Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Part 7

Vernon, with which it has some a.n.a.logy 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 Va.s.sall, whose family owned the still older house across the way now called the Batchelder House; and there is a tradition of a subterranean pa.s.sage between the two houses, although this has. .h.i.therto 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. Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Was.h.i.+ngton'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 ma.s.s 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 Moliere, Crebillon, and Florian, Madame de Sevigne and Madame de Stael. 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 a.s.sociation, 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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 antic.i.p.ated him in prose.

Such was the house where Longfellow resided for the rest of his life; seven years of which pa.s.sed 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ments.}

{39 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xii. 26.}

CHAPTER XI

HYPERION AND THE REACTION FROM IT

"Outre-Mer" had been published some time before, with moderate success, but "Hyperion" was destined to attract far more attention. It is first mentioned in his journal on September 13, 1838, though in a way which shows that it had been for some time in preparation, and its gradual development is traceable through the same channel. One entire book, for instance, was written and suppressed, namely, "St. Clair's Day Book,"

the hero having first been christened Hyperion, then St. Clair, and then Paul Flemming. Its author wrote of it, "I called it 'Hyperion,' because it moves on high among clouds and stars, and expresses the various aspirations of the soul of man. It is all modelled on this idea, style and all. It contains my cherished thoughts for three years."{40}

The cordiality with which "Hyperion" was received was due partly to the love story supposed to be implied in it, and largely to the new atmosphere of German life and literature which it opened to Americans.

It must always be remembered that the kingdom in which Germany then ruled was not then, as now, a kingdom of material force and business enterprise, but as Germans themselves claimed, a kingdom of the air; and into that realm Hyperion gave to Americans the first glimpse. The faults and limitations which we now see in it were then pa.s.sed by, or visible only to such keen critics as Orestes A. Brownson, who wrote thus of it in "The Boston Quarterly Review," then the ablest of American periodicals except "The Dial:" "I do not like the book. It is such a journal as a man who reads a great deal makes from the sc.r.a.ps in his table-drawer. Yet it has not the sincerity or quiet touches which give interest to the real journals of very common persons. It is overloaded with prettinesses, many of which would tell well in conversation, but being rather strown over than woven into his narrative, deform where they should adorn. You cannot guess why the book was written, unless because the author were tired of reading these morceaux to himself, for there has been no fusion or fermentation to bring on the hour of utterance. Then to me the direct personal relation in which we are brought to the author is unpleasing. Had he but idealized his tale, or put on the veil of poetry! But as it is, we are embarra.s.sed by his extreme communicativeness, and wonder that a man, who seems in other respects to have a mind of delicate texture, could write a letter about his private life to a public on which he had as yet established no claim.... Indeed this book will not add to the reputation of its author, which stood so fair before its publication."{41} This is the criticism of which Longfellow placidly wrote, "I understand there is a spicy article against me in the 'Boston Quarterly.' I shall get it as soon as I can; for, strange as you may think it, these things give me no pain."{42}

Mr. Howells, in one of the most ardent eulogies ever written upon the works of Longfellow, bases his admiration largely upon the claim "that his art never betrays the crudeness or imperfection of essay,"--that is, of experiment.{43} It would be interesting to know whether this accomplished author, looking back upon "Hyperion" more than thirty years later, could reindorse this strong a.s.sertion. To others, I fancy, however attractive and even fascinating the book may still remain, it has about it a distinctly youthful quality which, while sometimes characterizing even his poetry, unquestionably marked his early prose. A later and younger critic says more truly of it, I think, "Plainly in the style of Richter, with all the mingled grandeur and grotesqueness of the German romanticists, it is scarcely now a favorite with the adult reader; though the young, obedient to some vague embryonic law, still find in it for a season the pleasure, the thrilling melancholy, which their grandfathers found."{44} But Professor Carpenter, speaking from the point of view of the younger generation, does not fail to recognize that Paul Flemming's complaints cease when he reads the tombstone inscription which becomes the motto of the book; and I recall with pleasure that, being a youth nurtured on "Hyperion," I selected that pa.s.sage for the text of my boyish autobiography written in the Harvard "Cla.s.s Book" at the juvenile age of seventeen. Dozens of youths were perhaps adopting the motto in the same way at the same time, and it is useless to deny to a book which thus reached youthful hearts the credit of having influenced the whole period of its popularity.

