Old friends; being literally recollections of other days

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OLD FRIENDS

ffe

^' '*. '

From a drau/in^ hy SoL. Eifhnye

OLD FRIENDS

BEING LITERARY RECOLLECTIONS

OF OTHER DAYS

BY
WILLIAM WINTER

Tbey are all gone into the world of light.

And I alone sit lingering liere I
Their very memory is fair and bright

And my sad thonghts doth clear.

Henby VAuaHAN

New York

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1909

5

COFTEIGBT, 1908, 1909, BV

WILLIAM WINTER

All Bighti Beaerved

PubUshed, May, 1909
Second Printing, September, 1909

To the Memory of My Earliest Friend
My Loved and Honored Father

CAPTAIN CHARLES WINTER
I Dedicate These Recollections.

He knew my love, and wheresoe'er it be.
His spirit knows ! There is no need of vow

Of fond remembrance, — ^yet there is for me
A kind of comfort to avouch it now.

CONTENTS

PAaK

I.

Henry Wadsworth Longfell

ow . .17

II.

Bohemian Days

. 62

III.

Vagrant Comrades

. 79

IV.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

. 107

V.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

. 132

VI.

Bayard Taylor

. 153

VII.

Charles Dickens

. 181

VIII.

Wilkie Collins .

. 203

IX.

George William Curtis

. 223

X.

Old Familiar Faces

. 275

1. Arthur Sketchley

. 278

2. Artemus Ward .

. 284

3. Bohemia Again .

. 291

4. Edmund Clarence Stedr

nan . 297

5. The Ornithorhyncus CI

ub . . 308

6. Charles B. Seymour

. 310

t. WiUiam North .

. 313

8. Sol Eytinge

. 317

9. James Russell Lowell

. 320

10. Donald Grant Mitche

11 . . 323

11. Albert Henry Smyth

. 329

12. Philip James Bailey

. 336

XI.

Notes —

Longfellow Letters

. 345

George Arnold .

350

Selected Letters of T. B.

Aldrich . 351

Ada Cavendish

. 377

XII.

Index

. 385

ILLUSTRATIONS

Charles Dickens .

Frontispiece

From the portrait by Sol Eytmge, Jr.

Henry W. Longfellow . . Facing Page 18

Edgar Allan Poe . . . '

36

Henry Clapp, Jr. . . . '

56

Edward G. P. Wilkins . . . '

84

George Arnold . . . . '

94

Oliver Wendell Holmes ... . '

' 116

Thomas Bailey Aldrich . . '

' 142

Bayard Taylor . . . . '

' 158

William Winter (in 1876) . . '

' 172

Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey '

' 186

William Wilkie Collins .

' 216

George William Curtis . . . '

' 242

Arthur Sketchley (George Rose) . '

' 278

Artemus Ward (Charles F. Browne) '

' 286

Richard Henry Stoddard . . '

« 294

Edmund Clarence Stedman . . '

' 306

James Russell Lowell . . . '

' 320

Donald Grant Mitchell . . . '

' 328

Philip James Bailey . . . '

' 342

Ada Cavendish . . . . '

' 378

PREFACE

My hook of " Othee Days," contammg Chronicles
and Memories of Actors, has been received by the public
with gratifying favor, and that favor has impelled me
to act on a suggestion, coming from several sources,
that I should write a companion book, containing
Chronicles and Memories of Authors. The result is
this book of " Old Friends." / was introduced into
the companionship of authors early in life, having
published my first book, — which led to acquaintance
with some of them, — in 1854, and I have had friendly
intercourse with many of them, extending over a period
of more than fifty years. Some of my recollections of
that intercourse are here expressed, with all the kind-
ness that is consistent with truth, and perhaps my
readers will find a little pleasure in rambling with me
along the grass-grown pathways of the Past, where
the idols of my youthful enthusiasm and the comrades
of my pen remain unchanged.

Yet let not those readers suppose that I write as '
a praiser of the Past, in detraction of the Present. i
Reverence for that which is old, only because it is old,
has often been imputed to jne, always without reason
or justice. There is no folly more egregious than that

13

14 PREFACE

which judges the Present hy the Past, wnless it be the
folly that judges the Past by the Present. Having
been a continual writer for the press and for the book-
sellers since early youth, much that I have written has,
necessarily, been ephemeral; but many themes apper-
taining to contemporary periods have been expounded
by my pen and celebrated with ardent enthusiasm. In
these books of mine, " Other Days " and " Old
Friends," the intention is clearly signified, not of the
celebration of To-day, but of the reminiscence of Yes-
terday; and therefore no reason exists why praises of
the Present should be expected in them, or the absence
of it be deplored. With regard to the Present, in Lit-
erature and Dramatic Art, it is my purpose to publish
several books. These sketches only represent a Past
that I personally knew. If by chance they should sur-,
tfive their little day, they may aid the future historian^
in tracing the literary movement in America, and throw\
some light upon the personality of those who guided it.
It should be added that much of the material of this
book was first made known in " The Philadelphia Sat-
urday Evening Post," hut has been revised and aug-
mented for publication in the present form. If found
tedious, I would plead Sir Walter Scott's apologetical
remark, that " Old men may be permitted to speak
long, because they cannot, in the course of Nature,
have long to speak."

W. W.
New York, April 23, 1909.

' For precious friends hid in death's dateless night."

Shakespsare.

" When musing on companions gone
We doubly feel ourselves alone."

Sir Walter Scott,

'Shades of departed joys around me rise.

With many a face that smiles on me no more.
With many a voice, that thrills of transport gave.
Now silent as the grass that tufts their grave."

Samuel Bogers.

When now the twiligM hour comes on
And Memory hroods o'er pleasures gone.
While Joy with Sorrow softly hlends,
'Tis sweet to think of vanish'd friends.
And dream that, close hehind the veil.
They wait to give the welcome hail!
Strange hope! almost akin to fear —
Yet who would wish to lose it here?

W. W.

LONGFELLOW.

The year 1889 brought the centenary of Cooper.
The year 1907 brought the centenary of Long-
fellow. Those men were the leaders of Amer-
ican literature in the nineteenth century, and they
remain the two great representative American
authors. Longfellow is the foremost of our
poets. Cooper is the foremost of our novehsts.
Many years ago, in London, in conversation with
the most expert, accomplished, and fascinating of
story-tellers, Wilkie Collins, that excellent writer
said to me: "America has produced one great
novehst; I wonder whether you can tell me his
name." "The name of him," I said, "is James
Fenimore Cooper." "Right " exclaimed Collins,
in obvious satisfaction; "the author of Leather-
stocking was a man of wonderful genius."
Cooper, who died in 1851, when aged sixty-two,
I did not know and never saw ; but in boyhood I

17

18 OLD FRIENDS

worshipped him, and in age I still read his roman-
tic stories, — so pure in spirit, so fine in invention,
so beautiful in picture and, aside from some in-
flexibility of language in the sentimental pas-
sages, so rich, true, natural, and various in char-
acteristic dialogue, — with delight and admiration.
Longfellow I knew well, beginning my ac-
quaintance with him at a time of life when the
affections are ardent, when the confiding fancy
exults in its ideals, and when the mind is sus-
ceptible to the charm of romance. The poet was
forty-seven when first we met, and from that
time, for twenty-eight years, it was my happy
fortune to hold a place in his affectionate esteem.
To me, from the first, he was an object of rever-
ence. I loved him, and I rejoice to remember that
he honored me with his friendship, and that I pos-
sessed and enjoyed that blessing tiU the day of
his death. Dxiring the years from 1853-'54 to
1859-'60 I was often a guest in his house, at Cam-
bridge, and I had the rare privilege of his ex-
ample, his conversation, and his counsel. In the
winter of 1859-'60 I established my residence in
New York and could no longer be near to him;

LONGFELLOW 19

but he frequently wrote to me, and I visited him
as often as I could. "Come and sit in my chil-
dren's chair," he said to me, on the occasion of
my latest visit; "you never forget me; you
always come to see me." He knew my love for
him, and he trusted it. I saw him as he was;
and, within my observation and knowledge of
men, which have been exceptionally wide, a man
more noble, gentle, lovable and true never lived.
In certain musical and beautiful words, writ-
ten on a day in March, 1855, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow hallowed the city of Portland, Maine,
where he was born, February 27, 1807, and where
he passed his youth. He came of an old family,
of Yorkshire, England, and on the maternal
side he was descended from John Alden and
Priscilla Mullens, of the Mayflower Massachu-
setts Colony. He was graduated from Bowdoin
College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1825, and, after
passing four years in travel and study in Europe,
he occupied a chair in that college, as a professor
of modern languages. That office he held for
more than five years, resigning it in 1835, in
order to make another European tour, prepara-

20 OLD FRIENDS

toiy to the acceptance of a professorship of
modern languages in Harvard College. He
was married, in 1831, to Miss Mary Potter, of
Portland, who died in November, 1835, when
travelling with him in Holland. In December,
1836, he established his residence in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and began his labor as a Harvard
professor. In July, 1843, he was married to
Miss Frances Appleton, of Boston, with whom,
for eighteen years, he hved in perfect happiness,
ended by her sudden, tragical death, by fire, in
the summer of 1861. He resigned his office at
Harvard College in 1854, and from that time
till the last he devoted himself exclusively to
hterary authorship. In 1866 he visited Europe
for the third and last time, remaining there
eighteen months. In the autumn of 1869 he
returned to his home in Cambridge, — an old
Colonial mansion known as the Cragie House
and celebrated as having once been occupied by
Washington, — and there he resided till the end
of his days. He died on March 24, 1882, and
his body was buried, beside that of his second
wife, in the cemetery of Moimt Auburn, where

LONGFELLOW 21

rest the mortal relics of so many of his friends.
His works, in prose and verse, — the first of which
was "Outre-Mer," published in 1835, and the last
of which was "Michael Angelo," published in
1883, — fill eleven large volumes, and they have
been translated, in all or in part, into fifteen
languages. His statue, according to present
design, wUl be erected in a meadow oppo-
site to his former home, overlooking the pleas-
ant river Charles, which he loved, and which he
has celebrated in felicitous and tender song.
His bust, in Westminster Abbey, — the first
monument to an American author ever placed
in that venerable temple, — stands in the Poets'
Corner, near to the effigy of Dryden, and looks
across the graves of Beaiunont, Cowley, Den-
ham, Tennyson, and Browning, to the hallowed
spot where the dust of Campbell mingles with
that of Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, and
Macaulay, and where the remains of Garrick,
Doctor Johnson, and Henry Irving slumber side
by side.

A reason for thinking that Longfellow is the
foremost of American poets is the belief that he

22 OLD FRIENDS

was more objective than any of the other bards,
and was elementally actuated by an impulse of
greater and broader design. Individual lyrics
might be named, written by other American
poets, that, perhaps, surpass, in the element of
passionate inspiration, anything that proceeded
from Longfellow's pen. Poe's "Haunted Pal-
ace," HaUeck's "Marco Bozzaris," Story's
"Cleopatra," and Whittier's "St. John de
Matha" are types of ardent poetic emotion;
but no other American poet has produced a
fabric of imaginative poetry that rises to the
height of Longfellow's "Golden Legend" and is
sustained with such copious feeling and diversi-
fied with such affluence of invention, unflagging
interest of material, and perfection of taste.

Another reason why Longfellow stands fore-
most among our poets is that he possessed and
manifested a more comprehensive, various, and
felicitous command of verbal art than has
been displayed by any other American poet;
while stiU another reason is that he speaks
with a voice that is more imiversal than
personal. "Evangehne," "The Building of the

LONGFELLOW 23

Ship," "The Golden Legend," "The Saga of
King Olaf," "Tales of a Wayside Inn," and
"Hiawatha" are works that illumine the gen-
eral imagination, express the general human
heart, and are freighted with the general life of
man.

Longfellow once told me that he sometimes
wrote poems which he considered too personal,
too delicate, for publication; hut he did not write
exclusively for himself; he wrote for others; and
more fully than any other American poet
he represents the two cardinal principles which
are of the highest import to the hiunan race, —
nohUity of individual life and faith in the divine
government of the world. He is absolutely pure ;
he turns to beauty everything that he touches;
and he continually imparts that conviction of
spiritual immortality which alone can lift man-
kind above the dread of death; that absolute trust
in a celestial destiny which alone can inculcate
patient endurance of our inevitable sorrows, the
natural and unavoidable consequence of mor-
tality. Much of the possible enjoyment of life
is sacrificed in the taking of futile precautions as

24 OLD FRIENDS

to the future; for, as said by Wordsworth and
taught by Longfellow:

Disasters — do the best we can —
Will reach us, great and small,

And he is oft the wisest man
Who is not wise at aU.

Longfellow's place in hterature is not among
the marvels of creative genius, the portents that
dazzle and bewilder, such as Milton, Dryden,
Byron and Coleridge, but with the benefactors
of mankind, that soothe and bless. Lowell
associated him with the English poet, Thomas
Gray, whose works, beautiful as they are (the
immortal Elegy being unequalled by anything
of the kind in our language), do not contain a
tithe of Longfellow's humanity. To my mind
he more resembles, in essential ways, the earher
English poet, Abraham Cowley. But, however
that may be, his poetry takes a wide range, and
it appeals to a vast nimiber of persons, because
it expresses for each of them, simply, directly,
and admirably, the emotion that each of them
feels and would like to express. It does not
always elevate the reader, but it always satisfies ;
and it always elevates the subject.

LONGFELLOW 25

An anecdote that is amusing and at the same
time significant was told to me by the clever,
versatile, popular, lamented James R. Osgood,
once prominent as a publisher in Boston and
London. Mr. Osgood, who began his career as
a bookseller in the shop at "the Old Comer" of
School and Washington streets, Boston, was
accosted in that shop (so he related) by a
stranger, who expressed the wish to buy a volume
of poetry, as a Christmas present for a girl. "I
don't want Byron or Shelley," he remarked, "or
anything of that kind; I want something like
Longfellow. He suits the girls and he suits me.
He's a good, safe, family poet."

In one point of view that remark might seem
to be a disparagement, an implication of con-
ventionality and commonplace. In another point
of view it is a tribute. All thoughtful men are
aware of the tremendous influence that reading
exerts over the mind of youth. The things that
we read when we are young sink deep into the
memory and are never wholly forgotten. They
color our thoughts and they more or less affect
the conduct of our lives. Byron's "Don Juan,"

26 OLD FRIENDS

— considered with reference to its scope, its
variety of subjects, its feeling, its humor, its wit,
its worldly wisdom, its satire, its poetry, and its
wonderful mastery of the language, — ^is one of
the most colossal fabrics of literary art existent
in any literature. Southey's "Curse of Kehama,"
notwithstanding its supreme felicity of fancy
and its exquisite finish of style, is a somewhat
arid composition. But there is no father who
would not prefer that his child should read "The
Curse of Kehama" rather than "Don Juan." In
one of his letters Scott has wisely remarked: "It
is not passages of ludicrous indehcacy that cor-
rupt the manners of a people ; it is the sentimen-
tal story, half lewd, half methodistic, that de-
bauches the understanding."

The notion that everything should be generally
read only because it happens to have been written
is radically mischievous as well as unsound. An
idea has long been prevalent, and it happens to
be more than conmionly prevalent now (because
of a general trend toward luxury and sensuality,
combined with the admired publicity of decadent
and degenerate authors and actors) , that delirium

LONGFELLOW 27

is genius, and that without convulsion there can-
not be power. It was said of the Scotch essay-
ist, Gilfillan, that he seemed to think himself a
great painter because he painted with a large
brush. "The first time I ever saw that remark-
able woman," says Mr. Crummies, in "Nicholas
Nickleby," — referring to his formidable wife, —
"she was standing on her head, upon the top of
a pole, surrounded with fireworks." A certain
fine frenzy is, doubtless, a part of the tempera-
ment of genius; but just as the sunshine per-
meates space without a sound, so does the
magical light of genius illimiine the human soul
without effort and without strife. The comet,
seeming to flash lawless through the untravelled
heavens, may prove a momentary wonder; the
stupendous, calm order of the solar system, with-
out which all life would instantly be hurled into
chaos, is not simply a marvel, it is a perpetual
blessing. Genius that is erratic and splendid
shines but to dazzle, and it soon is quenched. The
lasting value of genius is beneficence. "I have
been, perhaps," said that great poet and stiE
greater man. Sir Walter Scott, toward the close

28 OLD FRIENDS

of his life, "the most voluminous author of the
day, and it is a comfort to me to think that I
have tried to unsettle no man's faith, to corrupt
no man's principles, and that I have written noth-
ing which, on my death-hed, I should wish
hlotted."

Longfellow made himself known to thousands
of hearts, and every heart is purer and stronger
for the knowledge of him. "Shall there be no
repose in hterature?" he once wrote: "Shall
every author be like a gladiator, with swollen
veins and distended nostrils, as if each encounter
was for life or death?" How truly Longfellow
was a poet of power, — ^not the power that makfes
fireworks, but the power that can rise to the
dignity of a great theme and evenly sustain itself
in perfect poise, — ^his noble poem of "The Goblet
of Life" will testify. Nothing but poetic inspira-
tion can account for such poems as his "Sandal-
phon," "The Beleaguered City," "The Ballad of
Carmilhan," "The Open Window," "The Foot-
steps of Angels," and "The Chamber Over the
Gate." Time may forget such narratives as
"The Courtship of Miles Standish" and such

LONGFELLOW 29

plays as "The Spanish Student," but never the
sublime development of his "Christus"; never
the solemn paean of patient will that he uttered in
"The Light of Stars."

Disparagement of Longfellow began early,
and, though not now often audible, it has en-
dured. The Boston "transcendentalists" could
not abide him. Certain foreign critics found him
more "mediseval" than American. That eminent
Catholic poet, Coventry Patmore, — ^who wrote
"The Angel in the House," and who emitted
the amazing annotincement that Thomas Bu-
chanan Read's autumnal poem of "The Clos-
ing Scene" is superior to Gray's "Elegy," — Ele-
gantly referred to him, in one of his pubhshed let-
ters, as "Longwindedfellow." The complaint, —
which is one that more or less touches all Ameri-
can literature, — ^proceeds now, as it has all along
proceeded, from an irrational disposition, first
to revert to the berserker state of feeling, and
then to exact, from a new country, new forms
of speech. Thus, for example, literary authori-
ties in England, some of them conspicuous for
station and abihty, have accepted, and, in some

!

80 OLD FRIENDS

cases, have extolled beyond the verge of extrava-
gance, one American writer, the eccentric Walt
Whitman, for no better reason than because he
discarded all laws of literary composition, and,
instead of writing either prose or verse, composed
an uncouth catalogue of miscellaneous objects
and images, generally conmionplace, sometimes
coarse, and sometimes filthy. That auctioneer's
list of topics and appetites, intertwisted with a
formless proclamation of carnal propensities and
universal democracy, has been haUed as grandly
original and distinctively American, only be-
cause it is crude, shapeless, and vulgar. The
writings of Walt Whitman, in so far as they are
anything, are philosophy: they certainly are not
poetry: and they do not possess even the merit
of an original style; for Macpherson, with his
"Ossian" forgeries; Martin Farquhar Tupper,
with his "Proverbial Philosophy," and Samuel
Warren, with his tumid "Ode," were extant long
before the advent of Whitman. Furthermore,
Plato's writings were not unknown; while the
brotherhood of man had been proclaimed in
Judea, with practical consequences that are stUl

LONGFELLOW 31

obvious. No author has yet made a vehicle of
expression that excels, in any way whatever, or
for any purpose, the blank verse of Shakespeare
and Milton. In the hands of any artist who
can use them the old forms of expression are
abundantly adequate, and so, likewise, are the
old subjects; at aU events, nobody has yet dis-
covered any theme more fruitful than the human
heart, human experience, man in his relation to
Nature and to God.

Invidious criticism of Longfellow's poetry was
written, with pecuhar zest, by Miss Margaret
Fuller^ a native of Cambridge, who married an
Italian and became Countess d'Ossoli. She was
a clever woman, of a somewhat tart temper, and
prone to the peevish ill-nature of a discontented
mind. In the early days of "The New- York Tri-
bune" she was a contributor to that paper and,
more or less, to the perplexities of its eccentric
founder, Horace Greeley. Both Longfellow and
his wife spoke of her, to me, with obvious, though
courteously veiled, dislike. Her health was not
robust; she suffered from some form of spinal
disease that caused her occasionally to wriggle

32 OLD FRIENDS

when seated. She figures among the writers
commemorated by the venomous industry of
Rufus Wihnot Griswold, and she is chiefly re-
membered as having perished in a shipwreck on
the southern coast of Long Island,

"The poet aims to give pleasure," Longfellow
more than once said to me, "but the purpose of
the critic is, usually, to give pain." Speaking
of the numerous papers that were sent to him,
containing notices of his poems, he told me that
it was his custom never to read an article written
in an unpleasant spirit. "If, after reading a few/,,
lines, I find that the intention is to wound," he J
said, "I drop the paper into the fire, and that is
the end of it." A kindred feeling was expressed
by Sir Walter Scott, who, referring to Jeffrey,
the eminent Edinburgh reviewer, wrote: "I have
neither time nor inclination to be perpetually
making butterflies that he may have the pleasure
of pulling their wings and legs off" ; and again,
remarking on the same subject, Scott said: "I
would rather please one man of genius than all
the great critics in the kingdom." Longfellow,
of course, knew that it is possible for criticism

LONGFELLOW 33

to be creative (as it sometimes is, and as notably
it was when written by Matthew Arnold), and
likewise that it can help the right by opposing the
wrong; but his preference, always and rightly,
was for the creative order of mind. One of the
wisest and best of all precepts is expressed in his
monition that "he who carries bricks to the build-
ing of every one's house will never build one for
himself."

The most acrimonious critic of Longfellow's
poetry was his famous contemporary, Edgar Poe
(1809-'49). Poe's criticisms of Longfellow are
included in the standard edition of his works,
edited by Stedman and Woodberry. They are
rank with injustice and hostility. In judging of
the conduct and writings of Poe, however, allow-
ance has to be made for the strain of insanity that
was in him, and for the mordant bitterness that
had been engendered in his mind by penury and
grief. Poe lived at a time when writers were very
poorly paid, and furthermore his genius was of a
rare and exquisite order, lovely in texture, sombre
in quality, monotonous in its utterance, and
obviously vmfit for the hack-work of news-

34 OLD FRIENDS

papers and magazines. His really appreciative
audience is a small one, even now, and probably
it will long, or always, remain a small one. Such
poetry as his "Haunted Palace" — (which is per-
fection) — ^is seldom understood. The defects of
his character and the errors of his conduct, more-
over, were exaggerated in his own time, and they
have been absurdly exploited in ours. He was a
brilhant and an extraordinary man. The treasures
of imaginative, creative, beautiful art, in prose
as well as verse, that he contributed to American
literature are permanent and precious; and noth-
ing in literary biography is more contemptible
than the disparagement of his memory that con-
tinually proceeds through its pages, on the score
of his intemperance. Poe died in 1849, aged
forty, leaving works that fill ten closely packed
volumes. No man achieves a result like that
whose brain is ruined by stimulants. The same
disparagement has been diffused as to Fitz- James
O'Brien, that fine poet and romancer, who died
at thirty-four, — losing his life in the American
Civil War, — whose writings I collected and pub-
lished. I have known O'Brien to have neither

LONGFELLOW 35

lodging, food nor money, — ^to be, in fact, desti-
tute of everything except the garments in which
he stood. The volume of his works that I col-
lected, — including the remarkable stories of "The
Diamond Lens" and "The Wondersmith," — is
one of five hundred pages; and there are other
writings of his in my possession which would make
another volimie of equal size. He was an Irish-
man, and he knew and hked the favorite tipple
of his native land; but it is to his genius that the
world owes his writings, — ^not to his drams.
Poe may have been aflflicted with the infirmity of
drink. My old friend John Brougham, the co-
median, who knew him well, told me that Poe
could not swallow even a single glass of wine
without losing his head. But what does it sig-
nify, and why should a reader be perpetually
told of it, whether he drank wine or not? His
writings remain, and they are an honor to our
literatiu'e; and that is all we need to consider.
As Tennyson wrote :

He gave the people of his best!

His worst he kept: his best he gave.

My Shakespeare's curse on clown and knave

Who will not let his ashes rest.

36 OLD FRIENDS

The motive of the disparagement of Poe is
envy. In an age of mediocrity inferior writers
will always strive to degrade an exceptional
genius. Shakespeare, who records everything,
has happily recorded that. "He hath a daily
beauty in his life that makes me ugly." "To
some kind of men their graces serve them but as
enemies." "Will honor not live with the living?
N"o. Detraction will not suffer it."

Among my valued rehcs is a piece of the coffin
of Poe, taken from his grave when his remains
were moved and reburied in Westminster church-
yard, Baltimore, in October, 1875. He had lain
in the earth for twenty-six years. That sombre
memorial was sent to me by an old friend, John
T. Ford, the once eminent theatrical manager,
now dead and gone, and soon afterward I wrote,
at his suggestion, and because of the effect of the
relic, the poem that was read at the dedication
of the monument marking the place of Poe's
final burial.

I once had a conversation with Longfellow
concerning Poe. It was on an evening when I
was sitting with him, at his fireside, and when I

E<igkr Allan rOE

.„-rii _.(.„

I l»* li H .' H II) I . jtj_

^' ^ ^' i

EDGAE ALLAN POE
/^7'0;» an Elching by Louis Lefcn-t

LONGFELLOTV^ 37

chanced to observe a volume of Poe's poems
on his library table. I inquired whether he had
ever met Poe and was assured that he had
not. Longfellow opened the book and read aloud
a few stanzas of the poem "For Annie," remark-
ing that one of them, containing the line "And
the fever called living is conquered at last," would
be an appropriate epitaph for its writer. There
was not a shade of resentment in either his man-
ner or voice. "My works," he said, "seemed to
give Mr. Poe much trouble; but I am alive and
stiU writing." I remember that he mused a little,
in sUence, and then began to speak of the inex-
pedience of replying to attacks made in the press,
■si "You are at the beginning of your career," he
Jadded, "and I advise you never to answer the
attacks that will be made on you." It was wise
counsel. Only lately, reading in "Herman
Boerhaave," I came upon a kindred thought:
"Calumny and detraction are sparks, which, if
you do not blow them, wiU go out of themselves."
The persistent malevolence and misrepresentation
with which Poe assailed the personal integrity
and the writings of Longfellow might have been

38 OLD FRIENDS

expected to inspire the elder writer with a lasting
animosity: his feeling and tone, on the contrary,
when referring to the subject, were those of com-
passion and tolerance. He miderstood the "genus
irritabile," and he had deep sjonpathy with it.

I met him one night at a hall in Boston, and
sat with him, at his expressed wish, to Usten to a
lecture by Charles Mackay, on "Dibdin's Sea
Songs." Mackay's verse is not generally read
now, but it was popular once. He wrote it
fluently and in abimdance. One of his more
ambitious fabrics relates to the "Tarantula
Dance": there is a fable that a person bitten by
that venomous spider becomes delirious and must
dance downward toward the sea. His best-
known poem begins with the familiar line,
"There's a good time coming, boys." He was a
compact, burly, ruddy-faced little man, and a
commonplace, matter-of-fact speaker, sincere
and sensible. He gave a plain narrative of
Charles Dibdin's life and quoted several of the
songs, notably "Tom Bowline"; and he closed
the discourse by reading one of his own graceful
poems of sentiment, which he said he had that

LONGFELLOW 39

day written, — prompted thereto by the sight of
some daisies growing on Boston Common. Long-
fellow proposed that we shovdd walk home to-
gether, it being a pleasant, moonlit night, and that
we did, — across the West Boston bridge, along
the silent streets of the Port, over Dana Hill,
past the red brick buildings of Harvard, and so
onward to the gate of his mansion, in the Mount
Auburn road, in old Cambridge, where we said
good-night and parted. It is a long walk, but it
seemed short to me; for the poet whom I so much
loved and reverenced beguiled the time with
pleasant talk about the sea and about old ballads,
— particularly the Spanish ballads of Lockhart,
— and, incidentally, about the delights and in-
trinsic rewards of poetry; and I recall it as one
of the most delightful of rambles. Longfellow's
voice was calm and sweet, and his companionship
always caused peace. He spoke kindly of Charles
Mackay's lecture; said that he had enjoyed it;
and added that it was a spirit of comradeship that
had led him to be present. "We must always do
what we can," he said, "for our brother authors."
Mackay came again to America in the early

40 OLD FRIENDS

days of the Civil War, resided in Staten Island,
near to New York, and acted as correspondent
of "The London Times." Some readers, no doubt,
are acquainted with his useful "Memoirs of Ex-
traordinary Popular Delusions." He partici-
pated in the hterary turmoil that ensued when
Harriet Beecher Stowe stirred up the Byron
scandal, and he wrote a book, now out of print,
on Medora Leigh. He was the father of the
late Eric Mackay, a man of poetic genius, dead in
his prime, who wrote several excellent lyrics, and
from whom much might have been expected.

It is not every poet who possesses the sense of
humor. The lack of that sense in Wordsworth
caused effects that are lamentable. Tennyson
mistakenly considered himself to be strongly
humorous, and when likened to Shelley he re-
plied, almost resentfully, "But Shelley had no
humor." Tennyson could, be playful, — some-
times grimly and bitterly so, sometimes sweetly
and merrily so, — but his humor was lambent
Longfellow's sense of humor, on the contrary,
though gentle, was acute, and nothing comic
escaped him. Among the relics that he especially

LONGFELLOW 41

treasured was an inkstand once the property of
Coleridge. One day, showing that relic to a
stranger who had called on him, he said, "Per-
haps 'The Ancient Mariner' was written from
this." "Yes," said his visitor, "and 'The Old
Oaken Bucket' — ^who done that?" Another vis-
itor, on asking his age and being told it was
seventy, remarked, "I've seen many men of your
age who looked much younger than you do." A
Newport bookseller said to him: "Why, you look
more hke a sea captain than a poet!" An ad-
mirer, of the epistolary order, wrote to him, say-
ing: "Please send your autograph in your own
handwriting." He has recorded a characteristic
dialogue with a strange lady, in black garments,
who accosted him one surmner morning at his
house door.

"Is this the house where Longfellow was
born?"

"No, he was not born here."

"Did he die here?"

"No, he is not dead."

"Are you Longfellow?"

"I am."

42 OLD FRIENDS

"I thought you died two years ago."
That recalls the intelligent remark made to
Walter Savage Landor by a lady who wished to
compliment him on his "Pericles and Aspasia."
"Mr. Landor," she said, "I haven't had time to
read your 'Periwinkles and Asparagus,' but I
hear it is very good."

Hero-worshippers sometimes act as well as
speak in an eccentric manner. Looking from a
front window of his dwelling, one day, Longfel-
low saw persons approaching across his lawn
bearing a piano. The instrument was preceded
by a lady who presently greeted him, saying that
she had set one of his poems to music, and had
now come to sing it to him; which she forthwith
proceeded to do. He much enjoyed the humor-
ous absurdity of such incidents, and he liked to
recount them. I was seldom in his company
without hearing from him a comic story or a
sportive comment. He was a happy man, and he
liked to diif use cheerfulness and to make every-
body happy around him. His usual aspect was
that of sweet, gentle, pensive composure, but his
mood was often playful, and his appreciative en-

LONGFELLOW 43

joyment of anything humorous, while not de-
monstrative, was extreme. That enjoyment ex-
pressed itself in suppressed laughter and in a
peculiar, low, delighted, caressing tone of voice.
Speaking to me once about that admirable gen-
tleman and rare poet, Thomas W. Parsons, —
who wrote the noble Ode on Dante, which is
one of the gems of our language, — ^he related,
with peculiar zest, a comic incident of personal
experience with him. Parsons was a man of fine
genius and of a lovely spirit, and, as sometimes
happens with such natures, he was easily con-
fused by wine, to the use of which, when care-
worn, he sometimes resorted. "One summer
evening," said Longfellow, "I found Parsons
roaming in my garden. He did not know me
at the moment, but he greeted me affably, and
he accepted my invitation to take a drive. I
ordered my carriage to be brought to the gate,
and we drove together to his home. He had not
recognized me, and during the whole of the ride
he talked to me about the poetry of Longfellow,
abusing it as extremely bad and inviting my con-
currence in that opinion, — ^which, of course, I

44 OLD FRIENDS

gave. He was an amiable man and one of my
cherished friends, and nothing could have been
more ludicrous than both his discourse and the
manner of it, — for he was sweetly confidential."

Stories of that kind Longfellow told with
hearty rehsh. I recall his narration to me of
the first interview that he had with Mrs. Cragie,
when he called at her house, with the purpose of
hiring a lodging in it. The prim, formal, dig-
nified old lady showed him room after room.

"This is a pleasant room," he would say to her.

"Yes," she would answer. "This is a pleasant
room, — but you cannot have it."

After that colloquy had been several times
repeated the poet ventured to inquire:

"But, madam, why can I not have this room?"

"Well, sir, no students are allowed in this
house."

"But I am not a student, Mrs. Cragie; I am
only a professor."

"Ah, that is different; you can have either of
the rooms that you like."

"And so," he added, "I became a lodger in
this house, which afterward became mine."

LONGFELLOW 45

The disclosure would be remarkable and amus-
ing if each author's private estimate of his con-
temporaries in authorship, — often his acquaint-
ances or friends, — were to be obtained and made
known. We know now what Lamb thought of
Byron and what Coleridge thought of Moore,
and some day, no doubt, when time enough has
flown and memoirs have multiphed, the reader
will learn what Bryant thought of WilUs and
what Stoddard thought of Holmes, and so fol-
lowing. It can scarcely fail to be a whimsical
chronicle, for bards, as a class, are even more
exigent than actors in their judgments of one an-
other. Longfellow's nature was radically mag-
nanimous. I never heard from his lips a syllable
of detraction of any contemporary author. When
he could not say praise he said nothing. The
American authors whom, in my hearing, he spe-
cially extolled, were Dana, Washington Irving,
Hawthorne, and Lowell. Of AUston, who was
eight years his senior, and who died in 1843, he
spoke with peculiar tenderness. "Allston," he
said, describing him to me, "often dressed in
white garments, from head to foot; he was serene

46 OLD FRIENDS

and benignant, his hair was silvery, his face was
pale, and in white clothing he seemed like a man
of snow." One of Longfellow's favorite anec-
dotes related to AUston, painter as well as poet,
from whom, personally, he learned the incident.
One of Allston's model sitters was an elderly
Jew, and for some time the fastidious artist could
not satisfy himself with the picture that he was
endeavoring to paint. There came a moment at
last, however, when the Jew's countenance as-
sumed an expression of exultant animation and
even of venerable majesty, and the painter was
able to pursue his artistic purpose. "Your
thought must have been on some fine subject,"
said AUston, speaking to his model; "what were
you thinking of?"

"I was thinking," replied the candid Hebrew,
"how much money you would get for that picture
when it is finished."

Many years ago he told me, with an indescriba-
bly soft and rich tone of enjoyment in his voice,
about a pedler who intruded himself into the
house one morning, with a request for some verses
in praise of a medicine that he was vending, — a

LONGFELLOW 47

carminative, for infants, — offering a bottle of it,
"price one dollar," in exchange for the lines. At
another time he mentioned an amusing instance
of the awkward compliment with which famous
men are not infrequently favored. "A stranger,"
he said, "was introduced to me at Newport who,
seizing my hand, most effusively exclaimed:
'Sir, I have long desired to know you. Sir,
1 am one of the few men who have read your
'Evangehne' !" And it is to himself that the
lover of humor is indebted for record of the in-
genuous remark made to him by an English
woman who, with a party of fellow-traveUers,
called on the American poet: "As there are no
ruins in this coimtry," said the felicitous speaker,
"we thought that we would come and see you!"
"I am sorry you are going away," Longfellow
said to me, on a day in 1859, when I had come
to his home to say farewell; "I wish that you
could have stayed here." Had I been able to
discern the future, — ^had I known what I was
to encounter of toil and care in the hterary hfe
of New York, — I think that he would have had
his wish. "In youth," says Sir Walter Scott,

48 OLD FRIENDS

"we seek pleasure, and in manhood fame and
fortune and distinction, and when we feel the
advance of years we would willingly compound
for quiet and freedom from pain." Longfellow
would gladly have used practical influence to in-
duce me to remain in Cambridge. I recollect
having had the wish to own and edit a newspaper
which was published there and which happened to
be for sale, and when I spoke to him on that sub-
ject he kindly offered to buy the paper for me if
its owners would accept in payment a consider-
able number of shares of a certain stock that he
possessed. The transaction might have been
effected, and probably would have been, but that
an esteemed city official chanced to interpose,
with an offer that was more attractive, and so
the project failed and the current of a lifetime
was changed.

In the early days of my acquaintance with
Longfellow I observed that he was inclined to
bright apparel ; not to the elaborate dandyism of
his popular contemporary, N. P. Wilhs, and not
to the extravagance of radiant raiment that char-
acterized Charles Dickens in early life, but to

LONGFELLOW 49

such decorative attire as the figured waistcoat and
the gay cravat. His dress, however, was always
in good taste. Indeed, there was ahout the whole
man, — ^his person, his ways and his influence, —
an air of exquisite refinement and tranquillity,
the natural result of temperamental sweetness
and perfect self-possession. He piu-sued his own
course. He was a man to inspire resolute but
calm devotion to a far-reaching, noble purpose,
and thus he was a man to soothe and cheer. That
way I love to remember him, — sitting beside his
open fireplace, as he often did, late at night, after
all his household had retired, watching the flames,
listening to the wind in the chimney, musing,
smoking his cigar, and occasionally writing
whatever came into his thoughts.

In a number of "Notes and Queries" there was
pubhshed a just, graceful and sympathetic tribute
to the memory of Longfellow, by John C. Fran-
cis, who, in noting "the magnetism which drew
all hearts toward him," mentioned that "Mrs.
Carlyle remembered his visit to them, at Craigen-
puttock, as 'the visit of an angel,' and William
Winter, who had been greeted by him as a young

50 OLD FRIENDS

aspirant in literature, would walk miles to Long-
fellow's house, only to put his hand upon the
latch of the gate which the poet himself had
touched." That act of homage on my part was
done in my youth; but, old as I am, the feeling
that prompted it has not yet died out of my
heart. Such emotions commonly perish when
time and experience have shown to us the frail-
ties of human nature and the selfishness of the
world: but if ever a man has lived whose ex-
cellence justified the continuance of them Long-
fellow was that man. His character, his life and
his writings concur in the diffusion of such an
influence and such an example as have helped
thousands of human beings, and wUl help thou-
sands of human beings hereafter, to meet trial
and affliction with imswerving coiirage, and to
bear with fortitude every ordainment of fate.
The sudden and terrible calamity that well nigh
broke his heart was endured without a murmur.
The strifes and tumults of the sordid, seething
world surged round him in vain. No obstacle
of adversity every stayed him in the accomplish-
ment of his sacred mission, — ^to bless mankind by

LONGFELLOW 51

the interpretation of Nature's beauty and by the
monition and enforcement of spiritual hope. His
exemplar, I think, was Goethe, who, in one great
dramatic poem, written without haste and with-
out rest, achieved the consummate and final ex-
pression of human life, — perfect as a picture and
supreme as a guide. It is a kindred achievement
that makes the greatness of Longfellow. There
is comfort in every page that he wrote, and in the
last words that ever fell from his pen there is a
precious legacy of faith: " 'Tis daybreak every-
where."

11.

BOHEMIAN DAYS.

The Boston of to-day presents a strong con-
trast with the Boston of fifty or sixty years ago.
Now it is an Irish Roman Catholic city. Then
it was an American Puritan city. Now it is spa-
cious and splendid. Then it was comparatively
small and staid. Now it is pervaded with com-
motion and the attendant racket. Then it was
all tranquillity. Now it does not hold undisputed
and indisputable pre-eminence in hterature and
journalism. Then it was, — and was rightly
called, — the Athens of America. In those
days I was familiar with every part of it. As
a boy I dwelt and sported on old Fort Hill, —
since reduced to a plain, — and made my play-
groimd all along the waterside, from Constitu-
tion Wharf to Charlestown Bridge. The Com-
mon; the Back Bay; the dry docks; the India
Wharf warehouses, of which the doors often

63

BOHEMIAN DAYS 53

stood open, liberating delicious, alluring odors
of cinnamon and cedar; the T Wharf, with its
story of Revolutionary times; the granite Cus-
tom House, then new, and seeming wonderful;
the Quincy Market, then considered a marvel of
architecture, — all those things, and many more,
were known to me. Many a time did I gaze, awe-
stricken, at the haunted mansion, deserted and
silent, frowning behind its huge walls, in High
street, called and known as "Harris's Folly."
Many a time did I rove through Theatre AUey
and look with juvenile curiosity on the theatre
in Federal street, — little dreaming that the stage f
was to be a principal theme of my thoughts |
and writings, throughout a long, laborious life.
From the top of Fort HUl there was, in the
vicinity of Hamilton street, a mysterious wind-
ing stairway, of stone, down which the adventu-
rous truant could make his way to the precincts
of the docks, where much of my boyhood was
spent, in consort with other vagrant lads; and
many a happy hour did I pass there, — sometimes
practically investigating newly landed cargoes of
sugar; sometimes reclining on the stin- warmed

54 OLD FRIENDS

planks of the silent piers, and dreaming over the
prospect of the moving ships and the distant isl-
ands of Boston harbor.

Those were the days in which I began to wi"ite
what I thought was poetry; and soon, as years
slipped away and golden youth arrived, I began
to concern myself with the affairs of magazines
and newspapers and the making of books. The
publications of that period were singularly diif er-
ent from those of the present day. Charles G.
Greene, facetious and satirical, was editing "The
Post." George Limt, scholarlike, trenchant and
independent, was editing "The Courier," a con-
servative newspaper, of great dignity and force.
The brilhant Charles T. Congdon, afterward so
highly distinguished as an editorial writer for
"The New- York Tribune," was adorning the col-
umns of "The Atlas." Those were among the
more important of the newspapers. Among the
periodicals to which I obtained access were "The
Transcript," "The Olive Branch," and "The
Saturday Evening Gazette." "The Olive Branch"
was, I think, edited by Louise Chandler, in after
years highly distinguished as Louise Chandler

BOHEMIAN DAYS 55

Moulton. "The Gazette" was edited by William
Warland Clapp, author of that valuable book, "A
Record of the Boston Stage," which contains a
compact history of theatrical affairs in Boston,
from 1849 to 1853: his assistant editors were
Adam Wallace Thaxter and Benjamin P. Shil-
laber ("Mrs. Partington"), — ^both of them cher-
ished friends of mine, to the end of their days.
"The Atlantic Monthly," started in 1857, with
Frank Underwood as editor, speedily led the
field, in literary authority. The august lumina-
ries of hterature, — Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes.
Emerson, Whittier, Whipple, etc., — clustered
around that magazine, and hkewise around the
old bookstore at the corner of Washington and
School streets, in which the presiding genius was
the handsome James T. Fields, then in the zenith
of health, happiness and popularity. Epes Sar-
gent, who wrote "A Life on the Ocean Wave," —
which the popular vocahst, Russell, always sang
"A hfe on the ocean sea" — ^was prominent then,
and being a townsman of mine, as Whipple was
(we were all natives of Gloucester), he was
friendly toward me and propitious toward my

56 OLD FRIENDS

verse. A dapper, elegant little man he was,
neatly attired, swinging a thin, polished black
bamboo cane, and seeming the embodiment of
cheer. Benjamin Muzzey was one of the leading
publishers of that time, a fine, portly person,
who brought forth several piratical editions of
"Festus," and largely profited by them. Many
years later (in 1897), at Nottingham, Eng-
land, I had the honor to meet the author
of that remarkable poem, PhiUp James Bailey,
at his home; and I found it mortifying to hear
him say that he had never received "even six-
pence" from the sale of his book in America, al-
though apprised that the sale there had been very
large.

It would be easily possible to descant on the
conditions of the "Modern Athens" of fifty years
ago. I found them oppressive, and I was eager to
make my escape from them, — as presently, after
some experience as an author, a joiirnalist, a po-
litical speaker, and a member of the Suffolk bar,
I did.

When I made my home in New York, in the
winter of 1859-'60, a circle of writers was

HENKY CLAPP, Jb.

BOHEMIAN DAYS 57

existent there, called Bohemians. Those writers
did not designate themselves by that name, but
it had been appKed to them by others, and it had
grown to be their distinctive title. Some of those
writers had already become personally known to
me ; aU of them soon became my companions. I
had not been many days in the city before I was
engaged, by Henry Clapp, to be sub-editor
of his paper, "The Saturday Press," a weekly
publication that he had started in 1858, and that,
aU along, had led, and was still leading, a pre-
carious existence; and with that paper I re-
mained associated tiU its suspension, ia Decem-
ber, 1860, The purpose of "The Saturday
Press" was to speak the truth, and to speak it
in a way that would amuse its readers and would
cast ridicule upon as many as possible of the
humbugs then extant and prosperous in hteratiu-e
and art. Clapp was an original character. We
called him "The Oldest Man." His age was vm-
known to us. He seemed to be very old, but, as
afterward I ascertained, he was then only forty-
six. In appearance he was somewhat suggestive
of the portrait of Voltaire. He was a man of

58 OLD FRIENDS

slight, seemingly fragile but really wiry figure;
bearded; gray; with keen, light blue eyes, a hag-
gard visage, a vivacious manner, and a thin, in-
cisive voice. He spoke the French language with
extraordinary fluency, and natives of France
acknowledged that he spoke it with a perfect
accent. He had long resided in Paris, and, in-
deed, in his temperament, his mental constitu-
tion, and his conduct of life, he was more a
Frenchman than an American. At the time of
our first meeting I knew httle of his mer-
curial character and his vicissitudinous career, but
Avith both of them I presently became acquainted.
He was brilliant and buoyant in mind; impatient
of the commonplace ; intolerant of smug, ponder-
ous, empty, obstructive respectability; prone to
sarcasm ; and he had for so long a time lived in
a continuous, bitter conflict with conventionality
that he had become reckless of public opinion.
His delight was to shock the commonplace mind
and to sting the hide of the Pharisee with the
barb of satire. He had met with crosses, disap-
pointment, and sorrow, and he was wayward and
erratic; but he possessed both the faculty of taste

BOHEMIAN DAYS 59

and the instinctive love of beauty, and, essen-
tially, he was the apostle of the freedom of
thought,

Clapp was bom in the island of Nantucket,
November 11, 1814. In early life he associated
himself with the chiu-ch, espoused, as a lect-
urer and writer, the cause of temperance, and
actively labored for the anti-slavery movement
in New England, — following the leadership
of that foremost abolitionist, Nathaniel P.
Rogers, of New Hampshire, a man of brilliant
ability, now forgotten, to whom he was devotedly
attached, and whose name, in later years, he often
mentioned to me, and always with aif ectionate
admiration. His early essays in journalism were
made in New Bedford, and gradually he drifted
into that profession. At one time he edited a
newspaper in Lynn, Mass., and once he was
arrested and put into prison there, for his audac-
ity and severity in attacking the traffickers in spir-
ituous liquor. His views, on almost all subjects,
were of a radical kind, and, accordingly, he ex-
cited venomous antagonism. As to the philosophy
of social life he was a disciple of Francois Charles

60 OLD FRIENDS

Fourier, in the translation of whose treatise on
"The Social Destiny of Man" he had a principal
hand, when working as secretary to Albert Bris-
bane. His career, when I was first associated
with him, had been, in material results, more or
less, a failure, as aU careers are, or are likely to
be, that inveterately run counter to the tide of
mediocrity. Such as he was, — ^withered, bitter,
grotesque, seemingly ancient, a good fighter, a
kind heart, — ^he was the Prince of our Bohemian
circle. His "Saturday Press," piquant, satirical,
pugnacious, often fraught with quips and jibes
relative to unworthy reputations of the hour, and,
likewise, it must be admitted, sometimes relative
to writers who merited more considerate treat-
ment,, eventually failed, but, during its brief ex-
istence, it was, in one way, a considerable power
for good.

There always has been, in literary life, and not-
withstanding the mental alertness and feverish
activity of the present day there still is, a ten-
dency to inertia and dry rot, — a tendency that
shows itself in the gradual establishment of
mediocrities as the shining exemplars of poetry

BOHEMIAN DAYS 61

and the potential leaders of thought. Just as
there are Figureheads now, so there were Figure-
heads then; and Clapp dehghted in satire of
them. Tupper was more popular than Ten-
nyson, sixty years ago, and General George P.
Morris was actually accepted as the American
Tom Moore. Readers of "Faust" will recall
Goethe's satirical comment on the breadth of the
summit of Parnassus. The caustic "Saturday
Press" found ample opportunity for satire, and
the opportunity was improved, — ^with beneficial
results; for, in the long run, it is ever a public
advantage that the bubble of fictitious reputa-
tion should be punctured. A satirist, however,
and especially one who writes "satire with no
kindness in it," must expect to be disliked. "The
Saturday Press" was discontinued after a cur-
rency of a little more than two years, and for
some time after its decease Clapp wrote for "The
New York Leader," a Democratic weekly, edited
by John Clancy and Charles G. Halpine, — the
latter widely known and much admired, in his
day, as "Miles O'Reilly." That was in the war
time. About 1866-'67 Clapp resuscitated his

62 OLD FRIENDS

weekly, in a new form, with the characteristic edi-
torial announcement: "This paper was stopped in
1860, for want of means: it is now started again
for the same reason." The quality of the man's
wit is aptly shown in that example of it. His
mind was ever ready with quips of that descrip-
tion. It was Clapp who described Horace
Greeley (with whom he associated and was well
acquainted when they happened to be in Paris at
the same time) as "a self-made man that wor-
ships his creator"; and it was Clapp who said
of a notoriously vain, self-satisfied clergyman,

when asked if he knew what the Rev. was

doing: "He is waiting for a vacancy in the Trin-
ity." Over his signature, "Figaro," the vivacious
old Bohemian, for several years, writing about the
Stage, afforded amusement to the town ; but grad-
ually he drifted into penury, and, although help
was not denied to him, he died in destitution,
April 2, 1875: and I remember that, after his
death, his name was airily traduced by persons
who had never manifested even a tithe of his
ability or accomplished anything comparable with
the service which, notwithstanding his faults and

BOHEMIAN DAYS 63

errors, he had rendered to literature and art. His
grave is in a little cemetery at Nantucket. His
epitaph, — ^written by me, at the request of a few
friends, but not approved by his only relative
then living, and therefore not inscribed over his
ashes, contains these lines :

Wit stops to grieve and Laughter stops to sigh
That so much wit and laughter e'er could die;
But Pity, conscious of its anguish past,
Is glad this tortur'd spirit rests at last.
His purpose, thought, and goodness ran to waste,
He made a happiness he could not taste:
Mirth could not help him, talent could not save:
Through cloud and storm he drifted to the grave.
Ah, give his memory, — who made the cheer.
And gave so many smiles, — a single tear!

Our place of meeting, in 1859-'60, was a
restaurant, in a basement, on the west side of
Broadway, a short distance north of Bleecker
street, kept by a German named Pfaff. That
genial being, long since gone the way of all man-
kind, had begun his business with a few kegs of
beer and with the skill to make excellent coffee.
Clapp, who subsisted chiefly on coffee and to-
bacco, had been so fortunate as to discover that
place soon after it was opened. By him it was
made known to others, and gradually it came to

64 OLD FRIENDS

be the haunt of writers and artists, mostly young,
and, though usually impecunious, opulent in their
youth, enthusiasm, and ardent belief alike in a
rosy present and a golden future. The place
was roughly furnished, containing a few chairs
and tables, a counter, a row of shelves, a clock,
and some barrels. At the east end of it, beneath
the sidewalk of Broadway, there was a sort of
cave, in which was a long table, and after Clapp
had assumed the sceptre as Prince of Bohemia,
that cave and that table were pre-empted by him
and his votaries, at certain hours of the day and
night, and no stranger ventured to intrude into
the magic realm. Thither came George Arnold, — •
handsome, gay, breezy, good-natiu-ed, — one of
the sweetest poets in our country who have sung
the beauties of Nature and the tenderness of true
love; and he never came without bringing sun-
shine. Walt Whitman was often there, clad in
his eccentric garb of rough blue and gray fabric,
— ^his hair and beard grizzled, his keen, steel-blue
eyes gazing, with bland tolerance, on the frolic-
some lads around him. Charles Dawson Shanly,
— a charming essayist and a graceful poet, quaint

BOHEMIAN DAYS 65

in character, sweet in temperament, modest and
gentle in bearing, — was a regular visitor to the
Bohemian table. N. G. Shepherd, — one of the
most picturesque of human beings, a man of
genius, whose poems, never yet collected, ought
to be better known than they now are, — ^was sel-
dom absent from the evening repast, a festivity
in which, contrary to general belief, the frugality
of poverty was ever more clearly exhibited than
the luxury of riches or the prodigahty of revel.
That singular being, Charles D. Gardette, who
wrote "The Fire Fiend," and, for a time, re-
joiced in luring the public into a beUef that it was
a posthumous poem by Edgar Poe, was conspicu-
ous there, for daintiness of person, elegance of
attire, and blithe animal spirits. Frank Wood
and Henry NeU, young jom-nalists of fine abiUty,
were frequently present: both of them died in
youth, with their promise unfulfilled. The most
fashionable visitor was Edward G. P. Wilkins,
then dramatic critic for "The New York
Herald"; a prime favorite with the elder James
Gordon Bennett; remarkable for extraordina-
ry facility in literary composition, for gentle,

66 OLD FRIENDS

playful humor, for intimate knowledge and
keen observation of human nature, and for
a quizzical manner, bland and suave, but sug-
gestive of arch, mischievous, veiled pleasantry.
Wilkins was singularly self-contained, yet it
was not difficult, when in his company, to feel
that his secret thought was one of satirical banter.
Among the artists who came to Pfaff's were
Launt Thompson, George Boughton, Edward
F. Mullen, and Sol Eytinge, jr., — ^he whom
Charles Dickens declared to have made the best
illustrations for his novels and the best portrait
of himself. The most striking figure of the
group was Fitz-James O'Brien.

