CHAPTER XI

JOURNALISM

Given a disposition to enter into controversies on art questions, provoked by the general incompetence of the newspaper critics of that day, and the fact that there was at that time no publication in America devoted to the interests of art, it happened naturally that I was drawn into correspondence with the journals on art questions, and easily made for myself a certain reputation in this field.  I obtained the position of fine-art editor of the “Evening Post,” then edited by W.C.  Bryant, a position which did not interfere with my work in the studio.  My duties on the paper were light and pecuniarily of no importance, though the “Post” was the journal which, of all the New York dailies, paid most attention to art, and had the highest authority in questions of culture.  My relations with Bryant were intellectually profitable to me.  He was a man who enjoyed the highest consideration amongst our contemporary journalists,—­of inflexible integrity in politics as well as in business affairs.  The managing editor was John Bigelow, a worthy second to such a chief.  Bryant was held to be a cold man, not only in his poetry, but in his personal relations; but I think that, so far as his personality was concerned, this was a mistake.  He impressed me as a man of strong feelings, who had at some time been led by a too explosive expression of them to dread his own passions, and who had, therefore, cultivated a repression which became the habit of his life.  The character of his poetry, little sympathetic with human passion, and given to the worship of nature, confirmed the general impression of coldness which his manner suggested.  I never saw him in anger, but I felt that the barrier which prevented it was too slight to make it safe for any one to venture to touch it.  A supreme sense of justice went with a somewhat narrow personal horizon, a combination which, while it made him hold the balance of judgment level, so far as the large world of politics was concerned, made him often too bitter in his controversies touching political questions; but the American political daily paper has never had a nobler type than the “Evening Post” under Bryant.  Demonstrative he never was, even with his intimates, but to the constancy and firmness of his friendship all who knew him well could testify, and, as long as he lived, our relations were unchanged, though my wandering ways brought me seldom near him in later years.

It was about this time that I had become acquainted with the Browns.  Of Mrs. Brown I have, in anticipation of events, spoken in connection with spiritism, apart from which she had a remarkable individuality in many ways.  She had those instantaneous perceptions of truth in the higher regions of thought, the spiritual and moral, which seem to be either instinct or inspiration.  Their house was the meeting place of a school of transcendental thinkers (and I use the word in its full sense) of