File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Reverend Samuel Longfellow, 5 November 1855 (ab99cc96-48ba-49a3-8d1c-e998af0f17c4).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-025#014

Cambridge. Nov 5th 1855.
Dear Sam,
I am ashamed not to have thanked you sooner for your beautiful birth-day gift which I cherish highly.
There are some fine hymns in the collection, which lose little or nothing by translation, & there is a raciness about many I like much. The quaint binding too is taking to & hand, & I like to feel the little volume in the latter as already an old friend. It was very kind of you to remember me in this way in all the bustle of departure [p. 2] I am very glad to hear you feel better since your return. We were concerned at your pale looks - & [crossed out: look] air of languor. The bracing autumn will I hope invigorate you, but, as yet, we have had very little of good weather. Since the beautiful, but debilitating, Indian Summer there have only been chill, damp days & I feel greatly the need of a dry, strengthening, exhilarating atmosphere.
Henry has just got a pleasant letter from Lowell at Dresden, where he is stud [p. 3] ying hard, & living in a pleasant family, & thinks he shall remain all winter. He [crossed out: has heard] says that his poor sister Mrs Putnam has lost her oldest son at Havana, of cholera, in two days, & being on her way to join him had not then heard of it. A cruel blow for her.
The ‘Song of Hiawatha’ will be out on Saturday. I believe we are to have some copies today. I hope you will like it. It is very fresh & fragrant of the woods and genuine Indian life, but its rhyme-less rhythm will puzzle the critics, & I suppose it will be abundantly abused as poor Maud seems to be. Pegasus will ‘gang his ain gait,’ [p. 4] despite all the whips & spurs of the many who think they know so much better than the poet what he ought to say.
Dr Frothingham’s volume of poems is out – quite a bulky affair, & enclosing too many trivial pieces. Among them one he left at our house the night of our wedding – which we did not discover to be his until he requested permission to publish it! I suppose you sometimes see Hurlburt. Pray remember us kindly to him. Did he write the Heine in Putnam? It is very lively & good. I saw Rachel again in Adrienne which was grandly done but did not somehow touch me – only intellectually as perfect acting. Mary [p. 1 cross] has just been here. She begins to feel the cold.
Good bye
Yr aff
Fanny E.L
Uncle Wm always asks affectionately about you. Charley is looking very well.

• Keywords: correspondence; long archives; frances e. a. longfellow papers (long 20257); frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; people; document; friendship; subject; events; birthday; longfellow works; hiawatha; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1855 (1011/002.001-025); (LONG-FileUnitName)