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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/3393.txt b/3393.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c293e12 --- /dev/null +++ b/3393.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1531 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies of Lowell, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Studies of Lowell + From "Literary Friends And Acquaintances" + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #3393] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES OF LOWELL *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES--Studies of Lowell + +by William Dean Howells + + + +STUDIES OF LOWELL + +I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge +when I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in +1860. I saw him more and more after I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; +and I now wish to record what I knew of him during the years that passed +between this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try to +paint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall +only claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do +not keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did? + + + + +I. + +It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my consular post at +Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out to see Lowell +at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him from Italy. +The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and a +sand-box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowell +thought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put the +thing in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a +pasteboard pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as +I knew the place--a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time I +suppose the inkpot continued as dry as the sand-box. + +My visit was in the heat of August, which is as fervid in Cambridge as it +can well be anywhere, and I still have a sense of his study windows +lifted to the summer night, and the crickets and grasshoppers crying in +at them from the lawns and the gardens outside. Other people went away +from Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowell +always stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for his +town. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and he must have +made me sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go with him for +a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one help him +idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work; and +no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from any +pleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always been +kind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both. + +He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shy +youth to all the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was not +much; I loved him, and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me, +but in Lowell I was always conscious of an older and closer and stricter +civilization than my own, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative +status. His democracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart, +and his denied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was so +noble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our long acquaintance I +found it well to come to open rebellion, as I more than once did, he +admitted my right of insurrection, and never resented the outbreak. I +disliked to differ with him, and perhaps he subtly felt this so much that +he would not dislike me for doing it. He even suffered being taxed with +inconsistency, and where he saw that he had not been quite just, he would +take punishment for his error, with a contrition that was sometimes +humorous and always touching. + +Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn with Italy, and he was +interested but not much encouraged by what I could tell him of the +feeling in Venice against the Austrians. He seemed to reserve a like +scepticism concerning the fine things I was hoping for the Italians in +literature, and he confessed an interest in the facts treated which in +the retrospect, I am aware, was more tolerant than participant of my +enthusiasm. That was always Lowell's attitude towards the opinions of +people he liked, when he could not go their lengths with them, and +nothing was more characteristic of his affectionate nature and his just +intelligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, but he +loved many sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with, and he +suffered even prejudices counter to his own if they were not ignoble. In +the whimsicalities of others he delighted as much as in his own. + + + + +II. + +Our associations with Italy held over until the next day, when after +breakfast he went with me towards Boston as far as "the village": for so +he liked to speak of Cambridge in the custom of his younger days when +wide tracts of meadow separated Harvard Square from his life-long home at +Elmwood. We stood on the platform of the horsecar together, and when I +objected to his paying my fare in the American fashion, he allowed that +the Italian usage of each paying for himself was the politer way. He +would not commit himself about my returning to Venice (for I had not +given