XXXIII

Doctor of Laws 1873 (LETTERS 2108 TO 2170)

SooN AFTER THE NEw YEAR the Cummington Library was completed, and at about the same time Bryant contracted for a new road with an easy slope leading from the old village center on Cummington Hill to the Westfield River valley, joining the highway at the library. This would replace an earlier road so steep as to be sometimes impassable in the winter and spring. With these projects in hand, Bryant took his two daughters and Anna Fairchild, accompanied again by John Durand, on a Florida holiday. Leaving New York in February, they visited Jacksonville, Saint Augustine, Palatka, Green Cove Springs, and Silver Spring, stopping at Mandarin to see Harriet Beecher Stowe's winter home. In letters to the Evening Post Bryant remarked on noticeable changes since his visit thirty years earlier-particularly in the conditions of the former slaves. They were, he thought, less favorable on the whole, despite emancipation, for the blacks were now not so well fed or clad; probably more intelligent, but less hardy and more easily fatigued at work. On their return trip the travelers stopped at Savannah, Charleston, Norfolk, and Richmond, reaching home in mid-April. In May the Cumming• ton Library received its books, and the next month, with the new "Bryant Road" from the hill completed, it was opened to the public. In June, by a coincidence, President James McCosh of the college at Princeton, New Jersey, who had tried in vain the year before to get Bryant as a commencement speaker, asked him to give the principal address at the dedication of the new Chancellor Green Library. Bryant stayed for two days at McCosh's home on the campus, giving his talk and receiving the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Earlier this year he had lectured at the Roslyn Lyceum on his impres• sions of Mexico. Neither talk, however, was printed in his only notable publication of 1873, a volume of selected Orations and Addresses, brought out by Putnam, which was very favorably received. James T. Fields is reported to have called these "the most beautiful speeches in the English language." In March Bryant was elected an honorary member of the Russian Academy, founded in 1773 by Catherine II. He was little concerned this year with political matters, although he was busier with his newspaper as a result of the death in April of its literary editor, John R. Thompson. But in one instance at least he made an imprint on American foreign policy. In November Secretary of State Hamilton Fish asked his advice on what action the government should take toward the Spanish colony of Cuba, after a gunboat had seized an American freighter Doctor of Laws 95 carrying arms to Cuban insurgents, and had executed eight American sailors. Fish asked Bryant to "favor me with your views on the subject." Bryant advised that "a war with Spain would be a real disaster" to be "sedulously avoided." We did not need nor want Cuba, he wrote, for "we have trouble enough already with the freed men of our own country" to wish to add to them an ignorant population, white and black, which had lived for centuries under the "most grinding despotism." Two weeks later the matter was settled amicably with Spain without the hostilities against which Bryant had warned. At the end of July, as had become his custom, Bryant went to Cumming• ton. There he busied himself with his two volumes of landscape scenes, Picturesque America. In August a young editor who had taken "very great pleasure" in reading Bryant's Orations and Addresses, William Dean Howells of the Atlantic Monthly, solicited for that magazine "a series of articles-the more autobiographical the better" on his lifetime experiences. But Bryant pleaded preoccupation with other writing and the indolence of old age, and was still undecided when Howells pressed him again later in the year. Soon after his return to Roslyn in late September Bryant was kept by another engagement from dining with the British mystery writer Wilkie Collins, then giving readings in this country. In December he was invited by Robert Waterston to a centennial celebration by the Massachusetts Historical Society of the Boston Tea Party. In declining the invitation Bryant replied, in a letter read at the meeting, with a sweeping review of the century's changes which may have suggested the theme of his last major poem, "The Flood of Years," written three years later. 96 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

2108. To Frederic Huidekoper1 The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, Jany. 2d. 1873. Dear Sir. My memory not serving me in the case mentioned in your letter, I put the letter into the hands of Mr. Gay,2 now in this office and at one time editor of the Anti Slavery Standard, who has looked up what is written on the enclosed paper,3 which is as near as we can come to answering your inquiry. It may put you on the track of the particulars of the case. I am, sir, very truly yours W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDREss: F. Huidekoper Esq. DOCKETED: W. C. Bryant, I Jan. 2, 1873. 1. Frederic Huidekoper (1817-1892) was Professor of New Testament and Church History, 1844-1877, at the Meadville (Pennsylvania) Unitarian Theological School, founded in 1844 by his father, Harm Jan Huidekoper (1776-1854), an immigrant from Holland. The letter Bryant mentions is unrecovered. 2. In 1872 Sydney Howard Gay (1814-1888), previously the editor of the American Anti-Slavery Standard, the New York Tribune, and the Chicago Tribune, had become managing editor of the EP. 3. Unrecovered.

2109. To Christiana Gibson New York, Jany. 6th. 1873. My dear friend. Your last letter to me was dated October 23d, and I was haunted by a dim fancy that I had answered it, until your letter to Julia arrived the day before yesterday. Sad as the tenor of the letter to Julia was, it yet brought the welcome news that your cough, which obliged you to fly your country, had left you, and that your young niece Flora had also found her health restored by the mild climate, and, now about to embark for India, had the hope of a happy future before her. You and yours may be assured of our deep and sincere sympathy in the sorrows which it has pleased Providence to send upon you. Here too the closing days of the year have been saddened by the deaths of those whom we much prized, suddenly removed in the midst of their usefulness-Kensett, the amiable and generous artist1-Putnam, the liberal-minded and kindly bookseller,2 and the promoter of every good work-and the much esteemed Treasurer of the Century Asso- Doctor of Laws 97

ciation, Priestly, a man of great worth and intelligence.3 It is not often that we lose, so near to each other, so many deeply and widely mourned. What a fleeting thing human life is!-like the shadow of a cloud passing swiftly over the field, leaving behind the flowers, which it visits but for an instant, and the prattling brooks and the pools that give back the image of the sky, and the song-sparrow warbling on its perch and the meadow lark brooding on its nest in the grass-leaving all, all-and hurrying to be lost on the dim, distant hills, where the sight can no longer follow it. I miss Putnam greatly. He published two of my books, and I employed him to get together my Cummington Library-about four thousand volumes. What he did for me beyond my special directions, was judiciously and disinterestedly done. I must tell you about the Library. The building containing the books is finished, and is perfectly fire-proof-with a floor of Portland Cement laid on brick arches, and a ceiling of brick laid on iron beams, so that there will be nothing to burn save the shelves. Then there is the dwelling house of the Librar• ian, ample for a pretty large family, built of concrete, that is to say, a mixture of water, lime and sand. There is also a barn for the house• hold and a shed to shelter the horses of those who visit the library and a croft of eleven acres for the family. The Westfield, a winding brawling stream, with a fringe of thicket, murmurs under the win• dows. I have procured at some expense a new road to be made from my house to the library, avoiding a steep and high hill which the old road first climbed and then descended. Are we never to see you again on this side of the Atlantic? May it not be that the breath of the climate which filled your lungs for so many-may I not say rather happy years?-have as kindly an influence on your health as the air of Nice? Our people are beginning to go westward on our continent in search of health. Minnesota is full of persons who have gone thither on account of weak lungs, most of whom find a healing power in the air of that region. By and by we shall run down to Mexico, on railways already projected, and the winter of Mexico is one long, temperate, cloudless summer. Your sister, Miss Jessie, must have had a sad winter. Her kind and humane assiduities are always at hand wherever there is suffering and sorrow. I hope her health may not have suffered in consequence of her watchings at the bedside of her poor niece. At Roslyn time brings its changes. Our Dr. Elyt is confined to his chamber with dropsy, and without any hope of recovery. Mis[s] Amy Mudge5 whom you remember as living on my premises is also confined to her chamber, without any expectation of coming down till she is carried to the burial ground. 98 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

The ministers whom you have sent us or rather whom we have coaxed away from you, are making quite a stir here. Dr. Hall preaches to crowds.6 Dr. Tayler fills the Tabernacle to suffocation.7 The winter, thus far, has been stormy-though hardly to the degree that it has been in England. The streets have been choked with snow, and early in December, the cold was intense, though it has somewhat mitigated. Possibly Julia and I may turn our faces southward in February-but not to leave the United States. Kind regards to Miss Ran ken, 8 and believe me ever Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPTS: NYPL-BPMP (final); NYPL-GR (partial draft) ADDREss: Miss Chris• tiana Gibson DOCKETED: W. C. Bryant I Jan. 6. 1873 PUBLISHED (in part): Life, II, 328-329. I. John F. Kensett. See 1410.1; illus., Volume IV. 2. George P. Putnam. See 433.1, 442.1. 3. John Priestly (d. 1872) was elected a member of the Century in the Club's first year, 1847, and was its treasurer from 1857 until his death. Information from Rodger Friedman, Century Asosciation Librarian. 4. See 1165.3. Rev. Samuel Ely died that year. 5. See 700.5. 6. Probably John Hall (1829-1898), who came from Armagh, Ireland, in 1867 and served as pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York. 7. William MacKergo Taylor (1829-1895), a native of Kilmarnock, Scotland, was pastor of the Broadway Tabernacle, 1872-1892. 8. See Letters 549, 1034.

2ll0. To C. Bates Josselyn' New York January 8th, 1873. Dear Sir. As to the criticism of Lowell, although it is pretty severe it does not become me to express any wish as to your disposal of it. Do exactly as you think fit, and I shall find no fault. 2 The Rhyming Dictionary in my possession is not at hand; I left it at my country place on Long Island. I am ashamed to say that I do not remember the name of the compiler. It is an American reprint in a moderate-sized duodecimo. I am, sir, truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: William Cullen Bryant, II ADDRESS: C. Bates Josselyn Esq. I. Unidentified. The letter to which Bryant apparently responds is unrecovered. Doctor of Laws 99

2. It is not certain whether Bryant refers here to the fun James R. Lowell had made of him in A Fable for Critics in 1848, but Lowell had made handsome amends for his youthful gibes, both in the stirring tribute he paid the older poet on his seventieth birthday in 1864, and in his subsequent remarks to George Bancroft that year, referring to "that granitic temper of mind which keeps him steadfast to principle, buttressed immoveably as one of his own Berkshire Hills." See Volume III, [5]; Volume IV, 342; Martin Duberman, james Russell Lowell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin [1966]), p. 440, n. 27.

2111. To John B. Ford1 The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, Jan. 11. 1873. Dear sir I enclose you another letter2 relating to the Library of Poetry & Song. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: StUL. 1. See Letters 1927 ff. 2. Unrecovered.

2112. To Fanny Bryant Godwin Saturday Jany 11th 1873. Dear Fanny. I am sorry that you have had such an illness. For a part of the time I have also had a severe cold. If Mr. and Mrs. Rogers1 do not come to dine with us tomorrow as they·have half promised I will come to thirty seventh street. Affectionately W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDREss: Mrs F Bryant Godwin. 1. Probably sculptor John Rogers and his wife. See 1886.1.

2113. To Frederic Huidekoper New York, Jan. 14th. 1873. Dear sir. If it be your purpose to collect the later instances of legal punish• ment by burning the convict alive I can furnish you with one which I have just met with in reading Evelyn's Diary.! He says. "Passing by 100 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Smithfield, I saw a miserable creature burning who had murdered her husband." The date is May lOth 1652. I am sorry that I cannot help you in looking up the instance of burning a negro to which you refer. It is singular however, that Stroude2 has no mention of it. I am, sir, truly yours. W. C. BRYANT. P.S. On the 9th of July of the same year-1652-Evelyn speaks of a man charged with some crime who, "refusing to plead, was pressed to death." W.C.B. MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDRESS: F. Huidekoper Esq. DOCKETED: W. C. Bryant, I Jan. 14, 1873. 1. From 1640 to 1706 John Evelyn (1620--1706) of London kept a diary which was rediscovered and published in 1818. 2. Probably either A Sketch of the Laws Relating to Slavery in the Several States of the United States ofAmerica (Philadelphia, 1827), or Southern Slavery and the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, 1863), by George McDowell Stroude (1795-1875). 2114. To Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co. New York Jany. [17?] 1873. Gentlemen. Your letter enclosing a cheque for $181.25 has come safely to hand, 1 and you have my thanks. Yours truly W C BRYANT. MANUSCRIPT: Brown University Library ADDRESS: To Jas. R. Osgood & Co. 1. Royalties for Bryant's translations of Homer. 2115. To Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co. The Evening Post, Published by Wm C. Bryant & Co New York, January 18 [1873?] Gentlemen I have this day received your statements of the accounts between us-one dated the first of May last and the other dated the first of November together with your Cheque for five hundred and ninety seven dollars and seventy five cents [$597.75] being the amount which appears due me on account, for which you have-besides the receipt• my thanks. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT. MANUSCRIPT: MCL ADDRESS: To Messrs. James R. Osgood & Co. Doctor of Laws 101

2116. To George N. Hitchcock1 New York Jan. 21. 1873. Dear sir. I cannot say that I had any particular flower in view when I wrote the line in my "Forest Hymn" to which you refer.2 It might be the wood-anemone or the liver-leaf called by Miss Cooper in "Rural Hours"3 squirrel cups or it might be the pyrola, of which there are three species, or it might be the yellow violet of my native hills, all of them wood-flowers and often found nestling at the root of large old trees in the forest. I am glad that you are able to speak so kindly of what I have written in verse. I am, sir, very respectfully yours. W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Edwin H. Miller ADDRESS: Geo. N Hitchcock Esq. 1. Unidentified. 2. "A Forest Hymn" (1825), II. 63-64: "That delicate forest flower I With scented breath ...." 3. Rural Hours by Susan Fenimore Cooper, which Bryant had praised greatly, pleasing the author's father, the novelist James Fenimore Cooper. See Letter 730. 2117. To Henrietta S. Nahmer New York. Jan 27th 1873. Dear Madam. Your catalogue came to hand on Saturday-this is Monday-It seems to be very well done, so far as I have examined it. 1 The list of Books of Reference is perhaps somewhat larger than is absolutely necessary, but I can judge better when I see the volumes. I will then, if I think that any of the books placed by you under this head should be allowed to be taken out from the library, make a mark against them in the catalogue, to signify that they may be taken. As to the compensation, I perceive that it will be more than the sum which I mentioned to you. If you desire to receive any part of it before you put on the covers I can send it to you, provided that you inform me immediately, as I may make ajourney soon to the south. I am, Madam, truly yours W. C. BRYANT. P.S. I perceive that in the Table of Contents, you make the number of books 3.615, while in the Catalogue as they are numbered you give the last volume the number of 3.570. I think that I may as well omit the number in the table. W.C.B. 102 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDREss: Mrs. H. S. Nahmer. 1. Catalogue of the Cummington Library (New York: Evening Post, 1873).

