Longfellow’s next poem reverted to hexameters once more, inasmuch as “Evangeline” had thoroughly outlived the early criticisms inspired by this meter. The theme had crossed his mind in 1856, and he had begun to treat it in dramatic form and verse, under the name it now bears; but after a year’s delay he tried it again under the name of Priscilla, taking the name, possibly, from an attractive English Quakeress, Priscilla Green, whose sweet voice had charmed him in a public meeting, “breaking now and then,” as he says, “into a kind of rhythmic charm in which the voice seemed floating up and down on wings.” It has been thought that he transferred in some degree the personality of this worthy woman to the heroine of his story, their Christian names being the same; but he afterwards resumed the original title, “The Courtship of Miles Standish.” He wrote it with great ease between December, 1857, and March, 1858, and perhaps never composed anything with a lighter touch or more unmingled pleasure. Twenty-five thousand copies were sold or ordered of the publishers during the first week, and ten thousand in London on the first day. In both theme and treatment the story was thoroughly to his liking, and vindicated yet further that early instinct which guided him to American subjects. Longfellow was himself descended, it will be remembered, from the very marriage he described, thus guaranteeing a sympathetic treatment, while the measure is a shade crisper and more elastic than that of “Evangeline,” owing largely to the greater use of trochees. It is almost needless to say that no such effort can ever be held strictly to the classic rules, owing to the difference in the character of the language. With German hexameters the analogy is closer.
On July 10, 1861, Mrs. Longfellow died the tragic death which has been so often described, from injuries received by fire the day before. Never was there a greater tragedy within a household; never one more simply and nobly borne. It was true to Lowell’s temperament to write frankly his sorrow in exquisite verse; but it became Longfellow’s habit, more and more, to withhold his profoundest feelings from spoken or written utterance; and it was only after his death that his portfolio, being opened, revealed this sonnet, suggested by a picture of the western mountain whose breast bears the crossed furrows.
THE CROSS OF SNOW
In the long, sleepless watches of the night, A gentle face — the face of one long dead — Looks at me from the wall, where round its head The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white Never through martyrdom of fire was led To its repose; nor can in books be read The legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines Displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes And seasons, changeless since the day she died.
July 10, 1879.
CHAPTER XVIII. BIRDS OF PASSAGE
Longfellow had always a ready faculty for grouping his shorter poems in volumes, and had a series continuing indefinitely under the name of “Birds of Passage,” which in successive “flights” were combined with longer works. The first was contained in the volume called “The Courtship of Miles Standish” (1858); the second in “Tales of a Wayside Inn” (1863); flight the third appeared in connection with “Aftermath” (1873); flight the fourth in “Masque of Pandora and Other Poems” (1875), and flight the fifth in “Keramos and Other Poems” (1878). These short poems stand representative of his middle life, as “Voices of the Night” and “Ballads” did for the earlier; and while the maturer works have not, as a whole, the fervor and freshness of the first, they have more average skill of execution.
The “Tales of a Wayside Inn” was the final grouping of several stories which had accumulated upon him, large and small, and finally demanded a title-page in common. Some of them had been published before and were grouped into a volume in 1863, which, making itself popular, was followed by two more volumes, finally united into one. We have what is not usually the case, the poet’s own account of them, he having written thus to a correspondent in England: “‘The Wayside Inn’ has more foundation in fact than you may suppose. The town of Sudbury is about twenty miles from Cambridge. Some two hundred years ago, an English family by the name of Howe built there a country house, which has remained in the family down to the present time, the last of the race dying but two years ago. Losing their fortune, they became innkeepers; and for a century the Red-Horse Inn has flourished, going down from father to son. The place is just as I have described it, though no longer an inn. All this will account for the landlord’s coat-of-arms, and his being a justice of the peace, and his being known as ‘the Squire,’ — things that must sound strange in English ears. All the characters are real. The musician is Ole Bull; the Spanish Jew, Israel Edrehi, whom I have seen as I have painted him,” etc., etc.
Other participants in the imaginary festivities are the late Thomas W. Parsons, the translator of Dante, who appears as the poet; the theologian being Professor Daniel Treadwell of Harvard University, an eminent physicist, reputed in his day to be not merely a free thinker, but something beyond it; the student being Henry Ware Wales, a promising scholar and lover of books, who left his beautiful library to the Harvard College collection; and the Sicilian being Luigi Monti, who had been an instructor in Italian at Harvard under Longfellow. Several of this group had habitually spent their summers in the actual inn which Longfellow described and which is still visible at Sudbury. But none of the participants in the supposed group are now living except Signor Monti, who still resides in Rome, as for many years back, with his American wife, a sister of the poet Parsons. All the members of the group were well known in Cambridge and Boston, especially Ole Bull, who was at seventy as picturesque in presence and bearing as any youthful troubadour, and whose American wife, an active and courageous philanthropist, still vibrates between America and India, and is more or less allied to the Longfellow family by the marriage of her younger brother, Mr. J. G. Thorp, to the poet’s youngest daughter. The volume has always been popular, even its most ample form; yet most of the individual poems are rarely quoted, and with the exception of “Paul Revere’s Ride” and “Lady Wentworth” they are not very widely read. These two are, it is to be observed, the most essentially American among them. The book was originally to have been called “The Sudbury Tales,” and was sent to the printer in April, 1863, under that title, which was however changed to “Tales of a Wayside Inn,” through the urgency of Charles Sumner.
