with very great interest. John Brown was like a star and still shines in
the firmament. We could not have done without him."
He considered Governor Andrew's approbation of John Brown as more
important than anything that would be written about him in the future.
He did not trouble himself much in regard to Lincoln's second election,
for he saw that it was a foregone conclusion; but after Andrew Johnson's
treachery in 1866, he felt there was a need of unusual exertion. When the
November elections arrived, he told his classes: "Next Tuesday I shall
have to serve my country and there will be no recitations." When Tuesday
came we found him on the sidewalk distributing Republican ballots and
soliciting votes; and there he remained until the polls closed in the
afternoon. He had little patience with educated men who neglected their
political duties. "Why are you discouraged?" he would ask. "Times will
change. Remember the Free-soil movement!" He attended caucuses as
regularly as the meetings of the faculty, and served as a delegate to a
number of conventions. More than once he aroused the good citizens of
Cambridge to the danger of insidious plots by low demagogues against the
public welfare. The poet Longfellow took notice of this and spoke of him
as an invaluable man.
On another occasion Professor Child was discoursing to his class on
oratory and mentioned the fact that Webster and Choate both came from
Dartmouth; that Wendell Phillips graduated at Harvard, but the university
had not seen much of him since. At the mention of Wendell Phillips some
of the boys from pro-slavery families began to sneer. Professor Child
raised himself up and said determinedly, "Wendell Phillips is as good an
orator as either of them!" He was chagrined, however, at Phillips's later
public course,--his support of Socialism and General Butler. Neither did
he like Phillips's Phi Beta Kappa oration, in which he advocated the
dagger and dynamite for tyrants. "A tyrant," said Professor Child, "is
what anyone chooses to imagine. My hired man may consider me a tyrant and
blow me up according to Mr. Phillips's principle." The assassins of
Garfield and McKinley evidently supposed that they were ridding the earth
of two of the worst tyrants that ever existed. Professor Child was
exceptionally liberal. He even supported Woman Suffrage for a time, but
he held Socialism in a kind of holy horror,--such as one feels of a
person who is always making blunders.
In 1878 Professor Child and some other political reformers were elected
to a Congressional convention and went with the hope of securing a
candidate who would represent the educated classes,--the incumbent at
that time being a shoe manufacturer. They argued and worked hard all day,
but without success. Late in the afternoon the shoe manufacturer, a
worthy man but very ignorant, who afterwards became governor of the
State, was renominated; and when it was proposed to make the nomination
unanimous Professor Child called out such an emphatic No that it seemed
to shake the whole assembly. Not content with this he entered a protest
next day in the Boston _Advertiser_. He was so much used up by the
exertion that he was unable to attend to his classes. Some years later he
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing his candidate, Theodore Lyman,
nominated and elected.
Emerson once delivered a lecture in Boston on university life in which he
made the rather bold statement that "in the course of twenty years the
rank-list is likely to become inverted." One of Professor Child's class
paraphrased this lecture for a theme, and against the sentence above
quoted the Professor wrote: "A statement frequently made, but what is the
fact?" I do not think he liked Emerson quite so well after this, and he
can hardly be blamed for feeling so. It was not only a disparagement of
good scholarship but like a personal slight upon himself. That Emerson
graduated near the foot of his class ought not to prove that an idle
college life is a sign of genius.
Professor Child talked freely in regard to the meetings of the college
faculty, for he believed that graduates had a right to know about them.
He quoted some amusing anecdotes of a certain professor who led the
opposition against President Eliot and praised the dignified manner with
which Eliot regarded him. In 1879 he said one day:
"We are in the half-way stage between a college and a university, and
there is consequently great confusion. If we once became a university,
pure and simple, all that would be over; but the difficulty is that the
material which comes to us is so poor. I do not mean that the young men
are lacking in intelligence, but the great majority of them do not brace
themselves to the work. As Doctor Hedge says, the heart of the college is
in the boating and ball-playing and not in its studies."
