Every year when the lilac buds begin to burst their sheaths and until
the full-blown clusters have spent themselves in the early summer air,
the remembrance of Longfellow--something of his presence--wakes with
us in the morning and recurs with every fragrant breeze. "Now is the
time to come to Cambridge," he would say; "the lilacs are getting
ready to receive you."
It was the most natural thing in the world that he should care for
this common flower, because in spite of a fine separateness from dusty
levels which everyone felt who approached him, he was first of all a
seer of beauty in common things and a singer to the universal heart.
Perhaps no one of the masters who have touched the spirits of humanity
to finer issues has been more affectionately followed through his ways
and haunts than Longfellow. But the lives of men and women "who rule
us from their urns" have always been more or less cloistral. Public
curiosity appeared to be stimulated rather than lessened in Longfellow's
case by the general acquaintance with his familiar figureand by his
unceasing hospitality. He was a tender father, a devoted friend, and a
faithful citizen, and yet something apart and different from all these.
From his early youth Longfellow was a scholar. Especially was his
power of acquiring language most unusual.
As his reputation widened, he was led to observe this to be a gift as
well as an acquirement. It gave him the convenient and agreeable power
of entertaining foreigners who sought his society. He said one
evening, late in life, that he could not help being struck with the
little trouble it was to him to recall any language he had ever
studied, even though he had not spoken it for years. He had found
himself talking Spanish, for instance, with considerable ease a few
days before. He said he could not recall having even read anything in
Spanish for many years, and it was certainly thirty since he had given
it any study. Also, it was the same with German. "I cannot imagine,"
he continued, "what it would be to take up a language and try to
master it at this period of my life, I cannot remember how or when I
learned any of them;--to-night I have been speaking German, without
finding the least difficulty."
A scholar himself, he did not write for scholars, nor study for the
sole purpose of becoming a light to any university. It was the energy
of a soul looking for larger expansion; a spirit true to itself and
its own prompting, finding its way by labor and love to the free use
and development of the power within him. Of his early years some
anecdotes have been preserved in a private note-book which have not
appeared elsewhere; among them this bit of reminiscence from
Hawthorne, who said, in speaking of his own early life and the days at
Bowdoin College, where he and Longfellow were in the same class, that
no two young men could have been more unlike. Longfellow, he
explained, was a tremendous student, and always carefully dressed,
while he himself was extremely careless of his appearance, no student
at all, and entirely incapable at that period of appreciating
Longfellow.
The friendship between these two men ripened with the years.
Throughout Longfellow's published correspondence, delightful letters
are found to have been exchanged. The very contrast between the two
natures attracted them more and more to each other as time went on;
and among the later unpublished letters I find a little note from
Longfellow in which he says he has had a sad letter from Hawthorne,
and adds: "I wish we could have a little dinner for him, of two sad
authors and two jolly publishers, nobody else!"
As early as 1849, letters and visits were familiarly exchanged between
Fields and himself, and their friendship must have begun even earlier.
He writes:--
"My dear Fields,--I am extremely glad you like the new poems so well.
What think you of the enclosed instead of the sad ending of 'The
Ship'? Is it better?... I send you also 'The Lighthouse,' once more: I
think it is improved by your suggestions. See if you can find anything
more to retouch. And finally, here is a letter from Hirst. You see
what he wants, but I do not feel like giving my 'Dedication' to the
'Courier.' Therefore I hereby give it to you so that I can say it is
disposed of. Am I right or wrong?"
Of Longfellow's student days, Mr. Fields once wrote: "I hope they keep
bright the little room numbered twenty-seven in Maine Hall in Bowdoin
College, for it was in that pleasant apartment, looking out on the
pine groves, that the young poet of nineteen wrote many of those
beautiful earlier pieces, now collected in his works. These early
poems were all composed in 1824 and 1825, during his last years in
college, and were printed first in a periodical called 'The United
States Literary Gazette,' the sapient editor of which magazine once
kindly advised the ardent young scholar to give up poetry and buckle
down to the study of law! 'No good can come of it,' he said; 'don't
let him do such things; make him stick to prose!' But the pine-trees
waving outside his window kept up a perpetual melody in his heart, and
he could not choose but sing back to them."
