Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Part 16

WESTMINSTER ABBEY

Longfellow was the first American to be commemorated, on the mere ground of public service and distant kinship of blood, in Westminster Abbey.

The impressions made by that circ.u.mstance in America were very various, but might be cla.s.sed under two leading att.i.tudes. There were those to whom the English-speaking race seemed one, and Westminster Abbey its undoubted central shrine, an opinion of which Lowell was a high representative, as his speech on the occasion showed. There were those, on the other hand, to whom the American republic seemed a wholly new fact in the universe, and one which should have its own shrines. To this last cla.s.s the "Hall of Fame," upon the banks of the Hudson, would appeal more strongly than Westminster Abbey; and it is probable that the interest inspired by that enterprise was partly due, at the outset, to the acceptance of Longfellow in England's greatest shrine. It may be fairly said, however, on reflection, that there is no absolute inconsistency between these two opinions. No one, surely, but must recognize the dignity of the proceeding when an American writer, born and bred, is, as it were, invited after death to stand as a permanent representative of his race in the storied abbey. On the other hand, it may easily be conceded that the dignitaries of Westminster are not, of themselves, necessarily so well versed in American claims as to make their verdict infallible or even approximate. The true solution would appear to be that in monuments, as in all other forms of recognition, each nation should have its own right of selection, and that it should be recognized as a gratifying circ.u.mstance when these independent judgments happen to coincide. The following is the best London report of the services on this occasion:--

"On Sat.u.r.day, March 2, 1884, at midday, the ceremony of unveiling a bust of Longfellow took place in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. It is the work of Mr. Thomas Brock, A. R. A., and was executed by desire of some five hundred admirers of the American poet. It stands on a bracket near the tomb of Chaucer, and between the memorials to Cowley and Dryden.

Before the ceremony took place, a meeting of the subscribers was held in the Jerusalem Chamber. In the absence of Dean Bradley, owing to a death in his family, the Sub-Dean, Canon Prothero, was called to the chair.

"Mr. Bennoch having formally announced the order of proceeding, Dr.

Bennett made a brief statement, and called upon Earl Granville to ask the Dean's acceptance of the bust.

"Earl Granville then said: 'Mr. Sub-Dean, Ladies and Gentlemen, ... I am afraid I cannot fulfil the promise made for me of making a speech on this occasion. Not that there are wanting materials for a speech; there are materials of the richest description. There are, first of all, the high character, the refinement, and the personal charm of the late ill.u.s.trious poet,--if I may say so in the presence of those so near and so dear to him. There are also the characteristics of those works which have secured for him not a greater popularity in the United States themselves than in this island and in all the English-speaking dependencies of the British Empire. There are, besides, very large views with regard to the literature which is common to both the United States and ourselves, and with regard to the separate branches of literature which have sprung up in each country, and which act and react with so much advantage one upon another; and there are, above all, those relations of a moral and intellectual character which become bonds stronger and greater every day between the intellectual and cultivated cla.s.ses of these two great countries. I am happy to say that with such materials there are persons here infinitely more fitted to deal than I could have been even if I had had time to bestow upon the thought and the labor necessary to condense into the limits of a speech some of the considerations I have mentioned. I am glad that among those present there is one who is not only the official representative of the United States, but who speaks with more authority than any one with regard to the literature and intellectual condition of that country. I cannot but say how glad I am that I have been present at two of the meetings held to inaugurate this work, and I am delighted to be present here to take part in the closing ceremony. With the greatest pleasure I make the offer of this memorial to the Sub-Dean; and from the kindness we have received already from the authorities of Westminster Abbey, I have no doubt it will be received in the same spirit. I beg to offer you, Mr.

Sub-Dean, the bust which has been subscribed for.'

"The American Minister, Mr. Lowell, then said: 'Mr. Sub-Dean, my Lord, Ladies and Gentlemen, I think I may take upon myself the responsibility, in the name of the daughters of my beloved friend, to express their grat.i.tude to Lord Granville for having found time, amid the continuous and arduous calls of his duty, to be present here this morning. Having occasion to speak in this place some two years ago, I remember that I then expressed the hope that some day or other the Abbey of Westminster would become the Valhalla of the whole English-speaking race. I little expected then that a beginning would be made so soon,--a beginning at once painful and gratifying in the highest degree to myself,--with the bust of my friend. Though there be no Academy in England which corresponds to that of France, yet admission to Westminster Abbey forms a sort of posthumous test of literary eminence perhaps as effectual.

