes he would take a stroll to the post -office or the glen before dinner. After dinner he would write letters or -do “scissors work” before the afternoon drive or ride. The evening was -spent with his guests, or, if the family were alone, he would write again -and come down to a nine o’clock supper. - -From the trivial incidents of this daily life he wove his correspondence; -enough of it, at last, to fill two volumes, “Out Doors at Idlewild” and -“The Convalescent;” the former dedicated to Mr. Grinnell, the latter to -Doctors William Beattie and John F. Gray, his physicians, and both books -addressed more particularly to the author’s “parish of invalids.” These -letters have by no means the literary merit of the “Letters from under a -Bridge,” and it was, perhaps, presuming too far on their claim to even -contemporary respect to bind them up at all after they had once done duty -in the newspaper column. They were eagerly read, nevertheless, as they -appeared from week to week, and a sympathetic public was interested in -Willis’s kindly prattle about his landscape gardening, his tree planting, -the deluges in his brook, his children, his horses and dogs, the -eccentricities of his country neighbors, the humors of his poultry, the -daily voyage of the family wagon to Newburg, the sleighing on the frozen -Hudson, and the occasional picnics and excursions to Storm King, West -Point, Poughkeepsie, or remoter points. Willis found himself not without -amusement, becoming something of a country gentleman and public-spirited -bulwark of society, taking part in local interests. There was a -picturesque little Episcopal church a mile from Idlewild, in which he -became a vestryman and used to pass the plate. Once he even made a speech -at a public meeting, in favor of dividing the county. Letters XXXIX. and -XL. in “Out Doors at Idlewild,” giving a graphic description of the ascent -of Storm King, are perhaps the best thing in the volume. - -Among the many guests attracted to Idlewild by the hospitalities of its -owner and his inviting pictures of his highland retreat were numbers of -literary men and artists.[11] Bayard Taylor, Charles A. Dana, De -Trobriand, of the “Courrier des États-Unis;” Hicks and Kensett, the -painters, came up from New York at various times, and rambled, bathed, or -otherwise disported themselves in the glen. Whipple and Fields ran across -from Boston and made a pleasant visit of two or three days, of which both -afterwards gave reminiscences. Fields loved to recall an anecdote that -Willis told him, “of his watching a little ragged girl, one day in London, -who was peering through an area railing. A window of a comfortable -eating-house gave upon this area, and a man sat at the window taking a -good dinner. The child watched his every movement, saw him take a -beefsteak and get all things in readiness to begin; then he stopped and -looked round. ‘Now a pertaty,’ murmured the child.” - -In the summer of 1854, Willis had a call from his down-river neighbor, -Washington Irving, and repaid it at Sunnyside in 1859, in company with J. -P. Kennedy and Lieutenant Wise, the author of “Los Gringos,” who had both -been passing a day or two with him at Idlewild. Irving drove them through -Sleepy Hollow, as recounted in “The Convalescent,” in which this visit -fills an agreeable chapter; and Willis characteristically begged his host -to give him his blotting-sheet for memorabilia, as being “the door-mat on -which the thoughts of Irving’s last book had wiped their sandals as they -went in.” “The Convalescent” (1859) was the last book which Willis -published, if we except some late editions of his poems, but there are -gleams in it, here and there, of the wit and fancy that never quite -forsook him. There was, for instance, a long and very dark covered bridge -over Moodna Creek, which he always entered with dread, when on horseback, -and which he described as giving “a promise of emergence to light on the -other side, which required the faith of a gimlet.” Upon the whole, it -would be a very difficult reader who should refuse to admit the plea which -the author urges in behalf of books of “The Convalescent” kind. “I learned -also, to my comfort, that Nature publishes some volumes with many leaves, -which are not intended to be of any posthumous value--the white poplar not -lasting three moonlight nights after it is cut down. Even with such speedy -decay, however, it throws a pleasant shade while it flourishes; and so, -white poplar literature, recognized as a class in literature, should have -its brief summer of indulgence.” - -Willis found that his best medicine was horseback riding, and spent as -many hours as he could in the saddle. His horses and dogs were a great -source of amusement to him. One of his special pets was Cæsar, a superb -Newfoundland, that had been with Dr. Kane on one of his Arctic voyages, -and was afterwards presented to Willis. When it died its grave at Idlewild -was marked by a marble slab, the gift of Brown, the famous Grace Church -sexton, with an epitaph of his own composition. The slab was on exhibition -for a time, in July, 1862, at Barnum’s museum, and the inscription on it -ran as follows:-- - - CÆSAR, - WHO MADE THE VOYAGE TO THE ARCTIC - REGIONS WITH DR. KANE, - AND WAS AFTERWARDS THE FAVORITE DOG OF THE CHILDREN - OF IDLEWILD, - LIES BURIED BENEATH THIS STONE. - - Died December 7, 1861, aged thirteen years. - - Thy master’s record of thy worth made thee of great renown, - And caused this tribute to thy memory from Sexton Brown. - -In 1854 a book was published which became the occasion of many -heart-burnings, and of accusations against Willis that have not yet ceased -to go the rounds of the newspapers. This was “Ruth Hall, a Domestic Tale -of the Present Time,” by Fanny Fern. The lady who wrote under this pen -name was his younger sister, Sarah, the author of much cleverish -literature--“Fern Leaves,” and the like--which once enjoyed a prodigious -circulation. She was the _enfant terrible_ of the family, a warm-hearted, -impulsive woman, but not always discreet. By the death of her husband, -Charles Eldridge of Boston, she had been suddenly reduced from comfort to -poverty. She afterwards contracted an unfortunate marriage with a Mr. -Farrington, from whom she was finally divorced. To support herself and her -children, she turned instinctively to literature, in which she at last -made a decided hit. Among other things she offered some contributions to -the “Home Journal;” but Willis, whose literary taste, though certainly not -severe, was fastidious in its way, could not see merit enough in his -sister’s writing, and disliked what he regarded as its noisy, rattling -style. He felt obliged to decline her articles, but that there was any -literary jealousy in this, as is intimated in “Ruth Hall,” will hardly be -believed, when his eagerness to welcome and patronize young writers is -remembered. It seems to have sprung from an original opposition in -character and taste between the two. But it naturally made hard feeling -and led to recriminations. Mr. James Parton, who was then sub-editor of -the “Home Journal,” took Fanny Fern’s part, and the acquaintance thus -begun soon ripened into an engagement of marriage. There was a scene, in -consequence, in the office of the “Home Journal,” and Mr. Parton retired -from the paper, his place being supplied by Mr. T. B. Aldrich. Smarting -under a sense of neglect by her kinsfolk, Fanny Fern wrote and printed -this novel of “Ruth Hall,” in which, under a very thin mask of fiction, -she washed a deal of family linen in public. Willis figures therein as -Hyacinth, a “heartless puppy,” who worships social position, has married -an heiress, inhabits a villa on the Hudson, and is the prosperous editor -of the “Irving Magazine.” When Ruth asks him to help her by printing her -pieces in this periodical, he coldly assures her that she has no talent, -and advises her to seek “some unobtrusive employment.” But when she -becomes famous and begins to get letters from college presidents, begging -her for her autograph, and from grateful readers, saying, “I am a better -son, a better brother, a better husband, and a better father than I was -before I commenced reading your articles. God bless you!” then, under -these triumphant circumstances, Hyacinth, who had given $100 for a vase -when Ruth was starving, is proud to point out to a friend, as they sit -together in the porch of his country seat, a beautiful schooner tacking up -stream with “Floy,” his sister’s _nom-de-plume_, painted on the bows. - -Against this caricature of himself Willis made no public protest. When a -man is wounded in the house of his friends, his only refuge is silence. -But in private and to his intimates he asserted that the attack upon him -in “Ruth Hall” was most unfair; that he _had_ helped his sister in the -early days of her widowhood, but that after her second marriage and -divorce he had ceased to have any communication with her, and felt -justified in letting her alone. Willis was doubtless a man who took his -responsibilities lightly. But had he felt called upon to do his utmost for -Fanny Fern, even to the end, it is easy to see how his hands were tied in -various ways. He had an expensive family of his own, whose support -depended upon his pen. His home on the