Willis was forty when the “Home Journal” was begun—an age at which writers who have thought and studied deeply are often no more than ripe, and have their most productive years before them. But his best work was already done. After 1846 he wrote hardly any more stories or poems—none at all of any value. His pen was devoted more and more steadily to editorial duties, to ephemeræ and paragraphs and fragments of all kinds, and his well-wishers lamented that wit and fancy which, if properly directed, might have produced something that would live and delight future generations, were wasted in dissertations upon the cut of a beard or the fashion of a coat. To all remonstrances of his friends over his literary trifling and their exhortations to write for posterity, his invariable answer, in and out of print, was that the public liked trifles, and that posterity would not pay his bills—that he must go on “buttering curiosity with the ooze of his brains.” That this answer satisfied himself, or that he was without those aspirations after a more enduring fame which are natural to all, cannot be believed. It is probable that he sadly acknowledged in his inner consciousness that the best part of his career was over. His talent, as has been said before, was the result of, or was closely dependent upon, his physical temperament. When health began to decay, and youth was over, and his animal spirits had effervesced, life commenced to have a flat taste. The bloom was off. His writing, too, as we have seen, was always closely related to his personal experiences; and as these grew tamer, he had less and less to report, and his writing grew tame in proportion. With some, mere study and contemplation supply, to a degree, the ravages which time makes upon the freshness of young impressions. But it had been Willis’s misfortune in youth that a premature success had deprived him of the discipline of early rebuffs, and had made a painful self-culture needless. He never drew much inspiration from books, and in later life he read very little. He said that he could not afford to read, partly for want of time, partly from a notion that much reading would be fatal to originality. Neither was it his privilege to command, at this or at any time, the stimulating and bracing association with men of high serious intellects and strenuous aims, such as he might, perhaps, have had if he had remained in Boston. The occasional hasty meetings with men of brains and literary tastes in general society did not at all take the place of that intimate communion with a circle of gifted spirits which has been so stimulating to others. Moreover it should be borne in mind, as accounting largely for the mediocrity of his later work, that for the last fifteen years of his life Willis was a chronic invalid. Indeed, he was never really a well man after his illness of 1845.
Next to Cooper, Willis was the best abused man of letters in America. It is easy to understand how the former, who was pugnacious and struck hard, should have been always in hot water. But why a man of Willis’s urbanity should have been a target for the newspaper critics is more difficult of explanation. “Colonel” William L. Stone of the “Commercial Advertiser,” and “Colonel” James Watson Webb of the “Courier and Enquirer,” distinguished themselves especially by their stern condemnation of Willis’s literary affectations, and of what they were pleased to consider the weaknesses of his private character and life. It is suggestive, by the way, of the militant disposition of the New York press at that time, that so many editors were generals and colonels—or at least were breveted such by public consent, and graced with titular embellishments of a warlike character. Henry J. Raymond, who joined the “Courier and Enquirer” in 1842, proved his zealous adhesion to the traditions of the paper by an onslaught upon Willis, in which he asserted that the latter had snobbishly represented himself as received in the best circles abroad, “when in truth ’twas no such matter.” Willis replied to this in an editorial which Poe mentions as a clever specimen of skill at fence. An effort was afterwards made by friends of both to bring them together, at a time when Willis was living at Idlewild and Raymond was visiting in the neighborhood. The plan miscarried for some reason or other, though Willis, who seldom cherished a resentment, was quite ready for a reconciliation.
In 1850 Willis became unpleasantly involved in the famous divorce suit between Edwin Forrest and his wife. He had known Forrest as early as 1836, admired his acting, and praised it constantly in the “Mirror” and “Home Journal,” preferring it to the more studied performances of his English rival, Macready. He had seen little of Forrest for a number of years; but after his return to New York, in 1846, the two families grew quite intimate, exchanging visits and dinners. Mrs. Willis and Mrs. Forrest especially became fast friends, and on one occasion, when the former was seriously ill, she sent for Mrs. Forrest to come and stay with her. Mrs. Forrest was the daughter of Sinclair, the great English singer. She was a lady of refinement, beauty, and social accomplishments. Her sister Mrs. Voorhies, who lived with her for a time, had inherited her father’s musical talents, and Mrs. Forrest soon got about her a pleasant circle of friends, which included many persons of literary and artistic tastes, editors, authors, professors, clergymen, and their wives. The Bryants, the Godwins, Dr. Dewey, Henry Wikoff, and Samuel Raymond, the actor, were among the frequenters of the house. When Richard Willis returned from his musical studies in Germany in 1848, his brother introduced him there, and he found so much enthusiasm for his art, that he called repeatedly, to practice his compositions with Mrs. Voorhies.
