Following Two Professions 1816-1821 (LETIERS 34 to 80)
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II Following Two Professions 1816-1821 (LETIERS 34 TO 80) HAVING BEEN ADMITIED TO THE BAR on August 15, 1815, Byrant-as he put it to a former fellow-student-"lounged away" three months at his home in Cum mington. His phrase was surely imprecise, for during this time he wrote the first draft of "Thanatopsis" and an incomplete version, or "Fragment," of the poem later entitled "Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood." And he busily hunted a community in which to locate his legal practice. Bryant's problem was troublesome. To settle in a large town or a city, such as New Bedford or Boston, which he saw as the most attractive prospect, would require capital his father could not provide. William Baylies urged on him, as offering a young lawyer the best opportunities, certain rural towns such as Truro on Cape Cod, or Freetown, between Bridgewater and New Bedford, but to Cullen these seemed to promise only more of the isolation in which he had once been unhappy at Worthington. Northampton, where his father's friends Samuel Howe and Judge Joseph Lyman might have helped, was the Hampshire County seat and already well served by attorneys. Having explored possible openings in towns nearer home, such as Williamsburg and Ashfield, Bryant finally accepted, in December 1815, what seemed the least attractive choice, the little farming village of Plainfield just north of Cummington where he had prepared for college under Moses Hallock. Six unhappy months at Plainfield, which Bryant describes rather bitterly in the first letter written thereafter which is now recovered, ended with his re ceiving through Samuel Howe an invitation to enter into partnership with an established lawyer, George Ives, at Great Barrington in the Housatonic Valley, forty miles from Cummington. Here, after eight months with his more experi enced partner, Bryant bought Ives out and began practice by himself. The young poet who had now "mixed with the world" and been "stained" by its "follies" could still look only "coldly on the severe beauties of Themis," as he told Baylies a few days after parting from Ives in May 1817. Meanwhile, Peter Bryant furthered his son's literary interests. In a desk drawer in his office he happened on some of Cullen's verses. Taking them to Boston when he at tended the legislature in June, he left them with his friend Willard Phillips, then an editor of the North American Review. The anonymous appearance in that journal in September 1817 of "Thanatopsis" and "A Fragment" ("Inscrip tion for the Entrance to a Wood"), incomplete as they then were, encouraged Cullen four months later to submit two finished poems to the North American Review, one of which was "To a Waterfowl." Soon afterward, at Phillips' invitation to contribute a prose article to his journal, Bryant produced a critical essay on American poetry which showed him to be a perceptive student of his own craft. Several more of his articles were ac- Following Two Professions 63 cepted by the North American Review in 1819 and 1820. But its conductors had decided, soon after the publication of "To a Waterfowl," that because they could not hope for equally good verse from other writers they must discontinue their poetry department, so Bryant was left once more to solitary composition. Despite distaste for his profession, Bryant persevered at the law, and earned recognition in Berkshire County in other ways. During his first two years as an attorney he was limited by his license to appearances in justice courts and in the Court of Common Pleas, but in September 1819 he was admitted to full practice in the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts. In the same month he was surprised to receive an honorary Master of Arts degree from Williams College. Between 1819 and 1821 he was elected or appointed to a series of vil lage offices in Great Barrington: tithing man, town clerk, justice of the peace, and clerk of the center school district. He wrote odes for agricultural celebra tions, a speech for the Bible Society, and in 1820 an oration which he delivered at Stockbridge on the Fourth of July. The years 1820 and 1821 were eventful for him in more personal ways. In March 1820 Dr. Peter Bryant died of the chronic lung trouble from which he had suffered increasingly for five years. In January 1821 Cullen married Frances Fairchild, a Great Barrington girl he had met during his first few months in the village. In April he was invited to compose a longer poem than he had heretofore attempted, and to read it before the Phi Beta Kappa Society in Cam bridge the following August, learning-belatedly-that he had been elected to the Harvard chapter of that society four years earlier. The circumstances of this invitation make it evident that the Cambridge friends Bryant had made during his writing for the North American Review Willard Phillips, Edward Channing, and Richard Dana-had been so impressed with his poetic talent that they were eager to encourage it further. They made his visit to Cambridge for the Harvard commencement in August the occasion for the realization of a project which Channing had urged on him more than two years before, the publication of a collection of his poetry. They offered suggestions and frank criticism toward its preparation, and guided the slim volume of eight poems through the press in September. And by securing favor able notices of Bryant's Poems at Boston and New York, they encouraged him to make a resolution four years later of the dilemma which was becoming ever more frustrating-whether to lodge his career finally in literature or the law. 64 LEITERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 34. To an Unidentified Friend1 [Great Barrington, December? 1816?]2 I am told you complain that I have not kept my word in writing to you whenever I should establish myself in business. I had indeed for gotten that I ever made such a promise; but a late repentance will some times wipe out an error if made as soon as that error is discovered. I too have great cause to complain of my Bridgewater friends many of whom promised to write to me & who seem to have forgotten both me & their promises. After leaving Bridgewater and lounging away three months at my father's I went to practice in Plainfield a town adjoining Cumming ton- I remained there eight months but not being satisfied with my situation & prospects in that place I left it for Great Barrington-a pleas ant little village in Berkshire County on the banks of the Housatonick, where I am now doing business in partnership with a young man of the name of Ives.3 This town was originally settled by the Dutch about the year 1730-& many of their descendants compose about one tenth of the present inhabitants.- Its politics are highly federal. I live about 5 miles from the line of the state of New York & 10 from that of Connecticut In Plainfield I found the people rather bigoted in their notions, and al most wholly governed by the influence of a few individuals who looked upon my coming among them, with a good deal of jealousy- Yet I could have made a living out of them in spite of their teeth had I chosen to stay, but Plainfield was an obscure place & I had little prospect of ever greatly enlarging the sphere of my business- My present situation I am better pleased with-4 Such is my history. I have been very solicitous to hear from my friends in Bridgewater since I left it;-but without much success- I should be extremely glad to receive a line from you or any of my friends who may condescend to write. I shall always be glad to hear of their wel fare & always interested in their history. Of all the places in which I ever resided there is none in which I passed my time more pleasantly, & none in which I would rather wait for the close of my life than in Bridge water- I hope you continue as cheerful, as good-humoured & as hos pitable as ever- I hope that the young ladies of your parish are getting well-married and that those who are not will preserve their bloom till they do- I came into this place about the first of last October- Since I have been here I have been wasted to a shadow by a complaint of the lungs but am now recovered- ! am very desirous to hear from friends in Bridgewater. [unsigned] MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR (draft) PUBLISHED (in part): Life, I, 145-146. I. The recipient of this letter is identifiable only as a friend, and probably a former fellow-student, of Bryant's at Bridgewater. 2. The date is conjectural. This letter must have been written between Bryant's Following Two Professions 65 removal to Great Barrington in October 1816 and the dissolution of his partnership with George Ives in May 1817. 3. Soon after beginning law practice in Plainfield, Bryant had apparently heard through Samuel Howe that George Ives (1789-1825), son of Gen. Thomas lves of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was looking for a partner. After an exchange of letters, Ives wrote Bryant on June 24, 1816, inviting him to join in a busy practice which might produce as much as $2,000 a year with a partner in his office. NYPL--BG. Having looked into other possibilities, perhaps at Dalton and Northampton, Bryant accepted Ives's invitation about September l. Sarah Snell Bryant, "Diary," August 6, 10, 19, 22, 1816; "Youth," pp.