When Clapp started "The Saturday Press," —
which he did in association with Edward How-
land, October 29, 1858, — ^he engaged T. B. Al-
drich to write book reviews and Fitz-James
O'Brien to write about the Stage. Neither of
those writers long remained in harness. Aldrich
had more congenial opportunities, while O'Brien
was a man to whom the curb of regular employ-
ment was intolerable. Aldrich was associated
with the paper during only the first three months

BOHEMIAN DAYS 67

of its existence; O'Brien for only a few weelfs.
Among those Bohemian comrades of mine, — all
dead and gone now and mostly forgotten, —
O'Brien was at once the most potential genius
and the most original character. As I think
of him I recall Byron's expressive figure, "a
wild bird and a wanderer." Readers of the
present day are, probably, not familiar with the
stories of "The Diamond Lens" and "The
Wondersmith," written by O'Brien and pub-
lished in early numbers of "The Atlantic Month-
ly." Those stories were hailed as the most in-
genious fabrics of fiction that had been con-
tributed to our literature since the day when
Edgar Poe surprised and charmed the reading
community with his imaginative, enthralling tale
of "The Fall of the House of Usher." They
revived, indeed, the fashion of the weird short
story, and they provided a model for subse-
quent compositions of that order. A groimdless,
foohsh fable was set afloat, soon after the publi-
cation of "The Diamond Lens," to the effect that
O'Brien had derived it from one of the manu-
scripts of William North, — the fact being that it

68 OLD FRIENDS

was prompted by a remark made to him by Dr.
A. L. Carroll (he who, for a short time, in
1865, published the comic paper called "Mrs.
Grundy"), relative to the marvellous things con-
tained in a drop of water. North, who wrote the
novel called "The Man of the World,"— at first
named "The Slave of the Lamp," — ^was a com-
rade of O'Brien's, but they quarrelled, and in that
novel North described and satirized his former
friend, under the name of "Fitz-Gammon
O'Boimcer." North committed suicide, Novem-
ber 13, 1854, at No. 7 Bond Street, New York,
by drinking prussic acid, — disappointment in
love, and in everything else, being the cause of
his deplorable act. He was about twenty-eight
years of age; a native of England; a scion of the
Guilford family; and, both in London and New
York, he had worked incessantly with his pen, —
writing stories in such magazines as the old
"Graham's" and "The Knickerbocker," and con-
tributing in various ways to the press. An en-
velope was found on his desk, containing twelve
cents, with a few written words, stating that to be
the fruit of his life's labor.

BOHEMIAN DAYS 69

It was not to WilKam North, however, or to
anybody else, that Fitz-James O'Brien was
indebted for the inspiration of his writings.
Some of them were produced imder my per-
sonal observation. Others were made known
to me immediately after they had been com-
posed. His fine poem of "The Fallen Star"
was written in my lodging, and I still pre-
serve the first draft of it, which Fitz left on my
table, together with the pen with which he wrote
it. His singular story of "The Wondersmith"
grew out of an anecdote related by Clapp, in my
presence. "Once, while I was working for Albert
Brisbane" (so, in substance, said the old Prince
of our Bohemia), "I had to read to him, one
evening, many pages of a translation that I had
made, for his use, of Fourier's book on the Social
Destiny of Man. He was closely attentive and
seemed to be deeply interested ; but, after a time,
I heard a slight snore, and looking at him, in pro-
file, I saw that he was sound asleep — and yet the
eye that I could see was wide open. Then and
thus I ascertained, somewhat to my surprise,
that he had a glass eye." There was some talk.

70 OLD FRIENDS

ensuing, about the use of glass eyes and about
the startling effects producible by the wearer of
such an optic who should suddenly remove it from
his visage, polish it, and replace it. In his story
of "The Wondersmith" O'Brien causes the
uncanny keeper of the toys to place his glass
eye, as a watcher, — investing that orb with the
faculty of sight and the means of commimication.
At twilight on a gloomy autmnn day in 1860,
when I happened to be sitting alone at the long
table under the sidewalk in PfafF's Cave, O'Brien
came into that place and took a seat near to me.
His face was pale and careworn and his expres-
sion preoccupied and dejected. He was, at first,
sUent; but presently he inquired whether I in-
tended to go to my lodging, saying that he would
like to go there with me, and to write something
that he had in mind. I knew O'Brien and, thor-
oughly imderstanding his ways, I comprehended
at once the dilemma in which he was placed.
Our circle of boys had a name for it. He was
"on a rock"; that is to say, he was destitute. I
told him that I had something to do, that would
keep me absent for an hour, at the end of which

BOHEMIAN DAYS 71

time I woWld return for him. That was a pre-
text for going to my abode (it was in Varick
Street), and causing a room to be prepared for
my friend. He remained in that lodging for two
nights and a day. In the course of that time he
slept only about foiu" hours: I could not induce
him to taste either food or drink: he would not
even eat a little fruit that I obtained and
contrived to leave in his way. On the morn-
ing of the second day he appeared at my bed-
side, having a roll of manuscript in his hand, and,
formally, even frigidly, took leave of me. "Sir,"
he said, "I wish you good morning" ; and, so say-
ing, he departed. About four o'clock in the after-
noon of that day I entered Delmonico's, then at
the comer of Broadway and Chambers Street,
and there I found Fitz, — ^in glory. He was ar-
rayed in new garments; he had refreshed him-
self; he was dispensing refreshment to all who
would partake of it; his aspect was that of wealth
and joy. He had, in the meantime, sold to
"Harper's Magazine," for a large price (at least
in those days it was considered large) , the product
of his vigil at my lodging, and he was rejoicing

72 OLD FRIENDS

in the sensation of affluence. He was a strange
being: I remember that he became angry because
I would not borrow some money from him, and
at last I was obliged to appease him by accepting
the loan of a small banknote. The composition
that he had sold was his fabric of narrative verse
called "The Sewing Bird," — a singularly in-
genious work, blending fancy with satire, which
had been suggested to him by the sight of one of
those little silver-colored birds, then a recent in-
vention, used by sewing girls, to hold cloth. The
drift of it is that much of the remunerative work
that should be left for women to do is pre-empted
and taken from them by men. It meant more at
that time, perhaps, than it does now. It was
widely read and much admired. The wish that
every remunerative work to which women are
equal should be reserved for them is, no doubt,
general; but there is a ludicrous side to the sub-
ject, as noticed by that great novelist Wilkie
Collins, who, in one of his dehghtful stories, re-
fers to " . . . Maternal societies for confining
poor women; Magdalen societies for reselling
poor women; Strong-Minded societies for put-

BOHEMIAN DAYS 73

ting poor women into poor men's places and leav-
ing the poor men to shift for themselves." Still,
"The Sewing Bird" is a clever work, and it had
a good effect.

Like many persons of the Irish race, O'Brien
was impetuous in temper and "sudden and quick
in quarrel." At one time he consorted with a
Scotch comrade, Donald McLeod, author of a
novel called "Pynnshurst," and they were
obliged to occupy the same bed. Once, after they
had retired for slimiber, an angry dispute oc-
curred between them, relative to the question of
Irish or Scotch racial superiority. O'Brien was
aggressively positive as to the predominant merit
of the Irish. McLeod was violent in assertion
of the incomparable excellence of the Scotch. "I
win not tolerate your insolence," said McLeod.
"You can do as you please," said O'Brien. "I
will demand satisfaction!" shouted McLeod; "a
friend of mine shall wait on you in the morning."
"Very well," answered O'Brien, at the same time
pulling the blanket over himself, "you know
where to find me, in the morning!" Both the
belligerents were sincere in their ferocious inten-

74 OLD FRIENDS

tion, but neither of them could resist the sud-
denly comic aspect of their dispute, and so the
quarrel ended in a laugh. The incident was
related by O'Brien.

The following letter, characteristic of O'Brien,
and genially expressive of his peculiar humor,
was addressed by him to an old friend, the ad-
mirable, once eminent, comedian John E. Owens
(1823-'86), the most essentially humorous actor
that has adorned our stage since the time of
Burton:

November 21, 1860.
Is your name Owens? This is a query whieh I wish
to have distinctly answered. I remember, on a recent oc-
casion, meeting a person whose mental attractions were only
equalled by the beauty of his physical development. That
person answered to the name above mentioned. As I learn
that an individual bearing the same cognomen is now man-
aging an insignificant theatre in New Orleans, I address
this epistle to that place, in the hope of discovering whether
the Knight errant Owens and the manag'er Owens are one
and indivisible — which it seems the Union is not. Inde-
pendent of the personal interest which I feel in ascertain-
ing the welfare and locality of my New York friend, I have
a small interest in a comedy of surpassing beauty which he
bore away with him from this city, as Jason bore the golden
fleece from Colchis. You see this matter is ad-Jasoned to
the other. Now, if you are the lovely and fascinating Owens

[BOHEMIAN DAYS 75

that whilom I knew, I wish you to tell me whether you
will take the comedy on the terms named, or any other
man? If you take it, please get it copied, and charge me,
out of the first instalment, with copying charges as well as
with a certain ten dollars, money lent, and forward balance.
If not let me have a line, and I will enclose the last men-
tioned filthy lucre, and forward at same time express ex-
penses for the transmission of the MS. here. I have no
other copy of the gorgeous production, and do not want to
lose the chances of getting it done here. Please reply at
once. If your name IS Owens, I may tell you without
breach of confidence that all our friends are well. Tom
Placide has multiplied into ten acts instead of his usual
five. Wilkins has lately been convicted of a deaf-aleation.
Cushman, thank God! is going, and Booth is come. Pre-
senting with all due incoherence the assurance of my dis-
tinguished consideration, I remain (if your name IS Owens),
your sincere friend, j,_ j o'BEIEN.

Address, Harper Brothers, Franklin Square, New York.

O'Brien's career was brief, stormy, laborious,
sometimes gay, sometimes miserable, and its
close, though honorable, was sad. He was a
native of Limerick, born about 1828. He was
graduated from Dublin University, and after
leaving that institution he settled in London and
edited a paper there, which failed. In 1852 he
came to New York, bringing to such prominent
editors as Major Noah and General Morris let-

76 OLD FRIENDS

ters of introduction from Dr. R. Shelton Mac-
kensie, then resident in Liverpool, later eminent
in the journalism of Philadelphia. On his arrival
in America O'Brien entered with vigor upon the
duties of the literary vocation, writing for "The
Home Journal," "The Evening Post," "The New
York Times," "The Whig Review," "Harper's
Magazine," and other publications, and sometimes
contributing short plays to the New York stage:
the elder Wallack and Lester Wallack were
among his friends. "When I first knew O'Brien,"
so wrote Aldrich, in a letter to me, "he was trim-
ming the wick of 'The Lantern,' which went
out shortly afterward." "The Lantern" was a
paper that had been started by John Brougham,
the comedian. The best of O'Brien's works were
first published in "Putnam's Magazine," "Har-
per's" and "The Atlantic." The last article that
came from his pen was printed in "Vanity Fair,"
a comic paper that struggled through much
vicissitude, during the war time, and, though its
payments were small, was of vital service to
our Bohemian circle. When the war began
O'Brien promptly sought service in the field,

BOHEMIAN DAYS 77

at first with the New York Seventh Regi-
ment, later with the forces led by General
Lander: on whose staff he held the position of a
Volunteer Aid. On February 6, 1862, in a fight
with the cavalry of the Confederate Colonel Ash-
ley, he was dangerously wounded, the shoulder-
joint of his left arm being smashed into frag-
ments. On April 6, at Cumberland, Virginia, he
died, of that wound. Aldrich and O'Brien had
applied, almost simultaneously, for the place of
Aid to General Lander, and a letter giving the
appointment had been addressed to Aldrich, at
Portsmouth, but, by accident, it failed to reach
him, as he had left that place, and so the coveted
position fell to O'Brien. One of Henry Clapp's
grim witticisms glanced at that subject: "Al-
drich, I see," he said, "has been shot in O'Brien's
shoulder." The old cynic did not like either of
them. As to O'Brien, friendship had to be char-
itable toward infirmities of character and errors
of conduct. He lacked both moral courage and
inteEectual restraint. He was wayward, choleric,
defiant, sometimes almost savage: but he was
generous in disposition and capable of heroism,

78 OLD FRIENDS

and his works afford abundant evidence of the
imagination that accompanies genius and the
grace that authenticates literary art. Among my
iBohemian comrades he was not the most beloved,
but he had the right to be the most admired. His
poem of "The Fallen Star," already mentioned,
contains stanzas in which, unconsciously, he re-
vealed the better part of his own nature, with
some part of his own experience, and which
pathetically indicate the writer's personality and
the influence it diffused:

A brilliant boy that I once knew,

In far-off, happy days of old,
With sweet frank face and eyes of blue

And hair that shone like gold;

A figure sinewy, lithe and strong,

A laugh infectious in its glee,
A voice as beautiful as song

When heard along the sea.

Like fruit upon a southern slope,

He ripened on all natural food, —
The winds that thrill the skyey cope.

The sunlight's golden blood;

And in his talk I oft discerned

A timid music vaguely heard,
The fragments of a song scarce learned,

The essays of a bird. ■

III.

VAGRANT COMRADES.

It was my fortune, when I was a student at
the Dane Law School of Harvard College,
to win the favorable notice of that honored Pro-
fessor, Theophilus Parsons, and to be treated
very kindly by him. On one occasion, after his
morning lecture had ended, he called me into his
study and imparted to me some serious advice.
"I am sorry," he said, "to observe that you are
turning your attention to Literature. I have
seen your poems in the newspapers. Don't think
of living by yom- pen. Stick to the Law! You
will be an excellent lawyer. You wiU have a
profession to depend on. You can make your
way. You can have home and friends. Stick to
the Law. I once knew a brilliant yoimg man —
Paine was his name — who started much as you
have done. He might have had a prosperous
and happy Ufa. He had much abihty. But he
left the Law. He took to writing. They had

79

80 OLD FRIENDS

him here and there and everywhere, with his
poems. He was convivial: he wasted his talents;
and he sank into an early and rather a dishon-
ored grave. Don't make a mistake at the be-
ginning. Stick to the Law, and the Law will
reward you."

So spoke my sage and friendly old preceptor,
tersely and comprehensively stating the safe,
conservative, prudential view of the literary
vocation. There has, at all times, been some
reason for that view. Macaulay said, of Rich-
ardson, the novelist, "he kept his shop and his
shop kept him." "Let your pen be your pas-
time," said Sir Walter Scott, "your profession
your sheet anchor." At the time when Professor
Parsons imparted to me that earnest admonition
to shim the Muses the reasons for it seemed de-
cisive. The conditions of the literary hfe in
America, certainly, were not propitious. The
really vital literary movement in om- country had,
indeed, begun; but that fact was not sharply
reahzed. The number of writers who were obtain-
ing a subsistence from distinctively literary labor
was smaU. Dana was a man of fortune. Halleck

VAGRANT COMRADES 81

was an accountant. Bryant was an editor. Long-
fellow was a eoUege professor. Hawthorne
was an official in the Federal service. Charles
Sprague was a banker. Holmes was a physician.
Prosperity such as attended "The Lamplighter,"
by Miss Cummings, and "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
by Mrs. Stowe (I remember seeing boys, with
baskets full of copies of the latter novel, running
in the streets and selling them, as pedlers sell
apples), was extraordinarily exceptional. Poe,
notwithstanding his marvellous genius, — or be-
cause of it, — ^had lived in comparative poverty
and died in destitution. The number of writers
had considerably increased since the epoch of
Washington Irving, and increase in nimiber of
writers had not been attended with increase of
emolument from writing. "You young fellows,"
said that author, addressing George William
Curtis, "are not so lucky as I was, for when I
began to write there were only a few of us."
The payment for literary product fifty years ago,
unless in exceptional cases, was very small. A
precarious vocation! there could be no doubt
about it.

82 OLD FRIENDS

Experience was to teach me what counsel
failed to teach. A harder time for writers
has not been known in our country than the time
that immediately preceded the outbreak of the
Civil War; yet that was a time when the sun
shone bright on the fields of Bohemia, and the
roses were in bloom: a time of frequent hardship,
sometimes of actual want: I learned then what
it is to lack a lodging, and how it feels to be com-
pelled to walk all night in the streets of a great
city, alone, hungry and cold: not a time of con-
tinuous, unalloyed comfort, and yet almost
always a time of careless mirth. It did not last
long. By the stroke of death and the vicissitude
of fortune the circle of my early artistic associ-
ation in New York was broken in 1861, after
which year our favorite haunt, Pf aff 's Cave, was
gradually deserted by the votaries of the quiU
and the brush, and the day of dreams was ended.
Writing to me, in 1880, the poet Aldrich said:
"How they have all gone, 'the old famiUar faces'!
What a crowd of ghosts people that narrow strip
of old Bohemian country through which we
passed long ago!" Even then, at the distance of

VAGRANT COMRADES 83

only twenty years, that period of freedom and
frolic seemed vague and shadowy. Now, at the
distance of half a century, it seems, in the
dim vista of the Past, like a phantom that
wavers in a dream. Not one of my old comrades
of 1859-'60 is living now, and, for the most part,
the mention of their names would mean nothing
to the present generation of readers. Yet it is a
fact within the experience of every close observer
of his time that men and women of extraordinary
abiUty and charm pass across the scene and van-
ish from it, leaving a potent impression of char-
acter, of mind, and even of genius, yet leaving
no endurable evidence of their exceptional worth.
Such persons, of whom the world hears nothing,
are, sometimes, more interesting than some per-
sons, — ^writers and the like, — of whom the world
hears much. They deserve commemoration;
occasionally they receive it. Browning's poem of
"Waring" has done more to preserve the inter-
esting memory of Alfred Dommett than any-
thing has done that Dommett wrote: Matthew
Arnold's poem of "Oberman" has cast a halo
around the name of Senancour.

84 OLD FRIENDS

Prominent in the singular group of writers
with whom I became associated in 1 859-' 60 was
Edward G. P. Wilkins, the journalist, whom I
have already mentioned, a man of brilliant talent
and singular charm. He was a native of Bos-
ton, and his early experience of journalism
was gained in that city. When I met him he
was associated with "The New York Herald."
He had attracted the attention of the elder
James Gordon Bennett by writing an excel-
lent account of the Crystal Palace exhibition
(the building stood where Bryant Park now
is, at the corner of Sixth Avenue and 42d
Street, New York), and that sagacious editor
had rapidly advanced him. He was an edi-
torial writer, and also he held the office of musical
and dramatic critic. He was a fluent penman, di-
rect, exphcit, humorous, ready with a reason
for every opinion that he pronounced, and
fortunate in the possession of an equable temper
and a refined taste. His favorite author was
Montaigne, whose works he read in the orig-
inal French as well as in the English trans-
lation, and he was deeply sympathetic with

EDWARD G. P. WILKINS
I'hotogroph by J. Guniey & Son, X. T.

VAGRANT COMRADES 85

the later poems of Whittier: facts worth noting,
because every man is perceived, at least in part,
by knowledge of his loves in literature as well
as by knowledge of his friends. He was a tall,
slender man, of delicate constitution, having
regular features, dark hair, and remarkably fine
blue eyes. He stooped a little, and he was
slightly deaf. His deafness, I observed, became
peculiarly dense on occasions when he did not
wish to hear. Noisy, intrusive persons, angry
theatrical managers, and other belligerent indi-
viduals, when stating their grievances and mak-
ing their complaints to him, were favored with
coiu-teous attention; but, with an extreme placid-
ity of demeanor, he would request a second or a
third recital of their remarks, and often then
would misunderstand them. His tact in discom-
fiting a bully or quelUng the clamor of a fool was
extraordinary. He was scrupulously elegant in
attire and carelessly so in manner, and his im-
perturbable, humorous aff abiUty was especially
attractive. For the discreet management of his
talents and professional opportunities, as well
as for the polish of his manners, he was some-

86 OLD FRIENDS

what indebted to the friendship of Mme. Cora
de Wilhorst, a popular vocalist of the period
(she was the daughter of Reuben Withers, of
New York, and it is recorded of her that she
made a brilliant first appearance in opera,
January 28, 1857, at the Academy of Music, as
Lucia), therein being fortunate; because no in-
fluence can be more auspicious for any clever
youth than that of an accomplished woman,
acquainted with the ways of the social world and
sincerely desirous of promoting his welfare.

Wilkins dwelt in a house, still standing, at
the northeast corner of Amity and Greene
streets, and there he died, in the spring of 1861.
On the night but one before his death I sat by
his bedside, from sunset tiU morning, and I had
reason then to know that, beneath a blandly
cynical exterior, his mind was reverent, his spirit
gentle, and his heart affectionate. His disease
was pneumonia, and he suffered much. It is hard
to look upon anguish that you cannot relieve.
Once, in the course of that dreadful night, he
asked me to read to him, — at first a descriptive
passage from Carlyle; then from the Bible. He

VAGRANT COMRADES 87

knew (though I did not) that his last hour was
near. A cold, heavy, desolate rain was falling
when I left him, which lasted all that day, but the
next morning was beautifully clear and bright.
I thought that I should find him better, but when,
imaware of what had happened, I entered his
chamber, all things were in order, and he was
dead. His grave is in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Is there any reason why readers of the present
day should care to hear of him? I think there is.
He was the first among American journalists to
introduce into our press the French custom of
the Dramatic FeuiUeton. Many writers of this
period are, — without being aware of it, — fol-
lowing an example that was set by him; writing
about the stage and society in a facetious,
satirical vein, striving to hghten heavy or barren
themes with playful banter, and to gild the
dreariness of criticism with the glitter of wit.
Wilkins not only attempted that task, but he
accomphshed it. His writings are buried in
the files of "The Herald," "The Saturday
Press" and "The Leader," and they are buried
forever. His comedy called "Young New York"

88 OLD FRIENDS

survives. Laura Keene produced it, in the au-
tumn of 1856, and herself acted in it, as also did
George Jordan, Charles Wheatleigh, and Tom
Johnston, three of the most expert comedians
that have adorned the theatre in our time.
Wilkins had a hand in other dramatic composi-
tions, and he was instrumental in bringing upon
our stage the first version that was acted in
America of "Les Pattes des Mouche," the most
charming of Sardou's comedies, — originally pro-
duced by Wallack, under the name of "Henri-
ette"; now widely known and popular as "A
Scrap of Paper." He did not habitually frequent
Pfaff's Cave, but he often came there, and his
presence afforded a signal contrast with that of
some of our companions.

The group, seldom complete, included Clapp,
Howland, Wilkins, O'Brien, George Arnold,
Frank Wood, Charles Dawson Shanly, N. G.
Shepherd, Charles D. Gardette, Walt Whitman,
Thomas Blades de Walden, W. L. Symonds,
T. B. Aldrich, Edward MuUen, and the writer
of these words. Once in a while, at night, the
table became surrounded. One such occasion I

VAGRANT COMRADES 89

I recall when the humorist Artemus Ward
(Charles F. Browne) made his first appear-
ance there, accompanied by an acquaintance
whose name he mentioned, and whom, with re-
assuring words, he gleefully commanded to take
a seat. "Don't be afraid," he said: "they won't
hurt you. These are Bohemians. A Bohemian
is an educated hoss-thief!" On another such
occasion, Mr. W. D. Howells, now the volu-
minous and celebrated novelist, — ^he whose efful-
gent criticism has, to the consternation of the
literary world, dimmed the shining stars of Scott
and Thackeray, — came into the cave, especially,
as afterward was divtilged, for the purpose of
adoring the illustrious Whitman. Mr. HoweUs,
at that time, was a respectable youth, in black
raiment, who had only just entered on the path
to glory, while Whitman, by reason of that odor-
iferous classic, the "Leaves of Grass," was in
possession of the local Parnassus. The meeting,
of course, was impressive. Walt, at that time,
affected the Pompadour style of shirt and jacket,
— ^making no secret of his brawny anatomy, — ■
and his hirsute chest and complacent visage

90 OLD FRIENDS

were, as usual, on liberal exhibition: and he
tippled a little brandy and water and received
his admirer's homage with characteristic be-
nignity. There is nothing like genius — ^unless
possibly it may be leather.

I have seen a singular reference to that mo-
mentous occasion, written and pubhshed, in later
years, by the renowned Mr. Howells. "At one
moment of the orgy" (so runs that reference),
"which went but slowly for an orgy, we were
joined by some belated Bohemians, whom the
others made a great clamor over. I was given to
understand they were just recovered from a fear-
ful debauch; their locks were stiU damp from the
towels used to restore them, and their eyes were
very frenzied. I was presented to those types,
who neither said nor did anything worthy of their
awful appearance, but dropped into seats at the
table and ate of the supper with an appetite that
seemed poor. I stayed, hoping vainly for worse
things, xmtil eleven o'clock, and then I rose and
took my leave of a hterary condition that had
distinctly disappointed me."

The fine fancy and fertile invention that have

VAGRANT COMRADES 91

made Mr. Howells everywhere illustrious were
never better exemplified than in these remark-
able words ; for, as a matter of fact, no such inci-
dents occurred, either then or at any other time,
nor did the great novelist ever see them, except in
his "mind's eye." Fancy is both a wonderful
faculty for a writer of fiction and a sweet boon
for the reader of it. I have regretted the absence
of Mr. Howells from a casual festival which oc-
curred in Pfaif' s Cave, much about the time of
his advent there, when the lads (those tre-
mendous revellers!) drank each a glass of beer
in honor of the birthday of Henry Clapp, and
when he might, for once, have felt the ravishing
charm of Walt Whitman's colossal eloquence. It
fell to the lot of that Great Bard, I remember,
to propose the hiealth of the Prince of Bohemia,
which he did in the following marvellous words :
"That's the feller!" It was my privilege to hear
that thrilling dehverance, and to admire and ap-
plaud that superb orator. Such amazing ema-
nations of intellect seldom occvu*, and it seems
indeed a pity that this one should not have had
ISIr. IloweUs to embroider it with his ingenious

92 OLD FRIENDS

fancy and embalm it in the amber of his vera-
cious rhetoric. Sad to relate, he was not present;
and, equally sad to relate, the "types" whom
he met at Pfaff's Cave, and by whom he was
"distinctly disappointed," were quite as "dis-
tinctly disappointed" by him. They thought
him a prig.

The custom of detraction, which has been ex-
ceedingly prevalent in American criticism from
the time of the hounds that barked upon the
track of Edgar Poe, is not only pernicious but
ridiculous, and it is right and desirable that pro-
test should be made against it. The men of
whom I am writing had faults, no doubt, and
many of them: all the angels, of course, lived
in Boston, at that time, and were marshalled,
by Frank Underwood, aroimd "The Atlantic
Monthly": but those old comrades of mine were
not sots, nor were they given to "debauchery."
Most of them were poor, and they were poorly
paid. As an example, I will mention that for
my poem of "After All," which has since found
its way into almost every compilation of verse
made within the last fifty years, I received three

VAGRANT COMRADES 93

dollars — ^and was glad to receive so much. Rev-
elry requires money : and at the time Mr. HoweUs
met those Bohemians, — ^with the "damp locks"
and the "frenzied eyes," — it is probable that the
group did not possess enough money among them
all to buy a quart bottle of champagne. Further-
more, they were writers of remarkable ability, and
they were under the stringent necessity of work-
ing continually and very hard : and it seems perti-
nent to suggest that such a poem, for instance,
as George Arnold's "Old Pedagogue," or Fitz-
James O'Brien's Ode in commemoration of
Kane, or Charles Dawson Shanly's "Walker
of the Snow," is not to be produced from the
stimulation of alcohol. Literature is a matter
of brains, not drugs. It would be equally just
and sensible for American criticism to cherish
American hterature, and to cease from carping
about the infirmities, whether actual or putative,
of persons dead and gone, who can no longer
defend themselves.

It would be idle to allege that complete har-
mony existed among those vagrant comrades of
mine, — for complete harmony among votaries of

94 OLD FRIENDS

any form of art has never yet existed, and, in-
deed, it is impossible. Nevertheless there was a
sentiment of fraternity among those Bohemian
writers, such as I have not since observed.
Grcorge Arnold was the most entirely beloved
member of that group. His manly character, his
careless good-humor, his blithe temperament,
his personal beauty, and his winning manners
made him attractive to everybody. His numer-
ous stories have not been collected, but his poems
(gathered and published under my editorial care)
survive, and their fluent, melodious blending of
rueful mirth and tender feeling with lovely tints
of natural description, — constituting an irresisti-
ble charm, — ^have commended them to a wide
circle of readers. One of the saddest days of my
life was the day when we laid him in his grave, in
Greenwood, Another much loved companion
was Shanly, — of whose writings scarce any rec-
ord exists, — ^modest, silent, patient, reticent —
everything that is meant by the name of gentle-
man. His poems called "The Briar-Wood Pipe"
and "Rifleman, Shoot Me a Fancy Shot" ought
long to preserve his memory, and perhaps they

GEORGE AEXOLD

VAGRANT COMRADES 95

will. To him it was a matter of indifference. I
have never known a writer who was so absolutely
careless of literary reputation : indeed, it was not
until after we had been acquainted for several
months that I learned that he had written any-
thing. He never spoke to me of his writings,
till, at the last, when, in 1875, he was leaving
New York for Florida (where he died, April 14,
that year), he asked me to act as his literary
executor, in case any publisher should care to
put forth a book of them. The contrasts of per-
sonality thus exhibited were fuU of interest.
Perhaps the most abrupt of them was that af-
forded by the restful, indolent, elegant demeanor
of Wilkins and the vital, breezy, exuberant de-
meanor of Fitz-James O'Brien, — the most repre-
sentative Bohemian writer whom it has been my
fortune to know.

John Brougham, the comedian, expressed to
me the opinion that O'Brien never cared much
for any person with Avhom he did not quarrel,
and as both of them were Irishmen that opinion,
perhaps, was correct. O'Brien sometimes in-
volved himself, or became involved, in quarrels.

96 OLD FRIENDS

proceeding to physical violence. Persons whom
he disliked he would not recognize, and in the
expression of opinion, especially as to questions
of literary art, he was explicit. Candor of judg-
ment, indeed, relative to literary product was the
inveterate custom of that Bohemian group.
Unmerciful chaiF pursued the perpetrator of any
piece of writing that impressed those persons as
trite, conventional, artificial, laboriously solemn,
or insincere; and they never spared each other
from the barb of ridicule. It was a salutary ex-
perience for young writers, because it habituated
them to the custom not only of speaking the
truth, as they understood it, about the writings
of their associates, but of hearing the truth, as
others understood it, about their own productions.
"I greatly like your poem of 'Orgia,' " O'Brien
said to me, "and I like it all the more because
I did not think you could write anything so
good."

The quarrels in which O'Brien participated
were more often pugilistic than literary ; contests
into which he plunged, with Celtic delight in the
tempest of combat. He was constitutionally val-

VAGRANT COMRADES 97

orous, but, as his valor lacked discretion and he
did not hesitate to engage with giants, he was
usually defeated. He came into the cave late
one night, I remember, adorned with a black eye,
which had been bestowed upon him by a casual
antagonist in Broadway, because of a difference
of opinion respecting the right of passage on the
side- walk; and, producing from one pocket a
vial with a leech in it, which, — concealed in a
white handkerchief, — ^he apphed to the region of
his damaged optic, he produced from another
pocket the manuscript of a poem that he said
he had that evening written (his residence, then,
was the old Hone House), called "The Lost
Steamship" ; and he read that poem to our circle
in a magnificent manner, with all the passionate
vigor, all the weird feeling, and aU the tremor
of haunted imagination that its tragical theme
requires.

A steamship had recently been wrecked, on the
Atlantic coast, with much loss of life. The poem
is the story of the disaster, and that story is told,
to a fisherman on the shore, by a person who
seems, at first, to be the only survivor of the

98 OLD FRIENDS

wreck. That speaker declares that all on board
the ship were drowned, — ^the last man to go down
with her being the Second Mate : then, suddenly,
he stands revealed as the ghost of the mariner,
the final victim engulfed by the sea. I have
heard many readings: I have never heard one in
which afflicting reality, hysterical excitement,
shuddering dread, and tremulous pathos were so
strangely blended as they were in O'Brien's read-
ing of his "Lost Steamship."

Poor O'Brien's combats were, no doubt, seri-
ous enough to him, but to most of his associates
they seemed comic. His Waterloo, as a fistic
belligerent, — a defeat which befell on June 14,
1858, at the New York Hotel, — ^was, as to some
of its results, playfully indicated to me by the
sm-geon who attended the damaged warrior im-
mediately after the battle. "He looked" ( so wrote
that hvmiorous friend) "like Cruikshank's
picture of 'the man wot wun the fight.' Never
have I seen the human nose more completely
comminuted than in my patient's case. Even his
tailor wouldn't have recognized him. I remem-
ber that nose particularly, on account of his

VAGRANT COMRADES 99

urgent solicitude that I should make it slightly
aquiline, but avoid the Israelitish extreme.
Eomans rather than Hebrews furnished his
text."

O'Brien is here portrayed as he was after his
incorrigible, gypsy-Uke wildness of temperament
had asserted absolute control over his conduct.
He had not always been reckless; he had not
always been environed with difficulties. The be-
ginning of his hterary career, as proved by the
number and variety of his contributions to New
York magazines and papers, was signalized by
steadUy ambitious eifort and fertile industry —
not whoUy unrewarded. The poet George
Arnold, who met him before I did, wrote:
"When I first knew O'Brien, in 1856-'57, he
had elegant rooms; a large and valuable hbrary;
piles of manuscripts; dressing-cases; pictures; a
ward-robe of much splendor; and all sorts of
knick-knackery, such as young bachelors love to
collect." Other persons, since dead, who knew
him soon after his arrival in New York, in 1852,
have described him to me as a man of xmcom-
monly attractive aspect, — making mention of his

100 OLD FRIENDS

athletic figure, genial face, fair complexion,
pleasing smile, waving brown hair, and winning
demeanor. When I first met him a change had
occurred, alike in his person and his circum-
stances. He had come to Boston, as an assistant
to that energetic, resolute, intrepid, tumultuous
theatrical manager H. L. Bateman (the H. L.
signifying Hezekiah Linthicum), who was then
directing the professional tour of the beautiful
actress Matilda Heron, — afterward the wife of
the accomplished musician Robert Stoepel, — and
it was easy to perceive that he had experienced
considerable vicissitude and was a confirmed liter-
ary gypsy. His countenance bore a slight trace
of rough usage; his hair, closely cropped, had
begun to be a httle thin ; but his expressive gray-
blue eyes were clear and brilliant; his laughter
was bluff and breezy; his voice was strong and
musical ; his manner was gay ; and he was a cheer-
ful companion, — ^making the most of To-day, and
caring not at all for To-morrow.

In a letter to me, written in 1880, Aldrich, in
his serio-comic way, mentions facts about
O'Brien that help to make more distinct the im-

VAGRANT COMRADES 101

age of his erratic personality and the story of his
wayward career:

I mada O'Brien's acquaintance in 1853. He once told me
he was graduated from Dublin University, and that, on
leaving college, he inherited from his father some $40,000,
all of which he handsomely spent, in the course of two
years, in London.

The article (about O'Brien) I prepared for "Harper's
Weekly," in 1862, was returned to me. I distinctly re-
member my disgust. The manuscript, which lay in a drawer
of my work-table for two or three years afterward, was
^either lost or destroyed at the time (1865) I moved to
Boston.

In the years 1858- '59 O'Brien and I were very intimate;
we never let a day pass without meeting. I recollect that
I treated this period in detail in the missing paper. I
wish you had it, or that I could lay hold of the ghost of it
in my memory.

I enclose to you, as a curiosity, the first letter I ever
received from O'Brien. It is the only instance I know of
his signing himself "Fitz- James de Courcy O'Brien." You
know he was "Baron Inchiquin," or something of the sort.
I used to call him Baron Linchpin, when we were merry.

The merriest days depress me most when I look back to
them: — as compensation, I can smile at the saddest. I
half smile as I recall how hurt I was on an occasion when
O'Brien borrowed $35.00 of me, to pay a pressing bill, and,
instead of paying the bill, gave a little dinner at Del-
monico's to which he did not invite me! Arnold and Clapp
were there, and perhaps you. I gave that dinner!

Did O'Brien ever finish a short serial story, "The Red

102 OLD FRIENDS

Petticoat," which he began in some New York newspaper?
I read the opening chapters in proof slips, but don't remem-
ber that I ever saw any more of it. There was a fine
description of "a run" on a shabby Bowery bank, in the
first chapter. The picture of the grim, half-insane crowd
hurling itself against the bank doors lingers in my memory
as something wonderfully good.

O'Brien was not the heir to a title, nor did
he pretend to be. The clever, piquant, tart, and
rather malicious writer, Charles F. Briggs, once
prominent in New York journalism as "Harry
Franco," originated and published the incorrect
statement, — ^which was accepted by Aldrich and
others, — that O'Brien was a relative of Smith
O'Brien, at one time conspicuous as an Irish
"agitator," and was heir to the title borne by
Smith O'Brien's brother. Lord Inchiquin. Fitz-
James's father was a lawyer : his mother's maiden
name was de Coiu-cy. The story of "The Scarlet
Petticoat" (not Red) was begun in a paper
called "Leslie's Stars and Stripes," published,
for a few months, in 1859, but it was not com-
pleted. Some of O'Brien's writings have not
been found. In 1881 I caused the publication of
a volume of his works, containing forty-three

VAGRANT COMRADES 103

poems and thirteen stories; and of his writings
that I have collected, from various sources, for
a companion volume there are thirty pieces in
prose and fifteen in verse, besides several plays,
and many interesting fragments — material
enough to make a book of five himdred pages.

O'Brien's letter to Aldrich, who was then sub-
editor of the New York "Home Journal," is
characteristic, in its playful vein:

Waverley House, Madison, N. J.,
Sept. (something or other), Tuesday.
Dear Sir: I send you a poem. If I finish another before
I go to bed to-night, I will enclose it also. If you do not
find it, conclude that it is not finished. The one I send
you is a ballad, horrible and indigestible.

Make such corrections as you think fit, preserving care-
fully, at the same time, the language, spelling, punctuation,
and arrangement of the verses. Anything else that you
find "out of kilter" you can alter.

Seriously, if you can improve, do it fearlessly. It is the
!A.ugur who speaks to Tarquin. "Cut boldly"; an auger who
trusts that he does not bore.

Paradox as it may seem, "the Fall" has already arisen.
I saw her veil fluttering on the hills the other day, and some
of the earliest and most servile of the trees have already
put on her livery. Come out and be presented. . . .
Yours sincerely,
PITZ-JAMES DE COURCY O'BRIEN.

104 OLD FRIENDS

O'Brien had a presentiment of his early and
violent death. A letter to me, from the clever
and kindly artist Albert R. Waud, long since
dead, who was in his company "at the front,"
intimates this, in words that make a significant
picture:

After O'Brien became Aid on Lander's staff a feeling
took possession of him that he would not long survive the
commission: under its influence he became, at times,
strangely softened. His buoyant epicureanism partly de-
serted him. He showed greater consideration for others
and was less convivial than was his wont.

One night I rode with him to the camp of the First
Massachusetts Battery, where the evening passed pleas-
antly, with cigars and punch. Some one sang the song,
from "Don Csesar de Bazan," "Then let me like a soldier
die." Next morning he started, to join the General
(Lander) at Harper's Ferry. As we rode he kept repeat-
ing the words of the song; said he appreciated it the more,
as he had a presentiment that he should be shot, before
long. He would not be rallied out of it, but remarked that
he was content; and, when we parted, said good-by, as
cheerfully as need be.

I heard, afterward, that medical incompetence had more
to do with his death than the wound. How true it was I
don't know. But the same thing was said of General
Lander; and there was, at that, time, a great want of
surgical experience in the field.

There is a temptation, which must be resisted.

VAGRANT COMRADES 105

to linger on the theme of days before Black
Care had claimed acquaintance — of days when
Hope beckoned and Youth replied — and of
vagrant comrades as heedless and merry as the
whitecaps of the sea. Enough, however, has
been said to indicate the character of a pectdiar
period of literary transition in the chief city of
America, — "that unfriendly time" for letters, as
the poet Stedman called it, who had dwelt in it
and closely observed it, — a period when the age
of Annuals and Keepsakes and Friendship's
Offerings had not quite passed away, and when
the epoch of free thinking and bold expression
had not become entirely established. The pro-
pulsive influences of that period, greatly broad-
ened and strengthened, are splendidly operative
now, and the hard vicissitudes of such a case as
that of O'Brien would be needless or impossible
to-day. Poet, romancer, wanderer, soldier, he
sang his song, he told his story, he met his fate
like a brave man, giving his life for his adopted
land, and dying, — with much promise vmfulfilled,
— ^when only thirty-four years old. As I turn
away from his grave I turn away, hkewise, from

106 OLD FRIENDS

the whole strange scene of vagrant literary life.
The gypsy camp is broken. The music is hushed.
The fires are put out. The gypsies are all gone.
There is no Bohemia any more, nor ever will be,
except in luxury's lap or imagination's dream.

IV.

OMVEE WENDELL HOLMES

As I look back to the distant days of my youth,
in the old cities of Boston and Cambridge, and
recall the reverent devotion to literature and its
eminent professors that then prevailed, I am
somewhat painfully conscious of a great change
that has taken place, either in pubhc sentiment
as to those subjects or in my own mind. Those
were the days when Dana, Bryant, Halleck,
Cooper, and Washington Irving were hallowed
names, never thought of without spontaneous
admiration nor mentioned without profound
respect. Those were the days, also, of Long-
fellow, Emerson, Whittier, Lowell, Felton,
Holmes, Mitchell, Whipple, and Henry Giles, —
to mention only a few of the men then conspicu-
ous in the realm of thought, — and around all
those names there was an atmosphere of sanctity.
We who were young never even dreamed of
doubting the authenticity of their greatness.

107

108 OLD FRIENDS

Reverence for them was a religion, and that
religion was generaEy prevalent. No such feel-
ing seems to exist now, relative to authors,
whether of the past or present. The audacious
New Age ignores aU reputations and challenges
all claims. When Charles Dickens first visited
Boston (it was as long ago as 1842), the girls
in the fine mansions that he entered would
throng around him and furtively cut hits of fur
from his seal-skin overcoat, to be treasm-ed as
souvenirs. No writer is idolized now, in any such
spirit, or in any spirit at all. In my own breast,
I grieve to say, the spring of hero-worship has
nearly run dry ; but that, I am wishful to believe,
is due to the lapse of time. Wordsworth has
noticed the "sober coloring" which, from the
eyes of ancient watchers of mortality, is taken
by "the clouds that gather round the setting svm."
For me, however, a remnant of that old devo-
tional enthusiasm stiU remains. There is, for
example, as there always has been, a halo aroimd
the name of Oliver Wendell Holmes.

At the time of which I speak Holmes had not
yet written "The Autocrat," but his early poems.

HOLMES 109

published in 1836 and later, were known to us
young readers, and we loved them well. Some
of them were comic, such as "My Aimt," "The
September Gale," and "The Height of the
Ridiculous," whUe some of them were martial
or pathetic, such as "Old Ironsides" and the song
of greeting to Charles Dickens. The poem of
"Old Ironsides" had (in 1830) saved the frigate
Constitution from being demohshed, and we
could see her, stiU afloat, in the harbor, oif the
Navy Yard at Charlestown. The Dickens song
had given to us one crystal gem of feeling and
melody not to be forgotten:

The Irish harp no longer thrills,

Or breathes a fainter tone ;
The clarion blast from Scotland's hills,

Alas! no more is blown;
And Passion's burning lip bewails

Her Harold's wasted fire,
Still ling 'ring o 'er the dust that veils

The lord of England's lyre.

It is not surprising that Holmes charmed us,
for he voiced the ardor of youth and he touched,
at one and the same moment, the chords that
vibrate to laughter and to tears. Time adjusts

110 OLD FRIENDS

the scales in which achievement is weighed and
by which reputation is finally determined. Other
bards may have excelled Holmes, in later years,
and to them may have been accorded a higher
rank than has been accorded to him, in the esti-
mation of his countrymen : but no American poet
of the middle of the nineteenth century, — ^unless,
perhaps, it was Longfellow, — was so much loved
by the rising generation.

I saw Holmes many times before I became
personally acquainted with him. He dwelt, at
one time, in Montgomery Place, one of those
short, secluded streets open at only one end, like
the back-water eddies in the river Thames, of
which, in those days, Boston possessed many. I
suppose that, mostly, they are gone now. There
was Federal alley, back of the Theatre. There
was an alley leading from State Street into Dock
Square. There was an inlet to Arch Street, and
there was an arch, which I dimly remember.
There was a narrow, bleak passage leading from
Court Square into Washington Street, in which,
as he told me long afterward, Edwin P. "Whip-
ple (best of American literary critics) once met

HOLMES 111

the illustrious lawyer and orator Rufus CHoate,
who passed him with a stately bow, merely
ejaculating, as a comment on that dingy thor-
oughfare, "ignominious, but convenient." I saw
Holmes, several times, emerging from "old
Montgomery Place." I saw him walking in "the
long path," as he afterward called it, in the
quaint, tender, eminently felicitous closing chap-
ter of "The Autocrat." I saw him (but that was
at a later period) slowly and sadly pacing near
the old Cragie mansion, on the desolate summer
day of the funeral of Mrs. Longfellow. Once I
met him on the bridge that spans the Charles
river, westward, from Boston to Cambridge,
and the encoimter was both singular and amus-
ing. It chanced that we were the only persons
then on the bridge. We were strangers; we
were on opposite sides of the causeway, proceed-
ing in different directions; and, of course, he
took no notice of me. Upon him, on the contrary,
my admiring gaze was riveted. He was walk-
ing slowly, was musing, and his face was exceed-
ingly grave; but, suddenly, without obvious rea-
son, he burst into laughter, and his countenance

112 OLD FRIENDS

became radiant with mirth. I do not think that
a more illuminative indication could be cited of
the peculiar constitution of his mind. He was
unconscious of being observed. He was oif his
guard. He was, at that moment, — although I
did not know it, — the veritable humorist of the
Autocrat, passing instantly from a serious
thought to a merry one, and exultantly happy
in the transition and the mirth of it. Much can
be learned, if you have the privilege of looking
at a great man when he is alone, wrapt in thought,
and unconscious of observation. I once saw
Daniel Webster, a little after dawn of a sum-
mer morning, pacing to and fro, — ^no other per-
son in sight and no movement anywhere, — at the
extreme end of Long Wharf, in Boston; and
the image of that noble figure and leonine face,
with its gloomy, glorious eyes, has never faded
out of my memory.

The life of Holmes extended over almost the
whole of the nineteenth century. He was bom
August 29, 1809, and he died October 7, 1894.
I once heard Rufus Choate, — greatest of orators
that have been heard in our country! — speak on

HOLMES 113

"The Last Days of Samuel Rogers," the gentle
poet of "The Pleasures of Memory," who lived
for ninety-two years, 1763 to 1855, and who, of
course, had passed through a seething, tumultu-
ous period of tremendous events and startling
changes, — events and changes of which, equally
of course, the superh speaker painted a magnifi-
cent picture, in "thoughts that breathe and words
that burn." There is, in the spacious garden of
Holland House, at Kensington, an arbor, facing,
at a little distance, Canova's superb bust of
ISTapoleon Bonaparte, in which cosey retreat an
inscription, composed and placed by Lord Hol-
land, glances at the friendship of that celebrated
nobleman with the equally celebrated poet:

Here ROGERS sat, and here forever dwell,
With me, the pleasures that he sang so well.

Rogers was contemporary with the war in
which England lost her American Colonies;
with the terrible French Revolution; and with
the entire career of Napoleon; he laiew Garrick,
Mrs. Siddons, and all the luminaries who circled
around them; he might have talked with Dr.
Johnson, and would have done so but for tim-

114 OLD FRIENDS

idity; his time comprised, as to literature, all the
achievements of Bums, Scott, Wordsworth,
Southey, Coleridge, Lamh, Byron, Landor,
Shelley and Keats; and he lived to see the tri-
imiphs of Macaulay and Dickens and to decline
the office of poet laureate, in favor of Alfred
Tennyson. The period spanned by the life of!
Holmes was equally remarkable for social vicissi-
tudes and prodigality of marvels, and it was even
more remarkable for its amazing discoveries in
science, its diffusion of intelligence, its escape
from the shackles of superstition, its advance-
ment in civilization, and its progress toward a
rational fellowship of the human race. It is no
part of my purpose to vsrite his life or review
his career. I wish only to say that the reader
of his books discovers that he was always abreast,
and often in advance, of the boldest, clearest,
best thought of his day, upon every subject of
vital interest to mankind. In youth he studied
Law, but he soon turned from Law to Medicine,
and from Medicine, — in which he was highly
distinguished, — ^he turned to Literature, which,
indeed, was his natural vocation. His first pub-

HOLMES 115

lication was made in 1834; his last in 1888.
There are thirteen volumes of his works, thus far
collected, — poems, novels, essays, lectures, and
scientific papers, — and they are a mine of wisdom
and beauty.

The author of "The Voiceless," "The Cham-
bered NautUus," "Under the Violets," and "The
Living Temple," — ^those being only exponents,
eloquently indicative, in their significance, of
the opulent depth of his poetic nature and fac-
ulty, — ^has written his name in letters of golden
light, clear and imperishable, on the tablets of
our national literature. Holmes was a great
poet, even though he never wrote an epic, just as
[Gray was a great poet, for his Elegy alone. It
pleased Holmes, however, to write many poems
of "occasion," and he has been designated, some-
times a little disdainfully, "an occasional poet."
He was more than that. His achievements in that
vein, meanwhile, are incomparably fine, and the
felicitous verse for "occasions" that he wrote so
well was made doubly charming and splendidly
effective by his beautiful delivery of it. At times
when he had thus to speak he became eagerly

116 OLD FRIENDS

animated; joyously excited; keenly conscious of
the intellectual value of the feat to be accom-
phshed and of the effect to be produced. His
countenance, pleasingly eccentric rather than
conventionally handsome, and more remarkable
for intensity and variety of expression than for
regularity of feature, would, at such moments,
glow with fervency of emotion ; his brilliant eyes
would blaze, as with interior light; his little,
fragile person, quivering with the passionate
vitality of his spirit, would tower with intrinsic
majesty; and his voice, clear and sympathetic but
neither strong nor deep, woidd tremble, and
sometimes momentarily break, with ardor and
impetuosity of feeling, while yet he never lost
control of either his metrical fabric, his theme,
his sensibility, or his hearers. He was a consvrai-
mate artist, whether in words or in speech. On
May 28, 1879, there was a festival, at the Parker
House in Boston, commemorative of the centen-
ary of the great Irish poet Thomas Moore (a
man of exquisite genius, and one of the chief
benefactors of the world, seeing that he set to
music, in the sweetest of words and the loveliest

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

HOLMES 117

of melodies, its most sacred feelings and its best
aspirations) , and, as we were going into the ban-
quet room, Holmes took me by the arm and said
to me: "I shall try, to-night, to do something as
nearly as possible in the manner of Moore him-
self, and I hope that you will like it." He was
as eagerly interested and as tremulously nervous
as a young girl might be, going to her first Re-
ception, and he was as ingenuous and winning
as a little child; yet then he was a man of 70,
and he was speaking to a man but little more than
half his age. His delivery of his poem was per-
fect, — surpassing all expectation. When he rose
to speak he gazed steadily, for a few moments,
at a bust of Moore, which had been placed at the
further end of the haU, immediately opposite to
him, and then, without a word of preamble, he
ejaculated the first line of that glowing apos-
trophe to the dead poet, — that exquisite interpre-
tation of his spirit, — that illuminative parallel
between the two great representative bards of
Ireland and Scotland ("Enchanter of Erin,
whose magic has bound us!"), which, to this day,
remains the most felicitous and eiFective occa-

118 OLD FRIENDS

sional poem existent in the English language.
The effect of it was magical. A brilliant assem-
blage, hushed, almost breathless with excitement,
hung, enraptured, upon every syllable and every
tone, and when the last words rang from the
speaker's Ups there was such a tumult of accla-
mation as seemed to shake the waEs. Among the
auditors were James T. Fields and the tragedian
John McCuUough: both were deeply moved.
McCuUough's Irish heart, as might weU be
imagined, was thrilled in every fibre. Long
afterward, and again and again, he spoke to
me of that occasion and of the marvellous charm
of the old poet's passionate eloquence. Indeed,
he committed the poem to memory, and often,
in the course of our wanderings together, I have
heard his deep voice murmuring to himself that
lovely tribute to his native land and its immortal
singer:

And while the fresh blossoms of summer are braided,
For the sea-girdled, stream-silvered, lake-jewelled isle.

While her mantle of verdure is woven unfaded,
While Shajinon and Liffiey shall dimple and smile,

The land where the staff of St. Patrick was planted,

Where the shamrock grows green from the cliffs to the shore,

HOLMES 119

The land of fair maidens and heroes undaunted
Shall wreathe her bright harp with the garlands of Moore.

