and he still remains the favorite American poet. Not that Longfellow
is one of the great world poets; Longfellow himself would have been
offended with that eulogistic extravagance which would place him among
the few immortals. He is not a Homer, nor a Dante, nor a Shakspere.
No, he is not even a Wordsworth in philosophic insight into nature,
nor a Shelley in power to snatch the soul into the starry empyrean,
nor a Tennyson in variety and passion, nor a Milton in grandeur of
poetic expression. He is--only Longfellow. But that means he has his
own peculiar charm. It is idle to detract from the fame of one man
because he is not some one else. Roast beef may be more nutritious
than strawberries, but that is no criticism upon the flavor of the
strawberry. Longfellow is not Milton, but then neither is Milton
Longfellow:
If I cannot carry forests on my back
Neither can you crack a nut.
Of late years the critics have been finding fault with Longfellow.
They have said that really Longfellow is no poet. Frederic Harrison
calls Evangeline "goody, goody dribble!" and Quiller-Couch in his
anthology gives three pages to Longfellow and seven to Wilfred Scawen
Blunt--but who is Blunt? When I was in Berlin I found in a German
history of English and American Literature one-half a page devoted to
Longfellow and ten pages to Poe. Perhaps some of this criticism is but
the natural reaction following the extreme praise that ensued after
the death of Longfellow in 1882.
[Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
From a wood engraving of a life photograph]
But Longfellow is surviving all derogatory criticism. He is still the
poet with the universal appeal. It is altogether probable that he is
more widely read to-day than any other American poet. Even foreigners
still express their affection for this poet of the domestic
affections. In 1907 Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, the English Ambassador
to the United States, made an address in which he made graceful
acknowledgement of his debt to this American poet:
"I owe much of the pleasure of my life to American writers of every
shade of thought.... But I owe to one American writer much more than
pleasure. Tastes differ and fashions change, and I am told that the
poetry of Longfellow is not read as it used to be. Men in my own
country have asked me whether the rivers of Damascus were not better
than all the waters of Israel, whether Shakspere, and Milton, and
Shelley, and Keats were not enough for me, that I need go to
Longfellow. And Americans have seemed surprised that I did not speak
rather of Lowell and Bryant and others. Far be it from me to say a
word against any of them. I have loved them all from my youth up,
every one of them in his own way, and Shakspere as the master and
compendium of them all. No one, I suppose, would place Longfellow as a
poet quite on the same level with some of them. But the fact remains
that, for one reason or another, perhaps in part from early
associations, Longfellow has always spoken to my heart. Many a time,
in lands far away from the land he loved so well, I have sought for
sympathy in happiness and in sorrow--
Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of time--
but from that pure and gentle and untroubled spirit."
Professor E.A. Grosvenor, of Amherst, years ago published an article
on Longfellow that was widely copied. It is an interesting account of
a conversation in 1879 on board the Messageries steamer _Donai_, bound
from Constantinople to Marseilles. On board many nationalities were
represented. The story is a fine illustration of the wide-spread
popularity of the American poet.
"One evening, as we were quitting the Straits of Bonifacio, some one
remarked at dinner that, though Victor Hugo was born in Paris, the
earliest impressions of his life were received in Corsica, close to
which we were passing. Ten or twelve of us lingered after the meal was
finished to talk of the great French poet. One of the party spoke of
him as embodying, more than any other writer, the humanistic
tendencies of the nineteenth century and as the exponent of what is
best in humanity.
"We had been talking in French, when the Russian lady exclaimed in
English to the gentleman who had last spoken, 'How can you, an
American, give to him the place that is occupied by your own
Longfellow? Longfellow is the universal poet. He is better known, too,
among foreigners than any one except their own poets! Then she
commenced repeating in rich, mellow tones:
I stood on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose over the city
Behind the dark church tower.
I recall how her voice trembled over the words:
And the burden laid upon me
Seemed greater than I could bear.
and how it swelled out in the concluding lines:
As the symbol of love in Heaven,
And its wavering image here.