Hudson had been purchased with his -wife’s inheritance. As to paying his sister for articles in the “Home -Journal,” supposing them to have been otherwise acceptable, the editors -were constantly reiterating that the paper did not, as a rule, pay its -contributors anything, and could not afford to do so. It paid its own -editorial staff, and that was all. Contributors were glad to write for it -for the pleasure of seeing themselves in print. - -Willis continued to put forth permutations and combinations of old matter -under new titles, as long as his books would sell. “Fun Jottings,” -“Ephemera,” “Famous Persons and Places,” and “The Rag-Bag” were all made -up from the contents of previous volumes, or the teeming sheets of the -“Mirror” and “Home Journal.” But in 1857 he published something new, “Paul -Fane,” his only novel, and the only book which he wrote as a book, and not -as one or more contributions to periodicals. So exclusively a -_feuilletoniste_ had he made himself, that any talent for construction on -a larger scale which he may once have had was quite frittered away. - - “It has been with difficult submission to marketableness,” he had - written in his preface to “Dashes at Life,” “that the author has - broken up his statues at the joints and furnished each fragment with - head and legs to walk alone. Continually accumulating material, with - the desire to produce a work of fiction, he was as continually - tempted by extravagant prices to shape these separate forms of - society and character into tales for periodicals; and between two - persuaders--the law of copyright, on the one hand, providing that - American books at fair prices should compete with books to be had - for nothing; and necessity, on the other hand, pleading much more - potently than the ambition for an adult stature in literary fame--he - has gone on acquiring a habit of dashing off for a magazine any - chance view of life that turned up to him, and selling in - fragmentary chapters what should have been kept together, and - moulded into a proportionate work of imagination.” - -If “Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life Else Untold” was a response to this -artistic craving for unity in a sustained work, its author had waited too -late. It was, in effect, a poor novel; and--what was unusual with Willis, -even at his thinnest--it was dull. The story is told in the first person, -and the hero is a young American artist, who, feeling his social equality -challenged by a look in the eyes of a cold English girl of high birth, is -driven abroad by a restless determination to put himself on a level with -any nobility that hereditary rank can bestow. He brings the haughtiest -daughters of Albion to his feet. Three or four women fall in love with -him, including the original offender and her aunt, but he will none of -them. It is Willis’s old theme of nature’s nobleman versus caste. The -novel was an experiment, before the times were ripe, in that field of -international manners which has since been so cleverly occupied by Henry -James. It tries to deal with the perplexities and real miseries, which -arise not so much from the deeper conflicts of character as from the -attempt to adjust hostile social standards. Mr. James has made a very -interesting story out of the simple episode of a young English lady -marrying an American, coming to America to live, and then, not finding -American ways to her taste, taking her husband back to England with her. -But Willis was not well equipped for success in this field. He could not -keep his fancy in check; there must be a dash of romance, of exaggeration -in his tale. And he was a quick observer rather than a patient student of -manners, as of other things. He lacked the sober, truthful vigilance of -James and Howells. Miss Firkin, in this book, an overdone Daisy Miller, -and Blivins, an American type once rumored to have existed, but -inconceivable at this distance of time, show how far his execution fell -below the fine and solid work of our contemporary realists. There are -passages of vulgarity in “Paul Fane” which are a surprise in any book of -Willis’s, but which came rather from the weakness and failure of his hand -in its attempt to execute scenes of broad humor, than from any crudity of -feeling. This kind of violent and assumed indelicacy on the part of -naturally refined writers, when they are trying to put on the healthy -coarseness of a Hogarth or Teniers, is a not uncommon phenomenon; -daintiness mistaking coarseness for the strength of which it is often a -sign or an accompaniment. - -In “The Convalescent” were included narratives of a trip to the -Rappahannock, to Nantucket, and to the horse fair at Springfield, -Massachusetts. In July, 1860, Willis accompanied Mr. Grinnell on a journey -to the West,--reported for the “Home Journal” as a “Three Weeks’ Trip to -the West,”--going to Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Chicago, and as far as -Madison, Wisconsin; then descending the Mississippi in a steamboat to St. -Louis, and returning East by way of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh. - -In Willis’s later writings his verbal affectations gained upon him to an -intolerable extent. “Mr. N. P. Willis,” says Bartlett in his “Dictionary -of Americanisms,” “has the reputation of inventing many new words, some of -which, though not yet embodied in our dictionaries, are much used in -familiar language.” One of the phrases which Bartlett accredits to him is, -“the upper ten,”--originally and in full, “the upper ten thousand of New -York city.” This seems likely to keep its place in the language. -“Japonicadom” took at the time, but has now gone out. He had a fondness -for agglutinations. “Come-at-able” is a convenient word which is traced to -his mint; and Professor George P. Marsh, in his “Origin and History of the -English Language,” lends the weight of his authority to Willis’s -“Stay-at-home-itiveness,” as a synonym for the Greek οἰκουρία, and the -early English _studestapelvestnesse_. But such philological monsters as -re-June-venescence, worthwhile-ativeness, fifty-per-centity, with which -some of his books are strewn, have a painfully forced effect, and the -trick became, from repetition, a tedious mannerism. Punning, likewise, -was a habit which grew upon him, though both of these offenses are -commoner in his private correspondence than in his published work. - -At the outbreak of the civil war in the spring of 1861, there was a rush -of newspaper men to Washington. It was decided that the “Home Journal,” -too, should have its war correspondent, and accordingly Willis, bidding -good-by to Idlewild, flung himself into the tide of journalists, soldiers, -politicians, office-seekers, contractors, and speculators of all sorts, -setting toward the seat of government. At Baltimore he stayed over a day -with his friend Kennedy, who was prominently mentioned for the -secretaryship of the navy, and who went on to Washington with Willis, -where the latter introduced him and Reverdy Johnson to Mrs. Lincoln. The -feeding of the “Home Journal” press with “Lookings-on at the War” proved a -longer job than Willis had anticipated. It kept him in Washington for over -a year, with occasional furloughs for a hurried visit home. He had always -been curiously indifferent to politics. His opinions had been Whiggish, -and he was, of course, a Union man. But he retained a secret sympathy with -the South, and a liking for “those chivalrous, polysyllabic Southerners, -incapable of a short word or a mean action,” whom he had known at -Saratoga years before. Nevertheless, he dropped his light plummet of -observation into the boiling sea of the civil war, where it was tossed -about at no great depth below the surface. It is interesting to compare -his letters from the capital with the patriotic fervor and swing of such -martial sketches as Theodore Winthrop’s “Washington as a Camp.” The war, -indeed, may be said to have made Willis and the kind of literature which -he cultivated obsolete for a time. A more earnest generation of writers -had come to the fore, who struck their roots deeper down into the life of -the nation. Mr. Derby, the publisher, proposed in 1863 to make a book out -of Willis’s “Lookings-on at the War,” but the project hung fire for some -reason, and “The Convalescent” remained, as has been said, his last -publication in book form. - -Willis found all the world at Washington; among the rest, Lady Georgiana -Fane, whom he presented to Mrs. Lincoln. “Fancy anticipating this at -Almack’s twenty-five years ago!” he wrote of this conjunction, in a letter -to Mrs. Willis. He met Charles Sumner, whom he had known in Boston, and -had a long talk with him about the political situation; found Pierpont, -the poet, employed as a clerk in one of the departments, and got rooms for -him and Mrs. Pierpont in the house where he lodged himself; was -introduced to General McClellan and to the cabinet officers, and the -numerous congressmen and brigadiers who swarmed Pennsylvania Avenue and -crowded the lobbies at Willard’s. He went out to all manner of receptions -and dinner parties, and became quite a favorite with Mrs. Lincoln, who -drove him out frequently in her barouche, had him to dine _en famille_ at -the White House, sent him flowers, and promised him a