Quick Review

Tales of a Wayside Inn by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Yet another handsome little book I read for no better reason than that.  My copy is actually a hardcover edition published and sold by what's now called "Longfellow's Wayside Inn."  I've read some Longfellow of course, and more in the past few years as I've started exploring the great Victorian poets, English and American.  This past summer was all about Tennyson for me, and Longfellow figured briefly in Tennyson's biography, so perhaps that's why this book caught my eye.  Whatever the reason I picked it up, I didn't put it down again until I'd read it through.  Pleasant enough at a go, so why not?  There was a hook.  After the brief introductory poem, what was the first of the Tales?  "The Landlord's Tale," aka "Paul Revere's Ride."  I don't think, even today, that there is an American child who has not, at some point heard or read that one -- if only to dispute the historical particulars or mock the quaint sincerity of an old fashioned patriot.  Turns out, it's a better poem than I remember.  (That's been my experience of Longfellow generally.)

I was a little disappointed by what followed, simply because most of the subsequent stories were, frankly, so self-consciously exotic, or simply "foreign." They weren't unhappy reading, for the most part, but they did smell more of the library than the salt sea air, or the perfumed sands of Arabia, or what have you.  Still, if some of these Tales seemed but so much watered beer, there were a few of enough interest to keep me reading, the surprisingly pitch-black story, "The Falcon of Ser Federigo", for example.

And then came Olaf.  I'd actually read one these in a Christmas anthology recently, and one or two of them here held my attention for the length of a poem, but I am not a saga-man.  Nothing bores me more the exploits of Big Strong Men.  From the Iliad to the Ramayana to all these stomping, bellowing blonds, I simply could not care less who smote who.  Actually, I only thought I could not care less.  Turns out, I could.  Take your Norseman, and make him, as Longfellow does here, a rampaging Christian, "converting" Vikings by the sword, and, yup, even less do I care for such doings and hymns. And there is, sadly, an awful lot of Olaf here.

It was a fashionable excursion at the time, I suppose, off to the Sagas, just as the Romantics dearly loved a seraglio.  (Here, I stand with the Romantics; give me a trip to the harem before a night in the mead hall any day.)  Not really Longfellow's fault I don't care for beer.  But then, my dislike of subject also could only point  Longfellow's virtues: ease, aptness, simplicity, and faults: placidity, obviousness, simpleness.  There are stretches of the Olaf stories as bad as anything I've read by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which is saying somethin'.

But then, to close out this pale, New England Boccaccio, comes a truly remarkable poem, another American story -- though it might be a myth as old as man -- "The Poet's Tale," or "The Birds of Killingworth," to remind me of the rare power in Longfellow's simple line and sternest voice.  As an indictment of man's hubris in the face of nature's perfect balance and a perfect metaphor for the poet himself, the poem is a remarkable performance, and deserving of a wider, modern readership.

These grey-bearded, respectable Victorian gents can still surprise.



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