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Updated: June 21, 2025
It was only a few minutes' walk from Pfaff's to Washington Square, and there could be found the substantial-appearing University building, where Theodore Winthrop had his office and where he wrote Cecil Dreeme and John Brent.
They appear to have been written about 1856 and 1857, when their author was twenty-eight or nine years old. Of the order in which they were composed I have no record; but, judging from internal evidence, I should say that "Edwin Brothertoft" came first, then "Cecil Dreeme," and then "John Brent."
In those whose goodness, like that of Cecil Dreeme, is founded on purity of sentiment and strength of principle, he excites unmitigated abhorrence and strenuous opposition; but on all those whose excellence is "respectable" rather than vital, who are good by the felicity of their circumstances rather than the force of their conscience, he exercises a fascination almost irresistible.
Its vivid pages shine throughout with the author's brave and tender spirit. "Cecil Dreeme" was an embodiment of his thoughts, observations, and imaginations; "John Brent" shows us the inbred poetry and romance of the man in the grander form of action.
A small earthwork marks the site of Magruder's field-pieces, and hard by the slain were buried. The spot was noteworthy to me, since Lieutenant Greble, a fellow alumnus, had perished here, and likewise, Theodore Winthrop, the gifted author of "Cecil Dreeme" and "John Brent." The latter did not live to know his exaltation. That morning never came whereon he "woke, and found himself famous."
The utmost sensitiveness and delicacy of moral sense were combined in him with a rough delight in all the manifestations of manly strength; and these two tendencies of his nature are fitly embodied and exquisitely harmonized in the characters of Cecil Dreeme and Robert Byng. They are opposites which by their very nature are necessarily attracted to each other.
Witness: Farjeon's The Turn of the Screw; Bierce's The Damned Thing; Bulwer's A Strange Story; Cranford's Witch of Prague; Howells' The Shadow of a Dream; Winthrop's Cecil Dreeme; Grusot's Night Side of Nature; Crockett's Black Douglas; and The Red Axe, Francis' Lychgate Hall; Caine's The Shadow of a Crime; and countless other stories, traditions, tales, and legends, written and unwritten, that invite and receive a gracious hospitality on every hand.
There are his usual literary excellences, brought to the service of a keen and faithfully reporting eye, and his fine humane qualities, his tenderness, reverence, and humor. This volume is one of the best ventures of the literary year. Cecil Dreeme. By THEODORE WINTHROP. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 16mo.
The style, and the quality of thought, in the latter is more mature than in the others, and its tone is more fresh and wholesome. In the order of publication, "Cecil Dreeme" was first, and seems also to have been most widely read; then "John Brent," and then "Edwin Brothertoft," the scene of which was laid in the last century.
Cecil Dreeme. By Theodore Winthrop. With a Biographical Introduction by George William Curtis. Boston. Ticknor & Fields. 16mo. pp. 360. $1.00. Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada. From the Manuscripts of Fray Antonio Agapida. By Washington Irving. Author's Revised Edition. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 548. $1.50. Woman's Rights under the Law.
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