Bryant, and his friends

Front matter

Ino

BRYANT,^^"HIS FRIENDS:

SOME REMINISCENCES OF THE KNICKERBOCKER WRITERS.

Preface

The present volume might perhaps properly be called " Some Literary Recollections," for it has been the writer's peculiar privilege to have enjoyed more or less intimacy with all the " Old Guard " of American authors mentioned in the following pages, excepting only Joseph Rodman Drake, and with most of those introduced in the concluding chapter on " Knickerbocker Literature." All but one of these have joined Cooper and Irving and Bryant, having deserted the ranks of those De Quincey described as " the not inconsiderable class of men who have not the advantage of being dead."

There is a natural tendency among biographers to contract what Lord Macaulay sneeringly designates "the disease of admiration." This the author has endeavored to avoid in the brief notices of Bryant and his brilliant Knickerbocker contemporaries.

Madame de Stael used to say that the highest happiness she had experienced was derived from her conversations and correspondence with great and gifted

4 PREFACE.

men. The writer is fully disposed to share this belief, and he deems it among the happiest circumstances of his life, that he has had the good fortune to enjoy the friendship of so many literary men,

" On Fame's eternal) bead-roll worthie to be fyled."

If he has in any instance appeared to give too much prominence to himself, some apology may possibly be found in the fact that, relating occurrences or conversations in which he bore a part, it was unavoidable, and scarcely less so in making use of the epistles of his gifted correspondents. Should the well-read meet with many familiar facts in " Bryant and His Friends," still, in the words of the old scholar, " the unlearned will thank me for informing, and the learned will forgive me for reminding them" of interesting matters they may have met with before.

To the brief biography of William Cullen Bryant, originally prepared for the Memorial Edition of his popular " Library of Poetry and Song," a chapter has been added, and also an unpublished poem ; while to the monograph on Drake an interesting anonymous communication has been appended since its first appearance in Harper's Magazine. The papers on Paulding and Dana, originally contributed to Scribner's Motiihfy, hsiVQ been greatly extended by extracts culled from a goodly sheaf of letters, addressed among others to the author, by those literary pioneers.

PREFA CE. 5

For the use in this work of the fine steel portrait of James K. Paulding the writer desires on behalf of his publishers to return their thanks to his son and biographer, William Irving Paulding; and also to Egerton L. Wiiithrop for the loan of his private plate of Fitz-Greene Halleck, engraved for his father, the late Benjamin R. Winthrop. On his own behalf the author wishes to express his grateful acknowledgments to Miss Henry for kindly placing at his disposal the series of letters addressed to her father, the Rev. Dr. C. S. Henry, by Richard H. Dana, between the years 1832 and 1878; and to add, in conclusion, that very many communications and poems contained in the following pages now appear in print for the first time. Of these may be especially mentioned the lines on " Abelard and Heloise," appearing in fac-simile of Drake's manuscript ; while the writing of the venerable Dana is shown in his transcription of "The Little Beach Bird," copied for the author, as he says, " by a more willing than able old hand " in his ninetieth year.

Lenox Hill, New York, September, 1885.

DEDICATED TO Mrs. ROBERT L. STUART.

BY HER FRIEND,

THE AUTHOR.

Contents

PAGE

WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859) iS7

KNICKERBOCKER LITERATURE, 376

CHAPTER 1. The gravity and stillness of your youth

The world hath noted, and your name is great

In mouths of wisest censure.

William Shakespeare.

O charming youth ! in the first op'ning page: So many graces in so greeen an age!

John Dryden.

He had the wisdom of age in his youth, and the fire of youth in his age. — Mark Hopkins.