His third occupation and chief recreation was his rose-garden. The whole
space between his front piazza and Kirkland Street was filled with rose-
bushes which he tended himself, from the first loosening of the earth in
spring until the straw sheaf-caps were tied about them in November. What
more delightful occupation for a scholar than working in a rose-garden!
There his friends were most likely to find him in suitable weather, and
when June came they were sure to receive a share of the bountiful
blossoms; nor did he ever forget the sick and suffering.
He was greatly interested to hear of a German doctor at Munich who had a
rose-garden with more than a hundred varieties in it. "I should like to
know that man," he said; "wouldn't we have a good talk together?" He
complained that although everybody liked roses few were sufficiently
interested in them to distinguish the different kinds. Naturally rose-
bugs were his special detestation. "Saving your presence," he said to
President Felton's daughter, "I will crush this insect;" to which she
aptly replied, "I certainly would not have my presence save him." When he
heard of the Buffalo-bug he exclaimed: "Are we going to have another pest
to contend with? I think it is a serious question whether the insect
world is not going to get the better of us."
After his painful death at the Massachusetts Hospital in September, 1896,
the president and fellows of the university voted to set apart little
Holden Chapel, the oldest building on the college grounds, and yet one of
the most dignified, for an English library dedicated to the memory of
Francis J. Child. Such an honor had never been decreed for president or
professor before; and it gives him the distinction that we all feel he
deserved. It is much more appropriate to him, and satisfactory than a
marble statue in Saunders Theatre would have been, or a stained-glass
window in Memorial Hall. Yet his presence still lingers in the memory of
his friends, like the fragrance of his own roses, after the petals have
fallen from their stems.
LONGFELLOW
It has been estimated that there were four hundred poets in England in
the time of Shakespeare, and in the century during which Dante lived
Europe fairly swarmed with poets, many of them of high excellence.
Frederick II. of Germany and Richard I. of England were both good poets,
and were as proud of their verses as they were of their military
exploits. Frederick II. may be said to have founded the vernacular in
which Dante wrote; and Longfellow rendered into English a poem of
Richard's which he composed during his cruel imprisonment in Austria. A
knight who could not compose a song and sing it to the guitar was as rare
as a modern gentleman of fashion who cannot play golf. When James Russell
Lowell resigned the chair of poetry at Harvard no one could be found who
could exactly fill his place, and it was much the same at Oxford after
Matthew Arnold retired.
The difference between then and now would seem to reside in the fact,
that poetry is more easily remembered than prose. From the time of Homer
until long after the invention of printing, not only were ballad-singers
and harpers in good demand, but the recital of poetry was also a favorite
means of livelihood to indigent scholars and others, who wandered about
like the minstrels. The "article," as Tom Moore called it, was in active
request. Poetry was recited in the camp of Alexander, in the Roman baths,
in the castles on the Rhine, and English hostelries. Now it is replaced
by novel-reading, and there are few who know how much pleasure can be
derived on a winter's evening by impromptu poetic recitations. If a
popular interest in poetry should revive again, I have no doubt that
hundreds of poets would spring up, as it were, out of the ground and fill
the air with their pleasant harmonies. The editor of the _Atlantic_
informed Professor Child that he had a whole barrelful of poetry in his
house, much of it excellent, but that there was no use he could make of
it.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was as irrepressible a rhymer as John Watts
himself, and fortunately he had a father who recognized the value of his
talent and assisted him in a judicious manner, instead of placing
obstacles in his way, as the father of Watts is supposed to have done.
The account that Rev. Samuel Longfellow has given us of the youth of his
brother is highly instructive, and ought to be of service to all young
men who fancy they are destined by nature for a poetic career. He tells
us how Henry published his first poem in the Portland _Gazette_, and
how his boyish exultation was dashed with cold water the same evening by
Judge ----, who said of it in his presence: "Stiff, remarkably stiff, and
all the figures are borrowed."
