COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE 
 DAVIS, CALIFORNIA 
 
UNITED STATES ARTILLERY SCHOOL 
 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 REC'D JUL 11 1899 
 Purchased 
 
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS. 
 Ml 
 
 BOSTON: 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 
 
 New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 
 
 1896. 
 
 DKIVERSTTY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 COLLEGE OF AGRlCUlTUKI 
 ^ nxvis 
 
Copyright, 1886, 
 BT HENRY A. BEEE3. 
 
 Ml rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Company. 
 
"T) 
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 THE materials for a life of Willis are rich 
 enough to be embarrassing. Most of his writ 
 ings are, in a greater or less degree, autobio 
 graphical ; 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 " Recollec 
 tions," etc., by his contemporaries. In addition 
 to these printed sources, I have been furnished, 
 by the kindness of Mrs. N. P. Willis, Miss Ju 
 lia Willis, and Mrs. Imogen Willis Eddy, with 
 private letters, journals, and other MS. memo 
 randa by Willis, which extend from his school 
 days at Andover down to a few weeks before 
 
 76713 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 his death of course not without lacunce. Al 
 though 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 cor 
 recting 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 ac 
 knowledge 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 with 
 hold mention of my obligations to Mr. Richard 
 S. Willis and to Mr. Morris Phillips, the editor 
 
 of the " Home Journal." 
 
 HENRY A. BEERS. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 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 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IDLEWILD AND LAST DATS 326 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 353 
 
 INDEX . 357 
 
NATHANIEL PAEKEE WILLIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 1806-1823. 
 
 ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 
 
 WILLIS was born January 20, 1806, in the 
 little old seaport city of Portland, Maine, cele 
 brated 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 illus 
 trious 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 contrib- 
 
2 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ute 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 corre 
 spondent. When " Outre-Mer " was issued in 
 1835, Willis had won a reputation as a prose 
 writer on both sides of the Atlantic by his " Pen- 
 cillings " in the " New York Mirror ; " and by 
 1839, when Longfellow published his first vol 
 ume 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 
 
 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 hun 
 dred copies annually. Fifty years after date this is not bad. 
 How many copies of Something and Other Poems, issued in 
 1 884, 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, bear 
 ing 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 vol 
 ume of Stories by American Authors contains his " Two Buck- 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 3 
 
 fate of all fashionable literature. Every genera 
 tion 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-col 
 ored 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 be 
 tween 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 writ 
 ings are not only his freshest, but his strongest 
 and most carefully executed. 
 
 Willis is a glaring instance of inherited ten 
 dencies, being the third journalist in succession 
 in his line of descent. The founder of the fam 
 ily in this country, and the progenitor of our 
 
 ets 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. 
 
4 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 dis 
 tinction," who resided in Cambridge, Massachu 
 setts, some sixty years, having been admitted to 
 the Freeman's Oath in 1638 and elected a dep 
 uty 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-conform 
 ing Independent minister in Lancashire, who, 
 having been silenced and afterwards imprisoned, 
 escaped to Massachusetts in 1684, and was set 
 tled, first as minister over the church in Water- 
 town, 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 re 
 spects itself is without one or more fine old Pu 
 ritan divines of this kind. Accordingly, when 
 Willis began to take that mild, retrospective in 
 terest in his own genealogy which foretokens the 
 oncoming of age, when new twigs upon the 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 5 
 
 family tree give an unthought-of importance to 
 the roots, he bestowed the name of this par 
 ticular 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 can- 
 nily 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 feath 
 ers and hot tea were administered to his Majes 
 ty's tax-collector in Boston. His position and ac 
 tion in the affair were represented in an ancient 
 engraving, bought long afterwards by his grand 
 son, Deacon Nathaniel Willis, our Willis's fa 
 ther. 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 
 
6 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Chroni 
 cle," and became one of the pioneer journalists 
 of the unsettled West. He removed first to 
 Winchester, Virginia, where he published a pa 
 per 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, Con 
 necticut. 
 
 His son and the poet's father, Nathaniel Wil 
 lis, Junior, the fourth Nathaniel in the family, 
 was born at Boston in 1780, and remained 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 1 
 
 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 Amer 
 ican 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 re 
 member 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 De 
 troit. 
 
 At the age of fifteen young Nathaniel returned 
 to Boston and entered the office of his father's 
 old paper, the " Independent Chronicle," work 
 ing in the same press-room in Court Street 
 
8 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 polit 
 ical 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 Doug 
 las who had come so near imposing his Chris 
 tian name on the infant Willis. At Portland 
 Nathaniel Willis came under the ministrations 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 9 
 
 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 him 
 self by publishing tracts and devotional books, 
 he started, in January, 1816, the " Boston Re 
 corder," which he asserted to be the first relig 
 ious newspaper in the world. It was in this 
 periodical that the earliest lispings of Willis's 
 muse reached the ear of the public. The " Re 
 corder" was conducted by his father down to 
 1844, in which year it was sold to the Rev. 
 Martin Moore. It still lives as the "Congre- 
 gationalist and Boston Recorder." 
 
 Nathaniel Willis also originated the idea of 
 a religious paper for children. " Tne 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 
 
10 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 them by telling them stories from Scripture his 
 tory without giving names. The result was that 
 the Catechism was all committed to memory by 
 the children, and the idea occurred of a chil 
 dren's department in the 'Recorder.' This de 
 partment being much sought for by children, it 
 suggested the experiment of having a paper ex 
 clusively 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 broth 
 ers 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 11 
 
 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 domes 
 tic 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 be 
 tween " 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 educa 
 tion was scanty, and he had the formal and nar 
 row 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 nick 
 named by the Unitarians " Brimstone Corner." 
 
12 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 "My recollection of a particular occasion," says 
 an old member of that society, " when, at a con 
 ference meeting in the church, he, as presider, 
 was expounding John xv., is that I regarded it 
 as a memorable illustration of a man's attempt 
 ing to expound without ideas. I hear him say 
 ing, 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 appre 
 ciation." His rigidity was, perhaps, more in his 
 principles than in his character, and his auster 
 ity was tempered by two qualities which have 
 not seldom been found to consist with the di- 
 aconate, namely, a sense of humor "dry," of 
 course, to the correct degree and an admira 
 tion 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 ca 
 reer, 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 cor 
 respondence with his son by his allusions to an 
 interminable litigation that he was carrying on 
 in his eighty-fourth year. " I should have writ 
 ten 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 13 
 
 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 
 
 O 
 
 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 passion 
 ate, 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 per 
 fect love which casteth out fear. Like many 
 another poet's mother, like Goethe's, for ex 
 ample, she supplied to her son those elements 
 
14 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 of gayety and softness which were wanting in 
 the stiffer composition of the father : 
 
 " Von Mutterchen die Frohnatur, 
 Die Lust zu fabuliren." 
 
 He inherited from her the emotional, impulsive 
 part of his nature as well as his physical consti 
 tution, his light complexion, full fa~.ce, and ten 
 dency, in youth, to a plethoric habit. " My 
 veins," he wrote, " are teeming with the quick 
 silver spirit which my mother gave me. What 
 ever 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 i dol of 
 her family ; the faithful companion, the t 3nder 
 mother, the affectionate sister, the fast and as 
 siduous friend." 
 
 Willis was the second in a family of nine 
 children, all of whom reached maturity, and two 
 of whom, besides himself, achieved literary rep 
 utation. These were Sarah Payson Willis, af 
 terwards 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 15 
 
 " 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 re 
 nounce 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 house 
 hold flew off like the dry seeds of the Impatiens, 
 it need not therefore be hastily concluded that 
 the home training, though perhaps too repress 
 ive 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 cer 
 tainly 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 
 
16 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 the Rev. Dr. McFarland, of Concord, New 
 Hampshire. " I have forgotten every circum 
 stance," he wrote long after, " of a year or two 
 that I was at school at Concord, New Hamp 
 shire, when a boy, except the natural scenery of 
 the place. The faces of my teacher and my 
 playmates have long ago faded from my mem 
 ory, 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 Dor 
 chester Heights, and the shivering search after 
 never found green leaves and flowers ; the but 
 toning 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 17 
 
 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 evi 
 dently 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 relig 
 ious 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 Unita 
 rians 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 in 
 stitutions of Yale and Harvard were in the hands of 
 2 
 
18 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 zeal 
 ots 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 An- 
 dover and at Exeter, the latter had been cap 
 tured 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, re 
 mained an insoluble lump of Calvinism, a 
 wedge of defiant Orthodoxy in partibus infide- 
 lium. To Andover, accordingly, young Willis 
 was sent, after a course in the Latin School, to 
 complete his preparation for Yale. The acad 
 emy was then under the headship of that sound 
 classical master, John Adams, who was princi 
 pal 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 im- 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 19 
 
 petus 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 mar 
 riage, 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. 
 'T was 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 mo 
 rocco volume, of very ornate slenderness and 
 thinness, in which I recorded my raptures at 
 spring mornings and blue sashes, my unappreci 
 ated sensibilities, my mysterious emotions by 
 moonlight, and the charms of the incognita 
 whom I ran against at the corner. This pre- 
 
20 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 cious record shared in the final and glorious con 
 flagration of Latin themes, grammars, graduses, 
 and old shirts, on leaving academy for college." 
 " The Lunatic's Skate " opens with some rem 
 iniscences 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 un 
 dignified 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 be 
 ing 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 impen 
 etrable 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 Mc- 
 Lellan, 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 21 
 
 to the poet as " the very boy that has tracked 
 the woods with us, and called us by our nick 
 name 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 hom- 
 inum,' 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 after 
 noons, 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 Ju 
 lia. " Every kind grows in profusion in An 
 dover, 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 Shaw- 
 sheen, our Andover river." 
 
 This Indian Ilyssus was the scene of an ad 
 venture recorded in certain " Tete-a-tete Confes 
 sions" in the "American Monthly," doubtless 
 with some exaggerations for literary effect and 
 
22 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 with a dnoiiment suspiciously dramatic. The 
 passage may be given, however, for w"hat 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 twi 
 light 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 beau 
 tiful. 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, de- 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 23 
 
 clared my passion, and left her with my heart half 
 broken. We were gone four weeks, and when I re 
 turned 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 depres 
 sion of gloomy weather in a winter term, the 
 machinery is set in motion. Daily prayer-meet 
 ings 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 
 
24 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 im 
 pression which endures with some, and with oth 
 ers 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 vio 
 lent call to repentance, but there is a sort of in 
 decency 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 de 
 lay of my admission to the church. I prayed that 
 God would, if I was in danger of making a hasty 
 step, hy some means or other prevent it. I doubted, 
 till it became almost a certainty, whether it was 
 
JjJ AN GENTRY AND LARLY 'TEARS: ' ' '"2 
 
 proper. I doubted my&lf,, m pretensions to a 
 change of heart ; and my very heart seemed to sink 
 under me every time I thought of the solemn engage 
 ment. 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 solici 
 tude 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 
 
26 l ' 'tTAT&ANrEL^ARkER' WILL.1& 
 
 developed iti Nfew 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 affec 
 tionate 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 im 
 agine 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 as 
 surance 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 mo 
 ment 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 An 
 dover. It is conducted by the pious scholars of the 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 27 
 
 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 con 
 versed 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 in 
 creases ; 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 
 
28 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 of the principal of the academy, and was after 
 wards 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 ivas 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 
 
ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS. 29 
 
 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 & 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 af 
 fected. 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 as 
 cends 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." 
 
30 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ma 
 terial. 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 Col 
 lege, with other members of the Andover con 
 tingent. 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 ap 
 pointment list, and his influence over his less 
 steady room-mate was always for good. He 
 became in time the founder and first presi 
 dent of the University of California, and a man 
 
32 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 distin 
 guished member of the class of 1827 was Hor 
 ace Bushnell. In senior year the two roomed 
 in the same hall the north entry of North 
 College ; and in 1848, on the occasion of Bush 
 nell' s preaching a sermon at Boston to the Uni 
 tarians, 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 independ 
 ent good fellow, popular in spite of being both 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 33 
 
 blunt and exemplary." Bushnell was a leader 
 in his class; Willis decidedly not. They be 
 longed 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 sev 
 eral European capitals, and the winner of fame 
 at home as the importer of Fanny Elssler and 
 founder of the " New York Republic " hap 
 pened 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 fol 
 lowing description of two undergraduates with 
 whom he was subsequently more nearly asso 
 ciated : 
 
 " 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, ex 
 plained the notice he attracted ; but there was enough 
 of individuality about John Van Buren to command 
 
34 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 hered 
 itary 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 com 
 manded 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, sen 
 ior, 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 35 
 
 for the plaintiff. Wikoff, who had known For 
 rest intimately before and after his marriage, 
 and had traveled extensively with him in Rus 
 sia 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 sus 
 tained another relation to Willis, as pastor of 
 Park Street Church. Student life in the twen 
 ties 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 stir 
 ring microcosm, with its athletic and social 
 clubs, its regattas, promenade concerts, and 
 class-day gayeties, its undergraduate newspa 
 pers 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 
 
36 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ex 
 penses " gave the annual maximum as two hun 
 dred dollars. That paragraph has always been 
 over sanguine, but probably four or five hun 
 dred 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 Rebel 
 lions," 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 threat 
 ened the Medical School because a body had 
 been dug up by resurrectionists. The South 
 erners, then a large element at Yale, were par 
 ticularly 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 rest 
 less under the restriction of a lesson on playday. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 37 
 
 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, fresh 
 men squirted, and every imaginable scene of dissipa 
 tion acted out in full. Last night they barred the 
 entry doors of the South College, to exclude the gov 
 ernment, 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 Caro 
 lina 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 be 
 came a member of his state's legislature, but 
 died prematurely. 
 
 New Haven in 1823-27 was not the consider 
 able 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 turn 
 pike, stretched a level of sandy pastures, alive 
 with grasshoppers, where the young orators, 
 practicing for debates in " Linonia " or " Broth- 
 
38 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ers," or for declamations before the Professor 
 of Rhetoric, used to go to "explode the ele 
 ments." Down by the bay, in a region now 
 occupied by great factories, stood the old " Pa 
 vilion," 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 col 
 legians, 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 nat 
 urally rife. 
 
 But en revanche New Haven was a beautiful 
 little city, with a homogeneous population and a 
 charming society, and better fitted in some re 
 spects for the seat of a university than it is 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 39 
 
 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 recollec 
 tion 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 un- 
 mingled." 
 
 This was in the retrospect. He did not em 
 ploy such fine language in 1823. His first let 
 ters from college are like those of any other 
 freshman, simple in style, filled with affectionate 
 messages to the folks at home, thanks for bun- 
 
40 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 dies, 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 van- 
 tage-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 Fri 
 days; 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 morn 
 ing, mathematics at eleven, and Roman antiqui 
 ties 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 men 
 tioned 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 ed 
 ifying to the shins of the freshmen." These last 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 41 
 
 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 pub 
 licly expelled, the president reading out his mit 
 timus in chapel to the whole college. Willis 
 has joined the Linonian Society, " Calhoun, the 
 candidate for the presidency, was once a mem 
 ber 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 ab 
 sence, " 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 
 
42 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ap 
 pointed one of the committee to solicit subscrip 
 tions 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-meet 
 ings, there being just at present considerable 
 " engagedness " among " professors " in the sev 
 eral 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 diffi 
 culty. They did it at twelve o'clock at night, 
 wrapped in sheets, and are both dismissed." The 
 disturbances between the sophomores and fresh 
 men 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 43 
 
 of persons in whose rooms he had seen a squirt, 
 an instrument of torture whose possession 
 involved expulsion. The letter in which he an 
 nounced 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 re 
 ligion 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 fresh 
 man year. He had the poetic temperament, and 
 was subject to his moods, easily elated and easily 
 depressed. His chum was away somewhere teach 
 ing, 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 
 
44 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 of manners or feeling, fresh from the country, 
 whose piety renders them respectable, and who with 
 out it would be but boors. But there are a few stu 
 dents 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 as 
 sociate with, but when they are all out of the way, 
 and I am in need of something to brighten my feel 
 ings, 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 her 
 mit 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 epis 
 tolary style. The following is from a letter of 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 45 
 
 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 im- 
 
46 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 mense 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 pre 
 senting 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 sensa 
 tions which must be felt to be understood. After this 
 delightful exercise I walked home, and, seating my 
 self 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 47 
 
 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 propo 
 sitions in that branch of mathematics, and 
 when the objectionable corollaries were, notwith 
 standing, imposed upon them, the mercury 
 then standing at 90 and the annual exami 
 nations 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 pla 
 toons, 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 class 
 mate, 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 bud 
 ding 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 read 
 ers may remember that their albums contained, some 
 time since, a beautiful vignette representing a lady 
 
48 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 of 
 fered by the " New York Mirror." He also re 
 calls a division-room composition, of a humor 
 ous 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 mer 
 riment 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 se 
 lections from Watts or original contributions 
 from the pens of " Maro," " Eliza," and " The 
 Green Mountain Bard." Some of these juve 
 nilia 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 quot 
 ed and admired, copied about in the news 
 papers, 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," 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 49 
 
 " The Memorial," " The Connecticut Journal," 
 "The Youth's Companion," and "The Tele 
 graph." 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 desig 
 nated by the judges of original poetry in the 
 4 Christian Watchman,' " as announced in the 
 issue of that paper for March 30, 1827 ; and 
 for " The Sacrifice of Abraham," similarly des 
 ignated by the judges in the " Boston Re 
 corder " for 1826. He was also invited to write 
 for the " Atlantic Souvenir," published in Phil 
 adelphia, Goodrich's " Token," and Hill's " Ly 
 ceum " 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 " news 
 paper in Rhode Island," and other publications. 
 All this literary glory gave the young under 
 graduate great eclat in New Haven. He re- 
 
 4 
 
50 NATHANIEL PARKER WJLLIS. 
 
 ceived 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-paint 
 er, Gilbert Stuart, shows him with a rosy face, 
 very fair hair hanging in natural curls over the 
 forehead, a retrousse 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 rec 
 ognition of their influence over him and grate 
 ful for les petits soins which he never neglected. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 51 
 
 Taken up more and more with social distrac 
 tions, he ceased to apply himself to his college 
 duties. Indeed, he had never felt much inter 
 est 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 mis 
 cellaneous 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 acquaint 
 ances, 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 lamenta 
 tion 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 
 
52 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 forbid 
 den 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. Reg 
 ularly on reaching my chambers (or as soon after 
 morning prayers as my head became pellucid), I at 
 tempted to reduce to dialogue the wit of our Chris 
 topher North, ' Shepherd ' and ' Tickler ; ' but alas ! 
 it became what may be called ' productive labor.' 
 Either my memory did not serve me, or wit (I 
 should n't be surprised) reads cold by repentant day 
 light. 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 perform 
 ances, " 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. 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 58 
 
 " 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 gar 
 ment." A third had profaned one of his relig 
 ious hours. 
 
