The White Mr. Longfellow | Page 8

I did not know Longfellow before that fatal time, and I
shall not say that his presence bore record of it except in my fancy. He
may always have had that look of one who had experienced the utmost
harm that fate can do, and henceforth could possess himself of what
was left of life in peace. He could never have been a man of the
flowing ease that makes all comers at home; some people complained
of a certain 'gene' in him; and he had a reserve with strangers, which
never quite lost itself in the abandon of friendship, as Lowell's did. He
was the most perfectly modest man I ever saw, ever imagined, but he

had a gentle dignity which I do not believe any one, the coarsest, the
obtusest, could trespass upon. In the years when I began to know him,
his long hair and the beautiful beard which mixed with it were of one
iron-gray, which I saw blanch to a perfect silver, while that pearly tone
of his complexion, which Appleton so admired, lost itself in the
wanness of age and pain. When he walked, he had a kind of spring in
his gait, as if now and again a buoyant thought lifted him from the
ground. It was fine to meet him coming down a Cambridge street; you
felt that the encounter made you a part of literary history, and set you
apart with him for the moment from the poor and mean. When he
appeared in Harvard Square, he beatified if not beautified the ugliest
and vulgarest looking spot on the planet outside of New York. You
could meet him sometimes at the market, if you were of the same
provision-man as he; and Longfellow remained as constant to his
tradespeople as to any other friends. He rather liked to bring his proofs
back to the printer's himself, and we often found ourselves together at
the University Press, where the Atlantic Monthly used to be printed.
But outside of his own house Longfellow seemed to want a fit
atmosphere, and I love best to think of him in his study, where he
wrought at his lovely art with a serenity expressed in his smooth,
regular, and scrupulously perfect handwriting. It was quite vertical, and
rounded, with a slope neither to the right nor left, and at the time I
knew him first, he was fond of using a soft pencil on printing paper,
though commonly he wrote with a quill. Each letter was distinct in
shape, and between the verses was always the exact space of half an
inch. I have a good many of his poems written in this fashion, but
whether they were the first drafts or not I cannot say; very likely not.
Towards the last he no longer sent his poems to the magazines in his
own hand; but they were always signed in autograph.
I once asked him if he were not a great deal interrupted, and he said,
with a faint sigh, Not more than was good for him, he fancied; if it
were not for the interruptions, he might overwork. He was not a friend
to stated exercise, I believe, nor fond of walking, as Lowell was; he had
not, indeed, the childish associations of the younger poet with the
Cambridge neighborhoods; and I never saw him walking for pleasure
except on the east veranda of his house, though I was told he loved

walking in his youth. In this and in some other things Longfellow was
more European than American, more Latin than Saxon. He once said
quaintly that one got a great deal of exercise in putting on and off one's
overcoat and overshoes.
I suppose no one who asked decently at his door was denied access to
him, and there must have been times when he was overrun with
volunteer visitors; but I never heard him complain of them. He was
very charitable in the immediate sort which Christ seems to have meant;
but he had his preferences; humorously owned, among beggars. He
liked the German beggars least, and the Italian beggars most, as having
most savair-faire; in fact, we all loved the Italians in Cambridge. He
was pleased with the accounts I could give him of the love and honor I
had known for him in Italy, and one day there came a letter from an
Italian admirer, addressed to "Mr. Greatest Poet Longfellow," which he
said was the very most amusing superscription he had ever seen.
It is known that the King of Italy offered Longfellow the cross of San
Lazzaro, which is the Italian literary decoration. It came through the
good offices of my old acquaintance Professor Messadaglia, then a
deputy in the Italian Parliament, whom, for some reason I cannot
remember,