up my place, yet, and was away on leave), but he intimated his +distrust of the flattering conditions of life abroad. He said it was +charming to be treated 'da signore', but he seemed to doubt whether it +was well; and in this as in all other things he showed his final fealty +to the American ideal. + +It was that serious and great moment after the successful close of the +civil war when the republican consciousness was more robust in us than +ever before or since; but I cannot recall any reference to the historical +interest of the time in Lowell's talk. It had been all about literature +and about travel; and now with the suggestion of the word village it +began to be a little about his youth. I have said before how reluctant +he was to let his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch with my +juniority had made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him +thinking of the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. +He would never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. He +told once of having been on a brief journey when he was six years old, +with his father, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood in the evening, +and his father saying, "Ah, this is a pleasant place! I wonder who lives +here--what little boy?" At another time he pointed out a certain window +in his study, and said he could see himself standing by it when he could +only get his chin on the window-sill. His memories of the house, and of +everything belonging to it, were very tender; but he could laugh over an +escapade of his youth when he helped his fellow-students pull down his +father's fences, in the pure zeal of good-comradeship. + + + + +III. + +My fortunes took me to New York, and I spent most of the winter of 1865-6 +writing in the office of 'The Nation'. I contributed several sketches of +Italian travel to that paper; and one of these brought me a precious +letter from Lowell. He praised my sketch, which he said he had read +without the least notion who had written it, and he wanted me to feel the +full value of such an impersonal pleasure in it. At the same time he did +not fail to tell me that he disliked some pseudo-cynical verses of mine +which he had read in another place; and I believe it was then that he +bade me "sweat the Heine out of" me, "as men sweat the mercury out of +their bones." + +When I was asked to be assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and came +on to Boston to talk the matter over with the publishers, I went out to +Cambridge and consulted Lowell. He strongly urged me to take the +position (I thought myself hopefully placed in New York on The Nation); +and at the same time he seemed to have it on his heart to say that he had +recommended some one else for it, never, he owned, having thought of me. + +He was most cordial, but after I came to live in Cambridge (where the +magazine was printed, and I could more conveniently look over the +proofs), he did not call on me for more than a month, and seemed quite to +have forgotten me. We met one night at Mr. Norton's, for one of the +Dante readings, and he took no special notice of me till I happened to +say something that offered him a chance to give me a little humorous +snub. I was speaking of a paper in the Magazine on the "Claudian +Emissary," and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like +"Who in the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary?" "You are in +Cambridge, Mr. Howells," Lowell answered, and laughed at my confusion. +Having put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, and at parting he +said, with a light of half-mocking tenderness in his beautiful eyes, +"Goodnight, fellow-townsman." "I hardly knew we were fellow-townsmen," I +returned. He liked that, apparently, and said he had been meaning to +call upon me; and that he was coming very soon. + +He was as good as his word, and after that hardly a week of any kind of +weather passed but he mounted the steps to the door of the ugly little +house in which I lived, two miles away from him, and asked me to walk. +These walks continued, I suppose, until Lowell went abroad for a winter +in the early seventies. They took us all over Cambridge, which he knew +and loved every inch of, and led us afield through the straggling, +unhandsome outskirts, bedrabbled with squalid Irish neighborhoods, and +fraying off into marshes and salt meadows. He liked to indulge an excess +of admiration for the local landscape, and though I never heard him +profess a preference for the Charles River flats to the finest Alpine +scenery, I could well believe he would do so under provocation of a fit +listener's surprise. He had always so much of the boy in him that he +liked to tease the over-serious or over-sincere. He liked to tease and +he liked to mock, especially his juniors, if any touch of affectation, or +any little exuberance of manner gave him the chance; when he once came to +fetch me, and the young mistress of the house entered with a certain +excessive elasticity, he sprang from his seat, and minced towards her, +with a burlesque of her buoyant carriage which made her laugh. When he +had given us his heart in trust of ours, he used us like a younger +brother and sister; or like his own children. He included our children +in his affection, and he enjoyed our fondness for them as if it were +something that had come back to him from his own youth. I think he had +also a sort of artistic, a sort of ethical pleasure in it, as being of +the good tradition, of the old honest, simple material, from which +pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought. He liked +giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, where he +masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered his early +kindness for them. + + + + +IV. + +In those walks of ours I believe he did most of the talking, and from his +talk then and at other times there remains to me an impression of his +growing conservatism. I had in fact come into his life when it had spent +its impulse towards positive reform, and I was to be witness of its +increasing tendency towards the negative sort. He was quite past the +storm and stress of his anti-slavery age; with the close of the war which +had broken for him all his ideals of inviolable peace, he had reached the +age of misgiving. I do not mean that I ever heard him express doubt of +what he had helped to do, or regret for what he had done; but I know that +he viewed with critical anxiety what other men were doing with the +accomplished facts. His anxiety gave a cast of what one may call +reluctance from the political situation, and turned him back towards +those civic and social defences which he had once seemed willing to +abandon. I do not mean that he lost faith in democracy; this faith he +constantly then and signally afterwards affirmed; but he certainly had no +longer any faith in insubordination as a means of grace. He preached a +quite Socratic reverence for law, as law, and I remember that once when I +had got back from Canada in the usual disgust for the American +custom-house, and spoke lightly of smuggling as not an evil in itself, +and perhaps even a right under our vexatious tariff, he would not have +it, but held that the illegality of the act made it a moral of fence. +This was not the logic that would have justified the attitude of the +anti-slavery men towards the fugitive slave act; but it was in accord +with Lowell's feeling about John Brown, whom he honored while always +condemning his violation of law; and it was in the line of all his later +thinking. In this, he wished you to agree with him, or at least he +wished to make you; but he did not wish you to be more of his mind than +he was himself. In one of those squalid Irish neighborhoods I confessed +a grudge (a mean and cruel grudge, I now think it) for the increasing +presence of that race among us, but this did not please him; and I am +sure that whatever misgiving he had as to the future of America, he would +not have had it less than it had been the refuge and opportunity of the +poor of any race or color. Yet he would not have had it this alone. +There was a line in his poem on Agassiz which he left out of the printed +version, at the fervent entreaty of his friends, as saying too bitterly +his disappointment with his country. Writing at the distance of Europe, +and with America in the perspective which the alien environment clouded, +he spoke of her as "The Land of Broken Promise." It was a splendid +reproach, but perhaps too dramatic to bear the full test of analysis, and +yet it had the truth in it, and might, I think, have usefully stood, to +the end of making people think. Undoubtedly it expressed his sense of +the case, and in the same measure it would now express that of many who +love their country most among us. It is well to hold one's country to +her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is +their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not +suppose it was the "common man" of Lincoln's dream that Lowell thought +America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender +of the common man's hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted +line her sincerity with the uncommon man: the man who had expected of her +a constancy to the ideals of her youth end to the high martyr-moods of +the war which had given an unguarded and bewildering freedom to a race of +slaves. He was thinking of the shame of our municipal corruptions, the +debased quality of our national statesmanship, the decadence of our whole +civic tone, rather than of the increasing disabilities of the +hard-working poor, though his heart when he thought of them was with +them, too, as it was in "the time when the slave would not let him +sleep." + +He spoke very rarely of those times, perhaps because their political and +social associations were so knit up with the saddest and tenderest +personal memories, which it was still anguish to touch. Not only was he + + "--not of the race + That hawk, their sorrows in the market place," + +but so far as my witness went he shrank from mention of them. I do not +remember hearing him speak of the young wife who influenced him so +potently at the most vital moment, and turned him from his whole +scholarly and aristocratic tradition to an impassioned championship of +the oppressed; and he never spoke of the children he had lost. I recall +but one allusion to the days when he was fighting the anti-slavery battle +along the whole line, and this was with a humorous relish of his Irish +servant's disgust in having to wait upon a negro whom he had asked to his +table. + +He was rather severe in his notions of the subordination his domestics +owed him. They were "to do as they were bid," and yet he had a +tenderness for such as had been any time with him, which was wounded when +once a hired man