Another memorable occasion when the vener-
able poet put forth his characteristic and excep-
tional powers with brilliant effect was that of
the festival that was given, December 3, 1879,.
by the pubhshers of "The Atlantic Monthly,"
to signaUze his seventieth birthday. The place
was the great hall of the Brunswick Hotel, in
Boston. The assemblage, composed mainly of
American authors, was one of the most distin-
guished that have been seen in this country.
Howells, the novelist, gracefully presided, and
the tables were surrounded with representatives
of letters from almost every state in the Union.
Holmes, profoundly agitated by the sense of
private friendship and public homage, dehvered
his noble, pathetic poem called "The Iron Gate"
— that portal which, as he so feh'citously inti-
mates, closes behind every man whose work has
been done, whose task has been fulfilled, and who
no longer appertains to the active movement of
the Present Day. The feehng which pervades
that poem dimly glimmers, — ^like the tender.

120 OLD FRIENDS

fading, golden twilight of an autumn day, — ^in
Goldsmith's delicious musing on "The Deserted
Village"; but nowhere in literature, aside from
Holmes's poem, can be foimd such an ample
expression of it. He read the lines sweetly, fer-
vently, solemnly, and they touched every heart.
If I mention my personal participation in the
tribute paid to him on that day, it is only that I
may preserve his image as I saw it then; for my
place was only about twenty feet away from him,
and while I was reading my poem in his honor
his emotion became so excessive that he half rose
from his chair, fixing upon me those brilliant
eyes of his, suffused with tears that he could
scarcely restrain, lost all consciousness of his sur-
roundings, knew only that he was listening to the
voice of reverence and love, and seemed more a
spirit than a man.

"Youth longs and manhood strives, but age
remembers." I am older now than Holmes was
when he wrote that line in "The Iron Gate,"
and I need not hesitate to use the privilege of
age, in recalling the letter that he wrote to me, a
few days after that memorable meeting when.

HOLMES 121

from far and near, the writers of his native land
assembled to celebrate their beloved chieftain:

296 Beacon Street, Dec. 6th, 1879.
My Dear Mr. Winter: —

I did not hurry to write to yon so much as to some other
friends, because I had the opportunity of telling you, face
to face, what I thought of your exquisite poem. I hardly
need say to you, what you must have been told many times,
that it touched everybody, and brought tears from not a
few eyes. It was most feelingly delivered, and yet, when
I come to read it, I am not disappointed in its melody, its
finish, its pathos. I was not at liberty to shed a tear that
evening, or I should have had a good cry. When I cry I cry
in earnest, and I made up my mind to keep a stiff upper eye-
lid, in spite of all temptation. If this has to follow you to
New York, please remember that I called on you twice to-day,
in the hope of seeing you. Believe me, dear Mr. Winter,
very sincerely and gratefully yours, O. W. HOLMES.

Here are two stanzas of my poem; and I have
thought that perhaps the old poet was pleased
in perceiving that it did not anywhere imply
expectation of his precipitate removal to realms
of bliss:

The silken tress, the mantling wine.

Red roses, summer's whispering leaves,
, The lips that kiss, the hands that twine,

The heart that loves, the heart that grieves —
They all have found a deathless shrine
In his rich line.

122 OLD FRIENDS

Ah well, that voice can charm us yet,
And still that shining tide of song,
Beneath a sun not soon to set,
( In golden music flows along.
'With, dew of joy our eyes are wet —
Not of regret.

There was a playful incident of that occasion
^vhich lingers in my memory. The feast was a
breakfast, beginning about noon and continuing
tiU the early twilight of the bleak December day.
Many ladies were in the company, making the
beautiful scene still more beautiful. It was an
occasion of state, and in that respect, as in some
others, it was, among literary festivals, almost
unique. The privilege fell to me of escorting to
the table that accomplished gentlewoman Lucy
OLarcom; she who drew so well the pathetic word
picture of "Poor Lone Hannah, Binding Shoes"
• — a poem that Whittier admired and one of which
Wordsworth, had he written it, might well have
been proud. I sat at her right, and on her left
sat Thomas Wentworth Higginson, — stalwart
among progressive thinkers, intrepid iconoclast
of intrenched abuses, who, in the serenity of a
lovely and honored age, contemporary and kin-

HOLMES 123

'dred withi that of the lamented Mitchell, rep-
resents all that is highest and therefore best
in American literature. Our talk, I remember,
ranged gayly over many themes, lingering for a
moment on wine. The current potation chanced
to be claret, and Miss Larcom, who did not taste
it, was insistent (in a low tone) that I should ask
Mr. Higginson to take a glass of wine with me —
as, immediately, I did. His response, most
courteously made, was to raise to his lips a glass
of water. "But," I said, "you do not honor the
toast — which is the health of our fair com-
panion": whereupon he swallowed a teaspoonful,
perhaps, of claret, with obvious impatience. I
was afterward informed that he was a rigid,
inveterate, iron-bound apostle of total abstinence !
If his eyes should ever rest on these words he will
be amused to learn that Lucy Larcom, notwith-
standing aU her demure gravity, was not averse
to a joke, and that she was then trying her hand
at a httle playful mischief, of which both he and
I were to be the victims. It was a merry occa-
sion; one of those sweet times that recur to the
reminiscent mind, fresh and fragrant, among the

124 OLD FRIENDS

tenderest memories of Long Ago. Stedman was
one of the merriest of the company. The hand-
some George Lathrop was in his gayest mood.
Osgood, the well-beloved publisher (and it is
something of note that a publisher should be well-
beloved!), seemed to have brought with him
enough of simshine to flood the room. Aldrich,
that fine genius, "the frolic and the gentle" (as
Wordsworth so happily said of Charles Lamb),
was, as ever, demure in his kindly satire and
piquant in his spontaneous, playful wit. The
gracious presence of Nora Perry and Louise
Chandler Moulton charmed the festival, while
amply representing the best in poetic art that has
been accomplished by the female writers of our
land. But for the absence of two or three of the
veterans, kept away by illness (who, neverthe-
less, sent their tributes), there was not a vestige
of a cloud over that bright throng. Some of
those happy guests have flitted to ghost-land
since, and they will come no more, except,
shadow-like, in pages such as this. Dear com-
rades, gone before, but not forgotten, I write
your names, not with a tear but with a smile I

HOLMES 125

The world is better and brighter because you have
lived in it, and soon we shall aU meet again!

My divination, as to the veteran's future, at that
seventieth birthday festival was amply justified.
He survived for nearly fifteen years, and some
of his loveliest poems are among the products
of those latter days. Even in the vein of Occa-
sional Verse the limit of his achievement had not
been reached, nor was it reached till near the end
of his life. Once, adverting to that topic, he
wrote to me (February 20, 1883), as follows:

I have done my share in paying tributes o£ respect to
many poets of our own land and other lands, and the time
has come when I must claim the privilege of leaving the kind
of tasks I have so often undertaken — grateful and honor-
able as they are — to others who can do full justice to
occasions. ... I told the gentleman who called me up
at a dinner the other day that I was an Emeritus Professor,
after more than thirty-five years' service, — but an Emeritus
as Occasional Versifier of more than Fifty years' standing,
and entitled to plead my privilege. . . .

Holmes was fond of the Stage, and that was
an additional bond of sympathy between him and
me. One of the happiest of his achievements in
that difficult Queen Anne style of verse which
he used with such brUliant facihty (difficult verse

126 OLD FRIENDS

because, unlike some other rhythmical forms, it
will not allow the substitution of melody for
meaning, but exacts thought as well as music),
is the pictorial, touching poem of "The Old
Player." He wrote the Ode for the Shake-
spearean Tercentennial Celebration in 1864. He
wrote the Address — and a fine one it is ! — for the
opening of the lamented Augustin Daly's Fifth
Avenue Theatre, in New York, in 1873. Writ-
ing to me (April 25, 1893, when he had received
my "Shadows of the Stage"), he said:

I remember Mary Duff well, in the character of Desde-
mona. Forrest and Cooper — "the noblest Roman of them
all" — used to take Othello and lago, by turns, interchang-
ing parts. I remember the elder Booth and others, and, of
course, I am glad to know something about them. Many
thanks for the book and the pleasure it gives me. . . .

Many years ago, when, by chance, we met at
the old Globe Theatre, in Boston, and he asked
me to name the greatest, in my judgment, of the
American actors then prominent, he was, I re-
member, surprised that I thought Comedy more
exacting than Tragedy, and named the comedian
Jefferson, then at the zenith of his wonderful
career. But, whether comedy or tragedy, the

HOLMES 127

drama was dear to him, and he wrote from his
heart when he wrote that

The poet's song, the bright romancer's page,
The tinsel 'd shows that cheat us on the stage.
Lead all our fancies captive to their will:
Three years or threescore, we are children still !

I recall with sorrow and joy my last meeting
with Holmes, — sorrow because it was the last,
and joy because it was so pleasant and because it
left in my memory such a brilliant image alike
of the poet and the man. It occurred at his final
home in Beacon Street, Boston, a few weeks
after the death of his wife. Mrs. Holmes had
been ill for a long time, and, as her mind had
become somewhat enfeebled, her death was a
blest release from mortal durance. The bereaved
husband spoke to me freely about her, with deep
tenderness, with sweet gravity, and with that
winning gentleness for which he was remark-
able. There are some men whose minds pass
quickly from solemnity to a kind of wistful play-
fulness. The comedian Jefferson was such a
man. Holmes possessed the same sensitive,
mercurial temperament, the same capability of

128 OLD FRIENDS

instantaneous perception of the humorous side of
serious things. "I don't go much into company
now," he said; "because, when a man has suffered
such a loss as mine, people observe him curiously,
and seem to be wondering whether he looks quite
as sorry as he ought to look," As he spoke his
face brightened; he glanced around at the teem-
ing book-shelves in his study, and then he added:
"but my dear daughter has come to live with me;
she is putting things in order ; and we have begun
the world anew."

My son Louis, now dead, was present at that
interview, and he had timidly expressed the de-
sire to possess a signed photograph of the poet.
"You shall have it, my boy," said the kind vet-
eran; and immediately he produced a picture of
himself and began to write upon it. Then, paus-
ing, with suspended pen, he looked earnestly at
the lad, and said, with an indescribably arch
smUe and tone: "Ten — twenty — perhaps even
thirty years from now — somebody may be inter-
ested to hear you say that you received this pict-
ure from the hands of the original; — sometimes
writers are remembered even as long as that."

HOLMES 129

The picture remains, but both the generous giver
and the grateful recipient are gone. I tried to
lead my old friend to speak of earlier times; of
the famous group of New England authors in
which he had been the most brilliant figure; and
of the first days of "The Atlantic Monthly"; but
he was interested more in the Present than in
the Past. Once, indeed, he became reminiscent
of his youth, and, asking me to come to a window
wherefrom could be obtained a wide prospect of
the river Charles and the level expanse of coun-
try westward of it, he indicated a certain pane
through which we looked together, and he said:
"It is not every man who can see, at one glance,
and through one pane of glass, the house where
he was born, the college where he was educated,
and the ground in which his ashes wiU rest; yet
there they are for me." There indeed they were,
golden in the radiance of the afternoon sun; —
old Cambridge, in the distance, where his parental
mansion still fronts the village green; the quaint
buildings, easily discernible, of Harvard Col-
lege; and, more remote, but in nearly the same
line of vision, the round tower that overtops its

130 OLD FRIENDS

central hill, among the multitudinous graves of
Mount Auburn cemetery.

Almost immediately then, — ^though not till
after a moment of musing, — ^he reverted to in-
quiry about my pursuits and labors in the great
city. "Ah!" he exclaimed; "New York is a won-
derful place! The hydrants are flowing there!"
His eyes seemed to blaze, as he spoke, and his
person to dilate. He was diminutive ; very slight \
but he was wonderfully vital; his httle figure pos-'
sessed extraordinary dignity; and even the slight-
est conscious sense of the splendor of power and
of action seemed to awaken in him an indomitable
spirit of emulative sympathy and creative will.
One of his class-mates at Harvard, that fine,
erratic genius Charles T. Congdon, — many years
afterward one of my colleagues and friends, —
told me that Holmes, even in his college days,
was remarkable for many peculiarities, and was
especially remarkable for the impressive stateli-
ness of his demeanor on ceremonial occasions, — a
natural statehness, from which physical exility
could not detract. Humorist he was, from the
first, possessing a faculty of humor more

HOLMES 131

sprightly than that of Addison, but, like that of
Addison, underlaid with noble pride of intellect,
purity of heart, and a profoundly reverential
spirit. His last word to me was one of blessing,
whereof the remembrance has cheered me in many
a dark hour and taught patience in many a mo-
ment of trial: so that, — ^remembering his ex-
ample, for so many years cherished, and his per-
sonal kindness, that only ceased with life, — I am
moved to re-echo the prayerful apostrophe with
which Tickell adjured the shade of Addison, in
one of the most beautiful elegies in oiu* language:

Oh, i£ sometimes thy spotless form descend,
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend;
When rage misguides me, or when fears alarm,
When pain distresses, or when pleasures charm.
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart.
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart.

V-

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

In one of the lyrics of Aldrich there is a
thought that must have come to thousands of
persons, but that only he has expressed. The
poet is waiting for his wife, — as she "sets the
white rose in her hair," — and they are to drive to
a festival: and suddenly, amid the suggested sur-
roundings of happiness, the prescience of death
comes upon him:

I wonder what day of the week,
I wonder what month of the year;

Will it be midnight or morning;
And who will bend over my bier.

The day of the week was to be Tuesday. The
month of the year was to be March. He died
on Tuesday, March 19, 1907, at half-past five
in the afternoon. "In spite of all I am going to
sleep," he said: "put out the lights." He had
lived a little more than seventy years. During
the last fifty-two of those years I had the priv-
ilege of his friendship, and, although our path-

138

ALDRICH 133

ways were different, and we could not often
meet, the affection between us, that began in our
youth, never changed. We were bom in the
same j'^ear, 1836; he in November, I in July.
We entered on the literary life in the same
year, 1854, when his first book was published, in
New York, and my first book was pubUshed, in
Boston: and from that time till the last our greet-
ings were exchanged across the distance, and
there never was a cloud between us. In sending
to me the complete edition of his works, — there
are eight volumes, — ^he wrote this inscription:

Kedman Farm, Ponkapog, Mass.,

November 6, 1897.
To William Winter.

Dear Will: I set your name and mine here, in happy
memory of a friendship dating from our boyhood.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

An old man, I think, may be glad and proud
of such a friendship. Time, care, and trouble
tend to deaden the emotions. Affection does not
often last for more than half a century. Our ac-
quaintance began in almost a romantic way. It
happened that in 1854 a part of my employment
was the occasional writing of miscellaneous

134 OLD FRIENDS

articles, — book notices, etc., — for "The Boston
Transcript." That paper, — less important and
less opulent than it is now, but always a favorite
in Boston, — ^was then edited by Daniel N.
Haskell, a kindly, somewhat eccentric man, who
had abandoned mercantile business in order to
adopt the pursuit of journahsm, who knew Bos-
ton society well, and who possessed the skill to
please mediocrity without disturbing it by any,
obtrusion of superfluous intellect. I recall a
remark of his that was happily characteristic of
him, and that it has often been a comfort to re-
member. "There are many people in this town,
WiUy," he said, "who think that you and I are
fools; but as long as we know that we are not,
it makes no diiference to us." He had taken a
fancy to me, as the phrase goes, and he was will-
ing to encourage my aspirations as a writer. His
custom was to give to me some of the volxmies,
particularly those of verse, that came to his paper,
for review, and one day he gave me a book called
"Poems, By T. B. A." I read it with pleasure
and reviewed it with praise. The author of it
was Aldrich, then residing in New York. "The

ALDRICH 135

Transcript" containing my little tribute speedily
found its way to him, and immediately he re-
sponded by publishing, in" the New York "Home
Journal," a poem dedicated to "W. W." Then,
of course, I wrote a letter to him, and thereafter
we had a correspondence lasting several months,
in the course of which we explained ourselves to
each other, in that strain of ardent, overflowing
sentiment which is possible only when hfe is
young, and hearts are fresh, and all the world
seems beautiful with hope. One day in 1855, at
twilight, I happened to be in the editorial sanctum
of "The Transcript" (the building was then in
Congress Street), waiting for Haskell to finish
his labors, as he had asked me to dine with him,
at the old Revere House, — a stately hotel then,
where he had long been resident. The chair
in which I was sitting was one that could be re-
volved. Haskell was writing, by a dim light. A
young man came into the room and addressed
him, saying "My name is Aldrich." Before he
could say another word Haskell seized my chair,
whirled it around so that I could face the visitor,
and said "This is WiUiam Winter." That was

136 OLD FRIENDS

our meeting, and a very sweet and gracious meet-
ing it was. We presently repaired to the Revere
House, where the occasion was celebrated, and
Aldrich and I became Tom and Will to each
other; and so we remained, to the end of the
chapter.

In the season of 1859-'60 I left Boston and
found a residence in New York. The nation, at
that time, was trembling on the verge of Civil
War. New York was seething with indescribable
excitement, and a fever of expectancy was every-
where visible. There were not many theatres in
operation at that time, but there were many
"dives." Newspapers were less numerous than
they are now, and less wealthy, and the aspect of
them was that of singular contrast. Horace
Greeley's "Tribune," devoted to Anti-Slavery, was
published in a low, common building, at the cor-
ner of Nassau and Spruce streets, — ^where its
palace now stands. Rushmore G. Horton's "Day
Book," devoted to Pro-Slavery, was published in
a building close by. "The World," started in
1860, was a religious newspaper, specially devoted
to the saving of souls. "The Home Journal" was

ALDRICH 137

a conspicuous literary authority of the hour, con-
ducted by the two bards, Nathaniel P. Willis and
George P. Morris. Major Noah's conservative
"Sunday Times" was in existence. Free Ma-
sonry had an organ called "The Dispatch."
James and Erastus Brooks were prosperous with
"The Evening Express." The poet Bryant was
advocating democracy, in "The Evening Post."
The elder Bennett led the field of news with "The
Herald." The sheet that most attracted me was
a paper called "The Saturday Press," published
in Spruce Street, where also Charles F. Briggs,
— "Harry Franco" being his pen name, — ^was
pubhshing "The Courier," a weekly sheet in
which Augustin Daly, about the same time, be-
gan his career as a writer. "The Saturday Press"
had been started in 1858, by Henry Clapp
and Edward Howland, and, for a little while,
Aldrich was associated with Clapp, in the writing
of it. I had already contributed verses to that
paper, — among others the poem of "Orgia," — and
presently Clapp employed me as a reviewer and
sub-editor, and so began my Bohemian life: im-
pecunious, but interesting ; impoverished, but de-

138 OLD FRIENDS

lightful; burdened with labor and hardship, but
careless and happy, — ^happier than any kind of
life has been since or wiU be again. No literary
circle comparable with the Bohemian group of
that period, in ardor of genius, variety of char-
acter, and singularity of achievement, has since
existed in New York, nor has any group of writ-
ers anywhere existent in our country been so
ignorantly and grossly misrepresented and ma-
ligned. I glance at that period now only because
the figure of Aldrich momentarily appears in it.
He was at that time dwelhng in the abode of his
uncle, a portly merchant, named Frost, at No.
105, now 331, West Eighth Street, immediately
opposite to the northern end of Macdougal Street.
That abode, it is interesting to remember, was, at
a later time, bought by Douglas Taylor, that able
and genial theatrical recorder and antiquarian,
who dwelt in it for eight years, and by whom it is
still owned (1909). The house is now occupied by
tradesmen, and its aspect, like that of its neigh-
borhood, is changed; but it will long possess an
interest for the Hterary pilgrim, because there
Aldrich wrote, among many other things, the

ALDRICH 139

poem of "Babie Bell," which has had a world-
wide circulation; the beautiful poem of "The Un-
forgiven"; and the first draft of his "Judith,"
long afterward wrought into a play; and there, as
a passing guest, that briUiant Irishman, Fitz-
James O'Brien, wrote the story of "What Was
It?" A time arrived when Tom grew weary of
Bohemia, and I remember we had a serious talk
about it. "Do you mean," he asked me, "to cast
in your lot permanently with those writers? Do
you intend to remain with them?" I answered
yes. He then told me of his piu*pose to leave
New York, as eventually he did, establishing
his residence in Boston, where, by and by, he
became editor of "Every Saturday" and later of
"The Atlantic Monthly," and where he had his
career, in constantly increasing prosperity and
universal respect. There he was happily married ;
there his twin sons were born (R. H. Stoddard,
after that, jocosely mindful of his initials, T. B.,
called him "Two-Baby Aldrich") ; and there he
died, in the fulness of his hterary fame. No
sweeter lyrical poet has appeared in America. His
touch was as deUcate as that of Herrick, whom

140 OLD FRIENDS

he loved but did not imitate, and his themes are
often kindred with those of that rare spirit, —
the Ariel of sentiment, fancy, and poetic whim,
fn my Bohemian days it was my f ortmie — or
misfortune, as the case may be — ^to meet often
and to know well the American bard Walt Whit-
man. It is scarcely necessary to say that he did
not impress me as anything other than what he
was, a commonplace, uncouth, and sometimes ob-
noxiously coarse writer, trying to be original by
using a formless style, and celebrating the prole-
tarians who make the world almost uninhabitable
by their vulgarity:/ With reference to me Walt's
views were expressed in a sentence that, doubt-
less, he intended as the perfection of contemptu-
ous indifference. "Willy," he said, "is a young
Longfellow." But I remember one moment
when he contrived to inspire Aldrich with a per-
manent aversion. The company was numerous,
and the talk was about poetry. "Yes, Tom,"
said the inspired Whitman, "I like your tinkles:
I like them very well." Nothing could have de-
noted more distinctly both complacent egotism
and ill-breeding. Tom, I think, never forgot

ALDRICH 141

that incident.^ This is one of the "tinkles," —
written long afterward, — defining the Poet:

Kings and Queens
Are facile accidents of Fame and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb 'd not there!
But he who, from the darkling mass of men.
Is, on the wing of heavenly thought, upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God anointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.

In those Bohemian days I participated in
various talks with Walt Whitman, and once I
asked him to oblige me with his definition of "the
Poet." His answer was: "A poet is a Maker."

"But, Walt," I said, "what does he make?"

He gazed upon me for a moment, with that
bovine air of omniscience for which he was re-
markable, and then he said: "He makes Poems."

That reply was deemed final. I took the lib-
erty, aU the same, of suggesting to him that no
person, poet or otherwise, can do more than dis-
close and interpret what Gk)d has made; — seeing
that everything in Nature existed, — even the
most minute and deUcate impulses of the spirit
that is in humanity, — ^before ever man began to

142 OLD FRIENDS

make poems about anything. The words of the
poet occasionally take a form that is inevitable, —
seeming to have been intended from the begin-
ning of the world: there are examples of that
felicity of form in Shakespeare, in Wordsworth,
in Byron's "Childe Harold," and in Shelley's
"Adonais"; but the word "creative" has been, and
continually is, too freely used. Nature is cre-
ative, and the Poet is the voice of Nature. It
was a raucous voice when it issued from Whit-
man: it pipes, like a penny whistle, when it issues
from his paltry imitators.

In one of his earlier letters to me, written be-
fore we met, Tom gave me a brief account of his
life. I had asked for it, and the story is so
fraught with characteristic touches that I find it
as delightful now as I found it then. Thus he

wrote to me, July 25, 1855 :

I saw the completion of my eighteenth year November 11,
1854. I was bom at Portsmouth, and have spent only one-
fifth of my life in that beautiful town. I could boast of a
long line of ancestors, but won't. They are of no possible
benefit to me, save it is pleasant to think that none of
them were hanged for criminals or shot for traitors, but
that many of them are sleeping somewhere near Bunker
Hill. I come in a straight line from President Adams, and

THOMAS BAILEY ALDEICH

ALDRICH 143

his son mentions me in his "book of the Adams family."
Being only three months of age when Mr. Adams put me in
his book, he neglected to mention my gift of rhyme, which
was very shabby in him. My genealogical tree, you will
observe, grew up some time after the Flood, with other
vegetation. I will spare myself, this warm day, the exer-
cise of climbing up its dead branches, and come down to
one of the lower "sprigs," but by no means "the last leaf
upon the tree." My early life was spent in travel. I have
been in every State in the Union. My father was a mer-
chant at the South and I lived in New Orleans five years.
Some six years ago my parents sent me " North," to
be educated. WhUe at school at Portsmouth my father
died, and my mother returned to Portsmouth. Two years
since my uncle, an eminent New York merchant, offered me
a place in his counting-room, which I accepted and have since
occupied. I am one of his family and he has been to me a
brother and a father. I enjoy the lofty and richer pleasures
of life keenly, and the love of beauty, in every form, has
become a part of my soul. I value money only because it
buys books. I have neither brother nor sister. I am an
only child, but not a spoilt one, and do not expect to be
unless you spoil me, and make me vain, by loving me too
much. Such is he who signs himself, in the bonds of friend-
ship, T. B. A.

In another of those early letters he told me of
his reverence for the poet Longfellow, whom he
had not met but about whom I had written to
him, and he described, in a way that is especially
interesting and touching, the awakening in

144 OLD FRIENDS

his soul of the poetic faculty, then dormant, which
was destined to make him one of the sweetest
voices of the human heart that our time has heard :

You speak warmly in praise of your poet friend. I join
you with my heart, in every word. I think this world
must be lovelier in God's eyes for holding such men as
Longfellow. ... I will tell you why I like him so much,
and how I came to write verse.

One evening, more than five years ago, I was sitting on
the doorstep of "the old house where I was bom," with
as heavy a heart as a child ever had. A very dear friend
had been borne over that threshold a while before, and, as
I watched the shadows of the trees opposite grow deeper,
I longed for her. I missed a hand that used to touch my
hair so gently! I was not fond of reading poetry, though I
feasted on prose. By chance a volume of poems was in my
hand: it was the "Voices of the Night." I opened at "The
Footsteps of Angels." Never before did I feel such a gush
of emotion. The poem spoke to me like a human voice ; and
from that time I loved Longfellow, and I wrote poetry —
such as it is. Often since I have heard something rustle near
me, and I am sure it was not the wind.

More than half a century has passed since Al-
drich wrote those words, and both he and the poet
whom he loved have entered into their rest. Their
graves are not far apart, in the beautiful ceme-
tery of Mount Auburn. It is singular and im-
pressive to remember that the last poem that fell

ALDRICH 145

from the pen of Aldrich was the elegy that com-
memorates the centenary of Longfellow.

There is a peculiarly gentle, aif ectionate spirit
in my old comrade's early letters to me, and they
reveal him in a charming light. It would be easy
to fill pages with rightly selected extracts from
them, — ^violating no confidence and wounding no
sensibility of surviving relatives and friends, — aU
tending to show what manner of youth he was, as
manifested in words that came directly from his
heart, and that never have been seen by any eyes
but mine. His published writings exhibit his soul,
as the writings of a poet always do. As to the
writing of letters: in after years, like the rest of
us, he acquired what we call "worldly wisdom,"
and he restrained his feelings; but he never lost
them. The child was father to the man ; and the
man, to the end of his days, was the apostle of
beauty and the incarnation of kindness. His
character rested upon a basis of prudence, and
in the conduct of life he was conventional. There
was nothing in his nature of the stormy petrel.
Hard experience, — ^bitter, heart-breaking conflict
with adverse circumstances, — would, probably.

146 OLD FRIENDS

have repressed his genius and defeated his ambi-
tion. He never was subjected to it. Of all his
early troubles he told me, and no one of them was
unusual or severe. In the spring of 1856, I re-
member, he left mercantile employment, which
to him must have been a farce, and became sub-
editor of "The Home Journal." "I had no idea
of what work is" (so he wrote to me), "till I be-
came 'sub.' I have found that reading proof
and writing articles on tminteresting subjects, 'at
sight,' is no joke. The cry for 'more copy' rings
through my ears in dreams, and hosts of little
phantom printers' devils walk over my body
all night and prick me with sharp-pointed types !
Last evening I fell asleep in my arm-chair and
dreamed that they were about to put me 'to
press,' as I used to crush flies between the leaves
of my speller, in school-boy days." Such an ex-
perience was mere child's play in contrast with
the habitual experience of the journalist of later
years. Good fortune always attended Tom Al-
drich. The death of one of his sons was the only
cruel blow of affliction that ever fell upon him,
and he never recovered from it. His Avritings

ALDRICH 147

reveal a mind that had the privilege of brooding
over its conceptions till it found the best means
of expressing them. Some of his short stories
are exquisite in their felicitous finished utterance
of his fancy, sentiment, and humor. His essay
on Herrick is one of the most acute, searching,
truthfully pointed, and lightly and rightly
phrased pieces of criticism that have been written.
His poetry is supreme in the element of grace,
and he maiotained precisely the right attitude
toward it and toward criticism of it — as shown
in his bantering Httle quatrain of " Quits " :

If my best wines mislike thy taste,
And my best service win thy frown,

Then tarry not, I bid thee haste;
There 's many another Inn in town !

Those lines aptly indicate his characteristic
attribute of playful humor. He possessed a
happy faculty of quick rejoinder and quizzical
remark. One day, in London, I remember, we
went to the grave of the poet Goldsmith and
visited the Temple church, in which there is an
organ, said to have been given to that place of
worship by the infamous Judge Jeffreys, in the
reign of James II. The sexton, who showed the

148 OLD FRIENDS

church, expatiated to us upon its contents, taking
many liberties with English history and the letter
"h," and dwelt especially upon its age. "That
Morgan," he said, " 'as been 'ere as much as five
'undred years." "Well," said Tom, "then I sup-
pose it could play 'Old Hundred' all by itself."
One night, aboard the steamship " Servia," he
and Lawrence Barrett and I were pleasantly occu-
pied, on the upper deck, discussing Shakespeare,
and I remember that he drove Barrett nearly
crazy by his playful, but apparently serious, dis-
section of Macbeth's soliloquy, beginning "If it
were done when 'tis done." "How could a naked,
new born babe stride a blast, or stride anything
else?" was, I recall, one of the queries that he
solemnly proposed to the earnest tragedian, who,
for a long time, took the subject very much to
heart, — as indeed his custom invariably was when
talking about Shakespeare. It is possible only
to indicate in words, it is not possible to express,
the furtive archness, the demure manner, the
nimble spirit with which Aldrich could, and often
did, converse with serious persons. On that same
" Servia " voyage a notice was posted in the gang-

ALDRICH 149

way, of the loss of "a petrified eye." It had not
been there long before Tom, eluding official vigi-
lance as to such matters, managed to post a notice
along side of it of his loss of a novel called
"Anne," upon which, his placard said, "the owner
would hke to cast his petrified eye." Trifles: but
it was his way to make trifles droll, and, whUe at
heart he was earnest and thoughtful, on the sur-
face it pleased him to be gravely gay; and he
went through life diffusing sxmshine all around
his path.

Once, in Paris, he invited Mark Twain to take
a stroU, saying that he had something to show
to him, very interesting and worthy of special
attention. The "stroU" proved to be a walk of
about a mUe, round and round, along contiguous
streets, ending at a book-store, near to the hotel,
in the Rue St. Honore, from which the pedes-
trians had started. One of the books displayed
in the window was a copy of the Poems of
Aldrich. "I have asked this shop-keeper," said
Tom, "if he has any more of the works of Aldrich,
and he says No; so you see the sale has been very
large — for this is the only copy left; but he says

150 OLD FRIENDS

he has several shelves full of the works of Mark
Twain, and more of them in the basement, I'm
afraid you are not appreciated in France." The
sale of Twain's book had, actually, of course, been
very large.

Once at a dinner in honor of Lord Houghton
(the poet, Richard Monckton Milnes, whose
"Poems of Many Years" include some of the
loveliest things in our literature), Aldrich
chanced to be seated beside the chief guest, and
presently he observed that Houghton had mislaid
his napkin and was vainly looking for it. The
napkin had, in fact, fallen to the floor. Tom
kindly picked it up and restored it to the noble
bard, quoting as he did so two lines from one of
his lordship's poems:

A man's best things are nearest him —
Lie close about his feet.

The place of Aldrich in American Literature
will be determined by posterity. There can be
no doubt that his works will live. The poems that
he wrote when under the influence of the genius
of Tennyson are echoes of the style of that great
poet, — the master as well of blank verse as of the

ALDRICH 151

lyric form, — and, probably, they will be remem-
bered and esteemed as chiefly echoes. The
poems, meantime, that bear the authentic signet
of his mind are original, individual, characteristic,
and of permanent value. The attributes of them
are loveliness of sentiment, tenderness of feeling,
a fine, rippling play of subtle suggestion, a
dream-like atmosphere, pensive sweetness, and
delicious spontaneity of verbal grace. In youth
his mind was attracted by Oriental themes, such as
Moore would have fancied; but in manhood his
Muse preferred graver subjects, and often,
even beneath the guise of playful whim, he
touched the springs of pathos and spoke from
the heart. At no time did he become didactic.
His poetic sense, in that respect, was unerring.
He knew that poetry should not aim to teach,
but should glide through the mind as sunbeams
glide through the air. Once, in a talk with me
about Ohver Wendell Holmes (always, in mj'-
thoughts, an object of affectionate admiration),
he said, half playf uUy, half in earnest : "In the
doctor's poetry there is not enough moonshine/'
[By that word he meant the nameless, indefinable
charm, the something that hallows every object

152 OLD FRIENDS

in an exquisite landscape or difflises a sacred
atmosphere, half of rapture and half of awe,
around the heauty of woman. It is my convic-
tion that his poems, sweet and tender, beauti-
fully expressive of human affection, — ^which is the
immortal part of us, — and lovely in style, will
endure as long as anything endures in our lan-
guage. The view that he took of them, however,
was far more humble, — as expressed in a letter
to me, from which I make this extract: "I am
not too confident about the fate of these things,
in the immediate future. Fashions change in
literature, and perhaps our cut of poetry will not
be worn at all, twenty years from now. If it
isn't, what odds will it make?"

No odds whatever. The writer who can cheer
the time in which he lives, who can help the men
and women of his generation to bear their bur-
dens patiently and do their duty without wish or
expectation of reward, has fulfilled his mission.
Such a writer was Thomas Bailey Aldrich. As
I think of him I am encouraged to believe, more
devoutly than ever, that the ministry of beauty
is the most important influence operant upon
society, and that it never can fail.

VI.

BAYARD TAYLOR

What is Poetry, and what are the faculties
that constitute a Poet? In the course of a long
life, devoted to the art of writing, I have talked
Avith many authors and have read hundreds of
books ; but I have not obtained an exphcit, illu-
minative, decisive answer to those inquiries. The
critic is ready with his theory; the rhetorical
treatise is ready with its definition; but neither
theory nor definition reveals the heart of the
mystery. The thing that is not Poetry, though
set forth in verse, is readily recognized, and it
can be distinctly defined: the magic that irradi-
diates verse and makes poetry out of prose is felt
rather than known, and exact specification of it
eludes the dexterity of the grammarian.

Observation likewise perceives, among even
expert writers and judges of verse, wide dispari-
ties of opinion as to the poetic element. John-

153

154 OLD FRIENDS

son, who admired Young, could see no poetry
in Gray. Byron, who admired Pope, could see
no poetry in Cowper. To Macaulay, the
nightingale was Milton, and, comparatively,
other singers were wrens. Thackeray, who dis-
liked Byron, was charmed with Addison's lines on
the Spacious Firmament, and he found John-
son's " Ode on the Death of Levett " so poetic as
to be " sacred." Carlyle despised Lamb, but he
adored Burns. Coleridge, the worshiper of
Wordsworth, was contemptuous of Moore. Poe
behttled Burns and disparaged Longfellow,
but he perceived divine fire in Mrs. Browning.
Emerson, usually centred in himself, was able
to perceive poetry in Walt Whitman. Aldrich,
the disciple of Herrick, was blind to the intrin-
sic glamour of Holmes. Great scholars, like-
wise, exhibit wide diversities of opinion as to
poetry and poets. Fox, the statesman, for ex-
ample, who possessed extraordinary scholarship,
cared not at all for Wordsworth, esteemed Dry-
den before Milton, and ranked Homer above
them all.
Among the bards themselves there is, further-

BAYARD TAYLOR 155

more, a perplexing disparity of method in the
invocation of the Muse. Whence is the impulse
derived? Scott affirmed that, while he took no
pains with his prose, he wrote his verse with
great care. Byron was accustomed to incite in-
spiration by reading a fine passage from some
other poet, after which he would write at fuU
speed, in a fever heat. Moore formd poetic
stimulant in looking at the sunset. Wordsworth,
keenly susceptible to every influence of physical
Nature, walked alone, in the lonely, beautiful
Cumberland country, composing his verses, often
speaking them aloud, and committing them to
memory as he composed them. Burns, appar-
ently the most sweetly natural singer since
Shakespeare (as long ago was said by William
Pitt), himself testified that the influence that
most exalted and enraptured him was that of a
stormy wind howling among the trees and raging
over the plain, and that whenever he wanted to
be " more than ordinary in song " he put himself
" on a regimen of admiring a fine woman." Rich-
ard Henry Stoddard, — whose " Songs of Simi-
mer " comprise some of the loveliest and some of.

156 OLD FRIENDS

apparently, the most spontaneous lyrics existent
in the English language, — ^told me that sometimes
he wrote the first draft of a poem in prose, and
afterward turned it into verse. Edmund Clar-
ence Stedman, whose poetic achievement made
his name illustrious in American hterature, told
me that it was his custom to select with care the
particular form of verse that he designed to use,
and sometimes to invent the rhymes and write
them at the ends of the lines which they were to
terminate, — ^thus making a skeleton of a poem,
as a ground-work on which to build. To my
mind it seems that the poet should be like the
^olian harp, which makes music when its
strings were swept by the breeze ; but, in the pres-
ence of so much perplexity of fact and opinion,
a certain audacity appears to be reqmsite to de-
clare that anybody is a poet or that anything is
poetry.

Years ago I had the pleasure of friendly inter-
course with one man of letters who possessed, in
ample measure, that particular form of intrepid-
ity. That man was the Rev, William Rounse-
ville Alger, at one time a popular preacher in

BAYARD TAYLOR 157

Boston, and famous for his impassioned elo-
quence. Alger wiU be remembered as the biog-
rapher (1877) of the tragedian Edwin Forrest,
and also because of the service that he did to
literature by composing, or translating, or para-
phrasing a considerable number of Oriental
poems, valuable alike for their meaning and their
melody. He vpas a man of acute and copious
sensibihty, of a feminine temperament, quickly
and keenly appreciative, and easily moved to
tears. 'No poet could have vdshed for a more re-
ceptive, responsive auditor. The poetic element
that especially he recognized and loved vi^as feel-
ing ^ and that element he found in the poetry of
Bayard Taylor, whom he ranked, and did not
hesitate to designate, in several conversations
with me, as the " foremost and best of American
poets."

I never had the opportunity of mentioning that
opinion to Bayard Taylor, — a fact which I deeply
regret ; for the knowledge of it would have been
a great satisfaction to him. Taylor was a rapid,
disciu*sive, voluminous writer: few American
authors have vrritten so much and in such various

158 OLD FRIENDS

departments of literature: but, of all his writing,
that which he chiefly valued, — that in compar-
ison with which the rest, in his esteem, was ac-
counted nothing, — ^was his poetry. On that sub-
ject he often spoke and wrote to me, and always
with the candor that was eminently character-
istic of his ingenuous, simple nature; — for, with
great practical knowledge of the world. Bayard
Taylor was simplicity itself. I recall a remark
of his to me that seemed to reveal, in a flash, his
whole nature: " What a lovely day this is! " he
said; "I'm going home to write poetry!" As
he spoke he was the personification of exultant
happiness.

Taylor's rank as a poet will be determined
after another generation of readers has arisen, —
when he is no longer remembered as, specifically,
a traveller and a journalist; and that rank will
be high. He was, distinctively, a poet, but,
under the pressure of necessity, he delved in so
many Unes of literary labor that his miscellaneous
pubhcity obscured him in the vision of his own
period. It has taken America some time to
learn fully the exceptional value and abiding

BAYARD TAYLOR

BAYAKD TAYLOR 159

charm of such noble verse as that of William
Cullen Bryant and such exquisite prose as that
of Donald Grant Mitchell, and to realize that
it possessed, in Fitz-Greene Halleck, one of the
strongest, sweetest poets that have swept the
harp-strings of the human heart. Time will do
justice to the fine poetic genius of Bayard
Taylor.

Good fortune attended Taylor's career
(1825-'78), but the full recognition that he mer-
ited was not accorded till after his death; and
possibly it would not have been accorded then
but for the indubitable success of his magnificent
metrical version of " Faust." It is the conven-
tional opinion that a writer who succeeds in one
thing must, necessarily, fail in others. Taylor's
conceded renown, with the multitude, was that of
a traveller and a lecturer on travel. The fact
that he was novelist, dramatist, and, — above all
else, — poet, was unappreciated, and sometimes
even unknown. A humorous incident, related to
me by him, illustrates this ludicrous truth.

" I had delivered a lecture in one of our rural
towns," — so said my old friend, — " and several

160 OLD FRIENDS

of my auditors were accosting me with expres-
sions of their satisfaction. One person, in par-
ticular, was effusively eager, — saying * I am de-
ligJited, Mr. Taylor, to make your acquaintance.
I have read everything that you have ever writ-
ten, and I have greatly enjoyed it all.' This
was pleasant to hear, and, as he grasped my hand
with evident friendship, I responded with a re-
quest for his opinion of my poetry. A look
of overwhelming astonishment and perplexity
came into his face. ' Your Poetry? ' he ex-
claimed; "have you ever written any Poetry?'
This, I need not tell you, satisfied my curiosity."
The humor of that incident was not lost upon
the poet. Indeed, a sense of humor was one of
Taylor's most propitious and most charming at-
tributes, and with him, as with all other persons
who possess that blessing, it served as a shield
against petty troubles and as a cordial stimulant
to philosophical views of hfe. He was like a
boy, also, in his love of fun. I remember the
glee with which he told me of a personal expe-
rience at the home of that austere philosopher
and preceptor, the Rev. Horace Mann, — a cler-

BAYARD TAYLOR 161

gyman, orator, and refonner, at one time very
prominent in New England life, — among whose
several enthusiastic propensities of culture was
a fanatical devotion to the use, external and in-
ternal, of cold water. " Every morning the year
round," said Taylor, " he immersed himself in
it; he drank nothing else; and he seemed to ex-
pect his guests to follow his example. I had de-
hvered a lecture in his town, and I was kindly
entertained at his home. It was mid-winter and
bitterly cold. I found in my bedroom a huge
tub of icy water, intended for my morning bath;
and my host directed my attention to it, with
strong approval of its utiUty. I had a good
wash, when the morning came, but not in that
tub! He was left, however, in the comforting
belief that I had taken the plunge, — for I man-
aged to wet all the towels and to scatter water aU
over the floor. He was an excellent person, and
it would have been a pity to disappoint him."

A conspicuous product of Taylor's playful
humor is the " Echo Club," first published seri-
ally and afterward (1876) in a book. It incor-
porates imitations of the styles of many of the

162 OLD FRIENDS

writers of verse who were his contemporaries,
and therein it follows the tradition of the " Re-
jected Addresses " and is remotely kindred with
the delicious comicahties of Calverley. Advert-
ing to those squibs, which are, in fact, parodies,
he sent this message to me, from Gotha, October
6,1872:

My Deae Wintee:

I recognize your hand in. the address of two packages of
papers which I have received during the last week or two.
I was very glad to get them, especially the daily Tribunes,
which have so much more of New York and of the Trib.
office about them than has the semi-weekly, which I get
regularly. I hope you will as kindly remember my needs,
every now and then. . . .

All the papers were welcome, I assure you, and even the
sight of your unforgeable MS. was refreshing to mine eyes.
Moreover here was evidence that you have already forgiven
me for my abominable effort at imitating some of your best
poems, making comic the very qualities in them which I
most enjoy. I may congratulate myseM, I think, on having
finished the series of travesties without having (so far as I
know) given lasting offence to any of the victims. Yet,
stay! — I almost doubt of being pardoned by Mrs. Howe. It
was a perilous undertaking, just at present, and I might
easily have had worse luck. . . .

I am now rejoicing in a general freshness of mind and
body, the result of laziness, Alpine air, baths and drinking
disagreeable waters. I only perceive now, by the contrast

BAYARD TAYLOR 163

with my condition six months ago, how much I needed the
treatment. One can't always tell when one's barometer is
low. Mine has risen so much that I have begun to relieve
myself of a poetic idea which has been plaguing me for five
or six years. I have only 200 lines written, and I foresee that
it will run to 2,000. But I am also doing hack work for
Scribners, in the hope of purchasing the right to use my
own time in my own way.

We spent August at the baths of Bormio, in the Italian
Alps, then went to Como and the other lakes, and over the
Simplon to Lausanne, where we stayed a fortnight with my
sister. I ran down to Geneva, the last day of the Arbitra-
tion. Kalph Keeler and J. K. Young were there, and we
had a wonderful breakfast. We reached here just ten days
ago, and here we stay until the end of the year. You see
the absence has not been eventful thus far. I am slowly
collecting material for Goethe's life, and am delighted with
its richness and interest. But it will take time to digest
such a mass.

Now what are you all about in New York? In the Trib.
office you must be a set of howling dervishes until this furi-
ous campaign is over. I count the days, for although I am
out of the vortex, some of its unrest reaches me even here.

I have a strange fancy that something has happened to
Stoddard, or Elizabeth, or Lorry. It came upon me the day
we reached here, and when I spoke of it to my wife I was
startled to find that she had the same impression. As some of
my presentiments have come true, this worries me, and I
pray that it is a mere freak of the imagination. I shall be
only too glad to be laughed at.

I think I'll inclose a note to Stedman in this, as I'm not
certain of his present address, and you'll probably know it.

164 OLD FRIENDS

Do write to me when you have time, and give me all the
gossip, literary or otherwise. I don't expect to hear from
any one else in the Trib. until after November 8. Give my
love to all the good fellows. My wife joins me in best
regards to yours. How I wish you could step into this
quaint old room, with its view of the stormy sky and the far
mountains! Well — ^when we return — as I hope the Lord
will let us — ^there shall be amends for much absence. Mean-
time, don't forget

Tour faithful friend,

Bayaed Taylor.

Several of the travesties mentioned in this let-
ter are notably felicitous, and all of them are
amusing. An imitation that he wrote of Long-
fellow was not printed, as he feared, needlessly,
that Longfellow would be hurt by it and would
take offence. It is a parody on " The Psalm of
Life," and it gives the reverie of a pensive moral-
ist, in a farm-yard. Taylor, in his mood of boy-
ish frolic, once repeated it to me. This is the
first stanza:

O'er the fragile rampart leaning.

Which enclosed the herd of swine.
Thoughts of vast and wondrous meaning

Flitted through this brain of mine.

And then the philosophic bard, observing the self-
ish conduct of the porkers, — ^how the larger ones
contend for place at the trough, and how the

BAYARD TAYLOR 165

smaller ones are pushed off and trodden down, —
perceives an obvious analogy to the conduct of
human beings, and melodiously sets forth that
thus it is in human life.

Taylor's finest poem, in sublimity of theme,
grandeur of conception, and spontaneity of
rhythmical eloquence, is " The Masque of the
Gods." The cherished copy of it that he sent to
me is inscribed: " To WilUam Winter, from his
old friend Bayard Taylor. New York, May 30,
1872." The words that he provides for Apollo
to speak express himself:

Mine the simpler task
To build one bridge that reaches to the sky.
To teach one truth that brings eternal joy.
And from the imperfect world the promise wrest
Of one perfection. If than this Man needs
A broader hope, a loftier longing, yet
This he must have; bereft of it he dies.
He cannot feed on cold, ascetic dreams.
And mutilate the beauty of the world
For something far and shapeless : he must give
His eyes the form of what in him aspires.
His ears the sound of that diviner speech
He pines to speak, his soul the proud content
Of having touched the skirts of perfect things.

In special reference to this poem, Taylor wrote
to me a characteristic letter, eloquent equally of

166 OLD FRIENDS

his affectionate heart and his wonderfully enthu-
siastic spirit:

lEViNa House, N. Y., May 28, 1872.
My deae, true Winter:

... I hope you'll like the Masque, for it is certainly
the best thing I've yet done. The fact of your liking Iris
convinces me that you will. I feel that I am only just now
getting command of my true speech in poetry. I have al-
ways had faith in the Art of Song, a faith as intense as that
of an early Christian martyr. I never look back more than a
year over my finished work, but always forward, and always
occupy my fancy with the new and half-formed conceptions.

I think I feel more actual poetic " frenzy " now than ever
before in my life, and I can only attribute it to the steady
drudgery, for years, which now enables me to move freely in
all rhythmical shackles, so that the form of poetry is a
servant to the mind, not a master, as at first.

This, with the equally religious faith that a devotion to
art, unshaken by the criticism, the whims, or the tastes of
the day, will surely reward the believer, in the end, is all
the explapation I can give. The trouble is not with our
poetical conceptions: we all have them: but we must con-
quer language and rhythm and forms of thought before we
can represent them with the freedom and symmetry of life.

Since I have reached this conviction I am happy. The
Masque is a dead failure, as a publication: the sale is only
about 600 copies: but I do not care one whit. I feel that I
have advanced, and (so far as one can judge of himself) on
the true path. I will follow it, though I starve.

I take a certain amount of mechanical hack work, in order
to buy the rest of my time for myself, and I mean to use

BAYARD TAYLOR 167

that hard-bought time to do my own work. If good, it
be recognized, some time: if bad, it ought to perish.

Meantime, one must have some support and encourage-
ment, and I have enough in the sympathy of a few friends
and poets like yourself. Tou are not, and never will be, a
failure to me : I find in you the same higher and finer laws of
'Art which I am trying to make my own. . . . Remember
that I shall always be, as I am now, most faithfully and
affectionately your friend.

Bataed Taylor.

The year 1876 was, in the general mind of the
[American Republic, convalescent after the dis-
ease and anguish of hideous civil war, a year
of amity and reconciliation. It brought the an-
niversary of the Declaration of Independence,
and it stimulated, throughout the country, a joy-
ous impulse to exult in the triumph of popular
government and to celebrate the growth and
prosperity of the nation. A jubilee was or-
dained, to occur in Philadelphia, on the Fourth
of July, and Taylor was asked to participate in
it, as the poet of that national occasion. He
appreciated the honor and he accepted the duty.
The Society of the Army of the Potomac, mean-
while, had arranged for its annual reunion to be
held in the same city, in the month of June, and

168 OLD FRIENDS

he had promised to be present and to deliver a
poem. At that time Taylor and I were neigh-
bors, dwelling in houses almost opposite each
other, in East Eighteenth Street, New York,
and, as we were also colleagues in " The New
York Tribune," our meetings were frequent;
and when we did not meet we sometimes ex-
changed notes.

On April 7 he wrote to me: "I have at last
hung a string into my dissolved conceptions, and
the alum of the Ode is slowly beginning to crys-
tallize upon it." The formidable occasion was
then distant less than three months, and now he
began to consider that he might not be able to
produce two poems, of a patriotic character, re-
sponsive to the requirements of two occasions
occurring so closely together, and he asked me
to relieve him of one of those engagements.
This I agreed to do, and the result was that the
Society of the Army of the Potomac invited me
to be its poet in that jubilee year, and Taylor
was left free to concentrate his thoughts upon the
magnificent Ode, with which, on the Fourth of
July, standing in front of Independence HaU, he

BAYARD TAYLOR 169

electrified a vast multitude and gained for him-
self a laurel that never can fade: for there is no
other poem that so f uUy and so eloquently ex-
presses the central thought of American civili-
zation and the passionate enthusiasm for Hberty
by which that civihzation is permeated and sus-
tained.

Taylor's memory of the Centennial Celebra-
tion, and of his own brilhant achievement, was
expressed to me, in the following letter, written
three days after the dehvery of the Ode:

142 East 18th Street, N. T., July 1, 1876.
My Dear Winter:

I found your whole-hearted note of congratulation at the
office this morning. It is one of five already received, and all
of the same cheering strain. You don't know — but, yes, you
do! — how comforting and encouraging is such recognition.

As for myself, I don't know how it was, nor can I yet
understand, — ^but I did what I never saw done before, and
certainly shall never do again: thousands of common people
were silenced, then moved, then kindled into a flame, hy
Poetry! It was this grand instinctive feeling of the mass
which amazed me most.

I must tell you all about it when we meet : I cannot now.
I am suffering the natural reaction after such an immense
nervous tension. But let spite and disparagement do their
worst ! They can't take away from me the memory of that
half -hour !

170 OLD FRIENDS

Perhaps I shall see you to-morrow. I am tired and over-
worked (having written five leaders and a column of reviews
this week, besides the Fourth), and can't go up to you for a
few days yet. . . .
Thank you, over and over again, dear old fellow!
Ever yours faithfully.

Bayard Taylob.

Our meeting, which presently occurred, was a
Ijovial one, and great was our enjoyment in re-
counting to each other the incidents of our expe-
rience as patriotic bards. Taylor's delight in the
triumphant success of his Ode was almost pa-
thetic in its childlike ecstasy of happiness.

Neither of us had any reason for regret. The
poem that I wrote for the Society of the Army
of the Potomac and delivered at the Philadelphia
Academy of Music is called " The Voice of the
Silence," — ^its intention being to indicate the ad-
monitions that proceed out of the tranquillity of
Nature, in places, now silent and peaceful,
that have been tumultuous and horrible with
strife, and, incidentally, to declare that there is
active spiritual impartment in the seeming quies-
cent physical world. The scene, as I recall it,
presented a superb pageant of life and color.

