# A History of American Literature/Chapter 8

VIII.
WASHINGTON IRVING.
1788–1859.
"The father of American Literature."
The first ambassador whom the new world of letters sent to the old." — Thackeray.
Dutch New York. — No American city has had a more picturesque history or has undergone a more complete metamorphosis than New York. In 1664, as New Amsterdam, it was a dreamy Dutch village, its lazy windmills and sleepy streets between houses of antique architecture contrasting strangely with the wild scenery about it. For almost half a century it had been the headquarters of the Dutch in America, and a century of English occupation did not banish the atmosphere of Holland from its limits. As late as the beginning of the present century, the old Dutch burghers were still a prominent element of the population. Often of a summer evening they might be seen sitting in the doorways of their quaint, gabled houses, built a century before of bricks brought from Holland, smoking their long-stemmed pipes in peaceful revery. Their whitewashed dwellings and picturesque windmills were still a prominent feature in the landscape.
Suggested Reading. "The Historian," in Bracebridge Hall.
​Life of Irving (by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving, 1862; by David J. Hill in American Authors Series, 1879; by Charles Dudley Warner in American Men of Letters Series, 1881. See also Irvingiana, a collection of various tributes to Irving published soon after his death. For more extended list of authorities see Reference Lists of the Providence Public Library, April, 1883).
In this quaint old city of fast-fading traditions, Washington Irving was born April 3, 1783, the year that witnessed the close of the Revolutionary struggle. He was but five months old when General Washington. entered the city just evacuated by the British, and by a happy chance he received the blessing of the great man of whom he was destined to become the chief biographer. Irving's father was English, while his mother was of Scotch descent. They had come to America scarce twenty years before, and with limited means were struggling along with a family of eleven children. School privileges under such circumstances were necessarily limited, but the youthful Irving early acquired a voracious appetite for reading, and within his reach were the volumes of Chaucer and Spenser and Addison, which he well-nigh learned by heart. Throughout his boyhood he was fond of solitary excursions, wandering often, as he tells us in The Sketch Book, into surrounding regions, drinking in eagerly the strange tales told by Dutch housewives of the old days, so involved by their drowsy imaginations in mystery and romance.
Required Reading. "The Author's Account of Himself," and "The Voyage." The Sketch Book.
​Salmagundi. — The condition of Irving's health, always delicate, became in his twenty-first year so1801. Napoleon made Emperor of France. 1805. Trafalgar and death of Nelson. 1805. Austerlitz. 1806. Jena. alarming to his friends that they sent him made Emperor to the south of Europe, where he remained for two years. Returning in 1806 completely cured, he resumed for a time the study of law which his European journey had interrupted. But literature appeared to him far more attractive than law. Early the following year his exuberant spirits and teeming literary fancies found vent in a little periodical entitled Salmagundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq., and Others. The "others" mentioned in the title were Irving's brother William, and his brother-in-law, James K. Paulding. The object of the publication, as stated in the Salutatory, was "simply to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." It was published anonymously, and created much curiosity and interest. It bubbled over with fun, mock seriousness, and whimsical fancies, yet, bright as it was, it gave little promise of an original American literature. The correction of the town meant. simply the moulding of it to contemporary London standards, and as far as its individuality is concerned it might have been written by an Englishman in London. After twenty numbers, the young editors tired of their play and the publication ceased.
Suggested Reading. — The Salutatory, Solmagundi, No. 1. For definition see Dictionary. See also E. A. Duyckinck's Introduction to Salmagundi, edition of 1800. ​Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809). —
"Of all mock-heroic works... the gayest, the airiest, and the least tiresome." — Bryant.