2118. To Matilda Lieber1 New York. Jany. 29, 1873. Dear Madam.

I thank you for the letter which you have sent me.2 It shows with what a clear forecast your husband perceived the shadows of coming events. If you should favor the Evening Post with anything further be pleased to address Parke Godwin Esq. at this office. I am, Madam, truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: HEHL ADDRESS: Mrs. Matilda Leiber DOCKETED: Bryant Jan 1873. 1. Widow of Francis Lieber (217.2), who had died in 1872. 2. Published in the EP for January 31, 1873. This January 18, 1850 letter from Francis Lieber to an unnamed correspondent was prescient in its forecast of the future on the day Senator Henry Clay introduced resolutions in the senate, designed to resolve differences between northern and southern states, which when passed later in that year became known as the controversial Compromise of 1850. No peaceful separation of states from the Union was possible, he wrote, and "A war between North and South would be the bitterest ever recorded." We would "bleed to faintness only to recover to acts of wildness." He decried Abolition, for history tells us that "Slavery is a deciduous institution which always falls at a certain time, as the first teeth are absorbed and give way to the second and permanent teeth." He recounted the conflict a few years earlier when liberal and conservative cantons in Switzerland were on the point of "severing their country," and were dissuaded only by a hermit who rushed into their senate chamber shouting "Concord! concord! concord!" and "painted the dangers so vividly" that compromise was achieved. Would Clay, he concluded, "be the man?"

2119. To James T. Fields New York, January 30, 1873

For one of the best of reasons I cannot do what you request in such kind and flattering terms. 1 I am about to make a journey to the Southern States. We old men are like snakes-fond of the sun, and inclined to crawl into sunny places. I must go before the date men• tioned in your letter. But, besides this reason, I have yet another difficulty. I have been often asked to deliver public lectures, and I always answer that I never do it. I sometimes make little dinner speeches, and now and then speak at public meetings, when some important matter is up for discussion, but I never give lectures. I cannot well afford to Doctor of Laws 103

deprive myself of so short and easy an answer to such applications as I have mentioned. And then I do not like the idea of coming before a strange audience-and a Boston audience. The people of New York are accustomed to my defects as a speaker, and bear with me. I could not expect from Boston the same indulgence....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 327. 1. Fields' request that Bryant lecture in Boston is unrecovered.

2120. To Fanny Bryant Godwin February 6th. 1873. New York Dear Fanny. It is our intention to start for the south next week, about the middle, say Thursday, and I shall be happy to have you in the party. Anna Fairchild will go with us. Yours affectionately W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Mrs. F. Bryant Godwin.

2121. To Jerusha Dewey New York, February 9th [1873]

... I cannot leave New York on the journey which Julia and myself, with two or three others-Mrs. Godwin, Miss Fairchild, and Mr. John Durand-are to make this week to the warmer parts of the Union• say as far as Florida-without writing to you. I went last week, on Thursday, to Roslyn, to speak on the subject of Mexico. 1 I looked over my journal, and my Mexican letters, and then held forth for the space of an hour and a quarter, relating what I had seen, without saying all I had in my mind. I had a most attentive audience, the largest which has attended any of their lectures this winter-many coming from Westbury-and so still that you could have heard a whisper from the other end of the room. You wonder what I said to the children at the church in Thirty• fourth Street.2 Nothing beyond commonplace exhortations, to take the conduct of the Master for their example, and to do everything in their power to make others happy. Mr. Tyndall, who has just sailed on his return, has been much followed after here.3 I said to Mr. Beckwith, "He is a pleasant man." "No," was the answer; "he is merely a scientific man, and those who are so are too much absorbed in science to be pleasant companions." But I have met him at dinner, and, although 104 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

he gesticulated very vehemently for an Englishman, I thought him agreeable. You ask what books I have been reading. I have just finished one on Madame de Stael, by Amelia Bolte, a German lady of Dresden, whom Fanny (Mrs. Godwin) knows.4 It professes to be a life of Madame de Stael, but the dialogue is mostly imaginary. What a life! passionate, for she was brought up not to control her passions; almost always unhappy, marrying an old man whom she did not care for, after being twice refused by young men whom she did love, and to whom she offered herself, if not formally, yet in a manner not to be misunderstood; forming, after her marriage, intimate relations with Benjamin Constant, to her father's great grief, and, when he deserted her, marrying, after her husband's death, a half-dead Italian named Rocca, and finally wearing out her life by opium-eating. I am reading now "Evelyn's Diary," which I find very interesting....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 329-330. 1. No report of this lecture has been found. 2. The text of this speech is unrecovered. 3. The British natural philosopher john Tyndall (1820-1893) visited the United States in 1872-1873, delivering lectures on light and heat later incorporated in his published works. 4. Fanny and her family had spent some time in Dresden while traveling in Europe in 1866--1867. The biography to which Bryant refers, probably a German title, is not listed in the National Union Catalogue. Anne Louise Germaine de Stael, Baronne de Stael-Holstein ( 1766--1817) was a French writer.

2122. To Frederic Huidekoper The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, February 10, 1873. Dear Sir. I thank you for the portions of your work which you have sent me. I have looked over them with great interest. The subject which you discuss is altogether new to me and I am amazed-not at the existence of some degree of Jewish influence upon the Greek and Roman mind, before the Christian era, for that was natural enough, but at the great extent of it which your proofs reveal. I shall be curious to see the entire work, and especially your vindication of the emperor Tiberius. 1 I am, sir, truly yours W. C. BRYANT. Doctor of Laws 105

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDRESS: F. Huidekoper Esq. I. Frederic Huidekoper,judaism at Rome B.C. 76 to A.D. 140 (New York, 1876). This was reprinted many times during the next quarter century. Tiberius Claudius Nero Caesar (42 B.C.-A.D. 37), second Emperor of Rome, ruled from A.D. 14 to 37.

2123. To John G. Whittier St. Augustine, Florida, March 6th. 1873. My dear Friend, I am quite of your opinion that one who has so long and ably served Massachusetts, which I am proud to call my native state, should not be subjected to a public stigma for differing with a majority of the legislature of the state, in regard to the words which are to be inscribed on the flags of the regular army. 1 The vote of censure I have greatly regretted; it was hastily passed, and in obedience to an impulse of the moment, which a little delay would have calmed. It seems to me that it would be highly honorable to the Massachusetts legislature if that measure were immediately rescinded2-a step which, in my judgment is due to the character of one who, whatever occasional mistakes he may have made, is a man of exalted integrity and honor, who has rendered eminent services to the country and who is an example of public virtue to all who are entering upon political life. I am, dear sir, very truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: HCL ADDREss: John G. Whittier Esq. I. In the United States Senate on December 2, 1872, Charles Sumner (751.1, 976. 7) had urged that "No Names of Battles with Fellow Citizens" should be entered on the "Army-Register or the Regimental Colors of the United States." On December 18 the Massachusetts legislature adopted a motion of censure for his words. Informa• tion from Beverley Wilson Palmer. 2. Soon after Bryant's letter to Whittier, on February 11 and 13, 1873, largely through the instrumentality of Whittier, this motion was rescinded. Ibid.

2124. To the EvENING PosT Palatka, Florida, March 18, 1873.

It is thirty years since I was last in Florida. In that time several of our western states, which then lay in wildernesses, have become populous and boast their large cities and intersecting railways, and count their millions where they counted their hundreds of inhabitants. East Florida still remains for the most part a forest. 106 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

The long peninsula of sand-sand formed by the disintegration of the coral rock on which East Florida lies, is divided for nearly its whole length by the majestic river of St. John, which rises in the southern part of the peninsula, a broad, deep, placid stream, as black as a Claude Lorraine mirror, 1 with no motion that makes a ripple, and here and there spreading into lakes. Into this great artery scores of smaller streams, just as dark and just as quiet, and either drained from swamps or fed by copious springs, bring their waters and keep its channels full, in some places almost even with the banks. These low tracts are, of course, swamp; they are corded with trees and shrubs of various kinds, the roots of which are in a black mould, which stains the water drained from them. As you pass along this calm, dark river, or its calm, dark tributaries, you sweep by these marshy spots, and come to others where the shore rises a few feet above the water, and the soil is almost pure white sand. On the more fertile of these spots grow more lofty live-oaks and magnolias, and here the settler makes his openings, and builds his dwelling, and plants his orchard of orange trees. In one of these spots, named Mandarin, Mrs. Stowe has her winter mansion,2 in the shadow of some enormous live oaks, and here she has planted an orange grove. In another, named Magnolia, is an excellent hotel, with a row of cottages for guests, and all around them the solitary woodland. A mile south of Magnolia is Green Cove Spring, where a little village has sprung up, with the yellow jessamine, now in late bloom, clambering over the cottages. The spring itself is one of the most beautiful objects of its kind that I ever saw-a natural well of twenty feet in diameter, throwing up the translucent water in huge gushes. So clear is the water that the minutest object at the bottom is readily discerned as if it were near the eye, and that bottom, pearly white in some parts and bright green in others, gleams through the water with a brilliancy like that of some precious stone. From the spring a copious stream runs rapidly to the St. John, supplying in its way the baths for which the place for many years past has been famous. The beauty of the ground has been marred by cutting away the evergreen shrubs that once hung over the water and putting around it an ugly border of planks. But these are merely stations in the great forest, which for the most part, where it is not swamp, is a sandy plain covered with the trees of the long-leaved pine, under which is a growth of the dwarf palmetto, shading the size of a man's leg. In many parts the trees have been thinned by the gatherers of turpentine; no others have sprung up in place of those that have been destroyed, and the wind sighs drearily through the branches of a few that are left. Sometimes you see a track made by the wheels of carts leading from the river bank, Doctor of Laws 107 and looking that way you discern a log cabin or two in the distance. At times you come upon groups of the palmettos, towering to a height which they do not attain further north, and giving a tropical aspect to the woods. On one side of the river you perhaps see a tangled growth of evergreen shrubs and twining plants apparently impenetrable, and on the other bank small lean cows browsing upon the green things that come within their reach, and you are told that here in Florida, on account of the scarcity of nutriment, the neat cattle soon degenerate. For three hundred years has Florida been open to settlement, and St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States by more than fifty years.3 How does it happen that East Florida is still for the most part a wilderness? It certainly is not the fault of the region immediately north of it. The ocean winds from the Gulf of Mexico on the west, and the Atlantic on the east, mitigate the summer heats and prevent the winter frosts. It is claimed, and probably with truth, that the diseases which arise from malaria are of a milder character than in the lower parts of Georgia and South Carolina. The reason of the slow increase of population must be the meagreness of soil in the greater part of the peninsula. I remember that a writer in the Evening Post some time since spoke of the soil of East Florida as "the despair of the cultivator." The expression is a strong one, and perhaps, as applied to the whole region is not quite deserved. There are some noble orange groves along the St. John and in St. Augustine, which flourish and yield large returns of profit. The mud is dug from the neighboring marshes and mingled with the sand which forms the greater part of the soil, and the ground becomes fertile. The oranges of Florida are among the finest produced anywhere. The keeper of an apple-stand at Jackson• ville, on the St. John, as we stopped coming up the river, asked me if I had ever tasted the Indian River oranges. I thought he said Indian rubber, and answered him accordingly. "Indian River," said he, "and you will find it the finest fruit that grows." I tried his Indian River oranges brought from New Smyrna, many leagues south of this, and could not but own that his praise was not ill-deserved, so rich and agreeably tempered to the palate was the juice, and so delicately tender the little cells in which the juice was contained. How far it is practicable to carry this method of obtaining muck from the marshes to make the immense tracts of sand productive I have not the means of judging. There is an Orange Growers' Association here, who say in their prospectus that the best soil for the orange tree is that of the marshes when "properly drained." But the draining of the marshes seems to me a very doubtful undertaking, on account of their very slight elevation above the surface of the rivers. Could not the marshes in Florida be treated in the manner of the Chinampas in Mexico? There 108 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

