Part 10 (1/2)

SIR,--I perceive with great regret, by your letter of the 3d Inst.

that, although you have followed with due precision the prescriptions of the German Doctor who

corpus recenti sparget aqua,

convalescence is not yet attained, but that the water spirit has announced that another year is required in order to obtain the full benefit of his draughts and ablutions. The fact is a source of great sorrow to your friends and of no less embarra.s.sment to the Corporation of the College. The granting the leave of six months'

absence was effected, not without difficulty. Doubts were expressed concerning the possibility of your realizing your expectations, within the period you specified; and the objections were surmounted only on your a.s.surance that you would return in October, and that the benefit of your instructions should not be lost, by any [cla.s.s]

of the college, according to the arrangements you made. It was on this fact, and on this a.s.surance alone, that a.s.sent of the Corporation was obtained. By the proposition you now make the present Senior cla.s.s will be deprived of the advantages, on which they have a right to calculate and have been taught to expect.

Under the circ.u.mstances of the case, the Corporation do not feel themselves willing absolutely to withhold their a.s.sent to your protracting your absence as you propose; at the same time they are compelled by their sense of duty & I am authorized to state, that they, regarding themselves, not as proprietors, but as trustees, of the funds under their control, cannot deem themselves justified in paying the salary of the Professors.h.i.+p to a Professor, not resident & not performing its duties. They value your services very highly, and are therefore willing, if you see fit to remain another year in Europe, to keep the Professors.h.i.+p open for your return; but I am directed to say that, in such case, your salary must cease, at the end of the current quarter--viz. on the 30 of November next.

The obligation thus imposed on the Corporation, it is very painful to them to fulfil, but they cannot otherwise execute the trust they have undertaken, conformably to their sense of duty.

And now, Sir, permit me to express my best wishes for your health; the high sense I entertain of your talents and attainments and the unaltered esteem & respect with which I am, most truly.

Your friend and hl'e S't.

JOSIAH QUINCY.{60}

CAMBRIDGE.

30. Sep. 1842.

Longfellow spent his summer at the water-cure in Marienberg, with some diverging trips, as those to Paris, Antwerp, and Bruges. In Paris he took a letter to Jules Janin, now pretty well forgotten, but then the foremost critic in Paris, who disliked the society of literary men, saying that he never saw them and never wished to see them; and who had quarrelled personally with all the French authors, except Lamartine, whom he p.r.o.nounced ”as good as an angel.” In Bruges the young traveller took delight in the belfry, and lived to transmit some of its charms to others. At Antwerp he had the glories of the cathedral, the memory of Quintin Matsys, and the paintings of Rubens. His home at Marienberg was in an ancient cloister for n.o.ble nuns, converted into a water-cure, then a novelty and much severer in its discipline than its later copies in America, to one of which, however, Longfellow himself went later as a patient,--that of Dr. Wesselhoeft at Brattleboro, Vermont. He met or read German poets also,--Becker, Herwegh, Lenau, Auersberg, Zedlitz, and Freiligrath, with the latter of whom he became intimate; indeed reading aloud to admiring nuns his charming poem about ”The Flowers' Revenge”

(_Der Blumen Rache_). He just missed seeing Uhland, the only German poet then more popular than Freiligrath; he visited camps of 50,000 troops and another camp of naturalists at Mayence. Meantime, he heard from Prescott, Sumner, and Felton at home; the ”Spanish Student” went through the press, and his friend Hawthorne was married. He finally sailed for home on October 22, 1842, and occupied himself on the voyage in writing a small volume of poems on slavery.

{56 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. ix. 318.}

{57 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. ix. 336.}

{58 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. x. 363.}

{59 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xi. 153.}

{60 _Harvard College Papers_ [MS.], 2d ser. xi. 187.}

CHAPTER XIV

ANTI-SLAVERY POEMS AND SECOND MARRIAGE

It is difficult now to realize what an event in Longfellow's life was the fact of his writing a series of anti-slavery poems on board s.h.i.+p and publis.h.i.+ng them in a thin pamphlet on his return. Parties on the subject were already strongly drawn; the anti-slavery party being itself divided into subdivisions which criticised each other sharply. Longfellow's temperament was thoroughly gentle and shunned extremes, so that the little thin yellow-covered volume came upon the community with something like a shock. As a matter of fact, various influences had led him up to it. His father had been a subscriber to Benjamin Lundy's ”Genius of Universal Emanc.i.p.ation,” the precursor of Garrison's ”Liberator.” In his youth at Brunswick, Longfellow had thought of writing a drama on the subject of ”Toussaint l'Ouverture,” his reason for it being thus given, ”that thus I may do something in my humble way for the great cause of negro emanc.i.p.ation.”

Margaret Fuller, who could by no means be called an abolitionist, described the volume as ”the thinnest of all Mr. Longfellow's thin books; spirited and polished like its forerunners; but the subject would warrant a deeper tone.” On the other hand, the editors of ”Graham's Magazine” wrote to Mr. Longfellow that ”the word slavery was never allowed to appear in a Philadelphia periodical,” and that ”the publisher objected to have even the name of the book appear in his pages.” His friend Samuel Ward, always an agreeable man of the world, wrote from New York of the poems, ”They excite a good deal of attention and sell rapidly. I have sent one copy to the South and others shall follow,” and includes Longfellow among ”you abolitionists.” The effect of the poems was unquestionably to throw him on the right side of the great moral contest then rising to its climax, while he incurred, like his great compeers, Channing, Emerson, and Sumner, some criticism from the pioneers. Such differences are inevitable among reformers, whose internal contests are apt to be more strenuous and formidable than those incurred between opponents; and recall to mind that remark of Cosmo de Medici which Lord Bacon called ”a desperate saying;” namely, that ”Holy Writ bids us to forgive our enemies, but it is nowhere enjoined upon us that we should forgive our friends.”

To George Lunt, a poet whose rhymes Longfellow admired, but who bitterly opposed the anti-slavery movement, he writes his programme as follows:--

”I am sorry you find so much to gainsay in my Poems on Slavery. I shall not argue the point with you, however, but will simply state to you my belief.