To the youthful editors of Salmagundi, with their effervescent spirits, "the town" seemed a huge comedy for their criticism and delight. Nothing escaped them. A popular handbook of New York, written in a dignified, serious style, amused them so immoderately that Irving, with his brother Peter, immediately planned a burlesque of the work, commencing in all seriousness with the creation of the world, and bringing in broad caricatures of the Dutch founders of the city. Anything more serious than an ephemeral parody was not once dreamed of. But Irving soon realized the richness of the material upon which he had stumbled. He found the period of the Dutch supremacy wonderfully full of literary possibilities. It was far enough away in the past to be robed in the haze of romance, and it offered untold opportunities for humorous treatment. The subject grew upon the author, and he carefully elaborated it.
The story of Irving's ingenious hoax, which attributed the authorship of the history to one Diedrich Knickerbocker, an old Dutch gentleman whose disappearance was duly chronicled in the newspapers of the day, is told in the preface of the work. Many were deceived by it; all were curious, and when the work, which had been published in Philadelphia to increase the mystery, appeared, its success was phenomenal. The ​descendants of the old Dutch settlers were greatly shocked at its liberties, but every one else was delighted with its boisterous humor. It was republished in England, and was hailed by Campbell and Scott as a real addition to the literature of the world.
The humor of the book is irresistible. "The author makes us laugh," says Bryant, "because he can no more help it than we can help laughing." With such perfect art has it been constructed that it has all the gravity of authentic narration; indeed it is said to have been once gravely quoted by a German editor, Göller, as real history.
Required Reading. — "Account of the Author," in the History of New York; also "Wouter Van Twiller," Book III., ch. 1; and "The Manners of our Grandfathers," Book III, ch. 3. See also "The Author's Apology," in edition of 1860.
1. The Period of Sketches. — Irving's literary career, which opened with the publication of the 1. Dutch-American Sketches: The History of "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," in The Sketch Book. "Dolph Heyliger" in Bracebridge Hall. Tales of a Traveler, Part III. Wolfert's Roost. 1855. 2. English and Random Sketches:Knickerbocker's History of New York, may be divided into four distinct periods, corresponding to the four literary themes which at different periods of his life engaged him. The interval between 1809 and 1826 may be characterized as the period of sketches.
During the five years following his first successful book Irving was variously engaged, first as editor in Philadelphia of the Analytic Magazine, and afterwards, in 1814, as aide-de-camp to Governor Tompkins. The following year, in connection ​The Sketch Book Bracebridge Hall. .Tales of A Traveller. The Crayon Miscellany. 1835with the mercantile business of his brothers, he sailed for England, intending to be absent only a few months. His literary fame had preceded him, and he found himself welcomed in the most exclusive literary circles of England. He visited Campbell at Sydenham, and dined with the famous publisher, Murray. In Edinburgh he was the guest of the Scottish critic, Jeffrey, and he passed two delightful days with Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford.
Suggested Reading. — Abbotsford. See also, Lockhart's Life of Scott, Vol. V.
The Sketch Book (1819). —
"He colored the shores of the Hudson with the softest hues of legend. The banks at Tarrytown stretching backward to Sleepy Hollow, the broad water of the Tappan Zee, the airy heights of the summer Kaatskill, were mere landscape, pleasing scenery only, until Irving suffused them with the rosy light of story and gave them the human association which is the crowning charm of landscape." — George William Curtis.
Irving seems to have regarded the History of New York simply as a 'jeu d'esprit, which was in no way au introduction to a literary career, and for nine years he produced very little. But the failure of the mercantile house in which his brothers were large shareholders having left him at the age of thirty-six in London without apparent means of support, he immediately took up his neglected pen. The first number of The Sketch Book, which was written in England, was published in America in 1819. It contained six sketches, among which was the immortal "Rip Van Winkle." American critics ​hailed the book with extravagant praise. The second and third numbers appeared in rapid succession. Upon the recommendation of Sir Walter Scott, the English publisher Murray was induced to undertake an edition. Its success was instantaneous. The author became the literary "lion" of the day. Lockhart declared in Blackwood that "Mr. Washington Irving is one of our first favorites among the English writers of this age, and he is not a bit the less so for being born in America." Byron pronounced The Broken Heart "one of the finest things ever written on earth."
