“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” from Tales of a Wayside Inn
(I know what you’re thinking—wouldn’t that quote be more appropriate for April 19, the date of the midnight ride—or at least February 27, Longfellow’s birthday? But I chose today for a reason—on this date in 1863, the Cambridge poet’s Tales of a Wayside Inn was published. That week surrounding publication became what Anne Morrow Lindbergh would call, in her own life, an “Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead”—a moment of great triumph or happiness followed by disaster or dread.
The first thing to recall about Longfellow’s famous poem, as I learned from touring his home in Cambridge and the Old North Church in Boston, is that ultimately it’s not about the American Revolution at all, but about what was seen by William Henry Seward as “the irrepressible conflict”: the Civil War. Longfellow wanted to remind Americans preparing for this next epic struggle that even a common man such as Paul Revere—not a Virginia aristocrat like George Washington or even a lawyer such as John Adams—could make a difference in the struggle for freedom.
The Atlantic Monthly originally published “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1860, but a few years later, as he conceived the idea of a narrative poems centered around travelers gathered together—a device harking back to Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—Longfellow thought he saw a way to introduce this poem into the mix by packaging it as “The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride.” The book—which would be expanded over the next decade—also included “The Legend of Rabbi Ben-Levi” and “The Saga of King Olaf.”
This range of subject matter, I submit, is one of the most attractive aspects of Longfellow. Though not as experimental as Walt Whitman (nor as likely to step outside the boundary of conventional middle-class lifestyles of his or our day), Longfellow might hold a better claim than the Sage of Camden to be able to say, “I contain multitudes.”
A guide at his home at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Mass., told me that Longfellow spoke eight languages fluently, could write in 12, and may have known phrases in up to 50 altogether, since his home contained books in up to that many languages. The guy not only wrote sympathetically about Native-Americans in “The Song of Hiawatha,” but did so in the meter of a Finnish epic. Talk about multicultural!
The “Wayside Inn” of the title, Longfellow told intimates, was based on a similar establishment, the 200-year-old Red Horse Tavern, in Sudbury, Mass., and several of the figures in the book—the poet, the Sicilian, and the theologian—were not only real but had spent summer months at the inn.
Nine years after his decision to leave his teaching position at Harvard, Longfellow had made a successful transition into becoming the first American to make his living entirely and successfully as a poet. His publisher’s decision to bring out Tales of a Wayside Inn in an edition of 15,000 recognized that level of success.
But at the hour of his greatest professional triumph, Longfellow would be indelibly touched, as so many families were, North and South, in those years, by the terrible bloodshed taking place in the South.
An abolitionist who had welcomed the election of Lincoln as “the redemption of the country,” Longfellow was already noting by April 23, 1861 the “weary days of wars and rumors of wars, and marching of troops, and flags waving and people talking.” Within a few more months, I believe, his view of the conflict would alter further by troubles closer to home.
In July, his beloved wife Fanny died when her light summer dress caught fire as he was using hot wax. Longfellow—who had tried to save her by wrapping her in a library rug, then by wrapping himself around her when that didn’t work—was disconsolate—a gloom that deepened when, the day after her funeral, his father-in-law also died.
Longfellow’s unwillingness not to put another family member in harm’s way might account for why he forbade son Charles from joining the Union Army, even if he agreed that the cause was just and so many of Harvard friends were joining the fight.
But Charles Longfellow loved adventure and was dismissive of danger—he had lost his left thumb after a gun accident at the age of 11—and, scorning the life of a privileged family, wanted to try his luck against the world. Nor surprisingly, the 19-year-old ran away to Northern Virginia, where he joined the First Massachusetts Cavalry, rising to the rank of lieutenant.
Only two days after Tales of a Wayside Inn was published, Charles was wounded in a skirmish near New Hope, Virginia. He sustained what could have been a mortal wound in the back. His father and brother Ernest, immediately notified of this, traveled to Washington and brought him home to Cambridge. Luckily, the teenager recovered and became an inveterate traveler, filling his journals with accounts of his encounters with Europe and especially the Far East, before he succumbed to pneumonia in 1893.
If you’re even slightly interested in historic travel, you should make it a point to visit the Longfellow National Historic Site (shown in the picture accompanying this post, which I took while on vacation last month) the next time you’re in the Boston area, for several reasons:
1) You’ll learn not only about one usually talented man—Longfellow—but several generations of fascinating people: John Vassall, the West Indies merchant forced to flee his gorgeous Georgian mansion here beyond of Loyalist tendencies; George Washington, who made this house his headquarters during the siege of Boston; and Nathaniel Appleton, who, as a wealthy man, was in a position to buy this house and present it to his daughter and son-in-law as a wedding present;
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” from Tales of a Wayside Inn
(I know what you’re thinking—wouldn’t that quote be more appropriate for April 19, the date of the midnight ride—or at least February 27, Longfellow’s birthday? But I chose today for a reason—on this date in 1863, the Cambridge poet’s Tales of a Wayside Inn was published. That week surrounding publication became what Anne Morrow Lindbergh would call, in her own life, an “Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead”—a moment of great triumph or happiness followed by disaster or dread.
The first thing to recall about Longfellow’s famous poem, as I learned from touring his home in Cambridge and the Old North Church in Boston, is that ultimately it’s not about the American Revolution at all, but about what was seen by William Henry Seward as “the irrepressible conflict”: the Civil War. Longfellow wanted to remind Americans preparing for this next epic struggle that even a common man such as Paul Revere—not a Virginia aristocrat like George Washington or even a lawyer such as John Adams—could make a difference in the struggle for freedom.
