'0^ 'oK /\ ^^.' J\ itt.- /% iw-- / V • •s^* A* ''^%fA". •^Va' >. c*" 0^ o'JL-^. "^o. ^*^ ..^" .-^' ^ C" .1^:5^^' °o .-J^^ »-:«^^ ^-t, C° ."L^^^rL: '. o ^^^jr»^ - Harge^^aper €tiitton THE LIFE OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH BY FERRIS GREENSLET THE LIFE OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH BY FERRIS GREENSLET CAMBRIDGE printeD at ^\)t HiberstUe prefifg MDCCCCVIII f €)V '^ .L> (a^ COPYRIGHT 1908 BY FERRIS GREENSLBT /{*^(\ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October IQ08 i O-^fi Y \"\ iUpt;A<»v ,f CONGRESS^ UUT I 1908 U^'Ut r^u v'/'ti^ i COPY A. JFitae i^unbtcb Copieij j^rinteft t^.^ H K ^ PREFACE To all the friends of Mr. Aldrich who have generously placed in my hands the letters and memorials on which the following pages are grounded my cordial thanks are due. With the exception of the series of letters to Edwin Booth, and one other, all of Mr. Aldrich's more important corre- spondence has been collected and read. Yet the loss of the letters to Booth is a serious one. If any reader of the book should chance to know of their whereabouts he will confer a favor by communicating it. To Mrs. Aldrich my obligation is of the deepest. The fine helpfulness that she gave through so many years to the poet has but taken a new form, in the active and resourceful aid that has been at the service of his bio- grapher. F. G. _l CONTENTS CHAPTER I. "TOM BAILEY" i CHAPTER II. THE HALL BEDROOM i8 CHAPTER HI. ARRIVAL 50 CHAPTER IV. BEACON HILL 78 CHAPTER V. PONKAPOG m CHAPTER VI. "THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 141 CHAPTER VII. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 161 CHAPTER VIII. THE LAST YEARS 216 CHAPTER IX. ALDRICH'S POETRY 240 BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 INDEX 293 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Frontispiece From a photograph by Cox THE "NUTTER HOUSE" 2 From a sketch by Launt Thompson THOMAS DARLING BAILEY —" GRANDFATHER NUTTER " 6 From a daguerreot5rpe THE HOUSE OF THE BAD BOY IN NEW ORLEANS 10 From a sketch by Albert Phelps TOM BAILEY IN REGIMENTALS 14 From a daguerreotype SARAH ABBA BAILEY ALDRICH 18 From a daguerreotype "105 CLINTON PLACE," NEW YORK (ss WEST EIGHTH STREET) 22 From a drawing by E. C. Peixotto ALDRICH ABOUT 1854 26 From a ferrotype N. P. WILLIS IN 1856 36 LAUNT THOMPSON 44 From a caricature by George Arnold EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN ABOUT i86i 56 ALDRICH IN 1863 64 From a medallion by Launt Thompson X ILLUSTRATIONS EDWIN BOOTH 72 From a drawing by G. H. Boughton ALDRICH IN 1866 78 From a ferrotype WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS IN 1866 82 From a ferrotype 84 PINCKNEY STREET 88 ALDRICH IN 1868 92 MARK TWAIN IN 1874, DRAWN BY HIMSELF " 114 . THE FIRST LIBRARY AT PONKAPOG 126 From a sketch by C. Graham BAYARD TAYLOR AND A FACSIMILE OF HIS MANUSCRIPT 136 ALDRICH IN 1880 140 THE OFFICE OF THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" DURING THE EDITORSHIP OF ALDRICH 144 59 MOUNT VERNON STREET 152 THE LIBRARY AT 59 MOUNT VERNON STREET 158 THE STUDY AT 59 MOUNT VERNON STREET 166 THE GRAVE OF EDWIN BOOTH 174 With a facsimile of the manuscript of the inscription prepared by Aldrich "THE CRAGS," TENANT'S HARBOR 190 From a sketch by Talbot Aldrich FACSIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE SHAW MEMORIAL ODE 196 With a portion of a note from Augustus Saint-Gaudens ILLUSTRATIONS xi REDMAN FARM, PONKAPOG 212 MISS NANCE O'NEIL AS "JUDITH" 230 FACSIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF "FRED- ERICKSBURG" 240 "IDENTITY," WITH THE DRAWING BY ELIHU VEDDER 256 ALDRICH'S BOOK PLATE 260 Designed by Talbot Aldrich THE LIFE OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH CHAPTER I "TOM BAILEY" 1836-1852 FOR those who knew him the death of Thomas Bailey Aldrich carried a poignancy that seldom attends the passing of those who have lived out their threescore years and ten. He was a lover of life. Like all poets of his sensi- tive kind, he knew the melancholy thought of dissolution, — the end of pleasantness, of warmth and light, — but even after the great sorrow of his last years the aging anticipa- tion of death was alien from him. Lowell himself was not more remarkable for perennial youthfulness, and far more than Lowell, Aldrich looked astonishingly young, — "a habit," as he liked to say, "acquired in early youth." Blond, erect, and ruddy, with a peculiar boyish alertness of bearing, he seemed at seventy to defy mortality, to be himself as immortal as a lyric. To his biographer, curiously inquiring into the vanished days of that singularly fortunate Hfe, the image that over- lays all others is that of "Tom Bailey," the bad boy, who was yet "not such a very bad boy." The exquisite lyric 2 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH poet, the inimitable story-writer, the accomplished editor, the witty, urbane man of letters, all take in the mind from that Portsmouth boyhood a coloring of sincerity and soundness, of mischief and mirth, which makes his whole life seem not only its fulfilment but in a queer sense its prolongation. It is, then, with a certain surprise that one becomes aware of the wide segment of American literature, the variety of intellectual movements, that his life touched. And it is precisely in this that one prime interest of his letters lies. Through them, as through the candid eyes of Tom Bailey, we watch the flow and ebb of the literary tides of more than half a century. The safe fuU of old letters that has been the centre of the writer's daily thought for more than a year echoes with mute voices and teems with ghostly life. These packets of yellowing letters, fuU of friendship, the casual records of the details of daily living, of work and play, of pleasant and sad times, embody the very form and pressure of periods and manners and opinions that have gone irrevoca- bly into the night. Old Portsmouth, with her parochial personages, the privateers of 1812 still rotting at her dreamy wharves ; literary Bohemia in the brownstone New York of N. P. Willis and General George P. Morris, of Fanny Fern and Ada Clare ; Boston, in her Augustan age, when Longfellow and Lowell and Holmes might be met any night at dinner ; the eighties and nineties, prehistoric decades of the woodcut and the dialect story, — all live "TOM BAILEY" 3 again in these letters with a life that is made the more convincing as the record advances unbroken and veracious ahnost to the very hour. More impressive still, perhaps, is the friendship of the letters. The series begins in an age when there was ampler leisure than now for the cilltivation of the ancient art of being friends. In the letters to and from Bayard Taylor with their bounteous humanity, in those from Edwin Booth with their undertone of tragic gloom, their pathetic eagerness for affection and mirth, in the long, reciprocal, diverse-faceted correspondence with Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, Fields, Stedman, Mr. Howells, Mr. Clemens, Mr. Woodberry, Mr. Gilder, and many more, there is a warmth of feeling, a richness of interest and ripeness of expression that make one ashamed for the meagre com- munications that are the contemporaneous type of the friendly letter. Yet Aldrich was not a bom letter- writer ; he never, like Lowell or Stevenson, cultivated letter-writing as a fine art, still less did he ever pour out his " soul" in lyrical effusion, like, say, Lafcadio Hearn. He wrote a letter, when he did write one, chiefly because there was some compelling occa- sion to do so, but never perfunctorily, never without the magnetic personal touch, the sincere friendly expression, and rarely without some sparkle of his inextinguishable wit. His letters are not such as he would wish to have printed by themselves as a substantive part of his " Com- plete Works," nor do they enlarge upon his views of things- 4 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH in-general with quite sufficient assurance to play the cus- tomary part in a "Life and Letters" ; but if the reader will let them have their way with him, there is no intimacy of temperament, no significance of event, no hue of back- ground that they will not disclose. Throughout this book, after the point at which the correspondence begins, the story of Aldrich's life and work and friendships shall be told, so far as possible, in his own words, in the words of those yellowing, mystically communicative old letters. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the only child of Elias Taft Aldrich and Sarah Abba Bailey Aldrich, was born Novem- ber II, 1836, in the old seaport town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Both the Aldriches and the Baileys were of sound colonial stock. In the male line the Aldrich descent can be traced back through seven generations to a certain George Aldrich, who came from Derbyshire to the Massa- chusetts Bay Colony in the middle of the seventeenth cen- tury, and died there in 1682. The Aldriches were chiefly men of affairs, though representatives of the family with a tincture of the humanities were not wanting. Writing in 1898 to Miss S. M. Francis, who was preparing a sketch of his life to accompany a selection from his works, Aldrich said : " An old aunt of mine used to say that that Henry Al- drich, who wrote a humorous poem giving five reasons why a man should drink, was our ancestor. He was a schol- arly and musical party, and I am ready to adopt him." Unfortunately this Henry Aldrich — who was a Canon of "TOM BAILEY" 5 Christ Church, Oxford, and described by Macaulay as "a polite though not profound scholar, and genial, hos- pitable gentleman" — died unmarried in 1710 and could have been nothing more than a collateral kinsman of the poet. It is pleasant, however, to think of him as of the family. One point at least there was of close kinship between Henry and Thomas Bailey Aldrich : both were ardent and consistent pipe- smokers. It is related of the former that some Oxford undergraduates once laid a wager that he would be found smoking at a certain preternaturally early hour in the morning. Going to see, they found him not smoking, indeed, but in the act of refilling his pipe. One of the most admired of his musical compositions was a catch *'to be sung by four men smoking their pipes not more difficult to sing than diverting to hear." Before taking leave of this "genial, hospitable gentleman," the five rea- sons for drinking, with their Aldrichian flavor, may not come amiss : — "Si bene quid memini, sunt causae quinque bibendi: Hospitis adventus, praesens sitis atque futura, Aut vini bonitas, aut quaelibet altera causa." That is to say : there are five good and sufficient reasons for drinking, — the arrival of a guest, present thirst or future, excellence of wine, or any other reason. As is not uncommonly the case, Aldrich seems always to have attached a certain special importance to his maternal ancestry. The Baileys traced their descent to a John Bailey, 6 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH who flourished at Grantham in Lincolnshire early in the seventeenth century. He it was, perhaps, who married the "creature soft and fine From Spain, some say, some say from France; Within her veins leapt blood like wine — She led her Roundhead Lord a dance!" — to whom Aldrich liked imaginatively to trace a certain duaUty of temperament in himself : — "In Grantham church they lie asleep; Just where, the verger may not know — Strange that two hundred years should keep The old ancestral fires aglow. In me these two have met again; To each my nature owes a part; To one, the cool and reasoning brain, To one, the quick, unreasoning heart!" To call the roll of the collateral ancestors of both the Aldriches and the Baileys is to enumerate many of the most distinguished names of the old colony. We find among them Stanleys, Pickerings, Adamses, Thayers, Putnams, Cogswells, and Rolfes — not to mention the indefatigable John Alden. In an early letter, written in 1854, Aldrich himself touches upon his ancestry with a characteristic mingling of irony and pride. "I could boast of a long line of ancestors," he wrote, "but won't. They are of no pos- sible benefit to me, save it is pleasant to think that none of them were hanged for criminals or shot for traitors, but that many of them are sleeping somewhere near Bunker Hill. . . . My genealogical tree, you will observe, grew up THOMAS DARLING BAILEY ("Grandfather Nutter") L "TOM BAILEY" 7 some time after the Flood, with other vegetation. I will spare myself this warm day the exercise of climbing up its dead branches and come down to one of the lower * sprigs,' but by no means * the last leaf upon the tree.' " Elias Taft Aldrich, the poet's father, was born in 1807 at Livermore Falls, Maine. He seems early in life to have become the master of some little property and gone into business in Bangor as a kind of free lance, — common in those adventurous days, — with interests in lumber and in the coastwise trade. In the course of his ventures, soon after the death of the wife he had married when little more than a boy, he visited Portsmouth, and there, in the way of business, met Thomas Darling Bailey, the admirable "Grandfather Nutter" of "The Story of a Bad Boy." Mr. Bailey took his new friend home to dinner and intro- duced him to his three daughters. The eldest of these, Sarah Abba, was a girl of eighteen, who, according to a pleasant family tradition, still played with her dolls, and was doubtless expected to remain decorously mute in the presence of company. Yet from their first meeting Elias Aldrich found her attractive. In February, 1833, they were married and went to live in Bangor. In the fall of 1836, after three years, in which Elias Aldrich's affairs seem not altogether to have prospered, they returned to Ports- mouth, and there, a few weeks later, Thomas Bailey Aldrich came into the world. He was born in the house at 61 Court Street, in which his grandfather was temporarily living. When he was but six 8 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH weeks old he was taken to live in the house at number forty — now forty- five — on the same street, which was to be a lifelong symbol of "home" to him, and which he has made familiar to hundreds of thousands of readers as the " Nutter House" in "The Story of a Bad Boy." Very slightly idealized, it is there described to perfection : — " Imagine a low-studded structure, with a wide hall run- ning through the middle. At your right hand, as you enter, stands a tall black mahogany clock, looking like an Egyp- tian mummy set up on end. On each side of the hall are doors (whose knobs, it must be confessed, do not turn very easily), opening into large rooms wainscoted and rich in wood-carvings about the mantelpieces and cornices. The walls are covered with pictured paper, representing land- scapes and sea-views. In the parlor, for example, this en- livening figure is repeated all over the room : A group of English peasants, wearing Italian hats, are dancing on a lawn that abruptly resolves itself into a sea-beach, upon which stands a flabby fisherman (nationality unknown), quietly hauling in what appears to be a small whale, and totally regardless of the dreadful naval combat going on just beyond the end of his fishing-rod. On the other side of the ships is the mainland again, with the same peasants dancing. Our ancestors were very worthy people, but their wall-papers were abominable. "There are neither grates nor stoves in these quaint chambers, but splendid open chimney-places, with room enough for the corpulent back-log to turn over comfortably "TOM BAILEY" 9 on the polished andirons. A wide staircase leads from the hall to the second story, which is arranged much hke the first. Over this is the garret. I need not tell a New England boy what a museum of curiosities is the garret of a well- regulated New England house of fifty or sixty years' standing. Here meet together, as if by some preconcerted arrangement, all the broken-down chairs of the household, all the spavined tables, all the seedy hats, all the intoxicated looking boots, all the split walking sticks that have retired from business, 'weary with the march of life.' The pots, the pans, the trunks, the bottles — who may hope to make an inventory of the numberless odds and ends collected in this bewildering lumber-room? But what a place it is to sit of an afternoon with the rain pattering on the roof! what a place in which to read ' Gulliver's Travels,' or the famous adventures of Rinaldo Rinaldini!"^ At a very early age, however, Tom Bailey was obliged to absent himself for a while from the felicity of this pleasing abode. When he was some eighteen months old Elias * This house is now the Aldrich Memorial Museum. Money for its purchase was raised by popular subscription, and through the piety and devotion of the poet's family its interior has been restored with the utmost fidelity. There to-day the visitor may gaze in the very mirrors that reflected Tom Bailey's blithe features, or turn the pages of the books that entranced him on rainy afternoons. In the quaint colonial garden may be found every flower mentioned in his poetry, while in the fireproof room that has been erected may be seen his priceless collection of auto- graph manuscripts, first editions, and literary relics. A visit here will better acquaint the reader with the background of the poet's youth than many pages of biographical rhetoric. I lo THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Aldrich grew restless, as was his wont, and, taking his little family, went out into the wider world to seek a wider for- tune. For three years he seems to have wandered far, so far that when he was eighteen his son wrote, perhaps with a little use of hyperbole, that in infancy he had visited every state in the Union. In 1841 the family settled in New York, living at 41 North Moore Street, just around the comer from Hudson Street, where in 1843 Laurence Hutton, one of Aldrich's intimates of later years, was bom. For four years, with long summers in Portsmouth, the Aldriches continued to dwell in New York. Finally, in 1846, in com- pany with Charles L. Frost, who had married another of Mr. Bailey's daughters, Elias Aldrich moved with his family to New Orleans, and invested his little property in a commission business, "so securely that he was never able to get more than half of it out again." For three years this was our poet's home, and it is perhaps not too fantastic a speculation to suppose that from those early days in the old Creole city, with its strange, tropical beauty, its exotic sounds and scents, he drew imaginative clues to a richer and more romantic life than was commonly to be observed among the dwellers upon the North Shore, with their preoccupations, commercial and transcendental. In the spring and fall the boy would be taken on trading- trips up and down the Mississippi, and to the end of his life he could vividly recall the weird-flaring torches of the negroes who came down to light their landings. And in a late letter there is a lively remembrance of the " sweet blond "TOM BAILEY" n saints" in the New Orleans Cathedral. The psychologizing critic may like to fimd in these early impressions the root of that somewhat exotic impulse that later begat the aro- matic verse of his "Cloth of Gold." And, perhaps, in his childish relations with a subject race, — the reader will recall the affectionate kicking of little black Sam in "The Story of a Bad Boy," — we may find one secondary source of a certain amiable and engaging assurance that always marked his manner. As the boy grew older the limitations of Southern schools began to be evident, and finally, in the spring of 1849, he was taken back to Portsmouth to prepare to enter Harvard College. In the autumn the calamity of death first touched his life. In September Ehas Aldrich set out to return by himself to New Orleans. After his departure Mrs. Aldrich was tormented nightly by dreams of death and disaster to her husband. Unable to withstand her anxiety, she jour- neyed hastily to New Orleans. There she found that Elias Aldrich had died of the cholera on October 6, on a Missis- sippi River steamer, at Memphis. Three months later she came home, bringing her husband's body to be interred in Greenwood Cemetery.^ In the mean time the boy had been put to school in Ports- mouth, and then began those golden boyish years in the Nutter House that have been immortalized in one of the ' The date of Elias Aldrich's death has hitherto been variously stated in print as 1850, 1851, and 1852. The date of 1849 is substantiated by the records of the Cemetery. 12 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH best books of its kind in the world. " The Story of a Bad Boy" is of course autobiography of the more generous sort, in which incidents are combined, arranged, and idealized to make a reality more real than real life. The sequence of the events described in it bears little or no relation to the chronology of its author's own boyish life. Yet the Wahrheit of the book is vastly in excess of its Dichtung. It is simply a composed picture of vivid boyhood memories. The present vn-iter has conferred with two survivors of the circle of Tom Bailey's Portsmouth schoolmates, and has found their memories of boyish pranks to be substantially the same as those related in the book. The private theatri- cals in the Bailey barn, the Fourth of July escapade, the cruises to the river's mouth, the snow fort on "Slatter's Hill" and the frigid warfare waged there, all had their prototypes in fact. Even the boyish love-affair with Miss Nelly, and the death of Binny Wallace, — the pathetic page of perfect art that Hngers longest in the reader's mem- ory, — had their basis in actuality. Nor is this, indeed, very remarkable. The doings of boys the world over show a singular homogeneity of conception, and it is the typical and universal character of Tom Bailey's escapades that is their most enduring attraction. His schoolmates' memories of Tom Bailey have one sig- nificant concurrence: to a man, and almost in the same language, they speak of a certain distinction, a magnetic reserve about him; they say he was a "marked boy." He was a good fighter, blessed with a kind of "terrier cour- "TOM BAILEY" 13 age" in fistic emergencies, a cool hand at a nocturnal prank or a snowball siege, yet he seems to have gone into adventures with a certain detachment, — the typical bard at a battle. In part, no doubt, these recollections of his boyish companions have taken an ex post facto coloring. Yet no one who knew him, and is endowed with a sense for the unity of personality, can doubt their essential truth. Even in those days he was a reader, a little dreamer, and moved in a world peopled with the folk of the imagination. The passage in "The Story of a Bad Boy" describing his little hall-room in the " Nutter House," the books he found there and the use he made of them, is of the first biogra- phic importance : — "A washstand in the corner, a chest of carved mahogany drawers, a looking-glass in a filigreed frame, and a high- backed chair studded with brass nails like a coffin, consti- tuted the furniture. Over the head of the bed were two oak shelves, holding perhaps a dozen books — among which were ' Theodore, or The Peruvians,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' an odd volume of 'Tristram Shandy,' Baxter's 'Saint's Rest,' and a fine EngHsh edition of the 'Arabian Nights,' with six hundred woodcuts by Harvey. "Shall I ever forget the hour when I first overhauled these books? I do not allude especially to Baxter's 'Saint's Rest,' which is far from being a Hvely work for the young, but to the 'Arabian Nights,' and particularly to 'Robinson Crusoe.' The thrill that ran into my fingers' ends then has 14 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH not run out yet. Many a time did I steal up to this nest of a room, and, taking the dog's-eared volume from its shelf, glide off into an enchanted realm, where there were no lessons to get and no boys to smash my kite. In a lidless trunk in the garret I subsequently unearthed another motley collection of novels and romances, embracing the adventures of Baron Trenck, Jack Sheppard, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Charlotte Temple — all of which I fed upon like a bookworm. " I never come across a copy of any of those works with- out feeling a certain tenderness for the yellow- haired little rascal who used to lean above the magic pages hour after hour, religiously believing every word he read, and no more doubting the reality of Sindbad the Sailor, or the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance, than he did the existence of his own grandfather." Throughout his Portsmouth boyhood young Aldrich attended the school kept by Samuel De Merritt, a famous schoolmaster in his day, and it is pleasant to recall that after thirty years his old teacher wrote in quaint sincere phrase: "With the hundreds of pupils who have been under my instruction there is not one for whom I entertain a higher regard and a purer affection than Thomas Bailey Aldrich." The boy's poetical education kept an equal pace. The spirit of the history-haunted town, with its hints and flavors of the ocean, its intimations of foreign shores, its refined, sad old houses, blended with his memories of iUM BAILEY IN REGIMENTALS "TOM BAILEY" 15 exotic New Orleans, and with the imagined landscapes of Arabia and Spain, deeply stirred his boyish imagination and soon bore fruit in rhyme. His earliest verses, " To the Moon," have not been preserved, but enough specimens of his juvenilia can be recovered to show their quality. Par- ticularly interesting are "Santonio," an attempt at heroic poetry, printed in the poets' corner of the "Portsmouth Journal" for June 19, 1851, when he was less than fifteen years old, and some humorous- pathetic stanzas on the destruction of the old Atkinson house across the way, written about a year later, and to be found printed in Brewster's "Rambles about Portsmouth." Neither is a very remarkable production, but the former has its interest for the correctness of the versification that embodies its imitative adolescent fervor; while the latter, in its crude commingling of pathos and humor, is perhaps prophetic of that exquisite blending of light and shade which is a salient quality of his mature work. But like most pleasant things, these golden Portsmouth days with their happy pastimes and poetic dreaming were to have an early end. EHas Aldrich had left a Httle pro- perty, but scarcely enough for the adequate support of mo- ther and son. When, therefore, the time came for the boy to go to college, and there began to be sober consideration of ways and means, the project came to seem of dubious practicability. In the event he gave up the prospect of going to Cambridge to study literature with Professor Longfellow, and accepted instead a clerkship in the i6 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH counting-room of his uncle, Charles Frost, in New York. Yet until he was thirty-five years old, — "Nel mezzo del cammin del nostra vita," — his summer home continued to be in Portsmouth. This chapter can draw to its close no more fitly than with a por- tion of a letter that Aldrich wrote in 1883, regretting his inability to be present at a Portsmouth reunion : — " Dear Mr. President : — When a mother has so large a family as Portsmouth has, a son more or less scarcely counts ; but keenly sensible of their loss are the sons who find themselves unable to join the other children, when the impulse seizes them to fly back for a moment to the dear old lady's apron-strings. "I write in behalf of one of those unavoidably-absent sons — a prodigal who would be as glad as he of the para- ble to get home again. His loyalty to that spot of earth where his eyes first opened on sea and sky, and where, on his arrival, he lost as Httle time as possible in rigging up a fishing-rod for the smelt at the end of Long Wharf — his loyalty, I repeat, is not to be challenged. Though he has more or less been known as a Bad Boy, he has never been known as an ungrateful one. So far as his slight gift went he has sung the praises of the Old Town by the Sea; in prose and verse he has sung them, until he was sometimes afraid that good folk might weary of the strain. Now and then he has veiled Portsmouth in a fictitious name, but his affection for her never went veiled ; and nothing has ever touched him more nearly than when some book or page "TOM BAILEY" 17 of his has caused the stranger to turn aside from his route of travel in order to take a stroll through the streets of Rivermouth. "The beautiful old town in which we all passed our childhood ! How her lovehness deepens and freshens year by year, as if the waters of the Piscataqua, sparkling at her lip, had their rise in those Fountains of Perpetual Youth which Ponce de Leon sought ! How our purest memories have crystallized about her ! What a strong sentiment it is that periodically impels us to flock back to her from every point of the compass — making her the Mecca of loving pilgrimages ! We who are Portsmouth born and bred never get wholly away from the glamour of early association. One night, a year ago, lying half-awake in a hostelry in Russia, I fancied that I heard the nine o'clock bell tolling in the steeple of the Old North Church, and was conscious of being out rather late ! — Just as it used to be ! " One May day, some years after, he wrote to Stedman : — " The Spring has served me as the girls did n't use to — she has failed to keep her appointment with me. Shall you not go to Newcastle this summer ? It is a magical place, a fairyland where I seem to have left my boyhood. If you ever see a little sl\ade wandering along shore, picking up shells, and dreaming of a big ship to come and carry him across the blue water, you will know it is I. If you caU out 'Hi! young Bailey!' (the name I used to go by) perhaps I'U come to you." CHAPTER II THE HALL BEDROOM I 85 2-1 860 PERHAPS not the least propitious fortuity of Aldrich's fortunate life was the chance that sent him to New York rather than to Boston or Cambridge to spend his early years as a young commencer in literature. His finely individual talent would have gained little from the over- nutriment of academic studies ; and in Boston in the fifties the close, bright risen stars of Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Emerson, and Whittier were likely to dazzle the eye and silence or constrain the song of the poetic beginner. In New York the chief literary potentates of the time, Bry- ant, HaUeck, Willis, and General George P. Morris, were scarcely of such magnitude as to produce this pernicious result. There was, too, in New York, a group of young men of poetic talent, in some cases of poetic genius, ready to welcome and cheer any newcomer in the Muse's Bower. And, finally, there was in the tone of this circle a certain worldliness, a disposition to render unto Caesar the things that are indubitably his, which was an excellent corrective for the ineffective other-worldliness that was likely to befog the young New England poet in those years, and of which Aldrich, with an odd contradiction of the essential quality SARAH ABBA BAILEY ALDRICH THE HALL BEDROOM 19 of his genius, had ahready, in his early attempts in verse, shown symptoms. Some of his finest and most characteris- tic poems were written during his residence in New York, and bear the clear impress of the Metropolitan Muse. The circumstances of his abode there were happily cal- culated to give him a full measure of freedom to share the various Hfe of the city, yet with no lack of those safeguard- ing domestic ties that the young urban poet is likely to throw off to his cost. The fine old house at 105 Clinton Place (now 33 West Eighth Street), which, fallen upon evil days, still stands, looking, somewhat wistfully, one imagines, down the length of MacDougal Street towards Washington Square, was in 1852 the scene of a rich family life. Mrs. Elias Aldrich went to New York with her boy, and Mrs. Frost, the mistress of the house, was his favorite aunt. Indeed, there is a tradition that so close was the bond between them that when in 1846 she was married to Mr. Frost, Tom Bailey had to be taken along on the wedding- trip. Her children were not so many years younger than he, and her daughter still remembers that when as a child she cried in the night it was most often her boy cousin who came running to her solace. Charles Frost, himself, whose portrait can scarcely be distinguished from Thackeray's, was a fine type of the vigorous, successful merchant, as may be seen from this character of him taken from a letter to Mr. Stedman in 1880: — "Indeed I sorrowed very sincerely over my old uncle. Under his shockingly bluff manner he had a heart as sensi- 20 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH tive as a child's and as sympathetic as a woman's — for those he loved. He had faults and virtues enough to set up five or six conventional men. I shall never forget his good- ness to me and mine. At his funeral (or rather at the slight services held at his house before the remains were taken to Portsmouth) a pathetic thing happened. A Httle group of mourners, totally unknown to the family, made its appear- ance — a shabby lot of old men and women and one or two striplings. These forlorn figures were persons whom Mr. Frost had helped in one way or another. Some of them he had boarded in hospitals, others he had established in the junk-business, and others again he had assisted with small weekly sums of money when they were out of work. I can picture how he bullied them and swore at them — and helped them. 