'Some men with a horror of slaughter,Improve on the Scripture command.And honour their--wife and their daughter--That their days may be long in the land.'
Alluding to Grattan's dying advice to his son, 'Always be ready with the pistol,' Moore asked, 'Is it not wonderful that, with all the agitation in Ireland, we have had no such men since his time? The whole country in convulsion--people's lives, fortune, religion at stake, and not a gleam of talent from one's year's end to another. It is natural for sparks to be struck out in a time of violence like this--but Ireland, for all that is worth living for,is dead! You can scarcely reckon Sheil of the calibre of the spirits of old, and O'Connell, with all his faults, stands alone in his glory.'
In the drawing-room, after dinner, some allusion to the later Platonists caused D'Israeli to flare up. His wild black eyes glistened, and his nervous lips poured out eloquence, while a whole ottomanful of noble exquisites listened in amazement. He gave an account of Thomas Taylor, one of the last of the Platonists, who had worshipped Jupiter in a back-parlour in London a few years before. In his old age he was turned out of his lodgings, for attempting, as he said, to worship his gods according to the dictates of his conscience, his landlady having objected to his sacrificing a bull to Jupiter in her parlour. The company laughed at this story as a good invention, but Dizzy assured them it was literally true, and gave his father as his authority. Meanwhile Moore 'went glittering on' with criticisms upon Grisi and the Opera, and the subject of music being thus introduced, he was led, with great difficulty, to the piano. Willis describes his singing as 'a kind of admirable recitative, in which every shade of thought is syllabled and dwelt upon, and the sentiment of the song goes through your blood, warming you to the very eyelids, and starting your tears if you have a soul or sense in you. I have heard of women fainting at a song of Moore's; and if the burden of it answered by chance to a secret in the bosom of the listener, I should think that the heart would break with it. After two or three songs of Lady Blessington's choice, he rambled over the keys a while, and then sang 'When first I met thee' with a pathos that beggars description. When the last word had faltered out, he rose and took Lady Blessington's hand, said Good-night, and was gone before a word was uttered. For a full minute after he closed the door no one spoke. I could have wished for myself to drop silently asleep where I sat, with the tears in my eyes and the softness upon my heart.'
PART II
Having received invitations to stay with Lord Dalhousie and the Duke of Gordon, Willis went north at the beginning of September, 1834. The nominal attraction of Scotland he found, rather to his dismay, was the shooting. The guest, he observes, on arriving at a country-house, is asked whether he prefers a flint or a percussion lock, and a double-barrelled Manton is put into his hands; while after breakfast the ladies leave the table, wishing him good sport. 'I would rather have gone to the library,' says the Penciller. 'An aversion to walking, except upon smooth flag-stones, a poetical tenderness on the subject of putting birds "out of their misery," and hands much more at home with the goose-quill than the gun, were some of my private objections to the order of the day.' At Dalhousie, the son of the house, Lord Ramsay, and his American visitor were mutually astonished at each other's appearance when they met in the park, prepared for a morning's sport.
'From the elegant Oxonian I had seen at breakfast,' writes Willis, 'he (Lord Ramsay) was transformed into a figure something rougher than his Highland dependant, in a woollen shooting-jacket, pockets of any number and capacity, trousers of the coarsest plaid, hobnailed shoes and leather gaiters, and a habit of handling his gun that would have been respected on the Mississippi. My own appearance in high-heeled French boots and other corresponding gear, for a tramp over stubble and marsh, amused him equally; but my wardrobe was exclusively metropolitan, and there was no alternative.' It was hard and exciting work, the novice discovered, to trudge through peas, beans, turnips, and corn, soaked with showers, and muddied to the knees till his Parisian boots were reduced to the consistency of brown paper. He came home, much to his own relief, without having brought the blood of his host's son and heir on his head, and he made a mental note never to go to Scotland again without hobnailed boots and a shooting-jacket.
On leaving Dalhousie Willis spent a few days in Edinburgh, where he breakfasted with Professor Wilson,aliasChristopher North. The Professor, he says, talked away famously, quite oblivious of the fact that the tea was made, and the breakfast-dishes were smoking on the table. He spoke much of Blackwood, who then lay dying, and described him as a man of the most refined literary taste, whose opinion of a book he would trust before that of any one he knew. Wilson inquired if his guest had made the acquaintance of Lockhart. 'I have not,' replied Willis. 'He is almost the only literary man in London I have not met; and I must say, as the editor of theQuarterly Review, and the most unfair and unprincipled critic of the day, I have no wish to know him. I never heard him well spoken of. I have probably met a hundred of his acquaintances, but I have not yet seen one who pretended to be his friend.' Wilson defended the absent one, who, he said, was the mildest and most unassuming of men, and dissected a book for pleasure, without thinking of the feelings of the author.