BAYARD TAYLOR m

There was a multitudinous audience. The stage
was thronged with men renowned in war and
eminent in peace. General Hancock presided.
My seat was at the left of that commander, and
on my left sat General Sherman. I had not
before met those famous chieftains, and pres-
ently I obtained an amusing assurance that we
had indeed been strangers. General Hancock
was visibly sujffiering from nervous trepidation,
as he inspected the printed order of exercises and
prepared to begin the proceedings.

" From New York, sir? " he said, turning to
me, in a bewilderment of inquiry. Almost at
the same moment General Sherman, who also
was inspecting the programme, — ^but with a
bland composure curiously contrastive with his
military colleague's excitement, — ^smote me upon
the shoulder and cheerfully inquired: " Do I un-
derstand that this is a poem of your own compo-
sition that you intend to deliver? " Reassured
by a favorable reply as to both those points, the
warriors seemed to accept the situation, and the
speaking was begun.

I have addressed many audiences, but never an

172 OLD FRIENDS

audience more eagerly responsive and generously
enthusiastic than that assemblage of members
of the Society of the Army of the Potomac.
When I returned to my seat, after the delivery
of my poem, every person upon the stage was
standing; the house was ringing with cheers;
General Sherman caught me in his arms, with
fervent feeling: and, as to the success of the
effort, it is enough for me to remember that, from
that day till the day of his death, that great man
remained my friend.

Themes of ardor and scenes of tumult were,
to Bayard Taylor, the breath of life. No other
American poet has surpassed and only Halleck
and Whittier have equalled him in the quality
of passionate, ecstatic enthusiasm, as it is shown
in his " Bedouin Song," his " Nilotic Drinking
Song," his " Song of the Camp," his " Sicilian
Wine," his " Porphyrogenitus," his " Shake-
speare Ode," and " The Bath." Those are typ-
ical exponents of a spirit that was forever aspir-
ing, forever hopeful, always feeling the impulse
and sounding the exultant note of joyous en-
deavor:

WILLIAM WINTER
(In 1876)

BAYARD TAYLOR 173

Turn not where sinks the sullen dark

Before the signs of warning,
But crowd the canvas on our bark

And sail to meet the morning.

Writing to me from Gotha, Germany, Octo-
ber 2, 1873, he gave this revelation of his indomi-
table mind:

I have been, until recently, so busy with a History of
Germany, for schools, that my purpose to write to you has
been postponed until now. ... I was compelled to under-
take the History, for the sake of bread and butter. It was
a work of eight months, severe and unremitting, and if it
does not have a tolerable success I shall infer that no literary
work of mine is destined to succeed. " Lars,'' for instance,
is a dead failure, in a business point of view. The sales, for
the first two months, were just 1,050 copies.

I believe the book has been praised by the critics (at least
Osgood says so), but it seems to have made no impression on
most of my friends. McEntee is the sole individual who
has mentioned it in his letters. Stedman wrote such praise
of my Vienna Letters (the most ephemeral work) as would
have seemed ironical from any but an old friend, without
even hinting that he had ever heard of a poem which is
worth all my correspondence, from first to last.

However, I am one of those tough souls which cannot
be changed either by censure or neglect. I shall go on
writing until I either receive the right sort of recognition
or am smothered to death under a pyramid of magnificent
failures. I have an intense joy and satisfaction in writing
a poem, and I never could write so fast as to get ahead of

174 OLD FRIENDS

the accumulating conceptions. A nice prospect for mj;
friends !

I go to Weimar in about a week, to study the Goethe
archives and the localities generally. Gotha, therefore, wiU
be my address until Christmas: it is only one hour from
Weimar. Our winter plan is still in nubibus; but there is
no hurry. Next summer there is the return home, and any
amount of sordid drudgery for me. . . .

I'm getting a little homesick, for the absence, thus far,
has been anything but a holiday. I've been fifteen months
in Europe, and in that time have compiled a volume for
Scribner, written " Lars " and a " History of Germany,"
and gone to Vienna for the Tribune. The remaining six or
eight months of our stay must be devoted to the Goethe plan,
for which, principally, I came.

Iiillian is still at school, developing in a way which glad-
dens our hearts; so the main fortune of life has not yet
deserted us. How are your wife and boys? Give them our
love, and whenever you have an hour to "loaf and invite
your soul " tell me how you are getting on. . . .

There, you are tired of this, and I'll stop. If there were
a seashore here I'd wander on it, and look over the waves
like Iphigenia in Tauris. But I'm not the less an exile.
Ever faithfully yours.

Bayard Taylor.

On another occasion, writing to me from the
same German city, he said:

My Dear Winter:

Your letter of Nov. 11 came like an unexpected and there-
f ore-aU-the-more-welcome visit into my G«rman solitude here.

BAYARD TAYLOR 1^5

But, good Heavens! what all has not happened since then!
I write now, in a state of the greatest confusion and uncer-
tainty, — a condition during which we ought really not to
write at all, — ^but I cannot foresee how soon it will end.
Greeley's death is a severe blow to me ; for, in spite of many
little personal squabbles (for which he never showed me the
least sensitiveness), he was one of my best friends, one of the
few to be always relied upon, one upon whom I counted in
forecasting the future. . . .

My new poem has been my great consolation, and now that
it is finished I miss the diversion of mind sadly. It is a
blank verse idyllic story, in three books — something over
2,100 lines. The MS. has gone to Osgood, by mail, and I have
made another copy for Strahan & Co., London, who, to my
surprise, are willing to publish it. I hope their confidence will
not be shamed by the result. I can only say that it is quite
unlike anything I have 'yet done : it is quaint, simple, un-
historical, objectively expressed. The story, which is all
mine own invention, seemeth to me good; it is certainly
original. AU this will not make the poem popular. I have
come to the conclusion that popularity depends on striking
some transitory mood or whim of the mercurial public; hence
I expect nothing from this venture, except what an interest
in the mere story may give. But it will be pleasant if my
friends take an interest in the bantling. . . .

I had a new experience last week. I lectured, in German,
on American Literature, for the benefit of the Ladies' Chari-
table Association of the city. My friends were a little nerv-
ous, but the experiment was a thorough success. The hall
was crammed: the ladies made over one hundred thalers
profit: and everybody seemed delighted. I read, among
other things, a translation of Poe's Eaven and a poem of

176 OLD FRIENDS

Whittier, both of which seemed to make a strong impression.
I wrote the Lecture immediately in German, and — to my
surprise — ^have received many compliments on account of
its style. This " occupation, that never wearies, that slowly
creates and destroys not," as Schiller says, is, after all, our
best refuge in uneasy times.

Stedman has just written, in his old, hearty way, and I
shall reply to-morrow. Eeid speaks of his poem, on Greeley,
being very fine, which makes me all the more regret that
the papers have not come. I have sent also some lines,
written during the first shock of the news: they have prob-
ably been published by this time.

I don't know of any poem, anywhere, called " The Veiled
Muse." I hke the title: why didn't you send me a copy of
the poem? As for your poetic activity, this poem proves
that you have not given up. I know the despondency under
which you are resting, but also I know that the congenital
gift never dies out of one's nature. Several volumes of
mine sell no longer; not five copies a year; but am I to be
silent because of that? Never, my masters! If I live I
shall publish several more volumes of poetry. What is in me
must out, whether the public like it or not!

Tou wiU surely write again soon. I shall, probably, from
all quarters, not hear a full account of what has taken place
in the office since Greeley's death, and you can certainly
give me a little more light on the situation, from your point
of view. Now I must close, to catch to-day's mail. With
hearty greetings to all friends.

Ever faithfidly yours.

Bayard Taylor.

BAYARD TAYLOR 177

Of the poetic group in which Taylor was
conspicuous not one remains. That group in-
cluded, among others, Richard Henry Stoddard
and his brilUant wife, EUzabeth Barstow;
Edmund Clarence Stedman; George Henry
Boker; Fitz- James O'Brien; Christopher P.
Cranch; Fitz Hugh Ludlow, and George Will-
iam Curtis. The writings of Taylor evince his
strong affection for Boker and Stoddard. The
home of the latter poet, where I first met Taylor,
was, for several years, in a house, still standing,
at the northeast corner of Fourth Avenue and
Tenth Street, New York. There, on occasion,
Stoddard, — the most subtle and exquisite lyrical
genius in our poetic Uterature since Poe, — ^would
assemble his guests, and there I have seen Tay-
lor, as also at his own fireside and at mine, the
incarnation of joviality and the soul of mirth.
He was in no way ascetic. He loved the pleas-
ures of life. No man could more completely
obey than he did the Emersonian injunction to
" Hear what wine and roses say ! " In the ear-
her part of his career he had fancied himself a
disciple of Shelley: there is, among his works.

178 OLD FRIENDS

an ode to that elusive poet, whom he invokes as
" Immortal brother " ; but, in fact, he had as little
natural sympathy with the rainbow mysticism of
that strange being as he had with his proclivity
for dry bread. He would have consorted far
more readily with Burns or Christopher North,
" the jolly bachelors of Tarbolton and Mauch-
line " (as Allan Cunningham called Burns's gay
comrades), or the genial revellers of the Noctes
Ambrosianas. Not that he fancied carousal: but
he was very human. Like Shelley, however, he
loved Grecian themes: his "Icarus," "Hylas"
and " Passing the Sirens " are fine imaginative
examples of that love; but, like Burns, he habit-
ually treated all themes in a spirit of ardent
humanity.

Neither Taylor, Stoddard, Stedman, nor
Boker was associated with the Bohemian group
that gathered round the satiric Henry Clapp, in
the days of " The Saturday Press " and Pfaff's
Cave. None of those poets led a Bohemian hfe
or evinced practical sympathy with what is called
Bohemianism. Stedman, indeed, wrote a poem
about Bohemia, — a poem which is buoyant with

BAYARD TAYLOR 179

a gypsy spirit and a winning lilt; but it is one
thing to write melodious verses about Arcadian
bliss, and quite another thing to subsist from
week to week on the precarious rations of a pub-
lisher's hack. Taylor, roaming up and down the
world, — as Goldsmith had done before him, —
learning languages, consorting with aU sorts of
persons, and earning his bread with his pen, pos-
sessed the true Bohemian spirit; but, aU the same,
his tastes were domestic, his proclivities were
those of the scholar and the artist, and he typifies
not Grub Street, but literature ; and in literature
he especially represents the rare and precious
attribute of poetic vitality; for his many-colored
line throbs and glows with life, — ^not alone the
life of the intellect, but the life of the heart.

It is difficult to depict, in the cold gleam of
words, the inspiring personality of Bayard Tay-
lor and to indicate its value to the general experi-
ence. As I think of him I see again the taU,
stalwart figure; the symmetrical head, with its
crown of dark, slightly grizzled, curling hair; the
aquiline, bearded face; the dark eyes, glowing
with kindly light; and again I feel the cordial

180 OLD FRIENDS

clasp of the strong hand, and hear the cheerful,
musical, winning voice. In the common life of
every day he was the genial comrade, enjoying
everything and happy in contributing to the hap-
piness around him. In the life of the intellect,
in the realm of thought and expression, he be-
came transfigured; he was the priest at the altar,
the veritable apostle of Art. There is, in the
crypt of the Pantheon, in Paris, a tomb, of which
the door stands partly open, to allow the passage
of an arm of bronze, bearing an uplifted torch, —
the emblem of immortal aspiration. No symbol
could better denote the personality of Bayard
Taylor, the meaning of his life, and the abiding
influence of his works. Upon his grave, at Long-
wood, Pennsylvania, there is a Greek altar, in-
scribed with the words, " He being dead yet
speaketh." It is not an idle epitaph. As long
as there is beauty in the world, and as long as
there are human hearts to receive its message of
joy and hope, his voice will be heard.

VII.

CHARLES DICKENS

It was my privilege, many years ago, to clasp
the hand of Charles Dickens and to hear from
his Ups the cordial assurance of his personal re-
gard. " If you come to England," he said, " be
sure to come to me; and it won't be my fault if
you don't have a good time." The great novel-
ist said those words as we sat together aboard a
little tug-boat, on the morning of April 22, 1868,
steaming to the Kussia, which was anchored in
the bay of New York, and about to sail for Eng-
land. It was a lovely morning. The air was
genial, the broad expanse of the Hudson and the
bay sparkled in briUiant sunlight, and the whole
silver scene was vital with motion and cheerful
sound. Dickens had expressed the wish to slip
away unimpeded by a crowd, for his many Read-
ings, together with much travel and continuous
social exertion, had taxed his endurance, and he

181

182 OLD FRIENDS

was weary and ill. Accordingly, accompanied
by his friend and manager, George Dolby, he
drove from his hotel, the Westminster, to the pier
at the western end of Spring Street, where a
few friends were to meet him and embark with
him for the steamship. The party included
James T. Fields, James R. Osgood, Sol Eytinge,
Jr., A. V. S. Anthony, H. C. Jarrett, H. D.
Palmer, George Dolby, and the present writer, —
who is the sole survivor of that group. When
Dickens alighted from the carriage and glanced
at the river he uttered the joyous exclamation:
" That's home! " We were soon aboard the tug-
boat, — called " The Only Son," — and as we sailed
down the river it pleased the novelist to talk with
me about many things. I had heard all his Read-
ings in New York, and had written about them,
and on that subject he had many pleasant words
to say. Mention being made of the English
poet Matthew Arnold, he spoke warmly, saying:
" He is one of the gentlest and most earnest of
men." Of the renowned foreign actor Charles
Fechter, — ^who had not visited America, but
was soon to come, — ^he said: " When you see

CHARLES DICKENS 183

Fechter you will, I think, recognize a great
artist." So the talk rambled on, till presently I
ventured to speak of the benefit and comfort that
I, in common with thousands of other readers,
had derived from his novels. My favorite, in
those days, was " A Tale of Two Cities," and
in a fervor of enthusiasm I declared to him the
opinion that it is the greatest of his works. He
seemed much pleased, and he answered, with evi-
dent conviction: " I think so too! " Study and
thought, in years that since have passed, convince
me that we were both somewhat mistaken, for
the indisputable supremacy of Dickens is that of
the humorist, and surely the foremost of his
novels, in respect of himaor, are " David Copper-
field " and "Martin Chuzzlewit"; but the
avowal he then made affords an interesting
glimpse of his mind, and therefore it is worthy
to be remembered.

The humorist not infrequently imdervalues his
special gift, and fancies himself to be stronger
in pathos than in mirth. Dickens, as shown by
many denotements in his writings, was fond of
melodrama, meaning the drama of astonishing

184 OLD FRIENDS

situations, — a branch of art by no means to be
despised, but not the highest, — and he hked pos-
itive, h^^eral effects rather than suggestions to
the imagination: it is known, for example, that
he ranked the performance of Solon Shingle, by
John E. Owens, which was reality, above the
performance of Rip Van Winkle, by Joseph
Jefferson, which, in that actor's treatment of it,
was poetry. No critical considerations, however,
affected our discourse, in the conversation that is
now recalled. The novelist had labored through
a toilsome season: his work was done, his mind
was at ease, and he was blithe in spirits, — only
subdued, at moments, by consciousness of im-
pending separation from dear friends. There
was about him the irresistible charm of ingenu-
ous demeanor and absolute simplicity. His ap-
pearance, that day, afforded a striking contrast
with the appearance he had presented at the
reading desk. When before an audience Dick-
ens assumed the pose of an actor. He wore
evening dress, but he used the accessories of foot-
lights and also a colored screen as a background,
and he " made up " his face, as actors do. There

CHARLES DICKENS 186

was, in his reading, an extraordinary facility of
impersonation, and he employed aU essential
means to heighten the desired effect of it. Now
he was himself. The actor had disappeared.
The man was vdth us, unsophisticated and un-
adorned. He wore a rough travelling suit and
a soft felt hat; his right foot was wrapped in
black silk, for he had been suffering from gout ;
and he carried a plain stick. After he had
boarded the steamship, and while he was talking
with the captain and other officers, the members
of our little party assembled in the saloon with
what he afterward jocosely described as " bitter
beer intentions." Soon he approached our group
and, addressing me, he said: "What are you
drinking? " I named the fluid, and, responding
to his request, filled a tumbler for him. He
shook hands with us, all around, with a grasp of
iron, emptied his glass, put it on the table, and
turned to greet the old statesman Thurlow
Weed, who had just then arrived: whereupon,
immediately, I seized that glass, and, to the con-
sternation of the attendant steward, put it into
my pocket, — ^mentioning, as I did so. Sir Wal-

186 OLD FRIENDS

ter Scott's appropriation of the glass of King
George IV, at the civic feast in Edinburgh, long
ago. The royal souvenir, it is recorded, fared
ill, for Sir Walter sat upon it and broke it. The
Dickens souvenir survives and is still in my pos-
session. When the farewells had been spoken
and we had left the ship, Dickens stood at the
rail, his brilliant eyes (and surely no eyes more
brilliant were ever seen) suffused with tears,
and, placing his hat on the end of his stick, he
waved it to us till distance had hidden him from
view. I never saw him again. Nine years later,
in 1877, when I first went to England, though
I could not seek for him at his home, I stood
with reverence beside his grave. He rests in the
Poets' Comer of Westminster Abbey. As I
drew near to that sacred spot I saw a single red
rose lying on the pavement that bears his name,
and almost at the instant a heedless visitor, in-
dolently strolling along the transept, trod upon
the flower and crushed it.

The general heart of mankind was touched by
Charles Dickens. Criticism, in its examination
of his writings, may refine and discriminate to

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CHARLES DICKENS 187

the utmost possible extent, but it cannot obliter-
ate that solid, decisive truth. His own words
tersely and convincingly declare the consummate,
conquering principles of his faith and his works:

Ages of incessant labor, by immortal creatures, for this
earth, must pass into eternity, before the good of which it
is susceptible is all developed. . . . Any Christian spirit,
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will
find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.
. . . There is nothing in the world so inevitably contagious
as laughter and good humor.

Upon those principles Dickens continuously
acted, and in his literary life, of more than thirty
years of conscientious labor, he created enduring
works of art, — peophng the realm of pure fiction
with a wide variety of characters, interpreting
human nature in manifold phases, reflecting the
passing hour, demolishing social abuses, teaching
the sacred duty of charity, comforting and help-
ing the poor, and stretching forth the hands of
loving sympathy to the outcast and the wretched.
Thus laboring, he enriched the world with a per-
petual spring of kindness, of hope, and of inno-
cent, happy laughter; he inculcated devotion to

188 OLD FRIENDS

noble ideals; and he stimulated and strength-
ened the spiritual instincts of the human race.
Any reUc of such a man is precious, and the
Dickens souvenir to which I have adverted, — ^the
glass from which he took his parting drink, on
the day of his final departure from America, —
has been tenderly cherished. Once in a while it
is brought forth and shown, for the pleasure of a
hterary visitor. On one occasion of exceptional
and peculiar interest, when Charles Dickens, the
younger, dined with us in our home, March 3,
1883, it was placed in his hands, and thus, after
the lapse of fifteen years, the farewell glass of
the illustrious father was touched by the lips of
the reverent and honored son.

The younger Charles Dickens, a man of un-
common talents and of a singularly amiable and
winning personality, possessed abundant and
deeply interesting recollections of his father, and,
naturally, he was fond of talking about him.
Adverting to his father's Readings, he men-
tioned several picturesque and significant inci-
dents, all tending to show the deep interest that
the great novelist felt in that branch of his art.

CHARLES DICKENS 189

and the scrupulous care with which he trained
himself for the vocation of public reader. The
home of Dickens, Gad's HiU Place, a house that
he had known and fancied when a boy, and that
he bought in 1856, is near to Rochester and Chat-
ham, where there is a military and naval estab-
Ushment. " Noisy brawls sometimes occurred
in the neighborhood," said the younger Dickens,
" but we did not regard them. One morning I
heard a great din, shouts and screams, as of a
violent, drunken quarrel. At first I did not heed
it, but after a while, as it steadily continued, I
went out to our grove, across the road, where I
found my father, alone. ' Have you heard the
row? ' I asked. ' Did you hear any noise? ' he
answered. ' Yes,' I replied, ' I thought some-
body was being killed. What can have hap-
pened? Did you shout? ' ' I made the row,' he
replied; 'I have been rehearsing the murder
scene in " Oliver Twist." It was the wrangle
of Bill Sykes and Nancy that you heard; I have
just been trying to kill Nancy.' ' Well,' I said,
* I should think you have succeeded, for a more
damnable racket was never made.' " The ear-

190 OLD FRIENDS

nest narrator proceeded to tell me that his father
was warned against the prodigious exertion
necessitated by those Readings of his, and espe-«
cially by the reading from " Oliver Twist." The
death of Dickens (aged only fifty-eight) was
precipitated by his implication in a frightful rail-
road accident, which occurred at Staplehurst, a
year before he died, but, imdoubtedly, the efforts
that he made as a pubUc reader hastened the close
of his great career. Indeed, toward the last, his
son Charles, acting in obedience to the imperative
order of his father's doctor, invariably sat in front,
near to the stage, and, — as he told me, — ^had,
privately, provided himself with a short ladder,
by means of which he could obtain immediate
access to the platform, in order to aid his father
in case he shoiJd be smitten with a stroke of apo-
plexy. Such an end was expected, and such was
the end that came; but, happily, not in public.
Dickens gave his last reading on March 19, 1869,
at St. James's Hall, London. He died, sud-
denly, of apoplexy, in his dining room at Gad's
Hill Place, June 9, 1870. The younger Charles
Dickens long survived his father, dying on July

CHARLES DICKENS 191

21, 1896, — and so one of the kindest men, one of
the gentlest spirits, one of the best speakers in
England, vanished from our mortal scene.

The name of the Dickens house and of its local-
ity is speUed both ways — Gad's Hill and Gads-
hill. In the second act of the First Part of
Shakespeare's great play of " Henry IV " it is
spelled Gadshill, and it is used as the name of a
place and as the name of a person, — ^the servant
of Falstaff. The place is westward from Roch-
ester. On a brilliant day in the summer of 1885 I
made a pilgrimage to that Hterary shrine, — driv-
ing from the BuU, at Rochester, Mr. Pickwick's
tavern, and passing many hours among the
haunts of Dickens. There is, or was, a quaint
little inn, called the Falstaff, near to Gad's HiU
Place, on the opposite side of the turnpike road,
and from that resort I dispatched a card to the

owner of the mansion. Major , signifying

that one of the American friends of Dickens
would gratefully appreciate the privilege of
viewing the house. The Major received me with
cordial hospitality, and so it happened that a
stranger spoke, upon the threshold of Dickens,

192 OLD FRIENDS

the welcome that the great author himself in-
tended and promised to speak. There was the
study, unchanged, — ^the room in which " Great
Expectations," " Our Mutual Friend " and
"Edwin Drood" were written; there was the
writing-desk at which the magician would never
sit again; there was the vacant chair; there, on
the back of the door, was the painted book-case,
with the mock volumes, bearing comic titles, in-
vented by the novelist; and over all the golden
summer sunshine glimmered and a magic light
of memory that words are powerless to paint.
I sat in the chair of Charles Dickens and rever-
ently wrote my name in the chronicle of pilgrims
to his earthly home. The dining room had, on
that day, been prepared for a banquet for many
persons, but no guests had yet arrived, and the
Major kindly permitted me to enter it and see
the sofa on which Dickens died; and later he con-
ducted me through a tunnel vmderneath the road,
giving access to a field and grove where was the
Swiss chalet presented to Dickens by friends of
his in Switzerland, a snug retreat to which he
often resorted to escape interruption when at

CHARLES DICKENS 193

work, and where he passed his last day as a living
man. I recalled his words, as I stood there:
" If you come to England be sure to come to
tnel' and it seemed to me that he was actually
present, and that I felt again the hearty grasp
of his hand and heard the ringing tones of his
cheery voice. The garden was gay with red
roses. " Dickens loved these," said the Major,
and, so saying, he placed a cluster of them in my]
hands, by way of gracious farewell.

THE READINGS OF DICKENS

Dickens was not only an excellent reader but
a good actor. The discerning reader of his
novels perceives that he possessed a keen dra-
matic instinct. The auditor of his Readings was
soon convinced that he also possessed a positive
dramatic faculty. In reading scenes from his
novels he entered into characters that he had cre-
ated, and his correct assumption of diverse per-
sonalities was decisively effective. Now he was
Scrooge; presently Mr. Fizgig; then Boh
Cratchitt; and by and by he passed, easily, by
the expedient of artistic suggestion, — and by

194 OLD FRIENDS

something more, which it is difficult to define,^
through the contrasted guises of Serjeant Buz-
fuz, the httle Judge, Mrs. Cluppins, Sam Wel-
ler, Mr. Winkle, Micataher, Pecksniff, and
Sairey Gamp. The skill that merges personality
with a fictitious character, and yet does not efface
the performer's individual quahty, is indispen-
sahle in acting. Dickens possessed it. He knew
the effect that he wished to produce. His
method was characterized by simplicity and deli-
cacy. In the copious, mellow, musical vocalism
^a httle marred by the monotony of rising inflec-
tion), the authoritative manner, the unaffected,
free gesticulation, and the spontaneous accord-
ance of the action with the word the authentic art
of the actor was conspicuous. As an interpreter of
tragic character and f eehng he was consistent and
often impressive, as in his reading of the storm
chapter, much condensed, in " David Copper-
field," — ^that wonderful blending of the terrors
of the tempest with the tragic and pathetic cul-
minations of human fate, — but he was, distinc-
tively, a humorist, and his humorous embodi-
ments, for embodiments, practically, they were.

CHARLES DICKENS 195

and not merely denotements, were his indubitable
triumphs of dramatic art. In outbursts of pas-
sionate emotion, while he did not lack fervor, he
lacked vocal power; but the moment he entered
the realm of humor he was a monarch. His
whole being then seemed aroused. His clear,
brilliant, expressive eyes twinkled with joy; his
countenance expressed bubbling mirth that was
with difficulty restrained; his tones grew deep
and rich; he, manifestly, escaped from all con-
sciousness of self; and he completely captivated
his auditor.

At this distance of time, — forty years having
passed since last I heard his voice, — it is not
easy to name his superlative comic achievements ;
but my clearest remembrance of them would
specify Micawber, Mrs. Gamp, Sam Weller, Mrs.
Raddles, PecJcsniff, Mrs. Gummidge and the lit-
tle servant of Bob Sawyer as gems of his hu-
morous acting. There was a sweet, gentle strain
of humor in his exposition of the delicate episode
of poor little Dora Spenlow; but the scenes in
which he reveUed and greatly excelled were such
as display the festival with Micawber at Canter-

196 OLD FRIENDS

bury; the supper with Bob Sawyer^ in the lodg-
ing-house of the shrill, spiteful Mrs. Baddies;
and the tipsy altercation between Mrs. Gamp
and Mrs. Prig. His finest impersonations, —
finest, because of the dramatic interpreter's abso-
lute fidelity to the author's designs, and also be-
cause of their integral reveahnent of his genius,
— were, as I remember them, those of Dr. Mari-
gold and Mrs. Gamp. The latter portrayal was
a consummate type of his humor; the former of
his pathos. That fat, fussy heathen, that prodigy
of eccentric, comic selfishness, that ungainly, sa-
gacious, piggish cockney, Mrs. Gamp^ — ^herself
possessing no perception, however shght, of
either good feeling or mirth, — dehghts by the
grotesque comicality of a character, both serious
and ludicrous, which is skilfully developed and
displayed under ingeniously himiorous condi-
tions. All lovers of broad fun have rejoiced in
Sairey, — ^in her copious loquacity, her store of
anecdote, her appropriate aphorisms, her belief
in the utility of regular habits, her talent for sar-
casm, her partiality for gin, her naive suggestion
of " a bottle on the chimbley-piece, to set to my

CHARLES DICKENS 197

lips when so dispoged," her ample resources of
unconsciously ludicrous illustration, her fecund,
inexhaustible vocabulary, her mythical friend
Mrs. Harris, her formidable compatriot Betsy
Prig, and her ever memorable quarrel with that
audacious associate. Dickens must have rejoiced
in creating Mrs. Gamp, for he evinced the keen-
est artistic enjoyment in depicting her, — ^his por-
trayal of her exemplifjdng absolute harmony
between the imaginative ideal and the executive
intellectual purpose. Our stage was adorned, in
old times, by three comedians, George Holland,
William Davidge, and Marie Wilkins, any of
whom could have personated Mrs. Gamp per-
fectly well; but none of them, though aided
by the accessories of costume and scenery, could
have made the character more actual to the mate-
rial vision than Dickens made it to the eyes of the
mind. He read it, and, at the same time, he
contrived to act it.

The same felicity of achievement was percepti-
ble in the portrayal of Dr. Marigold. No other
one of his Readings contained more — ^if so much
— of himself. In whatsoever way interpreted.

198 OLD FRIENDS

the story of Dr. Marigold would touch the heart.
As interpreted by Dickens, its harmony of humor
and pathos was irresistible. The sketch itself is
exceptionally representative of the essential char-
acteristic of its author's genius — ^vital humanity.
No writer has shown himself more capable than
Dickens was of pointing those afflicting contrasts
which reveal human nature as, at times, so noble,
and social conditions as, at times, so tragic. No
writer ever was more quick to see or more expert
to show the heart that beats beneath the motley,
and, therewithal, the masquerade of living, in
which so many human beings, of fine feeling and
high motive, are doomed to participate, — often
through many arid years of smiling endurance.
When Dickens assumed Dr. Marigold the for-
mal English gentleman, in evening dress, seemed
to disappear, while in his place stood the coarsely
clad, loquacious pedler, on the footboard of his
Cheap-Jack cart, — his dying daughter clasped
to his breast, her arms around his neck, her head
drooping on his shoulder, — ^vending his wares —
voluble, facetious, resolute — chiding his sorrow —
the veritable incarnation of heroism — even while

CHARLES DICKENS 199

the gray shadow of death was stealing over the
face of his child. It was an inexpressibly pa-
thetic presentment of dramatic contrast: on one
side, self-abnegation, the celestial element of hu-
man nature; on the other side, innocent, helpless,
forlorn childhood, made doubly sacred by misfort-
une. I have seen all the important acting that
has been shown on the American stage within a
past of more than fifty years : I have seen but lit-
tle, in the serio-comic vein, that was better than
that of Charles Dickens in the character of Dr.
Marigold. This humble tribute can suggest
only the general character of his art. His Read-
ings were the spontaneous expression, wisely
guided, of a great nature, in the maturity of its
greatness, and those persons who heard them en-
joyed a precious privilege, never to be forgotten.
Contemporary interest in those Readings, no
doubt, was intensified by admiration, — ^then very
general, — of the reader's writings; and perhaps,
by reason of that admiration, they seem, in
remembrance, to have been finer than they act-
ually were. I do not, however, credit that con-
jecture. I recall, even now, the action of Dick-

200 OLD FRIENDS

ens when, as Boh Cratchitt, he seemed to be
throwing a kiss to Tiny Tim, and brushing away
a tear, as he prepared to propose the health of
Scrooge. Those persons only who have children
and fear to lose them, or, loving them, have lost
them, could understand how much that simple
action meant. I recall his sad tones and direct
way when, as Pegotty, he told of the weary
search for Little Em'ly, and " the fine, massive
grandeur in his face " when he spoke those touch-
ing words : " And only God knows how good
them mothers was to me." I remember the ex-
alted, awe-stricken expression of his countenance
when, as he closed his narrative of the storm, in
" Copperfield," he spoke of the dead man, whose
name is unmentioned, and the pathetic tone in
which he said: " I saw him lying with his head
upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at
school." Those indescribably beautiful strokes of
art, and many Hke them, denoted a consummate
artist. It is not, however, to be questioned that
the intrinsic power and authentic supremacy of
Dickens consisted in authorship, and not in the
histrionic illustration of it. He enriched litera-

CHARLES DICKENS 201

ture with creations that can never perish. Hu-
mor and pathos blend in his works and make an
exquisite music. The geniahty of Christmas is
nowhere so fully expressed as in " Pickwick "
and the " Carol," — ^where great fires blaze upon
spacious hearths, and bright eyes sparkle, and
merry beUs ring, and simshine, starlight, and joy
make a delicious atmosphere of comfort, kind-
ness, and ardent good-wiU. There is no terror
more ghastly than that on the face of Jonas
Chuzzlemt, as he breaks out of the woods, after
doing the murder. There is no written tempest
more actual and terrible than the tempest in
which Ham and Steerforth go to their death.
There is no emblem of self-sacrifice more sublime
than the figure of Sidney Carton at the guillo-
tine. But it is only a ghmpse of a great author
that is here intended, — ^not a critical estimate of
works long since accepted into the sacrariima of
Enghsh Literature. Thq world knows them by
heart, and the judgment of the most exacting of
human intellect has recognized and celebrated the
scope and the opulence of their writer's genius:
the vitaUty of his thought; the sincerity of his

202 OLD FRIENDS

virtuous emotion; the certainty of his intuition;
the fehcity of his inventive skill; the rosy glow of
his copious, captivating humor; the fineness of
his perception of tragic and comic contrast in
human experience; the depth of his sympathy
with the common joys and sorrows of the human
race; the eloquence of his fluent, nervous, forci-
ble, convincing style; and the profound, stead-
fast, consistent purpose of his life and his art to
inculcate the religion of charity and love. The
world is happier and better because Charles
Dickens has lived in it.

VIII.

WILKIE COLLINS

There is no resemblance of organic structure
and mental idiosyncrasy between the works of
Charles Dickens and the works of Wilkie Collins,
yet CoUins, as a novelist, was a result of the pro-
digious influence of Dickens upon the hterary
movement of the time in which he lived, and the
memory of the one irresistibly incites remem-
brance of the other. My acquaintance with Col-
lins began long ago, and it speedily ripened into
a friendship that was interrupted only by his
death. He was a great writer: as a story-teller,
specifically, he stands alone, — ^transcendent and
incomparable: but his personahty was even more
interesting than his authorship. To be in his
society was to be charmed, delighted, stimulated,
and refreshed. His intellectual energy com-
municated itself to aU around him, but his man-

203

204 OLD FRIENDS

ner was so exquisitely refined and gentle that,
while he prompted extreme mental activity, he
also diffused a lovely influence of repose. The
hours that I passed in the company of Collins
are remembered as among the happiest of my
life. His views were unconventional, — ^the
views of a man who had observed human nature
and society widely and closely, and who thought
for himself. His humor was playful. His per-
ception of character was intuitive and unerring.
He manifested, at all times, a delicate considera-
tion for other persons, and his sense of kindness
was instantaneous and acute. His learning was
ample, but he made no parade of it. Sincerity
and simphcity were the predominant attributes
of his mind. He had seen much of the world, he
possessed a copious store of anecdote, and his
conversation was fluent, sprightly, and amusing,
— the more attractive because of personal pecu-
Uarities that deepened the impression of his win-
ning originality. His temperament was mercu-
rial, — ^his moods alternating between exuberant
glee and pensive gloom; but in society he was
remarkable for the buoyancy of a youthful spirit.

WILKIE COLLINS 205

and at all times he dominated himself and his
circumstances with a calm, resolute will. In
listening to his talk and in reading his novels I
derived the impression that he was a fatalist.
However that may be, he looked upon the human
race with boundless charity. His sensibility was
great; his intuition was infallible, and, in par-
ticular, his mental attitude toward women was
that of ardent chivalry. He understood woman
— ^her heroism, her magnificent virtues, her en-
thralling charms; he knew her faults also, and
he did not hesitate to declare and reprove them;
but his works abound with touches of tender sym-
pathy with her trials and sufferings, and with
lovely compassion for her infirmities and griefs.
That exquisite hvimanity, combined with fine in-
tellect and delicate, spontaneous humor, made
companionship with Wilkie CoUins an inestima-
ble privilege and blessing. I have had the fort-
une of knowing, intimately, many distinguished
persons: I have not known any person, distin-
guished or otherwise, whose society, — because of
mental breadth, catholic taste, generous feeling,
quick appreciation, intrinsic goodness, and sweet

206 OLD FRIENDS

courtesy, — ^was so entirely satisfying as that of
Wilkie Collins.

The unjustifiable use of private letters, as an
element in the biography of deceased persons,
has been severely, and rightly, condemned. A
judicious and correct use of such documents,
however, can neither do injustice to the dead nor
give offence to the living. Some of the letters
that Colhns addressed to me are more expressive
than any description could be of his bhthe alac-
rity of mind and his genial spirit. Here is one
that pleasantly indicates those attributes and
also, — announcing his allegiance to certain splen-
did ideals now somewhat out of fashion, — de-
clares his hterary taste:

90 Gloucester Place, Poetman Square, W.
London, August 5, 1878.
My Dear Winter:

Tour kind and friendly letter found me in a darkened
room, suffering again from one of my attacks of rheumatic
gout in the eyes. I am only now well enough to use my
eyes and my pen once more, and I hasten to ask you to
forgive me for a delay in writing to you which has been
forced upon me, in the most literal sense of the word.

Let me get away from the disagreeable subject of myself
and my illnesses, and beg you to accept my most sincere

WILKIE COLLINS 207

thanks for the gift of your last volume of poems. My first
renewal of the pleasure of reading is associated with your
pages. I ought to warn you that I am an incorrigible heretic
in the matter of modem poetry, of the sort that is now
popular. I positively decline to let the poet preach to me or
puzzle me. He is to express passion and sentiment, in lan-
guage which is essentially intelligible as well as essentially
noble and musical, — or I wiU have nothing to do with him.
You will now not be surprised to hear that I delight in
Byron and Scott, and, more extraordinary still, that I am a
frequent reader even of Crabbe !

Having made my confession, I am sure you will believe
I speak sincerely when I thank you for some hours of real
pleasure, derived from your volume. Both in feeling and
expression I find your poetry (to use a phrase which I don't
much like, but which expresses exactly what I mean)
"thoroughly sympathetic." "The Ideal," "A Dirge," and
"Eosemary" are three among my chief favorites. I thank
you again for them — and for all the rest,

I have been too completely out of the world to have any
news to tell you. As to literature, we are in a sadly stagnant
state in London. And as to the " British Theatre " the less
(with one or two rare exceptions) said about it the better.
Writing of the theatre, however, I am reminded that my
" New Magdalen," Ada Cavendish, sails on the 24th, to try
her fortune in the United States. She has, I think, more
of the divine fire in her than any other living English
actress of " Drama " — and she has the two excellent qualities
of being always eager to improve and always ready to take
advice in her art. I am really interested in her well-doing,
and I am specially anxious to hear what you think of her.
In the "Magdalen," and also in "Miss Gwilt" (a piece

208 OLD FRIENDS

altered, from my "Armadale," by Eegnier — of the Theatre
Frangais — and myself), she has done things which electrified
our English audiences. If you should be sufficiently in-
terested in her to give her a word of advice in the art she
■will be grateful, and I shall be grateful too.

I am " bestowing my tediousness " on you without mercy,
and my paper warns me that the time has come to say, for
the present, Good-by. Let me come to an end by expressing
a hope that you will give me another opportunity of proving
myself a better correspondent. In the meantime, with all
good wishes, believe me.

Ever yours,

WiLKEB Collins.

When you see Mr. Jefferson pray remember me kindly to
him.

Miss Ada Cavendish (Mrs. Frank A. Mar-
shall) was an actress of exceptional beauty, tal-
ent, and charm. She first attracted attention on
the London stage in 1863, as a performer in bur-
lesque, and subsequently she gained distinction
in comedy and tragedy, — acting in important
dramas and winning fame by fine performances
of Shakespeare's Beatrice and Rosalind. In
1873 she first impersonated Mercy Merrick, in
CoUins's play based on his novel " The New
Magdalen " ; and thereafter, until the end of her

WILKIE COLLINS 209

career, she remained identified with those hero-
ines of his creation, Mercy Merrick and Miss
Gwilt. Her first appearance on the American
stage was made at Wallack's Theatre, New
York, on September 9, 1878, and to that inci-
dent Collins refers. He was fond of the stage,
and his novels, — from several of which he de-
rived plays, — are abundantly supplied with orig-
inal dramatic incident. One of his effective
dramas is based on " The Woman in White,"
with which Mr. Wybert Reeve, in the character
of Count Fosco, traversed Great Britain, the
United States, and Canada, acting Fosco more
than fifteen hundred times. In the following
letter Collins makes an instructive allusion to
one of his plays, as viewed by one of the most
interesting members of the stage of France, the
brillianti much lamented Aimee-Olympe Desclee
(1836-'74) :

90 Gloucester Place, Portman Square,
London, February 10, 1882.
My Dear Winter:

You were indeed happily inspired when you sent me that
generous and sympathetic article in "The Tribune." Still

210 OLD FRIENDS

tormented by the gout, I forgot my troubles when I opened
the newspaper, and felt the encouragement that I most
highly value — ^I mean the encouragement that is oflEered to
me by a brother-writer.

If what I hear of this last larcenous appropriation of my
poor " Magdalen " be true, what an effort it must have been to
you to give your attention, even for a few hours only, to
dramatic work so immeasurably beneath your notice ! How
did you compensate your intelligence for this outrage offered
to it by this latest "adapter" of ideas that do not belong
to him? Did you disinfect your mind by reading, or writ-
ing, — or did you go to bed, and secure the sweet oblivion of
sleep ?

I wonder whether I ever told you of an entirely new view
taken of "Magdalen" by the last of the great French
actresses — Aimee Desclee. After seeing the piece in London
she was eager to play, on her return to Paris — Grace Rose-
terry! "Develop the character a little more, in the last
act," she said to me; "I will see that the play is thoroughly
well translated into French — and I will make Grace, and not
Mercy Merrick, the chief woman in the piece. Grace's
dramatic position is magnificent: I feel it, to my fingers'
ends. Wait and see ! " She died, poor soul, a few months
afterward, and Grace Boselerry will, I fear, never be properly
acted now. Don't forget me, my dear Winter — and let me
hear from you sometimes. I set no common value on your
friendship and your good opinion.

Ever yours,

WiLKiE Collins.

P.S. I address you as Mr. on this envelope. Our curiously
common mock-title of Esquire is declared by Eenunore
Cooper to be a species of insult, and even a violation of the

WILKIE COLLINS 211

Constitution of the United States, when attached to the
name of an American citizen. Is that great Master (shame-
fully undervalued by Americans of the present day!) right
or wrong about Esq. ? N.B. I have just been reading " The
Deerslayer " for the -fifth time.

On the occasion of my last meeting with Col-
lins, which occurred at his house, No. 82 Wimpole
St., near Cavendish Square, London, not long
before his death (on September 23, 1889), we
sat together from noon till after midnight, talk-
ing of many subjects, — men, women, books,
opinions, feelings, and events, — and then, as
often before, I had occasion to appreciate his
copious knowledge, fine discernment, and vigor-
ous, novel thought. At that time, and indeed
throughout his later years, he was obliged, occa-
sionally, to consume laudanum. He had orig-
inally been compelled to use that drug because
of excruciating pain, caused by rheumatic gout
in the eyes, and it had become to him, more or
less, an indispensable anodyne. In the course of
the evening that medicine was brought to him,
and, naturally, he adverted to its properties and
effects.

212 OLD FRIENDS

" My suffering was so great," he said, " when
I was writing * The Moonstone,' that I could
not control myself and keep quiet. My cries and
groans so deeply distressed my amanuensis, to
whom I was dictating, that he could not continue
his work, and had to leave me. After that I
employed several other men, with the same re-
sult : no one of them could endure the strain. At
last I engaged a young woman, stipulating that
she must utterly disregard my sufferings and
attend solely to my words. This she declared
that she could and would do, and this, to my
amazement (because the most afilicting of my
attacks came upon me after her arrival) , she in-
dubitably and exactly did. I was blind with
pain, and I lay on the couch writhing and groan-
ing. In that condition and under those circum-
stances I dictated the greater part of 'The
Moonstone.' "

Collins mentioned, I remember, that the acces-
sion of pain began at the point where Miss Clack
is introduced into the narrative, so that the essen-
tially humorous part of that fascinating story
was composed by its indomitable author when

WILKIE COLLINS 213

he was almost frenzied with physical torture.
The art of the fabric, nevertheless, is perfect: the
invention never flags; the playful, satirical
humor, with its vein of veiled scorn for canting
hypocrisy, meanness, and spite, flows on in a
smooth, silver ripple of felicitous words, and the
style is crystal clear. " Opium sometimes hurts,"
he said, that day, " but also, sometimes^ it helps.
In general, people know nothing about it." He
then referred to the experience of Sir Walter
Scott, in the enforced use of laudanum, when
writing " The Bride of Lammermoor," — an ex-
perience that is related in Lockhart's noble life
of that great author.

Mention was made of Coleridge and of De
Quincey, and of the elder Lord Lytton (Bul-
wer) , all of whom had recourse to opiimi. " I
very well remember the poet Coleridge," Col-
lins said: "he often came to my father's house,
and my father and mother were close friends of
his. One day he came there and was in great
distress, saying that it was wrong for him to take
opium, but that he could not resist the craving
for it, although he made every possible effort to

214 OLD FRIENDS

do so. His grief was excessive. He even shed
tears. At last my mother addressed him, say-
ing: 'Mr. Coleridge, do not cry; if the opium
really does you any good, and you must have it,
why do you not go and get it? ' At this the
poet ceased to weep, recovered his composure,
and, turning to my father, said, with an air of
much rehef and deep conviction: ' Collins, your
wife is an exceedingly sensible woman! ' I sup-
pose that he did not long delay to act upon my
mother's suggestion. I was a boy at the time,
but the incident made a strong impression on
my mind, and I could not forget it. Coleridge
had brilliant eyes and a very sweet voice."

The reader must not infer, from what is here
said, that Wilkie Collins was a man of weak
character, self-indulgent, and subservient to the
" opium habit." Such an inference would be
unjust to the memory of a great writer and a
noble person. The works of CoUins, which fill
more than twenty-one volumes, bear decisive tes-
timony to the poise of his intellect, the opulence
of his genius, the incessancy of his labor, the
copious wealth of his invention, the breadth of

WILKIE COLLINS 215

his knowledge of life, the ardency of his sympa-
thetic emotion, and, above all, the sturdy inde-
pendence and adamantine solidity of his charac-
ter. He possessed an extraordinary mind, and
in adding a body of original, vital, imaginative
fiction to the literature of his country he accom-
plished an extraordinary work. But during the
greater part of his life he was an invalid, and,
remembering the circumstances under which he
wrote, it is amazing that he accomplished so
much. One denotement of his potent individual-
ity is the uniform texture of his style, — a style
that is unique. He portrayed many characters,
and it is notable that those characters, with little
exception, express themselves in one and the same
verbal form: the faculty, possessed in such a mar-
vellous degree by Shakespeare and by Sir Walter
Scott, of making each person speak in exact ac-
cordance with his or her personality, he did not
employ: yet every character that he drew is dis-
tinctly individual, and, by a certain subtle magic
of artistic skill, it is made to seem to be talking
in a perfectly individual manner. Consummate
art, thus exemplified, is not achieved with a dis-

216 OLD FRIENDS

ordered intellect. Personal observation of Col-
lins, furthermore, found him exceptionally self-
possessed, firm in mind, clear in thought, digni-
fied yet gentle in manner, the embodiment of the
sweet gravity and involuntalry grace that fancy
associates with the ideal of such men as Cowley
and Addison. His aspect was singular and in-
teresting. When seated he appeared to be a
portly man, but when he stood that impression
was dispelled. His head was large and leonine.
His eyes were hazel. He wore an ample beard.
His body was small, his shoulders were slightly
Stooped, and his limbs were, seemingly, attenu-
ated. His walk was slow and feeble, — ^that of a
person who had been weakened by great pain.
His voice, though low, was clear, kindly, and
winning, and his demeanor was marked by the
formal courtesy that is commonly ascribed to
persons designated as survivors of " the old
school." That formal bearing, which, in fact,
was involuntary distinction, did not lessen his
geniality of companionship. He freely partici-
pated in social enjoyments, but it was in the com-
munion of intellectual taste that he especially

WILLIAM WILKIE COLLINS
PJiotograph by Lock and Whifjield

WILKIE COLLINS 217

rejoiced, and it was through the medium of such
communion, as his writings prove, that he im-
parted the most of pleasure and benefit. As a
writer he taught, — not by didacticism but by-
suggestion, — purity of living and charity of feel-
ing, and as a man he was the inspiration of nobil-
ity to every person who came within the scope
of his influence, and especially to those who were
blessed with his friendship.

In matters of taste Collins was epicurean.
The perfection of enjoyment, he assured me, is
only to be obtained when you are at sea, in a
luxurious, well-appointed steam yacht, in lovely
summer weather. One of his eccentricities re-
sulted from his inordinate liking for black pep-
per: " It is seldom provided at dinner tables to
which I repair," he said, " and therefore I take
care to provide it myself." He did; and pleas-
urable it was to see the droU gravity with which
he produced that condiment. His ways were
ever ingenuous and characteristic. His reminis-
cent talk was charming, — ^the word-pictures that
he made of authors whom he had seen and
known, such as Thomas Hood, Douglas Jerrold,

218 OLD FRIENDS

and Thackeray, being, in effect, like perfect
cameos. Here is a characteristic letter, affording
a glimpse of his boyhood:

90 Glouoesteb Place, Portman Square, W.
London, September 3rd, 1881.
My Dear Winter:

If you have long since dismissed me from memory, you
have only treated an inexcusably bad correspondent as he
deserves. When I was at school, — ^perpetually getting pun-
ished as " a bad boy," — ^the master used to turn me to good
moral account, as a means of making his model scholars
ashamed of their occasional lapses into misconduct: "If it
had been Collins I should not have felt shocked and sur-
prised. Nobody expects anything of him. But You!!" —
etc., etc.

In the hope that you, by this time, "expect nothing of
Collins" I venture to appeal to your indulgence. In the
intervals of rheumatic gout I still write stories — and I
send to you, by registered book-post, my latest effort, called
"The Black Eobe," in the belief that you will "give me
another chance," and honor me by accepting the work. It
is thought, on the European side of the Atlantic, in Soman
Catholic countries as well as in Protestant England, to be
the best thing I have written for some time. And it is
memorable to me as having produced a freely offered gift
of forty pounds from one of the pirates who have seized it
on the American side! ! !

I write with your new editions, — so kindly sent to me, —
in the nearest book-case. In the Poems I rejoice to see my
special favorites included in the new publication — ^"The

WILKIE COLLINS 219

Ideal," " Eosemary " and the exquisitely tender verses which
enshrine the memory of " Ada Clare."

I have heard of you from Miss Cavendish. May I hope to
hear of you next — ^from yourseKI

Always truly yours,

WiLKiE Collins.

His place is with the great masters of English
fiction. He did not copy the surfaces of common
life, calling the product " nature," and vaimting
it as truth. He knew how to select and how to
comhine, and he possessed the great art of deli-
cate exaggeration. In the telling of his stories he
created characters, and he made them Uve. His
employment of accessories, — ^meaning scenery,
whether civic or rural; climate; atmosphere;
cloud; sunshine; rain; the sound of the sea, or
the ripple of leaves in the wind; morning or even-
ing, or midnight, — ^is exact in its fitness and im-
erring in its effect. In that respect, as in his
devotion to romance, he followed in the footsteps
of the chieftain of the whole inspired band.
Sir Walter Scott, — ^whom he designated, in
writing to me, " the Prince, the King, the Em-
peror, the God Almighty of novelists." He was
deeply interested in his own time, in the advance-

220 OLD FRIENDS

ment of civiKzation and the consequent promo-
tion of the public welfare. He spoke and wrote
with satirical contempt of the obstructive wor-
ship of old things, — especially in Literature and
Painting, — ^merely because they are old. He
cordially recognized and welcomed meritorious
achievement in any and every line of contem-
porary endeavor, and quite as cordially he con-
demned contemporary pretence. He was the
soul of honesty. He lived a good life: and he is
remembered not only with honor but with love.
It happened that I was travelling from Lon-
don to Paris when the death of Collins occurred,
and I was unable to attend his funeral. A little
later, aboard the steamship Aurania, in mid-
ocean, October 10, 1889, I wrote the commemo-
rative lines which follow.

Often and often, when the days were dark
And, whether to remember or behold.
Life was a burden, and my heart, grown old

With sorrow, scarce was conscious, did I mark
How from thy distant place across the sea.
Vibrant with hope and with emotion free.

WILKIE COLLINS 221

Thy voice of cheer rose like the morning lark —
And that was comfort if not joy to me!

For in the weakness of our human grief
The mind that does not break and will not bend
Teaches endurance as the one true friend.

The steadfast anchor and the sure relief.

That was thy word, and what thy precept taught
Thy life made regnant in one living thought.

n

Thy vision saw the halo of romance
Round every common thing that men behold.
Thy lucid art could turn to precious gold, —

Like roseate motes that in the sunbeams dance, —

Whatever object met thy kindling glance.
And in that mirror life was never cold.

A gracious warmth suffused thy sparkling page.
And woman's passionate heart by thee was drawn.
With all the glorious colors of the dawn.

Against the background of this pagan age —

Her need of love, her sacrifice, her trance
Of patient pain, her weary pilgrimage!

Thou knewest all of grief that can be known.

And didst portray all sorrows but thine own.

in

Where shall I turn, now that thy lips are dumb
And night is on the eyes that loved me well?
What other voice, across thy dying knell.

With like triumphant notes of power will come?

222 OLD FRIENDS

Alas ! my ravaged heart is still and ntunb
With thinking of the blank that must remain I
Tet be it mine, amid these wastes of pain.
Where all must falter and where many sink.
To stay the foot of misery on the brink
Of dark despair, to bid blind sorrow see —
Teaching that human will breaks every chain
When once endurance sets the spirit free;
And, living thus thy perfect faith, to think
I am to others what thou wert to me.

