June, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



235 



be the home of his favorite daughter and of his lawyer son- 

 in-law. Here, therefore, where their life together had begun, 

 Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Longfellow spent many happy years. 

 Here the poet's six brothers and sister were born. And here 

 Anne Longfellow (Mrs. George Pierce) passed almost her 

 entire life, leaving the house, upon her 

 death in 1901, to the Maine Historical 

 Society as a memorial to her gifted brother. 



No more fitting monument could well be 

 imagined. For it is within these hallowed 

 walls that all the home thoughts and rem- 

 iniscences of him who is pre-eminently 

 America's Poet of Home are bound up. 

 Moreover, it was from this very house that 

 the gifted boy stole out at the age of 

 thirteen to drop into the box outside the 

 office of the Portland Gazette his first pub- 

 lished verses, "The Battle of Lovell's 

 Pond." Other poems known to have been 

 written wholly or in part in this house, are 

 "Musings," "The Spirit of Poetry," 

 "Burial of the Minnisink," "Where from 

 the Eyes of Day," "Song of the Birds," 

 "Changed," "The Lighthouse," and "The 

 Rainy Day." As one sits at the desk made 

 famous by the writing of this last named 

 poem one may still see, glancing out into 

 the garden, the vista that met the poet's 

 eye. This room is now called the "Den" 

 or "Henry's Room," but it was originally 

 the sleeping apartment of General Wads- 

 worth. The walls are decorated with 

 paper brought from Paris sixty years ago. 



Scarcely less interesting than the parlor with its old-time 

 piano and the den with its ink-stained mahogany desk is the 

 family sitting-room, which was once the law office of the 

 poet's father. Here are dozens of pieces of furniture which 

 fill the collector with envy. But the charm of it all lies in 

 the fact that the chairs and tables, the andirons and the 

 pictures have associations as well as age. The carpet is the 

 same as was upon the floor at the time of the poet's last visit 

 to his old home, and it was against this mantel that he often 

 leaned as a youth. 



The poet's chair still stands by his favorite windows; near 

 it is a sewing table that was his mother's, and, on the other 

 side, the chair his father liked best. On the adjacent wall 

 hangs a gilt-framed mirror whose quaint picture and row of 

 tiny gilt balls stamps it as of his grandmother Wadsworth's 

 day. 



Just across a doorway leads into a small room built on by 

 Stephen Longfellow for his law office but now sacred to 

 shelves and cupboards. There is here a single window com- 

 manding the old garden and that was once a favorite writing 

 place for the boy poet we must believe from a letter sent to 

 his sister Elizabeth during his first visit abroad in 1829: 

 "My poetic career is finished. Since I left America I have 

 scarcely put two lines together . . . and no soft poetic 

 ray has irradiated my heart since the Goths and Vandals 

 crossed the Rubicon of the front entry and turned the Sanc- 

 tum Sanctorum of the 'Little Room' into a china closet." 



No part of the house, however, is more interesting to 

 visitors than the kitchen, with its capacious fireplace and its 

 curious outfit of utensils long since retired from use. The 

 fireplace itself is especially worth examining because of the 

 figure of a fish on an iron plate set into the brickwork on the 

 back, a thing of which one of the poet's brothers has spoken 



of as "a fish baked in effigy." Here the crane still supports 

 the pots and kettles that hung from the hook a century ago 

 and all about the hearth are articles which in name as well 

 as in use are quite strange to visitors of the twentieth century, 

 a Dutch oven, a tin kitchen, a plate warmer, apple roaster, 



The Kitchen of Longfellow's House 



Coiiyright, 1902, 

 by Lainson Studio 



coffee roaster and mills, a bread toaster, and waffle irons 

 which look like a huge pair of tongs. Built into the brick- 

 work at the left is the oven for baking and at the right is a 

 boiler with the small opening underneath in which a fire was 

 made on washing days. The kitchen dresser near-by is like- 

 wise attractive with its display of well-shone Britannia tin 

 and earthen ware. Here may be seen the bread tray used 

 by General Lafayette when he visited Portland in 1825. 

 Here, too, are candle molds and lanterns and the steelyards 

 with which the babies of the family were weighed. 



Directly over the parlor, in which the mother of the poet 

 was married, is her bedroom in which she died. Near here 

 is the cradle in which the baby Henry was rocked, as well as 

 a priceless collection of old gowns and bonnets, among them 

 the little cap first worn by that head which was later to be 

 crowned with laurel. Here, too — and this is of special in- 

 terest to visitors — is a copy of a long-forgotten poem in 

 which Henry Longfellow protested against the removal of 

 this old building when some one wished to replace it by a 

 more modern structure. 



The room to which the poet came with his bride is the 

 guest chamber across the hall. The tall, four-post bed- 

 stead, with its dainty hangings of dimity and its quaint cover- 

 let suggestive of a bygone day, is the same now as then. By 

 its side is a wood bottom rocking chair which belonged to the 

 first mistress of the house. It was probably in this room that 

 the poet slept during frequent visits made to the house after 

 he became famous. He never lost his love for the home of his 

 childhood and he rejoiced greatly that the conflagration of 

 July 4, 1866, which obliterated so many interesting land- 

 marks in Portland, left "the family house unburned!" 

 Though the old mansion has now been open to the public 

 only four years it has been visited by thousands. 