 " I turned me at the slow Amen 
 
 And wiped my drowning eyes, and met 
 A trifling smile ! Think ye of men 1 
 
 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 ac 
 quaintance, when 
 
54 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " She trifled, ay, that angel maid, 
 She trifled where the dead was laid ! " 
 
 These misogynistic musings called forth a re 
 monstrance, " Woman to Roy," by one 
 of the " Recorder's " poetesses, who signed her 
 self " 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 dissi 
 pation began to reach Boston, and caused his 
 family much distress. These reports were ab 
 surdly 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 cir 
 cles where he was made at home nothing like 
 dissipation was tolerated. The society of the 
 little university town was as simple as it was re 
 fined. He was cordially welcomed in such fam 
 ilies 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 55 
 
 Richards, partly at Stratford with the Johnsons, 
 once at New London among the kinsfolk of his 
 grandmother, Lucy Douglas ; and once he trav 
 eled as far as Philadelphia. His " dissipations " 
 in New Haven were picnics to East Rock, re 
 hearsals of " The Lady of the Lake " at a semi 
 nary for young ladies, pie-banquets in Thanks 
 giving 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 liter 
 ary 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 ef 
 fort 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 John 
 sons 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 re 
 spect for his services. ... I found many old ac 
 quaintances there and made some new ones, among 
 the latter, a Mrs. Brunson, as beautiful a woman as I 
 
56 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ever saw, and her sister, Miss Catherine Bailey, also 
 a most beautiful woman. I met the very accom 
 plished 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 soiree at 
 the great Dr. Hosack's. This man is the most luxu 
 rious liver in the city, and his house is a perfect pal 
 ace. 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 glo 
 rious fellow. More of him when we meet. . . . You 
 know on New Year's day in New York all the gentle 
 men 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 57 
 
 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 attention * 
 of literary men and women ; the latter more par' 
 ularly, who seemed to consider it quite the thing 
 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 
 habitue was the household of Mrs. Ap thorp, 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 re 
 viewers 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-re 
 finery." His lines " On the Death of a Young 
 
58 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Theo 
 dore Winthrop. Another friend of Willis's was 
 a Mrs. De Forest, widow of the American con 
 sul 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 daugh 
 ters, Julia and Pastora matre pulchra filice 
 pulchr lores were great belles among the stu 
 dents 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 re 
 vival were gradually obliterated by the preoccu 
 pations of undergraduate life. He did not defi 
 nitely 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 : 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 59 
 
 " My own experience makes me very much alive 
 to the frequent fallacy of the hopes which are experi 
 enced in revivals. I understand your anxiety for me, 
 and I understand the feelings which prompted moth 
 er'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 bet 
 ter instructed. But my feelings are most peculiar 
 and most trying. I am under one ceaseless and en 
 during conviction of sin ; one wearing anxiety about 
 my soul, without making any visible progress. I 
 know what you will write about it. I could antici 
 pate 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 perform 
 ances of the kind. It is in blank verse, labori 
 ously didactic, and expresses the usual conven 
 tional 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 
 
60 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 class champion, and first printed in the " Con 
 necticut 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 ; tak 
 ing 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. Law 
 rence." He traveled by the Erie Canal, then 
 newly opened through an almost unbroken wil 
 derness, 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 com 
 plete 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 con 
 trasts. 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 61 
 
 flowers along the tow-path. Odd experiences re 
 lieved 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 pas 
 sengers, 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 re- 
 
62 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ceived 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 cultiva 
 tion and refinement" dropped down unexpect 
 edly 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 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 63 
 
 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 Lin- 
 sey," " F. Smith," " Scenes of Fear," " Larks 
 in Vacation," and " The Cherokee's Threat." 
 These, however, are not college stories in the com 
 mon meaning of the term. The heroes of these 
 amusing and often incredible adventures are un 
 dergraduates, but they have the easy savoirfaire 
 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-mak 
 ing, driving stanhope, and touring about the 
 country in an independent manner. The aca 
 demic life of the time offered but a meagre field 
 to the romancer, nor indeed is the case much al 
 tered since. There have been loud calls, at pres- 
 
64 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ent subsiding, for an " American Tom Brown." 
 A few patriotic Harvard graduates have re 
 sponded, but their success has been such that 
 the alumni of other colleges have congratulated 
 themselves that no one has been moved to per 
 form the same office for their own Almce Ma- 
 tres. 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 imag 
 ination. 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 fic 
 tion. As experiments of this nature, Willis's col 
 lege stories should be regarded. It must be con 
 fessed that he idealized a good deal. His geese 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 65 
 
 were always swans, and he practiced an airy ex 
 aggeration 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 stu 
 dent. 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 en- 
 
 5 
 
66 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 trance 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 enter 
 prising 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 collec 
 tively. 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 bibli 
 cal and not very literary constituency ; to a pub 
 lic familiar with the Old and New Testaments 
 alike, and familiarized also with the life and 
 scenery of the East through Bible commentaries 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 67 
 
 and the lectures of missionaries who had trav 
 eled 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 con- 
 creteness 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 
 Thau 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 
 
68 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 clas 
 sics 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 nar 
 rative portions of the Scriptures has not been 
 successful. Something is lost when the impres 
 sive 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 wa 
 ter." Alfred de Vigny, a fine spirit and good 
 Doet, has tried the same thing in French and 
 
COLLEGE LIFE. 69 
 
 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, some 
 times musical, but seldom energetic. It favored 
 his tendency to diffuseness and it often degen 
 erates 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 sponta 
 neous poems. 
 
 It makes one realize the startling growth of 
 the United States in the last fifty years, to re 
 member that Willis had already won a " na 
 tional reputation " by his poetry when he left 
 college. The air was much thinner then, Amer 
 ican 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 Philadel 
 phia, and the praises of a few dozen journals 
 were enough to bestow fame. What undergrad 
 uate nowadays, however clever or precocious, 
 could hope to make his voice heard beyond the 
 limits of the college yard ? 
 
70 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 develop 
 ment. Percival went to West Point as Pro 
 fessor 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 Judg 
 ment," had given him great fame in the univer 
 sity as an orator and poet. " ' Hadad ' was pub 
 lished in 1825," wrote Willis, " during my sec 
 ond 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 con 
 fided to me, in a casual conversation, the plan of 
 a series of dramas, different from all he had at 
 tempted, 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 mani 
 fest 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 uncer 
 tain 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 con 
 duct a magazine. He still made occasional con 
 tributions to the " Recorder " among others 
 the New Year's verses, then essential to every 
 weU-regulated paper for 1828 and 1829. But 
 
72 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 his first editorial engagement was with Samuel 
 G. Goodrich, the well-known bookseller and pub 
 lisher, who had removed from Hartford to Bos 
 ton 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 Yan 
 kee enterprise and versatility. He was one of 
 the pioneers of " the trade " in America, enter 
 ing 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 vir 
 tue 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 con 
 trasted sketches of the two principal contribu 
 tors to his annuals Willis and Hawthorne. 
 Goodrich's perceptions were, perhaps, not of the 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 73 
 
 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 advan 
 tageous to the work. In 1827 I published his vol 
 ume 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 po 
 etry at that period. One thing is certain, everybody 
 thought Willis worth criticising. He has been, I sus 
 pect, more written about than any other literary man 
 in our history. Some of the attacks upon him pro 
 ceeded, 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 be 
 fore 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 ths beginning, he has had a 
 
74 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 larger circle of steadfast friends than almost any 
 man within my knowledge. It is curious to remark 
 that everything Willis wrote attracted immediate at 
 tention and excited ready praise, while the produc 
 tions 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 pub 
 lisher'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 Pro 
 phetic Pictures," should have "extorted hardly 
 a word of either praise or blame " when orig 
 inally 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 unluck 
 ily too late to profit the publisher of " The To 
 ken " " which led them to study the mystical." 
 To Goodrich' s personal description of Willis 
 may be added the following little portrait by 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 75 
 
 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 lux 
 uriant 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 Hippoly- 
 tus and Phaedra, 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 consist 
 ing 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 vol 
 umes were issued, one in the early, and one in 
 the later part of 1828. "The work proved a 
 miserable failure," said Goodrich, though num 
 bering among its contributors Mrs. Sigourney, 
 Miss Sedgwick, Halleck, Pierpont, Willis, Gay- 
 lord Clark, George Luiit, Grenville Mellen, 
 and others less known to this generation. Wil 
 lis wrote the two prefaces and contributed half 
 a dozen poems of no importance, unless we ex 
 cept " The Annoyer," which had considerable 
 currency, and three prose papers, " Unwritten 
 
76 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 senti 
 ment, 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 Au 
 thors." " Leaves from a Colleger's Album " 
 was a first experiment of another kind, a hu 
 morous 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 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 77 
 
 " 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 illus 
 trated 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 or 
 nate combinations of literature and art was im 
 ported 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 birth-day 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 "Lon 
 don 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 
 
78 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 re 
 markable " embellishments " and the still more 
 remarkable letter -press 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 fash 
 ion 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 wil- 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 79 
 
 low and bloomed the eglantine, and jessamine 
 embowered the cot of the village maid; where 
 the lark warbled in the heavens and the night 
 ingale chanted in the grove 'neath the mould 
 ering 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, en 
 chanted grottoes, peris, gondolas, and gazelles. 
 All its pleasantly rococo landscape has van 
 ished, 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 roman 
 tic tales of mediaeval 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 vqlume 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 ^Eolian harps. In England 
 
80 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 artifi 
 cial school. This passage from "The Declara 
 tion " is in point : 
 
 " 'T was 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 ex 
 cept 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 pres 
 entation 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 Leg 
 endary." Many of Hawthorne's " Twice-Told 
 Tales" came out in "The Token." Mrs. Sigour- 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 81 
 
 ney's " Connecticut River " divided with Wil 
 lis's "The Soldier's Widow" the 8100 prize 
 offered by the publisher for 1828. Among the 
 contributors to Willis's volume (1829) were 
 John Neal, Colonel William L. Stone, Mrs. Si- 
 gourney, 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 repre 
 senting 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 exper 
 iments 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 contrib 
 ute verses to " The Token" after he had resigned 
 its editorship. " To a City Pigeon," " On a 
 
82 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ac 
 company an engraving in " Remember Me," a 
 religious Annual published in Philadelphia. But 
 he had no very high opinion of the class of lit 
 erature 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 start 
 ing the " American Monthly Magazine," which 
 ran two years and a half from April, 1829, 
 to August, 1831. Mr. Thomas Gold Apple- 
 ton 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 litterateur, only a 
 year and a half out of college, without capital, 
 without backing, almost without experience, the 
 establishment of a monthly magazine was cer- 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 83 
 
 tainly 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 journal 
 ism at that time. He says that he cannot pay 
 much for contributions, like the English maga 
 zines which he took for his model. " The dif 
 ficulties 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 v 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 McLel- 
 lan, the Rev. George B. Cheever, Albert Pike, 
 
84 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 clas 
 sical inspiration, which have often provoked 
 comparison with Keats's odes; and which, if 
 their workmanship were equal to their imag 
 inative 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 " Amer 
 ican 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 rec 
 ognized so far as to give them any place in his 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 85 
 
 collected writings. Others, as " Baron von Raff- 
 Ion ," " 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 elo 
 quent passage on the night heavens, which ob 
 tained a better setting in "Edith Linsey." " An 
 Inkling of Adventure " lent its name and noth 
 ing else to the first published collection of Wil 
 lis's " Slingsby " stories. Then there were 
 sketches of travel in New York State and Can 
 ada, 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 advan 
 tage. Parts of these were similarly refurbished 
 for later employment. The secret of that skill 
 ful 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. Be 
 sides the monthly " table " there were editorial 
 articles of that rambling, chatty description pe- 
 
86 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 culiar to the period, and which the " Noctes" had 
 done as much as anything to introduce : " Scrib- 
 blings," "The Scrap Book," "The Idle Man," 
 " Tete-a-tete Confessions," etc., in which the ed 
 itor takes the reader into his confidence and 
 his sanctum, makes him sit down in his red mo 
 rocco 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 fa 
 miliar 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 imagi 
 nary interlocutor, Cousin Florence, or Tom Las- 
 celles, 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 Jo 
 seph T. Buckingham, the veteran of the Boston 
 press and editor of the " Courier," then the 
 most influential Whig newspaper in Massachu 
 setts. He published epigrams on Willis, with 
 very blunt points, administered fatherly rebukes 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 87 
 
 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 " Ameri 
 can Monthly," though their editors were pri 
 vately 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 ex 
 perience in editing the " American Monthly " 
 was of great advantage to him. He had a natu 
 ral 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 de 
 fined at once his success and his limitations. 
 For its purposes Willis's crisp prose was admi 
 rable: "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 gr,ace, the air of 
 " the town," the tone of good society. In his 
 review of Lady Morgan's "Book of the Bou 
 doir," he made a plea for that neglig6 style 
 which he practiced so daintily himself. u 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 
 
88 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 in writing or conversation. Study may make 
 anything but this. It is like nawet in charac 
 ter, 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 spir 
 ited description of Nahant in one of the " ta 
 bles " did duty in "F. Smith." But many a 
 nice bit was foo 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 mo 
 tionless leaves like a very painting on the broad side 
 walk." 
 
 The "New England Galaxy," which was also 
 under Buckingham's management, was edited 
 for a time by one William Joseph Snelling, who 
 
OS TON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 89 
 
 made quite a stir in Boston newspaper circles. 
 He had been an uiider-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 threat 
 ened for this, and he converted his office into a 
 sort of arsenal. In 1831 he published a slash 
 ing lampoon, " Truth : a New Year's Gift for 
 Scribblers," in which he blackguarded American 
 writers in general and paid his respects to Wil 
 lis 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 hatids 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 Marry at, 
 in the article in the " Metropolitan " which led 
 to the affair of honor between that warrior and 
 Willis. The latter answered Snelling "con 
 temptuously but effectively," Goodrich reports, 
 " in some half dozen verses inserted in the ' States 
 man,' and addressed to Smelling Joseph. The 
 
90 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 lines stuck to poor Smelling for the remainder 
 of his life." The pasquinader himself after 
 wards 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 harp 
 ing 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 par 
 ody. "The Annoyer" was travestied in the 
 "Amateur " and a humorous imitation of "Albina 
 M'Lush " was also printed. Mere literary criti 
 cism, 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 let 
 ters 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 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 91 
 
 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 fopper 
 ies 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 sug 
 gested 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 ungentle- 
 manly critic and forget the poor wrong of his 
 criticism." 
 
 In intervals of work on the "American Month 
 ly " 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 
 
92 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 stu 
 dio, 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-hu 
 mored and disposed to trust, the original, 
 doubtless, of Gallagher in " The Female Ward," 
 a story written long afterwards, but whose inci 
 dents and descriptions are assignable to this 
 period. 
 
 Willis's position in Boston was in some re 
 spects a difficult one. His family connection 
 were plain, good folks, not " in society," not, 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 93 
 
 at least, in the literary society, which was Uni 
 tarian, or in the so-called aristocratic society, 
 which was mainly either Unitarian or Episco 
 palian. He himself was socially ambitious, and 
 these were the circles which he wished to fre 
 quent. " The pale of Unitarianism," he wrote, 
 u is the limit of gentility." He was a great fa 
 vorite 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 Sara 
 toga 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. Whit 
 ing 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 peo 
 ple suppose. He is attending to his magazine, 
 
94 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 cer 
 tainly not given to any serious dissipations. It 
 was not in his temperament to run into physical 
 excesses. His senses were delicate, and he al 
 ways respected them. He never, for example, 
 used tobacco ; he was never a hard drinker. In 
 youth he affected a moderate conviviality and 
 had an esthetic liking for champagne. In mid 
 dle 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 conver 
 sion 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 con 
 vinced afterward that he was mistaken in his 
 conviction, and that he had not experienced the 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 95 
 
 change that qualified him for church member 
 ship ; 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, ex 
 communicated 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 
 
96 NATHANIEL PARKER WILL IS. 
 
 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 char 
 acter, the sister of Park Benjamin and after 
 wards 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 Eng 
 land, in the summer of 1834, he said : 
 
 " I loved Mary B., and never think of her without 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 97 
 
 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' separa 
 tion, 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, 
 
 "I/alma, quel che non ha, sogna et figura." 
 
 By 1829 Willis had accumulated verses enough 
 to fill another slender volume of " Fugitive Po 
 etry." 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 beau 
 tiful ' 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 Eogers was the first who 
 told me of it, and often have I repeated ' The 
 perfect world by Adam trod,' etc." " The An- 
 
98 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 noyer" 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 repub- 
 lish, 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, 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 99 
 
 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 Eng 
 land, September 12, 1835, he wrote : 
 
 " They have denied me patronage, abused me, mis 
 represented 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 Na 
 thaniel 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 Septem 
 ber 10th and 17th published, furthermore, two 
 
100 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 letters from Saratoga, written by Willis in Au 
 gust, and containing some characteristic verses, 
 " The String that tied my Lady's Shoe," and 
 " To ," 
 
 " 'T is 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 dif 
 ferent 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 with 
 drawn some time before Willis joined it. Mor 
 ris, with whom Willis now began a business 
 partnership that lasted, with slight interruptions, 
 for the rest of their lives, and a personal friend 
 ship almost romantic in its tenderness and fidel 
 ity, was the most popular song writer of his 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 101 
 
 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 uni 
 versal favorite in the days of gem-book min 
 strelsy. " My Mother's Bible " was dear to the 
 great heart of the people, and the air of " Wood 
 man, 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 popu 
 larity with "Home Sweet Home," having suffered 
 translation into French (" Bucheron, epargne mon 
 arbre"), German (" Haue nicht die alte Eiche 
 nieder "), Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch; the 
 German version being even introdiiced by an 
 essay, "Ueber Morris's Entwickelung, Denken 
 und Wirken." " The Amaranth " for 1840, an 
 annual, edited by Nathaniel Brooks and dedi 
 cated to Morris, contains Greek and Latin ren 
 derings 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, prac 
 tical side to him. He was a good business man 
 ager, and as Willis had no talent in that kind, the 
 association was mutually advantageous. Morris's 
 intellectual stature was not great, and Willis, 
 
102 NATHANIEL PARKER 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 com 
 petition 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 lolanthe, 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 " Nor- 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 103 
 
 man Leslie," which was afterwards dramatized, 
 and was founded on a famous murder trial in 
 which Burr and Hamilton had figured as coun 
 sel. Fay contributed to the " Mirror " satirical 
 letters on New York society, u 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 Ama 
 teur," 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 oc 
 curred while the three editors were supping 
 together at Sandy Welsh's oyster saloon. Long 
 and earnestly they revolved the question of ways 
 
104 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 and means. At length $500 were scraped to 
 gether as viaticum, and it was agreed that Wil 
 lis 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 em 
 barked 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 conse 
 quences which the trip thus lightly undertaken 
 were to have for him. 
 
