Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Part 17

He could find it delightful

"To lie And gaze into a summer sky And watch the trailing clouds go by Like ships upon the sea."

But it is a vast step from this to Browning's mountain picture

"Toward it tilting cloudlets prest Like Persian ships to Salamis."

In Browning everything is vigorous and individualized. We see the ships, we know the nationality, we recall the very battle, and over these we see in imagination the very shape and movements of the clouds; but there is no conceivable reason why Longfellow's lines should not have been written by a blind man who knew clouds merely by the descriptions of others. The limitation of Longfellow's poems reveals his temperament. He was in his perceptions essentially of poetic mind, but always in touch with the common mind; as individual lives grow deeper, students are apt to leave Longfellow for Tennyson, just as they forsake Tennyson for Browning. As to action, the tonic of life, so far as he had it, was supplied to him through friends,--Sumner in America; Freiligrath in Europe,--and yet it must be remembered that he would not, but for a corresponding quality in his own nature, have had just such friends as these. He was not led by his own convictions to leave his study like Emerson and take direct part as a contestant in the struggles of the time. It is a curious fact that Lowell should have censured Th.o.r.eau for not doing in this respect just the thing which Th.o.r.eau ultimately did and Longfellow did not. It was, however, essentially a difference of temperament, and it must be remembered that Longfellow wrote in his diary under date of December 2, 1859, "This will be a great day in our history; the date of a new Revolution,--quite as much needed as the old one. Even now as I write, they are leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia, for attempting to rescue slaves! This is sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind, which will come soon."

His relations with Whittier remained always kindly and unbroken. They dined together at the Atlantic Club and Sat.u.r.day Club, and Longfellow wrote of him in 1857, "He grows milder and mellower, as does his poetry." He went to Concord sometimes to dine with Emerson, "and meet his philosophers, Alcott, Th.o.r.eau, and Channing." Or Emerson came to Cambridge, "to take tea," giving a lecture at the Lyceum, of which Longfellow says, "The lecture good, but not of his richest and rarest.

His subject 'Eloquence.' By turns he was grave and jocose, and had some striking views and pa.s.sages. He lets in a thousand new lights, side-lights, and cross-lights, into every subject." When Emerson's collected poems are sent him, Longfellow has the book read to him all the evening and until late at night, and writes of it in his diary: "Throughout the volume, through the golden mist and sublimation of fancy, gleam bright veins of purest poetry, like rivers running through meadows. Truly, a rare volume; with many exquisite poems in it, among which I should single out 'Monadnoc,' 'Threnody,' 'The Humble-Bee,' as containing much of the quintessence of poetry." Emerson's was one of the five portraits drawn in crayon by Eastman Johnson, and always kept hanging in the library at Craigie House; the others being those of Hawthorne, Sumner, Felton, and Longfellow himself. No one can deny to our poet the merits of absolute freedom from all jealousy and of an invariable readiness to appreciate those cla.s.sified by many critics as greater than himself. He was one of the first students of Browning in America, when the latter was known chiefly by his "Bells and Pomegranates," and instinctively selected the "Blot in the 'Scutcheon"

as "a play of great power and beauty," as the critics would say, and as every one must say who reads it. He is an extraordinary genius, Browning, with dramatic power of the first order. "Paracelsus" he describes, with some justice, as "very lofty, but very diffuse." Of Browning's "Christmas Eve" he later writes, "A wonderful man is Browning, but too obscure," and later makes a similar remark on "The Ring and the Book." Of Tennyson he writes, as to "The Princess," calling it "a gentle satire, in the easiest and most flowing blank verse, with two delicious unrhymed songs, and many exquisite pa.s.sages. I went to bed after it, with delightful music ringing in my ears; yet half disappointed in the poem, though not knowing why. There is a discordant note somewhere."

One very uncertain test of a man of genius is his "table-talk."

