Showing posts with label Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Show all posts

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Charles Sumner to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, January 24, 1850

[January 24, 1850.]
DEAR HENRY,

Whittier is here on a short visit. I go to-night with Miss Bremer to hear Wendell Phillips, and to-morrow evening dine out, or I should insist upon taking him [Whittier] to you. He is staying at the Quincy Hotel, in Brattle Street.

I regret the sentiments of John Van Buren about mobs, but rejoice that he is right on slavery. I do not know that I should differ very much from him in saying that we have more to fear from the corruption of wealth than from mobs. Edmund Dwight once gave, within my knowledge, two thousand dollars to influence a single election. Other men whom we know very well are reputed to have given much larger sums. It is in this way, in part, that the natural antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts has been kept down; it is money, money, money, that keeps Palfrey from being elected. Knowing these things, it was natural that John Van Buren should say that we had more to fear from wealth than from mobs. He is a politician,—not a philanthropist or moralist, but a politician, like Clay, Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence; and he has this advantage, that he has dedicated his rare powers to the cause of human freedom. In this I would welcome any person from any quarter.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 212

Friday, September 6, 2019

Diary of to Amos A. Lawrence: November 17, 1858

President Walker, Chief Justice Shaw, Judge G. T. Bigelow, Rev. Dr. Putnam, Professors Agassiz and Longfellow, Messrs. David Sears, W. Appleton, E. Rockwood Hoar, Jared Sparks, and J. A. Lowell dined here at four o'clock. They had an agreeable meeting. Chief Justice Shaw took Mrs. Lawrence in to dinner, though I asked Dr. Walker to do so; the former (who is seventy-eight) being more active than Dr. Walker, who is lame. The dinner was cooked by our own cook, Marion, and they all were cheerful and even gay; nor did they leave the dining-room until they went away. Mr. Agassiz sat next to me and talked all the time. I asked him whether some anecdotes about him in the newspapers to-day were true, but he had not seen them. Then I repeated one about his replying to a person who offered him a large sum for some lectures, “that he was too busy to waste his time in making money;” and this he pronounced to be true.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 158-9

Friday, April 5, 2019

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, July 4, 1852

Boston, July 4th, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I got your note yesterday, and read most of it to Carter;1 afterwards I sent it to Parker, to be used with care. I have done what I could in a quiet way to inspire others with the confidence I feel in the final success of your plan. I received this morning a note from Parker (written of course before I sent yours) which I think it best to send you. A wise man likes to know how the wind blows, though he may have determined not to vary his course, even for a tempest. I wrote to Parker saying that he was lacking faith, and I feared beginning to lack charity — things in which he had abounded towards you.

I think the crying sin, and the great disturbing force in the path of our politicians is approbativeness; they let public opinion be to them in lieu of a conscience. So will not you do.

I want you to raise your voice and enter your protest, not because it is for your interest to do so, but for the sake of the cause, and of the good it will surely do. The present is yours, the future may not be; you may never go back to Washington even should you be spared in life and health. Again, it may be imprudent to wait till the last opportunity, for when that comes you may be prostrated by illness. Mann made a remark in one of his late letters about you, which I think I have more than once made to you, viz: that you yield obedience to all God's laws of morality, but think you are exempt from any obligation to obey his laws of physiology. You will have a breakdown some time that will make you realize that to ruin the mental powers by destroying that on which they depend is about as bad as neglecting to cultivate them.

However, what I mean to say is this: that though you would not heed all the world's urging you to speak if you thought it your duty to be silent, yet believing with all your friends that you ought to speak, you must not vista everything, in the hope of doing so at a particular moment, when you may be disabled by sickness.

Downer said to-day: “I don't see how it is to be, yet I have great faith that Sumner will come off with flying colours.” He would say so, even if you were prevented from speaking at all this session, and so should I, but so would few others.

Julia has returned and is well; so are all my beautiful and dear children. We go to Newport next Monday to stay awhile in the house with Longfellow, Appleton, etc.2 No news here. Daniel [Webster] is determined to show fight; he has much blood, and it is very black. . . .

S. G. H.
_______________

1 Robert Carter

2 At Cliff House. The party consisted of my father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Longfellow and their children, George William Curtis, Thomas G. Appleton, and two or three others.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 382-3

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

Diary of Amos A. Lawrence: November 3, 1856


The newspapers advertise Mr. Sumner's reception to take place to-day: that he will be received by a committee at my house, thence taken to Boston, where he will be received at the Roxbury line by the Mayor and city authorities and a cavalcade of citizens, and an address to be made to him by Josiah Quincy, Sen. (eighty-six years old), thence to the state house, where he will be welcomed by the Governor.

I went to Boston as usual. Came out at one. Found Mr. Sumner here, with Mr. Longfellow, Rev. Dr. Huntington, Dr. Perry, his physician, and his brother George.

He lunched, conversed with a reporter for the press, and gave him his speech in manuscript, after which I sent the reporter to town. He appears well when sitting, but is feeble when standing. I gave him a parlor to himself, and shut him up to avoid fatigue and enable him to prepare his speeches. He was here an hour and a half. I gave him some wine before starting, then delivered him over to the committee, who were in barouches. They had reserved a seat for me by the side of Mr. Sumner, but I declined to go. I thought the committee were disappointed, and also at seeing a Fillmore flag flying at the side of my house. But they had told me the reception was to be without distinction of party, and I took them on their own ground. After dinner I drove to town with Sarah and the children. Saw the procession from Mr. Appleton's. A long cavalcade, music, then carriages with Mr. Sumner and his friends.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 142-3

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Senator Charles Sumner, March 15, 1852

Boston, Thursday, March 15, 1852.

Dearest Sumner: — I write you from my house, to which I have been confined by a more than commonly severe attack of neuralgia. I have been indisposed four days, or else I should have studied the land question in order to be able to give a reason for the faith that is in me. I have a sort of instinct that you are in the right, but that you do not go far enough. This whole matter of ownership of God's earth, whether by individuals or by nations, has got to be ripped up and readjusted upon principles and considerations different from those ever yet entertained by any except those who are pooh-poohed down as visionaries.

I do not think the press can make much impression by their outcry against you; besides, that will cease now that Daniel, in order to make a little capital, has followed in your wake. However, I shall be out to-morrow, and will see what I can do.

Some of your friends, and good judicious ones, have been alarmed by the onslaught made upon you for your silence about slavery;1 and all Hunkerdom shouted “a hit! a capital hit!” when Judge Warren quoted something of yours about the effect of Washington atmosphere upon our Northern representatives &c. Some friends say that you cannot altogether get over an impression (if such should get abroad) that you had wavered, even by your being ever so firm afterwards. I do not share their alarm — not as yet. I do not much regard any temporary and passing policy got up by the daily press; by and by it will not be asked how long was Sumner silent — at what precise moment did he speak — but it will be asked did he speak out and speak bravely? I do think it important, and more than a matter of taste, that your speech should be well-timed, and seem to be called for. There are great and vital questions yet to come up about the Territories, and about California. However, I know nothing about the how, the why, the when — but this I know, you are true and brave—the Bayard of politicians, sans peur et sans reproche.

You will, I doubt not, give due weight to those considerations which your friends urge as calling for a speedy manifestation of your principles.

Vaughan is here, upon Kossuth business principally, but this is entre nous.

I have seen much of him; he is a very intelligent man and I think an honest one as politicians go.
I saw Longfellow at his beautiful home a few days ago.

I saw Palfrey too — growing rapidly into an old man; thin, wan and sad. He is a noble and beautiful spirit.

At the State House our friends are fighting for freedom in every way that seems to them likely to redound to their own credit and continue them in power.

