CRAIGIE HOUSE
In entering on the duties of his Harvard professorship (December, 1836)
Longfellow took rooms at the Craigie House in Cambridge. This house, so
long his residence, has been claimed as having more historic interest
than any house in New England, both from the fact of his ownership and
of its having been the headquarters of General Washington during the
siege of Boston. It has even been called from these two circumstances
the best known residence in the United States, with the exception of Mt.
Vernon, with which it has some analogy both in position and in aspect.
It overlooks the Charles River as the other overlooks the Potomac,
though the latter view is of course far more imposing, and the Craigie
House wants the picturesque semicircle of outbuildings so characteristic
of Mt. Vernon, while it is far finer in respect to rooms, especially in
the upper stories. It was built, in all probability, in 1759 by Colonel
John Vassall, whose family owned the still older house across the way
now called the Batchelder House; and there is a tradition of a
subterranean passage between the two houses, although this has hitherto
been sought in vain. Both these dwellings belonged to a series of large
houses on Brattle Street, called Tory Row, whose proprietors were almost
all kinsfolk, owned West India estates and slaves, entertained company
in great affluence, according to the descriptions of the Baroness
Riedesel, and were almost all forced to leave the country at the
approach of the Revolution. Tradition recalls a Twelfth Night party
given by Mrs. Washington in 1776, she having come to visit her husband
during his residence in Cambridge. "She arrived in great ceremony, with
a coach and four black horses, with postilions and servants in scarlet
livery. During her visit she and her husband celebrated their wedding
anniversary, though the General had to be much persuaded by his
aides."{37} The southeastern room, afterwards Longfellow's study, had
been Washington's office, and the chamber above it his private room,
this being Longfellow's original study. The house was bought about
1792, the dates being a little uncertain, by Andrew Craigie,
apothecary-general of the northern department of the Revolutionary army,
who made additions to the house, which was described as a princely
establishment.{38} Mr. Craigie sometimes entertained a hundred guests at
the Commencement festival, and had among his other guests the celebrated
Talleyrand and the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria's father, then Prince
Edward. Mr. Craigie had large business transactions, speculated
extensively but at last unsuccessfully in real estate, and died in 1819.
His wife long outlived him, and being poor, let rooms to various
inmates. Edward Everett took his bride there in 1822, and so did
President Jared Sparks in 1832. Five years after, Longfellow took the
rooms, and thus describes his first visit to Mrs. Craigie:--
"The first time I was in Craigie House was on a beautiful afternoon in
the year 1837. I came to see Mr. McLane, a law-student, who occupied the
southeastern chamber. The window-blinds were closed, but through them
came a pleasant breeze, and I could see the waters of the Charles
gleaming in the meadows. McLane left Cambridge in August, and I took
possession of his room, making use of it as a library or study, and
having the adjoining chamber for my bedroom. At first Mrs. Craigie
declined to let me have rooms. I remember how she looked as she stood,
in her white turban, with her hands crossed behind her, snapping her
gray eyes. She had resolved, she said, to take no more students into the
house. But her manner changed when I told her who I was. She said that
she had read 'Outre-Mer,' of which one number was lying on her
side-board. She then took me all over the house and showed me every room
in it, saying, as we went into each, that I could not have that one. She
finally consented to my taking the rooms mentioned above, on condition
that the door leading into the back entry should be locked on the
outside. Young Habersham, of Savannah, a friend of Mrs. Craigie's,
occupied at that time the other front chamber. He was a skilful
performer on the flute. Like other piping birds, he took wing for the
rice-fields of the South when the cold weather came, and I remained
alone with the widow in her castle. The back part of the house was
occupied, however, by her farmer. His wife supplied my meals and took
care of my rooms. She was a giantess, and very pious in words; and when
she brought in my breakfast frequently stopped to exhort me. The
exorbitant rate at which she charged my board was rather at variance
with her preaching. Her name was Miriam; and Felton called her 'Miriam,
the profitess.' Her husband was a meek little man.
