Bryant on Scott: brilliant luminary

William Cullen Bryant was busy in the fall of 1872. His day job as editor-in-chief of the New-York Evening Post was hectic amidst a presidential election, he was steadily working on a translation of Homer, and was editing a book on the unique scenery of the United States called Picturesque America. Still, when he was invited to give a speech on the dedication of a statue of Walter Scott at New York City's Central Park, he accepted.

His address, given on November 4, 1872, as the statue by Scottish artist John Steell was unveiled, honored the Americans of Scottish descent who had led the efforts to honor their countryman author. Bryant, after all, was old enough to remember Scott before his death in 1832. He remembered that "this brilliant luminary of modern literature" first drew attention for his ballad "Lay of the Last Minstrel." His work, the poet said, was infused with the traditions of Scotland: "In it we had all their fire, their rapid narrative, their unlabored graces, their pathos, animating a story to which he had given a certain epic breadth and unity." He goes on:

No other metrical narratives in our language seem to me to possess an equal power of enchaining the attention of the reader, and carrying him on from incident to incident with such entire freedom from weariness.

Bryant offered specific praise on several of Scott's works, and even the author's choice to print inexpensive editions which allowed his work to circulate more widely. His "Waverley" novels too, Bryant claimed, began a new era in literature. Those works were written in such rapid succession, he recalled, that they were similar to the fireworks shot off on the Fourth of July in the United States. He continued the metaphor, describing how each volume rose from the horizon and burst with a brilliant hue. Bryant was especially pleased that his statue should grace Central Park, which had only recently become a designed public space. He pictured the spirit of Scott's wandering about the park, a veritable army protecting the statue. Bryant concludes:

And now, as the statue of Scott is set up in this beautiful park, which a few years since possessed no human associations historical or poetic connected with its shades, its lawns, its rocks, and its waters, these grounds become peopled with new memories. Henceforth the silent earth at this spot will be eloquent of old traditions, the airs that stir the branches of the trees will whisper of feats of chivalry to the visitor. All that vast crowd of ideal personages created by the imagination of Scott will enter with his sculptured effigy and remain... They will pass in endless procession around the statue of him in whose prolific brain they had their birth, until the language which we speak shall perish, and the spot on which we stand shall be again a woodland wilderness.

Bryant: O restless Sea

The July 28, 1860 issue of the New York Ledger included the poem "The Tides" by local poet William Cullen Bryant (who wrote the poem at his home in Roslyn, Long Island). It was one of several poems Bryant published in the Ledger that year, most of which had nature as a theme. Nature, after all, is one of Bryant's most frequent focuses, though he also often used maritime themes and images. In "The Tides," Bryant describes an evening by the ocean by personifying the Deep as an entity which desperately tries to reach the moon but fails with every attempt:

The moon is at her full, and, riding high,
         Floods the calm fields with light;
The airs that hover in the summer-sky
         Are all asleep to-night.

There comes no voice from the great woodlands round
         That murmured all the day;
Beneath the shadow of their boughs the ground
         Is not more still than they.

But ever heaves and moans the restless Deep;
         His rising tides I hear,
Afar I see the glimmering billows leap;
         I see them breaking near.

Each wave springs upward, climbing toward the fair
         Pure light that sits on high—
Springs eagerly, and faintly sinks, to where
         The mother-waters lie.

Upward again it swells; the moonbeams show
         Again its glimmering crest;
Again it feels the fatal weight below,
         And sinks, but not to rest.

Again and yet again; until the Deep
         Recalls his brood of waves;
And, with a sullen moan, abashed, they creep
         Back to his inner caves.

Brief respite! they shall rush from that recess
         With noise and tumult soon,
And fling themselves, with unavailing stress,
         Up toward the placid moon.

O restless Sea, that, in thy prison here,
         Dost struggle and complain;
Through the slow centuries yearning to be near
         To that fair orb in vain;

The glorious source of light and heat must warm
         Thy billows from on high,
And change them to the cloudy trains that form
         The curtain of the sky.

Then only may they leave the waste of brine
         In which they welter here,
And rise above the hills of earth, and shine
         In a serener sphere.

