Forgive the obvious pun, if you please, but lately my creative juices have been going through a dry spell, so I thought I would take a look at some of the people and things that inspire me. For instance, the genius paintings of Davinci or Monet. Or perhaps listen to one of my favorite albums – Evanescence or maybe something by Smile Empty Soul to get in a “dark place”. But somehow the first stop my brain exits the “thought train” at is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I think about his flowing words and the ease of reciting his rhythmic poetry. Then I wonder what inspired some of his greatest works. What inspired him to write my favorite poem of all time “Footsteps of Angels”? So I type his name into Wikipedia and get lost in the early 1800s, a time I think I should have been born into. I am fascinated by his life story and thought I would share it with you. Who knows? This might become a mini-series with the likes of Poe and Hemingway to follow.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was the second eldest of eight children, born on February 27^th, 1807 in Portland, Maine in an aunt’s house. At eight months, Longfellow moved into what is now known as the Wadsworth Longfellow House and continued to reside there for the next thirty-five years. What I found interesting about this house is that it was built between the year 1785 and 1786 by Longfellow’s grandfather, peleg Wadsworth, who was a war general. The house was the very first building in Portland to be constructed entirely out of brick and is now a National Historic Landmark. Henry’s mother, Zilpah, was married in the house to Stephen Longfellow, IV.

His first poem, “The Battle of Lovell’s Pond”, was printed in the Portland Gazette on November 17, 1820.  He was just thirteen years old.  And at the tender age of fifteen, Henry enrolled at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.  During his last year at the college, 1824 – 1825, he published nearly forty original poems in local newspapers and magazines.  After graduating in 1825 he was offered a job as Professor of Modern Languages.  Mind you, he was still only eighteen years old.  Though obscure, the story goes that he was hired under the condition that he travel abroad through Europe in order to study French, Spanish and Italian.  He traveled to France, Spain, Germany, Italy and England before returning home to the United States and had learned the required languages as well as German and Portuguese in the three years he had traveled without any formal instruction.  While working at the college he wrote textbooks in French, Italian and Spanish, but hated working there.  Longfellow once wrote, “…I do not believe that I was born for such a lot.  I have aimed higher than this.”

On September 14^th, 1831, Henry married his childhood friend, Mary Storer Potter and settled down in Brunswick, Maine.  They both disliked living there and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts when Longfellow was presented with the Smith Professorship of Modern languages from Harvard College in 1835.  As before, one stipulation of the position was that he travel abroad for at least a year, so the Longfellows traveled across Europe where Longfellow further studied German as well as Dutch, Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish and Danish.

Unfortunately, during their trip in October of 1835, Mary had a miscarriage in her sixth month of pregnancy.  She never recovered and died several weeks later at just twenty-two years.  Longfellow was deeply saddened by her passing and went on to write, “One thought occupies me night and day…She is Dead – She is dead!  All day I am weary and sad.”  Three years after Mary’s death, he was inspired to write the poem, “Footsteps of Angels”, which, as you know, is my favorite poem.

In 1836, Longfellow returned to the States, taking up the professorship at Harvard and lived in a house that is now preserved as the “Longfellow National Historic Site”.  The house was once the headquarters of George Washington.

While working in Cambridge, Longfellow met Frances “Fanny” Appleton, the daughter of a well-to-do Boston Industrialist, Nathan Appleton.  He was immediately smitten and determined to court her, though the girl was not at all interested in him.  Longfellow wrote to his friend, George Stillman in July of 1839 that, “Victory hangs doubtful. The lady says she will not! I say she shall! It is not pride, but the madness of passion."  George Stillman encouraged him, writing back, “I delight to see you keeping up so stout a heart for the resolve to conquer is half the battle in love as well as war".  And so Longfellow persevered and continued to court Fanny for seven long years, walking from his home in Cambridge to the Appleton house by crossing the Boston Bridge.  The bridge was later torn down and rebuilt in 1906, which was eventually redubbed the Longfellow Bridge.

During the long courtship, Henry continued to write and published Hyperion in 1839, a book in prose inspired by his European travels and his unsuccessful courtship of Fanny.