Every one of us has his own private Valhalla, and it is not apt to be populous. But the conditions of admission to the Abbey are very different. We ought no longer to ask why is so-and-so here, and we ought always to be able to answer the question why such a one is not here. I think that on this occasion I should express the united feeling of the whole English-speaking race in confirming the choice which has been made,--the choice of one whose name is dear to them all, who has inspired their lives and consoled their hearts, and who has been admitted to the fireside of all of them as a familiar friend. Nearly forty years ago I had occasion, in speaking of Mr. Longfellow, to suggest an a.n.a.logy between him and the English poet Gray; and I have never since seen any reason to modify or change that opinion. There are certain very marked a.n.a.logies between them, I think. In the first place, there is the same love of a certain subdued splendor, not inconsistent with transparency of diction; there is the same power of absorbing and a.s.similating the beauties of other literature without loss of originality; and, above all, there is that genius, that sympathy with universal sentiments and the power of expressing them so that they come home to everybody, both high and low, which characterize both poets.

There is something also in that simplicity,--simplicity in itself being a distinction. But in style, simplicity and distinction must be combined in order to their proper effect; and the only warrant perhaps of permanence in literature is this distinction in style. It is something quite indefinable; it is something like the distinction of good-breeding, characterized perhaps more by the absence of certain negative qualities than by the presence of certain positive ones. But it seems to me that distinction of style is eminently found in the poet whom we are met here in some sense to celebrate to-day. This is not the place, of course, for criticism; still less is it the place for eulogy, for eulogy is but too often disguised apology. But I have been struck particularly--if I may bring forward one instance--with some of my late friend's sonnets, which seem to me to be some of the most beautiful and perfect we have in the language. His mind always moved straight towards its object, and was always permeated with the emotion that gave it frankness and sincerity, and at the same time the most ample expression.

It seems that I should add a few words--in fact, I cannot refrain from adding a few words--with regard to the personal character of a man whom I knew for more than forty years, and whose friend I was honored to call myself for thirty years. Never was a private character more answerable to public performance than that of Longfellow. Never have I known a more beautiful character. I was familiar with it daily,--with the constant charity of his hand and of his mind. His nature was consecrated ground, into which no unclean spirit could ever enter. I feel entirely how inadequate anything that I can say is to the measure and proportion of an occasion like this. But I think I am authorized to accept, in the name of the people of America, this tribute to not the least distinguished of her sons, to a man who in every way, both in public and private, did honor to the country that gave him birth. I cannot add anything more to what was so well said in a few words by Lord Granville, for I do not think that these occasions are precisely the times for set discourses, but rather for a few words of feeling, of grat.i.tude, and of appreciation.'

"The Sub-Dean, in accepting the bust, remarked that it was impossible not to feel, in doing so, that they were accepting a very great honor to the country. He could conceive that if the great poet were allowed to look down on the transactions of that day, he would not think it unsatisfactory that his memorial had been placed in that great Abbey among those of his brothers in poetry.

"The Chancellor of the Exchequer moved a vote of thanks to the honorary secretary and the honorary treasurer, and said he thought he had been selected for the duty because he had spent two or three years of his life in the United States, and a still longer time in some of the British colonies. It gave him the greater pleasure to do this, having known Mr. Longfellow in America, and having from boyhood enjoyed his poetry, which was quite as much appreciated in England and her dependencies as in America. Wherever he had been in America, and wherever he had met Americans, he had found there was one place at least which they looked upon as being as much theirs as it was England's--that place was the Abbey Church of Westminster. It seemed, therefore, to him that the present occasion was an excellent beginning of the recognition of the Abbey as what it had been called,--the Valhalla of the English-speaking people. He trusted this beginning would not be the end of its application in this respect.

