Christmas Bells

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  He brooded in silence as he and the children traveled homeward. He was grateful that Charley and Ernest were as ever boon companions, and that dear, good, wise little Alice distracted her younger sisters by pointing out interesting sights she glimpsed through the windows and reading aloud to them when they tired of watching the passing scenery. Henry smiled when the children spoke to him, and caressed their heads whenever they came near, but he was distracted by the conundrum of how, upon their arrival at Craigie House, he would make it across the threshold without collapsing in paroxysms of grief.

  Upon their arrival in Boston they boarded a carriage for the last stage of their journey, and as they drove to Cambridge, the children peered through the windows and called out familiar landmarks they passed, as if they had been gone a year and everything they beheld was both new and familiar. Henry’s heart pounded as the carriage turned onto Brattle Street. Their home would be barren, so bleak and desolate, without the loving presence that had once graced it. He was not sure he could set foot within the once cherished walls.

  Too soon the carriage halted in front of Craigie House.

  Henry found himself unable to move. The children did not seem to notice; Charley opened the door and bounded out, Ernest on his heels, and as the boys helped with the luggage, Miss Davies assisted the girls. They were halfway up the front walk, and then they were climbing the stairs, and still Henry had not yet descended from the carriage.

  Then the front door opened and a woman emerged from the house. For a moment Henry felt as if his heart had stopped, and then recognition struck, and he inhaled deeply, both shaken and profoundly relieved. His sister Anne stood on the front porch, holding out her arms to her nieces and nephews, welcoming them home. She glanced past them, and her eyes met Henry’s, and she managed a tremulous smile.

  Anne. He descended from the carriage, steadying himself on his carved walking stick. What a compassionate sister, what a truly good woman she was! She had been widowed young, after only three years of marriage, and she had been the legal guardian of their nephew, Henry, ever since their brother Stephen’s wife had divorced him on grounds of alcoholism and adultery. The poet’s namesake was twenty-one now, and Anne had assumed the role of caretaker of the old family home in Portland, Maine. Now, it seemed, she had come to take care of her grief-stricken brother and his children. Her kindness knew no bounds.

  As the children embraced their aunt and went into the house, she held out her hands to her brother. “Henry,” she said, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “My dear sister.” He set aside his walking stick, took her hands, and kissed her cheek. “I cannot say how very happy and relieved I am to find you here.”

  “You’re growing a beard,” she said, studying him. “It ages you twenty years at least.”

  “It’s not the beard that has aged me.”

  • • •

  The house had been closed so long that the air tasted stale, but after the windows were opened to the fresh, autumnal breezes, the lingering scent of neglect dissipated. Henry marked changes that had occurred in his absence: The hearth rug had been discarded, the floor of the library and at the foot of the stairs scoured bare and refinished so that no trace of the fire remained. His wife’s clothing had been removed from her wardrobe—by whom and where taken, he did not know. Her jewelry remained, packed carefully into two velvet-lined cases, one she had brought with her as a bride, another he had given her for Christmas five years before. When his daughters came of age, he would pass the jewels on to them.

  Later Anne gently told him that she had packed away Fanny’s wedding gown in her trunk, along with a few other precious mementos. “They’re in her trunk in the attic,” she said. “It may pain you to look upon them now, but someday they’ll evoke fond memories, and they may bring you some comfort.”

  Henry could not imagine such a day, but he thanked her. “The girls will cherish the gown,” he said. “Perhaps they’ll wish to wear it in her honor when they marry—in twenty or thirty years, when I’ve reconciled myself to the idea of them marrying at all.”

  Anne smiled, her relief so evident that his breath caught in his throat. Truly he must appear most desperately bereft of all hope for such a simple, ordinary jest to bring her such relief.