The "Fight at Lovell's Pond" would not have been a remarkable poem for a
youth of nineteen, but it showed very good promise for the age at which
it was written. Few boys at that age can write anything that will hang
together as a poem. Young Longfellow was a better poet at thirteen than
his father's friend, the Judge, was a critic. His verses were by no means
stiff, but on the contrary showed indications of that natural grace and
facility of expression for which he became afterwards distinguished. As
for the originality of his comparisons it is doubtful also if the Judge
could have proved his point on that question. They were original to
Henry, if to nobody else.
Fortunately for Henry he was also a fine scholar. The following year saw
him enter as a Freshman at Bowdoin College, which was equal to entering
Harvard at the age of fifteen. Look out for the youngest members of a
college class! They may not distinguish themselves at the university, but
they are the ones who, if they live, outstrip all others. But Longfellow
did distinguish himself. In his Junior year he composed seventeen poems
which were published, then and afterwards, in the _United States
Literary Gazette_, where his name appeared beside that of William
Cullen Bryant. This was quite exceptional in the history of American
literature, and as the editor of the _Literary Gazette_ stated it:
"A young tree which puts forth so many blossoms is likely to bear good
fruits."
With the close of his college course came the important question of
Longfellow's future occupation. His father, with good practical judgment,
foresaw that poetry alone would not serve to make his son self-supporting
and independent; but the boy hated to give this up for a more prosaic
employment. While the discussion was going on between them, the
authorities of Bowdoin solved the problem for them both by offering young
Longfellow a professorship of modern languages on condition that he would
spend two years in Europe preparing himself for the position. He had
graduated fourth in his class.
Does not this prove the advantage of good scholarship? Was the rank list
inverted in Longfellow's case? I think not. He had lived a virtuous and
industrious life, not studying for rank or honor, but because he enjoyed
doing what was right and fit for a young man to do; and now the reward
had come to him, like the sun breaking through the clouds which seemed to
obscure his future prospects. Still, there was a hard road before him. It
is very pleasant to travel rapidly through foreign countries, seeing the
best that is in them and to return home with a multitude of fresh
impressions; but living and working a long time in another country seems
too much like exile. The loneliness of the situation becomes a weary
burden, and it is dangerous from its very loneliness. Many have died or
lost their health under such conditions (in fact Longfellow came near
losing his life from Roman fever), and he wrote from Paris: "Here one can
keep evil at a distance as well as elsewhere, though, to be sure,
temptations are multiplied a thousand-fold if he is willing to enter into
them." A young man's first experience in London or Paris is a dangerous
sense of freedom; for all the customary restraints of his daily life have
been removed.
Mrs. Stowe says of her beautiful character, "Eva St. Clair," that all bad
influences rolled off from her like dew from a cabbage leaf, and it was
the same with Longfellow throughout. He lived in France, Spain, Italy,
and Germany, and then returned to Portland, the same true American as
when he left there, without foreign ways or modes of thinking, and with
no more than the slight aroma of a foreign air upon him. Longfellow and
his whole family were natural cosmopolitans. There was nothing of the
proverbial Yankee in their composition.
Whittier was a Quaker by creed, but he was also much of a Yankee in style
and manner. Emerson looked like a Yankee, and possessed the cool Yankee
shrewdness. Lowell's "Biglow Papers" testified to the fundamental Yankee;
but the Longfellows were endowed with a peculiar refinement and purity
which seemed to distinguish them as much in Cambridge or London as it did
in Portland, where there has always been a rather superior sort of
society. It was like French refinement without being Gallic. No wonder
that a famous poet should emanate from such a family.
