ALP Anne Longfellow Pierce
ASM Alexander Slidell Mackenzie
CAL Charles Appleton Longfellow
CMS Catharine Maria Sedgwick
CS Charles Sumner
EAW Elizabeth Austin Wadsworth
FEAL Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow
GWG George Washington Greene
GWC George William Curtis
HWL Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
IAJ Isaac Appleton Jewett
MLG Mary Longfellow Greenleaf
MSP Mary Storer Potter Longfellow
SL Stephen Longfellow
ZL Zilpah Longfellow
HL Houghton Library, Harvard University
LH Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site
Andrew Hilen, ed. Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Letters
Andrew Hilen, ed. The Diary of Clara Crowninshield Crowninshield
Samuel Longfellow. Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Life
Journals of Henry W. Longfellow HWL Journal
Journals of Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow FEAL Journal
Letters of Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow FEAL Letters
Longfellow House Catalogued Materials LONG
“Craigie Edition”: Periodic mentions of “Craigie House” and “Longfellow House” are references to the same structure at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, known when built in 1759 as “Vassall House,” and formally today as “Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.”
“the last I shall”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Journal, April 19, 1854, Houghton Library (HL), MS Am 1340 (hereafter HWL Journal). In 1858, Longfellow declined an invitation from Bowdoin College to deliver a poem before a public gathering with this explanation: “I have a positive repugnance to doing this kind of work, probably from not recognizing in myself any capacity for doing it well. For this reason I habitually decline all invitations however urgent.” Henry W. Longfellow (hereafter HWL) to Alpheus Spring Packard, April 30, 1858, in Hilen, Letters (hereafter Letters), vol. 4, 76.
“Too many ghosts”: [Horace P. Chandler] “Longfellow’s First Wife and Early Friends,” in Every Other Saturday, Jan. 19, 1884, vol. 1, no. 2, 20–21.
“Morituri salutamus”: It is thought Longfellow got the idea for the premise from a well-known painting by the French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme, Pollice Verso (1872), which pictures a vanquished gladiator lying helpless in the arena, the victor looming above, sword poised, awaiting a signal from the crowd—thumbs up or thumbs down—that will determine life or death.
“In the repudiation”: Aaron, in Maine Historical Society, 65.
damnatio memoriae: For more on the practice through history—also translated to mean “obliteration of the record”—see the “Ex Libris Punicis” chapter in my book A Splendor of Letters.
“Anthologists create”: Author interview with Joel Myerson, Aug. 6, 2018. See my profile of Myerson, “Transcendentalists in South Carolina,” Fine Books & Collections (Spring 2019).
“Longfellow is to poetry”: Van Wyck Brooks, America’s Coming-of-Age (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 50.
“Who, except wretched”: Ludwig Lewisohn, The Story of American Literature (New York: Modern Library, 1939), 65 [first Harper & Brothers edition, 1932].
“Don’t look down”: Theodore Roosevelt to Martha Baker Dunn, Sept. 6, 1902, quoted in Carl J. Weber, “Poet and President,” The New England Quarterly, vol. 16, no. 4 (Dec. 1943), 615–626. Roosevelt was responding to Dunn’s essay “Browning Tonic,” in The Atlantic Monthly, August 1902 (vol. 90, no. 538). For an excellent critical reading of “The Saga of King Olaf,” see Matthew Gartner, “Becoming Longfellow: Work, Manhood, and Poetry,” in American Literature, vol. 72, no. 1 (March 2000), 1-28.
“He is already thought”: Bliss Perry, “The Centenary of Longfellow,” The Atlantic Monthly, no. 99 (March 1907) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907), 379–388.
“in the eyes”: Steven Allaback, “Longfellow Now,” in National Park Service, Papers Presented.
“new poetry”: Lawrance Thompson, Robert Frost: The Years of Triumph, 1915–1938 (New York: Henry Holt, 1966), 291.
“I never was”: Lawrence Buell, author interview, March 28, 2017.
“all that silliness”: Harold Bloom, author interview, March 30, 2016. See my profile of Bloom in Every Book Its Reader, 228–237, and his obituary, “Harold Bloom, Critic, Who Championed Western Canon, Dies at 89,” The New York Times, Oct. 14, 2019.
Library of America: In a June 23, 2016, interview with me, J. D. “Sandy” McClatchy said one immediate result of the publication of his edition of Longfellow’s poetry in 2001 was to hear from academics informing him they would be “putting Longfellow back into the curriculum of American literature. It was amazing how they woke up, saying, ‘This stuff is better than I thought it was,’ or ‘It’s more important than I thought it was.’ ” See my profile of McClatchy in Fine Books & Collections (Winter 2017) and obituary “J. D. McClatchy, Poet of the Body, in Sickness and Health, Dies at 72,” New York Times, April 11, 2018.
“He is back”: Christoph Irmscher, in Irmscher and Barbour, Reconsidering Longfellow, 1.
“Longfellow is back”: Christoph Irmscher, in “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” Oxford Bibliographies in American Literature, ed. Jackson Bryer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). Available online through Oxford Bibliographies Online.
“The United States today”: Interview by telephone and subsequent exchange of emails with Andrew C. Higgins, March 8, 2019. My thanks to Professor Higgins also for allowing me to read an advance text of his essay “Prospects for the Study of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” accepted for publication in Resources for American Literary Studies, and still in production at the time of this writing.
“His grandchildren looked”: Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (hereafter Life), vol. 1, 21.
“a lady of eminent piety”: Horace Wadsworth, Two Hundred and Fifty Years of the Wadsworth Family in America (Lawrence, MA: privately printed, 1883), 43. Peleg Wadsworth’s Harvard classmates included Alexander Scammell, who died in the Revolution, and was namesake for one of his sons, and Theophilus Parsons, who became chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The house in Hiram, known as Wadsworth Hall, is still owned by Peleg’s direct descendants.
Congress Street: An extensive summary of Peleg Wadsworth’s service during the Revolution and his life afterwards, including the construction of his house in Portland and his move later to Hiram, is chronicled by William Goold, “General Peleg Wadsworth, and the Maternal Ancestry of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” in the “Seventy-Fifth Birthday” special issue of the Proceedings of the Maine Historical Society (Portland: Hoyt, Fogg, and Donham, 1881), 52–81.
“fell before the walls”: Text of the cenotaph, and details of the naval battle, in Horace Wadsworth, 48–49.
“We are in daily expectation”: Shipboard diary of Henry Wadsworth, in Longfellow House archives. The actions of Lt. Wadsworth and his shipmates were more formally memorialized in 1806 by the erection in Washington, DC, of the Tripoli Memorial, a sculpture of Carrara marble carved in Italy and brought to the United States aboard the USS Constitution; regarded as the nation’s first military memorial, it was moved to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1860.
“one moment”: Full text of formal death notice of Lt. Wadsworth written by Zilpah Longfellow, reprinted in MHS, the official publication of the Maine Historical Society (Fall 2011), 5.
“one of the most imposing”: William Willis, History of Portland from 1632 to 1864 (Portland, ME: Dailey & Noyes, 1865), 760.
Wadsworth-Longfellow House: 489 Congress St., Portland, ME, was the first building in the state to be designated a National Historic Landmark, according to the Maine Historical Society. It is open to the public.
“Henry is remembered”: Quoted in Life, vol. 1, 21.
Lafayette visit to Portland: A bouquet of flowers was presented to the general on this occasion by thirteen-year-old Mary Storer Potter, daughter of a prominent local judge, and from 1831 to her death in 1835 the wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
“Master Henry Longfellow”: Quoted in Life, vol. 1, 17.
Portland Academy: See Samuel Longfellow, “The Old Portland Academy: Longfellow’s ‘Fitting School,’ ” New England Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 2 (June 1945), 247–251.
The Reverend Samuel Longfellow: Henry’s youngest brother’s close personal and professional friendship with Samuel Johnson dated from their years as classmates at Harvard Divinity School. See the excellent biographical essay and chronology in the finding aid for the Reverend Samuel Longfellow (1819–1892) Papers, LONG 33705, which includes his outgoing and incoming correspondence. See also Abdo, passim.
“If you desire…say any more”: HWL to Zilpah Longfellow (hereafter ZL), March 7, 1844, Hilen, Letters, vol. 1, 79–81. See also Abdo, passim.
“indolence”: ZL to Stephen Longfellow (hereafter SL), Jan. 10, 1824. Zilpah’s letters to her husband during his years in Congress, and his letters to her, are to be found in seven folders of correspondence in Series V, Stephen Longfellow (1776–1849) and Family Papers, Subseries B, and Zilpah Wadsworth Longfellow, Correspondence, Outgoing, in the Wadsworth-Longfellow Family Papers, 1610–1971 (LONG 27923), Longfellow House—Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site. For extended discussions of Henry’s undergraduate years at Bowdoin, see Thompson, 23–73, and Calhoun, 26–38.
“disturbing to the quietness”: Information and quotations relating to the behavior of Stephen Longfellow at Bowdoin College in “Records of the Executive Government, 1805–1875,” box 2 (1.7.1), Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME.
Acquaintance with Stephen: Writing to Henry on March 27, 1848, Hawthorne stressed how “I want to see Stephen very much,” and expressed hope that he might make a visit to Concord when another Bowdoin classmate and mutual friend of theirs, Horatio Bridge, would be visiting. “It would give me great satisfaction to receive him here.” HL, bMS AM 1340.2 (2616). Hawthorne drew on his years as a Bowdoin undergraduate for Fanshawe, his first published work, printed at his own expense and issued anonymously in 1828 by Marsh and Capen of Boston; the fictional institution was called Harley College.
“After life’s fitful fever”: HWL Journal, Sept. 20, 1850.
“sacrificed his cherished…awaited him”: Nehemiah Cleaveland, History of Bowdoin College, with Biographical Sketches of Its Graduates (Boston: James Ripley Osgood, 1882), 308–309.
“What can have made”: ZL to SL, Feb. 20, 1825.
“a few pages”: HWL to ZL, April [no day] 1823, Letters, vol. 1, 43–44.
“I am not very conversant”: ZL to HWL, April 23, 1823, quoted ibid., vol. 1, 44, footnote 1; also Thompson, 37.
“I have a strong…notwithstanding”: HWL to ZL, April 25, 1823, Letters, vol. 1, 45.
“Chemical Lectures”: HWL to SL, March 13, 1824, ibid., 83–84.
“In thinking to make”: HWL to SL, April 30, 1824, ibid., 89–90.
“I would attach myself”: HWL to SL, Dec. 5, 1824, ibid., 94–96.
“A literary life”: SL to HWL, Dec. 26, 1824, HL, Am 1340.2 (3516).
“Went to my father’s”: HWL Journal, Aug. 9, 1849.
“Will you permit”: Theophilus Parsons to HWL, Nov. 17, 1824, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (4287).
“of all the numerous”: William Cullen Bryant, The New-York Review and Atheneum Magazine, vol. 1 (Aug. 1825) (New York: E. Bliss & E. White, 1825), 219–220.
“exceedingly difficult”: Theophilus Parsons to HWL, Aug. 16, 1825, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (4287).
Commencement address: The switch in subject titles was entered by pen in every copy of the printed program by Parker Cleaveland, an esteemed professor whom Henry would honor fifty years later with a sonnet written in his memory. See C. Wilbert Snow, “Longfellow—A Reappraisal,” in Bowdoin College Bulletin, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Sesquicentennial Issue, no. 327 (Dec. 1957), 9.
“But as yet”: HWL Bowdoin Oration, “Our Native Writers,” in Higginson, 30–36.
Benefactor of Modern Languages chair: Sarah Bowdoin (1761–1826), widow of James Bowdoin III (1752–1811), first patron of the college.
“a love for ancient…self-instruction”: Hillard, vol. 1, 9–11. For more on George Ticknor, see Tyack, passim, and Long, 3–62.
“you would splendidly fill”: Thomas Jefferson to George Ticknor, Oct. 25, 1818, in Hillard, vol. 1, 302.
“the first noteworthy”: Henry Grattan Doyle, “George Ticknor,” in The Modern Language Journal, vol. 22, no. 1 (Oct. 1937), 3–18.
“The fortune he inherited”: Hillard, vol. 1, 335.
“I dined to-day”: HWL to ZL, May 2, 1826, Letters, vol. 1, 151–152.
“this great Babylon”: HWL to SL, June 20, 1826, ibid., 162–164.
“I have not yet”: HWL to his “dear parents,” July 11, 1826, ibid., 169–171.
“I have settled down”: HWL to his brother Stephen, July 23, 1826, ibid., 173–175.
“You will allow me”: SL to HWL, Sept. 24, 1826, HL, Am 1340.2 (3516).
“perfectly at home”: HWL to SL, June 20, 1826, Letters, vol. 1, 162–164.
Hike through the Loire: Henry carried with him a copy of Itinéraire abrégé du Royaume de France by Hyacinthe Langlois père, an all-purpose guidebook with a foldout map offering advice on points of interest, transportation, cuisine, and wines. Heavily annotated, the copy is signed by Henry and dated October 1, 1826.
“Henri”: HWL to ZL, Oct. 19. 1826, Letters, vol. 1, 189–192.
“The question then”: HWL to SL, Oct. 19, 1826, ibid., 185–189.
“If the state of Spain”: SL to HWL, Dec. 3, 1826, HL, Am 1340.2 (3516).
“I shall leave Paris”: HWL to SL, Feb. 13, 1827, Letters, vol. 1, 211–213.
“A restless spirit”: HWL, chapter 1, The Schoolmaster, published without attribution, in The New-England Magazine, July 1831.
“Tell me”: HWL, Outre-Mer: A Pilgrimage Beyond the Sea, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Bros., 1835), vol. 1, 215.
Longfellow and multiculturalism: See Christoph Irmscher, “Cosmopolite at Home,” in Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the American Renaissance, ed. Christopher N. Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 66–79.
“If not”: HWL to his sisters, Sept. 1, 1828, Letters, vol. 1, 278–280.
“As many languages”: HWL, Harvard lecture, “History of the Modern Languages,” Sept. 11, 1844, HL, MS Am 1340 (49).
“Like all other people”: HWL to ZL, Nov. 27, 1828, Letters, vol. 1, 281–283. For more on Goldsmith’s “The Traveler,” see Lee Storm, “Conventional Ethics in Goldsmith’s ‘The Traveler,’ ” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 (Summer 1977), 463–476.
“Every reader has”: “Remarks in Presenting the Resolutions Upon the Death of Irving at a Meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society,” Dec. 15, 1859, in Life, vol. 1, 12.
Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon: See Jeffrey Rubin-Dorsky, “The Value of Storytelling: ‘Rip Van Winkle’ and ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ in the Context of ‘The Sketch Book,’ ” in Modern Philology, vol. 82, no. 4 (May 1985), 393–406.
“Europe was rich”: Washington Irving, History, Tales and Sketches, ed. James Tuttleton (New York: Library of America, 1983), 744.
“To horse”: HWL Spanish Journal, HL, MS Am 1340 (172).
Childe Harold left in Rome: HWL to George Washington Greene (hereafter GWG), Dec. 18, 1828, Letters, vol. 1, 283–286. Longfellow even advised Greene to read the book: “It will serve you, when you come on here.”
Lord Byron’s gondolier: HWL to ZL, Dec. 20, 1828, Letters, vol. 1, 288–291. See also Paul R. Baker, “Lord Byron and the Americans in Italy,” in Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 13 (Winter 1964), 61–75.
“famoso poeta”: HWL Italy Journal, HL Am MS Am 1340 (178). For more on Toni Toscan, and his relationship with Lord Byron, see Irmscher, Longfellow Redux, 160–174.
“I will not say…every temptation”: ZL to HWL, May 7, 1826, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (3520).
“It is impossible”: SL to HWL, undated, quoted in Thompson, 85–86. Original in HL, bMS Am 1340.2, (3516).
“all of which”: HWL to SL, March 20, 1827, Letters, vol. 1, 216–223.
“a huge covered wagon”: HWL to ZL, May 13, 1827, ibid., 223–227.
“The family with whom”: HWL to SL, March 20, 1827, ibid., 216–223.
“one of the sweetest”: HWL letter to ZL, May 13, 1827, ibid., 223–227.
“A year today”: HWL Journal, May 15, 1827.
“Thus I have seen”: Ibid., June 6, 1827.
“for although”: HWL to SL, July 16, 1827, Letters, vol. 1, 225–228.
“a young countryman”: [Alexander Slidell Mackenzie] A Year in Spain by a Young American, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1831), vol. 1, 335.
“I did not like…only at Florencia”: Ibid., 190–192.
“in the hired house”: Outre-Mer, vol. 1, 214.
“a beautiful girl…confidence”: Ibid., 217–218.
“from my memory”: Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (ASM), Spain Revisited, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1836), vol. 1, 203–204.
“the mules”: ASM to HWL, June 30, 1828, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (3661).
“I hope you were not”: ASM to HWL, Feb. 15, 1829, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (3661).
“My dear Don Enrique”: ASM to HWL, Nov. 17, 1829, ibid.
“You say little”: ASM to HWL, Feb. 20, 1830, ibid.
“a very intelligent”: ASM to HWL, June 10, 1843, ibid.
José Cortés y Sesti: Fifty letters to Henry in Houghton Library, Letters to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow bMS Am 1340.2–1340.7, bMS Am 1340.2 (1319), all in Spanish, several with postscripts added by Florencia González. None of the letters sent by Henry to him—or possibly, by extension, through him to Florencia—have been recovered, according to Professor Iván Jaksić: especially unfortunate since their friendship covered a thirty-year period. For more on Longfellow’s time in Spain, see also Whitman, passim.
“Florencia’s modus operandi”: Author email exchange with Iván Jaksić, Nov. 7, 2018. For more on José Cortés y Sesti, and the mutual friendship with Florencia González, see Jaksić, 95–96.
“with pleasure”: Florencia González to HWL, 1835, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (2298). My gratitude to Professor Jaksić for his full translation of this letter from the Spanish.
Nicholas Trübner, James Lenox, John Carter Brown: See Basbanes, A Gentle Madness, 157–160.
“I have a box”: Alexander Everett to HWL, undated [“1827” added in pencil], HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (1879).
“how much satisfaction”: Lucretia Everett to Mrs. Daveis, quoted in Life, vol. 1, 127.
“I think it a very good sign”: ZL to HWL, April 12, 1828, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (3520).
“I thought Longfellow’s”: George Ticknor letter recommending Henry to fill a teaching position in New York, which he did not get; June 18, 1834, HL bMS 1340.2 (1035).
“I am traveling”: HWL to ZL, Jan. 23, 1828, in Letters, vol. 1, 253.
“played ‘Yankee Doodle’ ”: HWL to ZL, Jan. 23, 1828, ibid., 253.
“We breakfast at noon”: Outre-Mer, vol. 1, 153.
“There are three”: HWL to ZL, March 26, 1828, Letters, vol. 1, 256–258.
“antiqua flamma”: HWL to GWG, Aug. 2, 1842, Ibid., vol. 2, 450–2. This letter was written to Greene from Germany, where Longfellow was spending several months taking a water cure for various unspecified ailments. He was hoping to spend some time in Paris, where he understood Giulia Persiani was living. The full quote: “Please send me in your next the name of Julia’s husband, and their address in Paris. I want to see once more my antiqua flamma.” Greene wrote back on Aug. 16, 1842: “You will find Julia here with all her family. The old lady is dead: the girls still unmarried and with precious little chance of ever getting husbands, unless their faces should change or some old codger leave them an attractive dowry.” In HL, MS Am 1340.2-1340.7, MS Am 1340.2 (2379). Henry was probably inspired to use the phrase from Dante, who refers to Beatrice in Purgatorio XXX as l’antica flamma, “the ancient flame” of his youth. See Alan Tate, “The Symbolic Imagination: A Meditation on Dante’s Three Mirrors,” in The Kenyon Review, vol. 14, no. 2 (Spring, 1952), 256–277.
