Tree Story: Mr. Longfellow's Tree
The first of a series at Our Trees
Today, we begin a new series at Our Trees, in which we tell the true story of a tree. Sometimes it will be the story of a tree species, or, as today, the story of an individual tree. The stories will appear every two weeks under the title Tree Story. Today’s story is free to all subscribers, but future stories will require a paid subscription, and we hope you will consider supporting our work.
The opening line of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem “The Village Blacksmith” tells us about a chestnut tree that stood in front of the village blacksmith shop. The tree and the smithy were real. The blacksmith in the poem was Dexter Pratt. He owned a house on Brattle Street a few blocks from Harvard University where Longfellow was a professor, and the smithy was attached to the house.
Longfellow made a sketch of the chestnut tree, which stood at the edge of Brattle Street. The city of Cambridge decided to widen the road. The tree was left standing in the middle of the road for a time, but then was felled. The house, known at the Dexter Pratt House is preserved as a memorial both to Pratt and to Longfellow. An interesting sculpture depicting the tree and the smithy by Dimitri Gerakaris is on one wall of the house.
After the tree was felled, the wood was saved by a group of Cambridge school kids, who raised money to have the wood made into a comfortable chair, which they gave to the poet. In return, Longfellow wrote a poem for the students, called “From My Arm Chair.” Today, the chair is at the Longfellow House, a short walk up Brattle Street from the Dexter Pratt House.
The poem’s opening line is “Under a spreading chestnut-tree.” The tree is not a chestnut, neither an American chestnut Castanea dentata, nor a sweet chestnut, Castanea sativa, though both trees were commonly planted in American cities. It is a horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum, a tree imported from Europe for its ornamental value, especially its showy flower. There are several North American species of Aesculus, known as buckeyes, but they are not found as far north as Cambridge.
Longfellow knew that the tree was a horse-chestnut, as shown in his correspondence, but its identity has long been confused, with many people claiming that it was a true chestnut. The question was resolved when a small wood sample was taken from the chair and shown to be from a horse-chestnut.
I recall as a child committing this poem to memory in school, but I was more interested, even then, in the nature of the tree. Perhaps this was an early indication of the path my life would take.
Please let me know in the comments what trees you would like to hear about in future Tree Stories.
I used to work out of Devou park in Covington, KY. There is a very large old Gingko tree by the Behringer-Crawford Muesum. It was a rumored to be a gift to that family from Henry Clay? However I’m not sure there’s much history on the tree. And I wish the Muesum would somehow include the tree in its information. There’s other Gingkos maybe of similar size in Cincinnati too (Spring Grove Cemetery). Although those might be related more to Dr. E. Lucy Braun?
I, too, memorized the smithy poem. I love tree stories, too. They give me joy, but also sorrow that none of us will ever see the forests that covered the northeast before the loggers took the trees for lumber.