Mrs. Longfellow: so perfect a companion

After suffering through the night, Frances "Fanny" Appleton Longfellow died on July 10, 1861 after asking for a cup of coffee. She was 43 years old. The cause of death seemed to be shock after accidentally catching fire the day before. Her husband, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, had tried to save her life when he awoke from a nap. He covered her with a rug, which proved too small, and resorted to patting out the flames with his own body. His hands were severely injured in the process and, as he recovered, he missed her funeral (which was held on their 18th wedding anniversary). A friend wrote of Longfellow's absence:

I have not seen Longfellow. He has seen no one yet, out of his immediate family. I dread to think of him bereaved of Fanny: she was so perfect a companion of his daily existence, and sharer of his glory... God help them all. The world henceforth will be strangely changed for him.

The poet remained very private in his sorrows, though he was deeply grieved by his wife's sudden death. He became more sullen and rarely left his home in the following months. He stopped shaving, either out of disinterest or due to burn marks on his face. Biographers have found it frustrating that Longfellow did not allow his deep depression to mark what a contemporary called his "goody two-shoes" style of poetry. Nevertheless, 18 years to the day after his wife's death, Longfellow composed a sonnet he never intended to have published. "The Cross of Snow" is dated July 10, 1879:

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.

Aldrich: In spite of it all, I am going to sleep

Suddenly struck with illness and lying in a hospital, 70-year old Thomas Bailey Aldrich turned to a friend and noted, "For myself, I regard death merely as the passing shadow of a flower."  Two days after leaving the hospital, on March 19, 1907, he smiled and said, "In spite of it all, I am going to sleep; put out the lights." He died in his Boston home that night.

Three years earlier, Aldrich (pictured here in 1903) had lost his grown son to tuberculosis. The event left the former "bad boy" devastated — enough that he stopped writing poems (instead, he wrote a play to help him cope). He was convinced to return to poetry, however, for the centennial of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in February 1907. Three weeks after completing his memorial poem to the deceased poet, he wrote a letter to George Woodberry, referring to the poem as the first one he'd written since his son's death. "I have not known a whole happy day in that time." It is the last poem Aldrich ever completed, and it was read at his funeral:

Above his grave the grass and snow
Their soft antiphonal strophes write:
Moonrise and daybreak come and go:
Summer by summer on the height
The thrushes find melodious breath.
Here let no vagrant winds that blow
Across the spaces of the night
   Whisper of death.

They do not die who leave their thought
   Imprinted on some deathless page.
Themselves may pass; the spell they wrought
   Endures on earth from age to age.
And thou, whose voice but yesterday
   Fell upon charmed listening ears,
Thou shalt not know the touch of years;
   Thou holdest time and chance at bay...

Both Longfellow and Aldrich are buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

The hour of darkness and peril and need

Though it was issued two days earlier in a Boston newspaper, the first official publication of the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" occurred on December 20, 1860 — 150 years ago today. The Atlantic Monthly introduced the now-famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in its issue dated January 1861. Longfellow and editor James T. Fields were both surprised to see that six lines were accidentally omitted; its iconic first lines, however, were intact:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Coincidentally, on the day the poem was published, South Carolina seceded from the Union — one of the many steps that led to the American Civil War. That event only emphasizes the period in which Longfellow was motivated to write the poem. His mythologized version of the historic ride on the 18th of April in '75 was never meant as an accurate representation but as a message about the importance of liberty and joining together in times of national crisis. By invoking our shared past, he was trying to warn us of the future. Though the opening lines are the poem's most famous, it may be more appropriate to consider its final stanza in light of that time of national crisis:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,—
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

*For the information in this post, I am indebted to the recent research of historian Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail. For more information on Longfellow's poem, please visit www.paulreveresride.org.

John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th century, his 70th birthday party in 1877 was a major event — in more ways than one.

The party was thrown by the Atlantic Monthly at Boston's Brunswick Hotel. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Richard Henry Stoddard, and about fifty others. Speeches were presented in Whittier's honor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem. Perhaps out of place among these New England literary giants was Mark Twain — who ended up stealing the show.