Apart from the personal romance which his readers attached to it, the book had great value as the first real importation into our literature of the wealth of German romance and song. So faithful and ample are its local descriptions that a cheap edition of it is always on sale at Heidelberg, and every English and American visitor to that picturesque old city seems to know the book by heart. Bearing it in his hand, the traveller still climbs the rent summit of the Gesprengte Thurm and looks down upon the throng in the castle gardens; or inquires vainly for the ruined linden-tree, or gives a sigh to the fate of Emma of Ilmenau, and murmurs solemnly,--as a fat and red-faced Englishman once murmured to me on that storied spot,--"That night there fell a star from heaven!" There is no doubt that under the sway of the simpler style now prevailing, much of the rhetoric of "Hyperion" seems turgid, some of its learning obtrusive, and a good deal of its emotion forced; but it was nevertheless an epoch-making book for a generation of youths and maidens, and it still retains its charm. The curious fact, however, remains--a fact not hitherto noticed, I think, by biographers or critics--that at the very time when the author was at work on "Hyperion," there was a constant reaction in his mind that was carrying him in the direction of more strictly American subjects, handled under a simpler treatment. He wrote on September 13, 1838, "Looked over my notes and papers for 'Hyperion.' Long for leisure to begin once more." It is impossible to say how long a preparation this implies; it may have been months or years. Yet the following letter to a young girl, his wife's youngest sister, shows how, within less than a year previous, his observation had been again turned towards the American Indians as a theme.

CAMBRIDGE, October 29, 1837.

MY DEAR MARGARET,--I was very much delighted with your present of the slippers. They are too pretty to be trodden under foot; yet such is their destiny, and shall be accomplished, as soon as may be. The colors look beautifully upon the drab ground; much more so than on the black. Don't you think so? I should have answered your note, and sent you my thanks, by Alexander on Wednesday last; but when I last saw him, I had not received the package. Therefore you must not imagine from my delay, that I do not sufficiently appreciate the gift....

There is nothing very new in Boston, which after all is a gossiping kind of _Little Peddlington_, if you know what that is; if you don't, you must read the story. People take too much cognizance of their neighbors; interest themselves too much in what no way concerns them. However, it is no great matter.

There are Indians here: savage fellows;--one Black-Hawk and his friends, with naked shoulders and red blankets wrapped about their bodies:--the rest all grease and Spanish brown and vermillion. One carries a great war-club, and wears horns on his head; another had his face painted like a grid-iron, all in bands:--another is all red, like a lobster; and another black and blue, in great daubs of paint laid on not sparingly. Queer fellows!--One great champion of the _Fox_ nation had a short pipe in his mouth, smoking with great self-complacency as he marched out of the City Hall: another was smoking a cigar! Withal, they looked very formidable. Hard customers....

Very truly yours

H. W. L.{45}

Note, again, how this tendency to home themes a.s.serts itself explicitly in Longfellow's notice of Hawthorne's "Twice-Told Tales" at about the same time in "The North American Review," (July, 1837):--

"One of the most prominent characteristics of these tales is, that they are national in their character. The author has wisely chosen his themes among the traditions of New England; the dusty legends of 'the good Old Colony times, when we lived under a king.' This is the right material for story. It seems as natural to make tales out of old tumble-down traditions, as canes and snuff-boxes out of old steeples, or trees planted by great men. The puritanical times begin to look romantic in the distance. Who would not like to have strolled through the city of Agamenticus, where a market was held every week, on Wednesday, and there were two annual fairs at St. James's and St. Paul's? Who would not like to have been present at the court of the Wors.h.i.+pful Thomas Gorges, in those palmy days of the law, when Tom Heard was fined five s.h.i.+llings for being drunk, and John Payne the same, 'for swearing one oath'? Who would not like to have seen the time, when Thomas Taylor was presented to the grand jury 'for abusing Captain Raynes, being in authority, by _thee-ing_ and _thou-ing_ him;' and John Wardell likewise, for denying Cambridge College to be an ordinance of G.o.d; and when some were fined for winking at comely damsels in church; and others for being common-sleepers there on the Lord's day? Truly, many quaint and quiet customs, many comic scenes and strange adventures, many wild and wondrous things, fit for humorous tale, and soft, pathetic story, lie all about us here in New England. There is no tradition of the Rhine nor of the Black Forest, which can compare in beauty with that of the Phantom s.h.i.+p. The Flying Dutchman of the Cape, and the Klabotermann of the Baltic, are nowise superior. The story of Peter Rugg, the man who could not find Boston, is as good as that told by Gervase of Tilbury, of a man who gave himself to the devils by an unfortunate imprecation, and was used by them as a wheelbarrow; and the Great Carbuncle of the White Mountains s.h.i.+nes with no less splendor, than that which illuminated the subterranean palace in Rome, as related by William of Malmesbury. Truly, from such a Fortunatus's pocket and wis.h.i.+ng-cap, a tale-bearer may furnish forth a sufficiency of 'peryllous adventures right espouventables, bryfefly compyled and pyteous for to here.'"