vase presented to -the President by the Emperor of China. In one of his letters to the “Home -Journal,” he had described her as having a “motherly expression,” -whereupon she addressed him the following note:-- - - EXECUTIVE MANSION, _July 24th_. - - MR. N. P. WILLIS: - - _Dear Sir_,--It will afford me much pleasure to receive yourself and - ladies[12] this evening. Of course anything Mr. Willis writes is - interesting, yet, pardon my weakness, I object to the “motherly - expression.” If you value my friendship, hasten to have it corrected - before the public is assured that I am an old lady with - _spectacles_. When I am _forty_, four years hence, I will willingly - yield to the decrees of _time_ and fate. - - Rather an indication, is it not, that years have not passed _us_ - lightly by? I rely on you for changing that expression before my age - is _publicly_ proclaimed. Quite a morning lecture, yet you - certainly deserve it. Be kind enough to accept this modest bouquet - from - - Your sincere friend, - - MARY LINCOLN. - -A sudden fit of sickness had hindered Willis’s plan to follow the army to -Bull Run--fortunately, no doubt, as the correspondent who took his place -was made prisoner. He afterwards took horseback rides into the enemy’s -country, once narrowly escaping capture near Mount Vernon, and made -excursions to Fortress Monroe, Manassas, Old Point Comfort, etc. On March -15, 1862, he was of the party which visited Harper’s Ferry at the -invitation of the president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Hawthorne, -too, was of the party and reported the occasion in his article, “Chiefly -about War Matters,” in the July “Atlantic” of that year. “Hawthorne is shy -and reserved,” wrote Willis in one of his letters to his wife, “but I -found he was a lover of mine, and we enjoyed our acquaintance very much.” -Emerson and Curtis lectured in Washington while Willis was there, and -Greeley dined with him in January, 1862. The novelty and excitement of -life at the capital were agreeable at first, but he soon grew homesick and -pined for his beloved Idlewild. - -In consequence of the war, the circulation of the “Home Journal,” a large -proportion of whose subscribers were in the South, had fallen off -seriously. Willis found himself greatly straitened, and was obliged to -close his country house for a time. Mrs. Willis and the children had spent -the winter and spring of 1861-62 at New Bedford, with her father. In April -she rented Idlewild and went with her family to pass the summer at -Campton, near Plymouth, New Hampshire. In June Willis left Washington and -joined her at Campton for a few days, and then returned to New York and -took lodgings for himself. Morris’s health had grown so feeble that it -became necessary for his partner to apply himself more closely to the -management of the paper and do double work. He had been much opposed to -the renting of Idlewild, and it troubled him to think of the place in the -hands of strangers. He paid it a visit in August, by invitation of his -tenant, a Mr. Dennis, and was very hospitably treated. In the autumn of -the following year (1863) Mrs. Willis opened at Idlewild a little school -for girls, in the hope of persuading her husband to leave New York and -come home for life. He appreciated her energy and devotion,--shown through -long years of failing health and fortune,--but he doomed himself to -homeless exile, and refused to abandon his post. He was opposed to the -school project, as he had been to the renting of Idlewild, unreasonably, -no doubt, since something of the kind had to be done. But it touched his -pride, and with increasing illness there grew upon him a morbid horror of -dependence on any one. He fancied that he could work better in his New -York lodgings. By 1864, moreover, Morris had become quite imbecile, and -the responsibilities of editorship weighed more and more heavily on -Willis. He remained at New York, therefore, running up to Idlewild for an -occasional visit of a day or two, over Sunday, or sometimes for a week at -a time. In July, 1864, General Morris died. Willis was deeply moved as he -stood by his coffin. “My beloved old friend,” he wrote, “looked -wonderfully tranquil, and so sweetly noble that I could not forbear giving -him a parting kiss, though William sobbed as he looked on. So passes from -earth one who loved me devotedly.” After Morris’s death Willis took into -partnership a young man named Hollister, who had capital and enthusiasm; -but the business management of the “Home Journal” began to fall more and -more upon the shoulders of its present editor, Mr. Morris Phillips. - -The story of the last few years of Willis’s life is a melancholy chronicle -of failing powers, and of persistent struggle with disease and narrowing -fates. He had long borne up against ill health with the gay courage of a -cavalier. His pen faltered, but nothing that it wrote gave signs of -bitterness or discouragement. Toward the last his temper, which had been -uniformly sweet, sometimes grew irritable and morbid, though nothing of -this appeared in his writing. As early as 1852 he had fancied that he had -consumption, but his cough turned out to be merely “sympathetic,” and his -lungs were pronounced sound. His disease finally declared itself as -epilepsy, and resulted at the last in paralysis and softening of the -brain. He was subject for years to epileptic fits, occurring periodically, -usually on the tenth day. During these attacks, so long as his strength -lasted, he was extremely violent, but as he grew weaker, they simply made -him unconscious, leaving him greatly prostrated when the fit was over. The -true nature of his malady was, for some years, known only to his wife and -his physician, Dr. Gray, who feared that it might injure Willis’s business -and literary interests if it were publicly understood that his brain was -affected, or in danger of being affected. Willis was himself very -sensitive on this point, and begged that no stranger might see him during -his attacks. Accordingly, the matter was kept secret as long as possible. -After Willis’s death, one of his physicians, Dr. J. B. F. Walker, printed -some “Medical Reminiscences of N. P. Willis,” in the course of which he -said: “Not only was he a martyr to the agonies of sharp and sudden -attacks, but he suffered all the languors of chronic disease. With the -exception of Henry Heine, there has hardly been a man of letters doomed to -such protracted torments from bodily disease.” - -Under these trying circumstances he exhibited a persistence in his work -which astonished his friends. They had not thought that such endurance was -in the man. But from some underlying stratum of character, some strain of -toughness inherent in his Puritan stock, he brought up resources of will -and stubbornness which resisted all appeals. Though complaining sometimes -in his letters that he was “pitilessly overworked,” he declared his -intention of dying in harness, and clung to his desk and his lonely -lodgings till the doctors pronounced him a dying man. A part of the -summers of 1865 and 1866 he spent at Idlewild, but the autumn of the -latter year found him still at work in the city. He was now so weak that -he often fainted in the street and had to be carried to his rooms. His -partner, Morris Phillips, was untiring in his attentions; and finally, -early in November, he brought him home to Idlewild, Willis yielding at -last to the united entreaties of his wife, his father, and his sisters, -and the imperative command of his doctor, to stop work. But he had come -home only to die. He kept his room and seldom went down-stairs. During the -first month he had some enjoyment of the home associations, taking -pleasure in the daily visit of his children, and listening to the reading -of poetry, more for its soothing effect than for any intellectual -apprehension of it. He soon became helpless and slept much of the time, -and when waking lived in continual visions and hallucinations. His -recognition of his family was fitful during the last six or eight weeks of -his life. He was watched and cared for by his wife and faithful Harriet, -and no strange hand ministered to him or marked his failing consciousness. -He died on the afternoon of the 20th of January, 1867,--his sixty-first -birthday,--so quietly that the single watcher could not say when. He was -taken to Boston, and buried in Mount Auburn. The funeral service of the -Episcopal Church was read over his body in St. Paul’s Church, by the Rev. -P. D. Huntington, the bookstores of the city being closed, in token of -respect, while the service lasted. His pall was borne by Longfellow, Dana, -Holmes, Lowell, Fields, Whipple, Edmund Quincy, Dr. Howe, Merritt Trimble, -and Aldrich. “I took the flower which lies before me at this moment, as I -write,” says Dr. Holmes, in a recent number of the “Atlantic,” “from his -coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul’s Church, on a sad, -overclouded winter’s day, in the year 1867.” - -The obituary notices which were published after Willis’s death made it -evident that he had, in a sense, survived his own fame. They were -reminiscent in tone, as though addressed to a generation that knew not -Joseph. It was forty years since he had come before the public with his -maiden book. It