The literary influences of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The universe hangs on moral foundations...There is something in this universe which justifies William Cullen Bryant in saying, "Truth crushed to earth will rise again." There is something which justifies James Russell Lowell in saying, "Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne, yet that scaffold sways the future.

Martin Luther King, Jr. used these lines in his essay, "Going Forward by Going Backward," in April 1954, but he often reused the sentiment and the quotes. He references Bryant's 1839 poem "The Battlefield" and Lowell's 1844 poem "The Present Crisis." King frequently quoted Lowell in particular, including lines like "Beyond the dim unknown God keeps watch over His own."

In the 1840s, Lowell was at his strongest as an advocate for civil rights, particularly in the abolition of slavery in the United States. His poem, "The Present Crisis," remains recognized one of his greatest works and its title was later adopted for the official magazine of the NAACP (the name was chosen with its first issue in 1910, edited by W. E. B. DuBois). Elsewhere, Dr. King quoted from Lowell's equally powerful "Stanzas on Freedom": "They are slaves who fear to speak / For the fallen and the weak." As he said in 1954:

These words from the pen of James Russell Lowell are quite expressive of all that I intend to say this morning. Usually we think of slavery in the physical sense, as an institution inflicted on one group of people by another group. But there is another type of slavery which is probably more prevalent and certainly more injurious than physical bondage, namely mental slavery.

Among his other inspirations, Dr. King also often cited Henry David Thoreau and, in particular, Thoreau's essay on "Civil Disobedience." In his autobiography, he refers to first reading that essay as a college freshmen:

During my student days I read Henry David Thoreau's essay "On Civil Disobedience" for the first time. Here, in that courageous New Englander's refusal to pay his taxes and his choice of jail rather than support a war that would spread slavery's territory into Mexico, I made my first contact with the theory of nonviolent resistance... I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau.

*For this post, I am particularly indebted to an edition of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Vol. VI: "Advocate of the Social Gospel" (University of California Press, 2007), Clayborne Carson, senior editor.

Bryant: a day-dream by the dark blue deep

Though he wrote it in Italy in 1858, William Cullen Bryant did not publish his poem "A Day-Dream" until 1861, when the New York Ledger included it in its issue for January 5. Inspired by a walk through Naples, the poem expresses Bryant's love of Italy and its seashore:

A day-dream by the dark-blue deep;
   Was it a dream, or something more?
I sat where Posilippo's steep,
   With its gray shelves, o'erhung the shore.

On ruined Roman walls around
   The poppy flaunted, for 'twas May;
And at my feet, with gentle sound,
   Broke the light billows of the bay.

I sat and watched the eternal flow
   Of those smooth billows toward the shore,
While quivering lines of light below
   Ran with them on the ocean-floor:

Till, from the deep, there seemed to rise
   White arms upon the waves outspread,
Young faces, lit with soft blue eyes,
   And smooth, round cheeks, just touched with red.

Their long, fair tresses, tinged with gold,
   Lay floating on the ocean-streams,
And such their brows as bards behold—
   Love-stricken bards — in morning dreams.

Then moved their coral lips; a strain
   Low, sweet and sorrowful, I heard,
As if the murmurs of the main
   Were shaped to syllable and word.

"The sight thou dimly dost behold,
   Oh, stranger from a distant sky!
Was often, in the days of old,
   Seen by the clear, believing eye.

"Then danced we on the wrinkled sand,
   Sat in cool caverns by the sea,
Or wandered up the bloomy land,
   To talk with shepherds on the lea.

"To us, in storms, the seaman prayed,
   And where our rustic altars stood,
His little children came and laid
   The fairest flowers of field and wood.

"Oh woe, a long, unending woe!
   For who shall knit the ties again
That linked the sea-nymphs, long ago,
   In kindly fellowship with men?

"Earth rears her flowers for us no more;
   A half-remembered dream are we;
Unseen we haunt the sunny shore,
   And swim, unmarked, the glassy sea.

"And we have none to love or aid,
   But wander, heedless of mankind,
With shadows by the cloud-rack made,
   With moaning wave and sighing wind.

