“Thanks for the sympathies that ye have shown! Thanks for each kindly word, each silent token, That teaches me, when seeming most alone, Friends are around us, though no word be spoken.”
In another age or country Longfellow would have been laurelled, medalled, or ennobled; but he has had what his essentially republican spirit doubtless preferred, the simple homage of a nation’s heart. He had his share of foreign honors; and these did not come from Oxford and Cambridge only, since in 1873 he was chosen a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and in 1877 of the Spanish Academy. At home he was the honored member of every literary club or association to which he cared to belong. In the half-rural city where he spent his maturer life — that which he himself described in “Hyperion” as “this leafy blossoming, and beautiful Cambridge” — he held a position of as unquestioned honor and reverence as that of Goethe at Weimar or Jean Paul at Baireuth. This was the more remarkable, as he rarely attended public meetings, seldom volunteered counsel or action, and was not seen very much in public. But his weight was always thrown on the right side; he took an unfeigned interest in public matters, always faithful to the traditions of his friend Sumner; and his purse was always easily opened for all good works. On one occasion there was something like a collision of opinion between him and the city government, when it was thought necessary for the widening of Brattle Street to remove the “spreading chestnut-tree” that once stood before the smithy of the village blacksmith, Dexter Pratt. The poet earnestly expostulated; the tree fell, nevertheless; but by one of those happy thoughts which sometimes break the monotony of municipal annals, it was proposed to the city fathers that the children of the public schools should be invited to build out of its wood, by their small subscriptions, a great armchair for the poet’s study. The unexpected gift, from such a source, salved the offence, but it brought with it a penalty to Mr. Longfellow’s household, for the kindly bard gave orders that no child who wished to see the chair should be excluded; and the tramp of dirty little feet through the hall was for many months the despair of housemaids. Thenceforward his name was to these children a household word; and the most charming feature of the festival held on the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the settlement of Cambridge (December 28, 1880) was the reception given by a thousand grammar-school children to the gray and courteous old poet, who made then and there, almost for the only time in his life, and contrary to all previous expectations, a brief speech in reply.
On that occasion he thus spoke briefly, at the call of the mayor, who presided, and who afterwards caused to be read by Mr. George Riddle, the verses “From My Arm-Chair,” which the poet had written for the children. He spoke as follows: —
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS, — I do not rise to make an address to you, but to excuse myself from making one. I know the proverb says that he who excuses himself accuses himself, — and I am willing on this occasion to accuse myself, for I feel very much as I suppose some of you do when you are suddenly called upon in your class room, and are obliged to say that you are not prepared. I am glad to see your faces and to hear your voices. I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking you in prose, as I have already done in verse, for the beautiful present you made me some two years ago. Perhaps some of you have forgotten it, but I have not; and I am afraid, — yes, I am afraid that fifty years hence, when you celebrate the three hundredth anniversary of this occasion, this day and all that belongs to it will have passed from your memory; for an English philosopher has said that the ideas as well as children of our youth often die before us, and our minds represent to us those tombs to which we are approaching, where, though the brass and marble remain, yet the inscriptions are effaced by time, and the imagery moulders away.
Again, upon his seventy-fifth birthday, there were great rejoicings in the Cambridge schools, as indeed in those of many other cities far and wide.
Craigie House, his residence, has already been described. In this stately old edifice dwelt the venerable poet, who was usually to be found in his ample study, rich with the accumulations of literary luxury. One might find him seated with Coleridge’s inkstand before him, perhaps answering one of the vast accumulations of letters from the school children of Western cities — an enormous mass of correspondence, which was a little while a delight, and then became a burden. Before him was a carved bookcase containing a priceless literary treasure, — the various editions of his works, and, which was far more valuable, the successive manuscripts of each, carefully preserved and bound under his direction, and often extending to three separate copies: the original manuscript, the manuscript as revised for the printer, and the corrected proofs. More than once his friends urged him to build a fireproof building for these unique memorials, as Washington did for his own papers elsewhere; but the calm and equable author used to reply, “If the house burns, let its contents go also.”
The wonder of Mr. Longfellow’s later years was not so much that he kept up his incessant literary activity as that he did it in the midst of the constant interruptions involved in great personal popularity and fame. He had received beneath his roof every notable person who had visited Boston for half a century; he had met them all with the same affability, and had consented, with equal graciousness, to be instructed by Emerson and Sumner, or to be kindly patronized — as the story goes — by Oscar Wilde. From that room had gone forth innumerable kind acts and good deeds, and never a word of harshness. He retained to the last his sympathy with young people, and with all liberal and progressive measures. Indeed, almost his latest act of public duty was to sign a petition to the Massachusetts legislature for the relief of the disabilities still placed in that State upon the testimony of atheists.
Mr. Longfellow’s general health remained tolerably good, in spite of advancing years, until within about three months of his death. After retiring to bed in apparent health one night, he found himself in the morning so dizzy as to be unable to rise, and with a pain in the top of his head. For a week he was unable to walk across the room on account of dizziness, and although it gradually diminished, yet neither this nor the pain in the head ever entirely disappeared, and there was great loss of strength and appetite. He accepted the situation at once, retreated to the security of his own room, refused all visitors outside of the family, and had a printed form provided for the acknowledgment of letters, leaving his daughters to answer them. During the last three months of his life he probably did not write three dozen letters, and though he saw some visitors, he refused many more. He might sometimes be seen walking on his piazza, or even in the street before the house, but he accepted no invitations, and confined himself mainly within doors. His seventy-fifth birthday, February 27, was passed very quietly at home, in spite of the many celebrations held elsewhere. On Sunday, March 19, he had a sudden attack of illness, not visibly connected with his previous symptoms. It was evident that the end was near, and he finally died of peritonitis on Friday afternoon, March 24, 1882.
It will perhaps be found, as time goes on, that the greatest service rendered by Longfellow — beyond all personal awakening or stimulus exerted on his readers — was that of being the first conspicuous representative, in an eminently practical and hard-working community, of the literary life. One of a circle of superior men, he was the only one who stood for that life purely and supremely, and thus vindicated its national importance. Among his predecessors, Irving had lived chiefly in Europe, and Bryant in a newspaper office. Among his immediate friends, Holmes stood for exact science, Lowell and Whittier for reform, Sumner for statesmanship, Emerson for spiritual and mystic values; even the shy Hawthorne for public functions at home and abroad. Here was a man whose single word, sent forth from his quiet study, reached more hearts in distant nations than any of these, and was speedily reproduced in the far-off languages of the world. Considered merely as an antidote to materialism, such a life was of incalculable value. Looking at him, the reign of the purely materialistic, however much aided by organizing genius, was plainly self-limited; the mode
st career of Longfellow outshone it in the world’s arena. Should that reign henceforth grow never so potent, the best offset to its most arrogant claims will be found, for years to come, in the memory of his name.
Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts — Longfellow’s final resting place
Longfellow’s grave, where he is buried with both of his wives
Delphi Complete Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Delphi Poets Series Book 13) Page 222
