Longfellow published two volumes of poetic selections, “The Waif” (1845) and “The Estray” (1846), the latter title being originally planned as “Estrays in the Forest,” and he records a visit to the college library, in apparent search for the origin of the phrase. His next volume of original poems, however, was “The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems,” published December 23, 1845, the contents having already been partly printed in “Graham’s Magazine,” and most of them in the illustrated edition of his poems published in Philadelphia. The theme of the volume appears to have been partly suggested by some words in a letter to Freiligrath which seem to make the leading poem, together with that called “Nuremberg,” a portion of that projected series of travel-sketches which had haunted Longfellow ever since “Outre-Mer.” “The Norman Baron” was the result of a passage from Thierry, sent him by an unknown correspondent. One poem was suggested by a passage in Andersen’s “Story of my Life,” and one was written at Boppard on the Rhine. All the rest were distinctly American in character or origin. Another poem, “To the Driving Cloud,” the chief of the Omaha Indians, was his first effort at hexameters and prepared the way for “Evangeline.” His translation of the “Children of the Lord’s Supper” had also served by way of preparation; and he had happened upon a specimen in “Blackwood’s Magazine” of the hexameter translation of the “Iliad” which had impressed him very much. He even tried a passage of “Evangeline” rendered into English pentameter verse, and thus satisfied himself that it was far less effective for his purpose than the measure finally adopted.
There is no doubt that the reading public at large has confirmed the opinion of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes when he says, “Of the longer poems of our chief singer, I should not hesitate to select ‘Evangeline’ as the masterpiece, and I think the general verdict of opinion would confirm my choice.... From the first line of the poem, from its first words, we read as we would float down a broad and placid river, murmuring softly against its banks, heaven over it, and the glory of the unspoiled wilderness all around.” The words “This is the forest primeval” have become as familiar, he thinks, as the “Arma virumque cano” which opened Virgil’s “Æneid,” and he elsewhere calls the poem “the tranquil current of these brimming, slow-moving, soul-satisfying lines.” The subject was first suggested to Longfellow by Hawthorne, who had heard it from his friend, the Rev. H. L. Conolly, and the outline of it will be found in “The American Note-Books” of Hawthorne, who disappointed Father Conolly by not using it himself. It was finished on Longfellow’s fortieth birthday.
It was a striking illustration of the wide popularity of “Evangeline,” that even the proper names introduced under guidance of his rhythmical ear spread to other countries and were taken up and preserved as treasures in themselves. Sumner writes from England to Longfellow that the Hon. Mrs. Norton, herself well known in literature, had read “Evangeline,” not once only, but twenty times, and the scene on Lake Atchafalaya, where the two lovers pass each other unknowingly, so impressed her that she had a seal cut with the name upon it. Not long after this, Leopold, King of the Belgiums, repeated the same word to her and said that it was so suggestive of scenes in human life that he was about to have it cut on a seal, when she astonished him by showing him hers.
The best review of “Evangeline” ever written was probably the analysis made of it by that accomplished French traveller of half a century ago, Professor Philarète Chasles of the Collège de France, in his “Etudes sur la Littérature et les Mœurs des Anglo-Américains du XIX. Siécle,” published in 1851. It is interesting to read it, and to recognize anew what has often been made manifest — the greater acuteness of the French mind than of the English, when discussing American themes. Writing at that early period, M. Chasles at once recognized, for instance, the peculiar quality of Emerson’s genius. He describes Longfellow, in comparison, as what he calls a moonlight poet, having little passion, but a calmness of attitude which approaches majesty, and moreover a deep sensibility, making itself felt under a subdued rhythm. In short, his is a slow melody and a reflective emotion, both these being well suited to the sounds and shadows of our endless plains and our forests, which have no history. He is especially struck with the resemblance of the American poet to the Scandinavians, such as Tegnèr and Oehlenschlaeger. He notices even in Longfellow the Norse tendency to alliteration, and he quotes one of the Northern poems and then one of Longfellow’s to show this analogy. It is worth while to put these side by side. This is from Oehlenschlaeger: —
“Tilgiv tvungne Trael af Elskov! At han dig atter Astsaeld findet.” ... etc.
