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American Men of Letters
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
BY
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1902
COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published October, 1902_
_Of this edition Three Hundred Copies have been printed and bound
entirely uncut with paper label_
PREFACE
A life of Longfellow has been from the beginning included in the plan of
the "American Men of Letters" series, but it has been delayed through a
variety of causes. Like all memoirs of this poet, it must rest partly on
the material amply furnished by the "Life" so admirably prepared by his
brother sixteen years ago, yet it may be well to explain that the
present volume will be found marked by three especial characteristics of
its own. First, much additional material is here drawn from the
manuscript correspondence of the first Mrs. Longfellow, received from
her family and bearing upon the poet's early married years and first
visit to Europe, during what was undoubtedly the formative period of his
life. Secondly, there is a good deal of material obtained from the
manuscript volumes known as the "Harvard College Papers" and preserved
at the University Library, elucidating the academical side of
Longfellow's life. Thirdly, there is a series of extracts from his
earlier writings, dating from college days and not hitherto brought
together, but showing the origin and growth of his lifelong desire to
employ American material and to help the creation of a native
literature; the desire which had its final fulfilment in "Evangeline"
and "Hiawatha." These three sources will be found, if the author is not
mistaken, to have afforded distinct contributions to our previous
knowledge as to Longfellow's character and work.
T. W. H.
CONTENTS
Chap. Page
I. Longfellow as a Classic 1
II. Birth, Childhood, and Youth 11
III. First Flights in Authorship 21
IV. Literature as a Pursuit 37
V. First Visit to Europe 45
VI. Marriage and Life at Brunswick 59
VII. The Corner Stone laid 67
VIII. Appointment at Harvard and
Second Visit to Europe 81
IX. Illness and Death of Mrs. Longfellow 107
X. Craigie House 116
XI. Hyperion and the Reaction from It 124
XII. Voices of the Night 137
XIII. Third Visit to Europe 149
XIV. Anti-Slavery Poems and Second Marriage 163
XV. Academic Life in Cambridge 176
XVI. Literary Life in Cambridge 188
XVII. Resignation of Professorship--
to Death of Mrs. Longfellow 202
XVIII. Birds of Passage 213
XIX. Last Trip to Europe 219
XX. Dante 225
XXI. The Loftier Strain: Christus 236
XXII. Westminster Abbey 248
XXIII. Longfellow as a Poet 258
XXIV. Longfellow as a Man 278
Appendix 297
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
CHAPTER I
LONGFELLOW AS A CLASSIC
The death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow made the first breach in that
well-known group of poets which adorned Boston and its vicinity so long.
The first to go was also the most widely famous. Emerson reached greater
depths of thought; Whittier touched the problems of the nation's life
more deeply; Holmes came personally more before the public; Lowell was
more brilliant and varied; but, taking the English-speaking world at
large, it was Longfellow whose fame overshadowed all the others; he was
also better known and more translated upon the continent of Europe than
all the rest put together, and, indeed, than any other contemporary poet
of the English-speaking race, at least if bibliographies afford any
test. Add to this that his place of residence was so accessible and so
historic, his personal demeanor so kindly, his life so open and
transparent, that everything really conspired to give him the highest
accessible degree of contemporary fame. There was no literary laurel
that was not his, and he resolutely declined all other laurels; he had
wealth and ease, children and grandchildren, health and a stainless
conscience; he had also, in a peculiar degree, the blessings that belong
to Shakespeare's estimate of old age,--"honor, love, obedience, troops
of friends." Except for two great domestic bereavements, his life would
have been one of absolutely unbroken sunshine; in his whole career he
never encountered any serious rebuff, while such were his personal
modesty and kindliness that no one could long regard him with envy or
antagonism. Among all the sons of song there has rarely been such an
instance of unbroken and unstained success.
Yet the fact that his death took place twenty years ago may justly raise
the question how far this wave of success has followed his memory, or
how far the passage of time has impaired his traditional influence; and
here we must compare a variety of tests and standards to ascertain the
result. Some analysis of this kind may well precede any new attempt to
delineate his career.