the wet ground is trenched with broad and deep ditches like canals, and the earth heaped in narrow parallel-ograms high above the water; and here all manner of vegetables and fruits are cultivated all the year round. In the dry season these narrow platforms are watered from the broad ditches that surround them. But there are some indications of growth in East Florida. Thirty years ago, when I visited it, Jacksonville, on the St. John, was known only by its single orange grove just planted. It is now a thriving town of four thousand inhabitants or more, and two hotels, at this season full of guests.4 I have just returned from St. Augustine, where thirty years since I passed nearly three weeks. It was then almost bare of trees, the orange groves by which it had been overshadowed having shortly before been killed by a severe frost. It has lost something of its ancient aspect; a few new houses having been built, among which are two hotels, but its orange trees have been renewed and they are now in bloom, sweetening the air for a great distance around them, and the mocking birds are singing among their branches. At present the place is suffering a northern invasion. All the hotels are crowded with guests, and every spare room in town which can be had for money is occupied by persons sent from the hotels, and still the tram-road over which the vehicles are drawn by mules, brings every day its fresh load of visitors. Whatever may be the fortune of the rest of East Florida, this place is likely to flourish on account of the purity of the air and the benignity of the climate, and to become the great winter watering• place of the United States. In a few years it will probably part with nearly all that is left reminding the visitor of its Spanish origin-its narrow streets, its high garden walls of shell-rock and its overhanging balconies-all but its fine old fort of St. Mark-and look like any other American town in the Southern States, saving its orange groves and the date palms, which, planted within thirty years, are now beginning to peer over the roofs of the houses. It will then be the resort of invalids who need not only a mild climate but the open air, and of idlers who come back to bask in the sunshine of this softer climate and these serener skies. For the sunshine here has been almost perpetual since we entered Florida, and although the climate here sympathizes in some degree with that of the Northern States and the great snow storms of that region chill the air even in these latitudes, yet they only make one the better for a brisk walk, and are a relief from the feeling of enervation which attends one of the warm days here. One of the sights most worth seeing here is the place of the late Mr. Buckingham Smith.5 That gentleman directed it by his will to be sold and the proceeds to be applied to the support of an hospital for poor and aged colored peopie. His executor, Dr. Bronson, a resident Doctor of Laws 109

of this place and one of its most public-spirited citizens, has already begun the building. The place is one of the finest things to be seen in East Florida. A lane between overhanging orange trees, now shining with their golden fruit, forming a fragrant covered way, leads to the mansion, which is overshadowed by gigantic mulberry trees. All around the mansion are rows of orange trees now in full bloom, yet with their bright yellow fruit glittering here and there among the dark green, and scattered irregularly about are great gnarled fig trees, and pomegranate bushes putting forth their young leaves. The dark color of the soil attests the care which has been taken to enrich it with the dark mould of the marshes, and here and there you have the grateful feeling of treading upon an elastic turf formed by the vigorously growing grass, a sensation quite rare in Florida, where the grass of our northern region is almost a stranger.

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: EP, March 24, 1873. 1. Seventeenth-century landscape painter who influenced the Hudson River school of American artists. See 755.2,3. 2. The writer Harriet B. Stowe (1454.3) passed much of her later years at her Florida home. 3. Founded by Spaniards in 1565. Bryant's figure is not quite accurate. Sante Fe, New Mexico, was founded in 1609-also by Spaniards. 4. See Letter 456. 5. A retired American diplomat and early Florida historian who had died in 1871. At Madrid in 1857 he had been attentive to the Bryant party. See Volume III, 410; Letter 1007.

2125. To the EvENING PosT Green Cove Springs, On the St. John's River, March 23, 1873.

I did not in my last finish what I had to say of St. Augustine. Since I visited it thirty years ago, 1 a great change has taken place in the constitution of society here; the slaves have been set free. I then observed that the negro race in the town had a sleek, well-fed look, and were for the most part neatly attired. In both respects it has seemed to me that there is a change for the worse. A lady who has long resided in the place said to me: "I am sure that the generation which have grown up since the war are decidedly more intelligent than their predecessors, but physically they are inferior. They are not so well supplied with wholesome food, and the consequence is that they are not so strong and hardy. They are easily fatigued with work, in comparison with their fathers and mothers. As to their manners, 110 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

they are not disrespectful, but they are, of course, not trained to the same courtesy as their parents." I was conducted, while at St. Augustine, to their principal school, in which are two departments, each of them with its female teacher from the Northern States. The pay of the teacher in the most advanced of their departments is forty dollars a month, on which she subsists, keeping house in a dwelling erected for that purpose by Dr. Bronson in the school-house yard, and presented by him to the school. In both departments the attendance was not large, but the pupils were quick in their answers to questions, and showed a respectable proficiency. "You should see the school," said a lady who was present, and who took a lively interest in its success, "when the town is not, as now, full of strangers. Every little creature of the colored race who is able to carry a cup of tea on a waiter without spilling it, is kept at home to wait on the guests at the hotels and boarding houses. But the scholars whom we were most proud of have lately left us, and are at the colleges for colored people in Atlanta. They had become experts in algebra and had made a beginning in Latin, and in these and other branches of education were so well trained that professors from our northern colleges, who were here last winter, expressed their astonishment at their proficiency. We shall soon have colored teachers for the colored race." The lady said that the colored people were so eager to learn that she gave, last summer, lessons to washerwomen at ten o'clock in the evening, after the labors of the day were over, and found others waiting at her door for their daily lessons at six o'clock in the morning, before their work was begun. Some of our party were present at a Sunday-school held in a Methodist church in St. Augustine, and were struck with the readiness shown by the little pupils in apprehending their instructions. They are collecting funds for founding a college at a place called Live Oaks.2 The frame is a specious structure, and has been put up and enclosed; seven thousand dollars have been raised for the comple• tion of its plan, and eighteen thousand more are wanted. I was present at a meeting at which a colored man was setting forth its claim on the public liberality. "We have nothing narrow or exclusive in our plan," he said, extending his arms by way of giving greater emphasis to his words; "we have no prejudices of caste or color, all will be freely admitted into our institution, whatever their profession or their race;" by which I understood that no person would be refused admission on· the ground that he was white. Save in the case of the very young, however, the schools have Doctor of Laws Ill made but little impression upon the ignorance in which the colored race have been reared. Their worship in their churches gives evidence of this. A lady, the other day, gave me an account of a sermon which she heard not long since in St. Augustine, as an example of their mode of embellishing Scripture history. The preacher had dwelt awhile on the fall of man and the act of disobedience by which sin came into the world, and had got as far as the time of Noah. He then said: "De world got to be berry wicked; de people all bad, and de Lord make up his mind to drown dem. But Noah was a good man who read his Bible, and did jus as de Lord tole him. And de Lord tole Noah to build a big ark, big enough to hole part of ebery thing alive on de earth. And Noah built it. And de Lord call upon ebery living ting to come into de ark, and be save. And de birds come flyin' to de ark, and de big lion and de cow and de possum come in, and de horse come trotting to de ark, and de leetle worm come creepin' in; but only de wicked sinner wouldn't come in, and dey laugh at Noah and his big ark. And den de rain come down, but Noah he set comfortable and dry in de ark and read his Bible. And de rain come down in big spouts, and come up to de doo' step of de houses and gin to cober de floo', and den de sinner be scaret and knock at de doo' ob de ark berry hard. And de big lion hear de racket and roar, and de dog bark, and de ox bellow, but Noah keep on readin' de Bible. And de sinner say, 'Noah, Noah, let us come in.' And Noah say, 'I berry sorry, but I can't let you in, for de Lord lock de doo' and trow away de key.' "3 The fund bequeathed by the late Mr. Peabody4 to the Southern States for the support of schools is found to be very convenient for the people of Florida. I visited a school for white children which received annually a thousand dollars from this source, and is under the care of a most skilful instructor from the North. "At this school, when it was first opened," said the gentleman who accompanied me, "we thought that we could not possibly expect more than fifty or sixty scholars, but we opened with a hundred and twenty." The Catholic priesthood in Florida, as everywhere else, discourage the attendance of the children of their flocks at schools not under their especial care, and the population of St. Augustine is principally Catholic. The result shows that there are many of them who prefer that their children should be educated with those of other religious denominations, instead of being forced to keep by themselves as a peculiar caste. Since my first visit to Florida a new branch of industry has been introduced, the credit of which is given to a lady with a Spanish name, Mrs. Olivarez. Thousands of acres in Florida are overspread with the dwarf Palmetto, a plant which has a shaggy stem lying flat on the ground and rooting itself by fibres from the under side, while its 112 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

summit is crowned with a tuft of fan-like leaves of a tough fibre. Those leaves, dried and bleached in the sun and shredded into strips, are formed into braids and the braids into hats and bonnets of a texture as flexible, and I should think nearly as durable, as that of the well• known Panama hat. In this way a plant which the settler has regarded as a pest is made to give bread to thousands, and becomes so valuable that its disappearance would be regarded as a misfortune. The names of Mrs. Pucetti, Mrs. Carrana, Mrs. Canova, and Miss U sina, over the shop doors in St. Augustine, show how generally the original popula• tion of the town have concerned themselves in this branch of industry. Our party went the other day to the Magnolia Grove, a few miles north of St. Augustine, a noble wood of great live oaks, festooned and curtained with moss, with a magnolia tree in the midst, where picnics are held, and on our way we passed by a solitary cabin, about which the sandy soil was spread with the leaves of the dwarf palmetto, whitening in the sun, which here at this season shines almost perpetu• ally. Some benevolent ladies among the guests from the North at Magnolia have discovered, in the depths of the surrounding forest, a family of Crackers, as they are called, or poor whites, who have attained a certain humble prosperity by this occupation. There is a mother and several children, among whom are daughters, unlettered, ignorant if you please, but not unintelligent, dwelling in a cabin kept with the most scrupulous neatness, kind, courteous, laborious and cheerful. Within the last year they had received eight hundred dollars for Palmetto braid, sent by them to New York. I returned the other day from a little voyage up the Ochlawaha River to Silver Spring. We took passage at Palatka, a little town on the St. John, beyond which the larger steamers do not ascend, and which, therefore, is a sort of mart for the surrounding region. It has its rich orange groves, on both sides of the river, and its little plantations of bananas, from amidst the long leaves of which, withered by the frosts of last January, new ones are breaking forth with a greenness and vigor which give some promise of fruit in the approaching season. Our steamer was a little thing of its kind, rudely constructed, with slight attention to comfort or convenience, for navigating a narrow and extremely winding river, where it must occasionally strike the trunks of the trees rising from the water's edge. We left our wharf at eight o'clock in the evening, and when the morning broke found ourselves in the Ochlawaha, with the steersman, a sturdy black fellow, at the wheel, apparently exerting his utmost strength to keep the little steamer from running into the bank, on some sudden turn of the stream, or dashing itself against the cypress stems that grew directly Doctor of Laws 113

from the dark waters. In the night a lady of our party had her finger stung by a scorpi[o]n.5 Our way was for more than a hundred miles along a narrow passage made by the river channel through a woodland solitude, mostly a morass, in which the roots of the trees as far as the sight could penetrate were steeped in the water. We looked for alligators, but the sunshine, though bright, was not warm enough to call them forth, but occasionally we passed a huge snake, the water moccassin, coiled up on a log or projecting branch over the stream. The kingfisher chattered and dived for his prey before us, brilliantly colored butter• flies crossed from one bank to the other; the water-turkey left his perch, and the noisy, long-necked birds which they call the lepkin flew away screaming into the depth of the woods. Once a deer showed himself on the bank, and quickly disappeared. When night again came on the crew lighted a fire of resinous pine on the upper deck over the bow of the steamer, and then the scene presented was one of the most remarkable that I ever saw. The strong ruddy glare of the fire seemed to bring closer to each other the leafy walls of the green arcade through which we were passing, and, changing their hue to the eye, gave them an unearthly yet beautiful aspect, such as we might ascribe to the groves of the Underworlds. The morning found us moored to the landing in Silver Spring, a basin some five or six rods across, a natural well of transparent water, with patches of a bright green color at the bottom, and so clear that you see at a great depth the fish with which it abounds. It feeds a stream called the Silver Run, which flows with a current of clear white water into the Ochlawaha, and gives to that river a preceptible flow and frequent ripples, which you do not remark in the lower branches of the St. John. Five of the party on board our steamer went in carriages to Ocala, six miles distant, the principal town of Marion county, and before the Indian war of Florida the residence of the famous chief Osceola, 6 which we reached by a sandy road through pine barrens. The town is pleasantly situated, in a region of more varied surface than I had seen in any part of Florida, gentle declivities and long smooth valleys, with groups of lofty and spreading trees, looking like a country long settled, although the town was only laid out twenty-seven years since. It is, in short, such a region as Bartram, in his account of Florida, loves to describe, or rather to exaggerate in his flowery prose. 7 The landlord of the Ocala House, who escorted us to the town, gave us, as we went, some account of his neighborhood. "Here," he said, "in Marion county is some of the best land in Florida. There were large plantations on both sides of the way that we 114 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