One of the earliest pictures I find of the every-day life of
Longfellow when a youth is a little anecdote told by him, in humorous
illustration of the woes of young authors. I quote from a brief diary.
"Longfellow amused us to-day by talking of his youth, and especially
with a description of the first poem he ever wrote, called 'The Battle
of Lovell's Pond.' It was printed in a Portland newspaper one morning,
and the same evening he was invited to the house of the Chief Justice
to meet his son, a rising poet just returned from Harvard. The judge
rose in a stately manner during the evening and said to his son: 'Did
you see a poem in to-day's paper upon the Battle of Lovell's Pond?'
'No, sir,' said the boy, 'I did not.' 'Well, sir,' responded his
father, 'it was a very stiff production. G----, get your own poem on
the same subject, and I will read it to the company.' The poem was
read aloud, while the perpetrator of the 'stiff production' sat, as he
said, very still in a corner."
The great sensitiveness of his nature, one of the poetic qualities,
was observed very early, and the description of him as a little boy
was the description of the heart and nature of the man. "Active,
eager, impressionable; quick-tempered, but as quickly appeased; kind-
hearted and affectionate,--the sunlight of the house." One day when a
child of ten he came home with his eyes full of tears. His elder
brother was fond of a gun, and had allowed Henry to borrow his. To the
little boy's great distress, he had aimed at and shot a robin. He
never tried to use a gun again.
Longfellow was said to be very like his mother. His brother wrote of
him: "From her must have come to Henry the imaginative and romantic
side of his nature. She was fond of poetry and music, and in her
youth, of dancing and social gayety. She was a lover of nature in all
its aspects. She would sit by a window during a thunderstorm enjoying
the excitement of its splendors. Her disposition, through all trials
and sorrows, was always cheerful, with a gentle and tranquil
fortitude."
No words could describe her son's nature more nearly. When he was only
sixteen years old we find him writing to his father: "I wish I could
be in Washington during the winter, though I suppose it is rather vain
to wish when it is almost impossible for our wishes to become
realities. It would be more pleasant to get a peep at Southern people
and draw a breath of Southern air, than to be always freezing in the
North; but I have very resolutely concluded to enjoy myself heartily
wherever I am. I find it most profitable to form such plans as are
least liable to failure."
His mother's sympathy with his literary tastes was certainly unusual.
He writes to her from college when he was sixteen years old. "I have
this evening been reading a few pages in Gray's odes. I am very much
pleased with them." ... To which she replies: "I wish you would bring
Gray home with you. I have a strong inclination to read the poems,
since you commend them so highly. I think I should be pleased with
them, though Dr. Johnson was not. I do not think the Doctor possessed
much sensibility to the charms of poetry, and he was sometimes most
unmerciful in his criticism."
The single aim of Longfellow's life, the manner in which from his
earliest days he dedicated himself to Letters, would prove alone, if
other signs were lacking, the strength of his character. When he was
only eighteen he wrote to his mother: "With all my usual delinquency,
however, I should have answered your letter before this, had I not
received, on Monday, Chatterton's Works, for which I had some time
since sent to Boston. It is an elegant work in three large octavo
volumes; and since Monday noon I have read the greater part of two of
them, besides attending two lectures a day, of an hour each, and three
recitations of the same length, together with my study-hours for
preparation."
This is said to have been the first handsome book the young student
owned, and it was earned by the work of his pen. In this same year,
too, we find him hurrying with his lessons (not slighting them), that
he might get leisure to read and think. "Leisure," he wrote his
father, "which is to me one of the sweetest things in the world." ...
"I wish I could read and write at the same time."
The eager activity of his mind was already asserting itself, an
activity which hardly slackened to the very end.
The severe criticism of his poem on the Battle of Lovell's Pond may
have cost him a few tears one night, but it did not alter his
determination. He continued to send contributions to the newspapers,
and when his father somewhat later suggested that he should consider
the question of "studying for a profession," he replied: "If so, what
profession? I have a particular and strong prejudice for one course of
life to which you, I fear, will not agree." He was not unwilling to
pay the price for what he intended to attain. He knew himself, and his
only suffering was at the thought of being obliged to turn aside from
the aims which Nature held before him.
