A New Hampshire Love Story

by Robert Hanaford Smith, Sr.
Weirs Times Contributing Writer

I have not forgotten an incident from my college days involving one of my roommates. A girl he had been dating had broken up with him and soon afterwards in our dormitory room he was lamenting the breakup by issuing the words borrowed from another that: “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
At this season when words of love are in the air and written all over the place, it must also be acknowledged that all love stories do not have a happy ending.
So it was with the true New Hampshire love story I am about to relate to you.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was an eighteen year old from Hampton Falls, New Hampshire and Ariana Smith Walker was a young lady from Peterborough in the same state. They met as a consequence of a literary society that Frank joined called the Anti-Tobacco Society. That group held debates and issued a monthly journal of writings of which Frank Sanborn became a contributor. A certain poem or group of poems which he wrote were shown to Ariana Smith Walker who was favorably impressed by what she read. Ariana was the daughter of James Walker whose first cousin was then the president of Harvard College. Her mother was Sarah Smith who was said to have been the “favorite niece of Judge Smith of Exeter.” Sarah had died in 1841 and her father had remarried.
Though previously knowing of each other through their writings, Frank and Ariana first saw each other at a service in a small church in Hampton Falls on July 20, 1850, where Frank tells us in his autobiography, “their eyes met.”

Ariana reportedly “…wrote on her folding fan, with a pin, ‘I don’t dare to look at Frank S.;he has a poetic face.” She afterwards wrote a letter to her friend Ednah Littlehale of Boston saying, “I have seen F.S., the young poet, – a face like the early portrait of Raphael, only Frank’s eyes and hair are very dark. I don’t care, now I have seen him, to speak or meet with him.”
It was but two days later, however,that he called upon her in a relative’s home in Hampton Falls and she welcomed him, and they talked until 11:00 p.m.
Anna, as she was called, wrote in her journal (as related by Frank in his autobiography) that she was astonished at his preferences in books and that there was a charm in everything he said. She characterized him as uncultivated, but then changed that assessment to self-cultivated. She wrote, “he stayed until 11, and yet I was neither weary nor sleepy, rather refreshed and invigorated.”
Frank wrote of his first meetings with Anna as “interviews”. They were apparently held in the home of a relative of Anna and with the presence of at least one other person. Their second meeting occurred on August 1st of 1850 and is passed on to us by Frank mainly through Anna’s journal. He had mentioned to her that it had been suggested to him that he should consider entering the ministry. After he indicated that he wasn’t interested in doing that she replied, “No, preaching is not your mission.”
She quickly regretted saying that, feeling that he would think she was critical of him, and later wrote him a letter apologizing for the comment. She also felt she had lost an opportunity to talk about his future.
In later conversations they apparently talked about a plan for his life and he gave her credit for guiding him in doing so.
Concerning that second meeting she wrote, “We talked of many things.” She expressed her observations concerning him by writing that the intellect was predominating and governing the heart, and that feelings do not often get the majesty.

Further impressions included “He is vigorous, living, strong.” “ Calmness of thought is a large element of his nature … yet there is fire under the ice.”
After noting that it was after eleven when he left on this second visit, Anna surprisingly wrote: “He has a rich nature, and yet my interest in him has little to do with feelings, less so than I could have supposed possible for me.”
Frank, on the other hand, was willing to admit to himself that feelings did have something to do with it as it pertained to himself.
Another meeting took place between Frank Sanborn and Ariana Walker on August 8th. This one did not conclude until after midnight and Anna’s journal stated, “I think I never spoke with more openness to anyone; we forgot we were Frank and Anna, and talked as one immortal soul to another.”
Sometime after the midnight hour the couple said their goodbyes:
He: “When will you be in Hampton Falls again? ”
She: “Perhaps one year, perhaps not for several.”
He: “Then it is doubtful we shall see one another again.”
She (in her journal):“We shook hands, and he went away.”
That was not the last of their meetings though. They continued to correspond, and she continued to write about him in her journal. He admitted in his New Hampshire autobiography that “The arrow of love had wounded me also, and I was not so unconscious of it as Anna was.”
He wrote a letter to her in November of 1850 in which he revealed “I confessed my ardent love for her.” Her reaction is expressed in her journal: “It seemed impossible to believe in the reality of what I saw. That Frank could love me, – weak, feeble, unworthy as I am – I had never even dreamed… I could only thank God that he loved me. Had he been near me then – could not but told him that I loved him. I, the lonely, felt myself no longer alone; and life looked fair to me in this new radiance.”
And Frank stated: “They could never afterwards be other than lovers.”
Because of the agreement between the two of them that Frank continue his education at Exeter and then at Harvard, an engagement was not announced until 1853. Anna had been afflicted with a mysterious illness which had come off and on since 1846 and was recognized as a serious illness in 1854.
The love bond was not broken but after Frank and Anna were married in that year they were abruptly separated eight days later when she died in his arms.
Concerning Frank Sanborn’s telling of this love story in his autobiography he said: “I write for readers in New Hampshire. This romance of our lives was wholly of New Hampshire.”

Robert Hanaford Smith , Sr., welcomes your letters at danahillsmiths@yahoo.com