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Longfellow in England: Unpublished Extracts from his Journal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Irving T. Richards
Irving T. Richards*
Affiliation:
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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Extract

In the early stages of his long residence in England after 1843, Romeo Elton, who had earlier occupied the positions of Baptist pastor and Professor of Latin and Greek at Brown University, corresponded with Longfellow. In a letter of December 28, 1846, he remarked: On a late visit to Ambleside Mr. Wordsworth inquired after you, & mentioned the pleasing interview he had with you at Rydal Mount, & passed a deserved eulogium upon your Poems. The Poet Laureate is still vigorous both in mind & body. He & his good wife walked a mile, in preference to riding, one evening to take tea with their daughter. He observed that he was solicited to accept of the title of Poet Laureate four times before he consented. In a volume of his Poems he has written a few verses commendatory of the Queen, for which in return she has sent him her portrait, Prince Albert's, & their children's.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1936 , pp. 1123 - 1140
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 A number of his letters exist in MS at Craigie House, Cambridge, Mass.

2 Preserved at Craigie House.

3 Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Boston and New York, 1891), i, 43; George Thomas Little in Longfellow's Boyhood Poems (Saratoga Springs, 1925), pp. 6–7.

4 Preserved in MS at Craigie House.

5 The Token and Atlantic Souvenir, ed. by S. G. Goodrich (Boston, 1833), pp. 150–152.

6 Quoted in part by Samuel Longfellow, op. cit., i, 176.

7 Preserved in MS at Craigie House, and reproduced with the kind permission of Mr. H. W. L. Dana, the custodian.

8 Here Longfellow briefly recounts the familiar tale of “Peeping Tom.”

9 MS at Craigie House.

10 Elizabeth Palmer Peabody.

11 Record of a School.

12 The original MS of both journal and letter (dated May 14) are at Craigie House.

13 Samuel Leigh, Leigh's New Picture of London (several ed.).

14 Charles Amory.

15 Mrs. Longfellow, in her letter on the same sheet, refers to “an old schoolmate of Clara's & mine. They live in much style in Portland Place.”

16 Clara Crowninshield, one of the young lady travelers in Longfellow's party.

17 Thomas Aspinwall.

18 Aaron Vail.

19 George W. Pierce, Longfellow's brother-in-law.

20 Mrs. Carlyle's unfavorable comment on Abraham Hayward's translation of Faust, which immediately follows, is quoted by James Taft Hatfield, New Light on Longfellow (Boston and New York, 1933), p. 33. With the familiar account of how the manuscript of the French Revolution was destroyed by Mill's servants, Longfellow completes his report of this first call on the Carlyles.

21 Willis Gaylord Clark, who wrote Longfellow on February 25, 1837 (MS at Craigie House): “I was sorry to hear from Lewis [Clark's brother] before y return, that Bulwer behaved so shabbily to you in London. But I verily believe that it was owing to a certain soreness, on account of my (present) friend Willis's social disclosures. I am the more induced to believe this, from certain allusions subsequently made to me in a letter from Bulwer himself. Especially to [sic] I draw this inference, because one or two others, to whom I gave epistles deliverable to the same Lion, were courteously entreated. At the same time, now that the a rdor of youthful admiration for authors at a distance waxeth fainter in my bosom, I am of this mind with you, the less those folk are worshipped the better. We have authors, mind, and a country at home, where all my affections centre.”

22 Nathaniel Parker Willis.

23 Mary, the wife of S. Skinner, an Indian nabob who later sold his estate of Shirley Park to the second Earl of Eldon—J. Corbet Anderson, A Short Chronicle concerning the Parish of Croydon in the County of Surrey (Edinburgh and London, 1882), p. 168.

24 Abraham Hayward. See Note 20.

25 Dionysius Lardner.

26 Ocean travel by steam was as yet thought impractical. In a letter to his father (MS at Craigie House dated April 9, 1835) Longfellow wrote just before leaving America: “The steam-boat takes us down the bay to Staten Island where the ship is anchored, at 11 o'clock tomorrow; and we set sail without delay if the wind be fair. Otherwise the steam-boat will tow us out to sea.”

27 Mary, the wife of James Samuel Wadsworth, very famous for her beauty.

28 The daughters of Samuel Swinton—see Archibald Campbell Swinton, The Swintons of that Ilk and their Cadets (Edinburgh, 1883), pp. 101–103.

