Romantic Friendship: Charles Sumner, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel Gridley Howe

Romantic friendship is the term historians most often use for the close, intimate and often ambiguous relationships between two friends of the same sex in the 19th century. Social customs then allowed far more affection between men, or between women, than is usual today, and such friendships ranged from platonic physical affection to romantic relationships.

Homosexuality was taboo at best and illegal at worst, and in the early 19th century there were no words, and no community, for men we might now call gay or bisexual to make sense of their feelings. Romantic friendship let men pledge undying devotion and even share the physical intimacy many longed for. Where friendship ended and love began is hard to say — but such friendships were often among the strongest bonds in a person's life. Charles Sumner's friendships with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Samuel Gridley Howe show how complex they could be.

Charles Sumner, by Eastman Johnson, 1846; it hangs today in Longfellow's study. Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters NHS (LONG 545).

Saturdays with Howe, Sundays with Longfellow

Sumner met both men in 1837 — Longfellow at a dinner with a mutual friend, Howe in the middle of a riot. These became the two most important friendships of his life. He spent Saturdays with Howe and Sundays with Longfellow, and all three found reasons to drop in on one another during the week. His law partner, George Hillard, complained to Longfellow that Sumner was "quite in love with Howe," adding that he was beginning to feel "the shooting pains of jealousy."

Sumner didn't deny it. He and Howe, "bachelors both," rode and drove together and spent evenings "far into the watches of the night, in free and warm communion." But Howe, he feared, would marry soon: "What then will become of me? It is a dreary world to travel in alone."

The fear was well founded. The custom was that a man stepped back from an intimate friend once he married; the friend became secondary. Howe himself hinted at it, writing that his heart yearned for "something to love even more than I love you my dear Sumner: but till I find it let me be all yours."

The Longfellows and the Howes at Newport, summer 1852: Julia Ward Howe standing at center, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow standing at right, Fanny Longfellow seated at center. Longfellow Family Photograph Collection, Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters NHS.

Two engagements

Howe's "greater love" was Julia Ward — later known for her women's rights work and for writing the words of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." After a rocky courtship they were engaged in February 1843. That May, Longfellow at last won Fanny Appleton. Sumner took the news hard. He feared he had seemed "dull & indifferent" to Longfellow's happiness, and asked what he would do now with "these long summer evenings," and the "Sabbaths, sacred to friendship and repose."

Howe and Longfellow answered in very different ways.

Howe: pulled both ways

After marrying, Howe swung back and forth — pushing Sumner away one day, his wife the next. Sumner felt abandoned and sank into depression, with thoughts of suicide. Friends, Longfellow among them, alerted Howe, who tried to reassure him, ending one plea by asking where, "at my time of life," he would ever find "a friend to love as I love you." It seems to have helped little: months later Sumner wrote that for him there was "no future either of usefulness or happiness."

Julia Ward Howe, for her part, thought her husband had not let go of Sumner enough. Catching him writing to Sumner on their honeymoon, she joked that "Sumner ought to have been a woman, and you to have married her." Howe passed the remark on — noting that he was monogamous, and marrying both would be wrong — and urged Sumner to marry too, painting a picture of Saturday nights in his easy chair, in Howe's red slippers with a glass of orvieto, and the happiness of marriage to a woman like Julia.

That marriage proved miserable, for reasons well beyond Sumner; Julia later wrote that she saw no reason to pretend to be happy, or to tell herself she loved a man "when love is a matter out of the question." Her relationship with Sumner stayed tense. When Sumner became a senator for Massachusetts, Howe told him he now burned any of his notes that might be embarrassing if seen by "unfriendly eyes." As a result most of Sumner's letters to Howe are lost, and many of Howe's to Sumner survive partly burned or cut to pieces.

The Longfellows: a place at the table

Fanny Longfellow's invitation to Charles Sumner to join the newlyweds' travels, August 1843. Frances Elizabeth Appleton Papers, Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters NHS.

The Longfellows instead took Sumner in as family — though not without a rocky start. Reeling from losing Howe, Sumner wrote that he was "alone, – alone," his friends falling away. Longfellow's reassurances were not enough; it was Fanny Longfellow who averted a crisis.

• She gave Sumner a prominent role in the wedding, and invited him on the honeymoon trip, asking him to be ready with his trunk packed.
• When he came back from that "bridal tour" still feeling "very much alone," she invited him to the first dinner in their new home — and seated him at the head of the table.

The three settled into a happy routine of parties, visits, and Sumner staying over every Sunday. Rather than losing Henry, he gained Fanny. Sumner told her that when Franklin Dexter remarked, "so your friend is engaged at last," he had replied simply: "my friends."

Fanny too urged him to marry, and helped look for a wife; he even briefly courted Louisa Ward, Julia Ward Howe's sister. It came to nothing, and Fanny wrote that she grieved to hear him call his life weary, and prayed he would make room in his heart for someone worthy of it.

A carte-de-visite of Alice, Charles Sumner's wife, labeled "Mrs. Charles Sumner" in the album of Longfellow's daughter Alice. Alice Mary Longfellow Papers, Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters NHS.

Sumner finally married in 1866; the marriage was unhappy and ended in separation a few months later.

What remains clear

Howe and the Longfellows were the truest family Sumner had. Where his feelings fell on the spectrum of sexual orientation can't be said for certain — it is as unclear now as it was then. What is clear is that these relationships were central to his life, and returned in kind: Longfellow's affection never faded, and the two stayed inseparable for the rest of their lives.

Sources

Based on "An Era of Romantic Friendships: Sumner, Longfellow, and Howe," Longfellow House–Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. It draws on the letters of Sumner, Howe, Hillard and the Longfellows (Houghton Library, Harvard University, and the site's own collections) and on G. Williams, Hungry Heart; S. Ferentinos, Interpreting LGBT History at Museums and Historic Sites; D. H. Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War; and A.-M. Taylor, Young Charles Sumner and the Legacy of the American Enlightenment. Portraits, photographs and letters from the site's collections.