27 February: Boreham on Henry Longfellow

Laureate of the West
This is Longfellow's day. The poet was born on February 27, 1807. For his own sake, as well as for the sake of the work that he did, he richly deserves to be remembered. As a boy he conceived a lofty ideal, and, throughout a long career, he never for a moment swerved from it. His father wanted him to be a lawyer. Henry begged to be excused. "I most eagerly aspire," he told his parents at the age of seventeen, "to eminence in literature; my whole soul burns most ardently for it, my every thought centres there. Surely there never was a better opportunity offered for the exertion of literary talent than is offered now!" America was in the making; a new world was taking shape; the hour seemed sublime.

He was fortunate in being appointed, whilst still in his teens, to a professorship of modern languages at Bowdoin College. Holding such a position, he was able to devote himself to literature with the necessary detachment and without the torment of anxiety that many young authors are forced to endure. He wrote carefully, travelled widely, and became not only one of the most popular poets, but one of the most commanding personalities of his time. His very appearance favoured him. Kingsley declared that Longfellow's was the most beautiful face that he had ever seen. Broad shouldered and of well-knit frame with finely-cut features, eloquent eyes and a voice that was singularly deep, flexible, melodious, and full of tenderness, his personality was richly and attractively equipped. Nor did this pleasing exterior convey an exaggerated impression of the superb quality of the man. "He was," says Thomas Davidson, "as nearly perfect as it is possible for human nature to be. He united in his strong, transparent humanity almost every virtue under heaven. No man ever lived more completely in the light than he." The choicest spirits of Europe and America were proud of being numbered among his friends.

The Chequered Evolution Of A Classic
The greatest day in Longfellow's life was that on which, he published "Evangeline." He was forty at the time. And the singular thing is that, in seizing upon this graceful story and weaving it into a romance, he was simply rescuing from oblivion what others had contemptuously, tossed to the rubbish heap. It happened that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Longfellow's school-fellow and life-long companion, came one day to dine with the poet at Craigie House, bringing with him a friend, a clergyman. The cleric, who had been delving among the records of the Nova Scotia rebellion, told the story of the frustrated wedding of two young people at Grand Pre; of their cruel separation by force of arms; of Evangeline's long, long quest; and of their reunion on the day of Gabriel's death. Turning to Hawthorne, he suggested that the record would furnish excellent material for the plot of a novel.

Oddly enough, Hawthorne sniffed at it. He was afflicted with what psychologists would call a miasmatic conscience. He could make nothing of a story into which no sinister element entered; he liked a villain as a foil for the splendours of his hero; he could see no possibilities in the pretty but unexciting story of a woman's endless search for her lost lover. "Well then," said Longfellow, "if you really do not want this story for a novel, let me have it for a poem!" And so it was agreed. As Longfellow perused the tragic annals of the period in which the plot is laid, he was impressed by the magnificence of the opportunity that Hawthorne had so peremptorily discarded; he chivalrously wrote to his friend urging him to reconsider his disdainful decision; but Hawthorne had made up his mind and declined to reopen the question. Thereupon Longfellow applied himself seriously to the enticing task. He did his work so well that Hawthorne himself, falling in love with the poem, read it so often that he almost knew it by heart, and, when dying he had it read aloud to him by a friend beside his bed.

The Art Of Setting History To Music
Longfellow had an amazing genius for crystallising into tuneful poesy the inner sentiment of history. In "Evangeline," in "Hiawatha," and in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," he was dealing with facts. His art lay in setting those facts to music without doing the slightest violence to the actual truth. He brought a certain amount of imagination to the Evangeline story; he suffused it with a strong and sublimated emotion; yet the reader instinctively feels that the tale as Longfellow tells it is probably a more faithful portrayal of the circumstances than a bald and lifeless record would have been. "Hiawatha" appeared seven years later. "I have hit upon a plan," he writes, excitedly, "for a poem on the Red Indians. It seems to me the right plan and the only one. It is to weave their beautiful traditions into a concerted whole. I have hit upon a measure, too, which exactly suits the theme." And now that, as the fruit of this inspiration, we have "Hiawatha," are we to regard it as pure poetry, concrete history or a medley of both?

Bancroft, the historian, congratulated Longfellow on the fidelity of the poem to Indian life and Indian tradition. In "The Courtship of Miles Standish," the poet is again absolutely loyal to the spirit of the historic narrative, even if he sometimes brings his fancy to bear upon the letter of it. And, after all, as Sir Walter Scott has proved, it is the spirit of the storied past rather than the letter that constitutes true history. Longfellow's most glaring defect lay in his excessive modesty. His brilliant academic gifts would have enabled him to strike a note as profound and as sublime as anything that Tennyson has given us. But he aspired to nothing so pretentious. Yet, contenting himself with singing a few dainty and deathless songs, he contrived, as W. D. Howells has pointed out, to secure standing and recognition for the literature of America among the classical treasures of the older world. His birthday provides us with a fresh opportunity of exulting in the priceless heritage which the peoples of Britain and of the United States enjoy in common.

F W Boreham

Image: Henry Longfellow