He was seventeen years old when he wrote to a friend: "Somehow, and
yet I hardly know why, I am unwilling to study a profession. I cannot
make a lawyer of any eminence, because I have not a talent for
argument; I am not good enough for a minister,--and as to Physic, I
utterly and absolutely detest it."
To his father the same year he wrote: "I have already hinted to you
what would best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge for
the purpose of reading history, and of becoming familiar with the best
authors in polite literature; whilst at the same time I can be
acquiring the Italian language, without an acquaintance with which I
shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of
letters.... The fact is--and I will not disguise it in the least, for
I think I ought not--the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future
eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and
every earthly thought centres in it.... Whether Nature has given me
any capacity for knowledge or not, she has at any rate given me a very
strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident
in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the
exercise of my talent in the wide field of literature. With such a
belief I must say that I am unwilling to engage in the study of the
law.... Whatever I do study ought to be engaged in with all my soul,--
for I WILL BE EMINENT in something.... Let me reside one year at
Cambridge; let me study belles-lettres; and after that time it will
not require a spirit of prophecy to predict with some degree of
certainty what kind of a figure I could make in the literary world. If
I fail here, there is still time left for the study of a profession."
...His father could not make up his mind to trust his son to the
uncertain reed of literature. "As you have not had the fortune (I will
not say whether good or ill) to be born rich, you must adopt a
profession which will afford you subsistence as well as reputation."
There was, however, a friendly compromise between father and son, and
the young student was allowed to pass a year in Cambridge. He replied
to his father: "I am very much rejoiced that you accede so readily to
my proposition of studying general literature for one year at
Cambridge. My grand object in doing this will be to gain as perfect
knowledge of the French and Italian languages as can be gained without
travelling in France and Italy,--though to tell the truth I intend to
visit both before I die.... The fact is, I have a most voracious
appetite for knowledge. To its acquisition I will sacrifice
everything.... Nothing could induce me to relinquish the pleasures of
literature;... but I can be a lawyer. This will support my real
existence, literature an IDEAL one.
"I purchased last evening a beautiful pocket edition of Sir William
Jones's Letters, and have just finished reading them. Eight languages
he was critically versed in; eight more he read with a dictionary: and
there were twelve more not wholly unknown to him. I have somewhere
seen or heard the observation that as many languages as a person
acquires, so many times is he a man."
Happily--how happily we can hardly say--Madam Bowdoin had left the sum
of one thousand dollars towards establishing a professorship of modern
languages at the college which was then only a few years older than
Longfellow. No steps had yet been taken; but one of the Board, Mr.
Orr, having been struck, it appears, by the translation of an ode from
Horace made by Longfellow for the senior examination, warmly presented
his name for the new chair.
It is impossible to overestimate the value of these benefactions to
men of talent and genius. Where would Wordsworth have been, what could
he have done, without the gift bestowed upon him by Raisley Calvert!
In America such assistance is oftener given in the more impersonal way
of endowment of chairs or creating of scholarships. No method less
personal or more elevating for the development of the scholar and man
of genius could easily be adopted.
The informal proposal of the Board that Longfellow should go to Europe
to fit himself for his position was precisely in a line with his most
cherished wishes. It was nearly a year from that time, however, before
he was actually on his way, "winter and rough weather" and the
infrequency of good ships causing many delays. Possibly also the
thought of the mother's heart that he was not yet twenty--still young
to cut himself off from home and friends--weighed something in the
balance. He read law in his father's office, and wrote and read with
ceaseless activity on his own account; publishing his poems and prose
papers in the newspapers and annuals of the day. He sailed from New
York at last, visiting Boston on his way. There he heard Dr. Channing
preach and passed part of an evening with him afterward. Also
Professor Ticknor was kind to him, giving him letters to Washington
Irving, Professor Eichhorn, and Robert Southey. Dr. Charles Lowell,
the father of the future poet, gave him a letter to Mrs. Grant, of
Laggan, and President Kirkland was interested in his welfare. Thus he
started away with such help and advice as the world could give him.
