ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS AND SECOND MARRIAGE
It is difficult now to realize what an event in Longfellow's life was
the fact of his writing a series of anti-slavery poems on board ship and
publishing them in a thin pamphlet on his return. Parties on the subject
were already strongly drawn; the anti-slavery party being itself divided
into subdivisions which criticised each other sharply. Longfellow's
temperament was thoroughly gentle and shunned extremes, so that the
little thin yellow-covered volume came upon the community with something
like a shock. As a matter of fact, various influences had led him up to
it. His father had been a subscriber to Benjamin Lundy's "Genius of
Universal Emancipation," the precursor of Garrison's "Liberator." In his
youth at Brunswick, Longfellow had thought of writing a drama on the
subject of "Toussaint l'Ouverture," his reason for it being thus given,
"that thus I may do something in my humble way for the great cause of
negro emancipation."
Margaret Fuller, who could by no means be called an abolitionist,
described the volume as "the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin
books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the subject would
warrant a deeper tone." On the other hand, the editors of "Graham's
Magazine" wrote to Mr. Longfellow that "the word slavery was never
allowed to appear in a Philadelphia periodical," and that "the publisher
objected to have even the name of the book appear in his pages." His
friend Samuel Ward, always an agreeable man of the world, wrote from New
York of the poems, "They excite a good deal of attention and sell
rapidly. I have sent one copy to the South and others shall follow," and
includes Longfellow among "you abolitionists." The effect of the poems
was unquestionably to throw him on the right side of the great moral
contest then rising to its climax, while he incurred, like his great
compeers, Channing, Emerson, and Sumner, some criticism from the
pioneers. Such differences are inevitable among reformers, whose
internal contests are apt to be more strenuous and formidable than those
incurred between opponents; and recall to mind that remark of Cosmo de
Medici which Lord Bacon called "a desperate saying;" namely, that "Holy
Writ bids us to forgive our enemies, but it is nowhere enjoined upon us
that we should forgive our friends."
To George Lunt, a poet whose rhymes Longfellow admired, but who bitterly
opposed the anti-slavery movement, he writes his programme as follows:--
"I am sorry you find so much to gainsay in my Poems on Slavery. I shall
not argue the point with you, however, but will simply state to you my
belief.
"1. I believe slavery to be an unrighteous institution, based on the
false maxim that Might makes Right.
"2. I have great faith in doing what is righteous, and fear no evil
consequences.
"3. I believe that every one has a perfect right to express his opinion
on the subject of Slavery, as on every other thing; that every one ought
so to do, until the public opinion of all Christendom shall penetrate
into and change the hearts of the Southerners on this subject.
"4. I would have no other _interference_ than what is sanctioned by law.
"5. I believe that where there is a _will_ there is a _way_. When the
whole country sincerely wishes to get rid of Slavery, it will readily
find the means.
"6. Let us, therefore, do all we can to bring about this _will_, in all
gentleness and Christian charity.
"And God speed the time!"{61}
Mr. Longfellow was, I think, not quite justly treated by the critics, or
even by his latest biographer, Professor Carpenter,{62} for consenting
to the omission of the anti-slavery poems from his works, published by
Carey and Hart in Philadelphia in November, 1845. This was an
illustrated edition which had been for some time in preparation and did
not apparently, like the nearly simultaneous edition of Harper, assume
to contain his complete works. The Harper edition was published in
February, 1846, in cheaper form and double columns, and was the really
collective edition, containing the anti-slavery poems and all. As we do
not know the circumstances of the case, it cannot positively be asserted
why this variation occurred, but inasmuch as the Harpers were at that
period, and for many years after, thoroughly conservative on the slavery
question and extremely opposed to referring to it in any way, it is
pretty certain that it must have been because of the positive demand of
Longfellow that these poems were included by them. The criticism of the
abolitionists on him was undoubtedly strengthened by the apostrophe to
the Union at the close of his poem, "The Building of the Ship," in 1850,
a passage which was described by William Lloyd Garrison in the
"Liberator" as "a eulogy dripping with the blood of imbruted
humanity,"{63} and was quite as severely viewed by one of the most
zealous of the Irish abolitionists, who thus wrote to their friends in
Boston:--
DUBLIN [IRELAND], April 28, 1850.
[After speaking about Miss Weston's displeasure with Whittier and
her being unfair to him, etc., the letter adds--]
Is it not a poor thing for Longfellow that he is no
abolitionist--that his anti-slavery poetry is perfect dish water
beside Whittier's--and that he has just penned a Pæan on the Union?
