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Longfellow House Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2001

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Longfellow House Bulletin, Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2001 on fellow ous L g ulletinH e Volume 5 No. 1 A Newsletter of the Friends of the Longfellow House and the National Park Service June 2001 New Study ExaminesThe Song of HiawathaB as Controversial Bestseller atthew Gartner’s recent work on noted in his journal: “Some of the MH.W. Longfellow’s most popular newspapers are fierce and furious about poem asserts that The Song of Hiawatha was Hiawatha,” and a few weeks later, he both a bestseller and a subject of contro- wrote, “There is the greatest pother versy as soon as it was published, and about Hiawatha. It is violently assailed, quickly became a cultural phenomenon. and warmly defended.” The historian Gartner, who is writing a book called The William Prescott, a friend of Longfel- Poet Longfellow: A Cultural Interpretation, will low’s, wrote the poet from New York of present his findings and analysis this July “the hubbub that Hiawatha has kicked up at the Society for the History of Author- in the literary community.” ship, Reading, and Publishing. At the heart of the controversy lay When Hiawatha was first published in Longfellow’s decision to use a poetic 1855 it sold rapidly. With an initial print- meter called “trochaic dimeter.” The ing of five thousand volumes, four thou- George H. Thomas illustration, The Song of Hiawatha, London, 1859 nineteenth century was an age of great sand were already sold as of its November nationwide by 1858, making it not only sensitivity to the art of prosody, or poetic 10 publication date. By mid-December Longfellow’s best-selling poem ever, but, meter, and Longfellow surely knew Hiawa- eleven thousand volumes were in print. arguably, the best-selling American poem tha’s success would, to a large extent, depend Longfellow’s publisher, James T. Fields, of the century. on how this seldom-used meter was received announced in January that they were sell- Controversy over the poem began and whether it was deemed suitable for his ing three hundred copies a day.Forty-three almost immediately. Less than two weeks book-length treatment of an Indian legend. thousand copies of Hiawatha had sold after Hiawatha’s publication, Longfellow (continued on page 2) House Loans Bierstadt’s “Departure of Hiawatha” for Exhibitions lbert Bierstadt’s “Departure of Hia- Minister William Gladstone himself. which will bring together works of art de- Awatha,”which usually hangs in the din- From August 7 to October 14, 2001, the picting American heroes, heroines, and hero- ing room of the Longfellow House, can be painting will be on loan to the National ism, and the shaping of American myth. seen in two major museums this summer. Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, for their “American Heroism” was developed to A German-born American and Hudson exhibition entitled “American Heroism,” promote cultural exchanges between the River School painter, Bierstadt is United States and Japan. The idea famous for his large, panoramic for the exhibition originated during views of the American West. a conversation between the former Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi received this small, brightly colored Murayama and President Clinton. oil painting as a gift from the artist From November 2001 until Feb- at a dinner party held in his honor ruary 2002, “Departure of Hia- by the artist and his wife at the watha” will be part of “Primal Langham Hotel in London on the Visions: Albert Bierstadt ‘Discov- 9th of July 1868. Longfellow was in ers’ America, 1859-1893” at the England to receive an honorary Montclair Art Museum in New degree from Cambridge University. Jersey. Afterward, the exhibit will Among those attending the dinner travel to the Columbus Museum of were the poet Robert Browning, the Art in Columbus, Ohio, and the painter Edwin Landseer, members Crocker Art Museum in Sacra- of the British Parliament, and Prime Departure of Hiawatha by Albert Bierstadt, 1868 mento, California. 1 - Hiawatha (continued from page 1) The case against Hiawatha claimed that Wooing” was read to audiences at the VWX the meter was a poetical straitjacket, too Boston Theater as an encore. Hiawatha “has Friends of the Longfellow House stiff to allow the poetry to reflect modula- been recited (in part) before crowded audi- Board of Directors tions in the feeling and mood of its story. ences of our people,” noted Putnam’s later Barclay Henderson, President Putnam’s Magazine of December 1855 de- that year, and a gossip column in Harper’s Edith Hollmann Bowers, Vice President clared: “We do not believe that any man asked acidly, “Have we great things to boast Robert Mitchell, Clerk can read ten pages of The Song of Hiawatha, of in this good year of our Lord 1856, if we Charlotte Cleveland, Treasurer in a natural, unforced manner, without lift- set aside the ad nauseam singings of Hia- Frances Ackerly ing his voice into a canter”—in other watha, and plenty of beef in the New