From that moment his career was simply a question of development. How
he could turn the wondrous joys, the strange and solitary experiences
of life into light and knowledge and wisdom which he could give to
others; this was the never-ending problem of his mind; to this end he
turned the labor of his days.
His temperament did not allow him the effervescent expression common
to the young. On the contrary, when writing to his sisters from Italy
during these student days, he says: "But with me all deep impressions
are silent ones." And thus the sorrows of life, of which he early bore
so heavy a burden, found little expression. He wore them in his heart,
whence they came again in his poems to soothe the spirit of humanity.
The delightful story of his three years of study and absence can be
traced step by step in the journals and letters edited by his brother;
but however interesting it is to follow him in every detail, it is
nevertheless true that the singleness of aim and strength of character
which distinguished Longfellow, combined with extreme delicacy and
sensitiveness of perception, were his qualities from the beginning and
remained singularly unchanged to the end.
His history is not without its tragedies, but they were coördinated in
his spirit to a sense of the unity of life. He was the psalmist, the
interpreter. How could he render again the knowledge of divine
goodness and divine love which were revealed to him? First came the
duty of acquiring learning; of getting the use of many languages and
thus of many forms of thought, in order to master the vehicles of
expression. To this end he labored without ceasing, laughing at
himself for calling that labor which gave him in the acquisition great
pleasure. "If you call it labor!" he wrote in one of his letters home
after speaking of his incessant studies.
His journals and letters, except the few early ones to his father,
seldom speak either of the heat of composition or of the toils of
study. He kept any mention of these, like all his deeper experiences,
to himself, but writes chiefly of more external matters; of his
relaxations and pleasures,--such as are surely indispensable to an
author and student after extreme tension of the brain and hours of
emotion.
Longfellow was twenty-two years old when he took up his residence as
professor at Bowdoin College, where he translated and prepared the
French grammar and the French and Spanish text-books which he desired
for his classes. He was also made college librarian--a duty which
required only one hour a day in those early times, but, added to his
other duties, gave him all the occupation he needed. "The intervals of
college duty I fill up with my own studies," he wrote to his friend,
George W. Greene, with whom he had already formed a friendship which
was to continue unbroken during their lives.
At the age of twenty-four Longfellow married a lovely young lady, the
daughter of Judge Potter, of Portland. She was entirely sympathetic
with his tastes, having herself received a very unusual education for
those days in Greek and Latin among her other studies. In the
"Footsteps of Angels" she is commemorated as
"the Being Beauteous
Who unto my youth was given,
More than all things else to love me."
His brother writes of this period: "They were tenderly devoted to each
other: and never was a home more happy than theirs, when, soon after
their marriage, they began housekeeping in Brunswick.... In this
pleasant home, and with this blessed companionship, Mr. Longfellow
devoted himself with fresh interest to his literary pursuits."
The monetary returns for all his labors at this period in America were
inconceivably small. He amused his friends one day in later years by
confessing that Mr. Buckingham paid him by one year's subscription to
the "New England Magazine" for his translation of the "Coplas de
Manrique" and several prose articles. After this he sent his poems to
Messrs. Allen and Ticknor, who presented him the volume in which they
appeared and sundry other books as compensation.
What a singular contrast was this beginning to his future literary
history! Late in life his publisher wrote: "I remember how
instantaneously in the year 1839 'The Voices of the Night' sped
triumphantly on its way. At present his currency in Europe is almost
unparalleled. Twenty-four publishing houses in England have issued the
whole or a part of his works. Many of his poems have been translated
into Russian and Hebrew. 'Evangeline' has been translated three times
into German, and 'Hiawatha' has not only gone into nearly all the
modern languages, but can now be read in Latin. I have seen
translations of all Longfellow's principal works, in prose and poetry,
in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, and
Danish. The Emperor of Brazil has himself translated and published
'Robert of Sicily,' one of the poems in 'Tales of a Wayside Inn,' into
his native tongue, and in China they use a fan which has become
immensely popular on account of the 'Psalm of Life' being printed on
it in the language of the Celestial Empire. Professor Kneeland, who
went to the national millennial celebration in Iceland, told me that
when he was leaving that faraway land, on the verge almost of the
Arctic Circle, the people said to him: 'Tell Longfellow that we love
him; tell him we read and rejoice in his poems; tell him that Iceland
knows him by heart.' To-day there is no disputing the fact that
Longfellow is more popular than any other living poet; that his books
are more widely circulated, command greater attention, and bring more
copyright money than those of any other author, not excepting
Tennyson, now writing English verse."