What we notice especially in the Longfellow Letters during this European
sojourn is the admonition of Henry's father, that German literature was
more important than Italian,--and the poet was always largely influenced
by this afterwards; that Henry did not find Paris particularly
attractive, and on the whole preferred the Spanish character to the
French on account of its deeper under-currents; that he did not seem to
realize the danger that menaced him from Spanish brigands, in spite of
the black crosses by the roadside; and that he was not vividly impressed
by the famous works of art in the Louvre gallery. He only notices that
one of Correggio's figures resembles a young lady in Portland.
Longfellow would seem to have been always the same in regard to his
appreciation of art. When he was in Italy, in 1869, he visited all the
picture galleries and evidently enjoyed doing so; but it was easy to see
that his brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow, felt a much livelier interest
in the subject than he did; and injured frescos or mutilated statues,
like the Torso of the Belvidere, were objects of aversion to him. Poets
and musical composers see more with their ears than they do with their
eyes.
The single work of art that attracted him strongly at this time was a
statue of Venus, by Canova, which he compares to the Venus de' Medici,
and his brother Samuel remarks that he was always more attracted by
sculpture than painting. Canova was a genius very similar to Longfellow
himself, as nearly as an Italian could be made to match an American, and
he was then at the height of his reputation.
In 1829 Longfellow returned to Portland and was immediately chosen a
professor at Bowdoin College, where he remained for the next seven years.
When, in 1836, Professor Ticknor retired from his position as instructor
of modern languages at Harvard, his place was offered to Longfellow and
accepted. This brought him into the literary centre of New England, and
one of the first acquaintances he made there was Charles Sumner, who was
lecturing before the Harvard Law-School.
The friendship between these two great men commenced at once and only
ceased at Sumner's death in 1874, when Longfellow wrote one of the finest
of his shorter poems in tribute to Sumner's memory. It was as poetic a
friendship as that between Emerson and Carlyle; but whereas Emerson and
Carlyle had differences of opinion, Sumner and Longfellow were always of
one mind. When Sumner made his Fanueil Hall speech against the fugitive
slave law, which was simply fighting revolution with revolution, and
Harvard College and the whole of Cambridge turned against him, Longfellow
stood firm; and it may be suspected that he had many an unpleasant
discussion with his aristocratic acquaintances on this point. It was
considered bad enough to support Garrison, but supporting Sumner was a
great deal worse, for Sumner was an orator who wielded a power only
inferior to Webster. Fortunately for Longfellow, his connection with the
university ceased not long after Sumner's election to the Senate; and the
unpleasantness of his position may have been the leading cause of his
retirement.
Sumner was the best friend Longfellow had, and perhaps the best that he
could have had. There was Emerson, of course, and Longfellow was always
on friendly terms with him; but Emerson had a habit of catechising his
companions which some of them did not altogether like; and this may have
been the case with Longfellow, for they never became very intimate.
Sumner, on the contrary, had always a large stock of information to
dispense, not only concerning American affairs but those of other
nations, in which Longfellow never lost his interest. More important to
him even than this is the fact that Sumner's statements were always to be
trusted. It may be surmised that it was not so much similarity of opinion
as the purity of their motives that brought the poet and statesman
together.
As soon as Sumner returned from Washington, in spring or summer, he would
go out to call on Longfellow; and it was a pleasant sight to see them
walking together on a June evening beneath the overarching elms of
historic Brattle Street. They were a pair of majestic-looking men; and
though Longfellow was nearly a head shorter than Sumner, his broad
shoulders gave him an appearance of strength, as his capacious head and
strong, finely cut features evidently denoted an exceptional intellect.
He wore his hair poetically long, almost to his coat collar; and yet
there was not the slightest air of the Bohemian about him. They seemed to
be oblivious of everything except their conversation; and if this could
have been recorded it might prove to be as interesting as the poetry of
the one and the orations of the other. They were evidently talking on
great subjects, and the earnestness on Sumner's face was reflected on
Longfellow's as in a mirror.