The following is by Longfellow: —
“Fuller of fragrance, than they And as heavy with shadows and night-dews, Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and magical moonlight Seemed to inundate her soul.”
It is curious to notice that Chasles makes the same criticism on “Evangeline” that Holmes made on Lowell’s “Vision of Sir Launfal;” namely, that there is in it a mixture of the artificial and the natural. The result is, we may infer, that on the whole one still thinks of it as a work of art and does not — as, for instance, with Tolstoi’s “Cossacks” — think of all the characters as if they lived in the very next street. Yet it is in its way so charming, he finds that although as he says, “There is no passion in it,” still there is a perpetual air of youth and innocence and tenderness. M. Chasles is also impressed as a Catholic with the poet’s wide and liberal comprehension of the Christian ideas. It is not, he thinks, a masterpiece (Il y a loin d’Evangéline à un chef-d’œuvre), but he points out, what time has so far vindicated, that it has qualities which guarantee to it something like immortality. When we consider that Chasles wrote at a time when all our more substantial literature seemed to him to consist of uninteresting state histories and extensive collections of the correspondence of American presidents — a time when he could write sadly: “All America does not yet possess a humorist” (Toute l’Amérique ne possède pas un humoriste), one can place it to the credit of Longfellow that he had already won for himself some sort of literary standing in the presence of one Frenchman. At the time of this complaint, it may be noticed that Mr. S. L. Clemens was a boy of fifteen. The usual European criticism at the present day is not that America produces so few humorists, but that she brings forth so many.
The work which came next from Longfellow’s pen has that peculiar value to a biographer which comes from a distinct, unequivocal, low-water mark in the intellectual product with which he has to deal. This book, “Kavanagh,” had the curious fate of bringing great disappointment to most of his friends and admirers, and yet of being praised by the two among his contemporaries personally most successful in fiction, Hawthorne and Howells. Now that the New England village life has proved such rich material in the hands of Mary Wilkins, Sarah Jewett, and Rowland Robinson, it is difficult to revert to “Kavanagh” (1849) without feeling that it is from beginning to end a piece of purely academic literature without a type of character, or an incident — one might almost say without a single phrase — that gives quite the flavor of real life. Neither the joys nor the griefs really reach the reader’s heart for one moment. All the characters use essentially the same dialect, and every sentence is duly supplied with its anecdote or illustration, each one of which is essentially bookish at last. It has been well said of it that it is an attempt to look at rural society as Jean Paul would have looked at it. Indeed, we find Longfellow reading aloud from the “Campaner Thal” while actually at work on “Kavanagh,” and he calls the latter in his diary “a romance.” When we consider how remote Jean Paul seems from the present daily life of Germany, one feels the utter inappropriateness of his transplantation to New England. Yet Emerson read the book “with great contentment,” and pronounced it “the best sketch we have seen in the direction of the American novel,” and discloses at the end the real charm he found or fancied by attributing to it “elegance.” Hawthorne, warm with early friendship, pronounces it “a most precious and rare bo
ok, as fragrant as a bunch of flowers and as simple as one flower.... Nobody but yourself would dare to write so quiet a book, nor could any other succeed in it. It is entirely original, a book by itself, a true work of genius, if ever there was one.” Nothing, I think, so well shows us the true limitations of American literature at that period as these curious phrases. It is fair also to recognize that Mr. W. D. Howells, writing nearly twenty years later, says with almost equal exuberance, speaking of “Kavanagh,” “It seems to us as yet quite unapproached by the multitude of New England romances that have followed it in a certain delicate truthfulness, as it is likely to remain unsurpassed in its light humor and pensive grace.”