are travelling, where Sea Island cotton and sugar cane were raised. They are abandoned; there is nobody to work them. The negroes in this county exceed the whites in number, and the moment they were free they took advantage of the Homestead act and took up lands in the tracts belonging to the government,8 and refused to work on the plantations. There are plantations on which were machines and imple• ments for making sugar, costing, perhaps, twenty thousand dollars, all of which are useless and ruined for that reason. But we do the best we can. We have thirty public schools in this state, and we cheerfully pay our school tax for the education of the blacks. Our most eminent men sit with them onjuries and associate with them in various departments of public business. We have, in the main, a law-abiding population. I was foreman of the Grand Jury at the term of our court now sitting, and we found but two indictments." I went with Mr. Harris, our landlord, into the Court-house. Two persons stood up, arraigned on one of these indictments, while it was read to them-a man and woman, black as jet. It was an indictment for adultery; from which I inferred that an effort was making to enforce the marriage obligation, hitherto but little respected by the colored race; one of the consequences of a state of slavery. Our guide returned with us to Silver Spring, taking another route, or rather passing from one old plantation road to another. "I do this," he said, "that you may see that Florida is not all swamp and sand, but contains good land. Here is a hummock of twenty-five thousand acres, and there are numerous other large ones between this and the Gulf of Mexico." We passed through a beautiful forest of lofty trees-the sweet and sour gum, the magnolia, the water oak, the prickly ash and others, with a dark soil, a firm road beneath our wheels, and here and there the limestone rock cropping out in the roadsides. We reached Silver Spring after a long drive, and thence made our way to this place. Since writing about the braiding of palmetto leaves I have seen people at work on the leaves of the tree palmetto, which are larger and longer than those of the dwarf species. They claim that it has a tougher fibre and is more durable, and object to the braid made from the foliage of the dwarf plant, that after a certain time it acquires a red tinge. Coming to this place, I found the two hotels crowded with guests, many of whom were quartered in the neighboring cottages. This hotel, the Clarendon, is like a beehive, murmuring all day, and far into the night, with its swarm of inmates. It is so everywhere. Florida is overrun with a northern invasion. The Jacksonville newspapers give long lists of passengers daily arriving. The hotel at Magnolia is full, the two Doctor of Laws 115

hotels at Palatka are full, and accommodations for strangers are sought in private houses. At St. Augustine they come in daily by scores; and people are seen wandering about the streets with their travelling bags, seeking quarters. "We have accom[m]odations in St. Augustine," said the keeper of our hotel, "for twice as many visitors as we had last winter. We were crowded then, and are crowded now." For my part I have no doubt that the number of those who resort to Florida will increase with every season-for this reason, if for no other, that this region may be reached without a sea voyage. With the increase of resort, the accom[m]odations for visitors will be improved and multiplied. There will be better means of reaching Silver Spring and the glades of Ocala, and of penetrating to Indian River, that the children of the North may pluck, where they grow, those apples of the Hesperides, the finest oranges in the world. In many more places the arid sands will be coaxed into fertility and beauty by being mingled with the dark soil of the marshes, and kept perpetually fresh by water drawn from a very little depth by windmills, and distributed over the surface. At some future time here will be groves of the date palm, which has flourished at St. Augustine, and gardens with hedges of myrtle, and walks embowered with the arbutus, and the laurel of Europe, and every beautiful evergreen which grows under the skies of Italy, for the refreshment of those who come from the snow fields of our harsher clime.

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: EP, March 28, 1873. 1. See Letters 457-459. 2. This college has not been further identified. 3. Cf. Genesis, 6:5-7:24. 4. George Peabody (1795-1869), America11-born London banker and philan• thropist. 5. It is uncertain which of the three ladies this was. 6. A Georgia-born Creek Indian, Osceola (cl800-1838) was a leader in the Second Seminole War against government forces until he was treacherously captured under a flag of truce and died in a Charleston prison. See 457 .1. 7. William Bartram (1739-1823), Travels Through North and South Carolina, Geor• gia, East and West Florida, The Cherokee Country, ... (Philadelphia, 1791). 8. In 1862 the Congress had passed a Homestead Act entitling every adult settler with a five-year continuous residence on government land to 160 free acres thereof.

2126. To Henrietta S. Nahmer Green Cove Spring, Florida. March 26th. 1873. Dear Madam. The leaves of the books should be cut, and it is a question with me whether the Librarian should not do it. Nevertheless, as it may be well 116 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT to have the books ready to be taken out as soon as they are in the building-if you will consent to do the work for half the compensation given for making out the catalogue, that is to say for half as much for each days occupation I agree that you may do it. The making out of the catalogue required qualifications of a higher order than cutting the leaves, and therefore it was just that it should have been more liberally compensated. In cutting the leaves of the volumes, a knife or any metallic instrument should not be used, but a paper-folder-or paper-cutter, made of ivory or hard wood. A knife is apt, either to tear the edges of the leaves, or cut them irregularly. I am just about to turn my face to the north, and leave this land, the winter of which is as warm as a Cummington summer. Yours truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDRESS: Mrs. H. S. Nahmer.

2127. To Isaac Henderson Charleston South Carolina April 2d 1873. My dear Sir I have agreed with Mr. George H. Putnam to relinquish the security I have by mortgage on lands of his father in Connecticut on his giving me security on certain stenotype plates. 1 I have received from Saml W. Tuttle, his lawyer at No. 20 Nassau Street a blank satisfaction piece which I am desired to execute and return to you. This I now do, and beg that you will be kind enough to receive the security he offers. You will find the paper enclosed with this note. We are all well. Our journey has been prosperous both going to Florida and coming to this place. Charleston is not in so bad a way as has been represented. We are waiting a little while for Julia to rest. Kind regards to all the gentlemen of the office. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: UTex ADDRESS: I. Henderson Esq. I. In 1872 George Haven Putnam (1844-1930) had become the head of the publishing firm G. P. Putnam and Son upon the death of his father. The firm had just published Bryant's Orations and Addresses when the financial panic of 1873 brought them into difficulties. See George Haven Putnam, Memories of a Publisher, 1865-1915 (New York: Putnam's, 1915), p. 61. It seems likely that Bryant was one of the "older friends" who helped the firm at that time, according to Putnam. See also Theodore Doctor of Laws 117

Hornberger, William Cullen Bryant and Isaac Henderson: New Evidence of a Strange Partnership . .. (Austin: University of Texas Library, 1950), p. 44.

2128. To the EvENING PosT Norfolk, Virginia, April 9, 1873.

I have yet one or two things to say [of?] the South, which furnish matter for another letter. On my journey hither I stopped for two or three days at Jackson• ville, the principal town in East Florida, and really a flourishing place. When I said, the other day, that its population exceeds four thousand, I merely repeated what somebody told me. I afterwards inquired of one who has lived there ever since the civil war. "The place," he answered, "is rated at ten thousand, but probably that is more than it contains; we may fairly call it eight thousand." It is laid out with very broad streets, shaded with sturdy trees, the live oak and water oak, evergreens both, and through the unpaved sandy streets, without a pebble, the wheel carriages plough their way unheard, or run as noiselessly over the sawdust with which some of them are overspread, while the foot-passengers make their way on sidewalks of plank. Steamers and other river craft lie at the wharfs on the river St. John, new buildings are going up, and the private dwellings are, for the most part, spacious and surrounded by gardens. If the wheel carriages roll silently, the steam sawmills, on the other hand, keep up a continual grating and creaking. The broad, sandy plains around the town are stripped of their huge pines, the growth of centuries, which are here slit into planks, and the refuse parts of the trees are pushed upward on ascending platforms and then flung down upon a fire that blazes and crackles from morning till night. At present, certainly, Jacksonville seems to be prosperous. In approaching Savannah by rail I perceived some striking indi• cations of the ravages of the late civil war. Mansions of the former large plantations reduced to ashes, with the chimneys standing, and new log cabins raised in the clearings of the dreary pine forest, marked the changed relations of the white and black races. Here and there we passed breastworks of earth thrown up for defence. Savannah, how• ever, shows to the casual observer no traces of the late struggle. Its well-built rows of houses, extending over what were open fields when I last saw the city, its great trees spreading a broader shadow, its glossy broad-leaved evergreens peeping over the garden walls, and its ware• houses crammed with bales of cotton, give no report of the terrible collision between the North and the South.' Between Savannah and 118 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Charleston, however, the ruined dwellings of the planters are not infrequently seen .... The war left many white children in utter destitution both in Charleston and other parts of South Carolina. Many of these were orphans, and others belonged to families who had no means of supporting them. They bore the names of some of the most distin• guished families in the state; yet they were growing up in utter neglect, unschooled, ragged, dirty, and exposed to the temptations of vice. The Rev. A. T. Porter, an Episcopal clergyman, conceived the idea of gathering them into a school and educating them in such a manner as to make them reputable and useful members of society. He succeeded. He began the "School of the Holy Communion" with small means and few pupils, and has now a school of about two hundred and forty boys, forty-three of whom are clothed, fed and instructed gratuitously, and many of the others at very cheap rates, their kinspeople paying what they are able. I visited the school, and think I never saw a brighter or more intelligent-looking set of boys. Among them were the Allstons, the Haynes, the Marions, the Pinck• neys and others, whose names are historical. The honor of these names will be kept up by those who are educated for lives of virtuous industry by this noble charity. The discipline of the school is mild, and great reliance is placed on the pupil's sense of honor. Mr. Porter does not hesitate to solicit pecuniary aid wherever he perceives the least chance of success. Such, at least, is what his Charleston neighbors say, but I perceive, and am glad to perceive, in looking at the prospectus of his school, that it has been "sustained" in great part by benefactions from the North. I shall speak, before I close this letter, of another charity equally noble, founded for the benefit of another class, equally unfortunate, and sustained by the generosity not of the people of any part of the country, but of a single benevolent individual. Meantime a discovery has been made of a substance which is likely to prove of the utmost importance to the agricultural prosperity of South Carolina, and of consequence to the future well being of its principle mart. In the neighborhood of Charleston vast beds of the bones and other remains of extinct animals have been found, of which an average two-thirds are pure phosphate of lime. Spines and teeth of enormous sharks, larger than any now known to swim the sea, are among them. These remains lie near the surface of the ground and are easily shovelled into drays, and, being taken to mills in the neighborhood, are crushed into powder, and are then treated with sulphuric acid to render the mass soluble as food for plants. In the crushed state, though inodorous when dug from the ground, they give out a strong offensive smell, somewhat like that of guano, showing Doctor of Laws 119 that the substance contained some animal ingredient besides mere phosphate of lime. Mingled with the thin soil of the pine barrens, or the exhausted soil of old fields, it brings them into immediate fertility. Two companies have already been formed to excavate these newly• found beds, and to prepare the substance for market. With this manure it may be hoped that the plantations of South Carolina will more than regain the highest fertility of their virgin state. Perhaps, not content with the staple product of cotton, the cultivator may bethink himself of returning to the cultivation of the indigo plant, which once prevailed so extensively in South Carolina, until it was found to exhaust the soil in which it grew. It was an oppressively sultry day when, with the companions of my journey, I left Charleston for Wilmington, in North Carolina, at ten o'clock in the morning, and arrived at about the same hour in the evening. Scarcely less oppressive in its heat was the Sunday that followed, but I was refreshed by attending, in the afternoon, the religious services of the "Tileston School," as it is called, in which are educated a different class from those who are the objects of Mr. Porter's charity-the children of the Crackers, as they are called, or poor whites, the class of whom the negroes have been accustomed to speak as "white trash." "You can hardly form an idea," said a resident in Wilmington to me, "unless you should go among them of the degradation and uselessness of this class, so averse are they to all occupation of mind or body, so listless, so utterly ignorant, with such stolid looks, so ragged and so dirty. Such have been those about Wilmington and its neighborhood." It was for the children of this class that the Tileston School was founded. Miss Bradley, who during the civil war had proved herself a worthy disciple of Florence Nightingaie, began the school with three pupils, and with such small means as she could command, amid expressions of pity from some and jeers of contempt from others. Her school grew, however, in numbers; she had the art of attaching the scholars to herself, and making them to delight in the acquisition of knowledge; she was persevering and calm tempered, ready in expe• dients, and utterly fearless. For a long time she was spoken ill of by those who could not comprehend the benevolence and disinterested• ness of her purposes; but her perseverance at last carried the day, and now all Wilmington is loud in her praises. It was while she was struggling with the difficulties of slender means, and the opposition, carried even to the point of persecution, of those who did not under• stand her, that a Mrs. Hemmenway2 an opulent Boston lady, but a native of New York, and daughter of the late Mr. Tileston,3 the well• known merchant, became informed of her school and of its condition, 120 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT and immediately became its patroness. She purchased grounds for the school, built a most convenient and spacious school-house, and added a dwelling-house for Miss Bradley and several of her assistants. From time to time Mrs. Hemmenway visits it, making her home with Miss Bradley, and takes the strongest interest in its success, which is now fully assured, for the school, once so derided and its founder so bitterly reviled, has become the pride of Wilmington. I hear that the example of the children who attended it has had the effect of intro• ducing order and cleanliness and industry into their families at home. After the services of which I have spoken, many of the older pupils came about me to speak with me-intelligent-looking youths and pretty girls, neatly dressed and of graceful and modest demeanor. In all my intercourse with the people of the South, although it has not been very extensive nor of very long continuance, I have heard only the expression of a desire to be on friendly terms with us of the Northern States. Especially has this been the case in Charleston, where I saw more than elsewhere of the people of the place. I have never, since I crossed Mason and Dixon's line, heard a single expression of bitterness or malignity towards those who live north of it. It was but the other day that the people of Charleston sent a formal invitation to the President of the United States to visit South Carolina. He declined the civility, and at the same time removed the postmaster of Charles• ton, Mr. Trott, who was highly esteemed, and for whose continuance in office the citizens, without distinction of party, had earnestly peti• tioned. In his place he appointed a colored man who, whether justly or not, lies under the odium of being connected with the corrupt fellows who have for several years been pillaging the state. This was like answering an invitation to dinner with a slap in the face, and was a gross blunder to say the least. The place from which I date this letter has its picturesque points, although I never heard them spoken of. Its noble harbor is one of the finest on the Atlantic, and it has its pleasant residences and breezy promontories. Just now its trees are putting forth their tender leaves, and the gardens are full of flowers.