'There goes the only friend I ever had,' muttered a shabby old man who looked as if he had been picked up at a bric-a-brac shop." Mr. Frost it was who said, when Aldrich told him that Dr. Guernsey of "Harper's" had just accepted a poem and paid him fifteen dollars for it, "Why don't you send the d d fool one every day?" The years from 1852 to 1855, that Aldrich spent as a clerk in the counting-room of Mr, Frost's commission- house at 146 Pearl Street, seem to have left very lit- tle impress on his mind. Possibly some of his careful habits may have been formed there, and something of his shrewdness and capacity in business matters, a capacity not very prevalent among poets, may have sprung from THE HALL BEDROOM 21 this early training ; but from the first he occupied himself more with lyrics than with ledgers. And his uncle used humorously to complain that he would always be found studying Spanish or doing something else equally remote from the commission business. His real life was lived in the Uttle back-hall bedroom on the third floor of the house in CHnton Place, where amid his books, his pipes, his Japanese fans, of which he was an early collector, he saw "Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream"; and wrote, as he recalled late in his life, "a lyric or two every day before going downtown." But if we would savor to the full the quality of those happy hall bedroom days we must turn to the letters. In 1 901 Mr. Alpha Child, a very early friend, whose memories are of a pecuhar sensitiveness, wrote to Aldrich : — "Some months ago an Italian electrician whom I had known in Schenectady wrote me he had something he wanted to say to me next time I should be in New York, and gave his address as 105 Eighth Street, rear room, third floor. An interval of thirty-five years from scenes at that house had obscured its identity. It was simply one of the many hundred thousand habitations in the great city, and I placed the memorandum with things to be of use on my going to New York a few days later. "A bewildering sense of familiarity with the curved and heavy stone coping to the steps came upon me as I mounted 22 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH to the door — ah ! that door ! Had n't I seen its somewhat ponderously moulded single panel before — somewhere ? But thinking it might be a wandering recollection of an old dream I opened it and stepped up the front stairs, hand on the rail, and turning with the turn of the rail to the next flight and up into the rear room, door partly open. It was the after-breakfast hour, but the man was not up. The door from the chamber into the bedroom was open, and he said, ' Come in.' "As I entered I forgot to look at him; my eye fell upon the back yards of the Ninth Street houses and turned to the walls of the room — (no longer olive !). Then I knew mighty well where I was! It was 'the chamber of quiet meditations' in the early morns and late afternoons of our years long gone." A paragraph from Mr. Aldrich's reply, and the picture is complete : "I have delayed acknowledging the receipt of your letter, with the hope that I might find the mood and the hour in which to write you one nearly half as charming. There was something almost spectral in your reminis- cences. It was as if I had taken down by chance a dusty old volume containing an unsuspected biographical sketch of myself. That mangy, disreputable old house in Clinton Place ! I once lived there ! Two or three years ago I stood in front of it for a few minutes. Was it ever a home filled with innocent laughter and kindly voices ? The one mar- riage and one death that took place in its rooms seemed like dreams to me. Like a dream, too, seemed the morning "io5 CLINTON PLACE," NEW YORK (33 West 8th Street) THE HALL BEDROOM 23 when you slipped under the carved front door a bit of paper telling me that Lincoln had been assassinated. . . . The Japanese hold that a man while still living has a detach- able ghost which he can leave round anywhere. I am sure that the phantom of a nineteen-year-old haunts the small hall room on the third floor rear of No. 105 Clinton Place!" Throughout his years in the counting-room young Aldrich was not only writing poems, but printing them over various pseudonyms. The "Sunday Atlas" seems to have been his most favored medium. The editor's note at the top of one of his contributions in 1854 gives a hint of the activity of his Muse, while beneath the flowery rhetoric of the note a judicious friendliness is discern- ible:— "We ask the readers of the 'Atlas' to indulge themselves in a rich poetical and literary banquet, when we invite them to peruse the annexed canto, the first of five which have been written by a young gentleman of New York for this paper. He has often graced our poetical department ; and every line which has emanated from his pen has received the most flattering encomium at the hands of the critics. We do not think that we ever came across a poet who possessed a more original, chaste, or active imagina- tion. The first canto of 'Blanchette,' like all the produc- tions of its young and gifted author, is marked by extrava- gance of metaphor and figure ; — those rough and yet rare diamonds which invariably mark the pathway to ultimate 24 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH excellence and eminence. They are but the precursors of reserved resplendent fame. We had marked several of these redundancies of genius, for remark; but, as we can- not, after a full review of the canto, consent to utter a word which might be unkindly taken by the author of the poem, our young friend 'Walter,' we give it to the reader as it stands in the original version." The poem itself, a rather overwrought " Legend of Eden- wold" in dramatic form, is perhaps best omitted. The year 1855 marked a turning-point in the young poet's life. In that year, at the age of nineteen, he pub- lished his first volume of verse, wrote a poem, which gained almost at once a national celebrity, and resigned his post in his uncle's counting-room to follow with single heart the Ufe of letters. "The Bells : A Collection of Chimes by T. B. A.," was published early in 1855 (the copyright date is 1854), with the imprint of J. C. Derby. In the Proem we are told that the volume has been entitled "The Bells," — "Because in bells there something is to me Of rhythms and the poets of gone years — A sad reverberation breeding tears, Touching the finer chords of Memory!" The poets of gone years are, indeed, a good deal in evi- dence in the inspiration of the verses. In the images and melodies there are many clear reminiscences of Keats, — in his earUer manner, — Chatterton, Tennyson, and Poe ; THE HALL BEDROOM 25 and still nearer masters throw their shadows on the page. We find a poem beginning — "Ye who love Nature, and in Nature, God," which is pure Bryant, and just over the leaf a piece con- cerning Fannie, — ' ' Fannie wears an open dress — Ah! the charming chemisette! Half concealing, half revealing Something far more charming yet," etc. — which is as pure WiUis, Willis in his secular vein. Perhaps the soundest poetic influence discernible in the little book is that of Longfellow. There is an admirable poem, in the metre of "In Memoriam," addressed to him, and the most successful ventures show a striving to catch something of the sweet pensiveness of his mood and the limpid cadence of his verse. Of the fifty poems in the volume not one was sufficiently pleasing to Aldrich's fastidious taste to be retained in any of his later collections. Yet in its fluency and variety of metre, its range of mood, its occasional power of vivid phrase, the book was of fine promise. Most significant of all its traits, perhaps, is its persisting duality of temper. Sentimental- ity and humor are still at war in it. In one poem, "The Lachrymose," they come to open blows. After exclaiming "Perdition catch these lachrymosic bards That moan forever about weary earth And sea ! as if their dismal dactyles could Improve it much!" the youthful poet expresses his own ambition : — 26 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ' ' For my own part I am content if I Can tinker joy, making it waterproof, To keep out tears!" For the present, however, the poetic tear is to be a frequent factor in his work, and the joy has something of wanness and fever. In short, the boy has not yet found his world, but is living in a misty mid-region, lighted by the reflection of the moods of his "poets of gone years." Early in 1855, soon after the publication of "The Bells," Aldrich won his first secure poetic success with his " Ballad of Babie ^ Bell." The death of a child in the Frost family gave him a profound and sincere sorrow that gradually grew musical in memory. Many of his early poems dealt with the subject, and the poetization became more telling as time went on, until in "Babie Bell" he struck a chord that found an instant response in the popular heart. The piece was written on backs of bills of lading while he was supervising the unloading at the wharves of goods con- signed to his uncle's firm ; it was first printed in a commer- cial paper, "The Journal of Commerce"; yet it seems to have swept through the country like a piece of news. It was reprinted in the " poet's corner" of the provincial press from Maine to Texas, and it is hard to find one of those quaint scrapbooks of the heart that our mothers liked to keep that does not contain it. ^ This spelling was retained in the successive editions of his poems until 1885. It is symptomatic of the mild American version of "the Gothic renaissance." In ' ' The Bells" we find many such Keatsy spellings as St. Ayne, Allinggale, dactyle, Lillyan, etc. ALDRICll AIJOUT 1854 THE HALL BEDROOM 27 With, for him, singularly little revision, "The Ballad of Baby Bell" was retained by Aldrich in his collected poems. There, beside his mature work, it sounds in places a little falsetto. Yet the tenderness and purity of its conception and the sweet music of its execution are likely to give it long life. Writing many years afterward in the "Theatre" maga- zine, John E. McCann tells how the poem helped him through a bad quarter of an hour in a western barroom fuU of the "bad men" of forty years ago. " Do you know how I got out of that scrape ? By touch- ing their rough hearts with a little poem I had seen in a magazine, about how a little baby came and went. I seem to see that low barroom and its rough crowd now — sitting around on boxes, barrels ; and the bartender on the bar, with his legs dangling over; and the miserable light from the oil lamps ; and the big, glowing stove ; and I hear the storm howling without — and the smell of bad tobacco and worse liquor is wafted to my nostrils, if I only shut my eyes and think for a moment. " Before I began I assured them that I would not try to 'play them,' etc., and they hinted rather strongly that I'd better not. Well, do you know that I could see those rough cusses melt as I went on? And when I came to the last lines, — " * At last he came, the messenger, The messenger from unseen lands : And what did dainty Baby Bell? She only crossed her little hands,' — 28 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH " * Oh, say ! ' from the big fellow. '"She only looked more meek and fair! We parted back her silken hair, We wove the roses round her brow — White buds, the summer's drifted snow — Wrapt her from head to foot in flowers . . . And thus went dainty Baby Bell Out of this world of ours.' "There was a silence, and then a deep *By !' from their very hearts. I was well provided for, you may be sure. Some of those men had left babies in the States, I suppose — anyway, I captured their good will with that one touch of nature." Writing of the poem in the last year of his life, to Mr. H. W. Mabie, Aldrich said : — "The verses were written when I was very young, and later I have wondered at finding here and there among the obvious crudities a line of curious significance and penetra- tion. In places I builded better than I knew. In spite of the popularity of the piece, I have always somewhat doubted its quality, perhaps because the verses were declined by all the leading magazines in the country." The sudden reputation that followed the publication of "Babie BeU" seems to have confirmed the young poet's sense of vocation. With the somewhat sceptical assent of Mr. Frost, he left the ledgers and bills of lading to write poetry, and to serve also as the junior literary critic of the " Evening Mirror," which was owned at that time by Willis and General Morris. One of the earliest of his letters to be THE HALL BEDROOM 29 preserved dates from this period. It is a note of acknow- ledgment to James T. Fields for a copy of Longfellow's "Hiawatha" sent him for review. With its engaging touch of nineteen-year old dignity it is of sufficient interest to be printed here : — New York, Nov. 10, 1855. My dear Sir, — I have just given "The Song of Hia- watha" a second reading, and have looked again at the pencilled fly-leaf, where you so kindly and delicately turned a book that would have been bought into a gift of friend- ship. You will add to the favor by accepting my thanks. I send you a copy of the "Evening Mirror," containing a meagre notice of the book, which I penned after a hasty perusal. Though it may show want of critical acumen, it also shows that Mr. Longfellow and his books are very dear to your Friend and Servant, Thomas Bailey Aldrich. How sincere was his affection for Longfellow and his poetry may also be seen in this passage from a fervid youthful letter written about the same time to Mr. Win- ter: — "You speak warmly in praise of your poet friend. I join you with my heart, in every word. I think this world must be lovelier in God's eye for holding such men as Longfel- low. ... I will tell you why I like him so much, and how I came to write verse. 30 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH " One evening, more than five years ago, I was sitting on the doorstep of 'the old house where I was born' with as heavy a heart as a child ever had. A very dear friend had been borne over that threshold a while before, and, as I watched the shadows of the trees opposite grow deeper, / longed for her. I missed a hand that used to touch my hair so gently! "I was not, in those days, fond of reading poetry, though I feasted on prose. By chance a volume of poems was in my hand. It was the ' Voices of the Night.' I opened it at ' The Footsteps of Angels.' Never before did I feel such a gush of emotion. The poem spoke to me Hke a human voice ; and from that time I loved Longfellow, and I wrote poetry — such as it is." Just at the end of 1855 an ill wind for certain of his con- temporaries blew our young poet a notable piece of luck. The "Evening Mirror" was but a minor interest of its owners; the mainstay of their fortunes was the "Home Journal," then at the height of its prestige, with Willis as editor, and a young Englishman, James Parton, as sub- editor. Between the twain displeasures arose. There had appeared one day in the office Willis's sister Sarah, better known as "Fanny Fern," the author of "Fern Leaves" and other popular works in the sentimental kind ; she had lately divorced her second husband and was solicitous of serializing in the "Home Journal" a novel, just finished, with "the heart-throb" in it. Willis read it, but, editorial judgment prevailing over fraternal affection, dechned to THE HALL BEDROOM 31 give it a place in his pages. Parton, on the other hand, read it, and roundly accused his chief of an error in judgment. So far did he carry his championship that, despite the lady's somewhat disconcerting matrimonial record and her eleven years' seniority, he contracted an engagement of marriage with her, which was speedily fulfilled. The result was that he lost his post on the "Home Journal," whether by free or forced resignation does not appear, and, after an inter- regnum of a few months, the young poet-reviewer of the "Evening Mirror" was taken on in his stead. Willis at this time was beginning to feel the approach of the malady that eventually caused his death, and spent much time away from the office, at Idlewild, his country- place on the Hudson, leaving Aldrich to shape the more immediate destinies of the paper. We get in the reminis- cences of those years some charming pictures of the golden- haired boy of twenty sitting in state in the august editorial chair, with a dignity no doubt enhanced by the fact that he also occupied the post of "literary adviser" to the kalei- doscopic publishing firm of Derby & Jackson. One of his favorite reminiscences was of an occasion during one of Willis's absences when, seated at his desk, he was compos- ing with due dehberation an editorial which seemed to him at the time likely to arrest the ruinous course of national events. His cogitations were rudely disturbed by a loud stranger, who, after purchasing from an underling some back numbers of the paper, turned to the absorbed editor with, "Say, bub, get me a piece of string, will you?" 32 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH It was here that he had his first taste of hard work, as may be seen by this paragraph from an early letter : "I had no idea of what work is till I became ' sub.' I have found that reading proof and writing articles on uninteresting sub- jects, 'at sight,' is no joke. The cry for 'more copy' rings through my ears in dreams, and hosts of little phantom printer's devils walk over my body all night and prick me with sharp-pointed types. Last evening I fell asleep in my armchair and dreamed that they were about to put me ' to press,' as I used to crush flies between the leaves of my speUer, in schoolboy days." His position with the "Home Journal," however, carried many compensating advantages. It seems in particular to have enlarged his circle, and placed him on terms of com- radeship with Bayard Taylor, Stoddard, and the rest. This warm little note to Taylor is the first in the long series recording what was perhaps the closest of his early friend- ships : — Derby & Jackson's, Aug. 29, 1856. My dear Taylor, — Stoddard has given me a chance to send you a note in his letter, but has allowed me so little time to prepare one, that I must limit myself to wishing you good health, propitious gales, cornucopias of happiness, and everything else that a fine Poet deserves ! I most sincerely envy you your tete-k-tete with Barry Cornwall. I should like to handle some of those unpub- lished MSS. If you meet Tennyson and Arnold, please THE HALL BEDROOM 33 send Stoddard or me a long description of them. I should be happy to get a line from you — yes, a poetical one. May God bless you, Taylor. Your friend, T. B. Aldrich. Sub-editorial labors seemed for a time likely to impede his progress in poetry. In September, 1856, he wrote to Fields : — " Do you remember Parsons' traveller, who, stopping at an inn, had " ' Little to eat and very much to pay,' or something of the sort ? I occupy a similar position. The ' Home Journal's ' motto is : — " ' Pretty good pay Btrx very much to do ! ' I have turned from a 'literary Bohemian' (as Mrs. Stod- dard calls me) to that mythical and underrated individual called ' a sub.' I am 'glad of this ' for a good many reasons, one of which is I can do more for the books which you so considerately send me than hitherto. "But alas for Poetry! "Pegasus refuses to trot in editorial harness, point- blank. . . . "From some 50 poems which I have written since the (cow) 'Bells' was published, I have selected 25 which I think will pass critical muster — 15 of which are better, to my taste, than the 'Pastoral Hymn.' Here the propo- sition comes in: I propose, in a month or so, to copy 34 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH these poems in book-form and send them to you for pe- rusal ; if you think they will pay you (never mind me) they shall be at your service. I should like to get a volume out by next Spring, but am willing to wait four summers ; so I shall not be very disappointed and not a bit hurt if you refuse. You have already been too kind to me. I shall probably write but little poetry for a year to come, and am as well prepared to make a collection now as I will be then. Those friends who advised me not to print 'The Bells,' tell me to publish now, but I come to you, Headquarters, for good advice. In reading the poems, please do not consider me any more than you would 'Jones,' or 'Smith' (not Alex), or ' Brown.' Shall I send you my MS ? I await your permission." Fields seems to have advised against the venture, for Aldrich's only publication in verse in 1856 was a privately printed "Nest of Sonnets," of which he later destroyed the entire edition. But one of these sonnets has been preserved. "Ghosts" was revised and reprinted in his volumes of 1859 and 1863, and with still further revision it stands as "Eidolons" in his collected works. His most ambitious book of the year was to be in prose. Early in 1856 he contributed to the " Sunday Atlas " a serial story entitled "Daisy's Necklace and What Came of It," which was published in book-form by Derby & Jackson in the fall of that year, with the date of 1857. " Daisy's Neck- lace" purports to be a burlesque of the sentimental novels of the " Alonzo and Melissa" type, which were at that time THE HALL BEDROOM 35 vastly popular in these states, but the burlesque inheres wholly in the humorous Prologue and Appendices. Read- ing it to-day, one can scarcely doubt that it was originally composed by its author as a serious venture in popular novel- writing. There is a fervor in many passages that pre- cludes the possibility of the burlesque mood. But when it was finished Aldrich's sense of humor seems to have awakened, revealed to him the absurdity of the perform- ance, and determined him to turn it all to laughter at the end. Additional color is lent to the supposition that the melan- choly "Daisy's Necklace" was not in the first instance intended as a burlesque by the fact that at the time of its composition Aldrich was not in his wonted sound physical tone. Throughout his Hfe his bodily health was excep- tional. Save in 1856 and 1857, — and again in the early sixties, — there is scarcely a mention of illness, his own at least, in all the mass of correspondence. But in the sum- mer of this latter year he wrote to Stoddard from Ports- mouth : "I fear that I am quite ill and shall ruin my health if I continue my sedentary kind of Hfe." Apparently a youthful and not altogether prosperous love-affair, of which we shall hear more later, had something to do with this uncharacteristic depression. After the first, however, his activity in verse- writing suf- fered no abatement. He continued to turn out fluent lyrics of the vers de societe type, with an occasional venture in a deeper vein. Whoever would read these now must seek 36 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH them in old files of the "Atlas," "The Home Journal," and the "Knickerbocker Magazine," then nearing its end. But it was characteristic of him then, as it was all his life, to care little for the brief success of a magazine poem, and despite the advice of Fields he was soon meditating another book. He was not, however, altogether trustful of himself, and finally, in the fall of 1857, applied in his dubiety to Willis for advice. In return he received this wisdom : — "It is no harm to keep publishing, that I know of. Of course, you give handles to your critics now, which you would not vdth years. But you are young and can stand it. And, after all, there is something in 'damnable iteration.' I should be sorry for you if you had not faults, and the more critics can find to blame, the more they will praise — / found that out, long ago." This advice, chiming so consonantly with his own in- clinations, appealed to him as sound, and in the spring of 1858 he appeared before the public with a slender volume entitled, "The Course of True Love never did Run Smooth." The poem, an Arabic love-story told in a series of richly painted episodes, was prefaced by an affectionate dedication to Stoddard, "under whose fingers this story would have blossomed into true Arabian roses." The little book was aU compact of ripening promise. Despite its sensuous musky subject, its structure is sound and cleanly- Umned, and there is a fine dramatic reserve in the right places. From the whole volume Aldrich retained in later N. P. WILLIS IN i8s6 THE HALL BEDROOM 37 collections but two brief passages, the perfect song begin- ning, — " O cease, sweet music, let us rest," and the fine descriptive fragment known as "Dressing the Bride." Yet throughout there were clear foretastes of the true Aldrichian flavor. Not the least pleasing result of its publication was the letter that it brought the young poet from Longfellow — the first of many. "The poem," the elder poet wrote, "is very charming, full of color and perfume as a rose. I congratulate you on your success. Sometime when you are passing through Boston, I wish you would find time, or make it, to swerve aside as far as Cambridge and the old Washington head- quarters. It would give me great pleasure to make your personal acquaintance and to assure you of the interest I take in your career." By the summer of 1858 Aldrich, at the age of twenty- two, was thus in the full tide of his early success. He was Ukewise as intimate as he ever became with the wits and poets of that lively "Literary Bohemia" of New York half a century ago. It is time, then, to pause in our tem- poral march and call the roll of his early friends. Some of the men to be enumerated did not come to terms of intimacy with him untO a year or two after the mo- ment of which we are writing, but as members of the New York circle may be most conveniently introduced here. Of the older men he knew best, of course, his chiefs, 38 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Willis and General George P. Morris, author of "Wood- man, spare that tree," which had just achieved a mundane immortality by being quoted in full in the course of a debate in the English Parliament on the integrity of the British Constitution. Halleck he seems to have known well, and with Whitman there are records of several meet- ings, though not of the most sympathetic nature. With Curtis, who was some years his senior, there grew up a pleasant acquaintance which later ripened into friendship. He came also into friendly relations with F. S. Cozzens, the wine-merchant and humorist, author of the capital " Sparrowgrass Papers"; and he seems to have had some acquaintance with Bryant. The nearer circle of his contemporaries consisted of Bayard Taylor, the Stoddards, Stedman, Mr. Winter, Edwin Booth, Launt Thompson the sculptor, and a group of journalists and magazine-writers of great repute in their own day, but as remote as Prester John to ours, — Henry Clapp, Jr., Ada Clare, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, George Arnold, and Fitz James O'Brien. The careers of Bayard Taylor and Edwin Booth are known to all men, and Launt Thompson's admirable busts of Booth and Bryant and heroic statues of Generals Scott and Burnside have given him the sculptor's immortality so strangely blended of tangible and shadowy elements. The three young men of the group that with Aldrich survived the century, Sted- man, Stoddard, and Mr. Winter, writers all of both poetry and prose, have become familiar names. It is perhaps THE HALL BEDROOM 39 something more than a coincidence that all four were New England boys. Concerning the others who have gone the way of the journalists of yester-year a word of introduction may not be out of place. Henry Clapp, Jr., perhaps the intensest personality of the group, the "King of Bohemia," was a clever, morose Httle man, a hater of the brownstone re- spectability of his day. He died in middle Ufe after a brilliant but far from prosperous career in variegated journaHsm. Jane McElhinney, or "Ada Clare," the beau- tiful and talented girl who was known as the "Queen of Bohemia," after a brief prismatic flight in literary jour- nalism, married an actor and soon after died tragically of hydrophobia contracted from the bite of a pet dog. Her vivid temperament may be studied by the curious in her novel, " Only a Woman's Heart." Fitz Hugh Ludlow made a success with his weird "Hasheesh Eater," which he was never afterwards able to equal. He died in 1870. Hand- some George Arnold's sincere and melodious verse was collected after his early death by Mr. Winter, in whose introduction we may read the story of his kindly, inef- fective Hfe. Of the group that failed to come through, perhaps the most engaging personality, and the one dearest to Aldrich, was Fitz James O'Brien. Born in Ireland in 1826, O'Brien had, as a young man, run through a bequest of ;i^8ooo, in two years, and come to New York to make a living with his pen. At first he was connected with a forgotten peri- 40 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH odical called the "Lantern." "When I first knew him," said Aldrich in one of his letters, "he was trimming the wick of the 'Lantern,' which went out shortly afterwards." After the extinguishing of this luminary he became a free lance, contributing stories and poems to all the best periodicals of the day; and in "The Diamond Lens," writ- ten during a visit at 105 Clinton Place, and printed in the first volume of the "Atlantic Monthly," he achieved a tale of mystery and marvel that still ranks among the finest American short stories. At the outbreak of the war he en- listed as an officer in the Union army and was mortally wounded in an unimportant cavalry skirmish in February, 1862. Of the warm, peppery friendship between Aldrich and O'Brien there are numerous memorabilia. The former liked to tell how once when he had loaned O'Brien forty dollars for the purchase of a suit of clothes the latter had indulged in malversation of the funds to the extent of giving a dinner with them. "He did n't even invite me," Aldrich would say sadly. A Httle later, owing to some mis- understanding between them, O'Brien challenged Aldrich to fight a duel. The matter was amicably arranged by Aldrich's pointing out to the Irishman that according to the "punctilio of the duello" it was incorrect to challenge a person while one owed him money. There is a pleasant anecdote, that once, when Aldrich was living en gargon at 105 Clinton Place in the absence of the Frost family, O'Brien said to him, "Let's live for a week after the THE HALL BEDROOM 41 Venetian manner." " What 's that ? " said Aldrich. " Why, sleep all day and live all night," was the reply. They tried it for a time, exploring the streets all night and going to bed at seven A. m., but it seems soon to have palled on them. Indeed, despite his close friendship with many of the men, Aldrich never went very far with the self-conscious Bohemianism that, transplanted from its native Paris soil, put forth few blossoms of other than a dubious fragrance. He was an occasional attendant at the compotations at Pfaff's celebrated resort in the basement of 647 Broadway. But there is plenty of evidence that he was usually glad to escape to the quiet of his little hall-room. There was a kind of critical reserve at the root of his temperament that always made noisy and promiscuous hilarity distasteful to him. Throughout his life he liked better a friend or two with their pipes than a brilliant roomful. There is a pas- sage in that letter from Mr. Child that "had something spectral about it," that throws a light on the current of the young poet's thoughts: "And our conversations upon immortal life in the hall bedroom of 105, its ohve-tinted walls, the window with parted golden silk curtains, lumi- nous with the sunshine of the long mornings of early summer, — the geraniums on the window-sill, — the cot bed you slept in, how clearly the enchanting picture comes to my inside eyes!" In a poem of Aldrich's later years, a poem of which the autobiographic significance can scarcely be overestimated. 42 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH the thing is explicitly said with the haunting emphasis of poesy : — "In youth beside the lonely sea, Voices and visions came to me. . , . " From every flower that broke in flame Some half -articulate whisper came. "In every wind I felt the stir Of some celestial messenger. "Later, amid the city's din And toil and wealth and want and sin, "They followed me from street to street, The dreams that made my boyhood sweet. "As in the silence-haunted glen. So, mid the crowded ways of men, "Strange lights my errant fancy led, Strange watchers watched beside my bed." The most momentous result of Aldrich's association with the Bohemians was that when, in October, 1858, a new paper called the "Saturday Press" was started by Clapp, to carry pure literature, as it was conceived by the Bohe- mians, to express epigrammatic views of current pre- tences, Aldrich became an associate editor, along with O'Brien and Mr. Winter. For a few months apparently he combined this with his work on the " Home Journal," but early in 1859 he seems to have abandoned the latter post and devoted himself wholly to the "Saturday Press" and miscellaneous writing. THE HALL BEDROOM 43 The vivacity and epigrammatic valor of the "Saturday Press " gave it a succbs d'estime, at least, from its first incep- tion. On December 17, 1858, Aldrich wrote to F. H. Underwood, assistant editor of the "Atlantic : " " The ' Sat- urday Press' is on its feet. It is growing. It will be a paper." For the first year of its life its young editors were in very hopeful spirits. In his "Literary Friends and Acquaintance" Mr. Howells has given one of his incom- parably vivid and faithful impressions of the "Saturday Press" and the tone of its ofifice: — "It would not be easy to say just why the Bohemian group represented New York literature to my imagination, for I certainly associated other names with its best work, but perhaps it was because I had written for the * Saturday Press' myself, and had my pride in it, and perhaps it was because that paper really embodied the new literary life of the city. It was clever, and full of the wit that tries its teeth upon everything. It attacked all literary shams but its own, and it made itself felt and feared. The young writers throughout the country were ambitious to be seen in it, and they gave their best to it ; they gave literally, for the ' Saturday Press ' never paid in anything but hopes of paying, vaguer even than promises. It is not too much to say that it was very nearly as weU for one to be accepted by the 'Press' as to be accepted by the 'Atlantic,' and for the time there was no other Hterary comparison. To be in it was to be in the company of Fitz James O'Brien, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Mr. Aldrich, Mr. Stedman, and whoever else was 44 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH liveliest in prose or loveliest in verse at that day in New York. It was a power, and although it is true that, as Henry Giles said of it, ' Man cannot live by snapping-turtle alone,' the 'Press' was very good snapping-turtle. Or, it seemed so then ; I should be almost afraid to test it now, for I do not like snapping-turtle so much as I once did, and I have grown nicer in my taste, and want my snapping-turtle of the very best. What is certain is that I went to the office of the ' Saturday Press ' in New York with much the same sort of feeling I had in going to the office of the ' Atlantic Monthly' in Boston, but I came away with a very different feeling. I had found there a bitterness against Boston as great as the bitterness against respectability, and as Boston was then rapidly becoming my second country, I could not join in the scorn thought of her and said of her by the Bohemians. I fancied a conspiracy among them to shock the literary pilgrim, and to minify the precious emotions he had experienced in visiting other shrines; but I found no harm in that, for I knew just how much to be shocked, and I thought I knew better how to value certain things of the soul than they. Yet when their chief asked me how I got on with Hawthorne, and I began to say that he was very shy and I was rather shy, and the King of Bohemia took his pipe out to break in upon me with ' Oh, a couple of shysters!' and the rest laughed, I was abashed all they could have wished, and was not restored to myself till one of them said that the thought of Boston made him as ugly as sin ; then I began to hope again that men who took them- LAUNT THOMPSON From a caricature by George Arnold THE HALL BEDROOM 45 selves so seriously as that need not be taken very seriously by me." The youthful associate editor seems to have served the paper faithfully, v^riting his due quota of its ''Hugoish paragraphs of one or more syllables," sharing in the ed- itorial councils, and even joining in the defence when, as was not uncommon, persons whose names had been men- tioned in the "Press" endeavored to carry the office by assault, vi et armis. It was in this office, too, and in his intermittent frequentation of Pfaff's that his wit was tem- pered. It was give and take there by the brightest minds in New York. The retold story and the repeated hon mot were rigorously barred, but the new good thing was sure of applause. In this fierce light Aldrich at first played a shrinking part, but soon he became known as the wielder of a rapier that no man cared to trifle with. Yet, as hereto- fore, his secure fineness of quality kept him from taking too deep a color of cynicism from his circle, or adopting its pose. There were many other phases of his Hfe that tended to correct the provincialism of Bohemia, which is of all provinciahsms perhaps the narrowest. In 1858 and 1859 he read poems at several college commencements, in company with such orators as Everett, Phillips, and Curtis ; and his summers of young sentiment in Portsmouth took him far from the coasts of Bohemia. In July, 1859, he wrote to Stoddard from Portsmouth : " I 'm in clover as you may imagine. To see her every day I Ah, well, — brush the dust off your courtship days and you will understand me." 46 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH In the same summer he communicated to Stoddard the interesting fact that he had begun a short novel "with a splendid title — 'Glass Houses,'" — and added, "God knows when I shall finish it." It was, indeed, never fin- ished, and his only publication of the year in book-form was "The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems." In this volume we find for the first time a sprinkling of pieces that have gone into the body of his poetic work. Besides the titular poem, the volume contained "Cloth of Gold," "We knew it would Rain," "After the Rain," "Nameless Pain," "Palabras Carinosas," "When the Sultan goes to Ispahan," and the "Invocation to Sleep," together with two-score pieces of a less discipHned poetic temper that Aldrich wisely discarded in the course of years. It was this volume, apparently, that the poet had chiefly in mind when he wrote "L'Envoi" that appeared fifteen years later at the end of "Cloth of Gold, and Other Poems": — " This is my youth, its hopes and dreams, How strange and shadowy it all seems After these many years ! Turning the pages idly, so, I look with smiles upon the woe, Upon the joy with tears!" After the publication of "The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems" in 1859, there were for the first time a few critics who pubHcly recognized the peculiar individuality of the best work in it and defined not unprecisely that keen and unmistakable flavor that is now instantly suggested to the THE HALL BEDROOM 47 true lover of poetry by the name of Aldrich. Mr. Howells, writing in the "Saturday Press," phrased this quaUty with a penetrating fehcity : — "In the volume before me (I got that out of my inkhorn- full of newspaper expressions), I hke best of all the little poem 'Nameless Pain.' It is the worthiest proof that Mr. Aldrich is a poet, and better than an epic for him. All hearts, however dulled by care, and doubt, and wrong, feel sometimes the Nameless Pain, only different in degree. How it thrills and trembles in the heart of the poet he has — described ? No. Expressed ? No. We do not, even the greatest-tongued of us, describe or express intense sensa- tion. The best that any can do is to let the soul be seen for an instant with the secret lightning of feehng playing through it, and illuming it — flammae inter nubes. "And this is not to be done by any elaboration of words, but suddenly and briefly, as Heine does it in his line-long revelations of Passion and Sorrow, in that rhyme commencing — " ' Mein Herz, meia Herz ist traurig, Doch lustig leuchtet der Mai, Ich stehe gelehnt an der Linde, Hoch auf der alten Bastei.' " The picture of the boy fishing in the lazy moat, the far- seen fields and meadows, the pleasure-houses, the maidens bleaching the Hnen, the mill-wheel scattering its diamonds with its 'femes Gesumm,^ and the sentry on the old gray tower, marching up and down before his box, with his 48 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH musket twinkling in the sun, and at last the imagination brought back to the sad haupt-figur of the scene, with this passionate cry — " ' Ich wollte er schosset mir todt!' " This is the art which makes me doubt art ; and this is the art which I love in Mr. Aldrich's poem of 'Nameless Pain.'" Early in i860 the "Saturday Press" came to the usual end of such belletristic enterprises. As the editor stated in his last valediction, "This paper is discontinued for lack of funds, which is, by a coincidence, precisely the reason for which it was started." Aldrich took the failure with a light heart. His relation to the paper had never been more than an elastic one, and even had there been more cause for discouragement, an event soon occurred which would have availed to cheer him. For three years he had been sending verse to the "Atlantic Monthly," then firmly established as the arbiter of taste in America, with, for one reason or another, Lll success. But one fine morning in April, i860, his mail contained this note : — Cambridge, i8th April, i860. My dear Sir, — I welcome you heartily to the "Atlan- tic." When I receive so fine a poem as "Pythagoras," I don't think the check of Messrs. Ticknor & Fields pays for it. I must add some thanks and appreciation. I have put it down for June. Very truly yours, J. R. Lowell. THE HALL BEDROOM 49 Twenty-five years later, when Aldrich in his turn had become editor of the "Atlantic," he accepted a poem that Lowell sent him with a copy of this note. Lowell promptly called at the office to say that he was so enheartened by the recognition that he had about made up his mind to follow literature as a profession. "Pythagoras," later known as "The Metempsychosis," Aldrich's most ambitious poem thus far, was printed in due course, and was followed by a round of plaudits that it is hard for us — in these days when magazine verse is seldom taken seriously save by the very young — even to conceive. Our poet was no longer the laureate of Bohemia. In the five years to come we shall find him still living in New York, it is true, and still on terms of friendship with many of the Bohemians, yet constantly extending the radius of his poetic reputation, steadily advancing in characteristic achievement, and — what was to prove still more important in his life — rapidly strengthening his personal relations with the writers of the New England group CHAPTER III ARRIVAL 1860-1865 THE summer of i860 found Aldrich free for the nonce from all journalistic and editorial ties, happy as a lark in his freedom, and similarly employed in song. For the sake of an effective chapter beginning it would be pleasant to allude to the thunder-clouds of civil war that were darkening over the country and trace their effect in the deepening of the young poet's mood. This will have to be done a page or two farther on, but for the present the veracious historian must content himself with portraying a mind happily preoccupied with poetical projects, and more concerned with rhymes than rebellions. In July he cruised comfortably down to Portsmouth in his uncle's yacht, and there entered upon another of those idyllic seasons that played so important a role in the fur- nishing of his imagination. A letter to Stoddard will help us to revive the spirit of that vanished summer : — Sunday Morning, August, i860. Dear Dick, — A mummy could n't have been more silent than I ever since my arrival in these latitudes. But the spirit of the epistolary pen has seized me this morning i ARRIVAL 51 and I am going to fill a page or so for the improvement of your mind. Don't fancy that pen and I have been strangers these five weeks. Bayard Taylor could n't write more verse than I have in the same number of days. I have two $30 poems on hand, sold two to the "Atlantic," and sent one to " Harper." " The Song of Fatima" in the September number of the "Atlantic" is mine. A lyric, "The Robin," will be in the October number. I am forty lines into a blank-verse story. So you see I have been doing better things than writing letters. Is the "little party" with you yet? Has she been writing great, big passionate little stories and picturesque poems all summer? I would like to compare poetical notes with her. . . . Good Lord, how contented I am here ! I hate a city more than I do the devil. I would Uke to have this sea and sky and forest around me forever. ... I shall have a host of things to tell you and Lizzy about the yacht trip. Give my love to her and the Taylors, to Mrs. Penelope and Mr. Ulysses. Your friend, Tom. "Sea and sky and forest," however, lose something of their charm with the falling of the leaves, and in the au- tumn Aldrich went back very contentedly to his Httle room at 105 Clinton Place. He seems to have had during this win- ter of 1860-61 no regular connection with any periodical, and to have employed his time as the singing impulse urged. In the summer he had written to Fields from Portsmouth again proposing the publication of a volume of his poetry : — 52 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH " You know that any time these five years I have wanted Ticknor & Fields to publish a small volume of poems for me — the idea, therefore, wiU not win your heart by its novelty ! Sometime in September I shall have a small book ready for the types. It will contain poems pubUshed in the * Atlantic ' and 'Harper,' several of which have made me new friends. Rudd & Carleton have brought out two volumes of mine : they sold 2200 copies of 'True Love' and 3000 of 'Babie BeU ' ; and are willing to try me again, but I would rather have your imprint if possible. It would be of such service to me. I write to you before binding myself with Rudd & Carleton. What cheer?" Fields, however, took the view that the time was still unripe for such a venture, at least so far as his own house was concerned, and when early in 1861 "Pampinea,* and Other Poems" was published it was over the imprint of Rudd & Carleton. Upon its cover the volume bore the title "Poems of a Year," which led a wicked reviewer to describe it as "Poems of a Yearling." Yet it merited the title vastly less than its predecessors. It contained of pieces that have been retained "Pythagoras," "Pampinea" (a poetic recollection of his past summer), "Hesperides," "The Crescent and the Cross," "Piscataqua River," and "The Lunch " ; and the poems since discarded — largely longer pieces, in the ballad vein not uncolored with maca- beresque — were more mature in both temper and execu- tion than their fellows in his previous collections. Of all * Later spelled Pampina. ARRIVAL 53 the poems in the volume perhaps the one that lingers long- est in the memory is the smooth yet ardent celebration of the well-beloved river of his boyhood adventures. Few readers will dissent from this view of Longfellow's : — "As each guest at a feast selects the wine that pleases him most, so each reader of a volume finds out his favorite lyric. Mine is 'Piscataqua' of i860. With all their beauties the others play mostly in the realm of Fancy; but this lives, moves, and has its being in the realm of Imagination, 'clothing the palpable and familiar with golden exhala- tions of the dawn.' The river will always be more beautiful for that song!" Yet, despite its poetic quality, or perhaps because of it, — because it so nearly attained fuU ripeness without quite reaching it, — Aldrich was always more anxious to suppress the "Poems of a Year" than any other of his early volumes. Throughout his later life he bought and destroyed every copy that he discovered in the auction catalogues. All told he played Herod to some twenty-five copies. With the cheerful liberty of a free lance Aldrich went down again to Portsmouth very early in the spring of 186 1, and now we begin to find the sombre shadow of the war upon the page in earnest. In December, i860, he had written a poem entitled "The Man and the Hour," — afterwards printed in the "Poems of a Year," which con- cluded with this eloquent foreshadowing, we may believe, of the career of Abraham Lincoln : — 54 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH " Men of this land and lovers of these States ! What master spirit from the dark shall rise : And with a will inviolate as fate's, God-like and prudent, merciful and wise, Do battle in God's name and set us right Ere on our glory ruin broods and night!" And throughout the spring and summer, the season that saw the fall of Fort Sumter and the disaster at Bull Run, the poet had no other thought than that of serving his country on field or wave. In April he wrote a letter to Governor Goodwin applying for an appointment on the staff of the colonel in command of the New Hampshire regiment. There seems to have been some delay in the decision, and when some weeks later a telegram arrived announcing his appointment to the staff of General Lan- der, Aldrich was away from home and the message never reached him. In consequence the appointment went to Fitz James O'Brien, with the result that, as Henry Clapp used to say, "Aldrich was shot in O'Brien's shoulder." Lander, too, an intimate friend of our poet, gave his life in the country's service, dying early in 1862 as the result of a wound that was given no time to heal. Al- drich 's collection of 1863 contained this elegy, which was never afterwards reprinted : — " Take him, New England, now his work is done. He fought the Good Fight valiantly — and won. Speak of his daring. This man held his blood Cheaper than water for the Nation's good. Rich Mountain, Fairfax, Romney — he was there. ARRIVAL 55 " Speak of him gently, of his mien, his air; How true he was, how his strong heart could bend With sorrow, like a woman's, for a friend: Intolerant of every mean desire ; Ice where he liked not; where he loved, all fire. " Take him. New England, gently. Other days, Peaceful and prosperous, shall give him praise. How will our children's children breathe his name, Bright on the shadowy muster-roll of fame ! Take him, New England, gently; you can fold No purer patriot in your soft brown mould." Aldrich was chagrined at the miscarriage in the matter of the miUtary appointment, and his mood was for the time still further depressed by the course of his youthful affair of the heart, which in this summer ended, as a first love should, unhappily. His temper at the time is apparent in this letter to the Stoddards : — Portsmouth, N. H., August, 1861. Dear Dick and Lizzy, — Your small note dropped in between me and my necessity like a wild- flower in the crevice of a split rock (you must n't prig this Very Neat Thing for your Novel, Mrs. Lizzy) ; for you must know that it found me in bed where I had been laid up for a week. Yesterday was my first day out. I have not forgotten my promise to visit the Stoddard House this summer; but I must delay my visit until I pass through Boston on my way to New York — if I ever go to New York again. You will please not mention the fact, but it is likely that I shall get a place on board of one of the three men-of-war that 56 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH are fitting out at our Navy Yard. Waiting to see the Com- mander of the Sabine is one of the circumstances which keep me here for the present — my ill-health and a neces- sary economy are a couple more. I have got a prose volume ready for the press. It is good. I have also got a thing not so easy to get — a publisher, when the times come favorable — ah, woeful " When ! " . . . From your friend, ToM. The project of obtaining a berth on a war vessel came to nought, too, and the post of naval laureate was to be briUiantly occupied by Henry Howard Brownell. Never- theless Aldrich, distinguished as he always was for a cer- tain belligerency of temperament, could not rest content until he had smelt powder. Following Stedman's exam- ple, he applied for work as a war correspondent, and in the fall of 1 86 1 went to the front as a representative of the " Tribune," attached to General Blenker's division of the Army of the Potomac. Of his experiences in the field he had many vivid memories, — a typical one may be told in his own words in a letter to his mother written from Washington, October 30, 1861 : — " I have just returned from a long ride into the enemy's country. I have been on horseback two days — and two nights, I was going to say, but I did get out of the saddle to sleep. What a strange time I had of it. House of the New York * Tribune ' and myself started on a reconnois- sance under the wing of General Stapel and staff. We had -5tiS»~' J&e4u.£.c^ ^^ «^^ r'^'^^^ c^-^^-C^ ^^ ^ z^ ^/^ ay^ ^ ^ ^y^-itf-t^ prr-Ca-r-i^ -^iut. C^c^. u.^^^^rK^ Ua^^l.,^^ »w^e/L ^.U- ^< / -y<^c^^ /?:X.^ ..^ ^..^^^ ^.^l:^ />4a. ^ ^t^ /^.Z : ^ ^.V«^ .^^^ ^^ ^' /^^ayi-^ •'^^ BAVAKD TAYLOR AND A FACSIMILE OF HIS MANUSCRIPT PONKAPOG 137 The sky is blue as Italy's, he will come . . . In the wind's whisper, in the swaying pine, In song of bird and blossoming of vine, And all fair things he loved ere he was dead ! " In January, 1879, the Aldriches sailed for a second European tour. London was their first objective point, where our poet met Browning and spent many pleasant hours with others of the literati. He was pleased to find that the author of "Sordello" had long been an admirer of "Pere Antoine" and "Marjorie Daw," of "Nameless Pain" and "Fredericksburg"; but the happiest memories of this European visit were of his weeks in Spain, a land that he had visited in imagination how many times before J Then came a brief stay in Paris, where he demonstrated to Mr. Clemens which was the more popular author with the French people. Leading him to the window of a book- shop in the Rue Saint-Honore, where a single copy of his own poems was displayed for sale, Aldrich thus explained the situation: "I have asked this shopkeeper if he has any more of the works of Aldrich, and he says no ; so you see the sale has been great — for this is the only copy left; but he says he has several shelves full of the works of Mark Twain, and more of them in the basement. I 'm afraid you are not appreciated in France." In June Aldrich was back again in Ponkapog; and " The Stillwater Tragedy" was finished early in 1880, and began its course in the "Atlantic." After its completion he al- lowed himself a breathing-space of several months, writing 138 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH little save for a poem or two, and numerous letters. The following to Stedman is evidence of the growing down- rightness of his views on literary matters : — PoNKAPOG, Mass., Nov. 20, 1880, My dear Edmund, — ... You seemed to think that I was going to take exception to your paper on Walt Whit- man. It was all admirably said, and my own opinion did not run away from yours at any important point. I place less value than you do on the indorsement of Swinburne, Rossetti and Co., inasmuch as they have also indorsed the very poor paper of . If Whitman had been able (he was not able, for he tried it and failed) to put his thought into artistic verse, he would have attracted little or no at- tention, perhaps. Where he is fine, he is fine in precisely the way of conventional poets. The greater bulk of his writing is neither prose nor verse, and certainly it is not an improvement on either. A glorious line now and then, and a striking bit of color here and there, do not constitute a poet — especially a poet for the People. There never was a poet so calculated to please a very few. As you say, he will probably be hereafter exhumed and anatomized by learned surgeons — who prefer a subject wath thin shoulder- blades or some abnormal organ to a well-regulated corpse. But he will never be regarded in the same light as Villon. Villon spoke in the tone and language of his own period : what is quaint or fantastic to us was natural to him. He was a master of versification. Whitman's manner is a hoi- PONKAPOG 139 low affectation, and represents neither the man nor the time. As the voice of the 19th century, he will have little significance in the 21st. That he will outlast the majority of his contemporaries, I have n't the faintest doubt — but it will be in a glass case or a quart of spirits in an anatomi- cal museum. While we are on the topic of poetry, and I 've the space to say it, I want to tell you that I thought the poem on Gifford exquisite, particularly the second division. The blank verse was wholly your own, "not Lancelot's nor another's " — as mine always is. . . . I am curious to see your review of Mrs. Fields's " Under the Olive." Here 's a New England woman blowing very sweet breath through Pandean pipes! What unexpected antique music to come up from Manchester-by-the-Sea ! I admire it all greatly, as a reproduction. Mrs. Fields's work in this represents only her intellect and its training : I don't find her personality anywhere. The joys and sor- rows she sings are our own to-day, but she presents them in such a manner as to make them seem aside from our experience. To my thinking a single drop of pure Yankee blood is richer than a thousand urnfuls of Greek dust. At the same time, I like a cinerary urn on the corner of my mantel-shelf, for decoration. This is the narrow view of a man who does n't know Greek literature except through translation. . . . Her poem must have interested you vastly. It is the most remarkable volume of verse ever printed by an American woman. Don't you think so? Your re\'iew will answer me. vVhile we are on marbleized classical subjects, let me beg you to read my sketch of 140 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH "Smith" in the January number of the ''Atlantic." Plu- tarch beaten on his own ground ! With our love, T. B. Aldrich. Stedman seems to have returned to the charge, for a week later we find Aldrich writing to him: "I do not see but we agree perfectly on Whitman. My estimate of him was based, not, as you seem half to suspect, on the recollec- tion of his early barbaric yawps, but on a careful study of his complete works. Awhile ago I invested ten dollars in two solid volumes which I should be glad to let any enthu- siastic Whitmaniac have at a very handsome reduction. I admire his color and epithets and lyrical outbreaks when I can forget the affectation which underlies it all. There was something large and sunny in Wordsworth's egotism. There is something unutterably despicable in a man writ- ing newspaper puffs of himself. I don't believe a charlatan can be a great poet. I could n't believe it if I were con- vinced of it!" With the beginning of 1881 came another event that marked an epoch in the smooth-flowing stream of Aldrich's life. Mr. Howells, who as assistant editor and editor had wielded the trident of the ruler of the "Atlantic" for fifteen years, wearied a little of the toil and resigned his post. Immediately thereupon the natural thing happened, and our poet, who had long before won his editorial spurs, and who had been for a score of years one of the "Atlantic's" most important contributors, was appointed to fill that dis- tinguished "seat of the scorner." CHAPTER VI THE ''ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 1881-1890 IT was in the February of 1881 that the arrangement was made for Aldrich to succeed Mr, Howells in the editorial chair of the "Atlantic." On the twentieth of the month he wrote to Stedman : — " I wanted to write to you — but * Good God ! ' as Mr. Samuel Pepys says. Between the * Atlantic Monthly ' busi- ness and the storming of my Charles Street house, where an unpaying tenant has intrenched himself and refuses to surrender, I have had my hands full. When I see you, as I hope to do next month in New York, I 'U give you the points of the situation. I have a very clear understanding of the responsibilities I have assumed in taking the editor- ship of the 'Atlantic' I accepted the post only after making a thorough examination of my nerve and back- bone. I fancy I shall do very little writing in the magazine, at first. I intend to edit it. I am lost in admiration of Howells, who found time to be a novelist." Edit it he did, and though by a judicious conserving of his work he continued to appear before the public with a volume in nearly every year of his editorship, including in 1885 the "Household" edition of his "complete" poetical 142 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH works, he actually wrote little, save for a few poems in lighter vein, and a group of important pieces of the elegiac kind, called forth by the death of Garfield, and of Wendell Phillips, and by the seventieth birthday of Tennyson. Prose he wrote at this time still more sparingly. He did a few critical articles for the "Atlantic," but that was all; and the life of his old chief, N. P. Willis, which he was to have prepared for the American Men of Letters Series, was cheerfully given over to another hand. The story of the years between 1881 and 1890 is a story of winters of editorial routine and of summers of travel. Even in his editorial ofl&ce Aldrich contrived to surround himself with the homelike comfort to which he was accus- tomed. He chose for his purpose a little back room at No. 4 Park Street, reached by a spiral stairway much resembUng the pictures of Dante's Purgatorio with the terrestrial Paradise at its summit. Its windows overlooked that haunt of ancient peace, the Old Granary Burying- Ground, where, as he liked to say, lay those who would never submit any more manuscript. But any melancholy that might have arisen from the scenery was mitigated by an open fire of cannel coal, by a pipe, — an engine which had not hitherto been in favor in that office, but which was expressly nominated in the bond between the editor and his publisher, — and by the constant attendance of his set- ter, " Trip." Once when Trip ate a sonnet, Aldrich asked, "How did he know it was doggerel?" Of the daily work in the office the present writer is for- THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 143 tunate in being able to present an account by the hand of Miss S. M. Francis, Aldrich's assistant for the nine years of his editorship, who has known the ways of many editors of the "Atlantic": — " The routine of the oflfice was simple enough. The prose manuscripts were read, sifted, commented on, and all with the smallest degree of merit placed in a drawer which quickly became over-full, waiting for the editor's examina- tion on a clearing-up day, of uncertain date, when he energetically went through the mass, and laid aside a few for further consideration. These did not usually wait long, for as an editor IVIr. Aldrich Uved from hand to mouth, the box in which accepted manuscripts were kept was never very full, was often half-empty. He had an unwiUingness to accumulate copy — for which much might be said — as well as a fastidious taste, and was not unfrequently a soli- citor for articles. Sometimes destitution seemed to stare him in the face, but with his usual good fortune things altogether desirable arrived at the last moment, and the supply never failed. The poetry I never read, as he wished to see all that came, and his reading was certainly quite sufficient. His judgment in the case of verse was very quick and very sure, even the single felicity of phrase or graceful thought in a poor poem never escaped his notice. His standard of what * Atlantic ' verse should be was high and not often to be attained to, but he came as near to it as circumstances allowed and never accepted poems lightly or unadvisedly. In the matter of short stories he was 144 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH nearly as critical, while a slovenly or careless style in any sort of article would almost obscure whatever other merit the paper might possess. He was, however, very fair- minded towards articles treating of subjects which did not appeal to his personal tastes, if the writers thereof were clear-headed and had a reasonable amount of literary skiU. "It is pleasant to remember his appreciation of papers of a distinct literary quality, — those from Mr. Woodberry and Miss Preston, to mention but two of what might be called his regular staff, and the too few articles of Mrs. Wister's. In Mr. SiU he found the ideal contributor for an easy-going editor. This modest gentleman used to send little essays of admirable pith and point to brighten the Contributors' Club, a half-a-dozen at a time, with usually a poem or two accompanying them. They were always sure to be acceptable, they were never inquired after by the author, who when the time came read his proofs to perfec- tion, and sent more equally good copy. Well do I remem- ber the heavy sense of loss when, with his latest papers in our hands, the news came of his death. Less tranquil, but still more interesting and stimulating, was the constant intercourse with that accomplished Shakespearean, mu- sical amateur, student of English, and man of letters, Mr. Richard Grant White. There was always a touch of exhilaration and pleasant anticipation in opening a new manuscript from him, and as he wrote on subjects of which he knew much, invariably had the courage of his convic- |3 H O THE ''ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 145 tions, and was at once exceedingly well-bred and exceed- ingly sensitive, emendations of any sort had to be as care- fully brought about as might be. When I think of the regular contributors, of the faithful survivors of the Old Guard, and of the writers then in their prime or beginning their work, I can see much justification for Mr. Aldrich's calm belief that excellent copy would come with each new month. " To work with him was usually a most agreeable experi- ence, but, as to accomplishment, it had its disadvantages. It was likely to remind him of something much more inter- esting. Some bit of autobiography, oftenest an anecdote of his early life, which led to another and yet another. Ah, if it could be possible to put that desultory talk, vivid narra- tion, scintillating humor, into cold type, it would leave any tale he ever told with pen and ink far behind ! He was hap- pily so circumstanced as to regard work and the various complications attending it, with a cheerful detachment not possible to the ordinary toiler. Of the domestic tribulations incident to the life of the usual householder in this ill-served land, he, as he always declared, practically knew nothing. No perplexities or annoyances of the kind were allowed to disturb his well-ordered home life, wherein again he was fortunate." Despite the happy ease with which Aldrich took his editorial work, he had, Hke other editors, his moments of weariness and discouragement; witness this from a letter to Stedman, written from Ponkapog in the fall of 1881 : — 146 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH "I am nearly dead with the details of office-work, and have run off to the old Indian Farm to bind up some wounds in the mind. Leaving out Sundays, and my trip to New York, I have not had a day's vacation since the first of last March. No, I have n't a novel or anything in hand, except a lyric or two which I shall print in ' Harper's Maga- zine.' I shall not print any of my verses in the 'Atlantic' No man shall say that I crowded him out and put myself in. I find it devilish difficult to get good poems for the Maga. Our old singers have pretty much lost their voices, and the new singers are so few ! My ear has not caught any new note since i860. By Jove ! I wish there were a nest of young birds in full song now! I don't call you a young bird. You are the only one of our day and generation who is doing anything at present. In your letter you speak of having written two poems. I wish you 'd send them to me. I am slowly making up my mind to pubHsh none but incon- testably fine poems in the ' Atlantic ' — which means only about four poems per year. What do you think of that plan ? If you could see the piles of bosh sent to this office you'd be sick at heart." But whatever were his alternations of mood and easy- going methods, Aldrich made an excellent magazine for the lettered reader. Under his conduct the "Atlantic " attained a notable unity of tone and distinction of style. A little less accessible to new and unknown talent than Mr. Howells had been, he was yet quick to perceive the note of distinc- tion, and few of his swans turned out geese. He was not a THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 147 militant editor, and was not greatly concerned about poli- tics and affairs. His interest was first and always Litera- ture, and perhaps no editor of the "Atlantic" has printed more of it. During his tenure of office the afterglow of the great day of New England literature was fading, but fading slowly. He could count on occasional poems from Long- fellow, Holmes, Whittier, and Lowell, to say nothing of the younger group headed by Sill. He had Parkman and Fiske for historical papers, James, Helen Hunt Jackson, Miss Murfree, Mrs. Oliphant, Marion Crawford, Miss Jewett, and the two Hardys, American and English, for fiction. He developed the critical department of the maga- zine to a high degree of competence by marshalling what has seldom been seen in this country, a thoroughly com- pact and capable coterie of critical reviewers. This group, which was composed of Richard Grant White, G. E. Woodberry, George Parsons Lathrop, Horace Scudder, and Miss Harriet Waters Preston, contributed a surprisingly large proportion of the material that is embodied in the score of volumes of his editing. Read to-day, after the lapse of twenty years, it is still remarkable for penetration of insight and felicity of expression. It was under Aldrich, too, that the ''Atlantic" won its international reputation as being, in the phrase of an English review, " the best edited magazine in the English language." To his fastidious sense of phrase and syntax, reading proof was a sacrament. If he habitually delegated the celebration of it to his assistant, his interest in the result was none the less keen, and it fared 148 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ill with any split infinitive or suspended nominative — even with such seemingly innocent locutions as "several peo- ple" — that fell under his searching eye. The editorial letters that Aldrich wrote out in his beauti- ful round hand are models of terse and luminous expres- sion, and many of his younger writers remember their help- fulness with sincere gratitude. With all his contributors, both known and unknown, he was something of a martinet, particularly in the matter of the pruning away of longueurs; but both classes soon came to trust his editorial acumen and literary craftsmanship. The books in which his corre- spondence was copied are fruitful reading for the magazine writer, professional or amateur. They contain, too, occasional arresting expressions of personal opinion. Take, for a single instance, this note, returning a sonnet to a would-be contributor personally unknown to him : — April 26, 1887. Dear Madam, — Though I think this a good sonnet, I do not retain it, for the reason that I have on hand more poems in that unpopular form than I can conveniently use. The sonnet is essentially a poet's poem ; I don't believe that the general reader cares for it. Your sonnet is very carefully built, and the construction afforded me pleasure; but while reading the lines I won- dered if we writers of verse did not give the public credit for more interest in our purely personal emotions than reaUy exists. Why should we print in a magazine those intimate THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 149 revelations which we would n't dream of confiding to the bosom of an utter stranger at an evening party ? In what respect does the stranger differ from the public which we are so ready to take into our inmost confidence ? The reflec- tion was not new to me, however: it has saved me from writing many a verse that could by no chance have been of the slightest interest to the general public. I trust, dear madam, that you will not think that I write at this length whenever I decline to print a sonnet ! Yours very respectfully, T. B. Aldrich. Not the least interesting episodes of his work to Aldrich himself, with his whimsical humor and zest for idiosyn- crasy, were his encounters with the eccentric persons who besiege editorial offices with ingenious devices for squaring the literary circle. Among his papers is the following, writ- ten in a large formidable hand : — T. B. Aldrich, Editor of "The Atlantic Monthly," No. 4 Park Street, Boston; Sir, — On the 24th day of February and again on the 7th inst. I gave you opportunity to apologize for the wilfully offensive manner in which you treated me in relation to my manuscript entitled " Shake- speare's Viola." You retained that manuscript nearly seven weeks. Then you returned it and expressed your regret that you could not accept it. ISO THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH That is to say, you intended to deceive me by the infer- ence that the manuscript was declined on its merits. The truth was and is you did not read it nor even open the package. Therefore you could not judge its merits nor say, with truth, that you regretted to decline it. You decline to apologize. My robust nature abhors your disgusting duplicity. You are a vulgar, unblushing Rascal and an impudent auda- cious Liar. Which I am prepared to maintain any where, any time. You ought to be publicly horsewhipped. Nothing would gratify me more than to give you a sounder thrashing than any you have yet received. Moreover, I am determined that the Literary Public shall know what a putrid scoundrel and Liar you are. X. Attached to this amazing document is a memorandum in Aldrich's leisurely script : — "The gentleman with the robust nature was politely invited to call at No. 4 Park Street on any day that week between 9 a. m. and 3 p. m., but * the robust nature ' failed to materialize." His whimsicality found another playground in his rela- tions with his fellow-workers, and is still a tradition in the office. Once when he was annoyed by too many interrup- tions from the lower office, he sprang up with the insouci- ance of a bad boy, — " but not such a very bad boy," — THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 151 plugged the speaking tube with a cork and drove it in with the poker. On another occasion, his masterful publisher, Mr. Houghton, who had been submitting to the "Atlantic " the manuscripts of divers "friends of the house" with rather ill-success, said to him jocosely: "I have written a story and I'm going to send it to you under a fictitious name." " Then," said Aldrich, " I advise you to send it to a fictitious editor." The even tenor of Aldrich's life through the eighties presents few themes for biographical expatiation. It was a placid, sun-kissed lake rather than a flowing river. In 1883 he bought the beautiful, ample house at 59 Mount Vernon Street, which as time