 Before sailing he had found time to visit Phil 
 adelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Mount 
 Vernon, and make a " Pencilling " of them for 
 the " Mirror." Another letter gave his impres 
 sions of New York, now become his American 
 address. He had also put to press the poem de 
 livered 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 " be- 
 
BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY. 105 
 
 fore 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 re 
 maining contents of the book two were Scripture 
 sketches and four were of a more ambitious de 
 scription than Willis had previously attempted. 
 These were " Parrhasius," "The Dying Alche 
 mist," " 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 cen 
 tral thought of this whole volume is the vanity 
 of an inordinate thirst for knowledge, power, or 
 fame. " Parrhasius," the story of an old Olyn- 
 thian captive who was tortured to death by the 
 Athenian painter that he might catch the ex 
 pression of his last agony for his picture of 
 Prometheus, comes the nearest to success. Wil 
 lis 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 
 
106 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 1831-1834. 
 
 LIFE ABROAD. 
 
 WHATEVER may have been the effect of Wil 
 lis's career in Europe upon his character, its 
 influence on his literary fortunes was most pro 
 pitious. Foreign travel furnished just the stim 
 ulus 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 corre 
 spondingly so; if life stagnated with him his 
 writing wore thin. Place is comparatively in 
 different 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 environ 
 ment into philosophy and poetry. And yet even 
 
 
108 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 crav 
 ing for luxury, and was fond of quoting a saying 
 of Godwin : "A judicious and limited voluptu 
 ousness is necessary to the cultivation of the 
 mind, to the polishing of the manners, to the 
 refining of the sentiment, and to the develop 
 ment 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 con 
 trasts between cities like New York and Boston, 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 109 
 
 on the one hand, and cities like London and 
 Paris, on the other. In every foreign capital 
 nowadays one finds his simple republican com 
 patriots grumbling at the absence of American 
 conveniences, cursing the steamboats, the rail 
 way 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, circum 
 stances threw Willis into a new world. He 
 shared for a time in the life of the titled aristoc 
 racy 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 Lon 
 don 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 in 
 toxication 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 
 
110 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 writ 
 ing 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 Amer 
 ican 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 protege, 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, 
 
LIFE ABROAD. Ill 
 
 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 ap 
 pointed president of the American committee 
 for the relief of the Poles, went off on his dan 
 gerous mission of distributing supplies among 
 the insurgent bands in Polish Prussia, an enter 
 prise which ended in his capture and confine 
 ment 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 pleas 
 antly begun between the two authors was after 
 wards 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 gover 
 nor of Hong Kong at the time of the Opium 
 War. He made acquaintance, too, with Spurz- 
 heim, the phrenologist, who took a cast of his 
 head ; with General Bertrand, who had been with 
 
112 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Amer 
 ican traveler looked eagerly for his footprints. 
 Mr. Rives, the minister of the United States at 
 Paris, was very attentive to his young country 
 man, and presented him to the king, with two 
 other American gentlemen, Mr. Ritchie and Mr. 
 Carr. The latter was American consul at Tan- 
 giers. 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 Aben- 
 cerrages, perhaps the most romantic country in his 
 tory, 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 gov- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 113 
 
 ernor 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. How 
 ever, before he left Paris, Mr. Kives 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 entree 
 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 emeutes on the Boulevard Mont- 
 martre, 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 splen 
 dors, exercised the same fascination over Willis 
 that it exercises proverbially over his compa- 
 
 8 
 
114 NATHANIEL- PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 triots. He was never tired of promenading 
 and sightseeing. His lodgings were in the Rue 
 Rivoli, facing the Tuileries. Sismondi, the his 
 torian, had the apartment under him. In a pri 
 vate letter he thus describes his daily occupa 
 tions : 
 
 " 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 even 
 ing, or stay at home and study with Zelie." 
 
 He had no fear of the cholera and firmly be 
 lieved that it was not contagious. He was ad 
 vised that good living, frequent bathing, a cheer 
 ful frame of mind, and regular habits were the 
 best preventives. He even went boldly through 
 the cholera wards of the Hotel 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 uni- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 115 
 
 versa!. 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, swal 
 lowed 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 Febru 
 ary 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 pos- 
 
116 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 sible. But by reason of irregular postal facil 
 ities, 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-ves 
 sel was tedious, and few Americans went abroad 
 for pleasure. Willis, to be sure, professed him 
 self astonished by the numbers of his country 
 men whom he met in Italy and elsewhere, but 
 these were but a handful compared with the an 
 nual 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 " Let 
 ters from London," 1804 ; or of " A Journal of 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 117 
 
 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 conven 
 tional, and doubtless his passing judgments on 
 famous works of art are often either at second 
 hand or incorrect. His education had not pre 
 pared him to pronounce on these, and he had 
 not the patience to cultivate a critical apprecia 
 tion 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 Haw 
 thorne, in his " Note-Books," or by Bayard Tay 
 lor, 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 Long- 
 
118 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 fellow, 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 lit 
 tle to give him, though he possessed just enough 
 of the historic imagination for the proper equip 
 ment 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 enjoy 
 ment. 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 Keview," 
 in a just but rather heavy notice of " Pencil- 
 lings," complained of the scantiness of useful in 
 formation 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 " sta- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 119 
 
 tistics," referred the anxious inquirer concerning 
 them to the cyclopaedias, acknowledged with de 
 lightful candor that he himself was an ornamen 
 tal person, and went on with his sketches of 
 people and places. Yet u Pencillings by the 
 Way" was a book which so solid a man as Dan- 
 jel Webster carried with him on a journey, and 
 which, says his biographer, " he read attentively 
 .find praised. He said the letters were both in 
 structive and amusing and evinced great talents 
 on the part of the author." They inspired the 
 young Bayard Taylor with his first longing to 
 gravel. 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 out 
 side of European life, at a time when steam had 
 not yet made the byways of all countries acces 
 sible. 
 
 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 : " 
 
120 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 attach^ to the American legation 
 at Paris obtained for him a private presen 
 tation to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and an 
 invitation to the ducal balls and the recep 
 tions 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 cap 
 ital with the title of Prince Montfort, and giv 
 ing very exclusive parties. He resorted to the 
 Saturday soirees of Prince Poniatowski, who 
 professed love for Americans, and whose august 
 name was afterwards borne by the favorite pony 
 of the Willis children at Idle wild. In short, he 
 was freely admitted to Florentine society and 
 took part in its fashionable intrigues and dissi 
 pations. 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 Green- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 121 
 
 ough subsequently introduced him to Gibson, 
 the English sculptor, who presented him with a 
 cast of his bas-relief, Cupid and Psyche. Un 
 der 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 ex 
 change 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." Green- 
 ough 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 un 
 told. 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 Wil 
 lis'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 
 
122 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Hal- 
 pin 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 recuper 
 ating from the exhausting effects of an Italian 
 summer. In a private letter dated on the 20th, 
 he announces his intention of starting for Eng 
 land 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 123 
 
 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 Flor 
 ence, and when the autumn was far enough 
 advanced to make it safe went on to Kome. 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 but 
 ton, for his whole progress through Europe was 
 a ticklish feat of diplomacy. Few of the peo 
 ple whom he met in society suspected what 
 thin ice he was skating on, or dreamed for an 
 instant that the dashing young attach^ was de 
 pendent for his bread and butter on weekly 
 letters to a newspaper. The failure of re 
 mittances from Morris sometimes put him in 
 an awkward predicament, but he always man 
 aged to find a way out. In one of the letters 
 
124 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 improb 
 able 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 125 
 
 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 post 
 age 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 Eome. 
 
 Having been invited by the officers of the 
 frigate United States to join them in a six 
 months' cruise up the Mediterranean, he re 
 paired 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 lat 
 ter. Both gentlemen were accompanied by their 
 wives and the commodore by his three beau 
 tiful 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 
 
126 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 pas 
 sengers, 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 " Pencil- 
 lings " 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 mys 
 teries of the seraglio and the slave market and 
 the veiled women in the bazaars piqued his 
 curiosity, and the poetry of the Turkish ceme 
 teries 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 127 
 
 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 drug 
 gists, smoking their narghiles and fingering 
 their spice wood beads, the edges of their jars 
 " turned over with rich colored papers (a pecul 
 iar 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 Sar- 
 dis." In the " Letters from under a Bridge," 
 he affirms, whether seriously or not I cannot say. 
 
 
128 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, 
 
 that the English artist Bartlett, who was his col- 
 loborator 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 serag 
 lio," and finally gave him a jar of attar of jas 
 mine 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 illumi 
 nated Hafiz, "and opening it with a careful 
 thumb, read a line in mellifluous Persian." Wil 
 lis also struck up an acquaintance with Dr. Mil- 
 lingen, 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 Bos- 
 phorus, 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 Smyr- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 129 
 
 niote merchant, who entertained him very hos 
 pitably, and invited him to join a party for a 
 few days' tour in Asia Minor. The party con 
 sisted of Willis and his host, an American mis 
 sionary 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 Com 
 modore 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 stay 
 ing at Smyrna he received "an offer of a thou 
 sand 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 
 
130 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 the prospect of one. I would much rather write 
 about pictures and green fields." The not un 
 pleasant 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 Archi 
 pelago." 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, Massachu 
 setts. 
 
 From Malta he made his way via Italy, Switz 
 erland, and France to England, arriving at 
 Dover on the 1st of June, 1834. 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 131 
 
 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 Examina 
 tion 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 at 
 taching to Willis. Landor's own story of the 
 transaction, told in an addendum to the first 
 edition of " Pericles and Aspasia," is as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " 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 uncon 
 ditionally my only copy of the five printed volumes, 
 interlined and interleaved in most places, together 
 
182 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 con 
 dition, at the moment of starting, and not know 
 ing how to add them to his baggage he rather 
 carelessly, perhaps " sent them with a note to 
 Theodore Fay, who was then in Florence, re 
 questing 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 Eng 
 land, 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 knowl 
 edge of the books." These, however, after a 
 brief stay in New York, were consigned to Wil 
 lis 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 133 
 
 continues, " that his [Lander's] biographer will 
 either let me slip off at Lethe's wharf, by expur 
 gating 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 mat 
 ter. 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-wor 
 ship found in Landor an easy victim," adds that 
 "Landor will perhaps be thought not without 
 excuse for the way in which he always after 
 wards spoke of Mr. N. P. Willis." But what 
 ever 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 Leg 
 horn, and I expected fully to have arrived in New 
 York a month or two after them." 
 
134 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 correspond 
 ence, were exceedingly cordial ; as will sufficient 
 ly appear from the following letter, undated, but 
 written, probably, during the winter of 1834- 
 35: 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, By a singular and strange co 
 incidence, 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 illegi 
 bly 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 re 
 solved for this very reason. I envy you the even 
 ings you pass with the most accomplished and grace 
 ful of all our fashionable world, my excellent friend, 
 Lady Blessington. Do not believe that I have writ- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 135 
 
 ten any paper in the magazine. Whatever I write I 
 submit to Lady B. My "Examination of Shake 
 speare " I published for a particular and private pur 
 pose, 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 miscellane 
 ous 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 acquaint 
 ance 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 
 
136 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Americans, and though well received in the na 
 tive society of Florence by virtue of his diplo 
 matic credentials, he had remained, after all, a 
 stranger and a looker-on. A foreign language 
 imperfectly learned is a barrier to complete in 
 tercourse even in the most cosmopolitan society. 
 In France and Italy he had made acquaintances ; 
 in England he made friends and formed do 
 mestic 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 inter 
 esting to visit ; but he liked the English and 
 they treated him well. No American author ex 
 cept 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 137 
 
 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 jour 
 nalist'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 Chan 
 nel. 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 snug- 
 ness 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 din 
 ner and presented him to the beaux esprits who 
 frequented Seamore Place. For this charming 
 woman her young protege 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 
 
138 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 of a Parisian salon. It was natural that Willis 
 should have formed, or at least should have po 
 litely 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 impor 
 tance, with the possible exception of her " Con 
 versations with Lord Byron," whose subject 
 lends it a certain claim to remembrance. At 
 her house Willis met Bulwer, Moore, Lord Dur 
 ham, Disraeli, James Smith, Gait, Procter, Fon- 
 blanque of the " Examiner," and many other 
 distinguished men whose portraits he has given 
 in the " Pencillings " with a sharpness of out 
 line 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 electro 
 plated novels of the authors of " Pelham " and 
 " Vivian Grey ; " and that he exclaimed more 
 than was necessary over the varied accomplish 
 ments of that gorgeous dandy Byron's Cupi- 
 don dechaine the Count d'Orsay. 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 139 
 
 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 ni- 
 veau 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 ap 
 pointments 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 com 
 pany 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 inher 
 itor of nothing but the name of his great ances 
 tor, a dandy and a fool." 
 
 " What a star is mine ! " he wrote in a letter to his 
 
140 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 slan 
 der at my back. Thank heaven, there is not a coun 
 tryman 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 rec 
 onciles 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 Amer 
 ica. [Here follows the passage about Mary Benja 
 min already quoted in chapter III.] I never can 
 return, however, till I can pay my debts, and it will 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 141 
 
 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, ex 
 changed 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 beau 
 ties, " 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. 
 
142 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 All these gayeties he described in his letters to 
 Morris, which, losing somewhat, it may be, in 
 picturesqueness, gained greatly in personal in 
 terest 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 Jeph- 
 son, July 23, 1834, gives her first impression of 
 him: 
 
 "I also liked very much Mr. Willis, an American 
 author, whose ' Unwritten Poetry ' and i Unwritten 
 Philosophy ' you may remember in my American 
 book, 1 and who is now understood to be here to pub 
 lish 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 143 
 
 very outspoken narrative of which afterwards 
 caused so many heart-burnings in this country. 
 Her vinegary reminiscences of Willis, as re 
 corded in her autobiography, though rather long, 
 are perhaps worth reproducing here, not only 
 for their liveliness, but because any contempo 
 rary 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 engag 
 ing in the round face, brisk air, and enjouement of 
 the young man ; but his conscious dandyism and un 
 paralleled 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 in 
 crease his consequence in London society by giving 
 apparent proof that he was on intimate terms with 
 every eminent person in America. He placed him 
 self 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 country- 
 
144 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 men 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 una 
 ble 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 defa 
 mation of strangers whom I was likely to meet con 
 firmed the suspicions my mother and I had confided 
 to each other about the quality of Mr. Willis's intro 
 ductions. It seemed ungrateful to be so suspicious : 
 but we could not see any good reason for such pro 
 digious 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 let 
 ters very cautiously, and to begin with one which 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 145 
 
 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. Wil 
 lis'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 no 
 tion 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 Martin eau ! 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 im 
 possible, they all knew how very intimate I was 
 10 
 
146 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ac 
 quaintance 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 manoeuvring, by which he lost a good deal, 
 and could hardly have gained anything. I have sim 
 ply 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 coun 
 trymen 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 celebri 
 ties of all kinds in the way he has done." 
 
 The simple American reader will have a 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 147 
 
 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 " Mir 
 ror " of September 6, 1834 (which was not an 
 "article," by the way, but an extract from a 
 private letter to Morris), conveyed any implica 
 tion 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 Mar 
 tineau. 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 distin 
 guished a visitor as Miss Martineau the warmest at 
 tentions of our country. She goes with high antici 
 pations, 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." 
 
148 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Any one who knew Willis would have felt sure 
 that his " prodigious efforts " on Miss Marti- 
 neau's behalf sprang from his always good-natured 
 and sometimes even officious eagerness to be of 
 service. And most who knew him would prob 
 ably 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 him 
 self 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 omit 
 ted this spiteful mention of him in her book. 
 Had he lived to read the passage, he would 
 probably have consoled himself with the re 
 flection 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 149 
 
 Beattie, the king's physician, attended his inter 
 esting patient devotedly and refused to take 
 any fee. This excellent gentleman, who was the 
 anonymous author of " Heliotrope " and a pro 
 lific 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 Camp 
 bell, whose life he afterwards wrote, and he in 
 troduced Willis to both of them. 
 
 By September the latter was sufficiently con 
 valescent to be ordered into the country. He 
 had received an invitation from the Earl of Dal- 
 housie, 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 " scrib 
 bling 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, no 
 bly 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 in 
 valid, and both of them were quiet, domestic 
 people, kindly and simple, living with the pro 
 fuse and even splendid hospitality proper to their 
 rank, but without ostentation of fashion or gay- 
 
150 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ety. 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 shoot 
 ing over the stubble. This young gentleman 
 succeeded to his father's title in 1838, was a mem 
 ber 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 de 
 scribe 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-shoot 
 ing 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 151 
 
 Whigs." He was laid up four days at Aber 
 deen, 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 Gor 
 don, to whom he brought a letter from Dalhou- 
 sie. At Gordon Castle he found a distinguished 
 company and passed ten days of unmixed enjoy 
 ment. There were thirty guests, among whom 
 were Lord Aberdeen, who had been foreign sec 
 retary under Wellington ; his son, Lord Claude 
 Hamilton, a handsome young Cantab, who in 
 vited 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 Duch 
 ess 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 antipa- 
 
152 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 thy for as is possible, with a very handsome face 
 for an apology." The same letter gives his opin 
 ion 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." Wil 
 lis's letters from Gordon Castle were perhaps 
 more criticised than any other part of his " Pen 
 cillings" for their alleged violation of the sanc 
 tities of private life. They are, nevertheless, 
 among the very best passages in his correspond 
 ence and, taken together, they present a bril 
 liant picture of what is, doubtless, so far as ma 
 terial 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 Read 
 ing. 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 153 
 
 acquaintance he had made in Italy and of 
 another in Cheshire, he returned hastily to Lon 
 don 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 jour 
 ney ings " Pencillings by the Way " come to an 
 end. A number of supplementary letters de 
 scriptive of London life, of the Isle of Wight, 
 of Stratf ord-upon-Avon, Charlecote, Kenil worth, 
 Warwick Castle, etc., were published at irregu 
 lar intervals in the " Mirror " under the general 
 heading " Loiterings of Travel." With letters 
 from Washington and the paper on " The Four 
 Eivers," 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 some 
 thing 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 attach^ 
 were surprised to learn that " that nice, agreea 
 ble 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 " Metropol 
 itan : " an episode of Italian travel, " The Mad 
 house 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 155 
 
 Mad Senior " in " Scenes of Fear "). The nom 
 deplume 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 
 Signer 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 Eng 
 lish magazines, published them simultaneously 
 in the " Mirror," and paid for them at the same 
 rate as for original articles. They were for 
 warded 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 Day 
 break," " 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, un 
 der the editorship of Theodore Hook. His last 
 contribution to it was " The Picker and Piler," 
 in the April number for 1839. 
 
