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knows how much I owe to you—all my success as a writer.’
One of the
Newport residents whom
Colonel Higginson especially enjoyed was
La Farge, of whom he wrote:—
I ought not to complain of living in a place which has La Farge.. .. He is one of the few men to whom it is delightful to talk—almost the only one with whom I can imagine talking all night for instance as that is not my way. He is so original and cultivated at the same time, and so free from unworthy things.
He seems like a foreigner too—it is getting the best part of France to talk with him. How unimportant is physical ugliness in a man!
If I were a woman I should fall in love with him, delicate and feeble as he is physically.
Of a farewell dinner given for
Wilkie Collins in 1874,
Colonel Higginson wrote:—
There were only eight literary men there and I remember noticing how much brighter were Mr. Whittier's eyes than those of anybody else, though he looks old and thin and sick.
On this occasion he first saw
Mark Twain who impressed him as ‘something of a buffoon, though with earnestness underneath; and when afterwards at his own house in
Hartford, I heard him say grace at table, it was like asking a blessing over Ethiopian minstrels.
But he had no wine at his table and that ’