I can no more comprehend what there is in the Union to make the
Yankee nation adore it--than you can understand the attractions of
Royalty & Aristocracy which thousands of very good people in England
look on as the source & mainstay of all that is great and good in
the nation....
RICH D. WEBB.{64}
Yet Mr. Whittier himself, though thus contrasted with Longfellow, had
written thanking him for his "Poems on Slavery," which in tract form, he
said, "had been of important service to the Liberty movement." Whittier
had also asked whether Longfellow would accept a nomination to Congress
from the Liberty Party, and had added, "Our friends think they could
throw for thee one thousand more votes than for any other man."{65} Nor
was Whittier himself ever a disunionist, even on anti-slavery grounds.
It is interesting to note that it was apparently the anti-slavery
question which laid the foundation for the intimacy between Longfellow
and Lowell. Lowell had been invited, on the publication of "A Year's
Life," to write for an annual which was to appear in Boston and to be
edited, in Lowell's own phrase, "by Longfellow, Felton, Hillard and that
set."{66} Lowell subsequently wrote in the "Pioneer" kindly notices of
Longfellow's "Poems on Slavery," but there is no immediate evidence of
any personal relations between them at that time. In a letter to Poe,
dated at Elmwood June 27, 1844, Lowell says of a recent article in the
"Foreign Quarterly Review" attributed to John Forster, "Forster is a
friend of some of the Longfellow clique here, which perhaps accounts for
his putting L. at the top of our Parnassus. These kinds of arrangements
do very well, however, for the present."{67}... It will be noticed that
what Lowell had originally called a "set" has now become a "clique." It
is also evident that lie did not regard Longfellow as the assured head
of the American Parnassus, and at any rate he suggests some possible
rearrangement for the future. Their real friendship seems to have begun
with a visit by Longfellow to Lowell's study on October 29, 1846, when
the conversation turned chiefly on the slavery question. Longfellow
called to see him again on the publication of his second volume of
poems, at the end of the following year, and Lowell spent an evening
with Longfellow during March, 1848, while engaged on "The Fable for
Critics," in which the younger poet praised the elder so warmly.
Longfellow's own state of mind at this period is well summed up in the
following letter to his wife's younger sister, Mrs. Peter Thacher, then
recently a mother.
CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 15, 1843.
MY DEAR MARGARET,--I was very much gratified by your brief epistle,
which reached me night before last, and brought me the assurances of
your kind remembrance. Believe me, I have often thought of you and
your husband; and have felt that your new home, though remote from
many of your earlier friends, was nevertheless to you the centre of
a world of happiness. With your affection, and your "young
Astyanax," the "yellow house" becomes a golden palace.
For my part, Life seems to be to me "a battle and a march." I am
sometimes well,--sometimes ill, and always restless. My late
expedition to Germany did me a vast deal of good; and my health is
better than it has been for years. So long as I keep out of doors
and take exercise enough, I feel perfectly well. So soon as I shut
myself up and begin to study, I feel perfectly ill. Thus the
Sphinx's riddle--the secret of health--is discovered. In Germany I
led an out-of-door life; bathing and walking from morning till
night. I was at Boppard on the Rhine, in the old convent of
Marienberg, now a Bathing establishment. I travelled a little in
Germany; then passed through Belgium to England. In London I staid
with Dickens; and had a very pleasant visit. His wife is a gentle,
lovely character; and he has four children, all beautiful and good.
I saw likewise _the_ raven, who is stuffed in the entry--and his
successor, who stalks gravely in the garden.
I am very sorry, my dear Margaret, that I cannot grant your request
in regard to Mary's Journal. Just before I sailed for Europe, being
in low spirits, and reflecting on the uncertainties of such an
expedition as I was then beginning, I burned a great many letters
and private papers, and among them this. I now regret it; but alas!
too late.
Ah! my dear Margaret! though somewhat wayward and restless, I most
affectionately cherish the memory of my wife. You know how happily
we lived together; and _I_ know that never again shall I be loved
with such devotion, sincerity, and utter forgetfulness of self. Make
her your model, and you will make your husband ever happy; and be to
him as a household lamp irradiating his darkest hours.
Give my best regards to him. I should like very much to visit you;
but know not how I can bring it about. Kiss "young Astyanax" for me,
and believe me ever affectionately your brother
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
Meanwhile a vast change in his life was approaching. He had met, seven
years before in Switzerland, a maiden of nineteen, Frances Elizabeth
Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton, a Boston merchant; and though his
early sketch of her in "Hyperion" may have implied little on either
side, it was fulfilled at any rate, after these years of acquaintance,
by her consenting; to become his wife, an event which took place on the
13th of July, 1843, and was thus announced by him in a letter to Miss
Eliza A. Potter of Portland, his first wife's elder sister.