It is the common fate of those poets who live to old age, that their critics, or at least their contemporary critics, are apt to find their later work less valuable than their earlier. Browning, Tennyson, and Swinburne, to mention no others, have had to meet this fate, and Longfellow did not escape it. Whether it is that the fame of the earlier work goes on accumulating while the later has not yet been tested by time, or that contemporary admirers have grown older and more critical when they are introduced to the later verses, this is hard to decide. Even when the greatest of modern poets completed in old age the dream of his youth, it was the fashion for a long time to regard the completion as a failure, and it took years to secure any real appreciation to the second part of “Faust.” This possibility must always be allowed for, but the fact remains that the title which Longfellow himself chose for so many of his poems, “Birds of Passage,” was almost painfully suggestive of a series of minor works of which we can only say that had his fame rested on those alone, it would have been of quite uncertain tenure. A very few of them, like “Keramos,” “Morituri Salutamus,” and “The Herons of Elmwood,” stand out as exceptions, and above all of these was the exquisite sonnet already printed in this volume, “The Cross of Snow,” recording at last the poet’s high water-mark, as was the case with Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar.” Apart from these, it may be truly said that the little volume called “Flower de Luce” was the last collection published by him which recalled his earlier strains. His volume “Ultima Thule” appeared in 1880, and “In the Harbor,” classed as a second part to it, but i
ssued by others after his death. With these might be placed, though not with any precision, the brief tragedy of “Judas Maccabæus,” which had been published in the “Three Books of Song,” in 1872; and the unfinished fragment, “Michael Angelo,” which was found in his desk after death. None of his dramatic poems showed him to be on firm ground in respect to this department of poesy, nor can they, except the “Golden Legend,” be regarded as altogether successful literary undertakings. It is obvious that historic periods differ wholly in this respect; and all we can say is that while quite mediocre poets were good dramatists in the Elizabethan period, yet good poets have usually failed as dramatists in later days. Longfellow’s efforts on this very ground were not less successful, on the whole, than those of Tennyson and Swinburne; nor does even Browning, tried by the test of the actual stage, furnish a complete exception.
CHAPTER XIX. LAST TRIP TO EUROPE
On May 27, 1868, Longfellow sailed from New York for Liverpool in the steamer Russia, with a large family party, including his son and his son’s bride, his three young daughters, his brother and two sisters, with also a brother-in-law, the brilliant Thomas G. Appleton. On arrival they went at once to the English lakes, visiting Furness Abbey, Corby Castle, and Eden Hall, where he saw still unimpaired the traditional goblet which Uhland’s ballad had vainly attempted to shatter. At Morton, near Carlisle, while staying with a friend he received a public address, to which he thus replied, in one of the few speeches of his life: —
“MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN, — Being more accustomed to speak with the pen than with the tongue, it is somewhat difficult for me to find appropriate words now to thank you for the honor you have done me, and the very kind expressions you have used. Coming here as a stranger, this welcome makes me feel that I am not a stranger; for how can a man be a stranger in a country where he finds all doors and all hearts open to him? Besides, I myself am a Cumberland man, — I was born in the County of Cumberland, in the State of Maine, three thousand miles from here, — and you all know that the familiar name of a town or country has a homelike sound to our ears.... You can think then how very grateful it is to me — how very pleasant — to find my name has a place in your memories and your affections. For this kindness I most heartily thank you, and I reciprocate all the good wishes which you have expressed for perpetual peace and amity between our two nations.”
He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws at Cambridge, and the scene was thus described by a London reporter: —
“Amid a score or so of Heads of Houses and other Academic dignitaries conspicuous by their scarlet robes, the one on whom all eyes were turned was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The face was one which would have caught the spectator’s glance, even if not called to it by the cheers which greeted his appearance in the red robes of an LL. D. Long, white, silken hair and a beard of patriarchal whiteness enclosed a fresh-colored countenance, with fine-cut features and deep-sunken eyes, overshadowed by massive eyebrows. In a few well-rounded Latin sentences, Mr. Clark, the Public Orator, recited the claims of the distinguished visitor to the privilege of an honorary degree. The names of Hiawatha and Evangeline sounded strangely amid the sonorous periods.”
Another journalist wrote that the orator “drew a picture of the function of poetry to solace the ills of life and draw men from its low cares ad excelsiora. This point was caught at once by the undergraduates and drew forth hearty cheering. The degree was then conferred.”
