File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Emmeline (Austin) Wadsworth, 20 July 1839 (05dbe459-78fc-403e-8a87-3169351f07e9).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-009#007

Stockbridge, July 20th 1839.
Many, many thanks, dearest, for your voluminous budget which Tom brought hither. I wish you would always write so much for it is next best to having a bona fida chat with you in your red arm-chair. I am enjoying, at this moment, a luxury a Syhaite might envy – writing to the music of the gentle Sepoosa which is rippling & gurgling by my feet over its mosses stones as I sit under the thick embowering shade of a noble tree that bends wooingly far over the brook making a natural arbour impervious to sun or rain, a sweet spot - of which Jewett was the Columbus & has been daily practising his organ of Constructiveness by planning boards & arranging them into a comfortable couch – an invesene serving me for a table admirably. But what with the talkative water & the combined chattering of Tom, Mary, Jewett & Fanny Wright – I am afraid I shall have to resign it for writing just now. A huge rock festooned with lichens encloses it on one side under which the water glides dark & cool – a refreshing contrast with a miniature Niagara above where the sailing bubbles wreck themselves over the rocks suggesting to us many moral comparisons with human life. We pass much time here daily philosophizing, laughing, dreaming or listening to Jewett’s flute which blends most harmoniously with the brook, or reading Shakespeare or Shelley aloud. I have hung a wooden tablet with appropriate inscriptions from a bough with true school-girl ro- [p. 2] mance! The only draw-back to its fascinations is that there is some barbarous miller who has appropriated the brook for utilitarian purposes, like poor Pegasus in the plough in Betzh’s outlines, (evidently intended by heaven for a loafer) & checks its joyous flow at certain hours – leaving the stones & us mourning. As we brought Mrs Minot here the other night & found its sweet voice hushed Jewett cooly opened the dam above & sent it singing on again. How astounded the miller must have been at this sudden outbreak we have not heard. Jewett has made several desperate efforts to leave us – has twice arrayed himself in his travelling costume & locked his trunk, but still lingers, saying with his favorite Milnes “Nature in loveliest aspect answered so.” It seemed almost impiety to go” I am amused at our good neighbours thinking we are bored here judging by their own tastes yet even our village friends, well as they appreciate the blessings of their ‘locale’ undertake to marvel that we are so content – as I marvel how city people are. Ah! Dearest hear from my soul I grieve that you cannot escape those vile prison walls. It mars half my enjoyment here to think that one I love so dearly is cut off from these blessed influences. I like your plan of coming in August or later for I feel now as if I must stay thro’ the Autumn, to see Nature’s rich blushes for the trashy compliment that is poured in her ear all summer. We expect Mrs Butler in a week & she will be a new attraction, tho’ I dread her magnetic influence on Mary whom she is actually luring to pass next winter with her in Georgia. I try hard to be as self denying as a martyr & think of what good the climate & the society of one she says exerts a most salutary effect upon her may do, but it is a bitter trial of my virtue [p. 3] tho’ I dare say if Father should oppose it strenuously I should plead for her qualification. I wont think int. that’s froz. You need have no farther alarm concerning my water perils. I am evidently destined for some other fate, tho’ if the Styx is as limpid & lovely as the Housatonic I might be tempted to patronise Monsieur Charon after escaping those moonlight quicksands I have no fear – being no arbibress of my own safety – the helm or oar is resigned to me as most skillful pilot. Night before last we had another delicious row by sunset flush & pale moonshine round our ox-bow – the river such a perfect mirror that it pained me to crack it with my oar & stern. I was often puzzled to discriminate the green boughs above from those below the river winds so constantly that the reflections mingle & you seem floating over a forest. I am glad you enjoy Mrs Jameson so highly did I not rave? Why where were your ears? Knowing & loving her as I do – as one of the warmest, kindliest souls alive – her graceful, feminine thoughts have treble charms for me. She seems to me to have mental finess of wondrous delicacy yet pointed with no sting – heavens! How she has dissected nuances of character & feeling where so many have