"Yet sometimes, as in elder days,
   We come before the painter's eye,
Or fix the sculptor's eager gaze,
   With no profaner witness nigh.

"And then the words of men grow warm
   With praise and wonder, asking where
The artist saw the perfect form
   He copied forth in lines so fair."

As thus they spoke, with wavering sweep
   Floated the graceful forms away;
Dimmer and dimmer, through the deep,
   I saw the white arms gleam and play.

Fainter and fainter, on mine ear,
   Fell the soft accents of their speech,
Till I, at last, could only hear
   The waves run murmuring up the beach.

At the time of the poem's composition, the newly-bearded Bryant was relieved that his wife had recovered from an illness. He was also happily surrounded by friends (including the sojourning Nathaniel Hawthorne and family). By the time of its publication, the poet was absorbed in the coming conflict that became the Civil War. His poetry soon took a more political turn.

Bryant and Dana: the stamp of your mind

The poet/novelist/critic Richard Henry Dana had written to William Cullen Bryant, praising his poem "The Tides." From his home in Roslyn, New York, Bryant wrote back on November 30, 1867:

I am glad that you can speak so well of my little poem, 'The Tides.' It was written in the mood in which I produce what seem to me my best verses; and I therefore was once quite disappointed when a friend told me that a person in whose judgment he seemed to have much reliance had told him that there was not much in it.

The poem, written in 1860, is about the relationship between the moon and the tides of a "restless Sea." It is a constant struggle for the tides as they reach to the moon: "Each wave springs upward, climbing toward the fair / Pure light that sits on high." Though the tide never reach their goal, they continue trying again day after day.

Both Dana and Bryant were greatly respected at this point in their careers, but they were also getting old (both were born in the previous century). Bryant reassured his friend that his life had been worthwhile: "I do not think that you ought to look, as you say, upon your life as a melancholy waste. You have impressed the stamp of your mind upon American literature, and have helped to make it what it is, and what it will yet be."

Yet, despite his reassurances, Bryant himself was equally despondent. He admitted that he had "little to say" about his life and only rarely ventured into the city. "I am in the main cheerful, but with some sad hours, and life to me has lost much of its flavor." Bryant also mentioned he was "trifling" with Homer (who he admits is not as perfect as critics say). In fact, in the following decade, Bryant would dedicate much of his time to translating both The Iliad and The Odyssey.

That mighty arm which none can stay

The patriotic optimism of William Cullen Bryant was nearly shattered by the Union loss at the First Battle of Bull Run. He had expected that federal troops would quickly destroy the rebellious Confederacy and normalcy would resume. He admitted that the loss would "take the conceit out of us" and, further, that it would "give the contest [e.g. the war] so serious a character that when we do settle it we shall insist on so crippling the slave interest that it will never lift its head again." On August 17, 1861, about a month after the battle, the New York Ledger published his poem, "Not Yet":

Oh country, marvel of the earth!
   Oh realm to sudden greatness grown!
The age that gloried in thy birth,
   Shall it behold thee overthrown?
Shall traitors lay that greatness low?
No, land of Hope and Blessing, No!

And we, who wear thy glorious name,
   Shall we, like cravens, stand apart,
When those whom thou hast trusted aim
   The death-blow at thy generous heart?
Forth goes the battle-cry, and lo!
Hosts rise in harness, shouting, No!

And they who founded, in our land,
   The power that rules from sea to sea,
Bled they in vain, or vainly planned
   To leave their country great and free?
Their sleeping ashes, from below,
Send up the thrilling murmur, No!

Knit they the gentle ties which long
   These sister States were proud to wear,
And forged the kindly links so strong
   For idle hands in sport to tear?
For scornful hands aside to throw?
No, by our fathers' memory, No!

Our humming marts, our iron ways,
   Our wind-tossed woods on mountain-crest,
The hoarse Atlantic, with its bays,
   The calm, broad Ocean of the West,
And Mississippi's torrent-flow,
And loud Niagara, answer, No!