Sir Walter Scott relates that, when some one was mentioned as a "fine old man" to Dean Swift, he exclaimed with violence that there was no such thing. " If the man you speak of had either a mind or a body worth a farthing, they would have worn him out long ago." In refutation of this theory, which it may be presumed has nothing to do with thews or stature, may be

12 BRYANT AND HJS- FHI^j^^S.

cited Beranger and Brougham, Goethe and Guizot, Humboldt and Sir Henry Holland, Lyndhurst and Palmerston, Earl Russell and Field-Marshal Moltke, and among Americans, J. Q. Adams and Taney, Professors Henry and Hodge, Horace Binney and Richard Henry Dana, who passed ninety-one — the age at which Titian said that genius never grows old. But if we were asked for a bright and shining example of faculties, and faculties of a high order, remaining unimpaired in mind and body till long past the grand climacteric, we might name William Cullen Bryant, the beloved patriarch of American poetry, and " the most accomplished, the most distinguished, and the most universally honored citizen of the United States," who, having lived under twenty Presidential administrations of ourcountiy, down to that of Garfield and Arthur, until the last week of May, 1878, completed his fourscore years and three, cheerful and full of conversation, and continued to the end to heartily enjoy what Dr. Johnson happily calls " the sunshine of life."

No name in our contemporaneous literature, either in England or America, is crowned with more successful honours than that of William Cullen Bryant. Born among the granite hills of Massachusetts, at a period when our colonial literature, like our people, was but recently under the dominion of Great Britain, he lived to see that literature expand from its infancy and take a proud place in the republic of letters, and he survived to see the Republic itself, after triumphantly crushing a giant rebellion, spring up to a giant power. Surrounded by such historic and heroic associations, men like Bryant,, who survive, embody in their lives the annals of a people, and represent in their individuality the history of a nation.

Pursuing beyond the age of fourscore an energetic literary career, the poet was also an active co-labourer in all worthy movements to promote the advancement of the arts and literature. A liberal patron of art himself, he was always a judicious and eloquent advocate of the claims of artists. On the completion of the beautiful Venetian temple to art erected by the New York Academy of Design, Mr, Bryant delivered the address dedicating the building and consecrating it to its uses. Foremost in the literary circles of his adopted city, he was for many years the president of that tigie-honoured institution of New York, the Century Club, of which Gulian C. Verplanck and George Bancroft had previously been presidents, and which has always embraced among its members men of letters, prominent artists, and leading gentlemen of the liberal professions. Philanthropic in his nature, Bryant was ever the consistent promoter of all objects having for their tendency the elevation of humanity and the furtherance of its interests. He might have echoed the remark of Victor Hugo, who had for half a century claimed that "all humanity was his family." Said the Rev. R. C. Waterston: "It was universally acknowledged that his integrity was as immovable as a mountain of adamant; and that, in all his efforts, he had no motive less elevated than the public good." Connected with the leading evening metropolitan journal, one of the oldest in the United States, he was enabled to bring the powerful influence of the press to bear with his own great literary renown and personal weight upon whatever measure he supported in the cause of philanthropy, letters, and the promotion of art.

William Cullen Bryant was born in a log-house at Cummington, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794.* He was a descend-

* A general misapprehension exists as to Mr. Bryant's birthplace. He was born, as he told the writer, not in what is now known as the " Bryant Homestead," but in a small house constructed of square logs and long since removed. This fact is further confirmed by the following note from the poet to a friend, dated December 5, 1876: " Your uncle Eliphalet Packard was quite right in designating my birthplace. As the tradition of my family goes, 1 was born in a house which then stood at the north-west corner of a road leading north of the burying-ground on the hill, and directly opposite to the burying-ground. The house was afterwards removed and placed near that occupied then by Daniel Dawes. I suppose there is nothing left of it now,"

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. I 5

ant of the English and Scotch families of Alden, Ames, Harris, Hay ward, Howard, Keith, Mitchell, Packard, Snell, and Washburn, and through them from several of the Pilgrims who landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth, on the 22d of December, 1620 — not a bad genealogy for an American citizen, nor unlike that of his brother-poet Halleck, who was descended from the Pilgrim Fathers, including John Eliot, the apostle to the Indians. Bryant also had a worthy clerical ancestor in the person of James Keith, the first minister of Bridgewater, Massachusetts, who, after having preached from 'the same pulpit fifty-six years, died in that town in 17 19,

