7

 

Switzerland

Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.

—William Hazlitt, “On the Fear of Death,” 1822

Fanny’s busy travel journal for July 20, 1836, records the Appleton party’s cautious passage along breathtaking Alpine trails from Bern to Thun, a picturesque Swiss village where they settled in for a few days, surrounded by “noble mountains of purest snow.” They took rooms in a “dashing new hotel” that looked out on a landscape of green fields that were “finely broken with trees thro’ which glistens the lordly Aar” River where it joins Lake Thun—altogether a “fairyland” so “wondrously beautiful” that Fanny had trouble choosing which among the “tempting variety” of natural landmarks around her to sketch first. A “fascinating walk” that afternoon with Tom revealed other spectacles, most striking a twelfth-century castle with “sky-piercing spires” and a chateau “reflected in the clear water” that Fanny declared to be “quaint in form” and “rich in tint.” Though reluctant to leave such a vista—“long to stay here,” Fanny wrote of the scene—they returned in time to join the others for dinner.

“Prof. Longfellow sends up his card to Father,” she entered next, noting offhandedly what to her was an extraneous afterthought on an otherwise exhausting day: an American scholar passing through the town where she and her family were staying had expressed an interest in making their acquaintance. What she wrote after that puts her feelings in even sharper perspective: “Hope the venerable gentleman won’t pop in on us tho’ I did like his Outre-Mer.” Fanny, it is safe to surmise from this, knew nothing whatsoever about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at the time, other than that he was a college instructor, and that he wrote a book she had read. That she used the word “venerable” literally—that she believed him to be a mature academic of some years—became evident when the two finally did meet, on the other side of Lake Thun in Interlaken, where the Appletons had checked into other lodgings, declaring him then “a young man after all or else the son of the poet.”

Fanny’s accounts of their interactions over the following days are concise and unadorned to the point of being almost reportorial, though what does come through in a fragmentary way is a growing respect for someone she came to regard as an intellectual equal. Henry astutely picked up on this penchant of hers, carrying on at length in areas he perceived were of mutual interest. But to be invited, as he later was, to join the Appletons on a portion of their travels, he also had to have been deemed worthy by Nathan Appleton, who was chaperoning two highly sophisticated young women on this trip, both of whom were bright, attractive, unattached, socially polished, and impeccably educated, a responsibility we can be sure he oversaw with attention and care.

“At the Hotel Bellevue I met Mr. Appleton, of Boston, going with his family to Interlaken,” Henry remarked of the day he had sent his “card up” to the family’s rooms. “How unlucky I am in not having met them there! I had but a few moments’ conversation with him,” and was off for Bern. But what Henry confirmed—that they did, in fact, meet face-to-face in Thun—has some bearing on everything else that followed. Though Henry was not descended from “old Yankee” wealth—neither, for that matter, was Appleton—he came from a respected New England family, and he was a Harvard professor, which in the absence of a minted pedigree or independent wealth, carried a cachet of its own in these circles. Henry, moreover, was a published author, and presumably made—as he usually did—a solid first impression.

Taking a room in Lausanne, Henry hired a cicerone—a guide—“to see things expeditiously,” including the villa where Edward Gibbon had written the final volumes of his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In Ferney, he visited the onetime residence of Voltaire, but left uninspired. “As I have neither love nor veneration for this arch-scoffer, the visit has not afforded me much gratification.” In Geneva, he stayed in the Hôtel des Bergues; in the village of Chamonix, he chose the Hôtel de l’Union, with a spectacular view of Mont Blanc. His decision to linger there for two days proved propitious when he received a “pleasant” call from Thomas Motley of Boston, a Beacon Hill neighbor of the Appletons, “who is here with his family.” Deciding to travel together, they shared a carriage to Thun and took a steamboat to Interlaken, where they “found the Appletons still stationary, as if there were a charm about the place.”

Finding the top hotels fully booked, they took rooms where they could find them, Henry “secluded in a convent, or what was once a convent” for the night. “I hope for an adventure,” he wrote before turning in, passing the night “in quiet sleep.” Another room was found for him the next day at the pension where the Appletons were staying, and he joined the group there. “After breakfast we went off in a body to stroll in the woods as far as the ruins of an old castle, which some of the ladies sketched, while the rest of us sat under the trees. And thus the time slipped pleasantly away.” A walk on the banks of the Aar after a late-afternoon dinner was followed by a concert in the evening. “Since I have joined these two families from America the time passes pleasantly,” he decided the next day. “I now for the first time enjoy Switzerland.”