was twenty since he had put forth anything entitled to -live; and meanwhile a new literature had grown up in America. The bells of -morning tinkled faintly and far off, lost in the noise of fife and drum, -and the war opened its chasm between the present and the past. For a time -even Irving seemed sentimental and Cooper melodramatic. Yet these survive, -but whether Willis, whose name has so often been joined with theirs, is -destined to find still a hearing, it is for the future alone to say. “He -will be remembered,” wrote his kinsman, Dr. Richard S. Storrs, “as a man -eminently human, with almost unique endowments, devoting rare powers to -insignificant purposes, and curiously illustrating the ‘fine irony of -Nature,’ with which she often lavishes one of her choice productions on -comparatively inferior ends.” - -But, laying aside all question of appeal to that formidable tribunal, -posterity, the many contemporaries who have owed hours of refined -enjoyment to his graceful talent will join heartily with Thackeray in his -assertion: “It is comfortable that there should have been a Willis.” - - - - -FOOTNOTES - - -[1] This statement needs, however, some qualification. Mr. Clark, of Clark -& Maynard, who publish Willis’s poems, tells me that there is a steady -sale for these of about two hundred copies annually. Fifty years after -date this is not bad. How many copies of _Something and Other Poems_, -issued in 1884, will be asked for at the booksellers’ in the year of grace -1934? The copyright of most of Willis’s poems having lately expired, a -cheap reprint of them has just been put forth, bearing date 1884 and -forming No. 352 of “Lovell’s Library.” This seems to point to a continued -popular demand. His prose writings are at present out of print. The fourth -volume of _Stories by American Authors_ contains his “Two Buckets in a -Well,” and it is understood that the publishers of that series have in -mind the publication of a volume of selections from Willis’s prose. - -[2] The book here mentioned was her compilation, _Stories of American Life -by American Authors_, printed in 1830, to which reference was made in -chapter III. A number of Willis’s letters to Miss Mitford are published in -_The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford_, from one of which the above -passage is taken. - -[3] It was doubtless this article which encouraged Bates in the _Maclise -Portrait Gallery_ to describe Willis as a “sumph” and “N(amby) P(amby) -Willis.” - -[4] Mrs. Child. - -[5] Not written by Willis. - -[6] In a late anthology, this poem of Willis is included under the -melodramatic title _Two Women_. An author’s choice of a title is almost as -much to be respected as his text. In this instance, Willis’s own selection -was not only much the better, but it is interesting as probably suggested -to him by lines that were favorites of his in Longfellow’s translation -from Uhland:-- - - “For, invisibly to thee, - Spirits twain have crossed with me.” - -[7] See also his paper on _The American Drama_, for an elaborate review of -_Tortesa_, which, with all its defects, he thought the best American play. - -[8] See Gill’s _Life of Poe_ for a fac-simile letter of Willis to Poe. - -[9] An allusion to the interlocutors in Willis’s _Cloister_ and _Cabinet_, -dialogues between the editors of the _Mirror_ in not very successful -imitation of the _Noctes Ambrosianæ_. - -[10] Cambridge, January 13, 1844. - -[11] J. Addison Richards visited Idlewild to make sketches for his -illustrated article in _Harper’s Magazine_ for January, 1858, _q. v._ for -a full description of the place. - -[12] Lady G. Fane and Mrs. Clifford. - - - - -APPENDIX. - - -BIBLIOGRAPHY. - -The following is a list of the first editions of Willis’s books. In a few -instances these were published first in England. In such cases the London -edition only is given. Most of his later works were published -simultaneously, or nearly so, in England and America. In such cases only -the first American edition is given. Of the various collective editions of -his verse, published since 1844, only the final and most complete is -mentioned, viz., the Clark & Maynard edition of 1868 (No. 29). No really -complete edition of Willis’s writings has ever been printed. The first -collective edition which laid claim to being complete was entitled: The -Complete Works of N. P. Willis. 1 vol., 895 pp. New York: J. S. Redfield, -1846. The thirteen volumes in uniform style, issued by Charles Scribner -from 1849 to 1859, form as nearly a complete edition of Willis’s prose -since 1846 as is ever likely to be made. - - 1. Sketches. 96 pp. Boston: S. G. Goodrich, 1827. - - 2. Fugitive Poetry. 91 pp. Boston: Peirce & Williams, 1829. - - 3. Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers, at Brown - University, on the Day preceding Commencement, September 6, 1831, - with other poems. 76 pp. New York: J. & J. Harper, 1831. - - 4. Melanie and Other Poems. Edited by Barry Cornwall. 231 pp. - London: Saunders & Otley, 1835. The first American edition was - published by Saunders & Otley, at New York, in 1837, and contained - some additional pieces. 242 pp. - - 5. Pencillings by the Way. 3 vols. London: Macrone, 1835. - - This was an imperfect edition. The first complete edition was - published by Morris & Willis, in the “Mirror Library,” New York, - 1844. - - 6. Inklings of Adventure. 3 vols. London: Saunders & Otley, 1836. - - 7. Bianca Visconti; or, The Heart Overtasked. A Tragedy in Five - Acts. New York: Samuel Colman, 1839. - - 8. Tortesa; or, The Usurer Matched. A Play by N. P. Willis. New - York: Samuel Colman, 1839. Nos. 7 and 8 were published in one volume - in England. Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. 1. Dying to keep Him; - or, Tortesa the Usurer. 2. Dying to lose Him; or, Bianca Visconti. - 245 pp. London: Hugh Cunningham, 1839. - - 9. À l’Abri; or, The Tent Pitched. New York: Samuel Colman, 1839. - - This was published as Letters from under a Bridge, together with - poems, by George Virtue, in London, 1840; and under the same title, - with the addition of the “Letter to the Purchaser of Glenmary,” by - Morris & Willis in the “Mirror Library,” New York, 1844. - - 10. Loiterings of Travel. 3 vols. London: Longman, 1840. Published - in America as Romance of Travel; comprising Tales of Five Lands. 1 - vol. New-York: S. Colman, 1840. - - 11. The Sacred Poems of N. P. Willis [Mirror Library]. New York, - 1843. - - 12. Poems of Passion, by N. P. Willis [Mirror Library]. New York, - 1843. - - 13. Lady Jane and Humorous Poems [Mirror Library]. New York, 1844. - - 14. Lecture on Fashion before the New York Lyceum. New York, 1844. - - 15. Dashes at Life with a Free Pencil. New York: Burgess, Stringer & - Co., 1845. - - 16. Rural Letters and Other Records of Thought at Leisure. New York: - Baker & Scribner, 1849. - - 17. People I Have Met. New York: Baker & Scribner, 1850. - - 18. Life Here and There. New York: Baker & Scribner, 1850. - - 19. Hurrygraphs. New York: Charles Scribner, 1851. - - 20. Summer Cruise in the Mediterranean. New York: Charles Scribner, - 1853. - - 21. Fun Jottings; or, Laughs I have taken a Pen to. New York: - Charles Scribner, 1853. - - 22. Health Trip to the Tropics. New York: Charles Scribner, 1854. - - 23. Ephemera. New York: G. W. Simmons, 1854. - - 24. Famous Persons and Places. New York: Charles Scribner, 1854. - - 25. Out Doors at Idlewild; or, The Shaping of a Home on the Banks of - the Hudson. New York: Charles Scribner, 1855. - - 26. The Rag Bag. A Collection of Ephemera. New York: Charles - Scribner, 1855. - - 27. Paul Fane; or, Parts of a Life Else Untold. A Novel. New York: - Charles Scribner, 1857. - - 28. The Convalescent. New York: Charles Scribner, 1859. - - 29. The Poems, Sacred, Passionate, and Humorous of N. P. Willis. - Complete edition. 380 pp. New York: Clark & Maynard, 1868. - -The following list includes the works, edited, compiled, and partly -written by Willis, but not the various journals and magazines of which he -was editor. - - 1. The Legendary. Edited by N. P. Willis. 2 vols. Boston: Samuel G. - Goodrich, 1828. - - 2. The Token. A Christmas and New Year’s Present. Edited by N. P. - Willis. Boston: S. G. Goodrich, 1829. - - 3. American Scenery. From Drawings by W. H. Bartlett. The Literary - Department by N. P. Willis, Esq. 2 vols. London: George Virtue, - 1840. - - 4. Canadian Scenery. From Drawings by W. H. Bartlett. The Literary - Department by N. P. Willis, Esq. 2 vols. London: George Virtue, - 1842. - - 5. The Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland. Illustrated by Drawings - from W. H. Bartlett. The Literary Portion of the Work by N. P. - Willis and J. Sterling Coyne, Esqs. London: George Virtue, 1842. - - 6. The Opal. New York: J. C. Riker, 1844. - - 7. Trenton Falls. Edited by N. Parker Willis. 90 pp. New York: - George P. Putnam, 1851. - - 8. Memoranda of the Life of Jenny Lind. By N. Parker Willis. 