Indeed, his aversion to society was abnormal. Melancholy and morose, he shunned his fellows and found pleasure only in his music. Monarchs showered compliments and gifts on him, but to the imaginative eye he appears always solitary and abstracted. Seated in a reverie before his piano, in his silent, gloomy chamber, he wrote passionate love music for others, but he won no woman's love for himself.
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER (United States—1807-1892).
In America, also, there has been no lack of bachelors who have achieved fame. The poet Whittier is, perhaps, the best known.
The son of a Quaker farmer, his boyhood was spent mainly upon the farm, but he early displayed a talent for verse, and learned the art of slipper-making to support himself while improving his education. In 1829 he was made editor of a Boston paper, and soon, aside from his poetry, became a real force in the anti-slavery movement in Massachusetts.
Yet in all his long and active life as editor, author, legislator, reformer, and poet, he had no thought—so far as we can tell—of marriage.
SAMUEL JONES TILDEN (United States—1814-1886).
There is perhaps no better example of the bachelor statesman in America than Samuel J. Tilden.
The story goes that he was once deeply in love with a Southern lady, but that fate, in some form, intervened. He never married, however, nor did he allow disappointment to interfere with his career. He became governor of New York, and later was nominated for president, being defeated by one electoral vote (though he was the popular choice by a majority of two hundred and fifty thousand). At his death he left more than five million dollars, chiefly to philanthropic purposes, of which the Tilden Foundation Fund of the New York Public Library received about one half.