WCP1373

[1]

[in pencil in ARW’s hand] ? quotes [illeg.] Hoz Lake

West New Brighton

S. I^d. [Staten Island] N.Y.

U.S.A.

Nov. 19th. 1898

D^r Alfred. R. Wallace,

My Dear Sir,

I was exceedingly pleased to get your letter and photoh and, as the best return I can make to one facile princeps in the scientific world, I send you the photo’ of the late George William Curtis¹ who was recognised, at the time of his death ("92), as the "First Citizen of America" He was theEditor of Harper’s Weekly and the writer of the "Easy Chair" in HarpersMag^e for a third of a Century, and those essays, like "The Spectator", have become a classic in American literature. Of his books “Prue & I”² is the perfection of the writing art. But as Editor and Orator his name is best known to every American. Before the civil war he was in the front rank of the Anti-Slavery movement, and thro' life the the [sic] acknowledged champion of Good Gov't and purity in politics. He was offered again and again high official stations and was urged by his friends to accept the mission of Minister to Eng^d, but he always refused political honors. He was, indeed, the first Comm^r. of our Civil Service, of which he was the founder, in order to purify politics, but resigned the position when the Pres't broke faith with him. The leaders of the Republican Party, and later of the Democratic Party as well, [2] were continually consulting him, from Presidents and Senators down, and, even after his death, I got a Democratic Pres't to retain a good man in office, a Republican, by showing that Mr. Curtis had held him in high esteem.

Mr. Curtis’ name is a house hold word in this country for all that is honorable and high minded. He was the intimate of Longfellow, Emerson, Motley and Lowell, and latterly the recognised Chief of the literary men of America and he was our last great orator.

I have written so fully because I fear that his name is not as well known in Eng^d as it deserves to be. I think he, as well as yourself, always bore in mind — (don't think me pedantic) — the last words of Socrates — "that to speak improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise occasions some injury to our souls."

In private life Mr. Curtis was charming and was said by your Thackeray to be the best conversationalist he had ever met.

Mrs. Curtis could not give me one of the last pho^s taken, and could only find two of these, and she and her daughter very gladly gave me the only one they could spare, when I told them it was for you. It is a capital likeness and was taken about eight years before his death. I enclose his autograph, which my daughter has cut from one of many book gifts he presented to her, thinking you might like to paste it under the Photo.

The list of yr favorite poets agrees with mine [3] except Byron, and ^my Tennyson, Shelley and Chaucer are all very dilapidated from use.

My first literary acquaintance was Hawthorne in Salem Mass, when as a child of four years I sat to Mrs. Hawthorne for the frontispiece to the tale of "The Gentle Boy". Hawthorne was a swarthy man — tall, long black hair and wore a voluminous cloak. He was very reserved and reticent.

At Cambridge in the 50s (Harvard Coll.) a fair-haired and gentle faced and carefully dressed gentleman of about 50, tho’ he looked younger, appeared one day in our lecture room and announced that he would take the place of our usual professor, and introduced himself to us as Prof. Longfellow. The tragedy of his wife’s death by fire in his presence afterwards aged him very quickly, and then his beard altered him still more, but he never lost that gentle poetical look.

Asa Gray³ was our lecturer on botany, but he took no pains to interest us and was evidently bored by having to teach. Agassiz⁴ however filled us with his own enthusiasm and was an ideal teacher or Prof. One never left him without feeling that he, the student, had more in him than he ever believed he had before.

O. W. Holmes⁵ was a little perky man, straining after wit and humor and I never cared much for his poetry, tho' he was greatly admired. In society he was never content until he was monologueing to a listening circle. It was he who compared Agassiz's book on the Amazon⁶ and the fishes thereof, (in which Mrs Agassiz [4] wrote the descriptions of scenery &c.) to the "fabled Mermaid — so nicely adjusted that you couldn't tell where the lady ended and the fish began".

W^m Cullen Bryant,⁷ who was once considered our greatest poet, I did not know till I came to N. Y. in "62. He had a Homeric head and was very able as literary man and Editor of the Evg Post of N. Y. He was a very reserved cold man to every one. His little granddaughter was asked what her grandfather had brot her from his trip to Mexico. He brot me, she said, a great cold apple.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher and poet, was the refined quintessence of all the best and shrewdest in the New England character, and he looked it.

It is a rather curious fact that there is a strong resemblance among all the New Eng^d men of that period and especially when one sees all their busts together. It is certainly true that Curtis, Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Prescott and some few others looked as if they are blood relatives. It was, I think, partly the New England type and still more their intellectual development along the same lines. I quite sympathise with you in your discovery of new poets among the old, for, with Thomas Warton's 'History of English Poetry" as a guide, I read last winter all the poets I could find antedating Charles the 2^nds reign, and it seemed to me as it English Literature would not lose much if the poets from Chas II to Victoria had been dumb.

I fear I weary you with my prolix reminiscences but it is certainly a sign of the weight of years. [5] 5/ I must thank you for the books you named, which I shall certainly get and read with great interest. I trust you did not suppose that I believed I had refuted your words on instinct, and I see at once that a loose-jointed doll would have done exactly what my infant did, if held in the same position. Mr Spencer's amusement was at my daring to play the trick on my newly born child.

I think your son⁸ will thoroughly enjoy his trip in that mild country, for I used to ride on horseback some 600 miles once or twice a year in the woods of Kentucky where the roads were only indicated by blazes in the trunks of trees, and I never enjoyed anything more.

I remember finding in log-house there an old lady of over eighty who spoke the most beautiful English I ever heard — rather quaint withal. I asked her at last how it was that her talk differed so much from the people around her. She pulled back a curtain from a couple of shelves and showed me the Spectator and several other English classics which her parents had brought from Virginia, and she told me those were almost the only books she had ever read and that she read them continually.

As to big cities — we are trying to reform ours, but our smaller towns have a seamy side too. There are still however in New England some few village which continue to have "town meetings" and govern themselves, and those are the best places I know of in the U.S.

I give you free hand to send my verses to [6] "Light" if you think they would care for them, which I rather doubt.

My daughter will mount your photo for me, for it got frayed on the edges in the mail, and, as she is studying at our "Art League," I intend to have her make me a larger copy of it in crayon.

Thanking you heartily for your letter and photo, and trusting you will forgive me for inflicting as long a letter on your patience.

I am very truly yours | Geo. O. Holyoke⁹ [signature]

P.S. Warton refers to this canzon I enclose, and as I found the original in Provençale in a note to an old book, and, as Petrarch translated it & made it into two ornate sonnets, and, as written about A.D.1250, it seems to be the model for future Sonneteers. I translated it absolutely literally and the antithetical simplicity of the original rather tickles me.

As I am not a poet myself I have rather a fancy for translating into verse the best of those who were poets of old, and I send you Danäe's Lament by Simonides in a very free translation from the Greek, which I have no doubt you read in the original when at school.

I trust the Curtis photo will arrive safe.

My daughter you see practices on a type writer – G.O.H [7] [in ARW’s hand] Letter from the late G. Q ^O. Holyoake