long in his employ greedily overreached him in a certain +transaction. He complained of that with a simple grief for the man's +indelicacy after so many favors from him, rather than with any +resentment. His hauteur towards his dependents was theoretic; his actual +behavior was of the gentle consideration common among Americans of good +breeding, and that recreant hired man had no doubt never been suffered to +exceed him in shows of mutual politeness. Often when the maid was about +weightier matters, he came and opened his door to me himself, welcoming +me with the smile that was like no other. Sometimes he said, "Siete il +benvenuto," or used some other Italian phrase, which put me at ease with +him in the region where we were most at home together. + +Looking back I must confess that I do not see what it was he found to +make him wish for my company, which he presently insisted upon having +once a week at dinner. After the meal we turned into his study where we +sat before a wood fire in winter, and he smoked and talked. He smoked a +pipe which was always needing tobacco, or going out, so that I have the +figure of him before my eyes constantly getting out of his deep chair to +rekindle it from the fire with a paper lighter. He was often out of his +chair to get a book from the shelves that lined the walls, either for a +passage which he wished to read, or for some disputed point which he +wished to settle. If I had caused the dispute, he enjoyed putting me in +the wrong; if he could not, he sometimes whimsically persisted in his +error, in defiance of all authority; but mostly he had such reverence for +the truth that he would not question it even in jest. + +If I dropped in upon him in the afternoon I was apt to find him reading +the old French poets, or the plays of Calderon, or the 'Divina Commedia', +which he magnanimously supposed me much better acquainted with than I was +because I knew some passages of it by heart. One day I came in quoting + + "Io son, cantava, io son dolce Sirena, + Che i marinai in mezzo al mar dismago." + +He stared at me in a rapture with the matchless music, and then uttered +all his adoration and despair in one word. "Damn!" he said, and no more. +I believe he instantly proposed a walk that day, as if his study walls +with all their vistas into the great literatures cramped his soul +liberated to a sense of ineffable beauty of the verse of the 'somma +poeta'. But commonly be preferred to have me sit down with him there +among the mute witnesses of the larger part of his life. As I have +suggested in my own case, it did not matter much whether you brought +anything to the feast or not. If he liked you he liked being with you, +not for what he got, but for what he gave. He was fond of one man whom I +recall as the most silent man I ever met. I never heard him say +anything, not even a dull thing, but Lowell delighted in him, and would +have you believe that he was full of quaint humor. + + + + +V. + +While Lowell lived there was a superstition, which has perhaps survived +him, that he was an indolent man, wasting himself in barren studies and +minor efforts instead of devoting his great powers to some monumental +work worthy of them. If the robust body of literature, both poetry and +prose, which lives after him does not yet correct this vain delusion, the +time will come when it must; and in the meantime the delusion cannot vex +him now. I think it did vex him, then, and that he even shared it, and +tried at times to meet such shadowy claim as it had. One of the things +that people urged upon him was to write some sort of story, and it is +known how he attempted this in verse. It is less known that he attempted +it in prose, and that he went so far as to write the first chapter of a +novel. He read this to me, and though I praised it then, I have a +feeling now that if he had finished the novel it would have been a +failure. "But I shall never finish it," he sighed, as if he felt +irremediable defects in it, and laid the manuscript away, to turn and +light his pipe. It was a rather old-fashioned study of a whimsical +character, and it did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I +believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse +such as we have fragmentarily in 'The Nooning' and 'FitzAdam's Story'. +Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the +universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in +the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He +liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself +all the whim and fancy which the more dramatic talent indulges through +its personages. + +He enjoyed writing such a poem as "The Cathedral," which is not of his +best, but which is more immediately himself, in all his moods, than some +better poems. He read it to me soon after it was written, and in the +long walk which we went hard upon the reading (our way led us through the +Port far towards East Cambridge, where he wished to show me a tupelo-tree +of his acquaintance, because I said I had never seen one), his talk was +still of the poem which he was greatly in conceit of. Later his +satisfaction with it received a check from the reserves of other friends +concerning some whimsical lines which seemed to them too great a drop +from the higher moods of the piece. Their reluctance nettled him; +perhaps he agreed with them; but he would not change the lines, and they +stand as he first wrote