May 30, ’46.
To Mrs. Crawford.
… For this summer my great themes of interest are Annie’s[2] marriage and Fofo’s teeth. Flossy, as Julia calls her, is as healthy a child as one can see. She creeps on the floor all day, and can pull herself up by a chair, and stand for a long time, though she is just nine months old. … I confess my spirits have risen wonderfully since I left the institution. My little corner is so green and pretty, so quiet and hidden from all. I have not those dreadful stairs to go up and down, all the rooms are so near together. I need not lose sight of the children at any time. …
2. My aunt, Anne Eliza Ward, who married Adolphe Mailliard.
June 17, 1847.
… I stay at home pretty much all day, and generally all the evening, too. I write stories and verses, and when my eyes are tired I paste pictures in the nursery scrap-book, which is in great demand. In another year I shall have a governess for Julia, who is getting too big to be left with a servant. She and Flossy come on well with their French. …
Nov. 31, ’47.
… Yesterday I incautiously used the word devil, and Julia said, “Mamma, that is not a pretty word; you had better say villain.” They are both as lovely as children can be. The little one is passionately attached to her sister and cries whenever they are separated. …
My father hired a house in Mount Vernon Street, in the years 1847–50, and of this I have still some recollections. The most interesting is that of a day in February, 1850, when my father carried all his three children down-stairs on his back, in a single load, to see our new little sister. She was later named Laura, after my father’s noted pupil, Laura Bridgman, and Elizabeth, after his sister. As Mrs. Laura E. Richards, author of many nursery rhymes and juvenile books, she has since been beloved by several generations of little folk.
Our brother, Henry Marion Howe, was not quite two years old when he came down on his father’s back to welcome sister Laura into this bustling world. Although, on one occasion, when he plunged her into the horse-trough, he nearly helped her out of it, they were throughout their childhood inseparable friends and companions.
Other memories of those years, 1847–50, relate to my earliest school-days. We went to a private school near by, kept by a Miss Watson, Paper dolls, made or contributed by the older girls, and peach leather loom large in these recollections of school attendance. The latter delicious article of food was a species of stiff marmalade prepared in a sheet about half an inch thick. This was rolled up tightly, and a piece, which was literally a jelly roll, was cut off the end. You could not only eat this, but you could first, happy thought, uncoil it. In old Southern cook-books the receipt for making peach leather can be found. Ours came from Professor and Mrs. Lieber, the former being at that time connected with Columbia College in South Carolina. He has been gratefully remembered, during the present war, as one of the freedom-loving Germans of earlier days.
Somehow or other I learned to read, for I can remember being conversant with my Reader before I was five years old—according to the custom of that day.
In the early summer of 1850 our parents, with the younger children, Harry and Laura, sailed for Europe. As became a child of New England, I was extremely reserved, and it was thought a pleasant sign when, as the family were about to depart, I wept. Alas! Investigation revealed that my tears were really connected with the little Greek almonds—doubtless too few had been allotted to me. In justice to myself I must say that on the return, eighteen months later, of my mother, brother and sister, I found tears of joy in my eyes.
My eldest sister and I were left in the custody of our faithful nurse, Lizzie, and in the care of friends. We spent the summer happily at Concord, Massachusetts. Hearing the bells toll one day, we asked the reason, and were told that General Taylor (then President of the United States) was dead.
One happy autumn day there was a cry of, “Papa! Papa!” and we rushed down the street into his arms. He could not remain away longer from America, owing to his many cares. We were now installed in the delightful home “Green Peace,” with an efficient housekeeper, Mrs. Stanwood, to care for us.
A sad memory comes back to me out of this distant past. On a certain summer day the blind pupils and their teachers made an excursion to the seaside, sister Julia and I going with them. Nurse Lizzie allowed us to go in bathing, but cautioned us to hold tightly to a rock whose head rose above the water.
With childish bravado, I let go, calling on the others to look at me. Suddenly a great wave dashed over me, but not more quickly than Lizzie, who rushed in and dragged me out, all dressed as she was. She never recovered from the cold taken that day, dying of consumption not long afterward. I must have been five or six years old at the time of the funeral. I remember seeing the face of the devoted nurse lying white and still beneath the glass of the coffin. I remember, too, that all knelt on the earth around the grave, the service being according to the Roman Catholic ritual.
While “Green Peace” remained our home for many years, its situation on the southerly slope of a hill made it warm in summer. Accordingly, in 1852 my father and the poet Longfellow hired a house on the cliffs at Newport, with the understanding that no other boarders should be received except those of whom they approved. The company that assembled beneath the roof of this early “Cliff House” was of a literary turn of mind. Count Gurowski nicknamed it “Hôtel Rambouillet.” A daguerreotype is still in existence showing Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow, my mother, Mrs. Freeman (wife of the artist), and Mr. Thomas Gold Appleton, the noted wit. A broad smile pervades the group, doubtless due to the fact that in those early days of photography the victims were obliged to sit some twenty minutes before the camera.
George William Curtis was among the favored few who spent that summer at the “Cliff House.” He was then a handsome young bachelor who went to balls and parties. Alas! Near his room was the Howe nursery, and the children, who took no part in the social gaieties of Newport, arose at an early hour. Our noise and that of our portable tin bath-tub sadly disturbed the morning slumbers of the “Howadji.”
I was a little girl of an independent turn of mind and objected decidedly to being kissed. Some of the gentlemen thought this very amusing in a child of barely seven, and delighted in teasing me. To enter or leave the house was a feat of daring, for the enemy might be lurking in the shadow of the hall, ready to catch me. Once, at least, I was seized and held up in the air by a Mr. G——. “Now I’ve got you!” he exclaimed. He was soon glad to put down a very irate and struggling little girl. The foolish custom of kissing children indiscriminately has happily gone out of fashion.
Another sad memory of that summer rises before me. I see on the lawn of “Cliff House” my silver mug, with a deep wound in its side. One of the gentlemen, espying it in the grass, took it for a pewter vessel and obligingly discharged his pistol at it.
The Longfellow boys, Charles and Ernest, who were of nearly the same age as sister Julia and I, were our pleasant playfellows. Speculating on their father’s height, they declared that he ought to be called Mr. Shortfellow rather than Mr. Longfellow. I do not so well recall his appearance at the “Cliff House,” but a year or so later he emerges from my childish recollections as an alert, slender and rather short man, with a cheerful expression of countenance and remarkably bright blue eyes. My uncle, Samuel Ward, declared they were like blue water-lilies. His hair was then sandy, with a dash of gray, and his sensitive mouth was not concealed by either beard or mustache, for he wore only side-whiskers.
In those early days he did not, to my thinking, look as poetical as in later years. It was customary in Boston to speak of him as Professor Longfellow, as he then filled the Harvard chair of belles-lettres. His predecessor, George L. Ticknor, author of a history of Spanish literature, was not well pleased at giving up his office. Instead of bequeathing his Spanish library to Harvard College, he left it to the Boston Public Library, with strict injunctions that the books should not be allowed