They talk, you know, of violating the common law of custom, and running Rantoul into the Senate — but they will hardly venture, because they do not feel strong enough, and a defeat would be very bad. I am sorry they ever put out any feelers about it.

Your description of your genial days makes me sigh; to-day we have a cold easterly storm and the ground is covered with snow and sleet.

I had fully determined to leave on the first of April when my vacation at the Blind begins; but I have to look out for the Idiots.

Seguin2 has been here two months, and proves to be a man of great vigour of intellect, and full of resources; he has done wonders — but we can hardly keep him; he is full of self-esteem and exigeant to the uttermost; one of his conditions is that the Trustees shall not be allowed to hold any meetings without his being present. Another that neither the matron nor any teachers shall hold any communication with the parents of the pupils, &c., &c. Besides, he is choleric, not benevolent, and not very high in his motives.

C'est la gloire la gloire.

But I must close. Ever thine,
s. G. H.
_______________

1 See post, p. 382.

2 Dr. Edward Seguin, author of “De l'Idiotie,” etc., came in 1852 to “take charge of the school for Idiots long enough to organize the classes, and introduce his method of training.” This gentleman . . . was at the head of the first public institution (for the teaching of idiots,) organized in France.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 365-8

Friday, December 14, 2018

Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Louisa Storrow Higginson, July 10, 1859

July 10, 1859
Dearest Mother:

Emerson says, “To-day is a king in disguise”; and it is sometimes odd to think that these men and women of the "Atlantic Monthly," mere mortals to me, will one day be regarded as demi-gods, perhaps, and that it would seem as strange to another generation for me to have sat at the same table with Longfellow or Emerson, as it now seems that men should have sat at table with Wordsworth or with Milton. So I may as well tell you all about my inducting little Harriet Prescott into that high company.

She met me at twelve in Boston at Ticknor's and we spent a few hours seeing pictures and the aquarial gardens; the most prominent of the pictures being a sort of luncheon before our dinner; viz., Holmes and Longfellow in half length and very admirable, by Buchanan Read (I don't think any previous king in disguise ever had his portrait so well painted as this one, at any rate); also, by the same, a delicious painting of three Longfellow children — girls with their mother's eyes and Mary Greenleaf's coloring, at least three different modifications of it. . . .

In the course of these divertisements we stopped at Phillips's and Sampson's, where we encountered dear, dark, slender, simple, sensitive Whittier, trying to decide whether to "drink delight of battle with his peers" at the dinner-table, or slide shyly back to Amesbury in the next train. To introduce him to Harriet was like bringing a girl and a gazelle acquainted; each visibly wished to run away from the other; to Whittier a woman is a woman, and he was as bashful before the small authoress as if she were the greatest. Cheery John Wyman was persuading him to stay to dinner, and on my introducing him to my companion turned the battery of his good-nature upon her, pronouncing her story the most popular which had appeared in the magazine — “Oh, sir,” she whispered to me afterwards, “he spoke to me about my story — do you suppose anybody else will? I hope not.”

Duly at three we appeared at the Revere House. You are to understand that this was a special festival — prior to Mrs. Stowe's trip to Europe — and the admission of ladies was a new thing. Harriet was whirled away into some unknown dressing-room, and I found in another parlor Holmes, Lowell, Longfellow, Whipple, Edmund Quincy, Professor Stowe, Stillman the artist, Whittier (after all), Woodman, John Wyman, and Underwood. When dinner was confidentially announced, I saw a desire among the founders of the feast to do the thing handsomely toward the fair guests, and found, to my great amusement, that Mrs. Stowe and Harriet Prescott were the only ones! Nothing would have tempted my little damsel into such a position, I knew; but now she was in for it; to be handed in to dinner by the Autocrat himself, while Lowell took Mrs. Stowe I Miss Terry was at Saratoga and Mrs. Julia Howe suddenly detained; so these were alone. But how to get them downstairs — send up a servant or go ourselves? — that is, were they in a bedroom or a parlor; an obsequious attendant suddenly suggested the latter, so Lowell and I went up. In a small but superb room the authoress of “Uncle Tom” stood smoothing her ample plumage, while the junior lady hovered timidly behind. . . . Mrs. Stowe was quietly dressed in a Quakerish silk, but with a peculiar sort of artificial grape-leaf garland round her head which I could not examine more minutely; she looked very well, but I thought Harriet looked better; she had smoothed down her brown .curls, the only pretty thing about her, except a ladylike little figure, robed in the plainest imaginable black silk. . . .

Down we went: Dr. Holmes met us in the entry; each bowed lower than the other, and we all marched in together. Underwood had wished to place Edmund Quincy by Harriet, at his request, she being on Dr. Holmes's right — the Autocrat's right, think of the ordeal for a humble maiden at her first dinner party! but I told him the only chance for her to breathe was to place me there, which he did. On Dr. Holmes's left was Whittier, next, Professor Stowe, opposite me, while Mrs. S. was on Lowell's right at the other end.

By this lady's special stipulation the dinner was teetotal, which compulsory virtue caused some wry faces among the gentlemen, not used to such abstinence at “Atlantic” dinners; it was amusing to see how they nipped at the water and among the ban mots privately circulated thereupon, the best was Longfellow's proposition that Miss Prescott should send down into her Cellar for some wine, since Mrs. Stowe would not allow any abovestairs! This joke was broached early and carefully prevented from reaching the ears of either of its subjects, but I thought it capital, for you remember her racy description of wine, of which she knows about as much as she does of French novels, which I find most people suppose her to have lived upon — she having once perused “Consuelo”!

Little Dr. Holmes came down upon her instantly with her laurels. “I suppose you meet your story wherever you go,” said he, “like Madam d'Arblay" (and indeed the whole thing reminded me of her first introductions into literary society). . . . I seized the first opportunity to ask whether she and Mrs. Stowe had any conversation upstairs. “Yes,” said she meekly; “Mrs. Stowe asked me what time it was and I told her I didn't know. There's intellectual intercourse for a young beginner! . . .

When the wife of Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer, was once asked if her husband, who was then staying at Fitzhenry Homer's, was not embarrassed by being in society superior to that in which he was trained, she replied indignantly that her husband, who was constantly in the society of the highest angels, was not likely to be overcome by Mrs. Fitzhenry Homer. And when I reflected on the entertainments which were described in “In a Cellar,” I felt no fear of Harriet's committing any solecism in manners at an “Atlantic” dinner, which she certainly did not, though a little frightened, occasionally, I could see, at the obsequiousness of the waiters and the absurd multiplicity of courses. . . .

I don't care so very much for " Atlantic " dinners — Professor Felton says they are more brilliant than London ones, but I think that Mary and I get up quite as good ones in Worcester — but Dr. Holmes is always effervescent and funny, and John Wyman is the best story-teller the world ever saw, and indeed everybody contributed something. The best thing Holmes said was in discoursing on his favorite theory of races and families. “Some families,” he said, “are constitutionally incapable of doing anything wrong; they try it as boys, but they relapse into virtue; as individuals, they attempt to do wrong, but the race is too strong for them and they end in pulpits. Look at the Wares, for instance; I don't believe that the Wares fell in Adam!


SOURCE: Mary Potter Thacher Higginson, Editor, Letters and Journals of Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1846-1906, p. 106-10

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Journal of Amos A. Lawrence, January 6, 1857

Very cold and windy. Rode an hour and a half. Called at the United States Hotel on Captain John Brown, the old Kansas hero. Found Governor Robinson of Kansas at the Emigrant Aid rooms. Spent most of the forenoon with him. He has resigned his office, and the plan is to give Governor Geary, now a United States official, the popular vote, and so help on the “Free State” movement. Bought a fur coat for Robinson. Met Captain Brown; he is trying to raise a company to be ready in any emergency that may arise in Kansas. He looks a little thinner than when he went to Kansas with his sons. He fought the Missourians at Osawatomie in such a style as struck terror into the whole body of marauders. To Professor Longfellow's in Cambridge with my wife and Mary. A party mostly of young people. Played whist with Mr. Nathan Appleton, Mrs. Lothrop Motley, and Sarah. Home at half past ten, very cold. Deep drifts on the cross roads, Cambridge.

