Authors and Friends Part 4

"I send you the pleasant volume I promised you yesterday. It is a book for summer moods by the seaside, but will not be out of place on a winter night by the fireside.... You will find an allusion to the 'blue borage flowers' that flavor the claret-cup. I know where grows another kind of bore-age that embitters the goblet of life. I can spare you some of this herb, if you have room for it in your garden or your garret. It is warranted to destroy all peace of mind, and finally to produce softening of the brain and insanity.

"'Better juice of vine Than berry wine!

Fire! fire! steel, oh, steel!

Fire! fire! steel and fire!'"

The following, written in the spring of the same year, gives a hint of what a festival season it was to him while the lilacs which surround his house were in bloom:--

"Here is the poem, copied for you by your humble scribe. I found it impossible to crowd it into a page of note paper. Come any pleasant morning, as soon after breakfast or before as you like, and we will go on with the 'Michael Angelical' ma.n.u.script. I shall not be likely to go to town while the lilacs are in bloom."

The rambling diary continues: "To-day Longfellow sent us half a dozen bottles of wine, and after them came a note saying he had sent them off without finding time to label them. 'They are wine of Avignon,' he added, 'and should bear this inscription from Redi:--

"'Benedetto Quel claretto Che si spilla in Avignone.'"

About this period Longfellow invited an old friend, who had fallen into extreme helplessness from ill health, to come and make him a visit. It was a great comfort to his friend, a scholar like himself, "to nurse the dwindling faculty of joy" in such companions.h.i.+p, and he lingered many weeks in the suns.h.i.+ne of the old house. Longfellow's patience and devoted care for this friend of his youth was a signal example of what a true and constant heart may do unconsciously, in giving expression and recognition to the bond of a sincere friends.h.i.+p.

Long after his friend was unable to rise from his chair without a.s.sistance or go unaccompanied to his bedroom, Longfellow followed the lightest unexpressed wish with his sympathetic vision and performed the smallest offices unbidden. "Longfellow, will you turn down my coat collar?" I have heard him say in a plaintive way, and it was a beautiful lesson to see the quick and cheerful response which would follow many a like suggestion.

In referring to this trait of his character, I find among the notes made by Mr. Fields on Longfellow: "One of the most occupied of all our literary men and scholars, he yet finds time for the small courtesies of existence, those minor attentions that are so often neglected. One day, seeing him employed in cutting something from a newspaper, I asked him what he was about. 'Oh,' said he, 'here is a little paragraph speaking kindly of our poor old friend Blank; you know he seldom gets a word of praise, poor fellow, nowadays; and thinking he might not chance to see this paper, I am snipping out the paragraph to mail to him this afternoon. I know that even these few lines of recognition will make him happy for hours, and I could not bear to think he might perhaps miss seeing these pleasant words so kindly expressed.'"

"_May Day_, 1876.--Longfellow dined with us. He said during the dinner, when we heard a blast of wintry wind howling outside, 'This is May day enough; it does not matter to us how cold it is outside.' He was inclined to be silent, for there were other and brilliant talkers at the table, one of whom said to him in a pause of the conversation, 'Longfellow, tell us about yourself; you never talk about yourself.'

'No,' said Longfellow gently, 'I believe I never do.' 'And yet,'

continued the first speaker eagerly, 'you confessed to me once'--'No,'

said Longfellow, laughing, 'I think I never did.'"

And here is a tiny note of compliment, graceful as a poet's note should be:--

"I have just received your charming gift, your note and the stately lilies; but fear you may have gone from home before my thanks can reach you.

"How beautiful they are, these lilies of the field; and how like American women! Not because 'they neither toil nor spin,' but because they are elegant and 'born in the purple.'"

There is a brief record in 1879 of a visit to us in Manchester-by-the- Sea. Just before he left he said, "After I am gone to-day, I want you to read Schiller's poem of the 'Ring of Polycrates,' if you do not recall it too distinctly. You will know then how I feel about my visit." He repeated also some English hexameters he had essayed from the first book of the Iliad. He believes the work may be still more perfectly done than has ever yet been achieved. We drove to Gloucester wrapped in a warm sea fog. His enjoyment of the green woods and the sea breeze was delightful to watch. "Ay me! ay me! woods may decay,"

but who can dare believe such life shall cease from the fair world!

Seeing the Portland steamer pa.s.s one night, a speck on the horizon, bearing as he knew his daughter and her husband, he watched it long, then said, "Think of a part of yourself being on that moving speck."