Twain, invited by his friend and Atlantic editor William Dean Howells, presented a speech intended to be humorous. He described a man he met while traveling who had recently hosted Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow. According to Twain, the man referred to Emerson as "a seedy little bit of a chap," while Holmes was "as fat as a balloon... and had double chins all the way down to his stomach," while Longfellow had "cropped and bristly" hair "as if he had a wig made of hair brushes." The three men start quoting obscure passages of poetry to the man, who clearly does not understand.

The man tells Twain that he now plans to move, saying, "I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." Twain responds by telling him they must not have been the true "gracious singers" but imposters. When the newspapers reported the speech as an "attack," Twain sent letters of apology to Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow and Whittier. Longfellow responded that the newspapers were responsible for the "mischief" and that everyone else recognized the "bit of humor." Longfellow concluded: "It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much." No response from Whittier regarding Twain's speech is known.

Longfellow: of my inner life, not a word

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a private man. Suddenly overcome with the rising interest in his work, he became concerned that people would delve into his personal life to satisfy their own curiosity. In an entry dated December 14, 1853, Longfellow admitted that even his journal would remain aloof:

How brief this chronicle is, even of my outward life. And of my inner life, not a word. If one were only sure that one's journal would never be seen by any one, and never get into print, how different the case would be! But death picks the locks of all portfolios, and throws the contents into the street for the public to scramble after.

This exact quote was published after his death by his brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow. Within a year of writing it, Longfellow left his full-time job at Harvard College and focused solely on his writing. Using it as his only regular source of income for the rest of his life, he is today considered America's first professional poet.

Despite this major accomplishment, few modern scholars approach Longfellow. Certainly, this reticence comes at least in part from a disdain for the perceived simplicity of his poetry, spurned by a Modernist aggression against Longfellow. But, his acknowledged refusal to admit his "inner life" at the height of his popularity remains an important obstacle. For the poet's bicentennial, for example, Prof. Christoph Irmscher prepared a booklet to go along with an exhibit at Harvard titled Public Poet, Private Man.

Longfellow: Very stiff, remarkably stiff

The issue of the Portland Gazette for November 17, 1820, included a short poem signed "HENRY." It carried the title "The Battle for Lovell's Pond," and today is considered the first published poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; he was 13 years old.

Cold, cold is the north wind and rude is the blast
That sweeps like a hurricane loudly and fast,
As it moans through the tall waving pines lone and drear,
Sighs a requiem sad o'er the warrior's bier.

The war-whoop is still, and the savage's yell
Has sunk into silence along the wild dell;
The din of the battle, the tumult, is o'er,
And the war-clarion's voice is now heard no more.

The warriors that fought for their country, and bled,
Have sunk to their rest; the damp earth is their bed;
No stone tells the place where their ashes repose,
Nor points out the spot from the graves of their foes.

They died in their glory, surrounded by fame,
And Victory's loud trump their death did proclaim;
They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast,
And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

The story goes that young Longfellow had dropped off the poem at the Gazette office without anyone knowing. The day it was published, he visited a friend whose father (a judge) was reading the newspaper, including the poem. "Very stiff, remarkably stiff," the judge concluded aloud. "Moreover, it is all borrowed, every word of it." The aspiring poet was mortified — but the criticism was not entirely unjust. Just a year earlier, a similar poem on the same topic (a 1725 battle) was published. Longfellow would face similar accusations of imitation later in his career as well.

* For more information, I recommend Charles Calhoun's very readable biography Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life (2005). The image above is Longfellow, nearly unrecognizable in his youth. The artist, Thomas Badger, painted it circa 1829, when Longfellow was about 22. Courtesy of The Maine Memory Network, the Maine Historical Society (which oversees Longfellow's boyhood home in Portland, Maine).

Guest post: Mount Auburn Cemetery consecrated

Mount Auburn Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, was consecrated on September 24, 1831. In his consecration address, Justice Joseph Story (later buried in the cemetery; see image at right) noted that, "Here are the lofty oak, the beech,... the rustling pine, and the drooping willow... All around us there breathes a solemn calm, as if we were in the bosom of a wilderness."

