To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner - photo 1
To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner - photo 2
To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner - photo 3

To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner

Lot 44
15.06.2023 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
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$ 6 300
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
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ID 967651
Lot 44 | To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner
Estimate value
$ 5 000 – 7 000
To his friend and confidant, Charles Sumner

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1851-1870

LONGFELLOW, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882). A series of six autograph letters signed ("H.W.W.") to Charles Sumner, Cambridge, 25 December 1851 - 8 November 1870.



22 pages total, bifolia, various sizes.



An important correspondence between the poet and the outspoken abolitionist senator, including a commiserating letter following the brutal attack on Sumner by South Carolina's Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate on 22 May 1856. In the aftermath of the attack, in which Brooks responded to Sumner's 20 May speech condemning southern slaveholders with a severe beating with his cane that left the Massachusetts senator unable to retake his seat for over three years, Longfellow offers his unwavering support. He writes on 28 May: "I have just been reading again your Speech. It is the greatest voice, on the greatest subject, that has been entered since we became a nation. No matter for insults—we feel them with you—no matter for wounds, we also bleed in them! You have torn the mask off the faces of Traitors, and at last the Spirit of the North is aroused..."



The balance of the correspondence covers a variety of subjects and people, including Nathaniel Hawthorne and other literary luminaries. On 30 January 1850, Longfellow remarks on "a dinner given by Lowell to Darley the artist, who is now here making studies for a series of Illustrations for 'The Scarlet Letter,'" and adding that "The 'Atlantic' flourishes. Holmes is in full blast, at his 'Breakfast Table' - Charles Norton has lately contributed two good articles on Dante's 'Via Nova'…" On 18 February 1859, Longfellow pens a reflective letter on the death of the historian William H. Prescott: "And so I stand here at my desk by the window, thinking of you, and hoping you will get some other letter from Boston before you do mine, so that I may not be the first to break to you the sad news of Prescott's death! Yes, he is dead! He died of a stroke of paralysis on Friday last... We shall see that cheerful, genial, sunny face no more!" In the same letter, he asks whether Sumner agreed that "Emerson's speech at the Burns dinner is charming. Don't you think so? …" The conclusion of the correspondence comes in the wake of the Paris Commune—at least as it affected the wine market: "Put no faith in Burgundy. I very much doubt whether I shall order any more - certainly not now, when everything in France is turned topsy-turvy." A superb and wide-ranging correspondence between two giants in their respective worlds, it documents a close friendship that lasted until Sumner's death in 1874. Longfellow was among the pallbearers at his funeral, together with Emerson, Whittier, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. See Blue, "The Poet and the Reformer: Longfellow, Sumner, and the Bonds of Male Friendship, 1837-1874," Journal of the Early Republic, Summer 1995.

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