Surrounded by a group of men who were such masters of this gift as Lowell, Holmes, and T. G. Appleton, Longfellow might well be excused from developing it to the highest extent, and he also "being rather a silent man," as he says of himself, escaped thereby the tendency to monologue, which was sometimes a subject of complaint in regard to the other three. Longfellow's reticence and self-control saved him from all such perils; but it must be admitted, on the other hand, that when his brother collects a dozen pages of his "table-talk" at the end of his memoirs, or when one reads his own list of them in "Kavanagh," the reader feels a slight inadequacy, as of things good enough to be said, but not quite worth the printing. Yet at their best, they are sometimes pungent and telling, as where he says, "When looking for anything lost, begin by looking where you think it is not;" or, "Silence is a great peace-maker;" or, "In youth all doors open outward; in old age they all open inward," or, more thoughtfully, "Amus.e.m.e.nts are like specie payments. We do not much care for them, if we know we can have them; but we like to know they may be had," or more profoundly still, "How often it happens that after we know a man personally, we cease to read his writings. Is it that we exhaust him by a look? Is it that his personality gives us all of him we desire?" There are also included among these pa.s.sages some thoroughly poetic touches, as where he says, "The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout, and hands full of flowers." Or this, "How sudden and sweet are the visitations of our happiest thoughts; what delightful surprises! In the midst of life's most trivial occupations,--as when we are reading a newspaper, or lighting a bed-candle, or waiting for our horses to drive round,--the lovely face appears, and thoughts more precious than gold are whispered in our ear."

The test of popularity in a poet is nowhere more visible than in the demand for autographs. Longfellow writes in his own diary that on November 25, 1856, he has more than sixty such requests lying on his table; and again on January 9, "Yesterday I wrote, sealed, and directed seventy autographs. To-day I added five or six more and mailed them." It does not appear whether the later seventy applications included the earlier sixty, but it is, in view of the weakness of human nature, very probable. This number must have gone on increasing. I remember that in 1875 I saw in his study a pile which must have numbered more than seventy, and which had come in a single day from a single high school in a Western city, to congratulate him on his birthday, and each hinting at an autograph, which I think he was about to supply.

At the time of his seventy-fourth birthday, 1881, a lady in Ohio sent him a hundred blank cards, with the request that he would write his name on each, that she might distribute them among her guests at a party she was to give on that day. The same day was celebrated by some forty different schools in the Western States, all writing him letters and requesting answers. He sent to each school, his brother tells us, some stanza with signature and good wishes. He was patient even with the gentleman who wrote to him to request that he would send his autograph in his "own handwriting." As a matter of fact, he had to leave many letters unanswered, even by a secretary, in his latest years.

It is a most tantalizing thing to know, through the revelations of Mr.

William Winter, that Longfellow left certain poems unpublished. Mr.

Winter says: "He said also that he sometimes wrote poems that were for himself alone, that he should not care ever to publish, because they were too delicate for publication."{105} Quite akin to this was another remark made by him to the same friend, that "the desire of the young poet is not for applause, but for recognition." The two remarks limit one another; the desire for recognition only begins when the longing for mere expression is satisfied. Thoroughly practical and methodical and industrious, Longfellow yet needed some self-expression first of all. It is impossible to imagine him as writing puffs of himself, like Poe, or volunteering reports of receptions given to him, like Whitman. He said to Mr. Winter, again and again, "What you desire will come, if you will but wait for it." The question is not whether this is the only form of the poetic temperament, but it was clearly his form of it. Th.o.r.eau well says that there is no definition of poetry which the poet will not instantly set aside by defying all its limitations, and it is the same with the poetic temperament itself.

{100 Scudder's _Men and Letters_, p. 68.}

{101 _Life_, ii. 19, 20.}

{102 _The New England Poets_, p. 141.}

{103 _Life_, ii. 189.}

{104 Tennyson's _Life_, by his son, i. 507.}

{105 _Life_, iii. 356.}

CHAPTER XXIV

LONGFELLOW AS A MAN

Longfellow always amused himself, as do most public men, with the confused and contradictory descriptions of his personal appearance: with the Newport bookseller who exclaimed, "Why, you look more like a sea captain than a poet!" and a printer who described him as "a hale, portly, fine-looking man, nearly six feet in height, well proportioned, with a tendency to fatness; brown hair and blue eyes, and bearing the general appearance of a comfortable hotel-keeper." More graphic still, and on the whole nearer to the facts, is this description by an English military visitor who met him at a reception in Boston in 1850. I happened upon the volume containing it amid a pile of literary lumber in one of the great antiquarian bookstores of London:--

"He was rather under the middle size, but gracefully formed, and extremely prepossessing in his general appearance. His hair was light-colored, and tastefully disposed. Below a fine forehead gleamed two of the most beautiful eyes I had ever beheld in any human head. One seemed to gaze far into their azure depths. A very sweet smile, not at all of the pensively-poetical character, lurked about the well-shaped mouth, and altogether the expression of Henry Wordsworth [_sic_]