"The company then proceeded to Poets' Corner, where, taking his stand in front of the covered bust,

"The Sub-Dean then said: 'I feel to-day that a double solemnity attaches to this occasion which calls us together. There is first the familiar fact that to-day we are adding another name to the great roll of ill.u.s.trious men whom we commemorate within these walls, that we are adding something to that rich heritage which we have received of national glory from our ancestors, and which we feel bound to hand over to our successors, not only unimpaired, but even increased. There is then the novel and peculiar fact which attaches to the erection of a monument here to the memory of Henry Longfellow. In some sense, poets--great poets like him--may be said to be natives of all lands; but never before have the great men of other countries, however brilliant and widespread their fame, been admitted to a place in Westminster Abbey. A century ago America was just commencing her perilous path of independence and self-government. Who then could have ventured to predict that within the short s.p.a.ce of one hundred years we in England should be found to honor an American as much as we could do so by giving his monument a place within the sacred shrine which holds the memories of our most ill.u.s.trious sons? Is there not in this a very significant fact; is it not an emphatic proof of the oneness which belongs to our common race, and of the community of our national glories? May I not add, is it not a pledge that we give to each other that nothing can long and permanently sever nations which are bound together by the eternal ties of language, race, religion, and common feeling?'

"The reverend gentleman then removed the covering from the bust, and the ceremony ended."{99}

{99 _Life_, iii. 346-351.}

CHAPTER XXIII

LONGFELLOW AS A POET

The great literary lesson of Longfellow's life is to be found, after all, in this, that while he was the first among American poets to create for himself a world-wide fame, he was guided from youth to age by a strong national feeling, or at any rate by the desire to stand for the life and the a.s.sociations by which he was actually surrounded. Such a tendency has been traced in this volume from his first childish poetry through his chosen theme for a college debate, his commencement oration, his plans formed during a first foreign trip, and the appeal made in his first really original paper in the "North American Review." All these elements of aim and doctrine were directly and explicitly American, and his most conspicuous poems, "Evangeline," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," "Hiawatha," and "The Wayside Inn," were unequivocally American also. In the group of poets to which he belonged, he was the most travelled and the most cultivated, in the ordinary sense, while Whittier was the least so; and yet they are, as we have seen, the two who--in the English-speaking world, at least--hold their own best; the line between them being drawn only where foreign languages are in question, and there Longfellow has of course the advantage. In neither case, it is to be observed, was this Americanism trivial, boastful, or ign.o.ble in its tone. It would be idle to say that this alone const.i.tutes, for an American, the basis of fame; for the high imaginative powers of Poe, with his especial gift of melody, though absolutely without national flavor, have achieved for him European fame, at least in France, this being due, however, mainly to his prose rather than to his poetry, and perhaps also the result, more largely than we recognize, of the a.s.siduous discipleship of a single Frenchman, just as Carlyle's influence in America was due largely to Emerson. Be this as it may, it is certain that the hold of both Longfellow and Whittier is a thing absolutely due, first, to the elevated tone of their works, and secondly, that they have made themselves the poets of the people. No one can attend popular meetings in England without being struck with the readiness with which quotations from these two poets are heard from the lips of speakers, and this, while not affording the highest test of poetic art, still yields the highest secondary test, and one on which both these authors would doubtless have been willing to rest their final appeal for remembrance.

In looking back over Longfellow's whole career, it is certain that the early criticisms upon him, especially those of Margaret Fuller, had an immediate and temporary justification, but found ultimate refutation.

The most commonplace man can be better comprehended at the end of his career than he can be a.n.a.lyzed at its beginning; and of men possessed of the poetic temperament, this is eminently true. We now know that at the very time when "Hyperion" and the "Voices of the Night" seemed largely European in their atmosphere, the author himself, in his diaries, was expressing that longing for American subjects which afterwards predominated in his career. Though the citizen among us best known in Europe, most sought after by foreign visitors, he yet gravitated naturally to American themes, American friends, home interests, plans, and improvements. He always voted at elections, and generally with the same party, took an interest in all local affairs and public improvements, headed subscription papers, was known by sight among children, and answered readily to their salutations. The same quality of citizenship was visible in his literary work. Lowell, who was regarded in England as an almost defiant American, yet had a distinct liking, which was not especially shared by Longfellow, for English ways. If people were ever misled on this point, which perhaps was not the case, it grew out of his unvarying hospitality and courtesy, and out of the fact vaguely recognized by all, but best stated by that keen critic, the late Mr. Horace E. Scudder, when he says of Longfellow: "He gave of himself freely to his intimate friends, but he dwelt, nevertheless, in a charmed circle, beyond the lines of which men could not penetrate.... It is rare that one in our time has been the centre of so much admiration, and still rarer that one has preserved in the midst of it all that integrity of nature which never abdicates."{100}