went on was to become a treasure- house of choice books, literary relics, autographs, and objects of art. There through the winters Aldrich, in his hours of ease in his study under the roof, read innumerable French and Spanish novels, or descended with cheerful reluctance to the drawing-room to play the perfect host to the visitors who thronged his hospitable portals. The summers he habitually spent in Europe, — in England, Russia, or Switzerland, — talking, reading, and, despite a profound aversion from "sight-seeing," gaining vivid im- pressions for future poems. In 1 88 1 he received the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Yale University, a well-merited academic recog- nition that gave him pleasure. Fifteen years later he was to receive a like honor from Harvard, and in the last year 152 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH of his life the University of Pennsylvania conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Laws. The relations with affairs which even the most belle- tristic editor cannot entirely avoid tended to keep per- manently alive Aldrich's political consciousness, which at other times was rather fitful in him. Two of his poems of deepest national feeling date from this period. On July 2, 1881, he wrote to Stedman: "I have just returned from Boston, where I found your pleasant note. I made a fi)dng visit to town this morning to lay in some rockets and champagne and ice cream and other explosives for the 4th. I no sooner set foot in the city than I was hurled back to that bewildering April morning in '65, when the news of Lincoln's assassination struck us all to the heart. Where were you that day? At first no one believed that Garfield had been shot. Up to the present moment we in peaceful Ponkapog know nothing of the result. (A whip-o'-will in the cherry-tree is driving me dis- tracted with his plaintive cry.) How far off from murder and the harm of the world we are here ! " The tragic event made a deep impression on his imagina- tion, to which, after the death of the President, " The Bells at Midnight" bore eloquent testimony. Again, on the day after the death of Wendell Phillips in 1884, Aldrich's "Monody" was written at a single sitting, a most unusual thing with him. None of his poems is more thoroughly interfused with the larger ideality, or more admirably worked out in grave and noble poetic speech. Owing to the 59 MOUNT VERNON STREET THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 153 speed of its composition and the questionable propriety of its verse form, Aldricli himself had many misgivings about it, yet the piece is indubitably one of his best in its kind. Take the lines that celebrate the great New England group: — "Rich is the land, O Death! Can give you dead like our dead ! — Such as he from whose hand The magic web of romance Slipped, and the art was lost! Such as he who erewhil'e — The last of the Titan brood — With his thunder the Senate shook; Or he who, beside the Charles, Untouched of envy or hate, Tranced the world with his song; Or that other, that gray-eyed seer Who in pastoral Concord ways With Plato and Hafiz walked." How sure and telling the accent ! Other notable poems of the period of his editorship were "The Sailing of the Autocrat," written in 1886, "The Last Caesar," done in 1887, and the magnificent eulogy of Tennyson, composed 1889. Aldrich's editorial experience with the "Atlantic" had the effect of refining still further his shrewd and candid critical judgment, and among the rather meagre survivals of his correspondence of these years are several letters that contain critical pronouncements of the first interest. Take as a first example this to Stedman concerning Holmes : — 154 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH " I think you are right about Holmes being in and out of fashion. His lyrics were at first very popular; then there came a time — between 1847 and 1857 — when his bright work was rather overshadowed by a different kind — that of Longfellow and Whittier. The poems in the ' Autocrat ' brought Holmes to the front again. After a while he lost ground, it seems to me. He wrote too many class-day verses: they had an instant, local success, but they be- longed, as our friend Henry James would say, to the paro- chial school of poetry. The verse that pleases merely a set does n't last like the verse that impresses a solitary reader here and there. Strictly speaking, Holmes's poems are not as popular to-day as they were ten years ago. Nothing is forgotten as quickly as the stanza that makes us laugh, and nothing is remembered so long as the stanza that makes us think or makes us feel. Holmes has written very few of the latter sort. Those few are nearly perfect, but they don't appeal to his general audience. I can't imagine how he will stand by and by. At present his personality is a tower of strength." A little later he wrote again to Stedman concerning an admirable paper that the latter had been writing on "The Twilight of the Poets": — " If you live to be two hundred years old — and I should like to catch you at it ! — you will not find a more difficult task than the one which you set yourself in the September ' Century,' nor be able to accomplish it more skilfully. I wonder how you dared to handle such a lot THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 155 of exposed poetic nerves! Yet you touched each with such inspired tact that I can't imagine a single quiver in the whole bunch. With regard to the passage which you so kindly devoted to me, I shall say to you what I said to a photographer yesterday, 'Am I as good-looking as all that?' One generally goes down to the grave without any very accurate idea of one's own profile. ' The Twi- light of the Poets' — the title by itself is worth $50 — must have cost you immense labor. How on earth did you get all these people together? Three or four of them were total strangers to me, and to a wise man here who sup- posed that he knew everybody. It is a notable paper, and if it errs anywhere it errs on the side of geniality — wisely, perhaps, yet I wish you had left out , who is simply a crank. The essay is very carefully built, and I find only two or three details to which I could take exception. One of them would be the coupling of * Songs of Sum- mer' with 'The Raven, and Other Poems' (page 794). In point of significance they are millions of miles apart. Then I think it is a good thing for a man to know his own limitations. The possession of that knowledge is in itself a kind of genius : the possessor will go far — because he will go in his own direction. If he's a round man he won't spend half his life in attempting to get himself into a square hole ; he won't write epics when God intended him to write lyrics. A poet does n't * reach the heights ' by a chance jump. What you say about over-elaboration is adnurable. That is had technique. The things that 156 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH have come down to us, the things that have lasted, are perfect in form. I believe that many a fine thought has perished being inadequately expressed, and I know that many a light fancy is immortal because of its perfect wording. Moreover, I have a theory that poor material is incapable of the highest finish. You can't make even statuettes out of butter." But perhaps the most characteristic of all the critical paragraphs in the letters of these years is this to Colonel T. W. Higginson concerning the battle bard, Henry Howard Brownell, a poet of whom Aldrich was one of the earhest and sincerest admirers : "I am sorry that you did not men- tion Brownell in your interesting paper concerning High- Water Marks. He is really the only poet produced by the War. His mother was Rebellion and his father Loyalty. Our other singers had earlier and gentler parentage. The flame in his verse was lighted at the mouth of the Hart- ford cannon. He has two or three poems, to have written which seems to me nearly as fine a thing as to have captured two or three towns. I don't agree with you on the value of contemporary criticism — excepting when it is mine ! Not a man in England saw how fine a poet Keats was, save Hunt and Shelley (after Keats was dead) and one or two other persons who were laughed at. Contemporary criti- cism is apt to get its own conceit in its eye ; but I do think that when the American verse of to-day comes to be sifted in 1990, there will be found in the sieve a great many grains of gold from Brovmell's mine. Possibly we may in a way THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 157 be permitted to know about it ; in which case I will remind you of my prophecy later!" In the summer of 1885 Aldrich spent several weeks on a cruise along the New England coast, on the Oneida, the yacht of Mr. E. C. Benedict. Others of the party were Booth, Barrett, Parke Godwin, and Laurence Hutton. Writing home to his daughter. Booth said : "Aldrich is kept at a white heat of fun by Hutton"; and about the same time Mark Twain was telling a Parisian interviewer: "Thomas Bailey Aldrich has said fifteen hundred if not fifteen thousand things as brilliant as the things Talleyrand said, which are labelled 'French Wit.'" It was, in short, during the period of his "Atlantic" editorship that Aldrich gained his national reputation as a wit. All his life long he had been uttering good things as copious and unconcerned as the bubbles that rise in an effervescent spring, but now he was a little nearer the footlights, and his sayings began to be more widely repeated. He ceased to be a neighbor- hood wit like Tom Appleton or John Holmes, and men began to tell of his whimsicalities at the clubs of New York and the dinner tables of Washington. It is difficult to do adequate justice to the quality of Aldrich's wit by reporting his tersely turned witticisms. When the " North American Review" suddenly reduced its thickness by one half, he said: "It looks as if destiny had sat on it" ; but to savor the full zest of the whimsicality we should have had to see the fine air, the charming half- pleased, half-deprecatory toss of the head with which it was carried 158 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH off. A great source of his wit lay in the humorous preju- dices of which he had a vast supply. Could he find a digni- fied and pretentious person holding fast some of the ideas he himself specially disliked, he was at his best. He would literally — as Leigh Hunt said Lamb would have done to Johnson — " pelt him with pearls." To the very end of his life one of the chief charms of his good things lay in a cer- tain boyish blurting of them out; and one of the most engaging qualities of his humor was a certain happy im- pudence. He delighted to tell of his experience in getting his name reinstated in the voting list of Boston after an absence of a year or two from his Mount Vernon Street home : appearing before a minor magistrate of the race that, as Lowell said, " fought all our battles and got up all our draft riots," he was asked his name and occupation, and if he could read. Modestly admitting that he could " a little," he was given the Declaration of Independence and told to "Read thot." "Begorra!" said Aldrich, "I will. 'Whin in the coorse of human ivints — ' " He was incontinently allowed to register. Another time he soberly asked the telescope man on Boston Common, who draws a living from star-gazing Bos- tonians, whether Venus were "naked to the visible eye." The owner of the "ingenious perspicall" twice assured him that she was, before the light broke^on him. Once, when Holmes was giving a dinner in honor of Matthew Arnold, the "Little Doctor," himself a wit of international acclaim, set the conversational ball rolling by THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY" 159 asking the various guests, in his humorously hectoring manner, what they would do in certain dire contingencies : if they were to encounter a pirate in the Back Bay, etc., etc. Each time Holmes capped the answer with a better one, till he came to Aldrich. "Aldrich," said he, "what would you do if one day on Mount Vernon Street you were to meet a cannibal?" "Why," said Aldrich, "I should stop and pick an acquaintance!" At another dinner, in honor of Lord Houghton, Aldrich chanced to be seated beside the chief guest, and, presently, he noticed that Houghton had mislaid his napkin and was vainly looking for it. Aldrich, observing that it had fallen to the floor, picked it up and restored it to the noble bard, quoting, as he did so, two lines from one of his lord- ship's poems : — " A man's best things are nearest him — Lie close about his feet." Perhaps the most telling feature of Aldrich's humor was its marvellous readiness. Coming home late one night, he noticed a light still burning in the study of Booth's house on Chestnut Street. Approaching a window, he tapped Kghtly on the pane; no response. Again he tapped: suddenly the door sprang open and out rushed the tragedian, hair rumpled and eyes wild, a navy revolver, at full cock, in his hand. "Hello, Ned," said Aldrich, "going hunting? I'U lend you Trip." i6o THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Often his wit had at once a classic precision of form, a core of sound sense, and a saucy disrespectf ulness that were to the last degree telling. A friend once remarked to him that a certain eminent and indefatigable laborer in the field of letters was a very learned man. "Yes," said Aldrich, "a very learned man, but like a gas-pipe, no richer for the illumination he has conveyed." We have had numerous witty men given to a more rol- licking humor, but scarcely another so choicely gifted in oral phrase, so airy and nimble in fancy, so happily and continuously witty through all his waking hours. There was no exaggeration in what Mark Twain has written of him : "Aldrich was always brilliant, he could n't help it ; he is a fire-opal set round with rose diamonds ; when he is not speaking, you know that his dainty fancies are twinkling and glimmering around in him; when he speaks, the dia- monds flash." In the spring of 1890, after nine years in the editorial chair, Aldrich concluded that the time had come to enjoy a larger leisure. Resigning the post permanently to Horace Scudder, who had often occupied it during his summers in Europe, he sailed for the East, free of all ties ; and manuscripts and "make-up" troubled him no more. CHAPTER VII INDIAN SUMMER DAYS I 890-1 900 NOT long after his release from the "Atlantic" Aldrich wrote in the postscript of a friendly letter, " What a blessed relief it is not to make a hundred bitter enemies per month by declining MSS. I am so happy these days that I sometimes half suspect some calamity lurking round the corner." The calamity was to be long deferred. The death of many of his friends of old time brought him hours of sorrow, and made him aware, as he many times writes in his correspondence, "What a slight hold we have on this revolving globe." Yet the years from 1890 to 1900 were perhaps the happiest of his life. They passed in a bland and mellow light as of a land where it seemed always afternoon. The memorabilia of these years are few. The Aldriches were abroad in the summers of 1890, 1891, and 1892. In the summer of 1893 they built "The Crags" at Tenant's Harbor on the Maine coast, a summer place that the poet came to be immensely fond of. In the winter of 1894-95 they went around the world. In the winter of 1898-99 they went again around the world ; and they were in Europe in the summer of 1900. Despite this far-darting travel and i62 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH the zest with which he enjoyed his leisure, Aldrich's pen was far from idle. He wrote numerous short stories, and though he was continually afl5rming that he had written his last poem, the impulse was as continually revisiting him. These years saw the composition of such poems as "Elm- wood," "Unguarded Gates," "Santo Domingo," and the "Shaw Memorial Ode." They saw, too, the successful stage production of his drama " Mercedes," and the publi- cation of five new books of verse and two of prose, as well as the appearance in 1896 of his collected works in eight compact volumes. In 1897, Henry L. Pierce, Aldrich's close friend for many years, — " Decus columenque rerum," — died in the house at 59 Mount Vernon Street, which had been as another home to him. By his will the bulk of his large estate was disposed among various important public benefactions, though a considerable legacy was left to each member of the Aldrich family. These are all the facts that the annalist need record of this ten-year period. Throughout it Aldrich wrote more numerous and more notable letters than in any other period of his life. A selected series of them wiU faithfully reveal the nature of his occupations and opinions in these years, and the succession of his moods through the seasons. This chapter, then, shall be a chapter of autobiography. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 163 To G. E. Woodberry Hotel Royal, Constantinople, July 22, 1890. Dear Woodberry, — Christian, having thrown off his burden and quitted "the shop" forever, is walking in the streets of the City Beautiful. He unwinds the turban of care from his brow and sits down by the fountains of delight. . . . The bazaars in the early morning, cooling drinks and many-colored ices at noon-day, and afternoon dreams on the Bosphorus leave his mind smooth for his nightly divan. The life and color of the streets, — the grand vizier riding by on his milk-white mare and only just not stepping on the curled-up toes of the professional crip- ple on the curbstone — the mosques, the markets, and the minarets — all this Orient business goes straight to the heart of your friend, who will return to his own uncivilized land in October loaded to the muzzle with magazine papers of the most delightful novelty at the very highest prices. Meanwhile he has begged his friend Jacob, the seller of sweet waters, to drop this missive into the post across the street in order that you may be assured that you still live in the memory of Your faithful Thomas Ben-Aldrich. i64 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH To Frank Dempster Sherman 59 Mount Vernon Street, Nov. 13, 1890. Dear Mr. Sherman, — I think the little book ^ very charming inside and out. I find two especially hopeful signs in the volume — ist, it is an artistic advance on your previous collection of lyrics ; and, 2d, it is not morbid. The verse throughout is wholesome and happy, with a riant air about it — "as when a Grace Sprinkles another's laughing face With nectar, and runs on." Graver moods will come by and by : in expressing them seek to retain the same hopeful atmosphere. That may be done even in tragedy. The finest sort of tragedy — that means Shakespeare's — never depresses one. I believe in printing only a few verses at a time, as you do. Small books get themselves read, and stand a chance of getting liked if they are good. How wise Longfellow was ! His earliest and best fame was made by volumes of one hundred pages or so. To leave the reader wanting more is art ; to give him as much as he can hold is stupid. I have read " Lyrics for a Lute " twice, from al-pha to omega. If it had been four hun- dred pages ? So, stick to brief collections. I have won and kept my few readers by not surfeiting them. In February next I shall serve them out another round of starvation ^ Lyrics for a Lute, INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 165 rations. If I miss sending this handful of rhyme to you — I may be absent from home at the moment of publication — please touch my memory with your pen's point. Yours very cordially, T. B. Aldrich. To the Same London, July 5, 1891. My dear Mr. Sherman, — The pages of your article ' came to me so late on the night before I sailed as to leave me only a few minutes to run through them and remail them to the " Century" folk. So I question whether I have an adequate impression of your paper, except so far as its appreciation. I was rather sorry that you gave so much consideration to two poems which in future will find no place among my writings — I mean the Sherry song and the sonnet " By the Potomac." ... In brief, the deepest impression I retain from my hasty reading of your essay is its kindness to my verse which might with justice have been treated very unkindly. I like my poems less than you do, for I know "better than you how far they fall short of my intentions. To do the largest sort of work within one's own limits is a proper ambition, and that was mine. Only in the rarest instances have I approached my desire. I have five or six lyrics and one poem which indicate what I wanted to do. I shall have to be measured by them, if I am measured at all. I can add nothing to their quality, and you are wrong in regarding me as a promising poet, for I have done my ' See the Century Magazine for September, 1891. i66 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH best and do not intend to repeat myself. I promise nothing whatever in the future. I mean to take mine ease at mine inn. I would rather be in Westminster Abbey (alive !) than write about it. I mean to travel, and read, and dine, and write prose when I write. Experience teaches a man little in poetry, but it gives him endless themes for short stories. So I shall probably build no more Wyndham Towers, but construct blocks of brown-stone English basement houses and let them out to realistic families ! . . . Ever very sincerely yours, T. B. Aldeich. To G. E. Woodherry Under the Leads, 59 Mt. Vernon St., Oct. i6, 1891. Dear Woodberry, — I have thought of you lots of times since I reached home, but just the mood to drop you a line has n't come along until now. How is it with you ? Do you like your professor's robes? I picture you in long black skirts and skull-cap with the square Oxford top, delivering lectures to young New York and advising them to read Aldrich's poems. You could n't do less — nor they either ! This reminds me to say that I have written a poem of one hundred lines or so, on Lowell. I hope you will like it when you see it in one of the December magazines. One verse I am sure you will like — " Himself a bondman till all men were free." . . . Sorrow, sorrow, sorrow, — my dear little dog Trip is ^ '^/n^^^^^^^^ |^H| .^^99SIH^IH ^^^^^H ■ 1 ^^^^^feH^^^^^HI^Hff9!Kll ''^^^^'' ^ ■1 ^ ^^hH "^ I^^^^^H^^sY IB ■Hb r '»^.' HP p " " ! •^^^^H ■y|i£^H[ HI «^ M |flllMi| iH H|^l H !!^ F[ i||||||||g| ESI V— ■^^^^■nnsil^C 1 II^M^^^^^^^^^^I j.^.^^^1 ■ 1 INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 167 dead. To think that so many bitter men and women are let live, and this faithful, gentle, blithe little spirit blotted out! All else is well with me and mine. Ever yours, T. B. Aldrich. To the Same Dans un grenier, Nov. 18, 1891. My dear Woodberry, — Here are some poems for you to read and send back to me without letting any one lay eye or ear on them. If you were not sincere in lamenting your separation from my verse you have brought the punish- ment down on you with your own hands. If you don't find "Insomnia" grotesque, and the "Two Moods" thought- ful, and the " Sonnet" striking — then you shall have your money returned to you at the door. . . . These are flush times with me. I write some verse every day, and have already half enough matter to make a vol- ume of the size of my last. Maybe these are my swan- songs! . . . Dear old Booth, I 'm so sorry about him ! Trip is missed every day. Affectionately, T. B. A. To the Same Milton, May 14, 1892. Dear Woodberry, — This little realm — bounded on the North by "Tamerlane," and on the South, East, and i68 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH West by preparations for Europe — must seem to you a very contracted realm indeed, compared to the great wal- lowing sphere in which you live, move, and have your — salary. Nevertheless, I drop you a line from this dim spot of earth called Boston. A bloated bondholder with $1850 snatched that copy of "Tamerlane" away from me and I saw it go with tears in my eyes. I went home and wrote a misanthropic poem called "Unguarded Gates" (July "Atlantic" !), in which I mildly protest against Amer- ica becoming the cesspool of Europe. I 'm much too late, however. I looked in on an anarchist meeting the other night, as I told you, and heard such things spoken by our *' feller citizens" as made my cheek burn. These brutes are the spawn and natural result of the French Revolution; they don't want any government at all, they " want the earth" (like a man in a balloon) and chaos. My American- ism goes clean beyond yours. I believe in America for the Americans; I believe in the widest freedom and the nar- rowest license, and I hold that jail-birds, professional mur- derers, amateur lepers (" moon-eyed" or otherwise), and hu- man gorillas generally should be closely questioned at our Gates. Or the "sifting" that was done of old will have to be done over again. A hundred and fifty years from now, Americans — if any Americans are left — will find them- selves being grilled for believing in God after their own fashion. As nearly as I can estimate it off-hand, there will be only five or six extant — the poor devils ! I pity them prospectively. They were a promising race, they had such INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 169 good chances, but their politicians would coddle the worst elements for votes, and the newspapers would appeal to the slums for readers. The reins of government in all their great cities and towns slipped from the hands of the natives. A certain Arabian writer, called Rudyard Kip- ling, described exactly the government of every city and town in the (then) United States when he described that of New York as being " a despotism of the alien, by the alien, for the alien, tempered with occasional insurrections of decent folk." But to turn to important matters. I am having a bit of headstone made for Trip's grave at Ponkapog. The dear little fellow ! he had better manners and more intelligence than half the persons you meet " on the platform of a West- End car." He was n't constantly getting drunk and falling out of the windows of tenement houses, like Mrs. O'Flar- arty ; he was n't forever stabbing somebody in North Street. Why should he be dead, and these other creatures exhaust- ing the ozone? If he had written realistic novels and "poems" I could understand "the deep damnation of his taking off." In view of my own mature years I will not say that "they die early whom the gods love." . . . No. 59 is to close its door on May 17, and we are to spend our time here and there, principally at Ponkapog, until the 13th of June, when we shall go to New York to sail on the 15th. . . . Mrs. T. B. is having a good time in turn- ing our house upside down, and making it no place for a Christian to write hundred-dollar lyrics in. She insisted I70 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH on having my inkstand washed, and I got a temporary divorce. . . . I 've had no word from you for ages, and now I think of it, you don't deserve so long and instructive a letter as this, and so I'll end it. Affectionately yours, T. B. A. To Frank Dempster Sherman PoNKAPOG, Mass., May 29, 1892. My dear Mr. Sherman, — Your note found me among about forty millions of apple-blossoms. I 'm glad that you did n't come to Boston, since I was not to be there. I have written two or three poems which I wish could be printed before you commit your new indiscretion. In "A Shadow of the Night" and " Broken Music " I have touched one or two deeper chords than usual. However — O the sins of youth and inexperience ! they are heavier than the crimes of age. I would Hke to be young again just in order not to write those old verses in those old *' Knickerbockers." My Muse was really in its "knickerbockers" in them days. Why does n't a poet have his art and his impulse all at once ? I often feel sorry for actresses, who are always too old to play Juliet by the time they have learned how to do it. I know how to play Hamlet and Romeo now, but my figure does n't fit the parts ! When you see Mr. Mabie give him my kindest re- gards. He has at various times, and among the earliest, said helpful things when I most needed encouragement. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 171 For twenty years to come poetry is going to have a rough voyage in this country. It will get wrecked on the rocks of materialism and neglect, if there is n't here and there along the coast a head-light, like Mabie. Those were Ar- cadian days when a volume of such gentle verse as "The Voices of the Night" could make a man famous! My paper 's out ! Affectionately yours, T. B. Aldrich. To E. C. Stedman Boston, Oct. 8, 1892. My dear Edmund, — Thanks for your pleasant letter and its inclosures. The rumor that I am to accept a de- partment in " Harper's " is a rumor that has managed to fly far without any authentic wings. During twenty-five years of my literary life I have had a salaried position ; this has enabled me to leave untouched the small property I had from my father, and to save the income from my magazine writings and that of my copyrights. I am now in a com- fortable case ; neither rich nor poor, but quite independent of hack-work, and the lightest sort of editorial harness would gall me. Moreover, the man who undertakes a de- partment similar to Curtis's^ (Curtis cannot be replaced, only succeeded) should live in New York City and be in close touch with the great currents of life there. It would * During the temporary illness of Curtis in 1875 Aldrich had writ- ten the Easy Chair, — so skilfully that few readers had detected the change of hand. 172 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH take a great deal more money than my poor services are worth to induce me to break up my home here. . . . Affectionately yours, T. B. Aldrich. To H. W. Mabie 59 Mount Vernon Street, Feb'y lo, 1893. My dear Mabie, — It would be a solid pleasure to me to run on to New York and dine with The Aldine Club ^ some evening next month ; but if it is a question of after- dinner speeches and personal fireworks generally, I shall have to think over the matter a little. I am not a public speaker, and so not worth my salt at a banquet where stand-up and give-and-take felicities are expected. In private I can be as injudicious as anybody ! I retired from our jolly Tavern Club because a fellow could n't eat his dinner there without the creepy dread of being "called upon." That he could n't properly say ten words did n't save him. Yet we don't invite a man who is not a musician to give us a solo on the cornet. Please drop me a word or two on this point. As dear old Joe Jefferson says, " I want to know where I am at." . . . Very sincerely your friend, T. B, Aldrich. ^ This dinner at which Aldrich was the guest of honor occurred in due course. It is still remembered by those who were fortunate enough to be present at the most delightful of occasions. Aldrich for once broke his rule and made a speech — a speech, in Stedman's phrase, " More like Lowell and his after-dinner best than any of the others." INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 173 To G. E. Woodherry PoNKAPOG, Mass., May 28, 1893. Dear Woodberry, — Fate seems to be cutting up with me just as she did last summer. All my tribe have been under the weather. On returning from New York (May 6 or 7) I was laid up in bed with congestion of the lungs, and at the present time have been on my feet only ten days. Meanwhile the newspapers have been sending me to recep- tions and theatres, and on long journeys all over the United States. American newspapers are fearfully and wonderfully made. If about 20,000 of them could be suppressed the average decency of the world would be increased from 25 to 50 per cent. I 've been doing a lot of reading — gone back to Spanish and Carlyle's "Frederick the Great." I first read the work in Lowell's library when I lived at "Elmwood." The old days come back to me as I turn over the incoherent and explosive pages of the sour Thomas. . . . O, how lazy I am ! not so much as a couplet stirring in its shell. I am reading the proofs of a new and revised edition of "Mercedes," and presently I shall have the proofs of my book of stories and "An Old Town by the Sea" to correct. This will be my summer work. I don't expect ever to write anything more. Inkstand dried up, pen split, ideas gone. "Is this the cheek that launched a thousand lines And got 'em played at Palmer's Theatre?" 174 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH No more at present from Yours affectionately, T. B. A. Is poor old Edwin to be taken to the seaside ? These are sad days for the dear boy and those who love him. To William Winter ^ PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 12, 1893. Dear Will, — We reached Mount Auburn a few min- utes before sunset. Just as Edwin was laid in the grave, among the fragrant pine-boughs which lined it, and soft- ened its cruelty, the sun went down. I never saw anything of such heart-breaking loveliness as this scene. There in the tender afterglow two or three hundred men and women stood silent, with bowed heads. A single bird, in a nest hidden somewhere near by, twittered from time to time. The soft June air, blowing across the upland, brought with it the scent of syringa blossoms from the slope below. Over- head and among the trees the twilight was gathering. "Goodnight, sweet Prince!" I said, under my breath, remembering your quotation. Then I thought of the years and years that had been made rich with his presence, and of the years that were to come, — for us not many, surely, — and if there had not been a crowd of people, I would have buried my face in the greensward and wept, as men may not do, and women may. And thus we left him. * Reprinted from The Life and Art of Edwin Booth, by William Win- ter. New York, The Macmillan Co. 1893. ^vK>v «. ^. \5_ 4» sVav t^n t.'-— \j? ^^lii^- '^^'- V'-^^^""^ ki«^v5 , 'St W. \^. ^J,^. ^ ^to^. VW ._^^ ^_:^. VliJ:^ THE GRAVE OF EDWIN BOOTH INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 175 Some day, when I come to New York, we must get to- gether in a corner at the Players, and talk about him — his sorrows and his genius and his gentle soul. Ever affectionately, Tom. To G. E. Woodberry Tenant's Harbor, Maine, Aug. 28, 1893. Dear Woodberry, — I give you twenty guesses at what I am up to. You '11 never guess it. I have found my ideal strip of seacoast and am building a bit of cottage — a cottage in Spain, so to speak, since Spain lies just in front of my proposed piazza. On the left stretch the Camden Hills, twenty-five miles away. It is the wildest and loveliest wave-washed place I ever saw. Tenant's Harbor (my land lies outside of the entrance) is a diminutive port with a real custom-house, which does n't prevent it from being merely a little old-fashioned fishing-hamlet, primitive and quaint and unlike anything I know of. I am as happy and dirty as a clam, and enjoy every moment of my waking hours in watching the progress of my house, which is to be called "The Crags." . . . After this week I shall be at Ponkapog again, to wel- come my boys home. They are to sail for New York on Wednesday next. They have been absent four weeks. Mrs. T. B. and I have had a lazy, drifting summer of it, mostly by the ocean, and are as brown and hardy as ber- ries. I have written nothing, thank God,these four months. 176 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Next winter I shall probably be loaded to the muzzle with lyrics and sonnets. Meanwhile I am Ever yours, T. B. A. To Laurence Hutton PoNKAPOG, Mass., Oct. 31, 1893. Dear Laurence, — Of course I would a hundred times rather sojourn with your death-masks than stick myself up in that room at The Players, where memory never lets go its grip on me for a moment. . . . I have n't seen Winter's book yet. I did n't know that there were any words of mine in it. He must have quoted something from one of my letters. It was nothing I in- tended to be printed, of course, I hope it was not too intime, for I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve. The more I feel, the less I say about it. . . . I've just been reading Lowell's letters. How good and how poor they are ! Nearly all of them are too self-con- scious. Emerson and Whittier are about the only men in that famous group who were not thinking about them- selves the whole while. They were too simple to pose, or to be intentionally brilliant. Emerson shed his silver like the moon, without knowing it. However, we all can't be great and modest at the same moment ! Ever yours, T. B. A. Tell Mark that I love him just the same as if he had n't written successful books. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 177 To E. S. Morse Mt. Vernon St., Boston, April 16, 1894. My dear Morse, — There is no very good photograph or engraving of me. My peculiar beauty appears to be too many for the camera in its present undeveloped state. If I could get a dozen or twenty angels to sit with me, a fairly satisfactory composite photograph might be obtained. My personal appearance is so original and inexhaustible that I have a new expression every day. . . . I inclose portraits of me in two "states." Farther than this I cannot help you. Ever cordially yours, T. B. Aldrich. To G. E. Woodberry PONKAPOG, May 15, 1894. Dear Woodberry, — I have just got back from Ten- ant's Harbor and the inspection of my little cottage there. It is a delight, "with magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas" and looking straight across to Spain, where there is no end of first-class building material for a dreamer sitting on my front piazza. Come and see The Crags ! I am collecting and revising my later verse and shall have a book for next autumn. I am also trying to write a preface for "The Bad Boy," which is to be brought out in an entirely new edition with sixty delightful drawings by A. B. Frost. When not otherwise engaged I sit and smoke, 178 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH and smile at the present Administration. . . . The best kind of Democracy (as per sample) is no better than the worst kind of Republicanism. The Income Tax is the de- formed child of Coxey and his brother scalawags. I vote for McKinley. We shall have bloody work in this country some of these days, when the lazy canaille get organized. They are the spawn of Santerre and Fouquier-Tinville. In about twenty years we shall bring out an American edition (illustrated with cuts) of the beautiful French Revolution. Meanwhile I am in receipt of your package of books. Thanks — especially for the Booth. I have read your monody again. If I had five hundred copies of it I would read each one. It is a lovely poem. Do you know that you 've got a full line from brother Shakespeare among the closing verses? I'll tell you which line it is for lo cents — or a letter. . . . Yours during life, T. B. A. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 179 Bis I To Francis Bartlett Redman Farm, PONKAPOG, Mass., Sept. 13, 1894. My dear Bartlett, — It has possibly not often oc- curred to you that Thomas Bailey Aldrich goes often to New York, and is always the polite, if a little bored, victim of the interview- ers. He remembers the time, 30 years or more gone, when he was a working journalist himself. For that reason, perhaps, he is always ready to give an attentive ear to newspaper men. He is a good deal changed now from the elegant and rather dandified litterateur who 3 years ago ! used to edit the Atlantic Monthly. His a good deal changed now from the elegant and rather dandified litterateur who used to edit the Atlantic Monthly. His clothes are cut as smartly as ever and are in the same exquisite taste, but the ends of his mustache are not tightly No, he now curled as of yore, nor is his^ hair plas- •wears a curl tered closely upon bis forehead, as it on that fore- used to be. The ends of his mustache, head; and minus their mandarinlike point, blow when he is where the wind listeth, and his hair has good, he is an unstudied thrust in it, rather wildish etc., etc. for the author of the "Ballads of Babie ^'good!" Bell." Just why Aldrich should have main- tained in his personal appearance the impression given forth by his early poems, the ditties of love-lorn days, was always a good deal of a mystery to those who were acquainted with the vi- rility of his later poetry and the strong patient judgment he exercised in the editorship of the Atlantic. It was a bit of a foible. But now that it is gone, one is able to see what a finely moulded head his shoulders carry. i8o THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH But it was not in order to state these obvious facts that I took my pen in hand. Mrs. Aldrich wanted me to say to you that she had a charming little visit in spite of her in- validism. She is better this morning, but her cough is still frequent enough to give me cause for just indignation. I don't put up with such things patiently. Dispensations of Providence can make me as mad as any other sort of im- position. . . . Ever faithfully yours, T. B. Aldrich. To his Sons Yokohama, Oct. 29, 1894. My dear Boys, — We arrived here this morning at nine o'clock after twelve wretched days, — a gale every day — the roughest voyage, the captain says, that the Empress of India has made in three years! Your little mother and I went to the table only once, and were on deck only twice. . . . The day before we sighted land your mother and I suddenly recovered, and had a heavenly twenty-four hours. I can't tell you how glad we were to get on shore. It was like getting into Paradise. Ahready that stormy ocean seems like a dream. This is the loveliest place we ever saw. The little houses are so funny, and the little men and women moving about the quaint streets look like figures from a chess-board. I never saw anything so curious as the streets. It is like being on the stage during a performance of the "Mikado." The little Jap girls are awfully pretty and do nothing but smile on us as they INDIAN SUMMER DAYS i8i toddle by. We have had a delicious breakfast and a long ride about town in rikishas — little two-wheeled wagons drawn each by a little Jap who trots just like a pony and seems never to get tired. The rikisha holds only one per- son, and costs 75c. per day ! A single course loc. It is per- fectly charming to ride in these toy carriages — they are set rather high, and I don't know what would happen if the horse were to stumble. AU the people are very gentle and polite and soft-voiced. I think I should like to live in Japan. But we have n't begun to see the best of it yet. We are told that we shall fall wholly in love with Tokio, where we are to go in a few days in order to attend the yearly garden-party of the Emperor. I have written to our Ambassador to obtain an invitation. We don't hear much about the war. The Emperor does n't allow cor- respondents to go with the army, so little or nothing is known about the battles until the government gives out the news. The harbor here is full of sunken torpedoes, and our ship had to be guided through them by a Jap- anese gunboat. We have been wishing all the morning that you two were with us, everything is so novel and fas- cinating. But you would n't have liked that sea- voyage. I would n't take it again for $5000. The Atlantic Ocean is an inland lake compared with the Pacific. The fellow who named it the Pacific was a heartless humorist. . . . Your mother and Miss have gone off in two riki- shas on a shopping excursion, and I must end this in or- der to run down to the pier and see the Empress of Japan i82 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH start for Hong-Kong. We made some lovely friends aboard — a Major Faithful in command of an English regiment stationed at Hong-Kong, and two young English captains sent over here to study the war. . . . Your ever affectionate Father. To the Same ToKio, Japan, Nov. 7, 1894 My dear Boys, — Since I wrote you from Yokohama we have been travelling in the interior of Japan. We have never been in a country so crowded vdth novelty — the people, the streets, the manners, and the very scenery are whoUy unHke anything elsewhere. When we leave Japan at the end of this month I fancy that we shall have left behind us the best part of our journey. We are spending a week here and are having a delightful time. The night before last I went on a Japanese spree with a Mr. T. formerly of Boston, but now a permanent resident of Tokio, where he dwells with Yum-yum in grand style. He invited me to a theatre party — five or six pretty Japanese ladies and two masculine Japs, none of whom knew a word of EngHsh. But they were very charming and poHte. I went to the theatre at six o'clock p. m. and witnessed the butt- end of a play that began at ten o'clock in the morning! After the performance we took rikishas, each with its gaudy paper lantern, and started for the tea-house some two miles distant. The ride through the streets under strings and arcades of lanterns was a dream. I seemed to 1 INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 183 be wandering in fairy-land. At the tea-house little Jap- anese women removed our shoes and gave us slippers, for no one wears shoes within doors, where everybody sits on the floor. We were shown into a room made of large screens and carpeted with mats. The only furniture in this room was a nail, on which I hung my hat — neither table nor chair. The supper, which consisted of twelve elabo- rate courses, was served on trays placed on the floor. Such food — green and purple fish, and meat black and red, and straw-colored dishes composed of God knows what. Several of the things were delicious, but the rest were Hke unpleasant drugs. While the banquet was progressing three girls played on outlandish musical instruments and three other maidens in beautiful costumes recited poems and danced. The meal lasted two hours and a half, ending with sake, a strong native wine, and coffee. Then Yum- yum put on my shoes, bowed down before me with her forehead on the matting, and a few minutes later I was in my rikisha on the way through the lonely streets to our hotel. I did n't have a headache, which I richly deserved, the next morning. I should n't care to go to many such banquets, but it was well worth doing once. It was a genu- ine page out of the Arabian Nights. It is impossible to de- scribe the wonders we have seen — the temples, the gardens, and bazaars. On Friday, November 9, we return to Yoko- hama, from which there are several excursions to be made ; then we shall set out for Kobe, where we are to take ship for Hong-Kong. The treaty ports of China are said to be i84 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH safe for Europeans, but the war fever increases as we go East, and I 'm afraid that we shall not be allowed to visit Canton, which is not a treaty port. However, we intend to try it. . . . Your affectionate Father. To the Same Hong-Kong, Dec. 9, 1894. My dear Boys, — We had a delightful voyage from Kobe to Hong-Kong, the sea being as smooth as Ponkapog Pond. At Shanghai we stopped long enough to have a ride through the town and take tiffin at a pastry shop. We have been here a week, seeing the sights and making ex- cursions. On Saturday last (this is Sunday) we went to Canton. It was not quite safe to do so on account of the pirates. They have a way of taking steerage passage at Hong-Kong, and then seizing the steamer when she gets out to sea. We had a large number of Chinese on the lower deck, and there was a sailor with a carbine at each gang- way to keep them down there. In the cabin on the upper deck were racks of Winchester rifles, loaded and ready for use. Nothing happened, however ; our preparations, per- haps, were too many for our shipmates, if they had any evil intentions. We left Hong-Kong in the evening and reached Canton the next morning. We spent the day there riding about the streets in rikishas, if they can be called streets, for they were only six or seven feet wide, and when two rikishas met it was close work to pass. We were fol- INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 185 lowed everywhere by forty or fifty ruffians who now and then hooted at us, and towards the end of the afternoon began snapping pebbles and bits of stick at the rear rikisha, in which I had the happiness of being seated. The rikishas had to go in single file and I brought up the rear of the pro- cession. I was glad that we were not to pass the night in Canton with a million and a half of copper-colored devils. After an early dinner (on food brought with us) in the fifth story of a pagoda on the outskirts of the city (the crowd still keeping us company and pouncing on the remains of our meal), we went on board a little steamer which was to leave for Macao the next morning at 8 o'clock. There we slept in comfort and safety. The following night we spent at Macao, a very interesting town, belonging to Portugal, and reached Hong-Kong the next evening. I would n't have missed our excursion to Canton, but I should n't like to repeat it. It was the foulest-smelling, most overcrowded place I was ever in, but the little shops were packed with rich things, and your mother bought a lot of gorgeous em- broideries very cheap. Here, at Hong-Kong, we met with Major Faithful, whose acquaintance we made on the voy- age from Vancouver to Yokohama. He is in command of a regiment stationed across the bay. . . . To-morrow we are to sail for Ceylon in a German Lloyd steamer, and are preparing ourselves with pith hats and very thin clothing, for the weather will presently be as hot as Tophet — if that's the way to spell it. We shall have to sleep on the decks after we have been out two or three days. Unless we i86 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH have a gale, not usual at this time of year, we shall have tranquil water and summer clouds. To this brief account of ourselves I can only add that we are all in good health and spirits and are enjoying every hour of our journey. ... At Ceylon we shaU arrange for servants and bedding and food, for none of these things are furnished by hotels in India ! They merely supply you with rooms to sleep in, and you have to do the rest, like a kodak. The voyage from here to Colombo (look at the map) will take seven or eight days, with a stay of twenty-four hours at Singapore, which will be a pleasant break. There we shall strike the hottest of weather and I shall don my silk night-suit, which is splendid enough to keep the rest of the passengers awake all night! Everybody will sleep (if he can) on deck, the cabins below being suffocating. I'm a picture in my mush- room pith hat and white shoes and the suit of clothes which I had built for me by a Japanese tailor at Yokohama ! — Major Faithful has just made his appearance, and I must end this with love to all. Your affectionate Father. To the Same Cairo, Feby. 8, 1895. My dear Boys, — At Cairo our faces are turned home- ward. It has been a long journey and one full of wonderful sights — Japan, China, Ceylon, India, and Egypt! All our sea-voyages, excepting that on the horrible Pacific, have been delightful, and in nearly every instance we have been INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 187 half sorry to leave the ship. The twelve days' voyage from Colombo to Calcutta was made up of blue skies and moon- light and seas of glass. After quitting Ceylon I did n't ex- pect to see much that was novel in the way of picturesque- ness, but then I had not seen India. It took us three weeks to go through the heart of India, from Calcutta to Bom- bay, where we took ship for Ismallia. I was glad when we passed through the Suez Canal and were within five hours of Cairo, for travelling in India was rough, the roughest we ever did, and I was afraid that some one of the party would break down at sea. We had been sleeping in damp and unwholesome bungalows and eating such food as we never before dreamed of. Much of our railway travel was done by night and was very fatiguing. However, we all stood it bravely and reached here in splendid condition. I forget when I last wrote to you ; the dates have been shaken out of me by a ride on a camel this morning. We made an ex- cursion to the Pyramids and the famous Sphinx a few miles from the town, and were obliged to go on camels the latter half of the way. Elephant-riding is vastly pleasanter. At Jeypur we made a little journey on elephants and had a lovely time, though now and then the elephant showed a disposition to sprinkle his rider over a precipice. We had ourselves photographed, but we have n't received the pic- tures, which were to be mailed to us. I hope we shall get them, but I am doubtful about it. We found a pile of letters and papers on our arrival here, and were thankful to get them, for we had been living a long while on mere cable- i88 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH grams. They consoled us with their laconic assurances that all at home were well, but we had begun to be hungry for details. Among my mail was a long and interesting letter from ancient William, for which give him my thanks. I wish he had told me more about his new house at the Harbor and less about my drain- pipe being swept away. That's no kind of news to send a man! I'm sorry that tidal wave did n't sweep the plumber's head off. I long to see The Crags with its built-out stern, and am looking for- ward with pleasure to having you all under that happy roof next summer. As to our movements : We are to sail for Naples (from Alexandria) on March 4, and in the meanwhile purpose to run up, or down, to Jerusalem, which will occupy about a week. The rest of the time will be spent here, where there is much to see. I forgot to say that we met Mr. Bartlett at Bombay, and visited the Slater yacht, which came in the night before we sailed for Ismailia. It is a beautiful yacht, but I prefer a seven-thousand-ton steamer for my personal sailing. We are constantly meeting old friends and ac- quaintances. It is a little world after all. I think that some of my books have been great travellers in out-of-the-way places, for I find them known here and there in the oddest corners on earth. — This is a thin letter to be woven out of so rich experience, but I have n't words enough to make things plain. I write only to send my love to you, my dear sons, and to all of our small circle at home. Your affectionate Father. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 189 To G. E. Woodberry PONKAPOG, May 17, 1895. Dear Woodberry, — I have resumed business at the old stand — or, rather, I have n't. I am here with a large assortment of picturesque merchandise — un-made-up stuffs of Japan and Ceylon — which I have n't the slight- est inclination to unfold and offer to the public. I have returned to find everything precisely as I left it. I have just finished the pipe which I laid down half-smoked that morning long ago when the carriage came to take me to the railway station. Nothing has changed, excepting my- self. I am blissfully ignorant of all things literary. I have n't looked into a single American magazine, or read more than a cablegram in a newspaper, since October 4, 1894. If you ever wish to refresh and strengthen your mind, steer clear of American literature for seven months and seven days ! I begin to think that I have some little intellect. I am naturally intellectual, but editorial work and accidental reading of dialect pomes and stories have come near to extinguishing the white light of reason. Henceforth my Httle flame shall be shielded by a globe, and will perhaps burn more purely. Sometime early in June we shall leave here for Tenant's Harbor, where I have an appointment with some cunners at the foot of The Crags. . . . Ever faithfully, T. B. A. 190 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH To the Same Tenant's Harbor, Maine, July 17, 1895. Dear Woodberry, — When you are disposed to listen to what the wild waves are saying to the sympathetic crags under my study window, won't you speak up and say so? Your room here, with "magic casements" opening on the sea, is ready for you toujours. You will find it a very drowsy, dreamy place, with such mandragora in the air as is not known elsewhere on the coast. I am positive that Mon- hegan, lying off to the southward, is the enchanted isle where Prosper© and Miranda had their summer cottage in the old days. It is simply impossible to do any work at The Crags. Since my return home I have done nothing but read — all sorts of books, Pepys's Diary, Social Evolution, the recollec- tions of S6nya Kovalevsky, things in French and Spanish, and God knows what all. . . . When you come, don't wear anything but your old clothes, for we do not dine here. One must be prepared at any instant to lie down on the rocks, or roU in the bayberry, or get red paint all over him. . . . I might have written all this to you in Japanese, but perhaps that would have seemed a bit pedantic, since you don't understand the language, you poor ignorant critter ! Mrs. Aldrich sends warm regards to you, and is wonder- ing whether you like lobsters and Russian fish-pies. Ever affectionately yours, T. B. A. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 191 To W. D. Howells 59 Mt. Vernon St., Oct. 25, 1895. Dear Howells, — How long ago it all seems ! The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth and your ar- rival in Boston are events separated by only a few months. The little wooden pill-box on Sacramento Street and the cardboard affair which I clung to in Pinckney Street are coeval with the Old State House and Faneuil Hall. In your collection of antiquities I have the feeHng of a piece of bric-a-brac doubtful of its own value, in spite of the plush-lined case in which you have so handsomely placed me. What you say of Osgood is touching and true. But if he had had aU the Wealth of Nations he would still have gone ashore on some financial reef after had frittered away the ship's stores. Those were — at least in looking back to them — happy days for us, though I doubt if Osgood's enjoyment was always on a level with ours. The other morning as I was turning over a bound copy of " Jubilee Days" I suddenly recalled Osgood's grim smile, a smile of blended rheumatism and incredulity, when I announced to him that my contributions to " Jubilee Days" measured i7J^ feet — I had measured them with a piece of twine. "Jubilee Days," however, was a financial success in a small way, one of the few successes that befell him at that period. But all is over and done, and poor old Osgood is bound in full marble in Kensal Green, laid away like a 192 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH copy of an edition de luxe, to be valued, but not to be read any more. As for ourselves — the years are after us ; but I shall always be young so long as you continue to put forth lovely leaves with all the profusion of a budding author. I envy you. In my early New York days I used to throw off a lyric or two every morning before going down town. I wish I had my springtime fluency with my chastened autumnal judgment. Perhaps — I'm not sure — I was foolish not to train myself to turn out just so much " copy" every day. But we all are as God made us. I like to think of what Clemens once wrote to me : he said that if he was a fool, he was at least God's fool, and entitled to some respect. You so completely fill the autobiographic field that I am fighting against a desire to write two or three chapters about New York as I knew it when a boy of seventeen, or eighteen. Irving, and Willis, and Bryant, and Fitz- Greene Halleck, and Rufus Griswoldwere still prowling the streets, upon which stiU rested the shadow of Poe. Ned Buntline was a queer figure about town. He had been something or other in the Mexican War, and he went round with a slouched hat on his skull and a sabre dangling at his thigh ! He was a picture. In order to lay these ghosts I shall have to ink them, and pigeonhole my manuscript. — I 've for- gotten that I am writing to a man who cannot have time to read letters even when, as in this case, they need no an- swer. . . . Sincerely, T. B. A. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 193 To the Same Mt. Vernon St., Boston, Nov. 12, 1895. Dear Howells, — As I cannot, in my present sterile state of mind, make any presentable "copy" for the maga- zines, I am just boiling over with letters, I remind myself of the boy described by Lowell, — the poor little chap who was so fuU of tears (at the prospect of returning to boarding- school) that if you joggled him he spilt. I shed letters at the slightest provocation, and your provocation is very great. I spare neither age nor sex — with a preference for persons of my own years weighing about 160 pounds. The thing that saves me from being a nuisance is that I do not feel the least hurt if I don't get letter for letter. If my correspondent will only let me blaze away at him, and has n't the desire to inflict some personal injury on me when he meets me, I consider that I have the best of the bargain. How long this is going to last I don't know. I was never before afflicted with the disease. But I am run- ning away from the intention of this note. I want to say that the little volume you mention is simply a gathering of the verses which seem best to me in my last three or four books. The poems are not Later Lyrics, excepting in the sense that they were written subsequently to my two pre- vious ("too previous," Woodberry suggests) volumes of selections in the same kind. I send the book to you in your unofficial capacity, since by so doing I may send my love with it. . . . Faithfully yours, T. B. Aldrich. 194 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH I was 59 yesterday. It is unpleasant to be 59; but it would be unpleasanter not to be, having got started. To G. E. Woodberry Redman Farm, PONKAPOG, Mass., Oct. 6, 1896. Dear Woodberry, — ... This is the last time for the present that I shall address you from Ponkapog. In a few days we return to town for the winter. I spent a pleasant hour or two yesterday among my books, and made a polit- ical canvas of one corner of my library, and found that Wordsworth will vote for McKinley, Keats for Palmer, and Shelley for Bryan. Speaking of poetry, I have lately been wondering why any man should handicap himself with rhyme and rhythm when he can canter round the circle in the light harness of prose. This mood is probably an acute symptom of a lyrical relapse on my part. I have had a broken summer, and have been in no one place long enough to do anythmg but read, read, read. I 've done lots of reading. I have just had the satisfaction of reading my Harvard diploma — with the aid of a Latin dictionary and the French and Spanish languages, espe- cially the Spanish, which is two thirds Latin. You will please to understand that I am virum Litteris deditum, scriptorem elegantem, narratorem jaceluni, poetam ingenii ubertate et varium et mulHplicem, and try to treat me with some little respect. Ever yours, T. B. A. INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 195 To Frank Dempster Sherman Boston, Dec. 10, 1896. Dear Sherman, — I have not seen Watson's sonnet/ and know nothing about it. It is Hke him not to send it to me. Perhaps you will copy it for the undersigned. No, I don't see myself in his verse, but when I read his "Lach- rymae Musarum" I am torn because I didn't write it. Watson's grandfather and father were Wordsworth and Tennyson ; his great uncle was Landor. Who but Words- worth could have taught Watson such a word as " prehen- sile" ? That's Wordsworth down to the very roots. I can fancy the old gentleman saying it, his face beaming with that expression of yearning for milk which one finds in all his portraits. Yours affectionately, T. B. Aldrich. To R. W. Gilder Boston, Dec. 12, 1896. Dear Gilder, — I suppose that Woodberry has told •you what a sad and anxious household we have here. Mr. Pierce came in from Milton a week ago last Thursday to pass three or four days with us, intending to go to New York on Tuesday. On Monday morning he had a stroke of paralysis, and has ever since been lying helpless in our house. His situation is very serious. For nearly twenty- ^ " To Thomas Bailey Aldrich," a reply to Aldrich's " On Read- ing William Watson's Sonnets entitled ' The Purple East.' " 196 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH five years he has been one of the most loved of guests at our fireside, and it takes all our fortitude to face the fact that that wise and gentle and noble heart has come to us for the last time. He is dimly conscious, but cannot speak; his right side is completely paralyzed. Should he, by a miracle, recover, he would never be able to walk, and his mind would be partly gone. I am sure you will be grieved to hear all this, for no one could be with him, even for so short a time as you were last summer, without being impressed by the sweetness and simplicity and integrity of his character. When I think of the false and cruel men who are let live, I don't understand the scheme which blots out such lives as his. I would have given him ten or fifteen happy years more. In haste. Yours sincerely, T. B. A. To E. C. Stedman PoNKAPOG, Mass., June lo, 1897. My dear Edmund, — When you get through with that handsome middle-aged man you hire to sit for you for your photograph, I wish you would send him on here to me. None of my photos does me any justice, while your alleged portrait is clearly that of a person quite entitled to reside in so picturesque a mansion as the "Casa Laura," If I ever get a decent shadow of myself I'll send it to you; meanwhile I am glad to get yours, though it is no substi- tute for E. C. S. I am pleased that you like the ode and think that it did J fi 1 ^O ,J l^ 3 i; .y 1 -5 r^- 3 ■i •=■' . . V'^ ^ e> <-" 1 ^ i J " .' tT /■ ^ x/' O > / ^ < 5i tA." \/» •^ ( C^ o< L^ i ■r > J C> J> ^ ^ i^ ^ in INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 197 not fall wholly short of the theme. What an advantage (for the time being) occasion-verse has over any other kind of verse ! It is the morning editorial of poetry, instantly suc- cessful, if successful at all, and forgotten by the time the evening papery are out. Patriotic and occasional poems, as a rule, don't wear well. I feel that most of Whittier's verse in this kind and all of Holmes's have already under- gone great shrinkage, while Emerson's " Bacchus," it seems to me, grows finer day by day. All the same I should like you to include the Shaw Ode in your selections from my poems. I don't know what else to suggest, since I don't know what space you are giving to promising young poets like me. However, here is a list of things for your choice : — Shaw Memorial Ode Monody on WendeU Outward Bound {sonnet) Phillips Andromeda {sonnet) To Hafiz Reminiscence {sonnet) Prescience The Last Caesar Santo Domingo Alice Yeaton's Son Tennyson Unguarded Gates Memory A Shadow of the Night Twilight Quits {quatrains) Tom. To Francis Bartlett A FALL IN C. B. & Q. It is the purpose of the author to tell this story in Car- lylese — a style of prose which admits of much grotesque 198 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH phrasing and what seems to be profound Thought, but is not Thought at all, only Wind on the Stomach, (zolus abdomena! It will be seen by the foregoing prolegomenon that the writer has already dipped his pen in the eccentric inkhorn which hangs, and has long since run dry, in the chimney- corner, otherwise ingleside, of the cottage at Craigenput- toch once occupied by the sweet-tempered Sage, now gone into Infinite Darkness and Chaos, who has left behind him such a splutter of verbal fireworks as no man ever touched off in this century or in any other century known to bipeds : bipeds intended to be — and having all the ruminative and dismal attributes of — quadrupeds. In the year 1879 — as nearly as can be ascertained in so inaccurate and unmathematical a world as this — there lived in New England, in that obscure part of the globe unhappily discovered by an impecunious and sea- faring tramp calling himself Christopher Columbus — doubtless with no authority whatever to do so — there Hved, I repeat, in New England (to be precise, on the outskirts of a con- glomeration of imperfect drains known as Boston) a certain Jonah Robinson. It was fortunate for the scriptural whale that this was not the Jonah he inhaled on the plangent wave, for the present Jonah would sorely have disagreed with him. Jonah Robinson disagreed with everybody within reach of his inadequate articulations, and was named by his luck- less neighbors "No-I-don't-Robinson." "No, I don't admit INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 199 it," or "No, I don't believe it," lie would say, just as the case might be, or even just as the case might not be. "Per- haps you'll admit that 2 and 2 make 4," said Smellfungus to him on one occasion. "No, I don't admit it," cries the atrabilious Jonah ; " 2 and 2 sometimes make 22 ! ! " Where- upon Smellfungus incontinently retreated into his domicile and was heard no more. I began this story seventeen years ago, dropt it for some reason, and have cleanly forgotten what it was to be all about. I'm sorry I didn't finish the thing, for it is devilish good Carlylese, so far as it goes. T. B. A. This MS. is my "party-call." We had a charming time with you. To H. W. Mabie Mt. Vernon St., Boston, Dec. 4, 1897. My dear Mabie, — Your paper in the last "Chap Book" places me in all sorts of grateful debt to you. After thanking you for the judicial kindness of the criticism I want to tell you how deeply it interested me at certain special points. You have, in a way, made me better ac- quainted with myself. Until you said it, I was not aware, or only vaguely aware, of how heavily we younger writers were overshadowed and handicapped by the fame of the reformatory and didactic group of poets, the chiefs of which were of course Whittier and Lowell : the others were only incidentally reformers, and Holmes was no reformer at all. 200 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH But they all with their various voices monopolized the public ear. So far as I am concerned, I did not wholly realize this, for even long before I had won an appreciable number of listeners these same men had given me great encouragement. I don't think that any four famous au- thors were ever so kind to an obscure young man as Haw- thorne, Whittier, Lowell, and Holmes were to me. I wish to show you, some day, a letter which Hawthorne wrote to me thirty-four years ago. I like to have you say that I have always cared more for the integrity of my work than for any chance popularity. And what you say of my " aloofness" as being " due in part to a lack of quick sympathies with contemporary expe- rience" (though I had never before thought of it) shows true insight. To be sure, such verse as ''Elmwood," "Wendell Phillips," "Unguarded Gates," and the "Shaw Memorial Ode" would seem somewhat to condition the statement; but the mood of these poems is not habitual with me, not characteristic. They did, however, grow out of strong convictions. ... I have always been instinc- tively shy of "topics of the day." A good poem on some passing event is certain of instant success; but when the event is passed, few things are more certain of oblivion. Jones' or Smith's lines "to my lady's eyebrow" — which is lovely in every age — will outlive nine tenths of the noisy verse of our stress and storm period. Smith or Jones, who never dreamed of having a Mission, will placidly sweep down to posterity over the fall of a girl's eyelash, leaving INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 201 about all the shrill didactic singers high and dry "on the sands of time," Enviable Jones, or Smith! . . . Believe me, your sincere friend, T. B. Aldrich. To S. Weir Mitchell 59 MouKT Vernon Street, Boston, December 26, 1897. My dear Mitchell, — I am not a little touched that you should think to send me a copy of that very limited edition of ''Hugh Wynne." The book in this shape begins by being doubly precious, and year by year a higher value will be set upon its rarity. I can imagine the envy with which the collector of 1997 will regard the possessor of a large paper copy of one of the two chief pieces of American fiction. The other is of course " The Scarlet Letter." They go together, though Hawthorne dealt only with an episode, while in "Hugh Wynne" you deal with a period, the most picturesque and important period in our national history. One cannot read these pages without feeling the pressure of great events in the air. In the camp scenes I get what I never before got from any book — a sense of vast num- bers of men drawn together and thrilled by a great purpose. All those chapters concerning the early political and social life of Philadelphia are full of novel and rich material ad- mirably used. In Darthea Peniston you have given Beatrix Castlewood a beautiful and virtuous younger sister. This indirectly reminds me to speak of a point which none of