Longfellow's face was most winning. He was dressed very fashionably--almost too much so; a blue frock coat of Parisian cut, a handsome waistcoat, faultless pantaloons, and primrose-colored 'kids'

set off his compact figure, which was not a moment still; for like a b.u.t.terfly glancing from flower to flower, he was tripping from one lady to another, admired and courted by all. He shook me cordially by the hand, introduced me to his lady, invited me to his house, and then he was off again like a humming bird."{106}

A later picture by another English observer is contained in Lord Ronald Gower's "My Reminiscences." After a description of a visit to Craigie House, in 1878, he says: "If asked to describe Longfellow's appearance, I should compare him to the ideal representations of early Christian saints and prophets. There is a kind of halo of goodness about him, a benignity in his expression which one a.s.sociates with St. John at Patmos saying to his followers and brethren, 'Little children, love one another!'... Longfellow has had the rare fortune of being thoroughly appreciated in his own country and in other countries during his lifetime; how different, probably, would have been the career of Byron, of Keats, or of Sh.e.l.ley, had it been thus with them! It would be presumptuous for me, and out of place, to do more here than allude to the universal popularity of Longfellow's works wherever English is spoken; I believe it is not an exaggeration to say that his works are more popular than those of any other living poet. What child is there who has not heard of 'Excelsior,' or of 'Evangeline,' of 'Miles Standish,' or of 'Hiawatha'? What songs more popular than 'The Bridge,'

and 'I know a maiden fair to see'? Or who, after reading the 'Psalm of Life,' or the 'Footsteps of Angels,' does not feel a little less worldly, a little less of the earth, earthy? The world, indeed, owes a deep debt of grat.i.tude to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.... Bidding me note the beauty of the autumnal tints that make America in the 'fall' look as if rainbows were streaming out of the earth, Longfellow presented me with a goodly sample of the red and golden leaves of the previous autumn, which, although dry and faded, still glowed like gems; these leaves I brought away with me, and they now form a garland round the poet's portrait; a precious _souvenir_ of that morning pa.s.sed at Craigie House."{107}

Lord Ronald Gower then quotes the words used long since in regard to Longfellow by Cardinal Wiseman,--words which find an appropriate place here.

"'Our hemisphere,' said the Cardinal, 'cannot claim the honor of having brought him forth, but he still belongs to us, for his works have become as household words wherever the English language is spoken. And whether we are charmed by his imagery, or soothed by his melodious versification, or elevated by the moral teachings of his pure muse, or follow with sympathetic hearts the wanderings of Evangeline, I am sure that all who hear my voice will join with me in the tribute I desire to pay to the genius of Longfellow.'"{108}

"We have but one life here on earth," wrote Longfellow in his diary; "we must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be avoided."

It is not often that a man's scheme of life is so well fulfilled, or when fulfilled is so well reflected in his face and bearing, tinged always by the actual mark of the terrible ordeal through which he had pa.s.sed. When Sydney Dobell was asked to describe Tennyson, he replied, "If he were pointed out to you as the man who had written the Iliad, you would answer, 'I can well believe it.'" This never seemed to be quite true of Tennyson, whose dark oriental look would rather have suggested the authorship of the Arab legend of "Antar" or of the quatrains of Omar Khayyam. But it was eminently true of the picturesqueness of Longfellow in his later years, with that look of immovable serenity and of a benignity which had learned to condone all human sins. In this respect Turgenieff alone approached him, in real life, among the literary men I have known, and there is a photograph of the Russian which is often mistaken for that of the American.

Indeed, the beauty of his home life remained always visible. Living constantly in the same old house with its storied a.s.sociations, surrounded by children and their friends, mingling with what remained of his earlier friends,--with his younger brother, a most accomplished and lovable person, forming one of his own family, and his younger sister living near him in a house of her own,--he was also easily the first citizen of the little University City. Giving readily his time and means to all public interests, even those called political, his position was curiously unlike that of the more wayward or detached poets. Later his two married daughters built houses close by and bore children, and the fields were full of their playmates, representing the exuberant life of a new generation. He still kept his health, and as he walked to and fro his very presence was a benediction. Some of his old friends had been unfortunate in life and were only too willing to seek his door; and even his literary enterprises, as for instance the "Poems of Places," were mainly undertaken for their sakes, that they might have employment and support.