It is an obvious truth in regard to the literary works of Longfellow, that while they would have been of value at any time and place, their worth to a new and unformed literature was priceless. The first need of such a literature was no doubt a great original thinker, such as was afforded us in Emerson. But for him we should perhaps have been still provincial in thought and imitative in theme and ill.u.s.tration; our poets would have gone on writing about the skylark and the nightingale, which they might never have seen or heard anywhere, rather than about the bobolink and the humble-bee, which they knew. It was Emerson and the so-called Transcendentalists who really set our literature free; yet Longfellow rendered a service only secondary, in enriching and refining it and giving it a cosmopolitan culture, and an unquestioned standing in the literary courts of the civilized world. It was a great advantage, too, that in his more moderate and level standard of execution there was afforded no room for reaction. The same attributes that keep Longfellow from being the greatest of poets will make him also one of the most permanent. There will be no extreme ups and downs in his fame, as in that of those great poets of whom Ruskin writes, "Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless; and Sh.e.l.ley as shallow and verbose." The finished excellence of his average execution will sustain it against that of profounder thinkers and more daring sons of song. His range of measures is not great, but his workmanship is perfect; he has always "the inimitable grace of not too much;" he has tested all literatures, all poetic motives, and all the simpler forms of versification, and he can never be taken unprepared. He will never be read for the profoundest stirring, or for the unlocking of the deepest mysteries; he will always be read for invigoration, for comfort, for content.

No man is always consistent, and it is not to be claimed that Longfellow was always ready to reaffirm his early att.i.tude in respect to a national literature. It is not strange that after he had fairly begun to create one, he should sometimes be repelled by the cla.s.s which has always existed who think that mere nationality should rank first and an artistic standard afterwards. He writes on July 24, 1844, to an unknown correspondent:--

"I dislike as much as any one can the tone of English criticism in reference to our literature. But when you say, 'It is a lamentable fact that as yet our country has taken no decided steps towards establishing a national literature,' it seems to me that you are repeating one of the most fallacious a.s.sertions of the English critics. Upon this point I differ entirely from you in opinion. A national literature is the expression of national character and thought; and as our character and modes of thought do not differ essentially from those of England, our literature cannot. Vast forests, lakes, and prairies cannot make great poets. They are but the scenery of the play, and have much less to do with the poetic character than has been imagined. Neither Mexico nor Switzerland has produced any remarkable poet.

"I do not think a 'Poets' Convention' would help the matter. In fact, the matter needs no helping."{101}

In the same way he speaks with regret, three years later, November 5, 1847, of "The prospectus of a new magazine in Philadelphia to build up 'a national literature worthy of the country of Niagara--of the land of forests and eagles.'"

One feels an inexhaustible curiosity as to the precise manner in which each favorite poem by a favorite author comes into existence. In the case of Longfellow we find this ill.u.s.trated only here and there. We know that "The Arrow and the Song," for instance, came into his mind instantaneously; that "My Lost Youth" occurred to him in the night, after a day of pain, and was written the next morning; that on December 17, 1839, he read of shipwrecks reported in the papers and of bodies washed ash.o.r.e near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck, and that he wrote, "There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-Flower on Black Rock. I must write a ballad upon this; also two others,--'The Skeleton in Armor' and 'Sir Humphrey Gilbert.'" A fortnight later he sat at twelve o'clock by his fire, smoking, when suddenly it came into his mind to write the Ballad of the Schooner Hesperus, which he says, "I accordingly did. Then I went to bed, but could not sleep. New thoughts were running in my mind, and I got up to add them to the ballad. It was three by the clock. I then went to bed and fell asleep. I feel pleased with the ballad. It hardly cost me an effort. It did not come into my mind by lines, but by stanzas." A few weeks before, taking up a volume of Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," he had received in a similar way the suggestion of "The Beleaguered City" and of "The Luck of Edenhall."

We know by Longfellow's own statement to Mr. W. C. Lawton,{102} that it was his rule to do his best in polishing a poem before printing it, but afterwards to leave it untouched, on the principle that "the readers of a poem acquired a right to the poet's work in the form they had learned to love." He thought also that Bryant and Whittier hardly seemed happy in these belated revisions, and mentioned especially Bryant's "Water-Fowl,"

"As darkly limned upon the ethereal sky,"

where Longfellow preferred the original reading "painted on." It is, however, rare to find a poet who can carry out this principle of abstinence, at least in his own verse, and we know too surely that Longfellow was no exception; thus we learn that he had made important alterations in the "Golden Legend" within a few weeks of publication.

