File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Emmeline (Austin) Wadsworth, 22 August 1841 (988e7e63-3135-4f92-8898-fc917b85c0f8).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-011#021

St. Leonard’s. August 22d 1841.
It is very grand to make a magnanimous request, my dearest darling, but very dismal to have it strictly obeyed. & when the last steamer brought me no letter from you I felt heart sick & had for consolation Father’s forlorn announcement “Emmeline not yet returned” which, compiled with yr silence, set me at once to conjecturing what might, or might not, have befallen you, whether you had broken yr dear little neck on some horrid Virginia road or had run away with the very handsome Englishman to break my heart having lost yr own; but I now reject all such discomfortable fancies for the more rational conviction that you wrote not, to save yr eyes, at my request. If so I am resigned, but I would you had waited till others could report of yr well-being – for such a sudden break in yr regular accounts gives me the shock of a railroad accident. Here am I listening to the Atlantic’s roar just 12 months from the time we listened to it together on your side. “How chances mock & changes fill the cup of alteration with divers liquors” as Shakspeare has it & how strangely the years of my life are shuffled about like cards, now & then turning out a trump, tho’ the ace of trumps does not seem to be forthcoming – for one is no better (nor worse) than his fellow as yet – very evenly balanced on the whole. This is an odd place, the mere frontispiece of a town having one row of very grand stone houses & Hotels, run into palace-like combinations, facing the sea which breaks in a beach within a stone’s throw from the windows, as if the Common was all green water instead of green grass & framed & tumbled upon your Mall. But there are no nice rocks as on our coast to scramble over (the chalky cliffs are ugly substitutes) so the lounging flaneur here have to snuff the soft salt breeze on as formal a promenade as a city avenue, or sit to see one wave play leap-frog with its predecessor on benches, one of which we have just vacated after enjoying a lonely P.M. thereon, Tom puffing, Mary & Mac [p. 2] sentimentalizing & watching the latitude & longitude of the Cutchs rosy round face & white feather over Anne’s shoulder as she bore him about & I staring at the dark line of the horizon & wondering what some good people were about beyond it. We came here from Tunbridge Wells thinking to remain a week or so but Mary’s nerves rebel at the townish look of things & the relaxing character of the air, so we shall probably skirt along shore & stop wherever it looks most inviting. I was rather sorry to quit Tunbridge fancying much its beautiful ravines & downs but one never knows when to pause in England for is it not all “a paradise of high productions” to quote from that sinful book you do not blush to read (cause you’re always a blushing!) Don Juan, & so we left Camilla’s haunts in all the turmoil of races & a Fair - & drove leisurely hither, seeing, en route, the loveliest old ruin, Bayham Abbey, nestled, as they always are, in sleek fat meadows, as sleek & fat as the worthy monks, with a gentle stream near by seeming to mutter audible aves. Such glorious masses of ivy clinging to & upholding the mouldering arches with an intensity of pious affection worthy of a human creature – Ruth & her aged kinswoman or any love stronger than death. How I love to sketch in these lone places & hear the grey stones talk & feel alone with the great Past as with a kind Christian ghost or Jean Paul’s Night. It is a very peculiar & expanding sensation – an inhaling of many lives beside yr own, & you do ”hear the tread of distant generations” & see them sweep by as realities not as mere phantoms seen thro’ a glass darkly when reading histories. They have touched the very stones you touch & it is like taking the hand of human brotherhood; to feel the whole world is your kindred when you stumble on these venerable reminders of the flow of destinies. We came thro’ Battle, where Harold ended his career, & I should hardly have been startled to have met him & his stout Saxons so visible & natural become striking events & so near when you have the ground-plan before you. A noble Abbey with lofty towers stands over the Saxon death-bed an amend honorable from Wm. It is truly breathing the breath of life in to dead matter to give it such associations for an appanage. I never look at the sea here without converting every fishing [p. 3] smack into the Norman fleet & have a thrill of interest (tho’ my sympathy is all with the Saxons as usually with the beaten) in thinking an Apulton or d’Apelton was on board possibly. I believe Father’s genealogical researches hint as much. Yesterday Tom & I walked to Hastings a mile hence & a queer old town washed by the sea & backed by very lofty steep cliffs which we mounted & found on their extreme verge, like an old feather-stipt eagle on his eyrie, an antique Castle perched, “sadly out of repair” as somebody said of Rome. I sketched (of course) its picturesque raggedness & Tom was inspired by the ‘genius loci’ to a Wordsworthian sonnet. Thus we “improve our opportunities.” The only visible genius was an old woman (in keeping with the ruin) who made us pay a shilling for our romance as we did not ‘subscribe to the Castle’! (the interior is converted into a public garden with neat flower-beds & arbours whence the coast of France is imagined to be seen.) Last night I