The Atlantic Monthly originally published “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1860, but a few years later, as he conceived the idea of a narrative poems centered around travelers gathered together—a device harking back to Boccaccio’s The Decameron and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—Longfellow thought he saw a way to introduce this poem into the mix by packaging it as “The Landlord’s Tale: Paul Revere’s Ride.” The book—which would be expanded over the next decade—also included “The Legend of Rabbi Ben-Levi” and “The Saga of King Olaf.”
This range of subject matter, I submit, is one of the most attractive aspects of Longfellow. Though not as experimental as Walt Whitman (nor as likely to step outside the boundary of conventional middle-class lifestyles of his or our day), Longfellow might hold a better claim than the Sage of Camden to be able to say, “I contain multitudes.”
A guide at his home at 105 Brattle Street in Cambridge, Mass., told me that Longfellow spoke eight languages fluently, could write in 12, and may have known phrases in up to 50 altogether, since his home contained books in up to that many languages. The guy not only wrote sympathetically about Native-Americans in “The Song of Hiawatha,” but did so in the meter of a Finnish epic. Talk about multicultural!
The “Wayside Inn” of the title, Longfellow told intimates, was based on a similar establishment, the 200-year-old Red Horse Tavern, in Sudbury, Mass., and several of the figures in the book—the poet, the Sicilian, and the theologian—were not only real but had spent summer months at the inn.
Nine years after his decision to leave his teaching position at Harvard, Longfellow had made a successful transition into becoming the first American to make his living entirely and successfully as a poet. His publisher’s decision to bring out Tales of a Wayside Inn in an edition of 15,000 recognized that level of success.
But at the hour of his greatest professional triumph, Longfellow would be indelibly touched, as so many families were, North and South, in those years, by the terrible bloodshed taking place in the South.
An abolitionist who had welcomed the election of Lincoln as “the redemption of the country,” Longfellow was already noting by April 23, 1861 the “weary days of wars and rumors of wars, and marching of troops, and flags waving and people talking.” Within a few more months, I believe, his view of the conflict would alter further by troubles closer to home.
In July, his beloved wife Fanny died when her light summer dress caught fire as he was using hot wax. Longfellow—who had tried to save her by wrapping her in a library rug, then by wrapping himself around her when that didn’t work—was disconsolate—a gloom that deepened when, the day after her funeral, his father-in-law also died.
Longfellow’s unwillingness not to put another family member in harm’s way might account for why he forbade son Charles from joining the Union Army, even if he agreed that the cause was just and so many of Harvard friends were joining the fight.
But Charles Longfellow loved adventure and was dismissive of danger—he had lost his left thumb after a gun accident at the age of 11—and, scorning the life of a privileged family, wanted to try his luck against the world. Nor surprisingly, the 19-year-old ran away to Northern Virginia, where he joined the First Massachusetts Cavalry, rising to the rank of lieutenant.
Only two days after Tales of a Wayside Inn was published, Charles was wounded in a skirmish near New Hope, Virginia. He sustained what could have been a mortal wound in the back. His father and brother Ernest, immediately notified of this, traveled to Washington and brought him home to Cambridge. Luckily, the teenager recovered and became an inveterate traveler, filling his journals with accounts of his encounters with Europe and especially the Far East, before he succumbed to pneumonia in 1893.
If you’re even slightly interested in historic travel, you should make it a point to visit the Longfellow National Historic Site (shown in the picture accompanying this post, which I took while on vacation last month) the next time you’re in the Boston area, for several reasons:
1) You’ll learn not only about one usually talented man—Longfellow—but several generations of fascinating people: John Vassall, the West Indies merchant forced to flee his gorgeous Georgian mansion here beyond of Loyalist tendencies; George Washington, who made this house his headquarters during the siege of Boston; and Nathaniel Appleton, who, as a wealthy man, was in a position to buy this house and present it to his daughter and son-in-law as a wedding present;
2) Longfellow’s children remained in the house for more than 30 years after his death in 1882, so unlike the Edith Wharton and Mark Twain mansions elsewhere in New England, there was no need to reconstruct the look of the home in its heyday; and
3) It’s a great opportunity to learn something about a poet who deserves rediscovery and reevaluation.
Longfellow’s once lofty, even unparalleled, reputation has declined, in my opinion, for a couple of reasons. First, he came to be viewed as a children’s author, practically the kiss of death. There was not only his poem “The Children’s Hour,” famous for the phrase “the patter of little feet,” but that first line of “Paul Revere’s Ride”—“Listen, my children, and you shall hear…” Second, he gave voice to middle-class, Victorian morality, extolling the virtues of hard work and religious piety—and posterity loves rebellion much more.
I think he deserves closer study. To start with, so many of his verses have passed into popular memory for a good reason: they’re skillful. He possessed a wide-ranging intellect and cultural sophistication that surpassed Whitman and Emily Dickinson, who, let me hasten to add, were no slouches in this department. Unlike many of his contemporaries—and, I should say, many of the greatest figures of 20th and 21st century American literature—Longfellow was blessedly tolerant of those who did not share his Anglo-Saxon background.
If you want, consider Longfellow American poetry’s answer to Broadway composer Oscar Hammerstein II: a figure whose seeming surface sentimentality belies a man of considerable intellect, sophistication, and liberal belief in the best possibilities of Americans.)
1 comment:
Sorry to respond to an old post - but this was a great one. The tragedy of Mrs. Longfellow's death cannot be overstated, especially considering the sincere and passionate love the couple shared, somewhat unusual for 19th century couple. I also note that her funeral was held on their wedding anniversary.
I agree with your assessment as to why Longfellow has fallen off the poetic radar. I also note the changing sentiments and style in poetry after Longfellow. I have made the argument that the modern poets who so loudly denounced Longfellow should remember that their poetry could not exist if it weren't for Longfellow's creation of traditional American poetry.
Great post!
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