Whatever direct interactions Henry was having with Fanny at this point are not recorded in either of their journals, though his entries suggest he was having a restful time. On August 3, they all left by steamer for a return trip to Thun, “a large party of us, the Appletons and the Motleys. We shall be some days together, a week or more probably. Nothing could be more pleasant.” Henry wasted little time taking on the role of raconteur during their extended carriage rides, he usually joining Fanny, Mary, and cousin William. “A day of true and quiet enjoyment, travelling from Thun to Entelbuch on our way to Lucerne,” he wrote. “The time glided too swiftly away. We read the ‘Genevieve’ of Coleridge, and the Christabel, and many scraps of song, and little German ballads of Uhland, simple and strange. At noon we stopped at Langnau, and walked into the fields, and sat down by a stream of pure water that turned a mill; and a little girl came out of the mill and brought us cherries; and the shadow of the trees was pleasant, and my soul was filled with peace and gladness.”

Fanny recalled these same events with similar clarity, but from a somewhat different angle. She reported how “Mr L” was “talking to me all the while, about poetry,” rhapsodizing about one of her favorites—Shelley—but also quoting at length “some poetical conceits” of Nathaniel Parker Willis, a now forgotten New England writer and editor who, it appears clear from her comments, was well known to both. What stands out is the utter disdain she openly expressed for the man and his work. She allowed that while Willis probably “has many such” expressions of occasional talent, the question for her was whether they were “inborn flashes” or—more likely in her view, and she coined a new word for the occasion—“well-polished prettinesses.” She answered her own question: “If one could separate the man’s personal character, so false, so flimsy, from his poetry, I might admire much more—his best thoughts now seem but affectations, mimicries of other people’s best garnished out his own way.” When Henry declared his newfound passion for this remarkable young woman some months later, one of his first compliments would be awe of her “genius”—her clearness of thought, her ability to cut to the core, her determination to hold back nothing of importance.

Fanny’s take on the late-afternoon walk “to the old bridge” where she was pleased to “sketch the cloister spires from a wall, then on the other side of the river, a dark picturesque cottage,” is otherwise comparable to Henry’s. “A nice talk—delicious twilight,” she wrote. “Replied to the courteous guten abend of the little children we met; my first German phrase.” A “quiet evening” indoors led her to reflect on the general surroundings. “My heart clings to this dear valley—shall I ever see it again? When and with what eyes?”

She recorded how “Mr L gave us a lesson in German,” choosing to read some “pretty ballads” of the Romantic poet Johann Ludwig Uhland, which she called “simple and touching.” Toward nightfall, Fanny, Mary, and Henry “took a stroll along the river-side under the trees,” viewing the “most poetical sunset I think I have seen in Europe,” to her a “glorious ‘illuminated’ leaf of Nature’s holy volume!” At a vista near Thun, they “wandered in dim twilight,” pausing in a grove of trees, with “bats wheeling over our head, silence around and the huge masses of poplars like dim black cathedrals reflected in the clear water with stars as altar-tapers. Walked slowly home filled with calm and happy thoughts. Father quite alarmed at our absence.”

Her description of the long carriage ride to Lucerne also confirms the basic points outlined by Henry, with a few added touches. “Mr L, William and moi together—read German, Coleridge, etc, all the morning so saw no scenery. A rush of chubby, pretty little girls, so droll in their black lace caps, as we alight to dine. Mary and I and Mr L sit down on logs over a crystal clear brooklet near a mill and sentimentalize over grass bent, whether it will or no, by the gliding stream; the ‘miller’s daughter’ bringing us sour cherries.” The next day brought more of the same: “Mr. L’s journal and poetry, read aloud as before.”