SOURCE: William Lawrence, Life of Amos A. Lawrence: With Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence, p. 123-4

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, December 5, 1851

Boston, Dec. 5, 1851.

Dearest Sumner: — I had a hasty note from you just as I was closing my last. In neither of your notes do you mention having received one from me in answer to your touching words from N. York. I hope that mine1 was not lost; not that it would be of consequence to any one, but what was consecrated to your eye of friendship I would not have looked upon irreverently by another.

I miss you, more even than I supposed I should: it makes me sad and almost sick at heart to think that you are where I cannot reach you, be my need of sympathy ever so great. But I have my usual poor resource to drive away thought — regret — sorrow — by work.

I have the whole Idiot School on my shoulders, and enough to do beside that.

We had the pleasure of your sister's company on Wednesday, and as usual found her full of earnest life and joyousness. Julia is fond of her, and knows she can give me no greater pleasure than by kindness to your sister.

We went to hear Felton again last evening. His lecture was better than the first, and better delivered. On the whole it was successful. I was pained, however, to find he indulged in flings at good and high things; for instance, speaking of the agglutinated languages, he made some quaint remarks in ridicule, and then said eagerly, “but don't suppose I have any reference to a late electoral law of this State.”

I saw Longfellow to-day, and as usual saw much that is lovely in him.

His Golden Legend I have read, and shall read again; it is very beautiful.

We had a pretty good meeting here (my office) yesterday about Kossuth's reception: we shall move publicly early next week. Do let me hear from you, if but a line.

Ever thine,
S. G. Howe.
_______________

1 This note is missing.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 347-8

Sunday, July 15, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, September 7, 1850

Marienberg, Boppart, Sept. 7, '50.

My Dear Sumner: — Here I am at last where I ought to have been two months ago. This is a most lovely place, and Julia and I have been enjoying walks upon the banks of the Rhine, and rambles upon the hillsides, and musings among the ruins, and jaunts upon the waters as we have enjoyed nothing since we left home. We could well spend a whole summer between Coblentz and Mayence and not exhaust all the resources of the country. It is well said that no one sees the Rhine who only sails up and down the stream in a steam-boat. Yesterday we drove from this to the St. Goar; explored the vast mines of the Rheinfels; crossed over and clambered up to the picturesque castle nicknamed the Cat, and wandered about in ravines and valleys which are now filled with the clustering vines.

Though I have visited the Rhine twice before and explored some of the ruins, I never had before a sense of the exquisite charm of the scenery, simply because I was always in a hurry. This is my besetting sin, you know. Now I have time enough; I take my early bath, and then with Julia wander off to some picturesque spot and enjoy the changing beauties of the scene to my heart's content. I return in time for my evening bath, and so the days go by. I have been here about a week.

As for the Water Cure, I do not think much of it; the water is not the best; not so good I think as that of Brattleboro, and as for the physician he is nothing. However, as I am doing pretty well here I shall bide the arrival of Crawford1 and his party and go on with them to Basle, perhaps to Geneva. Thence they will go to Lyons, Marseilles and Rome. Julia will accompany them, and I shall turn my face westward. I hope to sail from Liverpool on the 5th October at the latest, possibly a week earlier, so as to be back at my post at the end of my four months' furlough.

We have been long without American news; I am anxiously expecting our budget. The 30th ult. was a sad day to me. I could not by any effort keep my thoughts from Boston — the jail — the wretched criminal, and the dreadful and disgraceful scene there enacting.2 I say disgraceful, without pretending to decide whether the time has arrived when we may safely do away with capital punishment — if we cannot it is to our disgrace. You and all Boston must have suffered dreadfully: whither could you fly to avoid thoughts of the scene, if one so far away as I was could not keep it out of mind? There was a terrible fascination about it: I calculated the difference of time, and — supposing the execution would take place between twelve and one o'clock at Boston, which would be between five and six here — I hurried up and down the streets until long past the hour and then went to dinner with what appetite I could.

I have nothing special to say touching our personnel. Julia and the children have been in the enjoyment of perfect and uninterrupted health: mine has been very precarious; sometimes I have been pretty well — then down at zero again. I trust that my brain at least has got rested, and that when I return to regular hours, regular habits, pure water and plain roast beef I shall be able to put on my harness, and at least die with it on my back.

Remember me kindly to all friends; tell Longfellow we think often of him and speak of him in our walks: when we come to a spot of choice beauty we say, no doubt Longfellow has often clambered up and rested here. Would he were with us to point out the beauties which a poet's eye so quickly sees!

Adieu, dear Sumner. I long much to see you and be with you; I hope (selfishly) you will not be engaged this coming winter.

Ever thine,
s. G. H.
_______________

1 Thomas Crawford, the American sculptor, who married Louisa Ward, my mother's sister.
2 The execution of Dr. Webster, a professor in Harvard, for the murder of Dr. Parkman

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 323-5

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, August 20, 1850

Paris, Aug. 20, '50.

My Dear Sumner: — I am always cheered by the sight of your “hand-o'-write” and that of your last letter was more than usually welcome. Notwithstanding your sad errand you seemed to be in an elastic and healthy tone of mind, and I know too well by experience of the opposite condition what a blessing that is: may my friend never fall from the one into the other! You will be surprised at the date of this, and exclaim, “Why are you not en route for Frankfort?” I'll tell you. I had concluded or been persuaded by your letter and other considerations to go and attend the Peace Congress. I left Paris for that purpose on Friday evening last so as to be in Frankfort on the 20th, but I had hardly got an hundred miles when I began to feel the sure premonitions of an attack of cholera morbus. I remained all night in a miserable inn, hoping to be able to go on by the early train; but it was too certain that the grip of disease was upon me; I therefore turned back with all speed to get properly attended here. I was quite ill Saturday and Sunday; yesterday better but unable to travel, and to-day not fit for a fatiguing journey. I must therefore give up the Congress. All I should have done would have been to move for an adjournment en masse to the seat of war in Holstein, and discuss war between the two hostile armies. I am sick of this preaching to Israel in Israel; the Gentile ought to hear. Peace men should go to Russia, and Abolitionists to the Slave States. Besides, this calling upon France and Germany to disarm while Russia has the open blade in hand is what I cannot do. Our combativeness and destructiveness are the weapons God gives us to use as long as they are necessary, in order to keep others less advanced than we are in quiet by the only motives they will heed, selfishness and fear; you may as well appeal to conscience and benevolence in babes and idiots as in Russians and Tartars, I mean en masse. Conscience and benevolence they have, ay! and so have babes and idiots, but they are (not) yet called into life and action.

You tell me to go about sightseeing and to enjoy the rare opportunity before me. I go to see nothing — I care little for shows. I want to be back in the only place in the world which is fit for me or has charm for me; in my own office with the harness on my back. I wish you had my opportunity and I had yours. So goes the world. . . .

Kind words to Longfellow, Hillard, Felton, &c. Tell Briggs my conscience has been continually smiting me about my neglect of that Frenchman in prison. I hope he is out.