Not yet the hour is nigh when they
   Who deep in Eld's dim twilight sit,
Earth's ancient kings, shall rise and say,
   "Proud country, welcome to the pit!
So soon art thou, like us, brought low!"
No, sullen group of shadows, No!

For now, behold, the arm that gave
   The victory in our fathers' day,
Strong, as of old, to guard and save—
   That mighty arm which none can stay—
On clouds above and fields below,
Writes, in men's sight, the answer, No!

*William Cullen Bryant: Author of America (2008) by Gilbert H. Muller provided much of the information in this post.

Bryant: a horror of illustrations

By 1854, William Cullen Bryant had been well-established as a poet for several decades. A publishing house in England offered to produce a complete collection of his poetry — with illustrations. A large illustrated book like this carried a high price tag, and Bryant worried it would not sell well. He wrote to his friend (fellow poet/editor) Richard Henry Dana on May 26, 1854:

As to my poems with illustrations; that is an idea of my bookseller. There is I suppose, a class of readers — at least of book-buyers, who like things of that kind; but the first thing which my bookseller... has promised to do, is to get out a neat edition of my poems in two volumes without illustrations. The illustrated edition is a subsequent affair, and though I have as great a horror of illustrations as you have, they will I hope hurt nobody. I am not even sure that I will look at them myself.

Included in the collection were many of Bryant's most famous poems. Many focus on nature and natural scenes, including "To the Fringed Gentian":

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.

Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest,

Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.

Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue—blue—as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.

I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.

The good old year is with the past

"A Song for New Year's Eve" (1857) by William Cullen Bryant:

Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay—
     Stay till the good old year,
So long companion of our way,
     Shakes hands, and leaves us here.
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One little hour, and then away.

The year, whose hopes were high and strong,
     Has now no hopes to wake;
Yet one hour more of jest and song
     For his familiar sake.
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One mirthful hour, and then away.

The kindly year, his liberal hands
     Have lavished all his store.
And shall we turn from where he stands,
     Because he gives no more?
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One grateful hour, and then away.

Days brightly came and calmly went,
     While yet he was our guest;
How cheerfully the week was spent!
     How sweet the seventh day's rest!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One golden hour, and then away.

Dear friends were with us, some who sleep
     Beneath the coffin-lid:
What pleasant memories we keep
     Of all they said and did!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One tender hour, and then away.

Even while we sing, he smiles his last,
     And leaves our sphere behind.
The good old year is with the past;
     Oh be the new as kind!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One parting strain, and then away.

William Cullen Bryant and a pair of yellow slippers

On November 13, 1852, William Cullen Bryant set sail from the United States. He is pictured at left before his trip. It was a long-anticipated journey and, by coincidence, one of his fellow passengers was the writer Horace Binney Wallace. As can be imagined, the two writers took with them a substantial collection of books to pass the time on their trip. However, upon arriving in London, their books were taken by customs officials. Wallace died just over a month later.

It was Bryant's fourth trip to Europe, but he went farther than before. From London, Bryant went to France, Italy, to Malta. He then went to Egypt, where he rode a camel across the desert into Syria. He also visited Jerusalem and Nazareth — "I bathed in the Jordan and in the Dead Sea," he reported to his friend Richard Henry Dana, Sr. — and then went back the way he came. The entire trip took him only seven months.

During his trip, Bryant grew a long beard; the image at right shows him about two years after his return. The change in his physical appearance was striking — and the poet took advantage. One story goes that he donned "a turban, a Turkish silk shirt and striped silk gown, which I got at Damascus, and a pair of yellow slippers." In his disguise, he spent 15 minutes talking to his next-door neighbor in broken English, without her knowing it was him.

Shortly after his return, Bryant published his first complete collection of poems. None seem to reference his camel ride or his Turkish garb.

Birthday parties for William Cullen Bryant

In rural Cummington, Massachusetts, William Cullen Bryant was born in a log cabin on November 3, 1794. Shortly thereafter, the family settled into a home atop a hill overlooking the Westfield River valley. Bryant's first job required him to walk to the next town every morning. On one of those walks, he saw the bird that inspired his one of his earliest recognized poems, "To a Waterfowl." Bryant later settled in New York state and edited several newspapers, including the New York Evening Post.

