"The first meeting of the Dante Club Redivivus is on Wednesday next.
Come and be bored. Please not to mention the subject to any one yet
awhile, as we are going to be very quiet about it."
"_January_, 1867.--Dante Club at Longfellow's again. They are
revising the whole book with the minutest care. Lowell's accuracy is
surprising and of great value to the work; also Norton's criticisms.
Longfellow stands apart at his desk taking notes and making
corrections, though of course no one can know yet what he accepts."
Longfellow's true life was that of a scholar and a dreamer; everything
else was a duty, however pleasurable or bountiful the experience might
become in his gentle acceptation. He was seldom stimulated to external
expression by others. Such excitement as he could express again was
always self-excitement; anything external rendered him at once a
listener and an observer. For this reason, it is peculiarly difficult
to give any idea of his lovely presence and character to those who
have not known him. He did not speak in epigrams. It could not be said
of him,--
"His mouth he could not ope,
But out there flew a trope."
Yet there was an exquisite tenderness and effluence from his presence
which was more humanizing and elevating than the eloquence of many
others.
One quotation from a letter to Charles Sumner is too characteristic to
be omitted even in the slightest sketch of Longfellow. He writes: "You
are hard at work; and God bless you in it. In every country the
'dangerous classes' are those who do no work; for instance, the
nobility in Europe and the slaveholders here. It is evident that the
world needs a new nobility,--not of the gold medal and _sangre
azul_ order; not of the blood that is blue because it stagnates,
but of the red arterial blood that circulates, and has heart in it and
life and labor."
Speaking one day of his own reminiscences, Longfellow said, that
"however interesting such things were in conversation, he thought they
seldom contained legitimate matter for book-making; and ----'s life of
a poet, just then printed, was, he thought, peculiarly disagreeable
chiefly because of the unjustifiable things related of him by others.
This strain of thought brought to his mind a call he once made with a
letter of introduction, when a youth in Paris, upon Jules Janin. The
servant said her master was at home, and he was ushered immediately
into a small parlor, in one corner of which was a winding stairway
leading into the room above. Here he waited a moment while the maid
carried in his card, and then returned immediately to say he could go
up. In the upper room sat Janin under the hands of a barber, his
abundant locks shaken up in wild confusion, in spite of which he
received his guest, quite undisturbed, as if it were a matter of
course. There was no fire in the room; but the fireplace was heaped
with letters and envelopes, and a trail of the same reached from his
desk to the grate. After a brief visit Longfellow was about to
withdraw, when Janin detained him, saying: 'What can I do for you in
Paris? Whom would you like to see?'
"'I should like to know Madame George Sand.'
"'Unfortunately that is impossible! I have just quarreled with Madame
Sand!'
"'Ah! then, Alexandra Dumas,--I should like to take him by the hand!'
"'I have quarreled with him also, but no matter! _Vous perdriez vos
illusions.'_
"However, he invited me to dine the next day, and I had a singular
experience; but I shall not soon forget the way in which he said,
'vous perdriez vos illusions.'
"When I arrived on the following day I found the company consisted of
his wife and himself, a little red-haired man who was rather quiet and
cynical, and myself. Janin was amusing and noisy, and carried the talk
on swimmingly with much laughter. Presently he began to say hard
things about women, when his wife looked up reproachfully and said,
'Déjà, Jules!' During dinner a dramatic author arrived with his play,
and Janin ordered him to be shown in. He treated the poor fellow
brutally, who in turn bowed low to the great power. He did not even
ask him to take a chair. Madame Janin did so, however, and kindly,
too. The author supplicated the critic to attend the first appearance
of his play. Janin would not promise to go, but put him off
indefinitely, and presently the poor man went away. He tingled all
over with indignation at the treatment the man received, but Janin
looked over to his wife, saying, 'Well, my dear, I treated this one
pretty well, didn't I?'
"'Better than sometimes, Jules,' she answered."
Altogether it was a strange scene to the young American observer.
"_July_, 1867.--Passed the day at Nahant. As Longfellow sat on
the piazza wrapped in his blue cloth cloak, he struck me for the first
time as wearing a venerable aspect. Before dinner he gathered wild
roses to adorn the table, and even gave a careful touch himself to the
arrangement of the wines and fruits. He was in excellent spirits, full
of wit and lively talk. Speaking of the use and misuse of words, he
quoted Chateaubriand's mistake (afterwards corrected) in his
translation of 'Paradise Lost,' when he rendered
"'Siloa's brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God,'
as
"'Le ruisseau de Siloa qui coulait rapidement.'"
In talking about natural differences in character and temperament, he
said of his own children that he agreed with one of the old English
divines who said, "Happy is that household wherein Martha still
reproves Mary!"
In February, 1868, it was decided that Longfellow should go to Europe
with his family. He said that the first time he went abroad it was to
see places alone and not persons; the second time he saw a few
persons, and so pleasantly combined the two; he thought once that on a
third visit he should prefer to see persons only; but all that was
changed now. He had returned to the feeling of his youth. He was eager
to seek out quiet places and wayside nooks, where he might rest in
retirement and enjoy the consecrated memorials of Europe undisturbed.
The following year found him again in Cambridge, refreshed by his
absence. The diary continues: "He has been trying to further the idea
of buying some of the lowlands in Cambridge for the colleges. If this
can be done, it will save much future annoyance to the inhabitants
from wretched hovels and bad odors, beside holding the land for a
beautiful possession forever. He has given a good deal of money
himself. This might be called 'his latest work.'"
"_January_, 1870.--Longfellow and Bayard Taylor came to dine.
