Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Part 2

CHAPTER IV

LITERATURE AS A PURSUIT

Longfellow graduated at Bowdoin College in June, 1825. There was in his mind, apparently, from the first, that definiteness of purpose which is so often wanting when a student takes his first college degree. There was for him no doubt or hesitation: it must be literature or nothing; and this not merely from a preference for the pursuit, but from an ambition, willingly acknowledged, to make a name in that direction. He writes to his friend, George W. Wells, "Somehow, and yet I hardly know why, I am unwilling to study any profession. I cannot make a lawyer of any eminence, because I have not a talent for argument; I am not good enough for a minister,--and as to physic, I utterly and absolutely detest it." Even a year before this, he had written to his father a letter of some moment, dated March 13, 1824, containing the following ominous pa.s.sage: "I am curious to know what you do intend to make of me,--whether I am to study a profession or not; and if so, what profession. I hope your ideas upon this subject will agree with mine, for I have a particular and strong prejudice for one course of life, to which you, I fear, will not agree. It will not be worth while for me to mention what this is until I become more acquainted with your own wishes."{9}

This letter remaining for some months unanswered, there followed another which at last stated his own personal desire. It was written to his father and dated December 5, 1824.

"I take this early opportunity to write to you, because I wish to know fully your inclination with regard to the profession I am to pursue when I leave college.

"For my part I have already hinted to you what would best please me. I want to spend one year at Cambridge for the purpose of reading history and of becoming familiar with the best authors in polite literature; whilst at the same time I can be acquiring a knowledge of the Italian language, without an acquaintance with which I shall be shut out from one of the most beautiful departments of letters. The French I mean to understand pretty thoroughly before I leave college. After leaving Cambridge I would attach myself to some literary periodical publication, by which I could maintain myself and still enjoy the advantages of reading. Now, I do not think that there is anything visionary or chimerical in my plan thus far. The fact is--and I will not disguise it in the least, for I think I ought not--the fact is, I most eagerly aspire after future eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres in it. There may be something visionary in _this_, but I flatter myself that I have prudence enough to keep my enthusiasm from defeating its own object by too great haste. Surely there never was a better opportunity offered for the exertion of literary talent in our own country than is now offered. To be sure, most of our literary men thus far have not been professedly so until they have studied and entered the practice of Theology, Law, or Medicine. But this is evidently lost time. I do believe that we ought to pay more attention to the opinion of philosophers, that 'nothing but Nature can qualify a man for knowledge.'

"Whether Nature has given me any capacity for knowledge or not, she has at any rate given me a very strong predilection for literary pursuits, and I am almost confident in believing that, if I can ever rise in the world, it must be by the exercise of my talent in the wide field of literature. With such a belief, I must say that I am unwilling to engage in the study of law."

Again on December 31 he writes to his father, by way of New Year's gift, "Let me reside one year at Cambridge; let me study belles-lettres, and after that time it will not require a spirit of prophecy to predict with some degree of certainty what kind of a figure I could make in the literary world. If I fail here, there is still time enough left for the study of a profession; and while residing at Cambridge, I shall have acquired the knowledge of some foreign languages which will be, through life, of the greatest utility."

The answer of the father is too characteristic to be omitted, whether for its views as to personal standards or as to poetic structure. Most youthful poets of that day had to face a critical method based strictly upon the versification of Pope, and their parents regarded all more flowing measures as having a slight flavor of the French Revolution.

"The subject of your first letter is one of deep interest and demands great consideration. A literary life, to one who has the means of support, must be very pleasant. But there is not wealth enough in this country to afford encouragement and patronage to merely literary men.

And as you have not had the fortune (I will not say whether good or ill) to be born rich, you must adopt a profession which will afford you subsistence as well as reputation. I am happy to observe that my ambition has never been to acc.u.mulate wealth for my children, but to cultivate their minds in the best possible manner, and to imbue them with correct moral, political, and religious principles,--believing that a person thus educated will with proper diligence be certain of attaining all the wealth which is necessary to happiness. With regard to your spending a year at Cambridge, I have always thought it might be beneficial; and if my health should not be impaired and my finances should allow, I should be very happy to gratify you.... In the 'Advertiser' of the 18th, I observe some poetry from the 'U. S. Literary Gazette,' which from the signature, I presume to be from your pen. It is a very pretty production, and I read it with pleasure. But you will observe that the second line of the sixth verse has too many feet.