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: EP, April15, 1873. I. At the conclusion of Union General William T. Sherman's devastating march from Atlanta to Savannah, in the last months of 1864, the city's Confederate defenders withdrew, sparing it from destruction. 2. Mary Porter Tileston Hemenway (1820-1894), a Boston philanthropist, aided freedmen, and introduced domestic science and gymnastics for girls in Boston public schools. 3. Thomas Tileston (1793-1864), a New York shipowner and merchant. Doctor of Laws 121

2129. To Janet Gibson1 Richmond, Va., April 13th [1873]

We are on our way home from Florida, where we have found refuge from the long and bitter winter, which, at New York, has scarcely ended. I have written two or three letters for the 'Evening Post,' which, if you see that paper, will tell you about our journey. We found summer again among the live oaks and pines on the majestic St. John's. I bought a pair of India-rubber overshoes the day before leaving New York, and put them in my travelling bag, and have never taken them out of the paper in which they were wrapped. What has most impressed me in my visit to South, and what, I am sure, will greatly interest you, is the effort, which I have witnessed everywhere, to educate for usefulness both the black and the white population. I found excellent schools, both for the blacks and the whites, at St. Augustine; Sunday-schools in thinly settled neighborhoods; a thronged school at Charleston for the sons of impoverished families, sufferers by the war; 2 a school for the poor whites (a degraded race) at Wilmington, North Carolina, wonderfully successful; and another school, equally thronged with pupils, at Hampton, in Virginia, for educating colored teachers.3 It would require a letter of several sheets to give you an idea of the extent of these benevolent arrangements, in which people from the Northern States have interested themselves as warmly as the people of the South, and in several instances have contributed more largely to their support. This is a beautiful city, nobly situated on a group of hills, with the James below, murmuring over broad rapids, among little islands, and then gathering its waters into a deep, quiet stream, navigable up to the wharves of the town. The abolition of slavery seems to have given an impulse to its prosper• ity, and it is growing rapidly in population, having now sixty thousand inhabitants. The season is very late here, as it is throughout all the United States; but the apple-trees are in bloom, and the large, flower• ing magnolia, a glorious evergreen, is getting its flower-buds ready for openmg. I am sorry to hear that your health, since your excellent mother's departure to a better life, has not been so firm as formerly, and hope that repose and the softer climate of Nice will repair it. If we could have had you with us in our Southern sojourn this winter, I am sure that the genial temperature, and the constant sunshine, and the new sights, and the spectacle of what good people are doing for the rising generation, would have greatly pleased you. The moral influence of the labors and sacrifices of those who are seeking to train up children of both races to virtue and usefulness, I am certain, would have had a 122 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

healing effect on a nature like yours. I am glad that you like what I said about Burns,4 although the subject is so trite ....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 331-332. 1. A sister of Christiana Gibson then living in Edinburgh. 2. Established by a clergyman named Porter, according to Godwin in Life II, 332n. 3. Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, founded in 1868 by Samuel Chap• man Armstrong (1839-1893, Williams 1861) to educate Negroes and American Indians. 4. "Mr. Bryant was almost invariably a guest at the annual festivals of the [Robert] Burns Club of New York, and was quite as invariably called upon to say a word in honor of the national poet." See Prose II, [314]n, and [314]-323 for excerpts from several of these speeches, which were printed in large part in the EP.

2130. To Fanny Bryant Godwin The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, April17, 1873. Dear Fanny. Enclosed are $70 [seventy dollars] which I think are about what I had of you on the Florida journey, along with what you spent for yourself but which was properly a part of the travelling expenses. Affectionately W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Mrs. F. Bryant Godwin.

2131. To Francis H. Dawes New York April23d 1873. Dear Mr. Dawes. I directed Mr. King1 to send you on the first of April, a cheque for $250. I have not received any notice of its reaching your hands. Will you please inform me. The roads about us here begin to be good, though the frost of last winter pierced deep, and in a few places there are remains of it in the ground. We-my two daughters and Miss Fairchild and myself• found summer and almost constant sunshine in Florida, an atmo• sphere fragrant with orange blossoms, and mocking birds singing in the boughs. Kind regards to all. Yours truly, W. C. BRYANT. Doctor of Laws 123

MANUSCRIPT: Bryant Homestead, Cummington ADDREss: F. H. Dawes Esq. 1. Probably Albert B. King, a member of the EP business staff.

2132. To Hamilton Fish' The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, April27 1873. Dear Sir. Mr. [John] Durand2 who writes the accompanying letter3 is a most respectable and intelligent gentleman, whom I have known from his boyhood. He does not wish to make any copies of the correspondence to which the letter refers, save perhaps of here and there a passage, and has no view of making a political use of any part of it. His researches have reference solely to the social condition of France at the time Mr. Livingston was in that country. I hope it will not be found inconsistent with public policy to grant Mr. Durand the permission he desires.4 I am, dear sir truly yours W. C. BRYANT. P.S. Mr. Durand is the son of the eminent landscape painter of that name. W.C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: LC ADDRESS: To the Hon. Hamilton Fish I Secretary of State. 1. See 774.1 2. See 812.1. 3. Unrecovered. 4. It is not clear for which of his various writings Durand wished this information, nor whether the reference is to Robert R. Livingston (1746--1813, Columbia 1765), minister to France, 1801-1804, or to his son Edward Livingston (1764-1836, Prince• ton 1781), minister to France 1833-1835. Perhaps Durand's researches were in preparation for a translation of Hippolyte Adolphe Taine, Les Origines de Ia France contemporaine (1876--1894), which was published under the title The French Revolution (New York, 1878-1885).

2133. To George William Bagby' New York May 7th 1873. Dear Sir. A suitable monument should certainly mark the grave of our friend Mr. Thompson2 and those who best knew him would most cheerfully contribute the means of erecting it. One, however, could gather very little in going about for that purpose. It requires a very 124 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

long time for any man whatever may be his merit to become generally known in such an overgrown town as this. Mr. Thompson lived here but a short time, and was the last man in the world to take any pains to put himself forward. To look up those in this vast population who knew him well and esteemed him, would be a long and most discour• aging task. I have had a paragraph inserted in the Evening Post inviting contributions for the purpose you mention and when received they shall be forwarded to any one in Richmond who is to have charge of them. I am, sir, very truly yours w. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Virginia Historical Society ADDRESS: G. W. Bagby, Esq. 1. George William Bagby (1828-1883) was an editor, humorist, and contributor to the Richmond Enquirer, and the author of The Old Virginia Gentleman and other nostalgic lectures on prewar plantation life. 2. John Reuben Thompson (1823-1873), a poet and also a contributor to the Richmond Enquirer, had been literary editor of the EP from 1868 until shortly before his death at the home of Isaac Henderson on April 30, 1873. See Nevins, Evening Post, pp. 407-411.

2134. To Henrietta S. Nahmer Cummington May 18, 1873. Dear Madam.

I have asked Mr. Tower1 to have the books of the Library transported to the building now ready for them, and as there are but a few of them which require the leaves to be cut, he will see that this is done. Will you be kind enough to send me an account of the number of days that you have been engaged in cutting the leaves. I have already your statement of the time employed in covering the volumes &c. I will on receiving your answer to this send you a cheque for the compensation. May I ask of you in your answer to this, to indicate the most essential of the typographical mistakes in the Catalogue. I perceive that the Table of Contents gives the pages at which the several classes of books begin invariably wrong. I have asked Mr. Tower to correct that part of the Catalogue with pen and ink. Of that error you need not speak but I will be obliged to you if you will refer to the typo• graphical errors on the rest of the Catalogue and give the pages. Doctor of Laws 125

Thanking you in the mean time for the care you have taken to perform your task thoroughly and satisfactorily. I am, Madam, very truly yours W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: UVa ADDRESS: Mrs. H. S. Nahmer. 1. Lorenzo H. Tower (1830-post-1880), a Cummington farmer, was first librar• ian and treasurer of the Bryant Library. Only One Cummington, p. 338.

2135. To John A. Dix 1 The Evening Post, 41 Nassau Street, cor. Liberty, New York, May 21st 1873 Dear Sir. We beg to direct your attention to various applications which about this time will be made to you, asking that you will not hesitate to sign the bill repealing the privilege granted to the Gilbert Elevated Railway to occupy Broadway as a part of its track from Chamber[s] Street to the Battery. The mischief which the exercise of this privilege would occasion to that property on both sides of Broadway, is incalcu• lable. A conflagration sweeping off the buildings on that now noble thoroughfare or the batteries of a hostile army beating them to the ground would not do half the damage, for the street could then be rebuilt, while if the property were to be occupied in the way proposed by the Elevated Railway its value is gone forever. We hope that these considerations will have their weight to induce you to give a ready signature to the bilJ.2 We are with high regard & respect, yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: CU ADDRESS: To General John A Dix Governor I of the State of New York. 1. Dix (388.8) was governor of New York from 1872 to 1874. 2. As early as 1864 the EP had urged the construction of a subway under Broadway. By 1871 it declared that elevated railroads were preferable to subways, but not, as Bryant indicates here, over Broadway. The first such railway, opened in 1869, ran from Battery Place to Thirtieth Street and Ninth Avenue, and was greatly extended during the 1870s.

2136. To Richard Lathers1 New York May 22d 1873 Dear Mr. Lathers The volume of posthumous Essays by Mr. Calhoun on the subject of government,2 which you have been so kind as to send me, came 126 LEITERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

safely to hand and I write to express my thanks. As yet I have read but a small part of it, though quite enough to see that it has all the characteristics of his ablest productions-the skilful analysis the acute ratiocination and the clearness of statement for which his speeches in Congress were so remarkable, and which made him instructive even to those who differed from him in his conclusions. For my part I have always believed that if Mr. Calhoun had lived he would never have counselled the people of the southern states to sever the ties that bound them to the North with the sword. He regarded war as one of the greatest of evils and the great aim of his life seems to have been to secure to the South what he deemed to be its political rights by means which should avoid the necessity of a resort to force. Thanking you again for the volume I am, dear sir, truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: CU ADDRESS: Richard Lathers, Esq. 1. At the beginning of April Lathers (1820-1903) had entertained Bryant and former New York Governor Horatio Seymour (1299.2) at his home on the South Battery in Charleston, where a "most select" gathering of the city's leaders praised Bryant's poetry, particularly his "Song of Marion's Men," to which Bryant responded in a "brief but beautiful and touching address." Richard Lathers, Reminiscences of Sixty Years of a Busy Life in South Carolina, Massachusetts, and New York, ed. Alvin F. Sanborn (New York, 1907), pp. 308-309. 2. Probably either Disquisition on Government or Discourse on the Constitution of the United States, both published the year after the death in 1850 of John Caldwell Calhoun (231.6).

