I have said the accused submitted; but the phrase is scarcely accurate. Verplanck took his own way of obtaining redress, and annoyed Clinton with satirical attacks for several years afterward. Some of these appeared in a newspaper called the Corrector, but those which attracted the most attention, were the pamphlets styled Letters of Abimelech Coody, Ladies' Shoemaker, the first of which was published in 1811, addressed to Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell.
The war went on until Clinton or some friend was provoked to answer in a pamphlet entitled An Account of Abimelech Coody and other celebrated Worthies of New York, in a Letter from a Traveller. The writer saterizes not only Verplanck, but James K. Paulding and Washington Irving, of whose History of New York he speaks disparagingly. In what he says of Verplanck he allows himself to refer to his figure and features as subjects of ridicule. This war I think was closed by the publication of "The Bucktail Bards," as the little volume is called, which contains The State Triumvirate, a Political Tale, and the Epistles of Brevet Major Pindar Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever, caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are in heroic verse, have striking passages, and the notes are of a like incisive character. De Witt Clinton, then Governor of the State, valued himself on his devotion to science and literature, but he was sometimes obliged, in his messages and public discourses, to refer to compends which are in every body's hands, and his antagonists made this the subject of unsparing ridicule.
In the family of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, lived Mary Eliza Fenno, the sister of his wife, and daughter of John Ward Fenno, originally of Boston, and afterwards proprietor of a newspaper published in Philadelphia, entitled the Gazette of the United States. Between this young lady and Verplanck there grew up an attachment, and in 1811 they were married. I have seen an exquisite miniature of her by Malbone, taken in her early girlhood when about fifteen years old--beautiful as an angel, with light chestnut hair and a soft blue eye, in the look of which is a touch of sadness, as if caused by some dim presentiment of her early death. I remember hearing Miss Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear popular preachers and clerks that sing well; which she regards as crimes against the memory of his ancestors--an allusion to that part of the family pedigree which traced his descent in some way from the royal line of the Stuarts. She rallies him on his passion for old books, remarking that some interesting works had just appeared which must be kept from him till he reaches the age of three score, when they will be fit for his perusal. She writes to him from Boston, that he is accounted there an amazingly plain spoken man--he had called the Boston people heretics. She writes to him in Stratford, imagining him in Bishop Berkeley's arm-chair, surrounded by family pictures and huge folios. These letters were carefully preserved by her husband till his death, along with various memorials of her whom he had lost; locks of her sunny brown hair, the diamond ring which he had placed on her finger when they were engaged to each other, wrapt in tresses of the same bright hair, and miniatures of her, which the family never heard of till he died; all variously disposed among the papers in the drawers of his desk; so that whenever he opened it, he might be reminded of her, and her memory might become a part of his daily life. With these were preserved some letters of his own, written to her about the same time, and of a sportive character. In one of these he laments the passing away of the good old customs, and simple ways of living in the country, supplanted by the usages of town life. Everybody was then reading Coelebs in Search of a Wife, and Verplanck who had just been looking over some of the writings of Wilberforce, sees in it resemblances to his style, which led him to set down Wilberforce as the author.
He lived with his young wife five years, and she bore him two sons, one of whom died at the age of thirty unmarried, and the other has become the father of a numerous family. Her health failing he took her to Europe, in the hope that it might be restored by a change of air and scene, but after languishing a while she died at Paris, in the year 1817. She sleeps in the cemetery of Pere La Chaise, among monuments inscribed with words strange to her childhood, while he, after surviving her for sixty-three years, yet never forgetting her, is laid in the ancestral burying ground at Fishkill, and the Atlantic ocean rolls between their graves.
He remained in Europe a little while after this event, and having looked at what the continent had to show him, went over to England. In his letters to his friends at home he spoke pathetically of the loss of her who was the blessing of his life, of the delight with which, had she lived, she would have looked at so many things in the old world now attracting his attention; and of the misfortune of his children to be deprived of her care and guidance. In one of his letters he speaks enthusiastically of the painter, Allston, with whose genius he was deeply impressed as he looked on the grand picture of Daniel interpreting the Dream of Belshazzar, then begun but never to be finished. In the same letter he relates this anecdote:
"You may expect another explosion of mad poetry from Lord Byron. Lord Holland, who returned from Geneva, a few days ago, told Mr. Gallatin that he was the bearer of a considerable cargo of verses from his lordship to Murray the publisher, the subject not known. That you may have a higher relish for the new poem, I give you a little anecdote which is told in London. Some time ago Lord Byron's books were sold at auction, where a gentleman purchased a splendid edition of Shakespeare. When it was sent home a volume was missing. After several fruitless inquiries of the auctioneer the purchaser went to Byron. 'What play was in the volume?' asked he. 'I think Othello,' 'Ah! I remember. I was reading that when Lady Byron did something to vex me. I threw the book at her head and she carried it out of the room. Inquire of some of her people and you will get your book.'"
While abroad, Verplanck fell in with Dr. Mason, who had refused Stephenson his degree. The two travellers took kindly to each other, and the unpleasant affair of the college disturbance was forgotten.
In 1818, after his return from Europe, he delivered before this Society the noble Anniversary Discourse in which he commemorates the virtues and labors of some of those illustrious men who, to use his words, "have most largely contributed to raise or support our national institutions, and to form or elevate our national character." Las Casas, Roger Williams, William Penn, General Oglethorpe, Professor Luzac, and Berkeley are among the worthies whom he celebrates. It has always seemed to me that this is one of the happiest examples in our language of the class of compositions to which it belongs, both as regards the general scope and the execution, and it is read with as much interest now as when it was first written.
Mr. Verplanck was elected in 1820 a member of the New York House of Assembly, but I do not learn that he particularly distinguished himself while in that body. In the year following he was appointed, in the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, Professor of the Evidences of Revealed Religion and Moral Science in its relations to Theology. For four years he performed the duties of this Professorship, with what ability is shown by his Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity, the fruit of his studies during this interval. It is principally a clear and impressive view of that class of proofs of the Christian religion which have a direct relation to the intellectual and moral wants of mankind. For he was a devout believer in the Christian gospel, and cherished religious convictions for the sake of their influence on the character and the life. This work was published in 1824, about the time that he resigned his Professorship.
It was in 1824, that, on a visit to New York, I first became acquainted with Verplanck. On the appearance of a small volume of poems of mine, containing one or two which have been the most favorably received, he wrote, in 1822, some account of them for the New York American, a daily paper which not long before had been established by his cousin, Johnson Verplanck, in conjunction with the late Dr. Charles King. He spoke of them at considerable length and in the kindest manner. As I was then an unknown literary adventurer, I could not but be grateful to the hand that was so cordially held out to welcome me, and when I came to live in New York, in 1825, an intimacy began in which I suspect the advantage was all on my side.