238 pp. - Philadelphia: Robert E. Peterson, 1851. - - 9. The Thought Blossom. A Memento. New York: Leavitt & Allen, 1854. - - - - -INDEX. - - - Aberdeen, Lord, 151, 186, 189. - - Adams, John, principal of Phillips Academy, 18, 27. - - Adams, William, 27, 28. - - Album, The, 49. - - Aldrich, T. B., 298, 336, 350. - - Alger’s Life of Forrest, 316. - - Allston, Washington, 91. - - Amaranth, The, 101. - - Amateur, The, travesties Willis, 90. - - American Monthly Magazine, The, 20, 21, 51; - established by Willis, 82; - contributors to, 83, 84; - Willis’s contributions to, 84-88; - discontinuance of, 98, 99; 206, 207, 265. - - American Review, The, 275. - - Andover, school life at, 18-20. - - Annuals, The, 77-80. - - Antrobus’s, Lady, a Supper at, 159. - - Appleton, T. G., 82. - - Apthorp, Mrs., her seminary at New Haven, 57. - - Athenæum, The, Willis’s contributions to, 164, 216, 217. - - Atlantic Monthly, The, 345; - reminiscences of Willis in, 351. - - Atlantic Souvenir, The, 49, 77. - - Aytoun, W. E., his parody of Melanie, 181. - - - Bailey, John, an ancestor of Willis, 4. - - Baillie, Joanna, Willis’s acquaintance with, 160, 163-165, 167; 271. - - Barry Cornwall. See _Procter_. - - Bartlett, W. H., 128, 221, 222, 249. - - Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms quotes Willis, 341. - - Beattie, Dr. Wm., 97, 149, 166, 330. - - Beecher, Edward, 35, 94, 95. - - Belknap, Abigail, 5. - - Benjamin, Mary, Willis’s engagement to, 96, 97, 140; - poem to, 97, 183. - - Benjamin, Park, 83, 96. - - Berkeley, Grantley, his duel with Maginn, 196, 197. - - Bermuda, visit to, 321. - - Blackwood’s Magazine, 180, 195. - - Blessington, Margaret, Countess of, Willis’s introduction to, 131, - 134, 135; - her receptions at Seamore Place, 137-139; - her position in literature and society, 137, 138, 158, 159; - her kindness to Willis, 141, 148, 156, 165, 168; - letter to Willis, from, 173, 174; 151, 186, 192, 193, 237, 246, - 251, 270, 283. - - Bolney Priory, 283. - - Bonaparte, Jerome, entertains Willis at Florence, 120. - - Bonaparte, Lucien, 159. - - Boston, Willis’s residence in, 10, 16, 17, 71-99; - literature and society in, 83, 92, 93; - Willis’s feelings toward, 99. - - Boston Courier, 86, 87. - - Boston Latin School, 16, 17. - - Boston Recorder, established by Willis’s father, 9; - his contributions to, 48, 49, 52, 71. - - Boston Statesman, 89, 91. - - Boston Traveller, 90. - - Botta, Mrs. Vincenzo, 293. - - Bowring, Sir John, 111, 119, 141, 194, 271. - - Bristol Reporter, 49. - - Brother Jonathan, The, Willis a contributor to, 259, 260, 262, - 263; 239. - - Brown, Sexton, his epitaph on Cæsar, 332. - - Brown University, Willis’s poem before, 100, 104. - - Bryant, W. C., 49, 217, 220, 291, 308, 310, 313. - - Buckingham, J. T., 86-88. - - Bulwer, E. L., 138, 141, 237. - - Bushnell, Horace, 32, 33, 47. - - Byron, Ada, 164, 168. - - Byron, Lady, 164, 168, 216. - - - Cæsar, Dr. Kane’s dog, 334. - - Campbell, Thomas, a dinner with, 166, 167; 149, 245. - - Cape Cod, letters from, 322, 323. - - Carr, Mr., offers Willis Secretaryship at Tangiers, 112. - - Censor, The, 90. - - Channing, W. E., 144, 216; - Willis’s Sketch of, 164. - - Charleville, Lady, 156, 157. - - Cheney, J., 80, 81. - - Child, Mrs. L. M., 80, 90, 199. - - Cholera in Paris, the, 114, 115. - - Christian Examiner, The, 48. - - Christian Watchman, The, 49. - - Christopher North. See _Wilson_. - - Cincinnati Monthly Review, 216. - - Citation and Examination of William Shakespeare, MS. of given to - Willis, 131. - - Class Day poem, 59. - - Clay, Henry, 221, 242. - - Clifton, Josephine, plays in Bianca Visconti, 231-233. - - Colvin, Sidney, on Willis, 133. - - Concord, N. H., school life at, 16. - - Congdon, C. T., his Reminiscences of a Journalist quoted, 260. - - Conic Sections Rebellion, 47. - - Connecticut Journal, 49. - - Constantinople, visit to, 126-128. - - Cooper, J. F., entertains Willis in Paris, 110, 111; - Willis’s defense of, 216; 136, 210, 291, 306, 351. - - Cork, Dowager Countess of, 166. - - Corsair, The, 227; - established by Porter and Willis, 239-242; - Willis’s contributions to, 243, 244, 247, 249, 253; - Thackeray’s letters to, 253-256; - suspends publication, 259, 260; 265. - - Coughton Court, visit at, 172. - - Court Magazine, The, Willis’s contributions to, 140, 154, 206. - - Cox, William, 103. - - Culprit Fay, The, 217. - - - Dalhousie, Earl of, Willis’s visit to, 149, 150, 152; - letters from, 174, 190; 189. - - Dalhousie, Lady, 149, 190; - letter from, 191. - - Dana, C. A., 63, 332. - - Dana, R. H., 350. - - Dawes, Rufus, 84, 91, 92. - - Day, Jeremiah, 35. - - De Forest, Mrs., 58. - - Dewey, Dr. O. P., 308, 310. - - Diary, Passages from Willis’s, 165-169. - - Dickens, Charles, Willis’s acquaintance with, 264. - - Disraeli, Benjamin, 138, 237, 252, 253. - - Doane, G. W., 81. - - Dollar Magazine, The, Willis’s editorship of, 260. - - D’Orsay, Count Alfred, 75, 138, 158, 166, 237, 251. - - Douglas, Francis, 8. - - Douglas, Lucy, 6, 55. - - Down Town Bard, lyrics by, 267. - - Drake, J. R., 217, 292. - - Duganne, A. J. H., his Parnassus in Pillory, 298. - - Durant, Henry, Willis’s room-mate at Yale, 31, 40. - - Duyckinck, Evert A., 293. - - Dwight, Louis, 27, 28. - - Dwight, Louisa. See _Louisa Willis_. - - - Eastern Argus, The, 8. - - Edinburgh, visit to, 150. - - Edinburgh Review, The, 118, 194. - - Eglintoun Tournament, 244. - - Emerson, R. W., 16, 345. - - England, Willis’s arrival in, 130; - residence in, 135-179; - liking for, 135-137; - second visit to, 243-259; - third visit to, 276, 283-286. - - English, T. D., 275. - - Erie Canal, the trip along, 60, 61. - - Europe, Willis’s life in, 107-179; - influence of, on his character and writings, 107-110. - - Everett, Edward, 16, 18, 167; - Inklings dedicated to, 206. - - - Fable for Critics, A, passage from, 302. - - Fane, Lady Georgiana, 246, 343, 344. - - “Fanny Fern.” See _Sarah P. Willis_. - - Fay, T. S., edits the Mirror, 100; - his writings, 102, 103; 132, 284, 291. - - Felton, C. C., 206. - - Fields, J. T., 271, 332, 350. - - Fishwoman’s Son, The, a parody of Willis, 304. - - Flint, Rev. Timothy, 216, 217. - - Florence, Willis’s residence at, 119-125. - - Fonblanque, A. W., 138; - offended by Pencillings, 192, 193. - - Forget-Me-Not, The, 77. - - Forrest, Edwin, Willis involved in his divorce suit, 307-321; - assaults Willis, 312-314. - - Forrest, Mrs. Edwin, _vide supra_. - - Forster, John, his Life of Landor quoted, 133, 264. - - Franklin, Benjamin, 6. - - Franklin, Lady, 163. - - Franklin, Sir John, 160. - - Fraser, James, 197, 237. - - Fraser’s Magazine, reviews Pencillings, 194-197. - - Fuller, Hiram, 273, 276, 286. - - - Germany, visit to, 284, 286. - - Gibson, John, teaches Willis to Sculp, 121. - - Gift, the, 82, 262. - - Glenmary, 32, 163, 220; - description of, 223; - Willis’s life at, 223-231; - sale of, 263; 264, 285, 329. - - Godey’s Lady’s Book, Willis a contributor to, 260-263, 266, 286; - parodied in, 303, 304. - - Godwin, Parke, 308-310, 313. - - Goodrich, S. G., 49, 72; - his impressions of Willis, 73-75, 77, 81, 89, 90. - - Gordon, Duke of, visit to the, 151, 152; 186; - his opinion of Pencillings, 190. - - Gore House, Lady Blessington at, 156, 158, 193, 194, 252. - - Graham’s Magazine, Willis a contributor to, 260-262, 266. - - Gray, Dr. J. F., 330, 348. - - Greeley, Horace, 293, 345. - - Greene, Nathaniel, 91. - - Greenough, Horatio, his friendship with Willis abroad, 110, 120, 121. - - Grigsby, H. B., his reminiscences of Willis at college, 47, 48. - - Grinnell, Cornelia. See _Cornelia Grinnell Willis_. - - Grinnell, Hon. Joseph, 121, 287, 321, 323, 330, 340. - - Grisi, Julia, a supper with, 159. - - Guiccioli, Countess, 112, 119, 165, 168. - - - Halleck, Fitz Greene, 56, 102, 220, 264, 291. - - Harding, Chester, 63, 92. - - Harper’s Ferry, excursion to, 345. - - Harper’s Monthly Magazine, description of Idlewild in, 332. - - Harvard College, 17. - - Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 72, 74, 80, 345. - - Hildreth, Richard, 83. - - Hillhouse, James, his influence on Willis, 70. - - Hoffman. C. F., 292, 293. - - Holmes, Dr. O. W., his recollections of Willis, 75; 271, 350, 351. - - Home Journal, The, 15, 163, 215, 266; - established by Morris and Willis, 287; - character of, 288; - Willis’s contributions to, 273, 288-290, 293, 322, 325, 328, 330, - 338, 340, 342, 344; - associate editors of, 296, 298, 335, 336; 304; - on Edwin Forrest, 308, 311, 314, 319; 337; - its circulation, 346; 347. - - Howe, Dr. S. G., with Willis in Paris, 110, 111; 350. - - - Idlewild, 93, 307; - Willis’s country seat, 326-350; - description of, 326, 327, 332 _note_; - naming of, 328, 329; 345-347, 349. - - Imaginary Conversations, Landor’s intrusted to Willis, 131. - - Independent Chronicle, The, 6, 7. - - Ireland, tour of, 244-246. - - Irving, Washington, 136, 140, 291; - exchanges visits with Willis, 332, 333; 351. - - Italy, residence in, 119-125. - - - Jackson, Andrew, 135, 196. - - Jacobs, Harriet, 276, 350; - story of her escape from slavery, 284, 285. - - Jeffrey, Lord, a dinner with, 150; 194. - - Jenkins, Joseph, 28, 93; - marries Mary Willis, 30. - - Johnson family, The, of Stratford, Conn., 55. - - - Kemble, Charles, 246. - - Kennedy, J. P., letter from, 318; 332, 342. - - Killinger, Freiherr Von, letter from, 217, 218. - - Knickerbocker Magazine, The, 292. - - Knickerbocker School, The, 290-293. - - - Ladies’ Companion, The, 157, 261. - - Lafayette, Marquis of, 110. - - Lamb, Charles and Mary, a breakfast with, 141. - - Landon, Miss L. E., 80, 86, 184, 197, 237, 238. - - Landor, W. S., Willis’s relations with, 131-135; - letter from, 134; 141, 271. - - Langdon, Octavus, entertains Willis at Smyrna, 128, 129. - - Ledger, The, 