It is also to be noticed that George Bancroft, one of the half dozen men in America who had studied at a German University, wrote about the same time a violent attack on Goethe in the Boston “Christian Examiner,” in which he pronounced him far inferior to Voltaire, “not in genius and industry only, but still more in morality.” He says of him farther, “He imitates, he reproduces, he does not create and he does not build up.... His chances at popularity are diminishing. Twaddle will not pass long for wisdom. The active spirit of movement and progress finds in his works little that attracts sympathy.” It is to be remembered in the same connection that Longfellow, in 1837, wrote to his friend, George W. Greene, of “Jean Paul Richter, the most magnificent of the German prose writers,” and it was chiefly on Richter that his prose style was formed.
In June he left Heidelberg for the Tyrol and Switzerland, where the scene of “Hyperion” was laid. He called it “quite a sad and lonely journey,” but it afterwards led to results both in his personal and literary career. He sailed for home in October and established himself in Cambridge in December, 1836. The following letter to his wife’s sister was written after his return.
CAMBRIDGE, Sunday evening.
MY DEAR ELIZA, — By tomorrow’s steamboat I shall send you two trunks, containing the clothes which once belonged to your sister. What I have suffered in getting them ready to send to you, I cannot describe. It is not necessary, that I should. Cheerful as I may have seemed to you at times, there are other times, when it seems to me that my heart would break. The world considers grief unmanly, and is suspicious of that sorrow, which is expressed by words and outward signs. Hence we strive to be gay and put a cheerful courage on, when our souls are very sad. But there are hours, when the world is shut out, and we can no longer hear the voices, that cheer and encourage us. To me such hours come daily. I was so happy with my dear Mary, that it is very hard to be alone. The sympathies of friendship are doubtless something — but after all how little, how unsatisfying they are to one who has been so loved as I have been! This is a selfish sorrow, I know: but neither reason nor reflection can still it. Affliction makes us childish. A grieved and wounded heart is hard to be persuaded. We do not wish to have our sorrow lessened. There are wounds, which are never entirely healed. A thousand associations call up the past, with all its gloom and shadow. Often a mere look or sound — a voice — the odor of a flower — the merest trifle is enough to awaken within me deep and unutterable emotions. Hardly a day passes, that some face, or familiar object, or some passage in the book I am reading does not call up the image of my beloved wife so vividly, that I pause and burst into tears, — and sometimes cannot rally again for hours.
And yet, my dear Eliza, in a few days, and we shall all be gone, and others sorrowing and rejoicing as we now do, will have taken our places: and we shall say, how childish it was for us to mourn for things so transitory. There may be some consolation in this; but we are nevertheless children. Our feelings overcome us.
Farewell. Give my kind regards to all, and believe me most truly and affectionately, your friend,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
CHAPTER X. CRAIGIE HOUSE
In entering on the duties of his Harvard professorship (December, 1836) Longfellow took rooms at the Craigie House in Cambridge. This house, so long his residence, has been claimed as having more historic interest than any house in New England, both from the fact of his ownership and of its having been the headquarters of General Washington during the siege of Boston. It has even been called from these two circumstances the best known residence in the United States, with the exception of Mt. Vernon, with which it has some analogy both in position and in aspect. It overlooks the Charles River as the other overlooks the Potomac, though the latter view is of course far more imposing, and the Craigie House wants the picturesque semicircle of outbuildings so characteristic of Mt. Vernon, while it is far finer in respect to rooms, especially in the upper stories. It was built, in all probability, in 1759 by Colonel John Vassall, whose family owned the still older house across the way now called the Batchelder House; and there is a tradition of a subterranean passage between the two houses, although this has hitherto been sought in vain. Both these dwellings belonged to a series of large houses on Brattle Street, called Tory Row, whose proprietors were almost all kinsfolk, owned West India estates and slaves, entertained company in great affluence, according to the descriptions of the Baroness Riedesel, and were almost all forced to leave the country at the approach of the Revolution. Tradition recalls a Twelfth Night party given by Mrs. Washington in 1776, she having come to visit her husband during his residence in Cambridge. “She arrived in great ceremony, with a coach and four black horses, with postilions and servants in scarlet livery. During her visit she and her husband celebrated their wedding anniversary, though the General had to be much persuaded by his aides.” The southeastern room, afterwards Longfellow’s study, had been Washington’s office, and the chamber above it his private room, this being Longfellow’s original study. The house was bought about 1792, the dates being a little uncertain, by Andrew Craigie, apothecary-general of the northern department of the Revolutionary army, who made additions to the house, which was described as a princely establishment. Mr. Craigie sometimes entertained a hundred guests at the Commencement festival, and had among his other guests the celebrated Talleyrand and the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria’s father, then Prince Edward. Mr. Craigie had large business transactions, speculated extensively but at last unsuccessfully in real estate, and died in 1819. His wife long outlived him, and being poor, let rooms to various inmates. Edward Everett took his bride there in 1822, and so did President Jared Sparks in 1832. Five years after, Longfellow took the rooms, and thus describes his first visit to Mrs. Craigie: —
“The first time I was in Craigie House was on a beautiful afternoon in the year 1837. I came to see Mr. McLane, a law-student, who occupied the southeastern chamber. The window-blinds were closed, but through them came a pleasant breeze, and I could see the waters of the Charles gleaming in the meadows. 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 for my bedroom. At first Mrs. Craigie declined to let me have rooms. I remember how she looked as she stood, in her white turban, with her hands crossed behind her, snapping her gray eyes. She had resolved, she said, to take no more students into the house. But her manner changed when I told her who I was. She said that she had read ‘Outre-Mer,’ of which one number was lying on her side-board. She then took me all over the house and showed me every room in it, saying, as we went into each, that I could not have that one. She finally consented to my taking the rooms mentioned above, on condition that the door leading into the back entry should be locked on the outside. Young Habersham, of Savannah, a friend of Mrs. Craigie’s, occupied at that time the other front chamber. He was a skilful performer on the flute. Like other piping birds, he took wing for the rice-fields of the South when the cold weather came, and I remained alone with the widow in her castle. The back part of the house was occupied, however, by her farmer. His wife supplied my meals and took care of my rooms. She was a giantess, and very pious in words; and when she brought in my breakfast frequently stopped to exhort me. The exorbitant rate at which she charged my board was rather at variance with her preaching. Her name was Miriam; and Felton called her ‘Miriam, the profitess.’ Her husband was a meek little man.
