1. RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
2. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.
3. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
4. BAYARD TAYLOR.
5. EDGAR ALLAN POE.
6. ROBERT FULTON.
It was not until 1844 that Poe returned to New York, and during the years of his absence several writers with whom he was to become acquainted on his return had forged their literary way. There was Seba Smith, more generally known as "Major Jack Downing," from the humorous papers which he wrote under that name, and who about this time was writing the romance in verse called Powhatan. There was William Ross Wallace, the lawyer and magazine writer, who in after years was to be known through his poem of The Liberty Bell. There was the Congregational clergyman George B. Cheever making his way, having resigned his first pastorate, at Salem, Massachusetts, where he had been imprisoned for libel on account of his temperance sketch Deacon Giles's Distillery. There was Robert H. Messinger, known through his Horatian ode, Give Me the Old, his fame daily expanding in fashionable and literary circles. There was Edward Robinson, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, just returned from a tour of exploration in Palestine with Rev. Eli Smith, publishing Biblical Researches in Palestine. And there was Isaac McLelland, whose verse was as good as his sportsmanship. These were some few of the men who were first to recognize the genius of the poet.
Poe returned to New York the wiser for his experience with The Gentleman's Magazine and with Graham's Magazine, but having failed to establish The Stylus, a proposed publication of his own, which during all his life was to be a vision of Tantalus, just beyond his grasp. He returned rich in experience, strong in adversity, poor in pocket. There was no glorious opening for him, and finally he accepted a sub-editorship on the Evening Mirror, grinding out copy for several hard-working hours each day.
The Evening Mirror was a newly started publication, but its interests were so entwined with others that its history stretched back something more than twenty years from the day when Poe first occupied a desk in the office. Going back these one and twenty years, the better to understand the atmosphere in which Poe worked, to the spring of 1823, the time is reached when George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth joined forces and opened an office for the publication of the New York Mirror at 163 William Street. Morris was a young man then, but already gave strong evidence of the decided character he was to develop as an eminently practical printer and successful writer of songs—a man of such unusual personal magnetism that well-nigh every man who walked towards him a stranger walked away from him a friend. The eight years which followed the starting of the New York Mirror saw many changes; saw Morris becoming more and more popular as a writer of songs; saw him publishing the memorable Woodman, Spare that Tree, that was to make his name known over the land; saw Woodworth withdraw from the Mirror, and that publication strengthened and starting anew when Morris drew to the enterprise Theodore S. Fay and Nathaniel P. Willis; saw Fay going abroad in a few years as Secretary of Legation at Berlin, in which city he was to live out most of his life.
N.P. Willis was a young man, too, in those early days of his association with Morris. He had given up the American Monthly Magazine at Boston to devote his energies to the New York Mirror. In the year that he became associated with Morris, 1831, he went abroad at a salary of ten dollars a week, hoping to add strength and diversity to the paper by a series of letters. In London, poor and struggling, he managed to introduce himself into the fashionable set at that time presided over by Lady Blessington, and he came to be the adoration of all the sentimental young ladies in that set. There was a daintiness about his dress, a suggestion of foppishness in the arrangement of his blond hair, trifles about him which suggested the dandy and the idler; but withal there was a terrific capacity for work under the smooth outside. His letters to the Mirror and other papers did much for the refinement of literature and art, and, indirectly, for the manners of the times. He was in America again in 1836, bringing with him an English lady as a bride,—the Mary for whom the country place Glen Mary at Owego was named, where he wrote his delightful Letters from under a Bridge. He was again in Europe in 1839, soon starting The Corsair, and back to America in 1844, to join his friend Morris (the Mirror by this time being defunct) in the starting of a daily paper which took the name of the Evening Mirror. From this on Willis lived an active social-literary life, singing of Broadway with the same facileness as he sang of country scenes. He came to be a grave and patient invalid, living happily with his second wife as he had with his first, and ending his days at Idlewild,—his home on the Hudson.
It was with the newly started Evening Mirror that Poe became connected on his return from Philadelphia, and it would seem that if he ever had prospects bright to look forward to it was with the fair-minded, business-like Morris and the gentle-hearted Willis. But when Poe had continued with them a brief six months even that gentle restraint proved too much. The Evening Mirror did not last long after his going, though this had little to do with its failure. Then the indefatigable Morris, with Willis, started the Home Journal at 107 Fulton Street, which continued into the twentieth century, and is now known under its changed title of Town and Country.
