Thus ten years after the break-up of his home at Glenmary, he had again pitched his pavilion—this time for good—by green pastures and running waters. Henceforth he abjured fashionable life and devoted himself to the domesticities; to the care of his health and his grounds, the entertainment of his guests, and the preparation of his weekly letter to the “Home Journal.” There was little left in him of that dandyism which had distressed his critics. But the old coats and hats which he loved to wear were worn with a certain grace peculiar to the man. He could not put on the seediest garment without straightway imparting to it an air of jauntiness. He was fond of pets and was a most playful and affectionate companion to his children, the number of whom gradually increased to five by the birth of a third daughter, Edith, on September 28, 1853, and a second son, Bailey, on May 31, 1857. All of these survive, but his last child, a daughter, born October 31, 1860, lived only a few minutes.
From early spring till after Christmas the family at Idlewild kept open house, having almost always company staying with them, and in summer constantly receiving transient guests. The place had become celebrated through Willis’s descriptions in the “Home Journal.” Cornwall was growing to be a summer resort, and there were daily visits to the glen and to the house from all manner of people. Willis’s habit was to breakfast in his own room and write till noon. Sometimes he would take a stroll to the post office or the glen before dinner. After dinner he would write letters or do “scissors work” before the afternoon drive or ride. The evening was spent with his guests, or, if the family were alone, he would write again and come down to a nine o’clock supper.
From the trivial incidents of this daily life he wove his correspondence; enough of it, at last, to fill two volumes, “Out Doors at Idlewild” and “The Convalescent;” the former dedicated to Mr. Grinnell, the latter to Doctors William Beattie and John F. Gray, his physicians, and both books addressed more particularly to the author’s “parish of invalids.” These letters have by no means the literary merit of the “Letters from under a Bridge,” and it was, perhaps, presuming too far on their claim to even contemporary respect to bind them up at all after they had once done duty in the newspaper column. They were eagerly read, nevertheless, as they appeared from week to week, and a sympathetic public was interested in Willis’s kindly prattle about his landscape gardening, his tree planting, the deluges in his brook, his children, his horses and dogs, the eccentricities of his country neighbors, the humors of his poultry, the daily voyage of the family wagon to Newburg, the sleighing on the frozen Hudson, and the occasional picnics and excursions to Storm King, West Point, Poughkeepsie, or remoter points. Willis found himself not without amusement, becoming something of a country gentleman and public-spirited bulwark of society, taking part in local interests. There was a picturesque little Episcopal church a mile from Idlewild, in which he became a vestryman and used to pass the plate. Once he even made a speech at a public meeting, in favor of dividing the county. Letters XXXIX. and XL. in “Out Doors at Idlewild,” giving a graphic description of the ascent of Storm King, are perhaps the best thing in the volume.
Among the many guests attracted to Idlewild by the hospitalities of its owner and his inviting pictures of his highland retreat were numbers of literary men and artists.[11] Bayard Taylor, Charles A. Dana, De Trobriand, of the “Courrier des États-Unis;” Hicks and Kensett, the painters, came up from New York at various times, and rambled, bathed, or otherwise disported themselves in the glen. Whipple and Fields ran across from Boston and made a pleasant visit of two or three days, of which both afterwards gave reminiscences. Fields loved to recall an anecdote that Willis told him, “of his watching a little ragged girl, one day in London, who was peering through an area railing. A window of a comfortable eating-house gave upon this area, and a man sat at the window taking a good dinner. The child watched his every movement, saw him take a beefsteak and get all things in readiness to begin; then he stopped and looked round. ‘Now a pertaty,’ murmured the child.”
In the summer of 1854, Willis had a call from his down-river neighbor, Washington Irving, and repaid it at Sunnyside in 1859, in company with J. P. Kennedy and Lieutenant Wise, the author of “Los Gringos,” who had both been passing a day or two with him at Idlewild. Irving drove them through Sleepy Hollow, as recounted in “The Convalescent,” in which this visit fills an agreeable chapter; and Willis characteristically begged his host to give him his blotting-sheet for memorabilia, as being “the door-mat on which the thoughts of Irving’s last book had wiped their sandals as they went in.” “The Convalescent” (1859) was the last book which Willis published, if we except some late editions of his poems, but there are gleams in it, here and there, of the wit and fancy that never quite forsook him. There was, for instance, a long and very dark covered bridge over Moodna Creek, which he always entered with dread, when on horseback, and which he described as giving “a promise of emergence to light on the other side, which required the faith of a gimlet.” Upon the whole, it would be a very difficult reader who should refuse to admit the plea which the author urges in behalf of books of “The Convalescent” kind. “I learned also, to my comfort, that Nature publishes some volumes with many leaves, which are not intended to be of any posthumous value—the white poplar not lasting three moonlight nights after it is cut down. Even with such speedy decay, however, it throws a pleasant shade while it flourishes; and so, white poplar literature, recognized as a class in literature, should have its brief summer of indulgence.”
Willis found that his best medicine was horseback riding, and spent as many hours as he could in the saddle. His horses and dogs were a great source of amusement to him. One of his special pets was Cæsar, a superb Newfoundland, that had been with Dr. Kane on one of his Arctic voyages, and was afterwards presented to Willis. When it died its grave at Idlewild was marked by a marble slab, the gift of Brown, the famous Grace Church sexton, with an epitaph of his own composition. The slab was on exhibition for a time, in July, 1862, at Barnum’s museum, and the inscription on it ran as follows:—
CÆSAR,
WHO MADE THE VOYAGE TO THE ARCTIC
REGIONS WITH DR. KANE,
AND WAS AFTERWARDS THE FAVORITE DOG OF THE CHILDREN
OF IDLEWILD,
LIES BURIED BENEATH THIS STONE.
Died December 7, 1861, aged thirteen years.
Thy master’s record of thy worth made thee of great renown,