Complete Prose Works
Edwin, a good balladist. At the Bowery the loves of "Sweet William,"
"When on the Downs the fleet was moor'd,"
always bro't an encore, and sometimes a treble.
I remember Jenny Lind and heard her (1850 I think) several times.
She had the most brilliant, captivating, popular musical style and
expression of any one known; (the canary, and several other sweet
birds are wondrous fine--but there is something in song that goes
deeper--isn't there?)
The great "Egyptian Collection" was well up in Broadway, and I got quite
acquainted with Dr. Abbott, the proprietor--paid many visits there, and
had long talks with him, in connection with my readings of many books
and reports on Egypt--its antiquities, history, and how things and the
scenes really look, and what the old relics stand for, as near as we can
now get. (Dr. A. was an Englishman of say 54--had been settled in
Cairo as physician for 25 years, and all that time was collecting these
relics, and sparing no time or money seeking and getting them. By advice
and for a change of base for himself, he brought the collection to
America. But the whole enterprise was a fearful disappointment, in the
pay and commercial part.) As said, I went to the Egyptian Museum many
many times; sometimes had it all to myself--delved at the formidable
catalogue--and on several occasions had the invaluable personal talk,
correction, illustration and guidance of Dr. A. himself. He was very
kind and helpful to me in those studies and examinations; once, by
appointment, he appear'd in full and exact Turkish (Cairo) costume,
which long usage there had made habitual to him.
One of the choice places of New York to me then was the "Phrenological
Cabinet" of Fowler & Wells, Nassau street near Beekman. Here were all
the busts, examples, curios and books of that study obtainable. I went
there often, and once for myself had a very elaborate and leisurely
examination and "chart of bumps" written out (I have it yet,) by Nelson
Fowler (or was it Sizer?) there.
And who remembers the renown'd New York "Tabernacle" of those days
"before the war"? It was on the east side of Broadway, near Pearl
street--was a great turtle-shaped hall, and you had to walk back from
the street entrance thro' a long wide corridor to get to it--was very
strong--had an immense gallery--altogether held three or four thousand
people. Here the huge annual conventions of the windy and cyclonic
"reformatory societies" of those times were held--especially the
tumultuous Anti-Slavery ones. I remember hearing Wendell Phillips,
Emerson, Cassius Clay, John P. Hale, Beecher, Fred Douglas, the
Burleighs, Garrison, and others. Sometimes the Hutchinsons would
sing--very fine. Sometimes there were angry rows. A chap named Isaiah
Rhynders, a fierce politician of those days, with a band of robust
supporters, would attempt to contradict the speakers and break up
the meetings. But the Anti-Slavery, and Quaker, and Temperance, and
Missionary and other conventicles and speakers were tough, tough, and
always maintained their ground, and carried out their programs fully.
I went frequently to these meetings, May after May--learn'd much from
them--was sure to be on hand when J. P. Hale or Cash Clay made speeches.
There were also the smaller and handsome halls of the Historical and
Athensum Societies up on Broadway. I very well remember W.C. Bryant
lecturing on Homoeopathy in one of them, and attending two or three
addresses by R.W. Emerson in the other.
There was a series of plays and dramatic _genre_ characters by a
gentleman bill'd as Ranger--very fine, better than merely technical,
full of exquisite shades, like the light touches of the violin in the
hands of a master. There was the actor Anderson, who brought us Gerald
Griffin's "Gysippus," and play'd it to admiration. Among the actors of
those times I recall: Cooper, Wallack, Tom Hamblin, Adams (several), Old
Gates, Scott, Wm. Sefton, John Sefton, Geo. Jones, Mitchell, Seguin,
Old Clarke, Richings, Fisher, H. Placide, T. Placide, Thorne, Ingersoll,
Gale (Mazeppa) Edwin, Horncastle. Some of the women hastily remember'd
were: Mrs. Vernon, Mrs. Pritchard, Mrs. McClure, Mary Taylor, Clara
Fisher, Mrs. Richardson, Mrs. Flynn. Then the singers, English, Italian
and other: Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Mrs. Austin, Grisi, La Grange,
Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Parodi, Vestvali, Bertucca, Jenny Lind,
Gazzaniga, Laborde. And the opera men: Bettini, Badiali, Marini, Mario,
Brignoli, Amodio, Beneventano, and many, many others whose names I do
not at this moment recall.
In another paper I have described the elder Booth, and the Bowery
Theatre of those times. Afterward there was the Chatham. The elder
Thorne, Mrs. Thorne, William and John Sefton, Kirby, Brougham, and
sometimes Edwin Forrest himself play'd there. I remember them all, and
many more, and especially the fine theatre on Broadway near Pearl, in
1855 and '6.
There were very good circus performances, or horsemanship, in New York
and Brooklyn. Every winter in the first-named city, a regular place
in the Bowery, nearly opposite the old theatre; fine animals and fine
riding, which I often witness'd. (Remember seeing near here, a young,
fierce, splendid lion, presented by an African Barbary Sultan to
President Andrew Jackson. The gift comprised also a lot of jewels, a
fine steel sword, and an Arab stallion; and the lion was made over to a
show-man.)
If it is worth while I might add that there was a small but
well-appointed amateur-theatre up Broadway, with the usual stage,
orchestra, pit, boxes, &c., and that I was myself a member for some
time, and acted parts in it several times--"second parts" as they were
call'd. Perhaps it too was a lesson, or help'd that way; at any rate it
was full of fun and enjoyment.
And so let us turn off the gas. Out in the brilliancy of the
foot-lights--filling the attention of perhaps a crowded audience, and
making many a breath and pulse swell and rise--O so much passion and
imparted life!--over and over again, the season through--walking,
gesticulating, singing, reciting his or her part--But then sooner or
later inevitably wending to the flies or exit door--vanishing to sight
and ear--and never materializing on this earth's stage again!