X

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

In my youth I was often privileged to sit by
the fireside of the poet Longfellow, and with his
encouragement and under his guidance I entered
upon that service of literature to which, humbly
but earnestly, my life has been devoted. Long-
fellow possessed a great and peculiar fascination
for youth. He naturally attracted to himself aU
unsophisticated spirits; and, as I did not then
know, but subsequently learned, he naturally at-
tracted to himself all persons intrinsically noble.
His gentleness was elemental. His tact was iner-
rant. His patience never failed. As I recall
him, I am conscious of a beautiful spirit; a lovely
hf e ; a perfect image of continence, wisdom, dig-
nity, sweetness, and grace. In Longfellow's
home, the old Craigie mansion at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, on an autumn evening more than
fifty years ago, was assembled a brilliant com-

223

224 OLD FRIENDS

pany; and as I entered the large drawing-room,
which now is the hbrary, one figure in particular
attracted my gaze. It was a yoimg man, lithe,
slender, faultlessly apparelled, very handsome,
who rose at my approach, turning upon me a
countenance that beamed with kindness, and a
smile that was a welcome from the heart. His
complexion was fair. His hair was brown, long,
and waving. His features were regular and of
exquisite refinement. His eyes were blue. His
bearing was that of manly freedom and uncon-
ventional grace, and yet it was that of absolute
dignity. He had the manner of the natural
aristocrat — a manner that is born, not made; a
manner that is never found except in persons
who are self-centred without being selfish;
who are intrinsically noble, simple, and true.
I was introduced to him by Longfellow: and
then and thus it was that I first beheld George
William Curtis. From that hour until the
day he died I was honored with his friend-
ship, now become a hallowed memory. That
meeting was more than once recalled between
us; and as I look back to it, across the varied

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 225

landscape of intervening years, I see it as a pre-
cious and altogether exceptional experience. It
was a hand dispensing nothing but blessings
which bestowed that incomparable boon, — ^the
illustrious, venerated hand of the foremost poet
of America. It was the splendid munificence
of Longfellow that gave the benediction of
Curtis.

It is not because he was a friend of mine that
I try to assist in the commemoration of him; it
is because he was a great person. The career
of Curtis was rounded and complete. The splen-
did structure of his character stands before the
world hke a monument of gold. It is not for
his sake that tribute is laid upon the shrine of
memory ; it is for our own. Not to express hom-
age for a pubhc benefactor is to fail in self-
respect. Not to reverence a noble and exem-
plary character is to forego a benefit that is indi-
vidual as well as social. Nowhere else can so
much strength be derived as from the contempla-
tion of men and women who pass through the
vicissitudes of human experience, the ordeal of
life and death, not without action and not with-

226 OLD FRIENDS

out feeling, but calmly and bravely, without
fever and without fear. There is nothing greater
in this world, nor can there be anything greater
in the world to come, than a perfectly pure, true,
resolute soul. When the old Scotch Lord Bal-
merino was awaiting the block, on Tower HiU, —
in expiation of his alleged treason to the House
of Hanover, — he wrote a few great words, that
ought to be forever remembered. " The man
who is not fit to die," he said, " is not fit to live."
That was the voice of a hero. An image of
heroism Uke that is of inestimable value, and it
abides in the soul as a perpetual benediction. In
Shakespeare's tragedy, when the foes of Brutus
are seeking to capture him on the field of
battle, his friend LuciliuSj whom they have
already taken, denotes, in two consummate
lines, the same inspiring ideal of superb
stability :

When you do find him, or alive or dead.
He will be found like Brutus, like himself.

That might always have been said of Curtis. In
every duty faithful; in every trial adequate; in
every attribute of nobility perfect, —

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 227

He taught us how to live, and — oh, too high

The price for knowledge! — ^taught us how to die.

It is not the achievement of Curtis, however,
that lingers most lovingly in the memory; it is
the character. The authoritative, final word
upon his works will be spoken by posterity.

" When a neighbor dies " (so Curtis wrote, in
his wise, sympathetic sketch of the beloved and
lamented Theodore Winthrop), "his form and
quality appear clearly, as if he had been dead a
thousand years. Then we see what we only felt
before. Heroes in history seem to us poetic be-
cause they are there. But if we should tell the
simple truth of some of our neighbors it would
sound like poetry. ..."

The truth about Curtis has that sound now,
and more and more it will have that sound as
time proceeds. It is the story of a man of genius
whose pure hfe and splendid powers were de-
voted to the ministry of beauty and to the self-
sacrificing service of mankind. The superficial
facts of that story, indeed, are famihar and
usual. It was the inspiration of them that made
them poetic, — ^that profound, intuitive sense of

228 OLD FRIENDS

the obligation of noble living which controlled,
fashioned, and directed his every thought and
deed. The incidents customary in the life of a
man of letters are scarcely more important than
were the migrations of the Vicar of Wakefield
from the brown bed to the blue and from the blue
bed back again to the brown. He moves from
place to place; he has ill fortune and good fort-
une; he gains and loses; he rejoices and suffers;
he writes books: and he is not justly appreci-
ated until he is dead. Curtis was a man of let-
ters, born, in 1824, in our American Venice, the
New England city of Providence; born nearly
two months before the death of Byron (so near,
in literature, we always are to the great names of
the past), and a boy of eight in that dark year
which ended the illustrious lives of Goethe and
Sir Walter Scott. It has been usual to ascribe
the direction of his career to the influence of his
juvenile experience at Brook Farm, in Roxbury,
where he resided from 1840 to 1844 ; but it should
be remembered that the Brook Farm ideal was
in his mind before he went there, — the ideal of a
social existence regulated by absolute justice and

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 229

adorned by absolute beauty. In that idyllic re-
treat, that earthly Eden, conceived and founded
by the learned and gentle George Ripley as a
home for all the beatitudes and all the arts, and
later, at Concord, his young mind, no doubt, was
stimulated by some of the most invigorating
forces that ever were liberated upon ' human
thought: Theodore Parker, who was incarnate
truth; the mystical spirit of Charming; the reso-
lute, intrepid Charles Anderson Dana, the som-
bre, imaginative Hawthorne; the audacious intel-
lect and indomitable will of Margaret Fuller;
and, greatest of all, the heaven-eyed thought of
Emerson. But the preordination of that mind to
the service of justice, beauty, and humanity was
germinal in itself. Curtis began wisely, because
he followed the star of his destiny. He was wise,
in boyhood, when he went to Brook Farm. He
was wiser still in early manhood, having formally
adopted the vocation of literature, when he
sought the haunted lands of the Orient, and
found inspiration and theme in subjects that
were novel because their scene was both august
and remote. On that expedition, consuming

230 OLD FRIENDS

four precious years, he penetrated into the coun-
try of the Nile, and he roamed in Arabia and
Syria. He stood before the Sphinx and he
knelt at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. It
is a privilege to be able to add, since he was an
American humorist, that he did not endeavor
to be comic. Curtis was a humorist, but he
was not the hiraiorist who grins amid the
sculptures of Westminster Abbey. He was
a humorist as Addison was, whom he much
resembled. He looked upon life with tranquil,
pensive, kindly eyes. He exulted in all of good-
ness that it contains; he touched its foibles with
bland, whimsical drollery; he would have made
all persons happy by making them all noble,
serene, gentle, and patient. Such a mind could
degrade nothing. Least of all could it degrade
dignity with sport, or antiquity with ridicule.
He looked at the statue of Memnon, and he saw
that " serene repose is the attitude and character
of godlike grandeur." " Those forms," he said,
" impress man with himself. In them we no
longer succumb to the landscape, but sit, indi-
vidual and imperial, under the sky, by the moun-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 231

tains and the river. Man is magnified in Mein-
non." He stood among the ruined temples of
Erment, and he saw Cleopatra, glorious in beauty
upon the throne of Rameses, and he uttered nei-
ther a scrap of moraUty nor a figment of jest.
" Nothing Egyptian," he said, " is so cognate to
our warm human sympathy as the rich romance
of Cleopatra and her Roman lovers." . . .
" The great persons and events," he added, " that
notch time in passing, do so because Nature gave
them such an excessive and exaggerated impulse
that wherever they touch they leave their mark;
and that intense humanity secures human sym-
pathy beyond the most beautiful balance, which,
indeed, the angels love and we are beginning to
appreciate."

That was the spirit in which he rambled,
and saw, and wrote. " The highest value of
travel," he urged, " is not the accumulation
of facts, but the perception of their signifi-
cance." In those true words he made his com-
ment, not simply upon the immediate and local
scene, but upon the whole wide stage of human
activity and experience. He was wise, when he

232 OLD FRIENDS

began to labor for the Present, thus to fortify
himself with the meaning of the Past. Those
early books of his, " Nile Notes," and the
" Howadji in Syria," glow with the authentic
vitality of nature, — ^her warmth, color, copious
profusion, and exultant joy, — and they are
buoyant with the ardor of an auspicious, un-
saddened soul. But they are exceptionally pre-
cious for their guidance to the springs of his
character. In the " Syria " there is a passage
that, perhaps, furnishes the key to his whole
career. He is speaking of successful persons,
and he says this: "... Success is a delusion.
It is an attainment — but who attains? It is the
horizon, always bounding our path, and therefore
never gained. The Pope, triple-crowned, and
borne, with flabella, through St. Peter's, is not
successful, — for he might be canonized into a
saint. Pygmalion, before his perfect statue, is
not successful, — for it might hve. Raphael, fin-
ishing the Sistine Madonna, is not successful, —
for her beauty has revealed to him a finer and
an unattainable beauty."

In those words you perceive the spirit of com-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 233

prehensive, sweet, and tolerant reason that was
ever the conspicuous attribute of his mind. Those
words denote, indeed, the inherent forces that
governed him to the last, — perception and prac-
tical remembrance of what has already been ac-
comphshed, and the reaUzation that human life
is not final achievement but is endless endeavor.

Curtis occasionally wrote verse, but to the
poetic laurel he made no pretension. In 1863
he dehvered before a society, at Providence,
called the Sons of Rhode Island, a poem of four
hundred and eighteen hnes, called " A Rhyme
of Rhode Island and the Times," which incor-
porates an impassioned pgean for the flag of the
United States, manifests his patriotic ardor,
shows the quahty of his diction in verse, and indi-
cates that if he had chosen to cultivate the rhyth-
mical style that was dominant in the eighteenth
century he might have become expert in the use
of it. Poetry, however, was not his natural vo-
cation. A " fine frenzy," as Shakespeare calls
it, is inseparable from the temperament of
the poet. He must not yield his mind abso-
lutely to its control, but he must be capa-

234 OLD FRIENDS

ble of it and he must guide and direct its
course. He must not, with Savage and kindred
outcasts, abdicate the supremacy of the soul.
He must, with Shakespeare and with Goethe
(to borrow the fine figure of Addison) , " ride on
the whirlwind and direct the storm." The con-
duct of his life must not be a dehrium; but the
capability of wildness must, inevitably, be a part
of his nature. Conventionality is boimded by
four walls. Unless the heart of the poet be pas-
sionate he cannot move the hearts of others, and
the poet who does not touch the heart is a poet
of no importance. Curtis was a man of deep
poetic sensibility. In that idyllic composition,
" Prue and I," the poetic atmosphere is inva-
riably sustained, and it is invariably beautiful.
The use of poetic quotation, wherever it occurs,
throughout his writings, is remarkably felic-
itous, — as in his book " Lotus-Eating," writ-
ten in 1851, — and it manifests keen appre-
ciation of the poetic element. His analy-
sis of the genius of Bryant, in his noble ora-
tion before the Century Club, in 1878, is not
less subtle than potential, and it leaves nothing

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 235

to be said. His perception of the ideal, — as
when he wrote upon " Hamlet," with the spirit-
ual mind and princelike figure of Edwin Booth
in that character, — was equally profound and
comprehensive, and as fine and dehcate as it was
unerringly true. There can be httle doubt that
he was conscious, originally, of a strong impulse
toward poetry, but that this was restricted and
presently was diverted into other channels, partly
by the stress of his philosophical temperament,
and partly by the untoward force of iron cir-
cumstance. His nature was not without fervor,
but it was the fervor of moral and spiritual en-
thusiasm, not of passion. His faculties and feel-
ings were exquisitely poised, and I do not think
there ever was a time in all his life when that
perfect sanity was disturbed by any inordinate
waywardness or any blast of storm. The benign
and potent but utterly dispassionate influence of
Emerson touched his responsive spirit, at the be-
ginning of his career, and, beneath that mystic
and wonderful spell of Oriental contemplation
and bland and sweet composure, his destiny was
fulfilled. Like gravitates to like. Each indi-

236 OLD FRIENDS

vidual sways by that power, whatsoever it be, to
which in nature he is the most closely attuned.
The poetic voice of Emerson was the voice not
of the human heart, but of the pantheistic spirit.
In Curtis the poetic voice was less remote and
more himian ; but it was of kindred, elusive qual-
ity. It was not often heard. It sounded very
sweetly in his tender lyric :

Sing the song that once you sung.
When we were together young,
When there were but you and I
Underneath the summer sky.

Sing the song, and o'er and" o'er —
But I know that nevermore
Will it be the song you sung
When we were together young.

There can be no higher mission than that of
the poet, but there are vocations that exact more
direct practical effort and involve more imme-
diate practical results. One of those vocations
early and largely absorbed the mind of Curtis.

To persons of the present day it would be dif-
ficult to impart an adequate idea of the state of
political feeling that existed in New England
about 1855. The passage of the Fugitive

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 237

Slave Law, which was regarded as the ciiknina-
tion of a long series of encroachments, had in-
spired a tremendous resentment, and the com-
munity was seething with bitterness and conflict.
The effusive, hysterical novel of " Uncle Tom's
Cabin " had blazoned the national evil of
slavery, and had aroused and inflamed thou-
sands of hearts against it, as a sin and a dis-
grace. Theodore Parker, that moral and intel-
lectual giant, was preaching, in the Boston Music
Hall. The passionate soul of Thomas Starr
King poured forth its melodious fervor, in the
old church in Holhs Street. Sumner, Phillips,
Wilson, Giddings, Hale, and Burhngame, in
Faneuil Hall, and elsewhere, were pleading the
cause of the slave and the purification of the
flag. The return of Anthony Burns from Bos-
ton, in June, 1854, when the courthouse was sur-
rounded by chains and by soldiers, and when
State Street was commanded by cannon, al-
though perfectly legal, was felt, by every free-
man, as an act of monstrous tyranny, and as the
consummation of national shame. The murder-
ous assault on Sumner, committed, in the United

238 OLD FRIENDS

States Senate chamber, by Brooks of South
Carolina, had aroused all that was best of manly
pride and moral purpose in the North, and, from
the moment when that blow was struck, every
man not blinded by folly knew that the end of
human slavery in the Republic must inevitably
come. There never had been seen in our polit-
ical history so wild a tide of enthusiasm as that
which swept through the New England States,
bearing onward the standard of Fremont, in
1856. Statesmen, indeed, there were, foresee-
ing and dreading civil war, who steadily coun-
selled moderation and compromise. Edward
Everett was one of those pacificators, and Rufus
Choate was another. Choate, in Faneuil Hall,
delivered one of the most enchanting orations
of his life, in solemn and passionate warning
against those impetuous zealots of freedom who,
as he beheld them, were striving to rend asun-
der the colossal crag of national unity, already
smitten by the lightning and riven from summit
to base. And it must be admitted, and it needs
no apology, that the conviction of generous
patriotism, in those wild days of wrath and tem-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 239

pest, was the conviction that a Union under
which every citizen of every free State was, by
the law, made a hunter of negro slaves for a
Southern driver, was not only worthless but
infamous. Conservatives, cynics, mercenary,
scheming politicians, and timid friends of peace
might hesitate, and palter with the occasion, and
seek to evade the issue and postpone the strug-
gle; but the general drift of New England senti-
ment was all the other way. Old political lines
disappeared. The everlasting bickerings of
Protestant and Catholic were for a moment
hushed. The Know-Nothings vanished. The
thin ghosts of the old silver-gray Whig party,
led by Bell and Everett, moaned feebly at part-
ing, and faded into air. Elsewhere in the nation
the lines of party conflict were sharply drawn;
but in New England one determination ani-
mated every bosom, — ^the determination that
human slavery should perish. The spirit that
walked abroad was the spirit of Concord Bridge
and Bunker Hill. The silent voices of Samuel
Adams and James Otis were silent no more.
" My ancestor fell at Lexington," said old Joel

240 OLD FRIENDS

Parker, — ^then over threescore years of age, —
" and I am ready to shed more of the same blood
in the same cause." It was a tremendous epoch
in New England history, and those persons who
were youths in it felt their hearts aflame with
holy ardor in a righteous cause, I was myself
a follower of the Pathfinder, and a speaker for
him, in that stormy time, assaiUng Choate and
Caleb Gushing, and other giants of the adverse
faction, with- the freedom and confidence that
are possible only to unlimited moral enthusiasm.
What a different world it was from the world of
to-day! How sure we were that all we desired
to do was wise and right ! How plainly we saw,
our duty, and how eager we were for the onset
and the strife! If we could only have foreseen
the beatific condition of the present, I wonder if
that zeal would have cooled. Some of us have
grown a little weary of rolhng the Sisyphus
stone of benevolence, for the aggrandizement of
a selfish multitude, careless of everything except
its sensual enjoyment. But it was a glorious
enthusiasm while it lasted.

Into that conflict, of Right against Wrong,

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 241

Curtis threw himself, with all his soul. His
reputation as a speaker had already been estab-
lished. He had made his first public address in
1851, before the New York National Academy
of Design, discussing " Contemporary Artists
of Europe," and in 1853 he had formally
adopted the Platform as a vocation; and it con-
tinued to be a part of his vocation for the next
twenty years. He was everywhere popular in
the lyceum, and he now brought into the more
turbulent field of politics the dignity of the
scholar, the refinement and grace of the gentle-
man, and aU the varied equipments of the zealous
and accomplished advocate, the caustic satirist,
and the impassioned champion of the rights of
man. I first heard him speak on politics, mak-
ing an appeal for Fremont, at a popular con-
vention in the town of Fitchburg. It was on a
summer day, under canvas, but almost in the
open air. The assemblage was large. Curtis
followed Horace Greeley, with whose peculiar
drawl and rustic aspect his princelike demeanor
and lucid and sonorous rhetoric were in striking
contrast. Neither of those men was worldly-

242 OLD FRIENDS

wise; neither was versed in political duplicity.
Greeley, no doubt, had then the advantage in
political wisdom; but Ciurtis was the orator, and,
while Curtis spoke, the hearts of that multitude
were first lured and entranced by the golden
tones of his delicious voice, and then were shaken,
as with a whirlwind, by the righteous fervor of
his magnificent enthusiasm. It was the diamond
morning blaze of perfect eloquence. He contin-
ued to speak for that cause, — everywhere with
great effect ; and down to the war-time, and dur-
ing the war-time, the principles which are the
basis of the American Republic had no cham-
pion more eloquent or more sincere. He aban-
doned the platform as a regular employment in
1873; but he never altogether ceased the exer-
cise of that matchless gift of oratory for which
he was remarkable and by which he was enabled
to accomplish so much good and diffuse so much
happiness.

In that domain he came to his zenith. The
art in which Curtis excelled his contemporaries
was the art of oratory. Many other authors
wrote better in verse, and some others wrote as

GEORGE WILLIAM CUETIS
Photograph by Pack

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 243

well in prose. Hawthorne, Motley, Lowell,
Whipple, Giles, Mitchell, Warner, and Sted-
man were masters of style. But in the felicity
of speech Curtis was supreme above all other
men of his generation. My reference is to the
period from 1860 to 1890. Oratory as it existed
in America in the previous epoch has no living
representative. Curtis was the last orator of the
great school of Everett, Sumner, and Wendell
Phillips. His model, in so far as he had a model,
was Sumner, and the style of Simmer was based
on that of Burke. But Curtis had heard more
magical voices than those, for he had heard Dan-
iel Webster and Rufus Choate; and, although
he was averse to their politics, he could profit by
their example. Webster and Choate, each in a
different way, were perfection. The eloquence
of Webster had the affluent potentiality of the
rising sun; of the lonely mountain; of the long,
regular, successive surges of the resounding sea.
His periods were as lucid as the light. His
logic was irresistible. His facts came on in a
solid phalanx of overwhelming power. His
tones were crystal-clear. His magnificent per-

244 OLD FRIENDS

son towered in dignity and seemed colossal in
its imperial grandeur. His voice grew in vol-
ume as he became more and more aroused, and
his language, glowing with the fire of conviction,
rose and swelled and broke like the great ninth
wave that shakes the solid crag. His speech,
however, was addressed always to the reason,
never to the imagination. The eloquence of
Rufus Choate, on the other hand, was the pas-
sionate enchantment of the actor and the poet,
an eloquence in which the listener felt the rush
of the tempest, and heard the crash of breakers,
and the howUng of frantic gales, and the sobbing
wail of homeless winds, in bleak and haunted
regions of perpetual night. He began calmly,
often in a tone that was hardly more than a whis-
per; but, as he proceeded, the whole man was
gradually absorbed and transfigured, as into a
fountain of fire, which then poured forth, in one
tumultuous and overwhelming torrent of mel-
ody, the iridescent splendors of description, and
appeal, and humor, and pathos, and invective,
and sarcasm, and poetry, and beauty — ^till the
listener lost all consciousness of self and was

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 245

borne away as on a golden river flowing to a
land of dreams. The vocabulary of that orator
seemed literally to have no limit. His voice
sounded every note, from a low, piercing whisper
to a shriU, sonorous scream. His remarkable
appearance, furthermore, enhanced the magic of
his speech. The taU, gaunt, vital figure, the
symmetrical head, the clustered hair, — once
black, now faintly touched with gray, — ^the ema-
ciated, haggard countenance, the palhd ohve
complexion, the proud Arabian features, the
mournful, flaming brown eyes, the imperial de-
meanor, and wild and lawless grace, — aU those
attributes of a strange, poetic personality com-
mingled with the boundless resources of his elo-
quence to rivet the spell of altogether excep-
tional character and genius. In singular con-
trast with Choate was still another great orator
whom Curtis heard, — and about whom he has
written, — ^that consummate scholar and rhet-
orician Edward Everett. There is no statelier
figure in American history. If Everett had been
as puissant in character as he was ample in
scholarship, and as rich in emotion as he was fine

246 OLD FRIENDS

in intellect, he would have been the peerless won-
der of the age. He was a person of singular
beauty. His form was a little above the middle
height and perfectly proportioned. His head
was beautifully formed and exquisitely poised.
His closely clustering hair was as white as silver.
His features were regular; his eyes were dark;
his countenance was pale, refined, and cold. His
aspect was formal and severe. He dressed habit-
ually in black, often wearing around his neck a
thin gold chain, outside of his coat. His elo-
quence was the perfection of art. I heard him
often, and in every one of his orations, — except
the magnificent one that he gave in Faneuil Hall
on the death of Rufus Choate, which was su-
preme and seemingly spontaneous, — his art was
distinctly obvious. He began in a level tone
and with a formal manner. He spoke without
a manuscript, and whether his speech was long
or short he never missed a word nor made an
error. As he proceeded, his countenance kin-
dled and his figure began to move. With action
he was profuse, and every one of his gestures
had the beauty of a mathematical curve and the

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 247

certainty of mathematical demonstration. His
movement suited his words; his pauses were ex-
actly timed; his finely modulated voice rose and
fell, with rhythmic beat ; and his polished periods
flowed from his hps with limpid fluency and deh-
cious cadence. A distinguishing attribute of his
art was its elaborate complexity. In his noble
oration on Washington, when he came to con-
trast the honesty of that patriot with the aUeged
mercenary greed of Marlborough, it was not
with words alone that he pointed his moral, but
with a graceful, energetic blow upon his pocket
that mingled the jingle of coin vsdth the accents
of scorn. One speech of his, I remember, — as far
back as 1852, — contained a description of the visi-
ble planets and constellations in the midnight sky;
and his verbal pageantry was so magnificent that
almost, I thought, it might take its place among
them.

Such was the school of oratory in which Cur-
tis studied and in which his style was formed.
It no longer exists. The oratory of a later day
is characterized by colloquialism, f amiharity, and
comic anecdote. Curtis maintained the dignity

248 OLD FRIENDS

of the old order. Some of my readers, perhaps,
remember the charm of his manner, — ^how subtle
it was, yet seemingly how simple; how com-
pletely it convinced and satisfied; how it clarified
intelligence; how it ennobled feeling. One se-
cret of it, no doubt, was its perfect sincerity.
Noble himself, and speaking only for right, and
truth, and beauty, he addressed nobility in others.
That consideration would explain the moral and
the genial authority of his eloquence. The total
effect of it, however, was attributable to his ex-
quisite, inexplicable art. He could make an ex-
temporaneous speech, but, as a rule, his speeches
were carefully prepared. They had not always
been written, but they had been composed and
considered. He possessed absolute self-control;
a keen sense of symmetry and proportion; the
faculty of logical thought and lucid statement;
copious resources of felicitous illustration; pas-
sionate earnestness, surpassing sweetness of
speech, and perfect grace of action. Like Ever-
ett, whom he more closely resembled than he did
any other of the great masters of oratory, he
could trust his memory and he could trust his

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 249

composure. He began with the natural defer-
ence of unstudied courtesy, serene, propitiatory,
irresistibly winning. He captured the eye and
the ear upon the instant, and, before he had been
speaking for many minutes, he captured the
heart. There was not much action in his deliv-
ery; there never was any artifice. His gentle
tones grew earnest. His fine face became illu-
mined. His golden periods flowed with more
and more of impetuous force, and the climax of
their perfect music was always exactly identical
with the chmax of their thought. There always
was a certain culmination of fervent power, at
which he aimed, and after that a gradual subsi-
dence to the previous level of gracious serenity.
He created and sustained the illusion of spon-
taneity. The auditor never felt that he had been
beguiled by art, but only that he had been en-
tranced by nature. I never could explain the
charm that he exercised. I can only say of him,
as he said of Wendell Phillips : " The secret of
the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstasy, of the
sunset's glory — ^that is the secret of genius and
of eloquence."

250 OLD FRIENDS

While, however, the secret of his eloquence was
elusive, the purpose and effect of it were per-
fectly clear. It dignified the subject and it en-
nobled the hearer. He once told me of a conver-
sation, about poetry and oratory, between him-
self and the once eminent United States senator,
Roscoe Conkhng. That statesman, having de-
clared that, in his judgment, the perfection of
poetry was " Casablanca," by Mrs. Hemans
("The boy stood on the burning deck"), and
the perfection of oratory a passage in a Fourth-
of-July oration by Charles Sprague, desired
Curtis to name a supreme specimen of eloquence.
" I mentioned," said Curtis, " a passage in Em-
erson's Dartmouth College oration, — ^in which,
however, Mr. Conkling could perceive no pecu-
liar force." That passage Curtis repeated to
me. The citation of it is appropriate, not only
as showing his ideal but as explaining his devo-
tion, not to art alone but to conscience.

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence.
You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money,
place and name. " What is this Truth you seek ? what is this

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 251

Beauty ? " men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God
have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold,
be firm, be true ! When you shall say, " As others do, so will
I; I renounce, I am sorry for, my early visions; I must eat
the good of the land and let learning and romantic expecta-
tion go until a more convenient season " ; — then dies the man
in you; then once more perish the buds of art and poetry
and science, as they have died already in a thousand, thou-
sand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your his-
tory ; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect.

It was natural that Curtis should adopt
that doctrine. He would have evolved it if
he had not found it. That divine law was in
his nature, and from that diidne law he never
swerved.

How should a man of genius use his gift?
Setting aside the restrictive pressure of circum-
stance, two ways are open to him. He may cul-
tivate himself, standing aloof from the world, as
Goethe did and as Tennyson did, — aiming to
make his powers of expression perfect, and to
make his expression itself universal, potential,
irresistible; or he may take an executive course
and yoke himself to the plough and the harrow,
aiming to exert an immediate influence upon his
environment. The former way is not at once

252 OLD FRIENDS

comprehended by the world: the latter is more
obvious.

In his poem of " Retaliation," Goldsmith has
designated Edmund Burke as a man who.

Bom for the universe, narrowed his mind.

And to party gave up what was meant for mankind.

It always seemed to me that Curtis made one
sacrifice when he went into business, and another
when he went into pohtics. He manifested, in-
deed, sterling character and splendid ability in
both; yet he did not, in a practical sense, succeed
in either. The end of his experiment in business
was a heavy burden of debt, which he was com-
pelled to bear through a long period of anxious
and strenuous toil. His experience was not the
terrible experience of Sir Walter Scott, that
heroic gentleman, that supreme and incompa-
rable magician of romance! but it was an expe-
rience of the same kind. He released himself
from his burden, justly and honorably, at last;
but the strain upon his mind was an injury to
him, and the literature of his coimtry is poorer
because of the sacrifice that he was obliged to

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 253

make. On a day in 1860 I met him in Broad-
way, and he said to me, very earnestly, " Take
advantage of the moment; don't delay too long
the fine poem, the great novel, that you intend
to write." It was the wise philosophy that takes
heed of the enormous values of youth and free-
dom. It pleases some philosophers, indeed, to
believe that a man of letters will accomplish his
best expression when goaded by what Shake-
speare calls " the thorny point of bare distress."
That practice of glorifying hardship is sometimes
soothing to human vanity. Men have thought
themselves heroes because they rise early. It
may possibly be true of the poets that they
"learn in suffering what they teach in song";
but the suffering must not be sordid. Litera-
ture was never yet enriched through the pressure
of want. The author may write more, because
of his need, but he will not write better. The
best literatures of the world, the literatures of
Greece and England, were created in the gentlest
and most propitious climates of the world. The
best individual works in those literatures, — ^with
little exception, — were produced by writers

254 OLD FRIENDS

whose physical circumstances were those of com-
fort and peace. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton,
Herrick, Addison, Pope, Byron, Wordsworth,
Shelley, Scott, Moore, Lamb, Thackeray, Ten-
nyson, — ^none of them lacked the means of
reputable subsistence. Burns, fine as he was,
would have been finer in a softer and sweeter
environment of worldly circumstance. Curtis
was a man of extraordinary patience, concentra-
tion, and poise. He accepted the conditions in
which he found himself, and he made the best of
them. His incessant industry and his compo-
sure, to the last, were prodigious. He never, in-
deed, was acquainted with want. The shackle
that business imposed on him was the shackle
of drudgery. He was compelled to write pro-
fusely and without pause. His pen was never
at rest. Once, in 1873, he broke down, and for sev-
eral months could not work at all, — his chair in
" Harper's " being temporarily filled by that gen-
tle, gracious poet the late Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
During more than forty years, however, he
worked all the time. Curtis, at his best, had the
grace of Addison, the kindness of Steele, the sim-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 255

plicity of Goldsmith, and the nervous force of
the mcomparable Sterne. Writing under such
conditions, however, no man can always be at his
best. The wonder is that his average is so fine.
He attained to a high and orderly level of wise
and kindly thought, of gentle fancy, and of win-
ning ease, and he steadily maintained it. He
had an exceptional faculty for choosing diversi-
fied themes, and his treatment of them was al-
ways fehcitous. He wrought in many moods,
but always genially and without flurry, and he
gave the continuous impression of spontaneity
and pleasure. A fetter, however, is not the less
a fetter because it is Hghtly borne, and whatever
is easy to read was hard to write. It may be,
of course, that the troublesome business experi-
ence in the life of Curtis was only an insignifi-
cant incident. It may be that he fulfilled him-
self as an author, leaving nothing undone that
he had the power to do. But that is not my
reading of the artistic mind, and it is not my,
reading of him. For me the mist was drawn too
early across those luminous and tender pictures
of the Orient, those haunting shapes and old his-

256 OLD FRIENDS

tone splendors of the Nile. For me the rich,
tranquil note of tender music that breathes in
" Prue and I " was too soon hushed and changed.
Genius is the petrel, and hke the petrel it loves
the freedom of the winds and waves.

AU thinkers repudiate the narrow philosophy
that would regulate one man's life by the stand-
ard of another. " Be yourself! " is the precept
of the highest wisdom. Shakespeare has written
his plays. Milton has written his epic. Those
things cannot be done again and should not be
expected. The new genius must mount upon its
own wings, and hold its own flight, and seek the
eyry that best it loves. I recognize, and feel,
and honor the nobihty of Curtis as a citizen; but
I cannot cast aside the regret that he did not ded-
icate himself exclusively to hterature. Every-
thing is relative. To such a nature as that of
Curtis the pursuits of business and politics are
foreign and inappropriate. He was undoubt-
edly equal to all their responsibihties and duties;
but he was equal to much more, to things differ-
ent and higher, and the practical service essential
to business and politics did not need him. The

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 257

State, indeed, needs the virtue that he possessed,
but needs it in the form not of the poet, but of the
gladiator, who, when he goes rejoicing to battle,
has no harp to leave in silence and no garlands
to east unheeded in the dust. I would send
Saint Peter, with his sword, to the primary meet-
ing; I would not send the apostle John. The
organist should not be required to blow the bel-
lows. Curtis was, by nature, a man of letters.
His faculty in that direction was prodigious.
So good a judge as Thackeray, looking at him
as a young man, declared him to be the most
auspicious of aU our authors. It is a great voca-
tion, and because its force, like that of Nature,
is deep, slow, silent, and elemental, it is the most
tremendous force concerned in human aifairs.
The mission of the man of letters is to touch the
heart, to kindle the imagination, to ennoble the
mind. He is the interpreter between the spirit
of beauty that is in Nature and the general intel-
ligence and sensibility of mankind. He sets to
music the pageantry and the pathos of human
life, and he keeps alive in the soul the holy enthu-
siasm of devotion to the ideal. He honors and

258 OLD FRIENDS

perpetuates heroic conduct, and he teaches, by
many devices of art, — by story, and poem, and
parable, and essay, and drama, — purity of life,
integrity to man, and faith in God, He is con-
tinually reminding you of the goodness and love-
liness to which you may attain; continually caus-
ing you to see what opportunities of nobihty
your life affords ; continually delighting you with
high thoughts and beautiful pictures. He does
not preach to you. He does not attempt to reg-
ulate your specific actions. He does not assail
you vidth the hysterical scream of the reformer.
He does not carp, and vex, and meddle. He
whispers to you, in your silent hours, of love,
heroism, hohness, and immortahty, and you are
refreshed and strong, and come forth into the
world smiling at fortune and bearing blessings
in your hands. On bleak winter nights, with the
breakers clashing on our icy coasts and the trum-
pets of the wind resounding in our chimneys,
how sweet it has been, sitting by the evening
lamp, to turn the pages of " The Tempest," or
"The Antiquary," or "Old MortaKty," or
" Henry Esmond," or " The Idylls of the King,"

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 259

.while the treasured faces of Shakespeare, Scott,
Thackeray, and Tennyson looked down from the
library walls! How sweet to read those ten-
der, romantic, imaginative pages of " Prue and
I," in which the pansies and the rosemary bloom
forever, and to think of him who wrote them!

But whether the choice that Curtis made was
a sacrifice or not, we know he made it, and we
know why he made it. Prefigured in his char-
acter and his writings, at the outset, and illus-
trated in all his conduct, was the supreme law
of his being — practical consideration for others.
The trouble of the world was his trouble. The
disciple of Andrew Marvel could not rest at ease
in the summer-land of Keats. His heart was
there; but his duty, as he saw it, steadily called
him away. As Matthew Arnold writes :

Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, aad fill'd his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound.
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing; he is dead.

He would have rejoiced in writing more books
like "Prue and I "; but the virtuous glory of

260 OLD FRIENDS

the commonwealth and the honor and happiness
of the people were forever present to him, as the
first and the most solemn responsibility. When
his prototype. Sir Philip Sidney, on that fatal
September morning, over three hundred years
ago, set forth for the field of battle at Zutphen,
he met a fellow-soldier riding in light armor, and
thereupon he cast away a portion of his own mail,
and in so doing, as the event proved, he east
away his life, in order that he might be no bet-
ter protected than his friend. In like manner
Curtis would have no advantage for himself, nor
even the semblance of advantage, that was not
shared by others. He could not, with his super-
lative moral fervor, dedicate himself exclusively
to letters while there was so much wrong in the
world that clamored for him to do his part in
setting it right. He believed that his direct,
practical labor was essential and would avail,
and he was eager to bestow it. Men of strong
imagination begin life with illimitable ideals, with
vast illusions, with ardent and generous faith.
They are invariably disappointed, and they are
usually embittered. Curtis was controlled less

.GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 261

by his imagination than by his moral sense. He
had ideals, but they were based on reason. How-
ever much he may have loved to muse and dream,
he saw the world as a fact and not as a fancy.
He was often saddened by the spectacle of hu-
man littleness, but, broadly and generally, he was
not disappointed in mankind, and he never be-
came embittered. The belief in human nature,
with which he began, remained his belief when he
ended. Nothing could shake his conviction that
man is inherently and intrinsically good. He
believed in the people. He believed in earthly
salvation for the poor, the weak, and the op-
pressed. He believed in chivalry toward woman.
He believed in refinement, gentleness, and grace.
He believed that the world is growing better and
not worse. He believed in the inevitable, final
triumph of truth and right over falsehood and
wrong. He believed in freedom, charity, jus-
tice, hope, and love. The last line that fell from
the dying pen of Longfellow might have been
the last word that feU from the dying lips of
Curtis : " 'Tis daybreak everywhere."
Upon the spirit in which he served the state

262 OLD FRIENDS

no words can make so clear a comment as his
own. " There is no nobler ambition," he said,
" than to fill a great office greatly." His esti-
mate of Bryant culminates in the thought that
" no man, no American, living or dead, has more
truly and amply illustrated the scope and fidelity
of republican citizenship." " The great argu-
ment for popular government," he declared, in
his fine eulogy on Wendell Phillips, " is not
the essential righteousness of a majority, but the
celestial law which subordinates the brute force
of numbers to intellectual and moral ascend-
ancy." And his stately tribute to the character
of Washington reached a climax in his impas-
sioned homage to its lofty serenity, its moral
grandeur, and its majestic repose. The quality
of every man may be divined from the objects
of his genuine devotion. There could be no
doubt of the patriotism of Curtis; and in the
conditions confronting the American Repub-
lic, — racial antagonism, discontented labor, so-
cialism, communism, anarchy, a licentious press,
a tottering church, ambitious sectarianism, the
foreign vote, boss rule, ring rule, corruption in

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 263

office, levity, profanity, and a generally low state
of public morals, — ^it was no slight thing that
such a man as Curtis should have testified, to the
last, his confidence in the future of the Amer-
ican people, and, to the last, should have devoted
his splendid powers more largely to their prac-
tical service than to anything else. Fortunate is
the man who can close the awfully true book of
" Ecclesiastes " and forget its terrible lessons !
Fortunate is the people that has the example, the
sympathy, the support, and the guidance of such
a man! If the altogether high and noble prin-
ciples that Curtis advocated could prevail, then
indeed the Republic that Washington conceived
would be a glorious reality. When a vdse and
final check is placed upon the influence of mere
numbers, then, and not till then, wiU the ideal
of Waslungton be fulfilled! then, and not till
then, will the Republic be safe! There is
no behef more delusive and pernicious than
the behef that virtue and wisdom are resident
in the will of an ignorant, vacuous, frivolous
multitude.

If, therefore, Curtis made a sacrifice in turn-

264 OLD FRIENDS

ing from the Muse to labor for the common-
wealth, at least it was not made in vain. Nor
must it be forgotten that, — despite his preoccu-
pation as a publicist and as the incumbent of
many impaid and exacting offices, — ^his contri-
butions to literature, especially in the domain of
the essay, were extraordinary and brilliant.
When, in 1846, he began his literary career, a
yoimg man of twenty-two, American literature
had begun to assume the proportions of a sub-
stantial and impressive fabric. Paulding,
Irving, Dana, Bryant, Cooper, and Percival
were in the zenith. Longfellow and Whittier
were ascending. Hawthorne was slowly becom-
ing an auspicious figure. Halleck and George
Fenno Hoffman were reigning poets. Poe had
nearly finished, in penniless obscurity, his deso-
late strife. Holmes, aged thirty-seven, was but
little beyond the threshold; and the fine genius
of Stoddard was yet unknown. Griswold still
held the sceptre, which Willis was presently to
inherit. AUston and Paulding were sixty-seven
years old; Irving was sixty-three; R. H. Dana
was fifty-nine; Sprague fifty-four; Bryant fifty-

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 265

one ; Drake, Halleck, and Percival fifty. Emer-
son was only forty-two. Into that company
Curtis entered, — a boy among graybeards. Au-
thors were more nvimerous than they had been
thirty years earlier, but they were less numerous
than they are now, and it was easier then to
acquire literary reputation than it is at present;
but genuine literary reputation was never easily
obtained. Curtis made a new mark. In his
Oriental travels the observation was large; the
fancy deUcate; the feeUng deep; the touch light.
Then came, in " Putnam's Magazine," between
1852 and 1854, the satirical " Potiphar Papers "
and the romantic " Prue and I," — ^the most im-
aginative and the loveliest of his books. After
that the hmitations of circumstance began to con-
strain him. He assumed the Easy Chair of
"Harper's Magazine," in 1854,— receiving it from
that Horatian classic of American letters, Don-
ald G. Mitchell, by whom it had been started, —
and he occupied it till the last. In "Harper's
Weekly," in 1859-'60, he wrote the novel of
" Trumps," a work which wiU transmit to the
future that typical American politician, prosper-

266 OLD FRIENDS

ous and potential yesterday, to-day, and for-
ever, General Arcularius Belch. In "Harper's
Bazar" he wrote a series of papers, extending over
a period of four years, called " Manners on the
Road," — ^the Road being life, and Manners be-
ing the conduct of people in their use of it. In
those papers and in the Easy Chair the Addi-
sonian drift of his mind was fully displayed.
Those Essays do not excel " The Spectator " in
thought, learning, humor, invention, or in the
thousand felicities of a courtly, leisurely, lace-
ruifle style; yet they are level with The Specta-
tor in dignity of character and beauty of form;
they surpass it in dehcacy; and they surpass it
in fertiUty of theme, sustained affluence of feel-
ing, refinement of mind, and diversity of literary
grace. "The Spectator" contains 635 papers, and
it was written by several hands, though mostly
by the hand of Addison, between March, 1710,
and December, 1714, — a period of four years and
nine months. The Easy Chair contains over
twenty-five hundred articles, and it was written
by Curtis alone, and was prolonged, with only one
short intermission, for thirty-eight years.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 267

It was Wesley, the Methodist preacher, who
objected to the custom of letting the devil have
all the good music. Curtis was a morahst who
objected to the custom of letting the rakes have
all the graces. Good men are sometimes so insipid
that they make virtue tedious. In Curtis, not-
withstanding his invincible composure and per-
fect decorimi, there was a strain of the gypsy.
He had "heard the chimes at midnight," and
he had not forgotten their music. He had been
a wandering minstrel in his youth, and he had
struck the light guitar beneath the silver moon.
As you turn the leaves of Lester Wallack's
" Memories of Fifty Years," you find Curtis to
be one of them ; you come upon him very pleas-
antly, in the society of that brilhant actor, and
you hear their youthful voices blended, — ^the ro-
bust yet gentle genius of Thackeray being a
listener, — in the golden cadence of Ben Jonson's
lovely lyric:

Drink to me only with thine eyes.

And I will pledge with mine;
Or leave a kiss but in the cup.

And I'll not look for wine.

268 OLD FRIENDS

Throughout his hfe Curtis never lost the ca-
pacity for sentiment; the love of music; the wor-
ship of art and beauty; the morning glow of
chivalrous emotion. He never became ascetic.
He was a Puritan, but he was not a bigot. He
made the jest sparkle. He mingled in the dance.
Without excess, but sweetly and genially, he
filled a place at the festival. From his hand, in
the remote days of the Castle Garden Opera, the
glorious Jenny Lind received her first bouquet
in America; and from his lips, in the last year of
his hfe, her illustrious memory received its sweet-
est tribute. When he heard the distant note of
the street-organ his spirit floated away in a
dream of " the mellow richness of Italy " ; yet he
was a man who could have ridden with Crom-
well's troopers, at Naseby, and given his life for
a cause. There was no plainness of living to
which he was not suited, and equally there was
no opulence of culture and art that he could not
wear with grace. The extremes of his character
explain his power. There was no severity and
no sacrifice of which he was not capable, in his
scorn and detestation of evil and wrong; but for

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 269

human frailty he had more than the tenderness
of woman. He knelt, with a disciple's reverence,
at the austere shrine of Washington: yet his elo-
quence blazed, like morning sunlight upon a wil-
derness of roses, when he touched the rugged,
mournful, humorous, pathetic story of Robert
Burns.

In this evanescent and vanishing world one
thing, and only one thing, endures, — ^the spiritual
influence of good. Out of nature, out of liter-
ature, out of art, out of character, that alone,
transmuted into conduct, survives ensphered
when all the rest has perished. We are accus-
tomed, unconsciously, to speak of our posses-
sions and our deprivations as if we ourselves were
permanent; not remembering that, in a very
little while, our places also will be empty. He
is dead who was our champion, our benefactor,
our guide! Life is lonelier without his presence.
The streets in which he used to walk seem va-
cant. The very air of his silent and slumber-
ous Staten Island, musing at the mysterious
gateway of the sea, seems more brooding and
more solitary. Yet, being dead, he far more

270 OLD FRIENDS

truly lives than we do, and in far more exceed-
ing glory, because in that potential influence
which can never die. Still in our rambles he
will meet us, with the old familiar look that al-
ways seemed to say, " You also are a prince, an
emperor, a man; you also possess this wonder-
ful heritage of beauty, and honor, and immortal
life." Still in the homes of the poor will dwell
the memory of his inexhaustible goodness. Still
in the abodes of the rich will live the sweetness
and the power of his benignant example: and
still, when we have passed away and have been
forgotten, a distant posterity, remembering the
illustrious orator, the wise and gentle philoso-
pher, the serene and delicate literary artist, the
incorruptible patriot, the supreme gentleman,
will cherish his writings, will revere his charac-
ter, and will exult in the splendid tradition of
his blameless, beautiful, beneficent hfe.

A few days after the death of Curtis "(August
31, 1892) I wrote this threnody:

I

AH the flowers were in their pride
On the day when Kuperfc died.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 271

Dreamily, through dozing trees,
Sighed the idle summer breeze.

Wild birds, glancing in the air,
Spilled their music everywhere.

Not one sign of mortal ill

Told that his great heart was still.

Now the grass he loved to tread
Murmurs softly o'er his head:

Now the great green branches wave
High above his lonely grave:

While in grief's perpetual speech,
EoU the breakers on the beach.

Oh, my comrade, oh, my friend.
Must this parting be the end ?

n

Weave the shroud and spread the pall I
Night and silence cover all.

Howsoever we deplore.
They who go return no more.

Never from that unknown track
Floats one answering whisper back.

Nature, vacant, will not heed
Lips that grieve or hearts that bleed.

272 OLD FRIENDS

Wherefore now should moTiming word
Or the tearful dirge be heard?

How shall words our grief abate? —
Call him noble; call him great;

Say that faith, now gaunt and grim.
Once was fair because of him;

Say that goodness, round his way.
Made one everlasting day;

Say that beauty's heav'nly flame
Bourgeoned wheresoe'er he came;

Say that all life's common ways
.Were made glorious in his gaze;

Say he gave us, hour by hour,

Hope and patience, grace and power;

Say his spirit was so true
That it made us noble, too; —

What is this, but to declare
Love's bereavement and despair?

What is this, but just to say
All we loved is torn away?

Weave the shroud and spread the p,alll
Night and silence cover all.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 273

ni

Oh, my comrade, oh, my friend.
Must this parting be the end?

Heart and hope are growing old:
Dark the night comes down, and cold:

Pew the souls that answer mine,
And no voice so sweet as thine.

Desert wastes of care remain —
Yet thy lips speak not again!

Gray eternities of space —
Yet nowhere thy living face!

Only now the lonesome blight.
Heavy day and haunted night.

All the light and music reft —
Only thought and memory left!

IV

Peace, fond mourner ! This thy boon, —
Thou thyself must follow soon.

Peace, — and let repining go!
Peace, — ^f or Fate will have it so.

Vainly now his praise is said;
Vain the garland for his head :

Yet is comfort's shadow cast
From the kindness of the past.

274 OLD FRIENDS

All my love could do to cheer
Wanned his heart when he was here.

Honor's plaudit, Friendship's vow
Did not coldly wait till now.

Oh, my comrade, oh, my friend.
If this parting be the end.

Yet I hold my life divine.

To have known a soul like thine:

And I hush the low lament
In submission, penitent.

Still the sun is in the skies:

He sets — but I have seen him rise I

XI.

OLD FAMILIAR FACES

Suggestion has frequently been made that I
should write an Autobiography, — a kind of com-
position which is sometimes found deeply inter-
esting, but from which I find myself inclined to
shrink. It seldom happens to anybody to have
such a story to tell as that of Benjamin Franklin
or that of William Gifford, or to possess such
stores of knowledge and experience as Gibbon
was able to communicate, or such recollections as
those that enrich the opulent pages of Henry
Crabb Robinson. It is, however, possible that a
narrative of my experience, from the time when,
as a poor boy, I gathered blue-berries on the
rocky hills back of Gloucester, or rambled, with
other barefooted vagrants, on the wharves of
Boston, till this day of active labor as a veteran
of letters, might find a little favor; and perhaps
it will, one day, be written; for I have seen and

275

276 OLD FRIENDS

known many persons and things of exceptional
interest, and it would be easily possible for me
to dilate upon my remembrance of notable inci-
dents and of famous men whom I saw in my boy-
hood and youth, — ^that time which now seems so
distant, that time of dream and drift and
thoughtless enjoyment. Channing, the saint-like
preacher, pale and thin, standing in his pulpit,
and, even to my childish eyes, an object of awe;
Story, the great jurist, riding in the long omni-
bus that plied between Cambridge and Boston,
and talking with the passengers ; the funeral pro-
cession of John Quincy Adams, as, with the
black coffin exposed to view, it wound its slow
way through Boston streets, to the wailing music
of the Dead March. Polk, the President, in his
carriage, with long-drawn escort, making tri-
umphal progress, bowing right and left to the
shouting multitude ; Father Taylor, in his Bethel,
rugged and vehement, preaching to sailors, and,
as it happened, to me, a sailor's boy; Gough, the
stentorian orator of Temperance, who certainly
terrified one of his auditors, and probably many
others, by his simulation of drunken delirium;

NOTABLE INCIDENTS 277

the festal adornment of the city, and the general
joy of the people, when the Cochituate Water
was introduced for common use; the exceeding
horror attendant on the discovery of Professor
Webster's murder of Dr. Parkman, in the Medi-
cal College; Junius Booth, that meteor of trag-
edy, whom I beheld as Pescara, and trembled to
behold ; Daniel Webster, most imperial of Ameri-
can statesmen, uttering his clarion tones from the
portico of the old Revere House; Shaw, the
august and venerable Chief Justice of the Su-
preme Court of Massachusetts, presiding in his
place, often apparently slimiberous, but always
really alert, watchful, and aware of everything
around him; the acclaim that hailed the laying of
the first Atlantic cable, — ^to celebrate which event,
indeed, I wrote a song, that was sung by a vast
audience in the Music Hall; Theodore Parker,
the honest but virulent apostle of liberty, ad-
dressing a great multitude, in the temple where
he preached, and denouncing Daniel Webster
with bitterest vituperation; Rufus Choate, the
most magnificent, wonderful, and inspiring of
orators, pouring forth the diamond torrent of his

278 OLD FRIENDS

entrancing eloquence from the platform of
storied Faneuil Hall, — ^those are a few of the
images and scenes that crowd, in wild disorder,
upon my recollection, when I think of vanished
years. There is more display of enterprise in the
hfe of To-Day than there was in the life of Yes-
terday; but the Past, as I recall it, was not devoid
of action, and it was illustrious with the presence
of great persons who, to the eyes of age, seem un-
matched in the Present. There would be much to
say, but at this moment a fleeting glimpse must
suffice of good fellows of a day long past, who
once brightened my hfe with the sunshine of their
genius, kindness, and humor, and gained my af-
fection, and, by me, are not forgotten.

ARTHUR SKETCHLEY

One of the bhthest of those companions, as
good and kind a man as ever lived, was the
humorist Arthur Shetchley. That was his pen-
name, and he was commonly known by it, but, in
writing to me, he generally signed his actual
name, which was George Rose. His personality
was exceedingly interesting, and he possessed that

AKTHUR SKETCHLEY
George Roue

ARTHUR SKETCHLEY 279

extraordinary faculty of humor which manifests
itself by making its possessor intrinsically funny.
He was a stalwart, handsome Englishman, of an
aspect at once grave and jovial. His manner was
dignified yet gentle. His voice was rich and sym-
pathetic, and, beneath the facetious demeanor that
he often, and to all appearance unconsciously, as-
sumed, there was a reverent spirit, a solemn sense
of duty, and a conscientious purpose to use his
faculty of humor for the pubKc good. The char-
acter with which he chose to invest himself, as-
suming it both as a writer and an impersonator,
was that of a garrulous female named Mrs. Mar-
tha Brown, a representative, in many respects, of
the average, conventional, middle-class Enghsh
mind. He first made it known in 1863 in London.
His method was to subject scenes and incidents
of the passing hour, — ^the popular resorts, the
popular fads, and occasionally the popular plays
and novels, the proceedings of the fashionable
world, and the manners of the multitude, — to the
shrewd observation and pungent comment of that
loquacious dame, and to cause her to talk about
those subjects, in a rambling way and cockney

280 OLD FRIENDS

dialect. In doing that he caused Mrs. Brown, —
" a party in the name of Martha," — ^to reveal her-
self as a woman of large domestic experience,
sound judgment, good sense, and good feeKng; a
woman appreciative of the comforts of life, but
acquainted also with its trials and sorrows; and,
especially, a woman essentially and naturally hu-
morous, yet completely unconscious of her gift of
humor. In a remote way the character might
have been suggested to Rose by the Mrs. Nickleby
of Dickens, but probably it was a study of actual
life. Mrs. Nickleby is artificial, silly, and tedious.
Mrs. Brown is natural, sensible, and entertaining;
and her inexhaustible vocabulary, blending truth,
ridicule, sense, kindness, and imexpected felicity
of illustration with a tangle of words, is delight-
fully comic.

