With Mr. Longfellow himself Mr. Ticknor maintained pleasant and friendly relations, as we see by the poet’s letters.
I remember very well a charming children’s party given in the pleasant grounds adjoining the old “Craigie House.”
The mansion is Colonial in style, and with its wide verandas, has an ample front of more than eighty feet. As a child, the interior, with its spacious halls and rooms, impressed me more than the exterior. The former had an aspect of comfort and of a certain elegance which bespoke the refined and scholarly tastes of its owner. This was not so common at that time as it is now, when interior decoration is so much studied.
Great clumps of sweet-flowered shrubs grew about the dear old house, as if longing to shield it from the dust and traffic of the wayside. Here blossomed the sweetest of old-fashioned spring flowers, the lilac, and the starry syringas which were so much more fragrant than the modern more showy variety of the same flower.
Mr. Longfellow was an extremely kind and indulgent father and his boys, like other boys whom we have all known, sometimes abused his kindness. Across the pleasant memories of the “Craigie House” party lies the shadow of our virtuous indignation at the conduct of the boys, who, as he thought, cheated us out of our fair share of candy. The calm reflection of later years suggests that the spirit of fun and adventure rather than mere rapacity may have influenced their conduct. The girls were too young to accept their defeat in the true sporting spirit.
The coveted bonbons were showered upon us from a scrabble-bag, to wit, a large, brown-paper bag filled with candy and hung above our heads. At some parties the scrabble-bag also contained raisins and popped corn, but at the “Craigie House” I can remember only great showers of candy.
The children were in turn blindfolded, armed with a stick, then bidden to advance and bring down the contents of the bag with three blows. It was hung from the bough of a tree, the bonbons came down pellmell upon the grass and we all scrambled for them.
Mr. Longfellow, who must evidently have had assistants, was most active and energetic; I should be afraid to say how many brown-paper bags were hung up, a great number of them succumbing in turn to our childish onslaughts.
The boys established a sort of robbers’ den, or retreat, in one of the lofty trees of the dear old garden; here they would fly for protection when hard pressed by the enemy, returning to the attack when the sugar-plums were about to descend. It is but just to the Longfellow boys to say that they were usually pleasant playfellows. My sister Julia and I had many merry times with them before the dreadful catastrophe of Mrs. Longfellow’s death threw its dark shadow over the household.
It will be remembered that her thin summer dress caught fire while she was making seals to amuse her children. In those days of crinoline such an accident was almost certain to end fatally. The hoopskirt was a fire-trap of the most deadly sort.
For a long time after the tragic death of his wife the poet withdrew from all society.
We saw him occasionally in later years, when the gold of his hair had turned to silver. His beautiful snow-white hair and beard seemed almost like a halo surrounding his poetic face. The blue eyes retained their brightness, in spite of advancing years. It was always a red-letter day when he accepted an invitation to dine or spend an evening at our house, although he was, in the latter part of his life, rather a silent guest. But the charm of his presence was great, and what he said was, of course, well worth hearing.
Our mother always remembered his description of my sister Julia. In her beautiful young womanhood she was often tormented with the “Howe shyness” which seemed to form a slight but impalpable barrier between her and the world, until she became so much interested in the conversation as to forget herself. Mr. Longfellow said of her, “Julia is like a veiled lily.”
A curious myth prevailed at one time about a daughter of the poet. The artist who painted a portrait group of the three charming children placed one of them in such a position as to conceal both her arms. This picture was reproduced in an engraving which adorned the walls of many houses. Hence the fable arose that one of Mr. Longfellow’s daughters had no arms. Two ladies were lamenting this fact in a Cambridge horse-car when a Harvard professor overheard them. Thinking they would be glad to be set right, he addressed them: “Ladies, I know the Longfellow family well, and I am happy to be able to tell you that all three of the little girls have the usual number of arms.”
Rash is the man who thus seeks to overthrow a popular delusion! Drawing herself up, one of the ladies replied, “Sir, we have it on the best authority that one of Mr. Longfellow’s daughters HAS NO ARMS!”
The children’s parties given at Cambridge in the days of my childhood were certainly very delightful occasions. The old régime, under which distinguished men were chosen as professors at Harvard College, still prevailed at that time. When President Eliot took office he is said to have chosen men rather for their ability as instructors than for their claims to literary or scientific distinction. Professor Child, well known for his exhaustive collection of ballads, doubtless possessed both kinds of merit, since he was retained on the Harvard faculty, as I think, throughout his life. Generations of students remember him as the stern but humorous critic whose caustic comments stayed the noble current of their rage and withered many a youthful burst of eloquence with the unfeeling remark “spread-eagle.”
From this accustomed severity he would unbend on a midsummer afternoon, and frolic about with the children as if he had been one of them. Full of jokes, fun and nonsense, he was the life and soul of a certain merry June day which rises before me out of the mist of childish recollections. As he tumbled about in the new-mown hay, among his little friends, or sat down on the grass while we gathered about to listen to his stories, he seemed to me a very funny man. And yet I wondered, with a certain gravity of imagination peculiar to early childhood, why he should bring himself down to our level. Why, being a grown man, he should find it amusing to tumble in the hay. With his short figure, close-curling yellow hair, and decidedly retroussé nose, he certainly looked like the genius of comedy; but nothing about him seemed to me half so funny as a singular, light-colored felt hat which he wore. It was nearly as tall as that of the ordinary circus clown and had a rounded or dome-shaped crown. Under the skilful and amusing manipulation of its owner it certainly afforded us a great deal of amusement on that festal day. Alas! In later years he wore just an ordinary hat.
IV
OUR EARLY LITERARY ACTIVITIES
The Howe Children Invent a “Patagonian Language,” Edit a Newspaper, “The Listener,” Write Plays and Songs.—They Give “Parlor Concerts” and Take Part in Tableaux and Private Theatricals.—William Story and Thackeray.
I HAVE spoken of the Institution for the Blind as our intermittent or occasional home. The autumn of 1854 found us established there for a stay of more than a year.
The Crimean War was then going on, our parents being much interested in it. Their sympathies were with the Allies as against Russia, the little Howes duly reflecting the opinion of their parents. We followed the course of events in Punch and the Illustrated London News. Indeed, the London Charivari, with its excellent cartoons by Tenniel, John Leech and others, played quite a part in our early political education. We duly admired the sprightly Lord Palmerston, smiled at funny little Lord John Russell perpetually wheeling a reform bill in a perambulator, and entirely disapproved of “Dizzy” with his acrobatic tricks. Although Punch approved of Louis Napoleon, ally of England, our parents never did. Popular sympathy in America was, if I remember aright, on the side of Russia, witness the ballad of “Pop Goes the Weasel.”
Queen Victoria’s very sick;
Napoleon’s got the measles;
Sebastopol’s not taken yet.
Pop