  The days passed, and grew somewhat easier in the passing, though no less lonely. The children returned to school. The servants bustled about industriously, ever solicitous of the family’s grief, the master’s strange bewilderment. Henry tried to resume his familiar routines and found that he could not, for Fanny had been involved in every aspect of his life, even those solitary pursuits of reading and writing. Fanny had been the perfect companion of his daily existence, his partner in every endeavor, the sharer of all his successes.

  He did not know how to pick up and carry on without her. He was not sure he could.

  He knew that he must.

  He began with the simplest of tasks—responding to letters on matters of business. The burns to his hands had not yet completely healed, but he could hold a pen. There were accounts to settle, requests for charitable donations to honor, stationery to order, invitations to decline.

  He resumed his customary morning walks before breakfast, feeling unsteady without Fanny on his arm. Sometimes Anne accompanied him, but often he went alone. The scenery became increasingly beautiful as autumn colored the countryside, but to him its splendor was inexpressibly sad. He took his daughters out for drives to enjoy the noonday warmth and sunshine, and together they strolled the gardens of Craigie House, admiring the glimmer of golden leaves in the sunlight, the lilac hedges shot with crimson creeper, the river sketching silver curves in the meadow. Everything he beheld was full of loveliness and sublimity, but within him was naught but hunger, the famine of the heart.

  He knew he did not suffer alone. Charley hid his grief best, believing stoic strength to be the proper demeanor for a young man of seventeen contending with loss. In this Ernest tried to emulate him, but his mask of bravery often slipped, especially when he thought no one was watching. Tenderhearted Edith often wept, and was comforted by Alice, but of all the children, little Annie suffered the most. Sometimes, when Henry and his youngest child were alone and quiet, she would repeat her unhappy confession that she had killed her mother. He gently pleaded with her not to say such a terrible, untrue thing. He told her emphatically that whatever had happened, it had been an accident. She would nod obediently in response to his attempts to comfort and reassure her, but although she stopped professing her guilt aloud, he knew she still blamed herself, and the sense of her culpability oppressed her. “I used to call you Allegra,” he told his melancholy child ruefully, drawing her onto his lap, kissing her brow when she rested her head on his shoulder. “I shall now have to call you Penserosa.”

  A few friends visited, Charles Sumner and Richard Dana one evening, James Fields the next day. All were kind and solicitous, and he found some solace in their company. He apologized for neglecting to respond to their letters and begged them to understand that his silence did not signify indifference. To a man, they hastened to assure him that there was no need for apologies, or even replies. Their only wish was to offer him whatever comfort and help they could.

  To other friends, equally cherished but too far distant to visit, he did feel obliged to write, though the act of stringing words together had become painfully arduous.

  Cambridge. September 28, 1861.

  Mr. George William Curtis

  New York City

  My Dear Curtis,

  Have patience with me if I have not answered your affectionate and touching letter. Even now I cannot answer it; I can only thank you for it. I am too utterly wretched and overwhelmed,—to the eyes of others, outwardly, calm; but inwardly bleeding to death.

  I can say no more. God bless you, and protect your household!

  H. W. L.

  He owed his dear friend bet
ter than that, but he could do no more.

  His sister Anne remained with the family throughout September, easing their homecoming with her tender, affectionate ways, her quiet conversation, her deft management of the household. But Henry had always known that other responsibilities beckoned her home, and when the time came for her to depart, he managed to restrain himself from begging her to stay. “You’ve done me tremendous good,” he said as he saw her off at the train station. “I don’t know how I shall ever thank you sufficiently.”

  “I know how,” she promptly replied. “Write to me, and frequently, to let me know how you’re getting on. Even if it’s only a few lines about the weather and Charley’s latest mischief and how tall the children are growing—or how long your dreadful beard has gotten—do write.” She kissed him on the cheek, making a playful show of avoiding his whiskers. “Or better yet, shave it off and consider all debts fully paid.”

  “I will write,” he promised, but said nothing of the beard.

