Henry Wadsworth Long fellow, Andersen’s American correspondent.
A long time ago, when I was a lot and the world a little younger, Hans Christian Andersen entered my life not as a famous story-teller but as a ghost, a spectre momentarily conjured up. Brat tIe Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is filled with history. One walks lightly there, feeling that, although time passes, it does not always destroy. There are few places we can return to, but Brat tIe Street is one of them. Should I go there now, I might meet George Washington whose headquarters had been in the old house that later became the home of the poet Henry Wadsworth Long fellow. But almost as important to me, I might just be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of myself as a young man of nineteen, with so many hopes and ambitions. The sunlight shining on the painted walls of the old colonial house would not be different from what it was in 1942, when, newly hired to translate a few letters which Hans Christian Andersen had written to Long fellow, I made my way up the drive and knocked at the door .
Down in the cellar of Long fellow’s house, which is also a museum, the more important manuscripts are kept. It has a musty odour, which I am sure makes scholars’ hearts beat faster. I preferred the upper rooms that were so beautifully light and airy, so well fitted for life. But scholars must stay in dungeons; and there I sat under an electric bulb, which cast its hard, shadowless light on missives written a century earlier by the soft rays of a kerosene lamp or flickering candle light. What secrets did these letters reveal? None, I am afraid. They were only harmless, friendly messages. But there is a magic about such a handwritten letter: the creases where it was folded had been made by Andersen, and the slit of the envelope opened by Long fellow. Did the mailman then walk his rounds down Brat tIe Street; and did someone at the breakfast table ask, ‘Were there any interesting letters?’ And did the poet, after slicing the top off his boiled egg, answer, ‘Oh, there was a note from Andersen, I must answer it soon.’
The world has shrunk since those letters were written; the ocean is not weeks or even days wide, only hours. And yet in some ways people were closer to each other, more intimate, than we are today. Long fellow, Dickens, Andersen: all inhabited the same world of art and poetry. Although envy and enmity existed, they were personal and did not challenge the Muses.
Poetry was still deemed above the
more vulgar concerns of man; it was still holy, still nearer to God. The sharp philosophical and political rifts had not yet begun to appear, as yet the importance and worthwhileness of art were taken for granted by those who created it, and this gave their lives a serenity which we might envy.