The period following the publication of “Evangeline” seemed a more indeterminate and unsettled time than was usual with Longfellow. He began a dramatic romance of the age of Louis XIV., but did not persist in it, and apart from the story of “Kavanagh” did no extended work. He continued to publish scattered poems, and in two years (1850) there appeared another volume called “The Seaside and the Fireside” in which the longest contribution and the most finished — perhaps the most complete and artistic which he ever wrote — was called “The Building of the Ship.” To those who remember the unequalled voice and dramatic power of Mrs. Kemble, it is easy to imagine the enthusiasm with which her reading of this poem was received by an audience of three thousand, and none the less because at that troubled time the concluding appeal to the Union had a distinct bearing on the conflicts of the time. For the rest of the volume, it included the strong and lyric verses called “Seaweed,” which were at the time criticised by many, though unreasonably, as rugged and boisterous; another poem of dramatic power, “Sir Humphrey Gilbert;” and one of the most delicately imaginative and musical among all he ever wrote, “The Fire of Drift-Wood,” the scene of which was the Devereux Farm at Marblehead. There were touching poems of the fireside, especially that entitled “Resignation,” written in 1848 after the death of his little daughter Fanny, and one called “The Open Window.” Looking back from this, his fourth volume of short poems, it must be owned that he had singularly succeeded in providing against any diminution of power or real monotony. Nevertheless his next effort was destined to be on a wider scale.
CHAPTER XVII. RESIGNATION OF PROFESSORSHIP — TO DEATH OF MRS. LONGFELLOW
On the last day of 1853, Longfellow wrote in his diary, “How barren of all poetic production and even prose production this last year has been! For 1853 I have absolutely nothing to show. Really there has been nothing but the college work. The family absorbs half the time, and letters and visits take out a huge cantle.” Yet four days later he wrote, January 4, 1854, “Another day absorbed in the college. But why complain? These golden days are driven like nails into the fabric. Who knows but they help it to hold fast and firm?” On February 22, he writes, “You are not misinformed about my leaving the professorship. I am ‘pawing to get free.’” On his birthday, February 27, he writes, in the joy of approaching freedom, “I am curious to know what poetic victories, if any, will be won this year.” On April 19 he writes, “At eleven o’clock in No. 6 University Hall, I delivered my last lecture — the last I shall ever deliver, here or anywhere.” The following are the letters explaining this, and hitherto unpublished, but preserved in the Harvard College archives.
CAMBRIDGE, February 16, 1854.
GENTLEMEN, — In pursuance of conversations held with Dr. Walker, the subject of which he has already communicated to you, — I now beg leave to tender you my resignation of the “Smith Professorship of the French and Spanish Languages and Literatures,” which I have held in Harvard College since the year 1835.
Should it be in your power to appoint my successor before the beginning of the next Term, I should be glad to retire at once. But if this should be inconvenient, I will discharge the duties of the office until the end of the present Academic Year.
I venture on this occasion, Gentlemen, to call your attention to the subject of the salaries paid to the several Instructors in this Department, and to urge, as far as may be proper, such increase as may correspond to the increased expenses of living in this part of the country at the present time.
With sentiments of the highest regard, and sincere acknowledgments of your constant courtesy and kindness, during the eighteen years of my connection with the College,
I have the honor to be, Gentlemen, Your Obt. Servt.
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
To the President and Corporation of Harvard University.
[TO PRESIDENT WALKER.]
CAMBRIDGE, Feb. 16, 1854.
MY DEAR SIR, — I inclose you my note to the Corporation. Will you be kind enough to look at it, before handing it to them; for if it is not in proper form and phrase, I will write it over again.
I also inclose the letters of Schele de Vere, and remain,
Very faithfully Yours
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
P. S. I have not assigned any reasons for my resignation, thinking it better to avoid a repetition of details, which I have already explained to you.
[TO THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE.]
GENTLEMEN, — Having last Winter signified to you my intention of resigning my Professorship at the close of the present College year, I now beg leave to tender you my resignation more formally and officially.
It is eighteen years since I entered upon the duties of this Professorship. They have been to me pleasant and congenial; and I hope I have discharged them to your satisfaction, and to the advantage of the College in whose prosperity I shall always take the deepest interest.
In dissolving a connection, which has lasted so long, and which has been to me a source of so much pleasure and advantage, permit me to express to you my grateful thanks for the confidence you have reposed in me, and the many marks of kindness and consideration which I have received at your hands.
With best wishes for the College and for yourselves, I have the honor to be, Gentlemen,
Your Obedient Servant
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
Smith Professor of French and Spanish, and Professor of Belles Lettres.
