The Life of Thomas Bailey Aldrich

In 1854 Aldrich wrote: "I could boast of a long line of ancestors, but won't. They are of no possible benefit to me, save it is pleasant to think that none of them were hanged for criminals or shot for traitors" (6).

Greenslet describes Aldrich in the summer of 1858, at age twenty-two "in the full tide of his early success" (37). He was also "as intimate as he ever became with the wits and poets of that lively 'Literary Bohemia' of New York half a century ago" (37).

Greenslet discusses Aldrich's reserved nature, even in the midst of the Bohemians (41).

Greenslet states that when Aldrich worked for the Saturday Press, "the youthful associate editor seems to have served the paper faithfully, writing his due quota of its 'Hugoish paragraphs of one or more syllables,' sharing in the editorial councils, and even joining in the defence when, as was not uncommon, persons whose names had been mentioned in the 'Press' endeavored to carry the office by assualt, vi et armis. It was in this office, too, and in his intermittent frequentation of Pfaff's that his wit was tempered. It was give and take there by the brightest minds of New York. The retold story and the repeated bon mot were rigorously barred, but the new good thing was sure of applause. In this fierce light Aldrich at first played a shrinking part, but soon he became known as the wielder of a rapier that no man cared to trifle with. Yet, as heretofore, his secure fineness of quality kept him from taking too deep a color of cynicism from his circle, or adopting its pose" (45).

Greenslet mentions that during this time period, Aldrich also spoke/read at colleges and traveled (45).

During the summer of 1859, Aldrich informed Stoddard that he was working on a short novel called "Glass Houses," which he was unsure as to when he would complete -- the novel would remain unfinished. That year, he published "The Ballad of Baby Bell, and Other Poems" (46).

Greenslet claims that Aldrich did not take the failure of the "Saturday Press" in early 1860 terribly hard, as his relationship to the paper was an "elastic" one. Aldrich was also informed that he would soon be published in the "Atlantic" shortly after the failure of the "Saturday Press" (48). Aldrich would edit the "Atlantic" twenty-five years later. For the next five years, Aldrich remained in New York and established himself as a writer. He maintained some of his Bohemian friendships, but "no longer the laureate of Bohemia" and "constantly expanding the radius of his poetic reputation" and forging friendships with New England writers (49).

Thompson came to Booth's aid after his brother John Wilkes assasinated President Lincoln: "the only cloud came through his love and friendship for Edwin Booth, who, after the assassination of Lincoln by his brother John, feeling that the name Booth must be forever the synonym of infamy, shut himself moodily within his house. There for weeks and months he lived, the melancholy target for all the cruel notes and letters that came daily to his door. The only mitigations of his mood came through the friendly ministrations of Launt Thompson and Aldrich, who shared his solitude both day and night" (72-3).

Whitman is mentioned as one of the older men Aldrich knew in New York. Greenslet indicates that the young Aldrich met Whitman several times during his experiences in "Literary Bohemia" in New York, but that the records indicate that the meetings were "not of the most sympathetic nature" (38).

Aldrich wrote a letter (Nov. 20, 1880, from Ponkapog, Mass.) to Stedman discussing a "paper" Stedman wrote on Walt Whitman. Aldrich's response to Whitman's work was as follows: "You seemed to think that I was going to take exception to your paper on Walt Whitman. It was all admirably said, and my own opinion did not run away from yours at any important point. I place less value than you do on the indorsement of Swinburne, Rossetti and Co., inasmuch as they have have also indorsed the very poor paper of ---. If Whitman had been able (he was not able, for he tried it and failed) to put his thought into artistic verse, he would have attracted little or no attention, perhaps. Where he is fine, he is fine in precisely the way of conventional poets. The greater bulk of his writing is neither prose nor verse, and certainly it is not an improvement on either. A glorious line now and then, and a striking bit of color here and there, do not constitute a poet -- especially a poet for the People. There never was a poet so calculated to please a very few. As you say, he will probably be hereafter exhumed and anatomized by learned surgeons -- who prefer a subject with thin shoulderblades or some abnormal organ to a well-regulated corpse. But he will never be regarded in the same light as Villon. Villon spoke in the tone and language of his own period: what is quaint or fantastic to us was natural to him. He was a master of versification. Whitman's manner is a hollow affectation, and represents neither the man nor the time. As the voice of the 19th century, he will have little significance in the 21st. That he will outlast the majority of his contemporaries, I haven't the faintest doubt -- but it will be in a glass case or a quart of spirits in an anatomical museum" (138-9).

Stedman responded to Aldrich: "I do not see but we perfectly agree on Whitman. My estimate of him was based, not, as you seem to half suspect, on the recollection of his early barbaric yawps, but on a careful study of his complete works. Awhile ago I invested ten dollars in two solid volumes which I should be glad to let any enthusiastic Whitmaniac have at a very handsome reduction. I admire his color and epithets and lyrical outbreaks when I can forget the affectation that underlies it all. There was always something large and sunny in Wordsworth's egotism. There is something unutterably despicable in a man writing newspaper puffs of himself. I don't believe a charlatan can be a great poet. I couldn't believe it if I were convinced of it!" (140).