Part 20

Pleasantest and strongest perhaps of all his friendships was that for Charles Sumner, who was lecturing at the Law School when Mr. Longfellow first came to Cambridge. Begun when both were young men just launching forth on their great but so different career, it continued until death separated them, without a shadow of estrangement or disloyalty, but with ever increasing ardor of affection. Sumner was inclined to literature at that time, and indeed for many years afterwards, his political career being rather forced upon him by the stormy times. A club was formed at this time, called the "Five of Clubs," consisting of Longfellow, Sumner, Hilliard, Cleveland, and Felton. They read and criticised each other's writings, and enjoyed a hearty social intercourse. Awhile afterwards, when they began to speak well of each other's articles in the reviews, the newspapers gave them the name of the "Mutual Admiration Society." Not inapplicable, probably, but applicable to the literary men of all time. What is the great literary guild anywhere but a mutual admiration society? What a large portion of our best literature would be blotted out if what one great writer has said of another should be destroyed! Would we have this so? Nay, verily! Certainly there was no lack of warm admiration, and warm expression of it, among this little group of friends; and between Sumner and Longfellow, at least, these expressions continued throughout life, and were heartily sincere to the last. One after another Longfellow's poems were submitted to his friends' criticism, and each received its due meed of praise or gentle censure. Mr. Sumner's speeches were received by Longfellow with great enthusiasm always, and praised heartily and unreservedly. Every step in his career was watched with the most eager interest and intense sympathy. It is one of the most beautiful friendships on record. One wonders in reading the journal what Longfellow's life would have been without these constant visits and letters from Sumner. Every Sabbath was spent by the statesman at the poet's house, when the former was in the vicinity of Boston, and many and many are the records during the week,--Sumner to dine, Sumner to tea, Sumner to pass the night, and always some note made of the late and pleasant talk the pair had together. When Sumner goes to Washington he is sadly missed, and such little notes as this sent after him in tender remembrance:--

"Your farewell note came safe and sad; and Sunday no well-known footstep in the hall, nor sound of cane laid upon the table. We ate our dinner somewhat silently by ourselves and talked of you far off, looking at your empty chair. Away, phantoms! I will not think of this too much for fear that which you say may prove truer than I want it to be. Let us not prophesy sadness."

When Sumner was expected to make a speech all were alert at Craigie House, and often his friend would send him some such greeting as this:--

"It is now eleven o'clock of the forenoon, and you have just taken your seat in the Senate and arranged your artillery to bombard Nebraska! We listen with deepest interest, but shall not hear the report of your guns till to-morrow, you are so far off. If, after all, the enemy prevails, it will be one dishonest victory more in the history of the world. But the enemy will not prevail. A seeming victory will be a real defeat."

Then, after the speech was read:--

"All this morning of my birthday, my dear Senator, I have devoted to your speech on Nebraska, which came by the morning's mail. It is very noble, very cogent, very eloquent, very complete. How any one can get over it or under it or through it or round it, it is impossible to imagine."

Then, after the cowardly and fiendish attack upon Sumner in the Senate Chamber:--

"I have no words to write you about this savage atrocity; only enough to express our sorrow and sympathy for yourself. We have been in great distress. Owen came to tell us of this great feat of arms of the 'Southern chivalry.' He was absolutely sobbing. I was much relieved on seeing your despatch to your mother, and to hear that George was going to you directly. A brave and noble speech you made, never to die out of the memories of men."

Then, a day or two later:--

"I have just been reading again your speech. It is the greatest voice on the greatest subject that has been uttered since we became a nation. No matter for insults--we feel them with you; no matter for wounds--we also bleed in them."

