Edward William Johnston under the pen name IL SECRETARIO, "American Letters -- Their Character and Advancement." The American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art and Science. Volume I, Issue 6 (June 1845): pages 575-581. [Continued].
Picking up from the last section (page 578): Johnston continues to assert the relative feebleness of American poetry up until the 1845 present.
Have we, then, among the living poets of this country, any one who has founded a school, a poetic sect of his own? Nobody can for an instant suppose it. . . . Poets, you call ours: but where is the poem they have produced?
(Page 579): Fugitive pieces no more make the poet than portraits the painter . . . Surely if you would pair with a Columbian [i.e. American] rival either Southey or Coleridge or Keats or Moore, or even Proctor, you would be puzzled; and how far is it from such to Byron, Burns, Wordsworth, and Shelley? This is, of course, the only way to settle pretentions and pretenders -- to come to particulars and parallel. Piece for piece, where are the poems to be matched with others even of this exhausted day of English poetry? Halleck, Longfellow, and Bryant* are certainly the pride of all American verse; they rise far above all the rest [but do not match the power of the best British poets]. . . [As for] Bryant's "Effusions." They are rather poetic gleams than poetry: they show one who has poetic thoughts, but not the poet . . . Nothing can be more ridiculous than a short poem in blank verse. Its stateliness, its solemn cadences, its majestic flow and force imply grandeur and continuity of subject, and make it fit for heroic use alone.
Johnston then skewers Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820). It's worth noting here that Edgar Allan Poe earlier critiqued Drake in a review of "Culprit Fay" published in The Southern Literary Review (April 1836): pages 330-331. Poe and Johnston both thought "Culprit Fay" was terrible.
(Johnston, page 579): Perhaps we should speak of Drake, whose "Culprit Fay" has won, in our domestic criticism, rapturous enconium. It was thought highly imaginative and elegant. Now, there are folks for whom sylphs, and nymphs, and gnomes, and fairies, mixed with a due quantity of flowers, and odors, and moonshine, and a star or meteor, or so, make, with no further help than that of a witch, a tempest, a sprinkle of monsters, a few hideous reptiles, and a little ornithology, conchology and entomology, a divine body of fancies. Such, it strikes us, is this new Nymphidia, destitute of everything like airy and elegant invention, a lifeless piece of ingenuity, in a vehicle of verse the tamest . . .
[To be continued. Next: Johnston gives his thoughts about gender roles].
*Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878).
The search for anything Jerome Villagrand (1776-1845) and his daughter Marie Antionette Estelle Costar Villagrand Johnston (ca. 1802-1848) continues.
Checking through period New York directories, one can find Jerome Villagrand listed for 1815; in 1820, de Cressac is added. In 1827-28, he's listed as Jerome Cressac de Villagrand at 28 and 26 Park-place. For 1829-30, the address is rendered as 30 Chapel. He's listed again as Jerome Villagrand De Cressac in 1835, and in 1839-40, 30 Chapel is again given. By 1845, he's removed to Washington, DC.
I came across a small handful of later accounts pertinent to the Villagrands when they lived in Manhattan.
According to John Franklin Sprague: "About 1812, a refugee Frenchman, Jerome Cressac de Villagrand, kept a hotel in College Place, which was a favorite rendezvous and place for discussion. It was here that Fitz-Greene Halleck, representing the Astor family, received and entertained Prince Louis Napoleon." (Sprague, New York, the Metropolis. The New York Recorder, 1893, page 59).
From an 1890 account: "There is still to be seen at 30 College Place, (old Chapel Street,) on the corner of Park Place, a house, which in olden days was known as Villagrand's Hotel. Jerome Cressac de Villagrand was the Delmonico of those times, and his table d'hôte was much frequented by Frenchmen from 1825 to 1840. The place was the headquarters of all distinguished French refugees. A barber's shop, a bar, and a restaurant are now in the historical old manor where Joseph Bonaparte, as Comte de Survilliers, and numerous other celebrities ate many a meal." ("Former French Visitors: Notable Men Who Have Sought Freedom in America," New York Times, November 9, 1890).
And another: "The one house that may be found in the lower part of the city which is associated with any distinguished person already mentioned is the large, old-fashioned manor house, No. 30 College Place (old Chapel Street), on the corner of Park Place. This place was Villagrand's Hotel. Everybody knew Villagrand's from 1825 to 1840. Jerome Cressac de Villagrand served the best French cookery in town. [NYC's approximate population in 1830: 202,589]. All the French refugees made the place their headquarters. Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Naples, and known while in exile as Count Survilliers, was frequently a guest at this house; and politics were often discussed there over the throwing bowl till far into the night. And it was at Villagrand's that Fitz-Greene Halleck lodged and lived nearly all the years he managed the business of Mr. Astor in Vesey and Prince streets. It was at Villagrand's that Halleck gave a dinner to Prince Louis Napoleon in 1837, when he too was a wandering exile and lived at the old City Hotel in Broadway. The building is all that remains of antiquity in the neighborhood; and it still maintains a public character, for there is a well-patronized bar and restaurant in the basement and barber-shop on the first floor. Fifty years ago some of the wealthiest men in the city lived in the immediate vicinity." (F.B. Stanford, "Where Noted Men Have Lived in New York," The Illustrated American, October 25, 1890, pages 242-243).
Last but not least, the observations of "the American Byron," Fitz-Greene Halleck, circa 1816-17: "Finding that there were too many Americans at Madame Berault's, and that my wish of learning the French language was in vain while I continued there, I left her house on the 1st of February, and went to Mons. Villagrand's, in Chambers Street, where I still reside. Nothing but French is spoken here, and I have already nearly completed my knowledge of it. I now speak it with facility, and have often been taken, or rather mistaken, for a Frenchman by Frenchmen themselves. The family consists of the husband and wife, two sons, and a daughter. The wife and daughter are very agreeable, and both rather pretty. The former is somewhere from thirty to one hundred. One can never distinguish between youth and old age in a French woman. The dress of mother and daughter is alike, even to the roses on their hats and the morning paper-curls for their hair. The same amusements is common to each, each moves in the same social circle, and one would rather believe them playmates and companions than mother and child. I shall probably remain with them for years, until circumstances may render some other residence necessary." (James Grant Wilson, The Life and Letters of Fitz-Greene Halleck, New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1869, page 175).
(Illustration above: Les Modes Parisiennes, circa early-to-mid 1840s, via costumes.org)
Note: as of the time of this posting, I can be reached at efrance23@gmail.com