The breakfast had been cooling for an hour when the Professor leant back, with his chair still towards the fire, and 'seizing the teapot as if it were a sledge-hammer, he poured from one cup to the other without interrupting the stream, overrunning both cup and saucer, and partly flooding the tea-tray. He then set the cream towards me with a carelessness that nearly overset it, and in trying to reach an egg from the centre of the table, broke two. He took no notice of his own awkwardness, but drank his cup of tea at a single draught, ate his egg in the same expeditious manner, and went on talking of the "Noctes," and Lockhart, and Blackwood, as if eating his breakfast were rather a troublesome parenthesis in his conversation.' Wilson offered to give his guest letters to Wordsworth and Southey, if he intended to return by the Lakes. 'I lived a long time in their neighbourhood,' he said, 'and know Wordsworth perhaps as well as any one. Many a day I have walked over the hills with him, and listened to his repetition of his own poetry, which, of course, filled my mind completely at the time, and perhaps started the poetical vein in me, though I cannot agree with the critics that my poetry is an imitation of Wordsworth's.'
'Did Wordsworth repeat any other poetry than his own?'
'Never in a single instance, to my knowledge. He is remarkable for the manner in which he is wrapped up in his own poetical life. Everything ministers to it. Everything is done with reference to it. He is all and only a poet.'
'What is Southey's manner of life?'
'Walter Scott said of him that he lived too much with women. He is secluded in the country, and surrounded by a circle of admiring friends, who glorify every literary project he undertakes, and persuade him, in spite of his natural modesty, that he can do nothing wrong. He has great genius, and is a most estimable man.'
On the same day that he breakfasted with Wilson, this fortunate tourist dined with Jeffrey, with whom Lord Brougham was staying. Unluckily, Brougham was absent, at a public dinner given to Lord Grey, who also happened to be in Edinburgh at the time. Willis was charmed with Jeffrey, with his frank smile, hearty manner, and graceful style of putting a guest at his ease. But he cared less for the political conversation at table. 'It had been my lot,' he says, 'to be thrown principally among Tories (Conservativesis the new name) since my arrival in England, and it was difficult to rid myself at once of the impressions of a fortnight passed in the castle of a Tory earl. My sympathies on the great and glorious occasion [the Whig dinner to Lord Grey] were slower than those of the rest of the company, and much of their enthusiasm seemed to me overstrained. Altogether, I entered less into the spirit of the hour than I could have wished. Politics are seldom witty or amusing; and though I was charmed with the good sense and occasional eloquence of Lord Jeffrey, I was glad to get upstairs tochasse-caféand the ladies.'
Willis aggravated a temporary lameness by dancing at the ball that followed the Whig banquet, and was compelled to abandon a charming land-route north that he had mapped out, and allow himself to be taken 'this side up' on a steamer to Aberdeen. Here he took coach for Fochabers, and thence posted to Gordon Castle. At the castle he found himself in the midst of a most distinguished company; the page who showed him to his room running over the names of Lord Aberdeen and Lord Claude Hamilton, the Duchess of Richmond and her daughter, Lady Sophia Lennox, Lord and Lady Stormont, Lord and Lady Mandeville, Lord and Lady Morton, Lord Aboyne, Lady Keith, and twenty other lesser lights. The duke himself came to fetch his guest before dinner, and presented him to the duchess and the rest of the party. In a letter to Lady Blessington Willis says: 'I am delighted with the duke and duchess. He is a delightful, hearty old fellow, full of fun and conversation, and she is an uncommonly fine woman, and, without beauty, has something agreeable in her countenance.Pour moi-méme, I get on better everywhere than in your presence. I only fear I talk too much; but all the world is particularly civil to me, and among a score of people, no one of whom I had ever seen yesterday, I find myself quite at home to-day.'
The ten days at Gordon Castle Willis afterwards set apart in his memory as 'a bright ellipse in the usual procession of joys and sorrows.' He certainly made the most of this unique opportunity of observing the manners and customs of the great. The routine of life at the castle was what each guest chose to make it. 'Between breakfast and lunch,' he writes, 'the ladies were usually invisible, and the gentlemen rode, or shot, or played billiards. At two o'clock a dish or two of hot game and a profusion of cold meats were set on small tables, and everybody came in for a kind of lounging half meal, which occupied perhaps an hour. Thence all adjourned to the drawing-room, under the windows of which were drawn up carriages of all descriptions, with grooms, outriders, footmen, and saddle-horses for gentlemen and ladies. Parties were then made up for driving or riding, and from a pony-chaise to a phaeton and four, there was no class of vehicle that was not at your disposal. In ten minutes the carriages were all filled, and away they flew, some to the banks of the Spey or the seaside, some to the drives in the park, and all with the delightful consciousness that speed where you would, the horizon scarce limited the possessions of your host, and you were everywhere at home. The ornamental gates flying open at your approach; the herds of red deer trooping away from the sound of your wheels; the stately pheasants feeding tamely in the immense preserves; the stalking gamekeepers lifting their hats in the dark recesses of the forest--there was something in this perpetual reminder of your privileges which, as a novelty, was far from disagreeable. I could not, at the time, bring myself to feel, what perhaps would be more poetical and republican, that a ride in the wild and unfenced forest of my own country would have been more to my taste.'