156 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Lady Blessington's kindness continued after 
 his return to London, and he was taken up 
 by other fashionable bluestockings, dined and 
 wined, feted 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 Staun- 
 ton's nomination, to the AthenaBum, 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 Amer 
 ican minister, who disliked Willis for some rea 
 son, 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 157 
 
 in the rather too celebrated ' Pencillings by the Way,' 
 and also at the soirees of the late Lady Charleville 
 in Cavendish Square. Mr. Willis was an extremely 
 agreeable young man in society, somewhat over 
 dressed 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 attache to a foreign legation. He was 
 observant and communicative, lively and clever in 
 conversation, having the peculiar art of making him 
 self agreeable to ladies, old as well as young, degage 
 in his manner, and on exceedingly good terms with 
 himself and with the elite of the best society, wher 
 ever he went." 
 
 The secret of Willis's agreeableness to ladies 
 lay in his unfailing deference. It is extraordi 
 nary 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 sev 
 eral of his stories are studies on the thesis that 
 there is a beauty in age which may inspire pas 
 sion. 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. 
 
158 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Willis saw more " life " in London than was 
 quite good for him, and went into companies 
 which were less select than the Gore House co 
 terie, 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 in 
 heritance. 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'Or 
 say 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 ar 
 rangement, 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 159 
 
 intimate friend of Willis in London was that 
 very unconventional, not to say rapid, woman, 
 Lady Dudley Stuart, the daughter of Lucieii 
 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 soci 
 ety, not without its fascinations, of artists, ac 
 tors, opera-singers, refugee nobles, and adven 
 turers 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 Blessingtoii set, or to the Bohe 
 mian circle that surrounded Lady Dudley Stuart, 
 but included many families of unquestioned po 
 sition. The Ramsays, for instance, were solid 
 people, above any suspicion of queerness, and the 
 earl's niece, Lady Moncrieff, whom Willis vis 
 ited in London, was decidedly " evangelical." 
 There were two households in particular which 
 were like homes to him during the last year and 
 
160 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 more of his stay in England. These were Shir 
 ley 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 Bail- 
 lie, Jane Porter, and Miss Pardoe. The last 
 was a very pretty woman, author of " Beauties of 
 the Bosphorus," and other books more remark 
 able 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 consider 
 ate kindness. They made him offers of pecu 
 niary help, of which, fortunately, he had no 
 need to avail himself, as his letters to the " Mir- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 161 
 
 ror " and his " New Monthly " stories (which 
 added fifteen or twenty guineas a month to his 
 "poor two hundred a year ") brought him in re 
 turns 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 Skin 
 ner, 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 peo 
 ple, 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 Li 
 brary," which he was preparing for the press. 
 An extract from a very confidential letter from 
 Willis to Mrs. Skinner may be worth transcrib 
 ing, to show the terms of frank and cordial fa 
 miliarity 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 expose of my pov 
 erty did not change your fancy. I should like to 
 marry in England, and I feel every day (more and 
 11 
 
162 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 more) that my best years and best affections are run 
 ning 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 at 
 torney 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 al 
 ways 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 in 
 credible that an attache 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 con 
 fidence save only yourself. I would tell Miss Por 
 ter 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 Wil 
 lis to his mother, July 22, 1835, " where I am loved 
 like a child. I had a letter the other day from Hon 
 orable Mrs. Shaw, who fancied I looked low-spirited 
 at the opera. ' Young men have but two causes of 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 163 
 
 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 re 
 joicing 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 do 
 mesticated 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 Mack- 
 worth 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, 
 
164 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 For the authoress of " The Scottish Chiefs," es 
 pecially, he formed an enduring attachment, and 
 she regarded him with an almost motherly affec 
 tion. A lifelong correspondence was kept up be 
 tween 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, though 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. Charming in a series 
 of papers on American literature which Willis 
 had contributed to the "Athena3um," and she ex- 
 x pressed 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 au 
 tograph book. Byron's sister, Augusta Leigh, 
 he also met in London society. She gave him 
 an autograph letter of Byron, and on the appear 
 ance of " Melanie and Other Poems," in March 
 1835, he sent her a copy, and received an ac 
 knowledgment in which she said that the book 
 contained " some of the most touching and ex 
 quisite lines I ever read." The venerable Joanna 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 165 
 
 Baillie wrote him, on the same occasion, a letter 
 filled with the most graceful compliments. 
 
 Among other London acquaintances of Wil 
 lis's at this time were John Leech, the artist, and 
 Martin Farquhar Tupper, the proverbial philos 
 opher, who afterwards visited him in America. 
 A few extracts from a manuscript diary irregu 
 larly 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 sup 
 pressed passages. Talked of critics, and said that ' as 
 long as you cast a shadow, you were sure you pos 
 sessed substance.' Coleridge said of Southey : 'I 
 never think of him but as mending a pen.' Southey 
 said of Coleridge : ' Whenever anything presents it 
 self 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. . . . 
 
166 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " In the evening to a party at Lady Cork's, and 
 after to Lady Vincent's soiree." 
 
 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 soirees in New Bur 
 lington Street, between 1820 and 1840, were 
 crowded with talent and fashion. 
 
 " 2. Sat to Rand for my picture. Went to Lady 
 Dundonald's fete champetre 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. Tal- 
 madge dined with the Shaws. 
 
 " 7. Returned to town. Dined with Mrs. Chan- 
 non. Lady D. Stuart, Counts Battaglia, Vodiski, De 
 Grognon, and Miss Cockaine present. Came home ill. 
 
 " 8. Dined with Mrs. S., and went to Lady Dud 
 ley Stuart's soiree. 
 
 " 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 167 
 
 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 receiv 
 ing a favor from you. Said he was sorry for his vin 
 dication 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 
 dejeuner 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 fete at 
 Holly Lodge. The duke flew a falcon and killed a 
 pigeon. Fireworks, dinner in a tent, dancing, sing 
 ing, etc., etc., there. Mrs. Marjoribanks brought me 
 home." 
 
 This fete furnished some items for Willis's 
 story of " Lady Ravelgold." 
 
 " 12. Dined with Mrs. Joanna Baillie at Hamp- 
 stead. She gave me some of the wedding cake of 
 
168 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 soiree. Countess 
 d'Orsay there." 
 
 And thus the journal proceeds with its daily 
 count of dinners, balls, soirees, garden parties, 
 and opera-going, the diarist finally recording 
 himself as " fatigued to death with dinners and 
 
 O 
 
 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 Devon 
 shire House at Sunrise after a Splendid Ball : " 
 
 " Morn in the East ! How coldly fail- 
 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, 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 169 
 
 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 dis 
 sipation 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 sin 
 cere, 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 ly 
 ing on the grass in delightful idleness, with the 
 kindest friends and the greatest contentment." 
 At Shirley Park there were archery fetes, the 
 Archbishopess of Canterbury, " lords and ladies 
 in abundance, and poets and travelers ad libi 
 tum. 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 mid 
 dle 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, 
 
170 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 every 
 body, and my friend Mrs. Shaw, and Lady En- 
 combe, 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 visit 
 ing 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 Lon 
 donderry, 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 171 
 
 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 appear 
 ance she was of the purest Saxon type, a blonde, 
 with bright color, blue eyes, light brown hair, 
 and delicate, regular features. She had a gen 
 tle, clinging, affectionate disposition, adored her 
 husband, had been religiously and carefully edu 
 cated, 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 Ord 
 nance Storekeeper at Woolwich Arsenal. He 
 had been commissary to the British navy in 
 Egypt, and commissary of ordnance at the bat 
 tle of Waterloo, and had been rewarded for gal 
 lant 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 com 
 mon 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 
 
172 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 com 
 pleted the arrangements for his marriage, he set 
 out from London, September 10th, by the Tan 
 tivy coach for Sir Charles Throckmorton ? s seat 
 of Coughton Court. This was a fine old Eliza 
 bethan mansion near Alcester, and Willis spent 
 ten days there very agreeably, visiting, in com 
 pany 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 " Mir 
 ror." Thence he returned to Woolwich, receiv 
 ing on his departure an invitation from the hos 
 pitable 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 expect 
 ant groom had written to his friends announc 
 ing his engagement, and received in reply many 
 expressions of good wishes. Among others, Lady 
 Blessington wrote as follows : 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 173 
 
 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 con 
 tact with its dissipations, is, of all others, the one I 
 would select for a literary man, and I shall look for 
 ward 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 natu 
 ral sphere in such a circle ; he loses his identity and 
 blunts the fine edge of his sensibility. You have re 
 tired in time, and will, I am persuaded, have reason 
 
174 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 to bless the gentle and benign influence that has at 
 tracted you from it to the pure and healthy atmos 
 phere of domestic life. Be assured, my dear Mr. 
 Willis, that out of the circle of your immediate fam 
 ily 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 jest 
 ingly 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 : 
 
 YKSTER, October 23, 1835. 
 
 I promised to play my part as best man, my dear 
 Willis, at Niagara, and to have descended from that 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 175 
 
 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 Athenaeum 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 post 
 script, 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 compli 
 ments to Mrs. Willis, and believe me 
 
 Ever yours sincerely, RAMSAY. 
 
176 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Mrs. Skinner wrote, in a letter to Jane Por~ 
 ter: 
 
 " 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, ac 
 complished, 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 fiancee s religiousness, and he evi 
 dently shared the belief commonly held and 
 proclaimed among men of the world, that relig 
 ion, 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 177 
 
 have yourself, no doubt. Miss Porter," he adds, " is 
 sincere and refined as few professedly religious peo 
 ple 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 
 
 12 
 
178 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 the checker-board tavern-sign and checkered hu 
 man 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 H6tel Castiglione in Paris, and 
 then returned to England, where they spent the 
 winter, partly in London and partly at Wool 
 wich, and in visits to the Shaws, Skinners, and 
 other friends. Willis was busy in getting out 
 the first and second English editions of " Pencil- 
 lings " 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD, 179 
 
 came back with him, in 1839, to England, where 
 he ultimately got employment as a machinist, 
 having a good education and a knack at me 
 chanics. 
 
 In May, 1836, after many leave-takings, Wil 
 lis sailed with his wife for America. His " Lines 
 on Leaving Europe," 
 
 " Bright flag at yonder tapering mast," 
 dated in the English Channel, express the feel 
 ings 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 lyri 
 cal 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 Eng 
 land. " Melanie and Other Poems " appeared 
 March 31, 1835. It was divided into three 
 parts and included a selection from the three 
 
180 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 volumes of verse published in America, but un 
 familiar 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 reflec 
 tions of a friendly nature on American litera 
 ture and the desirableness of cultivating kinder 
 feelings between England and America. Wil 
 son, 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 de 
 scribed the poems as " edited " by Barry Corn 
 wall, 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 promis 
 ing 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 181 
 
 he meets that Willis is dead. "Impossible," 
 answers the friend; "day before yesterday he 
 was sitting very much alive in the Athenaeum 
 Club: here is a letter from him franked Ma- 
 hon," etc. Another Scotch professor Aytoun 
 who belonged, like Wilson, to the Tory light 
 artillery, was moved to write a parody of " Me- 
 lanie." The same humorist also paid his re 
 spects 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 er 
 rant 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, with- 
 
182 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 out a sign or word." The stanza and style are 
 taken from Byron's and Scott's metrical ro 
 mances. The very first line 
 
 " I stood on yonder rocky brow " 
 
 is a reminiscence of " The Isles of Greece." 
 The second poem, which is equally melodra 
 matic in its catastrophe, is in blank verse and 
 in the form of a dialogue between the Lady Isi 
 dore 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 Isi 
 dore, 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 con 
 cludes the dialogue with, " Thank God ! Thank 
 God ! " Both of these poems were imitative and 
 artificial, and the last not a little absurd. Wil 
 lis had no genius for narrative or dramatic po 
 etry, 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 183 
 
 that the best thing in the volume was " Birth- 
 Day Verses," addressed to his mother on Janu 
 ary 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 al 
 ready 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 Con 
 fessional," 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 ten 
 derness and chivalry," airy, facile, smooth, but 
 thin in content: not rich, full, concrete, but 
 buoyed up by light currents of emotion in a re 
 gion, to quote his own words again, of " floating 
 and colorless sentiments." This disembodied 
 character is a mark of almost all the American 
 
184 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ear 
 lier 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 Perci- 
 val's or Mrs. Sigourney's defter, briefer, more 
 pointed. But they had a certain poverty of im 
 agery 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 pub 
 lished. It was an imperfect one, made up has 
 tily 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 after- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 185 
 
 wards 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 appearence 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 inter 
 locutor. " 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." 
 
186 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 pri 
 vate 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 Wil 
 lis as a " Yankee poetaster," and a " sonnet 
 eer of the most ultra-sentimental delicacy; " in 
 timated 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 con 
 noted 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 Lock- 
 hart, "that what Lord Aberdeen said to Mr. 
 Willis might be repeated in print without pain 
 ing 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 gen- 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 187 
 
 tleman, 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 inaccu 
 rately, no matter which, before your claret is 
 dry on his lips, unrestrained table-talk on del 
 icate subjects, and capable of compromising in 
 dividuals''' Lockhart, as usual, contrived to 
 insult Willis's country, through her representa 
 tive. "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 levies, 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 
 
188 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 por 
 tions ; 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 in 
 dividuals which I would recall at some cost," 
 but " I may state as a fact that the only in 
 stance in which a quotation by me from the con 
 versation of distinguished men gave the least of 
 fense in England was the one remark made by 
 Moore, the poet, at a dinner party, on the sub 
 ject 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 189 
 
 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 Amer 
 ica was much farther away from England than 
 England was from America. Still, if Willis had 
 published anything that he should not have pub 
 lished, 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 news 
 paper 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 " Pencilliiigs ; " 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 see 
 ing themselves gossiped about in print. In one 
 or two instances Willis had been indiscreet, as 
 he freely admitted. But it is hard for one liv 
 ing in these times of society journals and " inter 
 viewers " 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 mat 
 ter is that the people whose hospitality and con 
 fidence he was charged with abusing took no 
 kind of umbrage at the liberty. On the con 
 trary, Lord Aberdeen, Wilson, Dalhousie, and 
 
190 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 others wrote to him in warm approval of his 
 book. " With what feelings," said the " Quar 
 terly" article, apropos of the description of 
 Gordon Castle, " the whole may have been pe 
 rused by the generous lord and lady of the cas 
 tle themselves, it is no business of ours to con 
 jecture." This point, however, need not be left 
 to conjecture, as it is amply answered in the fol 
 lowing letter to Willis from the Earl of Dal- 
 housie, dated February 25, 1836 : 
 
 ... In the long evenings of winter we have beguiled 
 the time with " Pencillings by the Way," and what 
 ever 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 am 
 plest 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' hap 
 piness, 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 Coals- 
 town, until called into a more active life, which I 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 191 
 
 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 at 
 tached 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, be 
 lieve 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 
 
 
192 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Moore and O'Connell, in which Willis acknowl 
 edged 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 " Pencil- 
 lings," and had written the author a note in 
 terms which the latter thought " very unjustifia 
 ble." 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, 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 193 
 
 his straight black hair uncombed and straggling over 
 his forehead ; he looked as if he might be the gentle 
 man l 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, Fon- 
 blanque, 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 en 
 sues " 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 friend 
 ship and correspondence continued unbroken till 
 her death in 1849. His poem, " To a Face Be 
 loved," 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 habitues of Gore House, put a 
 
 13 
 
194 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 pleas 
 ure 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 free 
 dom of my approach to you. Still my attach 
 ment 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 " Cock 
 ney," or an American, to hope for justice from 
 the Tory reviews. The " Westminster " (Rad 
 ical) was edited by Willis's friend, Dr. Bo wring ; 
 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, 
 " Eraser's," the lightest and brightest of the 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 195 
 
 Tory organs, received it with uproarious con 
 tempt. The notice of " Pencillings " in the Feb 
 ruary 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 "Fra- 
 ser," expressive chiefly of convivial joys and of 
 boisterous scorn of the Whigs. There was a fla 
 vor 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," what 
 ever that mystic monosyllable may import. 1 His 
 1 It was doubtless this article which encouraged Bates in 
 
196 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 writing is characterized as " chamber-maid gab 
 ble," " small beer," " penny-trumpet eloquence," 
 " Willis's bray," and " Niagara in a Jordan." 
 President Jackson, whom Maginn supposes to 
 have appointed Willis attache to the French em 
 bassy, 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 im 
 agines the silly man to have meant. The prob 
 abilities 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 pe 
 culiarly 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 neces 
 sary, 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 
 
 the Madise Portrait Gallery to describe Willis as a " sumph " 
 and "N(amby) P(amby) Willis." 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 197 
 
 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 shame 
 ful treatment of poor Miss Landon. 
 
 But one of the notices provoked by " Pencil- 
 lings " 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 in 
 formation about the sales of books in London. 
 In this occurred, among other things, the sen 
 tence 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 
 
198 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 attache" 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 simper 
 ing." " 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 pas 
 quinade of poor Joe Snelling, referred to in our 
 third chapter, from which he printed the follow 
 ing 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 199 
 
 At its foul bottom for precarious bread. . . . 
 Dishonest critic and ungrateful friend, 
 Still on a woman l 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, ungrammat- 
 ical 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 no 
 ticing Marryat's article at all, but he was stung 
 by the implied insult to his parents, and his mil 
 itary 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 Decem 
 ber, while his article was still in proof. 
 
 " Of that part of the paper which refers to the 
 i Mrs. Child. 
 
200 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 merits of my book," Willis wrote, " I have noth 
 ing to say. You were at liberty, as a critic, to 
 deal with it as you pleased. You have tran 
 scended 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 in 
 trusted 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 Mar- 
 ryat's slur on Willis's birth and parentage, 
 " You will readily admit that this dark insinua 
 tion must be completely withdrawn. My liter 
 ary 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 earli 
 est convenience, that explanation which you can 
 not but acknowledge is due to me on this point, 
 and which is most imperatively required by my 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 201 
 
 own character and the feelings of my friends." 
 As to the remark which had drawn the " Metro 
 politan " 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 
 4 Mirror ' and was never intended for publica 
 tion." 
 