Ever, dear Sumner, most affectionately thine,
S. G. H.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 322-3

Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Diary of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, September 12, 1860

The day has been blackened to me by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Bill in the House, Eliot of Boston voting for it. If we should read in Dino Compagni that in the tenth century a citizen of Florence had given such a vote, we should see what an action he had done. But this the people of Boston cannot see in themselves; they will uphold it.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 265

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Diary of Luman Harris Tenney: Monday, August 25, 1862

Went over to Capt. Nettleton's tent and borrowed Longfellow's "Hyperion." Charlie came over in the morning and read Will's last journal and my letter from Fred. Enjoyed both and a first-rate visit about home and “B. F.” and other friends. Like Fred's course. Read in “Hyperion.” Enjoyed it pretty well. In the evening commenced a letter to Sarah Felton. John Devlin and two other boys of Co. F came in. Were in the late brush on Drywood. One of the corporals was wounded. Had a clever visit with Newt. Adams. Bill tolerably drunk, yelling as usual. Lively talk before sleeping.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 28

Sunday, April 12, 2015

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, Monday, July 28, 1861

Nahant, July 28, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: I have not written to Forster, because I have taken it for granted that he sees my letters to you, and I could only write the same facts and the same conclusions to other correspondents. Nevertheless, I wish very much to write a line to him and to Milnes, and especially to Lord de Grey, and shall certainly do so within a very short time. I was delighted to hear of young Ridley's triumphs, and sincerely sympathize in the joy of Lord and Lady Wensleydale, to whom pray give my kindest remembrance and congratulations. I am very much obliged to Lord John Russell for his kindness in sending me a copy of his note to Mr. Everett. I have thought very often of writing myself to Lord John, and have abstained because I knew that his time was so thoroughly occupied as to leave him little leisure for unofficial correspondence, and because I knew also that his despatches from Washington and his conversations with Mr. Adams must place him entirely in possession of all the facts of this great argument, and I have not the vanity to suppose that any commentary which I could make would alter the conclusion of a mind so powerful and experienced as his.

“If on the 4th of March,” he says to Mr. Everett, “you had allowed the Confederate States to go out from among you, you could have prevented the extension of slavery and confined it to the slave-holding States.” But, unfortunately, had this permission been given, there would have been no “you” left. The existence of this government consists in its unity. Once admit the principle of secession, and it has ceased to be; there is no authority then left either to prevent the extension of slavery, or to protect the life or property of a single individual on our share of the continent. Permit the destruction of the great law which has been supreme ever since we were a nation, and any other law may be violated at will. We have no government but this one, since we were dependent and then insurgent colonies. Take away that, and you take away our all. This is not merely the most logical of theories, but the most unquestionable of facts. This great struggle is one between law and anarchy. The slaveholders mutiny against all government on this continent, because it has been irrevocably decided no further to extend slavery. Peaceful acquiescence in the withdrawal of the seven cotton States would have been followed by the secession of the remaining eight slave States, and probably by the border free States. Pennsylvania would have set up for itself. There would probably have been an attempt at a Western Confederacy, and the city of New York had already announced its intention of organizing itself into a free town, and was studying the constitutions of Frankfort and Hamburg.

In short, we had our choice to submit at once to dismemberment and national extinction at the command of the slavery oligarchy which has governed us for forty years, or to fight for our life. The war forced upon us by the slaveholders has at last been accepted, and it is amazing to me that its inevitable character and the absolute justice of our cause do not carry conviction to every unprejudiced mind. Those, of course, who believe with the Confederates that slavery is a blessing, and the most fitting corner-stone of a political edifice, will sympathize with their cause. But those who believe it to be a curse should, I think, sympathize with us, who, while circumscribing its limits and dethroning it as a political power, are endeavoring to maintain the empire of the American Constitution and the English common law over this great continent. This movement in which we now engage, and which Jefferson Davis thinks so ridiculous, is to me one of the most noble spectacles which I remember in history. Twenty millions of people have turned out as a great posse comitatus to enforce the laws over a mob of two or three millions, — not more, — led on by two or three dozen accomplished, daring, and reckless desperados. This is the way history will record this transaction, be the issue what it may; and if we had been so base as to consent to our national death without striking a blow, our epitaph would have been more inglorious than I hope it may prove to be.

Don't be too much cast down about Bull Run. In a military point of view it is of no very great significance. We have lost, perhaps, at the utmost, 1000 men, 2000 muskets, and a dozen cannon or so. There was a panic, it is true, and we feel ashamed, awfully mortified; but our men had fought four or five hours without flinching, against concealed batteries, at the cannon's mouth, under a blazing July Virginia sun, taking battery after battery, till they were exhausted with thirst, and their tongues were hanging out of their mouths. It was physically impossible for these advanced troops to fight longer, and the reserves were never brought up. So far I only say what is undisputed. The blame for the transaction cannot be fairly assigned till we get official accounts. As for the affair itself, the defeat was a foregone conclusion. If you read again the earlier part of my last letter, you will see that I anticipated, as did we all, that the grand attack on Manassas was to be made with McClellan's column, Patterson's and McDowell's combined. This would have given about 125,000 men. Instead of this, McDowell's advance with some 50,000 men, not onethird part of which were engaged, while the rebels had 100,000 within immediate reach of the scene of action. You will also see by the revelations made in Congress and in the New York “Times” that this has been purely a politician's battle. It is in a political point of view, not a military, that the recent disaster is most deplorable. The rebellion has of course gained credit by this repulse of our troops.

As for the Civil War, nothing could have averted it. It is the result of the forty years' aggression of the slavery power. Lincoln's election was a vote by a majority of every free State that slavery should go no further, and then the South dissolved the Union. Suppose we had acknowledged the Confederacy, there would have been war all the same. Whether we are called two confederacies or one, the question of slavery in the Territories has got to be settled by war, and so has the possession of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico. Even on the impossible theory that the United States continued to exist as a government after submitting without a struggle to dismemberment, still it would be obliged to fight for the rights of its four or five million of tonnage to navigate American waters.

In brief, the period has arrived for us, as it has often arrived for other commonwealths in history, when we must fight for national existence, or agree to be extinguished peaceably. I am not very desponding, although the present is gloomy. Perhaps the day will come ere long when we shall all of us, not absolutely incapacitated by age or sickness, be obliged to shoulder our rifles as privates in the ranks. At present there seems no lack of men. The reverse of last Sunday has excited the enthusiasm afresh, and the government receives new regiments faster than it can provide for them. As I am not fit to be an officer, being utterly without military talent or training, and as it is now decided that such responsible offices shall not be conferred except upon those who can bear an examination by competent military authorities, I am obliged to regret my want of early education in the only pursuit which is now useful. As to going abroad and immersing myself again in the sixteenth century, it is simply an impossibility. I can think of nothing but American affairs, and should be almost ashamed if it were otherwise.

A grim winter is before us. Gather your rosebuds while you may, is my advice to you, and engage your passages not before October. But having said this, I give you carte blanche, and let me know your decision when made. The war is to be a long one. We have no idea of giving in, and no doubt of ultimate triumph. Our disaster is nothing; our disgrace is great, and it must be long before it can be retrieved, because General Scott will now be free to pursue the deliberate plan which he had marked out when he was compelled by outside pressure to precipitate his raw levies against an overwhelming superiority of rebels in a fortified position.

