longfellow love legend in maine (1)

7/29/2019 Longfellow Love Legend in Maine (1)

1/14

February, 2007

February, 2007

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Arts Around theMid-coastFind local arts andentertainment events in Mid-coast Maine. EveryThursday in The TimesRecord.

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AREA EVENTS ON-LINE.

Longfellow's love: Legend or fact?

[email protected]

02/08/2007

By Bonnie W. Mason, Times Record Contributor

Special to Ticket

BRUNSWICKShhh. Don't tell anyone. It's just gossip. Andanyway, the only two people who know the truth are Henry

Wadsworth Longfellow and Susan Chase. And they are not here to

defend themselves, so it's not really fair is it?

Take a Longfellowpoetry trivia quiz

From which of Longfellow'sworks do these quotes
http://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumentmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://adserver1.harvestadsdepot.com/trecordme/ss/088291/http://www.timesrecord.com/Military/Military.htmlhttp://www.bekinc.net/


2/14

It can happen

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1. Music is theuniversal languageof mankind,/poetrytheir universalpastime anddelight.

2. I heard the trailinggarments of theNight,/Sweepthrough her marblehalls.

3. And the skipperhad taken his littledaughter,/ To bearhim company.

4. Under thespreading chestnut-tree/ The villagesmithy stands;

5. I shot an arrow intothe air,/ It fell toearth, I knew notwhere

6. Sail on, Oh Ship ofState/ Sail on, OhUnion, strong andgreat!

7. Why don't youspeak for yourself,John?

8. A boy's will is thewind's will.

9. One if by land, andtwo if by sea;

10.There was a littlegirl/ Who had a littlecurl/Right in themiddle of herforehead;
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3/14

But if you promise, really promise,

I'll tell you the story. And it is just astory.

From 1822 to 1825, when young

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was astudent at Bowdoin College, he

reportedly was seen walking from

the college campus to Pennellville.Now here's where the speculation

begins.

Did young Henry walk out to watchthe ships being built in Pennellville

by the Pennell shipbuilders? Or did

the now famous student walk out to

watch the tide come in?

Did he sometimes wander over to Bunganuc Road to visit theSamuel Chase family who raised six young women, many of

whom married into the Pennell clan?

And if so, why? Was it because the youthful poet's maternalgrandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, had been friends with

Benjamin Chase, Samuel Chase's father, during the Revolutionary

War?

William Barry, at the reference desk of the Maine HistoricalSociety, says he can find no Revolutionary War link between the

Chases and the Wadsworths or Longfellows. "Perhaps," he says,"Benjamin Chase was a Revolutionary War captain (as is stated on

a plaque found in the old Chase home) but I cannot find it here."

Still, there's a possibility that the families knew each other, says

Charles Calhoun, author of "Longfellow, A Rediscovered Life."

"Maine was a small place, and the leading families all knew each

other," he explained.

"The Chases and the Longfellows were all leading gentry of theday," explained Weld Henshaw, a retired Boston lawyer, as he

tramped through the snow on his property near the small cemeterywhere Samuel and Mary Chase are buried off Bunganuc Road.

And on these alleged visits to see the Chases, did Longfellow makethe acquaintance of a special Chase daughter, one named Susan

11.Nothing that is canpause or stay

12."Oh, Caesar, wewho are about todie/ Salute you!"was the gladiator'scry.

These quotes were compiled with thehelp of "Familiar Quotations" by JohnBarlett and also "Longfellow'sComplete Poetical Works,"Cambridge Edition, 1863.

SEE BOTTOM OF STORY FORANSWERS


4/14

Chase?

Henshaw, who at one time lived in the Chase home, at 380

Bunganuc Road, after his parents bought it, but before his nephew,

John Henshaw, renovated it, first heard the legend as a youth from

Robert Tristam Coffin, former Maine poet laureate and PulitzerPrize winner.

His mother and grandmother had once befriended Coffin's daughterwho got caught in a thunderstorm riding her bicycle in front of

their house. They took her home in their station wagon, where

Coffin invited them in.