The Sketch Book contains some of Irving's most dainty work. Four, at least, of the sketches will endure as long as does the language. "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" have made the Highlands of the Hudson classic ground, and have added two distinct characters to the literature of the world. The paper on "Stratford on Avon " has thrown a new spell over the birthplace of Shakespeare, and no one now visits this memory-haunted spot without Irving's work in his satchel. For grace and pensive beauty, the "Westminster Abbey" and "The Angler" are worthy to be compared with the best of Addison or Goldsmith.
Required Reading. — "Rip Van Winkle," "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," "Stratford on Avon." See Benson J. Lossing's The Romance of the Hudson, Harper's, Vol. LII., p. 613.
Bracebridge Hall (1822). — The careful pictures of The Sketch Book had thrown a soft, poetic light over English customs and scenes. To Irving the land was enchanted ground. Since his childhood he had dreamed. ​of it and idealized it. "Having been born and brought up in a new country," he wrote in Bracebridge Hall, "yet educated from infancy in the literature of an old one, my mind was early fitted with historical and poetical associations connected with places and manners and customs of Europe; but which could rarely be applied to those of my own country." To Irving England was flooded with the mellow atmosphere of romance. In Bracebridge Hall he draws ideal pictures of English country life, of the old-fashioned manor house and its inmates; of the beauty, cheer, and joy of the Yuletide; of St. Mark's eve and May-day; of "the old landmarks of English manners;" of the English country gentleman of the old school. It was the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers, from a new standpoint. "Irving rediscovered England; he opened a new vista; he poured over it the same mellow light with which he had flooded Sleepy Hollow and the dells of the Hudson.
After a winter at Paris and a season at Dresden, in 1824 Irving was paid by Murray £1500 for the manuscript of The Tales of a Traveller, but the book was far below its predecessors in interest and in literary merit, and was severely criticised on both sides of the Atlantic.
Required Reading. — "The Author," "The Stout Gentleman," and "May-Day," from Bracebridge Hall.
2. The Period of Spanish Themes (1826–1832). — In 1826 Irving received a letter from Alexander H. Everett, then United States Minister at Madrid, urging him to come to Spain at once to undertake the translation of ​Navarrete's Voyages of Columbus, then in press. But when once in Spain amid the abundant materials in the Spanish Archives, Irving abandoned the idea of the translation and immediately began to collect materials for a new life of the great discoverer.
He soon found himself in a wonderland. The period of Spanish history covered by the life of Columbus is full of romance. It resounds with the clash of arms and glitters with the splendor of pageants and the pomp of military display. Few periods have been more filled with stirring incidents. The Moorish splendors of Granada, the expulsion of the Arabs after nearly eight centuries in Spain, the dreamy old Alhambra refurnished for the brilliant court of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Inquisition with its horrors, the discovery of a new world, — all this was crowded into one reign, while back of it stretched the hazy vista of centuries of conflict with the Moors, almost the only records of which are vague traditions and romantic tales, embellished by all the wild extravagance of the Oriental imagination.
Required Reading. — The Preface to The Conquest of Spain.
The Life of Columbus was but the starting-point of Irving's Spanish investigations. The Moorish chronicles and arabesque legends of Spain were all untold, and to Americans, at least, the Spanish landscape was unfamiliar. So fully did Irving enter into the spirit of this period, and so faithfully did he portray its scenery and events, that he has become a part of the perennial charm that clings to this southern land.
​It was Irving's design, as he tells us in the preface to his Mahomet, to write a series of worksMahomet and his Successors. 1850. Legends of the Conquest of Spain. 1835. Moorish Chronicles. 1833. The Conquest of Grenada. 1829 The Alhambra. 1832. The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. 1828. Spanish Voyages of Discovery. 1831. "illustrative of the dominion of the Arabs in Spain," but this purpose he never accomplished. Although each of his seven Spanish books within its limits aims to be exhaustive, there are important historical epochs untouched. The books are, in reality, detached episodes of Spanish history, some of them historically accurate, and some of them mere romance. To follow the sequence of events they should be read in the order designated at the margin.