your inadequate reviewers has mentioned : When Thack- 202 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH eray introduces Dick Steele or Mr. Addison into his narra- tive he does it with a self-conscious air that is shared by Messrs. Steele and Addison themselves. They stand apart from the imagined dramatis personce and seem to be saying to the reader: "See how deuced clever Mr. Thackeray is!" Now, in "Hugh Wynne," Washington and Andr6 and Arnold and the other historical personages mingle naturally with the characters of the story and breathe the same atmosphere. This is an effect of fine (perhaps un- premeditated, and so all the finer) art. But I am writing a precis of your romance, and I meant only to thank you for it. I have reached a stage in life when one clings to old ac- quaintance and old friendship — so much in each sort has come to an end. I beg you to regard me as your friend and to let me think of you as mine. With New Year greetings, I am, Ever cordially yours, T. B. Aldrich. To R. W. Gilder PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 15, 1898. Dear Gilder, — I am sorry that you and Madame did n't find a day or two for Ponkapog. Everything is so lovely here, where we live on cream and amber butter from our purple cows ; where nothing disturbs us but the far-off rumors of war. I like your little poem, and think the last line is wholly musical, though it is a redundant line. To my ear its over- INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 203 fulness gives it melody. I do not quite fancy the word "musicked" — that is, I like it one minute and don't like it the next minute. The "ck" bothers me, as it does in physicked. "Multitudinous" is a fine word always, but it lacks novelty. One is apt to think of Shakespeare's "mul- titudinous seas incarnadine" and the old Greek poet's "multitudinous laughter of the waves." But this is beside the question. I imagine that I should not have lighted on so good phrasing, or at least that kind of phrasing, if I had been writing the poem. " Crescendo " or " contralto " would have occurred to me sooner than "multitudinous." "... And all day long he hears from hidden birds The soft crescendo of melodious words." This is not a criticism, but a reflection. "Soft crescendo" came to me instinctively in "Forever and a Day." But I have n't any business to be writing about poetry, for the Muses have kept their nine snowy shoulders turned on me these many months, and in future I do not intend to make love to any of those capricious girls, if I can help myself. At a time when it is supposed to be poetical to write "Gawd" instead of God and to otherwise mutilate God's choicest language, perhaps silence is the best poem for a man who respects his art. Oh, no, this is not sour grapes. My verses still sell — from force of habit; but what the great American public really likes is : — "Her body's in the baggage car." At the Howard Athenaeum the other night I saw an audi- ence of apparently human beings deeply moved by the sing- 204 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH ingof this rot. A stereoscopic picture of "the baggage car" brought tears to the eyes of all the burglars and murderers in the upper gallery. For a homely, horny-handed, whole- souled heart-song give me "Her body's in the baggage car." It is even better than 's epileptic best. Poor , he really might v^rite poetry that would n't sell ! No more at present from Yours faithfully, T. B. A. To the Same Hotel de France et Choiseul, Paris, April 27, 1899. My dear Gilder, — If you are meditating a threnody on a certain contemporary of yours who disappeared nearly a year ago and has not since been heard of, stay your hand, for in ten days or so from now he will return to the land of the brave and the home of the oppressors of an unoffending people fighting for freedom and self-government — as we did in 1776. Suppose England had sold us to Germany, how would we have liked that ? When I think that we have bought the Filipinos, just as if they were so many slaves, I am not proud of my country. I will not vote for McKinley again. I would sooner vote for Bryan. To be ruined finan- cially is not so bad as to be ruined morally. . . . Yours sincerely, T. B, A. I've been everywhere since I saw you — in Japan, China, Ceylon, and up the Nile, where, by the way, I met Weir INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 205 Mitchell in a handsome dahabeah as happy as if he owned the Pyramids. To G. E. Woodberry Carter's Hotel, London, May 12, 1899. Dear Woodberry, — On getting back to civilization — for England is really the only civilized spot over here — I find your volume of essays awaiting me. I envy you bringing out a new book. I no longer indulge in such dis- sipations. I have re-read "Taormina" with pleasure, and am keeping the other papers to comfort me on the sea- voy- age home. I dipped here and there into "Democracy," just enough to discover that it was a poem. I struck several fine things, and I admire your rosy prophecies. Personally I must confess that I have never been very deeply im- pressed by the administrative abilities of what we call the lower classes. The reign of terror in France is a fair illus- tration of the kind of government which the masses give us when they get the happy opportunity. But your masses, though without much education, are to be composed ex- clusively of individuals with lofty ideals — not such per- sons as Boss Croker (if that's the way to spell him), for example. However, I fancy it will come out all right two or three thousand years after we all are dead and forgotten. In the mean while I expect to sail for home on May 20, on the Campania, a good ship which I hope will be good enough to land me in New York in time to catch an afternoon train for Boston. I want to get back to my books 2o6 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH and my other pipes. I have had a lovely and instructive journey, though. It's a wonderful world round which I have now put two girdles. Ever yours, T. B. A. To the Same PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 12, 1899. Dear Woodberry, — Don't ever go away from home on a ten months' absence without leaving somebody be- hind to answer your letters for you. I have been swamped, and am only just getting my head out of my correspond- ence. I found my private affairs in a tangle, too, and not easy to straighten out. But the slug 's in the bud, and God 's in the sky, and the world is allO. K., as Browning incident- ally remarks. Apropros of Browning, I've been reading his letters to "Ba" and "Ba"'s letters to him, and think it a shameful thing that they should be printed. All that ponderous love-making — a queer mixture of Greek roots and middle-age stickiness ("Ba" was 40 years old) — is very tedious. Here and there is a fine passage, and one is amused by the way the lovers patronize everybody they don't despise. But as a whole the book takes away from Browning's dignity.^ A man — even the greatest — can- not stand being photographed in his pajahmas. Thank ^ p. S. I met Browning on three occasions. He was very cordial to me in a man-of-the-world fashion. I did not care greatly for him personally. Good head, long body, short legs. Seated, he looked like a giant ; stand- ing, he just missed being a dwarf. He talked well, but not so well as Lowell. . . . INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 207 God, we are spared Shakespeare's Letters to Anne Hatha- way! Doubtless he wrote her some sappy notes. He did everything that ever man did. We are gradually breaking up here, preparatory to moving to The Crags, which has been closed these three summers. I shall go there without any literary plans, un- less I carry out my idea of turning " The Eve of St. Agnes " into Kiplingese. Would n't it be delicious ! — St. Hagnes Hevel 'ow bloomin' chill it wasl The Howl, for all his hulster, was a-cold. The 'are limped tremblin' through the blarsted grass, Etc., etc. I think it might make Keats popular again — poor Keats, who did n't know any better than to write pure Enghsh. The dear boy was n't "up" to writing "Gawd" instead of God. In no haste, as ever, T. B. A. To Francis Bartlett PoNKAPOG, Mass., Oct. 18, 1899. Dear Bartlett, — If I had known what a bother I was to have with that diabolical half-line in "Elmwood," I would have kept you here by main force and made you help me straighten it out. I don't see how I am ever going to be able to do it. I have got to say what I did say, and it's not clear how I can say it differently. The idea (if it is an idea) of Nature whispering her secrets to a poet is not Tennyson's, and though I lighted on his phrasing I 'm con- 2o8 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH vinced that I did n't get it from "Tithonus," for the thing was wholly new to me when you pointed it out in that poem. I think I shall change whispering to breathing and wild to strange and let the matter go. Does n't Longfellow in his verses on Agassiz have something about Nature do- ing something to him ? By the way, I have just found that a line which I've always loved in Tennyson's "Wellington Ode" is n't Tennyson's at all — " The path of duty is the way to glory." This was written in 1852, but in 1831 Macaulay, in his review of Nugent's "Memorials of Hampden," had al- ready written : [Hampden] " found glory only because glory lay in the plain path of duty." Alas! "Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original." Yours faithfully, T. B. To H. W. Mabie Boston, Jan'y 25, 1900. My dear Secretary, — (This is addressed to you on your dizzy pinnacle as Secretary to the National Institute of Arts and Letters, where you are as much at home as if you were in dressing-gown and slippers in your own bun- galow) I wish I could, but I can't, attend the meeting of the Association to be held on January 30th. 4 INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 209 My dear Editor, — (This is to you in your equally dizzy journalistic quality) I have received a nice little note from a conjecturally nice little woman inviting me to talk (for publication) on contemporary poetry ! If my views on contemporary poetry were printed in "The Outlook," the circulation of that admirable journal would shrink to one third of its present size — still leaving the paper excellent property. I should have to say that when I want great poetry, or even good poetry, I don't go to , or , or . This would show that I don't know anything about the matter, and no newspaper would care to have a fellow like that loafing on the premises. Something to this effect, only wrapped in the very softest cotton of phraseology, I shall send to that imagined nice little woman who has sweetly attempted to fasten herself to me with her delicate inter- viewing antennae. The result, I am certain, does n't dis- appoint you a bit. ~> My dear Mabie, — (This is a strictly personal apos- trophe) I was sorry not to get to Bartlett's the other morning and help you look at his pictures ; but just as I was leaving the house for that purpose a business call dragged me down to State Street on a matter of dollars and cents. I got the cents ! Ever faithfully yours, T. B. Aldrich. 2IO THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH To R. E. Lee Gibson PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 4, 1900. My dear Mr. Gibson, — If I had not a disheartening pile of correspondence on my desk — accumulated during my three or four months' absence abroad — I would at- tempt something hke an adequate acknowledgment of your letter. As it is I can only briefly thank you for it. What you say touching the changes in certain of the son- nets interests me. These changes were not made without due consideration and what seemed to me good ethical or artistic reasons. Surely, Milton's inward-seeing eyes mak- ing their own deep midnight and rich morn (I am quoting from a bad memory) is more imaginative than "shut from the splendors of the night and morn." As to the "great cloud continents of sunset seas," the line was well enough by itself, but a little too bombastic and Marlowe-like in connection with the tone of the whole sonnet. Besides, the alliteration of the text of the lines immediately preced- ing made a change imperative. I have a way of looking at my own verse as if it were written by some man I did n't like very well, and thus I am enabled to look at it rather impersonally, and to discover when I have fallen into mere "fine writing," a fault I am inclined to, while I detest it. I think "Wyndham Towers" my best long poem, and "Friar Jerome" the next best. — Do you know Mr. Riley's "The Flying Islands of the Night"? — an imaginative poem of singular beauty, and worth a thousand volumes INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 211 of his dialect verse. The English language is too rich and sacred a thing to be mutilated and vulgarized. . . . But I am doing what I have no time to do, writing a long letter. Believe me, Always very cordially yours, T. B. Aldrich. To W. D. Howells PONKAPOG, Mass., June 5, 1900. Dear Howells, — I am still sorry that I was in Ponka- pog the other day when you called at Mt. Vernon Street. I have not enough years left (and never had !) to be able to afford to miss you when you call. Sometimes I almost wish — I say "almost" because I recognize how much wider a field New York is — that you had stayed in your lovely house in Beacon Street and taken charge of Charles River after Holmes gave it up. I am not sure that you would have done finer work than you have done, perhaps not; but I know that I should have caught something of your industry if I had had you for a neighbor and a consulting spur. There's no infectious industry here! But this is a long-winded way of telling you how sorry I was to be out. . . . Only that I don't want to write a grown-up letter, I would speak of the strangely touching and imaginative piece which you printed in the last "Harper's." It im- pressed me singularly, became, in the reading of it, a sort of personal experience. When I went to bed that night I 212 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH had to lie awake and think it over, as something that hap- pened to me during the day. . . . Always faithfully, T. B. Aldrich. To Francis Bartlett PoNKAPOG, Mass., June 21, 1900. My dear Bartlett, — I've been very busy and am greatly pleased with the result. You remember a thing of mine called "Shaw's Folly" — a thing in two parts which would n't hang together and could n't be separated ? Well, a while ago I had an inspiration and saw how I could fuse the two antagonistic sections and make a complete story of it — the best long short-story I have written since " Mar- jorie Daw," I had put so many fresh turns in the original version that I was heartbroken to lose 'em. But now I have saved the whole lot and added others. You see what a dearth of news I have when I fill a sheet with a matter of this sort. Ever yours, T. B. A. To H. W. Mabie PoNKAPOG, Mass., Sept. 12, 1900. Dear Mr. Mabie, — I have just been reading a charm- ing paper of yours on Shakespeare's Sonnets and one or two — I don't call them criticisms — things occur to me. You speak of the English form of sonnet as "surrendering something of the sustained fulness of tone of the Italian sonnet, but securing in exchange a sweetness, a flow of pure INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 213 melody, 'which were beyond the compass of the original sonnet }orm.^ " Are you sure of that? I have always enter- tained the conviction that the Petrarchan form of sonnet, with its interwoven rhymes, its capacity for expressing subtle music, was an instrument as superior to the English form as the harp or the guitar is superior to the banjo, and I fancy that most workers in this kind of verse will agree with me. The alternate lines rhyming, and closing with a couplet, gave the poet the command of some of the richest melodic effects within the reach of English versification. The sonnet that ends with a couplet misses that fine un- rolling 0} music which belongs to the sonnet proper. The couplet brings the reader up with a jerk. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the couplet has the snap of a whip- lash, and turns the sonnet into an epigram. To my think- ing, this abruptness hurts many of Shakespeare's beautiful poems of fourteen lines — for they are simply that. One must go to Milton, and Wordsworth, and Keats (in three instances) in order to find the highest development of the English SONNET. . . . Sincerely yours, T. B. Aldrich. To E. C. Stedman Mt. Vernon St., Nov. 15, 1900. My dear Edmund, — I had been wanting to ask you for one autograph copy of the "Prelude," but hesitated, because I know that such requests are sometimes the straws that finish off the camel. I value that fine piece of 214 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH blank verse all the more for coming to me unsought. I re- ceived a while ago a copy of the regular edition of the " An- thology," but as it bore no indication to the contrary, I supposed that it was sent by H. M. & Co., who favor me from time to time with their publications. I have just read your Introduction, which seems to me most admirable from every point of view, and have gone more carefully through the body of the book, and find it richer than I thought it at a first glance. If it were not for Tennyson and Browning, our Yankee poets could hold their own against the Victorians. It is easier to find little flaws in your compilation than it would be to produce a work one half as good. As no ten men can be brought to agree exactly touching a single poem, how can a collector of one or two thousand poems expect to please everybody? Of course I differ with you on certain selections ; I take exception to one or two of the critical dicta in your Biographical Notes, and here and there the touch of your hand in the rounding of a para- graph ; but, as I have already said, I don't see how any one could have made a finer American Anthology. I wish, though, that you had not set Lanier in your choice gallery of portraits. Chronologically he is out of place, and in point of poetic accompHshment he does n't deserve to be there. I don't believe that there are twenty-five persons in the United States who would place Lanier anywhere but in the rear rank of minor poets ; and I don't believe there are five critics who would rank him with Poe, Bryant, INDIAN SUMMER DAYS 215 Emerson, Whittier, and Lowell. (I mention Poe, though I've an idea that if Poe had been an exemplary, conven- tional, tax- oppressed citizen, Uke Longfellow, his few poems, as striking as they are, would not have made so great a stir.) To my thinking that right-hand lower corner of your frontispiece would have been more fitly occupied by Fitz- Greene Halleck, whose "Burns," "Marco Boz- zaris," and "Red Jacket" are poems which promise to live as long as any three pieces in the Anthology. To be frank, I think Lanier was a musician, and not a poet. If this were merely my personal opinion, I would n't express it. I have never met five men of letters who thought differ- ently. . . . Ever faithfully yours, T. B. Aldrich. CHAPTER VIII THE LAST YEARS I 901-1907 THE end of the century and of the happy post-merid- ianal decade of Aldrich's life came together. Fate, that seldom fails to balance a man's account, was prepar- ing to collect heavy arrears of sorrow. On Christmas Day, 1900, the elder of the twin sons was married. To our poet's imagination this marriage brought the promise of the fur- ther enrichment of his own life. In the early summer of 1 901, the Aldriches sailed for England to spend some months on the Devon coast. On their return in September they were met at the wharf by a message telling them that the son whom they had left in such joyful estate, whose letter received just as they were sailing from Liverpool announced his intention to welcome them at the wharf, had been smitten with a sudden hemorrhage of the lungs and had been hurried to the Adirondacks. They hastened to his side, and for a time he seemed better. There amid the mountains for two years and a half the fight went on with alternate seasons of hope and sad certainty. Whoever has read the letters in this book knows the strong tender- ness of Aldrich's family affections, but only his intimates know how tragical was his grief in these cruel years. Be- THE LAST YEARS 217 fore the world he contrived for the most part to maintain a brave cheerfulness, and through his correspondence runs a valiant humor that touches with poignant pathos the hearts of those who know what lay behind. The story of the earlier months at Saranac will best be told in his own words. First, a couple of paragraphs from letters to two of his friends will suggest the background of his life : — "We are very pleasantly settled and like the quiet life here. We are on the edge of the village with the mountains for our immediate neighbors. Our house, a new and spa- cious villa which we were lucky to get, stands on a plateau overlooking Saranac River. Two or three hundred yards away at our feet is the cottage in which Stevenson spent the winter of '87. He did n't like Saranac Lake, and I fancy was not very popular. It is a beautiful spot, never- theless. The sunsets and the sunrises compensate one for the solitude, which moreover has a charm of its own." "Of all places in the world this is the place in which to read. We've taken an overgrown cottage on the outskirts of the town, which at night looks like a cluster of stars dropped into the hollow. The young Aldriches have a cottage near by, and there are two or three other houses visible — when it does n't snow. It snows nearly all the time in a sort of unconscious way. I never saw such con- tradicting, irresponsible weather. It is n't cold here, for human beings, when it is 20 degrees below zero. Every- thing else is of course frozen stiff. The solitude is some- 2i8 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH thing you can cut with a knife. Icicles are our popular household pets. I am cultivating one that is already four feet long — I am training it outside, you understand, on a north gable. I feel that all this is giving you a false idea of our surroundings, which are as beautiful as a dream. Every window frames a picture of bewildering and capricious loveHness. If our dear boy only continues to gather strength we shall have a happy winter in this little pocket-Switzer- land. He is very thin and white and feeble. At times I have to turn my eyes away, but my heart keeps looking at him." So much for the setting; between the lines of a long letter to Mr. Howells we may read the story of a sensitive, whimsical, courageous spirit, strugghng with tragical fore- bodings ; — Saranac Lake, N. Y., Dec. 23, 1901. Dear Howells, — This is one of those not-to-be- answered letters with which I threatened you. I've been thinking of the old days — prodded by your note. We did enjoy them, but I fancy that time and distance and the present moment add a phantasmal gilt edge to the real enjoyment. Somehow we don't like things to-day as we liked them yesterday, and are going to like them to-morrow. Ah .■ . . I 'm a little doubtful about to-morrow. When I think of poor old Osgood sitting rosy and genial at the host-end of the table, vnth no hair on the poHshed top of his head and another bottle of champagne, not as dry as he THE LAST YEARS 219 is, standing in front of him — when this picture shapes itself in my memory and suddenly dissolves into a view of the dismal London burying-ground where the poor lad lies slowly turning into dust — when this kind of thing gets busy in my brain I would n't turn over my hand to be a great novelist, or a great general, or a great anything else. It is n't worth three pins. It is nothing but dust. Yet, with a sort of hopeful vivacity I have just bought two 5 per cent railway bonds that expire in 1967! Who'll be cutting off the coupons long before that? — provided the road hasn't gone into bankruptcy. Not I. I shall just be beginning to be known as the author of "The Jumping Frog" and "A Hazard of New Fortunes," while you will be preparing to dance down the lists of popularity in "The Helmet of Navarre." But this is talking shop. I can't get away from it. We (I don't mean us) are very literary up here. Why did Hutton go to Jerusalem for "Literary Landmarks" when he might have found plenty of them in the Adiron- dacks? Among others who have left footprints on the sands of time in this neighborhood are Stillman, Emerson, and Stevenson. The plateau upon which our house stands overlooks a small river, on whose opposite bank, near by, stands the melancholy cottage where Stevenson spent the winter of '87. I admired (and felt enviously how far it was beyond my courage) the wholesome candor with which you confessed to having never read a novel of his. You have missed an entertaining writer, though not a great one. His surviving friends, still under the glamour of what must 220 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH have been a winning personality, are hurting him by over- praise, and will end by getting him generally disliked. I 've a theory that every author while living has a projection of himself, a sort of eidolon, that goes about in near and dis- tant places and makes friends and enemies for him out of folk who never know him in the flesh. When the author dies this phantom fades away, not caring to continue busi- ness at the old stand. Then the dead writer lives only in the impression made by his literature : this impression may grow sharper or fainter according to the fashions and new conditions of the time. Mark's spectacular personality is just now very busy all over the world. I doubt if there is another man on earth whose name is more familiar. Little donkey-boys on the Nile, who never heard of George Washington, will tell you that they were "Mark Twain's" donkey-boys, when the black imps were not born until twenty-five years after Clemens was in Egypt. ... I began this fearful letter several days ago, and now I find myself brought up against Christmas. My greetings will be a trifle late in reaching you, but they are not perishable. Dec. 24-25. For the last few years I have had a suspi- cion that there is something not at aU merry in Merry Christmas — that sinister flavor which one detects in one's birthdays after one has had fifty or sixty of them. . . . This morning our boy was able to come downstairs and watch the revealing of a pathetic little Christmas tree in his front parlor. When he was brought up here on the i st of Octo- ber he was not expected to live through the journey. And THE LAST YEARS 221 now we have seen him sitting in his armchair and smiling upon the children as the gifts were plucked for them from the magical branches. . . . Dec. 27. In default of anything better to do I am wondering what kind of new story you have in your brain. I am all the time inventing plots which I can't use myself, plots for other fellows. I laid out a story for Stockton t' other afternoon. It was to be called "The Reformed Microbe." I wish I were not too lazy to give him the outlines of it. The thing was up to date and just fitted to his grotesque methods. Tell me of your find. — Dec. 30. This letter is made up of patches, Hke a crazy- quilt. From time to time I interrupt my idleness to add a square or a triangle. It is a busy idleness, however, since " they also serve who only stand and wait," and I am doing a good deal of energetic waiting. I find myself in a monde different from any I have ever known. You would get a book out of these surroundings. The village of Saranac is unique and the natives are — uniquer! Their lives are very simple and accumulative. The rent for two years* occupancy of a cottage pays for building it. No style at all. The Saranacers, like the folk described by David Harum, don't dress for dinner, they dress for breakfast, A thrifty people, with very large ideas of the lavishness becoming in foreigners — i. e. persons from New York and Boston and other partly civilized centres. There is much wealth and little show among this part of the population, which consists of invalids and their families, and an occasional misguided guest. When all is said there is a charm in the 222 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH place. There's something in the air to heal the heart of sorrow. . . . Dec. 31. Blizzard. I must polish up my snow- shoes. Meanwhile I'm reading "Le Vicomte de Brage- lonne," and have just come across a pretty thing: "Every woman is always only twenty years old in one corner of her heart." . . . No more for some time to come from Yours affectionately, T. B. Aldrich. As the months moved on with their increasing burden of anxiety and melancholy musing, one day so like another, as Aldrich said, that he "sometimes mistook Thursday for the previous Monday," the exiles made what efforts they could to keep a hold on the sustaining current of the world's life. In v/inter there were brief visits to Boston, in summer to Ponkapog. A few guests from the circle of their closest friends came and went. They took, too, an interest in building a house of their own. It was com- pleted in record time for that region of leisurely labor, and named "The Porcupine," "because it had so many good points, and because it was occupied by a quill-driver." Quill-driving, indeed, became again Aldrich's chief occupation and solace. In the vdnter of 1902 the plot of "The White Feather" "flashed" on him "out of a blue sky of idleness," and he found unusual satisfaction in working it out. In the autumn he published his volume of short stories, entitled "A Sea Turn and Other Matters," which showed his old gift for handling a surprising comic THE LAST YEARS 223 situation unabated, though in several of the stories there was an unwonted undertone of tragedy. Again, in the fall of 1903 he published his "Ponkapog Papers," a collection of pregnant note-book jottings and delicately turned es- says. Throughout these years one of his chief pleasures was in filing the manuscript of the stories and essays that went into these two volumes, and in reading the proofs long and lovingly. Much of his scanty correspondence of this time is concerned with nice points of literary technique ; and several of the letters are of keen interest for the light they throw on his own view of certain details of his work. On September 2, 1902, he wrote to his friend, Mr. W. O. Fuller, concerning some criticisms which the latter had made on "The White Feather": — My dear Fuller, — Thanks for your criticisms. They have greatly interested me. . . . The questions which you raise are chiefly questions of taste. In two or three cases I am rejoiced to think that you are wrong. I would n't say so if I did n't think I could convince you. I. "Shaggy overhanging eyebrows" is not tautological, if that is your meaning. Shaggy means coarse, rough, heavy (in texture). The flank of a mountain may be de- scribed as " shaggy," but it cannot be said to overhang. II. It is most natural, almost inevitable, that a veteran of the Civil War should incidentally mention the recent Spanish War — a thing especially interesting to him as a 224 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH soldier ; and it was not out of character for him to touch on a notorious abuse that existed in both periods. In both wars civilians "with political puUs" were made captains and majors and colonels over the heads of men who had been trained at West Point. In our future wars a National Cold Storage Warehouse for politicians would be a desira- ble piece of architecture. III. The Major is a man of education, but he had roughed it in camp, and a rougher place than a camp in war-time — as I happen to know by experience — is not easily to be found. I purposely roughened his conversation, here and there. I did n't want him to deliver himself in the style of an "exalted parrot." You notice, by the way, that when he speaks of cutting no ice he credits the slang to you young fellows of the present time. He might weU have used the phrase in proprid persond. I am rather care- ful in my own phraseology, but I don't hesitate to employ a mot-de-curbstone when it expresses my meaning better than a more elegant term might do. I get there all the same ! Yes, the Major is a man of considerable culture, as his general diction shows. He has read the books of the day, and it was perfectly in order for him to object to "a pet phrase" which Kipling has dumped upon the reader no fewer than fifty times. That I quite agreed with the Major was a happy coincidence which the reader, not knowing me personally, v^ll never suspect. IV. The most famous portrait of Daniel Webster repre- sents him standing with one hand thrust into his shirt- THE LAST YEARS 225 bosom. An engraving of this painting suggested to me what I consider the very happiest touch in my sketch. That looped-up empty sleeve was ben trovato. V. He looked "up" at me because he was seated, and I possibly was standing when I addressed him. Here my story is done. I have to thank you for your very light fault-finding ; perhaps you intentionally made it light. "The White Feather" has flaws ten times more serious than any you claim to have found. I hope that nobody will discover 'em ! Now please reckon this "up" at ten cents per word, and send me a check by return mail. I can't afford to throw away "copy" in this fashion. . . . Yours sincerely, T. B. A. P. S. "Left one arm behind him on the field" is awk- ward. I nearly trampled that disconnected member into the earth in my attempt to place it correctly, and did n't succeed, owing to verbal circumstances over which I had no control. Your dictionary (if you have one) will set you right touching the word "gloaming." It means (and isn't it mean of it ?) either morning twilight or evening dusk. In Scotland, where the word was born of poor but honest parents, it is almost invariably applied to the dim little hours that cuddle up to the early dawn. No charges. 226 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Of equal bookish interest is a letter to Mr. Brander Mat- thews, about a paper of his on the quatrain which had been printed in "The Lamp." Saranac Lake, N. Y., January 19, 1904. Dear Matthews, — "While 'The Lamp' holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return," and so it is not too late for me to confess that I ought long ago to have thanked you for your Uttle paper on the " Quatrain." I read it with easy interest. It is a surprisingly difficult form of poem. The difficulty of its construction is out of all proportion to its brevity. A perfect quatrain is almost as rare as a perfect sonnet. "Many are called," as Oliver Herford remarks, "but few get up." The quatrain has laws as imperious as those of the sonnet, and not to be broken with impunity. Four lines do not necessarily constitute a quatrain proper any more than fourteen lines necessarily constitute a sonnet. If your little stanza ends with a snap it becomes an epigram and ceases to be a poem. The idea or thought expressed must be so fuUy expressed as to leave no material for a second stanza. The theme that can be ex- hausted in the space of four lines is not easy to light upon. I have written forty or fifty so called quatrains (I called 'em Footnotes), but not more than five or six of them satisfy me. Landor was a master in this field. I once meditated printing my collections of four-liners in a little book with an elaborate essay on the quatrain, but the plan escaped, and now it is not worth while doing. . . .'^ THE LAST YEARS 227 It is 42 degrees below zero here this morning, but my cordiality for you has n't frozen over. Yours sincerely, T. B. Aldrich. As the year of 1903 drew to an end the hope that had from time to time lighted our poet's heart grew fainter. Writing to Mr. E. L. Burlingame, who had made him a flattering offer for some articles to be written, he had said, "If anything should happen to my boy I'd never again set pen to paper. If the task were begun it would be left un- finished." It was never even begun ! The holidays came and went, — "the hoUow days," he called them, — and the gentle life that was so dear to him flickered to its close. On March 6, 1904, Charles Aldrich died, in his thirty- sixth year. By this death, which involved more elements of tragedy than the mere pathos of mortality, the settled happiness of Aldrich' s life was shattered. His Hterary faculty was shrivelled by it as by a touch of evil magic, and though he regained in time, to the superficial eye, some- thing of the old airy joyousness, his intimates under- stood the brooding sorrow that lay underneath. Even in cheerier hours among his friends the old whimsical flow of happy life was poisoned at its source. Now and again his genial glow would come briefly back, but never with the old unquenchable fire, and often in the full current of his talk he would fall suddenly silent, and his face would be darkened by the shadow of his grief. 