Recollections of a Varied Life

by George Cary Eggleston

The Union had been purchased by Mr. Henry C. Bowen, the owner of the New York Independent, then the most widely influential periodical of its class in America. Theodore Tilton was the editor of both.

An Old School Man of Letters

Theodore Tilton was at the crest of the wave of success at that time, and he took himself and his genius very seriously. Concerning him I shall write more fully a little later on. At present I wish to say only that with all his self-appreciation he had a keen appreciation of other men's abilities, and he sought in every way he could to make them tributary to his own success in whatever he undertook. To that end he had engaged some strong men and women as members of his staff on the Union, and among these the most interesting to me was Charles F. Briggs, the "Harry Franco" of an earlier literary time, the associate and partner of Edgar Allan Poe on the Broadway Journal, the personal friend or enemy of every literary man of consequence in his time, the associate of George William Curtis and Parke Godwin in the conduct of Putnam's Monthly; the coadjutor of Henry J. Raymond on the Times, the novelist to whom Lowell dedicated "The Fable for Critics," and whose personal and literary characteristics Lowell set forth with singular aptitude in that poem. In brief, he was in his own person a representative and embodiment of the literary life of what I had always regarded as the golden age of American letters. He talked familiarly of writers who had been to me cloud-haloed demigods, and made men of them to my apprehension.

Let me add that though the literary life of which he had been a part was a turbulent one, beset by jealousies and vexed by quarrels of a bitter personal character, such as would be impossible among men of letters in our time of more gracious manners, I never knew him to say an unjust thing about any of the men he had known, or to withhold a just measure of appreciation from the work of those with whom he had most bitterly quarreled.

Perhaps no man among Poe's contemporaries had juster reason to feel bitterness toward the poet's memory than had Mr. Briggs. Yet during my intimacy with him, extending over many years, I never heard him say an unkind word of Poe. On the other hand, I never knew him to fail to contradict upon occasion and in his dogmatic fashion—which was somehow very convincing—any of the prevalent misapprehensions as to Poe's character and life which might be mentioned in his presence.

It was not that he was a meekly forgiving person, for he was, on the contrary, pugnacious in an unusual degree. But the dominant quality of his character was a love of truth and justice. Concerning Poe and the supposed immorality of his life, he once said to me, in words that I am sure I remember accurately because of the impression they made on my mind:

"He was not immoral at all in his personal life or in his work. He was merely unmoral. He had no perception of the difference between right and wrong in the moral sense of those words. His conscience was altogether artistic. If you had told him you had killed a man who stood annoyingly in the way of your purposes, he would have thought none the worse of you for it. He would have reflected that the man ought not to have put himself in your way. But if you had been guilty of putting forth a false quantity in verse, he would have held you to be a monster for whom no conceivable punishment could be adequate."

Often Mr. Briggs's brusquerie and pugnacity were exaggerated, or even altogether assumed by way of hiding a sentiment too tender to be exhibited. Still more frequently the harshest things he said to his friends—and they were sometimes very bitter—were prompted, not by his displeasure with those who were their victims, but by some other cause of "disgruntlement." On such occasions he would repent him of his fault, and would make amends, but never in any ordinary way or after a fashion that anybody else would have chosen.

One morning he came into the editorial room which he and I jointly occupied. I bade him good-morning as usual, but he made no reply. After a little while he turned upon me with some bitter, stinging utterance which, if it had come from a younger man, I should have hotly resented. Coming from a man of his age and distinction, I resented it only by turning to my desk and maintaining silence during the entire morning. When his work was done, he left the office without a word, leaving me to feel that he meant the break between us—the cause of which I did not at all understand—to be permanent, as I certainly intended that it should. But when he entered the room next morning he stood still in the middle of the floor, facing my back, for I had not turned my face away from my desk.