Meanwhile the young professor, after four years of retirement and work
at Bowdoin, began to look about him and to contemplate another flight.
Before his plans were laid, however, Professor Ticknor relinquished
his position at Harvard, which was immediately offered to Mr.
Longfellow under what were for that period the most delightful
conditions possible. President Quincy wrote to him, "The salary will
be fifteen hundred dollars a year. Residence in Cambridge will be
required.... Should it be your wish, previously to entering upon the
duties of the office, to reside in Europe, at your own expense, a year
or eighteen months for the purpose of a more perfect attainment of the
German, Mr. Ticknor will retain his office till your return."
During his second visit to Europe in the year 1835, this time
accompanied by his wife, she became ill and died at Rotterdam,
"closing her peaceful life by a still more peaceful death." Longfellow
continued his journey and his studies. Into his lonely hours, which no
society and no occupation could fill, came, his brother tells us, "the
sense and assurance of the spiritual presence of her who had loved him
and who loved him still, and whose dying lips had said, 'I will be
with you and watch over you.'" At Christmas of the same year a new
grief fell upon him in the death of his brother-in-law and dearest
friend. He received it as an added admonition "to set about the things
he had to do in greater earnestness."
"Henceforth," he wrote, "let me bear upon my shield the holy cross."
No history of Longfellow can hope to trace the springs which fed his
poetic mind without recording the deep sorrows, the pain, the
loneliness of his days. Born with especial love of home and all
domesticities, the solitary years moved on, bringing him a larger
power for soothing the grief of others because he had himself known
the darkest paths of earthly experience.
He continued his lonely studies at Heidelberg during the winter, but
with the spring, when the almond-trees were blossoming, the spirit of
youth revived and he again took up his pilgrimage and began the
sketches published some years later as the consecutive story of
"Hyperion." In the opening chapter of that book he says: "The setting
of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our
life is gone. Shadows of evening fall around us, and the world seems
but a dim reflection,--itself a broader shadow. We look forward into
the coming lonely night. The soul withdraws into itself. Then stars
arise and the night is holy. Paul Flemming had experienced this,
though still young."
Seven long, weary years elapsed between the death of his young wife
and the second and perfect marriage of his maturity. In spite of the
sorrow and depression which had overwhelmed him, he knew that his work
was the basis upon which his life must stand, and in those few years
he planted himself firmly in his professorship, published "Outre Mer,"
and the early poems which won for him an undying reputation as a poet.
During this period, too, he made the great friendships of his life, of
which he allowed no thread to break during the long years to come. His
characteristic steadiness of aim never failed even in this trying
period. He enjoyed the singular advantage of travel in a Europe which
is now chiefly a demesne of the past and of the imagination. Having
known all the picturesqueness and beauty of England, he settled
himself in the old Vassall (or Craigie) House, in Cambridge, with
serene enjoyment and appreciation. This house was then in a retired
spot, and overwrought as he frequently found himself, the repose of
the place was helpful to him. In 1842 he again visited Europe, for the
third time. His health suffered from solitude and the continued
activities of his mind. "I sometimes think," he said, "that no one
with a head and a heart can be perfectly well." Therefore in the
spring he obtained leave of absence for six months, and went abroad to
try the water cure at Marienberg. One of the chief events of this
journey was the beginning of his friendship with Freiligrath. The two
men never met again face to face, but they began a correspondence
which only ended with their lives. It is in one of his letters to
Freiligrath that he writes: "Be true to yourself and burn like a
watch-fire afar off there in your Germany." His mind was full of
poems; much of his future work was projected although little was
completed. He wrote one sonnet called "Mezzo Cammin," never printed
until after his death; perhaps he thought it too expressive of
personal sadness.
Upon the return voyage, which was a stormy one, he accomplished a feat
that many a storm-tossed traveler would consider marvelous indeed.