Once arrived in Lucerne, William’s weakened condition left Fanny “wilted and weary” and “oppressed with sad thoughts.” Henry may even have been getting on her nerves at this point. “Mr L. very inquisitive,” she wrote edgily before retiring for the night. But his offer the next morning to stay with Willy while the others went on a sightseeing trip to Mount Righi was greatly appreciated. “He is a most gentle spirit,” Henry wrote of the young man, “resigned and uncomplaining, as one who has already commenced ‘his conversation in heaven.’ ” Continuing on to their hotel in Zurich, Fanny and Mary were delighted to find Tom “waiting at the door, with a slouched hat and a merry heart.” Henry and Tom took to each other on the spot, both, in a way, possessing qualities the other coveted, which became more apparent in the years ahead. “I like brother Tom very much,” Henry decided. “He is lively, clever and witty”—and also wealthy, free-spirited, and contentedly independent. Tom, for his part, respected artistic ability above everything else—and never wavered in his respect for Henry’s talents and accomplishments.

During a row on Lake Zurich, the two men jumped off the boat “in the deep part of the lake,” diving “down, down, down ‘into those depths so calm and cool,’ ” Henry wrote, quoting two lines from Outre-Mer that recalled a similar experience frolicking with the Persiani family in Italy ten summers earlier. Tom, he added approvingly, “is a mighty swimmer, and my element is cold water.” Evocative as the outing on the lake may have been for Henry, it did little to ease Fanny’s mounting anxiety. At one point she plunged her hand in the water, hoping the chilly jolt would “mingle with my exhausted spirit—strengthen and cleanse it,” but all she felt was more worry for William. “How can I think of myself while he is growing so feeble daily, so patiently relinquishing the active habits he delights in and breaking our hearts with his self-forgetting thoughtfulness of all about him?”

For diversion, Fanny took a “dip into Mr L’s very graphic descriptions of little things” in his journal. A physician brought in to examine Willy reported grimly that any thought of his surviving a voyage home was “impossible”; even a journey to Paris “would be too much” for him. “Oh God—but how will the poor child bear this terrible disappointment! He seems calm tho’ it is his death-knell, but he cannot get up stairs without aid. Dined in a thunderstorm: mingled tears with my soup.” An evening walk with Henry “up a small hill in the town under a grove of huge, gloomy linden trees” left her contemplating the “dead, blank winter” to come, “but what is that to the pall the mind can weave for itself now.”

During a lengthy carriage drive around Lake Zurich, Henry and Fanny translated into English “Das Schloss am Meere” (The Castle by the Sea), another ballad by Uhland. Finding her muse “very coy or drugged with poppies,” Fanny nonetheless was pleased with her performance, and Henry heartily agreed, crediting her with translating “some of the best lines,” even used her version later in Hyperion. Fanny would write out several holographic copies of the ballad, one in a bound volume she kept in the years before her marriage for poems of her own composition, called “Appletoniana,” the other kept separately, and now in the Houghton Library. In a fine calligraphic hand, on what she unmistakably intended to serve as a “title page” for the latter, she wrote the name of the poem, the author, followed by the translators—“Fanny E. Appleton” and “Henry W. Longfellow.” She had given herself top billing.

As the traveling party prepared to leave Zurich, there was general agreement that the roadhouse where they had just spent the night—the Hôtel du Corbeau, French for “raven”—was subpar, deemed even more disagreeable when a “most exorbitant” bill was presented for payment. Henry jotted some “beautiful lines” of doggerel in the guest book, which Fanny copied out in her own journal, declaring it a “true and jocose admonition to future victims of this vile inn.” Henry recorded the words in his journal as well, and reprised them later in Hyperion:

Beware of the Raven of Zurich!

’Tis a bird of omen ill,

A noisy & unclean bird,

With a very, very long bill.

In the carriage ride that followed, Henry read two “soul-thrilling” sermons of the Unitarian minister Orville Dewey to William, which Fanny thought to have “pleased him much,” particularly “that touching one on the ‘Voices of the Dead.’ ” The three talked about religion and mortality during the “rainy and muggy ride,” with William affirming “it much better to die of consumption than of a fever or accident,” regarding such an exit to be “more natural, gliding from one state of existence to another.” He regretted not being able to have done “something good in this world—but perhaps it is better to die young,” and not having a memorial picture made for his mother. “Poor William is very feeble,” Henry wrote. “We were fearful he would not reach Schaffhausen,” and he persuaded them to stop near Bülach, where William could sleep for a few hours, and they could have a bite to eat. “I sat by him and bathed his forehead in cologne,” Fanny wrote, leaving William’s side only at his “earnest” insistence that she join the others in a grove of linden trees outside, shaded from the hot sun, all the while feeling “so out of this world” by the morning’s gloomy conversation.