“violent cold”: Life, vol. 1, 149.
“brought the story”: HWL to GWG, Oct. 1, 1839, Letters, vol. 2, 177–179.
“solitary supper”: HWL to GWG, Jan. 2, 1840, ibid., 200–205.
“imperishable beauty…best flowers”: These quotations from Nicander’s personal journal were translated from the Swedish for me by Niclas Wallin, a former antiquarian bookseller, of Stockholm. They appear in a chapter on Nicander’s relationship with Giulia Persiani, and his friendship with Longfellow, in Gunnar Lokrantz, Karl August Nicander (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktryckeri—A.—B., 1939), 241–255. My gratitude to James Feeney, circulation director at the Boston Athenæum, for locating a copy of this scarce book for my examination.
“We wandered…mural crown”: Quoted in Amandus Johnson, “The Relation of Longfellow to Scandinavian Literature,” The American Scandinavian Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (Jan. 1915), 39–43. Henry’s lengthy description of their evening at the Colosseum—he spells it “Coliseum”—is in Outre-Mer, vol. 2, 168–172, which begins: “I have just returned from the Coliseum, whose ruins are so marvellously beautiful by moonlight.”
“I assure you…desire the situation”: HWL to SL, Letters, vol. 1, 286–288.
“young, lovable Longfellow”: Nicander journal.
“The March of Mind in the East”: “The Old Dominion,” in HL, MS Am 1340.2.
Support for Greene: In addition to underwriting the publication of Greene’s biography of his grandfather, and providing occasional assistance for his family, Henry’s account book shows that he gave his friend a monthly stipend of fifty dollars over the final four years of his life, the initials “GWG,” and the amount, always at the top of each month’s summary of payments.
“What a devourer of books”: HWL to GWG, April 29, 1877, Letters, vol. 6, 268.
“I think I have formed”: HWL to Judge Barrett Potter, Sept. 26, 1830, Letters, vol. 1, 348.
“Yesterday I was at”: HWL to GWG, May 21, 1837, ibid., vol. 2, 28.
“an infected incomplete miscarriage”: Hilen, in Diary of Clara Crowninshield (hereafter Crowninshield), 177.
“I have a great desire”: Clara Crowninshield letter to Lydia Nichols Pierce, wife of her legal guardian, Jan. 30, 1835, original in Peabody-Essex Museum, Salem, MA, quoted in Crowninshield, xxiii.
“Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle”: Mary Storer Potter Longfellow (MSP) to ZL, “New Longfellow Letters, with Commentary by Mary Thacher Higginson,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1903, 779–786.
“a young and rather raw”: HWL Journal, May 25, 1835.
“an unused repository”: Roger Michener, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Librarian of Bowdoin College, 1829–35,” The Library Quarterly, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 1973), 215–226.
Italian reading book: See Bibliography of American Literature (BAL), 474–475; also HWL to Gray & Bowen, the Boston publisher, March 29, 1832, in Letters, vol. 1, 370–371.
Catalogue of the Library of Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME: Griffin’s Press, 1821). Bowdoin College Special Collections, MZ90:J5, 1821, interleaved.
“This compendious”: H. W. Longfellow, Syllabus de la Grrammaire Italienne (Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832), copyright page.
“double”: Austin, 177.
“His heart”: Samuel Longfellow, Life, vol. 1, 187.
“Portland young men”: Mary Thacher Higginson, “New Longfellow Letters, with Commentary by Mary Thacher Higginson,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1903, 779–786.
Mary Storer Potter: [Horace P. Chandler], “Longfellow’s First Wife and Early Friends,” in Every Other Saturday, Jan. 19, 1884, vol. 1, no. 2, 20–21.
“I most ardently”: HWL to Barrett Potter, in Letters, Sept. 26, 1830, vol. 1, 348.
“I certainly never”: MSP to Anne Longfellow (hereafter ALP), June 20, 1831, in Mary Thacher Higginson, 799–786.
“Her character”: Life, vol. 1, 187–188.
“My first impression”: Quoted in Higginson, 61–62.
“His intercourse with”: Quoted in Life, vol. 1, 182. Cyrus Hamlin (1811–1900), missionary, educator, college president, author, and inventor of the first functional steam engine in the state of Maine, which is still preserved at Owls Head Transportation Museum in Rockland.
“I am sorry to find”: ASM to HWL, Nov. 17, 1829, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (3661).
“this miserable”: HWL to James Berdan, Letters, vol. 1, Jan. 4, 1831, 351–352.
“You call it a dog’s life”: HWL to ALP, Aug. 21, 1831, ibid., 383.
“I have been laboring”: HWL to GWG, June 2, 1832, ibid., 373–376.
“You will excuse me”: HWL to Alexander H. Everett, July 16, 1833, ibid., 419–420.
“I suppose you think”: HWL to GWG, Feb. 13, 1834, ibid., 429-431.
“The Wondrous Tale”: James Taft Hatfield, “An Unknown Prose Tale by Longfellow,” in American Literature, vol. 3, no. 2 (May 1931), 136–148. Supporting correspondence: the clincher being a letter to Longfellow from Clark, dated Dec. 10, 1834: “Haven’t you got $50 from Greeley through your nom de guerre, in Boston? Please let me know.”
“from the pen”: The American Monthly Review, no. 20 (August 1833) (Boston: Russell, Odiorner & Co., 1833), 157–160; see also Loring E. Hart, “The Beginnings of Longfellow’s Fame,” New England Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1 (March 1963), 63–76.
“It is not unreasonable”: Higginson, 60.
Josiah Quincy: Josiah Quincy to HWL, Dec. 1, 1834, quoted in Letters, vol. 1, 459.
“Good fortune”: HWL to SL, Dec. 2, 1834, ibid.
“While my little boy”: George Ticknor to C. S. Daveis, Aug. 20, 1834, in Hillard, 398–399.
“become the standard”: Thomas R. Hart Jr., “George Ticknor’s History of Spanish Literature: The New England Background,” in PMLA, vol. 69, no. 1 (March 1954), 76–88.
George Ticknor as bibliophile: See my books A Gentle Madness and Patience & Fortitude.
“With respect”: SL to HWL, Dec. 8, 1834, HL, Am 1340.2 (3516).
“How often”: Mary Potter Longfellow to Barrett Potter, Sept. 13, 1835, in “New Longfellow Letters, with Comment by Mary Thacher Higginson,” Harper’s Monthly, vol. 106, no. 635 (April 1903), 779–786.
Kalevala: See Waino Nyland, “Kalevala as a Reputed Source of Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha,” in American Literature, vol. 22, no. 1 (March 1950), 1–20.
“far different”: Mary Potter Longfellow to Stephen and Zilpah Longfellow, July 14, 1833, in “New Longfellow Letters,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1903. For more on Henry’s work with Scandinavian languages, see George L. White, “Longfellow’s Interest in Scandinavia During the Years 1835–1847, in Scandinavian Studies, vol. 17, no. 2 (May 1942), 70–82.
“Thank you for the acquaintanceship”: Quoted by Hilen, in Crowninshield, 98.
“Just before I sailed”: HWL to Margaret Potter Thacher, Feb. 15, 1843, Letters, vol. 2, 505–506. With the exception of a diary Henry kept during his six-month trip to Europe in 1842, there is a four-year gap in his private journal (May 7, 1840, to July 14, 1844); whatever entries he may have recorded then were likely among the personal materials he admits in this letter to having destroyed at this time.
“Though her sickness…unspeakable”: HWL to Barrett Potter, Dec. 1, 1835, Letters, vol. 1, 526–528.
“Henry has given up”: Mary Potter Longfellow to Barrett Potter, Sept. 13, 1835, in “New Longfellow Letters,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, April 1903.
“How everything”: Crowninshield, 296.
“What a prisoner’s life”: Ibid., 165.
“worst symptom”: Ibid., 182.
“Little Mary is slowly recovering”: HWL Journal, Nov. 1, 1835.
“Mary is better”: Ibid., Nov. 25, 1835.
“This morning”: Ibid., Nov. 29, 1835.
“Her face…resignation”: Crowninshield, 183–184.
“She was very much changed”: Ibid., 184.
Henry (“Harry”) Wadsworth Longfellow Dana (1881–1950): The son of Richard Henry Dana III and Edith Longfellow Dana; his paternal grandfather, Richard Henry Dana Jr., was the author of Two Years Before the Mast. Harry Dana was the resident curator of Longfellow House for thirty-three years. See the excellent biographical essay and chronology in the finding aid to his papers, LONG 17314, which comprise 114 linear feet of archival material.
“It was not a fortunate one”: Crowninshield, 95.
Portrait of Mary in basement storage: LONG 4423-1.
“Professor Longfellow”: Will of Elizabeth Craigie, in the hand of Lemuel Shaw, collections of the Cambridge Historical Society, in Craigie Family archive.
Elizabeth Melville Thomas Metcalf: For more on her work as Melville scholar, editor, and custodian of archival materials, see Wyn Kelley, “Out of the Bread Box: Eleanor Melville Metcalf and the Melville Legacy,” Leviathan, vol. 13, no. 1 (March 2011): 21–33, available online through MIT Open Access Articles.
“Mrs. Metcalf remembers”: Harry Dana’s one-page accession notes for the Potter painting, LONG 4423-1.
“The world considers grief”: HWL letter to Eliza Potter, Cambridge, Sunday Evening [1836], in Higginson, 113–115, and Letters, vol. 1, 568–569.
an evening visitation: HWL Journal, March 26, 1839.
“Oh, give details”: Ibid., Aug. 5, 1838.
“She kept her eyes”: Journal that Fanny and Mary kept jointly, LONG 21578 FEAL-MAM Journal (June 17, 1832–July 14, 1833), Feb. 10, 1832.
“This evening Father arrived”: Mary Appleton, ibid., Feb. 11, 1833.
Thomas Gold Appleton (1812–1884): Like his sister Fanny, Tom had artistic aspirations, and dabbled as a painter, writer, and poet. He published several books in his lifetime, most notably Faded Leaves (1872), a collection of poems; A Sheaf of Papers (1875), a collection of essays; and A Nile Journal (1876), the record of one of his many trips abroad. The Massachusetts Historical Society has an extensive archive of his personal papers, in Ms. N-1778. For a full biographical treatment, see Tharp, passim.
Niagara Falls and New England: For discussion of Fanny’s art on this trip, see Diana Korzenik, “Face to Face: Fanny Appleton and the Old Man of the Mountain,” in Historical New Hampshire, vol. 63, no. 2 (Fall 2009), 121–139. For more on the trip itself, see Tharp, 141–153.
“We are now”: Frances Elizabeth Appleton (hereafter FEAL) to Robert Apthorp, Oct. 29, 1835, B2-F5-I8.
“Flowers and kind wishes”: Frances Elizabeth Appleton Journal FEAL 21857 (hereafter FEAL Journal), Nov. 16, 1835.
“SKETCHES”: Green leather volume, with FEA on the back. LONG 18490.
“Reclined on a coil”: Ibid., Nov. 16, 1835.
“We are off Sandy Hook”: Ibid., Nov. 17, 1835.
“We are agreeably”: Ibid.
“I am now”: Ibid.
Cleaveland Alexander Forbes: Forbes Family Papers (Manuscript Collection 293), G. W. Blunt Library, Mystic Seaport Museum, Mystic, CT; folder 1 includes biographical information on the captain, his seagoing family, and historical information on the Francis Depau.
“truly ‘mountain high’ ”: FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Dec. 3, 1835, FEAL B2-F5-I10.
“called upon deck”: FEAL Journal, Nov. 17, 1835.
“radiant with a clear”: Ibid., Nov. 20, 1835.
“I have longed”: FEAL letter to Robert Apthorp, Dec. 3, 1835, FEAL-B2-F5-I10.
“crawled up”: FEAL Journal, Nov. 22, 1835.
“The lovely”: Ibid., Dec. 5, 1835.
traveling desks: with label for T. Dalton of Great Ormond St., LONG 18564; with “Frances E. Appleton, 1832” engraved inside, LONG 36537.
“Today we surmise”: FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Dec. 3, 1835. FEAL-B2-F5-I10.
Nathan Appleton and Maria Theresa Gold Appleton: See Gregory, passim; Winthrop, passim; Tharp, passim.
“a man of elegant”: J. E. A. Smith, The History of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts (Springfield, MA: C. W. Bryan, 1876), 70.
Berry Street Academy: Grace Overmyer, America’s First Hamlet (New York: New York University Press, 1957), a biographical study of John Howard Payne and his family, with a segment on the school, 33–39. See too Katharine H. Rich, “Beacon,” in Old-Time New England, vol. 66, no. 243 (Winter/Spring 1976), 42–60.
Gilbert Stuart and Boston: George C. Mason, The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894), 28.
“The sentiment”: Quoted in Diana Korzenik, “Becoming an Art Teacher c. 1800,” in Art Education, vol. 52, no. 2 (March 1999), 6–13.
“hub of the solar system”: The phrase first appeared in an “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” essay Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote for the October 1858 issue of The Atlantic Monthly: “Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crowbar.”
Boston Athenæum: For more on this remarkable cultural institution, see my book A Gentle Madness, 154–157.
“I urged him”: Nathan Appleton, Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell (Lowell, MA: B. H. Penhallow, 1858), 7. See also Robert F. Dalzell Jr., Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
“a very intelligent”: Catharine Maria Sedgwick, quoted in Marshall, 179–180.
“Her chief difficulty…immediate improvement”: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Nathan Appleton, Feb. 12, 1827, Series I, Nathan Appleton Correspondence in the Appleton Family Papers, Longfellow House—Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site (LH), LONG 20256.
“I now go”: FEAL to Thomas Gold Appleton (hereafter TGA), Feb. 20, 1827, FEAL-B2-F1-I3.
“my intentions respecting…health of her mind”: Elizabeth Palmer Peabody to Nathan Appleton, undated, but internal evidence establishes 1827, in Bruce A. Ronda, ed., Letters of Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, American Renaissance Woman (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), 78–82.
“Mademoiselle Frances”: French notebook with tutor George Barrell Emerson, in Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow Papers, LONG 21583.
“a gentleman who”: Elizabeth Peabody, in the preface to the second edition of Record of a School (Boston: Russell, Shattuck & Co., 1836), xxii.
Lorenzo Papanti: See Crawford, 314–315.
Frances Erskine Inglis (1804–1882): In 1836, Fanny’s former music teacher married the Spanish nobleman and politician Ángel Calderón de la Barca y Belgrano and became known as Marquesa Calderón de la Barca. In 1843, she wrote Life in Mexico, an influential travel narrative of the period. She retained close contact with her Boston friends, notably the historian William Hickling Prescott, who kept her up to date on local happenings. See Marion Hall Fisher, passim.
“in every branch of learning”: For more on the Inglis school in Boston, see Fisher, 167–175.
“Fanny Calderón was here”: FEAL to EAW, April 19, 1842, FEAL-B3-F13-I73.
Francis Lieber: See Freidel, passim.
“the heroine of the world”: Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow Journal, LONG 21587 (Nov. 16, 1835–Jan. 31, 1836), Dec. 6, 1835. Hereafter FEAL Journal.
“lullabies of creaking masts”: Ibid.
“mirrored and curtained”: Ibid., Dec. 12, 1835.
“I cannot attempt”: Ibid., Dec. 17, 1835.
“the atmosphere of poetry”: Ibid., Dec. 18, 1835.
Dual portrait by Isabey: LONG 4152.
“He is a charming”: Ibid., Dec. 29. 1835.
“The largest is a sort”: Ibid., Jan. 22, 1836.
“We left Paris”: Ibid.
Fanny’s writing interests: “Would I not gain a living as authoress of ‘Tourist’s Guides’?”, FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Nov. 17, 1836, FEAL-B2-F6-I4; “I remember, in my despair, I often thought of writing some [children’s books] myself knowing so well what pleased best my own children.” FEAL to EAW, April 16, 1852, FEAL-B3-F2-I10.
“You know how I love”: FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Aug. 20, 1835, FEAL-B2-F5-I6.
“Coining words”: FEAL to Isaac Appleton Jewett (IAJ), Aug. 26, 1838, FEAL-B2-F8-I3. A lawyer by training, Jewett (1808–1853) was the son of Nathan Appleton’s youngest sister, Emily. He aspired to be a writer, and published a two-volume travelogue based on the European trip he made with his cousins in 1835–37, Passages in Foreign Travel (Boston: Little, Brown, 1838). His disapproval of Fanny’s decision to marry Henry effectively ended what had been a rich and fruitful correspondence.
“A beautiful morning”: HWL Journal, Nov. 24, 1835.
“Clara is still”: Ibid., Dec. 2, 1835.
“just at the moment”: Ibid.
“I could not get him”: Ibid., Dec. 7, 1835.
“ignorant of everything”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion, a Romance, 2 vols. (New York: Samuel Colman, 1839), vol. 2, 110.
“She says you have”: Ibid., vol. 1, 109.
“They are the best”: HWL to SL, May 8, 1836, Letters, vol. 1, 550–551.
“buried himself in books”: Hyperion, vol. 2, 93.
“I will read and write”: Crowninshield, 210.
“no mean mastery”: Hatfield, 38.
“The clock is even now”: HWL Journal, Dec. 17, 1835.
“the sense of my bereavement”: HWL to SL, Jan. 24, 1836, Letters, vol. 1, 538–540.
“I like them all”: Crowninshield, 213.
“I feel far happier”: Ibid., 215.
“Called on Bryant”: HWL Journal, Dec. 11, 1835.
“expired with perfect”: HWL to George Ticknor, Dec. 19, 1835, Letters, vol. 1, 529–531.
“Monsieur le Professeur”: George Ticknor to HWL, Dec. 25, 1835, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (5546).
“a journey of sentiment”: Edward C. Steadman, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, vol. 26, 1883.
“Henry has become quite”: Quoted in Higginson, 99.
“We compared it”: HWL Journal, Aug. 13, 1835.
Frithiof’s Saga: Hatfield, 36–37.
“rather unkind and unnatural”: Crowninshield, 221.
Clara’s share of the expenses: HWL Account Book, 1835–1840, in HL, MS Am 1340 (150), entries on pages 115–117, “Miss Crowninshield’s Account,” and also 127, 129.
literary history of the Middle Ages: bound manuscript of this unpublished work, HL, Am MS 1340 (8).
“I have a blank book”: HWL to GWG, Feb. 1836, Letters, vol. 1, 540–544.
book purchases for Harvard: See Johnson, 16–21. Henry would later learn that three trunks of books he had shipped to Boston from Rotterdam had been lost with the sinking of the brig Hollander “in sight of her port,” the titles “rare and curious Dutch books; the harvest of a months toil among the book-stalls of Amsterdam.” He found their loss lamentable. “The books were really too good to be sunk;—they were food for worms—not fishes. And so goes the entire collection of Dutch literature.” HWL to George Ticknor, May 9, 1836, Letters, vol. 1, 552–554.
“I am sorry”: George Ticknor to HWL, March 29, 1836, quoted in full in Johnson, 19–20. Ticknor’s manuscript letters to HWL are in HL bMS Am 1340.2 (5546).
“The part relevant”: HWL Journal, Feb. 20, 1836.
“nearly froze myself to death”: Ibid., Feb. 19, 1836.
“The winter…upon themselves”: Ibid., Feb. 20, 1836.
Samuel Ward: See Lately Thomas, Sam Ward: “King of the Lobby” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965).
“He knows many”: HWL Journal, March 17, 1836.
“desultory tatter”: Ibid., March 18, 1836.
“the most remarkable”: Cornelius Conway Felton to HWL, June 15, 1842, Hl, bMS Am 1340.2 (1941).
“Longfellow had…ever since”: Samuel Ward, “Days with Longfellow,” North American Review, vol. 134, no. 306 (May 1882), 456–466.
“no interest”: Crowninshield, 218.
“a miscellaneous youth”: Hyperion, vol. 1, 55.
“It is strange how soon”: Ibid., 186.
