Longfellow House

This week I went with friends to the Longfellow House http://www.longfellowfriends.org/index.php. I’ve been in a lot of historic houses, and this is definitely one of the best. (One not-best example: the Handel House. The place had been home to many exuberant remodelers after Handel so when the historic societies got hold of the place they stripped it back to the Handel-era interior and stocked it with various furniture and draperies from the time . . . but not a single thing in the house had belonged to Handel.)

This house, however, was great. It wasn’t just a literary site; it was a patriotic one. The eighteenth-century mansion was made famous by George Washington’s 1775­­-76 stay during which he mustered troops to face the British force occupying Boston. Sixty years later Longfellow rented a few rooms in the house and then got the whole thing as a wedding present from his father-in-law.

And it wasn’t just the site that was significant; the artifacts were there too. The people who lived there cared about the history, and they kept everything.

And seeing all of it wasn’t just an interesting historical experience but a poetic one since so many things we saw had been elevated by poems I’m attached to: “The Children’s Hour,” “The Cross of Snow,” “The Village Blacksmith,” etc.

And our visit wasn’t just touristy; it was behind-the-scenes. The girls I went with study library science, so they asked about the house’s archives and next thing we knew we were in the basement looking at refrigerated books and furniture and learning about the cataloging system.

And to top of the whole experience, it wasn’t just historical or literary or poetic; it was rhetorical. On our way out, I passed Gary Hatch going in.