The Mahomet and his Successors, which is generally regarded as an inferior work, was the last of the series in order of production. It had been projected while Irving was first at Madrid, and had been several times revised and cast aside before its final appearance. book, which recounts the rise and spread of Mohammedanism up to the eve of the Arab invasion of Spain, closes with the half promise of a history of the Moorish Conquest: "Whether it will ever be our lot to resume this theme, to cross with the Moslem hosts the Strait of Hercules, and narrate their memorable conquest of Gothic Spain, is one of [the] uncertainties of mortal life. The book hinted at was never written. The period is represented only by the Legends of the Conquest of Spain, a collection of dim traditions of Don Roderick, "the last of the Goths," and of the sad days that followed his overthrow. The Spaniards were either ​annihilated or driven to the mountains. Province after province fell before the Moors. The Moorish Chronicles is a record of the campaigns of two kings, Count Fernan Gonzalez of Castile and Fernando III. of Leon, who succeeded for a time in checking the tide of invasion.
The Conquest of Granada. —
"Nearly eight hundred years were past and gone since the Arabian invaders had sealed the perdition of Spain.... Since that disastrous event, kingdom after kingdom had been gradually recovered by the Christian princes, until the single but powerful territory of Granada alone remained under dominion of the Moors." Chapter I.
It was left for the brilliant reign of Ferdinand and Isabella utterly to overthrow the Mohammedan power in Spain. In 1481 the ruler of Granada refused to pay the tribute. Ten years of conflict, as full of heroic achievement and poetic incident as the siege of ancient Troy, were necessary to reduce the Alhambra, the last Moorish stronghold. The Conquest of Granada seems like fiction. Although real history, it is a book, as some one has said, that a young lady might read by mistake for a romance.
Required Reading. — "How Queen Isabella arrived in Camp," and "The Surrender of Granada."
The Alhambra. —
"The beautiful Spanish Sketch Book." — Prescott.
"It has the languid beauty of a Moorish song."
"The Alhambra is an ancient fortress or castellated palace of the Moorish kings of Granada, where they held dominion over this their boasted terrestrial paradise, and made their last stand for empire in Spain.... It is a Moslem pile in the midst of a Chris- ​tian land; an oriental palace amid the Gothic edifices of the West, an elegant memento of a brave, intelligent, and graceful people, who conquered, ruled, and passed away." — The Alhambra.
During the summer of 1829, Irving for several weeks took up his residence in this dreamy old palace. He wandered through its halls and courts at all hours of the day and night. He gathered its fast-fading legends and buried himself in its golden atmosphere. The Alhambra was the result, a book like the Arabian Nights, full of the passion and splendor of the Orient. In many respects it is the best of Irving's Spanish works.
Required Reading. — "The Palace of the Alhambra," "Moonlight on the Alhambra," and "The Legend of the Rose of the Alhambra."
The Life and Voyages of Columbus, a book upon which Irving expended the unrelenting labor of months, is the most serious and weighty of all the author's works on Spanish themes. It has taken its place as the standard English biography of Columbus, a position that it will doubtless always retain. Other and more scholarly works have been written and Irving's estimate of the discoverer has been sharply criticised, but the book will never lose its hold on the great mass of English readers. The Spanish Voyages of Discovery is but a sequel to the Life of Columbus, recounting the steps taken by Spain to gain her American possessions.
Required Reading. — "The Discovery of Land."