These things show that his remark to Mr. Lawton does not tell quite the whole story. As with most poets, his alterations were not always improvements. Thus, in "The Wreck of the Hesperus," he made the fourth verse much more vigorous to the ear as it was originally written,--

"Then up and spoke an old sailor Had sailed the Spanish Main,"

than when he made the latter line read

"Sailed to the Spanish Main,"

as in all recent editions. The explanation doubtless was that he at first supposed the "Spanish Main" to mean the Caribbean Sea; whereas it actually referred only to the southern sh.o.r.e of it. Still more curious is the history of a line in one of his favorite poems, "To a Child."

Speaking of this, he says in his diary,{103} "Some years ago, writing an 'Ode to a Child,' I spoke of

'The buried treasures of the miser, Time.'

What was my astonishment to-day, in reading for the first time in my life Wordsworth's ode 'On the Power of Sound,' to read

'All treasures h.o.a.rded by the miser, Time.'"

As a matter of fact, this was not the original form of the Longfellow pa.s.sage, which was,--

"The buried treasures of dead centuries,"

followed by

"The burning tropic skies."

More than this, the very word "miser" was not invariably used in this pa.s.sage by the poet, as during an intermediate period it had been changed to "pirate," a phrase in some sense more appropriate and better satisfying the ear. The curious a.n.a.logy to Wordsworth's line did not therefore lie in the original form of his own poem, but was an afterthought. It is fortunate that this curious combination of facts, all utterly unconscious on his part, did not attract the attention of Poe during his vindictive period.

It is to be noticed, however, that Longfellow apparently made all these changes to satisfy his own judgment, and did not make them, as Whittier and even Browning often did, in deference to the judgment of dull or incompetent critics. It is to be remembered that even the academic commentators on Longfellow still leave children to suppose that the Berserk's tale in "The Skeleton in Armor" refers to a supposed story that the Berserk was telling: although the word "tale" is unquestionably used in the sense of "tally" or "reckoning," to indicate how much ale the Norse hero could drink. Readers of Milton often misinterpret his line,

"And every shepherd tells his tale,"

in a similar manner, and the shepherd is supposed by many young readers to be pouring out a story of love or of adventure, whereas he is merely counting up the number of his sheep.

It will always remain uncertain how far Poe influenced the New England poets, whether by example or avoidance. That he sometimes touched Lowell, and not for good, is unquestionable, in respect to rhythm; but it will always remain a question whether his influence did not work in the other direction with Longfellow in making him limit himself more strictly to a narrow range of metrical structure. It was an admirable remark of Tennyson's that "every short poem should have a definite shape like the curve, sometimes a single, sometimes a double one, a.s.sumed by a severed tress, or the rind of an apple when flung to the floor."{104} This type of verse was rarely attempted by Longfellow, but he chose it most appropriately for "Seaweed" and in some degree succeeded. Poe himself in his waywardness could not adhere to it when he reached it, and after giving us in the original form of "Lenore," as published in "The Pioneer," perhaps the finest piece of lyric measure in our literature, made it over into a form of mere jingling and hackneyed rhythm, adding even the final commonplaceness of his tiresome "repetend." Lowell did something of the same in cutting down the original fine strain of the verses beginning "Pine in the distance," but Longfellow showed absolutely no trace of Poe, unless as a warning against multiplying such rhythmic experiments as he once tried successfully in "Seaweed." On the other hand, with all his love for Lowell, his native good taste kept him from the confused metaphors and occasional over-familiarities into which Lowell was sometimes tempted.

Perhaps the most penetrating remark made about Longfellow's art is that of Horace Scudder: "He was first of all a composer, and he saw his subjects in their relations, rather than in their essence." As a translator, he was generally admitted to have no superior in the English tongue, his skill was unvarying and absolutely reliable. Even here it might be doubted whether he ever attained the wonderful success sometimes achieved in single instances, as, for instance, in Mrs. Sarah Austen's "Many a Year is in its Grave," which, under the guise of a perfect translation, yet gives a higher and finer touch than that of the original poem of Ruckert. But taking Longfellow's great gift in this direction as it was, we can see that it was somewhat akin to this quality of "composition," rather than of inspiration, which marked his poems.