66. - - Leech, John, 165. - - Legendary, The, edited by Willis, 72, 75, 80, 81. - - Leigh, Augusta, 164. - - Leipsic, The great fair at, 286. - - Lennox, Lady Sophia, 151. - - Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 342, 343; - letter from, 344. - - Linonian Society, The, 37, 41, 51; - poem before 271. - - Literati of New York, The, 274, 293. - - Livingston, Miss Adele, visit to at Skaneateles, 62. - - Lockhart, J. G., 77; - his attack on Pencillings, 185-190, 193, 196, 199. - - London, residence in, 137-149, 154-169. - - London Literary Souvenir, 77. - - London Morning Herald, 129. - - London Morning Chronicle, 286, 287. - - London Times, on the Willis and Marryat affair, 202, 203, 205. - - Longfellow, H. W., a fellow townsman of Willis, 1-3; 10, 117, 220, - 269 _note_, 350. - - Lover, Samuel, 253. - - Lowell, J. R., correspondence with Willis, 300, 301; - his estimate of Willis, 66, 302; 350. - - Lucca, Baths of, 122. - - Lunt, George, 75, 83, 91. - - Lyceum, The, 49. - - Lynch, Miss Anne. See _Mrs. Vincenzo Botta_. - - - McLellan, Isaac, 20, 83. - - Maclise Portrait Gallery, 196 _note_. - - Macready, W. C., 253, 308. - - Madden, R. R., his Life of Lady Blessington quoted, 151, 192, 245; - impressions of Willis, 156, 157. - - Maginn, Dr. William, reviews Pencillings, 195, 196, 199; - his duel with Berkeley, 196, 197. - - Malta, sojourn at, 130. - - Marryat, Frederick, 89, 154, 193; - his quarrel with Willis, 197-206; 234. - - Marseilles, letter from, 109; adventure at, 124. - - Marsh, G. P., 341. - - Marshall, Emily, 62; acrostic to, 98. - - Martineau, Harriet, her impressions of Willis, 142-148. - - Mediterranean, Cruise up the, 125-129. - - Memorial, The, 49. - - Metropolitan Magazine, The, Willis’s contributions to, 140, 154, 206; - its review of Pencillings, 89, 197-201. - - Michell, William, 178, 179, 251. - - Millingen, Dr., 128. - - Mirror Library, The, 269. - - Mitford, Mary R., 76, 142, 152. - - Moncrieff, Lady, 150, 159. - - Moore, Thomas, 141, 160, 171; - his remarks about O’Connell, 186, 188, 192, 193. - - Morgan, Lady Sydney, 163, 253. - - Morris, G. P., editor of the Mirror, 100; - his character and talents, 100-102; 110, 112, 155, 197, 206; - coolness between, and Willis, 236-239; - establishes The New Mirror, 265; - Evening Mirror, 273; - National Press and Home Journal, 286-88; - Willis’s affection for, 296, 297, 347; 303, 327. - - Morse, S. F. B., 110. - - Motley, J. L., 82, 96. - - Musical World, The, 15. - - Mustapha, the perfumer, 127, 128, 213. - - - Nahant, 88, 92, 209, 212. - - National Press, The, started by Morris, 286, 287. - - Neal, John, 1, 81, 303. - - New England Galaxy, The, 88. - - New Haven in 1827, 37-39. - - New Mirror, The, established, 265, 266; - Willis’s contributions to, 266-269, 288, 308, 338; - suspends publication, 272; 296, 299, 300. - - New Monthly Magazine, The, Willis’s contributions to, 140, 154, 155, - 161, 206, 227, 249. - - New World, The, 239. - - New York Albion, 259. - - New York Commercial Advertiser, 306. - - New York Courrier and Enquirer, 242, 307, 320. - - New York Courier des États Unis, 332. - - New York Evening Mirror, edited by Morris and Willis, 266, 273, 275, - 286. - - New York Evening Post, 291, 313. - - New York Herald, on the Forrest testimony, 310, 311. - - New York Mirror; - Willis becomes editor of, 99; - described 102, 103; - Willis’s foreign correspondence in, 103, 104, 114, 115-119, 129, - 130, 153, 172, 184, 185, 188, 189, 197, 201, 206, 237; - Willis ceases to edit, 236; - discontinuance of, 265; - miscellaneous contributions to, 48, 141, 155, 193, 215, 221, 223, - 231, 233, 236, 249, 261; 145, 282, 238, 256, 284, 292. - - New York, literature and society in, 290-294; - Willis’s residence in, 288-290, 294. - - New York Spirit of the Times, 238. - - Niagara, 62, 219, 221. - - Norfolk Beacon, 47. - - Norton, Caroline, 141, 184, 237, 253. - - North American Review, The, 2, 206. - - - O’Connell, Daniel, 186, 188, 192. - - O’Conor, Charles, 314. - - Opal, The, 82, 262, 286. - - Otis, Mrs. H. G., 93. - - Owego, N. Y., 32, 222, 223, 225-227, 262. - - - Pardoe, Miss, 160, 163. - - Paris, residence in, 110-115; - wedding trip to, 178. - - Park Street Church, 4, 11, 35, 93, 94; - excommunicates Willis, 95. - - Parnassus in Pillory, passages from, 298-300. - - Parton, James, 296-298, 335, 336. - - Parton, Mrs. James. See _Sarah P. Willis_. - - Patterson, Commodore, 125, 129. - - Paulding, J. K., 102, 243, 292. - - Payson, Rev. Edward, 9. - - Percival, J. G., 70, 80, 184, 217. - - “Peter Parley.” See _S. G. Goodrich_. - - Phillips, Morris, 288, 296, 297, 347, 349. - - Pierpont, Rev. John, 343. - - Pike, Albert, 83, 84. - - Pirate, The, prospectus of, 240. - - Placide, Harry, 231. - - Poe, Edgar A., his relations with Willis, 273; - impressions of Willis, 274, 275; 206, 217, 269, 293, 295, 296, 303. - - Poniatowski, Prince, 120. - - Porter, Admiral Ker, 164. - - Porter, Jane, Willis’s friendship with, 160, 163-166, 170, 172, 176, - 177. - - Porter, Dr. T. O., letters to, 225, 234, 238, 248, 249; - associated with Willis on the Corsair, 239, 240, 254, 259. - - Portland, Maine, Willis’s birthplace, 1, 8, 10. - - Potomac Guardian, 6, 7. - - Praed, W. M., 163. - - Procter, Bryan Waller, 138; - edits Melanie, 180. - - Pumpelly, Geo. J., 32, 223. - - - Quarterly Review, The, abuses Pencillings, 133, 185-191, 194, 197. - - Quincy, Edmund, 350. - - - Ramsay, Lord, 150, 190; - letter from, 174, 175. - - Rand, the portrait painter, 166, 227. - - Raymond, H. J., 307. - - Remember Me, 82. - - Republic, The, 33. - - Rives, Mr., appoints Willis _attaché_, 113. - - Robinson, H. C., a breakfast with, 141. - - Rogers, Samuel, 149, 165. - - “Roy,” Willis’s _nom de plume_, 48. - - Ruth Hall, caricature of Willis in, 334-337. - - - Saratoga, letters from, 100; - described in Inklings, 209-211; 281. - - Sargent’s Magazine, 262. - - Scioto Gazette, 6. - - Scotland, visit to, 149-152. - - Scriptural poems, origin of, 10; - estimate of, 66-69. - - Seamore Place, 137, 156. - - Sharon Springs, letters from, 322. - - Shaw, Mrs. Fanny, her friendship with Willis, 160-162, 165, 166, 170. - - Shawsheen River, the, at Andover. 20-22. - - Shirley Park, at Croydon, 160, 161, 169, 170, 278. - - Sigourney, Mrs. L. H., 75, 80, 81, 84, 184, 261. - - Silliman, Benjamin, 35, 36, 49. - - Skaneateles, visit to, 62. - - Skinner, Mrs Mary, her intimacy with Willis, 160; - letter to, from Willis, 161-163; - letter from, to Jane Porter, 176; 165, 219, 278. - - Slingsby Papers, the, 63, 77, 154, 155, 207, 211. - - Smith, Forbearance, 76. - - Smith, Horace and James, 138, 246. - - Smyrna, visit to, 128, 129. - - Snelling, W. J., lampoons Willis, 88-90, 198, 199. - - Stace, Mary. See _Mary Stace Willis_. - - Stace, Gen. Wm., 170, 171, 243, 262. - - Stanhope, Sir Leicester and Mrs., 141, 165, 166. - - Staunton, Sir Geo., 156. - - Stepney, Lady, 156, 246. - - Steventon, Vicarage, 283, 284. - - Stoddard, R. H., visits Glenmary, 228. - - Stone, W. L., 81, 306. - - Storm King, named by Willis, 327, 331. - - Storrs, Dr. R. S., 351. - - Stuart, Isaac, 28, 30. - - Stuart, Lady Dudley, 159. - - Sumner, Charles, 220, 343. - - Susquehanna, rafting on the, 227. - - - Talfourd, Serjeant, 174, 249. - - Taylor, Bayard, 117, 119; - befriended by Willis, 298; 299, 331. - - Telegraph, The, 49. - - Thackeray, W. M., 215; - writes for the Corsair, 253-256; - his notices of Willis, 256-259; 352. - - Thought Blossom, The, 82. - - Throckmorton, Sir Chas., visit to, 170, 172. - - Token, The, 49; - edited by Willis, 72-74, 77, 80, 81. - - Trenton Falls, first visit to, 62; - described, 76; - letters from, 322-324. - - Truth: a New Tear’s Gift for Scribblers, lampooning Willis, 89. - - Tupper, M. F., 165. - - - Undercliff, 247. - - Unitarians, 11, 16, 17, 18, 32, 93. - - United Brothers, Society of, poem before, 104. - - United Service Gazette, The, 205. - - United States, the, cruise of, 125, 129. - - Upper ten thousand, the, 256, 341. - - Utica, N. Y., visit to, 61. - - - Vail, Minister, 156. - - Van Buren, John, 33, 34; - engaged in Forrest suit, 34, 316; - challenged by Willis, 317, 318. - - Van Buren, Martin, 110, 222. - - “Veritas,” letters to the Mirror, 237, 238. - - Verplanck, G. C., 293. - - Vienna, projected visit to, 284. - - Vincent, Wm., 244, 283. - - Virtue, Geo., 221, 244. - - Voorhies, Mrs., 308. - - - Walker, Dr. J. B. F., medical reminiscences of Willis, 349. - - Wallack, James, plays Tortesa, 232-234, 246. - - Washington, correspondence from, 221, 222, 287; - during the war, 342-346. - - Washington National Intelligencer, 263, 266. - - Watts, Alaric A., 77. - - Webb, J. W., his attacks on Willis, 242, 307, 320. - - Webster, Daniel, commends Pencillings, 119; 214. - - Weld, H. H., 260. - - Westminster Review, The, 111, 194. - - Wheaton, Henry, 284. - - Whipple, E. P., 332, 350. - - Wikoff, Henry, recollections of Willis, 33, 34; 35, 37, 58, 239; - his part in the Forrest case, 34, 308, 312. - - Willis, Bailey, 5, 329. - - Willis, Charles, 5. - - Willis, Cornelia Grinnell, 121, 287, 308, 310, 316, 318, 319, 326, - 343, 346. - - Willis, Edith, 329. - - Willis, George, 4. - - Willis, Grinnell, 294. - - Willis, Hannah Parker, her character and influence, 13, 14; - her death, 275. - - Willis, Imogen, 264, 276, 284, 288. - - Willis, Julia, 15, 45, 140. - - Willis, Lilian, 294. - - Willis, Louisa, 