'Beneath the dark and motionless beech.' I think it would be improved by subst.i.tuting _lonely_ for _motionless_. I suggest this for your consideration. I have the pleasure of hearing frequently from home. They complain that they have not heard a word from you since you left. This is unpardonable."

On January 24, 1825, the son wrote to his father again:--

"From the general tenor of your last letter it seems to be your fixed desire that I should choose the profession of the law for the business of my life. I am very much rejoiced that you accede so readily to my proposition of studying general literature for one year at Cambridge. My grand object in doing this will be to gain as perfect a knowledge of the French and Italian languages as can be gained without travelling in France and Italy,--though, to tell the truth, I intend to visit both before I die.... I am afraid you begin to think me rather chimerical in many of my ideas, and that I am ambitious of becoming a '_rara avis in terris_.' But you must acknowledge the usefulness of aiming high,--at something which it is impossible to overshoot--perhaps to reach. The fact is, I have a most voracious appet.i.te for knowledge. To its acquisition I will sacrifice everything.... Nothing delights me more than reading and writing. And nothing could induce me to relinquish the pleasures of literature, little as I have yet tasted them. Of the three professions I should prefer the law. I am far from being a fluent speaker, but practice must serve as a talisman where talent is wanting.

I can be a lawyer. This will support my real existence, literature an _ideal_ one.

"I purchased last evening a beautiful pocket edition of Sir William Jones's Letters, and have just finished reading them. Eight languages he was critically versed in; eight more he read with a dictionary; and there were twelve more not wholly unknown to him. I have somewhere seen or heard the observation that as many languages as a person acquires, so many times is he a man."{10}

It was undoubtedly an important fact to the young poet to be brought thus early in contact with Sir William Jones and his twenty-eight languages. It is the experience of all that the gift of learning a variety of tongues is something which peculiarly belongs to youth. In Southern Europe, in Russia, in the East, it is a common thing to encounter mere children who with next to no schooling will prattle readily in three or four languages with equal inaccuracy but with equal ease; while a much older person may acquire them by laborious study and yet never feel at home. One can hardly doubt Longfellow's natural readiness in that direction; he was always being complimented, at any rate--though this may not count for much--upon his aptness in p.r.o.nouncing foreign tongues, and the ease with which his own compositions lent themselves to translation may very possibly have some obscure connection with his own gifts in this respect. His college training can have had little bearing upon it, since there is no evidence that his cla.s.smate Hawthorne, doubtless a man of higher genius, showed any such capacity.

{9 _Life_, i. 50.}

{10 _Life_, i. 57, 58.}

CHAPTER V

FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE

Longfellow's college cla.s.s (1825) numbered thirty-seven, and his rank in it at graduation was nominally fourth--though actually third, through the sudden death of a cla.s.smate just before Commencement. Soon after his graduation, an opportunity occurred to establish a professorship of modern languages in the college upon a fund given by Mrs. Bowdoin; and he, being then scarcely nineteen, and nominally a law student in his father's office, was sent to Europe to prepare himself for this chair, apparently on an allowance of six hundred dollars a year. The college tradition is that this appointment--which undoubtedly determined the literary tendencies of his whole life--was given to him in consequence of the impression made upon an examining committee by the manner in which he had translated one of Horace's odes. He accordingly sailed from New York for Europe on May 15, 1826, having stopped at Boston on the way, where he dined with Professor George Ticknor, then holding the professorship at Harvard College to which Longfellow was destined to succeed at a later day. Professor Ticknor had himself recently returned from a German university, and urged the young man to begin his studies there, giving him letters of introduction to Professor Eichhorn, to Robert Southey, and to Washington Irving, then in Europe.