It was dramatic and never to be forgotten. Then she added, 'I long to
visit Boston that I may stand on the Bridge.'
"In the company was an English captain returning from the Zulu war. He
was the son of that member of Parliament' who had been the chief
supporter of the claimant in the famous Tichborne case, and who had
poured out his money like water in behalf of the man whom he
considered cruelly wronged. The captain was a typical British soldier,
with every characteristic of his class. Joining our steamer at Genoa,
he had so far talked only of the Zulus and, with bitter indignation,
of the manner in which the Prince Imperial had been deserted by
British soldiers to be slain by savages. As soon as the Russian lady
had concluded he said: 'I can give you something better than that,'
and began in a voice like a trumpet:
Tell me not in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream.
His recitation of the entire poem was marked by the common English
upheaval and down-letting of the voice in each line; but it was
evident that he loved what he was repeating.
"Then a tall, lank, gray-haired Scotchman, who knew no French, who had
hardly mingled with the other passengers, and who seemed always
communing with himself, suddenly commenced:
There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there.
He repeated only a few stanzas, but could apparently have given the
whole poem, had he wished.
"For myself, I know that my contribution was _My Lost Youth_,
beginning
Often I think of the beautiful town,
That is seated by the sea;
Often in thought go up and down
The pleasant streets of that dear old town
And my youth comes back to me.
Never did the distance from an early home seem so great to one, New
England born, as in that strange company, gathered from many lands,
each with words upon the lip which the American had first heard in
childhood.
"A handsome, olive-cheeked young man, a Greek from Manchester,
educated and living in England, said, 'How do you like this?' Then he
began to sing:
Stars of the summer night,
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
So he rendered the whole of that exquisite serenade--dear to American
college students--with a freedom and a fire which hinted that he had
sung it at least once before on some more appropriate occasion.
Perhaps to some dark-eyed maiden of that elegant Greek colony of
Manchester it had come as a revelation, and perhaps she had first
heard it sung in front of her father's mansion and had looked down,
appreciative but unseen, from above.
"The captain of the _Donai_ was not her regular commander, but an
officer of the national French navy, who was in charge only for a few
voyages. A thorough Frenchman, no one would have accused him of
knowing a word of any tongue, save his own. Versatile, overflowing
with wit and _bons mots_, it must have wearied him to be silent so
long. To our astonishment, in accents so Gallic that one discerned
with difficulty that he was attempting English, he intoned:
Zee seds of neet fair valeeng fast,
Ven t'rough an Alpeen veelage past
A yout, who bore meed snow and eece
A bannair veed dees strange deveece
Excelsiorr!
"'_Eh, voila_,' he exclaimed with satisfaction, '_J'ai appris cela a
l'ecole. C'est tout l'anglais que je sais._'
"'_Mais, commandant_,' said the Russian lady, '_ce n'est pas l'anglais
du tout ce que vous venez de dire la._'
"'_Ah, oui, madame, ca vient de votre Longfellow._'
"None of the other passengers contributed, but already six
nationalities had spoken--Scotch, Russian, Greek, French, English, and
American. As we arose from the table and went up on deck to watch the
lights glimmering in Napoleon's birthplace, Ajaccio, the Russian lady
said: 'Do you suppose there is any other poet of any country, living
or dead, from whom so many of us could have quoted? Not one. Not even
Shakspere or Victor Hugo or Homer.'"
LVIII
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
During his lifetime Thoreau published but two books,--_Walden_, and
the _Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_,--and these had but
limited sale while the author was living. Over seven hundred copies of
the _Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_ were returned, to
Thoreau by his publisher. Thoreau must have had a helpful sense of
humor, for after lugging the burden upstairs he complacently
remarks,--"I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over
seven hundred of which I wrote myself." In recent times a costly
edition of all Thoreau's writings has been published. He is one of the
rare spirits whose fame increases with the years. But of all his
voluminous writings _Walden_, so it seems to me, is the most readable,
the freshest, the most stimulating. Higginson says that it is,
perhaps, the only book yet written in America that can bear an annual
reading.