"The whiskey bottles popped open," said Henshaw. "And Coffin

told us the tale."

It has been said by some, who don't want to be named, that Coffinwas a better storyteller than he was an historian, but no matter, a

story is a story. And the fact that it has persisted so long isinteresting, said Calhoun, who also is a scholar-in-residence at the

Maine Humanities Council.

"Even if the story were true," says Christoph Irmscher, author of"Longfellow Redux," "and I haven't seen any references to it

anywhereit wouldn't change our perception of Longfellow one

bit. He was a very sensual man, and even before his marriage, hewas involved with a number of women we know abouta girl in

Spain with whom he seems to have fallen in love with in 1827,Florencia Gonzalez, and in Rome he became romantically

interested in Giula Persiana s o all of this would be old news."

Old news? To a highly respected, serious Longfellow scholar such

as Irmscher, indeed it would be. But to those of us who enjoy thespinning of yarns, perhaps it wouldn't.

Nancy Pennell of Pennellville said the legend was passed down to

her from her mother-in-law, Alice Coffin Pennell.

And Robert P. Tristam Coffin's son, Richard Coffin, of Falmouth,said he has always heard about Longfellow's letters to Susan

which Susan's niece, Mary Ellen Pennell, supposedly burned afterSusan's death.


5/14

Legend of 'The OldClock'

The old Chase home is not

open to the public althoughat one time it was a tavern.It is now the residence ofJohn Henshaw and hiswife.There is a legend that aclock on the stairs in theChase home inspiredLongfellow's famous poem,"The Old Clock on theStairs."Says Irmscher: "InLongfellow's journal hedoesn't mention a specific

clock as having inspired thepoem but talks insteadabout a literary source,Jacques Bridaine, a FrenchJesuit."Tradition has it that the oldclock was in the Appletonfamily estate in Pittsfield,Mass., this is what all hiscontemporaries and friendsassumed. Again, thisdoesn't really matter Ifind Longfellow's source

(Bridaine) far moreinteresting than thequestion where the clockwas that he had in mind.His journal entry ('a Clock')suggests he wasn't thinkingof a specific one anyway."According to Anita Israel,archives specialist at theLongfellow National HistoricSite, a letter written byLongfellow is archived therethat said that the clock was

the one that stood in Mrs.Longfellow's grandfather'shouse in Pittsfield, Mass."Apparently," she said,"Longfellow first becameacquainted with it when heand his second wife, FannyAppleton, went to Pittsfield


6/14

Were they love letters, those letters

that Robert P. Tristam Coffin wroteabout in his 1939 book, "Captain

Abby and Captain John"? Were they

kept in a trunk all Susan Chase's life,

as Coffin speculated? Nobodyknows. "People in the Victorian Age never talked about sex," said

Richard Coffin, "or anything that somebody might think would be

bad."

No letters from Susan Chase to Longfellow, however, can be found

at the Harvard Houghton Library, according to Anita Israel,

archives specialist, Longfellow National Historic Site.

"Victorian families were famous for editing family papers to

remove any hint of scandal," said Calhoun.

"We have found nothing in our collections to support or deny the

rumor," said Richard Lindemann, director of the George J.Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives at the

Bowdoin College Library.

But even people in Pennellville who aren't related to the Pennellshave heard the legend about Susan Chase and Henry Wadsworth

Longfellow.

Speculation continues to this day. Did Longfellow perhaps want to

marry Susan, as history buff, Frank Connors, of Bowdoinham,suggested? Did her father refuse a poet because he wanted a sea

captain?

Or did Susan want to marry Longfellow but the poet preferred to

follow his father's wishes, which may have been for him to marryMary Potter, the daughter of a Portland lawyer who was his father's

friend?

And here's another spin: Perhaps Susan Chase rejected Longfellowjust like she did all the other suitors that Robert P. Tristam Coffin

claimed came to her door. She never married.