 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 apol 
 ogy until Willis had publicly withdrawn his re 
 mark 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 writ 
 ings must be considered as more or less injurious 
 in proportion to the rank in society and estima 
 tion 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 pri 
 vate character." Willis accepted this explana 
 tion, in a second letter to Marryat, and then 
 
202 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 sent the entire correspondence to the " Times " 
 for publication. Marryat was furious at this, 
 and wrote at once to Willis, " I refuse all expla 
 nation 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 fol 
 lowed 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, ex 
 plaining 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 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 203 
 
 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 Febru 
 ary 9th, which he sent to the " Times," along 
 with his challenge and Willis's reply to it. The 
 terms of this withdrawal Willis considered in 
 sulting, and the publication of the challenge 
 after it had been agreed upon between the 
 friends of the parties that Marryat " should en 
 tirely 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 of 
 fering 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 
 
204 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 to fight, not to negotiate," but on a little discus 
 sion Captain Belcher found his principal in the 
 wrong, and made him concede what was neces 
 sary, 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 tea 
 pot. Willis had carried his point and had acted 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 205 
 
 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 Lon 
 don literary and social circles. " The United 
 Service Gazette," the organ of the British 
 Army and Navy, took Willis's side in a long ed 
 itorial in which much of the correspondence was 
 reprinted from the "Times." The latter jour 
 nal, however, probably voiced the true senti 
 ment 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. Camp 
 bell of Islay and Willis named John Tyndale, 
 between whom this subsidiary quarrel was soon 
 
206 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 patched up, in a manner honorable to both. The 
 assaults in the English magazines and the ru 
 mors of the Marryat affair of course found their 
 way speedily to America, and were circulated 
 and commented upon in the American period 
 icals 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 de 
 fense 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," to 
 gether with "Minute Philosophies" (from the 
 " American Monthly ") and " A Log in the Ar 
 chipelago," 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 X300, 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. 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 207 
 
 These " Slingsby " papers are exceedingly 
 clever. With the possible exception of " Let 
 ters 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 de 
 clared, 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 Cher 
 okee's Threat," and " Tom Fane and I," with 
 the easy optimism of their conclusions and their 
 cheerful avoidance of all the responsibilities im 
 posed upon the dwellers in this workaday world, 
 
208 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 nar 
 rative, 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 pas 
 sages really exquisite. It has recently been 
 announced that style is " increasingly unim 
 portant," but can this be true ? Not surely, 
 unless fiction is to become hereafter a branch 
 of social science and valuable only for its ac 
 curate report of life. It will then be the novel 
 ist's duty to obliterate himself in his message, 
 and any intrusion of his personality between 
 the reader and the subject will be an imperti 
 nence. But it is hard to believe that the per 
 sonal 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 nec 
 essary 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 ; 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 209 
 
 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 unhack 
 neyed. 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 fleet 
 ing show for bridal couples and a mill-race for 
 manufacturers. Saratoga, and Ballston, and 
 Lebanon were rival spas, the first a " mush 
 room 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 wilder- 
 
 14 
 
210 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ness was embosomed Barliydt's once famous 
 hermitage, with its ear-shaped tarn and columnar 
 pine shafts, whither one resorted for trout din 
 ners, 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 back 
 ground 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 pres 
 ent, 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 fan> 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 211 
 
 ilies. 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-keep 
 ers in these different parts of the country, and a vil 
 lage that has ten thousand transient inhabitants one 
 summer, has, for the next, scarcely as many score. 
 The vast and solitary temples of Paestum 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 
 blast?. 
 
 This freshness and youthfulness, this air of 
 stir, adventure, excitement, hope, which was im- 
 
212 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 pressed upon American life, books, and society 
 of that date are reflected from Willis's spark 
 ling pages and give them even a sort of his 
 torical interest, apart from their claims as liter 
 ature. 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 dia 
 logue, light, malicious humor, and natural senti 
 ment ; 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 reap 
 pears in many of the " Inklings " in " Edith 
 Linsey," "The Gypsy of Sardis," and "Niag 
 ara," a Green Mountain Frankenstein and Qui 
 xote 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 out 
 line, and had an original plot, the intellectual 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 213 
 
 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 feel 
 ings, and a nervous, spiritual intensity to her 
 thoughts. The anti-climax comes when she un 
 expectedly 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 thoughtf ulness, elo 
 quence, and emotional depth, but the story is 
 loosely put together, and interrupted by digres 
 sions, 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 Diplo 
 macy " and " The Revenge of 'the Signor Basil " 
 
214 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 re 
 quired 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 Web 
 ster's forehead, among the heads at a Jenny 
 Lind concert, to " a' massive magnolia blossom, too 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 215 
 
 heavy for the breeze to stir, splendid and silent 
 amid flattering 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 in 
 vented for certain columns in the " Home Jour 
 nal" : "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 six 
 teenth century pamphlet. An old lady in Hart 
 ford 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 writ 
 ings, 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 mis 
 cellaneous papers in the " Mirror " : " Notes 
 
216 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 from a Scrap Book " and " Fragments of Ram 
 bling Impressions," portions of which he after 
 wards 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 " Athena3um " for January and Febru 
 ary, 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 hun 
 dred poets and seventy-two prose writers whose 
 works have been printed in America since the 
 settlement of New England." He made no ap 
 proach to an exhaustive treatment of the subject., 
 but gave a number of graphic personal sketches 
 of American authors, one in particular, of Chan- 
 ning as a pulpit orator, which excited Lady 
 Byron's interest, as has been mentioned, and 
 another of Cooper, whom he indignantly de 
 fended against the slanders or a portion of the 
 
LIFE ABROAD. 217 
 
 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 Per- 
 cival to Bryant, saying that he is "the most 
 interesting man in America. He has not writ 
 ten anything equal to the 'Evening Wind' of 
 Bryant, but his birthright lies a thousand leagues 
 higher up Parnassus." Timothy Flint after 
 wards 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 "Athe 
 naeum " articles first introduced the English pub 
 lic 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 high 
 est 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. 
 
218 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 The Freiherr, it seems, was engaged in translat 
 ing " 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,' l his ' Niagara and So Forth,' etc., 
 etc., which I had translated into a little periodical of 
 mine, or, rather, a choice coUection of interesting ar 
 ticles from English periodicals and annuals, have been 
 read with much interest, and repeatedly been re 
 printed 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 trans- 
 latory attempt." 
 
 1 Not written bv Willis. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 1836-1845. 
 
 GLENMARY THE CORSAIR THE NEW MIRROR. 
 
 WILLIS was now fully committed to the pro 
 fession 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 ex 
 pectation 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. Wil 
 lis ; that he was constantly subject to the rheu 
 matism, etc. During the winter of 1836-37, 
 while in Washington, he made interest to secure 
 the post of secretary of legation at St. Peters 
 burg, with the view of writing a book 011 Rus 
 sia, but Mr. Dallas, the newly-appointed minister 
 
220 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 sim 
 ply " 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, Hal- 
 leek, 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 Amer 
 ica 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 221 
 
 as the greatest wonder on the continent in the 
 way of metropolitan caravansaries. On Septem 
 ber 20th he signed an agreement with the agent 
 of George Virtue, the London publisher, to fur 
 nish 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 con 
 taining four plates and eight pages of letter 
 press, and Willis was to receive fifteen guineas 
 a number. The first installment, containing de 
 scriptions 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 pro 
 jected, and there was a ludicrous contrast be' 
 
222 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 tween the wide, radiating avenues, with their 
 imposing public buildings scattered here and 
 there, and the wastes between, dotted at inter 
 vals with naked brick houses or mean negro 
 cabins. The large shifting population, which 
 fled as soon as Congress rose, lodged uncomfort 
 ably in hotels and boarding-houses. In short, 
 Washington was a dismal place to live in. Wil 
 lis set his practiced observation at work to de 
 scribe the picturesque and humorous social as 
 pects 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 inau 
 guration, 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 223 
 
 took his fancy that he decided to pitch his tent 
 there. He bought from his college friend Pum- 
 pelly, 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 an 
 nounces 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 
 Tempe, 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, form 
 ing 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 stream' 
 lets, 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 sil 
 vering in tranquil happiness." 
 
 In this secluded Arcadia his Penates had rest 
 for five years, and hence he wrote his " A 1' Abri, 
 or the Tent Pitched," contributed to the " Mir- 
 
224 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ror " as " Letters from under a Bridge," the 
 first one appearing July 7, 1838. This is Wil 
 lis'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 house 
 hold 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 sur 
 face of the ground, as if at the touch of the sun 
 shine. . . . 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 225 
 
 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 Tal 
 leyrand 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. " A 1'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 land 
 scape 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 hun 
 dred pretty and playful analogies, a hundred 
 texts for little sermons on cheerfulness and con 
 tent, in which he rode his fancy sometimes too 
 
 15 
 
226 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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, ex 
 cept 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 re 
 minded 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 227 
 
 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 rail 
 way having not as yet penetrated those solitudes. 
 Another picturesque feature of the neighbor 
 hood were the forest fires, the " blazing and in 
 numerable pillars swept by the wind till they 
 stood in still and naked redness, while the eye 
 could see far into their depths." This phenom 
 enon furnished a vivid description for his story, 
 "The Picker and Filer," 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 fur 
 nished 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 metropoli 
 tan 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 vil 
 lage of Canewana, a mile nearer, are within the 
 latitude of silver forks and their accompanying 
 vanities, morning calls, cards, dinner giving, 
 
228 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 champagne, and French bonnets. K. H. Stod- 
 dard, 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 obser 
 vation 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 un 
 pretending 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 229 
 
 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 philosoph 
 ical 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 rip 
 ened 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 an 
 swer 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 
 
230 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 and scribbled less. But whether he would ever 
 have excelled the best parts of his earlier writ 
 ings 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 continu 
 ance. 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 ma- 
 nebat neque idem decebat. It is not improba 
 ble that, even under the most favoring condi 
 tions, he would have kept on writing Jottings, 
 Loiterings, Hurrygraphs, etc., lacking, as he 
 evidently did, the power of construction re 
 quired for a large and serious work. Biit 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 shel- 
 
GLENMARY. 231 
 
 tered 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 com 
 pleted, " Bianca Visconti, or the Heart Over 
 tasked," 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 
 rdle of Pasquali, " a whimsical poet," was writ 
 ten 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 
 
232 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 first representation, Willis felt sufficiently en 
 couraged to persevere in his dramatic experi 
 ments. In a private letter from New York, 
 December 15, 1838, he said that Colnian had 
 just given him $300 for an edition of " Bian- 
 ca," which he considered a good price, as Epes 
 Sargent had sold his " Yelasco " for $60. Wai- 
 lack, he continues, who managed the National, 
 the rival theatre to the Park, was full of ad 
 miration 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 Septem 
 ber, 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 pur 
 suance 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 fol 
 lowing. The notice added that the play would 
 probably take with the public, as it had pleased 
 the actors, a good criterion. " The Betroth 
 al," however, was unequivocally damned, much 
 
GLEN MARY. 233 
 
 to Willis's mortification, though not to his per 
 manent 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, suc 
 cessively 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 in 
 stallments 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 char 
 acter. 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 succes (Testime merely. 
 Wallack had agreed to pay the author one half 
 
234 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 the proceeds of the fourth, ninth, thirteenth, and 
 eighteenth nights, after deducting $300 each 
 night for expenses. If it was produced in Eng 
 land, Willis was to have one third of the pro 
 ceeds of the fourth, eighth, and twelfth per 
 formances 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 Yandenhoff 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 
 
GLEN MARY. 235 
 
 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 undra- 
 matic; 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 oc 
 cur 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 Amer 
 ican 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 resem 
 blance to Shylock ; the heroine drinks a sleep 
 ing potion, like Juliet, to escape an odious mar 
 riage ; and in the last act, .which is constructed 
 with some skill, she stands in the frame of a 
 
236 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 " Ro 
 mance of Travel." The verse contributions 
 were added to the American edition of " Me- 
 lanie," 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 men 
 tioned, " 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 corre 
 spondence, about this time, of some coolness be 
 tween himself and General Morris, which appears 
 to have originated, or perhaps to have found 
 
GLEN MARY. 237 
 
 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 mislead 
 ing the American public by the false pictures of 
 London society given in the " Pencillings," pro 
 ceeded 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, Eraser, 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 No 
 vember 10th, denying, out and out, many of the 
 lies in " Veritas' s " communication, and explain 
 ing away some of the misrepresentations and ex 
 aggerations. 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 im 
 pression 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 corre- 
 
238 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 spondent has merely stated well attested facts." 
 One of these exceptions was the slander upon 
 Miss Landon, for printing which Morris apol 
 ogized. 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 con 
 nected. " The Skylight letter," Willis writes to 
 the latter, " was capitally done, and the ' Mir 
 ror ' 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 Gen 
 eral 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, deny 
 ing 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 pol 
 icy and a desire to exploit him. It does not ap 
 pear that this little misunderstanding ever came 
 to a breach. The " Mirror " continued most 
 
GLEN MARY. 239 
 
 courteous in its tone towards Willis, and its ed 
 itor 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 ave 
 nue through which to address his public. This 
 feeling took shape in December, 1838, in his ac 
 ceptance of a proposal from Dr. Porter to join 
 him in establishing a weekly paper. The " Cor 
 sair," which was the outcome of this arrange 
 ment, 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 West 
 ern, 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 Gen 
 eral Morris, were on board by invitation and ac 
 companied 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 con 
 ditions of American journalism. It was now 
 possible to get the freshest supply from the Lon 
 don 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, 
 
240 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 ed 
 itors, 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 fa 
 vor ; to hold up the age in its fashions, its eccentrici 
 ties, 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, Eng 
 land, and Germany. As to original American pro 
 ductions, 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 Bul- 
 wer 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 CORSAIR. 241 
 
 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 in 
 ternational copyright. By the act of 1838, the 
 English Parliament, acting in self-defense, had 
 refused to protect any longer the literary prop 
 erty of American authors, until America should 
 have the decency to reciprocate. This cut double 
 up6n 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 Amer 
 ican 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 Jan- 
 
 16 
 
242 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 uary, 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 copy 
 right 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 con 
 tributed art notes and miscellaneous chat, " The 
 Pencil," "The Gallery," "The Divan," etc.; 
 two papers on autographs ; a " Letter from Un 
 der a Bridge," a generic name that he gave to 
 much correspondence about this time, not com 
 prised in the original " Letters " ; some reminis 
 cences of Miss Landon as " The Departed Im- 
 provisatrice," and a very harsh review, " Pauld- 
 ing 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 re 
 joinder in the " Courier and Enquirer," by Col 
 onel James Watson Webb, a gentleman who af 
 terwards fell foul of Willis in various ways. In 
 
THE CORSAIR. 243 
 
 this article he held him up to scorn as a writer 
 " who revels on the cut of a coat or the otto 
 mans 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 dis 
 relish for Paulding's writings, which he thought 
 coarse and pointless. But the Secretary of the 
 Navy was an old man, whose books belonged al 
 ready to the past, and it was ungracious to dis 
 turb his age with taunts about their obsoleteness. 
 One suspects, in reading this review, that its 
 writer had some personal grudge against the au 
 thor of " The Dutchman's Fireside." 
 
 Willis also contributed to the " Corsair " " A 
 Story Writ for the Beautiful," which he de 
 scribed as a " gay, off-hand tale," and never re 
 printed. 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 accom 
 panied him, and, on landing, they were met by 
 the news that her father, General Stace, had 
 died a week before their arrival. This made 
 
244 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Charl- 
 ton, 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 Lon 
 don, Ireland, and elsewhere. Among other 
 things, he had contracted with Virtue to furnish 
 the letterpress for an illustrated work on Can 
 ada, 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 prep 
 aration, and ended in fizzle and rain-water. Of 
 this he gave a capital description in his letter to 
 the " Corsair," " My Adventures at the Tourna 
 ment." Mrs. Willis remained with some kins 
 folk of her mother, at Borrmount Lodge, near 
 Enniscorthy, County Wexf ord, while her husband 
 spent a fortnight in doing the Lakes of Killar- 
 
THE CORSAIR. 245 
 
 ney 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 col 
 lection of disease and misery I never believed possi 
 ble. 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 un- 
 pitied. 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 informa 
 tion about Ireland than they found altogether 
 comfortable. After three weeks more of tour 
 ing in that ragged commonwealth, he returned 
 with his wife to England. 
 
246 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 No 
 vember he spent a few days at Brighton, where 
 he lodged at the Ship Hotel, found several old 
 acquaintances, Lady Stepney and Lady Geor- 
 giana 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 Febru 
 ary he had to make another trip to Ireland, 
 visiting the Giant's Causeway and other cele 
 brated bits of scenery in the north. Lady Geor- 
 giana 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 
 
TEE CORSAIR. 247 
 
 given in honor of the queen's wedding, he made 
 a letter of it for the " Corsair," afterwards in 
 cluded 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 inter 
 est in them. They were written, however, with 
 more taste and animation than the run of sub 
 scription books of the kind. Willis was a natu 
 ral traveler, with a good eye for landscape effects, 
 and the best chapters are those descriptive of 
 spots with which he was already familiar, Niag 
 ara, 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 Amer 
 ican book contained, among its two hundred 
 and forty-two engravings, a view from Glen- 
 mary lawn and another of Undercliff, Gen 
 eral 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 en 
 tire, from the narratives of Charlevoix, Adair, 
 
248 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 descrip 
 tions of the North of Ireland, a portion of Con- 
 nemara, the Shannon, Limerick, and Water- 
 ford. 
 
 Before leaving America he had arranged with 
 Colman for the publication of " The Tent 
 Pitched " (" A 1'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 ad 
 vance. 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 Col 
 man 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 forgot- 
 
THE CORSAIR. 249 
 
 ten 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 vol 
 umes, 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 Eng 
 lish edition of " A 1'Abri," with illustrations by 
 Bartlett. A fourth London edition of " Pencil- 
 lings," with four illustrations, was coming out, 
 and, finally, Cunningham, Macrone's successor, 
 printed an English edition of " Bianca Yisconti " 
 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 ex 
 penses, 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, esca 
 pades, assassinations, masked balls, lost heirs, 
 and all the stock properties of the romancer's 
 
250 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 trip 
 pingly along. Willis had many of the gifts of 
 the born raconteur. He lacked a large con- 
 structiveness, but in the minor graces of the 
 story-teller he was always happy. He was skill 
 ful in managing the callida junctura, good at 
 a start, a transition, or a finish. One must not 
 look in these artificial fictions for truthful de 
 lineation 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 buoy 
 antly 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 difficul 
 ties, relieved by digressions, tipped with a moral, 
 and bound in two volumes, with a portrait of 
 the author." From this defect and from the 
 
THE CORSAIR. 251 
 
 author's light way of telling his stories, it fol 
 lowed that the more serious of these carried no 
 conviction of reality to the reader's mind. " Vio- 
 lanta Cesar ini " 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 ar 
 tist, 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 un 
 known in the high society of Florence, and car 
 ried 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 count 
 ess, who had run off with a famous outlaw. The 
 latter having been killed by the Austrian police, 
 the lady, without wasting much time in unavail 
 ing 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 
 
252 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 the story takes place. " Lady Eavelgold " 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 indefi 
 nite country. Three high-born beauties are des 
 perately 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 sug 
 gested by &fte~champetre 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 cav 
 erns, 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 " De 
 cameron," and it is not without an undercurrent 
 of pathos. 
 