_Walden_ is a record of Thoreau's sojourn for about two years in the
woods by Walden Pond. He went about two miles from his mother's door,
built a little house or hut, and there lived, reading his favorite
books, philosophizing, studying nature, and to a great extent
avoiding society. Some people have condemned him as selfish, others
have defended him. His best defense is his work. If anything so fresh
and readable as _Walden_ be the result, we might be willing to deny
ourselves the society of some of our urban friends, without charging
them with selfishness. Thoreau is sometimes called a "wild man"; in a
sense, he is untamed. He himself confessed,--"There is in my nature,
methinks, a singular yearning toward all wildness." Yet he was a true
lover of men. He hated slavery and went to jail rather than pay his
taxes, because he disbelieved in supporting a government that upheld
slavery. When his friend, the philosophic Emerson, peered into the
prison cell and said,--"Henry, why are you here?" the quick retort
was,--"Why are you not here?"
It must be remembered that Thoreau lived in a time of social
experiment. Hawthorne had thrown in his lot for a brief time with the
Brook Farm idealists. Why should not Thoreau make an experiment of his
own? Why not live the simple life before Wagner wrote about it? He was
tired of the conventionalities of society, of the incessant
interruptions to steady thought. Society is naught but a conspiracy to
compel imitation. "The head monkey of Paris puts on a traveler's cap,
and all the monkeys in America do the same." So Thoreau moves out into
the woods by the side of Walden Pond. Before he can live there he must
build his house:
"Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the
woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house,
and began to cut down some tall arrowy pines, still in their youth,
for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it
is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an
interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe as he released his
hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it
sharper than I received it."
His house, when finished, was ten feet wide and fifteen long. The
exact cost was twenty-eight dollars, twelve and one-half cents. In
_Walden_ he gives an itemized account of the cost. And then he adds,
with a twinkle of his eye, I think,--"I intend to build me a house
which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and
luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than
my present one."
Thoreau also finds some satisfaction that his house cost him less than
the year's rent of a college room at Harvard; for there the mere rent
of a student's room, "which is only a little larger than my own, is
thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of
building thirty-two side by side and under one roof."
In this book he gives a very interesting account of what his food cost
him during the eight months from July 4 to March 1. Here is his list:
Rice $1.73-1/2
Molasses 1.73
Rye meal 1.04-3/4
Indian meal .99-3/4
Pork .22
Flour .88
Sugar .80
Lard .65
Apples .25
Dried apple .22
Sweet potatoes .10
One pumpkin .06
One watermelon .02
Salt .03
"Yes," says he, "I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus
unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my
readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would
look no better in print." In this connection one may call to mind a
reported saying of Mrs. Emerson's to the effect that Henry never got
very far away from the sound of the dinner horn. It is not hard to
imagine that the hospitable Emerson often invited the kindred-spirited
Thoreau into his house for a warm and abundant dinner. Another writer
recently has advanced also this thought: Thoreau was not so much of a
selfish hermit as it might appear. He went into the woods to make his
house or hut a station on the underground railroad. If this be true, a
new and different light is thrown upon Thoreau's conduct.
Thoreau was a great lover of nature and the things of nature loved
him. Dr. Channing gives us this glimpse of the man:
"Thoreau named all the birds without a gun, a weapon he never used in
mature years. He neither killed nor imprisoned any animal, unless
driven by acute needs. He brought home a flying squirrel, to study its
mode of flight, but quickly carried it back to the wood. He possessed
true instincts of topography, and could conceal choice things in the
bush and find them again.... If Thoreau needed a box in his walk, he
would strip a piece of birch bark off the tree, fold it, when cut
straightly, together, and put his tender lichen or brittle creature
therein."
Emerson supplements this picture with the following account of a visit
he once made to Walden:
"The naturalist waded into the pool for the water plants, and his
strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor. On this day he
looked for the menyanthes and detected it across the wide pool; and,
on examination of the floret, declared that it had been in flower five
days. He drew out of his breast-pocket a diary, and read the names of
all the plants that should bloom that day, whereof he kept account as
a banker does when his notes are due.... He could pace rods more
accurately than another man could measure them with rod and chain. He
could find his way in the woods at night better by his feet than by
his eyes. He knew every track in the snow and on the ground, and what
creature had taken the path in the snow before him."