He sailed on the ship Cadmus, Captain Allen, and wrote to his mother from Havre that his pa.s.sage of thirty days had been a dreary blank, and that the voyage was very tiresome because of the continual talking of French and broken English, adding, "For Frenchmen, you know, talk incessantly, and we had at least a dozen of them with us." In spite of this rather fatiguing opportunity, he was not at once at home in French, but wrote ere long, "I am coming on famously, I a.s.sure you." He wrote from Auteuil, where he soon went, "Attached to the house is an extensive garden, full of fruit-trees, and bowers, and alcoves, where the boarders ramble and talk from morning till night. This makes the situation an excellent one for me; I can at any time hear French conversation,--for the French are always talking. Besides, the conversation is the purest of French, inasmuch as persons from the highest circles in Paris are residing here,--amongst others, an old gentleman who was of the household of Louis the Sixteenth, and a Madame de Sailly, daughter of a celebrated advocate named Berryer, who was the defender of Marshal Ney in his impeachment for treason. There is also a young student of law here, who is my almost constant companion, and who corrects all my mistakes in speaking or writing the French. As he is not much older than I am, I do not feel so much embarra.s.sed in speaking to him as I do in speaking to others. These are some of the advantages which I enjoy here, and you can easily imagine others which a country residence offers over that of a city, during the vacation of the literary inst.i.tutions at Paris and the cessation of their lectures."

It is to be noticed from the outset that the French villages disappointed him as they disappoint many others. In his letters he recalls "how fresh and cheerful and breezy a New England village is; how marked its features--so different from the town, so peculiar, so delightful." He finds a French village, on the other hand, to be like a deserted town, having "the same paved streets, the same dark, narrow alleys without sidewalks, the same dingy stone houses, each peeping into its neighbor's windows, the same eternal stone walls, shutting in from the eye of the stranger all the beauty of the place and opposing an inhospitable barrier to the lover of natural scenery." But when he finds himself among rural scenes, he has the delight felt by many an American boy since his days, as in the picture following:--

"From Orleans I started on foot for Tours on the fifth of October.

October is my favorite month of the twelve. When I reflected that if I remained in Paris I should lose the only opportunity I might ever enjoy of seeing the centre of France in all the glory of the vintage and the autumn, I 'shut the book-lid' and took wing, with a little knapsack on my back, and a blue cap,--not exactly like Quentin Durward, but perhaps a little more. More anon of him. I had gone as far as Orleans in the _diligence_ because the route is through an uninteresting country.

"I began the pedestrian part of my journey on one of those dull, melancholy days which you will find uttering a mournful voice in Sewall's Almanack: 'Expect--much--rain--about--this--time!' 'Very miscellaneous weather, good for sundry purposes,'--but not for a journey on foot, thought I. But I had a merry heart, and it went merrily along all day. At sundown I found myself about seven leagues on my way and one beyond Beaugency. I found the route one continued vineyard. On each side of the road, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but vines, save here and there a glimpse of the Loire, the turrets of an old chateau, or spire of a village church. The clouds had pa.s.sed away with the morning, and I had made a fine day's journey, cutting across the country, traversing vineyards, and living in all the luxury of thought which the occasion inspired. I recollect that at sunset I had entered a path which wound through a wide vineyard where the villagers were still at their labors, and I was loitering along, talking with the peasantry and searching for an _auberge_ to pa.s.s the night in. I was presently overtaken by a band of villagers; I wished them a good evening, and finding that the girls of the party were going to a village at a short distance, I joined myself to the band. I wanted to get into one of the cottages, if possible, in order to study character. I had a flute in my knapsack, and I thought it would be very pretty to touch up at a cottage door, Goldsmith-like,--though I would not have done it for the world without an invitation. Well, before long, I determined to get an invitation, if possible. So I addressed the girl who was walking beside me, told her I had a flute in my sack, and asked her if she would like to dance. Now laugh long and loud! What do you suppose her answer was?