But in the days of which we are writing, all these stormy troublous times were yet far in the future, and the world looked bright and pleasant to these afterward saddened friends. The acquaintance with Miss Appleton had been renewed after her return to Boston, and the poet was by this time deeply devoted to her, and hopeful of one day winning her for his own. He became something of a dandy in those days, and showed a fondness for color in coats, waistcoats, and neckties; and the ladies looked at him a little doubtfully, thinking perhaps, as they had done of Paul Fleming, that "his gloves were a shade too light for a strictly virtuous man." Six years passed after the first meeting with Miss Appleton in Europe before Mr. Longfellow finally claimed her for his bride. He had been a patient as well as an ardent lover, and was rewarded in 1843 by the hand of her he sought. She was now a woman of twenty-five, of stately presence, cultivated mind, and calm but gracious manners. Her face was not "faultily faultless" nor "icily regular," but both beautiful and expressive. Mr. Longfellow was now thirty-six years old, and a man of rapidly widening fame. Mr. Appleton purchased for the newly married couple the old Craigie House in Cambridge, which had been Mr. Longfellow's home ever since his arrival there. Most visitors to Cambridge are familiar with this old Colonial mansion which had once been the headquarters of General Washington. It stands far back in the ample grounds which surround it, and is painted in yellow and white. It is on Brattle Street as one goes from Harvard College to Mount Auburn. The front is about eighty feet in length, including the verandas, and a wooden railing extends around the roof. There is an Italian balustrade along the first terrace, and a hedge of lilacs leads up to the door. Old historic elms throw their broad arms all about the place. The interior of the house is very handsome, and is considered a fine specimen of the old Colonial style. Altogether it made a most delightful home for the poet and his bride, and there they spent the remainder of their lives.

About the time of his marriage Mr. Longfellow's eyes failed him on account of overstraining them, and one of Mrs. Longfellow's first wifely duties was to furnish eyes for her husband. She read to him and wrote for him a great deal for several years, and the close companionship which this required was very pleasant to both. He was a very busy man in those days; for, contrary to the popular impression, Mr. Longfellow did a great deal of hard work at the college for a good many years. His was no honorary position, but a genuine working professorship, involving the preparation of a great number of lectures during each year and close class-work besides. He enjoyed this work very much for the first few years, but long before he resigned his position it became exceedingly burdensome to him. The college should have relieved him of the drudgery of his professorship, and allowed him time for the preparation of special lectures upon really scholarly themes; but it had not the wisdom to do so, and exacted the labors of a dray-horse from this chained Pegasus. In the journal are many entries like the following:--

"I seriously think of resigning my professorship. My time is so fully taken up by its lectures and other duties that I have none left for writing. Then my eyes are suffering, and the years are precious; and if I wish to do anything in literature it must be done now. Few men have written good poetry after fifty."

Again:--

"I get very tired of the routine of this life. The bright autumn weather draws me away from study, and the brown branches of the leafless trees are more beautiful than books. We lead but one life here on earth. We must make that beautiful. And to do this, health and elasticity of mind are needful, and whatever endangers or impedes these must be avoided."

And again:--

"The day of rest--the 'truce of God' between contending cares--is over, and the world begins again to swing round with clash and clang, like the wings of a windmill. Grind, grind, grind."

Some hint of real work may be found in this:--

"The seventy lectures to which I am doomed next year hang over me like a dark curtain. Seventy lectures! who will have the patience to hear them? If my eyes were strong I should delight in it. But it will eat up a whole year, and I was just beginning so cheerily on my poem and looking forward to pleasant work on it next year."

Oh, the pity of it! Many men could have lectured to college boys on the modern languages and literature, if not as well as Longfellow, at least well enough; but who was there who could write his poems? That he should drudge on through his best years, giving only the odds and ends of his time to his real life-work, seems an infinite pity. What might he not have done in those earlier years could he have gone fresh and untired to his musings and his dreams?

Emerson was wiser than he, when early in life he resolved to be content with the most modest means and to have possession of himself. He never drudged in a profession, but gave his full strength to his literary work. Longfellow should have done this at least ten years before he did. But five children had come into the family during the years of his last marriage, and poetry has not long been a paying investment in this country, although Longfellow in the later years received large sums for his work. He probably dropped his college work as soon as he felt that he could afford to do so; and after that, much of his important work was done. But it was not done with the buoyancy and freshness which the earlier years might have furnished, although some of his best poems were written after the change.