Calhoun has a different theory: "Maybe the Longfellow (in thisstory) was Henry's scapegrace older brother Stephen, also a

Bowdoin student at that time. He was far wilder than Henry. In

later years, especially as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gotfamous, maybe their identities were conflated in local

to visit her grandmother,Mrs. Gold, on their bridaltrip."


7/14

reminiscence."

But the facts remain. "The two great loves of Longfellow's life

were Mary Potter and Fanny Appleton," said Calhoun.

Weld Henshaw disagreed. "Longfellow broke Susan's heart twice."Once, when he married Mary Potter. And a second time when he

chose to pursue Fanny Appleton in Boston after he moved to

Cambridge to teach at Harvard University.

"Maybe little Susan Chase wasn't going to hack it," suggested

Henshaw. "Longfellow may have had greater social ambitions."

Irmscher, professor of English at Indiana University, differs with

that opinion.

"Longfellow was a very ethical man, and while he liked women, hedid not decide whom to be with on the basis of money or social

status," he said.

His seven-year-long courtship of Fanny had nothing to do with

economic aspirations," he said. It was all about love.

Will we ever know the truth about Longfellow and Susan Chase?

Probably not, unless some letters surface that have been reportedly

lost.

But, "It's a story I like to tell," said Henshaw.

Answers:

1. Outre-Mer; 2. Hymn to Night; 3. The Wreck of the Hesperus; 4. The Village

Blacksmith; 5. The Arrow and the Song; 6. The Building of the Ship; 7. The

Courship of Miles Standish; 8. My Lost Youth; 9. Tales of a Wayside Inn. Paul

Revere's Ride; 10. There Was a Little Girl; 11. Keramos; 12. Morituri

Salutamus.

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8/14

Arts Around theMid-coast

Find local arts andentertainment events in Mid-coast Maine. EveryThursday in The TimesRecord.

VIEW A LIST OF SOMEAREA EVENTS ON-LINE.

It can happen

hereA special series on Elder

Abuse in Maine.

READ MOREabout ElderAbuse subjects in our

Longfellow's love: Legend or fact?

[email protected]

02/08/2007

By Bonnie W. Mason, Times Record Contributor

Special to Ticket

BRUNSWICKShhh. Don't tell anyone. It's just gossip. And

anyway, the only two people who know the truth are HenryWadsworth Longfellow and Susan Chase. And they are not here to

defend themselves, so it's not really fair is it?

Take a Longfellowpoetry trivia quiz

From which of Longfellow'sworks do these quotescome?

13.Music is theuniversal languageof mankind,/poetrytheir universalpastime anddelight.
http://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featuresmailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/archives.nsf/vwALL?SearchView&SearchOrder=3&SearchMax=0&Query=Elder+Abuse+AND+%5bSection%5d=Featureshttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://www.timesrecord.com/website/main.nsf/news.nsf/0/45F584DC5396168B8525757E005A1436?Opendocumenthttp://adserver1.harvestadsdepot.com/trecordme/ss/088291/http://www.timesrecord.com/Military/Military.html


9/14

Features Section

Local activities

plannned?

Have activities you'd like ourreaders to know about?Please contact thenewsdept.or mail your newsrelease to: The Times Record,P.O. Box 10, Brunswick, ME04011. To contact the editorialdept., go to our"About Us"page

ABOUT US

About Us

Advertise with us

Submit an AnnouncementLetters to the Editor

Photo Reprints

Submit a Classified Ad

Subscribe to The TimesRecord

here to find The TimesRecord

Employment at The TimesRecord

Area Support Groups

14.I heard the trailinggarments of theNight,/Sweepthrough her marblehalls.

15.And the skipperhad taken his littledaughter,/ To bearhim company.

16.Under thespreading chestnut-tree/ The villagesmithy stands;

17.I shot an arrow intothe air,/ It fell toearth, I knew notwhere

18.Sail on, Oh Ship ofState/ Sail on, OhUnion, strong andgreat!

19.Why don't youspeak for yourself,John?

20.A boy's will is thewind's will.