The editor of one of the great London weeklies said to an American
traveller not many years ago, "A stranger can hardly have an idea of how
familiar many of our working people, especially women, are with
Longfellow. Thousands can repeat some of his poems who have never read
a line of Tennyson and probably never heard of Browning." This passage I
take from an admirable recent sketch by Professor Edwin A. Grosvenor of
Amherst College, one of the most cosmopolitan of Americans, who spent
seven years as professor of history at Robert College, Constantinople.
He goes on to tell how, in the largest private library in the Ottoman
Empire, the grand vizier showed him as his favorite book a large volume
of Longfellow, full of manuscript comments in Turkish on the margin,
adding that he knew some of the poems by heart. Professor Grosvenor was
at one time--in 1879--travelling by steamer from Constantinople to
Marseilles with a Russian lady who had been placed under his escort, and
whose nationality could have been detected only by her marvellous
knowledge of half a dozen languages beside her own. A party of
passengers had been talking in French of Victor Hugo, when the Russian
lady exclaimed in English to the last speaker, "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!" She then repeated the
verses beginning, "I stood on the bridge at midnight," and added, "I
long to visit Boston, that I may stand on the bridge." Then an English
captain, returning from the Zulu war, said, "I can give you something
better than that," and recited in a voice like a trumpet,--
"Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream."
Presently a gray-haired Scotchman began to recite the poem,--
"There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!"
An American contributed "My Lost Youth," being followed by a young Greek
temporarily living in England, who sang "Stars of the Summer Night."
Finally the captain of the steamer, an officer of the French navy
detailed for that purpose, whom nobody had suspected of knowing a word
of English, recited, in an accent hardly recognizable, the first verse
of "Excelsior," and when the Russian lady, unable to understand him,
denied the fact of its being English at all, he replied, "Ah, oui,
madame, ça a vient de votre Longfellow" (Yes, madam, that is from your
Longfellow). Six nationalities had thus been represented, and the
Russian lady said, as they rose from the table, "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 Shakespeare, or Victor Hugo, or
Homer."{1}
One has merely to glance at any detailed catalogue of the translations
from Longfellow's works--as for instance that given in the appendix to
this volume--to measure the vast extent of his fame. The list includes
thirty-five versions of whole books or detached poems in German, twelve
in Italian, nine each in French and Dutch, seven in Swedish, six in
Danish, five in Polish, three in Portuguese, two each in Spanish,
Russian, Hungarian, and Bohemian, with single translations in Latin,
Hebrew, Chinese, Sanskrit, Marathi, and Judea-German--yielding one
hundred versions altogether, extending into eighteen languages, apart
from the original English. There is no evidence that any other
English-speaking poet of the last century has been so widely
appreciated.
Especially is this relative superiority noticeable in that wonderful
literary cyclopædia, the vast and many-volumed catalogue of the British
Museum. There, under each author's name, is found not merely the record
of his works in every successive edition, but every secondary or
relative book, be it memoir, criticism, attack, parody, or translation;
and it is always curious to consider the relative standing of American
and English authors under this severe and inexorable test. The entries
or items appearing in the interleaved catalogue under the name of
Tennyson, for instance, up to September, 1901, were 487; under
Longfellow, 357; then follow, among English-writing poets, Browning
(179), Emerson (158), Arnold (140), Holmes (135), Morris (117), Lowell
(114), Whittier (104), Poe (103), Swinburne (99), Whitman (64). The
nearest approach to a similar test of appreciation in the poet's own
country is to be found in the balloting for the new Hall of Fame,
established by an unknown donor on the grounds of the New York
University with the avowed object of creating an American Westminster
Abbey. The names of those who were to appear in it were selected by a
board of one hundred judges carefully chosen from men of all occupations
and distributed over every State in the Union; and these balloted for
the first hundred occupants of the Hall of Fame. Only thirty-nine names
obtained a majority of votes, these being taken, of course, from men of
all pursuits; and among these Longfellow ranked tenth, having
eighty-five votes, and being preceded only by Washington, Lincoln,
Webster, Franklin, Grant, Marshall, Jefferson, Emerson, and Fulton.