29 Julia Pardoe, whose book was entitled Traits and Traditions of Portugal (1833).

30 The blanks are of course Longfellow's. In the second of them, however, the word, which still shows the loop of an “h” to vindicate one's imagination in the obvious conjecture, was written and later obliterated.

31 Thomas Rodd, the younger.

32 Richard Heber.

33 Mrs. Longfellow reported that Carlyle called with an invitation to tea, and also gave her own impressions of the Carlyles, in a passage quoted both by Samuel Longfellow (op. cit., i, 208–209) and by Professor Hatfield (loc. cit.).

34 Probably Robert Willis (1799–1878).

35 The reference here omitted to Longfellow's passing “the morning over a coal fire, reading Carlyle's Life of Schiller” is quoted in full by Professor Hatfield (loc. cit.).

36 John Neal of Portland, who lived in the household of Jeremy Bentham from December 17, 1825, to April 14, 1827, and whose animadversions upon Bowring, with whom he quarrelled unmercifully, may have influenced Longfellow's opinion of that gentleman, though Longfellow appears to have had sufficient grounds of his own for his opinion.

37 Joseph Tuckerman, D.D.

38 Francis Boott, M.D., then at the height of his fame.

39 James Yates.

40 There follows an entry concerning the finishing of Carlyle's Schiller at two o'clock in the morning. This also is quoted by Professor Hatfield (loc. cit.).

41 Obadiah Rich.

42 Thomas Tegg.

43 Probably Richard Westmacott, the younger, sculptor.

44 Doubtless Sir Henry Holland.

45 Professor Hatfield, op. cit., p. 34, has quoted comments occurring here of Mrs. Carlyle's concerning her and her husband's views of Goethe and Schiller.

46 That Carlyle remembered vividly his parting with the young college professor, whose achievement in poetry was as yet negligible, is evidenced by a letter he wrote some five years later—quoted by Samuel Longfellow, op. cit., i, 382.

47 John Neal had published in 1830 his Principles of Legislation from the MS. of Jeremy Bentham, which contained a journal of his experiences in the Bentham household. Longfellow, however, had quite probably received supplmentary oral information from Neal, with whom he was fairly intimate.

48 Probably the Rev. John Barlow, F.R.S., author of The Connection between Physiology and Intellectual Philosophy, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 1846) and of On Man's Power over Himself to Prevent or Control Insanity (Philadelphia, 1846), secretary of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and a contributor at its meetings (see Notices of the Proceedings of the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution).

49 Some indication of the nature of this business at Wandsworth is conveyed in a letter of Longfellow's to his father on June 6, 1835 (MS at Craigie House): 'Since my last I have been at Wandsworth, and settled the business with Mr. Blackmore, receiving from him the sum of £23. 6. 8, being the amount of both legacies due to the Beckets.“ The Beckets were Portland people, for whom Longfellow, presumably as his father's deputy, was apparently conducting some legal service.

50 Francis Lieber.

51 Lewis Gaylord Clark, brother of Willis Gaylord Clark and editor of the Knickerbocker. His letter, dated May 9, 1835, is preserved at Craigie House.

52 James Brooks, editor of the Portland Advertiser and later famous as journalist and legislator.

53 Probably John Stevens Abbot, Bowdoin 1827, who studied law in the office of Longfellow's father and acted as agent for the Portland Advertiser at Thomaston, where he practiced.

54 MS at Craigie House, quoted by Samuel Longfellow, op. cit., i, 434–435.

55 MS at Craigie House.

56 Op. cit., i, 438–439.

57 John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens (Philadelphia, 1873), ii, 22–23, gives some account of Longfellow's entertainment.

58 During this final visit, made in 1868 and 1869, Longfellow kept no journal; so that the excerpts quoted above, with the exceptions referred to in the footnotes, constitute all the journal Longfellow ever kept in England.

59 Elton's remark concerning Edinburgh (in the letter cited), “You have visited it, & will no d[oubt] agree with me in the superiority of its refined & in[tellec]tual society,” is probably to be attributed to mere mistaken conjecture.

60 The account of the nightly vigil on the Thames in 1835 is not only after the manner of Longfellow's romantic German models, but also bears in the manuscript marks of revision for stylistic effect that must indicate some degree of satisfaction with it.