Rose came to America in the autumn of 1867
and gave public entertainments in New York and
a few other cities, in the character of Mrs. Brown.
He did not wear feminine attire, but appeared in
the customary evening dress, speaking without
manuscript, and, by dint of facile, suggestive
impersonation, giving to his auditors a clear and

ARTHUR SKETCHLEY 281

complete mental image of a voluble, elderly Eng-
lishwoman of an eccentric order. As acting the
achievement was unique and extraordinary. By
the American audiences, however, Mrs. Brown
was not understood, and her clever and amiable
representative did not long remain in America.
In England, on the other hand, Mrs. Brown
appeared before more than a thousand audiences,
in many cities of the kingdom, and every one of
them was delighted. In Australia, also, she met
with great favor. Rose was the author of several
comedies, some of which were successfully pro-
duced and all of which are good. He died in
London, at No. 96 Gloucester Place, Portman
Square, on November 13, 1882, aged 55, and was
buried in Brompton Cemetery, — that peculiarly
forlorn place of sepulture, which is so populous
with memorials of men and women distinguished
in service of the arts.

One of Rose's marked peculiarities was exces-
sive candor. He uttered disapprobation of many
things and persons, sometimes sincerely, at other
times in a playful, whimsical spirit, — for he was
prone to mystification; as when, in a season of

282 OLD FRIENDS

much Shakespearean revival, he would cause Mrs.
Brown to exclaim, " Shakespeare again! O,
that dreadful man ! " One of his intimate friends
was Charles Mathews, the famous and ever de-
lightful comedian ; and I have heard that as often
as they met it was the custom of Mathews to
forestall his comrade's impending censure by ex-
claiming: 'Now, Rose, damn everything \ and
have it done with, — and let's go to breakfast."
Rose was not, essentially, a censorious man, but
conventionaUty, — the everlasting sameness of
persons, thoughts, talk, and customs, — made him
impatient and prompted him to satire. When
in New York, in the season of 1867-'68, he was
often in my company, and he was the cause of
much mirth. One morning he came to see me, at
the office of a paper called " The Weekly Re-
view," of which, amid a multiplicity of occupa-
tions, I was the managing editor (for one of the
most accomplished and amiable of men, Theodore
Hagen, long ago dead) ; and, being in joyous
spirits, he suddenly favored me with a signal ex-
ample of his humorous aptitude and his pro-
pensity for playful satire. A public reading from

ARTHUR SKETCHLEY 283

Shakespeare, by the famous Fanny Kemble, had
occurred, on the previous evening, at Steinway
Hall, and, as sympathetically related by the
morning papers, it had been interrupted, at a
critical moment, by the late, and, naturally, vex-
atious, arrival of one of the distinguished per-
former's female auditors. Fanny Kemble, as is
known to persons who know the truth about her,
while possessed of intellect, abihty, and a grand
manner, was an arrogant, imperious woman,
somewhat of the old Duchess of Marlborough
order, and the interruption of her recital, which
happened to be that of a lurid apostrophe by
King Lear, caused her to pause and to fix a bale-
ful gaze of fury on the belated member of her con-
gregation. According to one of her newspaper
worshippers, " the angry spot did glow on Csesar's
cheek." On hearing a remark about that inci-
dent Rose instantly assumed the character of
Mrs. Brown At The Play, and, pretendinjg that
the disturbance had been caused by that worthy
dame's incursion into the formidable Fanny's
audience, he improvised a performance as fine
with truth and humor as anything of the kind

284 OLD FRIENDS

could be, — a performance such as the most glow-
ing of theatrical records attribute to the versatile
John Edwin, the incomparable Theodore Hook,
or the irresistible Burton. " That ther' Miss
Kimbil," he exclaimed, in conclusion; " and a
brazen 'ussey as she was, a sittin' in a black velvet
gownd and a-glarin' at me ! 'Rumble your belly
full ! ' she sings out ; ' blow wind ! ' which I don't
'old vith no sich langwige, and me a respectable
widdy, and peppermint drops is good for it."

AETEMUS WAED

Rose, as might have been expected, was cor-
dially sympathetic with the American humorist
Artemus Ward, and he was foremost in greeting
him, with glad welcome, on his arrival in London.
They became intimate friends, and it has been
said that Artemus, when on his death-bed, asked
Rose to obtain for him the ministrations of a
Roman CathoUc priest. Knowing both those
men, intimately, and thinking of that death-bed,
I surmise that it was Rose, not Ward, who sug-
gested the summons of the Romish ecclesiastic.
Rose had been educated for the priesthood; he

ARTEMUS WARD 285

was devout; he lived and died in the Roman
CathoKc faith. He, naturally, would have sug-
gested the presence of a confessor at the bedside
of his dying friend, and he would have considered
that proceeding conscientious and necessary.
Artemus Ward, Charles Farrar Browne, was a
good man, but he was not a sectarian in religious
belief. My acquaintance with Artemus began
when he came to New York, from the West, in
the autumn of 1860, and began to write for
" Vanity Fair," of which paper, subsequently, he
was, for a short time, the editor. He was comi-
cally eccentric, equally as a character and a
writer. His person was tall and thin; his face
aquihne; his carriage buoyant; his demeanor joy-
ous and eager. His features were irregular; his
eyes of a light blue color and, in expression, merry
and gentle. His movements were rapid and in-
elegant. His voice was fresh and clear, and,
though not sympathetic, distinctly communicative
of a genial spirit. His attire was rich and gay, —
the attire of a man of fashion. He possessed, in
an extraordinary degree, the faculty of maintain-
ing a solemn composure of countenance while

286 OLD FRIENDS

making comic or ridiculous statements, — as when,
in his first lecture in New York, he mentioned
the phenomenal skill of his absent pianist, who,
he said, " always wore mittens when playing the
piano," — and he could impart an irresistible ef-
fect of humor by means of a felicitous, unex-
pected inflection of tone. There is httle in his
published writings that fully explains the charm
he exercised in conversation and in public speak-
ing. The prominent characteristics of those writ-
ings are broadly farcical humor, sportive levity,
and comic inconsequence, — as when, in describing
his visit to the grim Tower of London, he men-
tioned that he saw the " Traitor's Gate," and
thought that as many as twenty traitors might
go through it abreast. The charm of Artemus
Ward was that of a kindly, droll personality,
compact of spontaneous mirth and winning
sweetness. It is an attribute that words can but
faintly suggest.

In the days of our intimacy I sometimes urged
upon the attention of Artemus the importance of
a serious purpose in humorous writings, espe-
cially commending to him the example of Thack-

ARTEMUS WAED

Charles Fa-ivar Bioivne

ARTEMUS WARD 287

eray. Those monitions of mine were always
gravely accepted, but with a demure glance and a
twinkle of the blue eyes that seemed to betoken
more amusement than heed. Late one night, — ^in
f iact, about three o'clock in the morning, — ^when
we had been merry-making with gay companions,
we repaired, upon his invitation, to the hotel in
which he then lodged, the Jones House, at the
southeast corner of Broadway and Great Jones
Street, New York, a pleasant abode, long ago
demolished. On reaching his room he hastily
summoned a servant, and, after ordering that
copious refreshment should be provided, he ear-
nestly inquired, with an imposing aspect of
solemnity, an aspect by which I was completely
deceived, whether it would be possible to arouse
the landlord. The servant hesitated.

" It is late, sir," he said.

" I know it is late," replied Artemus; " but I
have a message for him, of the utmost impor-
tance. It is urgent, and I am sure he will be glad
to receive it. Do you think you could wake
him?"

" Yes, sir; I could wake him, if you "

288 OLD FRIENDS

" Well — I wiU see that you are not blamed.
Will you remember what I say, and be careful
to deliver the message exactly as I tell you? "

" Yes, sir."

" Well, then, give him my compliments; be sure
you mention my name ; he's an old friend of mine ;
he'll be delighted to hear from me. Wake him,
and tell him, — and speak distinctly, will you? "

" Yes, sir."

" Tell him, with my very kindest regards, that
— the price of liberty is eternal vigilance."

Verbal record of that bit of frolic conveys only
a hint of the skill with which the humorist main-
tained his gravity and the aboimding glee with
which he exulted over the accomplishment of his
playfully mischievous design. That was one way
of signifying to me his assent to the proposition
that humor can be made to convey a serious truth.

I never saw Artemus after he went to Eng-
land. He was warmly welcomed in London, —
where he became widely popular, by reason of his
comic entertainment, given at the Egyptian
HaU, and also by reason of his contributions to
"Punch"; and he gained many affectionate

ARTEMUS WARD 289

friends. Among those friends were Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Millward and Mr. and Mrs. Fred-
erick Burgess, from whom, when I first visited
England, in 1877, 1 derived much information as
to his London life. Millward related an incident
that is signally indicative of Ward's character.
The humorist had been overwhelmed vdth Eng-
lish hospitality, — a kindness which, once awak-
ened, knows no bounds ; he had entered with eager
zest into the festivities of the convivial Savage
Club and of other kindred coteries, and, conse-
quently, his health was beginning to break. Mrs.
Millward, equally sensible and kind, warned him
of his danger. " You must," she repeatedly said
to him, " learn to say 'No.' " The home of Mill-
ward was in the northern part of London, far
from the Strand and therefore distant from Bo-
hemian haunts. " One night, between midnight
and morning, we were awakened," said Millward,
recounting this occurrence, " by a loud knocking
at our door; and, on descending, I found Artemus
there, in evening dress, unusually composed and
serious. Of course I welcomed him, though at a
loss to understand the cause of his untimely call.

290 OLD FRIENDS

He urgently requested the presence of Mrs. Mill-
ward, and would take no denial, — having, as he
gravely declared, a most important communica-
tion to impart, that only she could appreciate.
Yielding to his earnest importunity, I persuaded
Mrs. Millward to join us. The moment she ap-
peared he greeted her with impressive solenanity.
' It is done/ he said ; ' I knew you would wish to
hear of it at once. I have been at the Savage all
evening, and I have said Nor The result,"
added Millward, " was that we sat up the rest of
the night, and made a feast of it, — ^in which, it
is needless to add, he said ' Yes! ' "

Artemus died, in the South Western Railway
Hotel at Southampton, on March 6, 1867, aged
32. A short time before his death a friend tried
to persuade him to swallow some medicine that
he was reluctant to take. " I would do anything
for you" urged that affectionate person. " Would
you ? " said Artemus. " Well — then you take it ! "
His body rested for a short time in Kensal Green
Cemetery, London, but, ultimately it was brought
home and buried at Waterford, Maine, his birth-
place. Among the tributes which then appeared

ARTEMUS WARD 291

in print none is more touching than a poem which
has heen attributed to that great master of lyrical
verse, the lamented Algernon Charles Swinburne,
but which was written by James Rhoades, of
Haslemere, Surrey, and pubUshed in a London
paper. One stanza of it is here given:

He came, with a heart full of gladness.
From the glad-hearted world of the West;

Won. our laughter, but not with mere madness;
Spake and joked with us, not in mere jest;

Por the Man in our hearts lingered after,
When the merriment died from our ears.

And those who were loudest in laughter
Are silent in tears.

BOHEMIA AGAIN

In his New York days Artemus consorted with
my old Bohemian companions, and the thought of
him brings with it a thought of them. In earlier
chapters of reminiscence I have adverted to that
period and that group of writers, with the pur-
pose of providing an authentic record, however
brief and incomplete, of an interesting literary
episode and a remarkable, though accidental,
coterie of authors, the writings of some of whom

292 OLD FRIENDS

have survived and seem destined to endure.
George Arnold, Fitz-James O'Brien, Thomas
Bailey Aldrich, Walt Whitman, Charles Daw-
son Shanly, Charles D. Gardette, and Nathan
G. Shepherd are names that shine, with more or
less lustre, in the scroll of American poets, and
recurrence to their period affords opportunity for
correction of errors concerning it, which have
been conspicuously made. On January 13, 1909,
a brilliant assemblage convened at the Carnegie
Lyceum, New York, to participate in a public
service commemorative of the loved and honored
poet Edmund Clarence Stedman, and speeches
were delivered making allusion to the literary
environment of his youth, the time when he began
as a writer, and the Bohemian circle of which
erroneously he had been supposed, and was then
declared, to have been a member. That dis-
tinguished man of letters, whose death befell on
January 18, 1908, was, in 1860, associated with
" The New York World," — ^which was started
in that year, beginning as a religious newspaper,
— and although he was acquainted with a few
members of the Bohemian group then existent, he

BOHEMIA AGAIN 293

was not associated with it. He knew George
Arnold, having met him, in boyhood, at a place
called "The Phalanx," at Strawberry Farms,
New Jersey, and there is, among his poems, a
tribute to the memory of that delightful comrade
and charming poet. '^He also knew Aldrich and
Whitman ; but with the other persons of that com-
pany he had no acquaintance. The literary circle
to which Stedman obtained access, and which he
pleased and adorned, was that which comprised
Bayard Taylor, Richard Henry Stoddard, Mrs.
Stoddard (the brilliant Elizabeth Barstow),
George Henry Boker, and Lorimer Graham, — a
circle distinct from that of the contemporary
Bohemia, and not propitious to it. Stoddard, in-
deed, who held an official post in the New York
Custom House and who was accustomed to con-
tribute to various publications of that day, I had
made the acquaintance of Henry Clapp, and I
remember that occasionally he wrote for Clapp's
" Saturday Press," and had difficulty, not un-
usual, in obtaining payment ; for the resources of
the paper were so slight that its continuance, from
week to week, was a marvel. One day Clapp and

294 OLD FRIENDS

I, having locked the doors of the " Press " office,
in order to prevent the probable access of credi-
tors, were engaged in serious and rather melan-
choly conference as to the obtainment of money
with which to pay the printer, when suddenly
there came a loud, impatient knocking upon the
outer door, and my senior, by a warning gesture,
enjoined silence. The sound of a grumbling voice
was then audible, and, after a while, the sound
of footsteps retreating down the stairs. For sev-
eral minutes Clapp did not speak but continued
to smoke and listen, looking at me with a serious
aspect. Then, removing the pipe from his lips, he
softly murmured, " 'Twas the voice of the Stod-
dard — I heard him complain!" That incident
sufficiently indicates the embarrassing circum-
stances under which the paper struggled through
the twenty-six months of its existence. Some of
its contributors were glad to furnish articles for
nothing, being friendly toward the establishment
of an absolutely independent critical paper, a
thing practically unknown in those days. Among
those friendly contributors were Henry Giles,
Charles T. Congdon, Edward Howland (by

IJUHAIII) H. STODDARD
rhotograph by Sarony

BOHEMIA AGAIN 295

whom the paper had been projected) , Brownlee
Brown, C. D. Shanly, and Ada Clare. T. B.
Aldrich was connected with " The Saturday
Press " only during the first three months of its
existence, and he had not, at any time, any pecu-
niary investment in it, so that his biographer's
remark about his having " taken the failure with
a hght heart " seems comic.

A point to be noted in making the literary
chronicle of those days is that Taylor, Stoddard,
Stedman, Boker, Curtis, Ludlow, and others
whose names have been commingled with those of
Henry Clapp's Bohemian associates were not
only not affiliated with that coterie but were
distinct from it, and, in some instances, were
inimical to it. O'Brien was at one time inti-
mate with Taylor and Stoddard, but the intimacy
did not continue. After I collected the liter-
ary remains of O'Brien, — Poems and Stories,
published in 1881, — the most censorious review of
them that appeared was, I remember, written by
Stoddard, in " The New York Tribune." The
time, 1859-'60, was one of turbulence; for the
whole land was seething on the eve of the Civil

296 OLD FRIENDS

War, and animosities were as common as friend-
ships. One feature of it, and that peculiarly in-
teresting to men of letters, was the survival of ties
that bound it to the period that is covered by
Poe's account of " The Literati." Epes Sargent
and George P. Morris were known to me; N. P.
Willis had accepted and pubUshed, with cordial
commendation, one of my juvenile poems; Fitz-
Greene Halleck, William Wallace, Cornelius
Mathews, and Thomas Dunn English were living
and writing, and I often saw them; and many
times I talked vrith the tart, sprightly, satiric
Charles F. Briggs, — ^long ago at rest, in the old
Moravian Cemetery, in Staten Island. Those
writers, with many others, figure in the pages of
Poe, and it is both significant and pleasant to
recall that Poe, often and harshly censured for his
criticism of his contemporaries, was the first au-
thoritative voice to recognize the excellence of
Bayard Taylor; haiUng him, 1849, as " xmques-
tionably the most terse, glowing, and vigorous of
all our poets."

STEDMAN 297

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

Stedman had been known to me as a poet for
some time before we met. Our acquaintance be-
gan in 1862, and it speedily ripened into a friend-
ship that was never marred, notwithstanding our
variant opinions as to literary matters and our
invariably frank and exphcit criticism of one an-
other as votaries of the Muse. That good old
story of Gil Bias and the Archbishop, so highly
prized by Dean Swift, cleverly enough inculcates
the policy of critical lenity or reserve; but it is
not true that every man likes to be flattered; and,
moreover, that friendship which cannot bear plain
speech and good counsel is not friendship at all.
One of my most agreeable recollections of early
friends in the literary vocation, — such as Francis
A. Durivage, James T. Fields, Epes Sargent,
Edwin P. Whipple, Benjamin P. Shillaber, and
George Lunt, — ^is that the custom of perfectly
candid criticism prevailed among them, without
even the least surmise that it would give pain or
be deemed unkind. Stedman, in his intercourse
with authors, whom he knew by the score, may

298 OLD FRIENDS

have had his patience severely tried. I do not
know. I know that in his intercourse with me
he was always truthful as well as considerate.
There came a time, in the fulness of years, and
while he yet lived, when I had the opportunity of
bearing my testimony to his fine genius, his lovely
character, and his varied and precious achieve-
ment. On December 6, 1900, to signalize his
completion and publication of that massive and
splendid book " An American Anthology," the
Authors' Club, of New York, gave a feast in his
honor, on which occasion I dehvered the address
that here follows :

Whoso conquers the world.
Winning its riches and fame,
Comes to the evening at last.
The sunset of three score years.
Confessing that love was real.
All the rest was a dream.

Those are the words of the loved and honored
Poet around whom you have gathered to-night,
to congratulate him on the fulfilment of a great
work and to crown him with the laurel of a per-
fect renown. They sound the keynote of this
occasion, and no word of mine could make it

STEDMAN 299

sound more true. He has lived worthy of love;
he possesses it ; and love is the crown of life.

I have listened here to the sweetest of all
music, the music of the voice of friendship; and
now, as I gaze over this brilliant company, —
" the choice and master spirits " of American
literature in our capital, — and consider the motive
of this assemblage and the emotion that thrills
every heart, my thoughts go back to a memorable
personal experience, nearly fifty years ago, when
first, consciously, I worshipped at the shrine of
ideal intellect and beauty. It was a lovely night,
in May. The river Charles, flowing dreamily
through the meadows of Cambridge, glimmered
in burnished darkness under the faint Hght of the
stars. The winds were hushed. The soft air
was laden with the fragrance of lilac and wood-
bine. At some distance the clock in the old
church tower was striking midnight ; and I stood
at the gate of Longfellow, whither I had come, a
stranger and a pilgrim, to lay my hand upon the
latch that the poet's hand had touched. Strange
and wild is the heart of youth; but, unperverted
by selfish ambition and unembittered by worldly

300 OLD FRIENDS

distrust, the heart of youth is true. Many a time
since then it has been my fortune to meet with
great authors of the Present and to stand at the
shrines of illustrious authors of the Past. Long-
fellow, Holmes, and Wilkie Collins were my dear
personal friends. I have clasped hands with
Charles Dickens, and Robert Browning, and
Matthew Arnold. I have made a pilgrimage to
Sloperton Cottage, and worshipped in Bromham
church, and stood at the grave of that wonderful
singer, Thomas Moore, " the poet of all circles
and the idol of his own." I have been privileged
to roam in the halls and cloisters and gardens of
Newstead Abbey, and to kneel, in awe and rev-
erence, beside the tomb of Byron, in Hucknall
church. I have stood in the old Castle Street
study of Sir Walter Scott, in Edinburgh, and
held in my hands the original manuscript of his
Journal, and looked upon the almost illegible
tracery of the last words that fell from his im-
mortal pen. And, many a time, by night and by
day, I have mused in Stratford church, and heard,
or seemed to hear, the angel echoes, as from an-
other world, that float around the sacred dust of

STEDMAN 301

Shakespeare. But never have I felt more deeply
than in my boyhood's dream and rapture, on that
magical night at the gate of Longfellow, the
glamour and the glory of poetic achievement and
poetic renown.

There were clouds, now and then, over the
landscape, no doubt ; but, in the retrospect, poetic
sentiment gladdens and glorifies all the Past.
Looking back to the middle of the last century
and to the old, scholastic city of Cambridge,
where some of my early days were spent, I see, as
in a vision, a time when the world seemed gentler
than now it is, and a place where action had fallen
asleep. The broad, white streets were shaded
with copious elms, willows, and silver-leaf maples.
The houses were, mostly, isolated in gardens.
The shining river Charles wound its sinuous way
through broad reaches of golden marsh land, —
still and solitary in the sunshine, save for the stir
of rippling grass and the flight of a wandering
gull. Once every hour the long omnibus roUed
lazily through the village street, on its drowsy
journey to neighboring Boston. Once every day
the noiseless tenor of life was faintly stirred by

302 OLD FRIENDS

the arrival of " The Boston Transcript." The
bell was rung, in the church tower, at 12, and
the curfew at 9. At intervals the voice of the
lecturer became audible, — Emerson, or Philhps,
or Parker, or Beecher, or Chapin, or Osgood, or
Whipple, or Curtis, or Giles. Once I heard
the elder Dana, the author of " The Buc-
caneer," — a shght, strange, gray, palUd man,
with dark, mysterious, awe-stricken eyes, — dis-
course on " Hamlet." Sometimes, rambling
among the quaint red college buildings at Har-
vard, the gazer might descry the decorous, stately,
sable figure of Edward Everett; or the tall,
shambUng Felton, with spectacled nose and
kindly, preoccupied face; or Pierce, the great
professor of mathematics, with his long hair and
hirsute visage; or the rough, surly Greek tutor
Sophocles, in his cynic mood, which was incessant,
and his ancient cloak, which seemed to be per-
petual; or the manly presence and thoughtful
countenance of Lowell; or the handsome, com-
fortable Agassiz, with his beaming face, and
dark, observant, benevolent eyes, so intellectual
and so sweet. There also might be seen

STEDMAN 303

the ambient Theophilus Parsons, happy in his
legal erudition, happier stiU in his Sweden-
borgian faith and his sunny, cheerful, self-con-
fident temper, that nothing could sadden. And
there, sometimes, came the diminutive but erect,
sprightly, vital Holmes, one of the blithest
spirits, surely, that ever walked the earth. As
I think of those times and persons, — serene in a
halo of poetic distance and reverie, — I breathe
once more the fragrant syringa and lilac in the
half-forgotten springtime that never can return,
and hear the patter of the falling leaf in bur-
nished autumn woods of Long Ago.

The wild ardor of youth is chastened and
sobered as years drift away, but, if once it has
been felt, the emotion of delight in the achieve-
ment of poetic genius is never quite extinguished.
No realm of memory yields so much to comfort
the heart and cheer the mind as the realm that is
peopled with the Poets of the Past, — that realm
to which your honored guest, throwing wide the
portals of song, has made the avenue of access so
easy and so pleasant for the generations that
are to f oUow him, and in which he will ever re-

304 OLD FRIENDS

main a noble and an honored figure. From " Bo-
hemia " to " The Blameless Prince "; from " Old
Brown" to "The Heart of New England";
from the unique, romantic, tender ballad of
" Montagu " to the wild and pathetic rhapsody
of " The Lord's Day Gale "; from the Bryant
Ode to the gossamer, lace-hke, exquisite loveli-
ness of " The Carib Sea "; from " Alice of Mon-
mouth," — ^with its thrilling, triumphant dirge,
— ^to the inspired and beautiful "Ariel" that
commemorates Shelley, the same pure poetic
thought and feeling flow steadily onward, and
the same golden music sounds, — the music of a
noble mind and a passionate and tender heart, by
nature consecrated to the service of beauty, and,
therefore, to the supreme welfare of mankind.
The Poet is not, and must not be, a teacher. He
does not know, and he need not ask, in what way
his spirit affects the world. Longfellow has told
you that he found his wandering song in the heart
of a friend. Emerson has told you that the sex-
ton, ringing his church bell, knows not that the
great Napoleon, far off among the Alps, has
reined his horse and paused to listen. The songs

STEDMAN 305

of the poet are sifted into the minds of men as the
sunshine is sifted into the trees of the forest. In
that way the Muse of Stedman has become a
loved companion to thousands of responsive
souls ; in that way his influence has wrought and
his solid fame has grown. I sometimes think
that the deadliest foe of creative impulse in
poetry is the faculty of criticism, and that our
poetic literature will never, as a whole, acquire
the opulent vitality, bloom, and color of old
English poetry, until our authors cease to be self-
conscious and critical, and, — as that rare poet
Richard Henry Stoddard so often and so
happily has done, — yield themselves f uUy to their
emotions. But the faculty of criticism, as Sted-
man used it, becomes creative. Never have I
found, in any of his pages, a narrow doctrine or a
blighting word. Genius, he has said, is some-
thing that comes without effort, and yet impels
its possessor to heroic labor. No better word
was ever said of it, nor was ever a more explicit
example given of it than this which we now con-
template and acclaim, in the splendid fruition of
his inspired, laborious, and grandly faithful life.

306 OLD FRIENDS

It is true, as our friend has said, that a " breath
of poetry is worth a breeze of comment." It
was once my dream that I also might contribute
something to the poetry of my native land; some
strain of beauty " that the world would not will-
ingly let die." That dream has vanished, with
many other dreams, — ^the fair beguilements with
which young ambition is flattered by delusive
hope, — and I can say, with old George Colman:

My Muse and I, ere youth and spirits fled.
Sat up together, many a night, no doubt;

But now I've sent the poor old lass to bed.
Because — because my fire is going out.

She does not always stay there. Sometimes,
long after midnight, I find her in my arm-chair,
in the chimney comer, and together we look into
the embers and think of our old friends : and this
is what we should like to say to one of them, most
honored and most prized :

Comrade and friend! what tribute shall I render?

Eoses and lilies bloom no more for me.
And naught remains of Fancy's squandered splendor

Save marish flowers that fringe the sombre sea. .

EDMUND CLAKENCE KTEDilAN

STEDMAN 307

But were each word a rose, each thought a blessing,

Each prayer a coronal of gems divine.
Honor and love and perfect trust confessing.

My words, my thoughts, my prayers should all be thine

Por thou hast kept the faith: thy soul, undaunted.
Whatever storms niight round thee rage and roll.

By one celestial passion still enchanted.
Has held its course right onward to its goal.

No sordid aim, no worldly greed, beguiling.
Could ever wile thy constant heart astray;

No vine-clad, Circean, Cyprian Muses, smiling.
Allure thy footsteps down the primrose way.

Thou hast not basely gathered thrift with fawning.
Nor worn a laurel that thou hast not won ;

But, in thy zenith hour as in thy dawning.
The good thy nature willed thy hand has done.

On thy calm front the waves of trouble, broken.
Have backward surged and left thee regnant still :

Nor tempests of the soul nor griefs unspoken
Have e'er had power to shake thy steadfast will.

Thy glory cannot w^ne, — for were thy singing

Stilled at its source, through all the domes of fame.

In one great organ burst, superbly ringing.
The whole poetic choir would chant thy name.

308 OLD FRIENDS

Thy soul is music: from its deeps o'erflowing, —
With the glad freedom of the wild-bird's wing,

Where icy gales o'er sunlit seas are blowing, —
It sings because divinely born to sing.

No stain is on thy banner: grandly streaming.
Its diamond whiteness leads the tuneful host,

Porever in the front of honor beaming.
And they that know thee best must love thee most.

So rest: thy regal throne thou hast ascended:
The standards blaze, the golden trumpets ring.

And in one voice our loyal hearts are blended —
God bless the Poet and God save the King !

THE ORNITHOEHYNCrS CLUB

There was a notable group of writers and
artists in New York, of earlier date than the
Pfaff Bohemian coterie, comprising, among its
many members (as I heard, for I was not asso-
ciated with it) , Francis Henry Temple BeUew,
Charles Gayler, WiUiam North, Sol Eytinge,
Charles G. Rosenberg, Charles B. Seymour,
and Fitz-James O'Brien, all of whom are dead.
That society, unlike the Pfaflf coterie, was, after
a fortuitous fashion, organized, and it had a

THE ORNITHORHYNCUS 309

name, — ^the remarkable name of the Ornitho-
rhyncus Club. In New Guinea there is a four-
footed animal, having a bill like that of a duck,
known to the inhabitants of that country as the
Mulligong, but, scientifically, designated the
Ornithorhyncus paradoxus, or Duck-Billed
Platypus. The singular aspect of that quad-
ruped had attracted the amused attention of
Bellew, an excellent artist; and when, as hap-
pened, a German widow, poor, and wishful to
retrieve her once opulent fortune, opened a res-
taurant, in Spring Street, and wanted a name for
it, he suggested that of the eccentric Australasian
beast, and merrily persuaded her to adopt it ; and
he painted a sign for her, which was hung in
front of the house, representing the Ornithorhyn-
cus in the act of smoking a pipe, while grasping a
glass of foaming beer. At that facetious sign
the writers and artists constituting the Ornitho-
rhyncus Club habitually met, for the pastime of
talking, singing, joking, drinking beer, and
smoking church-warden pipes. Many of their
songs were composed among themselves, — one,
written by O'Brien and sung to an air from the

310 OLD FRIENDS

ever popular " Fra Diavolo," having been an
especial favorite.

CHARLES B. SEYMOUR

In that group an especially attractive person-
ality was that of Charles B. Seymour, with
whom, later, I had the good fortune of friendly
companionship. Seymour, who was an English-
man, — ^born in London, December 13, 1829, —
came to America at the age of twenty, estab-
lished his residence in New York, and, at first,
obtained employment as a teacher. Later he
became associated with the editorial staff of
" The New York Times," which was started in
1850, and when first we met he held the office of
musical and dramatic reviewer for that paper,
a position that he continued to occupy till his
death, on May 18, 1869. Some of the qualifica-
tions for such an ofiice are learning, judgment,
taste, sensibility, discernment, a kind heart, and
the habit of incessant industry. Seymour pos-
sessed them, and during a period of fourteen yeats,
from 1855 to 1869, he recorded the movement of
musical and dramatic art in New York, advocat-

CHARLES B. SEYMOUR 311

ing right principles, fostering worthy endeavor,
recognizing merit, and continuously exerting a
good influence, — ^the rather that his learning was
tinged with playful humor and his incisive style
was felicitous with lightness of touch. Few writ-
ers have the equanimity and patience to use the
critical faculty in a thoughtful, thorough, con-
scientious, impartial manner, and singers and
actors are indeed fortunate who find themselves
recognized in the press with an intelUgent appre-
ciation not less sympathetic and hberal than ac-
curate and just. Seymour was not content with
appreciating artists for himself; he labored to
interpret them to others. That service, fully
performed, imparts a measure of permanence to
those artistic achievements which, otherwise, are
wholly ephemeral. The entranced Kstener to
music or the enthralled spectator of acting is
usually content with declaring that the one is
magnificent or the other superb: the efficient
critic must justify his verdict of admiration by
exact analysis of the effect that has been pro-
duced and of the cause that has produced it, and,
in thus declaring the reasons for his judgment, he

312 OLD FRIENDS

must define and designate the powers of an artist
and the method hy which they have been used.
That professional obligation Seymour always
strove to meet, and therefore his writing was a
benefit to his readers.

But it was not only the talent of Seymour that
commended him to the Uldng of those sensitive
persons, the singers and the actors, of whom he
wrote, and to the esteem of his f eUow-workers in
the press. His temperament was sweet and his
life was gentle. He was simple and sincere. He
took his part in the everyday work of life, and he
did his best to make it worthy. Continuity of
effort in composition had made him an exception-
ally facile writer, so that his pen never halted,
and in emergencies he was neither dazed nor per-
plexed. His style was clear and terse, and a
glow of spontaneous mirth often played along the
silver threads of his thought. His writings in
the press, — " a great-sized monster of ingrati-
tudes," which has, in many countries, devoured
the product of many briUiant minds, — are lost
and gone. He was a correspondent for " The
New York Times " at the Paris Exposition, in

WILLIAM NORTH 313

1868, where his services as a member of the
American Commission were recognized by the
presentation to him of a medal from the Emperor
of France. One memorial of him, though, re-
mains in something like a permanent form — a
volume of biography that he wrote, called " Self-
Made Men," published in 1858.

WILLIAM NORTH

Among my relics there is a letter addressed by
Seymour to Frank Bellew, not only containing
authentic biographical detail, but conveying a
peculiarly sympathetic and winning intimation
of the character of its writer:

158 Nassau Street, N. Y., November 17, 1854
Dear Bellew:

You are long ere this acquainted with the melancholy
termination of our poor friend North's career. He left a
letter for you, which has been forwarded. Other particulara
of the event were published in the " Daily Times " and other
papers. The cause of death was love, not poverty. He im-
pressed that on me, the night before the catastrophe. I little
thought that the threat he uttered then, — as he had done
many times before, — ^would so surely be carried into execu-
tion.

It is to me, and wiU be to you, a source of inexpressible

314 OLD FRIENDS

consolation tliat we, at least, of all his friends, understood
appreciated, and loved him to the last. To the time of his
death I valued him as a brother, and cannot recall an angry-
word that ever passed his lips or mine. Poor fellow; my
heart bleeds when I think of his sad, sad end.

I wish to relieve you on one point where you will, I am
sure, experience uneasiness. Everything that propriety and
love demanded has been done. The corpse now lies in the
vault of Greenwood Cemetery. I have not interred it, be-
cause I thought it necessary to write to England, to consult
North's relations, before doing so. I ask nothing from them,
only the privilege of honoring my poor friend's remains here,
if they do not wish them there.

A great amount of sympathy has been elicited by the event,
but I have not permitted it to interfere with my action in
the matter. Excepting myself and TJnderhill, there was no
other friend here from whom North would have accepted a
favor. I have not allowed any one to offend his memory by
offering assistance now. Underbill insisted, and he alone
participated.

I have ninety days privilege of the vault. If I do not hear
from England in that time, I shall purchase a plot of ground,
and suitably mark the spot where lies a man of genius, a
gentleman, and a kind, brave, well loved friend.

With best wishes for your happiness,

I am, dear Bellew,

Tours in sorrow,

C. Seymour.

More than fifty years have passed since the
death of William North. Not widely known in

WILLIAM NORTH 315

his own time, he is not at all known now: yet his
writings, notwithstanding indications of a vision-
ary, unstable brain, possess poetical enthusiasm
and are a part of literature, while his personal
story has a place in literary annals. Under the
name of Dudley Mondel, he has, to some extent,
sketched himself, in his novel called " The Slave
of the Lamp," — existent now, though long out
of print, as " The Man of the World." He says
that he was born at sea, and that he was educated
partly in England and partly in Germany. In
boyhood he wrote a novel called " Anti-Con-
ingsby," for the purpose of controverting the
political views of the then young Disraeli. He
came from London to New York when about
twenty-five years old, and he wrote industriously
for "Graham's Magazine," " Harper's Maga-
zine," " The Knickerbocker Magazine," " The
Whig Review," and other periodical pubUcations.
Among his stories are " The Phantom World,"
" The Usurer's Gift," " My Ghost," and " The
Man That Married His Grandmother." North's
fantastic, almost delirious " Slave of the Lamp "
is not for a moment comparable with " Treasure

316 OLD FRIENDS

Island," but it contains a remote premonition of
that remarkable tale, in its account of a voyage
to an auriferous isle, somewhere in the Antarctic
zone, on which the adventurous Dudley Mondeh
the hero of the novel, and his singularly miscel-
laneous companions found much gold, and on
which, deep in the crater of a vast conical moun-
tain, they discovered a broad lake of quicksilver,
into which one of the group fell and was con-
verted into a silver statue, reposing on the surface
of the lake.

The woman for hopeless love of whom North
committed suicide was, in after years, known to
me, and certainly she was beautiful enough to
have inspired idolatrous passion in the breast of
even a marble monument. The fatal, crazy act
was done on the night of November 14, 1854.
The unfortunate man drank prussic acid and fell
dead, across his bed. Henry Clapp, who knew
him well, told me that it was one of North's
peculiarities that, in whatever room he chanced to
be, at night, he could not bear to have the door
stand open, even an inch: yet the door of the room
in which he died was found to be standing ajar

SOL, EYTINGE 317

by persons who, at morning, discovered the
corpse. One of the letters that he left has drifted
into my possession. It is written in blue ink, and
it is, indeed, a ghastly souvenir of a ruined Ufe:

To F. T. Bellew and Mss. Bellew.

Dear Friends: — ^May you be happy! Do not regret me.
I am not fit for this world. I fly to a better life. I am cahn
and brave and hopeful.

Ever afiectionately and truly,

W. North.
SOL EYTINGE

'A man of original and deeply interesting char-
acter, an artist of exceptional facility, possessed
of a fine imagination and great warmth of feel-
ing, passed from the world, in the death of my
old companion of many years, Sol Eytinge, — an
event which befeU on March 26, 1905, at
Bayonne, New Jersey. In his prime as a
draughtsman he was distinguished for the felicity
of his invention, the richness of his humor, and
the tenderness of his pathos. He had a keen wit
and he was the soul of kindness and mirth. The
aggregate of his works is large, but, individually,
they are widely scattered. The most appropriate

318 OLD FRIENDS

pictures that have been made for illustration of
the novels of Dickens, — pictures that are truly
representative and free from the element of cari-
cature, — are those made by Eytinge, and it is
remembered that they gained the emphatic ap-
proval of the novelist. The portrait of Dickens
that is included among the illustrations of this
volume was made by Eytinge, and it is the best
portrait existent of that great author, — ^because,
while faithful to physical lineaments, it conveys
expression of the mind and soul. The artist
loved, reverenced, and understood the man whose
semblance he had undertaken to create.

A hfe dedicated to " the serene and silent art "
is seldom eventful. That of Sol Eytinge was
exceptionally tranquil. He was born in Phila-
delphia, October 23, 1833, and there was edu-
cated. In June 1858 he was married, in Brook-
lyn, to Miss Margaret Winship, — ^Rev. Henry
Ward Beecher performing the marriage service,
and the American humorist Mortimer Thomson,
whose pen-name was Q, K. Philander Doesticks,
P. B., acting as groomsman; a clever writer and
a good fellow, almost or quite forgotten now.

SOL EYTINGE 319

Sol's circle of artistic companionship, then and
in after years, comprised Ehhu Vedder, George
H. Boughton, Cass Griswold, Charles Coleman,
W. J. Hennessey, William J. Linton, Albert
and William Waud, and A. V. S. Anthony, —
names that tell their own bright story of fine
achievement and honorable distinction. It was a
gay company, and many a happy hour do I re-
member, of festive communion with it. Many of
those old friends have passed away. Vedder and
Coleman, veterans now, are dwelling at Capri,
in Italy, — ^Vedder in the " Tower of the Four
Winds," whereto I waft a greeting, across the
world. The grave of Sol Eytinge is in New
York Bay Cemetery, Jersey City. His widow,
who survives, in serene age, long ago made a
name in letters, by reason of her exceptional
humor and her expert invention, particularly
as a writer for the young, and to think of her
is to recall many a convivial occasion that her
generous hospitality provided and that her kind-
ness and her genial wit enriched.

The pictures that Eytinge made for embel-
lishment of the poet Lowell's "Vision of Sir

320 OLD FRIENDS

Launf al " are especially significant of his sense
of romantic atmosphere and his sympathetic per-
ception of poetic ideals. He was a man of inde-
pendent mind and genial temperament; he was
devoted to the ministration of beauty; and his
conduct and manners had the charm and sim-
plicity of genius. He was very dear to me as a
comrade, and so I give myself the pensive pleas-
ure of gracing my pages with his name. Over
his grave might well be written the lines that Dr.
Johnson wrote, of Hogarth:

The hand of him here torpid lies

That drew the essential form of grace;

Here closed in death the attentive eyea
That saw the manners in the face.

JAMES EUSSELL LOWELL

When I was a youth, dwelKng in Cambridge,
I sometimes saw James Russell Lowell and often
heard of him, but I did not then possess the honor
of an acquaintance with him. At the fireside of
Longfellow I heard many kind words about ab-
sent friends and contemporary men of letters.
Longfellow could be stern in rebuking faults and

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 321

condemning evil, but a gentle consideration for
human weakness was one of the traits of his
lovely character, and I observed that when he
spoke of the absent he spoke kindly. His allu-
sions to LoweU were frequent and affectionate.
Having asked me, one evening, if I had ever seen
Lowell, he exclaimed: " He is one of the manli-
est and noblest men that ever lived! " As he said
this he rose and playfuUy imitated Lowell's
erect, dauntless bearing and manner. Those
words made an indelible impression on my mind,
and Lowell has always lived in my memory as
he was represented by Longfellow. I did not
meet him until long afterward, in 1881, when he
held the office of American Minister to the Court
of Saint James's. Our meeting occurred at a
festival in London. He manifested cordial kind-
ness, and then and later he was thoughtful in do-
ing courtesies. His appearance had undergone
a marked change. He was no longer militant
nor enthusiastic. His aspect was that of pensive
dignity and intellectual concentration. He was
invariably gentle, but he was only momentarily
playful. From observation, from slight social

322 OLD FRIENDS

intercourse with him, and from letters that
passed between us, I derived the impression that
Lowell was a man who broadened and mellowed
through every year of his life, and who was more
deeply interesting and lovable in his age than in
his youth. He died in 1891, in his seventy-third
year. Poets, when personally encountered, often
disappoint expectation, but Lowell was not a dis-
appointment. Few men have been so generally
attractive. He is not often mentioned as a poet,
but frequently as an essayist, a moralist, and a
reformer. If he had been born and reared in Old
instead of New England, if his genius had been
developed amid the venerable, imposing antiqui-
ties and exquisite rural beauties of that dehcious
country and clime, perhaps his poetic voice might
have sounded a more alluring, decisive, trium-
phant note. Puritanical environment seems to
have shaped his destiny, while the critical faculty,
that all-devouring monster, seems to have ham-
pered his creative impulse, — an experience not
uncommon, in an age when everybody writes
" criticism." But he was a great intellect, a po-
tent moral force, a keen satirist, a critic both com-

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 323

prehensive and subtle, while the temperament of
genius, combining aspiration and sensibiUty, in-
vested him with inherent grace, — a quality which
has been well designated as an impression of
beauty that cannot be analyzed.

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL

I had thought of writing a comprehensive re-
view of the field of early American Literature, as
an appropriate prelude to my sketches of repre-
sentative authors, of my own time, whom I have
personally known; but I remembered that this
had been thoroughly and admirably done by one
who was long our hterary chieftain, the wise and
gentle Donald Grant Mitchell, in his book of
" American Lands and Letters." It was my
privilege to be a reader of Mitchell in early life,
and for me his writings have not lost their fascinat-
ing charm. I did not meet him till he had sought
the chimney nook of age, but for years he honored
me with his regard, and I should grieve to lose
any opportunity of paying my humble tribute to
his memory. Mitchell died, at Edgewood, Decem-
ber 15, 1908. His excellent book about American

324 OLD FRIENDS

writers who flourished during the troubled forma-
tive period that extends from the time of Captain
John Smith to that of the advent of the poet
Bryant is minute without being either laborious
or prolix, — embodying the ripe conclusions of
thoughtful research, and providing both narra-
tive and commentary, in that tranquil, meditative
spirit, that clarity of judgment, and that gracious
facility of style which come only from large ex-
perience, and which are possible only to a master
of the literary art. Some of the early American
writers were bigots, and their writings are harsh;
but of all those writers Mitchell, working with fine
intuition and a superlatively hght touch, fur-
nished a history that is rich with learning, delicious
with gleams of playful humor, and charming with
grace. Such antique worthies as Roger Will-
iams, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, Sam-
uel Sewall, Timothy Dwight, John Trumbull,
and Joel Barlow, described by an annalist who
read not only their books but their minds, are
made as actual as when once they lived.

Reading Mitchell is like stroUing through
the woods on a breezy summer day, with all its

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 325

pleasures of fragrant air, rustling boughs, bird
notes, and the soft ripple of unseen brooks. His
works fill many volumes, ranging backward over
many years, but the earliest of them revealed the
soul of the writer, and, except that he mellowed
in time, he did not change. That same unity ap-
peared in the character of Longfellow, — ^with
whom, indeed, Mitchell was mentally and spirit-
ually kindred. Readers who truly know the
" Reveries of a Bachelor " and " Dream Life "
comprehend the author of them, and, loving those
books, have learned them by heart. Most per-
sons, authors included, neither allow peace to
others nor find it themselves. The hirnian being
who tranquillizes his fellow creatures is rare.
Mitchell, from the first, allured his readers with
gentleness and made them calm. Washington
Irving spoke of having been drawn toward him
by the qualities of head and heart in his writings ;
but he did not name them. Perhaps he would
have mentioned, first of all, that quality of grace
which diffuses peace, — ^that blending of dignity
and sweetness which is at once the sign and the
allurement of natural distinction. Mitchell never

326 OLD FRIENDS

stood in front of his subject, to ask attention to
himself. Washington Irving had the same char-
acteristic, and it was natural that they should be
drawn together. In early life Mitchell was much
under the influence of that veteran. " Dream
Life " was dedicated to Irving, and some of the
best glimpses that can be obtained of that revered
author are found in Mitchell's written recollec-
tions of him. The disciple, however, was not an
imitator. Mitchell's papers on " The Squire "
and " The Coimtry Church " are as characteristic
as anything in " The Sketch Book," but their
writer's style is his own. Authors, like actors,
run in mental families, and the families are not
numerous. Mitchell is of Irving's mental family,
and both of them consort with Goldsmith.

Another of his allurements is the great wealth
of feeling implied in his works, and still another
is his passionate love of Nature. He did not
write many stories, but the ingredients of a
superb novel are in the English and Italian epi-
sodes of the " Reveries of a Bachelor " ; and
surely the pen that could describe the touching
incidents of the " Rainy Day at Armagh," in

DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 327

the " Seven Stories," need not have shrunk from
the field of fiction. No novelist has shown a
deeper knowledge of youth, a keener sympathy
with its sentiments, passions, and aspirations, or
a broader capacity to see, as a whole, the relations
of human beings through the operation of love,
and therewithal the elemental experiences of hu-
man life. " Every man's heart," he said, " is a
living drama. Every death is a drop scene.
Every book that records sentiment or passion is
only a faint footlight, to throw a little flicker
on the stage." It is the contemplative spirit that
speaks, rather than the weaver of fiction, and
such a character clearly predicates a career of
reticence and works of meditation. Mitchell's
writings put much in little, and are addressed to
persons who can think. They do not attempt to
astonish, to dismay, or " to be knowing in bril-
hance." They are simple, soimd, and true, like
the heart from which they sprang. They have
helped many an earnest soul to bear its burdens
with cheerful patience, and that is why they are
loved. Yet the Mterary art of them might almost
equally well account for their fascination. If

328 OLD FRIENDS

his theme be only the sound of rain upon the
roof, Mitchell endears it by some indefinable
magic of touch. The fidelity and the quaintness
of Izaak Walton and of White of Selborne live
again, in the Edgewood books. In no other
treasury can be found such sweet, artless, fra-
grant memorials of the early and the late poets,
who lived close to Nature and were nestled in her
bosom, — ^the Greek and Roman bards of rural
life, and such moderns as Burns, Crabbe, Hogg,
Shenstone, and Bloomfield. Turning the leaves of
" Old Story Tellers," the reader seems to be in
personal communion with cherished friends. De
Foe, Swift, Goldsmith, Scott, — ^they are not
merely names, but are living men: and all that
body of literature is illumined with a droU, unob-
trusive humor, as companionable as the singing
of the kettle on the hob, when the lamps are lit at
evening, or as the cheery flame of a wood fire on
the broad hearth, before which you sit and dream,
when all aroimd is in shadow and all is still.

Among the letters that Mitchell addressed to
me there is one, much prized, that affords a sig-

DONALD G. MITCHELL
("Ik Marvel")

ALBERT HENRY SMYTH 329

nificant example of the sincerity and simplicity
of his large mind:

My Deae Mr. Winter:

I cannot .forbear thanking you for the very kindly, — ^tiho'
much too flattering way, — ^in which you speak of some of my
little books.

I am all the more grateful since you are one of the very
few writers of established reputation who have had the
hardihood to speak an honest, undisguised word of approval,
— without apologizing to the public for having been decoyed
into reading books of sentiment, and without shame-faced
allusion to the " callow days " or " green salad " days when
such reading was permissible!

I don't mean to quarrel with any of the good friends who
put such condescension in their praises : but I mean to thank
you for something quite different — and welcomer!

I hope you have received a copy of " American Lands and
Letters,'' with a slip testifying to the " kindly regard "

With which I am.

Ever truly yours,

Don'd G. MlTCHELt.

Edgewood, April 6, 1897.

ALBERT HENRY SMYTH

One of the noblest minds and gentlest spirits
I have ever known was Albert Henry Smyth,
whose affectionate friendship I had the peculiar

330 OLD FRIENDS

good fortune to possess during the last sixteen
years of his life, — a life which was so auspicious
to American Literature, and which was so sud-
denly and prematurely ended, while yet he was
in the prime of his brilliant and beneficent career.
Our first meeting occurred on shipboard, in 1891,
— ^in the course of a voyage to that England, so
dear to us both and in which we passed many
days of happy companionship, — and the kindly
regard for each other which then began only
grew stronger and deeper with each succeeding
year. Smyth was a native of Philadelphia, born
on June 18, 1863, and in a suburb of that city he
died. May 4, 1907, in the 44th year of his age.
The ordinance of death, sooner or later, afficts
every heart, but it does not often happen that so
many hearts are afilicted as were bereaved by the
sudden death of Albert Henry Smyth. He was
surroimded with affectionate friends. He was
dearly loved. He was in the golden affluence of
enjoyment and hope. He had only just com-
pleted and published his superb edition of the
works of Franklin, together with his Life of that
statesman. The echoes of his oratorical triumph

ALBERT HENRY SMYTH 331

at Paris, where he spoke (April 20, 1906), at
the international unveiUng of the statue of the
great philosoher, had not died away. He had
gained an amaranth of fame ; he was dearly loved ;
he was richly honored; and the pathway to yet
more splendid achievement in letters and a yet
wider circle of friends and ampler wealth of
honors seemed opening hefore him, in one long
vista of golden promise. His vitality, alike of
body and mind, was so extraordinary that no
thought of death could be associated with him.
He seemed formed to lead battalions of thought
and to endure forever. His countenance was
the beacon light of hope and joy. He animated
every mind with which he came in contact. He
dissipated doubts of a glorious future and he
dispelled dejection. He was a thorough scholar,
and he used his scholarship to cheer the onward
march, and not to dispense gloom. He was a
natural orator. He possessed a wonderful mem-
ory, and it was richly stored with knowledge of
the classic hteratiu-e of all lands. He was a rev-
erent student of Shakespeare, and he was entirely
competent as a Shakespeare scholar: among his

332 OLD FRIENDS

works there is an admirable book on " Shake-
speare's Pericles and ApoUonius of Tyre." He
wrote a Life of Bayard Taylor and also a com-
prehensive and minute history of the magazines
of Philadelphia and of the literary movement in
that old city, — which he so much loved and in
which he is tenderly remembered and deeply
mourned. His ambition was to excel in learning
and to augment the excellence of American Liter-
ature. He abhorred aU " crank " movements and
he denounced all efforts to corrupt the pure
stream of literature with the erotic mush that
parades itself imder the name of " new thought."
He was all that is meant by gentleman. Intellec-
tual men find the strife of the world very hard,
advocating that which is right, but the best that
any intellectual worker can do is to follow in his
footsteps. The loss of such a righteous force is
unspeakable. His example remains,

I shall yield to the temptation here to preserve
one of his letters, characteristic of the writer, and
in itself both instructive and amusing, relative
to the Bacon Humbug:

ALBERT HENRY SMYTH 333

The Aet Club, Philadelphia, February 5, 1902.
My Dear Winter:

This afternoon I lectured, to more than twelve hundred
persons, upon Lord Byron, and when I stopped at the Club,
jaded from a long day of unceasing labor, I found " The
Tribune" awaiting me, with your Shakespeare and Bacon
article.

What singular vitality that wretched hypothesis and fraud
seems to have. " The worst is not, as long as we can say
this is the worst." I thought we had sounded the lowest
depth when Donnelly made his audacious bid for the shekels
of the credulous. But Owens went far deeper, and now
Gallup — Oh, GaUup has simply gone " out of all whooping."
What remains? Will not some one prove that the plays
themselves do not exist? that it is aU "a phantasma and a
hideous dream"?