The Sunday following that visit he wrote from Portland:-- "Church bells are ringing; clatter of church-going feet on the pavement; boys crying 'Boston Herald;' voices of pa.s.sing men and women: these are the sounds that come to me at this upper window, looking down into the street.

"I contrast it all with last Sunday's silence at Manchester-by-the- Sea, and remember my delightful visit there. Then comes the thought of the moonlight and the music and Sh.e.l.ley's verses,--

"'As the moon's soft splendor O'er the faint, cold starlight of heaven Is thrown;'

and so on

"'Of some world far from ours, Where moonlight and music and feeling Are one.'

"How beautiful this song would sound if set to music by Mrs. Bell and chanted by her in the twilight."

Later he enclosed the song, which is as follows, and I venture to reprint it because it is seldom found among Sh.e.l.ley's poems:--

AN ARIETTE FOR MUSIC.

_To a lady singing to her accompaniment on the guitar._

As the moon's soft splendor O'er the faint, cold starlight of heaven Is thrown, So thy voice most tender To the strings without soul has given.

Its own.

The stars will awaken, Though the moon sleep a full hour later To-night; No leaf will be shaken, Whilst the dews of thy melody scatter Delight.

Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing A tone Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.

He added:--

"I find the song in my sc.r.a.pbook, and send it to save you the trouble of hunting for it.

"H. W. L."

It was first reprinted in "The Waif," a thin volume of selections published by Longfellow many years ago. "The Waif" and "The Estray"

preserved many a lovely poem from oblivion, till it should find its place at length among its fellows.

Already in 1875 we find Longfellow at work upon his latest collection of poems, which he called "Poems of Places." It was a much more laborious and unrewarding occupation than he had intended, and he was sometimes weary of his self-imposed task. He wrote at this period:-- No politician ever sought for Places with half the zeal that I do.

Friend and Foe alike have to give Place to

Yours truly, H. W. L.

Again he says:--

"What evil demon moved me to make this collection of 'Poems of Places'? Could I have foreseen the time it would take, and the worry and annoyance it would bring with it, I never would have undertaken it. The worst of it is, I have to write pieces now and then to fill up gaps."

More and more his old friends grew dear to him as the years pa.s.sed and "the G.o.ddess Neuralgia," as he called his malady, kept him chiefly at home. He wrote in 1877:--

"When are you coming back from your Cottage on the Cliffs? The trees on the Common and the fountains are calling for you.

"'Thee, t.i.tyrus, even the pine-trees, The very fountains, the very Copses are calling.'

Perhaps also your creditors. At all events I am, who am your debtor."

The days were fast approaching when the old things must pa.s.s away. He wrote tenderly:--

"I am sorry to hear that you are not quite yourself. I sympathize with you, for I am somebody else. It is the two W's, Work and Weather, that are playing the mischief with us.... You must not open a book; you must not even look at an inkstand. These are both contraband articles, upon which we have to pay heavy duties. We cannot smuggle them in.

Nature's custom-house officers are too much on the alert."

In 1880 he again wrote, describing the wedding of the daughter of an old friend:--

"A beautiful wedding it was; an ideal village wedding, in a pretty church, and the Windmill Cottage of our friend resplendent with autumnal flowers. In one of the rooms there was a tea-kettle hanging on a crane in the fireplace.

"So begins a new household. But Miss Neilson's death has saddened me, and yesterday Mrs. Horsford came with letters from Norway, giving particulars of Ole Bull's last days, his death and burial. The account was very touching. All Bergen's flags at half-mast; telegrams from the King; funeral oration by Bjoernson. The dear old musician was carried from his island to the mainland in a steamer, followed by a long line of other steamers. No Viking ever had such a funeral."

And here the extracts from letters and journals must cease. It was a golden sunset, in spite of the increasing infirmities which beset him; for he could never lose his pleasure in making others happy, and only during the few last days did he lose his own happiness among his books and at his desk. The influence his presence gave out to others, of calm good cheer and tenderness, made those who knew him feel that he possessed, in larger measure than others, what Jean Paul Richter calls "a heavenly unfathomableness which makes man G.o.dlike, and love toward him infinite." Indeed, this "heavenly unfathomableness" was a strong characteristic of his nature, and the gracious silence in which he often dwelt gave a rare sense of song without words. Therefore, perhaps on that day when we gathered around the form through which his voice was never again to utter itself, and heard his own words repeated upon the air saying, "Weep not, my friends! rather rejoice with me. I shall not feel the pain, but shall be gone, and you shall have another friend in heaven," it was impossible not to believe that he was with us still, the central spirit, comforting and uplifting the circle of those who were most dear to him.