"The winter was a rather solitary one, and the house very still. I used
to hear Mrs. Craigie go down to breakfast at nine or ten in the morning
and go up to bed at eleven at night. During the day she seldom left
the parlor, where she sat reading the newspapers and the
magazines,--occasionally a volume of Voltaire. She read also the
English Annuals, of which she had a large collection. Occasionally, the
sound of voices announced a visitor; and she sometimes enlivened the
long evenings with a half-forgotten tune upon an old piano-forte.
"During the following summer the fine old elms in front of the house
were attacked by canker-worms, which, after having devoured the leaves,
came spinning down in myriads. Mrs. Craigie used to sit by the open
windows and let them crawl over her white turban unmolested. She would
have nothing done to protect the trees from these worms; she used to
say, 'Why, sir, they are our fellow-worms; they have as good a right to
live as we have.'"
It was certainly a strange chance which threw the young poet, on his
return from Europe, into the curiously cosmopolitan atmosphere of Mrs.
Craigie's mind. The sale catalogue of her books lies before me, a mass
of perhaps five hundred odd volumes of worthy or worthless literature:
Goethe's "Werther" beside the American "Frugal Housewife," and Heath's
"Book of Beauty" beside "Hannah More." Yet it was doubtless the only
house in Cambridge which then held complete sets of Voltaire and
Diderot, of Molière, Crébillon, and Florian, Madame de Sévigné and
Madame de Staël. Some of the books thus sold form a part to this day of
the Longfellow library at Craigie House; but there is no reference to
the poet in the original catalogue, except that it includes "Outre-Mer,"
No. 1, doubtless the same copy which he saw lying on the sideboard.
Mr. J. E. Worcester, the lexicographer, shared the house with
Longfellow, as did for a time Miss Sally Lowell, an aunt of the poet.
Mr. Worcester bought it for himself, and ultimately sold it to Mr.
Nathan Appleton, father of the second Mrs. Longfellow, to whom he
presented it. Part of the ten magnificent elms of which Longfellow wrote
in 1839 have disappeared. The ground has been improved by the low-fenced
terrace which he added, and the grounds opposite, given by the poet's
children to the Longfellow Memorial Association, have been graded into a
small public park descending nearly to the river. Within the house all
remains much the same, Longfellow's library never having been scattered,
although his manuscripts and proof-sheets, which he preserved and caused
to be bound in their successive stages in the most orderly manner, have
now been transferred to a fire-proof building for greater security. The
"old clock on the stairs," which he himself placed there, still ticks
and strikes the hour; and one can see cracks in the stairway through
which the mysterious letters dropped morning after morning, as told in
the story of "Esther Wynne's Love Letters," by the accomplished author
known as Saxe Holm. The actual letters were more commonplace, but they
were apparently written by a schoolgirl under Mr. Craigie's care; and
there was a tradition, not very well authenticated, that Longfellow
himself had planned to make them the subject of a poem before Saxe Holm
or Helen Hunt--as the case may be--had anticipated him in prose.
Such was the house where Longfellow resided for the rest of his life;
seven years of which passed before his second wedded life began. The
following letter, taken from the Harvard College papers, will show the
interest he took in the estate.
MY DEAR SIR [President Quincy],--Will you have the goodness to lay
before the Corporation, at their next meeting, my request concerning
the trees, which I mentioned to you the last time I had the pleasure
of seeing you; viz. that they would permit me to take from the
College grounds 3 elm trees to be placed in front of the Craigie
House.
I am endeavoring to replace, as well as possible, the old elms, and
find it difficult to obtain many of the size I desire. Some parts of
the College ground are so thickly planted that a tree may be
removed, here & there, without at all impairing the beauty of the
grounds. I therefore request permission to remove any 3 trees that
the College Steward shall say may be taken without detriment to the
College property.
Yrs very truly,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 29 [1843].{39}
{37 Miss Alice M. Longfellow in _The Cambridge Tribune_, April 21, 1900,
page 4.}
{38 A history of this house from original documents was prepared by
Samuel S. Green, of Worcester, and was read by him before the American
Antiquarian Society, April 25, 1900, and published in their documents.}
{39 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xii. 26.}