In spite of his popularity, Willis's affairs were not prospering at this time. He had received nothing from the estate of his father-in-law, who died in 1839, his publisher failed in 1842, and he was obliged to sell Glenmary and remove to New York, whence he had undertaken to send a fortnightly letter to a paper at Washington. This was the year of Dickens's visit to America, and Willis was present at the 'Boz Ball,' where he danced with Mrs. Dickens, to whom he afterwards did the honours of Broadway. In 1843 Willis made up his difference with Morris, and again became joint-editor of the Mirror, which, a year later, was changed from a weekly to a daily paper. His contributions to the journal consisted of stories, poems, letters, book-notices, answers to correspondents, and editorial gossip of all kinds.
In March 1845 Mrs. Willis died in her confinement, leaving her (temporarily) broken-hearted husband with one little girl. 'An angel without fault or foible' was his epitaph upon the woman to whom, in spite of his many fictitious bonnes fortunes, he is said to have been faithfully attached. But Willis was not born to live alone, and in the following summer he fell in love with a Miss Cornelia Grinnell at Washington, and was married to her in October, 1846. The second Mrs. Willis was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, but she was a sensible, energetic young woman, who made him an excellent wife.
The title of the Mirror had been changed to that of The Home Journal, and under its new name it became a prosperous paper. Willis, who was the leading spirit of the enterprise, set himself to portray the town, chronicling plays, dances, picture-exhibitions, sights and entertainments of all kinds in the airy manner that was so keenly appreciated by his countrymen. He was recognised as an authority on fashion, and his correspondence columns were crowded with appeals for guidance in questions of dress and etiquette. He was also a favourite in general society, though he is said to have been, next to Fenimore Cooper, the best-abused man of letters in America. One of his most pleasing characteristics was his ready appreciation and encouragement of young writers, for he was totally free from professional jealousy. He was the literary sponsor of Aldrich, Bayard Taylor, and Lowell, among others, and the last-named alludes to Willis in his Fable for Critics (1848) in the following flattering lines:
'His nature's a glass of champagne with the foam on't,
As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;
So his best things are done in the heat of the moment.
* * * * *
He'd have been just the fellow to sup at the 'Mermaid,'
Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid,
His wit running up as Canary ran down,--
The topmost bright bubble on the wave of the town.'
After 1846 Willis wrote little except gossiping paragraphs and other ephemera. In answer to remonstrances against this method of frittering away his talents, he was accustomed to reply that the public liked trifles, and that he was bound to go on 'buttering curiosity with the ooze of his brains.' He read but little in later life, nor associated with men of high intellect or serious aims, but showed an ever-increasing preference for the frivolous and the feminine. In 1850 he published another volume of little magazine stories called People I have Met. This appeared in London as well as in New York, and Thackeray again revenged himself for that close column which had been rewarded by an uncertain guinea, by holding up his former editor to ridicule. With mischievous delight he describes the amusement that is to be found in N.P. Willis's society, 'amusement at the immensity of N.P.'s blunders; amusement at the prodigiousness of his self-esteem; amusement always with or at Willis the poet, Willis the man, Willis the dandy, Willis the lover--now the Broadway Crichton--once the ruler of fashion and heart-enslaver of Bond Street, and the Boulevard, and the Corso, and the Chiaja, and the Constantinople Bazaars. It is well for the general peace of families that the world does not produce many such men; there would be no keeping our wives and daughters in their senses were such fascinators to make frequent apparitions among us; but it is comfortable that there should have been a Willis; and as a literary man myself, and anxious for the honour of that profession, I am proud to think that a man of our calling should have come, should have seen, should have conquered as Willis has done.... There is more or less of truth, he nobly says, in these stories--more or less truth, to be sure there is--and it is on account of this more or less truth that I for my part love and applaud this hero and poet. We live in our own country, and don't know it; Willis walks into it, and dominates it at once. To know a duchess, for instance, is given to very few of us. He sees things that are not given to us to see. We see the duchess in her carriage, and gaze with much reverence on the strawberry-leaves on the panels, and her grace within; whereas the odds are that that lovely duchess has had, one time or the other, a desperate flirtation with Willis the Conqueror. Perhaps she is thinking of him at this very moment, as her jewelled hand presses her perfumed handkerchief to her fair and coroneted brow, and she languidly stops to purchase a ruby bracelet at Gunter's, or to sip an ice at Howell and James's. He must have whole mattresses stuffed with the blonde or raven or auburn tresses of England's fairest daughters. When the female English aristocracy read the title of People I have Met, I can fancy the whole female peerage of Willis's time in a shudder; and the melancholy marchioness, and the abandoned countess, and the heart-stricken baroness trembling as each gets the volume, and asks of her guilty conscience, "Gracious goodness, is the monster going to show up me?"'