3. The Period of Western American Themes (1832–1846). — In 1829 Irving was called from Spain to become ​the American Secretary of Legation at London, an office which he held with credit for three years. In 1832, after an absence of seventeen years, he returned to America, whore he was received with almost national honors. So rapidly had his country developed that he was a stranger amid the scenes of his childhood. He scarcely recognized his native city. He was like his own Rip Van Winkle. A new life and a new spirit seemed to animate everything. The vast territory to the westward that had been terra incognita in his boyA Tour of the Prairies. 1835. Astoria. 1836. Captain Bonneville. 1837.hood was now being rapidly filled by the tide of immigration. The frontier line was now beyond the Mississippi, and it was fast pushing westward. He was filled with a desire to acquaint himself with his native land which he had so long neglected. He "had a great curiosity," as he expressed it, to know and see the wild life of the West, and accordingly he at once, with several companions, made a journey among the Indian agencies from St. Louis up the banks of the Missouri.
Suggested Reading. — For Irving's feelings upon his return to America, see the Introduction to A Tour of the Prairies.
A Tour of the Prairies, which was the literary result of this journey, is the record of a month's expedition from Fort Gibson up the Arkansas to near the present boundary of Kansas. Giving, as it does, a faithful picture of the West of that day, it is a valuable addition to the all too scanty records of a picturesque era in our history. Edward Everett, in a review of the book, wrote:
​"It is a sort of sentimental journey, a romantic excursion, in which nearly all the elements of several different kinds of writing are beautifully and gayly blended into a production almost sui generis.... We thank him for turning these poor barbarous steppes into classical land, and joining his inspiration to that of Cooper in breathing life and fire into a circle of imagery which was not known before to exist, for the purposes of the imagination."
This book was followed the next year by Astoria, a history of the fur-trading settlement at the mouth of the Columbia River, written at the request of John Jacob Astor. In this work Irving was assisted by his nephew, Pierre M. Irving, who relieved the author of much of the drudgery of collecting materials.
It was while engaged in this book that Irving met at the house of Mr. Astor a noted soldier and hunter, in whose stories he became intensely interested. The outcome of this chance meeting was The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, a book of thrilling adventure among Indians and wild beasts in the Rocky Mountains, with accurate pictures of the frontier life of those early days.
Suggested Reading. The Introductions to Astoria and Captain Bonneville.
4. The Period of Biographical Work (1846–1859). — In 1842 Irving was appointed Minister to Spain, and upon his return in 1846 he settled down in his rural home at Sunnyside" on the Hudson to spend the last years of his life. The surroundings and the traditions of the old Dutch mansion which Irving remodelled into a sort of American "Abbotsford," were given to the world in 1855, in the volume Wolfert's Roost. Here ​Irving produced three biographies. The Mahomet has been already mentioned. In 1849 he published the Life of Oliver Goldsmith, the most charming of all his biographies, and probably the best study ever written of the thriftless, lovable poet.
But the book which Irving wished to be the crowning work of his life was The Life of Washington. Upon it he expended the most faithful labor, pushing so thoroughly his investigations that few additional facts of importance in the life of the great leader have since been discovered. The work was done under great difficulties. Old age was creeping upon the author. Toward the last the work dragged painfully, and the fifth and last volume appeared only a short time before the author's death. The chief charms of the book are its clear and beautiful style, and its bright, breezy descriptions. Although not a biography of the very highest rank, it is in every way worthy of its position as the standard life of a remarkable man and the crowning work of a brilliant literary career.
Irving's Style. — (Richardson, I., 278-280; Whipple's American Literature; Warner's Life of Irving; Curtis' Literary and Social Essays.) Though gifted with moderate power to create plots and characters, Irving was pre-eminently a story-teller. He was quick to detect the literary possibilities in seemingly unpromising material, and he could make much from very little, as in his "Stout Gentleman." His canvas was never a broad one. Even his longest histories are but aggregations of brilliantly told episodes. He delighted ​in gentle themes, in the Indian Summer days of the past. From all his work breathes his sweet, gentle nature. His English is pure and elegant; his sentences, each of sparkling clearness, ripple past like the music of a summer brook. His humor, at first lawless and boisterous, then more subdued and delicate in his later works, is everywhere present, but is wholly without bitterness.
