File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Mary (Appleton) Mackintosh, 19 June 1854 (fb7fbde2-84bf-49e9-a30e-9e5316b77615).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-024#008

Cambridge June 19th 1854.
Dear Mary,
You will think I have been long silent but I missed the Boston steamer & have since been so busy with guests I have had not a moment's leisure. Curtis has been with us a fortnight, & Mr Laurence more than a week, &, tho’ I could not give the latter a bed, having Miss Davie, & had to let him try the tender mercies of the Brattle House he is here all day, & has made a beautiful drawing of Henry which all agree in thinking the best yet taken. It is full of life & with a very lively, agreeable expression, very different from the woodeny likeness engraved in England. This is to be also engraved for Routledge & I hope will not suffer in the process. Laurence could only come now [p. 2] for this, &a beginning of Lowell, having many New York engagements, but will return in the autumn to Boston. We have had all the pleasant people of Cambridge to meet him & have driven them about Brookline &c & he seems highly pleased with this vicinity, thinking it so much more finished & English. He is a very agreeable person, so quiet & intelligent & shrewd in his observations. He wishes to draw me by & bye, & I should like a good portrait of Alice.
The country is most lovely now, the roses in perfection, & the weather warm enough for us to enjoy sitting or walking unbounded of evenings upon our spacious piazza. Curtis is as usual delightful, & we have enjoyed their visit much. Last night I had a small musical party, the prima donna being Miss Shelton (daughter of the Homer Shelton) who has a magnificent voice – most powerful & rich, & she sings in the purest Italian style. She woke all the children, but they were luckily quiet, & Char [p. 3] ley was so curious he got up, dressed himself in the dark, & peeped in at corners at what was going on. We moved the piano into the Library & her voice would have filled a much larger room. Curtis is enchanted with her, & has gone in today bearing a fresh bouquet of roses from our garden. She is a very pretty girl besides, with much quiet self-possession.
There have been various new engagements lately in the Eliot family. Mary E. to her cousin Charles Guild & Edmund Dwight to Miss Coolidge (daughter of Joe & sister of Jefferson, Hetty’s husband). Her other brother is also recently engaged to Mrs Frank Lowell’s daughter – so families get interlaced. Kitty Lawrence is married, & her reception I missed thro’ bad weather for which I was sorry as I wished to take Curtis & make him more acquainted in Boston. He goes soon to Canada Nahant promises to be very gay this summer. The Hotel is rebuilt in splendid style with gas & furnaces to heat it & ever luxury. Emmeline will go to the [p. 4] Lynn shore just opposite papa, & Mary Parkman too so I hope we shall meet if only on the beach. Her little Austin does not recover his strength as rapidly as she could wish. We have yr letter with the emigrant paper but know not yet how to use it, or if it could be possible for any society to find out the whereabouts of stray emigrants. They would naturally make their families acquainted, one would think, with their latest abode. I will ask Curtis if the N. York one undertakes this. A poor Finlander died near us a day ago of lock jaw from a slight accident & could not speak an intelligible word to any body – a hard case. Henry went to see him & took Mr Bergen who came out for a drive, but he was already gone, & as they only know Swedish it was doubtful if they could have understood him. I wrote you I think of poor Frank’s death. His mother has returned to Washington & is now more cheerful. My boys are very turbulent & I find Miss Davie much help but still think I shall require another nurse in the autumn, for she does not offer to do many little things about their dress which come upon their papa & me at inconvenient hours. An American girl I should boldly ask to do all kinds of things, but I fear she would [p. 1 cross] think her dignity compromised as she is rather fond of entertaining the gentlemen & is a little spoiled I fear by Mrs Lawrence’s wonderful energy & management of every thing. She is a very sensible nice person tho’, I still think, & we get on together most amiably. She is very much taken up writing to her brother & entering into his plans
Good bye for the present –
Yr loving
Fanny E.L.

• Keywords: correspondence; long archives; frances e. a. longfellow papers (long 20257); frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; people; document; subject; social life; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1854 (1011/002.001-024); (LONG-FileUnitName)