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York as the historian's amanuensis), and some days in Baltimore, with other pauses on the journey.1 At Washington they dined with Mr. Webster,2 Mr. Bancroft, then Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Pakenham, the British minister, and received attentions from Mr. Winthrop.
Sumner was not in Washington again till after his election as senator.
In the late summer or early autumn, Sumner made usually what he called his ‘annual sally,’—a journey of two or three weeks. In September, 1845, he visited Chancellor Kent; and the same autumn, when inspecting the prison at Philadelphia, dined with his friend J. R. Ingersoll.
The next autumn he was the guest of Mr. Maillard, recently married to Miss Annie Ward, of New York, then occupying at Bordentown, N. J., the mansion of the late Joseph Bonaparte,3 where he went over its treasures of art, and took rides on horseback through the spacious grounds.
Each summer he passed some time with his brother Albert, at Newport.
He was often with Longfellow at Nahant as well as at the Craigie House in Cambridge.
He enjoyed visits to New York city, where William Kent, B. D. Silliman, John Jay, and George Bancroft4 cordially received him. The last named wrote in December, 1850: ‘We shall always have a plate for you at five o'clock, and we will add the stalled ox to our dinner of herbs, and have no strife.’
He visited William Jay at Bedford.
Other visits were to his classmate Henry Winthrop Sargent at Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, to the Grangers at Canandaigua, the Wadsworths at Geneseo, and the Porters at Niagara.
Occasionally he visited Saratoga.
Sometimes he extended his journey to Canada.
He had friends there,—among them Lord Elgin,5 the governorgeneral,
1 Ticknor's ‘Life of W. T. Prescott,’ p. 246. ‘I was,’ said Mr. Prescott, in his journal. ‘provided with a very agreeable fellow-traveller, in my excellent friend Mr. Sumner.’
2 Sumner, in an interview with Mr Webster during this visit, asked him which of his (Mr. W.'s) writings and speeches he thought to be the best, and was surprised when Mr. Webster answered ‘the Creole’ letter. See ante, vol. II. p. 193.
3 He described the place in the Boston ‘Whig,’ 7 Oct. 12, 1846.
4 To Mrs. Bancroft, for whom he had a great liking, he wrote April 23, 1845, when the historian had become Secretary of the Navy: ‘I have a presentiment that we shall never again be dwellers in the same neighborhood, so that I shall not enjoy more the free social converse under your roof which has been one of the solaces of a bachelor. Your fates will keep you in high places far from mine.’ In 1874 Mr. Bancroft had arranged for a winter home in Washington, and counted as one of the attractions of his new home a renewal of familiar intercourse with Sumner, which the Senator's death prevented.
5 Lord Elgin was the brother of Sir Frederick Bruce, afterwards minister to the United States, and of Lady Augusta Stanley. Lady Elgin was the daughter of the first Earl of Durham. Sumner meeting her in 1839 is referred to, ante, vol. II p. 40.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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