A few days ago I went over to Quincy by appointment to dine with old Mr. Quincy. The dinner was very pleasant. Edmund was there, and very agreeable, with Professor Gould, and Mr. Waterston, and the ladies. The old gentleman, now in his ninetieth year, is straight as an arrow, with thirty-two beautiful teeth, every one his own, and was as genial and cordial as possible. He talked most agreeably on all the topics of the day, and after dinner discussed the political question in all its bearings with much acumen and with plenty of interesting historical reminiscences. He was much pleased with the messages I delivered to him from Lord Lyndhurst, and desired in return that I should transmit his most cordial and respectful regards. Please add mine to his, as well as to Lady Lyndhurst. when you have the privilege of seeing them. I was very sorry not to be able to accept young Mr. Adams's offered hospitality, but I had made arrangements to return to Nahant that night. Pray give my best regards to Mr. and Mrs. Adams. Last Saturday I went to Cambridge and visited Longfellow. He was in bed, with both hands tied up; but his burns are recovering, and his face will not be scarred, and he will not lose the use of either hand. He was serene and resigned, but dreaded going down-stairs into the desolate house. His children were going in and out of the room. He spoke of his wife, and narrated the whole tragedy very gently, and without any paroxysms of grief, although it was obvious that he felt himself a changed man. Holmes came in. We talked of general matters, and Longfellow was interested to listen to and speak of the news of the day and of the all-absorbing topic of the war.

The weather has been almost cloudless for the seven weeks that I have been at home — one blaze of sunshine. But the drought is getting to be alarming. It has hardly rained a drop since the first week in June. Fortunately, the charm seems now broken, and to-day there have been some refreshing showers, with a prospect of more. I dined on Saturday with Holmes. He is as charming, witty, and sympathetic as ever. I wish I could send you something better than this, but unless I should go to Washington again I don't see what I can write now that is worth reading. To-morrow I dine here with Wharton, who is unchanged, and desires his remembrances to you; and next day I dine with Lowell at Cambridge, where I hope to find Hawthorne, Holmes, and others. . . .


P. S.  Tell Tom Brown, with my kindest regards, that every one is reading him here with delight, and the dedication is especially grateful to our feelings. The Boston edition (I wish he had the copyright) has an uncommonly good likeness of him.

As for Wadsworth, I heard from several sources of his energy and pluck. Wharton has been in my room since I began this note. He had a letter from his sister, in which she says John Vennes, a servant (an Englishman) of theirs, who enlisted in the Sixty-ninth New York, had written to say that his master was the bravest of the brave, and that he was very proud of him as he saw him without his hat, and revolver in hand, riding about and encouraging the troops at the last moment to make a stand. I had a letter from Colonel Gordon the other day. He is at Harper's Ferry, and not at all discouraged by the results of the battle, in which of course he had no part. He says: “Our late check, it seems to me, is almost a victory. From seven to four did our brave troops face that deadly fire of artillery and infantry delivered from breastworks and hidden embrasures. Over and over again did they roll back the greatly outnumbering columns of the enemy, until at last, when a foolish panic seized them, they left the enemy in such a condition that he could not pursue them more than a mile and a half; so that one entire battery, which they might have had for the taking, was left all night on the field and finally returned to us again. Many such victories would depopulate the South, and from the victors there is no sound of joy. In Charleston, Virginia, at Harper's Ferry, and at Martinsburg they mourn the loss of many of their sons. Fewer in numbers, we were more than their match, and will meet them again.'”

In estimating the importance of this affair as to its bearings on the future, it should, I think, be never forgotten that the panic, whatever was its mysterious cause, was not the result of any overpowering onset of the enemy. It did not begin with the troops engaged.

Here we are not discouraged. The three months' men are nearly all of them going back again. Congress has voted 500,000 men and 5,000,000 of dollars; has put on an income tax of three per cent., besides raising twenty or thirty millions extra on tea, coffee, sugar, and other hitherto untaxed articles; and government securities are now as high in the market as they were before the late battle. . . .

J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 191-8

Sunday, March 22, 2015

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, July 14, 1861

Nahant, July 14, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: This is the first rainy day since I landed in the country, now nearly five weeks ago. It has been most wondrously bright weather day after day, sometimes very hot, but as it can never be too hot for me, I have been well satisfied. I was so glad to hear of Lady Dufferin's safe return, and I do hope sincerely that the Syrian sun has not visited her too roughly, but that the gentle atmosphere of an English summer will entirely restore her. What a comfort it must be to dear Mrs. Norton to have them safe back again!

Alas! during all my pleasure at reading your letters I could not throw off for a moment the dull, deadly horror of the calamity of which I wrote to you in my last. Yesterday I went out to Longfellow's house, by especial message from Tom Appleton, to attend the funeral. It was not thus that I expected for the first time after so long an absence to cross that threshold. The very morning after my arrival from England I found Longfellow's card, in my absence, with a penciled request to come out and sup with them, Tom, Mackintosh, and the rest. I could not go, but have been several times begged to come since that day, yet this is the first time I have been there. I am glad I had seen F–––, however. I think I told you that I saw her a few days ago, at the chair of her dying father; she was radiant with health and beauty, and was so cordial and affectionate in her welcome to me. I did not mean to look at her in her coffin, for I wished to preserve that last image of her face undimmed. But after the ceremony at the house the cortege went to Mount Auburn, and there was a brief prayer by Dr. Gannett at the grave, and it so happened that I was placed, by chance, close to the coffin, and I could not help looking upon her face; it was turned a little on one side, was not in the slightest degree injured, and was almost as beautiful as in life — “but for that sad, shrouded eye,” and you remember how beautiful were her eyes. Longfellow has as yet been seen by no one except his sisters. He has suffered considerable injury in the hands, but nothing which will not soon be remedied. He has been in an almost frenzied condition, at times, from his grief, but, I hear, is now comparatively composed; but his life is crushed, I should think. His whole character, which was so bright and genial and sunny, will suffer a sad change.

. . . We were expecting the Longfellows down here every day. Tom and he own together the old Wetmore cottage, and they were just opening it when the tragedy occurred. I still think it probable that they will come, for he certainly cannot remain in his own house now. My mother is decidedly gaining strength and is very cheerful. I don't find Mr. Cabot much changed, except that he is more lame than he was. They have invited me to Newport, and so have Mr. Sears and Bancroft, but I have no idea of going. I have hardly time to see as much of my friends and relations in Boston and its neighborhood as I wish.

I had better go back, I think, and try to do a year's hard work in the diggings, as I can be of no use here, and it is absolutely necessary for me to go on with my work.

. . . Although it seems so very difficult for the English mind, as manifested in the newspapers, to understand the objects of the war, they seem to twenty millions of us very plain — first, to prohibit forever the extension of negro slavery, and to crush forever the doctrine that slavery is the national, common law of America, instead of being an exceptional, local institution confined within express limits; secondly, to maintain the authority of the national government, as our only guaranty for life, liberty, and civilization. It is not a matter of opinion, but of profound, inmost conviction, that if we lose the Union, all is lost; anarchy and Mexicanism will be substituted for the temperate reign of constitutional, representative government and the English common law. Certainly these objects are respectable ones, and it is my belief that they will be attained. If, however, the war assumes larger proportions, I know not what results may follow; but this I do know, that slavery will never gain another triumph on this continent.

This great mutiny was founded entirely on two great postulates or hopes. First, the conspirators doubted; not of the assistance, in every free State, of the whole Democratic party, who they thought would aid them in their onslaught against the Constitution, just as they had stood by them at the polls in a constitutional election. Miserable mistake! The humiliation of the national flag at Sumter threw the whole Democratic party into a frenzy of rage. They had sustained the South for the sake of the Union, for the love of the great Republic. When the South turned against the national empire and fired against the flag, there was an end of party differences at that instant throughout the free States. Secondly, they reckoned confidently on the immediate recognition and alliance of England. Another mistake! And so, where is now the support of the mutiny? Instead of a disunited North, there is a distracted South, with the free States a unit. There is no doubt whatever that the conspirators expected confidently to establish their new constitution over the whole country except New England.