CAMBRIDGE, May 25, 1843.
MY DEAR ELIZA,--I have been meaning for a week or more to write you
in order to tell you of my engagement, and to ask your sympathies
and good wishes. But I have been so much occupied, and have had so
many letters to write, to go by the last steamers, that I have been
rather neglectful of some of my nearer and dearer friends; trusting
to their kindness for my excuse.
Yes, my dear Eliza, I am to be married again. My life was too lonely
and restless;--I needed the soothing influences of a home;--and I
have chosen a person for my wife who possesses in a high degree
those virtues and excellent traits of character, which so
distinguished my dear Mary. Think not, that in this new engagement,
I do any wrong to her memory. I still retain, and ever shall
preserve with sacred care all my cherished recollections of her
truth, affection and beautiful nature. And I feel, that could she
speak to me, she would approve of what I am doing. I hope also for
your approval and for your father's.... Think of me ever as
Very truly your friend
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.{68}
The lady thus described was one who lives in the memory of all who knew
her, were it only by her distinguished appearance and bearing, her
"deep, unutterable eyes," in Longfellow's own phrase, and her quiet,
self-controlled face illumined by a radiant smile. She was never better
described, perhaps, than by the Hungarian, Madame Pulszky, who visited
America with Kossuth, and who wrote of her as "a lady of Junonian beauty
and of the kindest heart."{69} Promptly and almost insensibly she
identified herself with all her husband's work, a thing rendered
peculiarly valuable from the fact that his eyes had become overstrained,
so that he welcomed an amanuensis. Sometimes she suggested subjects for
poems, this being at least the case with "The Arsenal at Springfield,"
first proposed by her within the very walls of the building, a spot
whose moral was doubtless enhanced by the companionship of Charles
Sumner, just then the especial prophet of international peace. She also
aided him effectually in his next book, "The Poets and Poetry of
Europe," in which his friend Felton also coöperated, he preparing the
biographical notices while Longfellow made the selections and also some
of the translations.
I add this letter from his betrothed, which strikes the reader as
singularly winning and womanly. This also is addressed to the elder
sister of the first Mrs. Longfellow.
BOSTON, June 5, 1843.
DEAR MISS POTTER,--Accept my warmest thanks for the very kind manner
in which you have expressed an interest in our happiness. It is all
the more welcome in coming from a stranger upon whom I have no past
claim to kindle a kindly regard, and touches my heart deeply. Among
the many blessings which the new world I have entered reveals to me,
a new heritage of friends is a choice one. Those most dear to Henry,
most closely linked with his early associations, I am, naturally,
most anxious to know and love,--and I trust an opportunity will
bring us together before long.
But I should feel no little timidity in being known to you and his
family; a dread that loving him as you do I might not fulfil all the
exactions of your hearts; were not such fears relieved by the
generous determination you have shown to approve his choice,--upon
faith in _him_. To one who has known him so long and so well, I need
not attempt to speak of my happiness in possessing such a
heart,--nor of my infinite gratitude to the Giver of every good gift
for bestowing upon me the power of rendering him once more happy in
the hope of a home,--so sacred and dear to his loving nature by
blessed memories to which I fervently pray to be found worthy to
succeed.
Receive again my thanks for your kind sympathy, with the assurance
of my warm regards,--which I trust will not always be imprisoned in
words, and with kindest remembrances to my other Portland friends,
I remain sincerely and gratefully yrs
FANNY E. APPLETON.
Henry sends his most affectionate regards and hopes, tho' faintly,
to be soon able to visit his home, and talk over his future with you
all.{70}
It is pleasant to record in connection with this sweet and high-minded
letter, that a copy of "Hyperion" itself lies before me which is
inscribed on the first page in pencil to "Miss Eliza A. Potter, from her
affectionate friend and brother, the Author." That he preserved through
life a warm friendliness toward all the kindred of his first wife is
quite certain.
{61 _Life_, ii. 8.}
{62 Beacon Biographies (_Longfellow_), p. 77.}
{63 Garrison's _Memoirs_, iii. 280.}
{64 Western MSS., Boston Public Library.}
{65 _Life_, ii. 20.}
{66 Scudder's _Lowell_, i. 93.}
{67 _Correspondence of R. W. Griswold_, p. 151.}
{68 MS.}
{69 _White, Red, and Black_, ii. 237.}
{70 MS.}