Stephen Bryant, the first of the poet's American ancestors of his own name, who is known to have been at Plymouth, Massachusetts, as early as 1632, and who some time before 1650 married Abigail Shaw, had several children, one of whom was also named Stephen. He was the father of Ichabod Bryant, who moved from Raynham to West Bridgewater in 1745, bringing with him a certificate of dismission from the church at Raynham, and a recommendation to that of his new place of residence. Philip, the eldest of his five sons, studied medicine and settled in North Bridgewater, now Brockton, where his house is still standing. Dr. Philip Bryant married Silence Howard, daughter of Dr. Abiel How^ard, with whom he studied medicine. One of their nine children, a son called Peter, born in the year 1767, studied his father's profession, and sjicceeded to his practice. At that time there lived in the same town a Revolutionary veteran, "stern and severe," named Ebenezer Snell, of whom, as a small boy of the period, but recently deceased, informed the writer, "all the boys of Bridgewater were dreadfully afraid," so austere and authoritative were his manners. The old soldier had a pretty daughter who won the susceptible young doctor's affections, so that when Squire Snell removed with his family to Cummington, and built what is now known as the "Bryant Homestead," Peter Bryant followed, establishing himself there as a physician and surgeon, and in 1792 was married to "sweet Sarah Snell," as she is called in one of the youthful doctor's poetic effusions. Five sons and two daughters were the fruit of this happy marriage, their second son being the subject of this sketch. Of these seven children, but one son survives, John Howard Bryant of Illinois, who, with his brother Arthur,* was present at the poet's funeral.

*Arthur Bryant was born at Cummington, November 28, 1803, and died at Princeton, Illinois, where he had resided for more than half a century, February 5, 1883. His brother John was born July 22, 1807. Writing to the author'in March, 1884, of his elder brothers Austin, Cyrus, and Arthur, he says: "They lived and died on farms., and

Dr. Peter Bryant's bearing, I was told by an aged man who remembered him, was the very reverse of that of his gruff father-in-law. Although reserved, he was gentle in manner, with a low, soft voice, and always attired with scrupulous neatness. While not above the height of his gifted son, he was broad-shouldered, and would sometimes exhibit his great strength by lifting a barrel of cider from the ground over the wheel into a waggon. According to the account of another who knew him, he was "possessed of extensive literary and scientific acquirem.ents, an unusually vigorous and welldisciplined mind, and an elegant and refined taste." He was for his son Cullen an able and skilful instructor, who chastened, improved, and encouraged the first rude efforts of his boyish genius. A personal friend of the poet wrote of him in 1840 that "his father, his guide in the first attempts at versification, taught him the value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to distinguish between true poetic enthusiasm and fustian."

The son in after-life commemorated the teachings and trainings of the father in a poem entitled " Hym'n to Death," published in 1825, which has often been quoted for its beauty and pathos:

they were all intelligent, respected, and worthy citizens, of whom no one need be ashamed."

BRYANT AND HIS FRIENDS.

" For he is in his grave who laught my youth The art of verse, and in the end of life Offered me the Muses. Oh, cut off Untimely ! when the reason in its strength, Ripened by years of toll and studious search, And watch of nature's silent lessons, taught Thy hand to practise best the lenient art To which thou gavest thy laborious days, And lost thy life."

The poet's great-gi-andfather, Dr. Abiel Howard, a graduate of Harvard College of the class of 1729, had an extensive library for those titnes, and in his youth wrote verses. Some of these were in Mr. Bryant's possession, and, to quote his own words, "show no small power of poetic expression." The inclination to express themselves in poetic form reappeared in Dr. Howard's grandchildren. Dr. Bryant wrote many songs and love-stanzas in his younger days, and some satirical political poems in middle age. His sister Ruth Bryant, who died young, left several meritorious poems which her nephew had read in manuscript. When Mr. Bryant was studying law, the late Judge Daniel Howard asked him from whom he inherited his poetic gift; he promptly replied, from his great-grandfather Dr. Howard. The poet's surviving brother recently said to the writer, " We were all addicted, more or less, to the unprofitable business of rhyming."