Both literature and horticulture have been important elements at Mount Auburn since its inception. The cemetery's founding drew upon roots from earlier literary proponents of Romanticism expressed in landscape design and it was originally incorporated under the auspices of the then new Massachusetts Horticultural Society in 1829. Mount Auburn cultivated necessary early support from Bostonians interested in both horticulture and literature.

Indeed the Cemetery drew upon literature even for its name. In the early 1800s, this rolling, wooded land that once had been a colonial-era farm became known colloquially as "Sweet Auburn." This name drew from Oliver Goldsmith’s nostalgic poem "The Deserted Village" (1770) which references a fictitious town of Sweet Auburn. Founding trustees of the cemetery named its highest hill Mount Auburn.

A visitor today may stop at monuments commemorating dozens of literary figures as well as explore the horticultural diversity of this nationally-acclaimed arboretum. The cornucopia of individuals with literary affiliations at Mount Auburn is varied: novelists, poets, playwrights, historians, editors, publishers, journalists, legal and classical scholars, technical writers and children's book authors, among others.

Many of those writers use horticultural imagery. For example, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow begins his poem "The Village Blacksmith" with, "Under the spreading chestnut tree / The village smithy stands." In "A Gleam of Sunshine" (1845), he writes:

The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;
Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.

Nathaniel Parker Willis, buried at Mount Auburn in 1867, wrote "City Lyrics" in 1850. The poem includes the stanza:

Oh woman! Thou secret past knowing!
Like lilachs [sic] that grow by the wall,
You breathe every air that is going,
Yet gather but sweetness from all!

Another Mount Auburn notable is Sarah Sprague Jacobs, who wrote poetry and authored several books for young adults including Nonantum and Natick (1853), which notes:

High upon the straight black cherry
The pigeon swings,—
With its fruit he maketh merry,
Flapping his wings;
As, on the neighboring dead ash limbs,
The stealthy hen-hawk watches him.

Oliver Wendell Holmes makes several references to notable trees in his 1858 The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, including:

What we want is the meaning, the character, the expression of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of tree, which if well marked, is probably embodied in the poetry of every language.

While not all of the many literary individuals that are buried here included horticulture in their writings, they certainly chose to be surrounded by horticulture in memorialization at Mount Auburn Cemetery.

*This guest blog was written by Jim Gorman, a certified arborist who is also fond of the written word. He has been a docent at Mount Auburn for the past three years.

Something for stay-at-home travellers

June 21 marks the Summer Solstice, the official first day of summer. Traveling during the hot season is certainly not a modern concept. Targeting that tradition, in 1876, the Lowell, Massachusetts poet Lucy Larcom compiled a book called Roadside Poems for Summer Travellers. As Larcom wrote in her opening preface:

The book begins and ends like the journey of a summer traveller, and may prove an agreeable companion to such as take it with them in their journeyings; for it lingers by brook and river, among mossy rocks and wayside blossoms, and under overhanging trees, and climbs and descends the hills of our own land, and the countries across the sea... And it has, perhaps, something for stay-at-home travellers as well.

The book collected poems (previously-published ones) by notable writers like Thomas Bailey Aldrich, William Cullen Bryant, Thomas Buchanan Read, Alice Cary, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James T. Fields, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Andrews Norton, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Bayard Taylor, Henry David Thoreau, Jones Very and, of course, her good friend John Greenleaf Whittier — as well as several British poets.

One of the contributions from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the poem "Travels by the Fireside." The poem perfectly answers Larcom's prediction that the book would appeal to "stay-at-home travellers as well."

The ceaseless rain is falling fast,
  And yonder gilded vane,
Immovable for three days past,
  Points to the misty main.

It drives me in upon myself
  And to the fireside gleams,
To pleasant books that crowd my shelf,
  And still more pleasant dreams.

I read whatever bards have sung
  Of lands beyond the sea,
And the bright days when I was young
  Come thronging back to me.

The narrator of the poem reads books reminiscent of his youthful travels and returns to those locales in his mind.

Let others traverse sea and land,
  And toil through various climes,
I turn the world round with my hand,
  Reading these poets' rhymes.

