"Since I last heard from you, nothing except what is melancholy
seems to have taken place. You seem all busy killing each other in
America. Some friends of yours and several friends of mine have
died. Among the last I cannot help placing Nathaniel Hawthorne, for
whom I had a sincere regard.... He was about your best prose writer,
I think, and intermingled with his humor was a great deal of
tenderness. To die so soon!
"You are so easily affronted in America, if we (English) say
anything about putting an end to your war, that I will not venture
to hint at the subject. Nevertheless, I wish that you were all at
peace again, for your own sakes and for the sake of human nature. I
detest fighting now, although I was a great admirer of fighting in
my youth. My youth? I wonder where it has gone. It has left me with
gray hairs and rheumatism, and plenty of (too many other)
infirmities. I stagger and stumble along, with almost seventy-six
years on my head, upon failing limbs, which no longer enable me to
walk half a mile. I see a great deal, all behind me (the Past), but
the prospect before me is not cheerful. Sometimes I wish that I had
tried harder for what is called Fame, but generally (as now) I care
very little about it. After all,--unless one could be Shakespeare,
which (clearly) is not an easy matter,--of what value is a little
puff of smoke from a review? If we could settle permanently who is
to be the Homer or Shakespeare of our time, it might be worth
something; but we cannot. Is it Jones, or Smith, or ----? Alas! I
get short-sighted on this point, and cannot penetrate the
impenetrable dark. Make my remembrances acceptable to Longfellow, to
Lowell, to Emerson, and to any one else who remembers me.
"Yours, ever sincerely,
"B.W. PROCTER."
And here are a few paragraphs from the last letter I ever received in
Procter's loving hand:--
"Although I date this from Weymouth Street, yet I am writing 140 or
150 miles away from London. Perhaps this temporary retreat from our
great, noisy, turbulent city reminds me that I have been very
unmindful of your letter, received long ago. But I have been busy,
and my writing now is not a simple matter, as it was fifty years
ago. I have great difficulty in forming the letters, and you would
be surprised to learn with what labor _this_ task is performed. Then
I have been incessantly occupied in writing (I refer to the
_mechanical_ part only) the 'Memoir of Charles Lamb.' It is not my
book,--i.e. not my property,--but one which I was hired to write,
and it forms my last earnings. You will have heard of the book
(perhaps seen it) some time since. It has been very well received. I
would not have engaged myself on anything else, but I had great
regard for Charles Lamb, and so (somehow or other) I have contrived
to reach the end.
"I _have_ already (long ago) written something about Hazlitt, but I
have received more than one application for it, in case I can manage
to complete my essay. As in the case of Lamb, I am really the only
person living who knew much about his daily life. I have not,
however, quite the same incentive to carry me on. Indeed, I am not
certain that I should be able to travel to the real Finis.
"My wife is very grateful for the copies of my dear Adelaide's poems
which you sent her. She appears surprised to hear that I have not
transmitted her thanks to you before.
"We get the 'Atlantic Monthly' regularly. I need not tell you how
much better the poetry is than at its commencement. Very good is
'Released,' in the July number, and several of the stories; but they
are in London, and I cannot particularize them.
"We were very much pleased with Colonel Holmes, the son of your
friend and contributor. He seems a very intelligent, modest young
man; as little military as need be, and, like Coriolanus, not baring
his wounds (if he has any) for public gaze. When you see Dr. Holmes,
pray tell him how much I and my wife liked his son.
"We are at the present moment rusticating at Malvern Wells. We are
on the side of a great hill (which you would call small in America),
and our intercourse is only with the flowers and bees and swallows
of the season. Sometimes we encounter a wasp, which I suppose comes
from over seas!
"The Storys are living two or three miles off, and called upon us a
few days ago. You have not seen _his_ Sibyl, which I think very
fine, and as containing a _very great_ future. But the young poets
generally disappoint us, and are too content with startling us into
admiration of their first works, and then go to sleep.
"I wish that I had, when younger, made more notes about my
contemporaries; for, being of no faction in politics, it happens
that I have known far more literary men than any other person of my
time. In counting up the names of persons known to me who were, in
some way or other, _connected_ with literature, I reckoned up more
than one hundred. But then I have had more than sixty years to do
this in. My first acquaintance of this sort was Bowles, the poet.
This was about 1805.
"Although I can scarcely write, I am able to say, in conclusion,
that I am
"Very sincerely yours,
"B.W. PROCTER."
Procter was an ardent student of the works of our older English
dramatists, and he had a special fondness for such writers as Decker,
Marlowe, Heywood, Webster, and Fletcher. Many of his own dramatic scenes
are modelled on that passionate and romantic school. He had great relish
for a good modern novel, too; and I recall the titles of several which
he recommended warmly for my perusal and republication in America. When
I first came to know him, the duties of his office as a Commissioner
obliged him to travel about the kingdom, sometimes on long journeys, and
he told me his pocket companion was a cheap reprint of Emerson's
"Essays," which he found such agreeable reading that he never left home
without it. Longfellow's "Hyperion" was another of his favorite books
during the years he was on duty.
Among the last agreeable visits I made to the old poet was one with
reference to a proposition of his own to omit several songs and other
short poems from a new issue of his works then in press. I stoutly
opposed the ignoring of certain old favorites of mine, and the poet's
wife joined with me in deciding against the author in his proposal to
cast aside so many beautiful songs,--songs as well worth saving as any
in the volume. Procter argued that, being past seventy, he had now
reached to years of discretion, and that his judgment ought to be
followed without a murmur. I held out firm to the end of our discussion,
and we settled the matter with this compromise: he was to expunge
whatever he chose from the English edition, but I was to have my own way
with the American one. So to this day the American reprint is the only
complete collection of Barry Cornwall's earliest pieces, for I held on
to all the old lyrics, without discarding a single line.
The poet's figure was short and full, and his voice had a low, veiled
tone habitually in it, which made it sometimes difficult to hear
distinctly what he was saying. When in conversation, he liked to be very
near his listener, and thus stand, as it were, on confidential ground
with him. His turn of thought was cheerful among his friends, and he
proceeded readily into a vein of wit and nimble expression. Verbal
felicity seemed natural to him, and his epithets, evidently unprepared,
were always perfect. He disliked cant and hard ways of judging
character. He praised easily. He had no wish to stand in anybody's shoes
but his own, and he said, "There is no literary vice of a darker shade
than envy." Talleyrand's recipe for perfect happiness was the opposite
to his. He impressed every one who came near him as a born gentleman,
chivalrous and generous in a marked degree, and it was the habit of
those who knew him to have an affection for him. Altering a line of
Pope, this counsel might have been safely tendered to all the authors of
his day,--
"Disdain whatever _Procter's mind_ disdains."