Then she took their hands again, gazed at her two wonderful, precious children, and told them she had bad news, good news, and an apology.
• • •
At noon the bells rang in the steeple of St. Margaret’s Church, joyful, hopeful, singing of peace on Earth and goodwill to everyone, everywhere. Sister Winifred stood in the vestibule beside Father Ryan, sending the parishioners home with warm smiles and heartfelt wishes for a blessed Christmas.
Hate was strong, she knew. In some cold hearts and shadowed places, hatred ruled and wreaked havoc upon all it encountered, mocking the gentle promises of a better way to live. But wild and sweet, the bells sang of hope and salvation, of love and kindness, of the spirit of giving, of offering shelter to the lonely traveler, of light in dark hours.
“God is not dead, nor does He sleep,” she murmured to herself as the last of the worshippers departed for home, for the welcoming hearths of friends and family. For each of them she wished the blessings of hearts full of goodwill and a renewed dedication to the glorious promise of peace on Earth.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Christmas 1864
When the festive season came once more, Henry decided to celebrate in the good old style, with family and friends and all the glorious sights, sounds, tastes, and fragrances that reminded him of the happiest moments of Christmases past, cherished in memory, celebrated in song. A Yule log crackled on the hearth, and a plum pudding smoked upon the sideboard. Santa had filled the little girls’ stockings with his prettiest offerings, and all day long, friendly visitors brought the much-beloved children so many gifts that the drawing room table resembled a stall at a fancy fair. All who joined the Longfellows at Craigie House enjoyed music and stories, a delicious feast and excellent wine, cheerful company and news from loved ones far away.
Throughout December—a month of bitterly cold temperatures and heavy snowstorms that had followed a glorious prolonged Indian summer—Henry had observed that the people of Cambridge and Boston were anticipating the holidays with more enthusiasm than they had since before the war. The deeply packed snow had forced the horse trolleys to cease operations for a long string of days, so the people had sped about their errands in sleighs, the riders’ happy shouts and the chime of harness bells ringing out joyful carols through the frosty air. Shops had been crowded with eager folk purchasing gifts for friends and family; throngs of people had jammed the markets determined to procure the fattest, tenderest goose for their Christmas feasts. Prices had been remarkably reasonable, given the constraints of wartime, and Henry was especially pleased to hear that bookstores had enjoyed brisk sales, the best in years.
It was a season of hope and joy. President Abraham Lincoln had been reelected in November, and although the war ground on as destructive and devastating as ever, General Grant’s armies steadily advanced, and it began to seem that a Union victory was inevitable if not imminent. Although the Union army had endured significant losses, the North yet had more men and resources than the South, and the results of the November elections proved that the people of the North were resolved to see the war through to victory. It could not come too soon.
On Christmas Day, just as Henry, his family, and their guests sat down to their Christmas feast, word came to Craigie House that three days before, General William T. Sherman had sent President Lincoln a most extraordinary dispatch, one that he had received only that morning: “I beg to present to you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” Yet another of the great cities of the South had fallen, and surely the capture of Petersburg and Richmond would soon follow. With no more strongholds to retreat to, the Confederacy would be forced to capitulate.
But while the people of the North celebrated—some confidently, others with guarded optimism—Henry’s heart was wistful, longing, as it had been every holiday since he had lost his beloved wife. And on that Christmas Day, no hopeful anticipation of peace could ease his yearning to be reunited with two absent loved ones: not only Fanny—his wife, his darling, his life’s companion—but also his eldest son, Charley.
Charley’s wounds had been frustratingly slow to heal. Two months after the bullet had torn through his son’s back at New Hope Church, Henry still had to help him dress in the morning. Then, in the second week of February, the Longfellow family was astonished to read in the newspaper that on January 24, Charley had been promoted to First Lieutenant with the First Massachusetts Cavalry. Charley had received no official word of his promotion, but while Henry was investigating to confirm whether the report was true, Charley received an official letter from military headquarters informing him of his dismissal from the army due to disability.
Shocked, Charley immediately replied that he had every intention of returning to duty as soon as he was fit. On February 17 he submitted to an examination by a doctor, who provided an affidavit that he believed Charley would be “sufficiently recovered to return to his post in forty days from the date hereof.” But it was to no avail. Despite the military’s well-known need for officers, Charley’s injuries precluded him from returning to duty. Charley was bitterly disappointed, all the more so because he had been unable to muster in at his new rank, so he was discharged as only a second lieutenant.
Henry was sorry for the sake of his son’s pride, but he was greatly relieved that Charley’s service to the United States Army had come to an end. For a year, Henry had begun each day with fear and trembling, his heart tight in his chest, his anxiety unrelieved until he had finished reading the long column of names in the day’s casualty list. Now, at last, he could breathe easier.