28, 284. - - Willis, Lucy, 19. - - Willis, Mary, 30. - - Willis, Mary Stace, her engagement and marriage, 170, 171, 176, 177; - letter to, from Willis, 176, 177; 219-221, 228, 243, 244; - her death, 276; 278. - - Willis, Nathaniel, Sr., 5, 6. - - Willis, Nathaniel, Jr., his education and character, 5, 7, 8, 11-13; - edits three newspapers, 8-10; 17, 26, 95. - - Willis, Nathaniel Parker, born at Portland, 1; - ancestry, 6-10; - home and school life, 11-17; - at Andover, 18-30; - at Yale College, 31-70; - begins his literary career in Boston, 71-82; - edits the American Monthly, 82-100; - goes abroad as foreign correspondent of the New York Mirror, 100-106; - spends five months in Paris, 110-115; - a year in Italy, 119-125; - half a year in a cruise up the Mediterranean, 125-130; - four months more in Italy, Switzerland, and France, 130; - two years in England, 130-179; - marries, 177; - returns to America and travels and corresponds for the Mirror, - 219-222; - settles at Owego, N. T., 223-238; - starts the Corsair, and makes a second trip to England, 239-259; - returns to America and edits Brother Jonathan, 259-263; - sells his place at Owego and moves to New York, 263; - edits the New Mirror, 265-272; - the Evening Mirror, 273-275; - loses his wife and makes a third visit to England, 276; - taken ill in London, 283; - makes a short visit to Germany and returns to America, 284; - marries again, 287; - edits the Home Journal and makes his residence in New York, 287-307; - becomes involved in the Forrest divorce case, 307-319; - is assaulted by Edwin Forrest, 312-314; - goes on a health trip to Bermuda, the West Indies, and the Southern - States, 321; - buys a country home on the Hudson, 326; - life at Idlewild, 329-334; - spends the first year of the war at Washington, writing letters to - the Home Journal, 342-346; - takes lodgings in New York, 346, 347; - in failing health, 347-349; - dies at Idlewild, 350. - _Writings_:-- - Absalom, 48, 49, 66, 296. - Absent, the, 155. - À L’ABRI. See LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. - Albina M’Lush, 85, 90. - American Literature, 216. - AMERICAN SCENERY, 128, 221, 222, 244. - Annoyer, the, 75, 90, 97. - Bandit of Austria, the, 251. - Baron von Raffloff, 85. - Belfry Pigeon, the, 183. - Betrothal, the, 232, 233. - Better Moments, 69, 169. - Beware of Dogs and Waltzing, 277. - BIANCA VISCONTI, 231, 232, 234, 235, 249. - Birth-Day Verses, 13, 77, 183. - Born to love Pigs and Chickens, 279. - Broadway, a Sketch, 262. - Brown’s Day with the Mimpsons, 258. - Burial of Arnold, the, 48, 59. - By a Here and Thereian, 154. - Cabinet, the, 299. - CANADIAN SCENERY, 244, 247, 248. - Captain Thompson, 85. - Chamber Scene, 155. - Charming Widow of Sixty, A, 265. - Cherokee’s Threat, the, 39, 57, 63, 155, 207. - City Lyrics, 267, 268. - Cloister, the, 299. - Confessional, the, 183. - Contemplation, 82, 98. - CONVALESCENT, THE, 330-333, 340, 343. - Countess Nyschriem and the Handsome Artist, the, 277. - Daguerreotype Sketches of New York, 266. - DASHES AT LIFE WITH A FREE PENCIL, reviewed by Thackeray, 256; - estimate of, 276-282; 262, 286, 325, 338. - Death of Arnold, the. See the Burial of Arnold. - Death of Harrison, the, 270. - Death of the Gentle Usher, the, 85. - Dedication Hymn, 97. - Departed Improvisatrice, the, 242. - Diary of Town Trifles, 267. - Dilemma, the, 216. - Divan, the, 242. - Dying Alchemist, the, 105. - Dying for Him. See TORTESA THE USURER. - Edith Linsey, 39, 62, 63, 65, 76, 85, 88, 155, 161, 183, 212, 213, - 277, 323, 324. - Elms of New Haven, the, 271. - Elopement, the, 84. - EPHEMERA, 216, 261, 264, 276, 288, 289, 337. - FAMOUS PERSONS AND PLACES, 286, 337. - Fancy Ball, the, 84. - Female Ward, the, 92, 279. - First Impressions of Europe. See PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY. - Fitz Powys and the Nun, 261. - Flirtation and Fox Chasing, 277. - Florence Gray, 183. - Four Rivers, the, 153, 223. - Fragments of Rambling Impressions, 216. - F. Smith, 63, 85, 88, 92, 155. - FUGITIVE POETRY, 97. - FUN JOTTINGS, 337. - Gallery, the, 242. - Getting to Windward, 277. - Ghost Ball at Congress Hall, the, 280, 281. - Gipsy of Sardis, the, 127, 129, 155, 212, 213. - Hagar in the Wilderness, 296. - HEALTH TRIP TO THE TROPICS, A, 322. - High Life in Europe and American Life, 276. - HURRYGRAPHS, 322. - Idle Man, the, 86. - Imei the Jew, 233. - Imogen and Cymbeline, 265. - Incidents in the Life of a Quiet Man, 85. - Incidents on the Hudson, 154, 218. - Inkling of Adventure, An, 85. - INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, 178, 206; - estimate of, 207-215; 217, 247, 276. - Inlet of Peach Blossoms, the, 280. - Invalid Letters from Germany, 286, 322. - Jephthah’s Daughter, 66. - Jottings, 267. - Jottings Down in London, 253. - Just You and I, 267. - Kate Crediford, 280. - LADY JANE, 260, 269-271. - Lady Rachel, 277. - Lady Ravelgold, 86, 167, 252. - Larks in Vacation, 63, 85, 155. - Lazarus and Mary, 68. - Leaves from a Colleger’s Album, 76. - Leaves from a Table-Book, 261. - Leaves from the Heart Book of Ernest Clay, 252, 256, 277, 279. - LECTURE ON FASHION, 272. - LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE, 127, 132, 207, 223; - estimate of, 224-231; 236, 242, 248, 249, 263, 269, 282, 302, - 322, 330. - Letters of Horace Fritz, Esq., 85. - Letter to the Unknown Purchaser and Next Occupant of Glenmary, 263. - LIFE HERE AND THERE, 325. - Lines on leaving Europe, 13, 179, 236. - Lines to Laura W----, 58. - Log in the Archipelago, A, 130, 206. - LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. See ROMANCE OF TRAVEL. - Loiterings of Travel, 153. - Lookings on at the War, 342, 343. - Lord Iron, 181, 182. - Lost Letter Rewritten, A, 130. - Love and Diplomacy, 154, 213, 277. - Love in a Cottage, 268. - Love in the Library. See Edith Linsey. - Lunatic’s Skate, the, 17, 20, 46, 154, 218, 277. - Madhouse of Palermo, the, 154. - Mad Senior, the, 155. - Marquis in Petticoats, the, 262. - Meena Dimity, 279. - MELANIE AND OTHER POEMS, 161, 164, 166, 179-181; - estimate of, 181-184; 236, 270. - MEMORANDA OF THE LIFE OF JENNY LIND, 324. - Minute Philosophies, 88, 206. - Misanthropic Hours, 52. - Miss Jones’s Son, 279. - More Particularly, 267. - Morning in the Library, A, 88. - My Adventures at the Tournament, 244. - My Hobby--Rather, 154. - New Year’s Verses, 71. - Niagara, Lake Ontario, and the St. Lawrence, 60, 62, 154, 212, 218. - Nora Mehidy, 279. - Notes from a Scrap Book, 215. - Notes upon a Ramble, 85. - On a Picture of a Girl, 81. - On Dress, 82, 286. - On the Death of a Young Lady, 57. - Open Air Musings in the City, 322. - OUT DOORS AT IDLEWILD, 330. - Paletto’s Bride, 251. - Parrhasius, 105. - Pasquali, the Tailor of Venice, 85, 252. - Passages from an Epistolary Journal, 253. - Passages from Correspondence, 261. - Paulding the Author disinterred, 242, 243. - PAUL FANE, 121, 151; - estimate of, 338-340. - P. Calamus, Esq., 84. - Pedlar Karl, 85, 154, 207. - Pencil, the, 242. - PENCILLINGS BY THE WAY, 85, 100, 104; - estimate of, 115-119; 126, 130, 138, 152, 153, 157, 178; - profits from, 184, 185; - reception of, by British press, 185-199; 193, 206, 207, 213; - translation of, 218; 236, 237, 249, 253, 269, 284, 298, 325. - PEOPLE I HAVE MET, 256, 325. - Phantom Head upon the Table, the, 278. - Pharisee and the Barber, the, 17. - Picker and Piler, the, 155, 227, 277. - Pity of the Park Fountain, the, 268. - Plain Man’s Love, A, 322. - POEM DELIVERED BEFORE THE SOCIETY OF UNITED BROTHERS, 104. - POEMS OF PASSION, 269, 275. - Poet and the Mandarin, the, 280. - Portrait, A, 98. - Power of an Injured Look, the, 82, 262. - Poyntz’s Aunt, 157, 261, 265. - Psyche before the Tribunal of Venus, 81. - Quarter Deck, the, 242. - RAG-BAG, THE, 338. - Revelation of a Previous Life, A, 278. - Revenge of the Signor Basil, the, 155, 213, 277. - Reverie at Glenmary, 230. - ROMANCE OF TRAVEL, 236, 248; - estimate of, 249-252; 276. - RURAL LETTERS, 286, 322. - Ruse, the, 81. - SACRED POEMS, 269. - Sacrifice of Abraham, the, 48, 49. - Saturday Afternoon, 81, 98. - SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND, 244, 247, 248. - Scenes of Fear, 63, 85, 155. - Scholar of Thebet Ben Chorat, the, 105. - Scrap Book, the, 86. - Scribblings, 86. - She was not There, 169. - SKETCHES, 66, 72, 73, 98. - Sketches of Travel, 153, 172, 221, 247. - Slipshoddities, 267. - Soldier’s Widow, the, 81. - Sparklings of Tenth Waves, 215. - Spirit Love of Ione S----, the, 279. - Spring, 236. - Story writ for the Beautiful, A, 243. - String that tied my Lady’s Shoe, the, 100. - Substance of a Diary of Sickness, the, 88. - SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN, A, 325. - Tales of Five Lands. See ROMANCE OF TRAVEL. - Tent Pitched, the. See LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. - Tête-à-tête Confessions, 86. - Those Ungrateful Blidginses, 279. - Thoughts in a Balcony at Daybreak, 155, 168. - Thoughts while making the Grave of a New-Born Child, 264. - Three Weeks’ Trip to the West, 341. - To ----, 100. - To ----, 155. - To a City Pigeon, 81, 106. - To a Face Beloved, 193, 236. - To Edith, from the North. See To M----, from Abroad. - To Ermengarde, 216, 236. - To M----, from Abroad, 97, 183. - To my Mother from the Apennines, 13, 183. - To the Julia of Some Years Ago, 289. - Tom Fane and I, 154, 