21.One if by land, andtwo if by sea;

22.There was a littlegirl/ Who had a littlecurl/Right in themiddle of herforehead;

23.Nothing that is canpause or stay

24."Oh, Caesar, wewho are about todie/ Salute you!"was the gladiator's
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10/14

But if you promise, really promise,

I'll tell you the story. And it is just astory.

From 1822 to 1825, when young

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was astudent at Bowdoin College, he

reportedly was seen walking from

the college campus to Pennellville.Now here's where the speculation

begins.

Did young Henry walk out to watch the ships being built inPennellville by the Pennell shipbuilders? Or did the now famous

student walk out to watch the tide come in?

Did he sometimes wander over to Bunganuc Road to visit theSamuel Chase family who raised six young women, many of

whom married into the Pennell clan?

And if so, why? Was it because the youthful poet's maternal

grandfather, General Peleg Wadsworth, had been friends with

Benjamin Chase, Samuel Chase's father, during the RevolutionaryWar?

William Barry, at the reference desk of the Maine HistoricalSociety, says he can find no Revolutionary War link between the

Chases and the Wadsworths or Longfellows. "Perhaps," he says,"Benjamin Chase was a Revolutionary War captain (as is stated on

a plaque found in the old Chase home) but I cannot find it here."

Still, there's a possibility that the families knew each other, says

Charles Calhoun, author of "Longfellow, A Rediscovered Life.""Maine was a small place, and the leading families all knew each

other," he explained.

"The Chases and the Longfellows were all leading gentry of theday," explained Weld Henshaw, a retired Boston lawyer, as he

tramped through the snow on his property near the small cemeterywhere Samuel and Mary Chase are buried off Bunganuc Road.

And on these alleged visits to see the Chases, did Longfellow make

the acquaintance of a special Chase daughter, one named Susan

Chase?

cry.

These quotes were compiled with thehelp of "Familiar Quotations" by JohnBarlett and also "Longfellow'sComplete Poetical Works,"

Cambridge Edition, 1863.

SEE BOTTOM OF STORY FORANSWERS


11/14

Henshaw, who at one time lived in the Chase home, at 380

Bunganuc Road, after his parents bought it, but before his nephew,John Henshaw, renovated it, first heard the legend as a youth from

Robert Tristam Coffin, former Maine poet laureate and Pulitzer

Prize winner.

His mother and grandmother had once befriended Coffin's daughter

who got caught in a thunderstorm riding her bicycle in front of

their house. They took her home in their station wagon, whereCoffin invited them in.

"The whiskey bottles popped open," said Henshaw. "And Coffin

told us the tale."

It has been said by some, who don't want to be named, that Coffin

was a better storyteller than he was an historian, but no matter, a

story is a story. And the fact that it has persisted so long isinteresting, said Calhoun, who also is a scholar-in-residence at the

Maine Humanities Council.

"Even if the story were true," says Christoph Irmscher, author of

"Longfellow Redux," "and I haven't seen any references to it

anywhereit wouldn't change our perception of Longfellow onebit. He was a very sensual man, and even before his marriage, he

was involved with a number of women we know about a girl in

Spain with whom he seems to have fallen in love with in 1827,Florencia Gonzalez, and in Rome he became romantically

interested in Giula Persiana

s o all of this would be old news."

Old news? To a highly respected, serious Longfellow scholar suchas Irmscher, indeed it would be. But to those of us who enjoy the

spinning of yarns, perhaps it wouldn't.

Nancy Pennell of Pennellville said the legend was passed down to

her from her mother-in-law, Alice Coffin Pennell.

And Robert P. Tristam Coffin's son, Richard Coffin, of Falmouth,said he has always heard about Longfellow's letters to Susan

which Susan's niece, Mary Ellen Pennell, supposedly burned afterSusan's death.

