White Mr. Longfellow, the (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. We had expected to stay in Boston only until we could find a house in Old Cambridge. This was not so simple a matter as it might seem; for the ancient town had not yet quickened its scholarly pace to the modern step. Indeed, in the spring of 1866 the impulse of expansion was not yet visibly felt anywhere; the enormous material growth that followed the civil war had not yet begun. In Cambridge the houses to be let were few, and such as there were fell either below our pride or rose above our purse. I wish I might tell how at last we bought a house; we had no money, but we were rich in friends, who are still alive to shrink from the story of their constant faith in a financial future which we sometimes doubted, and who backed their credulity with their credit. It is sufficient for the present record, which professes to be strictly literary, to notify the fact that on the first day of May, 1866, we went out to Cambridge and began to live in a house which we owned in fee if not in deed, and which was none the less valuable for being covered with mortgages

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948162
Langue	English

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THE WHITE MR. LONGFELLOW
We had expected to stay in Boston only until wecould find a house in Old Cambridge. This was not so simple amatter as it might seem; for the ancient town had not yet quickenedits scholarly pace to the modern step. Indeed, in the spring of1866 the impulse of expansion was not yet visibly felt anywhere;the enormous material growth that followed the civil war had notyet begun. In Cambridge the houses to be let were few, and such asthere were fell either below our pride or rose above our purse. Iwish I might tell how at last we bought a house; we had no money,but we were rich in friends, who are still alive to shrink from thestory of their constant faith in a financial future which wesometimes doubted, and who backed their credulity with theircredit. It is sufficient for the present record, which professes tobe strictly literary, to notify the fact that on the first day ofMay, 1866, we went out to Cambridge and began to live in a housewhich we owned in fee if not in deed, and which was none the lessvaluable for being covered with mortgages. Physically, it was acarpenter's box, of a sort which is readily imagined by theAnglo-American genius for ugliness, but which it is not so easy toimpart a just conception of. A trim hedge of arbor-vita; tried tohide it from the world in front, and a tall board fence behind; thelittle lot was well planted (perhaps too well planted) with pears,grapes, and currants, and there was a small open space which I lostno time in digging up for a kitchen-garden. On one side of us werethe open fields; on the other a brief line of neighbor-houses;across the street before us was a grove of stately oaks, which Inever could persuade Aldrich had painted leaves on them in thefall. We were really in a poor suburb of a suburb; but such is thefascination of ownership, even the ownership of a fully mortgagedproperty, that we calculated the latitude and longitude of thewhole earth from the spot we called ours. In our walks aboutCambridge we saw other places where we might have been willing tolive; only, we said, they were too far off: We even prized thearchitecture of our little box, though we had but so lately livedin a Gothic palace on the Grand Canal in Venice, and were notuncritical of beauty in the possessions of others. Positive beautywe could not have honestly said we thought our cottage had as awhole, though we might have held out for something of the kind inthe brackets of turned wood under its eaves. But we were richlycontent with it; and with life in Cambridge, as it began to openitself to us, we were infinitely more than content. This life, sorefined, so intelligent, so gracefully simple, I do not suppose hasanywhere else had its parallel.
I.
It was the moment before the old American customshad been changed by European influences among people of easiercircumstances; and in Cambridge society kept what was best of itsvillage traditions, and chose to keep them in the full knowledge ofdifferent things. Nearly every one had been abroad; and nearlyevery one had acquired the taste for olives without losing a relishfor native sauces; through the intellectual life there was anentire democracy, and I do not believe that since the capitalisticera began there was ever a community in which money counted forless. There was little show of what money could buy; I remember butone private carriage (naturally, a publisher's); and there was notone livery, except a livery in the larger sense kept by thestableman Pike, who made us pay now a quarter and now a half dollarfor a seat in his carriages, according as he lost or gatheredcourage for the charge. We thought him extortionate, and we mostlywalked through snow and mud of amazing depth and thickness.
The reader will imagine how acceptable thiscircumstance was to a young literary man beginning life with afully mortgaged house and a salary of untried elasticity. If therewere distinctions made in Cambridge they were not againstliterature, and we found ourselves in the midst of a charmingsociety, indifferent, apparently, to all questions but those of thehigher education which comes so largely by nature. That is to say,in the Cambridge of that day (and, I dare say, of this) a mindcultivated in some sort was essential, and after that came civilmanners, and the willingness and ability to be agreeable andinteresting; but the question of riches or poverty did not enter.Even the question of family, which is of so great concern in NewEngland, was in abeyance. Perhaps it was taken for granted thatevery one in Old Cambridge society must be of good family, or hecould not be there; perhaps his mere residence tacitly ennobledhim; certainly his acceptance was an informal patent of gentility.To my mind, the structure of society was almost ideal, and until wehave a perfectly socialized condition of things I do not believe weshall ever have a more perfect society. The instincts whichgoverned it were not such as can arise from the sordid competitionof interests; they flowed from a devotion to letters, and from aself-sacrifice in material things which I can give no better notionof than by saying that the outlay of the richest college magnateseemed to be graduated to the income of the poorest.
In those days, the men whose names have givensplendor to Cambridge were still living there. I shall forget someof them in the alphabetical enumeration of Louis Agassiz, FrancisJ. Child, Richard Henry Dana, Jun. , John Fiske, Dr. Asa Gray, thefamily of the Jameses, father and sons, Lowell, Longfellow, CharlesEliot Norton, Dr. John G. Palfrey, James Pierce, Dr. Peabody,Professor Parsons, Professor Sophocles. The variety of talents andof achievements was indeed so great that Mr. Bret Harte, when freshfrom his Pacific slope, justly said, after listening to a partialrehearsal of them, “Why, you couldn't fire a revolver from yourfront porch anywhere without bringing down a two-volumer! ”Everybody had written a book, or an article, or a poem; or was inthe process or expectation of doing it, and doubtless those whosenames escape me will have greater difficulty in eluding fame. Thesekindly, these gifted folk each came to see us and to make us athome among them; and my home is still among them, on this side andon that side of the line between the living and the dead whichinvisibly passes through all the streets of the cities of men.
II.
We had the whole summer for the exploration ofCambridge before society returned from the mountains and thesea-shore, and it was not till October that I saw Longfellow. Iheard again, as I heard when I first came to Boston, that he was atNahant, and though Nahant was no longer so far away, now, as it wasthen, I did not think of seeking him out even when we went for aday to explore that coast during the summer. It seems strange thatI cannot recall just when and where I saw him, but early after hisreturn to Cambridge I had a message from him asking me to come to ameeting of the Dante Club at Craigie House.
Longfellow was that winter (1866-7) revising histranslation of the 'Paradiso', and the Dante Club was the circle ofItalianate friends and scholars whom he invited to follow him andcriticise his work from the original, while he read his versionaloud. Those who were most constantly present were Lowell andProfessor Norton, but from time to time others came in, and weseldom sat down at the nine-o'clock supper that followed thereading of the canto in less number than ten or twelve.
The criticism, especially from the accomplishedDanteists I have named, was frank and frequent. I believe theyneither of them quite agreed with Longfellow as to the form ofversion he had chosen, but, waiving that, the question was h