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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Biography written by Roberto
Rabe
Probably the best loved of American poets the world over is Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. Many of his lines are as familiar to us
as rhymes from Mother Goose or the words of nursery songs learned
in early childhood. Like these rhymes and melodies, they remain
in the memory and accompany us through life.
There are two reasons for the popularity and significance of Longfellow's
poetry. First, he had the gift of easy rhyme. He wrote poetry
as a bird sings, with natural grace and melody. Read or heard
once or twice, his rhyme and meters cling to the mind long after
the sense may be forgotten.
Second, Longfellow wrote on obvious themes which appeal to all
kinds of people. His poems are easily understood; they sing their
way into the consciousness of those who read them. Above all,
there is a joyousness in them, a spirit of optimism and faith
in the goodness of life which evokes immediate response in the
emotions of his readers.
Americans owe a great debt to Longfellow because he was among
the first of American writers to use native themes. He wrote about
the American scene and landscape, the American Indian ('Song of
Hiawatha'), and American history and tradition ('The Courtship
of Miles Standish', 'Evangeline'). At the beginning of the 19th
century, America was a stumbling babe as far as a culture of its
own was concerned. The people of America had spent their years
and their energies in carving a habitation out of the wilderness
and in fighting for independence. Literature, art, and music came
mainly from Europe and especially from England. Nothing was considered
worthy of attention unless it came from Europe.
But "the flowering of New England," as Van Wyck Brooks
terms the period from 1815 to 1865, took place in Longfellow's
day, and he made a great contribution to it. He lived when giants
walked the New England earth, giants of intellect and feeling
who established the New Land as a source of greatness. Nathaniel
Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Oliver Wendell
Holmes, and William Prescott were a few of the great minds and
spirits among whom Longfellow took his place as a singer and as
a representative of America.
The first Longfellow came to America in 1676 from Yorkshire, England.
Among the ancestors of the poet on his mother's side were John
and Priscilla Alden, of whom he wrote in 'The Courtship of Miles
Standish'. His mother's father, Peleg Wadsworth, had been a general
in the Revolutionary War. His own father was a lawyer. The Longfellow
home represented the graceful living which was beginning to characterize
the age.
Henry was the son of Stephen Longfellow and Zilpah Wadsworth Longfellow.
He was born February 27, 1807, in Portland, Maine. Portland was
a seaport, and this gave its citizens a breadth of view lacking
in the more insular New England towns. The variety of people and
the activity of the harbors stirred the mind of the boy and gave
him a curiosity about life beyond his own immediate experience.
He was sent to school when he was only three years old. When he
was six, the following report of him was received at home:"Master
Henry Longfellow is one of the best boys we have in school. He
spells and reads very well. He can also add and multiply numbers.
His conduct last quarter was very correct and amiable."
From the beginning, it was evident that this boy was to be drawn
to writing and the sound of words. His mother read aloud to him
and his brothers and sisters the high romance of Ossian, the legendary
Gaelic hero. Cervantes' 'Don Quixote' was a favorite among the
books he read. But the book which influenced him most was Washington
Irving's 'Sketch Book'. Irving was another American author for
whom the native legend and landscape were sources of inspiration.
"Every reader has his first book," wrote Longfellow
later. "I mean to say, one book among all others which in
early youth first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites
and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, the first book was
the 'Sketch Book' of Washington Irving."
Longfellow's father was eager to have his son become a lawyer.
But when Henry was a senior at Bowdoin College at 19, the college
established a chair of modern languages. The recent graduate was
asked to become the first professor, with the understanding that
he should be given a period of time in which to travel and study
in Europe.
In May of 1826, the fair-haired youth with the azure blue eyes
set out for Europe to turn himself into a scholar and a linguist.
He had letters of introduction to men of note in England and France,
but he had his own idea of how to travel. Between conferences
with important people and courses in the universities, Longfellow
walked through the countries. He stopped at small inns and cottages,
talking to peasants, farmers, traders, his silver flute in his
pocket as a passport to friendship. He travelled in Spain, Italy,
France, Germany, and England, and returned to America in 1829.
At 22, he was launched into his career as a college professor.
He had to prepare his own texts, because at that time none were
available.
Much tribute is due him as a teacher. Just as he served America
in making the world conscious of its legend and tradition, so
he opened to his students and to the American people the literary
heritage of Europe. He created in them the new consciousness of
the literature of Spain, France, Italy, and especially writings
from the German, Nordic, and Icelandic cultures.
In 1831, he married Mary Storer Potter, whom he had known as a
schoolmate. When he saw her at church upon his return to Portland,
he was so struck by her beauty that he followed her home without
courage enough to speak to her. With his wife, he settled down
in a house surrounded by elm trees. He expended his energies on
translations from Old World literature and contributed travel
sketches to the New England Magazine, in addition to serving as
a professor and a librarian at Bowdoin.
In 1834, he was appointed to a professorship at Harvard and once
more set out for Europe by way of preparation. This time his young
wife accompanied him. The journey ended in tragedy. In Rotterdam,
his wife died, and Longfellow came alone to Cambridge and the
new professorship. The lonely [Longfellow] took a room at historic
Craigie House, an old house overlooking the Charles River. It
was owned by Mrs. Craigie, an eccentric woman who kept much to
herself and was somewhat scornful of the young men to whom she
let rooms. But she read widely and well, and her library contained
complete sets of Voltaire and other French masters. Longfellow
entered the beautiful old elm-encircled house as a lodger, not
knowing that this was to be his home for the rest of his life.