228 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH The summer of 1904 the Aldriches spent at York Har- bor, for The Crags was "crowded with ghosts." For- tunately for our poet he found an engrossing bit of literary work to divert his mind a little from his brooding. The project is first mentioned in a letter to a friend, written on May 15, 1904: — "We got back several days ago from our visit to Sauga- tuck and Newport, where we stayed a little longer than we had planned and had a pleasant time of it, considering the care and memories which we always carry with us, and shall have for company the short rest of our lives. Since our return we have had a series of guests at Redman Farm and endeavored to be as happy as it is possible. On Thurs- day Miss Nance O'Neil and her manager are coming out to lunch with us and talk dramatic business. Miss O'Neil is playing an Italian version of Judith, which she does not like, and has fallen in love with my narrative poem of "Judith and Holofernes" which she desires me to drama- tize for her. I could do it with a great deal of help, but I doubt if I shall make the attempt. I've no dramatic ambi- tion, or ambition of any kind. If everything I have written should be absolutely obliterated I should n't cry." As he considered the suggestion, however, it grew in at- tractiveness to him, and in the end, though with many misgivings, he undertook to carry it out. All through the summer he toiled steadily at the play, and in the fall it was completed measurably to his satisfaction and put in re- hearsal. His correspondence with Miss O'Neil is full of THE LAST YEARS 229 evidence of the close and searching care he gave to each detail of the piece. A single note from the series will serve to show his characteristic method : — My dear Miss O'Neil, — You and Mr. Rankin must by this time be tired of my emendations and additions, and wiU never want me to write another play for you ! But all my best thoughts are after-thoughts. It has been a great pleasure to me to dream out a new fine line for your speak- ing ; for instance — If this be not a dream, her heart is broken ! I have another, to follow the words The spell is broken. Now to all — farewell in Act IV. Please say : — The spell is broken ! Now to all — farewell ! To votive wreath and music's blandishment! From this day forth, etc. I can hear you saying it ! . . . Yours very truly, T. B. Aldrich. The play was produced with success at the Tremont Theatre on the night of October 13, 1904. In New York it failed to take the taste of the large luxurious audiences that throng the Broadway theatres betwixt dinner and bedtime. There is a certain pathos in the letter which Aldrich wrote to Miss O'Neil on her opening night in New York. At least there would be, had he himself taken the dramatic venture more seriously : — 230 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Boston, Dec. 9, 1904. Dear Miss O'Neil, — In spite of being in Boston, I was with you and the play last night at Daly's! At pre- cisely 8.15 p. M. I took up the little book and waited for the curtain to rise. Then I followed you through each scene and act, making due allowance at the proper places for the heartbreaking time it takes Daly's Theatre to make an "instantaneous" change of scenery. So I came to the end of the fourth act, where my imagination grew blurred. I sat wondering if Judith — "Judith the wilful" — again missed her opportunity for a fine dramatic climax. I wondered if she stood there inert, with all the people around her motionless and dead, while the curtain slowly went down on nothing ! Or did she take two or three steps towards the wings, and, with a look back over her shoulder, cry, "Let no one born of woman follow me !" Did Achior advance, as if to disobey her, and did Bagoas clutch his arm to restrain him? And did the crowd lean forward, spellbound, standing with out-stretched hands ? If so, the curtain went down on a thrilling dramatic tableau. Judith's swift exit at the end of Act II — making the whole act a success — was not stronger than this would have been. Judith need not leave the stage, but she must seem on the point of doing so. She said she was going, and she ought to go! What is she waiting for? Is there more to come? AU this passed through my mind last night, as I "made believe " I was at the play, and so I write it out for you this MISS NAN'CE O'NEIL AS '-JUDITH- THE LAST YEARS 231 morning. I cannot tell you, Miss Nance O'Neil, what a rare pleasure you have given me by your acting of my tragedy. I am glad that I did so rash a thing as attempt to be a dramatist ! Yours sincerely, T. B. Aldrich. It may be questioned whether "Judith of Bethulia" under any circumstances could ever have long held the boards before American audiences. Yet it was undoubt- edly the most notable enterprise in the field of dramatic poetry that theatre-goers had seen for a decade or more. The poetic vitality of the piece came from the music and color with which the poet had invested the old tale of Judith and Holofernes many years before. Yet the play was much more than a making over of the old purple stuff. It had one great dramatic moment, and in many other passages it fulfilled Coleridge's chief test of poetry for the stage: it was not so much "thought and passion disguised in the dress of poetry," as poetry "hid" in passionate action; and the compact movement of the play, embodied in verse of a firm yet delicate beauty, gave it the abiding signifi- cance which is inseparable from sincere and masterly workmanship. After the enlivening episode of Judith, Aldrich settled down again into something of the cheerful routine that filled his life in the happier days of the preceding chapter. He even recovered something of his inextinguishable youth- fulness. "Aldrich was here half an hour ago," wrote Mark 232 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Twain in 1905, "like a breeze from over the fields, with the fragrance still upon his spirit. I am tired waiting for that man to grow old." The summer of 1905 was spent by Aldrich cruising along the coast in his son's yacht, the BethuUa, and tour- ing in his automobile, — an engine that always had for his imagination something of the mysterious potency of Aladdin's carpet. In the winter of 1905 the Aldriches went to Egypt, and at Cairo a great happiness came to them in the engagement of their surviving son to a New England girl who was of their party. "She is young, just twenty," — Aldrich wrote, — "I shall have lovely days with her." The marriage took place in June. To Mr. Gilder, who had written him on the day of it, Aldrich replied: "It was very kind and thoughtful of you to write to me on a day that meant so much to us. We were and are touched by your sympathetic words. Not having had our experience, you could not have divined our happiness and our sorrow had you not been a poet. We rejoice for our son, but we are sad for ourselves." November 11, 1906, was Aldrich's seventieth birthday and he promised his interviewers "never to let it occur again." On the evening of that day he assisted at a dinner in New York in honor of his exact coeval, Henry M. Alden, editor of "Harper's Magazine," though with characteristic diffidence he decHned to make a speech. On his return to Mt. Vernon Street, he found awaiting him a flood of friendly letters and poems from all over the world. Of these poetic THE LAST YEARS 233 tributes one of the happiest, from Henry van Dyke, may be printed here : — To Thomas Bailey Aldrich on his Birthday Dear Aldrich, now November's mellow days Have brought another Festa round to you, You can't refuse the loving-cup of praise From friends the passing years have bound to you. Here come your Marjorie Daw, your dear Bad Boy, Prudence, and Judith the Bethulian, And many more, to wish you birthday joy, And sunlit hours, and sky caerulean! Your children all ! They hurry to your den With wreaths of honor they have won for you. To merry-make your threescore years and ten. You, old? Why, life has just begun for you! There's many a reader whom your silver songs And crystal stories cheer in loneliness. What though the newer writers come in throngs? They cannot spoil your charm of only-ness. You've done your work with careful, loving touch, — An artist to the very core of you, — You've learned the magic spell of "not too much"; We read, — and wish that there was more of you. And more there is ! For while we love your books Because their subtle skill is part of you; We love you better, for our friendship looks Behind them to the human heart of you. 234 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Perhaps the most memorable of all his birthday letters was one from Stedman, his friend for more than fifty years. Aldrich's reply was to be his valediction : — My dear Edmund, — On getting back home last night I found a monument of letters and telegrams on my desk, but none of the kindly messages touched me so nearly as yours. The six pages were crowded with sacred yesterdays, and I wish I had the leisure to tell you what thoughts they stirred in me. A hundred sheets like these would not hold them. I wish you would come to Boston and spend a week with me in Mt. Vernon Street. Later, it would be a precious memory to both of us — perhaps to only one of us. What do you say? I was right glad the other night to see you standing up and making a brave speech. / could n't do it ; I should have turned into tears if I had made the attempt. Yet I would have liked — could I have steered clear of the regret of being seventy years old — to speak of my early association with "Harper's." It made Alden seem like a mere boy. Dr. Guernsey was the editor on whose rejec- tions I cut my literary eye-teeth. He long ago offered him- self for publication elsewhere, and I trust that he was accepted, though he never, I believe, took anything of mine. He was followed by Nordhoff, — if I 've spelt him correctly, — who could n't have been as good an editor, for he always held on to my manuscript. Then came Alden. His editorship has lasted a lifetime. But I must end this. THE LAST YEARS 235 I shall be eighty years old before I have thanked every- body. Your affectionate friend, Tom. Just before his own birthday the committee in charge of the celebration of the centenary of Longfellow's birth in- vited Aldrich to prepare a poem for the occasion, and the invitation came to him in one of Mr. Norton's characteristic notes. At first the undertaking seemed impossible, but as he turned again and again to the stimulating phrases of the invitation, and pondered the life of the poet who had been his earliest ideal, and for so long his friend, the singing impulse came, and he completed the brief, but nobly eloquent, poem that now with a fine fitness stands at the end of his own poetic works. The poem was finished early in January, 1907. In the reaction from his labor Aldrich was weary and a little sad. On January 4, he wrote a characteristic letter to a younger friend who was mourning for the death of his wife, — a friend whom he had never seen, and knew only by corre- spondence ; — "I have sat here idly all the morning in my study with as much sadness as if the wife you love and have lost had been a familiar and dear presence at our fireside. Your letter somehow brought her very close to us — I say to us, for Mrs. Aldrich, too, with the quick sympathy of noble women, was deeply touched by the grief she saw in this separation. She has, I believe, written a few words to you, 236 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH knowing that tender words can soothe, though they may not heal such wounds as yours. The parting of those who love is inevitable, soon or late. I have long brooded upon this. Perhaps you will recall a poem of mine entitled 'A Shadow of the Night.' There is a passage here and there that may possibly appeal to you. In my dream I did not, as I do in real life to-day, sorrow for an ' unknown dead woman.' " Three weeks later he wrote to Mr. Woodberry the last of all his letters : — 59 Mount Vernon Street, Jan'y 29, 1907. Dear Woodberry, — I have just finished reading your "Emerson." It is a beautiful book, and is to be rated with your finest critical work. How fine I consider that, you know of old. I was freshly impressed, by your statement, of the gray atmosphere and severe surroundings of Emer- son's life. What a salted-down and austere existence it was! How few luxuries in it ! Emerson's mind would have been enriched if he could have had more terrapin and less fish- ball. I had an idea — picture me with one ! — that you would look in on me at old 59 during the prevalence of your Lowell lectures, none of which I could attend because of influenzas, dinners, guests, and other earthly embarrass- ments. I could have said a hundred things for you to dis- agree with, and shown you a phenomenon in the shape of a short poem, the first rhyme I have written since my boy THE LAST YEARS 237 died, three years ago. I have not known a whole happy day in that time. I have frequently wondered how life was going with you. If ever you wish to come and tell me, there is a cigar, or a pipe with perfect draught, awaiting you. Yours sincerely, T. B. Aldrich. Two days later, on January 31, with no premonitory consciousness of anything but perfect health, he fell sud- denly ill, and a serious operation was deemed necessary. He was taken at once to a hospital and the operation was performed. It was apparently wholly successful, but strength was slow in returning, and the end began to be in doubt. For six weeks he lingered, bearing his painful days and nights with cheerful courage and a sweet and patient self-effacement. All his thought was centred in the effort to keep from the one dearest to him the foreboding that was becoming a certainty to him. To a friend who sat by his side he said, " For myself I regard death merely as the passing shadow on a flower." On March 1 7 he expressed a wish to be taken home, and there on March 19, in the grayness of the deepening twi- light, the end came. He met death as he had met Hfe, bravely and serenely, fully conscious of the loosening of the cords that held him to the earth. With his last look and smile he said, "In spite of all, I am going to sleep ; put out the lights"; and for those who loved him darkness came. 238 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH In the Arlington Street Church, three days later, the first day of spring, were held impressive funeral services, of a simple dignity and beauty befitting a poet's passing. At the close was read the poem, written so short a time before for the centenary of Longfellow : — Above his grave the grass and snow Their soft antiphonal strophes write : Moonrise and daybreak come and go: Summer by summer on the height The thrushes find melodious breath. Here let no vagrant winds that blow Across the spaces of the night Whisper of death. They do not die who leave their thought Imprinted on some deathless page. Themselves may pass; the spell they wrought Endures on earth from age to age. And thou, whose voice but yesterday Fell upon charmed listening ears, Thou shalt not know the touch of years; Thou boldest time and chance at bay. Thou livest in thy living word As when its cadence first was heard. O gracious Poet and benign, Belovbd presence 1 now as then Thou standest by the hearths of men. Their fireside joys and griefs are thine ; Thou speakest to them of their dead, They listen and are comforted. They break the bread and pour the wine Of life with thee, as in those days Men saw thee passing on the street THE LAST YEARS 239 Beneath the elms — O reverend feet That walk in far celestial ways ! In the presence of his family and many of his old com- rades in the life of letters, he was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery beside his boy. CHAPTER IX ALDRICH'S POETRY "Enamored architect of airy rh3Tne." THOUGH we have taken account in the preceding pages of all, or nearly all, of Aldrich's short stories and novels, there is, perhaps, no better way to begin to speak of his poetry than to say a qualifying word or two of his prose; for wide as are the fields that lie between " Go- liath" and "Fredericksburg," between, say, "Identity" and "The Story of a Bad Boy," they are all unmistakably part and parcel of the same Parnassian estate. His poetic art was in a peculiar way the quintessence of his prose manner, and the one without the other loses something in relief and distinction. Writing many years ago to Mr. Howells, concerning one of the earlier novels of Mr. Henry James, then just pub- lished, Aldrich said : "Henry James has a plump and rosy prose style, and lots of observation. I envy him the easy grace with which he slips his pen through forty or fifty miles of aristocratic landscape." Aldrich's own prose style was certainly neither plump nor rosy. Rather it was slender, with a spare, athletic slenderness, and whatever ruddiness of complexion it exhibited was that of Psyche's "cheek's cold rose." / Opulence of any sort, whether of — ^ ^^^ ( r • V. ^ C OVfcyvjjiaJv^tMA » FACSIMILE OF THE MANUSCRIPT OF "FREDERICKSBURG" ALDRICH'S POETRY 241 "observation" or of expression, was never an attribute of his work. He was of the Flauberts, not of the Balzacs; his prose was the prose of talent rather than of genius ; but it would be hard to find an English author who has made more of his native endowment. Certainly no American story-writer, not excepting Poe or Hawthorne, has had a cooler understanding of the mechanics of story- writing, or written a lighter, chaster, more elegant prose style. Pure EngHsh was his passion. He would rather, as he often said, "be censured in pure English than praised in bad," And his entire literary life was a protest against the easy- going methods of composition that he saw sowing the seeds of corruption in the writings of increasing numbers of his contemporaries. "It is so easy," he would say, "to write sloppily!" His own prose was considered and refined to the last degree. He composed cautiously, making his way slowly and securely from phrase to phrase, from sentence to sen- tence, from paragraph to paragraph. The afflatus that descends at times even upon the writer of prose he dis- trusted, and confined with steady fingers upon the stops. His revision was more cautious still. The first draft would be interlined and erased and interlined again, until it be- came a puzzle to all eyes but his. Then it would be copied out fairly in his fine architectural hand, and the process repeated. Often, when a manuscript had been accepted by some magazine, he would recall it and send another draft, elaborately revised, in its place. His proof he casti- 242 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH gated with equal thoroughness. But his revision was creative as well as critical, and often some choice felicity of vivid phrase made its first appearance, to the despair of the printer, in "foundry proof." But it is easy to concentrate one's attention too exclu- sively upon the technical perfection of Aldrich's prose. The cool, poKshed page with its daintiness and gayety, its pecuHar politeness, is touched with the breath of poesy. This is its distinction from the work of other talented writers of correct prose, and the elusive source of its quality and charm. Take, for an example, the few pages in "The Story of a Bad Boy " that tell of the death of Binny Wal- lace. The narrative is spare, and simple, almost meagre in its restraint. Yet it produces a breadth and depth of poignant impression that can spring only from the poetic tenderness of its inspiration. It is always so when he is at his best in prose. The women in his novels, to take an- other instance, are like the girls of an Horatian poet, Uke the blonde and brunette pair in his own "Corydon," not so much dramatized as lyrically painted with light swift touches; yet Prudence Palfrey, Margaret Slocum in "The Stillwater Tragedy," and the fair distraught young Queen of Sheba dwell in our memories with a charming freshness of personaUty, with a sweet and virginal fragrance, that the analytical novelist must vainly admire. Perhaps Aldrich's most characteristic group of short stories is that in which the imaginative vitality lies in the shock of surprise at the end : " Marjorie Daw," " Mademoi- ALDRICH'S POETRY 243 selle Olympe Zabriski," "A Struggle for Life," "Two Bites at a Cherry," "GoUath," "His Dying Words," "A Sea Turn," and "Thomas Phipps," all fall under this rubric. Whether such stories as these have the potency of en- during life in them may be doubted. You cannot surprise the same reader with the same surprise twice. Yet these stories bear re-reading better than any others of this type that can readily be recalled. Their airy blandness of execu- tion gives a pleasure of which the reader does not easily tire, and the surprise is never a purely farcical. Jack-in- the-box affair. It springs always from some keen, humor- ous perception of the eternal ironies of character and cir- cumstance in this ironic world. When beside these we place such fantasies as "The ChevaHer de Resseguier," "Pere Antoine's Date-Palm," "A Midnight Fantasy," and "His Grace the Duke," where the faculties of poet and humorist are happily wedded in whimsical union, and those other tales, "Quite So," "The White Feather," and "For Bravery on the Field of Battle," where old flashlight memories of the war inspire the tragic note, we have a series of stories that for variety and pleasurableness do not suffer greatly in comparison with any similar collection in the language. Judged by equally high standards, the three novels are less successful and seem less likely to be read as ruinous time goes on. They lack the ampHtude of life that makes a work of fiction live. But "The Story of a Bad Boy," that tender, humorous, wholly characteristic and wholly engaging book, is as secure as anything can be 244 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH of a permanent place in the affection of readers old and young. In writing of Aldrich's prose, however much one may admire it, one is always a little conscious of putting the best foot foremost. But when we come to speak of his poetry reservations vanish. It is no longer a question of "best foot," of right hand or left. We have to deal with a compact body of verse wherein the author has forestalled reservation by discarding aU but his best, leaving for our study and lasting enjoyment a slender volume bearing on every page the stamp of a blithe perfection. No poet in a century has illustrated so well as Aldrich the truth of Michel Angelo's dictum, that "art is the purga- tion of superfluities." Throughout his poetic life he re- lentlessly purged his work of "superfluities," not only of phrase and image, of ornaments and excursions, of stanzas and entire poems, but even of subtler, more adhesive super- fluities of mood and impulse. We shall better comprehend the peculiar potency of the brilliant remainder, if we recall for the moment the successive mutations and chastenings of his poetic product. The survey will show us that " 'T is more to guide than spur the Muse's steed, Restrain his fury than provoke his speed." Like all juvenile poets, Aldrich in his earliest lispings in numbers kept his eye upon the copy set him by his masters. As we have already seen, Tennyson and Longfellow, Chatterton and Poe, even Willis, shed the golden air of ALDRICH'S POETRY 245 poesy around the world that Tom Bailey saw with his twinkling eyes, and set it vibrating with the cadences of their song. So, quite naturally, it is the reflection of their moods and the echo of their melodies that we find in his first little book of verse, "The Bells." Then, with his majority, came the boy's eflfort to find his own feet. In "The Course of True Love never Did Run Smooth" he turned away from the popular poets of the day, back to the "Arabian Nights" of his boyish memories and found a vein that, save for some similar experimentation by Stoddard, had no parallel in contemporary verse. Yet even so early as this we can see the awakening of his amazing faculty of self-criticism. From "The Bells" not a single piece went into any later collection, and only two fragments of "The Course of True Love" were preserved; while few of the numerous pieces in the manner of Willis that he was printing in the "Atlas," the "Knickerbocker," and the "Saturday Press" ever went between covers at all. In the volumes of 1859 and 1861 we begin to discover the assured touch of a maturing hand. The former con- tained eight poems that have gone into his collected works, the latter, a smaller volume, six. With the Carleton Blue and Gold edition of 1863 the number is increased to twenty, forty per cent of the whole number ; though in the exotic, even macaberesque, flavor of the remainder we can still see the survival of that struggling duality of temperament, Puck versus Ariel, that was to be reconciled later in such memorably individual poetic achievement. With the 1865 246 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH volume Aldrich's progress along the path to perfection is still more clearly marked, both by the discards and by the additions; while a study of the verbal changes is, as we shall presently see, a revelation of the subtler processes of poetic style. From this point onward Aldrich's poetic evo- lution was finely consistent. He published slim volume after sHm tantalizing volume, each with its masterly yet seemingly artless arrangement, its various charm. His talent came to its full flowering in the seventies and early eighties, between, say, his thirty-fifth and his fiftieth year. Yet it lasted on into his last years with an evenness that has seldom been seen in the later work of lyric poets. The brief, poignant, unforgetable poems that are per- haps the most characteristic of all his pieces, and seem so secure of an age-long anthological life, were the work of his prime; but the product of his later years, in such poems as "Elmwood," "Unguarded Gates," the "Shaw Memorial Ode," and "Longfellow," showed Httle abate- ment of his fine faculty and faultless craftsmanship. In 1896 he put his collected poetic works into two volumes, rejecting enough poems, and of sufficient quality, to make the reputations of a half dozen minor bards. Again, in 1906, he made a final selection of "Songs and Sonnets," retaining only those pieces which at once approached nearest to his own difl&cult standard of perfection, and had shown in the special favor they had found with true lovers of poetry some intimations of immortaHty. This last little volume is the best text for the study of ALDRICH'S POETRY 247 the quintessential quality of Aldrich's art. To know the range of his genius we must make frequent reference to the two volumes of the Riverside edition, and even to some of the admirable and charming poems that were rejected by his ruthless "Messrs. Knife, File and Co." from that col- lection; but between the covers of the "Songs and Son- nets" we have his staunchest poetic argosy, its precious freight stowed with singular neatness for the voyage down the years. If there is any better way of arriving at an appreciation of the essential quality of a body of poetry than to consider first its style, and next its substance, it has still to be dis- covered. Yet the finer the poet, the subtler will be the re- lation between the two, the more delicate and dangerous the affair of regarding them separately. With Aldrich we must never figure to ourselves that the style is a woven garment of words for the adornment of the thought : it is " the magic touch that gives The formless thought the grace whereby it lives." In his youth the sensuous side of Aldrich's poetic tem- perament, the source from which came the quality of his poetic style, was distinctly that of the impressionist. As Holmes pointed out to him, he loved too well "the fragrance of certain words," was too easily pleased with "vanilla-flavored adjectives and patchouH-scented parti- ciples." Typical of much of his early work were three lines from "When the Sultan goes to Ispahan," that were 248 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH omitted from the later editions, even though Holmes had admired them : — "And to the low voluptuous swoons Of music rise and fall the moons Of their full brown bosoms." But as he matured in character and art this sensuous- ness of tone, this interest in " low voluptuous swoons," became so mingled and blended with other traits of his manner that it ceased to "thump," — as painters say of too intense a color, — and became merely one of the many contributive elements of his poetic style; and the perfumed passages in the earlier pieces were deleted. Equally illuminative of his poetic method, and of the quaHty of his mature poetic style, are the changes that he made in the stanzaic form of certain pieces. Compare, for a single example, the first two stanzas of "The Queen's Ride " as they stand in the volume of 1863 and in the River- side edition. 1863 'T is that fair time of the year, Lady mine, When the stately Guinevere, In her sea-green robe and hood Went a-riding through the wood, Lady mine. And as the Queen did ride, Lady mine. Sir Launcelot at her side Laughed and chatted, bending over, Half her friend and all her lover ! Lady mine. Riverside Edition 'T is that fair time of year. When stately Guinevere, In her sea-green robe and hood, Went a-riding through the wood. And as the Queen did ride, Sir Launcelot at her side Laughed and chatted, bending over, Half her friend and all her lover. ALDRICH'S POETRY 249 Few are the poets who have been able to command such detachment from their work as to play havoc like this with the tune in which a poem was first conceived. Yet here by the mere omission of the tinkling refrain a piece that is quite devoid of distinction comes to have a keen and characteristic charm of pure and simple melody. Pure melody indeed is the chief musical quality of Al- drich's poetic style. Symphonic rhythms, large harmonies of vowels, and subtle sequences of consonantal tone are rare in his work. In reading his poems aloud there is little to tempt us to cantillation or intoning. Rather they demand, even in such Elizabethan flights of song as "Imogen" or "Forever and a Day," a quiet voice moved only by the tender passion of the poet's mood, and guided, not by any elaborately contrived musical structure, but by the lucid meaning of his words. In short, the essential attribute of Aldrich's poetic style, externally considered, is the delicacy and precision of his phrasing. His poetic diction is distinguished by the ab- sence, not only of clear words that just miss the gold, but even of those vague "poetic" words that most modern poets have employed for the sake of reminiscent suggestion, to trail across the page nebulous clouds of an ancient glory. Here again some of the verbal changes from the edition of 1863 will illustrate the point. In "The Crescent and the Cross," the poet says of the former : — 250 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH "It gives me dreams of battles, and the woes Of women shut in hushed seraglios." In later editions the final phrase was changed to "dim seraglios," shortening the Tennysonian echo/ avoiding the unpleasing sibilance of "hushed," following "shut," and flashing more vividly upon our inner eye pictures of the dusky corridors and courts of the palaces of Stam- boul. Perhaps, too, the poet's sense of humor may have led him to question the veracity of "hushed" as applied to a seraglio. Indeed his humor, that persistent piece of Tom Bailey in him, was one of the prime factors in Aldrich's cool and collected mastery of poetic style. "Pampinea," or "Pampina" as it later became, is an- other fruitful source of styHstic instruction. How telling, for instance, is the advantage gained by the slight change of "Mossy reefs and salty caves," to or of to "Dripping reefs and salty caves" ; "The dewy slim chameleons run Through twenty colors in the sun," "The timid, slim chameleons run," etc.; ^ "Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes. Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates, And hushed seraglios." A Dream oj Fair Women. ALDRICH'S POETRY 251 or, in the first stanza of "Piscataqua River," "Thou singest by the gleaming isles, By woods and fields of com, Thou singest, and the heaven smiles Upon my birthday mom." the change of "heaven," in the penultimate line, to "sun- Ught." But betterments of this sort are legion, and to enumerate them vt^ould involve the printing in parallel columns of the earhest, intermediate, and latest versions of nearly every poem that Aldrich ever wrote. The truth is that the tireless search for the poetic mot juste was the secret of Aldrich's power so far as his power inhered in poetic style. When he came to the concluding stanza of "Lynn Terrace," one of the finest of his poems, he brooded for days to find the one inevitable word to go with "sea-guU." After trying and rejecting scores of applicants for the position, he found it in the unexpected word " petulant," which gives the last lively touch of felicity to a perfect stanza : — "For me the clouds; the ships sail by for me; For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight; And mine the tender moonrise on the sea, And hollow caves of night." Yet with all his anxious search for the inevitable phrase, and deHcate blending of the flavors, the radical rather than the associational flavors, of choice words, Aldrich never fell into the cold impersonality that so often goes with extreme polish, whether in manners or in poetic style. He knew well when to break the smooth lapse of his verse with 252 THQMAS BAILEY ALDRICH the seemingly frank and unpremeditated line, the sudden smile. His finest poems may be as " polished as the bosom of a star," but they are never cold and remote, — "Up above the world so high Like a diamond in the sky." If they suggest the diamond in their exquisite cutting, their delicate fire and rainbow lights, their imperishability, it is always a diamond warm from the breast of beauty. Beauty was the ideal and principle of Aldrich's poetry to an extent that is rare among modern poets with their perturbing preoccupations, philosophic, reHgious, or politi- cal, and if we turn from the external and technical beauty of form to the inspiring beauty of substance we shall ap- proach more nearly to a perfect appreciation of its spirit. But first we must take a leaf from the books of the psy- chologists and remember that "a poem" is not a mere arrangement of printed words on a white page, or even a glowing mood in a poet's mind. The actual poem is something that takes place in us when we read the printed words on the white page, the succession of experiences, sounds, images, memories, thoughts, emotions, that we enjoy when we are reading sympathetically : — "To the sea-shell's spiral round 'T is your heart that brings the sound : The soft sea murmurs that you hear Within, are captured from your ear. You do poets and their song A grievous wrong, ALDRICH'S POETRY 253 If your soul does not bring To their high imagining As much beauty as they sing." We shall best arrive at the heart of Aldrich's poetry if we first notice that which is least characteristic in the sub- stance of his work, and then proceed to that which is most peculiarly his own. In so doing we shall advance along a constantly ascending path of poetic power, bringing with us, we may hope, the proper series of sensitized plates in our own minds upon which the actual "poems" are to be imprinted. Perhaps Aldrich's least characteristic work is in his longer narrative pieces. "Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book," "The Legend of Ara-CceH," "Judith and Holofernes," and "Wyndham Towers " are fine examples of an accom- plished poetic art, but there is little in their inspiration that might not be found in the work of any other poet of an equal grade of talent. The same thing is true, though in a less degree, of such expressions of national and patriotic feeling as "Unguarded Gates," "Spring in New England," or the "Shaw Memorial Ode." All are sincere and ad- mirable compositions, but they bear the stamp of the author's talent, rather than of his genius. Lowell might have written them, or even a less than Lowell. We first begin to find poetic substance that is unmis- takably stamped with the impress of the poet's personality in a group of poems in celebration of places that he loved. In "Piscataqua River" and "Lynn Terrace" we have the 254 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH authentic accent of an individual voice and manner. From these it is but a step along the path of the characteristic to another group of what, for want of a better name, may be called "urbane" poems: "The Flight of the Goddess," "Latakia," "Lines on an Intaglio Head of Minerva," "Amontillado," "Pepita," and "Corydon." Here we have a flavor that cannot be described by any word but "Al- drichian." There is a certain kinship between them and the poems of Thackeray and Praed, a closer one, per- haps, with Mr. Dobson's exquisite Muse, but the touch is at once lighter and firmer and in a certain sense more poetical. Nowhere else in English poetry is there a better chemical union of the elements of poetic fancy and humor. Here at last, as in the companion group of fantasies in prose, Tom Bailey and the author of " The Ballad of Baby Bell" are at peace. Still more of our poet's friendly heart is in his series of personal and memorial poems. "Bayard Taylor," "Elm- wood," "The Sailing of the Autocrat," and "Sargent's Portrait of Edwin Booth" belong with Lowell's " Agassiz," Longfellow's "Three Friends of Mine," and Whitman's "Captain, my Captain," among the most sincere and elo- quent elegiac poems in American literature. We read them, not as we read "Lycidas," or "Thyrsis," or " Adon- ais" or the other elegies that take their inspiration from poets dead long ago in Sicily, with admiration for the per- fect art, " most musical, most melancholy," but rather, if we bring to them a heart capable of comprehending ALDRICH'S POETRY 255 the old emotion of friendship, with a catching at the throat, with a pleasure that is half pain. On these lower stages of the ascent we see most clearly the range and variety of Aldrich's poetry. The poems that have been already enumerated are a sufficient answer to the critics of poetry who have thought him but a skilled carver of poetic cherry-stones. Yet there is this much of truth in the common view : as we go on up the path of the characteristic the way narrows. In his sonnets there are still many differing types of poetic power. From "Fred- ericksburg," with its calm and beautiful beginning, its tragic and tremendous close, to the quiet, thrilling perfec- tion of "Sleep," is a sufl5cient range for any sonneteer. But here we have not quite arrived at the summit, though we are within view of it. The most vitally characteristic, and we may believe the most enduring poems of Aldrich, the poems in which we have at once his genius in its purest intensity, and his art in its most nice perfection, are what we may call the anthology poems, like "Nocturne," "Pala- bras Carinosas," "Two Songs from the Persian," "For- ever and a Day," and, still more importantly, that series of tiny pieces of which no other American poet could con- ceivably have written a single one: "Snowflake," "Appari- tions," "Knowledge," "An Untimely Thought," "Des- tiny," "Identity," "Nameless Pain," "A Winter Piece," "Seeming Defeat," "Rencontre," "One White Rose," "Prescience," "Like Crusoe, walking by the Lonely Strand," "A Mood," "Memory," "Necromancy," "Lost 256 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Art," "I'll not confer with Sorrow," "Pillared Arch and Sculptured Tower," "Imogen," — thek very titles are poems ! These are the pieces that we must treasure in our memo- ries and re-create in our hearts if we would really know Aldrich. Let us take "Memory," not because it is the most striking of the group, but rather because it is super- ficially the least so, and see what can be the secret of its haunting charm ; — "My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, And yet recalls the very hour — 'T was noon by yonder village tower, And on the last blue noon in May — The wind came briskly up this way. Crisping the brook beside the road; Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree." This in its exquisite simplicity is art of a sort that is rare in the poetry of the Western world. It is the art, almost, of the Japanese painter who can make a spray of apple- blossoms stir the deep heart of man. In such poems as this Aldrich embodies only the final moment when the golden gong strikes and the mystic miracle occurs. There is never any preliminary chanting; no preluding incanta- tion of woven paces and of waving arms. In his long lei- surely days he had a singular sense for high moments, for vivid, fleeting impressioi^s and sudden revelations. He by '(2/^^^ m ^x^. v^^.v ^-X «'-^-. ^\- IDENTITY," WITH THE DRAWING BY ELIHU VEDDER ALDRICHS POETRY 257 no means "burned always with a hard gem-like flame." The genial glow of whimsical fancy that was habitual with him was but occasionally superheated into this pure in- tensity of light. He never forced, but always waited for the mood. When it came it was brief and poignant and memorable. Like the lark that sings in Dante's " Para- dise," he sang and then was silent — contented with the sweetness sung before : "Qual lodoletta che in acre si spazia Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta Deir ultima dolcezza che la sazia." But whence comes the ghostly response in the reader's mind to such poems as this ? Is not the answer suggested in a line that stands just across the page from " Memory " : — "Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness"? The poem awakens in us the sadness that attends all deli- cate beauty, yet its fairy weight plumbs a deeper sea than that. This swift, vivid impression of evanescent sound and scent and color touches us as with an enchanter's wand, sealing our eyes for the moment to the world we know, filling our mood with the dim sense of loss, and wistful- ness for the irrevocable years. Nor is the mood that is evoked personal so much as ancestral, racial. The sharp, sweet odor of the pine, the pale loveliness of drifting petals, smite our souls with the thrill of vanished springs, till we feel in our very blood the soft shuddering of the millions of our race that have trembled with the beauty of a myriad Mays. 258 THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH Lest all this seem but a vague and visionary dream, let us see how this poem moved one reader who could bring his own "high beauty" to its enjoyment. Whittier, writ- ing to a friend, said of it : — " Of course thee's read Aldrich's new bit which he calls 'Memory,' and equally of course it gives thee a pleasure that is very near pain in its intensity. Aldrich is a man of the world, I must admit that, but he is a poet first of all, a truer poet than most of us versifiers." And the same friend records : — "I spent a week with Whittier at Hampton Falls only a short time before the shadow that pursues us all overtook him. Every evening he asked me to repeat to him certain short poems, often 'Destiny,' and once even 'that auda- cious "Identity,"' as he called it; but at the end he invari- ably said, 'Now thee knows without my saying so that I want "Memory," ' and with his wonderful far-off gaze he always repeated after me : — '"Two petals from that wild-rose tree.'" The lasting significance of Aldrich's poetry lies in such pieces as this. Psychology, metaphysics were unknown lands to him. Yet with his fine sensitiveness, his clear and candid mind, he was no stranger to some of the subtlest thoughts, the most wayward and wistful moods of his moody age. This alone would not give him his peculiar distinction. Other men have been niore sensitive to the age-spirit, more "representative." But when Aldrich went to embody the egrie impulse in verse the miracle hap- ALDRICH'S POETRY 259 pened. He immortalized the moment's exquisite pang of memory or joy or foreboding, not in shadowy, but in crystalline verse. Impulses the most romantic in the world he guided by an instinct that was purely classic in its inspired poise. His most characteristic work is that in which the terse polish of an epigram but makes more memorable the frisson, the haunting, heart- searching thrill of the sudden thought. In a complex and quizzical age, an age when " The Muse in alien ways remote Goes wandering," Aldrich, by the miracle of genius, and by his mastery of his art, sang of beautiful and pleasant and sad things as simply as an Elizabethan or a Greek singer of the Anthology. For those who love poetry as a fine art, who read it for pure delight, his place in our literature is unique and secure. BIBLIOGRAPHY^ 1855 The Bells. A Collection of Chimes. New York: /. C. Derby. i2mo, cloth, pp. 144. Contents Proem Prelude to the Steeple of St. Ayne The Steeple of St. Ayne Chatterton H. W. L. Crescent City at Night Song of a Heart The Angel Fannie Maude of Allinggale To Marie The Knight of Poesy A Christmas Chime Eudele ^ This bibliography of the original editions of Aldrich's writings is largely based upon that compiled and printed in The Book-Buyer for September, 1900, by Mr. Ernest Dressel North, to whose kindness I am indebted for permission so to use it. I have, however, made a few al- terations and additions, and for the purposes of this book somewhat changed the form of the entries. Any errors or omissions that appear must be laid at my door. 262 BIBLIOGRAPHY Drip, Drip, Drip Tousolia A Madrigal I Might Have Been * * * * The Two Cities The Night Wind Imore Forever and Forever The Little Witches at the Crossings Phoebus The Night Rain "Thanatopsis" Noon To Elegiac Berthabell About a Tiny Girl The Gentle Hand The Three Conceits Epigrammatical To Sue Anacreontic With the Stars and the Stripes around Him The Lachrymose The Old House My Highland Mary Twilight Idyl The Golden Island The Bard Hope Lillyan IV Scene of Blanchette Night Scene BIBLIOGRAPHY 263 1857 Daisy's Necklace and what came of It. A Literary Episode. New York : Derby ^ Jackson. i2mo, cloth, pp. 226. 1858 The Course of True Love never did Run Smooth. New York : Rudd b" Carleton. i2mo, cloth, pp. 41. Contents Preface The Caliph Muses How it struck the Lovers The Wedding Fete How the Little Maiden Wept How Giafifer passed the Night Hearts and Crowns The Afrites give Giafifer a Hint In the Pavilion 1859 The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems. New York : Rudd 6^ Carleton. i2mo, cloth, pp. 117. Contents The Ballad of Babie Bell Cloth of Gold 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY The Faded Violet My North and South The Ghost's Lady We Knew it would Rain After the Rain A Ballad Last Night and To-night Tiger Lilies The Betrothal Madame, as you Pass Us By The Merry Bells Shall Ring May Little Maud Perdita Nameless Pain The Moorland At the Dead House Song Palabras Cariiiosas I Sat Beside You While You Slept Dead In the Woods Autumnalia Song Barbara It was a Knight of Aragon When the Sultan goes to Ispahan L'Envoi Infelicissimus A Ballad of Nantucket The Spendthrift's Feast A Pastoral Hymn to the Fairies The Unforgiven A Poet's Grave BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 Invocation to Sleep A Great Man's Death The Blue-bells of New England A Legend of Elsinore Passing St. Helena The Set of Turquoise Ghosts To Miracles Hassan's Music Fairy Punishment 1861 Pampinea, and Other Poems. New York: Rudd b* Carleton. i2mo, cloth, pp. 72. The title on the cover of this volume was "Poems of a Year." Contents Pampinea Pythagoras The Tragedy Two Leaves from a Play Kathie Morris Hascheesh Hesperides The Crescent and the Cross Song Piscataqua River The Lunch Haunted 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY Song Miriam's The Robin In the Old Church Tower Song Lamia The Man and the Hour Our Colors at Fort Sumter 1862 Out of His Head. A Romance. New York: G. W. Carleton. i2mo, cloth, pp. 226. 1863 Poems. With Portrait. New York : G. W. Carleton. 32mo, cloth, pp. 161 Contents Cloth of Gold Crescent and Cross The Sheik's Welcome The Unforgiven Dressing the Bride Two Songs from the Persian Tiger Lilies • Sultana It was a Knight of Aragon When the Sultan goes to Ispahan Hascheesh A Prelude BIBLIOGRAPHY 267 A Turkish Legend Ghosts The Faded Violet Dead The Lunch Before the Rain After the Rain Wedded The Blue-bells of New England The Moorland Nora McCarthy Nameless Pain The Girls Murder Done Miracles May Palabras Carinosas Little Maud Songs Hesperides The Poet The Robin The Ballad of Babie Bell Piscataqua River Pythagoras Ballad of Nantucket The Tragedy Haunted Pampinea A Great Man's Death Lamia Invocation to Sleep Sea Drift Infelicissimus 268 BIBLIOGRAPHY The Queen's Ride Leander The Set of Turquoise Barbara Notes 1865 The Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Boston: Ticknor df Fields. 32mo, cloth, pp. 240. Contents Prologue to Lih'an Judith in the Tower The Camp of Ashur The Flight Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book Garnaut Hall Lady of Castel Notre Amontillado Castles Robin Badfellow A Lady of Loch-Ine December, 1863 Cloth of Gold The Crescent and Cross The Sheik's Welcome The Unforgiven Dressing the Bride Two Songs from the Persian Tiger Lilies The Sultana It was a Knight of Aragon BIBLIOGRAPHY 269 When the Sultan goes to Ispahan Hascheesh Prelude Turkish Legend The Faded Violet Ghosts Dead The Lunch Before the Rain After the Rain Wedded The Blue-bells of New England Nora McCarthy The Moorland Nameless Pain The Girls Murder Done Glamourie May Palabras Carinosas Little Maud At the Morgue Songs Hesperides The Poet The Robin Ballad of Babie Bell Piscataqua River Pythagoras A Ballad of Nantucket The Tragedy Haunted Pampinea A Great Man's Death 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY Kathie Morris Lamia Invocation to Sleep Sea Drift The Queen's Ride Barbara The Set of Turquois Euterpe At Bay Ridge, L. I. Pursuit and Possession The Amulet Egypt Miracles Fredericksburg Accomplices 1866 Fere Antoine's Date-Palm. Privately printed by Welch, Bigelow df Co., Cambridge. 8vo, pp. 20. Twenty copies printed. 1870 Paw a X v. Wish. A Christmas Fantasy with a Moral. Boston: Marion 6r= Co. 8vo, pp. 8. Printed by Marion Talbot and Sister, daughters of Dr. I. T. Talbot, and sold at a fair in Boston. The Story of a Bad Boy. Illustrated. Boston: Fields, Osgood df Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 261. BIBLIOGRAPHY 271 1872 Jubilee Days.* (Sixteen numbers.) Boston : James R. Osgood df Co. 4to, pp. 68. 1873 Marjorie Daw and Other People. Boston: /. R. Osgood (Sr= Co. 1 2 mo, cloth, pp. 272. 1874 Cloth of Gold, and Other Poems. Boston: James R. Osgood (Sr" Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 184. Contents Prelude The Crescent and Cross The Sheik's Welcome The Unforgiven Dressing the Bride Two Songs from the Persian Tiger-Lilies The Sultana When the Sultan goes to Ispahan Hascheesh A Prelude A Turkish Legend * See p. 191. 2 72 BIBLIOGRAPHY Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book The Lady of Castelnore Amontillado Castles Ingratitude December The Faded Violet Dead The Lunch Before the Rain After the Rain Wedded The Bluebells of New England Nameless Pain At Two-and-Twenty Glamourie Palabras Carinosas Song May Lyrics Hesperides Poe Epilogue Baby Bell Piscataqua River The Tragedy Haunted Pampinea Lamia Invocation to Sleep Sea-Drift The Queen's Ride In the Old Church Tower The Metempsychosis BIBLIOGRAPHY 273 Judith Euterpe At Bay Ridge, Long Island Pursuit and Possession Egypt Miracles Fredericksburg By the Potomac L 'Envoi Prudence Palfrey. A Novel. Boston: James R. Os- good &= Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 311. 1877' Flower and Thorn. Later Poems. Baston: Ja7nes R. Osgood df Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 149. Miss Mehetabel's Son. Illustrated. Boston: James R. Osgood (Sr= Co. 32mo, cloth, pp. 93. A Rivermouth Romance. Illustrated. Boston: James R. Osgood &= Co. 32mo, cloth, pp. 94. * From this point onward so large a proportion of the poems in each successive volume went into Aldrich's collected works that the contents will be omitted save in the case of the last Household Edition, which con- tains all of the poems he cared to preserve, and the "Songs and Sonnets" of 1906, which represents his own last selection of his best. 274 BIBLIOGRAPHY A Midnight Fantasy, and The Little Violinist. Illustrated. Boston : James R. Osgood d^ Co. 321210, cloth, pp. 96. The Queen of Sheba. Boston: James R. Osgood df Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 270. 1878 Baby Bell. With Illustrations. Boston: James R. Os- good 6r= Co. 8vo, cloth, pp. 43. 1879 The Story of a Cat. Illustrated. Translated from the French of Emile de la Bedollierre [BddoUifere]. Boston: Houghton, Osgood &» Co. Bvo, paper, pp. 100. 1880 The Little Violinist. Reprinted with the Author's per- mission and sold at a Fair of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 8vo, pp. 18. The Stillwater Tragedy. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin b' Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 324. BIBLIOGRAPHY 275 1881 Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book, and Other Poems. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin b" Co. 32mo, paper, pp. 94. XXXVI Lyrics and XII Sonnets. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin b' Co. 32mo, paper, pp. 93. 1882 The Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Illustrated by the Paint and Clay Club. With Portrait. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin df Co. 8vo, cloth, pp. 253. 1883 From Ponkapog to Pesth. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin bf Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 267. 1884 Mercedes, and Later Lyrics. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin b' Co. 8vo, cloth, pp. III. 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY i88s The Poems of vThomas Bailey Aldrich. Household Edition. With Illustrations. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin £r^ Co. 8vo, pp. 286. Marjorie Daw, and Other People. [Riverside Aldine Series.] Boston : Houghton, Mifflin df Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 287. The Second Son. A Novel. By M. O. W. Oliphant and T. B. Aldrich. Boston and New York: Houghton, . Mifflin 6^ Co. 8vo, cloth, pp. 524. 1890 Wyndham Towers. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin b' Co. Crown 8vo, pp. 80. 1891 The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical AND Dramatic. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin 6^ Co. Crown 8vo, pp. 108. BIBLIOGRAPHY 277 1893 An Old Town by the Sea. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin bf Co. i6mo, cloth, pp. 128. 1894 Two Bites at a Cherry, with Other Tales. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin ^ Co. Crown 8vo, cloth, pp. 269. Mercedes. A Drama in Two Acts, as Performed at Palmer's Theatre. Boston and New York: Hough- ion, Mifflin df Co. Crown 8vo, cloth, pp. 71. 1895 Unguarded Gates, and Other Poems. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin &" Co. i2mo, cloth, pp. 121. The Story of a Bad Boy. Illustrated by A. B. Frost. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin df Co. 8vo, cloth, pp. 286. 1896 Later Lyrics. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin b'Co. i8mo, vellum paper cover, pp. 92. 278 BIBLIOGRAPHY Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book. Large-Paper Edi- tion. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin &= Co. i8mo, red vellum, pp. 57. With special title-page. Two hundred and fifty copies printed. Judith and Holofernes. A Poem. Boston and New York : Houghton, Mifflin ^3^- American newspapers, 173. American poets, some opinions of Al- drich on : H. H. Brownell, 156; Mrs. Fields, 139; Halleck, 215; Holmes, ^53) 154; Lanier, 214, 215 ; Longfel- low, 29, 30 ; Lowell, 90, 91 ; Frank Dempster Sherman, 164; R. H. Stod- dard, 128; Whitman, 138, 140. Americanism, Aldrich's, 168. Arnold, George, early friend of Aldrich, 3S, 39- Arnold, Matthew, dinner to, 158. Atlantic Monthly, The, Lowell's note accepting Aldrich's first poem in, 48 ; bought by H. O. Houghton & Co., 107 ; edited by Howells, 140, 146 ; by Aldrich, 141, 143-146; Scudder be- comes editor, 160, Babie Bell, The Ballad of, occasion of, 26 ; popularity of, 27, 28 ; and Other Poems, published, 46; sales, 52 ; con- tents, 263. Baby Bell, illustrated edition, 274. Bad Boy, The Story of a, quoted, 8, 9, 13, 14 ; autobiographic, 12 ; begun, 89 ; issued serially in Our Young Polks, 91 ; and as a book, 92, 270, 277, 278 ; its permanence, 243, 244. Bailey, John, ancestor of T. B. A., 5,6. Bailey, Thomas Darling, " Grandfather Nutter," 7. "Bailey, Tom," 1-17. Bartlett, Francis, letters from Aldrich to : about a newspaper interview, 1 79 ; " a fall in C. B. & Q.," 197 ; about his poem Elmwood, 207, 208; about Shaw's Polly, 212. Bartol, Cyrus A., 86, %T. BedoUi^re, Emile de la, Mother Michel andher Cat, 135. Bells, The, Aldrich's first volume of verse, 24 ; none of it included in late collections, 25, 245 ; contents, 261. Benedict, E. C, entertains Aldrich on his yacht, 157. Book of Songs and Sonnets, A, a final selection, 246, 285. Booth, Edwin, 3, 38; Aldrich's friend- ship with, 72, 73, 157, 159, 167; "a great actor," S3 ; burial of, 174. Brewster, Charles Warren, his Rambles about Portsmouth, early verses by Aldrich in, 15. Brownell, Henry Howard, naval lau- reate, 56 ; battle bard, 156. Browning, Robert, Aldrich meets in London, 137, 206. Bryant, William Cullen, 38. Bugbee, James M., a lifelong friend of Aldrich, 79. Buntline, Ned, as Aldrich remembered him, 192. Burlingame, E. L., 227. Carlyle, Thomas, his Prederick the Great, 173; a story in Carlylese, 197^ 199. Child, Alpha, letter to Aldrich quoted, 21, 41 ; Aldrich's reply, 22. Child, Francis J., proposes to Aldrich to become an instructor at Harvard, 100. Clapp, Henry, Jr., " King of Bohemia," 38, 39, 44, 54 ; starts the Saturday Press, 42. " Clare, Ada " (Mrs. Jane McElhinney), " Queen of Bohemia," 2, 38 ; her tragic death, 39. Clemens, Samuel L., see Twain, Mark. Cloth of Gold, 1 1 ; and Other Poems, 46; contents, 271. 298 INDEX Course of True Love never did Run Smooth, The, published, 36 ; sales, 52 , almost entirely omitted from later col- lections, 245 ; contents, 263. Cozzens, Frederick S., author of the Sparrowgrass Papers, 38. " Crags, The," Aldrich's summer place at Tenant's Harbor, 161, 175, 177, 190. Crescent and the Cross, The, 249, 250. Curtis, George William, 38 ; the " Easy Chair," 171. Daisys Necklace, and what came ofitt 34, 35. 263. DeMerritt, Samuel, Aldrich's teacher, 14. Derby, J. C, publishes Aldrich's first volume of verse, 24. Derby & Jackson, Aldrich becomes literary adviser to, 31; publish Daisy's Necklace, 34. Dickens, Charles, at Aldrich's house, 87. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, unconscious- ness of, 176; Aldrich's admiration of his Bacchus, 197. Evening Mirror, Aldrich junior liter- ary critic of, 28-31. Every Saturday, established, 76 ; edited by Aldrich, 79, 80, 84 ; changed to an illustrated weekly, 100 ; sold to H. O. Houghton & Co., 106, 107. Faithful, Major, 182, 185. " Fern, Fanny," sister of N. P. Willis, 2, 30 ; marries James Farton, 31. Fields, Annie, 79 ; letter of Aldrich to, 83 ; her Under the Olive, 139. Fields, James T., 3, 117 ; intimacy with Aldrich, 79, 87; retires from busi- ness, 100; letters from Aldrich to: about Hiawatha, 29 ; about publish- ing a volume of poems, 33, 52 ; about European experiences, 119. Flower and Thorn, 126, 130; pub- lished, 132, 133, 273. Francis, Miss S. M., 4 ; describes rou- tine of the Atlantic oiBce, 143-145. Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book, 253, 278 ; printed in the Atlantic, 71 ; Al- drich's estimate of, 210 ; published, with other poems, 275. Frost, A. B,, illustrates the Bad Boy, 178. Frost, Charles, Aldrich's uncle, 10; takes Aldrich into his counting-room, 16, 20. Frost, Mrs. Charles, 10, 19. Frothingham, Octavius Brooks, 127, 128. Fuller, W. O., criticises The White Feather, 223-225. Garfield, President James A., assassi- nation of, 152. " Gawd," thought a more poetical word than " God," 203, 207. Gibson, R. E. Lee, letter from Aldrich to, about changes in his sonnets, 210. Gilder, Richard Watson, 3 ; letters from Aldrich to : about Henry L. Pierce, 195 ; about poetry, 202 ; about buying the Filipinos, 204 ; about the marriage of his son Talbot, 232. Giles, Henry, quoted, 44. Girls, The, a discarded poem, quoted, 67. Glass Hottses, early novel by Aldrich, never finished, 46. Goodwin, Governor, of New Hamp- shire, 54. Guernsey, Alfred H., editor of Harper'' s Magazine, 20, 234. Halleck, Fitz Greene, an early friend of Aldrich, 18, 38; Aldrich's judgment of, 215. Hanging of the Crane, The, conceived by Longfellow in Aldrich's dining- room, 87. Hawthorne, Nathaniel, letter to Al- drich about his poems, 66, 200 ; The INDEX 299 Scarlet Letter, one of the two chief pieces of American fiction, 201. Hawthorne, Sophia, writes Aldrich about Pire Antoine's Date-Pa/m, 84, 85. Hearn, Lafcadio, as a letter writer, 3. Heine, Heinrich, quoted, 47. Herford, Oliver, quoted, 226. Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, letter from Aldrich to, about H. H. Brown- ell, 156. Holland, Josiah Gilbert, 123 ; popu- larity of, 132. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 3 ; letter to Aldrich about first collected edition of his poetry, 64, 65 ; letter about Blue and Gold edition, 75, 76 ; Al- drich's estimate of Holmes's work, 154; anecdote of, 158, 159; Aldrich's appreciation of his kindness, 200. Home Journal (New York), Aldrich's connection with, 30-33, 42. Houghton, Lord, anecdote of, 159. House, Edward H., war correspondent of the Tribune, 56, 57. Howard Athenaeum, the, 203. Howells, William Dean, 3 ; impressions of the Saturday Press, 43-45 ; re- views The Ballad of Babie Bell, 47, 48 ; first meeting with Aldrich, 79, 80 ; Aldrich's impressions of, Si ; editor of the Atlantic, 140, 146 ; letters from Aldrich to : about the birth of A.'s twin boys, 89 ; about his Charles Street house, 94 ; about A Midnight Fantasy, 116; about the Legend of Ara-Coeli, 120, 121 ; about The Queen of Sheba, and other matters, 122-125 ; lamenting that his poetical wind-mill is dismantled, 129 ; about J. R. Os- good and other old friends, 191 ; about letter writing, 193 ; about H.'s re- moval to New York, 211; a "crazy- quilt " letter, 218-222. Hutton, Laurence, 157; birthplace of, 10 J letter from Aldrich to, 176. Illustrated News, The, Aldrich's con- nection with, 63, 69. In Youth beside the Lonely Sea, an autobiographic poem, 41, 42. James, Henry, not a natural story-teller, 134 ; his prose style, 240. James, William, 79. Jefferson, Joe, 172. Journal of Commerce, Babie Bell first printed in, 26. Jubilee Days, 191, 271. Judith, prmted in the Round Table, 69-71. Judith and Holofernes, Miss O'Neil asks Aldrich to dramatize, 228 ; pub- lished, 278. Judith of Bethulta, 228; played in Bos- ton and New York, 229, 230 ; its mer- its, 231. Keats, John, " did n't know any better than to write pure English," 207. Keeler, Ralph, art editor of Every Saturday, 100 ; mysterious death, lOI. Kipling, Rudyard, 224 ; " a certain Ara- bian writer," 169. Lander, Gen. F. W., Aldrich appointed to staff of, 54; elegy on, 54, 55. Landor, Walter Savage, a master of quatrains, 226. Lanier, Sidney, ranked by Aldrich as a minor poet, 214, 215. Later Lyrics, 193, 277. Lathrop, George Parsons, 125, 147. Legend of Ara-Cceli, The, 120, 123, 124,253. " Little Miss," 86, 87. Little Violinist, The, 274. Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 3 ; in- fluence on Aldrich, 25 ; Aldrich's ad- miration of , 29 ; praises Aldrich, 3 7, 5 3 ; conceives The Hanging of the Crane in Aldrich's dining-room, 87, 88 ; his 300 INDEX opinion of the Bad Boy, 93 ; cente- nary of his birth, 235. Lowell, James Russell, perennially youthful, I ; a cultivated letter writer, 3 ; accepts poem by Aldrich for the Atlantic, 48, 49 ; suggests that Al- drich become an instructor at Har- vard, 100; leases Elmwood to Al- drich, 103 ; his Commemoration Ode, 132 ; his Letters, 1 76 ; letters from Aldrich to : about Under the Wil- lows, 90, 91 ; about Elmwood, 104, 108. Ludlow, Fitz Hugh, author of the Hasheesh Eater, 38, 39. Lynn Terrace, one of the finest of Al- drich's poems, 251. Mabie, Hamilton W., "a head-\\^\." 170, 171; letters from Aldrich to: about Baby Bell, 28 ; about speaking at dinners, 172; about his criticism of A.'s work, 199 ; about contempo- rary poetry, 208, 209 ; about the son- net, 212, 213. McCann, John E., reads Baby Bell in a Western barroom, 27, 28. McElhinney, Mrs. Jane, see Clare, Ada. Man and the Hour, The, quoted, 53, 54. Marjorie Daw, 93; 271, 276. Matthews, Brander, letter from Al- drich to, about the quatrain, 226. Memory, 256,257; Whittier's enjoy- ment of, 258. Mercedes, successfully produced on the stage, 162; revised, 173,277. Mercedes, atid Later Lyrics, 275. Metetnpsychosis, The, 49. Midnight Fa7itasy, A, 116, 274. Miss MehetabeVs So?i, 273. Mitchell, S. Weir, letter from Aldrich to, about Hugh Wynne, 201. Moore, Frank, Songs of the Soldiers, quoted, 59, 60. Morris, George P., 2, 18 ; one of the owners of the Evening Mirror, 28 ; his Woodman, spare that Tree, 38 ; once considered a poet, 128. Morse, Edward S., Aldrich writes to, about photographs of himself, 177. Mot-de-curbstone, 224. Nameless Pain praised by Mr. How- ells, 47, 48. Nason, Rev. Elias, 127. Nest of Sonnets, entire edition de- stroyed by Aldrich, 34. Newcastle, N. H., 17. Newspapers, American, 173. New York; literary life of, in the fifties, 18, 37, 45- Nordhoff, Charles, editor of Harper'' s Magazine, 234. North, Ernest Dressel, his bibliography of Aldrich, 261. Nutter House, The, 8, 11, 13. O'Brien, Fitz James, 38 ; literary work, 39, 40 ; challenges Aldrich to fight a duel, 40 ; associate of Aldrich on the Saturday Press, 42 ; on Gen. Lan- der's staff, 54. Occasional poems, not likely to wear well, 197, 200. , Old Town by the Sea, An, 173, 277. Oliphant, Mrs. M. O. W., Aldrich collab- orates with, in The Second Son, 276. O'Neil, Nance, in Judith of Bethulta, 228-231. Osgood, James R., writes Aldrich about editing Every Saturday, 76 ; changes Every Saturday to an illustrated weekly, 100 ; business misfortunes, 106, 107, 191. Our You}ig Polks, prints The Story of a Bad Boy, 91, 92 ; sold to Scribner & Co., 107. Out of his Head, and Other Stories, 60, 266. Paint and Clay Club, edition of Al- drich's Poems illustrated by, 275. INDEX 301 Pampinea (later Pampina), changes in, 250. Pampinea, and Other Poems, 52, 53; contents, 265. Pansy's Wish, 270. Parton, James, sub-editor of Home Journal, 30 ; marries " Fanny Fern," 31- Pire Antoine's Date-Palm privately printed, 61, 84, 270. Pfaff's restaurant, 41, 45. Phillips, Wendell, Aldrich's Monody on, 152, 153- Pierce, Henry L., Aldrich's nearest neighbor at Ponkapog, 112; dies at 59 Mount Vernon Street, 162, 195. Piscataqua River, 52, 53, 251. Poe, Edgar Allan, 215. Poem, the actual, 252. Poems of a Year, 52, 53, 265. Ponkapog, Aldrich's residence in, no, III, 126; his enjoyment of, 113, 125. Ponkapog Papers, 223, 285. Ponkapog to Pesth, Prom, 112, 275, "Porcupine, The," Aldrich's house at Saranac Lake, 222. Portsmouth, N.H., 2, 7, 11, 14, 15,16,17. Preston, Harriet Waters, 144, 147, Prudence Palfrey, 103-106, 273. Pythagoras ( The Metempsychosis), Al- drich's first poem in the Atlantic, 48, 49. Quatrain, the, Aldrich on, 226. Queen of Sheba, The, in, 122,124; published, 133, 274. Queen^s Ride, The, striking changes in, 248, 249. Quite So, one of the best of Aldrich's stories, 58. Rankin, McKee, 229. Riley, James Whitcomb, The Plying Islands of the Night, 210, 211. Rivermouth Romance, A, 273. Round Table, The, prints Judith, 70, Rudd & Carleton, publishers of some of Aldrich's early books, 52, 61. Sala, George Augustus, described by Aldrich, 72. Saranac Lake, New York, 217-227. Saturday Press, started by Heniy Clapp, Jr., 42 ; Howells's recollec- tions of, 43-45 ; discontinued for lack of funds, 48. Says Private Maguire, forgotten piece by Aldrich, 59, 60. Scudder, Horace E., 125, 147 ; becomes editor of the Atlantic, 160. Sea Turn, A, and Other Matters, pub- lished, 222, 2S5. Second Son, The, by Mrs. M. O. W. Oliphant and T. B. Aldrich, 276. Shadow of the Night, A, 236. Shawns Folly, 212. Sherman, Frank Dempster, Aldrich writes to : about Lyrics for a Lute, 164; and about his own poetry, 165, 166, 170; about William Watson, 195. Sill, Edward Rowland, an ideal con- tributor, 144, 147. Sisters' Tragedy, The, with Other Poems, 276, Songs and Sonnets, A Book of, 246, 285. Songs of the Soldiers, 58-60. Sonnet, the, Aldrich on, 212, 213. Stedman, Edmund Clarence, 383 ; letters of Aldrich to : about Newcastle, 17 » about Charles Frost, 19; about his home, 88 ; about New York, loi ; about Stedman's work, 127 ; about The Queen of Sheba, 134 ; about Walt Whitman, 138, 140 ; about ed- iting the Atlantic, 141, 146 ; about Holmes's poems, 154; about the Easy Chair, 171 ; about occasional poems, 196 ; about the American Anthology, 213 ; about his seventieth birthday, 234. 302 INDEX Stevenson, Robert Louis, 3 ; at Saranac Lake, 217, 219. Stillwater Tragedy, 77;^, iii, 137, 274. Stockton, Frank R., 221. Stoddard, Richard H., 32, 38 ; The Course of True Love dedicated to, 36; as a poet, 128; letters from Al- drich to . about vacation work, 50, 51 ; about entering the navy, 55. Story of a Cat, The, 135, 274. Sunday Atlas, Aldrich's poems in, 23, 36 ; Daisy's Necklace printed in, 34. Talbot, Marion, and sister, publish Pansys Wish, 270. Tamerlane, Poe's, Aldrich tries to buy a first edition, 168. Tavern Club, the, 172. Taylor, Bayard, 3, 32, 38 ; sonnet for Aldrich's marriage, "]■]•, death, 136; Aldrich's poem on, 136; letters from Aldrich to : the first in a long series, 32 ; about his own work, 70 ; about a happy summer, ^t^ ; about Boston and New York, 81 ; about newspaper criticism, 82, 83 ; about Elmwood, 103 ; about Every Saturday and Prudence Palfrey, 1 07 ; about Pon- kapog, 125-127 ; about literary mat- ters, 129-132. Thompson, Launt, 38 ; medallion of Al- drich, 63 ; friendship with Edwin Booth, 73. Ticknor & Fields include Aldrich's poems in their Blue and Gold series, 75- To the Moon, Aldrich's earliest verses, Translations of Aldrich's writings : Dutch, 288 ; French, 289, 290 ; Ger- man, 290, 291 ; Swedish, 291 ; Italian and Spanish, 292. Trip, Aldrich's setter, 142, 166, 167, 169. Trowbridge, John Townsend, editor of Our Young Polks, 92. Twain, Mark, 3 ; correspondence with Aldrich, 94-99 ; deluges Aldrich with photographs, 112-117 ; in Paris with Aldrich, 137 ; " God's fool," 192 ; his donkey-boys, 220. Two Bites at a Cherry, -with Other Tales, 277. Underwood, Francis H., 43. Unguarded Gates, 168, 253, 277. Van Dyke, Henry, poem on Aldrich's seventieth birthday, 233. Villon, Frangois, 138. Ward, Artemus, anecdote of, 98, 99. Watson, William, writes a sonnet to Aldrich, 195. Whipple, Edwin Percy, a real critic, 123. White, Richard Grant, a versatile writer, 144, 147. White Feather, The, 222-225 > one of Aldrich's best stories, 58. Whitman, Walt, and Aldrich not sym- pathetic, 38 ; criticised by Aldrich, 138, 140. Whittier, John Greenleaf, too simple to pose, 176; Aldrich's appreciation of, 200 ; his enjoyment of Aldrich's Metnory, 25S. Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 2, 18; part owner of Evening Mirror, 28 ; ed- itor of Home Journal, 30 ; engages Aldrich as assistant, 31 ; advises him about publishing, 36. Willis, Sarah, " Fanny Fern," 2, 30 ; marries James Parton, 31. Winter, William, 38 ; associate of Al- drich on the Saturday Press, 42 ; his Life and Art of Edwin Booth, 174, 176; letters from Aldrich to: about Longfellow, 29 ; about the bur- ial of Booth, 1 74. Wister, Mrs. S. B., 144. Woodberry, George E., 3; a frequent ws INDEX 30: contributor to the Atlantic, 144, 147 ; letters from Aldrich to : about the Orient, 163, 189; about some of A.'s work, 166, 167, 173; about American- ism, 167-169, 177, 205; about "The Crags," 175, 178, 190; about A.'s Harvard diploma, 194 ; about Brown- ing and Keats, 206, 207 the last of all his letters, 236. Woodman, Lilian, becomes engaged to Aldrich, 67 ; correspondence with, 68-70 ; marriage, jy. Wyndham Towers, 253, 276 ; con- sidered by Aldrich his best long poem. XXXVI Lyrics and XII Sonnets, 275. CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A \..',^^ '^c ;* <.^ ; -'-^0^ > - « • • > /-\ i?i> » • 0^ <^^ °./* •-" aP * o ^9- * V •ri» * aV •5'^ vP^ a"* ♦■