Thoreau could write the most beautiful descriptions when he was so
inclined. Here is an exquisite description of a snowstorm.
"Did you ever admire the steady, silent, windless fall of the snow, in
some lead-colored sky, silent save the little ticking of the flakes as
they touched the twigs? It is chased silver, molded over the pines and
oak leaves. Soft shades hang like curtains along the closely-draped
wood-paths. Frozen apples become little cider-vats. The old crooked
apple-trees, frozen stiff in the pale, shivering sunlight, that
appears to be dying of consumption, gleam forth like the heroes of one
of Dante's cold hells; we would mind any change in the mercury of the
dream. The snow crunches under the feet; the chopper's axe rings
funereally through the tragic air. At early morn the frost on
button-bushes and willows was silvery and every stem and minutest twig
and filamentary weed came up a silver thing, while the cottage smoke
rose salmon-colored into that oblique day. At the base of ditches were
shooting crystals, like the blades of an ivory-handled penknife, the
rosettes and favors fretted of silver on the flat ice. The little
cascades in the brook were ornamented with transparent shields, and
long candelabrums and spermaceti-colored fools'-caps and plated
jellies and white globes, with the black water whirling along
transparently underneath. The sun comes out, and all at a glance,
rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and emeralds start into intense life on
the angles of the snow crystals."
LIX
THE LAST DAYS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
There has been great difference of opinion concerning the genius of
Poe. His life also has been the subject of much controversy. By some
Poe is painted as a fiend incarnate, by others as a man more sinned
against than sinning. When Howells visited Emerson he was surprised to
hear the Concord Sage refer to Poe as the "jingle man," but then
Emerson himself had been treated rather contemptuously by Poe, and
that, together with Emerson's lack of appreciation of melody, may
account for the "jingle man" expression.
It is not strange that Poe has been the subject of bitter criticism.
He himself was bitter and unjust in his criticisms of others. He once
wrote: "Bryant is not _all_ a fool. Mr. Willis is not _quite_ an ass.
Mr. Longfellow _will_ steal, but, perhaps, he cannot help it." The man
who will write like that must expect similar vituperation in return.
To have friends, a man must be friendly. Poe was lacking in those warm
human sympathies that attract our fellow-men. The human touch lacking
in his art is also lacking in his life. "Except the wife who idolized
him," writes Mr. Woodberry in his excellent Life of Poe, "and the
mother who cared for him, no one touched his heart in the years of his
manhood, and at no time was love so strong in him as to rule his life;
as he was self-indulgent, he was self-absorbed, and outside of his
family no kind act, no noble affection, no generous sacrifice is
recorded of him."
In _Scribner's Magazine_, 1878, Mrs. Susan T. Weiss in writing of the
_Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe_, one of the most accurate accounts of
this period of the poet's life, gives us a more pleasing impression.
We quote the following extracts:
It was a day or two after his arrival that Poe, accompanied by his
sister, called on us.... The remembrance of that first meeting with
the poet is still as vividly impressed upon my mind as though it had
been but yesterday. A shy and dreamy girl, scarcely more than a child,
I had all my life taken an interest in those strange stories and poems
of Edgar Poe; and now, with my old childish impression of their author
scarcely worn off, I regarded the meeting with an eager, yet shrinking
anticipation. As I entered the parlor, Poe was seated near the window,
quietly conversing. His attitude was easy and graceful, with one arm
lightly resting on the back of his chair. His dark curling hair was
thrown back from his broad forehead--a style in which he habitually
wore it. At sight of him, the impression produced upon me was of a
refined, highbred, and chivalrous gentleman. I use this word
"chivalrous" as exactly descriptive of something in his whole
_personnel_, distinct from either polish or high-breeding, and which,
though instantly apparent, was yet an effect too subtle to be
described. He rose on my entrance, and, other visitors being present,
stood with one hand on the back of his chair, awaiting my greeting. So
dignified was his manner, so reserved his expression, that I
experienced an involuntary recoil, until I turned to him and saw his
eyes suddenly brighten as I offered my hand; a barrier seemed to melt
between us, and I felt that we were no longer strangers....