  • • •

  Henry had not followed politics since the day of the fire, but soon after Anne’s departure, on October 1, the state Republican convention opened in Worcester, about forty miles west of Cambridge. He could not help feeling a rekindled spark of interest, for his dear and loyal friend Charles Sumner had been invited to address the delegates, and Henry knew he intended to speak on the controversial subject of emancipation. The following day, his dormant curiosity creakily reawakening, Henry delved into the papers and was soon engrossed in reports of his friend’s success—or shameful demonstration of his utter loss of reason, as the Southern sympathizers in the press would have it. Delegates and spectators had filled the great hall, every one of them devoted to the Union, but divided in their opinion regarding a radical antislavery platform, some in favor, others firmly opposed. As he read Sumner’s speech, Henry found himself shaking his head in admiration for his friend’s audacity, his unwillingness to pander to the opposing factions in the audience. Declaring slavery to be the sole cause of the war and the fundamental strength of the rebellion, Sumner had insisted that slavery should be struck down with every power at the government’s disposal—including martial law.

  Many of Sumner’s remarks had met with vigorous applause, often so sustained and thunderous that he had been obliged to pause and wait for it to subside. Even so, afterward, as the convention proceedings continued, it became apparent that many of the delegates disagreed that the slaves should be declared free. Others, though they agreed that slavery must end, argued that the time was not right for emancipation. Unfortunately for the abolitionist cause—and for the countless thousands of souls languishing in bondage—the opposition to Sumner’s proposal was enough to compel the state Republican Party not to add a call for emancipation to the party platform.

  Henry knew his friend was sorely disappointed, but not undaunted. In the aftermath of the convention, Sumner’s speech was so well regarded—except in the most conservative circles—that he was invited to address other, more sympathetic audiences elsewhere.

  Less than a fortnight later, he delivered a more elaborate and extended version of the speech, newly titled “The Rebellion: Its Origin and Mainspring,” at the Tremont Temple in Boston, and Henry relinquished his mournful solitude for the evening in order to attend. He was escorted to place of honor in a box seat apart from the throng, for which he was thankful, and he listened, thoroughly absorbed and admiring, as Sumner boldly identified the institution of slavery as the source of the conflict between North and South, and the sole support of the rebellion. “It is slavery that marshals these hosts and breathes into their embattled ranks its own barbarous fire,” he declared. “It is slavery that stamps its character alike upon officers and men. It is slavery that inspires all, from general to trumpeter. It is slavery that speaks in the word of command, and sounds in the morning drum-beat. It is slavery that digs trenches and builds hostile forts. It is slavery that pitches its wicked tents and stations its sentries over against the national capital. It is slavery that sharpens the bayonet and runs the bullet; that points the cannon and scatters the shell—blazing, bursting unto death. Wherever this rebellion shows itself, whatever form it takes, whatever thing it does, whatever it meditates, it is moved by slavery; nay, the rebellion is slavery itself—incarnate, living, acting, raging, robbing, murdering, according to the essential law of its being.”

  With the advance of the Union armies, Sumner insisted, emancipation had become a military necessity, not only because the Confederates benefited from slave labor but also because the Union must align itself with the forces of moral good. Emancipation would do more to weaken the rebellion than any other weapon in its vast arsenal. “To the enemy such a blow will be a terror,” he said, his voice ringing with certainty. “To good men it will be an encouragement, and to foreign nations watching this contest it will be an earnest of something beyond a mere carnival of battle.”

  Henry was greatly pleased by the enthusiastic, vigorous applause that followed Sumner’s speech, and afterward, as they dined together, he congratulated his friend. “I intend to renew the discussion of emancipation in the Senate,” Sumner told him, every line of his face marked with determination. “If the president will not act, we will force his hand.”

  “You make a convincing case,” Henry replied. “I don’t see how Mr. Lincoln could fail to be persuaded.”

  “I’m certain the president abhors slavery, but I’ll make no excuses for his inaction, which only prolongs the war and will lead to greater loss of life.” Then Sumner’s expression softened. “But never think, my dear Longfellow, that in my preoccupation with our great national struggle, I forget for a moment your own deeply personal one.”

