Notable among Bryant’s public addresses were the orations on Cooper (1852) and Irving (1860) delivered before the New York Historical Society. He was a founder and the third president of the Century Association, first president of the New York Homœopathic Society, president of the American Free Trade League, and member of literary and historical societies innumerable. He held no public office, but as time went on it might almost be said that an office was created for him—that of Representative American. He seemed the incarnation of virtues popularly supposed to have survived from an older and simpler time. He was a great public character. The word venerable acquired a new meaning as one reflected on the career of this eminent citizen who was born when Washington was president, who as a boy had written satires on Jefferson, and who as a man had discussed political questions from the administration of John Quincy Adams to that of Hayes. Other men were as old as he, Bryant seemed to have lived longer.
‘And when at last he fell, he fell as the granite column falls, smitten from without, but sound within.’[3] His death was the result of an accident. He gave the address at the unveiling of the statue of Mazzini in Central Park. Though wearied with the exertion and almost overcome by the heat, he was able to walk to the house of a friend. As he was about entering the door he fell backward, striking his head violently against the stone step. He never recovered from the effects of this fall, and died on June 12, 1878.
II
BRYANT’S CHARACTER
We seldom think of Bryant other than as he appears in the Sarony photograph of 1873. With the snowy beard, the furrowed brow, the sunken but keen eyes, a cloak thrown about the shoulders, he is the ideal poet of popular imagination. Thus must he have looked when he wrote ‘The Flood of Years,’ and it is difficult to realize that he did not look thus when he wrote ‘Thanatopsis.’ We do not readily picture Bryant as young or even middle-aged.
Parke Godwin saw him first about 1837. He had a ‘wearied, almost saturnine expression of countenance.’ He was spare in figure, of medium height, clean shaven, and had an ‘unusually large head.’ He spoke with decision, but could not be called a copious talker. His voice was noticeably sweet, his choice of words and accuracy of pronunciation remarkable. When anything was said to awaken mirth, his eyes gleamed with ‘a singular radiance and a short, quick, staccato but hearty laugh followed.’ He was more sociable when his wife and daughters were present than at other times. Bryant’s reserve was always a conspicuous trait.
Under that prim exterior lurked fire and passion. ‘In court he often lost his self-control.’ It was thought that Bryant might keep a promise he once made of thrashing a legal opponent within an inch of his life (‘if he ever says that again’) though the man was twice his size. Not long after he became editor-in-chief of the ‘Post’ Bryant cowhided a journalistic adversary who had bestowed upon him by name, ‘the most insulting epithet that can be applied to a human being.’[4] It was the only time his well-schooled temper outwitted him.
His friendships were strong and abiding. He had an inflexible will and a keen sense of justice, so keen that it drove him out of the law. No thought of personal ease or advantage could turn him from a course he had mapped out as right. He was generous. His benefactions were many and judicious, and the manner of their bestowal as unpretending as possible.
Bryant’s ‘unassailable dignity’ was a marked trait of character. He refused an invitation to a dinner given Charles Dickens by a ‘prominent citizen’ of New York. ‘That man,’ said Bryant, ‘has known me for years without asking me to his house, and I am not going to be made a stool-pigeon to attract birds of passage that may be flying about.’
He was perfectly simple-minded, incapable of assuming the air of famous poet or successful man of the world. Doubtless he relished praise, but he had an adroit way of putting compliments to one side, tempering the gratitude he really felt with an ironical humor.