His Character. —
"He... was most finished, polished, easy, witty, quiet and socially the equal of the most refined Europeans.... In America the love and regard for living was a national sentiment. It seemed to me during a year's travel in the country, as if no one ever aimed a blow at Irving. All men held their hands from that harmless, friendly peacemaker.... The gate of his own little charming domain on the beautiful Hudson River was forever swinging before visitors who came to him.... He had loved once in his life. The lady he loved died; and he whom all the world loved never sought to replace her. I can't say how much the thought of that fidelity has touched me. Does not the very cheerfulness of his after life add to the pathos of that untold story?" — William Makepeace Thackeray.
Irving died at "Sunnyside," Nov. 28, 1859, and was buried on a beautiful Indian Summer day, near the Sleepy Hollow which he had made immortal.
Required Reading. — Longfellow's "In the Churchyard at Tarrytown," Lowell's "Fable for Critics."
James Kirke Paulding (1779–1860).
Life (Literary Life of J. K. Paulding, by his son, William Irving Paulding. See also Irving's Life of Irving).
​Closely associated with the name of Washington Irving is that of his brother-in-law and early literaryThe Dutchman's Fireside. 1831. Westward Ho!. 1832. Life of Washington. 1835. The Old Continental. 1846. The Puritan and his Daughter. 1849. partner, James K. Paulding. Although the early work of these authors, as seen in Salmagundi, was almost identical in style and spirit, and although their choice of literary themes shows many striking coincidences, there was, nevertheless, little similarity between the two. Unlike Irving, Paulding never outgrew Salmagundi. His humor is always boisterous, never chaste and sensitive. Often it is crude and caustic, leaving behind it a rankling wound. The artistic sense, the delicate touch, the tender sympathy which made "Rip Van Winkle" immortal, are too often lacking in The Dutchman's Fireside, and, in spite of its humor and its pathos, the book is forgotten.
Paulding's life was one of ceaseless activity. His published volumes, which number almost as many as Irving's, consist of novels, short stories, sketches, satires, parodies, burlesques, political works, poems, and an excellent Life of George Washington. Like Irving, he delighted in broad pictures of the old Dutch settlers. In some of his sketches his humor is as rollicking and as uncontrolled as Irving's in The History of New York. His Lay of the Scottish Fiddle (1813), a clever parody of Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), then at the height of its popularity, and his novel Koningsmarke (1823), a burlesque upon the Indian of Cooper's novel The Pioneers, are characteristic productions.
​Paulding's best work is his novel The Dutchman's Fireside.
"It is a genuine, life-like story, full of stirring incidents, of picturesque scenes, and striking characters, for which the author's early experiences had furnished the abundant materials. The amiable and whimsical peculiarities of the Dutch settlers, the darker tints of Indian character, and the vicissitudes of frontier life, have rarely been more powerfully sketched." — Underwood.
The descriptions of natural scenery are drawn with loving care. The author wields a poet's pen when he writes of the springtime, the pathless woods, and the sparkling Hudson.
During the administration of Van Buren, Paulding was Secretary of the Navy. His political views are well known. In all things intensely conservative, he defended even slavery, strengthening his position by publishing, in 1836, a treatise entitled Slavery in the United States.
Suggested Reading. — The Dutchman's Fireside.
Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867).
"No other American author has represented with equal vivacity and truth the manners of the age." — Thackeray.
Life (by Henry A. Beers, in American Men of Letters Series. See also Goodrich's Recollections of a Lifetime. The collected writings of Willis have been issued, in thirteen volumes, by the ScribPoems. Pencillings by the Way. Letters from Under a Bridge. People I Have Met. Paul Fane, a novel.ners).
Though of New England parentage, born in Portland, Maine, only one year before Longfellow, and receiving his edu​cation at Yale College, Willis belongs with "The Knickerbockers," that little group of writers that for a long time made New York the literary capital of America. Few authors ever started in life with greater promise. While yet an undergraduate at Yale he achieved a widespread literary fame with the series of Scripture poems, which, in spite of Lowell's joke about inspiration and water," are their author's best claim to remembrance as a poet, From this time until the rise of Longfellow and the New England writers, he enjoyed the distinction of being the most popular American poet.
