page_title: Alice Mary Longfellow
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Alice Mary Longfellow / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the three daughters of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The original still hangs in the dining room of Longfellow's home in Cambridge, MA. The image was used during the children's lifetimes to illustrate the poem "The Children's Hour," which refers to "grave Alice" (top), "laughing Allegra" (right), and "Edith with golden hair" (left).
context_page_description: Alice Mary Longfellow was a philanthropist, preservationist, and the eldest surviving daughter of the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. She is best known as "grave Alice" from her father's poem "The Children's Hour".
  Longfellow was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended classes at Radcliffe College during the 1880s and 1890s, studying at Newnham College in Cambridge, England, from 1883 to 1884. She traveled frequently throughout her life, spending the majority of her time abroad in France and Italy. Most notably, she met with Benito Mussolini in 1927.
  Alice Longfellow remained unmarried throughout her life. She died in Cambridge in 1928 in the same house where she was born.
  Longfellow worked to preserve her father's home in Cambridge, now Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site. She served as the Massachusetts Vice-regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association and held administrative positions at Radcliffe College throughout her life.
context_section_description: Alice Longfellow was born on September 22, 1850, at "half past six" in the morning, "with the setting of the moon and the rising of the sun! and all the splendors of the dawn!" to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Frances "Fanny" Elizabeth Appleton Longfellow, the daughter of Nathan Appleton, the Boston industrialist, and Maria Gold Appleton.
  Longfellow was christened on George Washington's birthday at which "she behaved beautifully." Her parents made this date choice intentionally because of Longfellow's birth in Washington's former headquarters.
  Her mother Fanny wrote of the baby Alice: "It is a great laughter and has a very expressive little face already, with dark blue eyes and an inclination to look like Henry, I think."
  Longfellow led a privileged childhood growing up in an affluent Cambridge family home. Her mother records of young Alice that, "She likes to take up a book & read stories & says more cunning things than can be remembered" and that "she is an impetuous little woman full of character & originality.” Longfellow learned very quickly in her private lessons with her governess or at private schools such as Miss C. S. Lyman's School, and later Professor Williston's School, and by the age of ten her mother wrote that Alice was "so wise she is quite a companion for me."
  After the death of her mother in 1861, Longfellow took on something of a caretaker role to her two younger sisters, which arguably solidified her "graveness" as described in her father's 1859 poem.  One of her best friends growing up was Harriet "Hattie" Spelman who would later go on to marry Longfellow's brother, Ernest. As an example of the lifestyle Longfellow had growing up, there is a letter exchange between Henry and Alice Longfellow about Alice's "basket carriage", or horse and buggy, that Henry had given her. The letter recounts that Longfellow drove it recklessly and crashed into a post, scaring herself and the horse nearly to death.
  In 1863 when she was just 12 years old Longfellow took her first trip to Maine. She went with her uncle Thomas Gold Appleton on his yacht that was named The Alice after her. This was the beginning of her long life of travel. By the time she was about 14, Henry Longfellow was already referring to his daughter Alice as "my darling runaway" as she was always gone on vacations.
  Longfellow's first European tour was from May 23, 1868, to September 1, 1869, when she went with her  family in celebration of Erny and Hattie's recent wedding. Longfellow would have been 18 years old during most of the trip. The family members on the trip were Longfellow's father, her maternal aunts and Uncle Samuel Longfellow, her Uncle Tom Appleton, her siblings and new sister-in-law, and the family governess Hannah Davie. They visited England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Germany, and Italy.
  When Longfellow turned 21 years old, her father gave her the share of her mother's estate that had been willed to her, totaling $131,755.45, which would allow Longfellow financial independence for the rest of her life.
caption: Portrait of "grave Alice" (top), "laughing Allegra" (right), and "Edith with golden hair" (left) used to illustrate Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Children's Hour" circa 1859.
exif: {}