In 1853 Willis, who had been obliged to travel for the benefit of his declining health, took a fancy to the neighbourhood of the Hudson, and bought fifty acres of waste land, upon which he built himself a house, and called the place Idlewild. Here he settled down once more to a quiet country life, took care of his health, cultivated his garden, and wrote long weekly letters to the Home Journal. He had by this time five children, middle age had stolen upon him, and now that he could no longer pose as his own allconquering hero, his hand seems to have lost its cunning. His editorial articles, afterwards published under the appropriate title of Ephemera, grew thinner and flatter with the passing of the years; yet slight and superficial as the best of them are, they were the result of very hard writing. His manuscripts were a mass of erasures and interlineations, but his copy was so neatly prepared that even the erasures had a sort of 'wavy elegance' which the compositors actually preferred to print. His mannerisms and affectations grew upon him in his later years, and he became more and more addicted to the coining of new words and phrases, only a few of which proved effective. Besides the now well-worn term, the 'upper ten thousand,' he is credited with the invention of 'Japonicadom,' 'come-at-able,' and 'stay-at-home-ativeness.' One or two of his sayings may be worth quoting, such as his request for Washington Irving's blotting-book, because it was the door-mat on which the thoughts of his last book had wiped their sandals before they went in; and his remark that to ask a literary man to write a letter after his day's work was like asking a penny-postman to take a walk in the evening for the pleasure of it.
On the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Willis went to Washington as war-correspondent of his paper. It does not appear that he saw any harder service than the dinners and receptions of the capitol, since an opportune fit of illness prevented his following the army to Bull's Run. The correspondent who took his place on the march had his career cut short by a Southern bullet. Willis, meanwhile, was driving about with Mrs. Lincoln, with whom he became a favourite, although she reproached him for his want of tact in speaking of her 'motherly expression' in one of his published letters, she being at that time only thirty-six. He met Hawthorne at Washington, and describes him as very shy and reserved in manner, but adds, 'I found he was a lover of mine, and we enjoyed our acquaintance very much.' One of the minor results of the great Civil War was the extinguishing of Willis's literary reputation; his frothy trifling suddenly became obsolete when men had sterner things to think about than the cut of a coat, or the etiquette of a morning call. The nation began to demand realities, even in its fiction, the circulation of the Home Journal fell off, and Willis, who had always affected a horror of figures and business matters generally, found himself in financial difficulties. He was obliged to let Idlewild, and return, in spite of his rapidly failing health, to the editorial office at New York.
The last few years of Willis's career afford a melancholy contrast to its brilliant opening. Health, success, prosperity--all had deserted him, and nothing remained but the editorial chair, to which he clung even after epileptic attacks had resulted in paralysis and gradual softening of the brain. The failure of his mental powers was kept secret as long as possible, but in November, 1866, he yielded to the entreaties of his wife and children, knocked off work for ever, and went home to die. His last few months were passed in helpless weakness, and he only occasionally recognised those around him. The end came on January 20, 1867, his sixty-first birthday.
Selections from Willis's prose works have been published within recent years in America, and a new edition of his poems has appeared in England, while a carefully written Life by Mr. De Beers is included in the series of 'American Men of Letters.' But in this country at least his fame, such as it is, will rest upon his sketches of such celebrities as Lamb, Moore, Bulwer, D'Orsay, and D'Israeli. As long as we retain any interest in them and their works, we shall like to know how they looked and dressed, and what they talked about in private life. It is impossible altogether to approve of the Penciller--his absurdities were too marked, and his indiscretions too many--yet it is probable that few who have followed his meteor-like career will be able to refrain from echoing Thackeray's dictum: 'It is comfortable that there should have been a Willis!'