Bryant's 70th birthday was met with a gala event, thrown by the Century Club (he was a founding member). It drew the likes of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Henry Theodore Tuckerman, and John Greenleaf Whittier. Read Lowell's poem to Bryant here; Whittier's is here.

Bryant died in 1878 at the age of 83 but the appreciation of his poetry continued. Three decades after the above birthday party, several celebrated what would have been his 100th birthday in 1894. Held near the family homestead (which Bryant himself later purchased for himself) in Cummington, attendees included Parke Godwin (Bryant's biographer and a poet himself), Charles Eliot Norton, Charles Dudley Warner, and Julia Ward Howe. Howe apparently read the same poem for both the 70th and 100th birthday celebrations:

The age its latest decade shows,
The wondrous autumn near its close,
Revealing in its fateful span,
Unwonted ways of good to man.

Imprisoned vapor speeds its course,
Flies, quick with life th' electric force,
Nature's daemonic mysteries
Are angels now that win and please.

But dearer far to human ken,
The record of illustrious men,
The gifts conveyed in measures wrought
Of noble purpose and high thought.

Above the wild industrial din,
The race an hundred goals to win,
The gathered wealth, the rifled mine,
Still sounds the poet's song divine...

Tramping over the soil

August 5, 1850 may have been the most exciting day in American literary history. A band of now-recognized literary giants (and a couple less gigantic) climbed Monument Mountain in western Massachusetts. According to the publisher James T. Fields:

I have just got back to my desk from the Berkshire Hills where we have been tramping over the soil with Hawthorne; dining with Holmes... and sitting... with Melville, the author of 'Typee.'

Fields, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Herman Melville were joined by editor Evert Augustus Duyckinck and writer Cornelius Mathews. Once at the top, they read William Cullen Bryant's poem "Monument Mountain," and passed around a single silver mug frequently replenished with champagne (a prescription brought along for the trip by Dr. Holmes).

Perhaps most important to this incident is that it marks the beginning of the friendship of Hawthorne and Melville, who had never previously met. Melville was so taken by the author of the recently-published The Scarlet Letter that he would soon earn the dedication of Moby-Dick, which he was then writing. Some suggest that Melville's infatuation with Hawthorne was more than merely literary admiration and that, perhaps, the younger author was developing a romantic interest. "Where Hawthorne is known,” Melville wrote a few days later, “he seems to be deemed... a sequestered, harmless man, from whom any deep and weighty thing would hardly be anticipated—a man who means no meanings.”

Melville soon wrote a particularly flattering review of Mosses from an Old Manse, then old by about four years. His pseudonymous review, "Hawthorne and his Mosses," was published by Duyckinck in his weekly periodical Literary World. He was the first to notice that Hawthorne's tales were significantly dark: "shrouded in blackness, ten times black." Hawthorne wrote to Duyckinck later that month that he had "a progressive appreciation" of Melville. "No writer ever put the reality before his reader more unflinchingly than he does."

*Image above is courtesy of the Trustees of Reservations.

Bryant: I gaze in sadness

On July 27, 1866, Frances Fairchild Bryant died at Cedarmere, sick for some time with "an obstruction of the bile, and water on the heart," according to the family physician. She was just under 70 years old. Her husband, the poet/journalist William Cullen Bryant was devastated, though her death was not unexpected. He wrote, "I think the wedded life of few men has been happier than mine" and referred to her as "my beloved wife and my loving companion for forty-five years and more." She was buried at Roslyn Cemetery the day after her death.

Bryant acknowledged that he always sought his wife's advice on each poem he wrote. "I found its success with the public to be precisely in proportion to the impression it made upon her." In fact, many of Bryant's works were directly inspired by his wife, including "October, 1866," a poem which described his Frances's chronic illness. That poem also served as the final chapter for a loose memoir Bryant wrote of his life; it has never been published. As Bryant wrote in the first paragraph:

What I write here is intended for my own eyes and those of my children... that it may revive in their minds a memory pleasant, though sad, of one who was most dear to them and who was, in all respects an example of goodness such as is rarely seen.

