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Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Emmeline (Austin) Wadsworth, 21 April 1851
Manuscript letter
Cambridge April 21st
1851.
Dearest Em,
I know not how so much time has intervened between my last letter & this – I can plead nothing but laziness, I fear, which grows upon me, more & more in the matter of writing until I long for a private electric telegraph which could have some connecting wire with my brain & heart & so throw off their messages. During the Sim’s affair I did not feel like writing, the humiliation of the whole thing poisoned all my thoughts, as does this cool claim of the South to establish a black mail upon our consciences & purses. If I did not know there was a heart still beating purely in the country I could quit it in disgust to see the great Republic degraded into a slave-market throughout, & its merchants asked to sell the principles for which they became a nation to satisfy a local [p. 2] tyranny. It makes me marvel King George was ever resisted, & how many, in Boston, would be tories now & know Liberty but as a name! But, thank God, there are also many to whom it is a reality, & daily a good man is added to their ranks. This case brought our old travelling companion Mr Loring forward as a defender of the oppressed, & I honor not a little him who has courage to face public abuse in such a position.
I was in town on Saturday & heard of Harriet Appleton’s engagement to Gordon Dexter which I have no doubt is a good one – a very pleasant connexion for me from my old acquaintance with the D’s.
One of the Miss Thorndike’s (the oldest) is engaged to Bañuelos the handsome Spanish Secretary I may have written you about him from Washington. The mother gave him a very ungracious reception, thinking him a mere adventurer, & it is not a pleasant marriage to contemplate. She has no beauty to attach him & tho’ he is of high family, is a dash [p. 3] ing fellow & will probably be any thing but faithful as a spouse.
I have thought much of Lizzy in reading Curtis’ charming book on the Nile which we have greatly enjoyed because it is so steeped in the golden atmosphere of youth & of the East with Tennysonian pictures & impressions rather than details. There are plenty of books for the latter, but the languid flow of the style of this is full of the poetry of the climate & you breathe its air yourself. How Lizzy must enjoy all this beauty & wealth of association with such happiness as hers for interpreter. I have been dipping into Mrs Browning too lately, & am more than ever amazed at her prodigious genius, so strong yet so purely feminine & tender, so holy with the deepest reverence. Her love sonnets in the last edition I have not seen, that is not all, but the few I have are unequalled for depth & sacredness of feeling, written with her very heart's blood. I can hardly bear to see them in [p. 4] print, - & yet all lovers will feel grateful for them. Hawthorne's Seven Gables is a wonderful book – of very high genius, so artistically treated & completed, & such portraits, with modern times made poetical by the subtle mysteries of antiquity, with an awful beauty like all of his. I went to see Mrs Shaw on Saturday & found her with miniatures of Coolidge, in his Jesuit’s dress, open on one side of her, & of Elizabeth, so blooming & with such ripe, red lips I could not believe they were no more, on the other. She talked freely of both, & seems to take a high pride in her son’s lofty character. How sorrow dignifies all faces I thought as I saw hers & her husbands, who, entering & seeing how we were occupied, changed his State St one for one so much softer & more human. Henry has lost his Uncle, Commodore Wadsworth, as you may have seen by the papers. He was a favourite brother of his mother, & I feel as if she had won his release from his sad state of helplessness His portrait, in full manly beauty, hangs in the parlor at Portland, & since I have known him he was still a fine looking man. [p. 1 cross] I wrote you I think of my father’s arrival at St Thomas – Tom enjoys his independance [sic] at the Tremont on the whole but has his trunk packed he says. The Lowells sail in July & half tempt us to go too to Genoa direct. It does not seem to be quite comfortably enough quiet in that direction I should not care to be in England this year. I do not forget, dearest that May is to bring you as well as flowers – more surely I hope. How did you stand the storm, but it did not reach you perhaps. We were unimpressed tho [p. 2 cross] the causeway was quite overflowed & was a strange dreary sight –
with much love to Wm & kisses to the boys ever yr
affte Fanny
[p. 3 cross] We had Tupper here – the small man of great fame in a small way!
1851.
Dearest Em,
I know not how so much time has intervened between my last letter & this – I can plead nothing but laziness, I fear, which grows upon me, more & more in the matter of writing until I long for a private electric telegraph which could have some connecting wire with my brain & heart & so throw off their messages. During the Sim’s affair I did not feel like writing, the humiliation of the whole thing poisoned all my thoughts, as does this cool claim of the South to establish a black mail upon our consciences & purses. If I did not know there was a heart still beating purely in the country I could quit it in disgust to see the great Republic degraded into a slave-market throughout, & its merchants asked to sell the principles for which they became a nation to satisfy a local [p. 2] tyranny. It makes me marvel King George was ever resisted, & how many, in Boston, would be tories now & know Liberty but as a name! But, thank God, there are also many to whom it is a reality, & daily a good man is added to their ranks. This case brought our old travelling companion Mr Loring forward as a defender of the oppressed, & I honor not a little him who has courage to face public abuse in such a position.