Willis came to the conclusion that a North American Indian, in his more dignified phase, closely resembled an English nobleman in manner, since it was impossible to astonish either. All violent sensations, he observes, are avoided in high life. 'In conversation nothing is so "odd" (a word that in English means everything disagreeable) as emphasis, or a startling epithet, or gesture, and in common intercourse nothing is so vulgar as any approach to "a scene." For all extraordinary admiration, the word "capital" suffices; for all ordinary praise, the word "nice"; for all condemnation in morals, manners, or religion, the word "odd.".... What is called an overpowering person is immediately shunned, for he talks too much, and excites too much attention. In any other country he would be considered amusing. He is regarded here as a monopoliser of the general interest, and his laurels, talk he never so well, overshadow the rest of the company.'
On leaving Gordon Castle, Willis crossed Scotland by the Caledonian Canal, and from Fort William jolted in a Highland cart through Glencoe to Tarbet on Lomond. Thence the regulation visits were paid to Loch Katrine, the Trossachs and Callander. Another stay at Dalhousie Castle gave the tourist an opportunity of seeing Abbotsford, where he heard much talk of Sir Walter Scott. Lord Dalhousie had many anecdotes to tell of Scott's school-days, and Willis recalled some reminiscences of the Wizard that he had heard from Moore in London. 'Scott was the soul of honesty,' Moore had said. 'When I was on a visit to him, we were coming up from Kelso at sunset, and as there was to be a fine moon, I quoted to him his own rule for seeing "fair Melrose aright," and proposed to stay an hour and enjoy it. "Bah," said Scott. "I never saw it by moonlight." We went, however, and Scott, who seemed to be on the most familiar terms with the cicerone, pointed to an empty niche, and said to him: "I think I have a Virgin and Child that will just do for your niche. I'll send it to you." "How happy you have made that man," I said. "Oh," said Scott, "it was always in the way, and Madam Scott is constantly grudging it house-room. We're well rid of it." Any other man would have allowed himself at least the credit of a kind action.'
After a stay at a Lancashire country-house, Willis arrived at Liverpool, where he got his first sight of the newly-opened railway to Manchester. In the letters and journals of the period, it is rather unusual to come upon any allusion to the great revolution in land-travelling. We often read of our grandfathers' astonishment at the steam-packets that crossed the Atlantic in a fortnight, but they seem to have slid into the habit of travelling by rail almost as a matter of course, much as their descendants have taken to touring in motor-cars. Willis the observant, however, has left on record his sensations during his first journey by rail.
'Down we dived into the long tunnel,' he relates, 'emerging from the darkness at a pace that made my hair sensibly tighten, and hold on with apprehension. Thirty miles in the hour is pleasant going when one is a little accustomed to it, it gives one such a pleasant contempt for time and distance. The whizzing past of the return trains, going in the opposite direction with the same degree of velocity--making you recoil in one second, and a mile off the next--was the only thing which, after a few minutes, I did not take to very kindly.'
Willis adds to our obligations by reporting the cries of the newsboys at the Elephant and Castle, where all the coaches to and from the South stopped for twenty minutes. On the occasion that our traveller passed through, the boys were crying 'Noospipper, sir! Buy the morning pippers, sir!Times, Herald, Chrinnicle,andMunning Post, sir--contains Lud Brum's entire innihalation of Lud Nummanby--Ledy Flor 'Estings' murder by Lud Melbun and the Maids of Honour--debate on the Croolty-Hannimals Bill, and a fatil catstrophy in conskens of loosfer matches! Sixpence, only sixpence!'
In November Willis returned to London, and took lodgings in Vigo Street. During the next ten months he seems to have done a good deal of work for the magazines, and to have been made much of in society as a literary celebrity. His stories and articles, which appeared in theNew Monthly Magazineunder the pseudonym of Philip Slingsby, were eagerly read by the public of that day. He was presented at court, admitted to the Athenacum and Travellers' Clubs, and patronised by Lady Charlotte Bury and Lady Stepney, ladies who were in the habit of writing bad novels, and giving excellent dinners. Madden, Lady Blessington's biographer, who saw a good deal of Willis at this time, says that he was an extremely agreeable young man, somewhat over-dressed, and a little toodémonstratif, but abounding in good spirits. 'He was observant and communicative, lively and clever in conversation, having the peculiar art of making himself agreeable to ladies, old and young,dégagéin his manner, and on exceedingly good terms with himself.'
Not only had Willis theentréeinto fashionable Bohemia, but he was well received in many families of unquestionable respectability. Elderly and middle-aged ladies were especially attracted by his flattering attentions and deferential manners, and at this time two of his most devoted friends were Mrs. Shaw of the Manor House, Lee, a daughter of Lord Erskine, and Mrs. Skinner of Shirley Park, the wife of an Indian nabob. Their houses were always open to him, and he says in a letter to his mother: 'I have two homes in England where I am loved like a child. I had a letter from Mrs. Shaw, who thought I looked low-spirited at the opera the other night. "Young men have but two causes of unhappiness," she writes, "love and money. If it ismoney, Mr. Shaw wishes me to say you shall have as much as you want; if it islove, tell us the lady, and perhaps we can help you." I spend my Sundays alternately at their splendid country-house, and at Mrs. Skinner's, and they can never get enough of me. I am often asked if I carry a love-philter with me.'
