“I turned me at the slow Amen
And wiped my drowning eyes, and met
A trifling smile! Think ye of men?
I tell you man hath heart:—no, no,
It was a woman’s smile. They tell
Of her bright ruby lip, and eye
That shames the Arabic gazelle;
They tell of her cheek’s glowing dye,
Of her arch look and witching spell:
But there is not that man on earth
Who at that hour had felt like mirth.”
Worse than all, he had been watching by a corpse, in company with a young lady of his acquaintance, when
“She trifled, ay, that angel maid,
She trifled where the dead was laid!”
These misogynistic musings called forth a remonstrance—“Woman—to Roy,”—by one of the “Recorder’s” poetesses, who signed herself “Rob.” “Ye know her not,” she sang,
“An idle name
Ye give to toys of fashion’s mould,
And well ye scorn those guilty ones
Who curl their smiles of pride to heaven.
Oh, seek her not in halls of mirth,
But in those calm dwellings of earth,” etc.
Meanwhile, rumors of his idleness and dissipation began to reach Boston, and caused his family much distress. These reports were absurdly exaggerated, and were warmly denied by his friends, who asserted that the head and front of his offending were an occasional moonlight drive to “the Lake” and a supper, with a glass of ale at “Barney’s.” Willis was gay in college, but very far from dissipated. In the select circles where he was made at home nothing like dissipation was tolerated. The society of the little university town was as simple as it was refined. He was cordially welcomed in such families as the Whitings, the Bishops, the Hubbards, and the entire Woolsey, Devereux, and Johnson connection in New Haven, Stratford, and New York. His winter holidays were spent partly at New York with his classmates Rankin and Richards, partly at Stratford with the Johnsons, once at New London among the kinsfolk of his grandmother, Lucy Douglas; and once he traveled as far as Philadelphia. His “dissipations” in New Haven were picnics to East Rock, rehearsals of “The Lady of the Lake” at a seminary for young ladies, pie-banquets in Thanksgiving week—paid for with verses—and New Year’s calls with their accompaniments of a cooky and a glass of wine.
That his head was a little turned by his literary and social successes is not wonderful. He had his share of vanity, and in his confidential letters to his parents and sisters he made no effort to conceal his elation. A passage from one of these, dated January 7, 1827, will give a good idea of his occupations and his frame of mind at this point in his senior year:—
“I stayed in Stratford till Friday, and then the Johnsons offered me a seat in the carriage to New York. This, of course, was irresistible; and Friday night at ten o’clock I was presented to the mayor of the city, at a splendid levee. It was his last before leaving his office, and I never saw such magnificence. The fashion and beauty and talent of the city were all there, crowding his immense rooms to show their respect for his services. … I found many old acquaintances there and made some new ones—among the latter, a Mrs. Brunson, as beautiful a woman as I ever saw, and her sister, Miss Catherine Bailey, also a most beautiful woman. I met the very accomplished Adelaide Richards there, who patronized me and played my dictionary, and from whose father and mother I received an invitation to dine on New Year’s day. At two or three o’clock I went home to Mr. William Johnson’s (who married Miss Woolsey’s sister), and in a glorious bed, with a good coal fire by my side, slept off the fatigues of a sixty miles’ ride and four hours’ dissipation.
“On Saturday evening I went to a genuine soirée at the great Dr. Hosack’s. This man is the most luxurious liver in the city, and his house is a perfect palace. You could not lay your hand on the wall for costly paintings, and the furniture exceeds everything I have seen. I met all the literary characters of the day there, and Halleck, the poet, among them. With him I became quite acquainted, and he is a most glorious fellow. More of him when we meet. … You know on New Year’s day in New York all the gentlemen call on all their acquaintances. I began at twelve o’clock at the Battery, and went up to St. John’s Park, merely running in and right out again till four, the dinner hour. I called on everybody. William Woolsey went with me, and, by appointing a rendezvous in every street, we kept along together. At four I went to Mr. George Richards’s to dine. He is no relative of Robert’s, and lives in the best style in a large house on St. John’s Park. We sat down to dinner between five and six, and sat several hours with a very large party. I got a seat next to the beautiful Miss Adelaide, and enjoyed it much. They live in the French style, and the last course was sugar-plums!”
In another letter he says:—
“I was much flattered in vacation by the attentions of literary men and women; the latter more particularly, who seemed to consider it quite the thing to find a poet who was not a bear, and who could stoop so much from the excelsa of his profession as to dress fashionably and pay compliments like a lawyer. I heard of a very blue young lady who said, ‘La, how I should love to see Mr. Willis! I am sure I should fall in love with a man who writes such sweet poetry.’ She is both belle and bluestocking, they say.”
One of the families in which Willis was an habitué was the household of Mrs. Apthorp, a widow with four lovely daughters, who conducted one of the seminaries for young ladies for which New Haven was famous. This was the original of Mrs. Ilfrington’s school in “The Cherokee’s Threat.” Willis was much ridiculed by the reviewers for his very high-colored description of this educational establishment, and in particular for declaring that “in the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Raphael” he had “scarcely found so many lovely women, of so different models and so perfect, as were assembled in my sophomore year,” in this Connecticut “sugar-refinery.” His lines “On the Death of a Young Girl” were written on the occasion of the death of one of this family, some years after. The “Lines to Laura W——, Two Years of Age”—one of two selections from Willis in Emerson’s “Parnassus”—were addressed to a little New Haven girl, the sister and biographer of Theodore Winthrop. Another friend of Willis’s was a Mrs. De Forest, widow of the American consul at Buenos Ayres, a lady of fortune, who came to New Haven, and bought a house facing the green, where she gave fashionable parties. She was herself a beautiful woman, and her daughters, Julia and Pastora—matre pulchra filiæ pulchriores—were great belles among the students in Chevalier Wikoff’s day, who describes one of them as a “perfect blonde,” and the other as a “matchless brunette.”
The religious impressions which had been stamped upon Willis’s mind by the Andover revival were gradually obliterated by the preoccupations of undergraduate life. He did not definitely renounce his profession, and remained till graduation in communion with the college church. But the state of his soul gave deep anxiety to his good parents, who looked upon him, as he did upon himself, as a backslider. In a letter to his father during a season of “ingathering” in the college, stimulated by the eloquent preaching of Professor Fitch, he wrote as follows:—
“My own experience makes me very much alive to the frequent fallacy of the hopes which are experienced in revivals. I understand your anxiety for me, and I understand