Women and weak minds seem attracted to this mighty
inquiry. Delia Bacon died in a mad-house. Mrs. Windle
(or Swindle) died in a maison de sante. Mrs. Alaric Watts
said she had had an interview with Bacon himself, and
he told her that he did write the plays but that the truth
would not be known for another year. Is all this an argu-
ment for, or against, Vassar, and Smith, and Brjm Mawr?

What a spanking Francis Bacon would have got from his
tutor for talking of Titus An-dron-i-cus, or of " the Ne-me-an
lion's nerve " ! And how dismayed his master would have
been, at Trinity, upon finding Brutus reading, before
Philippi, a book with " the leaf turned down."

" I was much amused, the other day, at Marston's exquisite
exposure of the fraud in the Gallup bi-literal. Mrs. G., you
know, found that Bacon had, with infinite pains, tucked
away a translation of Homer within the texture of Burton's

334 OLD FRIENDS

"Anatomy." Strange to say. Bacon shows an intimate
knowledge of Pope's translation of the Hiad, and quotes
freely and liberally from it, wherever Pope canters off on
an independent venture.

"Shakespeare und kein ende" wrote Goethe; and indeed
the steady glow of his great fame attracts strange and feeble
insects to it. We have books written to prove that Hamlet
was a woman; books to explain Hamlet by the phases of the
moon; and I possess a laborious German dissertation upon
the identity of the chilblains of the courtier in "Hamlet"
with the frozen toe of Thor, in the Teutonic mythology!
Tou recall the old verses:

"With songs on his pontificalibus pinned
Next Percy the Great did appear.
And Parmer, who twice in a pamphlet had sinned.
Brought up the empiricial rear."

That "empiricial rear" stretches on into vague perspec-
tive, attended by Olympian laughter.

Please prove mathematically that Henry Irving wrote the
Sketch Book. It is as easy as to demonstrate that the
squares of quadrantal ursois are equal to minus unity.

It gave me a thrill of pleasure to see your handwriting
again. I am very busy and have been taxed to the uttermost.
I am homeless, and all my books are stored away in a large
warehouse, and I am sufficiently miserable in consequence.
It would do me a world of good to see you and to be re-
freshed and inspired by a talk with you. When you have
a spare moment, will you not write me a brief note and tell
me how you are and what is happening in your world.

ALBERT HENRY SMYTH 335

I called at Edgewood during the Christmas holidays.
Mitchell is fairly well, but tired and growing feeble.
God bless you and give you health and strengtL

Ever yours,

Albert H. Smyth.

Soon after the death of Smyth the following
interesting letter about him was addressed to
me by the poet Stedman:

2643 Bhoadwat, May 22, 1907.
My Dear Will:

Since your tribute to Albert H. Smyth appeared, — surpris-
ing me so much in every way, except in respect of its beauty
and fitness, — I have been trying to write to you. Should
have done so at once, except that, lately, I am very loth
to add a featherweight to the burden which, at your age
and mine, I know grows so heavy, — so heavy for you! And
soon I was attacked by a brief illness from which I am just
picking up. . . .

The fine memorial notice of A. H. S. startled me, — as well
it might; for I had gone to the Century Club on the after-
noon of May 5, expressly in response to a letter received
from him, and had written him a careful reply, which must
have reached his home on the morning of his death! . . .

Prof. Smyth, long an occasional correspondent of mine,
and one who, in youth, had seemed to care for my advice
and regard, must have written me almost his last letter, —
perhaps his last, dated May 2. He wrote that Mr. Choate
was nominating him for the Century; would I write in his
favor, etc. So I went straight to the Club, on Friday, May 3,

336 OLD FRIENDS

found that Choate liad not yet put him up; sat down and
wrote him that I would keep watch, and do what he wished,
and everything in my power.

As Smyth's letter, apparently, came from one in perfect
health and hope, you can now imderstand how startled I was
by your next da^s announcement and eulogium.

Yesterday I had another such tragedy, — ^the dark shadow
of one, — ^the instant killing of young Prof. Eastman, Boston
"Tech," on the Back Bay. He was the pride of his pro-
fession, and recently married to a Norwich girl, almost a
daughter to me. A sheer, reasonless, cruelty of haphazard!

Affectionately yours,

Edmund C. Stedman.

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY

On the occasion of a visit to the old and deeply-
interesting city of Nottingham, England, in the
autumn of 1897, I had the privilege, delightful
and ever memorable to me, of a meeting with the
poet Philip James Bailey, author of " Festus."
That poem is not so widely read in our day as
it was, many years ago, when it was first pub-
lished; yet it is a great poem; magnificent equally
with thought, imagery, and feeUng, vital with
splendid audacity, and marvellous with eloquence;
and it is the most lucid and potent exposition
that has been made, in Enghsh verse, of the min-

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY 337

istry of evil. The first edition of "Festus"
appeared in 1847, and it was inunediately re-
printed in America. Benjamin B. Muzzey, a
Boston publisher, early perceived its value, and,
ignoring the rights of the author, sent it forth in
several shapes, notably with the honors of fine
paper, large type, and illustrations by a favorite
artist of that day, Hammat BiUings. " In Am-
erica," said the poet, in the course of his conver-
sation with me, " my ' Festus ' has passed through
thirty editions, while in England it has slowly
and painfully toiled through eleven; and from
America I have never received a sixpence for it.
But I am glad to think that I have many read-
ers and friends in that great country."

Bailey, at that time, was eighty-two years old,
but, although a httle infirm, his mind was lumi-
nous and vigorous. I found him in a pleasant
home, in the street called the Ropewalk, not far
from the Castle of Nottingham, and we con-
versed in his drawing-room and in his study, and
strolled in his garden. He was a man of medium
height, of a sturdy figure, of a benign aspect,
composed in manner, deUberate in movement, and

338 OLD FRIENDS

remarkable for his fine gray eyes and thick,
bushy gray hair. He spoke in gentle tones,
sometimes with humor, invariably with kindness
and good nature, and he seemed the embodiment
of peace. I have not met a person more serene,
more content with fortune, more confident of
the future. I had just received from an
honored and beloved friend. Miss Ada Rehan, a
copy of " Festus," — ^the only one that could
be found in the bookshops of Nottingham, the
poem being boxmd under the same cover with
Butler's "Analogy" and Combe's "Physiol-
ogy," and upon the fly-leaf of that book Bailey
wrote an inscription for me, copying a few fa-
vorite lines from his poem; and at parting he gave
me a handful of flowers.

In answer to an inquiry as to Tennyson, he
said: "William and Mary Howitt, many years
ago, gave a party, at which we were to meet, and
I attended it ; but Tennyson did not come. Some
time later Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall invited us,
and this time Tennyson came, but I was unable to
be present ; and so it happened that we never met.
But we have often exchanged letters." On the

PHILIP. JAMES BAILEY 339

mantelpiece of his drawing-room were two gold-
rimmed goblets, to which he directed my atten-
tion. " Those glasses," he said, " were once
owned by George IV and Queen Caroline." He
asked me to inspect his hbrary, — about five hun-
dred volumes, — composed largely of pocket edi-
tions of the old Roman authors, and bearing
marks of continual use. On the library table was
a httle folding desk, covered with green cloth, and,
sitting before it, in the poet's chair, I was hon-
ored with a sight of a singular and precious man-
uscript that he had made, being a key to " Fes-
tus " : in shape a semifcircle, the Knes radiating
from centre to circumference, the celestial, inter-
mediary, astral, and terrestrial scenes being dis-
tinguished by red, blue, and black ink; the whole
showing the unity and harmony of his design.
" My ' Festus,' " he said, " has too often been
viewed as a disconnected and fragmentary work.
It is, in fact, the blended result of one clear pur-
pose."

After the death of his wife, in 1896, the poet
dwelt in retirement. No mention was made of
him during the Diamond Jubilee and no mark of

340 OLD FRIENDS

honor was conferred on him, — a singular omis-
sion, remembering his great achievement and ex-
ceptional worth. There are many impressive
objects in Nottingham and its neighborhood:
the birthplace of the poet Henry Kirke White;
the caves beneath the castle, that are associated
with the tragic story of Mortimer, Queen Isa-
bella, and Bang Edward III; the spot where
Charles I unfurled his standard for the fatal war
with the Parliament of England; the treasures
and the wonders of Welbec; the glories of Sher-
wood Forest; the silver cup from which King
Charles took the sacrament, on the morning of
the day when he was slain; the mournful reUcs
of Byron, at Newstead Abbey, and the tomb in
which his ashes repose, in the old, towered church
of HucknaU-Torkard: but I saw there nothing
more significant of intellectual greatness and the
mutabiKty of fame than the lonely, almost for-
gotten poet, Philip James Bailey.

The house, in Nottingham, in which Bailey
was born, — a four-story brick building situated
at Weekday Cross, — was demolished, in 1895, to
make way for a railroad. Incidentally, as to the

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY 341

domestic habits of the veteran author, a comic
fact was mentioned to me by his nephew, George
H. Wallis, Esq., an eminent scholar and a gra-
cious gentleman, curator of the fine museum at
Nottingham. We had been speaking of the
hardy constitution of the poet, unimpaired even
at his great age. " What do you think he has,
for his midnight supper? " asked my friendly
acquaintance. " You could never guess. Hot
Scotch whisky and cold suet pudding! "

At this distance of time since the first publica-
tion of " Festus," and considering all, of hterary
import, that has come and gone, in the interim,
readers can scarcely be expected to realize the
extraordinary eflFect that was caused by that
book, at the outset of its career in America in its
stimulative impulse toward the reading of poetry.
Whether because of its semi-sacred character, or
its massive, diversified stature, or its happy blend-
ing of epical with dramatic form, or its fancied
resemblance to Goethe's great poem of " Faust,"
— ^then much in vogue, — or for whatever other
reason, everybody who read anything read " Fes-
tus," and in all literary circles it was long the

342 OLD FRIENDS

theme of interested discussion. Perhaps the pub-
lic of sixty years ago was a more thoughtful
public than that of to-day: it certainly was more
tranquil, and there are observers who venture to
believe that the authors prominent in that period
made a nobler display than is made by the au-
thors prominent now. " Festus " helped its age
in many ways — ^in no way more than by satisfying
and reinforcing the love of good hterature, foster-
ing romantic taste, and inculcating faith and
hope:

Evil and good are God's Tight hand and left.

By ministry of evil good is clear.

And by temptation virtue . . .

Earth is the floor of Heaven; in all we see

The great world-worker, the eternal Lord . . .

All ages are His children.

Philip James Bailey died, at Nottingham,
September 6, 1902, aged eighty-six years. These
words of his may fitly close this frail memorial:

Death is another life. We bow our heads
At going out, we think, and enter straight
Another golden chamber of the King's,
Larger than this we leave, and lovelier.

■

H

^^^^^kTl^j^llml^^^^M

H

^

^^^^^^^v

: ^. .^ . /

J

IH

H

H

^^^K^g

1^1 .^^^1

. , --v;g^_^^B

PHILIP JAMES BAILEY

^'Om the Bust in the Nottingham Art Museum

NOTES

NOTES

LONGFELLOW

At the time of Longfellow's death, in 1882, it
was my privilege to offer, in the press, a humble
tribute to his memory, and it chanced that I was
gratified with many letters, all of them sympa-
thetic and tender, relative to the loss of that great
poet and noble person. A few of those letters,
lovely in spirit and valuable as well for what they
suggest as for what they contain, I can, after the
lapse of more than a quarter of a century, vent-
ure to print, knowing that they will be wel-
comed and prized by lovers of Longfellow's writ-
ings, and that generous minds will not censure
me for including words of personal commenda-
tion. It is gratitude, not vanity, that cherishes
the approbation of genius and virtue.

32 Pabk Avenue, N. T., March 3, '82,
My Deae Winter:

Tour article on Longfellow, in this morning's " Tribune,"
is so excellent that it paralyzed a little attempt of mine which

845

346 OLD FRIENDS

Dr. Adler asked me to write for his Memorial Service next
Sunday. I wish your heautiful, touching, and appreciative
notice could have been delivered in a church. A certain air
of what I may call " sacredness " is around all your recorded
memories, and therefore I think they should have been spoken
on a Sunday. You know that I have long been an admirer
of your prose style, and certainly no nobler specimen of it
can be found than in your last article. The first portions
were so good that I began to be critical. I said " Winter can't
go on in this way through two columns without slipping into
some specimens of bad taste." But, my dear fellow, you
never slipped, in a single sentence, a single phrase, a single
word. How rejoiced I was as I came to the fine conclusion!
In haste.

Ever sincerely yours,

E. P. Whipple.

Brook;lyn, April 14, 1882.
My Dear Mr. Winter :

Thanks for your kind letter — although it was a long time
coming it was none the less welcome — and the Easter cards,
which were very pretty — and the article and poem on Long-
fellow. I think the "Memoir" one of the best things you
have done. I cried as I read, and think you must have cried
as you wrote it. The poem I have hidden away with my few
treasures, among which are several letters from Longfellow.
I think it exquisitely pathetic. How proud and happy the
good man of whom you wrote would have been could he have
seen what sweet, kind things you have said of him. I spent
a morning with him, at his request, just about four weeks
before his death, and it was one of the happiest mornings of
my life. I can see him yet so plainly as he stood at the

LONGFELLOW 347

window (he was too ill to hand me to the carriage as he had
always done), smiling and kissing his hand till a turn in the
road hid him. The new fallen snow and the bright sunlight
made him look radiant as he stood there. He had just re-
ceived from Cross the inkstand of Tom Moore, which pleased
him very much. He spoke of your Trip to England. Try
and come to see me this week, and I will tell you all about
him then. — ^Don't forget.

Tour friend, as ever.

Mart Anderson.

West New Brighton.
Staten Island, March 29, 1882.
Mt Dear Winter:

My heart responds to your sorrowful note. I knew that
Longfellow was very frail, but I was not ready for the sudden
end. Tortunately I was able to go over on Saturday evening
and stand by his coffin as the lid was closed forever. His face
was perfectly peaceful, and the right arm was laid across his
breast. It was in the large library in which I saw him liv-
ing, for the last time, on the 1st of last July. No man living
was so widely loved, no author was ever so personally lamented.
How spotless his life! How pure and sweet his character!
The most famous of Americans, and wholly free from envy,
malice, and all uncharitableness.

If I were at home on Sunday I should ask you to come up.
But I am not. Almost any evening but Tuesday and Sunday
I am at home and generally by day. But you are a bird of
night.

I do not forget that it was at Longfellow's we met, and our
mutual regard has the benediction of his gracious memory.

348 OLD FRIENDS

The fathers are departing. I saw Emerson stand by the
coffin and look at the dead face. But, in his broken state, the
dead seemed happier than the living.
Yours always,

George Willum Curtis.

Boston, April 1, 1882.
My Dear Mr. Winter:

I thank you most warmly for your kind and feeling nota
Although for the last few years I have seen comparatively
little of Longfellow, he was always a living presence with me,
and I have always been hoping that he might yet be able to
be with us at the social gatherings where he was often pres-
ent and always desired. What a beautiful memory he leaves !
All speak in the same way of him, — so gracious, so gentle, so
altogether lovely in his intercourse with young and old. A
boy of twelve years old, — a stranger, one of the little army
of autograph collectors, — came in just now and is staring
round my library as I write. He went a fortnight ago to see
Longfellow, who treated him with ^reat kindness, and not
only wrote him and his three companions their autograph, but
gave them each a piece of cake, as if they had been his own
grandchildren. Now, remembering how those visitors must
have swarmed about and settled upon him, nothing shows
more sweetly the loving-kindness of the dear Poet.

I have just received a very tender letter from Whittier, who
is deeply affected by the loss which saddens us all. For my-
self I can truly say that the world is darker for me than
before, and life more lonely. Yet I am so pressed upon by
my daily duties, and often so fatigued by the burdens which
are laid upon me, that I find fault with myself for wanting
the vacant hour in which to mourn over our irreparable loss.

LONGFELLOW 349

This winter Las been a very hard-working one for me, and
yet little has been accomplished in it beyond my routine
duties. But I find that, at seventy-two years, the thirty-two
high stairs at the College are harder to climb than they were
at half that age, when I began climbing them. My hundred
lectures tire me more than they did. Add to this a corre-
spondence which I hardly know what to do with, and you will
understand that I can hardly indulge much in the train of
saddening remembrances which gather round me with each
year, and of which this last sorrow, though not wholly unpre-
pared for it, is one of the deepest and most lasting.

I have read your article as well as your letter. Both over-
flow with the tender sensibilities which belong to your deli-
cate and impressionable nature: your warm heart will com-
prehend what I mean.

With kindest remembrances I am.

Very sincerely yourg,

O. W. Holmes.

23 Monroe Place, Beooklyn, N. Y., April 3, 1882.

Dear Mr. Winter:

I write to thank you for your most interesting " Tribune "
letter and tender poem in memory of Longfellow.

The poem I have just mailed to Mr. Whittier.

It was only for the last few years of his life that I had the
pleasure of knowing Mr. Longfellow personally, but that ac-
quaintance enables me to understand and appreciate all you
say of him.

In February he wrote me of his feebleness as if it were but
temporary; and this gave me such hope and cheer about him
that I was quite unprepared to hear of his death.

350 OLD FRIENDS

I thank you again for your letter and poem, which I have
read, as will so many others, with sympathetic tears.
Very truly yours,

Edna Dean Peoctoe.

GEORGE ARNOLD

Among the many letters that Longfellow
kindly sent to me there is one that I shaU venture
here to print, because of its reference to the
poems of my dear old comrade George Arnold,
who died in 1865, at the age of thirty-one. Those
poems were collected and published by me, with
a memoir of the author.

Nahant, July 23, 1866.
My Dear Me. Winter:

Accept my thanks for the copy of Arnold's Poems, which
you were so kind as to send me, and which I have read with
great interest and pleasure. He was a true poet; and I do
not think that you have overstated his merits in your Intro-
ductory Sketch, which is a graceful tribute to your friend.

I am glad to learn from your note that you are coming in
this direction, and I hope you will find time to run down to
Nahant, where you will be very welcome. Last smnmer you
did not come, though you half -promised me to do so. Pray
do not fail this year, as it is a long while since I had the
pleasure of seeing you.

With great regard.

Tours truly,

Heney W. Longfellow.

SELECTED LETTERS OF T. B. ALDRICH
In the sympathetic yet eminently judicious
hfe of Cowley that was written, after the death
of that remarkable poet, by his affectionate
friend Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, there
is a significant admonitory passage :

" Letters that pass between particular
friends" (so wrote the Bishop), "if they are
written as they ought to be, can scarce ever be fit
to see the light. They should not consist of ful-
some compliments, or tedious polities, or elabo-
rate elegancies, or general fancies; but they
should have a native clearness and shortness, a
domestical plainness, and a peculiar kind of fa-
miliarity, which can only affect the humor of
those to whom they were intended. The very
same passages which make writings of this nat-
ure delightful amongst friends will lose all man-
ner of taste when they come to be read by those
that are indifferent. In such letters the souls of
men should appear undressed, and in that negli-

351

352 OLD FRIENDS

gent habit they may be fit to be seen by one or
two in a chamber, but not to go abroad into the
streets."

The law as to the use of private letters could
not be better formulated; yet there are occa-
sions when, rightly and beneficially, it can be
relaxed. Literature would be much impover-
ished, for example, lacking the famihar letters
of Thomas Gray, William Cowper, and Sir Wal-
ter Scott. It has happened to me, in the course
of a long life, to receive many letters from many
interesting persons, — some of them the " heirs of
fame." That fine poet the late Thomas Bailey
Aldrich was an intimate friend of mine during
the greater part of his hfe. We first met in
1855, and from that time till his death, March
19, 1907, our cordial friendship remained un-
broken. We had maintained an active corre-
spondence for several months before we became
personally acquainted, — ^he being then resident
in New York and I in Cambridge, Mass. Al-
drich was an exceedingly interesting person in
his youth, and he retained his youthful spirit and
personal charm till the end of his days. Some

T. B. ALDRICH 353

of my lamented comrade's letters, addressed to
me long ago, — before experience, care, and the
reserve that comes with years had, in any de-
gree, checked his enthusiasm, — show such a gen-
tle, affectionate nature, and reveal their writer
in such a charming light, that I need not hesi-
tate, now that the grave has closed over him, to
make them known, at least in part. They de-
note him truly, depicting him in words that
came direct from his heart, and that never till
now have been seen by any eyes but mine. They
accomplish a portrait of the poet as he was in
his ingenuous boyhood, — a portrait which ob-
servers of character and students of hterature,
appreciative of the fine achievement of his ma-
ture genius, are likely to welcome, since, per-
haps, it suggests additional reason why his mem-
ory should be cherished. A few of them, in-
deed, may seem too much charged with romantic
affection for his correspondent; nevertheless, be-
cause they show the generosity of his nature, the
beauty of his character, and the variety of his
mind, they shall be given without modification,
and in the belief that the disclosure of them

354 OLD FRIENDS

will be ascribed to the right motive, and not to
vanity.

In the midsummer of 1855 Aldrich was con-
valescent after a serious illness, and on July 9 he
wrote:

How sweet is the letter that comes to a sick-room, fresh
from the hand of a very dear though unseen friend! And
how sweet it is, when one is just convalescent enough to sit
before a comfortable writing desk and languidly hang
thoughts, like a week's washing (pardon the homely com-
parison), upon a line, to watch " the swell mob of char-
acters," as Tom Hood says, creep gradually over the page!
This pleasure is mine now, dear Winter, and a sort of
dreamy joy comes over me, when I think how very soon
your eyes will run over these Hues, — ahnost following the
point of my pen.

How odd that I have never seen you! How strange that
we have looked into each other's hearts, and never touched
a hand or exchanged a glance! If we should never meet, I
shall always think of you as one of the delicious phantoms
which have, before now, flitted through the heaven of my
fancy, leaving me only a dim conjecture of what it might
have been. I cannot see you; but I can send you my mind,
the better part of me, which cannot be taken away. This
invisible God in us, — ^this living, eternal mind, — is an awful
boon. My brain is so heavy that it won't think, but mj]
heart iMnks, instead, and if there was ever a letter written
from the soul this is one, — so don't read it carelessly. . .,

T. B. ALDRICH 355

The rest of the letter relates to personal ex-
perience, essentially private. The letter that fol-
lows is here given because it enables me to place
a white rose of honor and constant affection on
the grave of a forgotten poet — ^Albert Laighton,
of Portsmouth.

New York, July 17, 1855.
My Dear Friend:

ToTir last was read with peculiar pleasure. I am growing
to love your letters and yourself very much. Will Winter
has become a fixture in my stock of pleasant thoughts, and
I look forward with perfect joy to the time when I shall
grasp his hand and hear his voice. It is something more
than mere curiosity. It is affection and respect which make
me wish to meet him.

And you, dear Winter, have excited more than a common
interest in the bosom of one I love almost as well as life;
nay, better, for I would lay down mine to save his. He writes
very tender, beautiful verse. ... I enclose a notice which
I wrote some time since of his poetry. . . . Observe the
beauty in " Joe " and the pathos running through " The
Tress of Hair." I sent him one of your early letters to read
(he resides in Portsmouth), and, to show in what light he
holds you, I will use his own words :

I read his letter with much pleasure ; in fact I read it three times
over, and after every reading I wanted William Winter close beside
me, that I might give him a cordial grasp of the hand and say " God
bless you and godspeed you in your divine calling ! " I should say
of him thus : he has a noble, generous, self-sacrificing spirit ; a gen-
tle, trusting, child-like soul. His soul has " imbibed more shade

356 OLD FRIENDS

than sun." He has a strong desire for friends, and, in his own sim-
ple, comprehensive language, " what he loves he loves very dearly."
Do I misjudge or overrate him ?

And I wrote to my friend: "No, you neither misjudge
nor overrate him. William Winter is very noble and good,
I am sure, and more worthy of your friendship, in a hundred
ways, than I am."

Albert Laighton, — ^whom afterward I met, on
the occasion of a visit to the quaint, picturesque,
interesting city of Portsmouth, and who became
a close friend and a correspondent of mine, —
was a native of that place, born in 1829. He
passed his hfe in Portsmouth, dying there on
February 7, 1887, aged fifty-eight. He was a
man of sweet and placid temperament, simple
and dignified in manner, self-contained and un-
obtrusive in character, — one of the gentlest and
best of human beings. He was beloved by all
who knew him well, and even those persons who
saw him only once imbibed a deep and lasting
impression of his innate nobiUty. His name was
seldom seen in print, and his writings are, prac-
tically, unknown. He was a poet of the affec-
tions. His poems are marked by simplicity,
grace, fancy, tender feeling, earnest religious

T. B. ALDRICH 357

sentiment, and melodious versification. A col-
lection of them was published in Boston, in 1859.
The principal poem, written in the heroic meas-
ure, was dehvered, by its author, before the
United Literary Societies of Bowdoin College,
on August 3, 1858, The book contains forty-nine
other pieces, among the most characteristic of
which are "The Missing Ships," "To My
Soul," " Found Dead," " Joe," " The Tress of
Hair," and " The Song of the Skaters."

Laighton was not the bearer of a great poet-
ical message, but he sang sweetly of love, con-
fident faith, and resignation; as a verbal artist
he was felicitous in phrase; he used rich colors
with dainty skill; and his style possesses the
merit of simplicity. That sympathetic critic the
venerable Andrew P. Peabody, D.D., writing in
" The North American Review," of which he was
the editor, in 1859, said of Laighton's poems:
" They are the unforced, inevitable overflow of a
true poetic nature, in harmony with all things
beautiful; they are smooth and harmonious in
rhythm; choice and polished, yet without con-
ceit or mannerism, in diction; rich and glowing

358 OLD FRIENDS

in imagery; and lofty, while unexaggerated, in
sentiment."

During his last days Laighton suffered much,
but a long agony was endured by him with the
silent, gentle patience which is ever the denote-
ment of a manly character. Citation of a brief
passage, representative of his poetic quality, wiU
not, perhaps, be deemed inappropriate. These
lines depict the midnight sky in winter:

Go, lift to heaven, at night, thy wondering eyes.

And read the starry language of the skies!

See Cassiopeia in her regal chair.

The golden trail of Berenice's hair;

The Northern Crown, whose jewels far outshine

All earthly gems and gleam with light divine;

The Pleiades and Lyra's shining strings;

The Silver Swan, the Dove with outspread wings;

The Twins, that tread their path with one desire.

The Great Orion with his helt of fire !

Or turn from these and watch the Northern Lights

With jewelled feet ascend the heavenly heights;

While with fantastic shapes they haunt the brain; —

A sky of amber streaked with silver rain;

A blaze of glory, heaven's resplendent fires;

A Temple, gleaming, with a thousand spires;

A sea of light that laves a shore of stars;

The gates of heaven; swift-rolling, fiery cars;

T. B. ALDRICH 359

'A golden pulse, quick beating througli the night;
Contending armies, mailed in armor bright;
A gauzy curtain, drawn by unseen hands.
Night's gorgeous drapery looped with starry bands;
Vast, burning cities that lie far away;
Blushes on Nature's face — ^pale ghosts of day;
A boundless prairie swept by phantom fire;
The vibrant strings of some gigantic lyre;
Emblazoned chariots ever skyward driven;
God's finger writing in the book of heaven;
The flaming banner of the North unfurled, —
The mystery that dares a boasting world!

New York, July 25, 1855.
My Kind and Dear Friend:

Tour letter, with its autobiographical touches at the end,
was deeply interesting, and you know, or ought to know,
that I thank you sincerely for the pleasure your generous
paper gives me. Tou have a way of saying a great deal in
a very few simple words, — a condensed style, so suggestive
and euphonious to read, and yet so difficult to attain ! Then
there is such a heart of kindness in your paragraphs, so
noble and strong, that I can feel it, unseen, throbbing against
my own. I think we shall be even better friends than now,
when we meet. Our tastes, in very many things, are alike,
for often, under the cloak of quaint words, I have found
the pulses of your thought to agree with mine.

You wish to make an " apology " for certain bits of truth
which you gave me, in your critique of " The Bells." I shall
not admit of it, for your strictures were just, and it is not

360 OLD FRIENDS

your better sense, but your friendship, that would take them
back. Love, affection, or gratitude make poor critics.

I do not know what to say about your making extracts
from my poor letters to send to Mr. Longfellow. The deep
and growing love I bear him and the earnest words with
which I told you of it I never meant for Ms eyes, only yours,
dear WiU. But please do not neglect to send me the prom-
ised MS. . , .

It gives me pleasure to know that you think kindly of
Albert Laighton. He is modest and noble. I have been inti-
mate with him several years, and have not found a grain of
dross in his nature. His heart was stamped in God's own
mint. Heaven. I make all my friends love each other.

The period of these letters was opulent in lit-
erary harvest. James T. Fields had devised a
particularly neat, modest, pleasing style of
brown cloth binding for the books that were pub-
lished by the famous house of Ticknor & Fields,
and volumes of special value, — ^by Motherwell,
Alexander Smith, Tennyson, Longfellow,
" Barry Cornwall," Henry Giles, E. P. Whip-
ple, De Quincey, Mrs. Howe, and other impor-
tant writers, — ^were pouring from the press, to
be eagerly welcomed and greedily devoured.
The letter that follows will indicate the active
interest that Aldrich felt in that teeming time

T. B. ALDRICH 361

of literary activity, and will illustrate the critical
bent of his mind in youth. The first allusion is
to Longfellow's " Courtship of Miles Standish,"
which was pubUshed in association with a con-
siderable number of lyrics.

August 15, 1855.
. . . Tte announcement of a new volume by Longfellow
does not create such a furor as might have been expected;
nevertheless his poem will be everything that lofty genius,
learning, and a quiet soul, like his, can make it. . . . It
is a pleasure to quote his poetry; to tell the world, in prose
ever so humble, that it warms the heart like a dream of
heaven. "My Lost Youth" is exquisite, — one of those sub-
dued twilight poems which he knows so well how to write.
The critical objection to his " long, long thoughts " is very
" far fetched " : but then, dogs will bark at the moon. . . .

Some of the extracts from " Maud " I do not like, — ^because
the measure is, unfortunately, long. The verses beginning
" Come into the garden " and those beginning " Still on the
tower stood the vane " are Tennyson himself. Thoughts, to
him, must come in swarms. I worship his books. There is
one little song of his that haunts me. You know it and have
admired it as much as I : " It is the Miller's Daughter." Is
not that poem perfect?

I hope Bailey's "Mystic" will not be mystical in reality,
as his writings are very apt to be. " Festus " has embalmed
his name. He never can be forgotten while beautiful, pas-
sionate poetry has a lover. He is sometimes obscure, and,
to my mind. Obscurity is no attribute of Poetry. There are
many verses famous among men of letters (I do not refer to

362 OLD FRIENDS

Bailey's particularly) which, to the mere matter-of-fact
reader, seem downright dulness; yet an indescribable beauty
runs through them, that cannot be analyzed; it can only be
felt. Such verses I am not slow to love and praise; but many
of Bailey's lines have to be turned, and fingered, and taken
apart, like a Chinese puzzle, to get at their meaning; and
then, like the puzzle, they are not worth the trouble. This,
I think, is a serious fault, and too general among our noblest
poets. . . .

You will think I have grown immensely critical, " all of a
sudden," for I have never ventured to give you so much
criticism before. I have been re-reading the critiques that
you so kindly sent to me, and think you will be a great critic,
one of these days. You look into a thing with much judg-
ment and "sum up the case " like a lawyer. . . . You speak
of giving me another review. If you do I shall read it with
joy and gratitude : but let me advise you not to permit your
fuU, warm heart to throb in your eyes and blind you to my
rhythmic faults. You have received, before this, a copy of
" Babie BeU " : it is one I have revised and corrected. Babie
has been a very fortunate child. . . .

Prentice's most poetical poem is in the Knickerbocker
Gallery, one of the finest books ever published and a rare
tribute to Louis Gaylord Clarke, editor of " The Knicker-
bocker Magazine" (who has treated me kindly). . . .

You were not wrong in your idea of Griswold's " Poets."
It is a poor affair. Half of the poetry ( ?) would have been
rejected by a country editor, and the biographical notices are
weak. I frequently meet him. He says he has a new volume
of "Poets" in contemplation. May their shadows never be
less! . . .

Tennyson is a King of simplicity and beauty. I read his

T. B. ALDRICH 363

"Two Voices" every other day. "The Princess" is a mas-
terpiece. The man that fails to appreciate it must have very
little soul. . . .

"The bard" in my book is meant for Gerald Massey. I
have some of his poems, in his MS. His ballad of " Babe
Cristabel" is wild, and full of Keats-like imagery. . . .

The wind that comes in at my open window brings the
tones of the neighboring clock that has just sounded one. I
must stand a few minutes at the window, to look at the camp-
ground of the angels, with their starry watch-fires burning,
and then — " to sleep, to sleep— perchance to dream." Good-
night, my dear friend.

• • ■• • '•'

It will be rightly inferred, from the words
which follow, that their writer had not yet out-
hved the time of hero-worship and romantic en-
thusiasm, but even a cynic may be pleased to be
reminded that there is such a time, and that the
passage through it is not the worst of human
experience.

Writing to me, on September 30, 1855, Al-
drich said:

To exchange words with one who gives gold for dross and
pearls for pebble-stones is a pleasure; to examine those
thoughts and to measure my correspondent's pulses with my
own is a study, in his acceptance who loves to watch the
different phases of different lives. . . .

I must thank you for the MS. and the message which ac-

364 OLD FRIENDS

companied it. When you write to Mr. Longfellow, say that
I am grateful for his kindness and that the few lines he sent
are dearer to me than fine gold. I have been re-reading your
pen portrait of him — a beautiful and finished picture. No
photograph could have given me his features more admir-
ably. A fine engraving of him hangs before me, surrounded
with those of Willis, Bryant, Morris, Holmes, and Titz-
Greene Halleck — who, by the way, says that there is not a
line in " Babie Bell " which he could alter, and other things
particularly pleasing to me. His kind words were not
written to me, however, but in a note to Mr. Cozzens, of
"Putnam's Monthly."

Last Thursday evening I attended the dinner given by
New York Publishers to American Authors. It is well
enough for them to give the poor dreamy devils something
to eat, now and then. Authors, before now, have been hun-
gry enough to eat poison. . . . The speeches, as a general
thing, were dull. ... It was a glorious sight, and I wished
a hundred times that W. W. was with me. . . .

Remember me to Mr. Haskell, kindly. [The reference is
to Daniel N. Haskell, at that time editor of " The Boston
Transcript."] Most men have an anatomical arrangement
called a heart, which is supposed to be located in the breast.
I say supposed to be; for, as they seldom show any, its ex-
istence is merely a supposition. But Mr. HaskeU's heart, I
am inclined to think, beats in every vein.

In his early letters to me Aldrich frequently
refers to Longfellow, and he discloses, amply
and tenderly, a trend of thought and feeling that

T. B. ALDRICH 365

he never ceased to follow. Thus, on October 27,
1855, he wrote:

I have a thousand things to tell you which I cannot write
to my satisfaction, for pen and ink are poor substitutes for
lips. There is something in a voice which gives vitality
and passion to words; and oftentimes, when I hang over the
fine trembles of a line which some dead poet has left to the
world, I could weep to think of the dead voice. Why could
he not have left us that? I never read Longfellow, but I
long to catch the modulation of his voice, and I break one
of the Ten Commandments by envying my friend Winter,
whose privilege it is to write to him and speak to him.

In a letter dated November 28, 1855, he wrote:

Have I ever spoken to you of Miss Alice Cary? I spent
last evening with her, and had a cosy talk about books, —
she and I alone. She is so beautiful, and simple, and good
that I love her. She has written some beautiful poetry. I
place her at the very head of American female poets. . . .

I once saw Mr. Longfellow, in Ticknor's book-store. It
was a long time ago ; about the time the " Golden Legend "
was published. He was speaking, I think, with Fields, and
I did not know who he was until he had left the place.
Angels sometimes stand beside us, and we know them
not. . . .

" Daisjr's Necklace " will be bound, in a week or so. Tou
shall have an early copy. What do you think of "Dred"?
How tame it seems beside Eeade's " Susan Merton " ! I
think that novel is one of the noblest I ever read. The
prison-scene is beyond anything Dickens has done, in the

366 OLD FRIENDS

same line. What wonderful vitality and sense of nature
run through Eeade's prose!

In after years Aldrich acquired, — as most men
do, — ^the " wordly wisdom," as it is called, which
restrains sentiment and cools enthusiasm; but
his feelings were not less deep because less freely
expressed. Pages could be filled with extracts
from his " wise " letters. Selection, however,
continues to be attended with embarrassment,
because scarcely one letter among hundreds can
be found that does not contain words of personal
commendation. Soon after our first meeting,
which occurred in the autumn of 1855, he wrote:

I was overjoyed to meet you, but a variety of other causes
worked upon me and made me not myself. My meeting with
you has not broken a link of my love for you. You are
older looking than I had pictured you, and a trifle more
thoughtful.

The letters thus far given show the sweet, in-
genuous nature of the poet, as he was in his enthu-
siastic youth. The selections that follow, — after a
considerable gap of time, during which, however,
he wrote to me very constantly, — afford a glimpse

T. B. ALDRICH 367

of him as he was in after life. On October 31,
1880, he wrote to me : " I have just returned from
watching at the deathbed of my uncle, Mr.
Frost, a faithful, good friend of my boyhood,
and am heavy-hearted."

After he had occupied for some time the posi-
tion of editor of " The Atlantic Monthly " Aid-
rich wrote:

March 8, 1881,
Deae Will:

. . . The editorial chair of the Atlantic Monthly is not
the piece of furniture I would select for comfort! My old
bamboo lounge at Ponkapog is worth a thousand of it. I
don't have time to breathe.

If that is O'Brien's poem, it is the best he ever wrote.
Here and there I catch the tone of his voice. That wild
fancy, in the second stanza, about the floating yellow hair of
the drowning sun, seems like O'Brien at his very best. The
poem is wholly new to me. . . .
In great haste, as this writing shows.

Always truly yours,
T. B. A.

I have come to the conclusion, [he wrote to me (1884)]
that more than half of the mischief done in this world is
done with the best intentions. Look at the shortsighted, in-
tolerant prohibitionists, the howling woman suffragists and the
roaring maniacs who are banging their heads against both
sides of the tariff fence. They all mean weU— confound
them I "

368 OLD FRIENDS

59 Mount Vernon Street, Boston,

March 7, 1891,
Dear Will:

I have only now got back to my den in Mount Vernon
Street, where I find two welcome letters from you. That you
like my new book gives me great pleasure, but the earlier
letter, in which you express your warm personal affection,
will ever be sacred and precious to me. I am glad you wrote
those pages, and did not withhold them. There is not an
affectionate word in the letter that I might not have spoken
these thirty years and more. That night at Barrett's, when
I glanced down and saw you sitting there — the one familiar
face among all those strange faces — my mind instantly went
back to the period when I lived in Portsmouth and you in
Cambridge, each standing on the brink of life, ready to
plunge, and not knowing whether we could swim or not.
That a memory of those old days should have come to you
also is not strange; for have we not more than once felt im-
pelled, at the same hour and day, to write to each other, after
two or three years of silence? I leave unsaid a hundred
things which I would like to say here; but I am in the middle
of a magazine story, and I must not let my pen run away
with me.

I shall look with interest to the coming of the Douglas
book. Those volumes of yours about England are the loveli-
est things that have been done in this kind. Your dramatic
writings have won you great distinction, but here are your
true themes, your destined work, and here you are easily at
your best. Irving lived among those scenes you love, but he
never nestled so close to the poetic heart of England as you
have. Your plan of bringing prose and verse together is
good and has a touch of novelty. I've just been rereading the

T. B. ALDRICH 369

Elegy on the Death of Longfellow, in the English Kambles.
It would enrich the collected lyrics of any poet living. The
diction is large and pure, and that refrain of the wUd March
winds wailing through the stanzas "takes me mightily," as
Mr. Pepys would say. And now, good-by, and God be with
you. Tour afiectionate friend,

T. B. Aldbich.

P. S. — I failed to put my name on the fly-leaf of "The
Sisters' Tragedy " because the book was published and mailed
during my absence from home. Some day I will do so.

T. B. A.

Mount Vehnon Street,
October 22, 1891.
Dear Will:

Those dramatic orations of yours are as wise and touching
as anything I ever read. The book has been a great pleasure
to me, these two days past, up in my workshop under the
leads. I am very sorry I did not hear you say all those
sensible and prophetic things.

I sent to you yesterday, to the care of Edwin, at the
Players, a proof of the Century portrait. Sometime when
you are uptown, look in at the Players and get it.

I hope that all is well with you and yours. Some one
dear to me dies whenever I go abroad. This time Lowell.
I have written a poem about him. I trust you will like it
when you read it, in the December Scribner's.

Ever afEectionately yours,
Tom.

There is, probably, no author who has not suf-

370 OLD FRIENDS

fered from the exactions of strangers who in-
sist upon asking all sorts of services — ^the writ-
ing of autographs, the reading of manuscripts,
the impartment of counsel, the exercise of per-
sonal influence, etc. ; innumerable requests being
made, all of which require answer. Aldrich, in
this letter, murmurs a gentle protest against this
form of imposition:

Boston, October 3, 1892.
Dear Will:

It was very kind and thoughtful of you to send me those
Tribunes containing your tender monody on Curtis and the
not less admirable tribute in prose. I should have been sorry
to miss them, and I should have missed them. Last year
Lowell, and now Curtis, and Whittier, and Parsons I How
rapidly the world is growing poorer!

The other day I lounged with a fieldglass on the deck of
the City of Paris, and tried to pick out your particular nest
on the lovely flank of Staten Island. I wondered which was
the New Brighton landing and if Curtis's house was visible
from my point of view. And I wanted to come ashore!

The health officers held us at anchor for eight mortal
hours ofE Staten Island. How comfortable the little village
looked, and how deliciously cool and green the grass was, in
protected dells here and there! The hollows seemed like
great goblets of creme de menth! My eye had got tired of
drinking sea water and wanted something stronger. I've a

T. B. ALDRICH 371

great respect for the solid earth. The sea was a mistake —
a sort of topographical error!

I hope you and yours are well. I have a score or two of
things to say to you, but not time to say them in. Letters,
letters, letters! Those of an old friend are ever welcome,
but — ^the stupid strangers who make life a burden to me!
Half of my waking hours are wasted on persons who have
no business to write to me, and yet must needs be treated
courteously, since they are courteous. I forgot to say that I
had a joyous after the theatre supper, at the Lyceum, with
Irving and Ellen Terry, and la belle Sarah Bernhardt with
her unravelled hair. The first two said pleasant things about
you to me. I am always ready to listen when folks talk so.

Affectionately yours,
Tom.

lAJdrich earnestly wished to excel in the field
of the drama. He wrote two plays that were
acted, " Mercedes " and " Judith," both of which
possess elements of dramatic force and attributes
of poetic beauty.

Milton, liASS., April 18, 1893.
Dear Will:

I am glad that your touching and thoughtful address on
Curtis has been put into permanent form. The little book
followed me out here, and got an immediate reading, though
1 was up to my eyes in a belated piece of fiction. As I went
from page to page I regretted that I did not have the pleas-

372 OLD FRIENDS

■ure of hearing you pronoiince those clear-cut sentences. I
know that you spoke them admirably, and they must have
helped you, for they have an air as if they would lend them-
selves graciously to the lips. Thanks for the volume; it
shall have a place with its brothers.

I closed my house on Monday last, intending to start for
Chicago on the 26th; but Mr. Palmer is going to bring out
my bit of tragedy (" Mercedes ") on the evening of May
1st, and I shall wait over to see it. I hope the thing will
not fall quite flat. If Lester Wallack, in 1866, had not kept
a play of mine six months, and then returned it to me, with
the seals unbroken, I should, probably, have been a writer
of dramas instead of a writer of lyrics. Without breaking
those seals myself I put that MS. on the coals, in my room
in Hancock Street, and gave up the idea of being Shake-
speare! I was one of those Shakespeares that get "stuck
on the horizon," to use Lowell's delightful phrase. Ever
yours, T. B. A.

I had told my old friend of my intention to
publish the Life of Edwin Booth and to dedicate
the book to him, as one of that great actor's most
intimate and beloved friends, and this was his

reply:

Milton, Mass., May 11, 1893.

Deah Will:

On returning from New York I picked up a cold on the
lungs, and am sitting up to-day for the first time since Sun-
day. I can write only a few lines. I saw dear Edwin for

T. B. ALDRICH 3^3

a momeut, and said farewell to that sweet soul. He did not
know me until the instant I touched his hand, and then he
smiled, and said "Tom Aldrich!" Immediately his mind
was gone again, and he turned vacant eyes upon me. That
was our parting.

To have my name associated with the beautiful studies
you have made of his character and his genius will be a
great pleasure and honor to me. Tou are Edwin Booths
authentic biographer.

" Mercedes " was a success beyond my hopes. All the
leading journals had favorable words for it. The Tribune's
criticism was most kindly fair. Tou being absent, not one
of the dramatic critics was known to me personally, or even
by name. The verdict was influenced by nothing but the
evidence. I am happier over it than if I had ten books suc-
ceed! Mr. Palmer gave the play a beautiful setting, and it
was finely acted. Miss Julia Arthur has passion and insight,
and made a personal hit. She will be as fine as the finest,
five years from now.

I've ever so many things to say, but the doctor forbids
me to do anything but keep quiet.

With love,

Tom.

I've not thought of much these last few days but Edwin,
lying there at the Players, waiting for Death. His face has
kept coming to me out of the darkness of my room.

Edwin Booth died, at the Players, June 7,
1893. My memoir of him was published in the
following autumn, dedicated as follows:

374 OLD FRIENDS

To

Thomas Bailey Aldrich,

Remembering Old and Happy Days,

I Dedicate This Memorial

Of Our Priend and Comrade,

Edwin Booth,

Forever Loved and Honored

And Forever Mourned.

"There is a world elsewhere."

It is to the " Life and Art of Edwin Booth "
that the subjoined letter refers:

PoNKAPOG, Nov. 1, 1893.
Dear Will:

Your book reached me last evening, and I read in it, far
into the night, with what interest I need not say. It is a
complete record. The man we knew and the man the world
knew are here drawn at full length. Hereafter others will,
doubtless, attempt to write of Edwin Booth, but they will have
to come to your pages for authentic material, whether of
biography or criticism. Everything that befell him was on
a large scale — ^his triumphs and his calamities. I count it
one of his great pieces of good fortune that he had a wise and
loving chronicler like you. I was glad to see Launt Thomp-
son's noble bust among the illustrations, — which are admi-
rable as a whole. I liked Mr. Scott's crayon the best.

Sargent's portrait comes out well, and the lago is a won-
derful bit of photography. Tour volume needs nothing but

T. B. ALDRICH 375

an alphabetical index of names. I was at first a little doubt-
ful of the footnote on page 156, — ^my impression of that
burial scene was so inadequately expressed in those few
hastily-written words; but perhaps the reader will read be-
tween the lines, and let his sympathy fill out the picture.

I notice that you speak of the Players as " The Players
Cluh " ; that is not the name of the association. It was my
happy fortune to suggest the name. Booth, Barrett, Bis-
pham, Hutton, and Benedict were present at the birth, which
occurred on Benedict's steam yacht Oneida.

When your book passes to a second printing, as it will
presently, will you please scrape away the comma after the
word sweet in the 19th line of my poem, and change " that "
to "whaf'f The line should read:

May know what sweet majestic face.

As I closed the volume last night I suddenly felt tired
for you, thinking how hard you must have worked, these last
three months. But here is your reward — ^you have made a
permanent addition to our slender store of biography and
our still more slender store of dramatic criticism. I wish I
had written the book ! And so, good night !

Ever affectionately,

Tom.

In the letter that follows there is playful allu-
sion to an old associate of ours, long since passed
away — Henry Clapp, editor and publisher of
" The Saturday Press." That paper was started
on October 23, 1858. One of Aldrich's early

376 OLD FRIENDS

publications was a poem, long out of print, called
" The Course of True Love Never Did Run
Smooth." A presentation copy, given to Clapp
by the author, chanced to come into my posses-
sion, and, knowing that he preferred to suppress
the work as an immature production, I sent it to
Aldrich. Hence the reference to our departed
comrade.

The Crags, Tennant's Haebok, Maine.
July 30, 1895.
Dear Will:

I have to thank you for two books, each of which inter-
ested me in its own way. I hope that you will carry your
" Shadows of the Stage " into many volumes and that I
shall live to read them. The series, — ^valuable now, — will be
precioiis hereafter. What if we had such a record of the
stage in Shakespeare's time!

My long-forgotten little book, which you were so good as
to send to me, is much more unsubstantial and ghostly than
the slightest of your " Shadows," — for they are of yesterday.
How on earth did that particular copy fall into your hand?
Did poor old Clapp express it to you C. O. D., by some
supernatural messenger? The yellow leaves have a strange,
musty odor: Is it brimstone?

I wish you were within hailing distance of this place. I
should love to have you make us a visit.

Ever yours,

T.B. A.

ADA CAVENDISH

Reference to the plays of Wilkie Collins and
to the actress by whom chiefly they were made
known in America affords an opportunity here
for a word commemorative of another cherished
friend passed away, the English actress Ada Cav-
endish. There was, in the personaUty and in the
art of that remarkable woman, a potent element
of intellectual character. She did not conquer by
beauty or authority, although she possessed both:
she conquered by a vanning intellectual person-
ality, evinced in a charming, if sometimes irregu-
lar, method of art. The two parts in which, espe-
cially, she succeeded were Mercy Merrick, in
" The New Magdalen," and Miss Gwilt, in " Ar-
madale." In acting Mercy Merrick she had to
impersonate a woman intrinsically good, but pas-
sionate and wayward, who, by sin and cruel cir-
cumstance, becomes enmeshed in a hopeless tangle
of temptation and affiction; and she had to show
her as passing through a succession of trials,

377

378 OLD FRIENDS

harrowing to the fine sensibility of womanhood,
till, redeemed and purified, she found refuge if
not peace in a saint-like abnegation of self. Her
manifestation of that suffering woman's nature
and experience was inspired with intense feeling,
and it possessed the artistic merit of gradual
development under the pressure of circumstance
and of conscience.

There is so much immaturity and shapeless ef-
fort in the acting that is obtruded upon public ob-
servation that a performance instinct with clear
purpose, invested with simplicity, and finished
with even a httle good taste, leaps at once into the
favor of those persons who, capable of thought,
are diligent in the service of the arts, making them
indulgent of defects, because of sympathy with
the right spirit, Ada Cavendish was well
equipped thus to beguile judgment, for her face
was luminous with hope and joy; her brilUant
blue eyes were very gentle in expression; she had
the sweet English voice; and her Uthe, graceful,
alert demeanor was a decisive allurement. As an
actress she had not acquired that complete repose
which only comes after long and varied experi-

ADA CAVENDISH

ADA CAVENDISH 379

ence, and sometimes the stress of her emotion
made her action precipitate and her speech vehe-
ment. But she expressed perfectly well the oper-
ation of remorse beneath an aspect of artificial
mirth, the anguish resultant from conflict of good
and evil impulses, and the submissive meekness
of repentance ; and therein she proved herself an
actress of authority and skill.

She was exceptionally peculiar. She acted
parts that are strongly contrasted, — Mercy Mer-
rick and Rosalind, Lady Teazle and Juliet, for
example, — but analysis of her acting, while it
found beauties in each performance that she gave,
discerned that her supreme fidelity of impersona-
tion was elicited by a character strongly tinctured
with eccentricity, — ^that, namely, of Miss Chioilt,
in Wilkie Collins's "Armadale," To that part
she was exactly suited by physical constitution
and by sensibility and eccentricity of tempera-
ment. The lithe figure, the ruddy golden hair,
the eagerly expressive countenance, the rich, sym-
pathetic voice, the quick, sinuous movements, the
capability of rapid transition from wild excite-
ment to icy calm, the energy of mind, and the

380 OLD FRIENDS

depth of feeling, — all those attributes of the
woman harmonized with the author's conception
of the character and reinforced the player's ex-
pression of it. That personation disclosed and
typified a nature essentially dramatic. There was
a lack of symmetry in the method of it, but the
spirit of it was perfect. The best actors, inevit-
ably, are sometimes uneven in their art, but they
are, in every fibre, suflPused veith magnetic fire.
To see Ada Cavendish as Miss Gwilt was to feel
the spell of intense emotion and potent intellectual
force. The foaming cataract, the flying cloud,
the swirl of angry waves and the rush of the tem-
pest are symbols of the spirit that shone through
her acting, — a spirit audacious with abounding
vitality, tremulous with eager impulse, and pa-
thetically suggestive of predestined sorrow. To-
ward the close of her life Ada Cavendish suffered
much, but she met her fate with gentle resigna-
tion and noble fortitude. Her grave is in Kensal
.Green. Her memory survives in faithful hearts.