From them I learn whatever lies
  Beneath each changing zone,
And see, when looking with their eyes,
  Better than with mine own.

Poe and Longfellow: Favorably known to me

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow would have had every reason to dislike Edgar Allan Poe in the 1840s. Poe, the preeminent American critic of his day, spent part of the middle of that decade engaged in a "Longfellow War." Longfellow, by then one of the major American poets, had gained his reputation unfairly, according to Poe, who accused the Portland, Maine-born poet of imitating other poets.

Yet, when Poe became a staff editor of the highly-circulated Graham's Magazine in Philadelphia, he knew that Longfellow would impress his readers. So, he humbly solicited a contribution, well before his major attacks against the poet he later called "a dextrous adapter of the ideas of other people." In his letter, Poe wrote of the "fervent admiration" of Longfellow's genius and suggested that Longfellow was far too important to recognize a little-known critic like Poe. Longfellow's response was dated May 19, 1841:

You are mistaken in supposing that you are not 'favorably known to me.' On the contrary, all that I have read from your pen has inspired me with a high idea of your power; and I think you are destined to stand among the first romance-writers of the country, if such be your aim.

Longfellow never responded publicly to Poe's criticism, even after Poe's death; this is likely because he knew he really was an imitator. He often attributed his ideas or poetic formats to others, a typical practice in romantic poetry. Poe, on the other hand, strove for originality (though he occasionally lifted ideas too). Longfellow's words about Poe, his worst critic, were always kind. In fact, in 1875, he even suggested (apparently from memory!) an epitaph for Poe's planned memorial monument: "The fever called Living is conquered at last."

*The image of Longfellow above dates to 1840 and was painted by Cephas Giovanni Thompson. The original still hangs in his long-time home in Cambridge, Massachusetts (where he was living at the time this letter was written). The image is courtesy of the National Park Service.

Fact is better in history than fiction

In the 19th century, several people were mythologizing the American Revolution. Many writers, who were children or grandchildren of veterans of that struggle, elevated the Founding Fathers as larger-than-life infallible heroes. These writers included Jared Sparks (at right), who altered George Washington's letters for publication to make him look more dignified. Washington Irving wrote a well-researched biography of America's first president as well but mostly told it through anecdotes, many of which are apocryphal.

But, perhaps, there is no more famous a myth-maker as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who turned Paul Revere into a national hero in the days leading to the Civil War. Despite what his poem claimed, Paul Revere did not wait on the banks of Charlestown to see the signal from the Old North Church ("one if by land, two if by sea"); he actually helped set them up as a back-up signal, in case he didn't reach his destination. He did not row himself to the opposite shore, but was rowed over by friends. He did not go to "every Middlesex village and farm," but only a select few. His main goal was to reach the Hancock-Clarke House in Lexington, just off the battle green.

Perhaps most importantly, Paul Revere did not ride alone. He was one of several riders that day, including William Dawes and Samuel Prescott. Longfellow was aware of all the available data on the historic ride and purposely chose to ignore it to create a composite character that would inspire his generation.

The irony comes from a letter written 18 years after the poem. Richard Henry Stoddard (pictured, right, near the end of his life in 1902) was preparing an article on Longfellow and wanted to confirm some biographical details. After reviewing an early draft, Longfellow pointed out a couple inaccuracies and, in a letter dated April 20, 1878, concluded:

This is perhaps of no great importance, but, generally speaking, fact is better in history than fiction.

Longfellow left just enough wiggle room to suggest that, for the sake of a poem, perhaps fiction can be useful in history.

The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed

Listen my children and you shall hear:
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wasn't entirely correct in his description of the fateful day of April 18, 1775 and the exploits of patriot and silversmith Paul Revere — now one of his most famous and most criticized works. Then again, it was never his intention to write history.

Longfellow visited the North End early in April 1860. In his journal, he records: "We climb the tower to the chime of bells, now the home of innumerable pigeons. From this tower were hung the lanterns as a signal that the British troops had left Boston for Concord." He started writing "Paul Revere's Ride" around the same time, 150 years ago this year.

