Did Willis really attend the premier of Fashion the very night after his wife died in childbirth?
A. Possibly. In his biography of Anna Cora Mowatt, The Lady of Fashion (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), Eric Barnes describes the gala opening night of Fashion: “The pit, as one witness recalled, ‘unprecedentedly . . . had been surrendered to the fair sex.’ Here, seated with the ladies, were such notables as . . . Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Parker Willis,” etc. This seems to me to stop short of declaring positively that Willis was there. Barnes may have been guessing. I cannot verify one way or the other. On the surface it would seem uncharacteristically callous and disrespectful of Willis to attend, but he’d probably had a sleepless night and a long day of greeting what must have been a throng of sympathetic well-wishers. There would have been much excited talk about the play, for it was eagerly awaited. Probably drinks were served. I can imagine Willis getting swept up in a swirl of people, fatigue, grief, excitement, shock, and alcohol-induced unreality. In such a state, n
