Forever and Forever (Historical Proper Romance)

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Could I . . . Would she . . . Henry did not know how to form his hopes into words, so he settled for images. He remembered the look on Fanny’s face when she’d stood beside him that night at the Nortons’ party. He remembered the warmth of her hand when she’d placed it on his cheek. The brilliance of her smile. The clarity of her eyes. All the supposed healing he thought he’d found in Germany slid aside to reveal the flame of hope that had never truly gone out but that now offered another kind of healing within its light. He’d accepted he could live without her, but now he was presented with a new future he’d dared not expect.

  When Henry had exercised through his impatience, he returned to his writing desk and forced his mind to focus on the next line of the poem he was working on. The cadence was off. He needed a different word or phrase for “reprimand” and turned his attention to the stack of books beside the desk in hopes that work could envelop him, fold him in tight and keep him aware of only this ink on this paper.

  Sometime later, a knock on his sitting room door caused him to look up from his paper, which had blessedly consumed his attention. He stood and crossed to the door. Miriam, standing almost as tall as he did, held out an envelope.

  “Just came for you, Mr. Longfellow.” He took the envelope, and she leaned forward to point at the return address printed in familiar hand. “Don’t Miss Appleton live on Beacon Street?”

  Henry felt the muscles of his face pulling into a grin, and for the first time in a while, he did not mind that everyone in Cambridge knew of his tendré for Miss Fanny Appleton. “That she does, Miriam,” he said. “Let us hope it is good news.”

  He closed the door and crossed to his desk. For a moment he simply looked at the thing: the fine paper, the perfect letters. There was a chance that this letter would not bear the news he was hoping for. She could reject him. Again. And yet somehow he knew she would not. In the past, he had felt hopeful but desperate. Now, he simply felt the rightness of everything. The past, the present, and the future.

  Without wasting another minute, Henry turned the envelope over and broke the seal. He unfolded the letter, took a breath, and began to read.

  With every word his heart grew lighter, the air was clearer, the sun moved higher in the sky. He finished reading and bowed his head as peace and calm washed over him like the waters of baptism. The afflictions of his soul had been swallowed up, and his heart began to pound with a new rhythm, as though forever changed by this moment—his personal Easter, where all was redeemed and salvation was nigh.

  “Thank you,” he said in tender prayer. He paused another moment before jumping from his seat and running for the door.

  He took the front stairs—thinking of Mrs. Craigie and how she had not liked him to use those stairs—and sent a little smile heavenward to her. She would find this turn delightful. It was because of her that he had tried to forget Fanny, tried to move forward without her, and perhaps that was why Fanny’s heart had finally come to him. As with Abraham and Isaac, he had been willing to give up, but in the end it had not been required of him to do so.

  Henry grabbed his coat and hat from the rack by the door and was buttoning his coat when Miriam came into the foyer.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, looking him over from head to toe.

  Henry beamed at her. “I am going to Beacon Street.”

  “Shall I call a carriage?”

  “I could not sit still if I wanted to,” Henry said. “And I don’t want to!”

  He pulled open the door and fairly ran toward Cambridgeport, pressing his hat further onto his head during the walk he had taken so many times before. Across the river by the West Boston Bridge and along Charles Street until finally he turned the corner onto Beacon Street.

  How many times had he walked the Commons hoping for a glimpse of his Dark Ladye? And now she had called him to her. Despite his awkwardness. Despite his missteps. Through some prism he was eager to understand—but did not yet know—she had come to feel just as he did. She loved him. She’d said so in her letter. Every dream of his heart was to become a reality.

  Henry slowed his steps as he approached the grand house. He stood on the sidewalk a few moments longer, letting his eyes travel from the ground level to the rooftop. He thought back to that night at Craigie House after Fanny had rejected him the first time and how Miss Lowell had listened to his confusing account of it. “She does not love me,” he had said. Because of that, Fanny could not move past the obstacles between them. He’d decided then—that day—to establish his writing career, to be patient, and to not give up hope. It had been five years since then. Five years! And yet here he was, in exactly the place he’d been the first time. But he was a better man now.

  And she was ready.

  He took the steps with reverence and removed his hat, smoothing his hair which was in need of a trim. At the front door he took a breath, said a prayer, and knocked.

  He expected the butler to open the door—would she miss having a butler?—but instead Fanny herself stood there. She looked him in the face, a smile growing on her fine lips. “I had hoped it was you,” she said, thrilling him to his very toes. “Won’t you come in, Mr. Longfellow?” A maid approached as Henry entered the foyer. “Please bring tea to the drawing room,” Fanny asked the maid. The young woman curtsied and headed for the kitchen.

  Henry’s mouth was suddenly dry. He turned the brim of his hat in his hands and looked around as though he’d never stood there before. Fanny faced him, her hands clasped in front and her head cocked to the side.

  “Did you . . . walk?” Fanny asked, a laugh in her voice.