We must always remember that Longfellow came forward at a time when cultivated Americans were wasting a great deal of superfluous sympathy on themselves. It was the general impression that the soil was barren, that the past offered no material and they must be European or die. Yet Longfellow's few predecessors had already made themselves heard by disregarding this tradition and taking what they found on the spot.

Charles Brockden Brown, although his style was exotic and G.o.dwinish, yet found his themes among American Indians and in the scenes of the yellow fever in Philadelphia. It was not Irving who invested the Hudson with romance, but the Hudson that inspired Irving. When in 1786, Mrs. Josiah Quincy, then a young girl, sailed upon that river in a sloop, she wrote, "Our captain had a legend for every scene, either supernatural or traditional or of actual occurrence during the war, and not a mountain reared its head unconnected with some marvellous story." Irving was then but three years old, yet Ichabod Crane and Rip Van Winkle or their prototypes were already on the spot waiting for biographers; and it was much the same with Cooper, who was not born until three years later.

What was needed was self-confidence and a strong literary desire to take the materials at hand. Irving, Cooper, Dana, had already done this; but Longfellow followed with more varied gifts, more thorough training; the "Dial" writers followed in their turn, and a distinctive American literature was born, this quality reaching a climax in Th.o.r.eau, who frankly wrote, "I have travelled a great deal--in Concord."

And while thus Longfellow found his desire for a national literature strengthened at every point by the example of his cla.s.smate Hawthorne, so he may have learned much, though not immediately, through the warning unconsciously given by Bryant, against the perils of undue moralizing.

Bryant's early poem, "To a Water-Fowl," was as profound in feeling and as perfect in structure as anything of Longfellow's, up to the last verse, which some profane critic compared to a tin kettle of moralizing, tied to the legs of the flying bird. Whittier's poems had almost always some such appendage, and he used to regret in later life that he had not earlier been contented to leave his moral for the reader to draw, or in other words, to lop off habitually the last verse of each poem. Apart from this there was a marked superiority, even on the didactic side, in Longfellow's moralizing as compared with Bryant's. There is no light or joy in the "Thanatopsis;" but Longfellow, like Whittier, was always hopeful. It was not alone that he preached, as an eminent British critic once said to me, "a safe piety," but his religious impulse was serene and even joyous, and this under the pressure of the deepest personal sorrows.

It is also to be observed that Longfellow wrote in this same number of "The North American Review" (July, 1837) another paper which was prophetic with regard to prose style, as was the Hawthorne essay in respect to thought. It was a review of Tegner's "Frithiof's Saga" which showed a power of description, brought to bear on Swedish life and scenery, which he really never quite attained in "Hyperion," because it was there sometimes vitiated by a slightly false note. A portion of it was used afterwards as a preface to his second volume of poems ("Ballads and Other Poems"), a preface regarded by some good critics as Longfellow's best piece of prose work. It was, at any rate, impossible not to recognize a fresh and vigorous quality in a descriptive pa.s.sage opening thus; and I can myself testify that it stamped itself on the memories of young readers almost as vividly as the ballads which followed:--

"There is something patriarchal still lingering about rural life in Sweden, which renders it a fit theme for song. Almost primeval simplicity reigns over that northern land,--almost primeval solitude and stillness. You pa.s.s out from the gate of the city, and, as if by magic, the scene changes to a wild, woodland landscape. Around you are forests of fir. Overhead hang the long, fan-like branches, trailing with moss, and heavy with red and blue cones. Under foot is a carpet of yellow leaves; and the air is warm and balmy. On a wooden bridge you cross a little silver stream; and anon come forth into a pleasant and sunny land of farms. Wooden fences divide the adjoining fields. Across the road are gates, which are opened by troops of children. The peasants take off their hats as you pa.s.s; you sneeze, and they cry, 'G.o.d bless you.' The houses in the villages and smaller towns are all built of hewn timber, and for the most part painted red. The floors of the taverns are strewn with the fragrant tips of fir boughs. In many villages there are no taverns, and the peasants take turns in receiving travellers. The thrifty housewife shows you into the best chamber, the walls of which are hung round with rude pictures from the Bible; and brings you her heavy silver spoons,--an heirloom,--to dip the curdled milk from the pan. You have oaten cakes baked some months before; or bread with anise-seed and coriander in it, or perhaps a little pine bark."

{40 _Life_, i. 353.}

{41 _Boston Quarterly Review_, January, 1840, iii. 128.}

{42 _Life_, i. 354.}

{43 _North American Review_, civ. 537.}

{44 Carpenter's _Longfellow_, p. 55.}

{45 MS.}