University of Virginia Library

MEMOIR OF Wm. P. HAWES.
TO THE MEMORY OF CYPRESS.

MEMOIR
OF
THE LATE WILLIAM P. HAWES, Esq.,
BY
HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.

To commemorate the talents, depict the character, and erlogise
the virtues of a departed friend, although a melancholy
task, must ever be, in some sort, pleasurable to a survivor;
and for the most part biographers have been so sensible of this
sad pleasure, that they have but too often departed from their
proper line of duty, and degenerated into mere panegyrists. So
far is this, however, from being in accordance with the views of
the writer, that he considers such adulatory notices equally
useless as regards the reputation of the dead, and discreditsble
to the motives of the living. It is, then, his intention merely to
lay before the public such brief facts, concerning the deceased,
as may suffice to render them acquainted with the individual
who ministered so often and so long to their amusement,

under the fictitious name, J. Cypress, Jr., which has been
still retained in the title of these volumes.

William Post Hawes, the author of the fugitive pieces now
for the first time collected, was the son of Peter Hawes, Esq.,
a distinguished member of the New-York bar, and subsequently
secretary of the Washington Insurance Company in
this city. He was born on the 4th day of February, 1803, and,
at a very early age, commenced a course of study in all the
branches of a liberal education, in several—the first—schools
of the day. In due course of time he entered at Columbia
college, and on the 7th day of August, 1821,—when but 18
years of age—was admitted bachelor of arts, with all the
honors; and on the 7th day of August, 1824, master of arts in
the same institution, of the Philolexian society of which he
had been an honorary member during the greater part of his
terms.

Having determined on the honorable profession of the law,
as the career most congenial to his habits, he became a student
in the office of John Anthon, Esq., now a celebrated
member of the New-York bar, and was successively admitted
attorney in August, 1824, solicitor in March, 1826,
counsellor in the supreme court in May, 1828, and in the court
of chancery in May, 1830. It may not be superfluous here
to state that Mr. Hawes served in the militia of the state of
New-York, from the grade of ensign in January, 1825, through
all the successive ranks, to that of colonel of the 222d regiment
of infantry, in January, 1836.

From the commencement of his practice as a lawyer at the
age of 21, to his untimely end, he continued in that eminent
profession; in which he occupied by his talents, industry, and
kindly disposition, a highly honorable situation.

In the year 1826 he contracted a matrimonial alliance with
Miss Priscilla Morris, by whom he had an interesting family,
to which he was ever bound by the kindliest and sweetest
ties, not of relationship alone, but of affectionate and earnest
solicitude. His premature death, the consequence of a severe
and sudden cold, neglected—he was engaged on Saturday
in the duties of his office, dead on the following Tuesday, and
actually buried before the writer of this brief memoir was
aware that he had a friend less in this world of care and disappointment—robbed
his young daughters and untimely widow
of their best earthly friend and only true protector.

The literary career of Mr. Hawes, which with a sensibility
characteristic of the man, he ever wished to keep out of sight,
commenced at a very early period, the first of his extant papers
bearing date of February, 1827, and consisting of a series
of articles published in the Gazette, on the then interesting
subject of the abduction and supposed murder of the
free mason Morgan.

From that period until the day of his death he continued to
write, at short and constant intervals, fugitive articles for various
periodicals and papers; the principal of which were the
American Monthly Magazine, the Mirror, the New-York Standard,
and afterwards, the New-York Times. Subsequently,
he became a regular contributor to the New-York Spirit of
the Times and Turf Register, both issued from the office of
those thorough sportsmen and most enterprising publishers,
the Messrs. Porter of this city.

With characteristic order and minuteness, all Mr. Hawes'
writings were found, after his death, regularly entered and corrected,
in a large blank book, kept by him for that purpose
from a very remote date, so that the duty, devolved on the editor,
has been merely that of selection and arrangement.

Mr. Hawes was a moderate but a steady democrat; never
a leveller or disorganizing radical; and almost all his earlier
literary productions, whether in prose or verse, are of a political
character. These the editor has judged it best to suppress,
for several reasons, which he feels it here his duty to
lay before the public. First, they are generally of a partizan
character, and do not relate to any grand measures of political
principle, or such as possess any lasting interest. Second,
although clear, sound, and sometimes richly fraught with humor,
they are generally inferior to the others, both in character,
spirit, and the peculiar racy naivete, which is the most remarkable
attribute of his miscellaneous writings.