But the last twenty years of Mr. Longfellow's life were saddened inexpressibly by the loss of his wife, and all his later work is of a sombre hue, filled through and through, unconsciously, with his own sadness. Unconsciously we say, for he never intentionally rhymed his own sorrows. There is no personal mention of his griefs in all his later poems. The death of his wife occurred on the 9th of July in 1861, and was caused by burns received from having her clothing ignited by a match upon which she trod in their library, where she had been sealing up some packages of the children's curls, which she had just cut. Mr. Longfellow was badly burned in trying to save her, and when the funeral took place was confined to his bed. She was buried upon the anniversary of her marriage-day, and was crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms. She was long remembered in Cambridge as the most beautiful woman of her time,--beautiful not alone in body, but in spirit and life. Mr. Longfellow never recovered from the tragedy, but mourned her in silence for twenty years. Heart-breaking are the entries in the journal during all this time,--entries telling at frequent intervals of his ever increasing desolation. Little was known of all this by the world until the publication of his journal, for it was one of the peculiarities of his grief that he could speak of it to no one. Only after months had passed did he allude to it in his letters even to his brothers, and then in the briefest fashion: "And now of what we both are thinking I can write no word. God's will be done." The first entry in the journal after the break made at the time of her death is this:--

"Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace! Sleep, holy spirit, blessed soul! While the stars burn, the moons increase, And the great ages onward roll."

The entries in the journal are all brief, but they are frequent and like these: "Walk before breakfast with E---- and afterward alone. The country is beautiful, but oh, how sad! How can I live any longer!" "The glimmer of golden leaves in the sunshine; the lilac hedge shot with the crimson creeper; the river writing its silver S in the meadow; everything without full of loveliness. But within me the hunger, the famine of the heart!" "Another walk under the pines, in the bright morning sunshine."

"Known and unknown; human, divine: Sweet human hand and lip and eye; Dear heavenly friend, who canst not die: Mine, mine forever; ever mine."

"How inexpressibly sad are all holydays! But the dear little girls had their Christmas-tree last night, and an unseen presence blessed the scene!"

No mention of his loss was ever made in his published verse, though the whole of his poetry was much sadder after that loss; but after his own death the following poem was found in his desk, written eighteen years after his wife's death:--

"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."

It was a long time before he could work again. When he felt that he could do so, he began his translation of Dante, and frequently produced a canto in a day, finding in this absorbing occupation the first alleviation of his sorrow. In a sonnet "On Translating Dante," he said:--

"I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate."

But when his work was done he always found that his burden was still awaiting him on the outside, and he took it up and bore it as patiently as he could. But he began earnestly to long for

"The Wayside Inn, Where toil should cease and rest begin,"

and to feel that the approach of old age without the beloved companionship was hard indeed to contemplate. But his children were beautiful and promising and affectionate, and he a most loving and conscientious father; so they gradually came to occupy his thoughts and much to cheer his solitude. He was a famous man too by this time, indeed long before; and the world made demands upon him which could not always be disregarded, and he began to mingle with it somewhat again. But the little group of friends to whom allusion has been made were his best comforters, and were more and more prized as the years went on. During the translation of Dante they assembled at very short intervals to listen to the reading of the work, and to criticise, and suggest such changes as were deemed advisable; and these occasions were much enjoyed. As the years went by, one after another of the early friends fell by the way, leaving gaps in his life which could never be filled. Felton was the first to go, and he was very deeply mourned by Longfellow, who felt "as if the world were reeling and sinking under his feet." His death made, as his friend expressed it, "a chasm which not only nothing can fill up, but which nothing has a tendency to fill up." Hawthorne and Agassiz followed soon after Felton; and later Charles Sumner, most deeply mourned of all. He said, in allusion to these friends, in one of his most beautiful sonnets:--

"I also wait! but they will come no more, Those friends of mine, whose presence satisfied The thirst and hunger of my heart. Ah me! They have forgotten the pathway to my door! Something is gone from Nature since they died, And summer is not summer, nor can be."