While upon this subject, I venture, though with great hesitation, to
say a word in relation to Poe's own marriage with his cousin, Virginia
Clemm. I am aware that there exists with the public but one view of
this union, and that so lovely and touching in itself, that to mar the
picture with even a shadow inspires almost a feeling of remorse. Yet
since in the biography of a distinguished man of genius truth is above
all things desirable, and since in this instance the facts do not
redound to the discredit of any party concerned, I may be allowed to
state what I have been assured is truth.
Poets are proverbial for uncongenial marriages, and to this Poe can
scarcely be classed as an exception. From the time when as a youth of
nineteen he became a tutor to his sweet and gentle little cousin of
six years old, he loved her with the protective tenderness of an elder
brother. As years passed he became the subject of successive fancies
or passions for various charming women; but she gradually budding into
early womanhood experienced but one attachment--an absorbing devotion
to her handsome, talented, and fascinating cousin. So intense was this
passion that her health and spirits became seriously affected, and
her mother, aroused to painful solicitude, spoke to Edgar about it.
This was just as he was preparing to leave her house, which had been
for some years his home, and enter the world of business. The idea of
this separation was insupportable to Virginia. The result was that
Poe, at that time a young man of twenty-eight, married his little,
penniless, and delicate child-cousin of fourteen or fifteen, and thus
unselfishly secured her own and her mother's happiness. In his wife he
had ever the most tender and devoted of companions; but it was his own
declaration that he ever missed in her a certain intellectual and
spiritual sympathy necessary to perfect happiness in such an union....
He was never a deliberately unkind husband, and toward the close of
Mrs. Poe's life he was assiduous in his tender care and attention. Yet
his own declaration to an intimate friend of his youth was that his
marriage "had not been a congenial one;" and I repeatedly heard the
match ascribed to Mrs. Clemm, by those who were well acquainted with
the family and the circumstances. In thus alluding to a subject so
delicate, I have not lightly done so, or unadvisedly made a statement
which seems refuted by the testimony of so many who have written of
the "passionate idolatry" with which the poet regarded his wife. I
have heard the subject often and freely discussed by Poe's most
intimate friends, including his sisters, and upon this authority I
speak. Lovely in person, sweet and gentle in disposition, his young
wife deserved, doubtless, all the love that it was in his nature to
bestow. Of his unvarying filial affection for Mrs. Clemm, and of her
almost angelic devotion to himself and his interests, there can be no
question.
Once in discussing _The Raven_, Poe observed that he had never heard
it correctly delivered by even the best readers--that is, not as he
desired that it should be read. That evening, a number of visitors
being present, he was requested to recite the poem, and complied. His
impressive delivery held the company spell-bound, but in the midst of
it, I, happening to glance toward the open window above the level roof
of the greenhouse, beheld a group of sable faces the whites of whose
eyes shone in strong relief against the surrounding darkness. These
were a number of our family servants, who having heard much talk about
"Mr. Poe, the poet," and having but an imperfect idea of what a poet
was, had requested permission of my brother to witness the recital. As
the speaker became more impassioned and excited, more conspicuous grew
the circle of white eyes, until when at length he turned suddenly
toward the window, and, extending his arm, cried, with awful
vehemence, "Get thee back into the tempest, and the night's Plutonian
shore!" there was a sudden disappearance of the sable visages, a
scuttling of feet, and the gallery audience was gone. Ludicrous as was
the incident, the final touch was given when at that moment Miss Poe,
who was an extraordinary character in her way, sleepily entered the
room, and with a dull and drowsy deliberation seated herself on her
brother's knee. He had subsided from his excitement into a gloomy
despair, and now, fixing his eyes upon his sister, he concluded:
And the raven never flitting, still is sitting, _still_ is sitting,
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door;
And its eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming--