

E-text prepared by Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
      file which includes the original illustration.
      See 53876-h.htm or 53876-h.zip:
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53876/53876-h/53876-h.htm)
      or
      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/53876/53876-h.zip)


      Images of the original pages are available through
      Internet Archive. See
      https://archive.org/details/nathanielparkerw00beeruoft





American Men of Letters.

Edited by

Charles Dudley Warner.


[Illustration: S. Lawrence, 1837. Illman & Sons.

N. P. Willis.]


American Men of Letters.

NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.

by

HENRY A. BEERS.







[Illustration]

Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street.
The Riverside Press, Cambridge.
1890.

Copyright, 1885,
By Henry A. Beers.

All rights reserved.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.




PREFACE.


The materials for a life of Willis are rich enough to be embarrassing.
Most of his writings are, in a greater or less degree, autobiographical;
and it would be possible to make a very tolerable life of him, by
arranging passages from these in the right order, and linking them
together with a few paragraphs of cold facts. Then, he lived very much in
the world’s eye, and was constantly talked and written about, so that
there is abundant mention of him in newspaper files, and in volumes of
“Recollections,” etc., by his contemporaries. In addition to these printed
sources, I have been furnished, by the kindness of Mrs. N. P. Willis, Miss
Julia Willis, and Mrs. Imogen Willis Eddy, with private letters, journals,
and other MS. memoranda by Willis, which extend from his school days at
Andover down to a few weeks before his death--of course not without
_lacunæ_. Although I have not quoted very freely from these letters, they
have been of the greatest service, by supplying facts which I have
incorporated with the body of the narrative, and by correcting or
verifying data otherwise obtained. A biography of Willis could have been
written without them, but this particular biography could not; and I take
occasion hereby to acknowledge my debt to the ladies whose courtesy gave
me access to this material.

There are many others who have helped my undertaking in various ways--too
many for me to thank them all by name. But I cannot withhold mention of my
obligations to Mr. Richard S. Willis and to Mr. Morris Phillips, the
editor of the “Home Journal.”

                                                          HENRY A. BEERS.




CONTENTS.


                                                 PAGE

                       CHAPTER I.

    ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS                        1

                       CHAPTER II.

    COLLEGE LIFE                                   31

                      CHAPTER III.

    BOSTON AND THE AMERICAN MONTHLY                71

                       CHAPTER IV.

    LIFE ABROAD                                   107

                       CHAPTER V.

    LIFE ABROAD CONTINUED                         154

                       CHAPTER VI.

    GLENMARY--THE CORSAIR--THE NEW MIRROR         219

                      CHAPTER VII.

    THIRD VISIT TO ENGLAND--THE HOME JOURNAL      283

                      CHAPTER VIII.

    IDLEWILD AND LAST DAYS                        326

    BIBLIOGRAPHY                                  353

    INDEX                                         357




NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.




CHAPTER I.

1806-1823.

ANCESTRY AND EARLY YEARS.


Willis was born January 20, 1806, in the little old seaport city of
Portland, Maine, celebrated by the “Autocrat” for its great square
mansions, the homes of retired sea-captains. The town had already made
some noise in literature, as the residence of that wild genius, John Neal;
and on February 27, 1807, little more than a year after the date with
which this biography begins, it witnessed the birth of its most
illustrious citizen, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A comparison at once suggests itself between the subsequent fortunes in
the republic of letters of these two infant poets, fellow townsmen for
some five years. Willis was the earlier in the field. In 1832, when
Longfellow, then a young professor at Bowdoin College, began to
contribute scholarly articles to the “North American Review,” the former
had been five years before the public, and was already well known as a
poet, a magazine editor, and a foreign correspondent. When “Outre-Mer” was
issued in 1835, Willis had won a reputation as a prose writer