Mr. Longfellow made a final visit to Europe in 1868, accompanied by his children, two sisters, and a brother, and his brother-in-law Thomas Appleton. This journey was much enjoyed by all, although Mr. Longfellow was not a very good sight-seer, and impatient of delays. The remainder of his life passed placidly at his old home, and he died at the age of seventy-five, in the midst of his family and friends. Upon his coffin they placed a palm-branch and a spray of passion-flower,--symbols of victory and the glory of suffering; and he was buried at Mount Auburn, beside her he had so long mourned. What his work was we may tell in the eloquent words of his brother poet and most appreciative critic, Mr. Stedman:--

"His song was a household service, the ritual of our feastings and mournings; and often it rehearsed for us the tales of many lands, or, best of all, the legends of our own. I see him, a silver-haired minstrel, touching melodious keys, playing and singing in the twilight, within sound of the rote of the sea. There he lingers late; the curfew-bell has tolled and the darkness closes round, till at last that tender voice is silent, and he softly moves unto his rest."

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JOHN G. WHITTIER.

The poet Whittier always calls to mind the prophet-bards of the olden time. There is much of the old Semitic fire about him, and ethical and religious subjects seem to occupy his entire mind. Like his own Tauler, he walks abroad, constantly

"Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life; As one who, wandering in a starless night, Feels momently the jar of unseen waves, And hears the thunder of an unknown sea Breaking along an unimagined shore."

His poems are so thoroughly imbued with this religious spirit that they seem to us almost like the sacred writings of the different times and nations of the world. They come to the lips upon all occasions of deep feeling almost as naturally as the Scriptures do. They are current coin with reformers the world over. They are the Alpha and Omega of deep, strong religious faith. Whoever would best express his entire confidence in the triumph of the right, and his reliance upon God's power against the devices of men, finds the words of Whittier upon his lips; and to those who mourn and seek for consolation, how naturally and involuntarily come back lines from his poems they have long treasured, but which perhaps never had a personal application until now! To the wronged, the down-trodden, and the suffering they appeal as strongly as the Psalms of David. He is the great High Priest of Literature. But few priests at any time have had such an audience and such influence as he. The moral and religious value of his work can scarcely be overstated. Who can ever estimate the power which his strong words had in the days that are now but a fading memory,--in the great conflict which freed the bodies of so many million slaves? And who can ever estimate the power his strong words have had throughout his whole career in freeing the minds of other millions from the shackles of unworthy old beliefs? His blows have been strong, steady, persistent. He has never had the fear of man before his eyes. No man has done more for freedom, fellowship, and character in religion than he. Hypocrisy and falsehood and cant have been his dearest foes, and he has ridden at them early and late with his lance poised and his steed at full tilt. Indeed, for a Quaker, Mr. Whittier must be said to have a great deal of the martial spirit. The fiery, fighting zeal of the old reformers is in his blood. You can imagine him as upon occasion enjoying the imprecatory Psalms. In his anti-slavery poems there is a depth of passionate earnestness which shows that he could have gone to the stake for his opinions had he lived in an earlier age than ours. That he did risk his life for them, even in our own day, is well known. During the intense heat of the anti-slavery conflict he was mobbed once and again by excited crowds; but he was not to be intimidated by all the powers of evil, and continued to speak his strong words and to sing his inspiring songs, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear. And those Voices of Freedom, whatever may be thought of them by mere critics and litterateurs, will outlast any poems of their day, and sound "down the ringing grooves of Time" when much that is now honored has been forgotten. He will be known as the Poet of a great Cause, the Bard of Freedom, as long as the great anti-slavery conflict is remembered. He is a part, and an important part, of the history of his country, a central figure in the battalions of the brave. Those wild, stirring bugle-calls of his cheered the little army, and held it together many a time when the cause was only a forlorn hope; and they came with their stern defiance into the camp of the enemy with such masterful power that some gallant enemies deserted to his side. They were afraid to be found fighting against God, as Whittier had convinced them they were doing. There is the roll of drums and the clash of spears in these stirring strains; there are echoes from Thermopylæ and Marathon, and the breath of the old Greek heroes is in the air; there is a hint of the old Border battle-cries from Scotland's hills and tarns; from Jura's rocky wall we can catch the cheers of Tell; and the voice of Cromwell can often be distinguished in the strain.