File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Mary (Longfellow) Greenleaf, 17 April 1854 (dfa4c35d-789d-4849-a459-b400e0eb27ea).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-024#004

Cambridge April 17th 1854.
Dear Mary,
It is late in the day to thank you for your last kind letter, but as you are pretty well habituated to my long intervals of silence I trust you do not make much account of them. I read with interest your statement of your society’s condition, & thought how difficult it must be to express every year so fluently & freshly similar facts. I was also obliged for the newspaper extracts touching Mr Thayer, & was amazed to think how [p. 2] my uncle Gardiner, whose strict orthodoxy would not, I imagine, have allowed his daughter to enter a theatre, would have been shocked to have an actor for a son-in-law. I wonder how [crossed out: her] Sarah’s mother likes it who was also educated to hold such things in holy horror.
Who do you think we have now as guest? Louly Baylor with her nurse & baby, a sweet little thing only 2 days older than mine, & just such a blonde with curling golden hair. She is thinner & a little talker but they make a charming little pair & enjoy each other highly. Mr Baylor has gone to Europe for two months & left Louly to board in Cambridge until his [p. 3] return, but we took pity on her forlorn condition & brought her here. She looks very young to have the care of herself & baby, & is pretty as ever.
My children, I am happy to say, are quite well. Alice & Edie accomplished the chicken pox this winter, very easily, & Erny’s scarlatina did not go beyond him. He had it very slightly & was as well as ever in a short time. I kept a pretty strict quarantine, which was rather troublesome, but now I am almost sorry the others did not take it – tho’ one does not like to put them in the way of such a disease. I have not seen Mrs Greenleaf for a long time, having been kept to my [p. 4] sofa for 3 weeks by a rheumatic ancle [sic] which is still too painful for me to walk, but Alice makes frequent visits to little Jamie & [??] Caroline occasionally. Today is as warm as June, & so was yesterday, &the birds & brooks are wild with joy, & I hope Mrs Greenleaf feels also the genial influence, doubly dear, after our long sepulchral winter. We have the doors open to the piazza & so balmy a breese steals in I can hardly write. If it would only last!
A shocking thing happened here, the other night, very little in harmony with God’s great gift of renewed life. A young man shot himself upon Miss Upham’s piazza for love of a pretty Miss Richardson who boards there. He first threatened her life. Lowell goes to Europe [p. 1 cross] next month leaving little Mabel with Mrs Dr Howe. We are much pleased he is to be Henry’s successor. We go to Newburyport this summer & Louly to Portland after her husband’s return. He will have to be at the South. Willie has a part in this weeks Exhibtition. I am going to drive so must stop. Love to James.
Ever yr loving
Fanny

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