Besides Emerson and Longfellow, only two literary men were included,
these being Irving with eighty-four votes and Hawthorne with
seventy-three.
It is a well-known fact that when the temporary leader in any particular
branch of literature or science passes away, there is often visible a
slight reaction, perhaps in the interest of supposed justice, when
people try to convince themselves that his fame has already diminished.
Such reactions have notably occurred, for instance, in the cases of
Scott, Byron, Wordsworth, and even of Burns, yet without visible or
permanent results, while the weaker fame of Southey or of Campbell has
yielded to them. It is safe to say that up to the present moment no
serious visible reaction has occurred in the case of Longfellow. So
absolutely simple and truthful was his nature and so clear the response
of the mass of readers, that time has so far left his hold upon them
singularly unaffected. During a recent visit to England, the author of
this volume took some pains, in every place he visited in city or
country, to inquire of the local bookseller as to the demand for
Longfellow's poems, and the answer was always in substance and sometimes
in express words, "He is a classic,"--in other words, his books had a
steady and trustworthy sale. I always found his poems on the shelves,
and this was true of no other American poet. Several editions of his
works, single or collective, had recently appeared in London. Poems
newly set to music had lately been published at the music stalls, and
familiar citations from his poems were constantly heard in public
speeches. Inquiries similar to mine were made a few years since in the
book-stores of Switzerland and Germany by my friend, Professor W. J.
Rolfe, who found without difficulty the German and English text of
single or collected poems by Longfellow at Nuremberg, Cologne,
Strasburg, Lucerne, Interlaken, and elsewhere.
Another form of obtaining statistics bearing on the relative position of
Longfellow among English-writing poets would be to inspect books of
selections made in Great Britain out of this class. I find two such
lying near at hand; the first is "Pen and Pencil Pictures from the
Poets," published by William P. Nimmo at Edinburgh, containing fifty-six
poems in all, each with a full-page illustration, generally by Scottish
artists. Of these selections, six are taken from Longfellow, five each
from Wordsworth and Thomson, and three each from Shakespeare, Burns, and
Moore. Of other American poets Bryant and Willis alone appear, each with
one contribution. Another such book is "Words from the Poets; selected
for the use of parochial schools and libraries." To this the leading
contributors are Wordsworth (twenty-one), Longfellow (eighteen), Cowper
(eleven), and Tennyson (nine), the whole number of contributors being
forty-three. Such statistics could be easily multiplied; indeed, it will
be readily admitted that no American poet can be compared to Longfellow
in the place occupied by his poems in the English market. Readily
admitting that this is not the sole or highest standard, it must at
least be recognized as one of the side tests by which that standard may
be determined.
Some occasional expressions of distrust as to Longfellow's permanent
fame have been based wholly upon his virtues. Many still cling to
Dryden's maxim, "Great wits are sure to madness near allied." Those who
grew up during the period when the Lake poets of England were still
under discussion can well recall that the typical poet was long supposed
to be necessarily something of a reprobate, or at any rate wild and
untamable; so that Byron and Shelley gained in fame by the supposition
that the domestic and law-abiding gifts were far from them. The
prominence of Wordsworth was developed in spite of this tradition, and
even when the report cheered some of his would-be admirers that he had
once been intoxicated at the university, it was damped by the opinion
expressed by Theodore Hook that "Wordsworth's conceptions of inebriation
were no doubt extremely limited." The popular impression in such matters
is too deep to be easily removed; and yet every test continues to prove
that the hold taken on the average human heart by Longfellow is far
greater than that held, for instance, by Poe or Whitman. This was
practically conceded by those poets themselves, and it is this fact
which in reality excited the wrath of their especial admirers. No man
ever sacrificed less for mere fame than Longfellow, no man ever bore
attack or jealousy with more of manly self-respect and sweetness; he
simply lived his own life, and worked out his own literary method; all
that he asked was to be taken for what he was worth, and the world's
praise was the answer to his request. The continuance of this hold on
men surely affords a sufficient reason for the renewed study of this
poet's life, training, and career.
{1 _N. Y. Independent_, October 22, 1896.}