It took him six months to complete the poem. During that time, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. The poet corresponded heavily with his friend the United States Senator Charles Sumner. He read the newspapers. And, perhaps most importantly, he knew the country was headed to a new "revolution" (his word, not mine).

He knew the true story of Paul Revere, having read his autobiography and other accounts. In fact, Longfellow was not writing about Paul Revere or the American Revolution. He was writing about the Civil War, the next revolution. The poem was not so much a call to arms, but a call to unite, a message of defiance (and not of fear). Longfellow wanted the American people to remember the last time they united for the cause of freedom (this time, the cause was freedom of slaves). He had publicly announced his abolitionist thoughts in 1842 in his book Poems on Slavery, just as his fame as a poet was beginning to build.

Between the first publication of "Paul Revere's Ride" and its inclusion in Tales of a Wayside Inn (renamed "The Landlord's Tale") in 1863, Longfellow wrote in his journal: "We are on the brink of Civil War. It is Slavery against Freedom; the north wind against the southern pestilence."

More on the sesquicentennial of "Paul Revere's Ride," including ongoing events in celebration of it as well as further discussions of its writing and its accuracy, visit www.paulreveresride.org.

It will be a new experience

In the circle of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, several people assisted him in his pursuit to bring continental European culture to the English-speaking world. Some of these friends included George Washington Greene, James Russell Lowell, and George Ticknor. Perhaps he had no closer relationship, however, than with Thomas Gold Appleton, his brother-in-law.

Appleton and Longfellow first met in Switzerland and it is there that the young professor fell for the beautiful Frances "Fanny" Appleton. They married after a seven-year courtship.

Tom Appleton published more books than did Longfellow on varying topics, ranging from travel essays to art books to poetry, many signed as "TGA." Heavily cultured, Appleton dabbled in poetry and painting, though he never amassed more than a local reputation in his 72 years. In the Boston area, however, he was known as a patron of the fine arts and for his witticisms

He once said that all good Americans, when they die, go to Paris. Instead, he died of pneumonia in New York at age 72 on April 17, 1884, having outlived his sister and her husband. On his deathbed he noted that death "will be a new experience." TGA had already experienced quite a bit in his life. He was incredibly well-traveled, and wrote (or created art) based on these experiences, including this poem about "A Sunset on the Nile" (which Longfellow published in his anthology Poems on Places):

Past emerald plains and furrowed mountains old,
Whose violet gorges snare the wandering eye,
The pillared palms day's dying ember's hold,
Like shafts of bronze against the crimson sky,
And every cloud mirrors its rosy fold
In tremulous waves which blush and wander by —
We float, and feel the magic penetrate,
Till all our soul is colored by the hues,
Making a heaven of earth, and, satiate
With splendor, we forego the use
Of speech, and reverently wait
While fades the glory with the falling dews,
And darkness seals for memory each gleam,
Happy to know it was not all a dream.

There is not one word of truth in this

By 1875, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was famous for many things. Certainly, he was among the country's most popular poets, but he was also a linguist, academic, and frequently published translations. These efforts were valued in England only slightly less than in the United States. Longfellow's earliest career pursuits were as a scholar of modern languages, which he taught both at Bowdoin College and at Harvard College. He also published the first American translation of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.

Longfellow was valued as someone who brought interesting pieces of mainland European (and, more rarely, Asian) culture to the English-speaking world, from poetry to prose to fables to scholarship to decorative arts. For these reasons, it was not so hard to believe recent news that a new major translation of a play was in the works. Yet, as the 68-year old wrote in his journal for April 16, 1875 (a great example of his wry humor and frequent frustration with the press):

Read in the London Publishers' Circular that "Professor Longfellow has almost ready for the press a translation of the Nibelungen Lied in verse, and a sacred Tragedy, conceived in the spirits of his Judas Maccabeus, which extends to no less than fifteen acts." There is not one word of truth in this.

The Nibelungenlied is an epic poem in German, likely dating to the 12th or 13th century. Longfellow had, in fact, written a long play-in-verse on the hero Judas Maccabeaus a couple years earlier. Earlier in his career, he had written several other plays, including The Courtship of Miles Standish and The Spanish Student, but never wrote another one after Judas Maccabeaus — certainly not one with over 15 acts.