“perfectly faithful representation”: In Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hyperion: A Romance, illustrated by Birket Foster (London: David Bogue, 1853), artist’s note to the reader. Longfellow wrote approvingly of the artist’s work in an itemization of paintings contained in Craigie House, including two original scenes from Hyperion Foster sent to him personally as gifts.
“The clock is just striking”: HWL Journal, June 4, 1836.
“At table”: Crowninshield, 283.
“It is certainly”: Ibid., 286.
“I have a proposition”: HWL to GWG, June 5, 1836, Letters, vol. 1, 554–557.
“if we can find”: HWL to George Ticknor, May 9, 1836, ibid., vol. 1, 552–554.
“I think you must be crazy”: HWL to Samuel Ward, June 22, 1836, ibid., vol. 1, 558–560.
“So once more”: HWL Journal, June 19, 1836.
“The day is bright”: HWL Journal, June 23, 1836.
“It is now nearly”: HWL Journal, June 24, 1836.
“companion”: Life, vol. 1, 212. Elsewhere in this chapter, Sam Longfellow refers to Henry and Clara simply as “our travelers.”
“You always say”: Crowninshield, xxvii.
“What this paragraph means”: Andrew Hilen, in Crowninshield, xxvii. In Longfellow in Love: Passion and Tragedy in the Life of the Poet (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2018), 90–92, independent scholar Edward M. Cifelli offers as suggestive evidence of a brief affair between Longfellow and Crowninshield diary entries made by Frances Bryant, the wife of William Cullen Bryant, who deeply resented Henry’s abrupt decision to leave Clara in her care in Heidelberg, and travel by himself to Switzerland; there are no other such contemporary speculations.
“Went to find my good”: HWL Journal, March 24, 1838. One folder of miscellaneous materials in Craigie House contains a business card with Henry’s name engraved on the front, a brief note to Clara Crowninshield scribbled on the back to accompany his gift to her of a book in German.
“But a trifle”: Life, vol. 1, 227.
“A private journal”: HWL Journal, May 21, 1835–July 17, 1836, HL, MS Am 1340 (188).
HWL study of languages: see Frederick Burwick, “Longfellow and German Romanticism,” Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (March 1970), 12–42; W. A. Chamberlin, “Longfellow’s Attitude Toward Goethe,” Modern Philology, vol. 16, no. 2 (June 1918), 57–76.
“I sat down upon”: LONG 21588, FEAL Journal (Feb. 1, 1836–May 9, 1836), Feb. 2, 1836. Hereafter FEAL Journal.
laurel leaf: Ibid., Feb. 1, 1836.
“pretty little garden…eddies”: Ibid., Feb. 2, 1836.
“a little Eden”: FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Feb. 2, 1836, FEAL-B2-F6-I1.
“so rich and heavenly…made to sketch”: Ibid., Feb. 6, 1836.
“forest of masts”: FEAL Journal, Feb. 5, 1836.
“You express”: FEAL to Susan Benjamin, Feb. 18, 1836, FEAL-B2-F6-I2.
“It is of most singular”: FEAL Journal, Feb. 19, 1836.
“looked like”: Ibid., Feb. 16, 1836.
“procession of beautiful…of our dreams”: Ibid., Feb. 21, 1836.
“chisels and hammers…in his Court”: Ibid., Feb. 22, 1836.
“Can I believe…What rapture”: Ibid., March 1, 1836.
“Hardly knew…live fast”: Ibid., March 3, 1836.
“I saw it would…‘folly of feeling’ ”: Ibid., March 4, 1836.
Beatrice Cenci (1577–1599): An Italian noblewoman who murdered a highly abusive father after repeated pleas to authorities for help went unheeded. Condemned to death in a lurid trial, her resistance to an arrogant aristocracy has been celebrated in numerous literary, musical, and artistic works as an example of heroic womanhood, and was especially appealing to Fanny Appleton.
“a small collection…fine it is”: FEAL Journal, March 5, 1836.
“the lovely little”: Ibid., March 7, 1836.
“rush and whirlpool…pedestal”: Ibid., March 9, 1836.
“a lovely morning”: Ibid., March 11, 1836.
“There was something”: Ibid., March 18, 1836.
“lovely spot”: Ibid., April 7, 1836.
“take the veil”: Ibid., March 13, 1836.
“sit, and study”: Ibid., March 14, 1836.
“a long row”: Ibid., March 15, 1836.
“Sweetest Emmelina . . of the ruins”: FEAL to EAW, March 22, 1836.
“Many a Niobe glance”: FEAL Journal, April 11, 1836.
“if a Circe”: Ibid., April 13, 1836.
“They are black strips…million years”: Ibid., April 15, 1836.
“At a first glance”: Ibid., April 26, 1836.
“Our situation”: Ibid., May 8, 1836.
“bought gloves”: LONG 21591 (May 9, 1836–Aug. 21, 1836), May 19, 1836.
“met beaux…soul sleeps”: Ibid., May 20, 1836.
“Made a short”: Ibid., May 28, 1836.
“a quiet I always”: Ibid., June 19, 1836.
“after such”: Ibid., May 19, 1836.
“Driving along”: Ibid., May 23, 1836.
“I sit”: Ibid., May 24, 1836.
“He gets very much”: Ibid., May 28, 1836.
“He was the most peace-loving”: Ibid., May 23, 1836.
“It is hard”: Ibid., May 28, 1836.
“to look my last”: Ibid., June 2, 1836.
“ran thro’ ”: Ibid., June 1, 1836.
“I should so like”: Ibid., June 7, 1836.
“It must have been”: Ibid., June 8, 1836.
“a long chat”: Ibid., June 9, 1836.
“Seated ourselves”: Ibid., June 10, 1836.
“we tried to believe”: Ibid., June 11, 1836.
“more perfect”: Ibid., June 14, 1836.
“tolerable…from marble”: Ibid., June 18, 1836.
“Addio bello Milano”: Ibid., June 19, 1836.
“There was a magic”: Ibid., June 22, 1836.
“farewell row”: Ibid., June 23, 1836.
“Perhaps the best”: William Hazlitt, “On the Fear of Death,” in Table Talk; or Original Essays on Men and Manners (London: Henry Colburn, 1824), vol. 2, 381–401. See also W. P. Albrecht, “Hazlitt’s ‘On the Fear of Death’: Reason Versus Imagination,” in The Wordsworth Circle, vol. 15, no. 1 (Winter 1984), 3–7.
“noble mountains…his Outre-Mer”: LONG 21591, FEAL Journal, May 9, 1836–Oct. 26, 1836, July 20, 1836.
“a young man”: Ibid., July 31, 1836.
“At the Hotel Bellevue”: HWL Journal, July 20, 1836.
“As I have neither”: Ibid., July 24, 1836.
“pleasant”: Ibid., July 28, 1836.
“found the Appletons…quiet sleep”: Ibid., July 31, 1836.
“After breakfast”: Ibid., Aug. 1, 1836.
“Since I have”: Ibid., Aug. 2, 1836.
“a large party”: Ibid., Aug. 3, 1836.
“A day of true and quiet”: Ibid., Aug. 4, 1836.
“to the old bridge…our absence”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 2, 1836.
“Mr. L, William”: Ibid., Aug. 4, 1836.
“Mr. L’s journal”: Ibid., Aug. 5, 1836.
“wilted and weary”: Ibid., Aug. 6, 1836.
“waiting at the door”: HWL Journal, Aug. 7, 1836.
“in the deep”: Ibid., Aug. 10, 1836.
“dip into…for itself now”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 10, 1836.
“very coy”: Ibid., Aug. 8, 1836.
“some of the best lines”: HWL Journal, Aug. 9, 1836.
“Appletoniana”: LONG 8011.
top billing: The Houghton Library copy of Fanny’s translation of the Uhland poem “Das Schloss am Meer” (The Castle by the Sea), MS Am 1340 (72).
“soul-thrilling”: FEAL Journal, July 11, 1836.
“I sat by him”: Ibid., July 14, 1836.
“talk about clouds…Everything had”: Ibid., Aug. 11, 1836.
“The scene was perfectly”: HWL Journal, Aug. 11, 1836.
“to hunt up…precious indeed”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 12, 1836.
“It seems impossible”: HWL Journal, Aug. 12, 1836.
“a young American”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 12, 1836.
“While we were at dinner”: HWL Journal, Aug. 12, 1836.
“Saw a pretty…birth-right”: Ibid., Aug. 13, 1836.
“under shady trees”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 14, 1836.
“Received a letter”: HWL Journal, Aug. 17, 1836.
“Mr. L gets one”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 17, 1836.
“gloomy”: HWL Journal, Aug. 29, 1836.
“ravages of his disease”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 21, 1836.
“He desired me”: TGA to HWL, Aug. 25, 1835, in HL, Am 1340.2 (182).
“sweet youth…six weeks”: Nathan Appleton, in Webster, 49–50.
“never did I love”: FEAL to Robert Apthorp, Nov. 17, 1836, FEAL-B2-F6-I4.
“roared through…downcast eyes”: HWL Journal, July 22, 1837.
“How much”: HWL Journal, Feb. 27, 1838. For more on Nathan Appleton and Lowell, MA, see my book On Paper, 293–297.
“My earliest…Golden Legend”: Charles Eliot Norton, “Reminiscences of Old Cambridge,” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, vol. 1, 1906, 11–34.
“I am now…mingled”: HWL to GWG, Feb. 1, 1837, Letters, vol. 2, 12–15.
“To go down”: HWL Journal, Sept. 3, 1838.
Craigie House journal: Longfellow’s recollections of his earliest encounters with Mrs. Craigie, for whom he expresses a special affection, are to be found in this notebook, which includes a number of miscellaneous materials, including an annotated map in his hand of the grounds and premises, and numerous newspaper clippings from the period on its history and other occupants. HL, MS Am 1340 (159).
“I have found”: HWL to SL, May 25, 1837, Letters, vol. 2, 38–40.
“delightfully”: HWL to George Ticknor, Sept. 28, 1837, ibid., 40–42.
“In my new abode…handkerchiefs”: HWL to ALP, Sept. 21, 1837, ibid., 38–41. In a March 22, 1837, letter to his father (Letters, vol. 2, 15–16), Henry passed on thanks to Anne “for her note and flannel breastplates.”
“an abundant supply”: HWL to SL, Dec. 7, 1836, ibid., vol. 1, 567–568.
“Just twig the Professor”: verse and recollections of Phillips Brooks in Harvard Graduate, a university periodical, 1908, 219.
“Samuel Longfellow…and the undergraduates”: Edward Everett Hale, Memories of a Hundred Years (New York: Macmillan, 1904), 241–247.
“To Boston I go…object in view”: HWL to GWG, Feb. 1, 1837, Letters, vol. 2, 11–12.
“The Bridge”: The half-mile wooden bridge across the Charles River would be replaced in 1909 by a stone-arch span the locals often call the “Salt and Pepper Bridge” for the turretlike shape of its four towers—though its formal name for more than a century has been the Longfellow Bridge. A five-year renovation project was completed in May 2018; part of the restoration involved installation of a companion walkway for foot and bicycle traffic at Charles Circle across Storrow Drive, named by order of the General Court of the Commonwealth the Frances “Fanny” Appleton Pedestrian Bridge, “in recognition of the celebrated courtship and marriage of Frances Appleton and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” Acts (2013–2014), chapter 108 (House Bill No. H2904).
“The professor called”: Mary Lekain Gore Appleton to FEAL, Feb. 4, 1837, Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow Papers, 1011/002.002.
“the attention and flattery”: Ibid., April 27, 1837, box 4, folder 4, item 22.
“as soft and gentle”: Ibid., June 25, 1837, box 4, folder 4, item 2.
“by the margins”: HWL to FEAL, Jan. 8, 1837, Letters, vol. 2, 6.
“And now the favor”: HWL to TGA, Jan. 23, 1837, ibid., 8–11.
“2 doz. gloves”: Notebook of Nathan Appleton for miscellaneous expenses, Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS), Appleton Family Papers, Ms. N-1778, box 12.
“the liberty…may please you”: HWL to FEAL, October 1837 [date approximate], Letters, vol. 2, 47–48.
“Hoping you will”: HWL to FEAL, Dec. 14, 1837, ibid., 54.
“trusty friend-at-court”: Hatfield, 50.
Mary Appleton Mackintosh: Four folders of letters she wrote to HWL, HL, bMS Am 1340.2-1340.7, bMS Am 1340.2 (3669).
“at some future day…very sad”: HWL to MAM, Dec. 10, 1837, Letters, vol. 2, 50–51; full translation of German segment, 52.
“without delay”: HWL to George Hillard, Dec. 21, 1837, ibid., 55–56.
“The precious lining”: George Hillard to HWL, Dec. 24, 1837, HL, bMS Am 1340.2–1340.7 (2733).
“A leaden…her affection”: HWL to GWG, Jan. 6, 1838, Letters, vol. 2, 58–60.
“This closely written”: Thompson, 403.
Lawrance Thompson and Harry Dana: Craigie House documents discussing Thompson’s access to materials for his work on the book Young Longfellow cover ten years, 1932 to 1942, and are kept in two onsite collections; four folders of miscellaneous materials are in Longfellow House Trust (1913–1974) Records (LONG 16174), three additional folders of correspondence are in Series IV, Anne Allegra Longfellow Thorp (1855–1934) Family Papers (LONG 27930).
Lawrance Thompson: See his obituary in The New York Times, “Lawrance Thompson, 67, Dies; Frost Biographer Won Pulitzer,” April 16, 1973.
Samuel Longfellow’s biography: Unable to document his criticism of Henry’s brother fully in the text of Young Longfellow, Thompson vented his grievances in endnotes, most notably a lengthy complaint that included this: “I am particularly dissatisfied with Samuel Longfellow’s handling of this period, not because he omitted, but because he concealed, in such a way as to distort the plain truth.” And this: “He emphasized the externals, by means of editorial manipulation, omission, and deletion” (361–362).
“emotional and physical collapse”: Hilen, in introduction to Letters, vol. 2, 5. Harry Dana’s correspondence and materials related to Lawrance Thompson are filed in Longfellow House under “H.W.L. Dana Papers, Series IX. Collected Materials.”
“Met Lady Fanny”: HWL Journal, May 19, 1838.
“I hear you have grown”: Clara Crowninshield to Henry, and his response, May 31, 1838, in Letters, vol. 2, 78–79.
“Lay upon the sofa”: HWL Journal, June 10, 1838.
Influence of Goethe: See Frederick Burwick, “Longfellow and German Romanticism,” in Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 7, no. 1 (March 1970), 12–42; W. A. Chamberlin, “Longfellow’s Attitude Toward Goethe,” in Modern Philology, vol. 16, no. 2 (June 1918), 57–76.
“And first of the ‘Dark Ladie’…all the morning”: HWL to GWG, Oct. 22, 1838, Letters, vol. 2, 106–112.
“Perhaps the worst”: HWL Journal, Sept. 10, 1838.
“Lecturing is all well”: Ibid., Sept. 12, 1838.
“Looked over my notes”: Ibid., Sept. 13, 1838.
“I have so many”: Ibid., Oct. 23, 1838.
“and wrote half”: Ibid., Oct. 29, 1838.
“I feel better…open to the world”: Ibid., Nov. 5, 1838.
“A rainy day”: Ibid., Nov. 8, 1838.
“a beautiful idea”: Ibid., Dec. 4, 1838.
“A beautiful holy morning”: Ibid., Dec. 6, 1838.
“long talk”: Ibid., April 28, 1838.
“Has it not”: HWL to Lewis Gaylord Clark, Aug. 3, 1838, Letters, vol. 2, 90–91.
“It is raining”: HWL Journal, May 3, 1839.
“Then it shall stand”: Ibid., Dec. 4, 1839.
“first appearance”: Ibid., Dec. 11, 1839.
“wish”: Charles Sumner (hereafter CS) to HWL, Jan. 24, 1839, Letters of Charles Sumner, vol. 1, 54–55.
“I wanted to tell you”: HWL to Sam Ward, Nov. 24, 1838, Letters, vol. 2, 115–117.
“It will look well”: HWL Journal, June 11, 1839.
“I cannot…be dished”: HWL to Sam Ward, July 13, 1839, Letters, vol. 2, 155–156.
“I have…pent-up fire”: HWL to GWG, July 23, 1839, ibid., 158–163.
“It is of great importance”: HWL to GWG, June 5, 1836, in Letters, vol. 1, 554–557.
“I called it Hyperion”: HWL to GWG, Jan. 2, 1840, ibid., vol. 2, 200–204.
“This book”: HWL to GWG, July 23, 1839, ibid., 158–163.
“Some one has”: Boston Evening Mercantile Journal, Sept. 27, 1839. Also quoted in Letters, vol. 2, 180, fn. 2.
“What care I?”: HWL Journal, Oct. 1, 1839.
“Of a truth”: Ibid., Dec. 8, 1846.
“We have no design”: [Edgar Allan Poe], “Review of New Book,” Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine, Oct. 1839.
“I should be overjoyed”: Edgar Allan Poe to HWL, May 3, 1841, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (4450). “The Beleaguered City” had appeared in Voices of the Night; “The Skeleton in Armor” had been published in The Knickerbocker just four months earlier by Lewis Gaylord Clark, and would appear in Ballads and Other Poems the following year.
“I am so much”: HWL to Edgar Allan Poe, May 19, 1841, Letters, vol. 2, 302.
“The amplest funds”: Edgar Allan Poe to HWL, June 22, 1841, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (4450).
The Spanish Student: First published in the September, October, and November 1842 issues of Graham’s Magazine; revised, it was issued in hardcover by Edward Moxon, London, in 1843.
“If he goes on”: HWL Journal, Dec. 7, 1845.
“moderate powers”: Margaret Fuller, review of Longfellow’s poems, in New-York Daily Tribune, Dec. 10, 1845, reprinted in Judith Mattson Bean and Joel Myerson, eds., Margaret Fuller, Critic: Writings from the New-York Tribune, 1844–1846 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 288. See Paula Kopacz, “Feminist at the ‘Tribune’: Margaret Fuller as Professional Writer,” in Studies in the American Renaissance (1991), 119–139.
“It is what”: HWL Journal, Dec. 11, 1845.
“We hear that”: Ibid., Oct. 11, 1849.
“succeeding famously well”: Ibid., Dec. 30, 1845.
Francis Frith: The noted English landscape photographer was among the first to use the glass-negative and albumen print process. See Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Photography, ed. John Hannavy (London: Routledge, 2013), 558–559.
“foremost interpreter”: W. A. Chamberlin, “Longfellow’s Attitude Toward Goethe,” in Modern Philology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1919), vol. 16, no. 2, 1–20.
twenty-five German authors: Hatfield, 74.
Felton review of Hyperion: North American Review, vol. 50 (Jan. 1840), 145–161.
“pursuing his way”: Hyperion, vol. 1, 5.
“female figure”: Ibid., vol. 2, 28.
“with the soft voice”: Ibid., 29–30.
“They did her wrong”: Ibid., 35.
“The lady’s figure”: Ibid., 36.
“He conversed”: Ibid., 41.
“reclining on the flowery”: Ibid., 90.
“He walked”: Ibid., 86–87.
“I love this woman”: Ibid., 105.
“bright eyes”: William Hickling Prescott to Fanny Calderón de la Barca, Aug. 15, 1840, in Prescott, Letters, 147. Prescott had an admitted crush on Fanny, calling her in another letter (Jan. 3, 1842, 277–278) “the dove in feminine attractions” of softness and beauty, “and the queen of birds in dignity.”
“for he is now”: CS letter to John Jay, May 25, 1843, in Pierce, vol. 2, 261. This John Jay was the son of Judge William Jay of New York, and grandson of the Founding Father and first US Supreme Court chief justice, John Jay (1745–1829).
“the supposed prototype”: Julia Ward Howe, “Reminiscences of Longfellow,” in The Critic, 1882, vol. 2, 115.