The papers, of which this little work is composed, were
published, with but the exception of one or two original posthumous
articles, either in the pages of the American Monthly,
and Turf Register, or in the columns of the Mirror, and the
Spirit of the Times. Farther than this it is not for the writer
to say; his own estimate of the writings, the character and
genius of his friend, has already been recorded in a paper entitled
“To the Memory of `Cypress”' published in the
Turf Register for May, 1841, which is appended to this memoir
as being the embodiment of first impressions, before the
writer had the least conception, that on him would fall the lot
to be the supervisor and collector of writings, which he so
sincerely and enthusiastically admires. The labor which he
has undertaken, he has undertaken as being indeed a labor of
love; he has brought to it the whole of his energies, the best
of his abilities; and though unused to sue for public favor, he
does so far deviate from his accustomed practice as to crave
this indulgence—that all the censure of the critics may fall
upon his head, while all the praise may be awarded, where it
is only due, to his departed friend. The profits of this little

work, if there be any, will be a husband's and a father's legacy
to orphans and a widow. The following is the tribute of his
editor.

TO THE MEMORY OF CYPRESS.

Alas! for Cypress!—snatched from among us by a blow
so sudden, so untimely—cut off in the prime of his manhood,
in the full vigor and maturity of his rich intellect—Alas! for
Cypress! and yet more, alas! for all who loved him!—not
readily, or soon, shall they see his like again. It was but a
moment, and he was here, delighting all around him with his
quaint kindly humor!—a moment, and he was gone for ever—
gone from all but the memories of the many, many friends who
will long mourn his loss—long cherish the least—faintest—
memorial of one bound to their spirits and their hearts by ties
so crose and kindred!—one, of whom it may be truly said,
that never by deed, word, or thought, did he wrong any man!
The writer of this humble tribute long knew and truly prized
him; and never in a friendship, which had lasted years, and
which was interrupted only by the cold hand of death, never
did he hear one unkind or illiberal remark, one ungenerous
surmise, one taunt or sarcasm, fall from those lips which overflowed—if
ever mortal's did—with the outpourings of a generous,
warm heart—the genuine abundant milk of human kindness.
In his domestic relations, he was all that parents would
desire their sons to be; a kind friend, affectionate husband,
tender and anxious father, true-hearted, upright, honorable
man. In his profession, without having attained perhaps the

highest eminence, he occupied a station highly respectable;
to which his classical education, his natural acuteness, and his
laborious habits, fully entitled him. It may be observed, too,
in this place, with great propriety, that in a profession the duties
of which it is difficult indeed to discharge, without incurring
the reproach of harshness from some party, without making
enemies of opponents—he was famous for his thoughtful
kindness, his conciliating mode of doing business, his hatred of
anything that savored in the least degree of tyranny or persecution.
It was, however, as an author that the talents of Cypress
were most brilliant, and most happily displayed. As a
writer in his own peculiar strain, he has assuredly no superior—assuredly
no equal! Perfectly original both in his
vein of thought, and in his style of writing, he stands entirely
alone in English literature, imitating no one, resembling no
one, nor to be imitated, as we think, by any. His productions
were all of a fugitive nature, all tinged with his peculiar quaint
drollery, with an air of naive simplicity; manifesting no slight
acquaintance both with men and books, great appreciation of
natural beauties, and considerable insight into the habits of
those denizens of wood, and wild, and water, concerning
which he would discourse so eloquently and so well. There
was a freshness in his manner, a raciness in his style of writing
and of thought, which could not fail to enchant all readers.
—Without being of a poetical temperament, there was yet
much of poetry in many of his descriptions, which, though
few and far between—for Cypress was in general a conversational
and discursive, more than a descriptive, writer—are of
a rare beauty and fidelity—in proof of which opinion, we
would refer his admirers to the description of the Sound and
the Connecticut Coast, as viewed by the Fisherman left on
the lonely rock, in “The Shark Story,” published originally
in the second volume of the American Monthly Magazine, and
subsequently, if we are not mistaken, reprinted in “The Spirit
of the Times”—and secondly, to the picture of the Long
Island trout-stream, wherein Ned Locus saw the Mermaid;
written for the same work, and afterward transferred to the
pages of the Turf Register. There are many other similar
gems to be found among the writings of Cypress; but to these
two we never recur without the most intense pleasure—there
is an unpretending and unlabored vividness about them, worth
its weight in gold; and we are bold to say that they are equal
in this respect, as pen and ink paintings, to the best things of
the same kind in Willis; whose forte decidedly lies in such
description, and many of whose poetical pictures of the Mediterranean,
Bosphorus, and Egean, are quite unsurpassed by
anything in the English language. Cypress's Long Island
baymen are perfect, life-like, and actual Southsiders, not to
be mistaken for any other specimen of the genus homo to be
found on the face of the earth; and we have often wondered
that Mount, the painter of the Island men, has never given actual
forms and bodies to the ideal creatures of their laureat
historian. Some of the scenes in Raynor Rock's fishing hut,
with Peter Probasco, long John, and the rest of the clique,
would give him the fairest of fields for the exercise of his
graphic pencil.