SOME PERSONAL AND OLD-AGE JOTTINGS
Anything like unmitigated acceptance of my "Leaves of Grass" book, and
heart-felt response to it, in a popular however faint degree, bubbled
forth as a fresh spring from the ground in England in 1876. The time was
a critical and turning point in my personal and literary life. Let me
revert to my memorandum book, Camden, New Jersey, that year, fill'd with
addresses, receipts, purchases, &c., of the two volumes pub'd then by
myself--the "Leaves," and the "Two Rivulets"--some home customers, for
them, but mostly from the British Islands. I was seriously paralyzed
from the Secession war, poor, in debt, was expecting death, (the doctors
put four chances out of five against me,)--and I had the books printed
during the lingering interim to occupy the tediousness of glum days and
nights. Curiously, the sale abroad proved prompt, and what one might
call copious: the names came in lists and the money with them, by
foreign mail. The price was $10 a set. Both the cash and the emotional
cheer were deep medicines; many paid double or treble price, (Tennyson
and Ruskin did,) and many sent kind and eulogistic letters; ladies,
clergymen, social leaders, persons of rank, and high officials. Those
blessed gales from the British Islands probably (certainly) saved me.
Here are some of the names, for I w'd like to preserve them: Wm. M.
and D.G. Rossetti, Lord Houghton, Edwd. Dowden, Mrs. Anne Gilchrist,
Keningale Cook, Edwd. Carpenter, Therese Simpson, Rob't Buchanan, Alfred
Tennyson, John Ruskin, C.G. Gates, E.T. Wilkinson, T.L. Warren, C.W.
Reynell, W.B. Scott, A.G. Dew Smith, E.W. Gosse, T.W. Rolleston, Geo.
Wallis, Rafe Leicester, Thos. Dixon, N. MacColl, Mrs. Matthews, R.
Hannah, Geo. Saintsbury, R.S. Watson, Godfrey and Vernon Lushington,
G.H. Lewes, G.H. Boughton, Geo. Fraser, W.T. Arnold, A. Ireland, Mrs. M.
Taylor, M.D. Conway, Benj. Eyre, E. Dannreather, Rev. T.E. Brown, C.W.
Sheppard, E.J.A. Balfour, P.B. Marston, A.C. De Burgh, J.H. McCarthy,
J.H. Ingram, Rev. R.P. Graves, Lady Mount-temple, F.S. Ellis, W.
Brockie, Rev. A.B. Grosart, Lady Hardy, Hubert Herkomer, Francis
Hueffer, H.G. Dakyns, R.L. Nettleship, W.J. Stillman, Miss Blind, Madox
Brown, H.R. Ricardo, Messrs. O'Grady and Tyrrel; and many, many more.
Severely scann'd, it was perhaps no very great or vehement success; but
the tide had palpably shifted at any rate, and the sluices were turn'd
into my own veins and pockets. That emotional, audacious, open-handed,
friendly-mouth'd just-opportune English action, I say, pluck'd me like a
brand from the burning, and gave me life again, to finish my book, since
ab't completed. I do not forget it, and shall not; and if I ever have
a biographer I charge him to put it in the narrative. I have had the
noblest friends and backers in America; Wm. O'Connor, Dr. R.M. Bucke,
John Burroughs, Geo.W. Childs, good ones in Boston, and Carnegie
and R.G. Ingersoll in New York; and yet perhaps the tenderest and
gratefulest breath of my heart has gone, and ever goes, over the
sea-gales across the big pond.
About myself at present. I will soon enter upon my 73d year, if I
live--have pass'd an active life, as country school-teacher, gardener,
printer, carpenter, author and journalist, domicil'd in nearly all the
United States and principal cities, North and South--went to the front
(moving about and occupied as army nurse and missionary) during the
secession war, 1861 to '65, and in the Virginia hospitals and after
the battles of that time, tending the Northern and Southern wounded
alike--work'd down South and in Washington city arduously three
years--contracted the paralysis which I have suffer'd ever since--and
now live in a little cottage of my own, near the Delaware in New Jersey.
My chief book, unrhym'd and unmetrical (it has taken thirty years, peace
and war, "a borning") has its aim, as once said, "to utter the same old
human _critter_--but now in Democratic American modern and scientific
conditions." Then I have publish'd two prose works, "Specimen Days," and
a late one, "November Boughs." (A little volume, "Good-Bye my Fancy,"
is soon to be out, wh' will finish the matter.) I do not propose here
to enter the much-fought field of the literary criticism of any of those
works.
But for a few portraiture or descriptive bits. To-day in the upper story
of a little wooden house of two stories near the Delaware river, east
shore, sixty miles up from the sea, is a rather large 20-by-20 low
ceiling'd room something like a big old ship's cabin. The floor, three
quarters of it with an ingrain carpet, is half cover'd by a deep litter
of books, papers, magazines, thrown-down letters and circulars, rejected
manuscripts, memoranda, bits of light or strong twine, a bundle to be
"express'd," and two or three venerable scrap books. In the room stand
two large tables (one of ancient St. Domingo mahogany with immense
leaves) cover'd by a jumble of more papers, a varied and copious array
of writing materials, several glass and china vessels or jars, some with
cologne-water, others with real honey, granulated sugar, a large bunch
of beautiful fresh yellow chrysanthemums, some letters and envelopt
papers ready for the post office, many photographs, and a hundred
indescribable things besides. There are all around many books, some
quite handsome editions, some half cover'd by dust, some within reach,
evidently used, (good-sized print, no type less than long primer,) some
maps, the Bible, (the strong cheap edition of the English crown,) Homer,