made bungling work of it & broken the threads – surtout that clumsy bungler Johnson - & how her microscope has unveiled the holy mysteries that have no name these travels especially the 2d vol exhilarated me like gas – as I knew her too before I read them – how her words sparkle & flow & dance & sing along ever with that plaintive under-tone Nature has I think her description of the rapids glorious & what she says about the Indian women true – most admirably true – the division of labour being really equal - & so on. I was asking Mrs Davisdon yesterday – (as I sat shelling peas for her with neighbourly charity [p. 4] her factotum being ill) about those noble lakes, & islands, as she went in the first steamboat there tho’ not so far as Mrs J. & she said there was no exaggeration in the descriptions of that scenery. Is not this new book advertised – the “lives of the Poets” with a new name? How excellent is all that about the poor victims of men’s selfishness & brutality so delicately touched upon & a subject women feel keenly & ought to speak about & yet my friend Mrs Gorham, not sickly sensitive I sh’d think, - joined the usual chorus of the squeamish in exclaiming against – a “female”’s soiling her fingers or heard with such like rudible pity!! Those are some of the true rights women should battle for & upset the axiom “might makes right” but alas! Are they not the first to cast the stone. Here is a sentence from Mary Wolstonecraft. I opened at – “Highly as I respect marriage as the foundation of almost every social virtue, I cannot avoid feeling the most lively compassion for those unfortunate females who are broken off from society & by one error torn from all those affectations & relationships that improve the heart & mind. It does not frequently even deserve the name of error; for many innocent girls become the dupes of a sincere affectionate hearts & still more are, as it may be emphatically termed ruined before they know the difference between virtue & vice & thus prepared by their education for infamy they become infamous. Asylums & Magdalens are not the proper remedies for these abuses. It is justice not charity that is wanting in the “world.” But I wont horrify you with this naughty womans sayings. I look in the book now & then & read passages Miss Sedgwick has marked – knowing such a true heart as hers cannot lead astray. I thot I sh’d let you off with one sheet but I cannot. [p. 5] I have been interrupted by the entrée of one of our village characters – Mr Ashburner – an English gentleman of very good family who lived years in India where all his children were born & then was led by his strong democratic principles to settle in this country, shifting at once from that luxurious life with a hundred hands to serve one, to this puritanical, republican neighborhood – cultivating his garden with his own hands - & so on. He is a man of much character with a physiognomy worthy Rembrants portraying; a weather beaten face with most prominent features – a cascade of snowy-white hair falling to his shoulders, small twinkling eyes & a mouth the focus of a million wrinkles – for in the centre of his upper jaw clings “alone in its glory” one huge tooth which fits like a cog in a wheel a corresponding cavity in the lower, & ever seems on the point of deserting its post – being flexible enough to rest at times on the lower lip – then he is meditating, then retreating – all the skin contracts like purse-strings. He has a curious Mephistopheles, sarcastic ha ha! Laugh which always reminds me of Voltaire as his whole appearance. An atheist he is or was. His daughters Anne & Grace are nice girls – the former travelled to England sola a few years since to see her brother – with true English independence. He has a boy of 7! Having married a Stockbridge damsel several years since to the great horror of his family. He comes to visit us often – to read our English papers – being a Chartist - & laugh at our living here but yet seems thoroughly Americanized. Mrs Theodore S. has two old-maid guests just now, the Miss Bridgens, whom we met abroad, who are quite entertaining bodies & talk with 40 horse power. One told me the particulars of Anne Walsh’s marriage – rather a sickening detail of N. York maneuvering after our delightful freedom from such experience. This Laffan she says is wealthy [p. 6] & abounding in noble, generous qualities but very unprepossessing in appearance & manners. the very last person such a girl would fancy, but she was worried into it by poverty with all her family, as she says, staring her in the face, & her brother supporting them all. I should pity her if I thought she had enough feeling to suffer much & moreover