Cypress was himself a sportsman, and we believe a good
one, in the Bays especially; he was not so good an upland,
as a fowl shot; but he loved all the various phases of field
sports, the hound, the pointer, gun, and rod, with that eager
warmth of affection which characterized his attachment to
everything he undertook in earnest. In principle and theory,
if not in practice, he was a perfect and complete sportsman;
he loved, and studied, and knew with a familiar knowledge,

every bird, beast, and fish, which is a legitimate object of the
gunner's, hunter's, angler's, sport and skill—and whether on
the sandy knolls of Raccoon Beach, on the shrubbery fringed
marge of the Long Island trout-stream, or on the rock-ribbed
forest-cinctured sides of the Hudson Highlands, he was equally
at home, equally happy himself, and equally a source of instruction
and delight to others. He was emphatically a fair
sportsman, no slaughterer of hatching mothers, no butcher of
broods unfledged and tender, in season and out of season.
Witness his beautiful and really pathetic mournings over the
infant quail, deluded by the imitative cry of the parent bird,
and murdered by the Negro of Matowacs!—Witness, too, the
law for the preservation of game, which he was principally instrumental
in getting through the Legislature; and by the enforcement
of which only can quail be preserved from becoming,
like the pinnated grouse of Lond Island, extinct within
the space of a few years. The quail was his especial favorite—his
fond, familiar pet—and beautiful indeed, exquisitely
beautiful, is that paper—“Some Observations concerning
Quail”—written for the New-York Mirror, and lately republished
in the Turf Register. We have always considered it
his masterpiece, embodying all the beautiful peculiarities of
his peculiar style and fancy—wit, playfulness, description,
pathos, freshness, simplicity, rich, natural, racy vigor. There
is nothing so good in Elia Lamb's best things—whom perhaps
Cypress more resembled than any other English author
—nothing so good in Izaak Walton—arch favorite both of
Lamb and Cypress—nothing so good in any rural writer.
This was the paper which called forth the discussion maintained
for some time by the subject, and by the writer, of this
brief tribute to departed talent, against an anonymous contributor
to the Turf Register, under the signature of“H.”, from
Marietta—a discussion which was commenced by an attack,
certainly—but we hope not intentionally—illiberal and unhandsome,
on the sportive and playful article alluded to above.
We are sorry to add—and we trust the author of that attack
will be sorry to learn—that poor Cypress was considerably
and deeply galled by the discourtesy of this assault, which not
only accused him of gross ignorance of ornithology, but reflected
on his Latinity, and called in question, as he fancied—
for his mind was no less sensitive than kind—his personal
veracity. With the exception, we believe, of one brief article
on the defensive, he wrote no more, in the few weeks he lived
after that attack; and it was observed by many of his friends,
that he was seen less often in the office of “The Spirit” afterward—where
he was often wont to commune with the kindred
souls, who thither did resort. But to quit an unpleasant topic,
which we have only touched on to illustrate the peculiar sensibility
of poor Cypress—he never attacked any one, he never
spoke a word in jest or earnest that could wound the humblest
feelings of the humblest individual; and when subjected to an
assault himself, at which most men would have laughed, he
winced, and felt the injury long after the first smart had passed
away. When Cypress commenced writing for the press, or
through what medium his earliest lucubrations were given to
the world, we cannot state with certainty. We knew him
and admired him first in the columns of the New York Mirror;
which contained, we are inclined to believe, his first,
and we are sure many of his ablest efforts. His “Fire-(Island-Ana,”
by most persons esteemed his chef d'œuvre, were written
expressly for the American Monthly Magazine; and it is
with a deep and heartfelt gratitude that the writer of these