  “Nor have I,” said Henry, his throat constricting, “in the midst of my own tragedy, forgotten our nation’s.”

  • • •

  October trudged on, full of autumnal beauty and aching loneliness and dreadful news about the war. Whenever Henry walked into town, he invariably encountered a friend with a son or nephew in the army, and even as they voiced pride in their young men’s service, every word and grimace betrayed their apprehension. Once Henry listened sympathetically as a physician of his acquaintance spoke at length about his son, a lieutenant with the Massachusetts Twentieth, from whom the family had not heard since before his battalion engaged the rebels in a battle on the Potomac. Suddenly the doctor, much embarrassed for his protracted narrative, said, “My good Mr. Longfellow, I fear I have detained you overlong.”

  “Not at all,” Henry assured him, quite truthfully, for in listening to the anxious father’s troubles he had almost, for a moment, forgotten his own. Three days later he learned that the physician’s son had been wounded in the battle but was expected to recover, so some good news tempered the bad.

  He tried, time and again, to compose poetry, but his thoughts were too full of his beloved Fanny to attempt to write about anyone or anything else, yet he dared not attempt to write of his lost beloved out of fear that his poor words would fail to do her justice. How could they but fail? She had been everything to him, his world, his all, and the thoughts that haunted his heart and brain he could not record.

  In early November, James Fields wrote to request a poem for the January edition of the Atlantic Monthly. Henry resolved to discipline himself, to wrest control of his poetic gifts from the iron grasp of despair, and to produce something worthy, not only to gratify his friend but to prove to himself that he could. But his determination weakened by the hour, and within days of receiving the letter he wrote back to decline. “I am sorry to say No, instead of Yes; but so it must be,” he wrote in haste, the sooner to finish the unhappy task. “I can neither write nor think; and have nothing fit to send you, but my love—which you cannot put into the Magazine.”

  Sometimes he feared that he would never write again, except apologetic letters to friends.

  Massachusetts celebrated Thanksgiving on November
21, but the Longfellows made no feast of it that year. Tom Appleton joined the family for a quiet supper, and afterward, Henry took a long, solitary walk in the twilight.

  December came, mild enough at first to allow him more solitary walks, sometimes through a grove of pines, gray clouds overhead, a carpet of russet pine needles underfoot. On rare occasion a friend would accompany him, uplifting and sustaining him with generous sympathy. More often he walked alone, the thin morning sunshine and light flurries heralding winter.

  As Christmas approached, Henry realized he must mark the occasion with more care than he had given Thanksgiving or he would never endure the day. Fanny had always loved the Christmas season—the contrast of green holly and red berries, the hint of snow in the air, the crackling warmth of the Yule log on the hearth, the music, the games, the revelry, the gathering of friends and family, the sacred joy of the Nativity, the wonder and awe in the children’s eyes. Whenever the merriment of the season reminded him—starkly, painfully—of his grief and longing and loneliness, he reminded himself that even a family as bereft as their own ought to mark Christmas with joy and thanksgiving. Was it not because of his Savior, whose birth they celebrated that holy day, that he was redeemed, and would be reunited with his dearest Fanny in the world to come?

  And so he kept Christmas determinedly, in honor of his beloved wife. He purchased gifts for the children, marking the cards from their mother as well as himself. He instructed the cook to prepare a special feast for the family, he made contributions to benefit the less fortunate, and he remembered the servants generously. With his daughters’ help, he packed a box full of presents to send to Portland for the aunts and cousins in his old hometown. On Christmas Eve, he had a beautifully decorated tree in the parlor for the children, and it met with such success that the following day, Edith and Annie made a tree of their own to present to their dolls in the nursery, using the top of the family tree and the candle ends. “It is, on the whole, rather prettier than the original,” Henry mused aloud when they invited him to come and see.