THE CORSAIR. 253 
 
 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 ambassa 
 dors 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 w?,s his meeting with 
 Thackeray then a young and comparatively 
 unknown writer and his engaging him as a 
 
254 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 contributor to the " Corsair," a stroke of jour 
 nalistic enterprise which ought to have pro 
 longed 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 re 
 sponsibility 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 touch 
 ing the authorship of ' The Yellowplush Papers ' 
 and the ' Reminiscences of Major Gahagan,' the 
 only things in periodical literature, except the ' Pick 
 wick Papers,' for which I looked with any in 
 terest or eagerness. The author, Mr. Thackeray, 
 breakfasted with me yesterday, and the ' Corsair ' 
 will be delighted, I am sure, to hear that I have en 
 gaged this cleverest and most gifted of the magazine- 
 writers of London to become a regular correspond- 
 
THE CORSAIR. 255 
 
 ent 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 lit 
 erature 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, H6tel 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 vol 
 ume entitled " The Paris Sketch Book," and all 
 
256 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 week 
 ly 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 
 
THE CORSAIR. 257 
 
 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 Eng 
 land, 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. Wil 
 lis'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 
 17 
 
258 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 mar 
 chioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart- 
 stricken baroness trembling, as each gets the volume, 
 and asking of her guilty conscience, ' Gracious good 
 ness ! 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 lat 
 ter avenges himself by a somewhat cavalier de 
 portment, 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. him 
 self:" 
 
 " 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 Mimp 
 son 's sherry, calls for a bottle of champagne not 
 
THE CORSAIR. 259 
 
 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) in 
 troduces him. Come, Brown, you are a stranger and 
 on the dinner list of most of the patricians of May 
 Fair, but is n't this un pen 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. Por 
 ter had become discouraged and discontinued 
 publication in March, transferring his subscrip 
 tion list to the " Albion." Since the establish 
 ment of the paper, a year before, Willis had 
 ceased his contributions to the New York " Mir 
 ror," 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 leav 
 ing 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, in- 
 
260 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 forming him of the "Corsair's" suspension, ex 
 pressing 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 hu 
 morous poem, " Lady Jane," was published in 
 installments in the " Dollar," the monthly edi 
 tion of "Brother Jonathan." With both of 
 these periodicals he had a quasi editorial con 
 nection, though the real editor was Mr. H. Has 
 tings 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. Wil 
 lis 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 reputa 
 tion 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 
 
THE CORSAIR. 261 
 
 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 produc 
 tion 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 re 
 ferred to were undoubtedly the " Mirror," " Gra 
 ham's," "Godey's," and "The Ladies' Com 
 panion," 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 de 
 served preserving found their way into " Ephem 
 era." His contributions to " Godey's " began 
 with the January number for 1842, and con 
 tinued, though with greatly diminished fre 
 quency, till January, 1850. During the first 
 year he had an article in nearly every number, 
 most of them stories. For " Graham's " he be 
 gan to write in January, 1843, and contributed 
 
262 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Phila 
 delphia. 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 pub 
 lished, 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 sym 
 pathy of his readers more than any other period 
 ical writer of his day, and his reputation almost 
 amounted to fame. Colonel Higginson tells a 
 story, illustrating his vogue, about a solid com 
 mercial gentleman in Boston, who, finding him 
 self by chance at some literary dinner or tea, is 
 reported to have entered into the spirit of the 
 occasion by saying that "he guessed Go-ethe 
 was the JSP. P. Willis of Germany." 
 
 Willis lived at Owego till 1842, and contin 
 ued to date his letters to " Brother Jonathan," 
 " Graham's," etc., " from under a bridge." He 
 had expected something like XI, 000 from Gen 
 eral Stace's estate, but it yielded him nothing. 
 
THE CORSAIR. 263 
 
 His publisher failed about this time, and his 
 arrangement with " Brother Jonathan " coming 
 to an end, he engaged with a Washington pa 
 per, 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 " Let 
 ters 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 
 
264 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 housekeep 
 ing 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 
 4 Morning Chronicle,' " living in lodgings at Fur- 
 nivall'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 Amer 
 ica 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 after 
 noon 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 ' Cornu 
 copia ' and had rum toddy and broiled oysters." 
 Among Willis's private papers is a cordial letter 
 from Dickens, dated at Niagara, April 30, 1842, 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 265 
 
 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 ex 
 ceeded 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 ed 
 itor, 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 fc< Corsair," but virtually he 
 was merely a contributor and foreign correspond- 
 
266 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 ent 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 for 
 mer, but the literary policy was largely shaped 
 by Willis, and almost the entire time and ener 
 gies of both partners were given to their enter 
 prises. The office of the new journal was at No. 
 4 Ann Street, and its title in full ran as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " The New Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and 
 Instruction : Containing Original Papers, Tales of 
 Romance, Sketches of Society, Manners, and Every 
 day Life ; Domestic and Foreign Correspondence ; 
 Wit and Humor ; Fashion and Gossip ; the Fine Arts 
 and Literary, Musical, and Dramatic Criticism ; ex 
 tracts from New Works ; Poetry, Original and Se 
 lected ; 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 ven 
 ture was going to succeed. He retained his 
 position as New York correspondent to the " Na 
 tional 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 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 267 
 
 on up to January, 1844, after which time he an 
 nounced that he should write in future exclu 
 sively 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, 
 Adhcesit pammento. 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, in 
 viting his sweetheart to a moonlight walk up to 
 Thompson's for an ice ; or mock heroic lamen 
 tations 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 
 
268 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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, per 
 haps, is " Love in a Cottage," a charmingly 
 frank expression of a preference for the arti 
 ficial, a quatrain from which has got into com 
 mon 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 abstrac 
 tion when the poet was strolling listlessly up 
 Broadway, his spirits low and his eternal watch 
 fulness for effects asleep has, for that very 
 reason doubtless, the sudden touch of genius, the 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 269 
 
 unconsciousness and careless felicity which seem 
 likely to keep it alive and to make it, possibly, 
 the only work of Willis destined to reach pos 
 terity. 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 imagina 
 tion. Its grace, dignity, and pathos are impres 
 sive, and there is more in it of earnestness of 
 soul than in anything I have seen from the pen 
 of its author." l 
 
 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 
 
 1 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." 
 
270 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 poems contained few notable additions to " Me- 
 lanie " 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 " stan 
 zas 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 pre 
 served 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 al 
 ternate irony and sentiment, the rattling digres- 
 siveness, and the eccentric rhyming and auda 
 cious punning of his original. There is a delicate 
 suggestion of Lady Blessington in the heroine ; 
 but Willis's English acquaintances could hardly 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 271 
 
 have felt pleased at being served up by name in 
 the picture of a London soirSe, 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 So 
 ciety of Yale College, extracts from which ap 
 pear 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 "Astraea," 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 re 
 sponse to an invitation from James T. Fields to 
 recite a poem in Boston, Willis wrote : " I took 
 
272 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Mer 
 cantile Library Association of Baltimore, and 
 the audience a large one was disappointed 
 by the serious nature of the address. A " Lec 
 ture on Fashion " given before the New York 
 Lyceum and published in 1844 was more char 
 acteristic, 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 senti 
 ments, to be delivered on my legs." 
 
 In the issue of the " New Mirror " for Sep 
 tember 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. Ee- 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 273 
 
 monstrances 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 follow 
 ing 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 4 Evening Mirror,' the 
 other day, treating his subscribers to an excur 
 sion ; he drove them all down Broadway to the 
 Battery in an omnibus." Edgar Poe was en 
 gaged 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 recollec 
 tions 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, reasonable 
 ness, and courtesy, while engaged upon the 
 
 18 
 
274 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " Mirror." Poe's own estimate of Willis is 
 given at some length in his series of papers on 
 " The Literati of New York." * 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, vacillat 
 ing, 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 as 
 sured grace of his carriage. His whole person and 
 personal demeanor bear about them the traces of 
 4 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 
 
 1 See also his paper on The American Drama, for an elabo 
 rate review of Tortesa, which, with all its defects, he thought 
 the best American play. 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 275 
 
 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 pub 
 lished 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." a 
 
 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 ad 
 mirable mother whose love had been to him both 
 
 1 See Gill's Life of Poe for a fac-simile letter of Willis to 
 Poe. 
 
276 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 rec 
 ord 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 edit 
 ing a daily paper had proved unexpectedly bur 
 densome and, added to the grief of his bereave 
 ment, 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 Ad 
 venture," and " Romance of Travel," in a single 
 large volume, " Dashes at Life with a Free Pen 
 cil." 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 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 277 
 
 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 Filer," and " The Lunatic's Skate " of a 
 capacity for stronger and graver work were dis 
 appointed 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 favor 
 ite 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 dis 
 guise, who flings off his cloak in the denoue 
 ment and confounds his adversaries. In " Get 
 ting 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, sojourn 
 ing 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 
 
278 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. . 
 
 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 retroussS 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 oc 
 cupants, the Becktons, are in truth the Skinner 
 family ; that Mabel Brown, the heroine, is iden 
 tical with Miss Mary Stace ; and, lastly, that 
 Miss Blakeney, the dazzling but heartless heir 
 ess, whose hand Mr. Maud's hostess kindly des 
 tines for her young protege, but whom, yield 
 ing 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 su 
 pernatural 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 mys 
 tery required for illusion. In the midst of the 
 fashionable, real life where they are set, his su 
 pernatural incidents lose their effect, and have no 
 vraisemblance. Nor was he more at home in 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 279 
 
 broad comedy. His humor and he had humor 
 was delicate rather than robust ; was made out 
 of irony, pleasantry, and gay spirits, and de 
 pended more upon situation than character. If 
 the situation was droll, the humor was good ; 
 otherwise not. "Miss Jones's Son," " The Spirit 
 
 Love of lone S ," " Nora Mehidy," "Meena 
 
 Dimity," and " Born to love Pigs and Chickens" 
 were all manque. The best of the humorous tales 
 is " The Female Ward," which tells of the em 
 barrassments 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 pri 
 vate lunatic asylum, are very happily imagined. 
 " The Female Ward " would lend itself nicely to 
 the dramatizer, and make up into a most amus 
 ing little farce. "Those Ungrateful Blidg- 
 imses " 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 
 
280 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 maids by the name of Buggins or Blidgins, rep 
 resenting 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 chal 
 lenge, 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 dec 
 laration. His letter is answered by the lady's 
 husband, who informs him of her recent mar 
 riage, 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 Blos 
 soms," 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 Haw 
 thorne, and though he might have treated it 
 more meaningly, he could not have improved 
 upon its wild, half -eerie gayety, with its under- 
 
THE NEW MIRROR. 281 
 
 current of regret the old Horatian regret for 
 the shortness of life and vanished youth. A su 
 perannuated beau, lingering in the empty col 
 onnade 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 fid 
 dlers, by the light of spermaceti tapers that floods 
 the dusty evergreens " with a weird mysterious- 
 ness, 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 abun 
 dance of pretty and clever things scattered 
 through these tales of Willis. " Flirtation" - 
 as an instance of his epigrams "is a circulat 
 ing library in which we seldom ask twice for the 
 same volume." " His politeness," he says of one 
 of his characters, " had superseded his charac 
 ter altogether." He tells of " a person of excel 
 lent family, after the fashion of a hill of pota- 
 
282 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 toes, 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 an 
 swer to his morning prayer : it provided his 
 daily bread." " Wigwam vs. Almacks," which 
 follows out the suggestions of a true story told 
 in " A 1'Abri," is not very satisfactory as a fic 
 tion, but is worth noticing for the lovely descrip 
 tion, 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 Berk 
 shire, 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 school 
 mate, who was passing through England on his 
 way to Vienna, where he had lately been ap 
 pointed chargg d'affaires, and who gave him a 
 complimentary appointment as attach^ to his le 
 gation, an addition to his passport of the kind 
 that had proved so serviceable in the days of his 
 
284 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " 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, ac 
 companied 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, at 
 tached 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 Imo 
 gen 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 
 
THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND. 285 
 
 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 Caro 
 lina. 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 hid 
 den for five years in a cubby under the roof, dur 
 ing which time she supported herself by fine 
 needle-work 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 in 
 terests of the family during the whole period of 
 her service was a beautiful instance of the fidel 
 ity 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. Sev 
 eral 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 
 
286 , NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 " Eural 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 con 
 siderable 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 " Even 
 ing Mirror " had tapered down to Hiram Ful 
 ler. 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," to- 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 287 
 
 ward 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 corre 
 spondent 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 Bed 
 ford, Massachusetts. To this lady he was mar 
 ried on October 1, 1846, the eleventh anniver 
 sary 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 Mor 
 ris's and Willis's final and most prosperous ex 
 periment in journalism. They both remained 
 connected with it till death: in Willis's case a 
 service of twenty-one years, during which his lit 
 erary toil was devoted almost exclusively to build 
 ing up the paper. " For the cultivation of the 
 memorable, the progressive, and the beautiful," 
 ran the legend upon its title-page, followed by a 
 
288 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 oc 
 cupies, 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 ga 
 zette of fashionable news and fashionable litera 
 ture, 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 Knick 
 erbocker Spectator, and his " Ephemera," pub 
 lished in 1854, is a running record of the notabil 
 ities of New York for a dozen years. He chron 
 icled 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 cafes, the 
 hotels, the balls and receptions, the changes in 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 289 
 
 equipages, customs, dress. He grew to be a 
 recognized arbiter elegantiarum, and his corre 
 spondence 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 hu 
 man ; his gregariousness and his cheerful phi 
 losophy cast a gleam of their own on this look 
 ing-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 Glemnary. Pan, we 
 know, has been found in Wall Street ; and Wil 
 lis 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 
 
 19 
 
290 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 summer, he borrowed a breeze from " the outer 
 most 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 char 
 acter which distinguishes it from all other Amer 
 ican 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 some 
 what 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 quar 
 ters. 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, 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 291 
 
 to Washington Irving, is of uncertain applica 
 tion ; 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 resi 
 dence 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 exclu 
 sively 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 gen 
 eral society. Irving himself, the starting-point 
 of the Knickerbocker writers, was out of the 
 country when Willis settled in New York, hav 
 ing gone as minister to Spain in 1842. He came 
 back in 1846 and took up his residence at Sunny- 
 side. 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 
 
292 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 Car 
 olina, 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 al 
 ready begun to show symptoms of the mental 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 293 
 
 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 spec 
 ulation in them, to be two holes, looking out 
 through a stone wall." Then there were Ver- 
 planck, the editor of Shakespeare, and Duyckinck 
 the compiler of the " Cyclopaedia 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 infor 
 mally at the weekly receptions given by Miss 
 Anne Lynch (now Mrs. Botta) the poetess, and 
 author of the " Handbook of Universal Litera 
 ture," 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 friend 
 ship. Willis used to go often to Horace Gree- 
 ley'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, 
 
294 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 house 
 keeping 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 favor 
 ite. 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 gen 
 tleman 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 neigh- 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 295 
 
 bor." 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 gentle 
 men 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 manu 
 script. " Private Letters," he declared in a 
 note to Edgar Poe, " are the 4 last ounce that 
 breaks the camel's back ' of a literary man." And 
 he once answered a friend who proposed a cor 
 respondence, 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 
 
296 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 degag6 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 com 
 position, 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 hav 
 ing "a certain wavy elegance." He was like 
 wise 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 word 
 ing 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 oc 
 curred during the whole of their literary life 
 and business association." "I would not stay 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 297 
 
 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. Phil 
 lips 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 ques 
 tions 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 mat 
 ters 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 al 
 ways out to every new-comer in the field of let 
 ters. It was an honorable trait in his character, 
 and should never be forgotten in casting his ac 
 count, that, whatever may have been his foibles, 
 the jealousy which is the besetting sin of authors 
 and artists was not among them. He was per 
 petually on the lookout for young writers of 
 promise, and was the first to praise them, and 
 
298 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 to give circulation to their good things by copy 
 ing them into his columns. He was the intro 
 ducer and literary sponsor of many reputations 
 now fallen silent, and of some which have sur 
 vived. 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 gen 
 tlemen 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 ded 
 icated to Willis, who contributed the preface. 
 This patronage was unkindly referred to in Du- 
 ganne'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 : 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 299 
 
 " What time Nat Willis, in the daily papers, 
 Published receipts of shoemakers and drapers ; 
 What time, in sooth, his ' Mirror' flashed its rays, 
 Like Burnum's ' drummond ' on the Broadway gaze, 
 When lisping misses, fresh from seminaries, 
 Worshiped ' mi-boy ' and ' brigadier ' l as lares; 
 Then Bayard Taylor protege 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 re 
 turns to the charge against Willis as follows : 
 
 " I almost passed by Willis ' ah, miboy ! 
 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 ' npper-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 ! 
 
 1 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 Nodes Ambrosiance. 
 
300 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " ' 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 blase 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 184344, the younger writer thanking the 
 older for his encouragement, sending him his 
 new volume of verse, and promising to contrib 
 ute to the " Mirror," but remonstrating with 
 him upon his declared intention in a very ap 
 preciative review of Lowell's poems in the "Mir 
 ror " 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 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 301 
 
 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." l 
 
 In point of fact if the item is not "below 
 the dignity of biography this threat of Low 
 ell'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 bap 
 tismal prcenomen, 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 sis 
 ters, as well as his intimate friends, were accus 
 tomed 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 
 
 i Cambridge, January 13, 1844. 
 
302 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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. 
 J T is 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 A 1'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 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 303 
 
 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. " Excel 
 sior," and " The Raven," and " Abou ben Ad- 
 hem " are by no means the best poems in the 
 English tongue, but their currency is attested 
 and doubtless kept up by the innumerable bur 
 lesque imitations of them that swarm the press. 
 Willis had a share of these left-hand honors: 
 his epistolary style in particular was often carica 
 tured in the newspapers. In " Godey's Lady's 
 Book " for December, 1849, he was selected to 
 gether 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 neces 
 sity, prompted by the piston of a fifty-dollar com 
 pensation, with a publisher as the pump-handle, hi 
 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. 
 Ah 1 the while that I was aping Prometheus (the win 
 dow being half-opened), I could sniff the delightful 
 odors of a rose which a fair neighbor will insist on 
 keeping," etc., etc. 
 
