File:Frances (Appleton) Longfellow to Francis Lieber, 19 May 1852 (434f7fe6-71c9-4f2f-b637-de59cc894c2b).jpg

Manuscript letter

Archives Number: 1011/002.001-022#029

Dear Lieber,
I owe you a thousand apologies for not answering at once your note on autographical matters but can only pay in this tardy reply. I, - we, I may say, agree with you in the value of a natural, not forced, letter for such a purpose & therefore authorize you to send the one you prefer, erasing all objectionable passages. Henry usually favors young ladies with a verse or two of any appropriate poem & if it were yet time I might ask your opinion of so doing [p. 2] in this case. He is deeply obliged to Miss Bunsen for desiring any form of his handwriting & is glad to add her name to the list of his English friends.
Your note was like a Spring concert with its many “bird songs” (alas that Jenny Goldschmidt should be singing hers for the last time here) but thro’ all your rejoicing in Natures bounty & impartiality came the sad minor key (ever in nature too) of your children’s illness. Tell dear Matilda how deeply I sympathise in her anxiety & care, but does she not know it? I fervently trust she is now relieved.
[p. 3] My sister Mary was to have been with us the first of May, but an accident happening to the steamer delayed it one trip, but she will doubtless arrive the first of June & will pass the whole summer with me (part of it at Newport where Julia Howe joins us) & may go to England in the autumn, but that is undecided.
This is the wedding day of one of our fairest young Bostonians Ellen Dwight, who marries Mr Twisleton, and English gentleman of high connections & most amiable character, a contemporary of Mackintosh. Hillard has no doubt sounded her praises to you, & his likewise. They are both handsome & clever - & may joy attend them!
[p. 4] We have seen much of the Kossuths & Pulszkeys since they have been here & like them all greatly. They are most cultivated & agreeable people not to speak of the deeper interest their misfortunes excite. I do not know how your sympathies lie in this matter, & I confess the thought of a European revolution is dreadful to me but I must acknowledge Kossuth to be a man who inspires the highest respect & sympathy when known & deserves none of the calumny heaped upon him. His last speech in Faneuil Hall I heard, & it was a most impressive one You will like his hearty praise of Germany – that its princes might bow to the Czar, as the tree-tops before the gale, but its trunk, the German people, remained unmoved. Cannot the South even bear the word ‘Freedom’ that they treated him so shabbily, when he [p. 1 cross] carefully abstained from all intermeddling with our domestic questions? In Boston there is a strangely cold feeling toward Europe. Despotisms seem to be thought quite good enough for it. I have more faith, & am with love to Matilda,
sincerely yrs
Fanny Longfellow
Old lady Prescott is no more, a great loss to many.

• Keywords: correspondence; long archives; frances e. a. longfellow papers (long 20257); frances elizabeth (appleton) longfellow; people; document; social life; family life; subject; events; wedding; Correspondence (1011/002); (LONG-SeriesName); Letters from Frances Longfellow (1011/002.001); (LONG-SubseriesName); 1852 (1011/002.001-022); (LONG-FileUnitName)