In closing these recollections I would venture
to say that their defects are as well known to

OLD FRIENDS 381

me as they can be to even the sternest of my
critical readers. The chief defect in them, to
my mind, is one of omission, — for I have known
many fine spirits whom I have not even men-
tioned in this chronicle of the Past. When I
think of the aflFection that has been lavished on
me, in the course of a long life, not free from
hardship, trial, and sorrow, I am overwhelmed
with a sense not only of gratitude but of un-
worthiness, and with a kind of pathetic awe.
It is an error to judge harshly of human nature.
With all its defects, it contains celestial attri-
butes. No estimate that I have made of any
human being is extravagant. I wish it had been
possible, in this book, to celebrate my loved and
revered friends among women, the noble and
the gentle, who have brightened life and made
it beautiful; — such women as Harriet McEwen
Kimball, the author of the loveliest religious
poetry that has been written in America; Louise
Chandler Moulton, whose rare poetic genius,
dimly understood or not even perceived by the
social circle in which she moved, wiU grow more
and more imposing in the lapse of time; and

382 OLD FRIENDS

Ellen Mackay Hutchinson (Mrs. Royal Cor-
tissoz) , whose lyre has sounded a note that is not
less original than sweet. I intended to include in
this volume a special, elaborate chapter on the life
and writings of my old friend the poet Stedman,
but I have not done so, being desirous that the
first comprehensive memorial of him should be
the biography that his beloved grand-daughter,
Laura Stedman, is now writing. Many a com-
rade's name comes to my remembrance, that would
warrant a chapter of reminiscence. Daniel N.
Haskell, Frances A. Durivage, James T. Fields,
Henry Giles, Benjamin P. Shillaber, Adam
Wallace Thaxter, Anson Burlingame, George
Limt, Aurelius D. Parker, Stephen Gordon
Nash, William Young (of the old "Albion"),
WilUam B. Reed, — with each of whom, and
with others, I had pleasant communion and
frequent and sometimes large correspondence,
and each of whom would afford interesting
studies of character and amusing chronicles of
incident. But it is needful here to pause. There
will come another occasion. Life, which is not
devoid of romance now, was full of romance in

OLD FRIENDS 383

those other days, and it was as opulent and as
dear to those who are gone as it is to those who
remain. Nature is ever generous, providing
opportunity to each generation, and remaining
indifferent to all. The essential thing is the
manner in which opportunity is improved. The
present period, wonderful in material achieve-
ments and in acquisitions of science, is less re-
markable for poetry, romance, and a civilization
interfused with the dignity and sweetness of
repose. The world, no doubt, is growing better,
and not worse, for the liberation and the material
comfort of mankind. Yet perhaps it could be
declared, with some confidence, that the condition
of literature and art fluctuates, — exhibiting at
this time, an aspect of decline. There is much
animalism in current literature, — notably that of
fiction. There is much cynicism in contemporary
thought. Among intellectual leaders there are
few who cherish belief in anything, or even speak
a word of cheer. Deference to the will of
the multitude verges upon fear and is almost
universal. No prophet can safely predict the
next change; but, meanwhile, it seems indubi-

384 OLD FRIENDS

table that the great authors who enchained the
heart and intellect of the community about the
middle of the nineteenth century were more
original, fertile, and brilliant than those who
claim the public attention now. It does not
follow that greater minds than those of either
period will not presently appear. The com-
plexion of American literature has imdergone
much change since the caustic, honest pen of
Poe depicted the local " Literati " of his period,
and much change has occurred since the eve of
the Civil War. Other changes, no doubt, are
imminent. Into that broad realm of specula-
tion I do not venture. Enough if I have here
succeeded in depicting at least a portion of the
old literary time through which I lived, and
some of the old friends whom it was delightful
to know, and whose works are worthy of com-
memorative remembrance.

INDEX

Academy of Music, The, Phila-
delphia, 170.

Adams, John Quincy, 143, 376.

Adams, Samuel, 339.

Addison, Joseph, 131, 154,
230, 234,, 2fi4, 266.

"Adonais," 142.

" After All," low price for, 92.

Agassiz, Louis; eminent natu-
ralist, 302.

ALDRICH, THOMAS
BAILEY, employed on
"Saturday Press," 66; refer-
ence of, to O'Brien, 76; Aid
to General Lander, 77; com-
ment of, in letter, 82, 88;
letter from, 100; biographi-
cal details, 101; sub-editor
of "The Home Journal;"
unique letter to, from P. J.
O'Brien, 103, 124; sketch of
his life, 132, et seq.; last
words, death, 133; author's
friendship with, 132-133-134;
author's first meeting with,
134-135; among "The Bo-
hemians," 138; his poem of
"Babie Bell"; removal to
Boston; marriage; editorial
positions ; Stoddard's nick-
name for; attributes of his
poetry, 139; remark about.

by Walt Whitman, 140; his
definition of the Poet, 141;
characteristic letter from,
143, 143; Longfellow's influ-
ence upon, 144; his best
poem, 145; nature, writings,
and experience; death of his
son, 145, 146; critical ability;
quality of his poetry; atti-
tude toward it, 147; visit,
with author, to Temple
Church, London, and whimsi-
cal comment, 147; talk with
Lawrence Barrett, 148; quiz-
zical anecdote of, and Mark
Twain, 149, 150; anecdote of,
and Lord Houghton, 150,
154; influence on, of Tenny-
son, and place in American
literature, 150, 151, 153; re-
mark about Holmes, 151;
temporarily takes place of
George William Curtis, in
Easy Chair of "Harper's,"
354, 393, 393; connection with
"The Saturday Press," 395;
selected letters of, written in
youth to the author, 351-
376.
Alger, Rev. William Rounse-
ville, on Bayard Taylor, 166-
157.

385

386

OLD FRIENDS

Allston, Washington, anecdote
of, related by Longfellow,
45, 264.

American Anthology, An, by
E. C. Stedman; Authors'
Club festival; speech by the
author, 298.

"American Lands and Let-
ters," by Donald Grant
Mitchell, description of, 333,
et seq.

Anderson, Mary, letter by,
about death of Longfellow,
348.

Anthony, A'. V. S., distin-
guished engraver, 182, 319.

Arnold, George, at PfafPs, 64,
88, 93; character of; burial,
94; description of F. J.
O'Brien, by, Q9, 101, 292,
293; letter about his poems,
by Longfellow, 350.

"Armadale," 208.

Arnold, Matthew, his criticism,
33; his "Oberman," 83; ear-
nestly commended by Charles
Dickens, 182, 259, 30a

Arthur, Julia, tribute to, by T.
B. Aldrich, for her acting,
373.

Atlantic CablCi the first one;
mention of song by the au-
thor, 377.

Atlantic," " The, early con-
tributors to, 55, 76, 92, 139;
Stories by Fitz-James O'Brien
in, 67.

AUas," "The Boston, 54.

Authors, exigent judgments of
each other, 45.

Bacon-Shakespeare Humbug;
letter by Albert Henry
Smyth, in ridicule of, 333.

Bailey, Philip James, author of
"Festus"; refers to piratical
editions of that poem in Am-
erica, 56; account of visit to
him by author, 336, et eeq.;
his "Mystic," 361; Aldrich's
view of his mystical lines,
362.
falmerino, Arthur Elphinstone^
Lord, epigram by, 226.

Barlow, Joel, 324.

Barrett, Lawrence, 368, 375.

Barstow, Elizabeth, Mrs. R.
H. Stoddard, 293.

Bateman, HezeMah Linthicum,
100.

Beaumont, Francis, 31.

Beecher, Henry Ward, Rev.,
302, 318.

BeU, John, 239.

Bellew, Francis Henry Tem-
ple, artist, 308; letter to,
from C. B. Seymour, about
suicide of William North,
313; letter to, from North,
317.

Benedict, E. C, 375.

Bennett^ James Gordon, the
elder, 84, 137.

Bernhardt, Sarah, 371.

Bible, 86.

Billings, Hammat, artist, his

INDEX

387

illustrations of " Festus,"
337.

Bispliam, William, 375.

Bloomfield, Robert, 338.

Bohemia, so called, in New
York, ceased to exist, 105,
106.

BOHEMIANS," " THE, of
New York, so called; sketch
of, 57, 63, 76, 78, et seq.j also
in chapter "Vagbant Com-
BADEs," 79, 80, 106; circle
broken, comment on, in letter
from Aldrich, 82; writers who
composed that group, 88;
William Dean HoweUs's refer-
ences to, 89, 90; poverty of,
93; fraternity and dissen-
sions among, 93, 94; con-
trasts afforded by, 95; can-
dor of literary judgment
among, 96; summarized, 138,
178.

Boker, George Henry, 177, 293,
295.

Bonaparte, Napoleon, 113.

Booth, Edwin Thomas, 75;
Aldrich's parting from, 373;
dedication of "Life and Art
of Edwin Booth," by the
author, to T. B. Aldrich, 374,
376.

Booth, Junius Brutus, the
elder, as Pescara, 277.

Boughton, George H., artist,
66, 319.

Boston, of to-day and sixty
years ago, contrasted, 53.

Brook Farm, 228, 329.
Bromham, and visit to Sloper-

ton Cottage and grave of

Thomas Moore, 300.
Brooks, Erastus, 137
Brooks, James, 137.
Bryant, William Cullen, 45,

81, 107, 137, 234, 263, 364;

Stedman's Ode on, 304, 324,

364.
Browning, Mrs. Robert, 154.
Browning, Robert, 21; poem

of "Waring," 83.
Brunswick Hotel, Boston, 119.
Brown, J. Brownlee, art critic,

295.
Browne, Charles Farrar, de-
scription of, 285. See also

under ARTEMUS WARD.
Brougham, John, actor; state-
ment by, about Edgar A.

Poe, 35; his opinion of F,

J. O'Brien, 95.
Brisbane, Albert, 60; anecdote

about, related by Henry

Clapp, Jr., 69.
Brooks, Preston S., assault

on Charles Sumner by,

238.
Briar Wood Pipe," "The,

94.
Burns, Anthony, "the return

of," into slavery, 237.
Briggs, Charles F. {Harry

Franco), originated hoax

about P. J. O'Brien, 102, 137;

place of burial, 296.
Burns, Robert, 114, 154; his

388

OLD FRIENDS

method of composition, 155,
178; oration on, by G. W.
Curtis, 369, 398.

Bunker HiU, 239.

Burgess, Mr. and Mrs. Fred-
erick, 389.

Burke, Edmund, 343.

Burlingame, Anson, 237.

Burton, William, actor, 74.

Byron, George Gordon, Lord,
34, 25 ; his " Don Juan " con-
trasted with Southey's
"Curse of Kehama," 25, 26,
45, 67, 142; as to poetry, 154;
his method in composition,
155, 254, 333, 340.

Calverley, Charles Stuart, 162.

Campbell, Thomas, 21.

Carlyle, Thomas, mention of his
writings, 86; as to poetry,
154.

Carroll, Dr. Alfred L., 68.

Cary, Alice; early friendship
of, and T. B. Aldrich, 365.
" Casabianca," 250.

Cavendish, Ada, actress (Mrs.
Frank A. Marshall), 206,
307, 208; sketch of, 208, 377,
et seq; analysis of her act-
ing, 378, 380.

Centennial Celebration of 1876,
in Philadelphia, 169.

Century Club, The, of New
York, 234.

Channing, WUliam Ellery,
Rev., 329, 276.

Chapin, Rev. Edwin H., 302.

Charles I, King of England,
his sacramental cup, 340.

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 254.

"ChUde Harold," 142.

Choate, Rufus, statesman and
orator, meeting of, with B.
P. Whipple, 111; on "The
Last Days of Samuel Rog-
ers," 113; delivers oration in
Fanueil Hall, and beauty of
it, 338, 240, 243; method and
effect of, in oratory, 344,
345, 277.

Civil War, 82.

CLAPP, HENRY, JR. {Prince
of Bohemia in New York),
sketch of (in " Bohemian
Days"), 57, et seq.; ias char-
acter, age, appearance; en-
gages WUliam Winter as
sub-editor of "The Saturday
Press"; his birth, 57, 60;
writes for "The New York
Leader"; resuscitates his
"Saturday Press," 61; char-
acteristic editorial announce-
ment by; his pen name;
satirical remark by; death
and the aspersion of, 62, 64;
place of his burial; epitaph,
63; "The Saturday Press"
started, Fitz-James O'Brien
and T. B. Aldrich engaged,
66; working for Albert Bris-
bane; anecdote about; trans-
lation of book by Fourier,
69; comment of, on O'Brien
and Aldrich, 77, 88; Walt

INDEX

389

Whitman at the celebration
of birthday of, 91; 101,
137, 393, 394, 39S; as to Wil-
liam North, 316, 375, 376.

Clapp, William Warland, of
Boston, 55.

Clancy, John, editor, 61.

Clare, Ada (Jane McElheney),
319; contributor to "The
Saturday Press," 395.

Clarke, Louis Gaylord, editor
of " The Knickerbocker Mag-
azine," 362.

Cleopatra, 231.

Coleman, Charles, artist, at
Capri, 319.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 24,
45, 114; as to poetry, 154; an-
ecdote of, told by Wilkie Col-
lins, 213, 314.

COLLINS, WILLIAM WIL-
KIE, novelist; his high opin-
ion of Fenimore Cooper, 17;
on women's societies, 72; ac-
count of, 203, et seq.j let-
ters to the author, from him,
306, 309, 318; his residence
in London, and author's last
meeting with him, 311; es-
timate of his works and his
character, and description of
his personal appearance,
214, 315, 316, 217; his allu-
sions to his boyhood; refer-
ence to his novel of " The
Black Robe," 318; elegiac
sonnets in memory of, by the
author, 320; 300, 377, 378.

Colman, George, dramatist,

306.
Cooper, James Fenimore, 107,

264.
Cooper, Thomas (A.), actor, 126.
Canova, his bust of Napoleon,

113.
Concord Bridge, 239.
Congdon, Charles Tabor, 54;

his remark about Holmes,

130, 294.
Conkling, Roscoe, his peculiar

idea of poetry, and elo-
quence, 250.
" Cormwall, Barry" pen name

of Bryan Waller Proctor,

360.
Courier," "The New York,

137.
"Courtship of Miles Stand-

ish," by Longfellow, its first

publication mentioned by

Aldrich, 361.
Cowley, Abraham, 21; com-
pared with Longfellow, 24.
Cowper, William, 154.
Cozzens, Frederick, author of

"The Sparrowgrass Papers,"

364.
Crabbe, George, Rev., 328.
Craigie mansion. The, 223.
Craigie, Mrs., and Longfellow,

44.
Cranch, Christopher Pearse,

177.
Criticism, right course of,

93.
Cromwell, Oliver, 268.

390

OLD FRIENDS

Cniikshank, George, 98.

Crystal Palace (New York),
Exhibition, 84.

Cumberland, Richard, 31.

Cunningham, Allan, 178.

Cummings, Miss, author, 81.

CURTIS, GEORGE WIL-
LIAM, orator and author, re-
mark to, by Washington Irv-
ing, 81, 177; his appearance in
youth; sketch of his life, 323,
et seq.; at home of Longfel-
low, 334; author's first meet-
ing with him; introduction
by Longfellow, 234; reason
for commemoration of, 325;
character of, 226; his sketch
of Theodore Winthrop men-
tioned, 227; Brook Farm,
228; influences which affected
him; wisdom of; conduct of
life, 229; visits the Orient,
229, 230; visits England,
230; a humorist; nobility of
his mind, 230; in Egypt; and
impressions of, on his mind,
231; his early books, 232;
poetry not natural vocation,
233; poetic sensibility of;
his analysis of the poet Bry-
ant, 234; particular books of,
334; nature and faculties of;
prose writings, 235; early
lyric faculty, 236; participa-
tion in the anti-slavery move-
ment, speaks in public with
Horace Greeley, and con-
trast with the latter, 241;

power as an orator, and pre-
eminence as such, 243; the
last great orator, 243; influ-
ences affecting his develop-
ment as an orator, 243, 344,
245, 246, 247; his method
and manner in public speech,
248, 249, 250; conversation
with Roscoe Conkling, 250;
example of supreme eloquence
mentioned by, 250; sacrifi-
ces made by him in his life;
his experience, 252; wise ad-
monition by, 253; his patience
and industry, 254; quality of,
254, 295, 302; letter from
him, about death and funeral
of Longfellow, 347; his resi-
dence, 370.

Cushman, Charlotte, great ac-
tress, 75.

Gushing, Caleb, 240.

" Daisy's Necklace,'' early

novel, by T. B. Aldrich,

365.
Daly, Augustin, begins career

as a writer, 137.
Daly's Fifth Avenue Theatre,

126.
Duff, Mary, 126.
Dana, Charles Anderson, 229.
Dana, Richard Henry, the

poet, 45, 80, 107, 204; his

lecture on "Hamlet."
Dane Law School, Harvard

College, 79.
Davidge, William P., actor, 197.

INDEX

391

Day Book," "The New York,
136.

Declaration of Independence,
anniversary of, celebrated in
1876, in Philadelphia, 167,
168, 169, 170, 171, 172; au-
thor delivers poem; anecdote
of General Hancock and
General Sherman, 173.

De Foe, Daniel, 328.

Delmonico's Restaurant, old,
71.

De Quincey, Thomas, 213, 360.

Descl^e, Aimde-Olympe, French
actress, 209, 21Q.;_ her view
of the character of Grace
Boseberry, 210.

DICKENS, CHARLES, the
elder, dress of, 48; his opinion
as to his portrait and illustra-
tion of his novels, 66; feel-
ing manifested about, 108;
109, 114; sketch of, 181, et
seq.; invites the author to
visit him in England; em-
barks aboard the Russia,
181; his opinion of "A Tale
of Two Cities"; fondness
for melodrama, 183; his man-
ner when before an audience,
and his manner in private
life, 184; description of him
and farewell to America,
185; farewell glimpse of;
visit to his grave, 186; the
glass out of which he took
his parting drink, on leaving
America, 188; his readings;

involved in a railway acci-
dent; his son's care of him,
when reading; death, and
that of his son, 190, 191; his
house, at Gad's Hill, 193;
critical examination of his
public readings, 193, 202,
280, 300, 365.

Dickens, Charles, the younger;
his anecdotes of his father,
188, 189; his death, 191.

Durivage, Francis Alexander,
297.

Dwight, Timothy, 324.

Diamond Lens," "The, by F.
J. O'Brien, 67.

Disraeli, reply to his "Con-
ingsby" by William North,
316.

Dolby, George, manager for
Dickens, 182.

Dommett, Alfred, 83.

"Don Caesar de Bazan," 104.

Donnelly, Ignatius, and the
Bacon Humbug, 333.

Douglas, David, eminent pub-
lisher in Edinburgh, 368.

"Dred," novel, by Mrs. Har-
riet Beecher Stowe, 365.

Drake, Joseph Rodman, 26

Dryden, John, 21, 24, 154.

Easy Chair, The, in " Harper's

Magazine," 265, 266.
Ecclesiastes, 263.
Edinburgh, 300.
Edwards, Jonathan, 324.
Edwin, John, actor, 284.

392

OLD FRIENDS

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 65,
107, 177; influence of, on
Curtis, 335; quality of his
expression in literature, 236;
passage from his Dartmouth
College Oration, repeated hy
Curtis, 350, 265, 303, 304;
at the funeral of Longfellow,
mentioned in letter hy G. W.
Curtis, 348.

Erment, Temples of, 231.

Everett, Edward, statesman
and orator, 338, 239, 243, per-
sonal appearance ; method
of, and effect in, oratory,
245, 246, 347; at Harvard,
302.

Eytinge, Sol, 308; artist, 182;
Dickens' opinion of portrait
by, 66; brief sketch of his
career, 317, et seq.; burial
place of, 319.

Express," "The New York,
137.

Fallen Star," "The, 69; stan-
zas of it applicable to its
author, F. J. O'Brien, 78, 79.

Fall of the House of Usher,"
"The, 67.

FaneuU HaU, 237.

"Faust," Goethe's, 341.

Fechter, Charles, praise of, by
Charles Dickens 183.

Felton, Cornelius, 107, 302.

"Festus," by Philip James
Bailey, 56, 336, 337, 338,
339, 340, 341, 361.

Fields, James Thomas, pub-

lisher, 55, 118, 182, 297, 360,
365.

Figureheads, in literature, sa-
tire of, 61.

First Massachusetts Battery,
104.

Ford, John T., theatrical man-
ager, relic of Poe received
from, 36.

Forrest, Edwin, 126.

Fourier, Francois Charles,
translation of his treatise on
"The Social Destiny of
Man," 60, 69.

Fox, Charles James, on poetry,
154.

Francis, John C, tribute to the
memory of Longfellow by,
49.

Franklin, Benjamin, 275, 330.

Fremont, General John C.

Frost, William, merchant, unr
cle of T. B. Aldrich,
138.

Fuller, Margaret (Countess
d'Ossoli), her criticism of
Longfellow; contributes to
"The New York Tribune,"
31; death of, 32, 229.

Fugitive Slave Law, 236, 237.

Gad's Hill, home of Charles

Dickens, 189, 191; visited by

the author, 192.
Gallup, Mrs. Elizabeth Wells,

and the Bacon Humbug, 333.
Gardette, Charles Demerais, his

deception of the public with

INDEX

393

"The Fire Fiend," 65, 88,
292.

Garrick, David, 113.

Gayler, Charles, dramatist, 308.

George IV and Queen Caro-
line, souvenirs of, 339.

Gibbon, Edveard, 275.

Giddings, Joshua R., 237.

Giflford, William, 275.

Gil Bias and the Archbishop,
297.

Giles, Henry, essayist, 107,
243, 294, 302, 360.

GilflUan, George, Scotch essay-
ist, 27.

Goethe, John Wolfgang von,
exemplar of Longfellow, 51,
61, 228, 234, 251.

Gloucester, Mass., birthplace
of author, 275.

Globe Theatre, The, in Boston,
126.

Goldsmith, Dr. Oliver, 147, 179,
252, 255; Washington Irving
and Donald Grant Mitchell
of the same "family," 326,
328.

Gough, John B., "temperance
orator," 376.

Graham, Lorimer, 298.

"Graham's Magazine," 68.

Gray, Thomas, Longfellow as-
sociated with, by Lowell, 24;
his "Elegy" and Thomas
Buchanan Read's " The Clos-
ing Scene," as compared by
Coventry Patmore, 29, 154;
his letters, 352.

Greeley, Horace, founder of
"The New York Tribune,"
31; designation of, by Henry
Clapp, 62, 136; death of,
mentioned in letter from
Bayard Taylor; appearance
of, 241, 243.

Greene, Charles G., 54.

Greenwood Cemetery, 94.

Griswold, Cass, artist, 319.

Griswold, Rufus Wilmot, 32,
264.

Grundy," "Mrs., comic paper,
68.

Guilford family (Lord North),

Hagen, Theodore, editor and
musician, 283.

Hall, Mr. and Mrs. J, C,
338.

Hale, John G., 237.

Hancock, General Winfield
Scott, 171.

Hanover, House of, 226.

Halpine, Charles Graham
{Miles O'Reilly), poet, edi-
tor, soldier, 61.

Halleck, Fitz-Greene, his
"Marco Bozzaris," 22, 80,
107; his appreciation of Al-
drich's "Babie Bell," 264,
296.

Harvard College, 129.

Harvard College, Dane Law
School of, 79.

"Harris's Folly," Boston, 53.

Harper's Ferry, 104.

394

OLD FRIENDS

"Harper's Bazar," 266.

" Harper's Magazine," 71, 76,
354, S65.

"Harper's Weekly," 101, 265.

Haskell, Daniel N., once editor
of "The Boston Transcript";
employs the author in youth;
characteristic remark of, 134,
135, 364.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 45, 81,
229, 243, 264.

Herald," "The New York, 84,
87, 137.

Heron, Matilda, Mrs. Robert
Stoepel, 100.

Herrick, Robert, poet, 139,
154, 254.

Hemans, Felicia, 250.

Henderson, John, actor, 21.

Hennesey, William J., ,

artist, 319.

Higginson, Thomas Went-
worth, 122, 123.

History of Germany, by Bay-
ard Taylor, 174.

Hoffman, George Fenno, 264.

Hogarth, Willliam, 320.

Holland House, 113.

HoUand, Lord (Henry Rich-
ard Vassal Fox), 113.

Holland, George, comedian,
197.

HOLMES, OLIVER WEN-
DELL., poet, novelist, and
physician, 45, 55, 81; sketch
of, 107, et seq.; characteristic
poems of, designated, 109 ; ad-
miration of the young for him.

110; illuminative indication
of hischaracter, 110, 111, 112;
remarkable period spanned by
his life, 112; variety of his
accomplishments, 114; his
rank as a poet, 116; his ap-
pearance, and method when
speaking in public, 116; his
fine delivery of his poem on
Moore, 117; "Atlantic
Monthly" festival in honor
of him, 119; remarkable ef-
fect of his delivery of "The
Iron Gate," 120; poem in his
honor, by author, delivered
on same occasion; effect of,
120; letter from, about that
poem, 121; anecdote of
Lucy Larcom, T. W. Hig-
ginson, and author, at that
festival, 122; characteristic
letter from, 125; his liking
for the stage, 125, 126; let-
ter from, about old actors,
126; his poem "The Old
Player," and Shakespeare
Ode, 126, 127; author's last
meeting with him; character-
istic attributes; anecdotes of,
and his interest in con-
temporary life, 127-131 ; qual-
ities of mind and heart,
121, 151, 154, 264, 300, 303;
letter by, about death of
Longfellow, 348, 364.

Home Journal," "The New
York, 76, 103, 136, 145.

Homer, 154.

INDEX

395

Hone house, the, in New
York, 97.

Hook, Theodore, 384.

Hood, Thomas, 354.

Horton, Rushmore G., editor,
136.

Houghton, Lord, Richard
Monckton Milnes, 150.

Howells, William Dean, novel-
ist; his views of Scott and
Thackeray mentioned, 89; ap-
pearance in youth; visits
Charles Pfaffs restaurant;
admiration for Walt Whit-
man; his incorrect state-
ments as to the old " Bo-
hemians," 89-91.

Howe, Mrs. Julia Ward, 360.

Howitt, William and Mary,
338.

Howland, Edward, 88;
founder, with Henry Clapp,
of "The New York Satur-
day Press," 137, 293.

Hutton, Laurence, 375.

Inchiquin, Lord, 103.

"Iris," 166.

Irving, Sir Henry, actor, 31,
371.

Irving, Washington, 45; remark
by, to G. W. Curtis, on au-
thorship, 81, lOr, 264; his
friendship with D. G. Mitch-
eU, 325, 326.

James II, King of England,
147.

Jarrett, Henry C, theatrical

manager, 182.
Jefferson, Joseph, actor, 126,

184, 206.
Jeffreys, George, Lord

(Judge), 147.
Jerrold, Douglas, 217.
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 21, 113;

on poetry, 153, 154; his lines

on Hogarth, 320.
Johnston, Thomas, acts in

"Young New York," 88.
Jonson, Ben, his famojis lyric

sung by George William

Curtis and Lester Wallack,

267.
Jordan, George, acts ia

"Young New York," 88.

Kane, Elisha, 93.

Keats, John, 114, 259.

Keeler, Ralph, 163.

Keene, Laura, produces, and

acts in, "Young New York,"

68.
Kemble, Fanny, anecdote of,

283.
King, Rev. Thomas Starr, 239.
Knickerbocker Magazine,"

"The, 68.
Know-Nothings, the, 239.

Laighton, Albert, his letters to
T. B. Aldrich, 355; brief
sketch of, 356, et seq.

Lamb, Charles, 45, 114, 124,
154, 254.

LampUghter," "The, 81.

396

OLD FRIENDS

Lander, General Frederick W.,
77; rumor of cause of his
death, 104.

Landor, Walter Savage, anec-
dote of, 42, 114.

Lantern," "The, 76.

Larcom, Lucy, at "Atlantic"
festival to Holmes, 123, 123.

"Lars," by Bayard Taylor,
173, 174.

Last Days of Samuel Rogers,"
"The, oration by Rufus
Choate, 113.

Lathrop, George Parsons, 124.

Leader," "The New York, 87.

"Leaves of Grass," 89.

Leslie's " Stars and Stripes,"
102.

" Life on the Ocean Wave," S5.

Lind, Jenny, at Castle Garden,
268.

Linton, William J., poet, artist,
319.

Lockhart, John Gibson, his
Life of Scott, 213.

Longwood, Pa., Bayard Tay-
lor's grave at, 18.

LONGFELLOW, HENRY
WADSWORTH, sketch of
his life, 17, et seq.; friend-
ship of author with, 18, 19;
birth, ancestry, and educa-
tion, 19; accepts professor-
ship at Harvard; marriage to
Mary Potter; her death;
marriage to Frances Apple-
ton; her death; his last visit
to Europe; his death and

burial, 20; his works; bust,
in Westminister Abbey, 21;
poetic rank of, and reason
for, 31, 22; mention of
works, 21, et seq.; 22, 23, 28,
29; some poems he thought
too personal for publication;
represents principle of high-
est import, 23; monition of
his life; place in literature;
range and variety of his
poetry, 24; significant anec-
dote of, told by J. R. Os-
good, 25; a poet of power;
effect of his writings, 28;
disparagement of, by Ck)ven-
try Patmore, Margaret Ful-
ler, and Edgar Poe; general,
29, 35; motive of disparage-
ment, 36; dislike of, and also
Mrs. Longfellow's, for Mar-
garet Fuller, 31; purpose of
poet and critic contrasted by;
custom of treating reviews,
32; conversation with, about
Poe, and comment; assailed
by Poe, 37; at Charles Mac-
kay's lecture on Dibdin's
Sea Songs, 38; midnight
walk with; characteristics;
comment on Mackay's lect-
ure, 39; keen sense of hu-
mor; anecdotes denoting
same, 40, 41, 43, 43, 44;
never uttered detraction;
anecdote related by, about
Washington Allston, 45;
anecdotes of him, 46, 47; of-

INDEX

397

fers to buy a newspaper for
author; apparel of, 48, 49;
personal appearance of, 49;
his character and patient en-
durance, 50 ; achievement
kindred with that of Goethe,
51; 55, 81, 107, 143, 144, 145,
154, 164; fascination of, for
youth; Curtis at home of,
S23, 335; his last line, S61;
S64, 399, 300, 304, 330, 331,
335, 345, et geq.; 358, 360,
361, 365, 369.

Lost Steamship," "The, poem;
story of; extraordinary read-
ing of, by its author, F. J.
O'Brien, 97, 98.
Lowell, James Russell, as-
sociates Longfellow with
Thomas Gray, 34; mentioned,
45, 55, 107, 343, 303; his
"Vision of Sir Launfal," il-
lustrated by Sol JEytinge,
319; described to author by
Longfellow, 321 ; meeting
with him, in London, 331;
impression made by, 333; 370,
373.

Lucia di Lammermoor, Mme.
Cora de Wilhorst as, 66.

Ludlow, Fitz-Hugh, author of
"The Hasheesh Eater," 1T7,
395.

Lunt, George, poet, 54, 297.

Lytton, Edward Lytton Bul-
wer, first lord, 313.

Macaulay, Thomas Babington,

Lord, 31; remark of, 80; 114;
on poetry, 154.

Mackay, Charles, his lecture
on Dibdin's Sea Songs; his
poems, 38; facts about; book
by, on Medor^ Leigh, 40.

Mackay, Eric, poet; son of
Charles Mackay, 40.

Mackenzie, Dr. R. Shelton,

mentioned as literary spon-
sor for F. J. O'Brien, 76.

Macpherson, James, his "Os-
sian " forgeries, 30.

Madonna, the Sistine, 333.

Man of the World," "The,
novel, 68, 315.

Marvel, Andrew, 369.

Masque of the Gods," "The,
165.

Massey, Gerald, his " Babe
Cristabel," 363.

Mather, Cotton, 334.

Mathews, Cornelius, author,
396.

Mathews, Charles, comedian,
283.

McLeod, Donald, author; com-
rade of F. J. O'Brien; lu-
dicrous quarrel between, 73.

McCullough, John, actor, effect
on, of poem about Moore,
delivered by Holmes, 118.

Memnon, statue of, 330.

Milnes, Richard Monckton,
Lord Houghton, ISO.

Milton, John; his blank verse,
31, 154, 354, 356.

Millward, Mr. and Mrs.

398

OLD FRIENDS

Charles; anecdote of, and
Artemus Ward, 389, 290.

MITCHELL, DONALD
GRANT, 107, 123, 243;
founder of Easy Chair in
"Harper's," 26S; sketch of
and tribute to, 323, et seq.;
324, 325, 326, 327, 328, 329;
letter from, 329; mentioned
by Albert Henry Smyth, in
letter, 33S.

Montaigne, Michael de, his
works mentioned, 84.

Moonstone," "The, CoUins's ac-
count of circumstances un-
der which it was written,
312.

Moore, Thomas, 45; commem-
oration of centenary of, 116,
117, 118; 151; his method of»
composition, 155, 254, 300.

Motherwell, William, 360.

Motley, John Lathrop, 243.

Moulton, Louise Chandler, 54,
124.

Mount Auburn, 130, 144.

Mullen, Edward F., artist for
"Vanity Fair," 66, 88.

Muzzey, Benjamin B., Boston;
piratical publisher of " Fes-
tus," 56, 337.

Nantucket, 59.

Napoleon, listening to the

sound of distant beUs, 304.
NeUl, Henry, journalist; death

of, 65.
New England States; anti-

slavery movement in, 238;
state of politics and par-
ties; popular excitement in,
239.

New York Tribune," "The,
Margaret Fuller a contribu-
tor to, 31.

New York Hotel, 98.

New York Leader" "The, 61.

New York, period of literary
transition in, 105; condition
of, in 18S9-'60.

Newstead Abbey, visited by au-
thor; relics of Lord Byron;
his tomb in Hucknall Tork-
ard church, 300, 340.

Noah, Major Mordecai Manuel,
75, 137.

North, Christopher, (Prof. John
Wilson), 178.

North, William, relations with
O'Brien, 67,68; account of his
career; writings; suicide; 313
to 317; his last letter, 31 T.

" Notes and Queries," tribute to
Longfellow in, 49.

O'BRIEN, FITZ-JAMES, poet
and soldier; vicissitudes of a
stormy life; frequent pov-
erty; disparaged, as Poe was;
short association with "The
New York Saturday Press";
remarkable short stories of,
67, 68; his method in compo-
sition; anecdote, told by
Clapp, suggests incidents in
a story, 69; peculiarities of

INDEX

399

his behavior; poem of "The
Sewing Bird," 71, 72; fiery
temper of; quarrel with Don-
ald McLeo^, 73; character-
istic letter of, 74; nativity,
education, early experience;
comes to New York, liter-
ary career, 75; his varied and
extraordinary career; allu-
sion to, by T. B. Aldrieh;
the best of his works, 76;
joins the New York Seventh
Regiment, in Civil War; ser-
vice as Aid to General Lan-
der; fatally wounded, 77;
death; comment by Henry
Clapp, on hearing of wound;
character and attainments,
77, 78; appearance of, de-
scribed, 79, 88, 100; his Ode
on Kane, 93; quarrels of, 95;
his opinion of the poem of
" Orgia " and of its author,
96; remarkable reading by,
at Pfaffs, 97, 98; "fistic
Waterloo" of ; his nose
broken; comments of Doc-
tor, 98; description of him
by George Arnold, 99; his
writings collected, edited, and
published by this author;
unpublished remains, 102,
103; characteristic letter
from, to Aldrieh, 103; refer-
ence to, in letter from Al-
drieh, 100, 101; author's first
meeting with, 100; not heir
to any title; origin of hoax

about that; his parentage;
letter of A. W. Waud de-
scribes his conduct and
death, 104; his story of
"What Was It?" 139;
177, 292, 295, 308, 309,
367.

O'Brien, Smith, Irish "agita-
tor," 102.

" Ode on the Death of Levett,"
Dr. Johnson's, 154.

Old Pedagogue," "The, poem,
93.

Olive Branch," "The, Boston,
54.

Ornithorhyncus Club, descrip-
tion of, 309.

Osgood, James Ripley, pub-
lisher, Boston, anecdote by,
of LongfeUow, 25; 121, 175,
124, 182.

Osgood, Rev. Samuel, 302.

Otis, James, 239.

Owens, John E., actor, letter
of O'Brien to, 74, 75; his per-
formance of Solon Shingle
admired by Dickens, 184.

Paine, Theophilus, 79.

Pantheon, The, in Paris, 180.

Palmer, Albert M. , theat-
rical manager, 182, 372, 373.

Palmer, Henry D., theatrical
manager, 182.

Parker House, the, Boston,
116.

Parker, Joel, warlike decla-
ration of, 239, 240.

400

OLD FRIENDS

Parker, Theodore, Rev., 229,
237, 277, 302.

Farkman, Dr. Francis, mur-
dered, 277.

Parsons, Theophilus, professor
at Dane Law School, Har-
vard College; his advice to
the author, in youth, 79, 80;
character of, 303.

Parsons, Thomas William, his
"Ode on Dante" mentioned;
anecdote of him and Long-
feUow, 43, 370.

Patmore, Coventry, Catholic
poet; " The Angel in the
House" mentioned; his
opinion of Thomas Buchanan
Read's "The Closing Scene,"
and of Gray's "Elegy," and
of Longfellow, 29.

Pattes des Mouches," "Les, by
Victorien Sardou, 88.

Paulding, James Kirke, novel-
ist and poet, 264.

Peabody, Andrew, Rev., editor;
his praise of Albert Lwgh-
ton's poems, 357.

Percival, James Gates, 264,
26S.

Perry, Nora, poet, 124.

PfafF, Charles, his restaurant
(" PfaflPs Cave," name given
to it by the author), dis-
covered by Henry Clapp, 63;
description of, 64; literary
and artistic frequenters of,
64, 65, 66, 70, 82, 88, 91, 93.

Phillips, Wendell, orator, 237,

243; comment on, by G. W.
Curtis, 249, 262, 302.

Pierce, Prof., famous mathe-
matician, 302.

Pitt, William, statesman, on
Burns, 155.

Placide, Thomas, actor, 75.

Plato, 30.

Players, The, Club, founded by
Edwin Booth in New York;
name suggested by T. B.
Aldrich, 375.

Plays of T. B. Aldrich; "Mer-
cedes" and "Judith of Be-
thulia," 371, 372.

Pleasures of Memory," "The,
by Samuel Rogers, 113.

Prentice, George Denison, poet
and editor, 362.

Press," "The New York Sat-
urday, 87, 137.

Proctor, Edna Dean, letter by
her, about death of Long-
fellow, 349.

Psahn of Life," "The, Bayard
Taylor's parody of, 164.

"Putnam's Magazine," 76, 265.

Pygmalion, 232.

"Pynhurst," novel, 73.

POE, EDGAR ALLAN, men-
tion of his " Haunted
Palace;" 22; his acrimonious
criticism of Longfellow;
works of, edited by E. C.
Stedman and George Ed-
ward Woodberry; allowance
necessary, in judging his
character and writings, 33;

INDEX

401

quaUly of his "Haunted
Palace," 34; achievement;
disparagement of works; his
death, 34; statement of John
Brougham about; mention of
his stories, 35; motive of
much vindictive censure of
him; relic of; poem of
author's read at dedication
of moniunent to, 36; con-
versation of author with
LongfeUow about; burial of,
36, 37; mention of alleged
posthumous poem by, 65, 67;
experience of, 81; reference
to detraction of, 92; as to
poetry, 154, 176, 177, 264;
his account of " the Literati "
mentioned; his early recog-
nition of Bayard Taylor as
a poet, 296.

"Poems of Many Years," ISO.

Poetry — ^what it is and is not,
153, 154.

Polk, James K., 276.

"Poor Lone Hannah Binding
Shoes," poem, 122.

Pope, Alexander, 154, 254; dis-
covery, by Mrs. Gallup, that
his translation of the Iliad
was introduced by Francis
Bacon, by means of cipher,
into Burton's "Anatomy of
Melancholy," 334.

Post," « The Boston, mentioned,
54.

Post," "The New York Even-
ing, 76, 137.

"Potiphar Papers," by G. W.
Curtis, 265.

Rameses, 231.

Raphael, da Urbino, 232.

Raven," " The, by Poe, trans-
lated into German by Bay-
ard Taylor, 75.

Read, Thomas Buchanan; C.
Patmore's opinion of "The
Closing Scene" by, 29.

Reade, Charles, novelist; Al-
drich's opinion of " It's Never
Too Late To Mend."

Reeve, Wybert, actor, as Count
Fosco, 209.

Record of the Boston Stage,"
"A, 55.

Rehan, Ada, actress, 338.

Reid, Whitelaw, editor, orator,
statesman, 176.

" Rejected Addresses," men-
tioned, 162.

" RetaUation," 252.

Revere House, Boston, 135,
136.

Rhoades, James, his elegy on
Artemas Ward, 291.

Rhyme of Rhode Island ancj
the Times," "A, by G. W.
Curtis, 233.

Richardson, Samuel, novelist^j
80.

" Rifleman, Shoot Me a Fancj'
Shot," 94.

Ripley, George, at Brook
Farm, 229.

Robinson, Henry Crabb, 275.

402

OLD FRIENDS

Rogers, Samuel; Rufus Choate,
on; lines about by Lord
Holland; memorable events
spanned by his life, 113, 114,
115.

Rogers, Nathaniel P., noted
"Abolitionist," 59.

Rose, George {Arthur Sketch-
ley); death, burial at Bromp-
ton, 281. See Arthur Sketch-
ley.

Rosenberg, Charles G., drama-
tist and journalist, 308.

Russell, vocalist, 55.

Russia, the old steamship on
which Charles Dickens sailed
from New York, 181.

St Peter's, Rome, 333.

Sargent, Epes, 55, 296, 297.

Saturday Evening Gazette,"
"The Boston, 54, 55.

Saturday Press," "The New
York; author becomes sub-ed-
itor; its purpose, 57; F. J.
O'Brien and T. B. Aldrich
employed on, 66; character
of, 60; satire of figure-
heads in literature; discon-
tinued, 61; 178, 395.

Savage, Richard, 334.

Scarlet Petticoat," "The, story,
102.

Scrap of Paper," " A, play, 88.

Schiller, John Christopher
Frederick von, 175.

Scott, portrait of Edwin Booth
as Hamlet by, 374.

Scott, Sir Walter, wise remark
of, 26; his comment on his
writings, 28; refers to Lord
Jeffrey; views of poetry and
criticism similar to those ex-
pressed later by Longfellow,
33; 80, 89, 114; method of
composition, 155, 207; men-
tion of mishap to glass of
King George IV, 185, 186;
mental similiarity of to
Shakespeare, 215; estimate
of, as novelist, by WiUde
Collins, 319, 328, 352, 254,
300; original MS of his Jour-
nal, 328, 353.

Scribners, the, mentioned by
Bayard Taylor, 163.

" Self-Made Men," biographical
sketches, by C. B. Seymour,
313.

Senancour, Stephen Pivert de,
83

Seventh Regiment, New York,
Fitz-James O'Brien with, 77.

Sewall, Samuel, 324.

Sewing Bird," "The, its inspi-
ration and drift; singular cir-
cumstances of its composi-
tion, 72, 73.

Seymour, Charles B., 308;
brief account of his life, 310,
et acq.; "Shadows of the
Stage," 126, 376.

Shakespeare, Ter-Centennial
Celebration of, 136; blank
verse of, 31; 143, 165, 191,
219, 226, 333, 334, 353, 354,

INDEX

403

256, 276, 282, 331, 332, 333,
334, 372.

Shanly, Charles Dawson, essay-
ist and poet; at P faffs, 64,
88, 93; writings of and mod-
esty about, 94, 95; death, 95,
292, 295.

Shaw, Lemuel G., distinguished
judge, 277.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 25;
Tennyson likened to, 40, 114,
142, 177, 178, 254; Stedman's
poem commemorative of him
mentioned, 304.

Shillaber, Benjamin P., 297.

Sherman, General William Te-
cumseh, 171.

Shenstone, William, 328.

Shepherd, Nathan Graham,
poet; at Pfaff's, 65, 88, 292.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 21.

Siddons, Sarah, 113.

Sidney, Sir Philip, 260.

Sketchley, Arthur (George
Rose), sketch of his career,
278, et seq.

Slave of The Lamp," "The,
novel, 68.

Smith, Alexander, 360.

Smith, Captain John, 324.

Smjrth, Albert Henry, brief
sketch of his life and career,
329, et seq.; his "Life and
Works of Franklin," 330.

"Social Destiny of Man," by
Fourier, 69.

Society of the Army of the Po-
tomac, The, 167, 168.

Sophocles, eccentric Greek tu-
tor at Harvard, 302.

Southey, Robert, his "Curse
of Kehama '' contrasted
with Byron's "Don Juan,"
26.

"Spacious Firmament" (Addi-
son), 154.

Spectator," " The, description
of, 266..

Sprague, Charles, 81, 250,
264.

Sprat, Thomas, Bishop of Roch-
ester, his Life of the poet
Abraham Cowley; view as to
posthumous publication of
personal letters, 351.

Staten Island, 296.

S T E D M A N, EDMUND
CLARENCE, works of Poe
edited by, and George Ed-
ward Woodberry, 33; 105, 124;
one of his methods in com-
position, 156, 163, 173; poem
on Greeley mentioned, 176,
177; poem of " Bohemia," 178,
179, 243; meeting in com-
memoration of, 292, 293, 295;
friendship of fifty years with
the author; wide knowledge
of authors, 297, 304, 305; let-
ter from, about death of Al-
bert Henry Smyth, 335.

Steele, Sir Richard, 254.

Sterne, Laurence, Rev., 255.

Stoddard, Lorimer, 163.

Stoddard, Richard Henry, 45,
139; method in composition.

404

OLD FRIENDS

ISS; 163, 177, 178, 264, 293,

294, 295, 305.
Stoddard, Mrs. Richard Henry

(Elizabeth Barstow), 163, 177.
Stoepel, Robert, 100.
Story, William Wetmore; his

"Cleopatra," 22.
Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher,

21.
Strahan & Co., London, 175.
Sumner, Charles, assault on,

237, 243.
Swift, Rev. Jonathan, 297, 328.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles,

291.
Symonds, Willliam Law, 88.

TAYLOR, BAYARD, poet,
novelist; anecdote of; " Echo
Club " by, 161, letter from, 162 ;
parodies Longfellow's " Psalm
of Life," 164; iinest poem
of, 165; characteristic letter
from, about his poems, 166;
participates in Declaration
of Independence jubilee, at
Pliiladelptiia, 1876 ; delivers his
Ode, with great effect, Phila-
delphia, 1876; characteristic
letter from, about that event,
169, 170; quality of his poetic
expression; themes congenial
with; particular poems of,
mentioned, 172; characteris-
tic letters from, about his
poems and travels, 173, 175;
lectures in Germany, in the
German language, on Ameri-

can literature, 175; hopeful
quality of his mind indicated,
176; group of writers to
which he belonged; strong
affection of his nature, 177;
spirit of his poetry, 178; ten-
derness of, 178; was not of
the " Bohemian " group, 178
spirit and personality of, 179
personal appearance, 179
grave of and epitaph, 180
293, 295; characterized by Ed-
gar Poe, 296; Life of, by Al-
bert Henry Smyth, 332.

Taylor, Douglas, antiquarian
and publisher, N. Y., 138.

Taylor, Lillian, daughter of
Bayard, 174.

Taylor, Rev. " Father," Boston,
276.

Temple Chufth, London, 147.

Tennyson, Alfred, first Lord,
21; on Shakespeare, 35;
thought himself humorous;
his allusion to Shelley, 40; 61,
254, 360, 361.

Thaxter, Adam Wallace, dra-
matic critic, 55.

Terry, EUen, actress, 371.

Thackeray, William Makepeace,
89; as to poetry, 154; 218,
254; his early high estimate
of George WiUiam Curtis, as
a writer, 257; 267.

Thomson, Mortimer, humorist,
(pen name Q. K. Philander
Doeitieki, P. B.), 318.

Thompson, Launt, sculptor; his

INDEX

405

bust of Edwin Booth as

Hamlet mentioned, 66, 374.
Threnody on the death of

George William Curtis by W.

W., 370, et seq.
Tickell, Thomas, his apostrophe

to Addison, 131.
Ticknor, William D., publisher,

360, 365.
Times," " The New York, men-
tioned, 76.
Tower of the Four Winds, home

of Elihu Vedder, at Capri,

Italy, 319.
Tower Hill, London, 226.
Transcript," "The Boston, Si,

134, 135.
Tribune," " The New York, 136,

162, 168, 174.
Trumbull, John, 324.
Tupper, Martin Farquhar, and

his "Proverbial Philosophy,"

30; popularity of, 61.

" Uncle Tom's Cabin," men-
tioned, 81; effect of, 237.
Underwood, Francis H.,editor, 93.

"Vanity Fair," comic paper of
vital service to the "Bohe-
mians," 76.

Vedder, Elihu, 319.

Veiled Muse," " The, 176.

Voice of the Silence," "The,
read at Philadelphia, by au-
thor, 170, 171, 172.

Webster, Prof. John W., cele-
brated murder case of, 277.

Webster, Daniel, statesman and
orator; first seen by author,
112; oratorical power of, 243,
277.

Weed, Thurlow, statesman, 185.

Wesley, Rev. John, 267.

Westminister Abbey, mention
of, 31 ; grave of Charles Dick-
ens in.

Weekly Review," "The New
York, 283.

Wheatleigh, Charles, actor; in
"Young New York," 88.

Whig Review," " The, 76.

Whipple, Edwin P., 55, 56, 107;
meeting with Rufus Choate,
110; 343, 297, 303; letter by
him, about author's com-
memoration of Longfellow,

• 245, 360.

White, Henry Kirke, his birth-
place, 340.

White, Gilbert, Rev., of Sel-
borne, 328.

Whitman, Walt, (originally
Walter), English admiration
of; unoriginal style, 30; at
Pfaffs; his appearance and
demeanor, 64, 88, 89; speci-
men of his peculiar "elo-
quence," 91 ; acquaintance
with, and remark about au-
thor; also about T. B. Al-
drich, 140; 154, 393, 293.

Whittier, John Greenleaf; his
" Mantle of St. John de Ma-
tha," 22; his poetry, 85, 107,
123; poem by him translated

406

OLD FRIENDS

into German hy Bayard
Taylor, 176; 264; mention of,
by Holmes, 348; and by Edna
Dean Proctor, 349, 370.

Wilhorst, Cora de, first appear-
ance of, in opera, 86.

Wilkins, Mrs. Marie, actress,
197.

Wilkins, Edward G. P.; early
experience in journalism;
joins staff of " The New York
Herald," wins favor of James
Gordon Bennett; friendship
of Mme. Cora de Wilhorst
for; prominent among the
"Bohemians," 84, 85, 86; in-
troduces the dramatic feuil-
leton, in " The Saturday
Press," 87; his dramatic com-
positions, 88; fatal illness;
author's last hours with; his
death, 86, 87; 95.

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, poet;
45; dandyism, 48, 136, 139,
264, 296.

Wniiams, Roger, 324.

Wilson, Henry, senator, 337.

Winship, Margaret, Mrs. Sol.
Eytinge, 318.

Winter, Captain Charles; au-
thor's father (1800-'78), death
and burial at Cambridge,
Mass.; see dedication.

Winter, Louis Victor, author's
son, mentioned, 128.

Winter, William; author; refer-
ence to, by J. F. Francis; his
homage to Longfellow, 50;

member of the Suffolk Bar,
Mass., 56; personal experi-
ence with F. J. O'Brien, 70,
71; student at Dane Law
School, Harvard College; ad-
vice to, by Theophilus Par-
sons, concerning Law and Lit-
erature, 79; early experience
of hardship. New York liter-
ary life, mentioned, 82; on
the comparative requirements
of Comedy and Tragedy, in
Acting, 126; early employ-
ment of, 133, 134; removes to
New York City, 136; asso-
ciated with "The New York
Saturday Press," as sub-edi-
tor, 137; on poetry, 156, 165;
agrees to deliver poem at
Centenary Celebration of the
Signing of the Declaration of
Independence, 168; delivers
poem before the Society of
the Army of the Potomac,
170, 171, 173; speaker for
Fremont, 340.

Winthrop, Theodore, reference
to, by G. W. Curtis, 227.

Withers, Reuben, 86.

Woman in White," "The,
209.

Wondersmith," " The, story, 67,
69, 70.

Wood, Frank, journalist, death
of, 65; 88.

Wordsworth, William, 24; lack
of humor, 40; 108; 114, 122,
134, 155, 254.

INDEX

407

World," "The New York,
started (1860), 136, 293.

Writers, increase of, men-
tioned, 81; hard time for, on
eve of Civil War, 82; those
who are never heard of, 83;
detraction of their merit fre-
quent in American criticism,
92.

Walden, Thomas Blades de,
dramatist, 88.

Walker of the Snow," "The,
by Shanly, 93.

Wallack, Lester (John John-
stone Wallack), actor, 76;
produced " Henriette " (" A
Scrap of Paper"), 267; his
treatment of MS. play by
T. B. Aldrich, and conse-
quence, 372.

Wallace, William Ross, 296.

Wallis, George H.; curator of
the Museum at Nottingham;
anecdote by, about Philip
James Bailey, 341.

Walton, Izaak, 328,

WARD, ARTEMUS (Charles
Farrar Brown, see also under
that head), at PfafTs; desig-
nation by, of the " Bohe-
mians," 89; sketch of his
career, with anecdotes, 284,
et seq., 285, 290.

"Waring" poem, mentioned, 83.

Warner, Charles Dudley, 243.

Warren, Samuel, his "Ode"
mentioned, 30.

Washington, George, 262, 263,
269.

Watts, Mrs. Alaric, her alleged
spiritual impartment from
Francis Bacon, 333.

Waud, Albert R., artist, letter
from, about O'Brien, 104; 319.

Waud, William, artist, 319.

Young, John Russell, 163.
"Young New York," comedy, 87.
Young, Edward, Rev. Dr., 154.

Zutphen, Sir Philip Sidney at
battle of, 260.

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