"Not out of my berth," he wrote, "more than twelve hours the first
twelve days. There cabined, cribbed, confined, I passed fifteen days.
During this time I wrote seven poems on slavery. I meditated upon them
in the stormy, sleepless nights, and wrote them down with a pencil in
the morning. A small window in the side of the vessel admitted light
into my berth, and there I lay on my back and soothed my soul with
songs." These poems, with one added as a dedication to Dr. Channing,
"threw the author's influence on the side against slavery; and at that
time it was a good deal simply to take that unpopular side publicly."
He took up his correspondence at this period with renewed fervor, and
what other life can show such devotion to friendship or such a circle
of friends? Through good report and evil report his friends were dear
to him, and the disparagements of others failed to reach the ear of
his heart. In one of his letters to G. W. Greene he says: "It is of
great importance to a man to know how he stands with his friends; at
least, I think so. The voice of a friend has a wonder-working power;
and from the very hour we hear it, 'the fever leaves us.'"
Upon his return home in December, 1836, he began his life in Cambridge
among the group of men who became inseparable friends,--Felton,
Sumner, Hillard, and Cleveland. They called themselves the "Five of
Clubs," and saw each other continually. Later came Agassiz and a few
others. How delightful the little suppers were of those days! He used
to write: "We had a gaudiolem last night." When, several years after,
he married Frances Appleton and began, as it were, "the new life," his
wife wrote to Mr. Greene: "Felton and the rest of the club flourish in
immortal youth, and are often with us to dine or sup. I have never
seen such a beautiful friendship between men of such distinct
personalities, though closely linked together by mutual tastes and
affections. They criticise and praise each other's performances, with
a frankness not to be surpassed, and seem to have attained that happy
height of faith where no misunderstanding, no jealousy, no reserve,
exists." It appears, however, that even these delightful friendships
had left something to be desired. In his journal he wrote: "Came back
to Cambridge and went to Mr. Norton's. There I beheld what perfect
happiness may exist on this earth, and felt how I stood alone in life,
cut off for a while from those dearest sympathies for which I long."
His brother said of him that having known the happiness of domestic
life for which his nature was especially formed, "he felt the need of
more intimate affection." Thus, after many years of lonely wandering,
another period of Longfellow's life opened with his marriage in 1843.
Had he himself been writing of another, he might have divided his
story into cantos, each one with a separate theme. One of aspiration,
one of endeavor, one with the despair of young sorrow, and one of
triumphant love. Advancing thus through the gamut of human experience
he might have closed the scene with the immortal line loved of all
poets:--
"In sua voluntade e nostra pace."
Thus indeed, reviewing Longfellow's life as a whole, we discern his
days to be crowded with incident and experience. Every condition of
human life presented itself at his door, and every human being found a
welcome there,--incidents and experience coming as frequently to him
through the lives of others as through the gate of his own being. The
note of love and unity with the Divine will was the dominant one which
controlled his spirit and gave him calm.
He early chose Craigie House as the most desirable place for his abode
in all the world. The poems and journals are full of his enjoyment of
nature as seen from its windows. In the beginning of his residence
there he persuaded Mrs. Craigie to allow him to have two rooms; but he
soon controlled the second floor, and at the time of his marriage to
Miss Appleton her father presented them with the whole of the
beautiful estate.
Here his life took shape and his happiness found increase with the
days. It was like him to say little in direct speech of all this; but
we find a few words describing his wife, of whom his brother wrote
that "her calm and quiet face wore habitually a look of seriousness."
And then evidently quoting from Henry, he adds, "at times it seemed to
make the very air bright with its smiles." She was a beautiful woman
of deep but reserved feeling and cultivated tastes and manners. She
understood and sympathized in his work, and, even more, she became
often its inspiration. During their wedding journey they passed
through Springfield, whence she wrote: "In the Arsenal at Springfield
we grew quite warlike against war, and I urged H. to write a peace
poem."