2137. To Jerusha Dewey New York, May 24th [1873]

... I went to Cummington last week, and found the roads dry and in excellent order; the deep snows had protected the ground from frost, so that when they disappeared they left the ground firm, and the fields ready for the plough. But it was a pallid region. Spring had not yet "kindled the birchen spray,"1 but the woods were full of the yellow violet in bloom just on the edge of the drifts of snow lingering yet in the hollows, and the golden-hued erythronium nodded to its fellow in nooks where the sunshine was warmest. I was charmed with my buildings, now completely finished-the library and the dwelling• house-the library in particular, so solidly built, and so neatly. You have seen that Mr. MacDonald, author of"David Elginbrod," has been giving lectures here, and preaching.2 I was at Dr. Bellows's Doctor of Laws 127

church one evening when he preached, but found the church packed with a crowded audience before I got there, and though I heard, where I sat, all the noise he made, I could not distinguish the articula• tions, and lost the discourse altogether. His lecture on Wednesday evening, at which I presided, was much liked, and brought him between six and seven hundred dollars. He is quite a favorite in society. I have become feverish in my longing for the green turf, and sprouting sprays, and fresh winds of the country. I saw no green turf in Florida, although under a summer sun. Mrs. Stowe has a lawn before her house that looked of a vivid green as we passed, but it was a patch of oats-the nearest approach that could be made to grass ....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 333-334. 1. Quotation unidentified. 2. David Elginbrod (Boston, 1862), by the Scottish clergyman and writer George MacDonald (1824-1905).

2138. To George Barrell Cheever1 [Roslyn?] May 28th 1873. My dear sir. I have copied your poem which is not in the volume that I spoke to you about, having appeared after that volume was published. Although I remember reading it more than once, I do not recollect altering a word of it.2 To meet it again has made me think of Pope's line-

"How sweet an Ovid was jn Murray lost."3 Yours very truly W C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: American Antiquarian Society ADDRESS: To the Revd Dr George B. Cheever. ENDORSED: Note, by the author. The above poem was published, about the I year 1825, in the Literary Gazette, then edited by M' Bryant I The copy of it having been lost by the author, Mr. Bryant I most kindly wrote it out, as above, with his own signature, and I sent it to the Author, 1873. The autograph is greatly valued. 1. George Barrell Cheever (1807-1890), a Congregational minister and re• former, of Englewood, New Jersey. 2. Bryant enclosed a copy he had made of Cheever's poem of seven eight-line stanzas, "Passage of the Red Sea," which had been printed in the United States Review and Literary Gazette for June 1827, pp. 218-219, while Bryant was its joint editor. 3. Bryant seems here to be confusing two verses from The Dunciad ( 1728) (IV, 169-170)-a rare error for him: How Sweet an Ovid, Murray was our boast! How many Martials were in Pulteney lost! 128 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

2139. To James McCosh' Roslyn, Long Island June 4, 1873. My dear sir. I have your obliging note of the 31st of May together with the Calendar and Catalogue of the College of New Jersey,2 for all which I thank you, as well as for the memoranda which form part of your letter. I will avail myself of the hospitable invitation of yourself and Mrs. McCosh to make my home at your house while I am in Princeton.3 I am yet to ascertain whether it will be most convenient to come on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning. I am much relieved at learning that I may be as short as I please in what I shall say. I should bore the audience I am sure if I were not short, and to be long would be difficult, since I should find that I had not much to say. I am dear sir truly yours. W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: PUL ADDRESS: Revd Dr. McCosh Esq. 1. James McCosh (1811-1894, M.A. Edinburgh 1834) was president of Princeton University from 1868 to 1888. A philosopher and a Presbyterian minister, he had been one of those who seceded from the Established Church to set up the Free Church of Scotland. Between 1852 and 1868 he had a notable career at Queen's College, Belfast, before coming to Princeton. 2. From its founding in 1746 until 1896 Princeton was known as The College of New Jersey. 3. On June 18, 1872, McCosh had written Bryant inviting him to the college's commencement. Letter in NYPL-GR. Bryant's response has not been recovered, but it is evident from his other correspondence that he did not attend. Now McCosh invited him to make the principal address at the dedication of the new Chancelor Green Library on June 24, during commencement week.

2140. To Marcus Bryant' Roslyn Long Island June 9th 1873. Dear Nephew. I have this moment received your note of hand dated the 7th instant for twenty eight hundred dollars.2 Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Bryant Family Association Papers, Bureau County Historical Society, Princeton, Illinois ADDREss: Marcus Bryant Esq. 1. Cyrus Bryant's fourth son, then thirty-one, a Princeton, Illinois, farmer. 2. For details of this transaction, see Letter 2146. Doctor of Laws 129

2141. To Julia S. Bryant Roslyn June 12th 1873 Dear Julia. On the arrival of the boat I got a letter from Mr. Schuyler, accepting my invitation, and as his "daughters are included" in the invitation, he accepts it for them also. 1 He is to be in town today and "will send word by mail or telegram" what day they can come. They will "come by steamboat and if perfectly convenient will remain one day and return by the boat of the day after." I went into the strawberry patch yesterday as soon as I got home by the five o'clock train. The fruit is ripe-that is to say on the path near the mill. North of Mr. Cline's there is scarce a berry with any color on it. Yours affectionately W C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: BLR ADDRESS: Miss Julia Bryant. 1. George Washington Schuyler (1810-1888), author of Colonial New York (1885), was the father of Louisa Lee Schuyler (Letter 2269) and her younger sister Georgina Schuyler, both spinsters.

2142. To James McCosh Roslyn, Long Island, N.Y. [June 20? 1873] My dear sir. Mr. Godwin informs me that you will send for me to the Princeton Station, if I will let you know at what time I expect to arrive. I think of leaving New York on Monday the 23d in the afternoon, for Princeton-but inasmuch as I do not know at what hour the train sets out, nor whether there be more than one train in that part of the day, it is of no consequence that you send for me, and I can find my way to your house by the ordinary conveyance. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: PUL ADDRESS: Revd Dr. McCosh

2143. To Jerusha Dewey Roslyn, June 26th [1873]

... I have just been looking at your cottage, 1 where the roses and honeysuckles are in full bloom, a fragrant kind of rose-very fragrant, 130 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

as you may remember-and the American wistaria is hanging its great blue strings of flowers from the mass of foliage almost to the ground, and before the door is a broad low thicket of a late blooming spiraea, which is getting to bloom in July. If the former inmates had been there, I should say that the grounds never looked so pretty, save that they have just been mown, and the grass wants the silkiness that frequent cutting gives. But the outside of the cottage is getting darker-putting on mourning, in fact-and, if you are never to live in it again, I am afraid I shall have to paint it, were it only to get rid of the melancholy aspect which it wears. When the color is a little brightened, I shall cease to think of what we have lost. But you tell me everybody about you insists that Plymouth is a pleasant summer residence. So is Roslyn, and your cottage at Roslyn especially so. What you want is a pleasant winter residence, and, if you do not get it at Plymouth, you may as well come back. I have just returned from a visit to Princeton. It is a fine old place; an ancient village embowered in lofty elms and other great trees-too shady, in fact, but grandly so--the college buildings, churches, and other edifices all of freestone, from quarries hard by; the Theological Seminary towering among its old trees, and its professors living near in palaces. I was told that these great trees are the second generation. The venerable and quiet aspect of the place interested me much. I was lodged at Dr. McCosh's-the president's house-where they made much of me, seeming to regard me as a very old gentleman who was to be particularly attended to. I made a little speech on the inaugura• tion of a very elegant building2-and commodious, too--as the college library, the gift of Mr. John C. Green, a wealthy New York merchant, and a native, I think, of Princeton, though not a graduate.3 The college is flourishing, Dr. McCosh taking great pains to commend it to the public .... I hear that the Cummington Library, which is now opened to the inhabitants, is much resorted to, and the road to it from my place is finished, so that we avoid the steep hill that we were formerly obliged to go over. I have been reading Lord Houghton's (Monckton Milnes's) "Mon• ographs, Personal and Social"; moderately entertaining, but one can• not help thinking, as one reads, that it might have been more so. It is an account of persons of distinction with whom the writer was inti• mately acquainted-eight of them.... 4

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 335-336 (there printed as two letters, rather than one). 1. See illustration and description in Goddard, Roslyn Harbor, pp. 70-73, of this cottage built by Bryant for Jerusha Dewey in 1862. It has recently been restored as the headquarters of the Roslyn Historical Society. Doctor of Laws 131

2. See 2144.1. 3. John Cleve Green (180~1875), a China merchant and former partner of Bryant's friend John Murray Forbes (1238.1). Green was a benefactor of Princeton University and the Lawrenceville School. 4. Bryant had spent a day on the Thames in 1845 in company with this friend of Tennyson and Thackeray and biographer of Keats. See Letter 540. Among those persons figuring in his Monographs Personal arul Social, with Portraits (London, 1873) were Heinrich Heine, Alexander von Humboldt, Walter Savage Landor (whom Bryant had met on two occasions at Florence; see 299.2), and Sydney Smith.

2144. To James McCosh Roslyn, Long Island N.Y. June 26, 1873 My dear sir. I did not see you and Mrs. McCosh yesterday morning, when I left Princeton, to thank you and her also-the pattern of hostesses, only too kind-for your hospitality and many attentions. Nor did I take leave of the others, your pleasant guests. I write now to make my apology. In my eagerness to explore your pleasant town I had wan• dered so far that I did not get back till all were in the church to hear the commencement exercises. 1 If in the course of the summer you and your party should find yourselves on or near that part of the Green Mountain range that passes through Massachusetts between the Housatonic and Connecti• cut rivers, I should be glad to see them under my roof for as many days as they can spare. It is a highland region with a pure air and cool enough to remind a Scotchman of his own country. My best regards to Mrs. McCosh and her daughter aqd son. My daughter Julia, the unmarried one who keeps house for me here desires to join me in thanks for the hospitality shown me. I am, dear sir, very truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: PUL ADDREss: Rev

2145. To James T. Fields Roslyn, July 2, 1873

... I am glad that you are able to speak kindly of my book of orations and addresses, although I feel that it would be presumption in me to accept as my due all that you are so good natured as to say concerning it. 1 Your commendations encourage me to believe that I have not committed a folly in gathering these compositions into a volume ....

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Life, II, 328. 1. Orations and Addresses (New York: Putnam's, 1873). According to Godwin, Fields had written Bryant calling these "the most beautiful speeches in the English language." Life, II, 328. Fields had actually written Bryant on June 28 (NYPL-BG), "If I were asked to put into the hands of a student the best model of English prose issued in our time I should commend your volume as the very best. I wish our Colleges and Schools would adopt it as a guide to fine English."

2146. To John Howard Bryant Roslyn, Long Island July 4th 1873. Dear Brother. I have your letter of the 30th of June. If Marcus Bryant is willing in consideration of one quarter of the sum which I have lent him,1 to give a mortgage on his land to his brother and sisters, for the other three quarters, I wish the matter to be arranged in that way. He will then owe but twenty one hundred dollars instead of twenty eight hundred and will have the same time to pay it in. If he declines giving the mortgage the matter can remain as it is or you can make such other arrangement as may seem to you expedient. We have suffered from the drought as well as you, but we begin to have showers again. The apple crop is small, and the fruit has fallen-a great deal of it-but the pear crop is large and seems fine. Of grapes we shall have an abundance apparently-cherries are few. Hay is a very short crop--maize looks well and other crops fair, seemingly. The heat has been for a few days very great. All are well here. Julia is surrounded with visitors. We think of going to Cummington about the last week in July. You will come also to see the Library and the New Road-is it not so? Kind regards to all. Julia sends hers. Yours very affectionately W. C. BRYANT. Doctor of Laws 133

MANUSCRIPT: WCL ADDRESS: Jn". H. Bryant Esq. 1. See Letter 2140.

2147. To Fanny Bryant Godwin Cummington July 31, 1873. Dear Fanny. Your letter has been duly delivered to Mrs. Smith at the Snell place, and this is her answer. She will be ready for Mr. Godwin and two or three of your daughters on the day mentioned in your note• the 9th of August. There are three double beds which I had furnished with bedding last summer and if wanted there is a spare bed of the Smiths. She can find somebody to wait upon her guests so that no servant need be brought. As to bringing anything with you from New York there is nothing which occurs to her as necessary. Yours affectionately W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDREss: Mrs. F. Bryant Godwin.

2148. To Edward Fenno Hoffman1 Cummington Massachusetts. August 5th. 1873. Dear Sir. I do not write a formal introduction to the volume which you are preparing because that might look like a booksellers expedient. But I have put what I have to say in a letter addressed to you which you might use in the course of introducing the collection yourself.2 You will find what I have written on the other half of this sheet. I am sir respectfully yours W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Haverford College Library ADDRESS: E. Fenno Hoffman Esq. 1. See Letter 2149. 2. Poems of Charles Fenno Hoffman, ed. E. F. Hoffman (Philadelphia, 1873).