it may turn out better as he is a good character than if she had chosen some mustached fool as she would probably. Here I am allowing your brother’s argument which only answers when the person is incapable of a strong & durable attachment – but what right have I to judge even her. You refer to my giving charitable alas! It is like valour when our enemy is near. Here I can afford to because I look at that distant thing society en masse & enjoy so much physically that I forget or overlook that old-man-of-the sea Experience – whom sweet Nature drugs for the time & here I spin resolutions to look solely at the virtues of people which thank God are plentifully bestowed after all just as I consider it a duty to regard the blessings in human condition & meddle not with the appalling shadows which shatter our faith in God’s mercy. But when these physical enjoyments are taken away I fear – the old incubus will be on my shoulders again. I dread to think of that time. I am lulled in an opiate dream just now which these fair, natural objects create & which, thank God, what I have felt in this life has not killed within me, but like remorse there is an aura of awakening & the reaction may balance the dream. Excuse this sentimental egoliton but you love me & I dont wish to deceive you as to my healthy state of mind – it is but intermittent like our dear brook I fear. There is a passage in Jean Paul I have a mind to send you – which is golden, so healthful, so racy & which is wise to me as the Bible – smacking too of the sturdy, old, English writers, Fuller &c. There is a fusion of pa- [p. 7] thos & int. philosophy & gorgeous imagination in his writings that is Shaksperian & yet thoroughly Germanesque. Even in this translation by Carlyle the Prof lent me there are gems of thought & expression that enchant me after once getting accustomed to their quaintness. We have the most glorious cloud shiftings from our house I ever beheld the horizon being immense & these frequent thunder storms rending Heaven’s tapestry marvellously [sic]. We are never palmed off with the mere tag end of a rainbow as you city people are afraid of soiling its gay robes or unable to see its way in such an atmosphere (as good, holy thoughts poor things!) but a whole bow of love bends over us daily & even the Moon once gave his which I never saw on land before. Then the pretty mists last night sleeping in the moonlight below the hill-tops & gradually expanding upward & outward till they made a bridal veil for the Moon & stars & startled one with their spiritual resemblance to the Alps. Tom seems to like our savage life vastly. I assure you we have an amazing deal of edifying conversation we four – Jewett’s mind being always active, Tom’s generally on a hard trot & ours ambling forth well when spurred by others. I am sorry Thomas à Kempis is in such a “parlons condition” – for I feel a sort of dim pity for the man as a “victim of an organization” & fear it is the rust wearing out the sword not the sword the scabbard. Phrenology, you know, teaches much charity & he is a sort of moral patient. “Died of a diseased organ of self-esteem” should be his epitaph. Jewett announced Slocum’s engagement to some Richmond damsel. I hope it is true, & that there is heart in it, on his part, tho’ I can hardly believe so after seeing a man suffer so intensely but ces gens là patch up often themselves to hitch along thro’ life even better than Dr Kirkland – a self-healing power – which poor women [p. 8] (for committing the first sin I suppose) had never for their dowry. I suppose Kitty Curtis got a “falling sickness” from her early experience & so has fallen in love thus prematurely. Mrs Jane S’s family here have been whelmed in misery by receiving letters from Castillia announcing the impossibility of his living permanently in this country – they expected him in August – you may imaging the disappointment. The pretty Fanny was in tears & appetite-less for a week. I should like to have seen something more of such a saint-like character as all declare his is. We expect letters daily from Miss Sedgwick & I long to hear how she enjoys bonny England. Good bye sweetest, dearest & best. Mary sends infinite love & I embrace thee with my soul’s arms. I have just been giving myself a twinge of heart ache by reading Elena’s song in Philip Van Artevelde – Ever thine con tutto il cuore Fan.
Addressed: Miss Austin / Care of Saml Austin Esq. / Boston. Mass.
Postmark: STOCKBRIDGE / JUL 24 / MS

• Keywords: frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; correspondence; emmeline (austin) wadsworth; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1839 (1011/002.001-009); (LONG-FileUnitName)