At Shirley Park, Willis struck up a friendship with Jane Porter, and made the acquaintance of Lady Morgan, Praed, John Leech, and Martin Tupper. Mrs. Skinner professed to be extremely anxious to find him a suitable wife, and in a confidential letter to her, he writes: 'You say if you had a daughter you would give her to me. If youhadone, I should certainly take you at your word, provided thisexposéof my poverty did not change your fancy. I should like to marry in England, and I feel every day that my best years and best affections are running to waste. I am proud tobean American, but as a literary man, I would ratherlivein England. So if you know of any affectionate andgoodgirl who would be content to live a quiet life, and could love your humble servant, you have full power to dispose of me,providedshe has five hundred a year, or as much more as she likes. I know enough of the world to cut my throat, rather than bring a delicate woman down to a dependence on my brains for support.'
In March of this year, 1835, Willis produced hisMelanie, and other Poems, which was 'edited' by Barry Cornwall. He received the honour of a parody in theBon Gaultier Ballads, entitled 'The Fight with the Snapping Turtle, or the American St. George.' In this ballad Willis and Bryant are represented as setting out to kill the Snapping Turtle, spurred on by the offer of a hundred dollars reward. The turtle swallows Willis, but is thereupon taken ill, and having returned him to earth again, dies in great agony. When he claims the reward, he is informed that:--
'Since you dragged the tarnal critturFrom the bottom of the ponds,Here's the hundred dollars due youAll in Pennsylvanian bonds.'
At the end of the poem is a drawing of a pair of stocks, labelled 'The only good American securities,' Willis seems to have been too busy to Boswellise this season, but we get a glimpse of him in his letters to Miss Mitford, and one or two of the notes in his diary are worth quoting. On April 22 he writes to the author ofOur Villagein his usual flattering style: 'I am anxious to see your play and your next book, and I quite agree with you that the drama is yourpied, though I think laurels, and spreading ones, are sown for you in every department of writing. Nobody ever wrote better prose, and what could not the author ofRienzido in verse. For myself, I am far from considering myself regularly embarked in literature, and if I can live without it, or ply any other vocation, shall vote it a thankless trade, and save my "entusymussy" for my wife and children--when I get them. I am at present steeped to the lips in London society, going to everything, from Devonshire House to a publisher's dinner in Paternoster Row, and it is not a badolla podridaof life and manners. I dote on "England and true English," and was never so happy, or so at a loss to find a minute for care or forethought.'
In his diary for June 30, Willis notes: 'Breakfasted with Samuel Rogers. Talked of Mrs. Butler's book, and Rogers gave us suppressed passages. Talked critics, and said that as long as you cast a shadow, you were sure that you possessed substance. Coleridge said of Southey, "I never think of him but as mending a pen." Southey said of Coleridge, "Whenever anything presents itself to him in the form of a duty, that moment he finds himself incapable of looking at it."' On July 9 we have the entry: 'Dined with Dr. Beattie, and met Thomas Campbell.... He spoke of Scott's slavishness to men of rank, but said it did not interfere with his genius. Said it sunk a man's heart to think that he and Byron were dead, and there was nobody left to praise or approve.... He told a story of dining with Burns and a Bozzy friend, who, when Campbell proposed the health ofMr. Burns, said, "Sir, you will always be known asMr. Campbell, but posterity will talk ofBurns." He was playful and amusing, and drank gin and water.'
While staying with the Skinners in August, Willis met his fate in the person of Miss Mary Stace, daughter of a General Stace. After a week's acquaintance he proposed to her, and was accepted. She was, we are told, a beauty of the purest Saxon type, with a bright complexion, blue eyes, light-brown hair, and delicate, regular features. Her disposition was clinging and affectionate, and she had enjoyed the religious bringing up that her lover thought of supreme importance to a woman. General Stace agreed to allow his daughter £300 a year, which with the £400 that Willis made by his pen, was considered a sufficient income for the young couple to start housekeeping upon.
Willis, who had promised to pay Miss Mitford a visit in the autumn, writes to her on September 22, to explain that all his plans were altered. 'Just before starting with Miss Jane Porter on a tour that was to include Reading,' he says, 'I went to a picnic, fell in love with a blue-eyed girl, and (after running the gauntlet successfully through France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Asia Minor, and Turkey) I renewed my youth, and became "a suitor for love." I am to be married (sequitur) on Thursday week.... The lady who is to take me, as the Irish say, "in a present," is some six years younger than myself, gentle, religious, relying, and unambitious. She has never been whirled through the gay society of London, so is not giddy or vain. She has never swum in a gondola, or written a sonnet, so has a proper respect for those who have. She is called pretty, but is more than that inmyeyes; sings as if her heart were hid in her lips, andlovesme.... We are bound to Paris for a month (because I think amusement better than reflection when a woman makes a doubtful bargain), and by November we return to London for the winter, and in the spring sail for America to see my mother. I have promised to live mainly on this side of the water, and shall return in the course of a year to try what contentment may be sown and reaped in a green lane in Kent.'