patronized a juggler never having wondered before at their seemingly unfathomable trickeries. It gives me a modest opinion of their senses & it is highly amusing to witness the wea[??]ness of the audience, aware it is all explainable trickery & yet shrinking from assisting the Conjuror as if they might thereby lend a hand to the Devil himself. The most ludicrous performance was the enacting (to use the generic expression of the bill) of “the Grecian statues” by an youthful Crumles encased from top to toe in white cotton, head inclusive. His attempts to stiffen warm flesh & blood into marble would have driven Perseus mad. À propos of him did you ever read Benvenuto Cellini’s autobiography I am getting deeply taken with it tis so full of vitality & adventure. The unbridled passions of those days gave wondrous picturesqueness tho’ shocking materiel to men’s destinies & he led a dozen lives in one & gives such interesting details of every act by sword or chisel or mould that he achieved beside being contemporary with so many other great geniuses, then enriching Italy together. Aug 29th I continue my letter, best & dearest, from a charming little quiet village, East Bourne, on the Sussex coast which so took our fancy with its pretty ruralities & nearness to the sea combined & unpretending comfort that we have taken a house for a week & may remain on if the bracing air does Mary as much good as it promises. Every thing is so systematized in England that [p. 4 bottom] housekeeping troubles melt into thin air. We had hardly crossed the threshold of the house before the butcher, baker, “egg-merchant,” &c &c appeared with magic speed to supply every possible human want. One is bothered with the variety only for the division of labour is carried to any extent & the separate accounts would be no slight fatigue to my unmathematical brain. We came hither by Pevensey bay where Wm the Conqueror landed of which Sidney Smith said the shore was so ugly he marvelled Wm had the heart to proceed into the country. It is now defended by any quantity of martello towers (rather belying Campbell’s boast that Engd has “no towers along the steep.”) built when Nap was expected to imitate the Norman hero. How like him to select the same spot for an invasion supposing doubtless he would conquer as certainly as his “illustrious predecessor.” At Pevensey there is a glorious old Castle, partly Roman, of immense extent with enormous towers, [p.4 top] grim as a Knight in harness with battered helm & shield, a perfect tapestry of thick ivy drapes the walls in parts making a very imposing whole. Tom & I got some nice sketches out of it & not an unrememberable pleasure was a nice lunch of bread & cheese ‘al fresco’ upon the ruins, the sea booming below us, fit voice for such a [crossed out: ghost] solitude & skeleton. Life in England is truly a rich compound, brimming over with spirit-stirring drops; the mind may grow fat as well as the body here but it is dismal to feel an alien in a country where we would fain claim a birth-right. One can readily comprehend the proud, self sufficiency of a people in such a Canaan as this, & misery is so well varnished over for the most part that no wonder they are incredulous of its existence, as I was that within these lovely cottages half buried in honeysuckle & roses the simplest necessaries were rare luxuries. We met a woman on the road [p. 1 cross] walking all the way to Portsmouth to join her husband a soldier, without shoes, wearing only one skirt & a shawl to cover her limbs (having pawned her clothes) & with the burden of 3 children, one 3 weeks old! Luckily she had an English constitution & walked quite as fast as we drove. The fields before & around us have the golden glow of harvest upon them & a succession of warm days has ripened them richly – groups of gleaners recal [sic] ‘Ruth amid the alien corn’ & it is a pretty sight the full stacks on the very verge of the deep chalk cliffs along which we walk as at Newport, & see the mellow harvest moon wake a soul in the sea as love does in cold natures, a welcome unlooked-for life. Art too gazing, sweet, on this August moon which I dearly love because it is a close link with thee, shines now just as brightly in yr eyes as in mine, & as near is the truest, most amiable of go-betweens! Dost remember how we gazed at it from our piazza at Newport & saw it rise out of the sea & shoot an arrow of light to our feet as from a brighter world? So didst thou arise to brighten & cheer my darkening spirit & fill it with a serene blessed radiance, driving thence the heavy mists that seemed settling where the light of day had vanished! This is no fine talk, dearest, there is a harmony on all God’s choice gifts & surely the light shed from one human soul upon another is faintly typified by visible things but we must use the latter as ‘thermometers’ are used to make known the degree of influence. May your dear eyes forgive this crossing remember how muchI check back when I write. God ever bless you & yours. Much love from all mine – in all faith & truth thy friend.
F. –
ADDRESSED: GEORGE TICKNOR ESQ / MISS AUSTIN. / WOOD’S HOLE / NEAR FALMOUTH [ALL BUT “MISS AUSTIN” IN A HEAVIER HAND OR PEN]
POSTMARK: BOSTON / SEP [?] 20 / MS
STAMPED: PAID

• Keywords: correspondence; long archives; frances e. a. longfellow papers (long 20257); frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; people; document; subject; travel; places; europe; england; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1841 (1011/002.001-011); (LONG-FileUnitName)