Individuals >> Winthrop, Theodore ( John Winthrop ) (1828-1861)

Novelist, Travel Writer, Journalist.

In the biographical sketch prefixed to Winthrop’s Cecil Dreeme, his friend George William Curtis characterizes him as patient, truly modest, and “silent and observant” (G. Curtis 5), though he bore an impressive pedigree. Winthrop’s name was “one of the few really historic names in this country” (7); he was descended from John Winthrop, the first Governor of Connecticut, who obtained the charter of rights for the colonists; on his mother’s side he counted six college presidents (7-8).

Born in Connecticut, Winthrop attended Yale where he studied Greek and philosophy and received the distinction of the Clark scholarship; he and nurtured early ambitions of pursuing religious or academic life. Though he was a man of faith, he was also a man shadowed by poor health throughout his life. Undeterred by these physical constraints he traveled widely in Europe and the United States even though he was subject to bouts of illness everywhere from Panama to the Pacific Northwest (G. Curtis 8-9).

Winthrop’s career included stints as a tutor and a staff member at a counting-house; he also earned his law degree and practiced briefly in St. Louis and New York before ultimately settling down to write novels, tales, travel accounts, and journals. His tales of travel were so “graphic and warm” (G. Curtis 10) that one fireside listener cried out after hearing him talk of his adventures that “It’s as good as Robinson Crusoe!” (10).

Like fellow Pfaff’s frequenter Fitz-James O’Brien, Winthrop’s literary career was curtailed by the start of the Civil War. After the attack on Fort Sumter, Winthrop eagerly enlisted in the artillery corps of the Seventh Regiment as did O’Brien; Winthrop was soon made the acting military secretary and aid to General Butler. He enjoyed serving and applied all his energy to his duties, offering suggestion to the General and rallying his fellow soldiers; at Fort Monroe he became interested in the fate of the freed slaves who sought refuge there (G. Curtis 14, 17). In his letters to Curtis he contended, “We must hold the South as the metropolitan police holds New York” (14). The war, however, had an adverse effect on his health, if not his enthusiasm; he missed his home in New York and told Curtis, “I have fun,--I get experience,- I see much,-- it pays. Ah, yes! But in these fair days of May I miss my Staten Island. War stirs the pulse, but it wounds a little all the time” (16). Curtis corrects the assumption that Winthrop planned the first expedition from Fort Monroe and was responsible for the “disastrous day” (18) of the 10th of June at Great Bethel. Because of his abilities as aid and advisor, he was brought into the council of war of the General where he supplemented, but did not create, the existing military plans (18). Refuting an account of Winthrop’s death which appeared in an early issue of the Century Illustrated Magazine, a soldier on the opposing side recalls Winthrop’s memorable death: “Among the numberless incidents that followed this skirmish, none are more indelibly impressed on my mind than the gallant bearing of this unfortunate young man, when I first saw him, calling his men to follow, and confident that he had accomplished his object, and the immediately succeeding rattle of our muskets and his fall” (J. Moore 478).

Drawing on his experience in the war, Winthrop wrote sketches of the military campaigns in Virginia which appear in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861. Curtis praises the style of these accounts: “He knew not only what to see and to describe, but what to think; so that in his papers you are not at the mercy of a multitudinous mass of facts, but understand their value and relation” (G. Curtis 18). In addition to these military accounts, Winthrop left behind a body of literary work including the posthumous novel Cecil Dreeme (1862). A gothic novel dealing with sexual ambiguity and the nature of desire set in the area around Washington Square and New York University, Cecil Dreeme may have been inspired by Winthrop’s own experience of living in the NYU University Building; Winthrop may also have been inspired by his friendship with Frederic Church, a Hudson River School painter, to include what he had learned about art and its history as well as bohemian culture. Reviewers of the book expounded that there is "no book in which may be found so truthful and striking a picture of many phases of New-York life as it really is to us of this decade. The club, the parlor, the opera, the atelier, are all given with remarkable fidelity" (“Literary Notices” 536). Following Winthrop’s death, Ticknor and Fields published his two other manuscripts John Brent and Edwin Brotherloft (1862)--collections of his travel tales appeared in 1863--and The Canoe and the Saddle and Life in the Open Air. The North American Review characterized his style as “sparkling and crispy style” with a “fresh and buoyant tone” (“[Review] of Edwin Brotherloft” 562).