It is a curious but indisputable fact that no house in Cambridge, even in the tenfold larger university circle of to-day, presents such a constant course of hospitable and refined social intercourse as existed at Craigie House in the days of Longfellow. Whether it is that professors are harder worked and more poorly paid, or only that there happens to be no one so sought after by strangers and so able, through favoring fortune, to receive them, is not clear. But the result is the same. He had troops of friends; they loved to come to him and he to have them come, and the comforts of creature refreshment were never wanting, though perhaps in simpler guise than now. It needs but to turn the pages of his memoirs as written by his brother to see that with the agreeable moderation of French or Italian gentlemen, he joined their daintiness of palate and their appreciation of choice vintages, and this at a time when the physiological standard was less advanced than now, and a judicious attention to the subject was for that reason better appreciated. His friends from Boston and Brookline came so constantly and so easily as to suggest a far greater facility of conveyance than that of to-day, although the real facts were quite otherwise. One can hardly wonder that the bard's muse became a little festive under circ.u.mstances so very favorable. His earlier circle of friends known as "the five of clubs" included Professor Felton, whom d.i.c.kens called "the heartiest of Greek professors;" Charles Sumner; George S. Hillard, Sumner's law partner; and Henry R. Cleveland, a retired teacher and educational writer. Of these, Felton was a man of varied learning, as was Sumner, an influence which made Felton jocose but sometimes dogged, and Sumner eloquent, but occasionally tumid in style. Hillard was one of those thoroughly accomplished men who fail of fame only for want of concentration, and Cleveland was the first to advance ideas of school training, now so well established that men forget their ever needing an advocate. He died young, and Dr. Samuel G. Howe, a man of worldwide fame as a philanthropist and trainer of the blind, was put in to fill the vacancy. All these five men, being of literary pursuits, could scarcely fail of occasionally praising one another, and were popularly known as "the mutual admiration society;" indeed, there was a tradition that some one had written above a review of Longfellow's "Evangeline" by Felton, to be found at the Athenaeum Library, the condensed indors.e.m.e.nt, "Insured at the Mutual." At a later period this club gave place, as clubs will, to other organizations, such as the short-lived Atlantic Club and the Sat.u.r.day Club; and at their entertainments Longfellow was usually present, as were also, in the course of time, Emerson, Holmes, Lowell, Aga.s.siz, Whittier, and many visitors from near and far. Hawthorne was rarely seen on such occasions, and Th.o.r.eau never. On the other hand, the club never included the more radical reformers, as Garrison, Phillips, Bronson Alcott, Edmund Quincy, or Theodore Parker, and so did not call out what Emerson christened "the soul of the soldiery of dissent."

It would be a mistake to a.s.sume that on these occasions Longfellow was a recipient only. Of course Holmes and Lowell, the most naturally talkative of the party, would usually have the lion's share of the conversation; but Longfellow, with all his gentle modesty, had a quiet wit of his own and was never wholly a silent partner. His saying of Ruskin, for instance, that he had "grand pa.s.sages of rhetoric, Iliads in nutsh.e.l.ls;" of some one else, that "Criticism is double edged. It criticises him who receives and him who gives;" his description of the contented Dutch tradesman "whose golden face, like the round and ruddy physiognomy of the sun on the sign of a village tavern, seems to say 'Good entertainment here;'" of Venice, that "it is so visionary and fairylike that one is almost afraid to set foot on the ground, lest he should sink the city;" of authorship, that "it is a mystery to many people that an author should reveal to the public secrets that he shrinks from telling to his most intimate friends;" that "nothing is more dangerous to an author than sudden success, because the patience of genius is one of its most precious attributes;" that "he who carries his bricks to the building of every one's house will never build one for himself;"--these were all fresh, racy, and truthful, and would bear recalling when many a brilliant stroke of wit had sparkled on the surface and gone under. As a mere critic he grew more amiable and tolerant as he grew older, as is the wont of literary men; and John Dwight, then the recognized head of the musical brotherhood of Boston, always maintained that Longfellow was its worst enemy by giving his warm indors.e.m.e.nt to the latest comer, whatever his disqualifications as to style or skill.