I find the numbers of United States troops given thus: General Patterson's command, 25,000; General McClellan, 45,000; General McDowell, 45,000; General Butler, 20,000; total, 135,000. Certainly, if we should deduct ten per cent, from this estimate, and call them 120,000, we should not be far wrong. McDowell commands opposite Washington, along Arlington, at Alexandria, etc.; McClellan is at this moment at Beverly, and Grafton in West Virginia; Butler is at and near Fortress Monroe; Patterson is at Martinsburg. I take it for granted that you have a good map of Virginia, and that you study it.

Now for the commanders. McClellan is a first-class man, thirty-seven years of age, of superior West Point education, and has distinguished himself in Mexico. The country seems to regard him as the probable successor to Scott in its affections when he shall be taken from us. McDowell is a good, practical, professional soldier, fully equal to his work, about forty years of age. Patterson is an Irishman by birth, age sixty-nine, but educated here, and has been in the army much of his life, having served both in the War of 1812 and in Mexico, and he commands against an able rebel, Johnston, who is, or was, at Winchester and its neighborhood. Butler is the militia general who commanded at Annapolis, for a time, in the first outbreak, and has since been made major-general in the army. The Gordon regiment, whose departure from Boston I mentioned in my last, are now at Martinsburg, and will be in the front ranks under Patterson, who has been perpetually menaced by Johnston with a general attack. The prevailing impression is, however, that Johnston will fall back, as the rebels have constantly been doing; all the dash, impetuosity, and irrepressible chivalry on their part have hitherto only manifested themselves on paper.

Don't be affected by any sneers or insinuations of slowness against Scott; I believe him to be a magnificent soldier, thoroughly equal to his work, and I trust that the country and the world will one day acknowledge that he has played a noble and winning game with consummate skill. He can afford to neglect newspaper criticism at present, whether cis- or transatlantic. One victory at least he has achieved: he has at last reduced the lying telegram manufacturers to submission. Henceforth you may read our newspaper accounts with tolerable confidence. Now look at the map of Virginia, and you will see his plan so far as developed. You read the American newspapers, of course, which I ordered for you. Yesterday and to-day bring accounts from McClellan, in which he officially informs government that he has routed and annihilated the rebels in West Virginia. Their general is killed, their army broken to pieces. One colonel (Pegram) has surrendered himself and his whole regiment. McClellan has at least 1000 prisoners. He has lost very few men, the rebels perhaps 200, but the result is a large one. I am sure no one wishes to hear a long list of killed and wounded on either side. What Scott wishes is to demoralize and disorganize this senseless and wanton rebellion, and to crush its leaders. Now, these 10,000 just routed by McClellan compose the main force by which the counter-revolution of West Virginia was to be prevented. There is another force in the southwest, on the Kanawha, under the redoubtable Wise, whose retreat you will soon hear of. You will also, I think, soon find that Johnston has fallen back from Winchester. Thus the rebels will soon be squeezed down toward Richmond. There, I suppose, they must make a stand, and there will, perhaps, be a great battle. Hitherto, however, they have shown no avidity for such a result. Virginia is the battle-ground for the summer.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 175-80

Sunday, March 15, 2015

John Lothrop Motley to Mary Benjamin Motley, July 11, 1861

Nahant, July 11, 1861.

My Dearest Mary: I write you this line only to tell you of a most dreadful and heartrending calamity which has thrown this community into mourning. Mrs. Longfellow was burned to death the day before yesterday. She was making seals for the amusement of her younger children in her house at Cambridge, when the upper part of her thin muslin dress caught fire, and in an instant she was all in flames. Longfellow was in the next room. Hearing the shrieks of the children, he flew to her assistance, and seizing a rug, held it around her, and although she broke away from him, attempting to run from the danger, — as persons in such cases seem invariably to do, — he succeeded at last in extinguishing the fire, but not until she was fatally injured. She lingered through the night, attended by several physicians, and expired yesterday forenoon about half-past ten, July 10. I understand that, through the influence of ether, her sufferings were not very intense after the immediate catastrophe, and that she was unconscious for a good while before she died. Longfellow was severely burned in the hands, but not dangerously; but he, too, has been kept under the effects of ether, and is spoken of as in almost a raving condition.

I have not had the heart to make any inquiries, but think that on Saturday I will try to see Mrs. Appleton. It is not more than five or six days since I was calling upon Mr. Appleton, who has so long been dying by inches, and who will look less like death than he does now when he shall have breathed his last. F— was there, and greeted me most affectionately, making the kindest inquiries after you; she never looked more beautiful, or seemed happier, and Longfellow was, as he always is, genial and kind and gentle. I should have stayed with them probably during commencement week at Cambridge, and was looking forward with great pleasure to being with them for a little while. There is something almost too terrible to reflect upon in this utterly trivial way in which this noble, magnificent woman has been put to a hideous death. When you hear of a shipwreck, or a stroke of lightning, or even a railway accident, the mind does not shrink appalled from the contemplation of the tragedy so utterly as it now does, from finding all this misery resulting from such an almost invisible cause — a drop of sealing-wax on a muslin dress. Deaths in battle are telegraphed to us hourly, and hosts of our young men are marching forth to mortal combat day by day, but these are in the natural course of events. Fate, acting on its large scale, has decreed that a great war shall rage, and we are prepared for tragedies, and we know that those who fall have been discharging the highest of duties. But what compensation or consolation is there for such a calamity as this?

I was with Holmes at the Parker House when the news was brought to us. We had gone to see the Greenes (William), with whom we were speaking in the hall. Holmes wanted a commission in Greene's regiment for his son Wendell in case he finds Lee's list completed. We both burst into tears, and did nothing more that morning about military matters; Holmes is, however, going out to see Lee to-morrow morning at his camp at Readville, and will doubtless obtain a lieutenancy under him for his son. Wendell is a very fine fellow, graduating this commencement, but he can't be kept in college any longer. He will get his degree, and is one of the first scholars in his class, but, like nearly all the young men, he has been drilling for months long in one of the various preparatory home battalions, and is quite competent for the post he wishes; but there are so many applicants for these commissions that even such a conspicuous youth as he is not sure of getting one immediately.

God bless you, dearest Mary, and my dear children. In great haste,

Affectionately yours,
J. L. M.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 172-4

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Charles Eliot Norton to George William Curtis, March 8, 1862

Shady Hill, 8 March, I862.

As I sit down to thank you for the note that came to me this morning, Jane is reading it aloud to Longfellow, and interrupts me to ask explanations. All you say is very interesting. But can I quite agree with you in confidence in Mr. Lincoln's instincts? His message on Emancipation1 is a most important step; but could anything be more feebly put, or more inefficiently written? His style is worse than ever; and though a bad style is not always a mark of bad thought, — it is at least a proof that thought is not as clear as it ought to be.

How time brings about its revenges! I think the most striking incident of the war is the march of our men into Charlestown singing the John Brown psalm, "His soul is marching on."

As for Lincoln's suggestions, I am sure that good will come of them. They will at least serve to divide opinion in the Border States. But I see many practical objections to his plan; and I doubt if any State meets his propositions with corresponding action.

The “Tribune” is politic in its burst of ardour. Let us make out the message to be more than it is, — and bring the President up to our view of it. . . .
_______________

1 The special message urging "gradual abolishment of slavery" was sent to Congress March 6.

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 252-3

Sunday, January 25, 2015

John Lothrop Motley to Anna Lothrop Motley, March 15, 1861

31 Hertford Street,
March 15, 1861.

My Dearest Mother:  . . . It is not for want of affection and interest, not from indolence, but I can hardly tell you how difficult it is to me to write letters. I pass as much of my time daily as I can at the State Paper Office, reading hard in the old MSS. there for my future volumes; and as the hours are limited there to from ten till four, I am not really master of my own time.