It was the dream of Dr. Bryant's life to educate a child for his own and his father's loved profession, and so it came to pass that his second son was named after one of the great Scottish medical lights of that era, William Cullen, an eminent Edinburgh physician. The child was frail, and his head was deemed too large for his body, which fact so disturbed the worthy doctor that, unable to find in the books any remedy for excessive cerebral development, he decided upon a remedy of his own, and directed that the child should be daily ducked in an adjoining spring of clear cold water. Two of Dr. Bryant's students were deputed to carry the child from his bed each morning and to immerse him and his immense head. The tradition is that the embryo-poet fought stoutly against this singular proceeding, of which the 5^oung mother did not approve, but which notwithstanding was continued till the discrepancy of proportion between the head and the body disappeared, and the father no longer deemed its continuance necessary.

As a child Bryant exhibited extraordinary precocity. He received instruction at home from his mother, whose school education, like that of most American women of her day, was limited to the ordinary English branches. He also was instructed by his father and an uncle, who taught him

"A little Latine and less Greeke,"

Bryant has happily told the story of his boyhood * in better and more entertaining style than it can by any possibility be narrated by another. It forms a charming chapter in an autobiography to which the venerable poet devoted an occasional hour during the closing years of his long career. Says Mr. Bryant:

" The boys of the generation to which I belonged — that is to say, who were born in the last years of the last century or the earliest of this — were brought up under a system of discipline which put a far greater distance between parents and their children than now exists. The parents seemed to think this necessary in order to secure obedience. They were believers in the old maxim that familiarity breeds contempt. My own parents lived in the house with my grandfather and grandmother on the mother's side. My grandfather was a disciplinarian of the stricter sort, and I can hardly find words to express the awe in which I stood of him — an awe so great as almost to prevent anything like affection on my part, although he was in the main kind, and certainly never thought of being severe beyond what was necessary to maintain a proper degree of order in the family.

" The other boys in that part of the country, my schoolmates and playfellows, were educated on the same system. Yet there were at that time some indications that this very severe discipline was beginning to relax. With my father and mother I was on much

* "The Boys of my Boyhood." St. Nicholas Magazine, December, 1876, easier terms than with my grandfather. If a favour was to be asked of my grandfather, it was asked with fear and trembling; the request was postponed to the^ last moment, and then made with hesitation and blushes and a confused utterance.

" One of the means of keeping the boys of that generation in order was a little bundle of birchen rods, bound together by a small cord, and generally suspended on a nail against the wall in the kitchen. This was esteemed as much a part of the necessary furniture as the crane that hung in the kitchen fireplace, or the shovel and tongs. It sometimes happened that the boy suffered a fate similar to that of the eagle in the fable, wounded by an arrow fledged with a feather from his own wing ; in other words, the boy was made to gather the twigs intended for his own castigation.

"The awe in which the boys of that time held their parents extended to all elderly persons, toward whom our behaviour was more than merely respectful, for we all observed a hushed and subdued demeanour in their presence. Toward the ministers of the Gospel this behaviour was particularly marked. At that time every township in Massachusetts, the State in which I lived, had its minister, who was settled there for life, and when he once came among his people was understood to have entered into a connection with them scarcely less lasting than the marriage-tie. The community in which he lived regarded him with great veneration, and the visits which from time to time he made to the district schools seemed to the boys important occasions, for which special preparation was made. When he came to visit the school which I attended, we all had on our Sunday clothes, and were ready for him with a few answers to the questions in the 'Westminster Catechism.' He heard us recite our lessons, examined us in the catechism, and then began a little address, which I remember was the same on every occasion. He told us how much greater were the advantages of education wliich we enjoyed than those which had fallen to the lot of our parents, and exhorted us to make the best possible use of them, both for our own sakes and that of our parents, who were ready to make any sacrifice for us, even so far as to take the bread out of their own mouths to give us. I remember being disgusted with this illustration of parental kindness, which I was obliged to listen to twice at least in every year.