“Once your friend”: William Dean Howells, “The White Mr. Longfellow,” first published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, August 1896, reprinted in Literary Friends & Acquaintances, 178–211.
“A part of Mr. Longfellow’s charm”: Sherwood, 131.
“struck by the great”: Wyatt Eaton, “Recollections of American Poets,” Century Magazine, vol. 64 (1902), 844.
“too timid”: Ernest Longfellow, 47.
“You are at the beginning”: Winter, 223.
Maria Clemm: Letters to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, HL, bMS Am 1340.2–1340.7, bMS Am 1340.2 (1188). Two of Henry’s letters to Clemm survive: see Letters, vol. 4, Jan. 12, 1860, 183, and May 4, 1863, 325. Sums of money were enclosed with both, the former also including “the signatures which you request.” The complimentary closing and signature on the latter has been cut out, presumably to sell as an autograph with the others. Henry’s account book contains four entries for sums sent to her, filed under “moneys given” and “charities,” HL, MS Am 1370 (152).
“concerned Longfellow”: Edwin D. Mead, “Memories of Dickens in Boston,” in Journal of Education, vol. 101, No. 24 (2534) (June 11, 1925), 667–671.
“As a Greek scholar”: Thomas Dwight Woolsey, Eulogy of Cornelius Conway Felton (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1862), 5.
Outis: Kent Ljungquist and Buford Jones, “The Identity of ‘Outis’: A Further Chapter in the Poe-Longfellow War,” in American Literature, vol. 60, no. 3 (Oct. 1988), 402–415, suggest a New York editor, Lawrence Labree, as Outis; Anne Whitehouse, “Poe vs. Himself,” in New England Review, vol. 39, no. 1 (2018), 98–107, supports the theory put forth by Burton R. Pollin in “Poe as Author of the ‘Outis’ Letter and ‘The Bird of the Dream’ ” in Poe Studies, vol. 20 (June 1987), that Outis was actually an invention of Poe himself. For a supportive view of Poe’s critical attacks on the Boston-Cambridge-Concord writers, see Eric W. Carlson, “Poe’s Ten-Year Frogpondian War,” in The Edgar Allan Poe Review, vol. 3, no. 2 (Fall 2002), 37–51. Kenneth Silverman gives a critically balanced examination in Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance (New York: HarperCollins, 1991). A scholarly monograph by Sidney P. Moss, Poe’s Literary Battles (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1963), includes an excellent chapter on the episode, “Culmination of a Campaign,” 132–190.
“ironical lady”: Julia Ward Howe, “Reminiscences,” Atlantic Monthly, vol. 80 (1899), 339.
“sweet”: Hillard, in Cleveland, 1844, xxiii.
Julia Ward introduced to Samuel Gridley Howe: see Maud Howe and Florence Howe Hull, in Dr. Howe’s Famous Pupil and What He Taught Her (Boston: Little, Brown, 1903), 87–88.
Letters to Greene: The Houghton Library holds 576 letters Greene wrote to Longfellow, MS Am 1340.2–1340.7, MS Am 1340.2, (2379).
Bowdoin classmates: On the evening of Oct. 29, 1824, Longfellow and Hawthorne gave presentations in the same academic program, with Henry delivering a “Salutatory Oration in Latin” on the English Poets (“Angli Poetae”), Hawthorne a dissertation, also in Latin, on the Roman Senators (“De Patribus Conscriptis Romanorum”). “I have been very much engaged of late in writing my Latin Oration, which is to be delivered at the Exhibition, on Friday next,” Henry wrote his sister Anne (Hilen, Letters, Oct. [no day] 1824, vol. 1, 92–93, and footnote). “I made a very splendid appearance in the chapel last Friday evening, before a crowded audience,” Hawthorne boasted to his sister Elizabeth: “I would send you a printed list of the performances if it were not for the postage” (Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884, vol. 27, 113).
“no two young men”: Nathaniel Hawthorne, quoted by Annie Fields, in “Glimpses of Longfellow in Social Life,” The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (New York: The Century Co., 1886), vol. 31 (new series vol. 9), 884–893.
“We were not”: Hawthorne to HWL, March 7, 1837, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (2616). See Wineapple, 94–95.
“When a star rises”: HWL in North American Review, vol. 45 (July 1837), 59.
“How can I give you”: Charles Dickens to John Forster, in Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882), vol. 1, 301.
“engaged three deep”: HWL to SL, Jan. 30, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 380–381.
Seamen’s Bethel Church: Dickens wrote about Father Taylor in American Notes and quoted extensively from his fiery remarks. It is thought that Herman Melville based the Father Mapple character in Moby-Dick (1851) on the famous Methodist preacher.
Paul Revere’s house and the Old North Church: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, in “Longfellow and Dickens: The Story of a Trans-Atlantic Friendship” (Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, vol. 28, no. 55, 1942, 55–104), speculated that it could have been during this excursion through the North End that Henry conceived the framework for what twenty years later would become “Paul Revere’s Ride,” though there is nothing in the surviving paperwork to document that assertion.
“When shall you be here”: HWL to Samuel Ward, Jan. 30, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 382–383.
Craigie House: Henry at that time was sharing the house with one other boarder, Joseph Emerson Worcester, a lexicographer and compiler of a dictionary that for a time went head to head with a rival compendium produced by his onetime employer Noah Webster, in a publishing brouhaha called “the Dictionary Wars.”
“bright little breakfast”: Life, vol. 1, 268.
“My dear Longfellow”: Charles Dickens to HWL, Feb. 3, 1842. Henry made an exact facsimile of the Dickens letter by hand, including the exuberant sixfold flourish under the signature, and mailed it off to his father in Maine. Both reproduced fully in Letters, vol. 2, 387–388. Originals in Houghton Library.
Ailments and treatments: For a full discussion of Longfellow’s lifelong battles with conditions both specific and imprecisely described, and the many remedies he sought, see Hilen, Letters, vol. 6, 3–6.
Continuing litany of ailments: Henry began his journal on Sept. 1, 1838, a Saturday, with this dour comment: “A new month, a new College year, and a new book in my journal begin today. I am neither in good health nor good spirits;—being foolishly inclined to indigestion and the most unpleasant melancholy. It is a kind of sleepiness of the soul, in which I feel a general indifference to all things.” On Sept. 20, there was this: “I was literally tired out today with my College labors. I believe I am not well. I hate to break down so near the beginning of the term.”
“In this time”: HWL letter to Harvard Corporation, Jan. 24, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 380.
“Mezzo Cammin”: holographic copy, HL, MS Am 1340 (72).
“dispatched”: HWL to CS, Sept. 17, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 469–470.
“Oh, I long”: CS to HWL, May 15, 1842, in Pierce, vol. 2, 207–208.
“There is no inspiration”: HWL to CS, Aug. 8, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 456–459. Longfellow documented his days in Marienburg in MS Am 1340 (196).
“Your bed is waiting”: Charles Dickens to HWL, Sept. 28, 1842, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (1579).
“I write this from”: HWL letter to CS, Oct. 16, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 473–474.
“Shakespeare on the stage”: Charles Dickens letter to HWL, Sept. 28, 1842, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (1579). See also Valerie L. Gager, Shakespeare and Dickens: The Dynamics of Influence (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 70.
“the tramps and thieves”: John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens, vol. 2 (New York: Lippincott, 1873), 22–23.
“McDowall, the boot maker”: Charles Dickens to HWL, Dec. 29, 1842, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (1579).
“I have read”: HWL to CS, Oct. 16, 1842, Letters, vol. 2, 440–441.
“The great waves struck”: HWL to Ferdinand Freiligrath, Jan. 6, 1843, ibid., 495–498.
“hunted Negro…the Witnesses”: Poems on Slavery (Cambridge: John Owen, 1842). The seven poems written at sea were dedicated “To William E. Channing.” An eighth poem included in the published edition, “The Warning,” was taken in part from “The Soul,” which had appeared in the Knickerbocker Magazine in January 1835. For more on their content, publication, and reception, see Janet Harris, “Longfellow’s Poems on Slavery,” in Colby Quarterly, vol. 14 (June 1978), 84–92.
“the thinnest”: Margaret Fuller, in the Dial, quoted in Charles Capper, Margaret Fuller: An American Romantic Life, The Public Years (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 59. Fuller had previously written Ralph Waldo Emerson, founder of the Dial, which she edited: “Longfellow sent us his poems. If you have toleration for them, it would be well to have a short notice written by some one (not me).”
“so mild”: HWL to IAJ, May 23, 1843, ibid., 537–538.
“I was never more surprised”: Nathaniel Hawthorne to HWL, Dec. 24, 1842, HL, bMS AM 1340.2 (2616).
“Though a strong”: HWL to John Greenleaf Whittier, Sept. 6, 1844, Letters, vol. 3, 44–45.
“I am glad”: HWL Journal, Nov. 30, 1850.
“I think no one”: HWL to Susan Farley Porter, June 8, 1852, Letters, vol. 3, 348; a Rochester, NY, activist, Porter had asked for a contribution of “four to five pages” to an antislavery book then being prepared for publication.
“hated excess”: Ernest Longfellow, 29.
“My Etna is burnt out”: HWL to Sam Ward, March 2, 1843, Letters, vol. 2, 511–513.
Catherine Eliot Norton: Letters to HWL in the Houghton Library, bMS Am 1340 (4147).
“the day and evening”: HWL Journal, April 13, 1844.
“Must I say”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 31, 1835, LH, LONG 21586.
“I would fain”: FEAL to EAW, 1838, no month or day indicated, FEAL-B3-F13-I39.
“I pity you”: FEAL to TGA, July 5, 1839, FEAL B2-F9-I5.
“delightfully un-cityfied…‘Holy of Holies’ ”: FEAL Journal, July 13, 1835.
“Lake District”: See Richard D. Birdsall, “Berkshire’s Golden Age,” in American Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 4 (Winter 1956), 328–355.
: See Bernard A. Drew, Literary Luminaries of the Berkshires: From Herman Melville to Patricia Highsmith (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2015), and Cornelia Brooke Gilder, with Julia Conklin Peters, Hawthorne’s Lenox (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2008).
“Let me write”: FEAL, Spiritual Journal, May 13, 1834, LONG 21598.
“Does thy sainted Spirit…loneliness and misery”: Ibid., Oct. 1, 1836.
“Dearest Aunt Kitty…Aunt Kitty”: FEAL letter to Catharine Maria Sedgwick (hereafter CMS), June 15, 1835, in MHS, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers, microfilm collection of correspondence (hereafter CMS letters).
“Most gladly”: CMS to FEAL, June 26, 1835, and FEAL letter to CMS, June 15, 1835, in MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 2.
Highly successful proto-feminist: Other books include Redwood (1824), Hope Leslie (1827), Clarence, or a Tale of Our Own Times (1830), and The Linwoods, or ‘Sixty Years Since’ in America (1835), For more on the life, work, and rediscovery of Catharine Maria Sedgwick, see Damon-Bach and Clements, passim. Also Mary Kelley, “A Woman Alone: Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s Spinsterhood in Nineteenth-Century America,” in New England Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 2 (June 1978), 209–225.
“one of the first”: George William Curtis, unsigned but attributed to him, in Homes of American Authors, 160.
“Thank you”: CMS to FEAL, July 21, 1841, MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 4.
“Miss Sedgwick”: Anna Jameson, Letters & Friendships, ed. Mrs. Steuart Erskine (London: T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1915), 160.
“My head swelled”: FEAL Journal, July 17, 1835.
Fanny Kemble: The celebrated British actress and writer Frances Anne “Fanny” Kemble (1809–1893) was at this time using her married name, Butler, which she would abandon after a contentious divorce in 1848 from Pierce Butler, a South Carolina slaveholder, a practice she found, as an abolitionist, to be abhorrent.
“To me such Nature”: FEAL to IAJ, Aug. 26, 1838, FEAL-B2-F8-I3.
“I am enjoying myself”: FEAL to EA, Sept. 5, 1838, FEAL-B2-F8-I4.
“Thank you, again and again”: CMS letters to FEAL, Nov. 25, 1838; MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 3.
“Once more my thanks”: CMS to FEAL, July 26, 1839, MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 3.
“been reading”: FEAL to IAJ, Dec. 29, 1839, FEAL-B2-F9-I19.
“The prosperity and beauty”: [George W. Curtis], in Homes of American Authors, 171.
“We are whiling away…spinsters of Llangollen!”: FEAL to IAJ, Aug. 26, 1838, FEAL-B2-F8-I3. The two women being referenced were Lady Eleanor Butler of Kilkenny Castle (1739–1828) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831) of Woodstock House, Inistioge. Robert Southey, Lord Byron, and William Wordsworth dedicated poems in their honor; Sir Walter Scott and Lady Caroline Lamb were among their many visitors. See Elizabeth Mavor, The Ladies of Llangollen (New York: Penguin, 1973), passim.
“the two most celebrated”: Eugene Coyle, “The Irish Ladies of Llangollen,” in History Ireland, issue 6 (November/December 2015), vol. 23.
“Italian villas”: FEAL to EAW, Sept. 5, 1838, FEAL-B2-F8-I4.
“We are independent…what they are”: FEAL to EAW, June 16, 1839. FEAL-B2-F9-I10.
Oxbow property: Documents recorded in Berkshire County Registry of Deeds conveying two parcels of land in Stockbridge, Mass., totaling thirty-five acres, to Nathan Appleton: Feb. 2, 1839, from Oliver Partridge, $1,000 (book 98, page 101); March 26, 1839, from Allen L. Yale, $1,800 (book 98, page 181).
Mrs. Sedgwick’s School for Young Ladies: See Carole Owens, “Connections: Elizabeth Sedgwick’s Lenox ‘Culture Factory,’ ” The Berkshire Eagle, Dec. 1, 2015, and Bernard A. Drew, Literary Luminaries of the Berkshires, 23–24.
Jennie Jerome: see Anne Sebba, Jennie Churchill: Winston’s American Mother (London: John Murray, 2008).
Harriet Hosmer: See Kate Culkin, Harriet Hosmer: A Cultural Biography (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010).
“Have you seen the Prof’s novel”: FEAL to EAW, July 7, 1839, FEAL-B3-F13-I19.
“She is now absent”: HWL to GWG, July 29, 1839, Letters, vol. 2, 158–163.
“There are really…of some name”: FEAL to EAW, Aug. 9, 1839, FEAL-B2-F9-I9.
“old ideas”: See Hatfield, 68–79; “nearly one half” of the chapter on Goethe alone, he noted, “was taken from the Harvard lecture of June, 1838” (74).
“The Professor has”: FEAL to EAW, Dec. 24, 1841, FEAL-B3-F13-I42.
“a bitter-sweet…spinsterhood”: FEAL to IAJ, Dec. 29, 1839, FEAL-B2-F9-I19.
Trip to Washington: In 1842, Nathan Appleton agreed to serve out the unexpired term of Robert Winthrop in Congress.
“I have left myself”: FEAL to EAW, Feb. 7, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I7.
“blown that fair castle”: FEAL to IAJ, Feb. 25, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I10.
Stockbridge land: Longfellow sold the seventy acres of pristine countryside off Glendale Middle Road in Stockbridge in 1867, which became the site of a Gilded Age mansion known as Southmayd Farm. Still largely undeveloped, the property was subdivided into two parcels, one of them with a mile of frontage on the Housatonic River, which sold in December 2017 for $6.25 million; the other, undeveloped parcel, was listed for $1.75 million. See The Berkshire Eagle, Jan. 8, 2018. My thanks to Cindy Welch, the realtor who brokered the sales, for showing my wife and me around the property.
“Passed an hour at the Ox-bow”: HWL Journal, July 22, 1848.
“very agreeable”: FEAL to IAJ, May 9, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I13.
“Once more the sheltering night”: HWL Journal, May 2, 1840.
“beyond comparison…Apology for my madness”: HWL letter to GWG, Sept. 4, 5, and 6, 1840 [one letter], in Letters, vol. 2, 244–248.
“I am much…single women”: FEAL to IAJ, Nov. 8, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I25.
Lawrance Thompson mention of Alleyne Otis: Thompson, 333–334.
“little party…blankets to me.”: Typed transcription of letter from Alleyne Otis to Joshua Francis Fisher, March 3, 1840, LONG 20527, Series II, Correspondence. FEAL B7-F5.
“decided that work…stupid”: Morison, 287–292.
“did nothing”: Henry James, William Wetmore Story, vol. 2, 186–187.
“listening to tortured”: FEAL to EAW, July 6, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I15.
“I can’t help”: FEAL Journal, Aug. 19, 1836.
“I feel…of ourselves open”: CMS to FEAL, May 11, 1840, MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 3.
“passed several weeks”: GWG to HWL, May 5, 1840, HL, MS Am 1340.2–1340.7, MS Am 1340.2 (2379).
“Fanny, my dear child”: CMS to FEAL, Aug. 20, 1840, MHS, CMS letters, reel 7, box 9, folder 1.
miniature notebook: FEAL Journal, May 1 to June 28, 1841, aboard steamship Columbia, LONG 27596.
“I saw Prof—L.”: CMS to FEAL, undated, MHS, CMS letters, box 9, folder 2. My gratitude to Lucinda Damon-Bach, professor of English at Salem State University, founding president of the Catharine Maria Sedgwick Society, editor of Sedgwick’s correspondence, and author of a forthcoming biography of the author, for her assistance in transcribing these letters to Fanny Appleton, and to Kathryn Hanson Plass, museum technician at Longfellow House, for transcribing Fanny’s introductory letter to Sedgwick.
“temple”: CMS letter of May 11, 1862, quoted in James Turner, The Liberal Education of Charles Eliot Norton (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 174.
“Oh come to me”: FEAL to HWL, May 10, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I3.
“What a year”: 1844 FEAL Journal, LONG 21575, Jan. 1, 1844.
“Dear friend”: FEAL to HWL, April 19, 1843, HL, MS Am MS Am 1340.2 (3507).
“surrendered unconditionally…with his name”: Andrew Hilen, in Letters, vol. 2, 487. Fanny’s May 10, 1843, acceptance of Henry’s proposal was not quoted in The Appletons of Beacon Hill (1976) by Louise Hall Tharp, or by Charles Calhoun in Longfellow Rediscovered (2004), though both included her less passionate letter of rapprochement from three weeks earlier. The May 10 letter, unlike the April 19 letter, is not in the Houghton Library collections, but in the Longfellow House archives, where I examined it, FEAL-B2-F13-I3.
Lawrance Thompson correspondence: Longfellow House Trust (1913–1974) Records, (E) Researcher Materials, LONG 16174 (box 22).
“reluctant to give”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana to Lawrance Thompson, quoted verbatim by Thompson in letter to Anne Longfellow Thorp, Feb. 8, 1938, LONG 16174.
“It isn’t likely”: Lawrance Thompson to Anne Longfellow Thorp, Aug. 19, 1937, LONG 16174.
“traveling to England”: HWL to Robert Bigsby, Sept. 11, 1849, Letters, vol. 3, 213.
“Henry and I were among”: FEAL to EAW, March 15, 1847, FEAL-B2-F16-I32.
“to George Sand’s provocative”: Irmscher, Public Poet, 190.
“Mr. McLane”: Henry wrote further that “McLane left Cambridge in August and I took possession of his room, making use of it as a library or study, and having the adjoining chamber as my bedroom.” HWL, Craigie House Journal, HL, MS Am 1340.2 (159).
“This news will”: FEAL to Martha Gold, May 16, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I5.
“Fanny was in all respects”: ALP to Elizabeth Poor, Aug. 15, 1843, FEAL Papers, LH, LONG 20257, Series I, Personal Materials.
“garland worn by Miss Appleton”: FEAL Papers, Series 7, Natural History Specimens, box 8, folder 1. Another flora, a rose petal “worn by Fanny at the Ball Feb. 28, 1844,” is in the same box, folder 2.
wedding excursion: Fanny’s Sketchbook with the inscription “Mary Ashburton to Paul Flemming,” LONG 19088.