them. In fact, most of his lines stand as he +first wrote them; he would often change them in revision, and then, in a +second revision go back to the first version. + +He was very sensitive to criticism, especially from those he valued +through his head or heart. He would try to hide his hurt, and he would +not let you speak of it, as though your sympathy unmanned him, but you +could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my remembrance from +a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed; and once when in a +notice of my own I had put one little thorny point among the flowers, he +confessed a puncture from it. He praised the criticism hardily, but I +knew that he winced under my recognition of the didactic quality which he +had not quite guarded himself against in the poetry otherwise praised. He +liked your liking, and he openly rejoiced in it; and I suppose he made +himself believe that in trying his verse with his friends he was testing +it; but I do not believe that he was, and I do not think he ever +corrected his judgment by theirs, however he suffered from it. + +In any matter that concerned literary morals he was more than eager to +profit by another eye. One summer he sent me for the Magazine a poem +which, when I read it, I trembled to find in motive almost exactly like +one we had lately printed by another contributor. There was nothing for +it but to call his attention to the resemblance, and I went over to +Elmwood with the two poems. He was not at home, and I was obliged to +leave the poems, I suppose with some sort of note, for the next morning's +post brought me a delicious letter from him, all one cry of confession, +the most complete, the most ample. He did not trouble himself to say +that his poem was an unconscious reproduction of the other; that was for +every reason unnecessary, but he had at once rewritten it upon wholly +different lines; and I do not think any reader was reminded of Mrs. +Akers's "Among the Laurels" by Lowell's "Foot-path." He was not only +much more sensitive of others' rights than his own, but in spite of a +certain severity in him, he was most tenderly regardful of their +sensibilities when he had imagined them: he did not always imagine them. + + + + +VI. + +At this period, between the years 1866 and 1874, when he unwillingly went +abroad for a twelvemonth, Lowell was seen in very few Cambridge houses, +and in still fewer Boston houses. He was not an unsocial man, but he was +most distinctly not a society man. He loved chiefly the companionship of +books, and of men who loved books; but of women generally he had an +amusing diffidence; he revered them and honored them, but he would rather +not have had them about. This is over-saying it, of course, but the +truth is in what I say. There was never a more devoted husband, and he +was content to let his devotion to the sex end with that. He especially +could not abide difference of opinion in women; he valued their taste, +their wit, their humor, but he would have none of their reason. I was by +one day when he was arguing a point with one of his nieces, and after it +had gone on for some time, and the impartial witness must have owned that +she was getting the better of him he closed the controversy by giving her +a great kiss, with the words, "You are a very good girl, my dear," and +practically putting her out of the room. As to women of the flirtatious +type, he did not dislike them; no man, perhaps, does; but he feared them, +and he said that with them there was but one way, and that was to run. + +I have a notion that at this period Lowell was more freely and fully +himself than at any other. The passions and impulses of his younger +manhood had mellowed, the sorrows of that time had softened; he could +blamelessly live to himself in his affections and his sobered ideals. His +was always a duteous life; but he had pretty well given up making man +over in his own image, as we all wish some time to do, and then no longer +wish it. He fulfilled his obligations to his fellow-men as these sought +him out, but he had ceased to seek them. He loved his friends and their +love, but he had apparently no desire to enlarge their circle. It was +that hour of civic suspense, in which public men seemed still actuated by +unselfish aims, and one not essentially a politician might contentedly +wait to see what would come of their doing their best. At any rate, +without occasionally withholding open criticism or acclaim Lowell waited +among his books for the wounds of the war to heal themselves, and the +nation to begin her healthfuller and nobler life. With slavery gone, +what might not one expect of American democracy! + +His life at Elmwood was of an entire simplicity. In the old colonial +mansion in which he was born, he dwelt in the embowering leafage, amid +the quiet of lawns and garden-plots broken by few noises ruder than those +from the elms and the syringas where + + "The oriole clattered and the cat-bird sang." + +From the tracks on Brattle Street, came the drowsy tinkle of horse-car +bells; and sometimes a funeral trailed its black length past the corner +of his grounds, and lost itself from sight under the shadows of the +willows that hid Mount Auburn from his study windows. In the winter the +deep New England snows kept their purity in the stretch of meadow behind +the house, which a double row of pines guarded in a domestic privacy. All +was of a modest dignity