" The good man had, perhaps, less reason than he supposed to magnify the advantages of education enjoyed in the common-schools at that time. Reading, spelling, writing, and arithmetic, with a little grammar and a little geography, were all that was taught, and these by persons much less qualified, for the most part, than those who now give instruction. Those, however, who wished to proceed further took lessons from graduates of the colleges, who were then much more numerous in proportion to the population than they now are.

"One of the entertainments of the boys of my time was what were called the ' raisings,' meaning the erection of the timber-frames of houses or barns, to which the boards were to be afterward nailed. Here the minister made a point of being present, and liither the able-bodied men of the neighbourhood, the young men especially, were summoned, and took part in the work with great alacrity. It was a spectacle for us next to that of a performer on the tight-rope to see the young men walk steadily on the narrow footing of the beams at a great height from the ground, or as they stood to catch in their hands the wooden pins and the braces flung to them from below. They vied with each other in the dexterity and daring with which they went through with the work, and when the skeleton of the building was put together, some one among them generally capped the climax of fearless activity by standing on the ridgepole with his head downward and his heels in the air. At that time even the presence of the minister was no restraint upon the flow of milkpunch and grog, which, in some cases, was taken to excess. The practice of calling the neighbours to these ' raisings ' is now discontinued in the rural neighborhoods ; the carpenters provide their own workmen for the business of adjusting the timbers of the new building to each other, and there is no consumption of grog.

" Another of the entertainments of rustic life in the region of which I am speaking was the making of maple-sugar. This was a favorite frolic of the boys.

" In autumn, the task of stripping the husks from the ears of Indian corn was made the occasion of social meetings, in which the boys took a special part. A farmer would appoint what was called 'a husking,' to which he invited his neighbours. The ears of maize in the husk, sometimes along with part of the stalk, were heaped on the barn floor. In the evening lanterns were brought, and, seated on piles of dry husks, the men and boys stripped the ears of their covering, and, breaking them from the stem with a sudden jerk, threw them into baskets placed for the purpose. It was often a merry time : the gossip of the neighbourhood was talked over, stories were told, jests went round, and at the proper hour the assembly adjourned to the dwelling-house, and were treated to pumpkinpie and cider, which in that season had not been so long from the press as to have parted with its sweetness.

" Quite as cheerful were the 'apple-parings,' which on autumn evenings brought together the young people of both sexes in little circles. The fruit of the orchards was pared and quartered and the core extracted, and a supply of apples in this State provided for making what was called 'apple-sauce,' a kind of preserve of which every family laid in a large quantity every year.

" The cider-making season in autumn was, at the time of which I am speaking, somewhat correspondent to the vintage in the wine-countries of Europe. Large tracts of land in New England were overshadowed by rows of apple-trees, and in the month of May a journey through that region was a journey through a wilderness of bloom. In the month of October the whole population was busy gathering apples under the trees, from which they fell in heavy showers as the branches were shaken by the strong arms of the farmers. The creak of the cider-mill, turned by a horse moving in a circle, was heard in every neighbourhood as one of the most common of rural sounds. The freshly-pressed juice of the apples was most agreeable to boyish tastes, and the whole process of gathering the fruit and making the cider came in among the more laborious rural occupations in a way which diversified them pleasantly, and which made it seem a pastime. The time that was given to making cider, and the number of barrels made and stored in the cellars of the farm-houses, would now seem incredible. A hundred barrels to a single farm was no uncommon proportion, and the quantity swallowed by the men of that day led to the habits of intemperance which at length alarmed the more thoughtful part of the community, and gave occasion to the formation of temperance societies and the introduction of better habits.