In the poem "October, 1866," Bryant first describes his wife's burial. In the fall, he returns to Roslyn Cemetery to visit Frances's grave; he brings her flowers and remembers their time together. Unable to stand being at Cedarmere alone, a month after the poem, in November 1866, he had to leave the country altogether for a time.

'Twas when the earth in summer glory lay,
  We bore thee to thy grave; a sudden cloud
Had shed its shower and passed, and every spray
  And tender herb with pearly moisture bowed...

Autumn is here; we cull his lingering flowers
  And bring them to the spot where thou art laid;
The late-born offspring of his balmier hours,
  Spared by the frost, upon thy grave to fade.

The sweet calm sunshine of October, now
  Warms the low spot; upon its grassy mould
The purple oak-leaf falls; the birchen bough
  Drops its bright spoil like arrow-heads of gold...

I gaze in sadness; it delights me not
  To look on beauty which thou canst not see;
And, wert thou by my side, the dreariest spot
  Were, oh, how far more beautiful to me!

*Information for this post was gleaned, in part, from Gilbert H. Muller's William Cullen Bryant: Author of America as well as Under Open Sky: Poets on William Cullen Bryant, edited by Nobert Krapf.

He loved to do good by stealth

On May 17, 1870, the poet/journalist William Cullen Bryant stood before the New York Historical Society to deliver his "Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck." Verplanck, a politician and occasional writer associated with the Knickerbocker group, had died about two months earlier at the age of 83.

Verplanck was also the Historical Society's vice-president at the time of his death. Bryant began his speech by noting how their late colleague was part of the framework of the organization. "It is as if one of the columns which support a massive building had been suddenly taken away," he said. Bryant then described Verplanck's life, his ancestry, his education, his career. Verplanck, Bryant noted, had given his first public speech at the age of 18, a patriotic one for Independence Day.

Bryant said that Verplanck wrote one of the earliest reviews of his poetry. In 1824, when Bryant was "an unknown literary adventurer" (his words), Verplanck positively reviewed him and encouraged further writing. At the same time, Verplanck began his career as a politician, elected to Congress several times (while in Washington, he promoted copyright protections for American writers), later a member of the New York state legislature and, later, edited an American edition of the dramatic works of Shakespeare. He contributed to the North American Review, served as "governor" of a city hospital, wrote critical reviews of works by Washington Irving and others, was vice-chancellor of a university, wrote satirical pamphlets, served as president of the board of immigration, founded The Talisman journal with Bryant, and gave speeches on history, art, and literature. Verplanck was one of many who successfully wove a life of letters into a life of politics.

Bryant praised Verplanck professionally and personally. "He loved to do good by stealth," Bryant said, emphasizing his friend's humility. Verplanck's last words, according to Bryant, were to a doctor. He asked where the doctor had studied. "Paris," he answered. Verplanck said nothing further, rolled over, and died.

*The image above is from the Brady-Handy Photograph Collection at the Library of Congress.

Irving and Bryant

William Cullen Bryant paid homage to his fellow New York writer Washington Irving in honor of the latter's birthday on April 3, 1860. Irving had died only five months earlier and Bryant was invited to present a speech by the New York Historical Society. He began:

We have come together, my friends, on the birthday of an illustrious citizen of our republic, but so recent is his departure from among us, that our assembling is rather an expression of sorrow for his death than of congratulation that such a man was born into the world. His admirable writings, the beautiful products of his peculiar genius, remain, to be the enjoyment of the present and future generations.

As early as 1827, Irving showed an appreciation for Bryant's poetry. In a letter to his friend Henry Brevoort, he wrote, "I have been charmed... with what I have seen of the writings of Bryant," calling him one of the "masters of the magic of poetical language."

Irving and Bryant were both members of the Bread and Cheese Club, an informal social group which met at the Washington Hotel on Broadway in New York. Other members included the poet Fitz-Greene Halleck, the politician Gulian Verplanck, and the novelist James Fenimore Cooper.