“I wish you could see”: FEAL to TGA, Aug. 30, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I16.
“We have got to love”: FEAL to Matilda Lieber, Sept. 4, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I17.
“If you decide”: FEAL to Nathan Appleton, Sept. 1843 [no day], FEAL-B2-F13-I18.
household purchases: See Historic Furnishings Report, Appendix A (535–558) for facsimiles of receipts for wedding gifts from Nathan Appleton between 1843 and 1844. See also Tharp, 243–245.
“It is a fine thing”: ZL to SL, Oct. 13, 1843. Having just met Fanny for the first time in Portland—neither of Henry’s parents made the trip to Boston for the wedding—Zilpah had this to say about her new daughter-in-law: “Every one to whom she was introduced seemed delighted with her, such a quiet and gentle manner, such perfect propriety of demeanor, so perfectly ladylike.” And she was especially taken by Fanny’s eyes: “so beautiful and so brilliant when she is engaged in conversation” (FEAL, Box 1, with correspondence of Zilpah Longfellow).
“maelstrom…have I seen”: FEAL to CS, Oct. 13, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I25.
“Willis I half like”: FEAL to EAW, Sept. 1843 [no day], FEAL-B2-F13-I21.
“We have but just returned”: FEAL to Samuel Longfellow, Oct. 20, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I27.
“in a broken…be critical”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 1, 1844. For more on Mount Auburn Cemetery, see John Harrison and Kim Nagy, eds., Dead in Good Company: A Celebration of Mount Auburn Cemetery (Medford, MA: Ziggy Owl Press, 2015).
“How much time”: FEAL Journal, Feb. 2, 1844.
“get on bravely”: FEAL to GWG, March 31, 1844, FEAL B2-F14-I7.
“our book”: FEAL Journal, Feb. 10, 1844.
“read him into”: Ibid., Jan. 2, 1844.
“Young Lowell”: Ibid., Jan. 21, 1844.
“sickened at heart”: Ibid., Jan. 13, 1844.
“making a great noise”: HWL to Sam Longfellow, Jan. 12, 1844, Letters, vol. 3, 21.
“Danish ballads to Henry”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 5, 1844.
“H. is so careful”: Ibid., Jan. 11, 1844.
“I have proposed”: FEAL to MLG, March 22, 1844, FEAL-B2-F14-I6.
“How I wish”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 24, 1844.
“Enjoy…his rich mind”: Ibid., Jan. 19, 1844.
“Since last summer”: HWL to Samuel Longfellow, Jan. 12, 1844, Letters, vol. 2, 21–23.
“the shilling edition…heart and person”: HWL letter to Joseph Bosworth, Feb. 28, 1844, ibid., vol. 3, 26–27.
“Such things seem…happy hearts and hours”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 18, 1844.
“Washington’s Headquarters at Cambridge”: Boston Evening Transcript, March 23, 1844, quoted in Letters, vol. 3, 29.
“Some of the Boston papers”: HWL to SL, March 24, 1844, ibid.
“Dexter, the architect”: HWL Journal, June 9, 1844.
“On taking off the old shingles”: Ibid., Aug. 14, 1844.
“Expected dearest Em”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 21, 1844.
“rather tough”: Ibid., Jan. 30, 1844.
“tea and strawberries”: HWL Journal, June 8, 1844.
“oppressively warm”: FEAL Journal, April 14, 1844.
“the latter overflowing”: Ibid., Jan. 17, 1844.
“celery sauce”: recipes in Fanny notebook, LONG 21612. Another notebook, LONG 21616, includes ten recipes in Fanny’s hand, in French, including “soufflet de ris,” “soufflet de chocolat,” “Isalmis de perdux,” and “un poulet a la casserole.”
“the evil times”: FEAL to MAM, Nov. 15, 1858, FEAL-B3-F9-I11. In his account book for 1865, MS Am 1340 (152), Henry lists wage payments for “cook,” “chambermaid,” “parlor girl,” “outofdoors man,” and “gardener,” further identified as “indoor servants” and “outdoor servants.” A copy of “Shadow of Fame: Documenting Domestic Service at the Craigie House” (2014), a master’s thesis by Mirit Lerner Naaman for Harvard University Extension School, is in the Longfellow House archives.
“fever flush”: FEAL Journal, Jan. 24, 1844.
“very magnifique affair”: Ibid., Feb. 28, 1844.
“Oh Father…of my child”: Ibid., Feb. 21, 1844.
“very agreeable”: Ibid., Feb. 2, 1844.
“and tried to enlighten”: Ibid., Aug. 8, 1843. The Springfield Armory operated from the time of the American Revolution through 1968, and today is a National Park Service Historic Site.
“has already a spirit-stirring”: Ibid., Feb. 6, 1844.
“a more ferocious verse”: Ibid., Feb. 19, 1844.
“peace-poem is fully cast”: Ibid., March 6, 1844.
“Lined a basket”: FEAL Journal, May 4, 1844.
“diverse Lilliputian”: Ibid., May 28, 1844.
“our first in the dining room”: Ibid., July 13, 1844.
Independence Day oration: Charles Sumner, The True Grandeur of Nations: An Oration (London: William Smith, 1846); reference to “The Arsenal at Springfield,” 49–50. For more on the negative reception to the speech, see Donald, 110–117.
“Got my last proof”: HWL Journal, Nov. 24, 1845.
“my idyll in hexameters”: Ibid., Nov. 28, 1845.
“I have nothing…in verse”: Details of the dinner party, including excerpts from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s notebook, quoted by Manning Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, in “The Origin of Longfellow’s Evangeline,” in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 41, no. 3 (Third Quarter 1947), 165–203.
“I owe entirely”: HWL to Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nov. 29, 1847, Letters, vol. 3, 145–146.
“A friend consulted”: Anthony Trollope, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” The North American Review, vol. 132, no. 293 (Apr. 1881), 383–406.
“Once, ah once”: A framed copy of this stanza from the poem “To a Child,” in Longfellow’s hand, hangs in the second-floor room once occupied by General Washington during his residence, and later by Henry when he first moved in as a tenant. The poem was written to note the birth of Charles Appleton Longfellow in 1844.
anxiety about using hexameters: On April 4, 1847, Longfellow wrote in his journal: “Sumner and Felton came to tea, and we discussed the first canto of Evangeline. I think Sumner is rather afraid of it still; and wants me to let it repose for six months and come to it again with a fresh eye.”
publication history of Evangeline: William Charvat, “Longfellow’s Income from his Writings, 1840–1852,” in The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 38, no. 1 (First Quarter 1944), 9–21.
stereotype plates: A solid plate of type metal cast from a papier-mâché or plaster mold, and used for printing instead of the original blocks of handset type. By creating a stereotype, printers could reprint books and documents on demand, and free their equipment for other work.
“His own method”: Charvat, “Longfellow’s Income from his Writings,” 15. See also “Income from Books,” Henry’s record of earnings, itemized by titles, editions, and translations, from 1840 to 1852, in HL, MS Am 1340 (148).
Annie Adams Fields: See Gollin, passim, and Roman, passim.
ether controversy: See Stephanie Browner, “Ideologies of the Anesthetic: Professionalism, Egalitarianism and the Ether Controversy,” in American Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1 (March 1999), 108–143; Judith Walzer Leavitt, “Science Enters the Birthing Room: Obstetrics in America Since the Eighteenth Century,” in The Journal of American History, vol. 70, no. 2 (Sept. 1983), 281–304; Irving A. Watson, ed., Physicians and Surgeons: A Collection of Biographical Sketches of the Regular Medical Profession (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1896), 804.
“No physician has tried”: HWL Journal, April 6, 1847.
“desirable…destruction”: Dr. James Pickford, Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal, July 1847, 258.
divine punishment: “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Genesis 3:16, New International Version.
“This morning was born”: HWL Journal, April 7, 1847.
Medical history: See William Channing, A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth (Boston: William D. Ticknor & Co., 1848), 27, and Appendix B, “First case of labor in which etherization was used in America, by N. C. Keep, M.D.,” 397, which reprints full text of notice that appeared in Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, April 14, 1847.
“a double tooth extracted”: HWL Journal, April 8, 1847. Among the many objects preserved in the Craigie House storage cabinets is a pair of handcrafted front false teeth set on a gold plate and kept in a leather case; though not otherwise identified, they were likely made for Henry by Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep to replace the two extracted during this procedure. LONG 17229.
“I am very sorry…gift of god”: FEAL to ALP, dated to May 1847 by internal evidence, FEAL B2-F17-l15.
“Women have so much to suffer”: HWL Journal, April 9, 1847.
Little Fanny’s scuffed shoes: LONG 13991.
“My courage is almost broken”: “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle,” 1848 (LONG 21576), Sept. 8, 1848, in the Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow Papers (LONG 20257), Series VIII, Diaries, Books, and Albums. Also “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle—Continued,” 1849–1858 (LONG 21573).
“Our little child”: HWL Journal, Sept. 12, 1848. “Via Dolorosa” is Latin for “Way of Grief,” the name of a street within the Old City of Jerusalem believed to be the path that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion. For an in-depth consideration the death of Little Fanny had on Henry, and his writing of “Resignation,” a poem mourning her loss, see Christoph Irmscher, “Longfellow’s Sentimentality,” in Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 93, no. 3/4 (Fall/Winter 2010), 249–280.
“parental public”: James T. Fields to HWL, Aug. 1, 1860. Houghton 1340.2 (1972).
pendant recovered at Gettysburg: “Henry W. Longfellow’s daughters, ca. 1863,” Maine Historical Society A85-727-1.
“I am sure”: FEAL to CS, July 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I11.
“proud and happy”: FEAL to Matilda Lieber, June 10, 1843, FEAL 1843-06-10.
“Sumner realized”: Author interview with John Stauffer, Aug. 2, 2017.
“Your New Year’s gift”: FEAL to CS, Jan. 1, 1844, FEAL-B2-F14-I1. The “Psalm of Life” manuscript, along with Sumner’s letter, in Houghton MS Am 1340 (71).
“I am alone…ills of life”: CS to Francis Lieber, July 13, 1843, Pierce, Memoir and Letters, vol. 2, 263. See also Moorfield Storey, “Memoir of Charles Sumner,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, second series, vol. 20 (1907), 538–549.
annexation of Texas and Mexican War: See Frederick Merk, “Dissent in the Mexican War,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, third series, vol. 81 (1969), 120–136.
“gross disloyalty”: Sumner made this allegation under the pseudonym “Boston” in the Boston Daily Whig, July 22, 1846, but his identity was quickly determined, and acknowledged; the Pontius Pilate reference was made in the Boston Courier, Aug. 13, 1846. See Donald, 142–146.
strain on Five of Clubs: In his journal for Dec. 27, 1845, Henry remarked how the group had “supped” that night for “the first time we have been together for many months. A pity these meetings should be so interrupted, as much good comes of our discussions and friendly comparison of opinions.”
“To be admitted”: Charles L. Pierce, Memoirs and Letters, vol. 3, 10.
Harvard Law School: Institutional conservatism and opposition to abolition at this time was such that in the twenty years preceding the Civil War, at least 392 students enrolled in the Harvard Law School were from the eleven Confederate states, and 191 from the border states, and at least 223 fought for the Confederacy. Among degree-granting institutions, only West Point educated more high-ranking officers for the Confederacy than Harvard Law, including three major generals, eight brigadier generals, and forty colonels. Source: Daniel R. Coquillette and Bruce A. Campbell, On the Battlefield of Merit: Harvard Law School, the First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 273. See also Carla Bosco, “Harvard University and the Fugitive Slave Act,” in New England Quarterly, vol. 79, no. 2 (June 2006), 227–247.
“Have I not answered”: CS to NA, Aug. 18, 1845, in Pierce, vol. 3, 375–376.
“Charles Sumner was”: William Appleton, “The Whigs of Massachusetts,” in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, second series, vol. 11 (1896–97), 278.
Free Soil: The name for the breakaway political party was derived from a slogan used by opponents to the extension of slavery in the western territories that demanded “free soil, free speech, free labor, and free men.”
Conscience Whigs and Cotton Whigs: John Quincy Adams described the dichotomy in his diary: “There are two divisions in the party, —one based upon public principle, and the other upon manufacturing and commercial interests.” John Quincy Adams Diary, Sept. 23, 1846, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. See also Frank Otto Gatell, “ ‘Conscience and Judgment’: The Bolt of the Massachusetts Conscience Whigs,” The Historian, vol. 21, no. 1 (Nov. 1958), 18–45.
“an unhallowed union…lords of the loom”: Quoted in Shotwell, 192. See also O’Connor, passim.
“I have regretted”: NA to CS, Sept. 4, 1848, in Pierce, vol. 3, 181.
“Please do not come”: HWL to CS, June 19, 1849, Letters, vol. 3, 204.
“dissuading him”: HWL Journal, March 26, 1848.
“Sumner passed the afternoon”: HWL Journal, Sept. 17, 1848.
“Went to church”: FEAL, “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle,” vol. 1, Sept. 17, 1848, LONG 21576.
“Ah me!”: HWL Journal, Oct. 26, 1848.
“truly thankful…motives”: FEAL to Samuel Longfellow, Nov. 11, 1848, FEAL B2-F17-I33, FEAL-B3-F14-I14.
“Read Papa’s…till midnight”: FEAL, “Chronicle of Children of Craigie Castle,” Dec. 3 and Dec. 5, 1848, LONG 21576.
“How I long”: FEAL to HWL, July 9, 1849, FEAL-B2-F19-I19.
“thrilled…the sword’ ”: FEAL to CS, July 19, 1849, FEAL 1849-07-19. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, the phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” was introduced in 1839 by the British author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in Cardinal Richelieu, a historical play.
Sarah C. Roberts v. the City of Boston: See Stephen Kendrick and Paul Kendrick, Sarah’s Long Walk: The Free Blacks of Boston and How Their Struggle for Equality Changed America (Boston: Beacon Press, 2006).
“twenty bodies washed ashore”: HWL Journal, Dec. 17, 1839. “I must write a ballad on this,” he declared, and finished “The Wreck of the Hesperus” two weeks later. After retiring for the night, he could not sleep. “New thoughts were running through my head and I got up to add them to the ballad.” HWL Journal, Dec. 30, 1839.
Abraham Lincoln: In “Lincoln’s Imagination,” an August 1879 essay for Scribner’s Monthly, the journalist Noah Brooks recalled having recited from memory “The Building of the Ship” for the president. “As he listened to the last lines…his eyes filled with tears, and his cheeks were wet. He did not speak for some minutes, but finally said, with simplicity: ‘It is a wonderful gift to be able to stir men like that.’ ”
Franklin Roosevelt: The original copy of FDR’s letter to Churchill, signed and dated Jan. 20, 1941, is in the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University. A facsimile can be seen on the Library of Congress online exhibition Churchill and the Great Republic. One of two broadside copies signed by both men sold at a 2001 Christie’s auction for $64,625.
“The Building of the Ship”: See Hans-Joachim Lang and Fritz Fleischmann, “ ‘All This Beauty, All This Grace’: Longfellow’s ‘The Building of the Ship’ and Alexander Slidell Mackenzie’s ‘Ship,’ ” The New England Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1 (March 1981), 104–118. The poem first appeared in The Seaside and the Fireside, a collection of twenty poems and two translations (November 1849).
“Mackenzie and his wife”: FEAL to CS, Oct. 13, 1843, FEAL-B2-F13-I25.
The crew of the Somers: Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, in Case of the Somers’ Mutiny: Defence of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Commander of the U.S. Brig Somers, Before the Court Martial Held at the Navy Yard, Brooklyn, New York (New York: Tribune Office, 1843), 14. For more on the court martial, see Buckner F. Melton, Jr., A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers (New York: Free Press, 2003).
“This officer”: Proceedings of the Naval Court Martial in the Case of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a Commander in the Navy of the United States, &c: Including the Charges and Specifications of Charges Preferred Against Him by the Secretary of the Navy. To Which Is Annexed, an Elaborate Review, by James Fennimore [sic] Cooper (New York: Henry G. Langley, 1844), 265.
“The voice of all upright men”: HWL to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, July [no day] 1843, Letters, vol. 2, 546–547.
“passed the night”: HWL Journal, Nov. 11, 1846.
“I like him in the main”: FEAL to EAW, Dec. 23, 1846, FEAL-B2-F16-I18.
Herman Melville: See Charles Roberts Anderson, “The Genesis of Billy Budd,” in American Literature, vol. 12, no. 3 (Nov. 1940), 329–346. For a discussion of the legal issues raised in the novella by Melville, see Tom Goldstein, “The Law, Once Again, ‘Billy Budd’ Is Standing Trial,” The New York Times, June 10, 1988.
Encyclopædia Americana: Vol. 11, with the “Ship” essay, Longfellow House copy, LONG 8592.
“object…a mystery”: [Alexander Slidell Mackenzie], “Ship,” in Francis Lieber, ed., assisted by E. Wigglesworth, and T. G. Bradford, Encyclopædia Americana. A Popular Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature, History, Politics and Biography (Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832), vol. 11, 363–378. Vol. 9, also in Longfellow House, includes the two other essays contributed by Slidell Mackenzie, “Navigation” and “Navy.”
“a charming visit”: HWL Journal, Sept. 18, 1845.
“the author of”: First quoted in Samuel Longfellow, Final Memorials, 121–122, later in Hans-Joachim Lang and Fritz Fleischmann, “ ‘All This Beauty, All This Grace’: Longfellow’s ‘The Building of the Ship’ and Alexander Slidell Mackenzie’s ‘Ship,’ ” in The New England Quarterly, vol. 54, no. 1 (March 1981), 104–118. For other contemporary comment on the technical fidelity of the poem, see Underwood, 152–161.
change on proof sheet: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, “ ‘Sail On, O Ship of State!’: How Longfellow Came to Write These Lines 100 Years Ago,” Colby Library Quarterly, 2d series, no. 13 (February 1950), 1–5.
“Urged him”: HWL Journal, Nov. 4, 1849. For more on the political forces suggesting the change, see John Frederick Bell, “Poetry’s Place in the Crisis and Compromise of 1850,” in Journal of the Civil War Era, vol. 5, no. 3 (Sept. 2015), 399–421.
“What think you”: HWL to James T. Fields, Nov. 15, 1849, Letters, vol. 3 (1071), 225. For more on the 1849 election, which none of the candidates for the Fourth Congressional District won for lack of a majority (required at that time), see Frank Otto Gatell, John Gorham Palfrey and the New England Conscience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), 160–193.
“upon the platform”: HWL Journal, Feb. 12, 1850. Henry reported the audience as “more than three thousand people.”
“She stood forth”: FEAL to Matilda Lieber, Feb. 23, 1850, FEAL-B2-F20-I4.
“turning…at the touch of a finger”: The seemingly effortless movement of the “immense bulk,” as Henry put it in his journal, of the Harvard Observatory telescope was explained in “Sketch of William Cranch Bond,” The Popular Science Monthly (New York: D. Appleton, 1895), vol. 47, 400–408, to wit: “The chief peculiarity of its mechanism is in the method of rotation by means of smoothly-turned spheres of iron. The dome rests on these at equidistant points, and, being set in motion by suitable gearing, the iron balls sustaining its weight roll along a level circular track of iron, the circumference of which is equal to that of the dome.”
“grand introduction”: HWL Journal, Oct. 25, 1848.
“It is luxurious”: FEAL to TGA, Feb. 18, 1850, FEAL-B2-F20-I3.
“Bought one or two books”: HWL Journal, Jan. 16, 1850.
“a telegraphic dispatch from Portland”: FEAL to EAW, March 18, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I9.
“curious sight”: HWL Journal, Dec. 13, 1862.
Sumner in the shower: Ernest Longfellow, 22. Known as a shower-bath, the novelty device was among Nathan Appleton’s numerous wedding gifts to Henry and Fanny. See Historic Furnishings Report, 135; also appendix A, “receipts for wedding gifts” from Nathan Appleton.