Arriving in London he received a deluge of cards and invitations; visited Windsor by invitation of the Queen, and was received in one of the galleries of the castle; called by request upon the Prince of Wales; and was entertained at dinner by Mr. Bierstadt, the landscape painter, who had several hundred people to meet him. Mr. Longfellow had stipulated that there should be no speeches, but after dinner there were loud calls for Mr. Gladstone, who said in reply, according to the reporters, that “they must be permitted to break through the restrictions which the authority of their respected host had imposed upon them, and to give expression to the feelings which one and all entertained on this occasion. After all, it was simply impossible to sit at the social board with a man of Mr. Longfellow’s world-wide fame, without offering him some tribute of their admiration. There was perhaps no class of persons less fitted to do justice to an occasion of this character than those who were destined to tread the toilsome and dusty road of politics. Nevertheless, he was glad to render his tribute of hearty admiration to one whom they were glad to welcome not only as a poet but as a citizen of America.”
Mr. Longfellow replied that “they had taken him by surprise, a traveller just landed and with Bradshaw still undigested upon his brain, and they would not expect him to make a speech. There were times, indeed, when it was easier to speak than to act; but it was not so with him, now. He would, however, be strangely constituted if he did not in his heart respond to their kind and generous welcome. In the longest speech he could make, he could but say in many phrases what he now said in a few sincere words, — that he was deeply grateful for the kindness which had been shown him.”
After visiting the House of Lords with Mr. R. C. Winthrop, on one occasion, he was accosted by a laboring man in the street, who asked permission to speak with him, and recited a verse of “Excelsior,” before which the poet promptly retreated. Passing to the continent, the party visited Switzerland, crossed by the St. Gothard Pass to Italy, and reached Cadenabbia, on the Lake of Como. They returned to Paris in the autumn; then went to Italy again, staying at Florence and Rome, where they saw the Abbé Liszt and obtained that charming sketch of him by Healy, in which the great musician is seen opening the inner door and bearing a candle in his hand. In the spring they visited Naples, Venice, and Innsbruck, returning then to England, where Longfellow received the degree of D. C. L. at Oxford; and they then visited Devonshire, Edinburgh, and the Scottish lakes. He again received numberless invitations in London, and wrote to Lowell, “It is only by dint of great resolution that I escaped a dozen public and semi-public dinners.” At the very last moment before sailing, he received a note from Mr. E. J. Reed, the chief constructor to the British Navy, who pronounced his poem “The Building of the Ship” to be the finest poem on shipbuilding that ever was or ever would be written. He reached home September 1, 1869. In his letters during this period, one sees the serene head of a family, the absolutely unspoiled recipient of praise, but not now the eager and enthusiastic young pilgrim of romance. Yet he writes to his friend Ferguson that if he “said his say” about York Cathedral, his friends would think him sixteen instead of sixty; and again tells his publisher Fields that he enjoys Lugano — never before visited — to the utmost, but that “the old familiar place saddened” him. Many a traveller has had in later life the same experience.
CHAPTER XX. DANTE
We come now to that great task which Longfellow, after an early experiment, had dropped for years, and which he resumed after his wife’s death, largely for the sake of an absorbing occupation. Eighteen years before, November 24, 1843, he had written to Ferdinand Freiligrath that he had translated sixteen cantos of Dante, and there seems no reason to suppose that he had done aught farther in that direction until this new crisis. After resuming the work, he translated for a time a canto as each day’s task, and refers to this habit in his sonnet on the subject, where he says: —
“I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate.”
The work was not fully completed until 1866, and was published in part during the following year.
The whole picture of the manner in which the work was done has long been familiar to the literary world, including the pleasing glimpse of the little circle of cultivated friends, assembled evening after evening, to compare notes and suggest improvements. For many years this was regarded by students and critics as having been almost an ideal method for the production of a great work, and especially of a translation, — a task where there is always the original text at hand for reference. As time h
as gone on, however, the admiration for the completed work has gradually been mingled with a growing doubt whether this species of joint production was on the whole an ideal one, and whether, in fact, a less perfect work coming from a single mind might not surpass in freshness of quality, and therefore in successful effort, any joint product. Longfellow had written long before to Freiligrath that making a translation was “like running a ploughshare through the soil of one’s mind,” and it would be plainly impossible to run ploughshares simultaneously through half a dozen different minds at precisely the same angle. The mind to decide on a phrase or an epithet, even in a translation, must, it would seem, be the mind from which the phrase or statement originally proceeded; a suggestion from a neighbor might sometimes be most felicitous, but quite as often more tame and guarded; and the influence of several neighbors collectively might lie, as often happens in the outcome of an ordinary committee meeting, rather in the direction of caution than of vigor. Longfellow’s own temperament was of the gracious and conciliatory type, by no means of the domineering quality; and it is certainly a noticeable outcome of all this joint effort at constructing a version of this great world-poem, that one of the two original delegates, Professor Norton, should ultimately have published a prose translation of his own. It is also to be observed that Professor Norton, in the original preface to his version, while praising several other translators, does not so much as mention the name of Longfellow; and in his list of “Aids to the Study of the ‘Divine Comedy’” speaks only of Longfellow’s notes and illustrations, which he praises as “admirable.” Even Lowell, the other original member of the conference, while in his “Dante” essay he ranks Longfellow’s as “the best” of the complete translations, applies the word “admirable” only to those fragmentary early versions, made for Longfellow’s college classes twenty years before, — versions which the completed work was apparently intended to supersede.
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 217