  “I did.” In two long strides he stood before her, close enough to raise his hand, tentatively at first, and touch her cheek. She swallowed at his touch while he relished the warmth spreading through his body. To be so near to her. To touch her soft skin and hear her gentle breath. “I could not contain the energy I felt upon receipt of your letter.”

  “I’m sorry it took me so long to respond to yours.” She sounded nervous. “I wanted to be sure. I needed to be certain.”

  He held her eyes. “And you are certain now?”

  She raised her own hand, pressing it against his hand cradling her face. She smiled and tears rose in her eyes. “To think you knew all along,” she whispered. “And never turned away from me.”

  “I tried,” he said, thinking of Germany and how certain he’d been that he was through pining for her. “My heart would not allow it.”

  “Bless your beautiful heart,” she whispered. “Can it ever forgive me, Henry, for taking so long to recognize my own?”

  Sweeter words had never sounded in his ears, and Henry could not resist the desire to seal such sentiment with the sweetness of a kiss. He lowered his face, and she stepped close enough that every one of his senses was filled with her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. Her cheeks colored, but not once did she look away from him. She clasped her hands behind his neck and touched the hair at the base of his neck. He lowered his face to hers.

  Henry had imagined Fanny’s kiss a thousand times, and yet the moment their lips met, he realized he could never have adequately imagined this. He had known, almost from when they first met, that his life would have no meaning without Fanny in it. She had healed him and haunted him and nearly driven him mad, and yet now she was in his arms, returning every beat of his heart with her own until he could scarcely believe there had ever been less than this wholeness between them.

  She pulled back, a bit breathless, and looked at him with an expression of surprised satisfaction. “I thank God you did not give up on me.”

  The husky quality of her voice nearly undid him while the future—something that so often was heavy and guarded—began to blossom, unfurling possibilities and grandeur he could scarcely comprehend. “Some part of me must have known that holding you in my arms would feel exactly like this.”

  Their lips met again, at first with tenderness, then passion, and then promise.


  The Past and Present here unite

  Beneath Time’s flowing tide,

  Like footprints hidden by a brook,

  But seen on either side.

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “A Gleam of Sunshine”

  Chapter Notes

  Henry and Fanny had six children—Charles, Ernest, Fanny, Alice, Edith, and Anne—though Little Fanny (their third child and first daughter) died at sixteen months of age from an unknown illness. Fanny herself made medical history when she gave birth to Edith while unconscious due to the use of ether after Henry had found a dentist willing to help her avoid the pain of childbirth. It had always distressed him how difficult childbirth was for women. Longfellow’s posterity continued to live in “Craigie Castle” until 1950. In 1972, the Longfellow house became a national park.

  In 1861, Fanny died following a tragic accident when her dress—a Victorian hoopskirt design—caught fire and could not be extinguished before she sustained fatal injuries. Henry attempted to put out the flames and was left with facial scars that became the reason he wore a beard for the rest of his life. Fanny succumbed to her injuries and was buried in the Mount Auburn cemetery on the couple’s eighteenth wedding anniversary. Henry was not present as he was still recovering from his own injuries.

  In a letter to Fanny’s sister written a month following Fanny’s death, Henry wrote: “I never looked at her without a thrill of pleasure;—she never came into a room where I was without my heart beating quicker, nor went out without my feeling that something of the light went with her.” One could say that when she died, much of the light in Henry’s life went with her as well.

  Henry remained unmarried and became increasingly solitary for the rest of his life. Although he continued to write, and, in his later years, undertook the auspicious translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, he was never quite the same after Fanny’s death. He was cared for by his daughter Alice and lived in Craigie House until his death in 1882 at the age of seventy-five. He passed away in the same bed where Fanny had died more than two decades earlier.

  While it is impossible to separate the tragedy from the love story, the love Henry and Fanny shared, with each other and their children, was profound and moving. Through exploring their lives and the abiding love they shared, I can imagine that, if given the choice of eighteen years of love with a tragic end, or nothing at all, both Fanny and Henry would have chosen the years they had together. They truly brought out the best in one another, and they loved one another fully to the end of their days.

  I tried to keep to the facts as much as possible in telling this story, but there were a lot of blanks in need of filling and motivations in need of understanding that necessitated some fictional license on my part. The following notes break down what I knew to be true and what I admit to being fictional.

  Chapter One

  A European Grand Tour was a popular journey through several European countries that, in the 1830s, was a new adventure for families—especially American families—to embark upon. Before then, it had been something that young men used as a tool of education, as Henry had done a decade earlier.

  The Appletons left for their tour rather spontaneously, three weeks after Charlie’s death and a year and a half after Fanny’s mother, Theresa Maria Gold Appleton, had died. The assumption is that Nathan was overcome with grief at the loss of his son, who he believed would take over his business interests, and felt he had to get out of Boston and distract himself from all the loss that had happened in such a short time. Both Maria Gold and Charles died of consumption, also known as tuberculosis, which would not have a cure for another hundred years.