On May 10^th, 1843, Longfellow received a letter from Fanny who had finally caved in and agreed to marry him.  The poor man was too keyed up to wait for a carriage that he walked for an hour and a half to meet her at her home and they were married shortly thereafter.  Nathan Appleton bought the house Longfellow had been living in as a wedding present and Henry ended up spending the remainder of his life living in that house.

Despite Fanny’s initial apprehension in marrying Longfellow, the couple had six children together.  Charles, Ernest, Fanny, Alice Mary, Edith and Anne Allegra.  The year little Fanny was born, 1847, Evangeline was published for the first time.

Shortly after throwing a farewell party for his lifelong friend, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom he met at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, who was moving overseas permanently, Longfellow retired from Harvard in 1854 and concentrated solely on his writing.  He was presented with an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the college in 1859.

Tragically, on July 9^th, 1861, Fanny was saving locks of her children’s hair and somehow her dress caught fire, though it is unclear if from hot wax or a burning candle.  Henry was awakened from the nap he was taking at the time and tried to stifle the flames, but it was too little, too late and Fanny had been badly burned.  She passed away the next morning.  In trying to save her, Longfellow was badly burned himself.  His injuries were serious enough that he was unable to attend his own wife’s funeral.  The burns to his face caused him to stop shaving, which produced the trademark beard he wore thereafter.

Henry never recovered from the devastation of his second wife’s death and would occasionally take laudanum, an alcoholic herbal concoction containing opium and morphine in order to cope.  He worried he would go insane and begged not to be institutionalized.  In 1879, eighteen years after Fanny’s death, he wrote “The Cross of Snow” in observance of her passing.

Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

And seasons, changeless since the day she died

Longfellow had difficulty in continuing his writing after her death, and so he went on a hiatus of sorts, focuseing on his translation.  He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy.  Longfellow was one of the five members of the Fireside Poets group.  The group included William Cullen Bryant, John Greenleaf Whittier, Russell James Lowell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.  These five talented poets were the first Americans to rival British poets in both countries, almost transcending Alfred Lord Tennyson.

In 1864, Longfellow created the “Dante Club”, a weekly gathering of some of his friends including William Dean Howells, James Russell Lowell and Charles Eliot Norton.  The group gathered to help Longfellow in his translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy and the complete three-volume translation was first published in 1867.

Longfellow supported abolitionism in the 1860s and once wrote in his journal in 1878: "I have only one desire; and that is for harmony, and a frank and honest understanding between North and South.”

In March of 1882, Longfellow was confined to bed with severe abdominal pain.  He coped with the pain for several days, calling on the help of an old friend, opium.  He died on March 24th, 1882, surrounded by his family.  He had been suffering from a disease called peritonitis, which nowadays can be corrected by antibiotics or surgery.  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was buried with his both of his wives at Mount Auburn Cemeter in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He had spent the last few years of his life perfecting the translation of Michelangelo’s poetry, but he never thought it was complete enough to be published.  One year after his death, in 1883, a posthumous edition was collected and printed. 

When the hours of Day are numbered,
  

And the voices of the Night


Wake the better soul, that slumbered,
  

To a holy, calm delight; 



Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
  

And, like phantoms grim and tall,


Shadows from the fitful firelight
  

Dance upon the parlor wall; 



Then the forms of the departed
  

Enter at the open door;

The beloved, the true-hearted,
  

Come to visit me once more; 



He, the young and strong, who cherished
  

Noble longings for the strife,


By the roadside fell and perished,
  

Weary with the march of life! 



They, the holy ones and weakly,
  

Who the cross of suffering bore,


Folded their pale hands so meekly,
  

Spake with us on earth no more! 



And with them the Being Beauteous,
  

Who unto my youth was given,


More than all things else to love me,
  

And is now a saint in heaven. 



With a slow and noiseless footstep
  

Comes that messenger divine,


Takes the vacant chair beside me,
  

Lays her gentle hand in mine. 



And she sits and gazes at me
  

With those deep and tender eyes,


Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
  

Looking downward from the skies. 



Uttered not, yet comprehended,
  

Is the spirit's voiceless prayer,


Soft rebukes, in blessings ended,
  

Breathing from her lips of air. 



Oh, though oft depressed and lonely,
  

All my fears are laid aside,


If I but remember only
  

Such as these have lived and died!