Hawthorne sworn in

Like most other early American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne struggled financially. In fact, it is said that he was kicked out of the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts for not paying rent. Knowing that his writing alone would not support him and his family (by this time, he was married and had two children, Una and Julian), he sought full-time work. As an avowed democrat, he looked to the political world and was soon offered a job at the Custom House in his home town of Salem, Massachusetts, an appointment approved by President James K. Polk. He was sworn in on April 9, 1846 as surveyor. His appointment earned him an annual salary of $1,200.

The author assumed the job overlooking Derby Wharf would allow ample time for him to write but, he soon learned, free time was not the issue. His experience at the Custom House was trying for other reasons. As he wrote to his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

I am trying to resume my pen... Whenever I sit alone, or walk alone, I find myself dreaming about stories, as of old; but these forenoons in the Custom House undo all that the afternoons and evenings have done. I should be happier if I could write.

Hawthorne had previously worked at the Custom House in Boston so he should have known the drudgery of this line of work. The building is today preserved as part of the Salem Maritime National Historic Site. Inside, the desk he used (pictured) is on display to the public.

He was forced out of his Salem position in the spring of 1849 when the democrats lost power. He did not take part in the public discussions about losing his job. As he wrote, "There is no use in lamentation. It now remains to consider what I shall do next." He eventually turned his experience into the sketch "The Custom-House," printed as an introduction to The Scarlet Letter in 1850.

Longfellow visits the dentist, has daughter

On April 8, 1847, the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow experimented with drugs — so to speak. That day, he visited his dentist, Dr. Nathan Cooley Keep, to have a tooth "extraction." Dr. Keep was experimenting with ether as an anesthetic (a term coined by Longfellow's friend and fellow poet, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes). Longfellow recorded the experience in his journal:

Stepped into Dr. Keep's and had a double tooth extracted under the ethereal vapor. On inhaling it, I burst into fits of laughter. Then my brain whirled round, and I seemed to soar like a lark spirally into the air. I was conscious when he took the tooth out and cried out as if from infinitely deep caverns, 'Stop;' but I could not control my muscles or make any resistance, and out came the tooth without pain.

Longfellow was often willing to try novel medical techniques. Throughout his life, he suffered from neuralgia and poor eyesight, both of which he treated with the water therapy and other treatments. He was happy to advocate these medical techniques with others. In fact, just the day before Longfellow's visit to the dentist, on April 7, 1847, his wife Frances Appleton gave birth to the couple's first daughter, whom they named Fanny, after her mother. Dr. Keep administered ether to Mrs. Longfellow — making her the first woman in the United States to give birth under anesthesia. Friends were worried when she agreed to use ether but she reassured them because her husband felt confident about it. He was fairly impressed she went through with it. Longfellow wrote about it to his friend Charles Sumner:

The great experiment has been tried, and with grand success! Fanny has a daughter born this morning, at ten. Both are well. The Ether was heroically inhaled.

We know it was controversial even among family members, judging by allusions made in letters in the few days after the birth. Longfellow tries to laugh off their concern, noting that if his wife had been asked if she would prefer a boy or a girl, "she would have replied, I will take ether." Alas, young Fanny did not survive more than a couple years.

*The image above shows Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances Appleton Longfellow with their first two children, Charles (center) and Ernest. After the birth of baby Fanny, they would have three more daughters.

Hawthorne and Longfellow's fairy tales

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote from Salem on March 21, 1838 to his former Bowdoin College classmate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Longfellow had turned down an invitation to dinner a few days earlier at which Hawthorne intended to discuss a possible literary collaboration. "I wanted to have a talk with you about that book of Fairy Tales which you spoke of," Hawthorne wrote. "I think it a good idea, and am well inclined to do my part toward the execution of it."

By this time, Longfellow had published a handful of books, while Hawthorne had published mostly short stories here and there. As he wrote, "I am terribly harassed with magazine scribbling." He was willing to let Longfellow have the title of editor for the project; "I will figure merely as a contributor," likely assuming that Longfellow had the more famous name. "Possibly we may make a great hit, and entirely revolutionize the whole system of juvenile literature," he wrote optimistically.