I am delighted to find that the success of the “United Netherlands” gives you and my father so much pleasure. It is by far the pleasantest reward for the hard work I have gone through to think that the result has given you both so much satisfaction. Not that I grudge the work, for, to say the truth, I could not exist without hard labor, and if I were compelled to be idle for the rest of my days, I should esteem it the severest affliction possible.

My deepest regret is that my work should be for the present on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Before leaving the subject of the new volumes, I should like to say that I regret that no one has sent me any of the numerous reviews and notices in the American papers and magazines to which you allude. I received a number of the New York “Times” from the governor, and also the “Courier,” containing notices. The latter, which was beautifully and sympathetically written, I ascribed to Hillard's pen, which I do not think I can mistake. If this be so, I hope you will convey my best thanks to him.

These are the only two which have been sent to me, and it is almost an impossibility for me to procure American newspapers here. Of course both Mary and Lily, as well as myself, would be pleased to see such notices, and it seems so easy to have a newspaper directed to 31 Hertford Street, with a three-cent stamp. Fortunately, I recently subscribed to the “Atlantic Monthly,'” and so received the March number, in which there is a most admirably written notice, although more complimentary than I deserve. It is with great difficulty that I can pick up anything of the sort, and I fear now that as the time passes it will be difficult for me to receive them from America.

The Harpers have not written to me, but I received a line from Tom showing that the book was selling very well considering the times. As to politics I shall not say a word, except that at this moment we are in profound ignorance as to what will be the policy of the new administration, how the inauguration business went off, and what was the nature of Mr. Lincoln's address, and how it was received, all which you at home at this moment have known for eleven days. I own that I can hardly see any medium between a distinct recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent foreign power, and a vigorous war to maintain the United States government throughout the whole country. But a war without an army means merely a general civil war, for the great conspiracy to establish the Southern Republic, concocted for twenty years, and brought to maturity by Mr. Buchanan's cabinet ministers, has, by that wretched creature's connivance and vacillation, obtained such consistency in these fatal three months of interregnum as to make it formidable. The sympathy of foreign powers, and particularly of England, on which the seceders so confidently relied to help them on in their plot, has not been extended to them. I know on the very highest authority and from repeated conversations that the English government looks with deepest regret on the dismemberment of the great American Republic. There has been no negotiation whatever up to this time of any kind, secret or open, with the secessionists. This I was assured of three or four days ago.  . . . At the same time, I am obliged to say that there has been a change, a very great change, in English sympathy since the passing of the Morrill Tariff Bill. That measure has done more than any commissioner from the Southern Republic could do to alienate the feelings of the English public toward the United States, and they are much more likely to recognize the Southern Confederacy at an early day than they otherwise would have done. If the tariff people had been acting in league with the secessionists to produce a strong demonstration in Europe in favor of the dissolution of the Union, they could not have managed better.

I hear that Lewis Stackpole is one of the most rising young lawyers of the day, that he is very popular everywhere, thought to have great talents for his profession, great industry, and that he is sure to succeed. You may well suppose with how much delight we hear such accounts of him.

My days are always spent in hard work, and as I never work at night, going out to dinners and parties is an agreeable and useful relaxation, and as I have the privilege of meeting often many of the most eminent people of our times, I should be very stupid if I did not avail myself of it; and I am glad that Lily has so good an opportunity of seeing much of the most refined and agreeable society in the world.

The only very distinguished literary person that I have seen of late for the first time is Dickens. I met him last week at a dinner at John Forster's. I had never even seen him before, for he never goes now into fashionable company. He looks about the age of Longfellow. His hair is not much grizzled and is thick, although the crown of his head is getting bald. His features are good, the nose rather high, the eyes largish, grayish, and very expressive. He wears a mustache and beard, and dresses at dinner in exactly the same uniform which every man in London or the civilized world is bound to wear, as much as the inmates of a penitentiary are restricted to theirs. I mention this because I had heard that he was odd and extravagant in his costume. I liked him exceedingly. We sat next each other at table, and I found him genial, sympathetic, agreeable, unaffected, with plenty of light, easy talk and touch-and-go fun without any effort or humbug of any kind. He spoke with great interest of many of his Boston friends, particularly of Longfellow, Wendell Holmes, Felton, Sumner, and Tom Appleton. I have got to the end of my paper, my dearest mother, and so, with love to the governor and A–––, and all the family great and small, I remain

Most affectionately your son,
J. L. M.

P. S. I forgot to say that another of Forster's guests was Wilkie Collins (the "Woman in White's" author). He is a little man, with black hair, a large white forehead, large spectacles, and small features. He is very unaffected, vivacious, and agreeable.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 117-21

Monday, January 12, 2015

Diary of William Howard Russell: March 20, 1861

The papers are still full of Sumter and Pickens. The reports that they are or are not to be relieved are stated and contradicted in each paper without any regard to individual consistency. The “Tribune” has an article on my speech at the St. Patrick's dinner, to which it is pleased to assign reasons and motives which the speaker, at all events, never had in making it.

Received several begging letters, some of them apparently with only too much of the stamp of reality about their tales of disappointment, distress, and suffering. In the afternoon went down Broadway, which was crowded, notwithstanding the piles of blackened snow by the curbstones, and the sloughs of mud, and half-frozen pools at the crossings. Visited several large stores or shops — some rival the best establishments in Paris or London in richness and in value, and far exceed them in size and splendor of exterior. Some on Broadway, built of marble, or of fine cut stone, cost from £6,000 to £8,000 a year in mere rent. Here, from the base to the fourth or fifth story, are piled collections of all the world can produce, often in excess of all possible requirements of the country; indeed I was told that the United States have always imported more goods than they could pay for. Jewellers' shops are not numerous, but there are two in Broadway which have splendid collections of jewels, and of workmanship in gold and silver, displayed to the greatest advantage in fine apartments decorated with black marble, statuary, and plate

New York has certainly all the air of a “nouveau riche.” There is about it an utter absence of any appearance of a grandfather — one does not see even such evidences of eccentric taste as are afforded in Paris and London, by the existence of shops where the old families of a country cast off their “exuviӕ” which are sought by the new, that they may persuade the world they are old; there is no curiosity shop, not to speak of a Wardour Street, and such efforts as are made to supply the deficiency reveal an enormous amount of ignorance or of bad taste. The new arts, however, flourish; the plague of photography has spread through all the corners of the city, and the shop-windows glare with flagrant displays of the most tawdry art. In some of the large booksellers' shops — Appleton's for example — are striking proofs of the activity of the American press, if not of the vigor and originality of the American intellect. I passed down long rows of shelves laden with the works of European authors, for the most part, oh shame! stolen and translated into American type without the smallest compunction or scruple, and without the least intention of ever yielding the most pitiful deodand to the authors. Mr. Appleton sells no less than one million and a half of Webster's spelling-books a year; his tables are covered with a flood of pamphlets, some for, others against coercion; some for, others opposed to slavery, — but when I asked for a single solid, substantial work on the present difficulty, I was told there was not one published worth a cent. With such men as Audubon and Wilson in natural history, Prescott and Motley in history, Washington Irving and Cooper in fiction, Longfellow and Edgar Poe in poetry, even Bryant and the respectabilities in rhyme, and Emerson as essayist, there is no reason why New York should be a paltry imitation of Leipsig, without the good faith of Tauchnitz.

