Greene Hallock.” Two years later, when fourteen years of age, he changed the spelling of his name from Hallock to Halleck, and, having completed his studies by passing through the four departments which then existed in New England schools, he in 1805 entered the store of his kinsman, Andrew Eliot, of Guilford, with whom he remained as a clerk for six years, residing in his family, in accordance with the custom of that day. Here he learned to keep accounts by double-entry, and soon took entire charge of the books. They were kept in a correct, and business-like manner, were well written, for even at that early date Halleck wrote a neat and dainty hand; and it is related that the only mistake ever discovered in the young clerk's book-keeping at Andrew Eliot's was in opening duplicate accounts in the ledger with the same person.
In the spring of 1808 Halleck made his first
visit to New York, being sent on business by Mr.
Eliot. During his three days' sojourn he attended
the Park theatre, where he saw young Oliff, the
actor, afterward introduced by him in two of the
“Croakers,” and also had pointed out by his
companion the young banker Jacob Barker and John
Jacob Astor, little thinking at the time that nearly
all the business portion of his life would be associated
with these prominent men. During the
summer of the same year Halleck joined the militia,
and was soon made a sergeant, filling the position
to the satisfaction of his associates. His
experiences in the Connecticut militia, as well as his
later campaign with
“Swartwout's gallant corps, the Iron Grays,”
was a never-failing source of fun with him, both in his conversation and in his correspondence. During the following winter he opened an evening-school for instruction in arithmetic, writing, and book-keeping, and by thus adding to his limited income was enabled to indulge his passion for the purchase of books. Among his earliest and most prized possessions of this character were Campbell's poems, a copy of Burns, and Addison's “Spectator.” In May, 1811, Halleck left his native town to seek after fame and fortune in New York, and in June entered the counting-room of Jacob Barker, in whose service he remained for twenty years. In the spring of 1813 he became acquainted with Joseph Rodman Drake. The young men immediately became attached friends, ever after maintaining an intimacy severed only by death, an event that was mourned by the survivor in those tender and touching lines, so universally admired, beginning:
“Green be the turf above thee.”
In 1819 they formed a literary partnership, and produced the humorous series of “Croaker” papers. Of this satirical and quaint chronicle of New York life, Halleck in 1866 said that “they were good-natured verses, contributed anonymously to the columns of the New York ‘Evening Post,’ from March to June, 1819, and occasionally afterward.” The writers continued, like the authors of Junius, the sole depositories of their own secret, and apparently wished, with the minstrel in Leyden's “Scenes of Infancy,” to
| “ | Save others' names, but leave their own |
| unsung.” |
In the latter part of 1819 Halleck wrote his longest poem of “Fanny,” an amusing satire on the fashion, follies, and public characters of the day, which was the perpetual delight of John Randolph. The edition was soon exhausted, and a second, enlarged by the addition of fifty stanzas, appeared early in 1821. The following year he visited Europe, and in 1827 published anonymously an edition of his poems, two of the finest in the collection, “Alnwick Castle” and “Burns,” having been suggested by scenes and incidents of foreign travel. This volume also included his spirited lyric of “Marco Bozzaris.” In 1832 Halleck entered the office of John Jacob Astor, with whom he remained until 1849, when, the millionaire having died and made him rich with an annuity of “forty pounds a year,” the poet retired to his native town, and took up his residence with his unmarried sister in an ancient house built in 1786 on ground formerly belonging to the Shelleys, ancestors of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In this fine old mansion (see illustration), where Halleck lived for so many years, he wrote the admirable poem “Connecticut,” “Lines to Louis Gaylord Clark,” and his latest poetical composition of “Young America,” published in 1864. These, with a few translations from the French, German, and Italian, are the only fruits of his pen after his retirement to Guilford. When in 1866 a wealthy admirer wrote to the poet for a view of his country-seat, to be engraved for a privately printed edition of “Fanny,” Halleck, whose limited means did not permit him to possess the mansion mentioned in this notice, being merely a tenant, and who had too much manliness of character to allow any glorification of his poverty, replied: “I am gratefully sensible of the compliment your proposition as to the sketch pays me: but you must pardon me for begging that it may not be carried into effect, for, although born here in Connecticut where, as Lord Byron says of England, ‘men are proud to be,’ I shall never cease to ‘hail,’ as the sailors say, from your good city of New York, of which a residence of nearly fifty years made me a citizen. There I always considered myself at home, and elsewhere but a visitor. If, therefore, you wish to embellish my poem with a view of my country-seat (it was literally mine for every summer Sunday for years), let it be taken from the top of Weehawk Hill, overlooking New York, to whose scenes and associations the poem is almost exclusively devoted.”
|
In October, 1867, Halleck visited New York for the last time. He remained a week, but was too unwell to accept any invitations, which were always numerous on his semi-annual excursions to the city, and only left his hotel twice, to call upon his physician and for a short stroll on a sunny afternoon with the writer, to whom on parting he said with prophetic words: “If we never meet again, come and see me laid under the sod of my
