File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Isaac Appleton Jewett, 6 July 1840 (88e86a61-0c83-4989-98ff-711d6c433a39).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-010#016

[star doodle] Newport. July 6th 1840.
Do you mark that pentagram on the threshold of this sheet, most saucy of cousins? Does your conscience hint to you it purpose Do you feel any evil spirit, that is mayhap looking within you, taking French leave at this mystic sign? I have stamped it there to preserve these lines from the sneering Mephisto that was your boon companion when last you perused one of my gracious communications – turning the cream of my good thoughts sour – as he looked over your shoulder. sacrilegiously echoing with his low, fiendish chuckle the enthusiasm kindled by honest virtue, - distorting quiet truths into caricatures for impish amusements. making you, even, forswear, for the time, the universal charity which was wont to be your boast. A sad influence. I hope he is gone; fairly exorcised & forget not to burn the above foot-print of the guardian angel on door & window sill that he may keep respectful distance or I shall not risk looking in upon you very often. For, like Margaret; he is hateful to me as poisoned air, I cannot breathe or pray where his sneer has polluted the atmosphere – he has already disenchanted all living things which he has touched - & his quiet malice would dethrone the stars if it could, but, thank God, - it cannot breathe in that rare upper-air. There, you have got all those heroics instead of the simple scolding I intended to lavish upon you for so saucily making fun of Mackintosh. If I had written you in the city you should have had it in the Stockbridgian manner which you found so spicy but these sweet, softening influences here you may thank for my good-nature. I would have taught you (if you wont mend the high-ways oh unworthy son of earth) how to mend your manners or to pay the tax, dearer than emptying your purse of a few shillings, of losing the good graces of one who is as exacting as Caesar. Put a pick axe [p. 2] there & smooth the ruts over which good-will stumbles. Mc Adamize the “old Adam” within you but – I cant afford to throw away any more good advice, gratis, especially if I must pay for all your double letters and my own too. Do wish to know my ‘environment’? Tis this Sitting in an airy, straw-carpeted, flower-perfumed drawing room at the farthest corner of this island (Rhode island) looking across a pillared piazza, flower beds, high grass, sown thick with usurping ‘white-weed,’ to the deep blue sea, swallows twittering in the soft, velvety air (like English the downiest in the world) & building nests trust fully under our very eaves, boba links likewise chattering – the distant under-toned murmur of breaking waves, & the sighings, shudderings, Miserere-like appealings of an Eolian harp in the window – like a sad angel ‘plaining (if such a paradox is allowable) the sudden laughter of a wandering-on cliffs-nurse & the unmeaning babbling of my youngest brother – Wm Sumner Appleton, &c &c – but such sights & sounds surrounded I am enjoying – (if our family circle were complete) the dolce far viente as fully as last summer. We have taken for 3 months this elegant marine villa, at a goodly distance from Newport-town already swarming with goat-like specimens of human or watering-place-anity [inserted, other hand: “quere: inanity?”] which our sea-breeze will, I hope, blow in shore like other annoying insects & with all our city household are house keeping in most comfortable style. Father has leisure to parade of mornings the French-marquis robes de chamber so useless in active city-life & Tom enjoys the luxury of going strap-less & hat-less when he chooses without the arrest of any Mephistophelian sneer. Last Sunday reminded me of Stockbridgeian lazy content & soul purifying – for we sat on noble rocks just below our high ‘locale’ listening to the divine eloquence of in-rushing billows & that of the ‘Shakespeare of divines’ Taylor, mingling har- [p. 3] moniously, as there to the trickling brook preaching homilies. Fanny Wright is with us, as there, to fill up the association. Beside the diversions of driving on beaches & through green lanes, of enacting goats [star] mermaids, of spying with one of Chevallier’s best glasses into passing ships & dim shores, of eating fresh tautog & raising our own vegetables – we intend practising archery to shame bold Robin Hood; bows & arrows in any quantity only await grass-mowing & target erecting to do wonders. Was’nt it about this very day that you & the two Ls dashed in upon our Yale mummery – shaking your ‘alluring locks’ & producing the fruit-offering? Do you feel no compunctious visitings of conscience that another year finds you living with as little purpose, as little laboring with the useful, as much a weathercock – or do you still boast of the spiritual progress which is the one thing needful – of an inward march which has no outward sign? But I wish not to pry into your self-content or self-discontent. There must be always enough of the latter to keep the balance steady & also – “the weight will find a leaven” as your Milnes says. We got long, delightful letters from Mary by the G[reat] Western detailing picturesquely & heartily – her cordial open-armed welcome in Engd by Mac’s relations, their external & internal (as far as discoverable) physiognomies & phsychologies [sic], Maer Hall, a country seat of his Uncle Wedgwood, - the lovely country about (she remained there some time en route to London) &c, &c . but you shant have any more particulars for your waggery to make a handle of. Your friend Harry Sargent & his wife (never looking so plump & pretty) were in town when we left - & he amused me with describing osme of your proceedings at Staten Island – How you used to wander by the sea-shore & Demosthenes-like shout aloud, & toss your arms, your long Hyperion locks unconfined by a beaver till his servants asked him with wondering eyes & trembling hearts ‘Whether the gentleman had possession of all his senses or had not escaped from a certain, turretted [sic] building on the other shore.’ And how he was resolved to test the mystery of the [p. 4 bottom] hair & abducted you one day with no wardrobe but what, snail-like, you carried on your back & how triumphantly the spell remained un dissolved by such treachery & the locks did not cease to curl. He was very agreeable (not always at your expense) & she has quite lost a little prim manner that cramped her girlish ease; has now matronly ease instead. Amory Appleton assumed the dignity of a husband some weeks ago. The bride & bridal group were most lovely. Her elder sister is like an antique gem, as spiritually fair as Psyche & as sadly as Psyche deserted – for her lover is dying gradually & she herself was once [p. 4 top] so near heaven as never to lose since expressions that dawn there only. Then Sarah Appleton is a Titanesque beauty – rare to find, & there was a Miss Coolidge – of Minerva dignity of look & bearing. We have been reading the first number of the “Dial” a magazine got up by our Transcendentalists & as you think such things fit testers of the spirit of the times try to get it - you will like the astonishing concentration of thought therein for so few pages. Some of the poetry resembles the “Psalms of life” & I think it is much more creditable than these patched-up Brobdingnag newspapers. Your [p. 1 cross] style would accord with it very well, pity you hate N. England so! I have got to the end of my paper so must say Adieu.
Yrs F.E.A.
[p. 4 cross] Here is a pure transcendental specimen
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought:
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught &c
ADDRESSED: I. A. JEWETT ESQ. / COLUMBUS. / OHIO –
POSTMARK: NEW PORT / R.I / JUL 8
ENDORSED: AND JULY 12TH 40

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