CAMBRIDGE, August 23, 1854.
[TO PRESIDENT WALKER.]
NAHANT, Aug. 23, 1854.
MY DEAR SIR, — I inclose you the Letter of resignation we were speaking of yesterday. I have made it short, as better suited to College Records; and have said nothing of the regret, which I naturally feel on leaving you, for it hardly seems to me that I am leaving you; and little of my grateful acknowledgments; for these I hope always to show, by remaining the faithful friend and ally of the College.
I beg you to make my official farewells to the members of the Faculty at their next meeting, and to assure them all and each of my regard and friendship, and of my best wishes for them in all things.
With sentiments of highest esteem, I remain
Dear Sir, Yours faithfully
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW
His retirement was not a matter of ill health, for he was perfectly well, except that he could not use his eyes by candle-light. But friends and guests and children and college lectures had more and more filled up his time, so that he had no strength for poetry, and the last two years had been very unproductive. There was, moreover, all the excitement of his friend Sumner’s career, and of the fugitive slave cases in Boston, and it is no wonder that he writes in his diary, with his usual guarded moderation, “I am not, however, very sure as to the result.” Meanwhile he sat for his portrait by Lawrence, and the subject of the fugitive slave cases brought to the poet’s face, as the artist testified, a look of animation and indignation which he was glad to catch and retain. On Commencement Day, July 19, 1854, he wore his academical robes for the last time, and writes of that event, “The whole crowded church looked ghostly and unreal as a thing in which I had no part.” He had already been engaged upon his version of Dante, having taken it up on February 1, 1853, after ten years’ interval; and moreover another new literary project had occurred
to him “purely in the realm of fancy,” as he describes it, and his freedom became a source of joy.
He had been anxious for some years to carry out his early plan of works upon American themes. He had, as will be remembered, made himself spokesman for the Indians on the college platform. His list of proposed subjects had included as far back as 1829, “Tales of the Quoddy Indians,” with a description of Sacobezon, their chief. After twenty-five years he wrote in his diary (June 22, 1854), “I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the American Indians which seems to be the right one and the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions into a whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which I think the right one and the only one for the purpose.” He had to draw for this delineation not merely upon the Indians seen in books, but on those he had himself observed in Maine, the Sacs and Foxes he had watched on Boston Common, and an Ojibway chief whom he had entertained at his house. As for the poetic measure, a suitable one had just been suggested to him by the Finnish epic of “Kalevala,” which he had been reading; and he had been delighted by its appropriateness to the stage character to be dealt with and the type of legend to be treated. “Hiawatha” was begun on June 25, 1854, and published on November 10 of that year. He enjoyed the work thoroughly, but it evidently seemed to him somewhat tame before he got through, and this tendency to tameness was sometimes a subject of criticism with readers; but its very simplicity made the style attractive to children and gave a charm which it is likely always to retain. With his usual frankness, he stated at the outset that the metre was not original with him, and it was of course a merit in the legends that they were not original. The book received every form of attention; it was admired, laughed at, parodied, set to music, and publicly read, and his fame unquestionably rests far more securely on this and other strictly American poems than on the prolonged labor of the “Golden Legend.” He himself writes that some of the newspapers are “fierce and furious” about “Hiawatha,” and again “there is the greatest pother over ‘Hiawatha.’” Freiligrath, who translated the poem into German, writes him from London, “Are you not chuckling over the war which is waging in the ‘Athenæum’ about the measure from ‘Hiawatha’?” He had letters of hearty approval from Emerson, Hawthorne, Parsons, and Bayard Taylor; the latter, perhaps, making the best single encomium on the book in writing to its author, “The whole poem floats in an atmosphere of the American ‘Indian summer.’” The best tribute ever paid to it, however, was the actual representation of it as a drama by the Ojibway Indians on an island in Lake Huron, in August, 1901, in honor of a visit to the tribe by some of the children and grandchildren of the poet. This posthumous tribute to a work of genius is in itself so picturesque and interesting and has been so well described by Miss Alice Longfellow, who was present, that I have obtained her consent to reprint it in the Appendix to this volume.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 216