“with my soul”: Laura Bridgman to HWL, Feb. 8, 1852, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (723).
“bends and bayous”: Boston Journal, Dec. 5, 1846. See also “John Banvard’s Great Picture—Life on the Mississippi,” in Littell’s Living Age, Dec. 11, 1847, 511–515.
“I see a panorama”: HWL Journal, Dec. 17, 1846.
“In materials for this”: HWL Journal, Dec. 15, 1846.
“Murmuring pines” and “hemlocks”: See John Frederic Herbin, Grand-Pré: A Sketch of the Acadian Occupation of the Shores of the Basin of Minas (Toronto: William Briggs, 1900). While noting “a few discrepancies” in Henry’s description of Grand-Pré topography and history, Herbin deemed the poem to be “in the main, correct” (151).
Ten thousand photographs: See Jack Naylor, “The Photographic Discovery of a Lifetime,” New England Journal of Photographic History, nos. 148/149 (1996), 27–36, 55, a feature on the photograph collection at Longfellow House, which had just recently come to light: “The thousands of photographs have always been in the house. They were in some of the fifty trunks in the attic, in closets and in the basement where they presently have accumulated.”
“Very good”: HWL Journal, Dec. 19, 1846. Fanny wrote this of the presentation to Emmeline: “I sailed down the Mississippi the other day, witnessing Banvard’s painting unrolled from three miles of canvas, and felt almost consoled for never having seen it it seemed so like reality.” Jan. 19, 1847, FEAL-B2-F17-I3. The advertised length of the canvas was three miles, but was probably about half a mile, according to modern estimates. See Paul Collins, Banvard’s Folly (New York: Picador, 2001), 1–24.
“Evangeline is ended”: HWL Journal, Feb. 27, 1847.
“a national literature”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kavanagh: A Tale (Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1849), 92–93. For a discussion of the goal to establish a “national literature” during this period, with close attention given to Kavanagh, and this quotation in particular, see John T. Frederick, “American Literary Nationalism: The Process of Definition, 1825–1850,” The Review of Politics, vol. 21, no. 1 (Jan. 1959), 224–238.
Andrew Craigie: See Pratt, passim; Maycock, 15–34; Anthony J. Connors, “Andrew Craigie: Brief Life of a Patriot and Scoundrel: 1754–1819,” in Harvard Magazine, November-December 2011. His role as the “first pharmacist” is recognized each year with presentation of the Andrew Craigie Award for the advancement of professional pharmacy in the federal government.
“almost the whole”: Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630–1877 (Boston: H. O. Houghton, 1877), 204. Paige wrote that Craigie’s earliest transactions in the Lechmere Point section of Cambridge were conducted “with much skill and secrecy. His name does not appear on the records until the whole scheme was accomplished” (183).
“eccentric to the last”: HWL, Craigie House journal in his hand, with clippings inserted, HL, MS Am 1340.2 (159).
The Craigies: See Pratt, passim.
Jared Sparks: The Writings of George Washington: Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, 12 vols. (Boston: American Stationers’ Company/John B. Russell, 1833–1837).
Harvard Observatory: Factual information drawn primarily from Solon I. Bailey, The History and Work of Harvard Observatory, 1839–1927, no. 4 in the Harvard Observatory Monographs series (New York: McGraw Hill, 1931). For an early account, see “The Astronomical Observatory of Harvard University,” in Christian Examiner & Religious Miscellany, March 1, 1851, 264–279.
“rejoice”: Daniel W. Baker, History of the Harvard College Observatory During the Period 1849–1890 (Cambridge, MA: Boston Evening Traveler, 1890), 15. The first Harvard Observatory operated from 1839 to 1847 with a much smaller telescope in a house just off Harvard Yard formerly owned by Richard Henry Dana, father of the author of Two Years Before the Mast, and today the site of Lamont Library. The Glass Universe (New York: Penguin, 2016), by Dava Sobel, examines the work of a group of African American women during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who studied, compared, classified, and catalogued data that had been photographed at the observatory on thousands of glass plates.
Nineteenth-century wizardry: My gratitude to Dr. Owen J. Gingerich, professor emeritus of astronomy and of the history of science at Harvard University, and a senior astronomer emeritus of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, whose office in Cambridge is located within feet of the historic telescope, for showing me the wondrous device, and allowing me a hands-on appreciation of the mechanics involved. For more on his writing and his extraordinary collection of books relating to the history of astronomy, see my profile “Mighty Heavens: An Astronomer Casts His Gaze on Rare Ephemerides,” in Fine Books & Collections, Summer 2012.
“over the fields”: HWL Journal, April 4, 1844.
“Prof. Longfellow [and his] Lady”: William Cranch Bond and George Phillips Bond, Harvard Observatory guest book, Oct. 30, 1847, quoted in Sky & Telescope, June 2001, 75. Fanny was equally excited about visiting the new marvel located near their property. “I intend, some fine night, to take a peep thro’ our noble telescope at the worlds beyond the clouds,” she wrote Emmeline in an undated letter. “So fine an instrument in our clear atmosphere is to astonish the world perhaps by many discoveries. It has already resolved the nebulae of Orion into stars which was never done before.” FEAL to EAW, FEAL-B2-F18-I52.
“immense and awful idea”: HWL Journal, Oct. 30, 1847.
“a weak, watery”: Ibid.
“gash”: Ibid., Nov. 3, 1848.
“The soul”: Ibid., Jan. 7, 1848.
“I like to look”: Ibid., May 11, 1850.
“a poet of the Night”: Arvin, 64.
“Hymn to the Night”: Other poems in Henry’s oeuvre that heavily use imagery of the night include: “The Light of Stars,” 1839; “Excelsior,” 1842; “Endymion,” 1842; “The Evening Star,” 1845; “Pegasus in Pound,” 1850; “The Galaxy,” 1875; “The Hanging of the Crane,” 1875; “The Harvest Moon,” 1878; “Night” 1880; and “Moonlight,” 1882.
“Manuscript Gleanings and Literary Scrap Book”: HL, MS Am 1340 (146).
“Occultation of Orion”: For a close critical reading of the poem, including the veracity of Longfellow’s astronomical details, see Michael Zimmerman, “War and Peace: Longfellow’s ‘The Occultation of Orion,’ ” in American Literature, vol. 38, no. 4 (Jan. 1967), 540–546.
“Astronomically speaking”: HWL, The Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, revised edition (Boston: James Osgood and Co., 1876), vol. 2, 272.
John White Webster letters to HWL: Houghton, bMS Am 1340.2 (5894).
wives well acquainted: Three months before the murder, Fanny mentioned “Our friends, the Websters in Cambridge” in a letter to her sister Mary Appleton Macintosh, Aug. 6, 1849, FEAL-B2-F19-I21.
“Matinée Musicale”: HWL Journal, Oct. 30, 1849.
“a good-natured Don Quixote”: FEAL to EAW, Nov. 26, 1849, FEAL-B3-F14-I7 and FEAL-B3-F13-I77.
“You will see”: FEAL to EAW, Dec. 4, 1849, FEAL-B2-F19-I29.
“Nothing talked of”: HWL Journal, Nov. 2, 1849.
“rainy, cold, bleak”: Ibid., Dec. 3, 1849.
“It seems…with you”: FEAL to EAW, Dec. 3, 1849, FEAL-B3-F14-I7, FEAL-B3-F13-I77.
“dark horror”: FEAL to Mary Longfellow Greenleaf, Dec. 4, 1849, FEAL-B2-F19-I29.
“beyond a reasonable doubt”: Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. John White Webster has been the subject of numerous books, monographs, and journal articles, Simon Schama’s Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991) and Paul Collins’s Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard (New York: Norton, 2018) among them.
“This horrid murder”: HWL Journal, Dec. 7, 1849.
“whitewashed cell”: Ibid., Dec. 12, 1849.
“They brought”: Ibid., March 31, 1850.
“We have survived…public executions”: FEAL to NA, April 8, 1850, FEAL-B2-F20-I10.
“Poor Dr. Webster”: HWL Journal, Aug. 30, 1850.
“too good”: Ibid., Jan. 14, 1851.
“hanging still”: FEAL to EAW, Jan. 18, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I2.
“dearest Papa…impartiality”: FEAL to NA, May 4, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I15.
donations: Included in HWL account books in Houghton Library, which also itemize income from writing and teaching, 1835–1840, MS Am 1340 (150); 1840–1882 MS Am 1340 (152); Book of Donations 1874–1880 (152); HWL book of donations, MS Am 1340 (155). For more on Longfellow’s response to slavery and donations, see Irmscher, Public Poet, Private Man, 109–119.
“public opinion in Massachusetts”: William Craft, Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery (London: William Tweedie, 1860), 82.
Boston free black community: See Horton and Horton, passim.
Fredrika Bremer’s American trip: See Adolph B. Benson, “American Appreciation of Fredrika Bremer,” in Scandinavian Studies and Notes, vol. 8, no. 1 (Feb. 1924), 14–33. Called “the Swedish Jane Austen” in some circles, her Sketches of Everyday Life were wildly popular in Britain and the United States during the 1840s and 1850s.
“surprised to find…agreeable wife”: Fredrika Bremer, tr. Mary Howitt, The Homes of the New World: Impressions of America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1853), vol. 1, 133–135.
“whole table full”: HWJ Journal, Dec. 20, 1849.
“Longfellow is an agreeable”: Bremer, The Homes of the New World, 135.
“among the most”: Ibid., 138.
“On Monday”: Ibid., 220.
“She has given me”: FEAL to Matilda Lieber, Feb. 23, 1850, FEAL-B2-F20-I4. Plaster cast of Fredrika Bremer’s hand: LONG 17849.
“Longfellow, the author”: Bremer, The Homes of the New World, 43.
“though I do not think”: Fredrika Bremer to HWL, Sept. 9, 1850, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (711).
“She is very feminine”: HWL Journal, Sept. 27, 1850.
“Jenny came in”: Ibid., Oct. 1, 1850.
“There is something”: Ibid., June 26, 1851.
“I congratulate you”: HWL to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jan. 29, 1853, Letters, vol. 3, 371.
“I hope that I”: Harriet Beecher Stowe to HWL, Feb. 1, 1853, HL bMS Am 1340.2 (5361).
“How she is shaking”: HWL Journal, Feb. 24, 1853.
“Henry, as you have doubtless”: FEAL to Samuel Longfellow, Feb. 22, 1854, FEAL-B3-F4-I2. Henry’s eighteen-year professional relationship with Harvard is examined at length by Carl Johnson in Professor Longfellow of Harvard, including a full examination of the factors that contributed to his resignation aside from the desire to spend more time writing, notably his disagreements with the college administrators over policy and the curriculum.
“on the last”: HWL Journal, April 19, 1851. When Henry concluded a similar course four years earlier (June 16, 1851), “I told the class that they had finished the Inferno perhaps in more senses than one; but they must not think immediately to enter Paradiso. The next canto of the poem and of life would be the Purgatorio, of which they would have a prelude in the examination on Wednesday. How glad most of them must be to see the end of this drilling.”
“The sea was glorious”: FEAL to EAW, July 28, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I33.
“You can not escape”: George William Curtis, Lotus-Eating; A Summer Book (London: Richard Bentley, 1852), 139–140.
“low, long house”: HWL Journal, July 5, 1850.
“Boston in Summer clothes”: FEAL to ALP, Aug. 25, 1847, FEAL-B2-F18-I17.
“No city has”: Curtis, Lotus-Eating, 137.
George William Curtis: See Winter, 264–266.
Charles Eliot Norton recalled meeting the “long-haired and sweet-visaged George Curtis” at the Café de Paris, and that it was “the beginning of the friendship which was to mean much to me during the remainder of my life.” In Sara Norton, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, 68.
“very nice supper”: HWL Journal, March 24, 1851.
“A very pleasant…remarkable book”: Ibid., March 27, 28, 1851.
“very learned and original”: Ibid., March 23, 18, 1851.
“a very summery book”: FEAL to Sam Longfellow, March 31, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I13.
“lulled”: FEAL to TGA, March 31, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I12.
“We take long walks”: FEAL to IAJ, July 20, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I25.
“spacious…complete our number”: FEAL to ALP, July 17, 1852, FEAL-B3-F2-I18.
“a singular damsel”: FEAL to TGA, Sept. 13, 1852, FEAL-B3-F2-I21. The Houghton Library collection of incoming letters to HWL includes six from Faustina Hesse Hodges. BMS Am 1340.2 (2755).
sheet music collection, 1846–1947: LONG 23207. The LiederArchive Net is an online compilation of texts to more than 150,000 settings of Lieder (art songs: German plural of Lied, song) and other vocal pieces such as choral works, madrigals, and part songs, in 125 languages. As of this writing, 1,160 musical compositions based on a Longfellow poem have been documented, the most for any American writer. Of the dozen poets writing in English inspected by the author for comparison, only Shakespeare (1,902) and William Blake (1,383), neither of them American, had more citations. Others examined include Emily Dickinson (1,084), Walt Whitman (778), Tennyson (795), Coleridge (690), Keats (203), and Wordsworth (167).
“We went and sat”: HWL Journal, July 5, 1852.
“a shady nook”: Ibid., July 9, 1852.
Sephardic community in Newport: See John J. Appel, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Presentation of the Spanish Jews,” in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 45, no. 1 (Sept. 1955), 20–34, and Hammett W. Smith, “A Note to Longfellow’s ‘The Jewish Cemetery at Newport,’ ” in College English, vol. 18, no. 2 (Nov. 1956), 103–104. For a factual reading of the poem, and the highly critical response to it in verse by the Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887), see Max Cavitch, “Emma Lazarus and the Golem of Liberty,” in American Literary History, vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 1–28.
“great charm of manner”: Ernest Longfellow, 40–41.
“most radiant”: Alice Longfellow, undated typescript of “The Old Order Changes: Morituri Salutamus,” text of an address prepared for members of the Cambridge Historical Society, Longfellow House archives.
“the acquaintanceships and friendships”: FEAL to TGA, Sept. 13, 1851, FEAL-B3-F2-I287.
“lithe, slender…without a manuscript”: Winter, 224, 246.
Thucydides and Pericles: See Lowell Edmunds and Richard Martin, “Thucydides 2.65.8: ελευθερως,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, vol. 81 (1977), 187–193.
Aspasia of Miletus: Factual details and quotations for this segment drawn from Madeleine M. Henry, Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Cheryl Glenn, “Sex, Lies, and Manuscript: Refiguring Aspasia in the History of Rhetoric,” in College Composition and Communication, vol. 45, no. 2 (May 1994), 180–199; and Plutarch’s Lives, the Translation Called Dryden’s, corrected from the Greek and revised by A. H. Clough, 5 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1906).
paper trails: I express herewith my gratitude to Dr. Diana Korzenik, professor emerita at Massachusetts College of Art and cofounder in 1994 of the Friends of Longfellow House, for pointing out to me the Aspasia segment in Lotus-Eating, and the Curtis dedication to Fanny in Prue and I, which includes the phrase “Castles in Spain.”
“fashionable life”: William Dean Howells, review of six books by George William Curtis, in North American Review, vol. 107 (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1868), 104–117.
“Do you ever see”: FEAL to EAW, Oct. 1, 1861, FEAL-B3- F1-I37.
epistolary novel: Walter Savage Landor, Pericles and Aspasia, 2 vols. (London: Saunders and Otley, 1836), shelved in Craigie House library, “H. W. Longfellow” bookplate on front pastedown, LONG 5664-5665.
histories: Oliver Goldsmith, History of Greece, 2 vols. (1812), LONG 255–256; William Mitford, History of Greece, 8 vols. (1838), LONG 2567–2574; William Smith, History of Greece, from the Earliest Times to the Roman Conquest (1855), LONG 12079.
“Rappaccini’s Daughter”: First published in the December 1844 issue of The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. See The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Mosses From an Old Manse (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), vol. 2, preface 107–109, “from the writings of Aubépine.”
“with capital sketches”: FEAL to TGA, Nov. 15, 1852, FEAL-B3-F2-I25.
“There is much readable”: FEAL to EAW, July 20, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I21. Fanny was less charitable about the journal in a letter to her cousin Isaac Appleton Jewett: “The last number of the Dial is out—more absurd if possible than the other—’tis like reading thro’ cobwebs.” Oct. 3, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I24.
“Gastric Sayings” and “train of fifteen railroad cars”: Cited by Adam D. Shprintzen, in The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of the American Reform Movement, 1817–1921 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 48.
“Orphic Alcott—or Plato Skimpole”: [George William Curtis], Homes of American Authors, 245; other uses of the nickname appear in the essay on pp. 246, 249, and 250. For a thorough discussion of the Dickens character, with full historical context, see Stephen F. Fogle, “Skimpole Once More,” in Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol. 7, no. 1 (June 1952), 1–18; Brahma Chaudhuri, “Dickens and the Critic: 1852–53,” in Victorian Periodicals Review, vol. 21, no. 4 (Winter 1988), 139–144; and Eleanor M. Gates, “Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley: The Long Goodbye,” in Keats-Shelley Journal, vol. 35 (1986), 149–167.
“Plato Skimpole was”: George Willis Cooke, ed., Early Letters of George William Curtis to John S. Dwight: Brook Farm and Concord (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1898), 96.
“for someone else’s witticism”: New York Times Saturday Review, Sept. 10, 1898.
“I should…This Aspasia”: Ibid., Sept. 17, 1898.
“acquainted…self-possession”: FEAL to MAM, June 19, 1854, FEAL-B3-F4-I8.
“A feeling”: HWL Journal, June 24, 1854.
“I am staying now”: George William Curtis letter to Charles F. Briggs, June 8, 1854, quoted in Cary, 86.
“a kind reception…guessed it”: CMS to HWL, Aug. 27, 1853, Houghton bMS Am 1340.2 (4988).
“Now that the vein”: FEAL to GWG, March 31, 1844, FEAL B2-F14-I7.
“I am a pretty active”: FEAL to ZL, April 3, 1844. FEAL B2-F14-I11.
“I suppose I can”: FEAL to EAW, July 2, 1847, FEAL-B2-F17-I16.
“I hope you will like”: FEAL to Sam Longfellow, Nov. 5, 1855, FEAL-B3-F6-I14.
“Henry has been writing”: FEAL to MLG, May 24, 1858, FEAL-B3-F9-I4.
“How brief this chronicle”: HWL Journal, Oct. 14, 1853.
Curtis letters to HWL: In five folders, Houghton, bMS Am 1340.2 (1395); the two Curtis letters to Fanny are in FEAL, Incoming Correspondence, dated July 25, 1854, and Nov. 5, 1855, LONG 1011-2-2-51-15. I was able to locate no letters Fanny may have written to Curtis in any of the institutions that collect either of their correspondence.
“My dear Mrs. Longfellow”: George William Curtis letter to FEAL, Nov. 5, 1855, FEAL Incoming Correspondence, LONG 1011-2-2-51-15.
“A generous box”: FEAL to TGA, Dec. 1, 1856, FEAL-B3-F7-I16.
“the tacitness of the period”: Author interview with Lawrence Buell, March 28, 2017.
“which may possibly be”: FEAL to EAW, Jan. 13, 1857, FEAL-B3-F13-I63.
books inscribed by George William Curtis to Mrs. Longfellow in the Houghton Library: Lotus-Eating: A Summer Book (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1852), AC85.L8605.Zy852c; The Potiphar Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam & Co., 1854), AC85.L8605.Zy853c; Prue and I (New York: Dix, Edwards & Co., 1856), AC85.L8605.Zy856c.
“A man must have”: Curtis, Prue and I, xix–xx. For an excellent biographical sketch of Curtis and a detailed discussion of the novel, see the introduction to the 1899 edition (in bibliography) by M. A. DeWolfe Howe, v–xv. See also William Dean Howells, North American Review, vol. 107, no. 220 (July 1868), 104–117 [untitled review of six books by Curtis]; and Florence A. Blanchard, “In Memoriam: George Wm. Curtis,” in Journal of Education, vol. 36, no. 11, Sept. 22, 1892, 186–187.