She said she liked to dance, but she did not know what a flute was! What havoc that made among my romantic ideas! My _quietus_ was made; I said no more about a flute, the whole journey through; and I thought nothing but starvation would drive me to strike up at the entrance of a village, as Goldsmith did."{11}

Thus, wherever he goes, his natural good spirits prevail over everything. Washington Irving, in his diary, speaks of Longfellow at Madrid as having "arrived safely and cheerily, having met with no robbers." Mrs. Alexander Everett, wife of the American minister at Madrid, writes back to America, "His countenance is itself a letter of recommendation." He went into good Spanish society and also danced in the streets on village holidays. At the Alhambra, he saw the refinement of beauty within the halls, and the cl.u.s.ters of gypsy caves in the hillside opposite. After eight months of Spain he went on to Italy, where he remained until December, and pa.s.sed to Germany with the new year. He sums up his knowledge of the languages at this point by saying, "With the French and Spanish languages I am familiarly conversant so as to speak them correctly and write them with as much ease and fluency as I do the English. The Portuguese I read without difficulty. And with regard to my proficiency in the Italian, I have only to say that all at the hotel where I lodge took me for an Italian, until I told them I was an American." He settled down to his studies in Germany, his father having written, with foresight then unusual, "I consider the German language and literature much more important than the Italian." He did not, however, have any sense of actual transplantation, as is the case with some young students, for although he writes to his sister (March 28, 1829), "My poetic career is finished. Since I left America I have hardly put two lines together," yet he sends to Carey & Lea, the Philadelphia publishers, to propose a series of sketches and tales of New England life. These sketches, as given in his note-book, are as follows:--

"1. New England Scenery: description of Sebago Pond; rafting logs; tavern scene; a tale connected with the 'Images.'

"2. A New England Village: country squire; the parson; the little deacon; the farm-house kitchen.

"3. Husking Frolic: song and tales; fellow who plays the fife for the dance; tale of the Quoddy Indians; description of Sacobezon, their chief.

"5. Thanksgiving Day: its merry-making, and tales (also of the Indians).

"7. Description of the White Mountains: tale of the b.l.o.o.d.y Hand.

"10. Reception of Lafayette in a country village.

"13. Down East: the missionary of Acadie."{12}

A few days after, he wrote from Gottingen to his father, "I shall never again be in Europe." We thus see his mind at work on American themes in Germany, as later on German themes in America, unconsciously predicting that mingling of the two influences which gave him his fame. His earlier books gave to studious Americans, as I can well recall, their first imaginative glimpses of Europe, while the poet's homeward-looking thoughts from Europe had shown the instinct which was to identify his later fame with purely American themes. It is to be noticed that whatever was artificial and foreign in Longfellow's work appeared before he went to Europe; and was the same sort of thing which appeared in all boyish American work at that period. It was then that in describing the Indian hunter he made the dance go round by the greenwood tree. He did not lay this aside at once after his return from Europe, and Margaret Fuller said of him, "He borrows incessantly and mixes what he borrows."

Criticising the very prelude to "Voices of the Night," she pointed out the phrases "pentecost" and "bishop's-caps" as indications that he was not merely "musing upon many things," but on many books which described them. But the habit steadily diminished. His very gift at translation, in which he probably exceeded on the whole any other modern poet, led him, nevertheless, always to reproduce old forms rather than create new ones, thus aiding immensely his popularity with the ma.s.s of simple readers, while coming short of the full demands of the more critical. To construct his most difficult poems was thus mainly a serene pleasure, and something as far as possible from that conflict which kept Hawthorne all winter, by his wife's testimony, with "a knot in his forehead" while he was writing "The Scarlet Letter."

It is always to be borne in mind that, as Mr. Scudder has pointed out in his admirable paper on "Longfellow and his Art," the young poet was really preparing himself in Europe for his literary work as well as for his professional work, and half consciously. This is singularly confirmed by his lifelong friend, Professor George W. Greene, who, in dedicating his "The Life of Nathanael Greene" to his friend, thus recalls an evening spent together at Naples in 1828:--