2149. To Edward Fenno Hoffman Cummington, Mass., Aug. 5, 1873. My Dear Sir: I congratulate you on the completion of the task which you have undertaken of collecting the poetical productions of your uncle, 134 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

Charles Fenno Hoffman,1 whom, while he lived in New York, I was proud to reckon among my friends, and whose kindly and generous temper and genial manners won the attachment of all who knew him. His poems bear the impress of his noble character. They are the thoughts of a man of eminent poetic sensibilities, who delights to sing of whatever moves the human heart-the domestic affections, patriotic reminiscences, the traditions of ancient loves and wars, and the ties of nature and friendship. These thoughts are expressed in musical ver• sification with the embellishments of a ready fancy. The friends of your uncle have reason to thank you for presenting them in this manner the moral and intellectual image of him whom they have had such reason to esteem. 2 I am, sir, Very truly yours, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT: Hoffman, Poems, pp. 10-11. ADDRESS: E. Fenno Hoffman, Esq. 1. New York poet and editor (1806--1884). See 280.1, 314.1. 2. C. F. Hoffman had suffered a mental collapse in 1850, and for the rest of his life he was confined to the Pennsylvania State Hospital at Harrisburg.

2150. To John A. C. Gray 1 Cummington August 12th 1873. My dear Sir. I have your note and am glad that you and Mrs. Gray think of coming to see us. We shall be at home all this week, and as to next week it may happen that Julia will be absent one night-perhaps that of the twentieth. With that exception we shall be here next week also. You will stop at Williamsburgh perhaps or Hinsdale, where you can get a conveyance to this place. Kind regards to Mrs. Gray-Julia desires hers to you both. Yours very truly W C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Andrew B. Myers ADDREss: john A. C. Gray Esq. 1. A New York banker and Central Park official. See 1269.1.

2151. To William Dean Howells 1 Cummington, Massachusetts. August 22d 1873. Dear Mr. Howells. I thank you for the suggestion which you have made in such kind terms in regard to writing for the Atlantic Monthly some reminis- Doctor of Laws 135 cences of my literary life. 2 I cannot say that I will undertake the task, nor yet that I will not. At any time of life the love of ease is not easily overcome, and it may be that my recollection of past occurrences will not be sufficiently distinct to enable me to write any thing with which I shall be satisfied. I have, moreover, on hand certain half engage• ments, as they may be called of a literary nature, which I ought-or at least which others may think I ought-first to fulfil. So I will for the present leave the matter where it is and trust to time to decide it.3 I am, sir, very truly yours. WM. c. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: RBHL ADDREss: W. D. Howells esq. 1. In 1871 William Dean Howells (1837-1920), later a distinguished novelist and essayist, had succeeded James T. Fields as editor of the Atlantic Monthly. 2. On August 18 Howells had written from Boston (NYPL-BG) asking Bryant to write for the Atlantic "a series of articles-the more autobiographical the better--on such phases of our literary, social and political past as have most interested you," adding that he had drawn "very great pleasure" from reading Bryant's lately published Orations and Addresses. 3. See Letters 2158, 2221.

2152. To John H. Gourlie Cummington September 6, 1873. Dear Goudie, I am sorry that we are to lose your visit this summer. If you had come in what you call the rainy week you would not have found it rainy here. We have had showers, but only one rainy day, and the country is as green as in June. The giddiness of which you speak, if occasioned by a disturbance of the bile is cured by my brother who is subject to it with a single tumbler of hard cider. He takes it at no other time lest it should lose its power by use, and the dose invariably cures him. The swimming sensation that proceeds from disordered bile is most perceived when the patient bends backward, and by this symptom it is distinguished from other kinds of vertigo. I once had it and it frightened me until I knew the cause. I hope, however, that you will be quite well before you get this. Greet the ladies in my name. Yours very truly, W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Collection of Edith C. Gourlie ADDRESS: John H. Gourlie Esq. 136 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

2153. To Richard H. Dana Cummington September 20, 1873. Dear Dana. It did my eyes good to see, an evening or two since, your familiar handwriting on the back of a letter addressed to me. 1 I thank you for telling me so much about the last days of our friend Phillips. 2 He lived when a lad and a youth for some time in a house which I see from my door here, on a somewhat distant hillside, and while studying for college, came to this house to take lessons from one of my father's medical pupils. The publication of the poems which you mention, through his agency, was properly my introduction to the literary world, and led to my coming out with the little volume which you and [Edward T.] Channing and he encouraged me to publish and which he kindly reviewed in the North American. To me he was particularly kind-unconsciously so as it seemed; it was apparently a kindness that he could not help. I am glad to learn that his last years were so tranquil and his death so easy, dropping like ripe fruit as Milton says, into his mother's lap. 3 I think, with you, that Godwin's reply to Youmans was remarkably well done. He is well prepared by his reading and studies for such discussions. The more men of science have grown conceited of late, and seem to take for granted that only the things which occupy their attention have any existence.4 I hear from you or rather of you, now and then. A few days since, the new Chief Justice of this state-Gray5-whom I had never seen before, called on me here, on the credit of a letter of introduction which he was to have had from you, but which, somehow, he had failed to get. I made him stay all night, and sent him off the next morning-one of those beautiful days of which we have had many this summer, at least in this highland region. He gave me a good account of your apparent health. I have been here since the latter part of July, breathing my native air, which is almost always agreeably cool in the summer months, and to one who comes from the neighborhood of New York, invigorat• ing-but I am to turn my face southward in two or three days. In reading your letter it occurred to me that I had never sent you a copy of my translation of Homer's Odyssey, and I shall write this morning to Osgood & Co. asking them to send you one. Julia bids me say, that while she is always glad to hear of you and from you, she would be much more so if she could ... remembrances and hers ... be with you ....6 Doctor of Laws 137

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Richd. H. Dana Esq. 1. Dated September 15, in Life, II, 336--337. 2. Willard Phillips (see Volume I, 13-14) had died on September 9. 3. Paradise Lost, xi, 535-536. 4. The brothers E. L. and W. J. Youmans were scientific writers for the new Popular Science Monthly. An article by one of them on silkworms and sericulture was reprinted in the EP on September 29. No reply from Parke Godwin has been found. 5. Horace Gray (1828-1902, Harvard 1845), Chief Justice of Massachusetts, 1873-1881, was appointed Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1881. 6. Conclusion and signature clipped.

2154. To an Unidentified Correspondent Roslyn, Long Island, September 29, 1873. Dear Sir. I am obliged, in consequence of an earlier engagement, to decline the obliging invitation to meet the popular novelist, Mr. Collins, 1 at dinner on.... 2

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR (partial draft). I. British novelist William Wilkie Collins (1824-1889) gave public readings from his novels in the United States in 1873-1874. 2. Balance of draft letter missing.

2155. To George Harvey1 Roslyn, L.I. N.Y. September 30, 1873. My dear Mr. Harvey. You must pardon something to old age. I forgot what I promised, till you reminded me of it, and now I fulfil my word, in the accompa• nying note. 2 I shall be glad to see your landscape of the Croton Valley, butjust now I am particularly engaged. I will see if I can accomplish it by and by. Meantime I am glad to learn that you are so busy with commissions. I have just returned from the Highlands of Massachusetts. As to the money question, did I ever quote to you the lines of Pope- Truths would you teach, [or)3 save a sinking land? All fear, none aid you, and few understand. 4 138 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

I do not observe that the world has grown much more enlightened on that point than it was twenty years since, except perhaps that there is some obscure misgiving abroad in relation to gold and silver as a stable standard of value. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Haverford College Library ADDRESS: Geo. Harvey Esq. 1. British painter and monetarist. See 553.2. 2. Unrecovered. 3. Bryant mistakenly wrote "to." 4. Essay on Man, iv, 265-266.

2156. To Paul Hamilton Hayne1 Sept. 30, 1873. My dear Sir. I am very sorry to hear that you find yourself circumstanced in the manner of which you speak in your note.2 Enclosed you will find a paper which being presented at the office of the Evening Post will put you in possession of the amount you mention. [$150.] I am sir very truly yours W C BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG (draft) ADDRESS: Paul H. Hayne Esq. 1. A South Carolina poet. See 1951.1. 2. Note unrecovered.

2157. To Edward H. Dixon1 Roslyn. Long Island October 1st 1873. Dear Dr. Dixon I thank you for the trouble which you have taken in regard to Caro's translation of Virgil.2 I have no means of informing myself hereafter in relation to its appearance in this country or in Bogota and should you learn any thing in relation to it I shall be much obliged if you wiH communicate it to me. I am, dear Sir, truly yours. W. C BRYANT. Doctor of Laws 139

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BFP (draft) ADDREss: Dr. Edward H. Dixon 1. Unidentified. 2. The Italian poet Annibale Caro (1507-1566) translated Virgil's Aeneid into the Italian language, as L'Eneide di Virgilio (Verona, 1728).

2158. To William Dean Howells Roslyn, Long Island N.Y. October 9th. 1873. Dear Sir. I cannot yet say that I will do what you have so obligingly requested. 1 I have been thinking over the literary intimacies of my past life, and have feared that the recollection which I have of them is too dim and vague to allow them to be set down in an interesting manner even by "narrative old age.["F Perhaps in a stage of superan• nuation yet to be reached the case may be different. Besides this, there seems to be a necessity that for a time, I should give more attention to my journal, the Evening Post, than I have done for a considerable time past, and that would make literary labor of any other kind, for a while, at least, out of the question. I am, dear sir, very truly yours, W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: HCL ADDRESS: W. D. Howells Esq. 1. See Letter 2151. 2. Cf. Pope, Iliad, iii, 199-200: "Chiefs who no more in bloody fights engage I But wise through time, and narrative with age."

2159. To Parke Godwin Roslyn, L.l. Oct. 31. 1873. My dear sir. I return the letter relating to Mr. Carmichael of whose agency in the Greeley affair I had heard something before, though I do not recollect from what source. 1 It does not look to me like an attack on Greeley's memory-save that the heading given to it makes it seem as if the Evening Post were inclined to consider it as such. If the heading ran thus instead of that part which is put in Italics.-"A new Player in the game of Politics. His own curious Account of the part he took in the late contest for the Presidency["]-this or something better than this would sufficiently attract the attention of readers, who I think would be amused with the portraiture of Carmichael's character, as I have been and would see in the part which relates to Greeley only an 140 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT episode of his history. The letter of Mr. Greeley given in the account is not discreditable to him, and the rest of the story is quite in conformity to his known character. Still, if the letter appears to yourself and others in the light of an attack, or a cruel exposure of Greeleys weaknesses after he is dead withhold it by all means. I do not quite so view it, but others may• and if they do, it were better not to publish it. 2 Yours truly W C BRYANT. MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG (draft) ADDRESS: Parke Godwin Esq. 1. Lewis Carmichael, a farmer and Democrat of Unadilla, New York, had supported Horace Greeley for the presidential nomination in 1872. His account of his correspondence with Greeley, published in the EP on November 4, seems, as Bryant suggests, to reflect no particular discredit on Greeley. 2. Although Bryant and Greeley had had little use for each other during a long journalistic rivalry, each could on occasion show forbearance and a degree of magna• nimity toward the other. In 1855 Greeley had suggested Bryant for New York's secretary of state, writing, "You know I don't like him personally, nor he me, but I can't think of any man of greater mark; and I think he is thoroughly honest and capable." After Greeley's death in 1872, Bryant said in an obituary article in the Evening Post, "With Mr. Greeley's political and philosphical views of things, we were not in entire accord; ... but for some objects, and these amcing the most momentous that ever divided the nation, we labored long in common, and we can bear witness to the zeal, the fearlessness, and the vigor with which he battled for the right." See Don C. Seitz, Horace Greeley, Founder of The New York Tribune (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill [1926]), pp. 13, 407; EP, November 30, 1872. 2160. To Fanny Bryant Godwin Roslyn, November 3d 1873. Dear Fanny. I got your note on Saturday evening. I thank you for your invitation, but I had not thought of going to town till Wednesday. Tomorrow I must stay here to vote-and I thought that I would celebrate my birthday at home. 1 If I had concluded to go to town I should have been very glad to accept your invitation. Yours affectionately w. C. BRYANT. MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR ADDRESS: Mrs. Fanny Bryant Godwin. 1. November 3 was Bryant's seventy-ninth birthday. 2161. To Hamilton Fish Roslyn Long Island N.Y. November 11th. 1873. Dear Sir. I learn that I am one of a Committee on the Fitz Greene Halleck statue to be placed in the Central Park and that you are also one of Doctor of Laws 141 the members. 1 It is found impossible to get the Committee together, and I write to ask your assent to an arrangement stated below. Mr. J. Wilson Macdonald, recommended by Prof. Morse has made a model for the statue, which was to cost $10.500.2 There are sub• scribed $8.000, and there the subscription obstinately stops. Mr. Mac• donald offers to finish the statue and take the risk of raising the rest of the money. The model I have seen and liked and so do some others of the Committee. I am told that the artists like it and I hear nothing against it. If Mr. Macdonald's offer be not accepted, I think that the project of a statue to Halleck will fall through entirely. Mr. Macdonald is very anxious to go on with it, and I believe is in the greatest need. Will you allow, so far as you are concerned, Mr. Macdonald to finish the statue, receive the $8.000 and take the risk of getting the rest, and will you do him and me the further favor to write me to that effect. I am, dear sir very truly yours, W. C BRYANT. P.S. Mr. LeClear the eminent portrait painter3 writes me speaking of the work of Mr. Macdonald in the highest terms as "beautifully composed" and certain to be "a lasting artistic ornament of the great park."4 W.C.B.