“I could not”: HWL Journal, June 25, 1854. A month after Hiawatha was published, Longfellow sent a complimentary copy to Henry Schoolcraft as “an acknowledgment of my obligation to you; for without your books, I could not have written mine,” noting in particular how he had “adhered very faithfully to the old myths, and you will be amused to hear that a critic in the National Intelligencer accuses me of drawing many of these legends from the Finnish Poem Kalevala” (Letters, vol. 3, Dec. 14, 1855, 509).
“three huge quartos”: HWL Journal, June 26, 1854.
“a few lines”: Ibid., June 27, 1854.
“I think I shall call it”: Ibid., June 28, 1854.
“I chose it instead”: HWL to Freiligrath, Jan. 11, 1856, Letters, vol. 3, 517. The point was especially pertinent in this instance, as Freiligrath was translating Hiawatha into German.
“one hundred hands”: HWL Journal, July 28, 1854.
nonstop flow of letters: “I thought that when I left College, I should have some leisure; but I have none. A hundred other claimants now take possession of my time; and I am as poor as ever in golden leisure!” (HWL Journal, Jan. 5, 1855).
“occupies and delights”: HWL Journal, Oct. 19, 1854.
Alexander Hesler and collodion-on-glass plates: See Mary A. Foresta, American Photographs in the First Century (Washington: National Museum of American Art/Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996), 131.
Minnesota Historical Society: Henry made no mention at all of this in either his journal or his correspondence, but it falls in line with the considerate way he typically went about doing things. In addition to this image, he acquired nine other contemporary photographs of the Minnehaha Falls taken from various vantage points, several of which could be viewed on his stereoscopic device. They are in the Longfellow House archives.
Ojibwa chief, Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh: For an in-depth historical and critical assessment, see Christoph Irmscher, “The Song of Hiawatha,” in American History Through Literature, 1850–1870, ed. Robert Sattelmeyer and Janet Gabler-Hover (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2006), 1106–1112.
The Wounded Indian: HWL Journal, Jan. 27, 1851.
Louis Agassiz: See Irmscher, Louis Agassiz, passim; also Edward Lurie, “Louis Agassiz and the Races of Man,” in Isis, vol. 45, no. 3 (Sept. 1954), 227–242, to wit: “Agassiz’s position demonstrated the manner in which a scientific theory was made to serve a social doctrine, thus illustrating the important relationship between science and society in nineteenth-century America.” His argument, now thoroughly discredited, “supported a plural belief in the origin of mankind.”
“We went together”: HWL Journal, June 13, 1850.
“right and only measure”: Daniel Aaron, introduction to the Everyman Edition of The Song of Hiawatha (London: J. M. Dent, 1992), xi–xix. See my profile of Aaron in Every Book Its Reader, 208–222. For more on Aaron and the literary canon, see also Kenneth M. Price and Daniel Aaron, “An Interview with Daniel Aaron on the Library of America,” South Central Review, vol. 5, no. 4 (Winter 1988), 60–71.
“pleasing series of pictures”: Henry R. Schoolcraft, The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1856), 1.
Hiawatha in translation: See Joe Lockard, “The Universal Hiawatha,” in American Indian Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 1 (Winter 2000), 110–125.
“From his shoulder”: Lewis Carrol’s “Hiawatha’s Photographing” first appeared in The Train, an English periodical, in December, 1857.
“Hiawatha’s metre”: FEAL to MAM, Jan. 14, 1856, FEAL-B3-F9-I11.
Creative works inspired by Hiawatha: See Cynthia D. Nickerson, “Artistic Interpretations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘The Song of Hiawatha,’ 1855–1900,” The American Art Journal, vol. 16, no. 3 (Summer 1984), 49–77.
“was adapted into”: Dana Gioia, in Parini, 65.
Three operas: I Puritani, Jan. 15; Lucrezia Borgia, Jan. 17; Norma, Jan. 22.
“This music for a season”: HWL Journal, Jan. 17, 1855.
“She read us”: Ibid., March 9, 1855.
“Over here”: James Russell Lowell letter to William Wetmore Story, July 16, 1856, in Henry James, vol. 1, 327.
“which has brought me”: Charles Eliot Norton to HWL, Oct. 21, 1849, in Sara Norton, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. 1, 40.
“is crammed…hinted at in them”: FEAL to MAM, Dec. 1, 1857, FEAL-B3-F8-I14.
“quiet evenings”: HWL Journal, Jan. 30, 1855.
“charming”: Ibid., Jan. 27, 1855.
“Society and hospitality…and thoughtfulness”: Alice M. Longfellow, “Longfellow in Home Life,” in The Cambridge Magazine, vol. 1, no. 2, New Series (March 1896), 73–82.
“very methodical”: Ernest Longfellow, 13. For more on the use of cartridge paper by writers and artists, see the “Fiery Consequences” chapter in my book On Paper.
Havana cigars: LONG 18456.
“bit of an anvil”: LONG 7203.
“If Socrates were here”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Emerson in His Journals, ed. Joel Porte (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), 447.
“At dinner”: HWL Journal, Nov. 23, 1848.
Charley’s shattered musket: LONG 13823.
“the curators of their own lives”: One of many author conversations and interviews over a ten-year period with James M. Shea, director emeritus of the Longfellow House—Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
“slow to acquire”: FEAL to ZL, Feb. 19, 1847, FEAL-B2-F17-I8.
“disobedient”: “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle (Continued)” (1849–1858), LONG 21573, Aug. 3, 1849.
“very active”: “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle” (1848), LONG 21576, Jan. 1, 1848.
“after an ebullition”: Ibid., Feb. 7, 1848.
“I know not”: “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle (Continued)” (1849–1858), LONG 21573, Aug. 3, 1849.
“I get very tired”: “Chronicle of the Children of Craigie Castle” (1848), LONG 21576, March 1, 1848.
“Charley struck me”: Ibid., Oct. 30, 1848.
“a very good little boy”: FEAL to ZL, Feb. 19, 1847, FEAL-B2-F17-I8.
“He was at Fresh Pond”: HWL Journal, April 10, 1856.
“He bought”: FEAL to MLG, May 2, 1856, FEAL-B3-F7-I4. The percussion musket in two pieces: LONG 13823.
“conspicuous”: HWL Journal, June 29, 1854.
“We are all greatly”: FEAL to Samuel Longfellow, Feb. 22, 1854, FEAL-B3-F4-I2. The line Fanny quoted from John Milton, in context: “So dear to Heaven is saintly chastity / That, when a soul is found sincerely so, / A thousand liveried angels lackey her, / Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,” (Comus, lines 453–456).
“The Crime against Kansas”: See Donald, 281–288.
“this damn fool”: quoted in Donald, 286.
caning of Sumner: Ibid., 288–297.
“Sumner’s health”: FEAL to TGA, July 12, 1856, FEAL-B3-F7-I6, FEAL-B3-F14-I19.
“Burlingame has had”: FEAL to TGA, July 29, 1856, FEAL-B3-F7-I7. See also Manisha Sinha, “The Caning of Charles Sumner: Slavery, Race, and Ideology in the Age of the Civil War,” Journal of the Early Republic, vol. 23, no. 2 (Summer 2003), 233–262.
“Perfect intellectual rest”: FEAL to Samuel Longfellow, Feb. 5, 1857, FEAL-B3-F8-I6.
“no personal feeling”: HWL Journal, Jan. 28, 1857.
Saturday Club: For an account of the organization’s first fifteen years, including vignettes of its members, see Edward Waldo Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855–1870 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918).
“Lowell was here”: HWL Journal, April 29, 1857.
chestnut tree: Henry thanked the “dear children” of Cambridge for their gift in a poem, “From My Arm-Chair,” published in Ultima Thule (1880).
letter announcing Nightingale poem: FEAL to MAM, Nov. 2, 1857, FEAL-B3-F8-I13.
“Tom had a beautiful”: FEAL to EAW, Jan. 28, 1846, FEAL-B2-F16-I2.
“remarkable letter”: FEAL to EAW, Feb. 6, 1846, FEAL-B2-F16-I4.
Parthenope Nightingale: Letter of thanks from Florence’s sister to HWL, HL, MS Am 1340.2–1340.7 (4127).
“Wherever there is”: The Times, February 1855, quoted in Sarah A. Tooley, The Life of Florence Nightingale (London: Cassell and Co., 1914), 175–176.
“Santa Filomena”: First appearance in The Atlantic Monthly, November 1857; first book appearance, Birds of Passage (1858).
“Early in the war”: Mark Bostridge, Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 254.
“Longfellow was the poet”: Author interview with Christoph Irmscher, Sept. 6, 2018.
“pass the summer”: FEAL to EAW, March 6, 1860, FEAL-B3-F11-I7.
“The Barbarism of Slavery”: Speech of Hon. Charles Sumner, on the Bill for the Admission of Kansas as a Free State, in the United States Senate, June 4, 1860 (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860).
“Allow me”: FEAL to CS, June 6, 1860, FEAL-B3-F11-I13.
“very pretty”: FEAL to MAM, Dec. 16, 1860, FEAL-B3-F11-I29.
“hour of darkness and peril and need”: Henry accepted a suggestion from James T. Fields to go with this particularly powerful line in the poem. His original version had read, “In the hour of peril men will hear,” prompting his editor to recommend the alternate construction; he also proposed a variant for the final line, which Henry adopted as well. See James C. Austin, “J. T. Fields and the Revision of Longfellow’s Poems: Unpublished Correspondence,” in New England Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2 (June 1951), 239–250.
“expedition”: HWL Journal, April 5, 1860.
“I wrote a few”: Ibid., April 9, 1860.
Paul Revere (1735–1818): See “Early American Artists and Mechanics, No. 11, Paul Revere,” ed. J. T. & E. Buckingham, New England Magazine, vol. 3 (Boston, 1832), 305–314. Paul Revere’s letter to Jeremy Belknap was first published in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1st series, vol. 5 (1798). A full, open-access facsimile of Revere’s eight-page letter to Belknap (1798), along with side-by-side transcriptions of each individual page, can be viewed at the website of the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS Collections Online). For more on the factual basis for the poem, see “New Research on ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’ Marks the Poem’s 150th Anniversary,” Longfellow House Bulletin, vol. 11, no. 2 (Dec. 2009), 1, 3–5. For more on Jeremy Belknap, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and its collection of 12 million manuscripts, see my books A Gentle Madness, 142–144, and On Paper, 234–245.
“unacknowledged and uncollected translations”: Horace E. Scudder, ed., The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow (Cambridge: Riverside Press/Houghton Mifflin, 1886); the sonnet, “Art and Nature,” is on page 652.
“Dear Sir”: HWL letter to an unidentified correspondent, April 27, 1877, Letters, vol. 6, 267. In a footnote, Andrew Hilen cites Henry’s “letter calendar” for that date as giving the name “Henry S. Stone” for the recipient.
“I have learned”: Jill Lepore, “How Longfellow Woke the Dead,” American Scholar, vol. 80, no. 2 (Spring 2011), 33–46. For full text of the Bertha Shaffer letter to Henry, and others he received from a wide variety of admirers, see Christoph Irmscher, Public Poet, 131–152. See also Sydelle Pearl, Dear Mr. Longfellow: Letters to and from the Children’s Poet (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2012).
“The dissolution”: HWL Journal, Feb. 15, 1861.
“after the 4th of March”: FEAL to EAW, Feb. 12, 1861, FEAL-B3-F12-I4.
Hawthorne’s dedication to Pierce: Publisher James T. Fields would characterize Hawthorne’s “determination at all hazards to dedicate a book to his friend” as a “beautiful incident,” especially since Pierce’s politics “at present shut him away from the faith of patriots.” But Hawthorne, he added, “has loved him since college days and will not relent.” James T. Fields journal, Feb. 11, 1863, quoted in M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Memoirs of a Hostess, 14–15.
“And so the War”: HWL Journal, April 12, 1861.
“It has a far-off”: Ibid., April 23, 1861.
“I was glad”: Ibid., April 28, 1861.
“The word May”: Ibid., May 1, 1861.
“looks death”: Ibid., May 4, 1861.
“dolce far niente”: Ibid., May 17, 1861.
“Nothing alive”: Ibid., May 8, 1861.
“Ticknor looks”: Ibid., May 18, 1861.
“If one”: Ibid., June 19, 1867.
“We seem”: Ibid., June 26, 1867.
“a grand time…sun-burnt”: Ibid., July 5, 6, 7, 1861.
“Edith’s hair”: HWL Family Papers, filed as “separated items removed from Edith Longfellow Dana Papers (box 57, folder 12); personal materials,” 5 envelopes, box 12, folder 34 (10-14).
Victorians and hair relics: See Deborah Lutz, “The Dead Still Among Us: Victorian Secular Relics, Hair Jewelry, and Death Culture,” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 39, no. 1 (2011), 127–142; Deborah Lutz, “Relics and Death Culture in Wuthering Heights,” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 45, no. 3 (Fall 2012), 389–408.
“one of the commonest”: Wilkie Collins, Hide and Seek: or, the Mystery of Mary Grace (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875 edition), 208.
“This literary fascination”: Elizabeth G. Gitter, “The Power of Women’s Hair in the Victorian Imagination,” PMLA, vol. 99, no. 5 (Oct. 1984), 936–954.
red leather pouch: Initials H.W.L., Feb. 27, 1877, a lock of white hair, with a valentine inscribed, “Hair of the poet Longfellow cut by Rose Fay Xmas 1876,” HL, MS Am 1340 (231).
Houghton locks of hair and poem “Two Locks of Hair”: The locks are dated, in Henry’s hand, Sept. 11, 1848, and July 10, 1861, HL, MS Am 1340 (51).
“You are lucky”: FEAL letter to Ernest Longfellow, July 7, 1861, FEAL-B3-F12-I12.
“As I was stepping”: Ernest Longfellow, 69.
Playing with matches: Charles C. Calhoun, in A Rediscovered Life (215–218), cites a memorandum written in 1908 by Richard Henry Dana III, the husband of Edith Longfellow, in which Annie Allegra is said to have acknowledged responsibility for what happened in the mishap, although the memory of a traumatized five-year-old, related half a century after the fact and passed on through a third party, has to be weighed accordingly. The memorandum is in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“This was before…martyred saint”: Skinner, 8–17.
“There was nothing…the happiest”: Charles Eliot Norton to Mrs. Gaskell, Aug. 12, 1861, in Norton, Letters, 238–241.
“trembled to look”: William Dean Howells, “The White Mr. Longfellow,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Aug. 1, 1896.
John Lothrop Motley and the Civil War: See William Peterfield Trent, ed., A History of American Literature, vol. 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1919), 123–147.
The History of the United Netherlands: John Lothrop Motley, 1861, Longfellow House copy, LONG 10084, 12037-9.
“There is something”: Motley, 173–174.
“almost daily holocaust”: The Lancet (London), Oct. 27, 1859.
“that inflated absurdity…Suicide by Crinoline”: Punch (London), March 22, 1862; April 23, 1862; May 3, 1862.
“crinoline accidents”…intense suffering: The Examiner (London), Jan. 4, 1862; Jan. 18, 1862.
“Every means”: The Spectator (London), July 29, 1861.
“most piteous and agonizing”: Harper’s Weekly, Sept. 28, 1861, under the headline “Shocking Occurrence at Philadelphia,” accompanied by an artist’s rendering of the horror that took place two weeks earlier, on Sept. 14.
“the dresses of ballet girls”: Scientific American, vol. 5, no. 13 (new series), Sept. 28, 1861.
“I remember”: Ernest Longfellow, 69.
“Dearest Longfellow…God bless you.”: Letters from CS to HWL, July 11 and July 21, 1861, in Pierce, vol. 4, 37.
“What is there”: Julia Ward Howe to HWL, July 14, 1861, Houghton bMS Am 1340.2 (2864).
“How does Longfellow bear”: Nathaniel Hawthorne letter to James T. Fields, July 14, 1861, Huntington Library, quoted in Mellow, 545.
“your terrific disaster”: Thomas Buchanan Read to HWL, Aug. 20, 1861, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (4601).
“I feel that only you”: HWL to MAM, Aug. 18, 1861, Letters, vol. 4, 241–243.
“many thousand hearts”: GWC to TGA, July 17, FEAL Misc. Correspondence 1861 07-17.
“dark valley…such things”: GWC to HWL, Sept. 7, 1861, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (1395).
“affectionate and touching”: HWL to GWC, Sept. 28, 1861, Letters, vol. 4, 245.
“Henry is jealous”: FEAL to EAW, Dec. 12, 1849, in two parts, FEAL-B3-F13-I76, FEAL-B3-F14-I22. Fanny’s copy of Shirley (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1859), LONG 8153.
“Your letters”: HWL to EAW, Oct. 17, 1861, HL, Am 1340.12 (12). The letter was transcribed by Kathryn Hanson Plass, archives and collections specialist at Longfellow House—Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site.
“I am sorry”: HWL to James T. Fields, Nov. 8, 1861, in Letters, vol. 4, 250.
“So closes”: HWL Journal, single entry for August 1861.
Lethe and Eunöe: In Purgatorio, the converging rivers at the peak of the earthly mountain upon reaching the Garden of Eden, through which penitents must wade and cleanse themselves of evil memory before entering Paradise; it is here, in the final canto of the canticle, that Dante is greeted by Beatrice.
“infant Hercules”: FEAL to ALP, Aug. 7, 1845, FEAL-B2-F15-I18.
Peter Piper and Little Merrythought: See Irmscher, Public Poet, 66–76.
children’s drawings: See Robert Arbour, “ ‘Not from the Grand Old Masters’: The Art of Henry and Ernest Longfellow,” in Irmscher and Arbour, 159–176, and Diana Korzenik, “ ‘That Is Best Which Liest Nearest’: Longfellow Family Art, 1804–1924,” in New England Quarterly, vol. 80, no. 3 (Sept. 2007), 491–501. The originals are kept in LONG 19588–19590 and 19617–19618.
letter to Santa Claus: Quoted in Andrew Hilen, “Charley Longfellow Goes to War,” in Harvard Library Bulletin, vol. 14 (1960), issue 1, 59–81, and issue 2, 283–303.
“On Tuesday”: HWL Journal, March 14, 1863.
“Dear Papa”: CAL to HWL, undated, quoted by Hilen in “Charley Longfellow Goes to War,” 59.
“Your motive”: HWL to CAL, March 14, 1863, Letters, vol. 5, 313–314.
“I did not consider”: Capt. W. H. McCartney to HWL, March 12, 1863, in Hilen, “Charley Longfellow Goes to War,” 61–62.
“I expect to hear”: HWL to CS, March 24, 1863, Letters, vol. 5, 317.
checklist: Henry spent about $800 outfitting his son for service in the Union Army.
“If I had taken my pick”: CAL letter to his family, in Hilen, “Charley Longfellow Goes to War,” 65.
“They may talk”: Ibid., 285.
“A letter…it is finished”: HWL Journal, March 16, 1863.
“In weariness of spirit”: Ibid., Feb. 1, 1853. See Christian Dupont, “Longfellow and Dante,” Kathleen Verdun, “Grace of Action: Dante in the Life of Longfellow,” and Christoph Irmscher, “Reading for Our Delight,” in Lansing, Dante Studies.
“I write a few lines”: HWL to Catherine Eliot Norton, March 21, 1843, Letters, vol. 2, 521.
“thick warm fog”: FEAL letter to EAW, Feb. 7, 1840, FEAL-B2-F10-I7.
“Let us, like”: FEAL to MAM, July 18, 1853, FEAL-B3-F3-I13.
“Henry has gone to college”: FEAL to EAW, March 15, 1847, FEAL-B2-F16-I32. The engraving of the Ary Scheffer painting of Paolo and Francesca, by Luigi Calamatta, Françoise de Rimini, LONG 4694.