With Willy “refreshed by his rest,” they continued on, Fanny reading aloud William Hazlitt’s 1822 essay “On the Fear of Death.” During a stop to feed the horses, she and Henry took a walk, the conversation turning idly to “talk about clouds and how so little can supply pleasure when in the mood.” Both described separately the panorama laid out before them, using lovely variations on the same metaphor, Henry giving credit to Fanny for the central image. Here is what she wrote: “Everything had a Sunday look—a silence as if the trees were asleep in their pews. Steeped in sunshine quietness. Old man in the fields stalking about in cocked hat, breeches and red waistcoat like a revolutionary scarecrow.” And Henry’s take: “The scene was perfectly quiet; a breathless stillness as if all Nature were at prayer; and, as F. said, the trees looked as if they were standing up in their pews to sing. The waters of the Rhine were of a most lovely green. Nothing in the colors of human art could equal their beauty.”

In Schaffhausen, Fanny and Henry walked into town “to hunt up some books to amuse the poor invalid,” then sat in a park for a “long talk” about Boston, the people they both knew, and other “such dull topics.” When they returned to the hotel, Willy was organizing “all the little presents he has collected for his family,” and talked “with the utmost cheerfulness about the disposal of them,” knowing “they can never be given by his own hand and will when received be sad legacies” of his passing. “Gave Mary and myself a Geneva brooch as a memento—precious indeed!” Henry was greatly impressed by William’s courage. “It seems impossible that he should live many days. He is himself conscious of this, and is making his little gifts to friends with a calmness which is beautiful. How heavenly it is to die thus.”

During dinner that evening, one of the people whose name we can be comfortably certain came up when Fanny and Henry were chatting in the town park about mutual acquaintances—George Ticknor—strode into the inn, unannounced. Ticknor stopped by, according to Fanny, because he had heard “a young American was ill in the house and thus stumbled upon us.” The Ticknors and the Appletons were Boston neighbors, and frequent guests in each other’s homes. Ticknor’s wife, Anna Eliot Ticknor, was “all kindness and sympathy,” and “very much shocked” to find William so ill. Henry was similarly surprised to see his colleague. “While we were at dinner this afternoon, who should come into our parlor but Mr. Ticknor! He has just arrived with his family from Constance. His winter in Germany has given him a most portly look.”

During the few days of their stay, the Ticknors became constant companions—a special treat for Fanny, who left William in the care of François, the valet, for a day trip to nearby Rhine Falls, the largest waterfall in Europe. The welcome respite allowed her to observe a mechanical device she knew something about but had never seen in action. “Saw a pretty camera lucida reflecting the whole fall on a sheet, a miniature moving picture,” she marveled of the curious instrument, which reflects rays of light through a prism onto a flat surface, ideal for sketching. Fanny was captivated by the depiction of movement on a stationary plane—the development of motion-picture technology was still decades away. “Spray wreathing sun sparking in the water—shadows changing—truly magical effect, having what pictures of falls always need—the motion. The spectral vanishing as day-light is let in was exquisite.”

Fanny’s copy of the poem she and Henry translated together from the German into English “by the margin of fair Zurich’s waters,” with her name appearing first

Back at the hotel, the Ticknors’ young daughter, Eliza, paid William a visit, cheering everyone’s spirits. “Tis a real delight to see a child—a bit of sunshine and her voice so tinkling and joyous,” Fanny wrote. “Such a blessed state of hopefulness and trust—fresh from Heaven—not yet undermined by earthly experience. Shall we ever, ever regain this birth-right?” On Sunday, Mrs. Ticknor brought William some flowers; Fanny spent the morning reading aloud a few psalms, and an afternoon walk “under shady trees” was followed by a “quiet night” in the hotel. William fell asleep early, the others “sat up talking” until one in the morning, the conversation covering a range of interests. Henry and Ticknor spoke at length about “education and German Universities,” a conversation Fanny found “quite interesting,” elevating, it is fair to propose, Henry’s stature even further in her eyes. He had already proven himself an authority on literature, a talented linguist, an attentive conversationalist, a person of compassion, a poet. Now he was holding his own with a Beacon Hill power figure Fanny knew well, the same person who had chosen Henry to succeed him at Harvard.