207. - Tom Hat, the, 82. - TORTESA THE USURER, 233-235, 248, 249, 274 _note_. - TRENTON FALLS, 324. - Two Buckets in a Well, 2 _note_. - Two Ways of Dying for a Husband. See BIANCA VISCONTI and TORTESA - THE USURER. - Unseen Spirits, 269. - Unwritten Music, 84, 294. - Unwritten Philosophy, 76, 142. - Unwritten Poetry, 76, 142. - Upon the Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Stanhope, 141. - Usurer Matched, the. See TORTESA THE USURER. - Violanta Cesarini, 250, 251. - What I saw at the Fair, 286. - While We hold You by the Button, 267. - Widow by Brevet, the, 130. - Wife’s Appeal, the, 105. - Wigwam _v._ Almacks, 282. - - Willis, Richard Storrs, 7, 14, 284, 298, 308, 310, 316. - - Willis, Sarah P., “Fanny Fern,” 14; - writes Ruth Hall, 334-337. - - Wilson, John, 52; - breakfast with, 150; - reviews Melanie, 180, 181; 185, 189. - - Winthrop, Theodore, 58, 343. - - Woodworth, Samuel, 100. - - Woolwich, 170, 172. - - Woolsey, T. D., 35, 42. - - - Yale College, 17; - Willis’s career at, 31-70; - condition of, in 1827, 35-37; - poem before, 271. - - Youth’s Companion, The, established by Nathaniel Willis, 9; 49. - - Youth’s Keepsake, The, 82. - - - - -American Men of Letters. - -EDITED BY CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. - - -A series of biographies of distinguished American authors, having all the -special interest of biography, and the larger interest and value of -illustrating the different phases of American literature, the social, -political, and moral influences which have moulded these authors and the -generations to which they belonged. - - _Washington Irving._ By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. - _Noah Webster._ By HORACE E. SCUDDER. - _Henry D. Thoreau._ By FRANK B. SANBORN. - _George Ripley._ By OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM. - _J. Fenimore Cooper._ By THOMAS R. LOUNSBURY. - _Margaret Fuller Ossoli._ By T. W. HIGGINSON. - _Ralph Waldo Emerson._ By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. - _Edgar Allan Poe._ By GEORGE E. WOODBERRY. - _Nathaniel Parker Willis._ By HENRY A. BEERS. - _Benjamin Franklin._ By JOHN BACH MCMASTER. - -_IN PREPARATION._ - - _Nathaniel Hawthorne._ By JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. - _William Cullen Bryant._ By JOHN BIGELOW. - -Others to be announced hereafter. - -Each volume, with Portrait, 16mo, gilt top, $1.25; cloth, uncut edges, -paper label, $1.50; half morocco, $2.50. - -“WASHINGTON IRVING.” - -Mr. Warner has not only written with sympathy, minute knowledge of his -subject, fine literary taste, and that easy, fascinating style which -always puts him on such good terms with his readers, but he has shown a -tact, critical sagacity, and sense of proportion full of promise for the -rest of the series which is to pass under his supervision.--_New York -Tribune._ - -It is a very charming piece of literary work, and presents the reader with -an excellent picture of Irving as a man and of his methods as an author, -together with an accurate and discriminating characterization of his -works.--_Boston Journal._ - -It would hardly be possible to produce a fairer or more candid book of its -kind.--_Literary World_ (London). - -“NOAH WEBSTER.” - -Mr. Scudder’s biography of Webster is alike honorable to himself and its -subject. Finely discriminating in all that relates to personal and -intellectual character, scholarly and just in its literary criticisms, -analyses, and estimates, it is besides so kindly and manly in its tone, -its narrative is so spirited and enthralling, its descriptions are so -quaintly graphic, so varied and cheerful in their coloring, and its -pictures so teem with the bustle, the movement, and the activities of the -real life of a by-gone but most interesting age, that the attention of the -reader is never tempted to wander, and he lays down the book with a sigh -of regret for its brevity.--_Harper’s Monthly Magazine._ - -It fills completely its place in the purpose of this series of -volumes.--_The Critic_ (New York). - -“HENRY D. THOREAU.” - -Mr. Sanborn’s book is thoroughly American and truly fascinating. Its -literary skill is exceptionally good, and there is a racy flavor in its -pages and an amount of exact knowledge of interesting people that one -seldom meets with in current literature. Mr. Sanborn has done Thoreau’s -genius an imperishable service.--_American Church Review_ (New York). - -Mr. Sanborn has written a careful book about a curious man, whom he has -studied as impartially as possible; whom he admires warmly but with -discretion; and the story of whose life he has told with commendable -frankness and simplicity.--_New York Mail and Express._ - -It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant.--_Christian Advocate_ -(New York). - -“GEORGE RIPLEY.” - -Mr. Frothingham’s memoir is a calm and thoughtful and tender tribute. It -is marked by rare discrimination, and good taste and simplicity. The -biographer keeps himself in the background, and lets his subject speak. -And the result is one of the best examples of personal portraiture that we -have met with in a long time.--_The Churchman_ (New York). - -He has fulfilled his responsible task with admirable fidelity, frank -earnestness, justice, fine feeling, balanced moderation, delicate taste, -and finished literary skill. It is a beautiful tribute to the high-bred -scholar and generous-hearted man, whose friend he has so worthily -portrayed.--_Rev. William H. Channing_ (London). - -“JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.” - -We have here a model biography. The book is charmingly written, with a -felicity and vigor of diction that are notable, and with a humor -sparkling, racy, and never obtrusive. The story of the life will have -something of the fascination of one of the author’s own romances.--_New -York Tribune._ - -Prof. Lounsbury’s book is an admirable specimen of literary biography.… We -can recall no recent addition to American biography in any department -which is superior to it. It gives the reader not merely a full account of -Cooper’s literary career, but there is mingled with this a sufficient -account of the man himself apart from his books, and of the period in -which he lived, to keep alive the interest from the first word to the -last.--_New York Evening Post._ - -“MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI.” - -Here at last we have a biography of one of the noblest and the most -intellectual of American women, which does full justice to its subject. -The author has had ample material for his work,--all the material now -available, perhaps,--and has shown the skill of a master in his use of -it.… It is a fresh view of the subject, and adds important information to -that already given to the public.--REV. DR. F. H. HEDGE, in _Boston -Advertiser_. - -He has filled a gap in our literary history with excellent taste, with -sound judgment, and with that literary skill which is preëminently his -own.--_Christian Union_ (New York). - -Mr. Higginson writes with both enthusiasm and sympathy, and makes a volume -of surpassing interest.--_Commercial Advertiser_ (New York). - -“RALPH WALDO EMERSON.” - -Dr. Holmes has written one of the most delightful biographies that has -ever appeared. Every page sparkles with genius. His criticisms are -trenchant, his analysis clear, his sense of proportion delicate, and his -sympathies broad and deep.--_Philadelphia Press._ - -A biography of Emerson by Holmes is a real event in American -Literature.--_Standard_ (Chicago). - -“EDGAR ALLAN POE.” - -Mr. Woodberry has contrived with vast labor to construct what must -hereafter be called the authoritative biography of Poe, a biography which -corrects all others, supplements all others, and supersedes all -others.--_The Critic_ (New York). - -The best life of Poe that has yet been written, and no better one is -likely to be written hereafter. This is high praise, but it is deserved. -Mr. Woodberry has spared no pains in exploring sources of information; he -has shown rare judgment and discretion in the interpretation of what he -has found.--_Commercial Advertiser_ (New York). - -“NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.” - -Prof. Beers has done his work sympathetically yet candidly and fairly and -in a philosophic manner, indicating the status occupied by Willis in the -republic of letters, and sketching graphically his literary environment -and the main springs of his success. It is one of the best books of an -excellent series.--_Buffalo Times._ - -“BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.” - -One of the most interesting and instructive volumes of the series, -overflowing with instructive matter concerning the Bostonian whose name is -so closely identified with the history of Philadelphia, and, indeed, with -that of the whole country as it existed in his day. The pictures which are -given of the momentous period in which he lived are full of vigor, and -betray an astonishing amount of research in many directions. The -simplicity of style and the critical ability so abundantly displayed make -the work very fascinating reading throughout. The estimate of Franklin’s -character, ability, and attainments is a very just one.--_Boston Gazette._ - -⁂ _For sale by all Booksellers. 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