“It is tempting”: Irmscher, Public Poet, 156.
“I am reading along”: FEAL to EAW, March 15, 1847, FEAL-B2-F16-I32.
“the great drama”: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana and Christian Y. Dupont, “Longfellow and Dante,” Dante Studies, with the Annual Report of the Dante Society, no. 128 (2010), 239.
“I am like”: quoted in Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant, with Extracts from His Private Correspondence (New York: D. Appleton, 1883), vol. 2, 249–251.
“Of what I have been through”: HWL to Ferdinand Freiligrath, May 24, 1867, Letters, vol. 5, 140–141.
“Translated the beautiful”: HWL Journal, Feb. 10, 1862.
“Another week”: Ibid., March 25, 1862.
“With all that he wrote”: Unpublished manuscript of Longfellow’s Harvard lectures on Dante, dated March 22, 1838, HL, MS Am 1340 (106). My gratitude to the Cambridge author Matthew Pearl for sharing with me his transcriptions of these lectures; the honors thesis Pearl wrote as a Harvard College undergraduate, “The Dante Club: A Re-assessment of the Emergence of Dante in Nineteenth Century America” (March 19, 1997), Harvard College Archives HU 89.808.1314), suggested to him the premise for his best-selling novel The Dante Club (New York: Random House, 2003). See my profile of Pearl in Fine Books & Collections, Summer 2016.
“Waiting, waiting, waiting”: HWL Journal, Sept. 15, 1862.
“Write a little upon”: Ibid., Oct. 11, 1862.
“a delicious…Boston westward”: Ibid., Oct. 31, 1862.
“Everybody”: HWL to James Ticknor, Aug. 29, 1863, Letters, vol. 4, 355. Following the publication of Henry’s poem, the inn reopened for business under the new name “Longfellow’s Wayside Inn,” and has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
“all the characters”: HWL to GWG, Dec. 28, 1863, Letters, vol. 4, 376–377.
“inherited a penchant”: Hilen, in Letters, vol. 3, 76, fn. 3. See also John J. Appel, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Presentation of the Spanish Jews,” in Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, vol. 45, no. 1 (September 1955), 20–34. Longfellow did two Wayside Inn sequels featuring the same cast of characters; the second appeared in 1870, the third two years after that. For a full discussion of the real-life narrators, see Van Schaick, 37–47.
“Fifteen thousand copies”: HWL Journal, Nov. 25, 1863.
Nathan Appleton Jr. (1843–1906): the eldest son of Nathan Appleton and his second wife, Harriot Sumner Appleton, and though only two years older than Charley, was his mother Fanny’s half-brother, and thus technically his uncle. Like Charley, he joined the Union Army in 1863 as a lieutenant, served honorably in several campaigns, and was with General Grant at Appomattox for the surrender of General Lee. His papers are divided between the Longfellow House—Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site and the Massachusetts Historical Society.
“We drank the health”: Ibid., Nov. 26, 1863.
“camp fever”: See Chapter III, “Camp Fevers,” in Joseph J. Woodward, Outlines of the Chief Camp Diseases of the United States Armies as Observed During the Present War (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1863), 74–161. Also Margaret Humphreys, “A Stranger to Our Camps: Typhus in American History,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 80, no. 2, 269–290.
“Yesterday”: HWL to Ernest Longfellow, June 22, 1863, Letters, vol. 4, 342–343.
“bathing without clothes”: Ernest Longfellow, 76–77; also Hilen, Charley Goes to War, 80–81.
“An Enfield bullet”: HWL to GWG, Dec. 18, 1863, Letters, vol. 4, 372.
“I was not of age”: Ernest Longfellow, 52.
Charley in Japan: See Laidlaw, passim, an annotated selection of the journals Charley kept during his residence in Japan in the early years of the Meiji period. My thanks to David R. Daly, curator at Longfellow House, for his insights on Charley, of whom he is the resident authority.
“Shall I put you down”: HWL to CAL, dated “Xmas 1869,” Letters, vol. 5, 311; Charley’s response is quoted in a footnote.
“a lark”: Charley’s original cable from England to his father is lost; other materials relating to the crossing are in the Charles Appleton Longfellow Papers, BX1, FLDR4.
Civil War uniform: Two of Charley’s cavalry hats have been preserved, both with crossed-sabers insignia, one an oval with the numeral 1, LONG 14050 and LONG 14051. His field jacket, LONG 14047.
“Lowell, Norton, and myself”: HWL Journal, Oct. 15, 1865.
Dante Club meetings: See J. Chesley Mathews, “Mr. Longfellow’s Dante Club,” in Annual Report of the Dante Society, with Accompanying Papers, no. 76 (1958), 23–35.
“to consider”: Charles Eliot Norton letter to Aubrey de Vere, Cambridge, March 25, 1867, in Sarah Norton, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, vol. 1, 294.
“When Longfellow read”: Howells, Literary Friends, 183–184.
“The supper”: Ibid., 184–185. In all the meetings he attended of the Dante Club, Howells could recall only one instance of unpleasantness; it fell on a night immediately after Christmas, when holiday decorations were still strung about Craigie House. As the group came out from the evening’s reading, cuttings of holly and pine wreathed about the chandelier above the supper table caught fire from the gas flame. “Longfellow ran forward and caught the burning garlands down and bore them out. No one could speak for thinking what he must be thinking of when the ineffable calamity of his home befell it” (195).
“priceless fidelity”: Attributed to James Merrill (1926–1995) by his literary executor, J. D. McClatchy, editor of the 2001 Library of America edition of Longfellow’s poetry, in an interview with Matthew Pearl, author of The Dante Club and editor of a Modern Library edition of Longfellow’s translation of the Inferno.
“In translating Dante”: HWL Journal, May 7, 1864.
“I shall always read”: George Ticknor to HWL, June 1, 1867, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (5546). See Patricia Roylance, “Longfellow’s Dante: Literary Achievement in a Transatlantic Culture of Print,” in Lansing, 135–48.
“Longfellow is a superb lyric poet”: Harold Bloom, Best Poems of the English Language: From Chaucer Through Frost (New York: HarperCollins, 2007). The four Longfellow poems he selected for inclusion: “Snow Flakes,” “The Cross of Snow,” “The Tide Rises, the Tide Falls,” “The Bells of San Blas,” 512–515. Bloom writes this of Longfellow’s place in the firmament: “Longfellow is not, like Whitman and Dickinson, a great original, and he compares poorly with the rugged Emerson in what Emerson called ‘meter-making argument.’ But he remains a permanent poet, replete with grace and his own chastened mode of cognitive music.”
“all the current versions”: Harold Bloom, author interview, March 30, 2016.
“The only merit”: HWL to Robert Ferguson, May 8, 1867, in Letters, vol. 5, 134.
earlier sonnets: “Mezzo Cammin,” 1842; “Dante,” 1845; “The Evening Star,” 1845; “On Mrs. Kemble’s Readings from Shakespeare,” 1848. See Greenslet, The Sonnets of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, xi–xviii. In his critical examination, Newton Arvin wrote that the “late flowering of the form” that “took hold” of Longfellow toward the end of his life had striking results: “Longfellow revealed himself to be the most accomplished writer of sonnets in the American nineteenth century” (304–305).
“all done”: HWL Journal, May 6, 1867.
Dickens in Boston: See Payne, Dickens Days in Boston, passim, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, “Longfellow and Dickens: The Story of a Trans-Atlantic Friendship,” in Proceedings of the Cambridge Historical Society, vol. 28 (1942), 55–104. Also, George Curry, “Charles Dickens and Annie Fields,” in Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 51, no. 1 (Winter 1988), 1–71.
“It was right pleasant”: HWL Journal, Nov. 20, 1867.
“triumph for Dickens”: Ibid., Dec. 2, 1867.
“I took it into my head”: Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins, Jan. 12, 1868, in Charles Dickens: Letters and Speeches (London: Chapman & Hall, 1908), vol. 2, 332–333.
“I can think of nothing”: HWL Journal, June 14, 1870.
“I suppose you don’t”: Charles Dickens to his eldest son, also named Charles Dickens, Nov. 30, 1867, in Charles Dickens: Letters and Speeches, vol. 2, 215–216.
Departure of Hiawatha: Painting by Albert Bierstadt, presented to HWL in London, 1869, Longfellow House Museum Collection, LONG 4138.
Photograph: Henry later reported that the picture Queen Victoria presented to him had been “purloined” from an album he kept by a “French governess we once had in the house,” along with several other valuable items “before her pilferings were discovered.” HWL to Edith Stuart Appleton, Jan. 7, 1873, Letters, vol. 5, 644.
Prince Albert biography: Theodore Martin: The Life of His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, 5 vols. (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1875–1880).
“I wished for you”: Austin, 348.
Julia Margaret Cameron: Lord Tennyson personally took Henry to Cameron’s studio for the portrait, and introduced them with these words. ‘‘I have brought you a great man, who will let you immortalize him. This is Longfellow; you know him by name, now you know him in the flesh. I will leave you now. Longfellow, you’ll have to do whatever she tells you. I’ll come back soon and see what is left of you.” Raymond Blathwayt, “How Celebrities Have Been Photographed,” in The Windsor Magazine, vol. 2 (July–Dec. 1895) (London: Ward, Lock & Bowden, 1895), 639–648.
“I have in my brain”: HWL to John Forster, July 20, 1868, Letters, vol. 5, 252.
“but Longfellow, alas”: quoted by Dana Gioia, in Parini, 65. See also Anthony Trollope, “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” in The North American Review, vol. 132, no. 293 (Apr. 1881), 383–406, published a year before Henry’s death.
“currency in Europe”: Quoted in Annie Adams Fields, 17–18.
“Ever since I reached”: HWL to GWG, Feb. 7, 1869, Letters, vol. 5, 276–277.
G. P. A. Healy portraits in Longfellow House: Fanny Appleton, 1834, Museum Collection, LONG 4437; Mary Appleton, 1834, LONG 4137. For more on Healy and his years in Europe, see McCullough, passim.
Healy portrait of Henry and Edith: Displayed for many years in the home of Edith Longfellow Thorp, it passed on to her heirs in 1915 and is now among the permanent collections of the Worcester Art Museum, a gift from one of her granddaughters.
“I had recently…pleasure to Longfellow”: George P. A. Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1894), 219–221. For more on the Healy painting— “one of the two best portraits of Liszt ever executed”—see Edward N. Waters, “A Letter from Liszt to Longfellow,” in Quarterly Journal of Current Acquisitions, vol. 12, no. 1 (Nov. 1954), 1–13. It has the Longfellow House designation LONG 4134.
“Your portrait”: HWL to Franz Liszt, Oct. 18, 1872, Letters, vol. 5, 603.
“Allow me to”: Franz Liszt to HWL, Nov. 22, 1874, quoted in Edward N. Waters, “A Letter from Liszt,” with his translation.
“I am heartily tired”: HWL to CAL, May 30, 1869, Letters, vol. 5, 284–285.
“He wrote that he could not go”: [Horace P. Chandler], “Longfellow’s First Wife and Early Friends,” in Every Other Saturday, vol. 1, no. 2, Jan. 19, 1884, 20–21. Chandler’s mother, Martha Ann Cleaveland Chandler, was the daughter of Parker Cleaveland; Henry stayed in the Cleaveland House during his return trip to Bowdoin for his fiftieth class reunion. Henry later wrote a sonnet, “Parker Cleaveland: Written on Revisiting Brunswick in the Summer of 1875,” which he sent to Martha Chandler on Feb. 25, 1876. See Hilen, Letters, vol. 6, Feb. 25, 1876, 105–106.
“I am rejoiced”: Joshua L. Chamberlain to HWL, March 22, 1875, HL, bMS 1340.2-1340.7 (1035).
Longfellow weeping: Alice Rains Trulock, In the Hands of Providence: Joshua Chamberlain and the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 349.
Bowdoin class of 1825: Horatio Bridge was especially close to Nathaniel Hawthorne and was instrumental in helping launch his career. He wrote at length about their years at Bowdoin, including concise profiles of his high-achieving classmates, in Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1893).
“from the advance sheets”: The New York Times, July 6, 1875.
“indescribably affecting”: Quoted in Underwood, 222–225.
Bowdoin Orient: (Brunswick, ME), vol. 5, no. 6, July 14, 1875, copy in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Collection M112, George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections, Hawthorne-Longfellow Library, Bowdoin College.
“non clamor sed amor”: The motto was discovered by Henry in a four-line verse that he had found, without any author’s name, in one of his books, and had translated to read: “Not voice but vow, / Not harp-string but heart-string, / Not clamor but love, / Sounds in the ear of God.” See Samuel Longfellow, Final Memorials, 440.
“evidence of the diversity”: Hilen, in Letters, vol. 5, 315–316.
“bought a copy”: Life, vol. 3, 276. The book, Plutarch’s Vitae, published in 1496, remains in the collections, catalog number LONG 2650.
“Even closets”: Annie Adams Fields, 26–27.
“The Exequy”: For a superb discussion of this poem, and these lines in particular, see Donald Hall, “The Poetry of Death,” in The New Yorker, Sept. 12. 2017.
“most intimate friends”: Ibid.
“no catalogue was ever”: Alice Longfellow, “Longfellow in Home Life,” The Cambridge Magazine, vol. 1 (new series), no. 2 (March 1896), 73–83.
final months: Charley returned from a trip abroad in March 1892, according to a clipped obituary in the Charles Appleton Longfellow Papers at Longfellow House (box 18, folder 10), and died on April 13, 1893, after having been “ill for over a year.” His half-uncle and occasional travel companion, Nathan Appleton Jr., wrote in Russian Life and Society (Boston: privately published, 1904), that Charley “had a sudden stroke of paralysis from which he never recovered” following a trip to Tahiti a year earlier (159).
“In this same old house”: Alice M. Longfellow, “Longfellow in Home Life.”
Fanny sketch of Henry: Dated 1847, framed, in the study, on bookcase shelf, LH Museum Collection, LONG 4154 HWL.
Henry sketch of Fanny: Dated in Henry’s hand, “January 31, 1847, Sunday afternoon.”
Eastman Johnson portraits in Craigie House: Study: Charles Sumner, LONG 545; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, LONG 544; Cornelius Conway Felton, LONG 543; Nathaniel Hawthorne, LONG 542; Ralph Waldo Emerson, LONG 541. Dining room: Anne Longfellow Pierce, LONG 4419; Mary Longfellow Greenleaf, LONG 4418.
“Here Vassall”: George Washington Greene, “Longfellow House and Library,” The Aldine, vol. 5, no. 5 (May 1872), 100–103.
“He is my oldest”: HWL Journal, March 10, 1877.
“He was inclined”: Annie Adams Fields, 58–59.
Accounts of the exposition: Frank H. Norton and Frank Leslie, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Historical Register of the United States Centennial Exposition, 1876 (New York: Frank Leslie’s Publishing House, 1876), LONG 2674; Frank H. Norton, Illustrated Historical Register of the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876, and of the Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1878 (New York: American News Company, 1879), LONG 2925.
“a charming vacation”: HWL Journal, May 16–21, 1876.
“series of illustrations”: Thomas Moran to HWL, June 5, 1876, HL, bMS Am 1340.2 (3960).
Mountain of the Holy Cross: See Wilkins, Thomas Moran, 95–107. The original oil painting displayed at the Centennial Exposition is now in the permanent collections of the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles, Object ID 91 221 49.
“The principal peak”: Picturesque America, or the Land We Live In, 2 vols., issued in parts, ed. William Cullen Bryant; “the main literary work on this publication was done by Oliver B. Bunce” (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1872–74), part 25, 502. HL copy f*58-1462.
“a hearty, genial”: HWL Journal, June 10, 1876.
Sarah Bernhardt: Ernest Longfellow, 43. “Of the actresses,” Ernest wrote of the many celebrities who visited Craigie House, “first place should be given Mrs. Kemble, whose wonderful reading of Shakespeare enthralled us when we were young.”
“In personal contact”: Anthony Trollope, North American Review (April 1881).
breakfast: Oscar Wilde said privately to a friend afterwards that “Longfellow was himself a beautiful poem, more beautiful than anything he ever wrote.” After Henry’s death a few weeks later, he professed a different view, saying at a public lecture in Boston that “the lips of Longfellow are still musical for us though his dust be turning into the flowers which he loved.” See Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 180–181.
“Day by day”: Annie Adams Fields, 31.
“As I was standing”: HWL Journal, Aug. 22, 1879.
“and asked”: Ibid., Oct. 22, 1866.
Unexpected visitors: Fanny once described for Emmeline the unending parade of admirers who came calling “at all hours” on Henry: “One day a lantern-jawed Kentuckian with son and daughters all greatly desiring autographs—another day some Italian or German refugee hoping for a little advice about their future,” the two being “just a specimen of the odd varieties” they continually received: “Henry seems to be considered a kind of Helper General to all nations and his good nature always encourages the idea.” FEAL to EAW, Aug. 22, 1851, FEAL-B3-F1-I32.
“Next to Mount Vernon”: David Millar, Measured Drawings of Some Colonial and Georgian Houses (New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1916), 3.
Magnolia: Numerous replicas of Craigie House still stand throughout the country, a number constructed before the Sears Roebuck copy, including one built in 1906 in Minneapolis that now serves as an information center for the Minneapolis Park System. An even earlier replica was created for the 1895 Cotton States and International Expositions in Atlanta. See “The Next Best-known House in America and Its Replicas,” in Longfellow House Bulletin, vol. 3, no. 2 (December 1999), and John Hebble, “The Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House of 1759: From Colonial America to the Colonial Revival and Beyond,” a thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, 2010.
“He has made”: FEAL to MAM, June 19, 1854, FEAL-B3-F4-I8. The Samuel Laurence portrait of Longfellow: LONG 2896.
Alexander Longfellow: See Richard Shain Cohen, The Forgotten Longfellow (West Yarmouth, MA: Artship Publishing, 2009), a consideration of the career of the poet’s younger brother, a cartographer and explorer who lived much of his life in Henry’s shadow.
“I told you”: FEAL to EAW, a fragment from August or September 1857, FEAL-B3-F14-I15. The portrait of Annie and Edith: LONG 2897.
“The Cross of Snow”: First appearance in print, Life, vol. 2, 372–373.
“Rowse began”: HWL Journal, March 3, 1858.
Saint Benedict, Monte Cassino, and the first monastic scriptorium: See my book Patience & Fortitude, 93–99.
“Mezzo Cammin”: Three versions of the sonnet, written in Germany during the 1842 “water cure,” one of them a fair copy, are in HL, MS Am 1370 (72).
420 poems: See “a chronological list of Mr. Longfellow’s poems” in Horace E. Scudder, ed., The Complete Poetical Works of Longfellow (Cambridge: The Riverside Press/Houghton Mifflin, 1886), 676–679.
sonnets: See the introduction by Ferris Greenslet in The Sonnets of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1907).
Longfellow’s death: Henry’s funeral was a small affair, attended by family and a few close friends, with a light snow falling outside Craigie House. William Dean Howells wrote that after viewing the body in the library, a by then very feeble Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked: “The gentleman we have just been burying was a sweet and beautiful soul; but I forget his name.”
“Typical Journeys and Country Life”: [W. H. Bishop], Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 64 (Dec. 1881–May 1882), 537–553.
“Book of Suggestions”: HL, MS Am 1340 (51).
“My slight sketch”: William Henry Bishop, Old Mexico and Her Lost Provinces (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883), 291.
“with a special force”: Arvin, 316. For more on Newton Arvin, and how an egregious invasion of his personal life led him to write this superb critical treatment of Longfellow’s poetry, see Barry Werth, The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin, a Literary Life Shattered by Scandal (New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2001).
coda: Harold Bloom, in Till I End My Song (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), an anthology of “last poems,” includes a “remarkable” poem Longfellow wrote in the final year of his life, “Elegiac Verse,” and praises him as a “wonderful lyric poet, once famous and then neglected,” who “merits revival and begins to receive it” (125).