Finally established in Craigie House, as the children grew and his
library enlarged, and guests, attracted by personal love and by his
fame, became more numerous, he found the days almost overburdened with
responsibilities. He wrote one day to Charles Sumner: "What you quote
about the _père de famille_ is pretty true. It is a difficult
role to play; particularly when, as in my case, it is united with that
of _oncle d'Amérique_ and general superintendent of all the
dilapidated and tumble-down foreigners who pass this way!" The
regulation of such a house in New England was far more difficult than
it is at present, and Cambridge farther away from Boston, with its
conveniences and privileges, than appeared. What anxieties if the
hourly omnibus should be crowded! and what a pleasant slow ride into
the far green land it seemed!
Nevertheless, this was his chosen home, his house beautiful, and such
he made it, not only to his own eyes, but to the eyes of all who
frequented it. The atmosphere of the man pervaded his surroundings and
threw a glamour over everything. Even those who were most intimate at
Craigie House felt the indescribable influence of tenderness,
sweetness, and calm which filled the place. Neither Longfellow nor his
wife was a brilliant talker; indeed, there were often periods of
speechlessness; but in spite of mental absences, a habit of which he
got the better in later years, one was always sure of being taken at
one's best and of coming away with a sense of having "breathed a
nobler air."
"Society and hospitality meant something real to him," his eldest
daughter writes. "I cannot remember that there were ever any formal or
obligatory occasion of entertainment. All who came were made welcome
without any special preparation, and without any thought of personal
inconvenience."
The decorations and splendors of the great world neither existed nor
were needed there. His orange-tree, "that busie plant," always stood
in his study window, and remains, still cherished, to-day. The
statuette of Goethe, to which he refers in "Hyperion," stands yet on
the high desk at which he stood to write, and books are everywhere.
Even closets supposed to be devoted to pails and dust-cloths "have
three shelves for books and one for pails." In his own bedroom, where
the exquisite portrait of his wife by Rowse hangs over the fireplace,
there is a small bookcase near his bed which contains a choice
collection of the English poets. Vaughan, Henry King, and others of
that lovely company of the past. These were his most intimate friends.
In the copy of Henry King, I found the following lines marked by him
in "The Exequy:"--
"Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed,
Never to be disquieted!
My last good-night! Thou wilt not wake,
Till I thy fate shall overtake;
Till age, or grief, or sickness, must
Marry my body to the dust
It so much loves."
His daughter says, "This library was carefully arranged by subjects;
and although no catalogue was ever made, he was never at a loss where
to look for any needed volume. His books were deeply beloved and
tenderly handled."
Such was Craigie House and such was the poet's life within it from the
beginning to the end. "His poetry was not worked out from his brain,"
his daughter again writes, and who should know better than herself!
"it was the blossoming of his inward life."
In a brief paper upon Longfellow written by Mr. William Winter I find
the universal sentiment towards him more fully and tenderly expressed,
perhaps, than elsewhere. Mr. Winter writes: "I had read every line he
had then published; and such was the affection he inspired, even in a
boyish mind, that on many a summer night I have walked several miles
to his house, only to put my hand upon the latch of his gate, which he
himself had touched. More than any one else among the many famous
persons whom, since then, it has been my fortune to know, he aroused
this feeling of mingled tenderness and reverence."
The description of his person, too, as given by Mr. Winter, seems to
me clearer and closer to the truth than any other I have chanced to
see.
"His dignity and grace, and the beautiful refinement of his
countenance, together with his perfect taste in dress and the
exquisite simplicity of his manners, made him the absolute ideal of
what a poet should be. His voice, too, was soft, sweet, and musical,
and, like his face, it had the innate charm of tranquillity. His eyes
were blue-gray, very bright and brave, changeable under the influence
of emotion (as afterward I often saw), but mostly calm, grave,
attentive, and gentle. The habitual expression of his face was not
that of sadness; and yet it was pensive. Perhaps it may be best
described as that of serious and tender thoughtfulness. He had
conquered his own sorrows thus far; but the sorrows of others threw
their shadow over him.... There was a strange touch of sorrowful
majesty and prophetic fortitude commingled with the composure and
kindness of his features.... His spontaneous desire, the natural
instinct of his great heart, was to be helpful,--to lift up the lowly,
to strengthen the weak, to bring out the best in every person, to dry
every tear, and make every pathway smooth."
