Longfellow's 7 Year Courtship of Fanny Appleton
His Poetry Wasn’t Enough to Woo This Sweetheart
Jun 7, 2009
Most people know who Longfellow was, but who was this woman he wooed for seven years?
Fanny Appleton (1817-1861) was the daughter of Nathan and Maria (Gold) Appleton. Nathan, a Boston merchant and politician, left Dartmouth to work with his older brother Samuel, a successful Boston businessman.
The Appletons
Brothers Nathan and Samuel became millionaires and members of elite Boston society. Their mother was a member of the Adams family.
Nathan Appleton was a U. S. Congressman and one of the founders of Lowell, MA. He worked with Francis Cabot Lowell and others to introduce the power loom and large scale cotton manufacturing to the United States. He and Samuel owned cotton mills at Waltham and Lowell
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Longfellow grew up in a comfortable Portland, Maine family. His grandfather had been a Revolutionary War general and Congressman. Henry published his first poem at age 13 and at 15 entered Bowdoin College, of which his grandfather was a founder and his attorney father a trustee.
As a young man, Longfellow had long sojourns in Europe and was a Bowdoin faculty member. He married childhood friend Mary Storer Potter in 1831. In 1834, Henry was invited to become a Harvard professor on the condition that he first spend a year abroad. While they were in Europe, Mary had a miscarriage and died in 1835 at age 22. Longfellow returned to begin the Harvard professorship, but it was a sad time. He rented rooms at Craigie House, where Washington had his headquarters during the Siege of Boston, and began writing poetry.
The Courtship Begins
Longfellow had two close friends connected to Frances Elizabeth Appleton. One was lifelong friend Charles Sumner, kin to Fanny's stepmother; the other was her brother, Thomas Gold Appleton, whom Longfellow met in Europe. Seeing how despondent his friend was, Thomas suggested he begin seeing Fanny.
Longfellow soon was quite smitten with the lovely Fanny Appleton, who refused to make a commitment. In 1839 he told a friend that it was doubtful she would marry him, but that he was determined. Friends, including Fanny’s brother, kept encouraging the poet. Longfellow frequently walked from Cambridge to the Appleton home on Beacon Hill, crossing the Boston bridge. The new bridge that replaced it was named Longfellow bridge.
Fanny Appleton Agrees
How surprised Longfellow must have been when in 1843, after seven years, Fanny wrote to say she would marry him. They were soon wed. Nathan Appleton bought the Craigie house as a wedding present to them. It was lived in by their family until a grandson died in 1950.
Longfellow’s only love poem, “The Evening Star,” tells of his love for Fanny, the mother of his six children: Charles Appleton, Ernest Wadsworth, Fanny, Alice, Edith and Anne. Their home was a gathering place for artists, writers and scholars.
A Tragic End
Theirs was a happy love story that ended in tragedy. On a hot July day in 1861, as Fanny was putting locks of the children’s hair into an envelope to seal with hot wax, her dress caught fire. Longfellow rushed to help her, stifling the flames with his own body. She was carried to her room and the doctor came. Fanny slipped in and out of consciousness during the night and died late the following morning. Longfellow was too badly burned to attend the funeral.
Biographers say the great poet never recovered from Fanny’s death. He said he was “inwardly bleeding to death” and more than a decade later wrote a poem, “The Cross of Snow,” expressing his grief. Fanny’s brother Tom helped raise the children and remained a close and supportive friend to the grieving Longfellow.
A companion article gives Appleton family Bible records.
SOURCES: Tharp, Louise Hall. The Appletons of Beacon Hill (Boston: 1973)
Winthrop, Robert C., Memoir of the Hon. Nathan Appleton (1969 reprint)
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