Edwin Forrest was a tragedian of great natural force and genius, endowed with a wonderful voice and a magnificent physique. But he was a man of passionate and overbearing temper; his education was defective, his language and manners sometimes offensively coarse, and he had little relish for intellectual society. He does not appear, however, to have felt any objection to his wife’s hospitalities, or to have suspected any impropriety in her receiving her friends, during his frequent absences from home on professional engagements, until long after other causes of estrangement had arisen between them. At Cincinnati, in the spring of 1848, he thought that he had discovered evidence of a guilty intimacy between Mrs. Forrest and an actor named Jamieson; and although she solemnly protested her innocence and her husband agreed to accept her oath, his jealousy smouldered and occasionally broke out in scenes of violence. At length, in April, 1849, they agreed to separate. Mrs. Forrest made her home for a time with Mr. and Mrs. Parke Godwin, and Forrest took up his residence in Philadelphia, where in February, 1850, he made an application for divorce to the Pennsylvania legislature, based upon affidavits, charging his wife with adultery. This application was ultimately denied, but meanwhile the lady’s friends in New York had taken the matter up. She had the sympathy and moral support of such men as William C. Bryant and his son-in-law, Mr. Parke Godwin, and Dr. Orville Dewey, the eminent Unitarian divine. Up to this time Forrest had not implicated Willis in his charges, but hearing that he was among those who were taking sides with Mrs. Forrest, he had stopped him in the street one day in January, 1850, and warned him against intermeddling between him and his wife, denouncing her unfaithfulness in the strongest terms. Willis replied that he did not believe a word of the slanders against her. The next day Mrs. Willis received an anonymous letter, accusing her husband of criminal relations with Mrs. Forrest. On March 28th the “Herald” published extracts from the evidence on which Forrest had based his application to the Pennsylvania legislature, which compromised, among others, Mr. Richard Willis. This drew from his brother a letter of explanation, printed in the “Herald” of the following day.
“It was not my intention,” wrote Willis, “to say a word in this letter upon the merits of the case to which this evidence belongs. To rescue the good name of an absent brother, who, in moral conduct is irreproachably correct, was my only object. A court of justice will soon sift the testimony, and better inform the public as to its credibility on other points. But the mention of my wife’s name, as a friend and visitor of Mrs. Forrest, makes it incumbent on me to add that the description of Mrs. Forrest’s manners and style of hospitality which is given in that evidence is totally at variance with all we have ever seen and known of that dignified, well-bred, and delicate mannered lady.”
And in the “Home Journal” for April 6th he published a severe review of the “Forrest testimony,” warmly defending Mrs. Forrest, expressing the belief that her husband’s chief motive in the late proceedings had been to rid himself of the expense of her support; that the real cause of their separation had been his jealousy of her intellectual superiority; and condemning indignantly his attempt to “enlist kitchen and brothel against her, and so sully her fair name by cheap and easy falsehood that he can throw her off like a mistress paid up to parting.” The article concluded as follows:—
“We have written the above under the editorial plural, but the facts being mostly of personal knowledge, and wishing to evade no manner of responsibility, we close with the writer’s individual signature,
“N. P. Willis.”
These two articles, coupled with testimony elicited from Forrest’s household servants, decided him to drag Willis into the case. His bill filed in Philadelphia contained the names of nine co-respondents, among them a clergyman, Mrs. Forrest’s family doctor, and Forrest’s old friend and traveling companion, Chevalier Wikoff. The last three were afterwards dropped from the case. Mrs. Forrest, having been served with a copy of the application and the process issued by the Pennsylvania legislature, filed a bill in the New York Supreme Court in September, 1850, and obtained an injunction to restrain her husband from proceeding with his suit in Philadelphia. She then began suit against him in New York for a divorce on the ground of adultery, which he defended with cross-accusations; and in New York the case was finally tried and decided. Meanwhile Forrest was prowling about his wife’s lodgings in New York, threatening people who went in or out, and stopping others in the street to warn them against interference.