York Peter Ambler words, the reader must clop through market?” The proliferation of Hiawatha- Hans-Peter Biemann Hiawatha like a horse with an unvaried gait. inspired performances, place names, and Gene A. Blumenreich The opposition argued that Hiawatha was paraphernalia of all sorts was just begin- Polly Bryson Dick Dober written in the best possible measure for ning. Already by 1857, for instance, a Mis- Nancy Fryberger such a poem and deferred to Longfellow’s sissippi steamboat was named “The Hia- Victor Gulotta own explanation: watha” and another “The Minnehaha.” Abigail Housen Ye who love a nation’s legends, Not all the Hiawatha spin-offs were Diana der Hovanessian Love the ballads of a people, favorable. The poet Bayard Taylor, a few Carol Johnson That, like voices from afar off, weeks after the poem’s release, felt the need Marilyn Richardson Call to us to pause and listen, to reassure Longfellow in a letter, “It will Lynne Spencer Speak in tones so plain and childlike be parodied, perhaps ridiculed, in many Susan Wood Scarcely can the ear distinguish quarters, but it will live after the Indian race Advisory Board Whether they are sung or spoken; — has vanished from our Continent, and there Ruth Butler Listen to this Indian Legend, will be no parodies then.” By February 1856 LeRoy Cragwell To this Song of Hiawatha! Longfellow noted with equanimity in his Diana Korzenik The poet and translator Thomas W. Par- journal, “Hiawatha parodies come in from Richard Nylander sons agreed, finding that “[t]he measure is all quarters,—even from California.” Stephen D. Pratt monotonous,—admitted; but it is truly Hiawatha marked an important turning Marc Shell Indian. It is child-like, and suited to the point in Longfellow’s career—the begin- Charles Sullivan Lowell A. Warren, Jr. savage ear.” The North American Review, de- ning of a split in public opinion regarding Eileen Woodford claring that “[t]he essential characteristic his work. The New England literary estab- of Indian life, and so of Indian literature, lishment backed Longfellow’s message of Newsletter Committee is that it is childlike,” likewise approved of reassurance and refinement, as did many Marilyn Richardson, Editor Hiawatha’s controversial meter. Despite American readers across the social spec- Glenna Lang, Designer James M. Shea these stereotypes, Hiawatha was the first trum. But an increasing number of readers long American poem in which Native in a rapidly changing country on the eve of opq American legends and heroes were given civil war no longer found Longfellow the center stage. innovative American poet he had been in National Park Service Longfellow’s meter had been attacked the late 1830s.With Hiawatha the debate over Myra Harrison, Superintendent previously in Evangeline, which adapted the Longfellow’s reputation began, and it con- James M. Shea, Site Manager Greek and Latin hexameter, but this time tinues to this day. Paul Blandford, Museum Educator his subject matter stirred up controversy as Liza Stearns, Education Specialist well. George William Curtis, Longfellow’s Janice Hodson, Museum Curator friend and supporter, defended the poem Anita Israel, Archives Specialist Peggy Clarke, Museum Technician against criticism that went beyond the met- Ed Bacigalupo, Chief of Maintenance rical and poetical. He summed up the Pat LaVey, Facility Manager charges: “It is adjudged pointless and unin- teresting. It is thought to be a hopeless attempt to invest Indian tradition with the Unless otherwise cited, all photos, art, and objects pictured in the Longfellow House Bulletin dignity and pathos of a true human ro- are from the Longfellow House collections. mance. It is voted an unfortunate subject, and the simplicity of the treatment is con- sidered to be too simple.” Printed by Newprint Offset, Waltham, Mass. Hiawatha, however, became an overnight cultural phenomenon, read and satirized extensively. In March 1856, according to Longfellow’s journal, the actress Grace 1234 Darling was “reading Hiawatha to crowded houses in Philadelphia,” and “Hiawatha’s - 2 Interview with a Friend…Meet Marilyn Richardson Marilyn Richardson is a member of the itself. Both North and South could hold material and publishing articles on the nine- Board of the Friends of the Longfellow this idea of the Indian as the Other. Hia- teenth-century Afro-Indian artist Edmonia House and also editor of this newsletter. watha was published only three years after Lewis. She was the first black American to Because of her scholarship in nineteenth- Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Longfellow was writing at gain an international reputation as a sculp- century American culture and her forth- the height of the fury over the Fugitive tor. She lived in Rome at the period of the coming book on Edmonia Lewis, we Slave Law of 1850 when blacks in the North ascendancy of an international group of thought it was time to turn the interiewer’s were at the mercy of bounty hunters and independent women artists, centered on the microphone towards her for this special could in no way be mythologized.
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