I was in town on Saturday & heard of Harriet Appleton’s engagement to Gordon Dexter which I have no doubt is a good one – a very pleasant connexion for me from my old acquaintance with the D’s.
One of the Miss Thorndike’s (the oldest) is engaged to Bañuelos the handsome Spanish Secretary I may have written you about him from Washington. The mother gave him a very ungracious reception, thinking him a mere adventurer, & it is not a pleasant marriage to contemplate. She has no beauty to attach him & tho’ he is of high family, is a dash [p. 3] ing fellow & will probably be any thing but faithful as a spouse.
I have thought much of Lizzy in reading Curtis’ charming book on the Nile which we have greatly enjoyed because it is so steeped in the golden atmosphere of youth & of the East with Tennysonian pictures & impressions rather than details. There are plenty of books for the latter, but the languid flow of the style of this is full of the poetry of the climate & you breathe its air yourself. How Lizzy must enjoy all this beauty & wealth of association with such happiness as hers for interpreter. I have been dipping into Mrs Browning too lately, & am more than ever amazed at her prodigious genius, so strong yet so purely feminine & tender, so holy with the deepest reverence. Her love sonnets in the last edition I have not seen, that is not all, but the few I have are unequalled for depth & sacredness of feeling, written with her very heart's blood. I can hardly bear to see them in [p. 4] print, - & yet all lovers will feel grateful for them. Hawthorne's Seven Gables is a wonderful book – of very high genius, so artistically treated & completed, & such portraits, with modern times made poetical by the subtle mysteries of antiquity, with an awful beauty like all of his. I went to see Mrs Shaw on Saturday & found her with miniatures of Coolidge, in his Jesuit’s dress, open on one side of her, & of Elizabeth, so blooming & with such ripe, red lips I could not believe they were no more, on the other. She talked freely of both, & seems to take a high pride in her son’s lofty character. How sorrow dignifies all faces I thought as I saw hers & her husbands, who, entering & seeing how we were occupied, changed his State St one for one so much softer & more human. Henry has lost his Uncle, Commodore Wadsworth, as you may have seen by the papers. He was a favourite brother of his mother, & I feel as if she had won his release from his sad state of helplessness His portrait, in full manly beauty, hangs in the parlor at Portland, & since I have known him he was still a fine looking man. [p. 1 cross] I wrote you I think of my father’s arrival at St Thomas – Tom enjoys his independance [sic] at the Tremont on the whole but has his trunk packed he says. The Lowells sail in July & half tempt us to go too to Genoa direct. It does not seem to be quite comfortably enough quiet in that direction I should not care to be in England this year. I do not forget, dearest that May is to bring you as well as flowers – more surely I hope. How did you stand the storm, but it did not reach you perhaps. We were unimpressed tho [p. 2 cross] the causeway was quite overflowed & was a strange dreary sight –
with much love to Wm & kisses to the boys ever yr
affte Fanny
[p. 3 cross] We had Tupper here – the small man of great fame in a small way!
Archives Number: 1011/002.001-021#014
U. S. National Park Service
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Correspondence (1011/002), (LONG-SeriesName)
, Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001), (LONG-SubseriesName)
, 1851 (1011/002.001-021), (LONG-FileUnitName)
, Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001), (LONG-SubseriesName)
, 1851 (1011/002.001-021), (LONG-FileUnitName)
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Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, Code: LONG
Longfellow House - Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, Middlesex County, Massachusetts
Latitude: 42.3769989013672, Longitude: -71.1264038085938
Latitude: 42.3769989013672, Longitude: -71.1264038085938
NPS Museum Number Catalog : LONG 20257
Title: Finding Aid to the Frances Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow (1817-1861) Papers, 1825-1961 (bulk dated: 1832-1861)
URL: https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/historyculture/archives.htm#FEAL
URL: https://www.nps.gov/long/learn/historyculture/archives.htm#FEAL
2016-01-30
04/21/1851
Manuscript letter in Frances Appleton Longfellow Papers, Series II. Correspondence, A. Outgoing, 1851. (1011/002.001-021#014)
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Organization: Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
Address: 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: LONG_archives@nps.gov
Address: 105 Brattle Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Email: LONG_archives@nps.gov
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 5:46:39 PM
Wednesday, November 9, 2022 5:46:39 PM
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