Though it seems it was Longfellow's original idea, he had second thoughts. Hawthorne even attempted a magazine project with Longfellow, which also went nowhere.

Even so, Hawthorne was pushed to continue the project of a children's book, partly by his future sister-in-law Elizabeth Peabody. Peabody contacted her future brother-in-law, Horace Mann, who was then secretary of the board of education in Massachusetts, to hire Hawthorne to write a series of books for children. Mann was not initially pleased with the idea, thinking there was not enough of a message to Hawthorne's work.

Eventually, the end result of Hawthorne's project of "juvenile literature" was a collection of historical sketches for children. Published in 1840, the collection, Grandfather's Chair, was printed in Elizabeth Peabody's book shop (with an illustration by Sophia Peabody, his future wife) and had "sequels" in Old People and Liberty Tree, both printed in 1841 by Peabody. The "fairy tale" idea would later evolve into A Wonder-Book for Girls and Boys, in which Hawthorne re-wrote several myths.

*The images are by the artist Eastman Johnson, who created these crayon and chalk portraits in 1846. He was commissioned by Longfellow himself and both portraits still hang in Longfellow's preserved study at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

One may sing for the delight of singing

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote to Annie Adams Fields, wife of his publisher James T. Fields, on January 18, 1864. Mrs. Fields had written a "charming note" praising Longfellow's poetry. By then a major poet and the first American earning a living solely through poetry, Longfellow held on to a humility that only grew in his later years. Here is his modest thank-you to Mrs. Fields:

It certainly is a great pleasure to give pleasure to others, and particularly to those whom we wish to please. Though one may sing for the delight of singing, I think it increases the delight to know that the song has been heard and liked.

Longfellow often referred to his poems as "songs" — a fairly appropriate term because of his many ballads and lyric poems. In this letter, Longfellow says that he likes writing poetry for the sake of writing it, but he feels much better knowing that a friend has read it too. It reminds me of one of his earlier poems, one which includes one of his most famous lines (one which few realize is Longfellow's). It is called "The Arrow and the Song."

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

 *The portrait above is by Longfellow's close friend George P. A. Healey.

Prohibition, temperance, and T. S. Arthur

On this day, January 16, in 1919, the 18th Amendment took effect in the United States — establishing 13 years of prohibition of the sale, manufacture, and consumption of alcohol. In honor of this "Noble Experiment," it's worth looking into some of the literary figures who believed in the sober lifestyle back in the 19th century.

Early in his career, editor/anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold advocated for a temperate lifestyle in the 1830s. Years later, he would come to enjoy vintage wines. Poet/abolitionist James Russell Lowell was a teetotaler for a (short) time after his marriage, likely due to the influence of his wife Maria White. His anti-alcohol stance was so strong for a time that his neighbor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow worried that Lowell would force him to destroy his wine cellar. Lowell, however, was infamous for his drinking while an undergraduate at Harvard and, perhaps, sneaking a few drinks when his wife wasn't looking.

Edgar A. Poe struggled to control what would now be called alcoholism throughout his short life. Aware of his problem, he went as long as 18 months without drinking at one point before finally looking for help. In 1849, he took a vow of sobriety and became a card-carrying member of the Sons of Temperance. Thirteen years before Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman published a book called Franklin Evans; or, The Inebriate (1842) — a temperance novel. The poet later called the book "a damned rot" and said he was actually drunk when he wrote it.

Perhaps the most important anti-alcohol writer was Timothy Shay Arthur, the New York author of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room and What I Saw There (1854). The story is told by an infrequent visitor to a new tavern in Cedarville named Sickle and Sheaf, founded by Simon Slade. Over his ten visits, the narrator witnesses the downfall of the tavern owner, his guests, and the town in general — all because of alcohol.

According to the publisher's preface:

"Ten Nights in a Bar-Room" gives a series of sharply drawn sketches of scenes, some of them touching in the extreme, and some dark and terrible. Step by step the author traces the downward course of the tempting vender and his infatuated victims, until both are involved in hopeless ruin. The book is marred by no exaggerations, but exhibits the actualities of bar-room life, and the consequences flowing therefrom, with a severe simplicity, and adherence to truth.

