File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Thomas Gold Appleton, 3 January 1853 (dabdc1f3-d99b-44b5-969f-2699a8cc9418).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-023#001

Cambridge Jan 3d 1853.
Dear Tom,
A merry Xmas & a happy New Year we warmly hope you have had & plenty of pleasant friends to enjoy them with. Your last delightful letter to Aunt Sam I have been favored with & I thank you kindly, in advance, for your brotherly munificence & promised presents. I shall be very proud of wearing them in your honor. Our gaiety is all yet to come so they will be quite in time for it. The winter thus far has been so marvelously wild that balls seemed quite as unnatural, & there have been very few. Mrs Sam Ward gave one New Year’s Eve to which I did not go as it was Harriots child’s party with the Xmas Tree, which could not appear at the usual time on account of her attack of Influenza. Two of the fairest stars shone upon us there, [p. 2] before illumining the ball, - Miss Russell (Lowell’s English cousin & brought out by him) & Miss Hodgkinson – like day & night they shone, Miss R. being all smiles & freshness & rosy health & Miss H, with her serious dark eyes & quiet grave manner a charming contrast. Both with beautiful figures & sweet English voices. The Tree was as brilliant as usual, even Clough being rewarded for coming by a pretty penwiper. Little Alice was as merry as a cricket (on the hearth) & carried off with triumphant joy a huge bedstead for her dolls. One of those vast pasties (or pastries as Mr Thackeray calls them) arrived from Henry’s Liverpool publisher, so, on New Years day, we opened it & the birds began to sing (poetically in the aroma) before papa, Felton, Clough & Lowell, & a worthy dish to set before such kings it certainly is this time, being richer in game than the last. It was also Clough’s birthday which made it very pleasant. He brought me a little vol of his poems, published before “the Bothie,” full of feeling and [p. 3] thought & quiet fun. This departed year has had a rich harvest of great men has it not, & to crown its ‘last load’ on the last day, it took the best perhaps of all, Mr Amos Lawrence, who died without an hour’s illness, just after signing his farewell to the firm, & after his usual acts of benevolence. That is a really good man to eulogize, & I am glad to see Theodore Parker honors him as he should be honored in yesterday’s sermon. The canonization of Webster still goes on, but Amos Lawrence will leave a far deeper regret I imagine. Aunt Sam feels much the sudden death of Ned Bangs’ uncle, Mr Edward Bangs, who sat in front of us at Thackeray’s last lecture & the next morning was dead! There seemed something quite awful in this close propinquity to an departing spirit, & the 3 extracts given in the lecture to illustrate Swift, Addison & Steele were all about the grave. Greenoughs death was very sad as you have heard. He gave only two of his lectures when this insanity, or brain fever as his friends call it, which I think was evident by looking at him all summer so well I remember the strangeness of his eyes & his excited manner, broke forth, shortly ending his life, some say by self-starvation, but the [p. 4] close is a mystery. So full of life & manly vigor was he it is strange to see it dashed out like a torch against a wall but his earnest spirit must be more intensely alive than ever, searching out the unseen laws of beauty in all their clearness. I think the change of climate may, after so long an interval, have stimulated him suddenly, & the mental application he undertook in writing on rather metaphysical subjects. His poor mother had only just heard too of the death of his brother John – abroad. Thackeray’s lectures are much liked but not thought entirely just to the subjects of them. He has a delightful voice & manner & his subtle humor make them very entertaining but he shows up severely all their fobiles & sins as if they were men of this day. At last it snows! a rare sight as yet & Angus will rejoice to try his new sled. Your new Emperor seems to make no more sensation than any thing else in this age of indifference, & I hope will learn when to let well alone which his Uncle never did. If he troubles us, we will scare him with Mr Williams, alias the Dauphin, whose life I hear is about to appear. Two young Kentuckians here last night say the filibusters are mustering a large force, to evade the government by leaving as emigrants, so we may need Gen Pierce to show the firmness his mouth seems to indicate. Henry has written for Putnams new Monthly a poem on ‘the Warden of [p. 1 cross] the Cinque Ports” which seems to give great satisfaction to some people old Dana especially praising it. It well paints the hour & the scene & the contrast of the morning stir to the silent chamber of death. This should be a capital magazine. He musters all the talent of the country & the Howadji has an active oar in it. Jewett has been quite ill with neuralgia. The rest of the family are flourishing. Hatty has gone on to comfort Aunt Wm & Sarah Lawrence will follow. Remember me kindly to Mary (Tom) Dwight. How pleasant for them to find you there also to Harriot [p. 2 cross] Crowninshield. Mary is contented to remain hearing of so much sickness in the W. Indies & now Emmeline has come it is all the pleasanter for her. Little Austin was at Harriot’s party, so manly and indepandant [sic]. Dear Em looks well & the house looks alive again. ever with Henry’s love, Yr affectionate.
Fanny.

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