Holmes said of him in a letter to Motley in 1873:--

"I find a singular charm in the society of Longfellow,--a soft voice, a sweet and cheerful temper, a receptive rather than aggressive intelligence, the agreeable flavor of scholarship without any pedantic ways, and a perceptible soupcon of the humor, not enough to startle or surprise or keep you under the strain of over-stimulation, which I am apt to feel with very witty people."

And ten years later, writing to a friend and referring to his verses on the death of Longfellow, printed in the "Atlantic Monthly," he said: "But it is all too little, for his life was so exceptionally sweet and musical that any voice of praise sounds almost like a discord after it."

Professor Rolfe has suggested that he unconsciously describes himself in "The Golden Legend," where Walter the Minnesinger says of Prince Henry:--

"His gracious presence upon earth Was as a fire upon a hearth; As pleasant songs, at morning sung, The words that dropped from his sweet tongue Strengthened our hearts; or, heard at night, Made all our slumbers soft and light."

He also points out that this is the keynote of the dedication of "The Seaside and the Fireside," the volume published in 1849.

"As one who, walking in the twilight gloom, Hears round about him voices as it darkens, And seeing not the forms from which they come, Pauses from time to time, and turns and hearkens;

"So walking here in twilight, O my friends!

I hear your voices, softened by the distance, And pause, and turn to listen, as each sends His words of friendship, comfort, and a.s.sistance.

"Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown!

Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, That teaches me, when seeming most alone, Friends are around us, though no word be spoken."

In another age or country Longfellow would have been laurelled, medalled, or enn.o.bled; but he has had what his essentially republican spirit doubtless preferred, the simple homage of a nation's heart. He had his share of foreign honors; and these did not come from Oxford and Cambridge only, since in 1873 he was chosen a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 1877 of the Spanish Academy. At home he was the honored member of every literary club or a.s.sociation to which he cared to belong. In the half-rural city where he spent his maturer life--that which he himself described in "Hyperion" as "this leafy blossoming, and beautiful Cambridge"--he held a position of as unquestioned honor and reverence as that of Goethe at Weimar or Jean Paul at Baireuth. This was the more remarkable, as he rarely attended public meetings, seldom volunteered counsel or action, and was not seen very much in public. But his weight was always thrown on the right side; he took an unfeigned interest in public matters, always faithful to the traditions of his friend Sumner; and his purse was always easily opened for all good works. On one occasion there was something like a collision of opinion between him and the city government, when it was thought necessary for the widening of Brattle Street to remove the "spreading chestnut-tree" that once stood before the smithy of the village blacksmith, Dexter Pratt. The poet earnestly expostulated; the tree fell, nevertheless; but by one of those happy thoughts which sometimes break the monotony of munic.i.p.al annals, it was proposed to the city fathers that the children of the public schools should be invited to build out of its wood, by their small subscriptions, a great armchair for the poet's study. The unexpected gift, from such a source, salved the offence, but it brought with it a penalty to Mr. Longfellow's household, for the kindly bard gave orders that no child who wished to see the chair should be excluded; and the tramp of dirty little feet through the hall was for many months the despair of housemaids.

Thenceforward his name was to these children a household word; and the most charming feature of the festival held on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Cambridge (December 28, 1880) was the reception given by a thousand grammar-school children to the gray and courteous old poet, who made then and there, almost for the only time in his life, and contrary to all previous expectations, a brief speech in reply.

On that occasion he thus spoke briefly, at the call of the mayor, who presided, and who afterwards caused to be read by Mr. George Riddle, the verses "From My Arm-Chair," which the poet had written for the children.

He spoke as follows:--

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS,--I do not rise to make an address to you, but to excuse myself from making one. I know the proverb says that he who excuses himself accuses himself,--and I am willing on this occasion to accuse myself, for I feel very much as I suppose some of you do when you are suddenly called upon in your cla.s.s room, and are obliged to say that you are not prepared. I am glad to see your faces and to hear your voices. I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you in prose, as I have already done in verse, for the beautiful present you made me some two years ago. Perhaps some of you have forgotten it, but I have not; and I am afraid,--yes, I am afraid that fifty years hence, when you celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of this occasion, this day and all that belongs to it will have pa.s.sed from your memory; for an English philosopher has said that the ideas as well as children of our youth often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where, though the bra.s.s and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.

Again, upon his seventy-fifth birthday, there were great rejoicings in the Cambridge schools, as indeed in those of many other cities far and wide.