Halfway through the novel, Slade the tavern-keeper is described by a character: "He does not add to the general wealth. He produces nothing. He takes money from his customers, but gives them no article of value in return —nothing that can be called property, personal or real." The book's chapter titles include "Some of the Consequences of Tavern-Keeping," "More Consequences," "Sowing the Wind" and (wait for it) "Reaping the Whirlwind." Alcohol leads to neglect, domestic abuse, gambling, and even murder. According to the book, not only is the tavern-keeper ruined, but also the entire town. "Does the reader need a word of comment on this fearful consummation?" the author asks at the end of one chapter. "No: and we will offer none."

During Prohibition (which lasted from 1920 to 1933), a feature film of Arthur's book was released, directed by William O'Connor (his other films were mostly Westerns), based on a 19th-century stage version adapted by William H. Pratt. Cheers!

*The image above is the bar room in question, from an early edition of Arthur's book.

Death of Dana, Jr.

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. died on January 6, 1882. He was 66 years old. Though his career was varied — he was a sailor, a writer, and a lawyer — he is known predominantly from one book: Two Years Before the Mast, published in 1840.

The book was inspired by two years at sea, which the Boston Brahmin took to avoid Harvard temporarily (and with a hope to repair worsening eyesight). Serving as a common sailor rather than taking the European Grand Tour expected of wealthy individuals, he was disturbed by the plight of his fellow seamen. His book, a memoir of his two years on board the Pilgrim, was written to draw attention to the poor conditions at sea. Dana Point in California was named in honor of the author.

Dana continued fighting on land as well. While an undergrad at Harvard, he was suspended for six months for supporting a student protest. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he fought for an eclectic range of clients, including the fugitive slave Anthony Burns.

He also represented doctor William T. G. Morton, who was fighting for official recognition as the discoverer of the anesthetic properties of ether. Interestingly enough, it was a dentist who applied ether to Frances Appleton Longfellow, wife of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, as the first woman to give birth under anesthesia. Her daughter, Fanny Jr., did not survive past infancy. However, another daughter of the Longfellows, "Edith with the golden hair," married Richard Henry Dana III.

Dana Jr. traveled to Rome, Italy, at the end of his life. It was there that he contracted influenza and died in 1882, having outlived his father and namesake, himself a famous poet and critic, by slightly less than three years.

Three Washingtons and a Longfellow

George Washington, future first President of the United States, married Martha Dandridge Custis on January 6, 1759. It was his first marriage, her second (after the death of her first husband Daniel Parke Custis, with whom she had four children).

The year of their marriage was also the year of construction of what would become Washington's first official headquarters as Commander of the Continental Army. The house in Cambridge, Massachusetts was built in 1759 for John Vassall, a Loyalist and Tory, who left his home amidst the Seige of Boston. During the Seige, the Washingtons celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary in Vassall's former home with a Twelfth Night party in January 1776.

The 18th century saw Founding Fathers like Washington as epic heroes who were put on pedestals. Such was the case with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who later became the owner of the Vassall house which Washington used as his headquarters. His family later re-created the Washingtons' wedding anniversary party. Longfellow himself wrote a poem, "To a Child," which alludes to the first President and his occupancy of the home in the sixth stanza.

Several authors from the 19th century found ways to pay homage to now-legendary figures from the previous century. Perhaps none was more important than one of the first American men of letters, Washington Irving — who even owed George Washington as his namesake when he was born in 1783. Legend has it that a 6-year old Irving met Washington in New York, shortly after the latter's Presidential Inauguration.

In 1855, Irving began publishing volumes of what he considered his master work: a full-length biography of George Washington. Its five volumes were published in four years; Irving died eight months after the final installment was published. In the book, Irving alludes to the Washington anniversary party held at what became the Longfellow House. After assuring the reader of Washington's modesty and religious piety, he notes that it was Mrs. Washington who insisted on a Twelfth Night party "in due style." The general, as Irving writes, attempted to refuse but "his objections were overcome and Twelfth-night and the wedding anniversary were duly celebrated."