In 1832, Irving served as the editor to the collected Poems of William Cullen Bryant, An American in London. In his dedication, dated March 1832, Irving praised Bryant as "essentially American." The poems, he said, are "characterised... by a purity of moral, an elevation and refinement of thought, and a terseness and elegance of diction." The highest praise Irving could offer was saying Bryant's poems appear "to belong to the best school of English poetry" and added that if the British liked Cooper, they'd love Bryant.

*The images depict a young Washington Irving (upper image) and a young William Cullen Bryant (lower image).

The Twenty-Seventh of March

The poet William Cullen Bryant once wrote, "I think the wedded life of few men has been happier than mine." He married Frances Fairchild in 1821, and they experienced a long and happy marriage. Bryant was so enamored of her, in fact, that he wrote a birthday poem in her honor, "The Twenty-Seventh of March" (she was born March 27, 1797):

Oh, gentle one, thy birthday suns should rise
Amid a chorus of the merriest birds
That ever sang the stars out of the sky
In a June morning. Rivulets should send
A voice of gladness from their winding paths,
Deep in o'erarching grass, where playful winds,
Stirring the loaded stems, should shower the dew
Upon the glassy water. Newly blown
Roses, by thousands, to the garden walks
Should tempt the loitering moth and diligent bee.
The longest, brightest day in all the year
Should be the day on which thy cheerful eyes
First opened on the earth, to make thy haunts
Fairer and gladder for thy kindly looks.

The full poem is much longer and eloquently shows his love for her.

In her later years, she was struck by illness. She died in 1866 at the age of 70, a ripe old age for women in the 19th century. Even so, a day after her death, Bryant wrote to a relative: "Her life seemed to close to me prematurely, so useful was she and so much occupied in doing good, and yet she was in her seventieth year, having been born on the 27th of March, 1797. It is now more than forty-five years since we were married -- a long time, as the world goes, for husband and wife to live together. Bitter as the separation is, I give thanks that she has been spared to me so long, and that for nearly half a century I have had the benefit of her counsel and her example."

Memorializing James Fenimore Cooper

James Fenimore Cooper died in September 1851. Despite a slightly abrasive personality, Cooper was immediately recognized as an American literary icon. So, about four weeks later, the editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold presented a resolution to the New York Historical Society to honor Cooper.

Calling him "an illustrious associate and countryman," "a masterly illustrator of our history," someone with "imminent genius" who was "honorable, brave, sincere, generous," Griswold helped organize a committee that became a veritable who's who of "Who are they??" — mostly-forgotten literary critics and writers: Parke Godwin, Fitz-Greene Halleck, George Pope Morris, James Kirke Paulding, Epes Sargent, Gulian Verplanck and, of course, the ubiquitous Nathaniel Parker Willis.

After a couple delays, the major ceremony was held on February 25, 1852 at Metropolitan Hall on Broadway (it was two years old at the time and would burn down two years later). The main address was given by Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State. Griswold himself held the role of co-secretary in organizing the event, though he may have served as Master of Ceremonies (I haven't seen evidence for this yet).

Remembrance letters were sent by Richard Henry Dana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Francis Parkman (and a whole bunch of obscure folks). Also speaking was Washington Irving, a somewhat controversial selection. Cooper and Irving were recognized early on for being progenitors of American writing, but they were not good friends. Cooper had antagonized Irving, once calling him a "double dealer" with low moral qualities, though Irving himself showed no animosity in return.

Irving later admitted his speech at Cooper's memorial was poorly-delivered. After him spoke William Cullen Bryant, who mentioned "an unhappy coolness" between Irving and Cooper; Irving was hoping that coolness would not come up. Even so, the event was recorded as a success; Elizabeth Oakes Smith was in the audience and, allegedly, was brought to tears. "The whole affair succeeded quite well," recorded Griswold.

Not quite so well, Dr. Griswold.

The committee hoped the event would raise enough money to honor Cooper with a large public statue. They fell short of their goal, raising less than $700. They gave the proceeds to another effort which led to a Cooper monument in Lakewood Cemetery — a marble pillar over 20-feet tall, surmounted by a statue of the author's most famous character, Leather-Stocking (a.k.a. Natty Bumpo).

 

*The image is from the James Fenimore Cooper Society.