File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Mary (Appleton) Mackintosh, 14 January 1856 (ab89befc-8c19-49f4-9649-12720599ed47).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-026#003

Cambridge Jan 14th 1856.
Dearest Mary,
We hope you enjoyed your Christmas at the Langtons, & that the New Year opens most cheerfully upon you & Robert. Our Christmas was duller than usual, as there was a violent storm without, & Harriot was too ill, with an Influenza, to have her usual party. The chicks, however, were amply consoled by a merry-making at Mrs Howes. I have hardly been able to get into town since my illness, & now the streets are blocked up with snow so that it is very diffi [p. 2] cult to get about. The boys have dug trenches in it, as laboriously as if at Sebastopol & have solid forts of ice from which they do great execution.
My monthly nurse has been gone a week, & as Rachel has, now the care of the baby added to the others, tho’ a very nice American seamstress relieves her of Alice, I am much confined up stairs, & feel like a venerable Banyan tree, pinned fast by all these offshoots springing up round me. I snatch stray moments for reading, while baby sleeps, & find ‘Lewes Life of Goethe’ very interesting - & most easy reading. Prescott we attempted [p. 3] to read aloud, but had to give it up, for we have only the evenings, & the boys consume half, - first with their Latin, in which papa must help them, & then with a book called ‘the Romance of the Revolution,’ which I gave Erny, & which they find so fascinating, with its stories of heroism, make & female, (for they are the finest little patriots & care for no history but ours) that they are not willing to wait for the slow process of reading it to themselves, but insist upon my help, which, as a New Year indulgence, I grant them, tho I have done too much in this way & they hardly yet enjoy their own efforts. Then there is Macaulay coming, &, with all the new poems, really an ‘embarrass de richesse.’ Curtis comes to lecture [p. 4] this week but I shall not be able to hear him more than once. He lectures on contemporaneous fiction Thackeray &c & no doubt will be brilliant – tho’ he has just lost his father I see, which is a sad preface to his Boston visit. He will be with Mrs Russell, his betrothed’s aunt. I shall tell Sumner about the Antigua slave, because I see in our papers it is mentioned as if a pretended case of slavery, & he may have a chance at Washington to set it right. It is droll that Mr Crampton might have been a cousin of ours, for he was much in love & offered himself to Henry’s pretty cousin Louly Wadsworth (was Mrs Baylor) who lives at Washington. She has just sent the children a famous box of Xmas gifts, with the funniest Santa Clause made of pine cones. Hiawatha’s metre makes quite a talk in the Athenaeum I see, & Freiligrath sends Henry his final dictum about it, but it was a pity he could not know that it was the similarity of Indian song with Finnish which suggested that metre, - making it the true one to use. [p. 1 cross] I always scold Henry for not explaining more in his notes. He forgets people are not as wise as he is! & might have saved himself much misinterpretation both in regard to this & the Golden Legend. Poor old Rogers! How glad I am I have seen him, & shall cherish his neat note about my ticket to Almanacks more than ever – also his kindness in getting it. My seamstress wished the Life of Sir J. Mackintosh to read so I trust her with it as she is very steady & neat.
[p. 2 cross] I have Miss Welles’ wedding-card, so I suppose she will soon be with the Sturgises. I read the speeches of Milnes &c at the Nightingale meeting with great interest. I see the Queen has bestowed some glittering gift upon her. I had some books done up for your chicks, when Tom intended to go, but I know not if they are worth sending on any other way. He is deep in spirits, - I mean of the other world, & they pulled the furniture about in an awful way he says the other night.
[p. 3 cross] Love to Mrs Rich, Mrs Wedgwood & all our dear friends – With much to R. & yourself
Yr affte
Fanny

• Keywords: correspondence; long archives; frances e. a. longfellow papers (long 20257); frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; people; document; social life; family life; health and illness; subject; longfellow works; hiawatha; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1856 (1011/002.001-026); (LONG-FileUnitName)