Nahant, July 11, 1861.
My Dearest Mary:
I write you this line only to tell you of a most dreadful and heartrending
calamity which has thrown this community into mourning. Mrs. Longfellow was
burned to death the day before yesterday. She was making seals for the
amusement of her younger children in her house at Cambridge, when the upper
part of her thin muslin dress caught fire, and in an instant she was all in
flames. Longfellow was in the next room. Hearing the shrieks of the children,
he flew to her assistance, and seizing a rug, held it around her, and although
she broke away from him, attempting to run from the danger, — as persons in
such cases seem invariably to do, — he succeeded at last in extinguishing the
fire, but not until she was fatally injured. She lingered through the night,
attended by several physicians, and expired yesterday forenoon about half-past
ten, July 10. I understand that, through the influence of ether, her sufferings
were not very intense after the immediate catastrophe, and that she was
unconscious for a good while before she died. Longfellow was severely burned in
the hands, but not dangerously; but he, too, has been kept under the effects of
ether, and is spoken of as in almost a raving condition.
I have not had the heart to make any inquiries, but think
that on Saturday I will try to see Mrs. Appleton. It is not more than five or
six days since I was calling upon Mr. Appleton, who has so long been dying by
inches, and who will look less like death than he does now when he shall have
breathed his last. F— was there, and greeted me most affectionately, making the
kindest inquiries after you; she never looked more beautiful, or seemed
happier, and Longfellow was, as he always is, genial and kind and gentle. I
should have stayed with them probably during commencement week at Cambridge,
and was looking forward with great pleasure to being with them for a little
while. There is something almost too terrible to reflect upon in this utterly
trivial way in which this noble, magnificent woman has been put to a hideous
death. When you hear of a shipwreck, or a stroke of lightning, or even a
railway accident, the mind does not shrink appalled from the contemplation of
the tragedy so utterly as it now does, from finding all this misery resulting
from such an almost invisible cause — a drop of sealing-wax on a muslin dress.
Deaths in battle are telegraphed to us hourly, and hosts of our young men are
marching forth to mortal combat day by day, but these are in the natural course
of events. Fate, acting on its large scale, has decreed that a great war shall
rage, and we are prepared for tragedies, and we know that those who fall have
been discharging the highest of duties. But what compensation or consolation is
there for such a calamity as this?
I was with Holmes at the Parker House when the news was
brought to us. We had gone to see the Greenes (William), with whom we were
speaking in the hall. Holmes wanted a commission in Greene's regiment for his
son Wendell in case he finds Lee's list completed. We both burst into tears,
and did nothing more that morning about military matters; Holmes is, however,
going out to see Lee to-morrow morning at his camp at Readville, and will
doubtless obtain a lieutenancy under him for his son. Wendell is a very fine
fellow, graduating this commencement, but he can't be kept in college any
longer. He will get his degree, and is one of the first scholars in his class,
but, like nearly all the young men, he has been drilling for months long in one
of the various preparatory home battalions, and is quite competent for the post
he wishes; but there are so many applicants for these commissions that even
such a conspicuous youth as he is not sure of getting one immediately.
God bless you, dearest Mary, and my dear children. In great
haste,
Affectionately yours,
J. L. M.
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 172-4
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