It was not until April 20 that Charley’s wounds had finally closed, but some pain and sensitivity had lingered, and his legs had been stiff and his feet swollen, reminding Henry of a gouty old aristocrat. As the summer passed, Charley had abandoned his plans to seek a new commission and had resigned himself to the rank of veteran. But the conclusion of his military career did not mean the end of his restlessness and hunger for adventure, and by autumn, Henry had resolved to remove his eldest son far from the temptations of the battlefield.
In October, Henry proposed that Charley tour the Mediterranean. Friends and relatives abroad would meet him at various cities along the way, and he could experience a grand adventure that would be both educational and enlightening. Charley quickly warmed to the plan, and while Henry inquired about a suitable vessel and made the arrangements, Charley studied maps and read travel memoirs in preparation for the journey.
On the first day of November, Charley had embarked for Palermo, Italy, aboard the bark Trajan. He wrote home frequently as he traveled from one city to the next, brief, enthusiastic letters describing the cities he explored, the people he met, and the sights he had seen. On Christmas Eve, the family received a cheerful letter wishing them a Merry Christmas from Gibraltar. Charley was well rested and happy, had recently toured Tangiers, and was planning to travel next to Málaga, and after that, Palermo again and perhaps Grenada. Charley was not viewing as many cathedrals and libraries as Henry had done during his own tours of the Continent, but he and Charley were two very different men, and Henry accepted that his son would chart a separate course.
Henry would have preferred to have his eldest son home that Christmas Day, but he was content to know that Charley was safe and happy. Ernest, Alice, Edith, and Annie were near, so Henry did not want for company, nor did he ever doubt that he was as cherished and loved in his household as any father could ever hope to be.
He knew too that the poem he had written that strange and wondrous Christmas night the year before was as true on the eve of peace as it had been during the bleakest nights of the war. It was not in vain that Christmas bells rang out their old familiar carols, wild and sweet, of peace on Earth and goodwill to all. The unbroken song, wistful and true, filled the skies above Cambridge and Gibraltar, across North and South, over homes an
d upon battlefields. On Christmas Day, the promise of peace offered a soft and shining light in dark times, an eternal flame that warfare could not douse, nor hatred extinguish.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I offer my sincere thanks to Denise Roy, Maria Massie, Liza Cassity, Danielle Springer, Christine Ball, Ben Sevier, and the outstanding sales team at Dutton for their contributions to Christmas Bells and their ongoing support of my work. I’m grateful for the generous assistance of my first readers, Marty Chiaverini and Geraldine Neidenbach, whose comments and questions were, as always, insightful and immeasurably helpful. I also thank Nic Neidenbach, Heather Neidenbach, Marlene and Len Chiaverini, and friends near and far for their support and encouragement.
The research for my historical fiction always involves many enjoyable visits to the Wisconsin Historical Society on the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison. The sources that most informed this work include: William Appleton, Selections from the Diaries of William Appleton, 1786–1862 (Boston: Merrymount Press, 1922); Charles C. Calhoun, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); Robert Ferguson, America During and After the War (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1866); Andrew Hilen, “Charley Longfellow Goes to War,” Harvard Library Bulletin, XIV, Nos. 1 and 2 (Winter and Spring 1960), 59–81, 283–303; Christoph Irmscher, Longfellow Redux (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Christoph Irmscher, Public Poet, Private Man: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow at 200 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Volume IV, ed. Andrew Hilen (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1972); Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poems & Other Writings, ed. J. D. McClatchy (New York: The Library of America, 2000); Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: With Extracts from His Journals and Correspondence (Boston: Ticknor and Company, 1886); Thomas H. O’Connor, Civil War Boston: Home Front and Battlefield (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997); Charles Sumner, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, ed. Edward L. Pierce (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1893).
I also relied upon several excellent online resource while researching and writing Christmas Bells, including the National Park Service’s website for Longfellow House (www.nps.gov/long/index.htm), Genealogybank.com’s archive of digitized historic newspapers (www.genealogybank.com), the website of the University of Notre Dame (www.nd.edu), and the website of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC (www.dcpriest.org).
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Bells” inspired the historical elements of this novel, but the contemporary storyline I owe to Madison Youth Choirs, director Michael Ross, and conductors Randal Swiggum and Margaret Jenks. I wrote a significant portion of this book in the hallway outside the studio during rehearsals, and I thank the talented young singers of Britten and Purcell for offering me many hours of entertainment and inspiration. For more information about Madison Youth Choirs, including a schedule of upcoming performances, classes, and auditions, please visit their website at www.madisonyouthchoirs.org.
As always and most of all, I thank my husband, Martin Chiaverini, and our sons, Nicholas and Michael, for their enduring love, tireless support, and inspiring faith in me. You make everything worthwhile, and I couldn’t have written this book without you. Merry Christmas!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, The Spymistress, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, Mrs. Grant and Madame Jule, and the Elm Creek Quilts series. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin.
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