Wayside Inn, in Sudbury, Massachusetts
Wednesday
I am currently with my mother visiting relatives in Acton, Massachusetts and have been impressed by how America’s literary past saturates the area. My cousin Phoebe Pine took us to visit the cemetery where Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Alcott are buried, and we had lunch at the Longfellow Wayside Inn (pictured above):
After his visit to that establishment, Longfellow wrote Tales from the Wayside Inn, which is a Decameron or Canterbury Tales-type of composition where different people gather together to exchange stories. The storytellers include the landlord, a young scholar (like Chaucer’s clerk), a Sicilian, a Spanish Jew, a theologian, a poet, and a musician. The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, published previously, was folded into the collection.
The collection was written during the Civil War and is understandably nostalgic for a time when different people could come together in harmony. Longfellow opens with a “Prelude”:
One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds,
Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Inside the inn we meet the storytellers:
Around the fireside at their ease
There sat a group of friends, entranced
With the delicious melodies
Who from the far-off noisy town
Had to the wayside inn come down,
To rest beneath its old oak-trees.
The firelight on their faces glanced,
Their shadows on the wainscot danced,
And, though of different lands and speech,
Each had his tale to tell, and each
Was anxious to be pleased and please.
Since the day was pleasant, we dined outside and looked out at the oak trees. I had the house ale and a nice cold cucumber soup. We were far off from the noisy town and life felt good.