Legend of 'The OldClock'


12/14

The old Chase home is notopen to the public althoughat one time it was a tavern.It is now the residence of

John Henshaw and hiswife.There is a legend that aclock on the stairs in theChase home inspiredLongfellow's famous poem,"The Old Clock on theStairs."Says Irmscher: "InLongfellow's journal hedoesn't mention a specificclock as having inspired thepoem but talks instead

about a literary source,Jacques Bridaine, a FrenchJesuit."Tradition has it that the oldclock was in the Appletonfamily estate in Pittsfield,Mass., this is what all hiscontemporaries and friendsassumed. Again, thisdoesn't really matter Ifind Longfellow's source(Bridaine) far moreinteresting than the

question where the clockwas that he had in mind.His journal entry ('a Clock')suggests he wasn't thinkingof a specific one anyway."According to Anita Israel,archives specialist at theLongfellow National HistoricSite, a letter written byLongfellow is archived therethat said that the clock wasthe one that stood in Mrs.Longfellow's grandfather'shouse in Pittsfield, Mass."Apparently," she said,"Longfellow first becameacquainted with it when heand his second wife, FannyAppleton, went to Pittsfieldto visit her grandmother,Mrs. Gold, on their bridal


13/14

Were they love letters, those letters

that Robert P. Tristam Coffin wroteabout in his 1939 book, "Captain

Abby and Captain John"? Were they

kept in a trunk all Susan Chase's life, as Coffin speculated?

Nobody knows. "People in the Victorian Age never talked aboutsex," said Richard Coffin, "or anything that somebody might think

would be bad."

No letters from Susan Chase to Longfellow, however, can be found

at the Harvard Houghton Library, according to Anita Israel,

archives specialist, Longfellow National Historic Site.

"Victorian families were famous for editing family papers to

remove any hint of scandal," said Calhoun.

"We have found nothing in our collections to support or deny therumor," said Richard Lindemann, director of the George J.

Mitchell Department of Special Collections and Archives at theBowdoin College Library.

But even people in Pennellville who aren't related to the Pennells

have heard the legend about Susan Chase and Henry WadsworthLongfellow.

Speculation continues to this day. Did Longfellow perhaps want tomarry Susan, as history buff, Frank Connors, of Bowdoinham,

suggested? Did her father refuse a poet because he wanted a seacaptain?

Or did Susan want to marry Longfellow but the poet preferred to

follow his father's wishes, which may have been for him to marry

Mary Potter, the daughter of a Portland lawyer who was his father'sfriend?

And here's another spin: Perhaps Susan Chase rejected Longfellow

just like she did all the other suitors that Robert P. Tristam Coffinclaimed came to her door. She never married.

Calhoun has a different theory: "Maybe the Longfellow (in this

story) was Henry's scapegrace older brother Stephen, also aBowdoin student at that time. He was far wilder than Henry. In

later years, especially as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow got

famous, maybe their identities were conflated in localreminiscence."

trip."


14/14

But the facts remain. "The two great loves of Longfellow's lifewere Mary Potter and Fanny Appleton," said Calhoun.

Weld Henshaw disagreed. "Longfellow broke Susan's heart twice."

Once, when he married Mary Potter. And a second time when hechose to pursue Fanny Appleton in Boston after he moved to

Cambridge to teach at Harvard University.

"Maybe little Susan Chase wasn't going to hack it," suggested

Henshaw. "Longfellow may have had greater social ambitions."

Irmscher, professor of English at Indiana University, differs withthat opinion.

"Longfellow was a very ethical man, and while he liked women, he

did not decide whom to be with on the basis of money or socialstatus," he said.

His seven-year-long courtship of Fanny had nothing to do with

economic aspirations," he said. It was all about love.

Will we ever know the truth about Longfellow and Susan Chase?Probably not, unless some letters surface that have been reportedly

lost.

But, "It's a story I like to tell," said Henshaw.

Answers:

1. Outre-Mer; 2. Hymn to Night; 3. The Wreck of the Hesperus; 4. The Village

Blacksmith; 5. The Arrow and the Song; 6. The Building of the Ship; 7. The

Courship of Miles Standish; 8. My Lost Youth; 9. Tales of a Wayside Inn. Paul

Revere's Ride; 10. There Was a Little Girl; 11. Keramos; 12. Morituri

Salutamus.

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