Although naturally of a buoyant disposition and fond of pleasure,
Longfellow lived as far as possible from the public eye, especially
during the last twenty years of his life. The following note gives a
hint of his natural gayety, and details one of the many excuses by
which he always declined to speak in public; the one memorable
exception being that beautiful occasion at Bowdoin, when he returned
in age to the scenes of his youth and read to the crowd assembled
there to do him reverence his poem entitled "Morituri Salutamus."
After speaking of the reasons which must keep him from the Burns
festival, he adds:--
"I am very sorry not to be there. You will have a delightful supper,
or dinner, whichever it is; and human breath enough expended to fill
all the trumpets of Iskander for a month or more.
"I behold as in a vision a friend of ours, with his left hand under
the tails of his coat, blowing away like mad; and alas! I shall not be
there to applaud. All this you must do for me; and also eat my part of
the haggis, which I hear is to grace the feast. This shall be your
duty and your reward."
The reference in this note to the trumpets of Iskander is the only one
in his letters regarding a poem which was a great favorite of his, by
Leigh Hunt, called "The Trumpets of Doolkarnein." It is a poem worthy
to make the reputation of a poet, and is almost a surprise even among
the varied riches of Leigh Hunt. Many years after this note was
written, Longfellow used to recall it to those lovers of poetry who
had chanced to escape a knowledge of its beauty.
In spite of his dislike of grand occasions where he was a prominent
figure, he was a keen lover of the opera and theatre. He was always
the first to know when the opera season was to begin and to plan that
our two houses might take a box together. He was always ready to hear
"Lucia" or "Don Giovanni" and to make a festival time at the coming of
Salvini or Neilson. There is a tiny notelet among his letters, with a
newspaper paragraph neatly cut out and pasted across the top,
detailing the names of his party at a previous appearance at a
theatre, a kind of notoriety which he particularly shuddered at; but
in order to prove his determination in spite of everything, he writes
below:--
"Now for 'Pinafore,' and another paragraph! Saturday afternoon would
be a good time."
He easily caught the gayety of such occasions, and in the shadow of
the curtains in the box would join in the singing or the recitative of
the lovely Italian words with a true poet's delight.
The strange incidents of a life subject to the taskmaster Popularity
are endless. One day he wrote:--
"A stranger called here and asked if Shakespeare lived in this
neighborhood. I told him I knew no such person. Do you?"
Day by day he was besieged by every possible form of interruption
which the ingenuity of the human brain could devise; but his patience
and kindness, his determination to accept the homage offered him in
the spirit of the giver, whatever discomfort it might bring himself,
was continually surprising to those who observed him year by year. Mr.
Fields wrote: "In his modesty and benevolence I am reminded of what
Pope said of his friend Garth: 'He is the best of Christians without
knowing it.'"
In one of Longfellow's notes he alludes humorously to the autograph
nuisance:--"Do you know how to apply properly for autographs? Here is
a formula I have just received, on a postal card:
"'DEAR SIR: As I am getting a collection of the autographs of all
honorable and worthy men, and think yours such, I hope you will
forfeit by next mail. Yours, etc.'"
And of that other nuisance, sitting for a portrait, he laughingly
wrote one day: "'Two or three sittings'--that is the illusory phrase.
Two or three sittings have become a standing joke." And yet how seldom
he declined when it was in his power to serve an artist! His
generosity knew no bounds.
When a refusal of any kind was necessary, it was wonderful to see how
gently it was expressed. A young person having written from a western
city to request him to write a poem for her class, he said: "I could
not write it, but tried to say 'No' so softly that she would think it
better than 'Yes.'"
He was distinguished by one grace which was almost peculiar to himself
in the time in which he lived--his tenderness toward the undeveloped
artist, the man or woman, youth or maid, whose heart was set upon some
form of ideal expression, and who was living for that. Whether they
possessed the power to distinguish themselves or not, to such persons
he addressed himself with a sense of personal regard and kinship. When
fame crowned the aspirant, no one recognized more keenly the
perfection of the work, but he seldom turned aside to attract the
successful to himself. To the unsuccessful he lent the sunshine and
overflow of his own life, as if he tried to show every day afresh that
he believed noble pursuit and not attainment to be the purpose of our
existence.