While the happy pair were on their honeymoon, Lady Blessington had undertaken to see thePencillings by the Waythrough the press. For the first edition Willis received £250, but he made, from first to last, about a thousand pounds by the book. Its appearance in volume form had been anticipated by Lockhart's scathing review in theQuarterlyfor September 1835. The critic, annoyed at Willis's strictures on himself in the interview with Professor Wilson, attacked thePencillings, as they had appeared in theNew York Mirror, with all proper names printed in full, and many personal details that were left out in the English edition. Lockhart always knew how to stab a man in the tenderest place, and he stabbed Willis in his gentility. After pointing out that while visiting in London and the provinces as a young American sonneteer of the most ultra-sentimental delicacy, the Penciller was all the time the regular paid correspondent of a New York Journal, he observes that the letters derive their powers of entertainment chiefly from the light that they reflect upon the manners and customs of the author's own countrymen, since, from his sketches of English interiors, the reader may learn what American breakfast, dinners, and table-talk arenot; or at all events what they were not in those circles of American society with which the writer happened to be familiar.
'Many ofthis person'sdiscoveries,' continues Lockhart, warming to his work, 'will be received with ridicule in his own country, where the doors of the best houses were probably not opened to him as liberally as those of the English nobility. In short, we are apt to consider him as a just representative--not of the American mind and manners generally--but only of the young men of fair education among the busy, middling orders of mercantile cities. In his letters from Gordon Castle there are bits of solid, full-grown impudence and impertinence; while over not a few of the paragraphs is a varnish of conceited vulgarity which is too ludicrous to be seriously offensive.... We can well believe that Mr. Willis depicted the sort of society that most interests his countrymen, "born to be slaves and struggling to be lords," their servile adulation of rank and talent; their stupid admiration of processions and levees, are leading features of all the American books of travel.... We much doubt if all the pretty things we have quoted will so far propitiate Lady Blessington as to make her again admit to her table the animal who has printed what ensues. [Here follows the report of Moore's conversation on the subject of O'Connell.] As far as we are acquainted with English or American literature, this is the first example of a man creeping into your home, and forthwith, before your claret is dry on his lips, printingtable-talk on delicate subjects, and capable of compromising individuals.'
TheQuarterlyhaving thus given the lead, the rest of the Tory magazines gaily followed suit. Maginn flourished his shillelagh, and belaboured his victim with a brutality that has hardly ever been equalled, even by the pioneer journals of the Wild West. 'This is a goose of a book,' he begins, 'or if anybody wishes the idiom changed, the book of a goose. There is not an idea in it beyond what might germinate in the brain of a washerwoman.' He then proceeds to call the author by such elegant names as 'lickspittle,' 'beggarly skittler,' jackass, ninny, haberdasher, 'fifty-fifth rate scribbler of gripe-visited sonnets,' and 'namby-pamby writer in twaddling albums kept by the mustachioed widows or bony matrons of Portland Place.'
The people whose hospitality Willis was accused of violating wrote to assure him of the pleasure his book had given them. Lord Dalhousie writes: 'We all agree in one sentiment, that a more amusing and delightful production was never issued by the press. The Duke and Duchess of Gordon were here lately, and expressed themselves in similar terms.' Lady Blessington did not withdraw her friendship, but Willis admits, in one of his letters, that he had no deeper regret than that his indiscretion should have checked the freedom of his approach to her. As a result of the slashing reviews, the book sold with the readiness of asuccés de scandale, though it had been so rigorously edited for the English market, that very few indiscretions were left.
The unexpurgated version of thePencillingswas, however, copied into the English papers and eagerly read by the persons most concerned, such as Fonblanque, who bitterly complained of the libel upon his personal appearance, O'Connell, who broke off his lifelong friendship with Moore, and Captain Marryat, who was furious at the remark that his 'gross trash' sold immensely in Wapping. Like Lockhart, he revenged himself by an article in his own magazine, theMetropolitan, in which he denounced Willis as a 'spurious attaché,' and made dark insinuations against his birth and parentage. This attack was too personal to be ignored. Willis demanded an apology, to which Marryat replied with a challenge, and after a long correspondence, most of which found its way into theTimes, a duel was fixed to take place at Chatham. At the last moment the seconds managed to arrange matters between their principals, and the affair ended without bloodshed. This was fortunate for Willis, who was little used to fire-arms, whilst Marryat was a crack shot.
