Some Christmas Cheer from Winslow Homer, a Cambridge Native

     As a history researcher, I often find that libraries are a gift -- and their online collections are a gift as well! The following images, originally published in Harper's Weekly in the late 1850's, are in the Boston Public Library's Winslow Homer collection, which is available to view on their flickr photostream.*

     Winslow Homer was born in Boston in 1836, and he grew up in Cambridge,  on the Old Cambridge side of the gray area between that neighborhood and Cambridgeport [1] (see this post for an overview of the Cambridge of his childhood). At age nineteen, he was apprenticed to a commercial lithographer, creating prints from metal plates. He began working as a freelance illustrator in 1857.[2] The wood engraving prints here are from the early years of his career.  

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, 1859

 

 My favorite part about this image is the holly framing the individual scenes.

    In 1859, Homer moved to New York, where he continued working as an illustrator, studied life drawing at the National Academy of Design, and briefly studied under the painter Frédéric Rondel. He worked for Harper's Weekly for over twenty years, and during the Civil War he served as a special correspondent, visiting the front and illustrating scenes from the daily life of the Army of the Potomac.[3] After the war, he turned more seriously to watercolors and oil painting. He spent time living and working in Paris; Glouster, Massachusetts; England; New York; and Maine. While he lived in Maine, he also made regular visits to the tropics and to the Adirondacks in New York State. He continued painting his whole life.[4]

The Christmas Tree, 1858

If you have seen Winslow Homer's later work, particularly his paintings, you might agree that the figures in his early wood engraved scenes are much less graceful and expressive. If you're interested, I recommend this online exhibit. What I like best about many of his prints, however, including this one, is that there are so many little interactions going on between the characters. You see people talking, listening, reaching out, interrupting, or just quietly reflecting in the glow of the candles.

     Wood engraving, a technique developed in the late 18th century, is a printmaking process in which the wood is cut away where there will be white space in the finished product. It is a form of woodcut printing, but wood engraving is done on the hard end of the block, against the grain, and woodcuts are usually done in the softer side of the block. Because of this, the engraving tools are somewhat different. Wood engraving blocks are ideal for printing over and over again, making them a common method of reproducing images for newspapers in the nineteenth century. [5]

Christmas -- Gathering Evergreens, 1858

I think this is my favorite of this set. The little lines of the engraving capture the needles of the trees perfectly. I like the contrast between the gentle curves of the tall, bare tree on the right and the rough, craggy boulders next to it. I also like the shadows in the snow. I'm impressed by the apparent skill of the pair making wreaths; that's a difficult task.

    What do you like - or dislike -- about these images? Do they evoke Christmastime for you?

    To those of you who celebrate Christmas, have a merry one!

* The images themselves are public domain. The digital photographs of the Boston Public Library's copies of those images are  considered some rights reserved.

1.  Downes, William Howe. The Life and Works of Winslow Homer. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911.

2. Boston Public Library Flickr sets, Winslow Homer Prints and Paintings. Accessed 12/21/2011.

3. Ibid.

4. National Gallery of Art online. Winslow Homer in the National Gallery of Art. 

  Accessed 12/21/2011.

5.Griffiths, Antony. Prints and Printmaking: an introduction to the history and techniques. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996.

Christmas Bells, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Dear readers,

    I'm doing an extra post this month because Christmas is the gift-giving winter holiday that I celebrate, and I wanted to celebrate it here at Cambridge Considered. Merry Christmas.

Christmas Bells

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

The story goes that Longfellow poured this poem onto the page on Christmas morning, as the bells he described were still ringing out. He lived in the former Tory Row on Brattle Street, at the historic manor sometimes known as the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow house. There were two nearby churches, Christ Church and First Parish Unitarian Church, so he could hear two sets of bells from his home. The 1863 poem is a Christmas favorite for many.

In the fourth, fifth, and sixth stanzas of the poem, Longfellow alludes to the Civil War, which had been going on for over two and a half years at that point. The Battle of Gettysburg, which was the bloodiest of the war, had taken place that July, and Lincoln gave his Gettysburg address in November. Longfellow was a pacifist, and his son Charles had just run away to join the Army of the Potomac (part of the Union army) earlier that year, which undoubtedly made the subject of war even more heart-wrenching for him.¹ Many readers also connect the despondent verses to Longfellow's grief at having lost his wife, Fanny, two years before, in a fire in their home. ²

The repeated line, “peace on earth, good-will to men” is from Luke 2:14. Another famous use of this line is from a century before, in Handel's Messiah.³ Both uses emphasize peace and goodwill on earth. Some other translations interpret the passage to mean there will be peace on earth for those who have goodwill with god. Longfellow was a liberal Christian,⁴ so it is fitting that he was familiar with the more universal phrasing, which does not put limits on peace. In the poem, the Christmas bells sing out those words: “peace on earth, good-will to men.” While a look at the context of the poem and at the Civil War stanzas shows the doubts and fears on Longfellow's mind, “Christmas Bells” is without a doubt a message of faith, hope, and peace.

1Website of the Longfellow National Historic Site, http://www.nps.gov/long/index.htm accessed 12/20/2010

2 Gartner, Matthew. “America's Longfellow.” http://www.nps.gov/long/historyculture/henry-wadsworth-longfellow.htm Accessed 12/20/2010

3G.F. Handel, “The Messiah.” Movement 17.

4His brother insisted that he was a devoted Christian but did not belong to a denomination, while his daughter stated that he was a Unitarian Christian his whole life. See “Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” http://www.uuquincy.org/projects/stamps/9longfellow.htm Accessed 12/20/2010.