"The streams which biclcered through the narrow glens of the region in which I lived were much better stocked with trout in those days than now, for the country had been newly opened to settlement. The boys all were anglers. I confess to having felt a strong interest in that ' sport,' as I no longer call it. I have long since been weaned from the propensity of which I speak ; but I have no doubt that the instinct which inclines so many to it, and some of them our grave divines, is a remnant of the original wild nature of man.

" I have not mentioned other sports and games of the boys of tliat day ; that is to say, of seventy or eighty years since — such as wrestling, running, leaping, base-ball, and the like, for in these there was nothing to distinguish them from the same pastimes at the present day. There were no public lectures at that time on subjects of general interest ; the profession of public lecturer was then unknown, and eminent men were not solicited, as they now are, to appear before audiences in distant parts of the country, and gratify the curiosity of strangers by letting them hear the sound of their voices. But the men of those days were far more given to attendance on public worship than those who now occupy their place, and of course they took their boys with them.

" Every parish had its tithing-men, two in number generally, whose business it was to maintain order in the church during divine service, and who sat with a stern countenance through the sermon, keeping a vigilant eye on the boys in the distant pews and in the galleries. Sometimes, when he detected two of them communicating with each other, he went to one of them, took him by the button, and, leading him away, seated him beside himself. His power extended to other delinquencies. He was directed by law to see that the Sabbath was not profaned by people wandering in the fields and angling in the brooks. At that time a law, no longer in force, directed that any person who absented himself unnecessarily from public worship for a certain length of time should pay a fine into the treasury of the county. I remember several persons of whom it was said that they had been compelled to pay this fine, but I do not remember any of them who went to church afterwards."

Bryant's education was continued under his uncle the Rev. Thomas Snell* of Brookfield, in whose family he lived and studied for one year; and by the Rev. Moses Hallock of Plainfield he was prepared for college. His brother Arthur

* Dr. Snell was pastor of the North Parish of Brookfield for sixty-four years. An instance that surpasses this is recorded of an English clergyman of ninety-six, who has held for seventy- two years the same living he now holds.

remembered that when the young poet came home on visits from his uncle Snell's or " Parson Hallock's," he was in the habit of playing at games with them, and of amusing them in various ways; that he excelled as a runner, and had many successful running contests witli his college classmates; also that he was accustomed on his home visits to declaim, for the entertainment of the family-circle, some of his own compositions, both in prose and verse. He was at this time a small, delicate, and handsome youth, very shy and reserved, and a great reader, devouring every volume that he could meet with, and resembling the hero of Waverley in "driving through a sea of books like a vessel without pilot or rudder." He was, as I was informed by Dr. Hallock, who studied with him at that time, — now seventy-five years ago, — a natural scholar like his father, and, although but fifteen, he had already accumulated a vast stock of information. In a letter to the Rev. H. Seymour of Northampton, Massachusetts, published after Mr. Bryant's death, he speaks as follows of his early studies of Greek: "I began with the Greek alphabet, passed to the declensions and conjugations, which I committed to memory, and was put into the Gospel of St. John. In two calendar months from the time of beginning with the powers of the Greek alphabet I had read every book in the New Testanient. I supposed, at the time, that I had made pretty good progress, but do not even now know whether that was very extraordinary." He found more pleasure in books, and in silent rambles among the hills and valleys, than in the usual sports and pastimes of youth of that age. In October, 1810, when in his sixteenth year, he entered the Sophomore class of Williams College. He continued his studies there during one winter with the same ardor as before, but not with the same enthusiasm or pleasure. He did not like his college life, some features of which were distasteful to his shy and sensitive nature; and so with his father's permission he obtained an honorable dismissal in May, 181 1, and in due time received the degree as a member of the class of 1813, of which there were in June, 1878, but two survivors, the Rev. Elisha D. Barrett * of Missouri, and the Hon. Charles F. Sedgwick f of Connecticut. Dr. Calvin Durfee, the late historian of Williams College, said to me that Mr. Bryant " did not graduate in a regular course