304 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 The requested poem is annexed a scriptural 
 poem, " The Fish woman'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 ephemera 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 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 305 
 
 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 in 
 ner consciousness that the best part of his ca 
 reer was over. His talent, as has been said 
 before, was the result of, or was closely de 
 pendent upon, his physical temperament. When 
 health began to decay, and youth was over, and 
 his animal spirits had effervesced, life com 
 menced 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 sup 
 ply, 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 dis- 
 
 20 
 
306 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 cipline of early rebuffs, and had made a pain 
 ful 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 com 
 mand, at this or at any time, the stimulating 
 and bracing association with men of high se 
 rious 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 so 
 ciety did not at all take the place of that inti 
 mate communion with a circle of gifted spirits 
 which has been so stimulating to others. More 
 over 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 under 
 stand 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. " Colo 
 nel " William L. Stone of the " Commercial 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 307 
 
 Advertiser," and " Colonel " James Watson 
 Webb of the "Courier and Enquirer," distin 
 guished themselves especially by their stern con 
 demnation of Willis's literary affectations, and 
 of what they were pleased to consider the weak 
 nesses of his private character and life. It is 
 suggestive, by the way, of the militant disposi 
 tion 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 rep 
 resented himself as received in the best circles 
 abroad, "when in truth 't was 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 visit 
 ing 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 For- 
 
308 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 rest and his wife. He had known Forrest as 
 early as 1836, admired his acting, and praised it 
 constantly in the " Mirror " and " Home Jour 
 nal," preferring it to the more studied perform 
 ances 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. For 
 rest 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 re 
 finement, 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. 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 309 
 
 Edwin Forrest was a tragedian of great nat 
 ural force and genius, endowed with a wonder 
 ful voice and a magnificent physique. But he 
 was a man of passionate and overbearing tem 
 per ; 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 ob 
 jection to his wife's hospitalities, or to have sus 
 pected 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 ac 
 tor 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 Feb 
 ruary, 1850, he made an application for divorce 
 to the Pennsylvania legislature, based upon affi 
 davits, charging his wife with adultery. This 
 application was ultimately denied, but mean- 
 while the lady's friends in New York had taken 
 
310 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS, 
 
 the matter up. She had the sympathy and 
 moral support of such men as William C. Bry 
 ant and his son-in-law, Mr. Parke Godwin, and 
 Dr. Orville Dewey, the eminent Unitarian di 
 vine. Up to this time Forrest had not impli 
 cated 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 Penn 
 sylvania 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 in 
 form the public as to its credibility on other points. 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 311 
 
 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 evi 
 dence is totally at variance with all we have ever 
 seen and known of that dignified, well-bred, and 
 delicate mannered lady." 
 
 And in the 4 < Home Journal " for April 6th 
 he published a severe review of the " Forrest 
 testimony," warmly defending Mrs. Forrest, ex 
 pressing 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 con 
 demning 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 knowl 
 edge, and wishing to evade no manner of responsi 
 bility, we close with the writer's individual signature, 
 
 " N. P. WILLIS." 
 
 These two articles, coupled with testimony 
 elicited from Forrest's household servants, de 
 cided him to drag Willis into the case. His 
 bill filed in Philadelphia contained the names of 
 
312 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 nine co-respondents, among them a clergyman, 
 Mrs. Forrest's family doctor, and Forrest's old 
 friend and traveling companion, Chevalier Wi- 
 koff. 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 Septem 
 ber, 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-accusa 
 tions ; 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 walk 
 ing in Washington Square, near his own resi 
 dence 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 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 313 
 
 time have been physically the equal of his antag 
 onist, 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 re 
 sponsible 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 ap- 
 
314 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 pealed 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 dam 
 ages. But in the mean time the suit for di 
 vorce 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 celebres of the last 
 generation. The trial occupied the then extraor 
 dinarily 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 unneces 
 sary 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 al 
 most solely of the testimony of servants, who 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 315 
 
 were thoroughly discredited in their cross-exami 
 nation. One of these witnesses was a man who 
 had been discharged from Willis's employ. An 
 other 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 as- 
 serter of the American stage against the " dudes " 
 and " Anglo-maniacs " of that day. " The boys," 
 who had stuck by him in his quarrel with Ma- 
 cready 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 Broad 
 way 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 
 
316 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 necessary to go so far as this in order to as 
 sert the innocence of Mrs. Forrest and of those 
 who were made parties to the accusations against 
 her. Alger, in his big " Life of Edwin For 
 rest," 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 For 
 rest'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 lis 
 tened to her testimony could have thought her a 
 woman likely to be deceived. John Van Buren, 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 317 
 
 who was Forrest's lawyer in all these cases, was 
 quite generally censured for the needlessly abu 
 sive way in which he handled the witnesses for 
 the other side. In the trial of the assault and 
 battery case, " Willis v. Forrest," his personal 
 ities 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 demand 
 ing 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 re 
 cipient returned (after carefully making a copy 
 of it) with a short reply, describing it as a " silly 
 and scurrilous communication." This it cer 
 tainly 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 re 
 plied 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 nourish on 
 
318 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 characteristi 
 cally 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 congratu 
 lation 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 as 
 sume 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 pun 
 gent 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 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 319 
 
 time to redeem my promise to myself, and to say to 
 you that I have felt a friend's part in the whole prog 
 ress 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 con 
 gratulate 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 peril 
 ous. 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, il- 
 logically and unfairly, perhaps, but still inevit 
 ably, a sediment of prejudice in the public mind. 
 It is in the nature of such cases tjiat the inmost 
 truth about them can seldom be/known to more 
 than two persons. To all others there remains 
 
320 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 nothing beyond inference and suspicion. Hence 
 the uncertainty which survives the judicial de 
 cision of the cause and works injustice to the 
 innocent who have been unlucky enough to be 
 drawn into compromising situations. An im 
 pression has always obtained in many quarters 
 that Willis was profligate in his relations with 
 women. Rumors to this effect were industri 
 ously 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 re 
 vive 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 impar 
 tial, 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 cor- 
 responcfonce 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 per 
 son a constant attitude of gallantry toward the 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 321 
 
 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 acquaint 
 ances, he was exposed to temptations which he 
 did not always resist, and probably had his 
 share of those adventures which the French in 
 dulgently 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 in 
 trigues 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 
 
 21 
 
322 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 " 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 cor 
 respondence and miscellaneous contributions to 
 his paper. " Rural Letters " contained his " In 
 valid Letters from Germany;" a reprint of "Let 
 ters 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 ; be 
 sides sketches often very acute pieces of men 
 tal 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, usu 
 ally, simultaneous editions in London and New 
 York. It is instructive to compare his letters 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 323 
 
 from Cape Cod a journey on which Mr. Grin- 
 nell 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 inhab 
 ited 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 pil 
 grimage 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 Tren 
 ton Falls which he had visited twenty years 
 before and described in " Edith Linsey " oc- 
 
324 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 curs a startling anticipation of the most admired 
 figure in Tennyson's " Queen Mary : " 
 
 " As we stood gazing at this, last night, a little af 
 ter 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 out 
 line 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 fren 
 zied tumult of the lashed and agonized waters, and 
 dividing whatever leapt across it, foam, spray, or driv 
 ing 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 unflinch 
 ingly represents a great principle amid the raging op 
 position, 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 pro 
 prietor and landlord, to edit a small illustrated 
 guide-book to Trenton Falls ; his own contribu 
 tions to which consisted of descriptions repro 
 duced from these letters and from " Edith Lin- 
 sey," 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 admi 
 ration, and whom he had been privileged to meet 
 
THE HOME JOURNAL. 325 
 
 often and familiarly during her first visit to 
 America. This was, of course, not a formal bi 
 ography, 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 for 
 mer 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 " Pencil- 
 lings by the Way." 
 
CHAPTEE 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 farm 
 house of a Mrs. Sutherland. They grew so at 
 tached 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 slen 
 der 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 midsum 
 mer, ran down to join the creek. The location 
 seemed destined by nature for a gentleman's 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 327 
 
 country seat, from its variety of surface, its con 
 trasting prospects, and its noble timber. The 
 outlook in front was upon a wide bend of the 
 river and the opposite heights and distant moun 
 tain 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 high 
 lands, 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 de- 
 
328 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 cided 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 him 
 self 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 Sunny side, 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 show 
 ing 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, in 
 vented after the fact to give the name a history 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 329 
 
 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, adoptions Christendoms," such as 
 Everwild, Mieux-ici, Lodore, Loudwater, Idle- 
 brook, Wanderwild, Up-the-brook, Shadywild, 
 Loiter wild, Demi jour-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 fash 
 ionable life and devoted himself to the domestic 
 ities ; to the care of his health and his grounds, 
 the entertainment of his guests, and the prepara 
 tion of his weekly letter to the " Home Jour 
 nal." There was little left in him of that dan 
 dyism 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 with 
 out straightway imparting to it an air of jaunti- 
 ness. He was fond of pets and was a most play 
 ful and affectionate companion to his children, 
 the number of whom gradually increased to five 
 by the birth of a third daughter, Edith, on Sep 
 tember 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. 
 
330 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 From early spring till after Christmas the 
 family at Idlewild kept open house, having al 
 most always company staying with them, and in 
 summer constantly receiving transient guests. 
 The place had become celebrated through Wil 
 lis's descriptions in the "Home Journal." Corn 
 wall 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 " scis 
 sors 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 " Let 
 ters from under a Bridge," and it was, perhaps, 
 presuming too far on their claim to even con 
 temporary respect to bind them up at all after 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 331 
 
 they had once done duty in the newspaper col 
 umn. They were eagerly read, nevertheless, as 
 they appeared from week to week, and a sym 
 pathetic 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 New- 
 burg, 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 amuse 
 ment, becoming something of a country gentle 
 man and public-spirited bulwark of society, 
 taking part in local interests. There was a pic 
 turesque 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. 1 Bayard Taylor, 
 
 1 J. Addison Richards visited Idlewild to make sketches 
 
332 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 Charles A. Dana, De Trobriand, of the " Cour- 
 rier des Etats-Unis ; " Hicks and Kensett, the 
 painters, came up from New York at various 
 times, and rambled, bathed, or otherwise dis 
 ported themselves in the glen. Whipple and 
 Fields ran across from Boston and made a pleas 
 ant visit of two or three days, of which both af 
 terwards 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. 4 Now a pertaty,' murmured the 
 child." 
 
 In the summer of 1854, Willis had a call 
 from his down-river neighbor, Washington Ir 
 ving, and repaid it at Sunnyside in 1859, in com 
 pany 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 char- 
 
 for his illustrated article in Harper's Magazine for January, 
 1858, q. v. for a full description of the place. 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 333 
 
 acteristically 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 horse 
 back riding, and spent as many hours as he could 
 
334 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 in the saddle. His horses and dogs were a great 
 source of amusement to him. One of his spe 
 cial pets was Caesar, a superb Newfoundland, 
 that had been with Dr. Kane on one of his Arc 
 tic 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 exhibi 
 tion for a time, in July, 1862, at Barnum's mu 
 seum, and the inscription on it ran as follows : 
 
 CAESAR, 
 
 WHO MADE THE VOYAGE TO THE ARCTIC 
 
 REGIONS WITH DR. KANE, 
 
 AND WAS AFTERWARDS THE FAVORITE DOG OF THE CHIL 
 DREN 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 ac 
 cusations against Willis that have not yet ceased 
 to go the rounds of the newspapers. This was 
 w Ruth Hall, a Domestic Tale of the Present 
 Time," by Fanny Fern. The lady who wrote 
 under this pen name was his younger sister, Sa 
 rah, the author of much cleverish literature 
 " Fern Leaves," and the like which once en- 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 335 
 
 joyed a prodigious circulation. She was the en~ 
 fant terrible of the family, a warm-hearted, im 
 pulsive woman, but not always discreet. By the 
 death of her husband, Charles Eldridge of Bos 
 ton, she had been suddenly reduced from com 
 fort to poverty. She afterwards contracted an 
 unfortunate marriage with a Mr. Farrington, 
 from whom she was finally divorced. To sup 
 port herself and her children, she turned instinc 
 tively 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 dis 
 liked 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 recrimi 
 nations. 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 
 
336 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 neg 
 lect 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 pros 
 perous 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 be 
 comes famous and begins to get letters from 
 college presidents, begging her for her auto 
 graph, and from grateful readers, saying, " I 
 am a better son, a better brother, a better hus 
 band, and a better father than I was before I 
 commenced reading your articles. God bless 
 you ! " then, under these triumphant circum 
 stances, 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 tack 
 ing up stream with " Floy," his sister's nom-de- 
 plume, painted on the bows. 
 
 Against this caricature of himself Willis made 
 
IDLEW1LD AND LAST DAYS. 337 
 
 no public protest. When a man is wounded in 
 the house of his friends, his only refuge is si 
 lence. 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 responsibili 
 ties 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 pa 
 per did not, as a rule, pay its contributors a ay- 
 thing, and could not afford to do so. It paid its 
 own editorial staff, and that was all. Contribu 
 tors 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," 
 
 22 
 
338 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 con 
 tributions to periodicals. So exclusively &feuil- 
 letoniste 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 market- 
 ableness," 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 persuad 
 ers the law of copyright, on the one hand, provid 
 ing 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 propor 
 tionate work of imagination." 
 
 If " Paul Fane, or Parts of a Life Else Un- 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 339 
 
 told " 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 de 
 termination 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 per 
 plexities and real miseries, which arise not so 
 much from the deeper conflicts of character as 
 from the attempt to adjust hostile social stand 
 ards. Mr. James has made a very interesting 
 story out of the simple episode of a young Eng 
 lish 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 
 
340 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 equipped for success in this field. He could not 
 keep liis 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 stu 
 dent of manners, as of other things. He lacked 
 the sober, truthful vigilance of James and How- 
 ells. 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 exe 
 cution 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 vio 
 lent and assumed indelicacy on the part of nat 
 urally refined writers, when they are trying to 
 put on the healthy coarseness of a Hogarth or 
 Teniers, is a not uncommon phenomenon ; dainti 
 ness mistaking coarseness for the strength of 
 which it is often a sign or an accompaniment. 
 
 In " The Convalescent " were included narra 
 tives of a trip to the Rappahannock, to Nan- 
 tucket, and to the horse fair at Springfield, Mas 
 sachusetts. In July, 1860, Willis accompanied 
 Mr. Grinnell on a journey to the West, re 
 ported for the "Home Journal" as a "Three 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 341 
 
 Weeks' Trip to the West," going to Yellow 
 Springs, Ohio, and Chicago, and as far as Mad 
 ison, 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 affecta 
 tions gained upon him to an intolerable extent. 
 " Mr. N. P. Willis," says Bartlett in his " Dic 
 tionary 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. " Ja- 
 ponicadom " 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 Eng 
 lish Language," lends the weight of his author 
 ity to Willis's " Stay-at-home-itiveness," as a 
 synonym for the Greek oiKovpia, and the early 
 English studesta2)elvestnesse. But such philo 
 logical monsters as re-June-venescence, worth 
 while - ativeness, fifty - per - centity, with which 
 some of his books are strewn, have a painfully 
 forced effect, and the trick became, from repeti* 
 
342 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 tion, a tedious mannerism. Punning, likewise, 
 was a habit which grew upon him, though both of 
 these offenses are commoner in his private cor 
 respondence 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 Idle- 
 wild, 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 promi 
 nently mentioned for the secretaryship of the 
 navy, and who went on to Washington with Wil 
 lis, 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 hur 
 ried 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, poly 
 syllabic Southerners, incapable of a short word or 
 a mean action," whom he had known at Saratoga 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 343 
 
 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 Convales 
 cent " remained, as has been said, his last publi 
 cation in book form. 
 
 Willis found all the world at Washington ; 
 among the rest, Lady Georgiana Fane, whom he 
 presented to Mrs. Lincoln. " Fancy anticipat 
 ing this at Alinack's twenty-five years ago ! " he 
 wrote of this conjunction, in a letter to Mrs. Wil 
 lis. 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 de 
 partments, and got rooms for him and Mrs. 
 Pierpont in the house where he lodged himself ; 
 
344 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 was introduced to General McClellan and to the 
 cabinet officers, and the numerous congressmen 
 and brigadiers who swarmed Pennsylvania Ave 
 nue 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 hav 
 ing a " motherly expression," whereupon she ad 
 dressed him the following note : 
 
 EXECUTIVE MANSION, July 2^th. 
 MR. N. P. WILLIS : 
 
 Dear Sir, It will afford me much pleasure to 
 receive yourself and ladies * 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 cor 
 rected 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. 
 
 1 Lady G. Fane and Mrs. Clifford. 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 345 
 
 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 Kun fortu 
 nately, 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 Mon 
 roe, Manassas, Old Point Comfort, etc. On 
 March 15, 1862, he was of the party which vis 
 ited 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 ac 
 quaintance 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 capi 
 tal were agreeable at first, but he soon grew 
 homesick and pined for his beloved Idlewild. 
 
 In consequence of the war, the circulation of 
 
346 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 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 trou 
 bled him to think of the place in the hands of 
 strangers. He paid it a visit in August, by in 
 vitation 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 aban 
 don his post. He was opposed to the school 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 347 
 
 project, as he had been to the renting of Idle- 
 wild, 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 bet 
 ter in his New York lodgings. By 1864, more 
 over, Morris had become quite imbecile, and 
 the responsibilities of editorship weighed more 
 and more heavily 011 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 partner 
 ship a young man named Hollister, who had 
 capital and enthusiasm ; but the business man 
 agement 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 nar- 
 
348 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 rowing 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 pro 
 nounced sound. His disease finally declared it 
 self as epilepsy, and resulted at the last in pa 
 ralysis and softening of the brain. He was 
 subject for years to epileptic fits, occurring pe 
 riodically, 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 011 this point, and begged that no 
 stranger might see him during his attacks. Ac 
 cordingly, the matter was kept secret as long as 
 possible. After Willis's death, one of his phy- 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 349 
 
 sicians, 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 at 
 tacks, 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 dis 
 ease." 
 
 Under these trying circumstances he exhibited 
 a persistence in his work which astonished his 
 friends. They had not thought that such endur 
 ance was in the man. But from some underly 
 ing stratum of character, some strain of tough 
 ness inherent in his Puritan stock, he brought 
 up resources of will and stubbornness which re 
 sisted all appeals. Though complaining some 
 times in his letters that he was " pitilessly over 
 worked," 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 lat 
 ter 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 at 
 tentions ; and finally, early in November, he 
 brought him home to Idlewild, Willis yielding 
 
350 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 at last to the united entreaties of his wife, his 
 father, and his sisters, and the imperative com 
 mand 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 
 
 O 
 
 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 ap 
 prehension of it. He soon became helpless and 
 slept much of the time, and when waking lived in 
 continual visions and hallucinations. His rec 
 ognition 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 sin 
 gle 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. F. D. Huntington, the bookstores of the 
 city being closed, in token of respect, while 
 the service lasted. His pall was borne by Long 
 fellow, Dana, Holmes, Lowell, Fields, Whipple, 
 Edmund Quincy, Dr. Howe, Merritt Trimble, 
 and Aldrich. " I took the flower which lies be- 
 
IDLE WILD AND LAST DAYS. 351 
 
 fore 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 af 
 ter 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 mean 
 while 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 sentimen 
 tal and Cooper melodramatic. Yet these sur 
 vive, 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 hu 
 man, with almost unique endowments, devoting 
 rare powers to insignificant purposes, and curi 
 ously illustrating the ' fine irony of Nature,' with 
 which she often lavishes one of her choice pro 
 ductions on comparatively inferior ends." 
 