Hawthorne was a classmate of Longfellow, and in the biography of the
latter there are a number of letters from one to the other which are
always friendly,--but never more than that on Hawthorne's side,--with one
exception, where he thanks Longfellow for a complimentary review of
"Twice-Told Tales" in the _North American_. At that time the
_North American_ was considered an authority which could make or
unmake an author's reputation; and Longfellow may be said to have opened
the door for Hawthorne into the great world. Hawthorne's friendship for
President Pierce proved an advantage to him financially, but it also
became a barrier between him and the other literary men of his time. Of
course he believed what his friend Pierce told him concerning public
affairs, and when he found that his other friends had not the same faith
in Pierce's veracity he became more strongly a partisan of the pro-
slavery cause on that account. Longfellow frankly admitted that he did
not understand Hawthorne, and he did not believe that anyone at Bowdoin
College understood him. He was the most secretive man that he ever knew;
but so far as genius was concerned, he believed that Hawthorne would
outlive every other writer of his time. He had the will of a great
conqueror.
Goethe has been called the pampered child of genius, of fortune, and the
muse; but if Goethe had greater celebrity he never enjoyed half the
worldly prosperity of Longfellow. While Emerson was earning a hard
livelihood by lecturing in the West, and Whittier was dwelling in a
country farm-house, Longfellow occupied one of the most desirable
residences in or about Boston, and had all the means at his command that
a modest man could wish for. The Craigie House was, and still remains,
the finest residence in Cambridge,--"formerly the head-quarters of
Washington, and afterwards of the Muses." Good architecture never becomes
antiquated, and the Craigie House is not only spacious within, but
dignified without.
One could best realize Longfellow's opulence by walking through his
library adjacent to the eastern piazza, and gazing at the magnificent
editions of foreign authors which had been presented to him by his
friends and admirers; especially the fine set of Chateaubriand's works,
in all respects worthy of a royal collection. There is no ornament in a
house that testifies to the quality of the owner like a handsome library.
Byron would seem to have been the only other poet that has enjoyed such
prosperity, although Bryant, as editor of a popular newspaper, may have
approached it closely; but a city house, with windows on only two sides,
is not like a handsome suburban residence. Longfellow could look across
the Cambridge marshes and see the sunsets reflected in the water of the
Charles River.
Here he lived from 1843, when he married Miss Appleton, a daughter of one
of the wealthiest merchant-bankers of Boston, until his death by
pneumonia in March, 1882. The situation seemed suited to him, and he
always remained a true poet and devoted to the muses:
Integer vitae scelerisque purus.
He did not believe in a luxurious life except so far as luxury added to
refinement, and everything in the way of fashionable show was very
distasteful to him. His brother Samuel once said, "I cannot imagine
anything more disagreeable than to ride in a public procession;" and the
two men were more alike than brothers often are. We notice in the poet's
diary that he abstains from going to a certain dinner in Boston for fear
of being called upon to make a speech. Craigie House gave Longfellow the
opportunity in which he most delighted,--of entertaining his friends and
distinguished foreign guests in a handsome manner; but conventional
dinner parties, with their fourteen plates half surrounded by wine-
glasses, were not often seen there. He much preferred a smaller number of
guests with the larger freedom of discourse which accompanies a select
gathering. Many such occasions are referred to in his diary,--as if he
did not wish to forget them.
He was the finest host and story-teller in the country. His genial
courtesy was simply another expression of that mental grace which made
his reputation as a poet, and his manner of reciting an incident,
otherwise trivial, would give it the same additional quality as in his
verses on Springfield Arsenal and the crooked Songo River, which without
Longfellow would be little or nothing. Then his fund of information was
what might be expected from a man who had lived in all the countries of
western Europe.
He had humble and unfortunate friends whom he seemed to think as much of
as though they were distinguished. He recognized fine traits of
character, perhaps real greatness of character, in out-of-the-way
places,--men whose chief happiness was their acquaintance with
Longfellow. It was something much better than charity; and Professor
Child spoke of it on the day of Emerson's funeral as the finest flower in
the poet's wreath.