In his preface to the first edition of thePencillingsWillis explains that the ephemeral nature and usual obscurity of periodical correspondence gave a sufficient warrant to his mind that his descriptions would die where they first saw the light, and that therefore he had indulged himself in a freedom of detail and topic only customary in posthumous memoirs. He expresses his astonishment that this particular sin should have been visited upon him at a distance of three thousand miles, when theQuarterlyreviewer's own fame rested on the more aggravated instance of a book of personalities published under the very noses of the persons described (Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk). After observing that he was little disposed to find fault, since everything in England pleased him, he proceeds: 'In one single instance I indulged myself in strictures upon individual character.... I but repeated what I had said a thousand times, and never without an indignant echo to its truth, that the editor of that Review was the most unprincipled critic of the age. Aside from its flagrant literary injustice, we owe to theQuarterlyevery spark of ill-feeling that has been kept alive between England and America for the last twenty years. The sneers, the opprobrious epithets of this bravo of literature have been received in a country where the machinery of reviewing was not understood, as the voice of the English people, and animosity for which there was no other reason has been thus periodically fed and exasperated. I conceive it to be my duty as a literary man--Iknowit is my duty as an American--to lose no opportunity of setting my heel on this reptile of criticism. He has turned and stung me. Thank God, I have escaped the slime of his approbation.'
The winter was spent in London, and in the following March Willis brought out hisInklings of Adventure, a reprint of the stories that had appeared in various magazines over the signature of Philip Slingsby. These were supposed to be real adventures under a thin disguise of fiction, and the public eagerly read the tawdry little tales in the hope of discovering the identities of thedramatis personæ. The majority of the 'Inklings' deal with the romantic adventures of a young literary man who wins the affection of high-born ladies, and is made much of in aristrocratic circles. The author revels in descriptions of luxurious boudoirs in which recline voluptuous blondes or exquisite brunettes, with hearts always at the disposal of the all-conquering Philip Slingsby. Fashionable fiction, however, was unable to support the expense of a fashionable establishment, and in May 1836 the couple sailed for America. Willis hoped to obtain a diplomatic appointment, and return to Europe for good, but all his efforts were vain, and he was obliged to rely on his pen for a livelihood. His first undertaking was the letterpress for an illustrated volume on American scenery; and for some months he travelled about the country with the artist who was responsible for the illustrations. On one of his journeys he fell in love with a pretty spot on the banks of the Owego Creek, near the junction with the Susquehanna, and bought a couple of hundred acres and a house, which he named Glenmary after his wife.
Here the pair settled down happily for some five years, and here Willis wrote his pleasant, gossipingLetters from Under a Bridgefor theNew York Mirror. In these he prattled of his garden, his farm, his horses and dogs, and the strangers within his gates. Unfortunately, he was unable to devote much attention to his farm, which was said to grow nothing but flowers of speed, but was forced to spend more and more time in the editorial office, and to write hastily and incessantly for a livelihood. In 1839, owing to a temporary coolness with the proprietor of theMirror, Willis accepted the proposal of his friend, Dr. Porter, that he should start a new weekly paper called theCorsair, one of a whole crop of pirate weeklies that started up with the establishment of the first service of Atlantic liners. In May 1839 the first steam-vessel that had crossed the ocean anchored in New York Harbour, and thenceforward it was possible to obtain supplies from the European literary markets within a fortnight of publication. It was arranged between Dr. Parker and Willis that the cream of the contemporary literature of England, France, and Germany should be conveyed to the readers of theCorsair, and of course there was no question of payment to the authors whose wares were thus appropriated.
The first number of theCorsairappeared in January 1839, but apparently piracy was not always a lucrative trade, for the paper had an existence of little more than a year. In the course of its brief career, however, Willis paid a flying visit to England, where he accomplished a great deal of literary business. He had written a play calledThe Usurer Matched, which was brought out by Wallack at the Surrey Theatre, and is said to have been played to crowded houses during a fairly long run, but neither this nor any of his other plays brought the author fame or fortune. During this season he published hisLoiterings of Travel, a collection of stories and sketches, a fourth edition of thePencillings, an English edition ofLetters from Under a Bridge, and arranged with Virtue for works on Irish and Canadian scenery. In addition to all this, he was contributing jottings in London to theCorsair. As might be supposed, he had not much time for society, but he met a few old friends, made acquaintance with Kemble and Kean, went to a ball at Almack's, and was present at the famous Eglinton Tournament, which watery catastrophe he described for his paper. One of the most interesting of his new acquaintances was Thackeray, then chiefly renowned as a writer for the magazines. On July 26 Willis writes to Dr. Porter:--
'I have engaged a new contributor to theCorsair. Who do you think? The author ofYellowplushandMajor Gahagan. He has gone to Paris, and will write letters from there, and afterwards from London for a guinea aclosecolumn of theCorsair--cheaper than I ever did anything in my life. For myself, I think him the very best periodical writer alive. He is a royal, daring, fine creature too.' In his publishedJottings, Willis told his readers that 'Mr. Thackeray, the author, breakfasted with me yesterday, and theCorsairwill be delighted to hear that I have engaged this cleverest and most gifted of all the magazine-writers of London to becomea regular correspondent of the Corsair.... Thackeray is a tall, athletic-looking man of about forty-five [he was actually only eight-and-twenty], with a look of talent that could never be mistaken. He is one of the most accomplished draughtsmen in England, as well as the most brilliant of periodical writers.' Thackeray only wrote eight letters for theCorsair, which were afterwards republished in hisParis Sketch-book. There is an allusion to this episode inThe Adventures of Philip, the hero being invited to contribute to a New York journal calledThe Upper Ten Thousand, a phrase invented by Willis.
When theCorsaircame to an untimely end, Willis had no difficulty in finding employment on other papers. He is said to have been the first American magazine-writer who was tolerably well paid, and at one time he was making about a thousand a year by periodical work. That his name was already celebrated among his own countrymen seems to be proved by the story of a commercial gentleman at a Boston tea-party who 'guessed that Goethe was the N.P. Willis of Germany.' The tales written about this time were afterwards collected into a volume calledDashes at Life with a Free Pencil. Thackeray made great fun of this work in theEdinburgh Reviewfor October 1845, more especially of that portion called 'The Heart-book of Ernest Clay.' 'Like Caesar,' observed Thackeray, 'Ernest Clay is always writing of his own victories. Duchesses pine for him, modest virgins go into consumption and die for him, old grandmothers of sixty forget their families and their propriety, and fall on the neck of this "Free Pencil."' He quotes with delight the description of a certain Lady Mildred, one of Ernest Clay's numerous loves, who glides into the room at a London tea-party, 'with a step as elastic as the nod of a water-lily. A snowy turban, from which hung on either temple a cluster of crimson camellias still wet with the night-dew; long raven curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that indescribable and dewy coolness which follows a morning bath.' How naively, comments the critic, does this nobleman of nature recommend the use of this rare cosmetic!
In spite of his popularity, Willis's affairs were not prospering at this time. He had received nothing from the estate of his father-in-law, who died in 1839, his publisher failed in 1842, and he was obliged to sell Glenmary and remove to New York, whence he had undertaken to send a fortnightly letter to a paper at Washington. This was the year of Dickens's visit to America, and Willis was present at the 'Boz Ball,' where he danced with Mrs. Dickens, to whom he afterwards did the honours of Broadway. In 1843 Willis made up his difference with Morris, and again became joint-editor of theMirror, which, a year later, was changed from a weekly to a daily paper. His contributions to the journal consisted of stories, poems, letters, book-notices, answers to correspondents, and editorial gossip of all kinds.
In March 1845 Mrs. Willis died in her confinement, leaving her (temporarily) broken-hearted husband with one little girl. 'An angel without fault or foible' was his epitaph upon the woman to whom, in spite of his many fictitiousbonnes fortunes, he is said to have been faithfully attached. But Willis was not born to live alone, and in the following summer he fell in love with a Miss Cornelia Grinnell at Washington, and was married to her in October, 1846. The second Mrs. Willis was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, but she was a sensible, energetic young woman, who made him an excellent wife.
The title of theMirrorhad been changed to that ofThe Home Journal, and under its new name it became a prosperous paper. Willis, who was the leading spirit of the enterprise, set himself to portray the town, chronicling plays, dances, picture-exhibitions, sights and entertainments of all kinds in the airy manner that was so keenly appreciated by his countrymen. He was recognised as an authority on fashion, and his correspondence columns were crowded with appeals for guidance in questions of dress and etiquette. He was also a favourite in general society, though he is said to have been, next to Fenimore Cooper, the best-abused man of letters in America. One of his most pleasing characteristics was his ready appreciation and encouragement of young writers, for he was totally free from professional jealousy. He was the literary sponsor of Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, and Lowell, among others, and the last-named alludes to Willis in hisFable for Critics(1848) in the following flattering lines:
'His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on't,As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;So his best things are done in the heat of the moment.* * * * *He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the 'Mermaid,'Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid,His wit running up as Canary ran down,--The topmost bright bubble on the wave of the town.'
After 1846 Willis wrote little except gossiping paragraphs and other ephemera. In answer to remonstrances against this method of frittering away his talents, he was accustomed to reply that the public liked trifles, and that he was bound to go on 'buttering curiosity with the ooze of his brains.' He read but little in later life, nor associated with men of high intellect or serious aims, but showed an ever-increasing preference for the frivolous and the feminine. In 1850 he published another volume of little magazine stories calledPeople I have Met. This appeared in London as well as in New York, and Thackeray again revenged himself for that close column which had been rewarded by an uncertain guinea, by holding up his former editor to ridicule. With mischievous delight he describes the amusement that is to be found in N.P. Willis's society, 'amusement at the immensity of N.P.'s blunders; amusement at the prodigiousness of his self-esteem; amusement always with or at Willis the poet, Willis the man, Willis the dandy, Willis the lover--now the Broadway Crichton--once the ruler of fashion and heart-enslaver of Bond Street, and the Boulevard, and the Corso, and the Chiaja, and the Constantinople Bazaars. It is well for the general peace of families that the world does not produce many such men; there would be no keeping our wives and daughters in their senses were such fascinators to make frequent apparitions among us; but it is comfortable that there should have been a Willis; and as a literary man myself, and anxious for the honour of that profession, I am proud to think that a man of our calling should have come, should have seen, should have conquered as Willis has done.... There is more or less of truth, he nobly says, in these stories--more or less truth, to be sure there is--and it is on account of this more or less truth that I for my part love and applaud this hero and poet. We live in our own country, and don't know it; Willis walks into it, and dominates it at once. To know a duchess, for instance, is given to very few of us. He sees things that are not given to us to see. We see the duchess in her carriage, and gaze with much reverence on the strawberry-leaves on the panels, and her grace within; whereas the odds are that that lovely duchess has had, one time or the other, a desperate flirtation with Willis the Conqueror. Perhaps she is thinking of him at this very moment, as her jewelled hand presses her perfumed handkerchief to her fair and coroneted brow, and she languidly stops to purchase a ruby bracelet at Gunter's, or to sip an ice at Howell and James's. He must have whole mattresses stuffed with the blonde or raven or auburn tresses of England's fairest daughters. When the female English aristocracy read the title ofPeople I have Met, I can fancy the whole female peerage of Willis's time in a shudder; and the melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart-stricken baroness trembling as each gets the volume, and asks of her guilty conscience, "Gracious goodness, is the monster going to show up me?"'
In 1853 Willis, who had been obliged to travel for the benefit of his declining health, took a fancy to the neighbourhood of the Hudson, and bought fifty acres of waste land, upon which he built himself a house, and called the place Idlewild. Here he settled down once more to a quiet country life, took care of his health, cultivated his garden, and wrote long weekly letters to theHome Journal. He had by this time five children, middle age had stolen upon him, and now that he could no longer pose as his own allconquering hero, his hand seems to have lost its cunning. His editorial articles, afterwards published under the appropriate title ofEphemera, grew thinner and flatter with the passing of the years; yet slight and superficial as the best of them are, they were the result of very hard writing. His manuscripts were a mass of erasures and interlineations, but his copy was so neatly prepared that even the erasures had a sort of 'wavy elegance' which the compositors actually preferred to print. His mannerisms and affectations grew upon him in his later years, and he became more and more addicted to the coining of new words and phrases, only a few of which proved effective. Besides the now well-worn term, the 'upper ten thousand,' he is credited with the invention of 'Japonicadom,' 'come-at-able,' and 'stay-at-home-ativeness.' One or two of his sayings may be worth quoting, such as his request for Washington Irving's blotting-book, because it was the door-mat on which the thoughts of his last book had wiped their sandals before they went in; and his remark that to ask a literary man to write a letter after his day's work was like asking a penny-postman to take a walk in the evening for the pleasure of it.
On the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Willis went to Washington as war-correspondent of his paper. It does not appear that he saw any harder service than the dinners and receptions of the capitol, since an opportune fit of illness prevented his following the army to Bull's Run. The correspondent who took his place on the march had his career cut short by a Southern bullet. Willis, meanwhile, was driving about with Mrs. Lincoln, with whom he became a favourite, although she reproached him for his want of tact in speaking of her 'motherly expression' in one of his published letters, she being at that time only thirty-six. He met Hawthorne at Washington, and describes him as very shy and reserved in manner, but adds, 'I found he was a lover of mine, and we enjoyed our acquaintance very much.' One of the minor results of the great Civil War was the extinguishing of Willis's literary reputation; his frothy trifling suddenly became obsolete when men had sterner things to think about than the cut of a coat, or the etiquette of a morning call. The nation began to demand realities, even in its fiction, the circulation of theHome Journalfell off, and Willis, who had always affected a horror of figures and business matters generally, found himself in financial difficulties. He was obliged to let Idlewild, and return, in spite of his rapidly failing health, to the editorial office at New York.
The last few years of Willis's career afford a melancholy contrast to its brilliant opening. Health, success, prosperity--all had deserted him, and nothing remained but the editorial chair, to which he clung even after epileptic attacks had resulted in paralysis and gradual softening of the brain. The failure of his mental powers was kept secret as long as possible, but in November, 1866, he yielded to the entreaties of his wife and children, knocked off work for ever, and went home to die. His last few months were passed in helpless weakness, and he only occasionally recognised those around him. The end came on January 20, 1867, his sixty-first birthday.
Selections from Willis's prose works have been published within recent years in America, and a new edition of his poems has appeared in England, while a carefully written Life by Mr. De Beers is included in the series of 'American Men of Letters.' But in this country at least his fame, such as it is, will rest upon his sketches of such celebrities as Lamb, Moore, Bulwer, D'Orsay, and D'Israeli. As long as we retain any interest in them and their works, we shall like to know how they looked and dressed, and what they talked about in private life. It is impossible altogether to approve of the Penciller--his absurdities were too marked, and his indiscretions too many--yet it is probable that few who have followed his meteor-like career will be able to refrain from echoing Thackeray's dictum: 'It is comfortable that there should have been a Willis!'
LADY HESTER STANHOPE