352 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. 
 
 But, laying aside all question of appeal to that 
 formidable tribunal, posterity, the many contem 
 poraries who have owed hours of refined enjoy 
 ment to his graceful talent will join heartily 
 with Thackeray in his assertion : " It is comfort 
 able that there should have been a Willis." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 THE following is a list of the first editions of Wil 
 lis'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, pub 
 lished since 1844, only the final and most complete is 
 mentioned, viz., the Clark & Maynard edition of 
 1868 (No. 29). No really complete edition of Wil 
 lis's writings has ever been printed. The first collec 
 tive 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 & Wil 
 
 liams, 1829. 
 23 
 
354 APPENDIX. 
 
 3. Poem delivered before the Society of United Brothers, 
 
 at Brown University, on the Day preceding Com 
 mencement, September 6, 1831, with other poems. 
 76 pp. New York : J. & J. Harper, 1831. 
 
 4. Melanie and Other Poems. Edited by Barry Corn 
 
 wall. 231 pp. London : Saunders & Otley, 1835. 
 The first American edition was published by Saun 
 ders & 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 Trag 
 
 edy 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 Eng 
 land. 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. Al'Abri ; or, The Tent Pitched. New York : Sam 
 
 uel 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. 
 
APPENDIX. 355 
 
 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 Leis 
 
 ure. New York : Baker & Scribner, 1849. 
 
 17. People I Have Met. New York : Baker & Scribuer, 
 
 1850. 
 
 18. Life Here and There. New York : Baker & Scrib 
 
 ner, 1850. 
 
 19. Hurry graphs. 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. 
 
356 APPENDIX. 
 
 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, com 
 piled, and partly written by Willis, but not the vari 
 ous 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. Bart- 
 
 lett. The Literary Department by N. P. Willis, 
 Esq. 2 vols. London : George Virtue, 1840. 
 
 4. Canadian Scenery. From Drawings by W. H. Bart- 
 
 lett. 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. Ster 
 ling Coyne, Esqs. London : George Virtue, 1842. 
 
 6. The Opal. New York : J. C. Hiker, 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. Par 
 
 ker 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, 33G, 350. 
 
 Alger's Life of Forrest, 31G. 
 
 Allston, Washington, 91. 
 
 Amaranth, The, 101. 
 
 Amateur, The, travesties Willis, 90. 
 
 American Monthly Magazine, The, 
 20, 21, 51 ; established by Willis, 
 82 ; contributors to, 33, 84 ; Wil 
 lis's contributions to, 84-88 ; dis 
 continuance of, 98, 99 ; 206, 207, 
 265. 
 
 American Review, The, 275. 
 
 Andover, school life at, 18-20. 
 
 Annuals, The, 77-80. 
 
 Antrobus'rf, Lady, a Supper at, 159. 
 
 Appleton, T. G., 82. 
 
 Apthorp, Mrs., her seminary at New 
 Haven, 57. 
 
 Athenaeum, The, Willis's contribu 
 tions to, 164, 216, 217. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, The, 345; remi 
 niscences of Willis in, 351. 
 
 Atlantic Souvenir, The, 49, 77. 
 
 Aytoun, W. E., his parody of Me- 
 lanie, 181. 
 
 BAILEY, JOHN, an ancestor of Willis, 
 4. 
 
 Baillie, Joanna, Willis's acquaint 
 ance with, 160, 163-165, 167 ; 271. 
 
 Barry Cornwall. See Procter. 
 
 Bartlett, W. H., 128, 221, 222, 249. 
 
 Bartlett's Dictionary of American 
 isms quotes Willis, 341. 
 
 Beattie, Dr. Wm., 97, 149, 166, 330. 
 
 Beecher, Edward, 35, 94, 95. 
 
 Belknap, Abigail, 5. 
 
 Benjamin, Mary, Willis's engage 
 ment 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 Wil 
 lis 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 contribu 
 tions to, <!8, 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 Cae 
 sar, 332. 
 
 Brown University, Willis's poem be 
 fore, 100, 104. 
 
 Bryant, W. C.,49, 217, 220, 291, 308, 
 310, 313. 
 
 Buckingham, J. T., 86-88. 
 
 Bulwer, E. L., 138, 141, 237. 
 
 Bushucll, Horace, 32, 33, 47. 
 
358 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Byron, Ada, 164, 168. 
 Byron, Lady, 1G4, 168, 216. 
 
 , Dr. Kane's dog, 334. 
 Campbell, Thomas, a dinner with, 
 
 166, 167 ; 149, 245. 
 Cape Cod, letters from, 322, 323. 
 Carr, Mr., otters 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 Wil 
 
 liam Shakespeare, MS. of given to 
 
 Willis, 131. 
 Class Day poem, 59. 
 Clay, Henry, 221, 242. 
 Clilton, Josephine, plays hi 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, 216, 294, 306, 351. 
 Cork, Dowager Countess of, 166. 
 Corsair, The, 227; established by 
 
 Porter and Willis, 239-242; Wil 
 
 lis'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 con 
 
 tributions 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 acquaint 
 ance with, 264. 
 
 Disraeli, Benjamin, 138, 237, 252, 
 253. 
 
 Doane, G. W., 81. 
 
 Dollar Magazine, The, Willis's edi 
 torship 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. 
 
 D wight, 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 ; in 
 fluence of, on his character and 
 writings, 107-110. 
 
 Everett, Edward, 16, 18,167; Ink 
 lings dedicated to, 206. 
 
 FABLE FOR CRITICS, A, passage from, 
 
 302. 
 Fane, Lady Georgiana, 246, 343, 
 
 344. 
 
 " Fanny Fern." See Sarah P. Wil 
 lis. 
 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 Pencilling?, 192, 193. 
 Forget-Me-Not, The, 77. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 359 
 
 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, 2G4. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, G. 
 
 Franklin, Lady, 1G3. 
 
 Franklin, Sir John, 160. 
 
 Fraser, James, 197, 237. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, reviews Pencil- 
 lings, 194-197. 
 
 Fuller, Hiram, 273, 276, 286. 
 
 GERMANY, visit to, 284, 286. 
 
 Gibson, John, teaches Willis to S3ulp, 
 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 con 
 tributor to, 260-203, 266, 286 ; par 
 odied in, 303, 304. 
 
 Godwin, Parke, 308-310, 313. 
 
 Goodrich, S. G., 49, 72 ; his impres 
 sions of Willis, 73-75, 77, 81, 89, 
 90. 
 
 Gordon, Duke of, visit to the, 151, 
 152 ; 186 ; his opinion of Pencil- 
 lings, 190. 
 
 Gore House, Lady Blessington at, 
 156, 158, 193, 194, 252. 
 
 Graham's Magazine, Willis a con 
 tributor to, 260-262, 266. 
 
 Oray, 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, de 
 scription 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., hio 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, 293, 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 ; 345-317, 349. 
 
 Imaginary Conversations, Lander's 
 intrusted to Willis, 131. 
 
 Independent Chronicle, The, G, 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 WilU>, 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 break 
 fast 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. 
 
360 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 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 towns 
 man 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. Vin- 
 
 cenzo 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 Pen 
 cillings, 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 ; adven 
 ture 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. 
 I Mirror Library, The, 269. 
 
 Mitford, Mary R., 76, 142, 152. 
 ! Moncrieff, Lady, 150, 159. 
 j Moore, Thomas, 141, 160, 171 ; his 
 remarks about O'Connell, 186, 188, 
 192, 193. 
 
 i 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; Na 
 tional 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. 
 I National Press. The, started by Mor 
 ris, 286, 287. 
 1 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 pub 
 lication, 272 ; 296, 299, 300. 
 
 New Monthly Magazine, The, Wil 
 lis'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 Etats 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, 13Q 
 153, 172, 184, 185, 188, 189, 197, 
 201, 206, 237; Willis ceases to 
 edit, 236; discontinuance of, 265; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 361 
 
 miscellaneous contributions to, 48, 
 
 141, 155, 193, 215, 221, 223, 231, 
 
 233, 23G, 249, 261 ; 145, 232, 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. 
 
 5, N. Y., 32, 222, 223, 225-227, 
 
 PAEDOE, Miss, 160, 163. 
 
 Paris, residence in, 110-115; wed 
 ding 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. Good- 
 
 PhTliips, Morris, 288, 2%, 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 attache, 
 
 Robinson, H. C., a breakfast with, 
 
 141. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 149, 165. 
 " Roy," Willis's nom deplume, 48. 
 Ruth Hall, caricature of Willis in, 
 
 334-337. 
 
 SARATOGA, letters from, 100 ; de 
 scribed in Inklings, 209-211 ; 281. 
 
 Sargent's Magazine, 262. 
 
 Scioto Gazette, 6. 
 
 Scotland, visit to, 149-152. 
 
 Scriptural poems, origin of, 10 ; esti 
 mate 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 Croyden, 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 MaryStace Willis. 
 
 Stace, Gen. Win., 170, 171, 243, 262. 
 
 Stanhope, Sir Leicester and Mrs., 
 141, 165, 166. 
 
 Staunton, Sir Geo., 156. 
 
 Stepney, Lady, 156, 246. 
 
 Steventon, Vicarage, 283, 284. 
 
 
362 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Stoddard, R. H., visits Glenmary, 
 
 228. 
 
 Stone, W. L., 81, 306. 
 Storm King, named by Willis, 327, 
 
 331. 
 
 Storrs, Dr. E. S., 351. 
 Stuart, Isaac, 28, 30. 
 Stuart, Lady Dudley, 159. 
 Sumner, Charles, 220, 343. 
 Susquehanna, rafting on the, 227. 
 
 TALFOUKD, 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 ; de 
 scribed, 76; letters from, 322- 
 324. 
 
 Truth : a New Year's Gift for Scrib 
 blers, 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 rem 
 iniscences 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 Pencil- 
 lings, 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 r 343, 
 346. 
 
 Willis, Edith, 329. 
 
 Willis, George, 4. 
 
 Willis, Grinnell, 294. 
 
 Willis, Hannah Parker, her char 
 acter 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; ed 
 its 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 ; be 
 gins his literary career in Bos 
 ton, 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; mar 
 ries, 177 ; returns to America and 
 travels and corresponds for the 
 Mirror, 219-222 ; settles at Owe- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 363 
 
 go, N. Y., 223-238 ; starts the 
 Corsair, and makes a second trip 
 to England, 239-259 ; returns to 
 America and edits Brother Jona 
 than, 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 Amer 
 ica, 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 Idle- 
 wild, 329-334 ; spends the first 
 year of the war at Washington, 
 writing letters to the Home Jour 
 nal, 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. A 
 L'ABRI. See LETTERS FROM UNDER 
 A BRIDGE. Albina M'Lush, 85, 90. 
 American Literature, 216. AMER 
 ICAN 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. Be 
 ware 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. Chero 
 kee's Threat, the, 39, 57, 63, 155, 
 207. City Lyrics, 267,268. Clois 
 ter, the, 299. Confessional, the, 
 183. Contemplation, 82, 98. CON 
 VALESCENT, THE, 330-333, 340, 343. 
 Countess Nyschriem and the 
 Handsome Artist, the, 277. Da 
 
 guerreotype 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 TORTBSA 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. Elope 
 ment, the, 84. EPHEMERA, 216, 
 261, 264, 276, 288, 289, 337. FA 
 MOUS PERSONS AND PLACES, 286, 
 337. Fancy Ball, the, 84. Female 
 Ward, the, 92, 279. First Im 
 pressions of Europe. See PENCIL- 
 LINGS BY THE WAY. Fitz Powyg 
 and the Nun, 261 . Flirtation and 
 Fox Chasing, 277. Florence Gray, 
 183. Four Rivers, the, 153, 223. 
 Fragments of Rambling Impres 
 sions, 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 Blos 
 soms, the, 280. Invalid Letters 
 from Germany, 286, 322. Jeph- 
 thah'e 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 
 
364 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 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, 2G3, 2G9, 282, 302, 
 322, 330. Letters of Horace Fritz, 
 Esq., 85. Letter to the Un 
 known Purchaser and Next Oc 
 cupant 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 RO- 
 
 MANCE OF TRAVEL. Loiterings of 
 Travel, 153. Lockings 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. Mis 
 anthropic Hours, 52. Miss Jones's 
 Son, 279. More Particularly, 267. 
 Morning in the Library, A, 88. 
 My Adventures at the Tourna 
 ment, 244. My Hobby Rather, 
 154. New Year's Verses, 71. Ni 
 agara, 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. Our DOORS AT IDLEWILD, 
 330, Paletto's Bride, 251. Par- 
 rhasius, 105, Pasquali, the Tailor 
 of Venice, 85, 252. Passages from 
 an Epistolary Journal, 253. Pas 
 sages 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. PENCIL- 
 LINGS 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. Por 
 trait, 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 
 Signer Basil, the, 155, 213, 277. 
 Reverie at Glenmary, 230. RO 
 MANCE OF TRAVEL, 236, 248; esti 
 mate 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, 2G7. Sol 
 dier's Widow, the, 81. Sparklings 
 of Tenth Waves, 215. Spirit Love 
 
 of lone S , the, 279. Spring, 
 
 236. Story writ for the Beauti 
 ful, A, 243. String that tied my 
 Lady's Shoe, the, 100. Substance 
 of a Diary of Sickness, the, 88. 
 SUMMER CRUISE IN THE MEDITER 
 RANEAN, A, 325. Tales of Five 
 Lands. See ROMANCE OF TRAVEL, 
 Tent Pitched, the. See LETTERS 
 FROM UNDER A BRIDGE. Tete-a-tete 
 Confessions, 86. Those Ungrate 
 ful 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 
 
 1 100. 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, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 365 
 
 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. Torn Hat, 
 the, 82. TORTESA THE USURER, 
 233-235, 248, 249, 274, note. TREN 
 TON FALLS, 324. Two Buckets in 
 a Well, 2, note. Two Ways of 
 Dying for a Husband. See Bi- 
 ANCA VISCONTI and TORTESA THE 
 USURER. Unseen Spirits, 2G9. Un 
 written Music, 84, 294. Unwrit 
 ten Philosophy, 76, 142. Unwrit 
 ten Poetry, 76, 142. Upon the 
 Portrait of the Hon. Mrs. Stan 
 hope, 141. Usurer Matched, the. 
 See TORTESA THE USURER. Vio- 
 lanta 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. Al- 
 
 macks, 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, estab 
 lished by Nathaniel Willis, 9 ; 49. 
 
 Youth's Keepsake, The, 82. 
 
#tett of letter 
 
 Edited by Charles Dudley Warner. 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING. By Charles Dudley 
 
 Warner, author of " In the Levant," etc. 
 
 NOAH WEBSTER. By Horace E. Scudder, author 
 
 of " Men and Letters," " Childhood in Literature and Art," etc. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. By Frank B. Sanborn. 
 GEORGE RIPLEY. By Octavius Brooks Frothing- 
 
 ham, author of " Transcendentalism in New England." 
 
 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. By Thomas R. 
 
 Lounsbury, Professor of English in Yale College. 
 
 MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI. By Thomas 
 
 Wentworth Higginson, author of " Malbone," " Oldport Days," etc. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. By Oliver Wendell 
 
 Holmes, author of " The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," etc. 
 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE. By George E. Woodberry, 
 
 author of " Studies in Letters and Life," etc. 
 
 NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS. By Henry A. 
 
 Beers, Professor of English Literature in Yale College. 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. By John Bach McMas- 
 
 ter, author of " History of the People of the United States." 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. By John Bigelow, 
 
 author of " Molinos the Quietist," etc. 
 
 WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS. By William P. 
 
 Trent, Professor of English Literature in the University of the 
 South, Sewanee, Tenn. 
 
 GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. By Edward Gary. 
 BAYARD TAYLOR. By Albert H. Smyth. 
 
 Other volumes to be announced hereafter. Each volume, "with 
 Portrait, ibmo, gilt top, $1.23 ; half morocco, $2.30. 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, 
 
 4 PARK ST., BOSTON; 11 EAST I;TH ST., TSTEW YORK. 
 
"WASHINGTON IRVING." 
 
 Mr. Warner has not only written with sympathy, mi 
 nute 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 Tribtine. 
 
 It is a very charming piece of literary work, and pre 
 sents the reader with an excellent picture of Irving as a 
 man and of his methods as an author, together with ar 
 accurate and discriminating characterization of his works 
 - Boston Joiirnal. 
 
 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, schol 
 arly 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 se 
 ries 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 Tho- 
 reau'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 frank 
 ness and simplicity. New York Mail and Express. 
 
 It is undoubtedly the best life of Thoreau extant. < 
 Christian Advocate (New York). 
 
"GEORGE KIPLEY." 
 
 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 gener 
 ous-hearted man, whose friend he has so worthily por 
 trayed. Rev. William H. Channing (London). 
 
 "JAMES FENIMORE COOPER." 
 We have here a model biography. The book is charm 
 ingly 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. Lcunsbury's book is an admirable specimen of 
 literary biography. . . . We can recall no recent addition 
 to American biography in any department which is supe 
 rior 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. 
 
 "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 sympa 
 thies broad and deep. Philadelphia Press. 
 
 "EDGAR ALLAN POE." 
 
 Mr. Woodberry has contrived with vast labor to con 
 struct 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). 
 
"NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS." 
 Prof. Beers has done his work sympathetically yet can. 
 didly 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 tha most interesting and instructive volumes 
 of the series. . . . 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. Boston Gazette. 
 
 We have had many lives of Franklin, but none so ab 
 solutely impartial as this, and although it is short it omits 
 no important fact that can help to reveal the man. . . . 
 Mr. McMaster telh his story with extreme charm of 
 narration. Hartford Courant. 
 
 "WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT." 
 There were many aspacts in which Mr. Bryant pre 
 sented himself as a subject for biography. He was a chief 
 in the department of American journalism. He was a 
 controlling power in American politics. He was also a 
 man of letters in the pure and simple sense of the term. 
 One might have known him well in either of these rela 
 tions and yet had no thought of the others. Mr. Bige- 
 low has, it seems to us, done justice to all. The Church 
 man (New York). 
 
 "WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS." 
 As a biography it will rank with the best in the series. 
 It is clear in style, full in statement of fact, impartial, 
 discriminating and critical, and at the same time gener 
 ous and sympathetic. Professor Trent has performed a 
 difficult task with rare discretion and good taste. Chris 
 tian Union (New York). 
 
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