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Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 5: first visit to Europe (search)
— In the Board of Trustees of Bowdoin College, Sept. 1st, 1829: Mr. Henry W. Longfellow having declined to accept the office of instructor in modern languages. Voted, that we now proceed to the choice of a professor of modern languages. And Mr. H. W. Longfellow was chosen. Thus briefly was the matter settled, and he was launched upon his life's career at the age of twenty-two. Of those who made up his circle of friends in later years, Holmes had just graduated from Harvard, Sumner was a Senior there, and Lowell was a schoolboy in Cambridge. Few American colleges had at that time special professors of modern languages, though George Ticknor had set a standard for them all. Longfellow had to prepare his own text-books—to translate L'Homond's Grammar, to edit an excellent little volume of French Proverbes Dramatiques, and a small Spanish Reader, Novelas Españolas. He was also enlisted in a few matters outside, and drew up the outline of a prospectus for a girls' high s
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 7: the corner stone laid (search)
, its gloomy misanthropist in song, and that even Wordsworth, in some respects an antidote to Byron, was as yet a very unsafe model for imitation; and he farther points out how invariably those who have imitated him have fallen into tedious mannerisms. He ends with a moral, perhaps rather tamely stated: We hope, however, that ere long some one of our most gifted bards will throw his fetters off, and relying on himself alone, fathom the recesses of his own mind, and bring up rich pearls from the secret depths of thought. lb. 78. The true glory of a nation—this is his final attitude—is moral and intellectual preeminence; thus distinctly foreshadowing the title of his friend Charles Sumner's later oration, The True Grandeur of Nations. American literature had undoubtedly begun to exist before this claim was made, as in the prose of Irving and Cooper, the poetry of Dana and Bryant. But it had awaited the arrival of some one to formulate its claims, and this it found in Longfell
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 12: voices of the night (search)
f Boston, or drives to Brookline or Jamaica Plain; and whist and little suppers are never long omitted. Lowell was not as yet promoted to his friendship because of youth, nor had he and Holmes then been especially brought together, but Prescott, Sumner, Felton, and others constantly appear. He draws the line at a fancy ball, declining to costume himself for that purpose; and he writes that he never dances, but in other respects spends his evenings after his own inclination. Two years later, nd neckties. It will be remembered that in Hyperion he makes the Baron say to Paul Flemming, The ladies already begin to call you Wilhelm Meister, and they say that your gloves are a shade too light for a strictly virtuous man. He wrote also to Sumner when in Europe: If you have any tendency to curl your hair and wear gloves like Edgar in Lear, do it before your return. It is a curious fact that he wrote of himself about the same time to his friend, George W. Greene, in Rome: Most of the tim
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 13: third visit to Europe (search)
ngs of Rubens. His home at Marienberg was in an ancient cloister for noble nuns, converted into a water-cure, then a novelty and much severer in its discipline than its later copies in America, to one of which, however, Longfellow himself went later as a patient,—that of Dr. Wesselhoeft at Brattleboro, Vermont. He met or read German poets also,—Becker, Herwegh, Lenau, Auersberg, Zedlitz, and Freiligrath, with the latter of whom he became intimate; indeed reading aloud to admiring nuns his charming poem about The Flowers' Revenge (Der Blumen Rache ). He just missed seeing Uhland, the only German poet then more popular than Freiligrath; he visited camps of 50,000 troops and another camp of naturalists at Mayence. Meantime, he heard from Prescott, Sumner, and Felton at home; the Spanish Student went through the press, and his friend Hawthorne was married. He finally sailed for home on October 22, 1842, and occupied himself on the voyage in writing a small volume of poems on slave
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 14: anti-slavery poems and second marriage (search)
, and includes Longfellow among you abolitionists. The effect of the poems was unquestionably to throw him on the right side of the great moral contest then rising to its climax, while he incurred, like his great compeers, Channing, Emerson, and Sumner, some criticism from the pioneers. Such differences are inevitable among reformers, whose internal contests are apt to be more strenuous and formidable than those incurred between opponents; and recall to mind that remark of Cosmo de Medici whicnuensis. Sometimes she suggested subjects for poems, this being at least the case with The Arsenal at Springfield, first proposed by her within the very walls of the building, a spot whose moral was doubtless enhanced by the companionship of Charles Sumner, just then the especial prophet of international peace. She also aided him effectually in his next book, The Poets and Poetry of Europe, in which his friend Felton also cooperated, he preparing the biographical notices while Longfellow made
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 15: Academic life in Cambridge (search)
vibrations. How the days resemble each other and how sad it is to me that I cannot give them all to my poem. have fallen into a very unpoetic mood and cannot write. It must be remembered that his eyes were at this time very weak, that he suffered extremely from neuralgia, and that these entries were all made during the great fugitive slave excitement which agitated New England, and the political overturn in Massachusetts which culminated in the election of the poet's most intimate friend, Sumner, to the United States Senate. He records the occurrence of his forty-fourth birthday, and soon after when he is stereotyping the Golden Legend he says: I still work a good deal upon it, but also writes, only two days after, Working hard with college classes to have them ready for their examinations. A fortnight later he says: Examination in my department; always to me a day of anguish and exhaustion. His correspondence is very large; visitors and dinner parties constantly increase. His
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 16: literary life in Cambridge (search)
low 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 asto
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 17: resignation of Professorship—to death of Mrs. Longfellow (search)
hest esteem, I remain Dear Sir, Yours faithfully Henry W. LONGFELLOWHarvard College Papers [Ms.], 2d ser. XXI. 249. 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 wr
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 18: birds of passage (search)
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
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chapter 21: the Loftier strain: Christus (search)
ject, especially Besse's Sufferings of the Quakers; on April 2 he writes a scene of the play; on May 1 and 2 he is pondering and writing notes, and says: It is delightful to revolve in one's mind a new conception. He also works upon it in a fragmentary way in July and in November, and remarks, in the midst of it, that he has lying on his table more than sixty requests for autographs. As a background to all of this lie the peculiar excitements of that stormy summer of 1856, when his friend Sumner was struck down in the United States Senate and he himself, meeting with an accident, was lamed for weeks and was unable to go to Europe with his children as he had intended. The first rough draft of Wenlook Christison, whose title was afterwards changed to John Endicott, and which was the first of The New England Tragedies, was not finished till August 27, 1857, and the work alternated for a time with that done on Miles Standish; but it was more than ten years (October 10, 1868) before it
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