within and without the house, which Lowell loved +but did not imagine of a manorial presence; and he could not conceal his +annoyance with an over-enthusiastic account of his home in which the +simple chiselling of some panels was vaunted as rich wood-carving. There +was a graceful staircase, and a good wide hall, from which the +dining-room and drawing-room opened by opposite doors; behind the last, +in the southwest corner of the house, was his study. + +There, literally, he lived during the six or seven years in which I knew +him after my coming to Cambridge. Summer and winter he sat there among +his books, seldom stirring abroad by day except for a walk, and by night +yet more rarely. He went to the monthly mid-day dinner of the Saturday +Club in Boston; he was very constant at the fortnightly meetings of his +whist-club, because he loved the old friends who formed it; he came +always to the Dante suppers at Longfellow's, and he was familiarly in and +out at Mr. Norton's, of course. But, otherwise, he kept to his study, +except for some rare and almost unwilling absences upon university +lecturing at Johns Hopkins or at Cornell. + +For four years I did not take any summer outing from Cambridge myself, +and my associations with Elmwood and with Lowell are more of summer than +of winter weather meetings. But often we went our walks through the +snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only +well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable +expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow's +house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious +faith as he ever did in my presence. He was speaking of the New +Testament, and he said, The truth was in it; but they had covered it up +with their hagiology. Though he had been bred a Unitarian, and had more +and more liberated himself from all creeds, he humorously affected an +abiding belief in hell, and similarly contended for the eternal +punishment of the wicked. He was of a religious nature, and he was very +reverent of other people's religious feelings. He expressed a special +tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was +also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I +suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems +are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling +providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will +repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the +strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years +of his life, I asked him if he believed there was a moral government of +the universe, he answered gravely and with a sort of pain, The scale was +so vast, and we saw such a little part of it. + +As to tine notion of a life after death, I never had any direct or +indirect expression from him; but I incline to the opinion that his hold +upon this weakened with his years, as it is sadly apt to do with men who +have read much and thought much: they have apparently exhausted their +potentialities of psychological life. Mystical Lowell was, as every poet +must be, but I do not think he liked mystery. One morning he told me +that when he came home the night before he had seen the Doppelganger of +one of his household: though, as he joked, he was not in a state to see +double. + +He then said he used often to see people's Doppelganger; at another time, +as to ghosts, he said, He was like Coleridge: he had seen too many of +'em. Lest any weaker brethren should be caused to offend by the +restricted oath which I have reported him using in a moment of transport +it may be best to note here that I never heard him use any other +imprecation, and this one seldom. + +Any grossness of speech was inconceivable of him; now and then, but only +very rarely, the human nature of some story "unmeet for ladies" was too +much for his sense of humor, and overcame him with amusement which he was +willing to impart, and did impart, but so that mainly the human nature of +it reached you. In this he was like the other great Cambridge men, +though he was opener than the others to contact with the commoner life. +He keenly delighted in every native and novel turn of phrase, and he +would not undervalue a vital word or a notion picked up out of the road +even if it had some dirt sticking to it. + +He kept as close to the common life as a man of his patrician instincts +and cloistered habits could. I could go to him with any new find about +it and be sure of delighting him; after I began making my involuntary and +all but unconscious studies of Yankee character, especially in the +country, he was always glad to talk them over with me. Still, when I had +discovered a new accent or turn of speech in the fields he had +cultivated, I was aware of a subtle grudge mingling with his pleasure; +but this was after all less envy than a fine regret. + +At the time I speak of there was certainly nothing in Lowell's dress or +bearing that would have kept the common life aloof from him, if that life +were not always too proud to make advances to any one. In this +retrospect, I see him in the sack coat and rough suit which he wore upon +all out-door occasions, with heavy shoes, and a round hat. I never saw +him with a high hat on till he came home after his diplomatic stay in +London; then he had become rather rigorously correct in his costume, and +as conventional as he had formerly been indifferent. In both epochs he +was apt to be