The Knickerbocker Gallery/Letter from Idlewild
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N. P. Willis
Letter from Mr. Willis.
[The contribution to our volume which was promised by Mr. Willis has been interrupted by the state of his health; but the letter which he writes to Mr. Clark, explanatory of his delay, at the same time that it is expressive of his kind wishes, is of a tone and quality so suited to the general reader that we will venture to place it in the vacant niche.]
Idlewild, October 8, 1854
My Dear Clark:
I regret exceedingly to say that I must be the delinquent among your troop of friends. The time is up, and I have no "article" to send you. My long and tedious illness would be an excuse if I could explain to your public why I can go on writing as freely as ever for myself, and yet be too much of an invalid to write for a friend. But so it is. The mind of an ailing editor will go on with its weakly iteration when, for the production of any thing in an unaccustomed form, it will not come to the scratch. I assure you I have tried—for two patient days I have subjected my "promise of an article" to conscientious incubation. In vain—the ugly customer will not chip shell. I rejoice that the "Turkey extra" which your Prospectus offers to subscribers does not depend upon my hatching.
But who wrote that same Prospectus? And what does he mean by your labors being "ill-requited"? Come, come, my dear fellow! The forty leading authors of the country rushing up with pick-axe and shovel to stop the first break in your mill-dam, and yet no complaint as to the popularity of your grists! What fortune that was ever made in trade would buy the equivalent of this honor? How are you an object of sympathy, I should like to know? Money (beyond victuals and clothes) is no necessity to you! Other people want it to put them on the first round of the ladder you are thus proved to be at the top of. The Fates have regulated these things ever since fame was a commodity. One man is not to have every thing. If you want to know what you weigh, see what Destiny has put into the opposite scale.
No, my dear Clark! You are far off yet from the only point where the world can be fairly called upon for sympathy with a literary life. There is such a point: its old age is apt to be bitter. You are in the prime of manhood; in the full exercise of vigor and resource; likely, for many a year, to hold the willing attention of your tributary thousands. But there comes a time when the pen falters—the brain faints—the hand that was reluctantly paid, even for its fulness, comes empty or poorly laden—a time when it would be wiser for the pen to stop, but it dare not—when sickness and weariness enfeeble the mind upon which necessity still calls for brilliancy and strength. Then comes what might well ask for sympathy. The old age of literary men seems to be a Lethean unavoidable gulf of oblivion which they must needs cross to their immortality. The world which is to honor them when dead forgets them when old. Willing gold for your monument, but reluctant pennies to keep you from starving on your way to it!
It has been often enough said that nations will not be just to their glory-furnishers till they look kindly on the improvidence of genius, giving to literary men who have run their career and won their laurels either means to resist poverty or an honorable asylum out of its reach. The latter would be the better thing; but there is likely to be no such Vallambrosa. John Bull would have thought of it for Hood and Campbell, if for any body; and Uncle Sam thinks it quite enough to "put the train through" for immortality, without building a waiting-room for passengers.
Well, success to you!—only do n't be so prosperous as to stagger our faith in your other deservings—and among those who will "take stock" in you, (as long as you continue "ill-requited,") put me down for a share or two, and believe me
Yours truly,
N. P. Willis.