A Mortal Antipathy | Page 3

if it had been painted to
show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was
something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an
anticipation of Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the
Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful
young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked
step-mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the
shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal. The painted
youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheecked, jaunty
young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I
took the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his
coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad,
overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis
was by far the most prominent young American author. Cooper, Irving,
Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best work. Longfellow
was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a school-boy. Emerson was
unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his way against the writers
with better educational advantages whom he was destined to outdo and
to outlive. Not one of the great histories, which have done honor to our
literature, had appeared. Our school-books depended, so far as
American authors were concerned, on extracts from the orations and
speeches of Webster and Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To
a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers, Halleck's Marco Bozzaris,
Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American Flag, and Percival's Coral
Grove, and his Genius Sleeping and Genius Waking,--and not getting
very wide awake, either. These could be depended upon. A few other
copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia,"
and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were already effaced, as many of the
favorites of our own day and generation must soon be, by the great

wave which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still
are legible.
About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which made some talk for a while, and is
now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be
read the names of many whose renown has been buried with their
bones. The "London Athenaeum" spoke of it as having been described
as a "tomahawk sort of satire." As the author had been a trapper in
Missouri, he was familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the
warfare of its owners. Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army
officer, educated at West Point, he came back to his native city about
the year 1830. He wrote an article on Bryant's Poems for the "North
American Review," and another on the famous Indian chief, Black
Hawk. In this last-mentioned article he tells this story as the great
warrior told it himself. It was an incident of a fight with the Osages.
"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the
scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed furiously
upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance
through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my
father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."
This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He
tomahawked him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him
in barbarous epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised;
hardly any one else escaped.
If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating,
some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find
in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard of.
I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the little
book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read the
obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing in
spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly
with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he

had dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof
which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and
many of whom had known worse days than those which they were
passing within its friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least,
was the story I heard after he disappeared from general observation.
That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all
that