  For the Appletons to have taken such a trip is evidence of the family’s wealth, and they spared no expense. Halfway through the Appletons’ Grand Tour, Henry Longfellow’s own tour intersected theirs. Longfellow was seeking respite from a long, dark winter spent in Germany following the death of his first wife, Mary Potter. In June or July 20, 1836 (there are varying accounts, but I chose July for the sake of the story), Fanny recorded that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow had left a card for them in Thun. She expected a “veritable gentleman” and hoped he would not call on them, though she did record that she liked Outré-Mer, which had been published a few years earlier. Henry was traveling the other direction through Thun, toward Berne, and did not meet up with the family at this time.

  It was not uncommon for people on tour to meet others from their own country or city, as a Grand Tour was all the rage among the upper classes in the 1830s. As Henry did not yet live in Cambridge, nor was of the same social class, the Appletons would not have known him beyond his writing.

  Mary Appleton, Fanny’s older sister by almost four years, is most commonly referred to as “Mary” in the resources I studied, however I found reference that the family’s nickname for her was Molly, just as Frances was called Fanny. In an attempt to avoid confusion between Mary Appleton and Mary Potter Longfellow—Longfellow’s first wife—as well as the smattering of other Marys that appear in the book, I chose to reference her as Molly throughout the work, even from those people outside of her family who would likely not have addressed her so informally.

  William Sullivan Appleton was the son of Nathan Appleton’s cousin, William Appleton, making him a second cousin to Tom, Molly, and Fanny. “Willie” was very close to the family and invited on the tour even though he was known to have a sickly constitution. He had enjoyed the trip until he became ill in Italy, thus prompting the family to seek out the mountain airs of Switzerland in hopes it would revive his health. That he would have anticipated the turn of his illness enough to make arrangements for an early return from the start is of my own creation.

  Chapter Two

  Nearly a year before meeting the Appleton family in Interlaken, another Appleton, John James Appleton, had assisted one of Mary Potter Longfellow’s traveling companions, Mary Goddard, to return to Portland after her father had died unexpectedly. I used that connection as an excuse for Henry to have sought out the Appleton family, though I am unsure it was the case and do not know for certain if or how John James was related to Nathan Appleton.

  The facts regarding Mary Potter’s death are consistent with what I learned in my research, and though I found it surprising that Henry and Clara Crowninshield would continue the tour following Mary’s death, I came to understand that such tours—especially for Americans—were a trip of a lifetime. Deposits were made in advance and a great deal of work went into making the arrangements. To leave early would lose the investment of both time and money. It was not unusual for those parties who experienced a death to continue forward as Henry did.

  It was also reasonable for him to fear that he would not receive the position at Harvard if he did not have recent European credential, as faculty was often based on family connection, and Henry’s was not equal to that of Harvard’s expectations. Without the education of his trip to Europe, he had little recommendation.

  In his journals following Mary’s death, Henry wrote of experiencing a heavy depression. He wrote, “What a solitary, lonely being I am. Why do I travel? Every hour my heart aches with sadness.”

  Henry met up with the Appleton party in Interlaken on July 31, 1836. Fanny recorded in her journal that he was not an old man after all, unless perhaps he was the poet’s son.

  Outré Mer was first published anonymously in America in 1833. It was common at that time for unknown authors to leave their name off their works until and unless those works became popular, but the identity was often known through whisperings and speculation. The British publication took place after Henry had left for Europe, and he saw the first copies in London. An American editor working in Denmark criticized the book when Henry asked after it during a meeting, not realizing Henry was the author.

  Chapters Three through Five

  After meeting the Appleton family, Henry traveled with them for some time, another common aspect of the Grand Tour. He certainly spent time with Fanny, but he was especially atten
tive to William, and the friendship he established with Tom Appleton would last throughout his life. Though he did not specifically comment on it at the time, in later years he said that he first fell in love with Fanny during this time they spent together. For Fanny’s part, she found much to admire in Henry but did not identify her feelings as love for another six years.

  Chapter Six

  Henry was progressive in his thoughts on equality and education but not particularly outspoken this early in his life. I combined several of his sentiments shared throughout his life to create the conversation he and Fanny have regarding his thoughts on education as a whole but, specifically, the education of women. I found no indication that Fanny would have been surprised by his feelings, but I chose for her to be so as to show how Henry’s opinions differed from the prevailing belief of the time. Henry was always very complimentary toward Fanny’s intellect; he often said it was what first attracted him to her.

  Henry was quite frustrated throughout his career as a professor by the approach to teaching as a whole but especially to teaching foreign languages. Greater emphasis was put on classic languages rather than learning another modern language, which Henry saw as a portal to enlightenment and cultural education. The sentiments expressed here are based on commentary made throughout his life on the topic and condensed for emphasis.

  By this time in his life Henry had documented his feelings against slavery but had not made them public. The topic would eventually rise up in his writing. Nathan Appleton had championed rights for Native Americans and slaves during his time in Congress, but he was not necessarily opposed to slavery, only the poor treatment of slaves. It seems logical that his reasons for not standing against the institution was due to the fact that his industry—textiles—was dependent on the southern plantations, but I did not uncover his specific thoughts.