Edward Rowland Sill; His Life And Work

PREFACE IT is more than ten years since, in s burst of enthusiasm and admiration, I undertook to prepare a Life of Sill. Enthusiasm and admiration have continued unabated, but circumstances interposed to delay the mork not, I am now inclined to think, to its detriment. Had I gone for ard u niapeded, working out the plan I then had in mind, the result rrouId have been different, partaking of the nature of essay and criticism. But midway of my task I fell under the influence of that great master of the art of biography, Sir Lcslie Stcphen, rhose dicta upon the subject changed the course I was taking. Nobody, said he, ever wrote a dull autobiography and he addcd, The biographer can never quite equal the autobiographer, but with a sufficient supply of letters he may approach very closely to the same result. About the sane time a saying of Sills, which I had probably read half a dozen times without seeing its application to the matter in hand, came home to me and reinforced the remarks of Sir Leslie, - Let a man write about himself. Its the only fellow he knows anything about. Thesc have been my milizg orders. Though Sills letters are not so abundant as a biographer working oh this principle might wish, thcy are not wanting except for brief periods, and so far as available thcy have been most gcnerously placed at my disposal by Sills family and friends. My obligations, therefore, are many and serious. My most grateful thanks are due to Mrs. Sill, not only for materials, but also for wise counsel and co8peration. To Sills classmates at Yale, Mr. Henry lIolt and Franklin B. Dcxter, as also to Miss hliIlicent JV. Shinn, of California, I acknowledge a debt of grati tude. Among many others towhom I am beholden for letters, recollections, and aid are Miss Heloise E. Herscy, Mr. l-Iowells, and Professor Roycc, and, to add those who are no longer living, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daniel C. Gilman, and RaIph 0. Williams, Yale, 61. W. B. P. January 16, 1916. CONTENTS I. AXCESTR A Y N D YOUTII . 1 11. Ihe LIFE AT COLLEGE . . 12 111. THE VOYAGE ROGAD TIIE II0RI-J . 36 IV. CALIFORXU . . 51 V. SETTLTNG D OWN . . 80 VI. TEACH IN IN CAL ORN A . 131 VII. X or LETTERS . . 190 V l l i . THE CKAFTSIIAN . . 420 IS. AVE ATQUE VALE . 296 Ihn x . . 305 EDWARD ROWLAND SILL ANCESTRY AND YOUTH LIKE most American men of letters the author of Opportunity and The Fools Prayer was a native of New England. He was born on April 29, 1841, in Windsor, affectionately called Ancient Windsor, Con necticut, where his parents, his grandparents, and forbears, reaching back to thc foundation of the colony, had lived before him, one of his ancestors being the first minister of the church there from 1630 to 1670. His ancestry included some of the best stocks of New Eng land - Walcotts, Grants, Edmardses, Ellsworths, Rowlands, Allyns and one who was curious in such matters might trace his descent to Sir Thomas Ware, Knight, of Yorkshire, member of Parliament in 1613, and auditorgeneral of Ireland, or, even farther back, to Sir Nicholas Pyncheon, of Wales, Sheriff of London in 1539. There is an allusion to this Welsh strain in his ancestry, which had a sort of fascination a for Sill, in a fragment of imaginative prose on Can Tunes be Inherited I have Welsh blood in my family, far back on my mothcrs side. By some freak of heredity the music of my Welsh ancestors has come down through six, eight, or ten generations, asa dormant germ, and come to life again - a dim, somnolent, imperfect life, to be sure - in a corner of my brain...