Encouraged by his poetic successes, Willis, after leaving college, went to New York, where, in 1828, he became, with George P. Morris, the song writer, associate editor of The New York Mirror. Two years later, with five hundred dollars in his pocket and the promise of ten dollars for every letter he might write to The Mirror, Willis, then in his twenty-fourth year, started for Europe. In Paris he became for a time an attaché to the American Legation, an honor which was of great service, since it admitted him freely to the best society of the capital. After a prolonged journey through Southern Europe, Turkey, and parts of Asia Minor, he returned to London, where, in 1885, he republished his letters to The Mirror in a three volume edition under the title Pencillings by the Way. The popularity of the book was immediate. Although its personalities made many bitter enemies, it was on the whole extravagantly praised on both sides of the Atlantic.
​"At this day it has something of the interest of a histrionic performance, which is highly comic to one who has been behind the scenes. Here was a young American, rubbing along through Europe on the slenderest resources, eking out his weekly revenue by an occasional poem or story, but always in mortal fear of coming to the bottom of his purse, and all the time he wrote in the tone and style of a young prince, conveying the impression that castles and palaces, chariots and horses, and all the splendors of aristocratic life, were just as familiar to him as the air he breathed.... He saw the outside of its gay and splendid life, and this he described in his Pencillings, with a vividness and grace which have rarely been equalled.... He was under a spell which blinded him to the true nature of what he looked upon and caused him to give a report of it which has misled in some degree the American people ever since." — James Parton.
Willis returned to America in 1887, and, with his wife, whom he had married in England, lived for several years at "Glenmary" on the Susquehanna near Owego, New York. In 1846, after establishing with Morris The Home Journal, a graceful society paper, having disposed of his Owego home, he settled down to pass the rest of his life at his quiet country residence "Idlewild," on the Hudson. During his last years his powers were much impaired by an incurable malady, which rendered imperative frequent trips to milder climates, but this did not stop his tireless literary production.
His Literary Style. — (Lowell's Fable for Critics; Poe's Literati; Beers' Life of Willis; Richardson, II.; Whipple's Essays and Reviews, I.; Tuckerman's American Literature.) The publications of N. P. Willis, which number nearly thirty titles, cover an exceedingly wide literary range. They include books of travel, journals, letters, sketches, dramas, poetry, biography, ​criticism, ephemeral jottings, and one novel. The greater number of his books are collections of miscellaneous contributions to The Journal and other magazines.
In the words of George Ticknor Curtis, Willis was the master of "a marvellously easy, graceful, half-flippant and wholly enjoyable style of prose writing." Poe declared that "as a writer of sketches, properly called, Mr. Willis is unequalled. Sketches, especially of society, are his forte." The word "jaunty" has been overworked in connection with Willis, yet no word sums up more completely his personality. His greatest literary faults are his tendencies to over ornament and his fondness for superficial glitter.
His poems, written in smooth blank verse, are simple and impressive, often pathetic. The most popular of his Scriptural poems was "Absalom"; the best of his secular poems are "Unseen Spirits," greatly admired by Poe, and the "Belfry Pigeon."
Although nearly all of his writings were of an ephemeral nature, no author ever wrote with more painstaking care than Willis.
​"He bestowed upon everything he did, even upon slight and transient paragraphs, the most careful labor, making endless erasures and emendations. On an average he erased one line out of every three that he wrote, and on one page of his editorial writing there were but three lines left unaltered." — James Parton.
The author's best work is contained in Pencillings by the Way and in the thoughtful Letters from Under a Bridge, so highly praised by Lowell. It was Willis' father, the Rev. Nathaniel Willis, who, in 1827, established in Boston the well-known Youth's Companion.
Required Reading. — "Unseen Spirits," "The Widow of Nain." Selections from Pencillings by the Way.