MANUSCRIPT: LC ADDRESs: Hon. Hamilton Fish. 1. After the death of Samuel F. B. Morse in 1872 Bryant had agreed to head the committee planning this statue. Adkins, Halleck, pp. 371ff. 2. James W. A. MacDonald (1824-1908), a St. Louis sculptor and painter, had worked in New York since the Civil War. 3. Thomas Le Clear (1818-1882), working in New York between 1860 and 1882, and a member of the NAD since 1863, painted a portrait of Bryant in 1876. 4. This statue, the first in Central Park of an American poet, was finally erected on the Mall in 1877. Bryant presided over its dedication on May 15 of that year. Adkins, Halleck, p. 373.

2162. To Eliza Seaman Leggett1 Cedarmere, Roslyn, Long Island November 11, 1873 Dear Friend, I thank you for your very kind letter, although it brought with it some sad recollections. My seventieth birthday of which you speak took place nine years since, and she who was then with me, and was more pleased, I believe, than I, at the testimonies of good will which I 142 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

received from my friends of the Century Club and others has been for more than seven years parted from me. One birthday after another, at the age which I have reached admonishes me that I shall ere long rejoin her. I do not remember the Mrs. Cheney of whom you speak but there was a Mr. Seth Cheney an artist of exceeding merit who drew portraits in crayon and gave them all a certain [nobleness?] of expression. I once sat to him.2 The anecdote you relate of his last illness is of course very interesting to me, and no less so is that which you relate of your ancient friend Mrs. Edmonds. 3 Julia, concerning whom you inquire is in her usual health and desires love to you all. She is pleased at being so kindly remembered by your husband. I must not omit to thank you for the photographic likeness of yourself which you were so kind to enclose and which was immediately assigned a place among those of our particular friends. You do not ask for mine, but I send it-you can at least give it to one of your baby grandchildren to play with. Kind regards to your husband and greetings to all those of your household. I am, dear friend, truly yours, W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Henry Ford Museum ADDRESs: Mrs. Eliza S. Leggett. 1. Mrs. Augustus W. Leggett, a former Roslyn neighbor. See 790.1. 2. Seth W. Cheney. See 487.4, 599.1; illustration, Volume II. 3. Possibly the widow of Francis W. Edmonds, 487.1.

2163. To Fanny Bryant Godwin Roslyn Nov. 12th 1873. Dear Fanny Please to thank the young folks of your household for their beautiful present to me. It is so fine that I am really afraid to use it, but I suppose I shall become bolder by and by. 1 I send you a basket of persimmons. Do not eat them till you are sure that they are quite ripe. Affectionately, W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG ADDREss: Mrs. Fanny B. Godwin. 1. This gift has not been identified. Doctor of Laws 143

2164. To Sidney H. Knapp1 Roslyn Long Island N.Y. November 14, 1873. Dear Sir I am sorry that I can think of no passage in any of the poets which will answer your purpose. The practice of celebrating what are called golden weddings is of very recent date in our country at least, and I do not know that any poet has made it the theme of his versus. Most of what the poets have said of marriage refers either to the courtship or the nuptials. Yours respectfully W. C BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: Hartford Seminary Foundation ADDRESS: Sidney H. Knapp Esq. 1. Possibly a young seminarian at Hartford, Connecticut. See descriptive note.

2165. To A P Putnam1 November 15, 1873 .

. As to the occasion of writing these hymns,2 the first in my small collection was composed for some ordination of a minister, and so was the second; but I have forgotten when or where or whom. The third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth were written at the instance of Miss [Catharine] Sedgwick, about fifty years since, for a collection made by Henry D. Sewall for Mr. William Ware's church in New York. 3 The ninth was written for an ordination somewhere in En• gland, but I have forgotten where, after a lapse of, I think, thirty years. The tenth was written for Mr. Waterston, on the occasion of dedicating his church in Boston.4 The' eleventh is another occasional hymn, written at the request of a friend-Mr. Hiram Barney-for the dedication of a church-the Church, I think, of the Pilgrims. 5 The twelfth was composed for a Foreign Mission anniversary. The thir• teenth was written for James Lombard, of Utica, and included in a collection at the end of a school liturgy, which he, a Unitarian, compiled in 1859. The fourteenth, entitled "The Mother's Hymn," was written, at Dr. Osgood's suggestion, in 1861-'62, and included by him in his liturgy.6 The remaining five in the small collection were written for the purpose of being included in it. ...

MANUSCRIPT: Unrecovered TEXT (partial): Bryant, Poetical Works, II, 369. 1. The recipient, a clergyman, is otherwise unidentified. 2. Bryant's Hymns, printed on EP presses in 1864 for private circulation, were reprinted in 1868, for circulation among a few friends and acquaintances. 144 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

3. See 63.1. 4. See 425.1. 5. See 1057.1. The Church of the Pilgrims was founded in Brooklyn in 1844. 6. See Letter 1258.

2166. To Hamilton Fish Roslyn L.l. N.Y. November 19 1873 My dear sir, I have your letter of the 17th and am obliged to you for so promptly acceding to my suggestion. 1 How my own name came to be on the Committee as its President, if I ever knew I have wholly forgotten. In relation to the main subject of your letter let me say that I fully comprehend the embarrassing position in which the butchery of the men on board of the Virginius places the administration.2 A war with Spain would be a real disaster to the country, and we do not want Cuba, with her ignorant population of negroes, mulattos and monteros or white peasantry, alien to our own population in language, manners, and habits and modes of thinking, the growth so far as the blacks are concerned of long years of slavery, and so far as the whites are concerned, of centuries of the most grinding despotism.3 We have trouble enough already with the freed men of our own country, without seeking to add to their number. It seems to me therefore that a war with Spain-for reasons which will readily occur to you-and the acquisition of Cuba-for the reasons I have given and half a dozen more-are things to be sedulously avoided. But there is the wrong done to our flag, the massacre of our fellow citizens, the failure of the engagement of the government at Madrid to protect them, and the insolent defiance of our government implied in the execution of the prisoners of the Virginius, which our government must take notice of and for which it must require satisfaction. The popular feeling just now seems alive to these considerations only, but its demonstrations are considerably exaggerated. There is a set of adventurers, always with us, who would be glad to try their fortunes in a war with Cuba, and just now, there is a large unemployed population who would be eager to take service under them. They would perish by the diseases of the climate, it is true, as the thousands of Spanish soldiery sent to put down the insurgents have perished, but they do not think of this. If Spain-that is, the home government of that country, now, as I believe, administered by really enlightened men-were to consult her own interest and dignity, without regard to the traditions of her history, she would declare the disobedient volunteers in a state of Doctor of Laws 145

insurrection-declare their proceedings to be treason, and if they could not be put down by the soldiery sent out from Spain, would arm the native Cubans to put them down. It is true that the consequence might be that the island would become independent, but the boldness of the step and its conformity to justice would command the respect of the world. At present the attitude of Spain towards Cuba, with the volunteers masters of the island, and treating her authority with utter contempt is any thing but honorable to her. I have for my own part, and I am sure that I speak for great numbers of our people, admired the wise deliberation with which the administration has proceded in this matter, and I am confident that the great mass of the people will ultimately approve its course. It will look well in history. I have never feared that while you were in the office of Secretary of State any rash proceeding would be had and in our relations with Spain rashness at present is the only danger. I am, sir, truly yours W. C. BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: LC ADDREss: Hon. Hamilton Fish. I. See Letter 2161. Fish had written Bryant from Washington on November 17 (LC), "I have such entire confidence in your judgment, and your taste in matters of art (as in all other matters) that I shall acquiesce in whatever you may approve & give your sanction." 2. Early in November it was reported to Fish that a Spanish gunboat had captured the American registered merchant ship Virginius, known to be carrying arms to Cuban rebels, and that many members of its crew, including eight Americans, had been executed by a firing squad. Nevins, Fish, pp. 669ff, 690-691. 3. In his letter of November 17, after discussing at length the dilemma facing the Grant administration over what its attitude should now be toward the future of Cuba, Fish wrote, "I should be much pleased, if you would at any time, & at all times favour me with your views upon the subject. I shall esteem it a favour." 2167. To James Grant Wilson Roslyn L.l. Nov. 20. 1873. My dear Sir.

I agree to what you suggest in your note of the 18th instant. 1 I have sent, since I wrote to you,2 Mr. Macdonalds Letter and Engage• ment to Mr Field along with Mr Winthrop's letter approving of the model, and two or three letters from artists commending it as credita• ble to the artist by whom it was made.3 I have a letter from Mr. Fish leaving me to do in the matter as I please, with his full consent-but the greater part of the letter is occupied with another subject-so that I cannot send it. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT. 146 LETTERS oF WILLIAM CuLLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: YCAL ADDRESS: To Gen' James Grant Wilson. 1. Note unrecovered. 2. Bryant's letter is unrecovered. 3. Maunsell Bradford Field (1822-1875) was a New York lawyer who character• ized Halleck in his Memories of Many Men and Some Women (New York, 1874), p. 223. Benjamin R. Winthrop, an early friend of Halleck's, had commissioned a portrait of the poet by Thomas Hicks in 1855. See Adkins, Halleck, p. 386.

2168. To Ira C. Hill' Roslyn Long Island N.Y. November 25th, 1873. Dear Sir Your note of the 22d instant2 has just reached me. The draft on the proprietors of the Charleston News, 3 which you left for me at the Office of the Evening Post has come back from Charleston unpaid. I am sir respectfully yours. W. C. BRYANT.

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-BG (draft?) ADDRESS: Ira C. Hill Esq. 1. Unidentified. 2. Unrecovered. 3. Probably the Charleston, South Carolina, News and Courier.

2169. To Robert C. Waterston1 Roslyn, December 12th [1873]

I thank you for your very kind invitation to meet at your house with the members of the Massachusetts Historical Society, on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.2 For various reasons I cannot accept it, although it would give me pleasure to be present on an occasion like this, which assembles the members of a society compre• hending so many eminent men, and possessing so rich a field for its labors. It would be interesting, with them, to look back upon what has happened since the event which will then be commemorated, and to observe how the mighty changes in the fortune of nations-which, while we look only on the present and the future, seem to unroll themselves slowly before our eyes, like a moving panorama-lie crowded together in the past. Such a review would naturally carry the contemplation beyond the limits of your State, and into fields beyond the province of your society, save in occasional glimpses showing the agency of the sons of Massachusetts in new commonwealths founded, peopled, and made great; fierce and bloody wars waged, victories Doctor of Laws 147

gained, and the republic saved; the discoveries of science turned to practical account, in a manner which fills the world with wonder; mountains pierced, and arid deserts traversed by iron tracks; the East married to the West, and America made the neighbor of China; great men rising and filling the world with their fame, and passing away to take their quiet niche in history; eloquent voices raised, and not in vain, for God and liberty, and then hushed in death; mighty wrongs committed, redressed, and punished; new wrongs committed, and yet awaiting their reward; and all the while, rumors of still mightier changes reaching us from the Old World-rumors of ancient despot• isms overthrown, new empires formed, and young republics making the experiment of existence in the seat of old monarchies. History will have much to do in recording the events of the century which ends with the sixteenth of this month.... 3

MANUSCRIPT: NYPL-GR (partial draft) TEXT: Life, II, 337-338. 1. See 425.1. 2. On December 16, 1773, in protest against a tax on imported tea imposed by the British Parliament, a group of Boston citizens led by Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and disguised as Indians boarded several ships and dumped their cargoes of tea into the harbor. 3. Waterston's invitation asked Bryant to attend a special meeting of the Massa• chusetts Historical Society at his home on December 16 to celebrate the centenary of the Boston Tea Party. Among speeches and poems read by their authors were verses by Emerson and an amusing ballad by Holmes. This letter from Bryant and another from Longfellow were read by Waterston. Life, II, 338.

2170. To Samuel L. M. Barlow1 Roslyn, Long Island December 18, 1873.- Dear Mr. Barlow. The bearer of this note is Mr. Pierre Condon whom I have favorably known for some years past. He is one of those whom the hard times have left without employment. It is understood that you have the bestowal of certain clerkships in the Erie Railroad Company, and you would greatly oblige a worthy and faithful man as well as an experienced clerk by placing him in one of them.2 I am bewildered among the many initials of your name, and as I have not your signature at hand to which to refer, it is possible that in addressing this note I have lost my way. If I have please to impute the fault to my treacherous memory. Yours very truly W. C. BRYANT. 148 LETTERS OF WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

MANUSCRIPT: HEHL ADDRESS: S. L. M. Barlow Esq. 1. Samuel Latham Mitchell Barlow (1826--1889) of Glen Cove, Long Island, was a near neighbor of Bryant's and a New York corporate lawyer specializing in the affairs of large companies. It is said that after winning a multimillion dollar lawsuit against Jay Gould and Jim Fisk for fraud in 1872, he became the "dominant figure" in Erie Railroad affairs. 2. Condon has not been further identified.