Charles Longfellow's Travels in India

Charley's inscription of "The Chota Sahib" appears to describe himself as the "Junior Officer."

Charles Appleton Longfellow Papers, Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site (1008.2/1.2-6#41)

Charles Appleton Longfellow, eldest child of Henry and Fanny Longfellow, was the most widely traveled member of a family that appreciated the benefits of visiting foreign lands. He visited every continent except for Antarctica, and of his immediate family by far spent the most time abroad and led a most peripatetic lifestyle. One of his most extensive trips, begun in 1868, took him to India for over a year.

Charles, or Charley as the family referred to him, intended his India sojourn to be just one stop on a globe-circling tour. The trip began with a visit to England, which was the start of a grand tour of Europe for the rest of the Longfellow family, occasioned by the marriage of his younger brother Ernest. It is unclear why Charley decided to split from the rest of the family after this first installment, (there are possible hints in his journal that perhaps he had some personal feelings for his younger brother’s bride) but his writing makes it clear that his intention to head for India was formed early on, perhaps even before the family set sail from the United States for Europe.

Charley’s trip to India can be split up into three major divisions. First, his arrival in the country and travels with a French aristocrat, the Comte de Gabriac, who was on his own around-the-world journey and recorded it in his book, Course Humorisituqe Autour Du Monde. During this phase of his trip Charley visited the cities of Bombay, Calcutta, and Benares, and hit all the top tourist attractions in northern India including the Taj Mahal, of which he wrote:

“its wonderful beauty in the bright moonlight, seeming like some supernatural thing, a thing before which to kneel down and worship, never have I experienced such feelings of reverence before any of mans’ works...”

The second part of Charley’s India trip was spent hunting, a pursuit that possibly took second place only to yachting in his heart. Accepting the invitation of several British army officers, in whose company he spent most of his time in India, Charley hunted black buck, tiger, leopard, and various bird species. Hunting these exotic animals had been one goal of the trip, as Charley had purchased firearms in England and India in preparation for these excursions. One gun in particular, referred to by Charley as “the little Egg”, a shotgun made by Dutch-born but London-based gunsmith Durs Egg, was used extensively and is now part of the museum collection at the Longfellow House.

Longfellow collected images like this of "Chini and its mountains" by Bourne to document his trip.

Charles Appleton Longfellow Papers, Longfellow House-Washington's Headquarters National Historic Site (1008.2/1.2-6#62)

The third phase of Charley’s Indian trip was in the Himalayan regions of northern India. This was in some ways the most adventurous leg of the trip, as few Americans had yet traveled to the area. While journeying through the mountains, Charley encountered two pioneering British explorers, Richard Shaw and George Hayward, who were returning from a dangerous venture into Chinese Turkestan. Longfellow’s ultimate destination was Srinagar in Kashmir, which at the time was still an independent princely state ruled by Maharajah Ranbir Singh, whom Charley met at an elaborate dinner. He overstayed his welcome in Kashmir, (one of several faux-pas he made while in India) which resulted in a tumultuous journey back to British-ruled territory.

A leg injury suffered early on in his Himalayan expedition eventually forced Charley to depart India and abandon his original plan to circumnavigate the globe. He returned to the United States on one of the first passenger ships to sail through the newly opened Suez Canal. But the fifteen months he spent in India only whetted his already voracious appetite for travel. Eventually he would circle the globe on a trip during which he would famously spend almost two years living in Japan.