From the Easy Chair, Volume 3 — Key Ideas to Explore

The Easy Chair as a Structural Device

The Easy Chair is not merely a title but a recurring narrative position. In the Church Street essay, Curtis uses the chair as a speaking persona that directly addresses a "well-informed traveller," creating a back-and-forth that dramatizes his argument. The traveler represents conventional European romanticism, while the Easy Chair insists on the romantic potential of New York's ephemeral streets. This dialogic structure appears elsewhere: in the Hawthorne essay, Curtis weighs Hawthorne's memory of Brook Farm against the recollections of others, noting that Hawthorne's account is "a very faithful picture of the kind of impression that the enterprise made upon him." The persona allows Curtis to shift between anecdote, reflection, and direct address without breaking the essay's flow.

Recurring Images of Movement and Change

Movement is a constant motif. In the Church Street essay, Curtis describes fashion and trade sweeping "from one point to another with such impetuosity" that the romance of changed interest can be enjoyed repeatedly. The image of the tide—rising and falling in hours rather than centuries—captures the tempo of New York. Similarly, in the essay on the departure of the Great Eastern, the ship's massive scale and slow progress become a spectacle of motion. Curtis often contrasts this American speed with European stasis: the Place Louis Quinze remains unchanged for generations, while Church Street disappears within a dozen years. The essays on autumn days and the review of Union troops also use seasonal or military movement to structure their observations.

Contrasting European and American Settings

Curtis repeatedly sets American scenes against European counterparts. In the Church Street essay, he compares New York's rapid change to the slow decay of Paris's Faubourg St. Germain. The well-informed traveller initially pities England and finds Paris the "metropolis of the globe," but the Easy Chair counters that the New Yorker has a personal romance unavailable to Europeans. This contrast extends to the Hawthorne essay, where Brook Farm is described as a "romantic episode" that offers "an available foothold between fiction and reality." Curtis implies that American settings, precisely because they are unfinished and transient, provide a different kind of romantic material than the historical layers of Europe. The essays on Washington in 1867 and the Boston Music Hall further develop this theme by examining how public spaces acquire meaning through use rather than age.

Specific Observations from the Excerpts

• In the Church Street essay, Curtis notes that the street "has an unsavory name" and that the city loiterer might recall "Wapping, or a May morning on the Seine quais" instead. This specific detail grounds the argument in a concrete location.
• He quotes Hawthorne's preface to The Blithedale Romance, where Hawthorne calls Brook Farm "the most romantic episode of his own life, essentially a day-dream, and yet a fact." Curtis then questions whether Hawthorne remembered it "very affectionately," showing a critical engagement with the source.
• The Easy Chair's reply to the traveller—"But we have"—is repeated twice, building a rhythm that underscores the insistence of the argument. The traveller's smile is described as "mild, melancholy," a precise emotional cue.

Readers approaching this volume will find that Curtis's essays reward attention to his recurring structural choices: the Easy Chair persona, the use of dialogue, and the deliberate juxtaposition of American and European scenes. Rather than offering a unified argument, the collection moves between topics as varied as Hawthorne's Brook Farm, the Japanese ambassadors' reception, and bicycle riding for children. The connecting thread is Curtis's method of observation—concrete, conversational, and alert to the romance in ordinary places.

I finished Curtis’s Easy Chair essays and kept thinking about how he watches old New York fade, not bitterly but with gentle wonder. That feeling surfaced again when I later opened a speech from Burlington, Our Union and Its Defenders An Oration, Delivered Before the Citizens of Burlington, N.J., on the Occasion of Their Celebration of the Eighty-Sixth Anniversary of — A Closer Reading. Both linger because they capture a specific, quiet moment that knew its own fragility.