“The winter was a rather solitary one, and the house very still. I used to hear Mrs. Craigie go down to breakfast at nine or ten in the morning and go up to bed at eleven at night. During the day she seldom left the parlor, where she sat reading the newspapers and the magazines, — occasionally a volume of Voltaire. She read also the English Annuals, of which she had a large collection. Occasionally, the sound of voices announced a visitor; and she sometimes enlivened the long evenings with a half-forgotten tune upon an old piano-forte.
“During the following summer the fine old
elms in front of the house were attacked by canker-worms, which, after having devoured the leaves, came spinning down in myriads. Mrs. Craigie used to sit by the open windows and let them crawl over her white turban unmolested. She would have nothing done to protect the trees from these worms; she used to say, ‘Why, sir, they are our fellow-worms; they have as good a right to live as we have.’”
It was certainly a strange chance which threw the young poet, on his return from Europe, into the curiously cosmopolitan atmosphere of Mrs. Craigie’s mind. The sale catalogue of her books lies before me, a mass of perhaps five hundred odd volumes of worthy or worthless literature: Goethe’s “Werther” beside the American “Frugal Housewife,” and Heath’s “Book of Beauty” beside “Hannah More.” Yet it was doubtless the only house in Cambridge which then held complete sets of Voltaire and Diderot, of Molière, Crébillon, and Florian, Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Staël. Some of the books thus sold form a part to this day of the Longfellow library at Craigie House; but there is no reference to the poet in the original catalogue, except that it includes “Outre-Mer,” No. 1, doubtless the same copy which he saw lying on the sideboard.
Mr. J. E. Worcester, the lexicographer, shared the house with Longfellow, as did for a time Miss Sally Lowell, an aunt of the poet. Mr. Worcester bought it for himself, and ultimately sold it to Mr. Nathan Appleton, father of the second Mrs. Longfellow, to whom he presented it. Part of the ten magnificent elms of which Longfellow wrote in 1839 have disappeared. The ground has been improved by the low-fenced terrace which he added, and the grounds opposite, given by the poet’s children to the Longfellow Memorial Association, have been graded into a small public park descending nearly to the river. Within the house all remains much the same, Longfellow’s library never having been scattered, although his manuscripts and proof-sheets, which he preserved and caused to be bound in their successive stages in the most orderly manner, have now been transferred to a fire-proof building for greater security. The “old clock on the stairs,” which he himself placed there, still ticks and strikes the hour; and one can see cracks in the stairway through which the mysterious letters dropped morning after morning, as told in the story of “Esther Wynne’s Love Letters,” by the accomplished author known as Saxe Holm. The actual letters were more commonplace, but they were apparently written by a schoolgirl under Mr. Craigie’s care; and there was a tradition, not very well authenticated, that Longfellow himself had planned to make them the subject of a poem before Saxe Holm or Helen Hunt — as the case may be — had anticipated him in prose.
Such was the house where Longfellow resided for the rest of his life; seven years of which passed before his second wedded life began. The following letter, taken from the Harvard College papers, will show the interest he took in the estate.
MY DEAR SIR [President Quincy], — Will you have the goodness to lay before the Corporation, at their next meeting, my request concerning the trees, which I mentioned to you the last time I had the pleasure of seeing you; viz. that they would permit me to take from the College grounds 3 elm trees to be placed in front of the Craigie House.
I am endeavoring to replace, as well as possible, the old elms, and find it difficult to obtain many of the size I desire. Some parts of the College ground are so thickly planted that a tree may be removed, here & there, without at all impairing the beauty of the grounds. I therefore request permission to remove any 3 trees that the College Steward shall say may be taken without detriment to the College property.
Yrs very truly,
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 29 .
