[Boston—Sunday, 26 November 1871]
Nov. 25 [sic]. Sunday. Last night Longfellow took tea here, after the brilliant Saturday Club where Sumner, Carl Schurz, Agassiz and all the old members, also Count Pourtales and others of Agassiz’s expedition now about to start in a few days, were present.
Longfellow mentioned having received two delightful pictures from Charles Lanman as a gift; in return he sent him (one of the pictures being a view of “Norman’s Woe” and the wreck of the Hesperus) a short passage copied from his diary where he mentions the fact of the news of the wreck coming to him one December night and three days after that he sat smoking in his study until after 12 at night and then the form of the poem came to him and he wrote it down. What a pleasure an old diary can be! He feels it fully, and so alas! should I, if I only wrote mine perfectly and closely enough to give such pictures of him in words as I have in the mind’s eye.
