Frances Appleton Longfellow by Rowse, 1859
Item 15474 info
NPS, Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site
Hearing the news, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Longfellow's colleague and friend, wrote to the Boston publisher James Fields, "How does Longfellow bear this terrible misfortune? I cannot reconcile this calamity to my sense of fitness.
"One would think that there ought to have been no deep sorrow in the life of a man like him.... I shall be afraid ever to meet him again; he cannot again be the man I have known."
Longfellow himself wrote, "[I] thank God hourly ... for the beautiful life we led together."
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