Nathaniel Parker Willis

by Henry A. Beers

The dew in sunshine leaves the flowers,—

They from their watch in light retire,

While we in sadness pass from ours.”

This is one of Willis’s most genuine utterances. The same revulsion of feeling is expressed in “Better Moments” and “She was not There.” There were two men in him, the worldling and the poet; and when worn with fashionable dissipation he was sensitive to the rebuke of the midnight heaven or of that “awful rose of dawn” which God makes for himself in the “Vision of Sin.” But the mood, though sincere, was not lasting. “Recovered my spirits,” runs the entry for July 15th, “after a causeless depression for a week.”

Toward the end of July he escaped to the country and “passed a month at Shirley Park and the Manor, Lee, alternately reading and lying on the grass in delightful idleness, with the kindest friends and the greatest contentment.” At Shirley Park there were archery fêtes, the Archbishopess of Canterbury, “lords and ladies in abundance, and poets and travelers ad libitum. It is midsummer,” continues the letter from which I quote (August 5th), “in cool and breezy England, five o’clock in the afternoon, and a beautiful day. The house is in the middle of a park (nothing but grass and trees) as large as the Common in Boston, the soft velvet greensward closely shaven all around the house, and a lovely archery ground on the edge of the lake just beneath my window, with red and gold targets, and a dozen young girls and beaux with beautiful bows and quivers shooting with all the merriment conceivable. There is a beautiful daughter of Sir Henry Brydges beating everybody, and my friend Mrs. Shaw, and Lady Encombe, and quantities of nice people.”

At Shirley Park he had a letter from Jane Porter, inclosing an invitation to him from Sir Charles Throckmorton, a Catholic gentleman in Warwickshire, at whose country seat she was staying. Willis joined her there on September 10th, but meanwhile something else of great importance to him had happened. While visiting at the Skinners’ he had met his fate in the person of Miss Mary Stace, a daughter of General William Stace of Woolwich. He saw her first at a picnic on the grounds of Lord Londonderry, at North Cray, and “thought her the loveliest girl he had ever seen.” At Shirley Park—whither she came as a guest—he was thrown much in her company, and after a week’s acquaintance made her a proposal of marriage, and was accepted. On the 1st of September he went to Woolwich on a visit to the Staces, and in the course of a day or two asked the general for his daughter’s hand. It was agreed that the engagement should be short, like the courtship, and that the wedding should come off on the 1st of October. Mary Stace, who became Mrs. Willis on the day fixed, was a girl of uncommon beauty and sweetness. In appearance she was of the purest Saxon type, a blonde, with bright color, blue eyes, light brown hair, and delicate, regular features. She had a gentle, clinging, affectionate disposition, adored her husband, had been religiously and carefully educated, and possessed the true Englishwoman’s sense of the importance of the male sex and the due subordination of woman. Her family were most worthy and substantial people, and strictly evangelical. General Stace was the Royal Ordnance Storekeeper at Woolwich Arsenal. He had been commissary to the British navy in Egypt, and commissary of ordnance at the battle of Waterloo, and had been rewarded for gallant service in that famous action. He gave Willis, as a souvenir, a military cloak and an eagle clasp taken from the body of a French officer after the battle, which are still preserved in the family. His son-in-law described him as honest, hearty, and plain-spoken, with the common soldierly weakness for telling post-prandial stories of his campaigns. Mrs. Stace was Irish, a great singer, and a friend of Tom Moore, who used to listen to her songs by the hour. There were five other children besides Mary. Two of the sons were in the army, and afterwards there were three Colonels Stace. The general agreed to give his daughter £300 a year, which, with the £300 or £400 which Willis counted upon making by literary work, would do, wrote the latter to Mrs. Skinner, for a poet. Having completed the arrangements for his marriage, he set out from London, September 10th, by the Tantivy coach for Sir Charles Throckmorton’s seat of Coughton Court. This was a fine old Elizabethan mansion near Alcester, and Willis spent ten days there very agreeably, visiting, in company with Miss Porter and his host, Warwick Castle, Kenilworth, Stratford, and other points of interest in the neighborhood. Of these jaunts an ample narrative is given in “Sketches of Travel,” originally communicated to the “Mirror.” Thence he returned to Woolwich, receiving on his departure an invitation from the hospitable baronet to bring his wife and stay a fortnight with him. At Woolwich he was again joined by Miss Porter, on the 25th, who came for a week’s visit to the Staces and to be present at the wedding. From Coughton Court the expectant groom had written to his friends announcing his engagement, and received in reply many expressions of good wishes. Among others, Lady Blessington wrote as follows:—

Anglesey-near-Gosport, September 19, 1835.

My dear Mr. Willis,—Yours of the 16th has been forwarded to me here, and I lose not an hour in replying to it. I congratulate you with my whole heart on your approaching marriage, and wish you all the happiness you so well deserve, and which a marriage well assorted will alone bestow. I predict the happiness I wish you, for you would not, I am sure, make an unworthy choice, and the distaste which the scenes you have gone through during the last year must have engendered in your mind will have taught you still more highly to appreciate the society and affection of a pure-minded and amiable woman, on whom your future happiness will depend. I think you have acted most wisely, and am sure that the rational plans you have laid down will insure your felicity. A residence near London, which gives you the opportunity of enjoying its numerous advantages, without weakening your mind by a too frequent contact with its dissipations, is, of all others, the one I would select for a literary man, and I shall look forward with pleasure to seeing you at Seamore Place in your new and more respectable character of a Domestic Man, which, be assured, will bestow more happiness on you than all the futile successes ever acquired in the heartless maze of fashion and folly, in whose vortex you have been whirled during so many months. A Man of Genius is out of his natural sphere in such a circle; he loses his identity and blunts the fine edge of his sensibility. You have retired in time, and will, I am persuaded, have reason to bless the gentle and benign influence that has attracted you from it to the pure and healthy atmosphere of domestic life. Be assured, my dear Mr. Willis, that out of the circle of your immediate family you have no friend more truly interested in your welfare or more anxious to promote it than I am, of which no proof in my power shall ever be wanting. I shall be in London on the 22d, and shall have great pleasure in seeing you. Your secret shall be safe with me, you may be sure. I hope the little tale will be sent for your correction in a day or two. Pray have “Ion” left at my house. Mr. Talfourd requested that it might not leave my possession, so that in lending it to you I disobeyed his request.

The old Earl of Dalhousie wrote a letter of hearty congratulation.