Longfellow talked of translators and translating. He advanced the idea
that the English, from the insularity of their character, were
incapable of making a perfect translation. Americans, French, and
Germans, he said, have much larger adaptability to and sympathy in the
thought of others. He would not hear Chapman's Homer or anything else
quoted on the other side, but was zealous in enforcing this argument.
He anticipates much from Taylor's version of 'Faust.' All this was
strikingly interesting, as showing how his imagination wrought with
him, because he was arguing from his own theory of the capacity of the
races and in the face of his knowledge of the best actual translations
existing to-day, the result of the scholarship of England.
"Longfellow speaks of difficulty in sleeping. In his college days and
later he had the habit of studying until midnight and rising at six in
the morning, finding his way as soon as possible to his books.
Possibly this habit still prevents him from getting sufficient rest.
However light may be the literature in which he indulges before going
to bed, some chance thought may strike him as he goes up the stairs
with the bedroom candle in his hand which will preclude all
possibility of sleep until long after midnight.
"His account of Sainte-Beuve during his last visit to Europe was an
odd little drama. He had grown excessively fat, and could scarcely
move. He did not attempt to rise from his chair as Longfellow entered,
but motioned him to a seat by his side. Talking of Victor Hugo and
Lamartine, 'Take them for all in all, which do you prefer?' asked
Longfellow.
"'Charlatan pour charlatan, je crois que je préfère Monsieur de
Lamartine,' was the reply.
"Longfellow amused me by making two epigrams:--
"'What is autobiography?
It is what a biography ought to be.'
"And again:--
"'When you ask one friend to dine,
Give him your best wine!
When you ask two,
The second best will do!'
"He brought in with him two poems translated from Platen's 'Night
Songs.' They are very beautiful.
"'What dusky splendors of song there are in King Alfred's new volume,'
he said. 'It is always a delight to get anything new from him. His
"Holy Grail" and Lowell's "Cathedral" are enough for a holiday, and
make this one notable.'"
When Longfellow talked freely as at this dinner, it was difficult to
remember that he was not really a talker. The natural reserve of his
nature made it sometimes impossible for him to express himself in
ordinary intercourse. He never truly made a confidant of anybody
except his Muse.
"I never thought," he wrote about this time, "that I should come back
to this kind of work." He was busying himself with collecting and
editing "The Poems of Places." "It transports me to my happiest years,
and the contrast is too painful to think of." And again in calmer
mood: "The 'ruler of the inverted year' (whatever that may mean) has,
you perceive, returned again, like a Bourbon from banishment, and is
having it all his own way, and it is not a pleasant way. Very well,
one can sit by the fire and read, and hear the wind roar in the
chimney, and write to one's friends, and sign one's self 'yours
faithfully,' or as in the present instance, 'yours always.'"
His sympathetic nature was ever ready to share and further the gayety
of others. He wrote one evening:--
"I have been kept at home by a little dancing-party to-night.... I
write this arrayed in my dress-coat with a rose in my buttonhole, a
circumstance, I think, worth mentioning. It reminds me of Buffon, who
used to array himself in his full dress for writing 'Natural History.'
Why should we not always do it when we write letters? We should, no
doubt, be more courtly and polite, and perhaps say handsome things to
each other. It was said of Villemain that when he spoke to a lady he
seemed to be presenting her a bouquet. Allow me to present you this
postscript in the same polite manner, to make good my theory of the
rose in the buttonhole."
How delightful it is to catch the intoxication of the little festival
in this way. In his endeavor to further the gayeties of his children
he had received a reflected light and life which his love for them had
helped to create.
"_December_ 14, 1870.--Taylor's 'Faust' is finished, and
Longfellow is coming with other friends to dinner to celebrate the
ending of the work....
"A statuette of Goethe was on the table. Longfellow said Goethe never
liked the statue of himself by Rauch, from which this copy was made.
He preferred above all others a bust of himself by a Swiss sculptor, a
copy of which Taylor owns. He could never understand, he continued,
the story of that unpleasant interview between Napoleon and Goethe.
Eckermann says Goethe liked it, but Longfellow thought the emperor's
manner of address had a touch of insolence in it. The haunts of Goethe
in Weimar were pleasantly recalled by both Longfellow and Taylor, to
whom they were familiar; also that strange portrait of him taken
standing at a window, and looking out over Rome, in which nothing but
his back can be seen.
"I find it impossible to recall what Longfellow said, but he
scintillated all the evening. It was an occasion such as he loved
best. His _jeux d'esprit_ flew rapidly right and left, often
setting the table in a roar of laughter, a most unusual thing with
him."
There was evidently no such pleasure to Longfellow as that of doing
kindnesses. One of many notes bearing on such subjects belongs to this
year, and begins:--
"A thousand thanks for your note and its inclosure. There goes a gleam
of sunshine into a dark house, which is always pleasant to think of. I
have not yet got the senator's sunbeam to add to it; but as soon as I
do, both shall go shining on their way."
"_January_, 1871.--Dined at Longfellow's, and afterwards went
upstairs to see an interesting collection of East Indian curiosities.
Passing through his dressing-room, I was struck with the likeness of
his private rooms to those of a German student or professor; a
Goethean aspect of simplicity and space everywhere, with books put in
the nooks and corners and all over the walls. It is surely a most
attractive house!"
Again I find a record of a dinner at Cambridge: "The day was
springlike, and the air full of the odors of fresh blossoms. As we
came down over the picturesque old staircase, he was standing with a
group of gentlemen near by, and I heard him say aloud unconsciously,
in a way peculiar to himself, 'Ah, now we shall see the ladies come
downstairs!' Nothing escapes his keen observation--as delicate as it
is keen."