In time, it passed into the possession of Nathan Appleton. Seven
years after he came to Cambridge, Longfellow married Frances Appleton,
daughter of Nathan Appleton, and Craigie House was given to the
Longfellows as a wedding gift.
Meantime, in the seven intervening years, he remained a rather
romantic figure in Cambridge, with his flowing hair and his yellow
gloves and flowered waistcoats. He worked, however, with great
determination and industry, publishing 'Hyperion', a prose romance
that foreshadowed his love for Frances Appleton, and 'Voices of
the Night', his first book of poems. He journeyed again to Europe,
wrote 'The Spanish Student', and took his stand with the abolitionists,
returning to be married in 1843.
The marriage was a happy one, and the Longfellow house became
the center of life in the University town. The old Craigie House
was a shrine of hospitality and gracious living. The young people
of Cambridge flocked there to play with the five Longfellow children
- two boys and the three girls whom the poet describes in 'The
Children's Hour' as "grave Alice and laughing Allegra and
Edith with golden hair."
From his friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, Longfellow got a brief outline
of a story from which he composed one of his most favorite poems,
'Evangeline'. The original story had Evangeline wandering about
New England in search of her bridegroom. Longfellow extended her
journey through Louisiana and the western wilderness. She finds
Gabriel, at last, dying in Philadelphia.
'Evangeline' was published in 1847 and was widely acclaimed. Longfellow
began to feel that his work as a teacher was a hindrance to his
own writing. In 1854, he resigned from Harvard and with a great
sense of freedom gave himself entirely to the joyous task of his
own poetic writing. In June of that year, he began 'The Song of
Hiawatha'.
Henry Schoolcraft's book on Indians and several meetings with
an Ojibway chief provided the background for 'Hiawatha'. The long
poem begins with Gitche Matino, the Great Spirit, commanding his
people to live in peace and tells how Hiawatha is born. It ends
with the coming of the white man and Hiawatha's death.
The publication of 'Hiawatha' caused the greatest excitement.
For the first time in American literature, Indian themes gained
recognition as sources of imagination, power, and originality.
The appeal of 'Hiawatha' for generations of children and young
people gives it an enduring place in world literature.
The gracious tale of John Alden and Priscilla came next to the
poet's mind, and 'The Courtship of Miles Standish' was published
in 1858. It is a work which reflects the ease with which he wrote
and the pleasure and enjoyment he derived from his skill. Twenty-five
thousand copies were sold during the first week of its publication,
and 10,000 were ordered in London on the first day of publication.
The
Courtship of Miles Standish
In 1861, the happy life of the family came to an end. Longfellow's
wife died of burns she received when packages of her children's
curls, which she was sealing with matches and wax, burst into
flame. Longfellow faced the bitterest tragedy of his life. He
found some solace in the task of translating Dante into English
and went to Europe for a change of scene.
The years following were filled with honors. He was given honorary
degrees at the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge, invited
to Windsor by Queen Victoria, and called by request upon the Prince
of Wales. He was chosen a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences
and of the Spanish Academy.
When it became necessary to remove "the spreading chestnut
tree" of Brattle Street, which Longfellow had written about
in his 'Village Blacksmith', the children of Cambridge gave their
pennies to build a chair out of the tree and gave it to Longfellow.
He died on March 24, 1882. "Of all the suns of the New England
morning," says Van Wyck Brooks, "he was the largest
in his golden sweetness."
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth
1807-82, American poet, b. Portland, Maine, grad. Bowdoin College,
1825. He wrote some of the most popular poems in American literature,
in which he created a new body of romantic American legends. Descended
from an established New England family, after college he spent
the next three years in Europe, preparing himself for a professorship
of modern languages at Bowdoin, where he taught from 1829 to 1835.
After the death of his young wife in 1835, Longfellow traveled
again to Europe, where he met Frances Appleton, who was to become
his second wife after a long courtship. She was the model for
the heroine of his prose romance, Hyperion (1839). From
1836 to 1854, Longfellow was professor of modern languages at
Harvard, and during these years he became one of an intellectual
triumvirate that included Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell
Lowell. Although a sympathetic and ethical person, Longfellow
was uninvolved in the compelling religious and social issues of
his time; he did, however, display interest in the abolitionist
cause. He achieved great fame with long narrative poems such as
Evangeline (1847), The Song of Hiawatha (1855),
The Courtship of Miles Standish (1858), and Tales of
a Wayside Inn (1863) which included "Paul Revere's Ride.
In all of these works he used unusual, "antique rhythms to
weave myths of the American past. His best-known shorter poems
include "The Village Blacksmith, "Excelsior, "The
Wreck of the Hesperus, "A Psalm of Life, and "A Cross
of Snow. Although he was highly praised and successful in his
lifetime, Longfellow's literary reputation has declined in the
20th cent. His unorthodox meters, while contributing to the unique
effects of his poems, have been much parodied, and many critics
have viewed harshly his simple, sentimental, often moralizing
verse. Longfellow made a poetic translation of Dante's Divine
Comedy (1867), for which he wrote a sequence of six outstanding
sonnets. After his death, he was the first American whose bust
was placed in the Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Commentary
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was brought up as a New England aristocrat steeped in European culture. His works, written in part as Americanized tributes to the works of Sir Walter Scott, were very popular during his lifetime, but an antagonistic attitude toward them later developed among critics with tastes of another age. Today they are enjoying a revival as early American epic myths. The plot of this simple, gracefully written poem is reminiscent of Cyrano de Bergerac, but with twists of its own. Reunited friendship and requited young love told in the delicate detail of an old-English style, make Longfellow's poem a classic.