"We wanted," he says, "to be alone, and yet to feel that there was life all around us. We went up to the flat roof of the house where, as we walked, we could look down into the crowded street, and out upon the wonderful bay, and across the bay to Ischia and Capri and Sorrento, and over the house-tops and villas and vineyards to Vesuvius. The ominous pillar of smoke hung suspended above the fatal mountain, reminding us of Pliny, its first and n.o.blest victim. A golden vapor crowned the bold promontory of Sorrento, and we thought of Ta.s.so. Capri was calmly sleeping, like a sea-bird upon the waters; and we seemed to hear the voice of Tacitus from across the gulf of eighteen centuries, telling us that the historian's pen is still powerful to absolve or to condemn long after the imperial sceptre has fallen from the withered hand. There, too, lay the native island of him whose daring mind conceived the fearful vengeance of the Sicilian Vespers. We did not yet know Niccolini; but his grand verses had already begun their work of regeneration in the Italian heart. Virgil's tomb was not far off. The spot consecrated by Sannazaro's ashes was near us. And over all, with a thrill like that of solemn music, fell the splendor of the Italian sunset."{13}

As an ill.u.s.tration of this obvious fact that Longfellow, during this first European visit, while nominally training himself for purely educational work, was fitting himself also for a literary career, we find from his letter to his father, May 15, 1829, that while hearing lectures in German and studying faithfully that language, he was, as he says, "writing a book, a kind of Sketch-Book of scenes in France, Spain, and Italy." We shall presently encounter this book under the name of "Outre-Mer." He connects his two aims by saying in the same letter, "One must write and write correctly, in order to teach." Again he adds, "The further I advance, the more I see to be done. The more, too, I am persuaded of the charlatanism of literary men. For the rest, my fervent wish is to return home." His brother tells us that among his note-books of that period, we find a favorite pa.s.sage from Locke which reappears many years after in one of his letters and in his impromptu address to the children of Cambridge, in 1880: "Thus the ideas as well as the 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."{14} He also included a quotation from John Lyly's "Endymion," which ten years later furnished the opening of his own "Hyperion." "Dost thou know what a poet is? Why, fool, a poet is as much as one should say--a poet." When we consider what he had just before written to his sister, it only furnishes another ill.u.s.tration of the fact, which needs no demonstration, that young authors do not always know themselves.

He reached home from Europe, after three years of absence, on August 11, 1829, looking toward Bowdoin College as his abode, and a professorship of modern languages as his future position. Up to this time, to be sure, the economical college had offered him only an instructorship. But he had shown at this point that quiet decision and firmness which marked him in all practical affairs, and which was not always quite approved by his more anxious father. In this case he carried his point, and he received on the 6th of September this simple record of proceedings from the college:--

"In the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College, Sept. 1st, 1829: Mr. Henry W. Longfellow having declined to accept the office of instructor in modern languages.

"Voted, that we now proceed to the choice of a professor of modern languages.

"And Mr. H. W. Longfellow was chosen."

Thus briefly was the matter settled, and he was launched upon his life's career at the age of twenty-two. Of those who made up his circle of friends in later years, Holmes had just graduated from Harvard, Sumner was a Senior there, and Lowell was a schoolboy in Cambridge. Few American colleges had at that time special professors of modern languages, though George Ticknor had set a standard for them all.

Longfellow had to prepare his own text-books--to translate "L'h.o.m.ond's Grammar," to edit an excellent little volume of French "Proverbes Dramatiques," and a small Spanish Reader, "Novelas Espanolas." He was also enlisted in a few matters outside, and drew up the outline of a prospectus for a girls' high school in Portland, such high schools being then almost as rare as professorships of modern languages. He was also librarian. He gave a course of lectures on French, Spanish, and Italian literature, but there seems to have been no reference to German, which had not then come forward into the place in American education which it now occupies. As to literature, he wrote to his friend, George W.

Greene, "Since my return I have written one piece of poetry, but have not published a line. You need not be alarmed on that score. I am all prudence now, since I can form a more accurate judgment of the merit of poetry. If I ever publish a volume, it will be many years first." It was actually nine years. For the "North American Review" he wrote in April, 1831, an essay on "The Origin and Progress of the French Language." He afterwards sent similar papers to the same periodical upon the Italian and Spanish languages and literatures, each of these containing also original translations. Thus he entered on his career as a teacher, but another change in life also awaited him.

{11 _Life_, i. 90, 91.}