Two days later, a passel of letters forwarded from Strasbourg arrived, including one that brought Henry’s Swiss holiday to an abrupt end. “Received a letter just before dinner which rendered it absolutely necessary for me to start for Heidelberg without delay,” he wrote on August 17, offering no further elaboration. Commenting on the letters just received, it is Fanny who fills in the blanks. “Mr. L gets one from Miss Clara C. which decides him to leave us immediately as she is out of patience awaiting an escort to America. Quite sorry to have him go.” Henry moved swiftly, and responsibly. “Engaged a carriage at once, and at six in the evening took leave, and started on my way through the Black Forest.” Reunited with Clara in Heidelberg, he described a “gloomy” ride from Baden to Strasbourg in which they “whiled away the time with whist; for the sky all tears, and the landscape with drenched garments, had no charms for us poor people, whose spirits were sufficiently sad, and whose voices had a muffled and mournful sound.”

The day after Henry’s departure, Fanny and Mary took a long walk up to “that lovely promenade,” where she reflected on “the happy state of childhood, innocence and ignorance before the down is rubbed off and the skeleton in all things is revealed and that fiend Doubt become our fire-side companion.” Her thoughts turned to her cousin who was “very, very weak today—has spoken little and dozed much.” The next day, Fanny walked with her father “through vineyards high above the Rhine,” admired an old fort with “mighty massive walls” and arches that reminded her of romances. “Refreshing to see strength in any shape.” Exchanging pleasantries in German with some villagers occasioned thoughts of Henry, departed just two days earlier: “Miss Mr L. considerably.” The cool temperatures had “invigorated” William, but not Fanny’s general mood. “The first dry leaves make those of my soul rustle within me!”

August 21, a Sunday, dawned rainy and cold. William had passed the night fitfully, the “ravages of his disease” taking their toll. “He gets no sleep tho appears to doze—shuts his eyes from weakness.” The morning was filled with a cluster of mundanities—a few letters from brother Tom and the Motleys had been delivered, and “some new Americans” had arrived. The hotel food was not to Fanny’s taste, and there was no music to soothe her spirits other than “the falling leaves.” An encounter on the town mall with two strutting peacocks got her thinking about “genteel” women dressed up in their gaudy finery—all appearance, little substance being the gist of her comments, none of them fully articulated, her preoccupation being with other thoughts—and there she stops. The final two pages of the volume are blank, with no indication whatsoever that William Sullivan Appleton had died early on August 24, two months shy of his twenty-first birthday.

Henry learned of Willy’s death from Tom Appleton, who wrote him with the sad news, sent to his forwarding address in Paris. “He desired me to remember him to all his friends and for me to thank those who had been kind in service to him in his illness, among whom he felt that you were warmly included.” The bare particulars of William’s passing were set down in a concise memoir Nathan Appleton wrote toward the end of his life, published posthumously by the Massachusetts Historical Society. He described William as a “sweet youth, who, for some time, had been suffering from a disease of the lungs,” dying finally after having “lingered on for some weeks.” A small church service was followed by “a procession to the burying-ground, where I obtained a lot in perpetuity, and afterward sent a monumental stone from Paris.”

Departing from Schaffhausen, the Appletons visited Fribourg, Strasbourg, Baden-Baden, and Heidelberg. In Mainz, it is Nathan Appleton who tells us that “both my daughters were attacked with what the physician called a ‘gastric fever,’ by which we were detained six weeks.” On the first anniversary of her departure for Europe, Fanny admitted to Robert Apthorp that “never did I love or appreciate home so much as now.” Of the previous twelve months, she joked that she just might “gain a living” as an “authoress” of tourist guides. “But over all this magic, anxiety, decay and death have thrown a tinge of sadness and there is a green corner by the blue Rhine where many aching hearts have bound the circle of their thoughts. I meant to write much to you about my sweet cousin William for the unsullied purity of his character and gentle sweetness of his disposition so ennobled his decay, shed such an atmosphere of heavenly hope and cheerful resignation around his last moments.”

She admitted to some uneasy “presentiments” when she left home, but had no idea that what she feared then would involve anyone other than herself. “I mention this only because it is the sole bit of superstition I ever indulged in. And I was again called to breathe comfort and hope to a gentle spirit hovering between two worlds.” In the end, she found William’s acceptance of his fate nothing less than inspirational. “From first to last he saw and felt his danger and met it with a Christian fortitude which was truly astonishing.”