I dined with a litterateur well known in England to many people a year or two ago — sprightly, loquacious, and well informed, if neither witty nor profound — now a Southern man with Southern proclivities, — as Americans say; once a Southern man with such strong anti-slavery convictions, that his expression of them in an English quarterly had secured him the hostility of his own people — one of the emanations of American literary life for which their own country finds no fitting receiver. As the best proof of his sincerity, he has just now abandoned his connection with one of the New York papers on the republican side, because he believed that the course of the journal was dictated by anti-Southern fanaticism. He is, in fact, persuaded that there will be a civil war, and that the South will have much of the right on its side in the contest. At his rooms were Mons. B–––, Dr. Gwin, a Californian ex-senator, Mr. Barlow, and several of the leading men of a certain clique in New York. The Americans complain, or assert, that we do not understand them, and I confess the reproach, or statement, was felt to be well founded by myself at all events, when I heard it declared and admitted that “if Mons. Belmont had not gone to the Charleston Convention, the present crisis would never have occurred.”

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 24-6

Saturday, December 20, 2014

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to John Lothrop Motley, April 29, 1860

Boston, April 29, 1860.

It was so pleasant, my dear Lothrop, to get a letter from you. I have kept it a week or two so as to have something more to tell you, yet I fear it will not be much after all. Yesterday the Saturday Club had its meeting. I carried your letter in my pocket, not to show to anybody, but to read a sentence or two which I knew would interest them all, and especially your kind message of remembrance. All were delighted with it; and on my proposing your health, all of them would rise and drink it standing. We then, at my suggestion, gave three times three in silence, on account of the public character of the place and the gravity and position of the high assisting personages. Be assured that you were heartily and affectionately, not to say proudly, remembered. Your honors are our honors, and when we heard you had received that superior tribute, which stamps any foreigner's reputation as planetary, at the hands of the French Institute, it was as if each of us had had a ribbon tied in his own buttonhole. I hoped very much to pick up something which might interest you from some of our friends who know more of the political movements of the season than I do.

I vote with the Republican party. I cannot hesitate between them and the Democrats. Yet what the Republican party is now doing it would puzzle me to tell you. What its prospects are for the next campaign, perhaps I ought to know, but I do not. I am struck with the fact that we talk very little politics of late at the club. Whether or not it is disgust at the aspect of the present political parties, and especially at the people who represent them, I cannot say; but the subject seems to have been dropped for the present in such society as I move about in, and especially in the club. We discuss first principles, enunciate axioms, tell stories, make our harmless jokes, reveal ourselves in confidence to our next neighbors after the Chateau Margaux has reached the emotional center, and enjoy ourselves mightily. But we do not talk politics. After the President's campaign is begun, it is very likely that we may, and then I shall have something more to say about Mr. Seward and his prospects than I have now.

How much pleasure your praise gave me I hardly dare to say. I know that I can trust it. You would not bestow it unless you liked what I had done, but you would like the same thing better if I had done it than coming from a stranger. That is right and kind and good, and notwithstanding you said so many things to please me, there were none too many. I love praise too well always, and I have had a surfeit of some forms of it. Yours is of the kind that is treasured and remembered. I have written in every number of the “Atlantic” since it began. I should think myself industrious if I did not remember the labors you have gone through, which simply astonish me. What delight it would be to have you back here in our own circle of men — I think we can truly say, whom you would find worthy companions: Agassiz, organizing the science of a hemisphere; Longfellow, writing its songs; Lowell, than whom a larger, fresher, nobler, and more fertile nature does not move among us; Emerson, with his strange, familiar remoteness of character, I do not know what else to call it; and Hawthorne and Dana, when he gets back from his voyage round the world, and all the rest of us thrown in gratis. But you must not stay too long; if all the blood gets out of your veins, I am afraid you will transfer your allegiance.

I am just going to Cambridge to an “exhibition,” in which Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks a translation (expectatur versio in lingua vernacula), the Apology for Socrates; Master O. W. Holmes, Jun., being now a tall youth, almost six feet high, and lover of Plato and of art.

I ought to have said something about your grand new book, but I have not had time to do more than read some passages from it. My impression is that of all your critics, that you have given us one of the noble historical pictures of our time, instinct with life and glowing with the light of a poetical imagination, which by itself would give pleasure, but which, shed over a great epoch in the records of our race, is at once brilliant and permanent. In the midst of so much that renders the very existence of a civilization amongst us problematical to the scholars of the Old World, it is a great pleasure to have the cause of letters so represented by one of our own countrymen, citizens, friends. Your honors belong to us all, but most to those who have watched your upward course from the first, who have shared many of the influences which have formed your own mind and character, and who now regard you as the plenipotentiary of the true Republic accredited to every court in Europe.

SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition, Volume 2, p. 87-90

Saturday, December 13, 2014

Charles Eliot Norton to Mrs. Gaskell, August 12, 1861

Newport, 12 August, 1861.

My Dear Mrs. Gaskell, —  . . . Your note came to me just at the time of a great sorrow in the sudden and terrible death of our dear friend Mrs. Longfellow. You have no doubt seen some notice of it. The fatal accident took place on one of our hot summer days in July. It was in the afternoon. She was with her two youngest little girls in the library, and having just cut the hair of one of them she was amusing them by sealing up some packets of the pretty curls. By some unexplained accident one of the wax tapers she was using set fire to her dress. It was of the lightest muslin, and the flame almost instantly spread beyond her power to extinguish it. Her first thought was to save her little girls from harm, and she fled from them into her husband's study, where he was lying asleep on a sofa. Hearing her call to him he sprang up, seized a rug from the floor, wrapped it round her and tried in vain to put out the fire. Before he could succeed the flames had done their work. She was taken upstairs, and the physicians were very soon with her. There was nothing to be done but to alleviate her suffering which for an hour or two was intense. She was rendered unconscious by ether, — and when its use was discontinued the suffering was over and did not return. Through the night she was perfectly calm, patient and gentle, all the lovely sweetness and elevation of her character showing itself in her looks and words. In the morning she lost consciousness and about eleven o'clock she died. Poor Longfellow had been very severely burned in trying to put out the flames, and for several days was in a state of great physical suffering and nervous prostration. I have never known any domestic calamity so sad and tragic as this. Of all happy homes theirs was in many respects the happiest. It was rich and delightful not only in outward prosperity but in intimate blessings. Those who loved them could not wish for them anything better than they had, for their happiness satisfied even the imagination.

Mrs. Longfellow was very beautiful, and her beauty was but the type of the loveliness and nobility of her character. She was a person whom everyone admired, and whom those who knew her well enough to love loved very deeply. There is nothing in her life that is not delightful to remember. There was no pause and no decline in her. It was but a very few days before her death that Lowell and I, as we came out from a morning party where we had met her, agreed that she had never been more beautiful or more charming. She had a fine stateliness and graciousness of manner. Reserved in expression, but always sweet and kind, it was only those who knew her well who knew how quick and deep and true her sympathies were, how poetic was her temperament, how pure and elevated her thoughts. Longfellow was worthy of such a wife.

Ever since I was a very little boy he has been one of our nearest friends, and for many years our lives have been closely connected with theirs. Their home is a little more than a mile from ours, but in affection they have been our nearest neighbours. It was a touching coincidence that her funeral took place on the eighteenth anniversary of her wedding day. Such a short time as it seemed! Such a happy time as it had been!

The next week we came to Newport, and here we have been living for the last four weeks very quietly, — save that I went to Cambridge a fortnight ago to see Longfellow. He was still confined to his bed, but his hands, which had been most badly burned, were becoming serviceable once more; and he was suffering more from feebleness than from pain. I have never seen any one who bore a great sorrow in a more simple and noble way. But he is very desolate, — and, however manfully and religiously he may bear up, his life must hereafter be desolate. I hope he may find happiness in his children; his three little girls are very dear and charming, and his two boys are just growing into young-manhood.

I have never known a private sorrow affect the community as this did. It went to the heart of every person, — and for a time even the pressing interest of our public affairs seemed remote. . .

SOURCE: Sara Norton and  M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 238-41