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Three Unpublished Letters of George Ticknor and Edward Everett

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2011

Arnold Goldman
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Extract

William Roscoe of Liverpool, banker, historian and man of letters, was George Ticknor and Edward Everett's “first celebrity” in their 1815–1819 European apprenticeship. Roscoe stood for them, as he does in Washington Irving's The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819–20), as “the literary landmark” of Liverpool, and more than that, a gateway to European culture. His house was open to Americans and he introduced them to and sped them on their repossessions of the heritage on which, in the previous years, the young country had turned its back.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the British Association for American Studies , Volume 8 , June 1964 , pp. 21 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1964

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References

1.Brooks, Van Wyck, “George Ticknor's Wanderjahre,” in The Flowering of New England 1815–1865, new and revised edition (Cleveland and New York, 1936), p. 82.Google Scholar
2.Washington Irving, “Roscoe”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (Dolphin Books: Garden City, N. Y., n.d.), p. 28. Irving disembarked in Liverpool about a month after Ticknor did (Life and Letters of Washington Irving, ed. Irving, Pierre E. London, 1877, 1. 190–1). It was the beginning of Irving's seventeen years abroad. He did not then know Roscoe, but met him during the winter of 1815–6, perhaps by September, 1815 (Stanley T. Williams, The Life of Washington Irving New York: Oxford University Press, 1935, 1. 151.Google Scholar
3.Buckminster had put a copy in the Boston Athanaeum, itself modelled on the Liverpool Athanaeum Roscoe had helped to found (Brooks, p. 17).Google Scholar
4.Life, Letters, and Journals of George Ticknor, ed. Hilliard, George S. (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1876), 1. 52.Google Scholar
5.Ib., 1. 49–50. Ticknor happened to be with Lord Byron when Byron received news of Waterloo, and may have been equally surprised by the reaction: “I am d—d sorry for it …. I didn't know but I might live to see Lord Castlereagh's head on a pole. But I suppose I sh'n't now” (Ib., 1. 60). “Waterloo”, of course, finished Byron's political career in England and within a year he was abroad for good.Google Scholar
6.Ib., 1. 52.Google Scholar
7.Roscoe Collection 1465. From the original in the City of Liverpool Public Libraries by courtesy of the City Librarian.Google Scholar
8.Roscoe Collection 4846. From the original in the City of Liverpool Public Libraries by courtesy of the City Librarian.Google Scholar
9.Life, Letters, and Journals, 1. 297.Google Scholar
10.Roscoe Collection 4847. From the original in the City of Liverpool Public Libraries by courtesy of the City Librarian. For Ticknor's meeting with Sprengel see Life, Letters, and Journals, 1. 111–3.Google Scholar
11.Ib., 1. 297–8.Google Scholar
12.The Sketch Book, p. 25.Google Scholar