Among his personal qualities, Curtis contrasts Winthrop’s “womanly grace of temperament” with the “unusual manliness of his character” (G. Curtis 11-12), stating that Winthrop possessed “what we Yankees call faculty,-- the knack of doing everything” (12). Curtis further praises Winthrop’s “heroic sincerity” (6) and “electric vitality” (19), describing him as “one of the men who represent the manly and poetic qualities that always exist around us, -- not great genius, which is ever salient, but the fine fibre of manhood that makes the worth of the race” (12). Further biographical information about Winthrop was culled by his sister, Laura Winthrop Johnson, in her The Life and Poems of Theodore Winthrop (1884).

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References & Biographical Resources

Curtis, George William. "Biographical Sketch of the Author." Cecil Dreeme. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864. [more about this work]

Goss, Warren Lee. "Recollections of a Private: Up the Peninsula with McClellan." Century Illustrated Magazine. Mar. 1885: 767-768. [more about this work]

Goss offers an account of Winthrop's death as told to him by local people encountered during his travels. [pages: 767-768, 769 (ill.)]

Hemstreet, Charles. Literary New York: Its Landmarks and Associations. New York: G.P. Putnam, 1903. [more about this work]

Hemstreet mentions the location of Winthrop's office where he wrote Cecil Dreeme and John Brent. Hemstreet also discusses Winthrop's military service (in the same regiment as O'Brien). [pages: 219, 220]

"In and about the City: Death of Charles I. Pfaff. Something about the Proprietor of the Once Famous "Bohemia."." New York Times. 26 Apr. 1890: 2. [more about this work]

The obituary identifies him as one of the "Knights of the Round Table" of the "lions of Bohemia." [pages: 2]

Johnson, Laura Winthrop. The Life and Poems of Theodore Winthrop. NY: Henry Holt, 1884. [more about this work]

"Literary Notices [for Cecil Dreeme]." The Knickerbocker; or, New-York Monthly Magazine. Dec. 1861: 535-536. [more about this work]

The reviewer praises Cecil Dreeme, contending that we can recall "no book in which may be found so truthful and striking a picture of many phases of New-York life as it really is to us of this decade. The club, the parlor, the opera, the atelier, are all given with remarkable fidelity" (536). The reviewer notes the promise of what s/he calls a "young" novel and regrets that Winthrop died, albeit gloriously, before his literary powers could mature. [pages: 535-536]

Moore, J.B. "The Death of Theodore Winthrop." Century Illustrated Magazine. Jul. 1885: 478. [more about this work]

Moore disputes the account of Winthrop's death forwarded in a previous issue of Century by Goss. [pages: 478]

Tarbox, Rev. I. N. "Winthrop and Emerson on Forefather's Day." New Englander and Yale Review. Apr. 1871: 175-203. [more about this work]

[pages: 175-203]

Wilson, James Grant and John Fiske, eds. Appletons' Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume VI, Sunderland-Zurita. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888. [more about this work]

[pages: 577(ill.)]

Winter, William. Old Friends; Being Literary Recollections of Other Days. New York: Moffat, Yard and Company, 1909. 407 p. [more about this work]

Winthrop quotes Curtis' description of the "beloved and lamented Theodore Winthrop" (227) in discussing Curtis' own life and accomplishments. [pages: 227]

[Curtis, George William]. "Theodore Winthrop." Atlantic Monthly. Aug. 1861: 242-252. [more about this work]

Curtis published his tribute to his friend Winthrop in the 1861 Atlantic Monthly. He later prefixed this material to Winthrop's posthumously published Cecil Dreeme. [pages: 242-252]

[New York University]. Cecil Dreeme; Theodore Winthrop -1861. 2007. [more about this work]

"[Review of] 'Life in the Open Air and Other Papers'." North American Review. 279. [more about this work]

The reviewer characterizes these travel accounts as “fresh, manly, and picturesque; the narrative clear, sparkling, and animated; the criticism genial; and the tone always healthful. Major Winthrop’s friends could have raised no nobler monument to his memory than the four volumes of his writings which have been published since his death” (279). [pages: 279]

"[Review of] Cecil Dreeme." North American Review. Jan. 1862: 267-268. [more about this work]

[pages: 267-268]

"[Review of] Edwin Brotherloft." North American Review. Oct. 1862: 561. [more about this work]

[pages: 561]

"[Review of] John Brent." North American Review. Apr. 1862: 553. [more about this work]

[pages: 553]

"[Review of] The Canoe and the Saddle, Adventures among the Northwestern Rivers and Forests; and Isthmiana”." The North American Review. Jan. 1863: 266. [more about this work]

[pages: 266]