It was undoubtedly an important fact to the young poet to be brought thus early in contact with Sir William Jones and his twenty-eight languages. It is the experience of all that the gift of learning a variety of tongues is something which peculiarly belongs to youth. In Southern Europe, in Russia, in the East, it is a common thing to encounter mere children who with next to no schooling will prattle readily in three or four languages with equal inaccuracy but with equal ease; while a much older person may acquire them by laborious study and yet never feel at home. One can hardly doubt Longfellow’s natural readiness in that direction; he was always being complimented, at any rate—though this may not count for much—upon his aptness in pronouncing foreign tongues, and the ease with which his own compositions lent themselves to translation may very possibly have some obscure connection with his own gifts in this respect. His college training can have 44 had little bearing upon it, since there is no evidence that his classmate Hawthorne, doubtless a man of higher genius, showed any such capacity.
[9] Life, i. 50.
[10] Life, i. 57, 58.
CHAPTER V
FIRST VISIT TO EUROPE
Longfellow’s college class (1825) numbered thirty-seven, and his rank in it at graduation was nominally fourth—though actually third, through the sudden death of a classmate just before Commencement. Soon after his graduation, an opportunity occurred to establish a professorship of modern languages in the college upon a fund given by Mrs. Bowdoin; and he, being then scarcely nineteen, and nominally a law student in his father’s office, was sent to Europe to prepare himself for this chair, apparently on an allowance of six hundred dollars a year. The college tradition is that this appointment—which undoubtedly determined the literary tendencies of his whole life—was given to him in consequence of the impression made upon an examining committee by the manner in which he had translated one of Horace’s odes. He accordingly sailed from New York for Europe on May 15, 1826, having stopped at Boston on the way, where he dined with Professor George Ticknor, then holding the professorship 46 at Harvard College to which Longfellow was destined to succeed at a later day. Professor Ticknor had himself recently returned from a German university, and urged the young man to begin his studies there, giving him letters of introduction to Professor Eichhorn, to Robert Southey, and to Washington Irving, then in Europe.
He sailed on the ship Cadmus, Captain Allen, and wrote to his mother from Havre that his passage of thirty days had been a dreary blank, and that the voyage was very tiresome because of the continual talking of French and broken English, adding, “For Frenchmen, you know, talk incessantly, and we had at least a dozen of them with us.” In spite of this rather fatiguing opportunity, he was not at once at home in French, but wrote ere long, “I am coming on famously, I assure you.” He wrote from Auteuil, where he soon went, “Attached to the house is an extensive garden, full of fruit-trees, and bowers, and alcoves, where the boarders ramble and talk from morning till night. This makes the situation an excellent one for me; I can at any time hear French conversation,—for the French are always talking. Besides, the conversation is the purest of French, inasmuch as persons from the highest circles in Paris are residing here,—amongst others, an old gentleman who was 47 of the household of Louis the Sixteenth, and a Madame de Sailly, daughter of a celebrated advocate named Berryer, who was the defender of Marshal Ney in his impeachment for treason. There is also a young student of law here, who is my almost constant companion, and who corrects all my mistakes in speaking or writing the French. As he is not much older than I am, I do not feel so much embarrassed in speaking to him as I do in speaking to others. These are some of the advantages which I enjoy here, and you can easily imagine others which a country residence offers over that of a city, during the vacation of the literary institutions at Paris and the cessation of their lectures.”
It is to be noticed from the outset that the French villages disappointed him as they disappoint many others. In his letters he recalls “how fresh and cheerful and breezy a New England village is; how marked its features—so different from the town, so peculiar, so delightful.” He finds a French village, on the other hand, to be like a deserted town, having “the same paved streets, the same dark, narrow alleys without sidewalks, the same dingy stone houses, each peeping into its neighbor’s windows, the same eternal stone walls, shutting in from the eye of the stranger all the beauty of the place and opposing an inhospitable barrier to the lover 48 of natural scenery.” But when he finds himself among rural scenes, he has the delight felt by many an American boy since his days, as in the picture following:—
“From Orléans I started on foot for Tours on the fifth of October. October is my favorite month of the twelve. When I reflected that if I remained in Paris I should lose the only opportunity I might ever enjoy of seeing the centre of France in all the glory of the vintage and the autumn, I ‘shut the book-lid’ and took wing, with a little knapsack on my back, and a blue cap,—not exactly like Quentin Durward, but perhaps a little more. More anon of him. I had gone as far as Orléans in the diligence because the route is through an uninteresting country.
“I began the pedestrian part of my journey on one of those dull, melancholy days which you will find uttering a mournful voice in Sewall’s Almanack: ‘Expect—much—rain—about—this—time!’ ‘Very miscellaneous weather, good for sundry purposes,’—but not for a journey on foot, thought I. But I had a merry heart, and it went merrily along all day. At sundown I found myself about seven leagues on my way and one beyond Beaugency. I found the route one continued vineyard. On each side of the road, as far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but vines, save here and there a 49 glimpse of the Loire, the turrets of an old château, or spire of a village church. The clouds had passed away with the morning, and I had made a fine day’s journey, cutting across the country, traversing vineyards, and living in all the luxury of thought which the occasion inspired. I recollect that at sunset I had entered a path which wound through a wide vineyard where the villagers were still at their labors, and I was loitering along, talking with the peasantry and searching for an auberge to pass the night in. I was presently overtaken by a band of villagers; I wished them a good evening, and finding that the girls of the party were going to a village at a short distance, I joined myself to the band. I wanted to get into one of the cottages, if possible, in order to study character. I had a flute in my knapsack, and I thought it would be very pretty to touch up at a cottage door, Goldsmith-like,—though I would not have done it for the world without an invitation. Well, before long, I determined to get an invitation, if possible. So I addressed the girl who was walking beside me, told her I had a flute in my sack, and asked her if she would like to dance. Now laugh long and loud! What do you suppose her answer was? She said she liked to dance, but she did not know what a flute was! What havoc that made among my romantic 50 ideas! My quietus was made; I said no more about a flute, the whole journey through; and I thought nothing but starvation would drive me to strike up at the entrance of a village, as Goldsmith did.”[11]
Thus, wherever he goes, his natural good spirits prevail over everything. Washington Irving, in his diary, speaks of Longfellow at Madrid as having “arrived safely and cheerily, having met with no robbers.” Mrs. Alexander Everett, wife of the American minister at Madrid, writes back to America, “His countenance is itself a letter of recommendation.” He went into good Spanish society and also danced in the streets on village holidays. At the Alhambra, he saw the refinement of beauty within the halls, and the clusters of gypsy caves in the hillside opposite. After eight months of Spain he went on to Italy, where he remained until December, and passed to Germany with the new year. He sums up his knowledge of the languages at this point by saying, “With the French and Spanish languages I am familiarly conversant so as to speak them correctly and write them with as much ease and fluency as I do the English. The Portuguese I read without difficulty. And with regard to my proficiency in the Italian, I have only to say that all at the hotel where I lodge 51 took me for an Italian, until I told them I was an American.” He settled down to his studies in Germany, his father having written, with foresight then unusual, “I consider the German language and literature much more important than the Italian.” He did not, however, have any sense of actual transplantation, as is the case with some young students, for although he writes to his sister (March 28, 1829), “My poetic career is finished. Since I left America I have hardly put two lines together,” yet he sends to Carey & Lea, the Philadelphia publishers, to propose a series of sketches and tales of New England life. These sketches, as given in his note-book, are as follows:—