CHAPTER VIII

THE CRAIGIE HOUSE

Longfellow came back from Europe and was installed as professor of modern languages and belles-lettres at Harvard College, in the beautiful town of Cambridge, two miles from Boston. Soon after he began his life there he went to live at the Craigie House, which has become so famous as the home of Longfellow that it deserves a little description.

It will be remembered that Longfellow was now a widower without children, his wife having died during his second journey to Europe. When he came to settle in Cambridge he was attracted by the spacious rooms and the quiet and aristocratic air of the Craigie House, famous as the headquarters of Washington when he was in Cambridge as commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War. George William Curtis has told the story of Longfellow’s first visit to this house and how he came to live there, and we give it here very nearly in Mr. Curtis’s own words.

In the summer of 1837, a young man passed down the elm-shaded walk that separated the old Craigie House from the high road. Reaching the door he paused to observe the huge old-fashioned brass knocker and the quaint handle, relics, evidently, of an epoch of colonial state. To his mind, however, the house, and these signs of its age, were not interesting from the romance of antiquity alone, but from their association with the early days of our Revolution, when General Washington, after the battle of Bunker Hill, had his headquarters in the mansion. Had his hand, perhaps, lifted the same latch, lingering, as he pressed it, in a whirl of myriad emotions? Had he, too, paused in the calm summer afternoon, and watched the silver gleam of the broad river in the meadows, the dreamy blue of the Milton hills beyond? And had the tranquillity of that landscape penetrated his heart with “the sleep that is among the hills,” and whose fairest dream to him was a hope now realized in the peaceful prosperity of his country?

He was ushered in and found himself face to face with Mrs. Craigie, a good old lady who had seen better days. He asked if there was a room vacant in the house.

“I lodge no students,” was her reply. Longfellow was so young-looking she took him to be a student.

“I am not a student,” answered the visitor, “but a professor in the university.”

“A professor?” she inquired. She thought a professor ought to be dressed like a clergyman.

“Professor Longfellow,” continued the guest, introducing himself.

“Ah! that is different,” said the lady, her features slightly relaxing, as if professors were naturally harmless and she need no longer barricade herself behind a stern gravity of demeanor. “I will show you what there is.”

She preceded the professor upstairs, and going down the hall she stopped at each door, opened it, permitted him to perceive its delightful fitness for his purpose, then quietly closed the door, observing, “You cannot have that.” The professorial eyes glanced restlessly around the fine old-fashioned points of the mansion, marked the wooden carvings, the air of opulent respectability in the past, which corresponds in New England to the impression of ancient nobility in Old England, and wondered if he were not to be permitted to have a room at all. The old lady at length opened the door of the southeast corner room in the second story; and while the guest looked wistfully in and awaited the customary “You cannot have that,” he was agreeably surprised by hearing that he might have it.

The room was upon the front of the house and overlooked the meadows to the river. It had an atmosphere of fascinating repose, in which the young man at once felt at home.

“This,” said the lady, “was Washington’s chamber.”

Here Longfellow lived for the rest of his life. He was merely a lodger in one of the rooms until he married the second time, six years after first going there. On his marriage his wife’s father, Mr. Nathan Appleton, who was a rich old gentleman, bought the house and gave it to him as a wedding present, and also gave him the lot opposite, so that no one should ever build a house that would shut off his view of the river Charles.

It was the view from the front of this house that inspired the poet to write that beautiful poem, “To the River Charles.” How sweet and suggestive the opening verses, which note that he wrote the poem four years after he moved into the Craigie House!

River! that in silence windest Through the meadows, bright and free, Till at length thy rest thou findest In the bosom of the sea!

Four long years of mingled feeling, Half in rest, and half in strife, I have seen thy waters stealing Onward, like the stream of life.

Thou hast taught me, Silent River! Many a lesson, deep and long; Thou hast been a generous giver; I can give thee but a song.

It may be said that Joseph Worcester, who wrote Worcester’s Dictionary, had once lived in this house, and Miss Sally Lowell, an aunt of James Russell Lowell, as well as Jared Sparks, who wrote a great life of Washington and was president of Harvard College. Mr. Sparks and Edward Everett both brought their wives there when they were married.

It seemed that Longfellow was always getting into famous houses. When he was at Bowdoin College he lived in the house in which “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was afterward written. It is said that Talleyrand, the famous French diplomat, and the Duke of Kent, Queen Victoria’s father, had been entertained at dinner at the Craigie House when it belonged to the original owner, Colonel John Vassal.