lines remembers and records, that their appearance in that periodical
was owing to the personal kindness of the author to
himself—a kindness the more valuable and the more appreciated,
because it displayed itself spontaneously and most efficiently,
at a time when sickness had incapacitated him from
the performance of editorial duties, and when the fortunes of
the Magazine were faltering, and its prospects dark and dubious.
Since that periodical passed into other hands, and became
extinct, Cypress published solely in the columns of “the
Spirit” and the pages of “the Register”—all that he published
there was republished in the English journals; and his name
was no less current abroad than in his own country. His
place can never be filled there!—the Editors—the readers
have to lament a common loss! His pen can never worthily
be wielded by another! Kindred souls he has left many to
deplore his premature and sudden doom—many who contribute
to those pages of which he was the brightest ornament—
but of these there is not one so daring as to brave comparison,
by imitation of what is in truth inimitable. His papers, left to
the care[1] of an associate and friend, able, and kind, and
thoughtful, will be inspected, and considered carefully, with a
view to their publication. His nearest friends can throw but
little light upon his modes and habits of composition, and know
but little as to the quantity of literary MSS which he has left
behind, or the degree of finish bestowed upon them. There
appears to be a general impression that he wrote very much
for one who published but a little. If so, the public may derive
yet much gratification from the posthumous collection of
his reliques. From one, however, of his intimates, and one
likely to know, and apt to judge correctly, we have learned
that he was wont to compose rapid skeletons, and then to
elaborate at his leisure, putting in all the delicate lights, the
quaint conceits, the bright and humorous fancies at after
periods; and giving them the perfect finish by oft-repeated,
and oft-interrupted touches. If so it be—and so we fear it is
—little can be done—we had almost said nothing! for the
great charm of Cypress lay in that very finish—and of the
writings of all living writers we know of none so unapproachable
by imitators, so unsusceptible of completion by any editorial
labors, as those of our departed friend. Those, however,
will be called to the task of supervision who loved him
well, and who will spare, most assuredly, no toil in what will
be to them truly a labor of love—and if it shall be in their
power to give to the world a posthumous monument of their
dear comrade, reared by his own right hand, and shaped by
his own exquisite skill—rich will they deem, and ample, their
reward.

As it is, his memory is enshrined in their souls, and they
will mourn him as he would be mourned. Often on the still
waters of the bays, among the sedgy hassocks, while brant and
broadbill skate before the driving breeze, defying the shooter's
skill by their unrivalled speed, will thoughts of him be near
the sportsman's heart—haunting it as with a real presence—
often, when in the heat and hush of a summer noon we recline,
weary and worn with toil, on the mossed brink of some lone
well-head, deep in the emerald woodlands, qualifying our
Ferintosh or old Cognac with the pure ice-cold water, while
our setter crouches at our feet, and our gun, and game-bag,
plump with the birds he loved—his own dear scolopax, lie on

the turf beside us, will the cup be quaffed in the solemn silence
of regret, while the tear steals down the cheek, to the memory
of him who cherished so those hours of sylvan rest, and knew
so sweetly to describe them. Green be the grass above him!
His very bones would pine beneath the weight of marbles—
he should lie in the shadow of some haunted grove, where
the whisper of the wind should wake wild music in the vocal
boughs, where some clear streamlet, rippling along its pebbly
bed, should make that melody beside his ashes, which his ear
loved so well while living, where the hum of the bee, and the
carol of the bird, and all the calm soft harmonies of nature
should sing the requiescat of the sportsman bard—In pace requiesoat!