CHAPTER XI. HYPERION AND THE REACTION FROM IT
“Outre-Mer” had been published some time before, with moderate success, but “Hyperion” was destined to attract far more attention. It is first mentioned in his journal on September 13, 1838, though in a way which shows that it had been for some time in preparation, and its gradual development is traceable through the same channel. One entire book, for instance, was written and suppressed, namely, “St. Clair’s Day Book,” the hero having first been christened Hyperion, then St. Clair, and then Paul Flemming. Its author wrote of it, “I called it ‘Hyperion,’ because it moves on high among clouds and stars, and expresses the various aspirations of the soul of man. It is all modelled on this idea, style and all. It contains my cherished thoughts for three years.”
The cordiality with which “Hyperion” was received was due partly to the love story supposed to be implied in it, and largely to the new atmosphere of German life and literature which it opened to Americans. It must always be remembered that the kingdom in which Germany then ruled was not then, as now, a kingdom of material force and business enterprise, but as Germans themselves claimed, a kingdom of the air; and into that realm Hyperion gave to Americans the first glimpse. The faults and limitations which we now see in it were then passed by, or visible only to such keen critics as Orestes A. Brownson, who wrote thus of it in “The Boston Quarterly Review,” then the ablest of American periodicals except “The Dial:” “I do not like the book. It is such a journal as a man who reads a great deal makes from the scraps in his table-drawer. Yet it has not the sincerity or quiet touches which give interest to the real journals of very common persons. It is overloaded with prettinesses, many of which would tell well in conversation, but being rather strown over than woven into his narrative, deform where they should adorn. You cannot guess why the book was written, unless because the author were tired of reading these morceaux to himself, for there has been no fusion or fermentation to bring on the hour of utterance. Then to me the direct personal relation in which we are brought to the author is unpleasing. Had he but idealized his tale, or put on the veil of poetry! But as it is, we are embarrassed by his extreme communicativeness, and wonder that a man, who seems in other respects to have a mind of delicate texture, could write a letter about his private life to a public on which he had as yet established no claim.... Indeed this book will not add to the reputation of its author, which stood so fair before its publication.” This is the criticism of which Longfellow placidly wrote, “I understand there is a spicy article against me in the ‘Boston Quarterly.’ I shall get it as soon as I can; for, strange as you may think it, these things give me no pain.”
Mr. Howells, in one of the most ardent eulogies ever written upon the works of Longfellow, bases his admiration largely upon the claim “that his art never betrays the crudeness or imperfection of essay,” — that is, of experiment. It would be interesting to know whether this accomplished author, looking back upon “Hyperion” more than thirty years later, could reindorse this strong assertion. To others, I fancy, however attractive and even fascinating the book may still remain, it has about it a distinctly youthful quality which, while sometimes characterizing even his poetry, unquestionably marked his early prose. A later and younger critic says more truly of it, I think, “Plainly in the style of Richter, with all the mingled grandeur and grotesqueness of the German romanticists, it is scarcely now a favorite with the adult reader; though the young, obedient to some vague embryonic law, still find in it for a season the pleasure, the thrilling melancholy, which their grandfathers found.” But Professor Carpenter, speaking from the point of view of the younger generation, does not fail to recognize that Paul Flemming’s complaints cease when he reads the tombstone inscription which becomes the motto of the book; and I recall with pleasure that, being a youth nurtured on “Hyperion,” I selected that passage for the text of my boyish autobiography written in the Harvard “Class Book” at the juvenile age of seventeen. Dozens of youths were perhaps adopting the motto in the same way at the same time, and it is useless to deny to a book which thus reached youthful hearts the credit of having influenced the whole period of its popularity.
Apart from the personal romance which his readers attached to it, the book had great value as the first real importation into our literature of the wealth of German romance and song. So faithful and ample are its local descriptions tha
t a cheap edition of it is always on sale at Heidelberg, and every English and American visitor to that picturesque old city seems to know the book by heart. Bearing it in his hand, the traveller still climbs the rent summit of the Gesprengte Thurm and looks down upon the throng in the castle gardens; or inquires vainly for the ruined linden-tree, or gives a sigh to the fate of Emma of Ilmenau, and murmurs solemnly, — as a fat and red-faced Englishman once murmured to me on that storied spot,— “That night there fell a star from heaven!” There is no doubt that under the sway of the simpler style now prevailing, much of the rhetoric of “Hyperion” seems turgid, some of its learning obtrusive, and a good deal of its emotion forced; but it was nevertheless an epoch-making book for a generation of youths and maidens, and it still retains its charm. The curious fact, however, remains — a fact not hitherto noticed, I think, by biographers or critics — that at the very time when the author was at work on “Hyperion,” there was a constant reaction in his mind that was carrying him in the direction of more strictly American subjects, handled under a simpler treatment. He wrote on September 13, 1838, “Looked over my notes and papers for ‘Hyperion.’ Long for leisure to begin once more.” It is impossible to say how long a preparation this implies; it may have been months or years. Yet the following letter to a young girl, his wife’s youngest sister, shows how, within less than a year previous, his observation had been again turned towards the American Indians as a theme.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 211