gloved, and the strong, broad hands, which left the +sensation of their vigor for some time after they had clasped yours, were +notably white. At the earlier period, he still wore his auburn hair +somewhat long; it was darker than his beard, which was branching and +full, and more straw-colored than auburn, as were his thick eyebrows; +neither hair nor beard was then touched with gray, as I now remember. +When he uncovered, his straight, wide, white forehead showed itself one +of the most beautiful that could be; his eyes were gay with humor, and +alert with all intelligence. He had an enchanting smile, a laugh that +was full of friendly joyousness, and a voice that was exquisite music. +Everything about him expressed his strenuous physical condition: he would +not wear an overcoat in the coldest Cambridge weather; at all times he +moved vigorously, and walked with a quick step, lifting his feet well +from the ground. + + + + +VII. + +It gives me a pleasure which I am afraid I cannot impart, to linger in +this effort to materialize his presence from the fading memories of the +past. I am afraid I can as little impart a due sense of what he +spiritually was to my knowledge. It avails nothing for me to say that I +think no man of my years and desert had ever so true and constant a +friend. He was both younger and older than I by insomuch as he was a +poet through and through, and had been out of college before I was born. +But he had already come to the age of self-distrust when a man likes to +take counsel with his juniors as with his elders, and fancies he can +correct his perspective by the test of their fresher vision. Besides, +Lowell was most simply and pathetically reluctant to part with youth, and +was willing to cling to it wherever he found it. He could not in any +wise bear to be left-out. When Mr. Bret Harte came to Cambridge, and the +talk was all of the brilliant character-poems with which he had then +first dazzled the world, Lowell casually said, with a most touching, +however ungrounded sense of obsolescence, He could remember when the +'Biglow Papers' were all the talk. I need not declare that there was +nothing ungenerous in that. He was only too ready to hand down his +laurels to a younger man; but he wished to do it himself. Through the +modesty that is always a quality of such a nature, he was magnanimously +sensitive to the appearance of fading interest; he could not take it +otherwise than as a proof of his fading power. I had a curious hint of +this when one year in making up the prospectus of the Magazine for the +next, I omitted his name because I had nothing special to promise from +him, and because I was half ashamed to be always flourishing it in the +eyes of the public. "I see that you have dropped me this year," he +wrote, and I could see that it had hurt, and I knew that he was glad to +believe the truth when I told him. + +He did not care so much for popularity as for the praise of his friends. +If he liked you he wished you not only to like what he wrote, but to say +so. He was himself most cordial in his recognition of the things that +pleased him. What happened to me from him, happened to others, and I am +only describing his common habit when I say that nothing I did to his +liking failed to bring me a spoken or oftener a written acknowledgment. +This continued to the latest years of his life when the effort even to +give such pleasure must have cost him a physical pang. + +He was of a very catholic taste; and he was apt to be carried away by a +little touch of life or humor, and to overvalue the piece in which he +found it; but, mainly his judgments of letters and men were just. One of +the dangers of scholarship was a peculiar danger in the Cambridge +keeping, but Lowell was almost as averse as Longfellow from contempt. He +could snub, and pitilessly, where he thought there was presumption and +apparently sometimes merely because he was in the mood; but I cannot +remember ever to have heard him sneer. He was often wonderfully patient +of tiresome people, and sometimes celestially insensible to vulgarity. In +spite of his reserve, he really wished people to like him; he was keenly +alive to neighborly good-will or ill-will; and when there was a question +of widening Elmwood avenue by taking part of his grounds, he was keenly +hurt by hearing that some one who lived near him had said he hoped the +city would cut down Lowell's elms: his English elms, which his father had +planted, and with which he was himself almost one blood! + + + + +VIII. + +In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and +pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he +was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his +finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their +inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his +poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was +usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took +him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in +abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it. + +The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and +to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called +'Among My Books' and 'My Study Windows'. He wished to name these more +soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which +they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they +took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a +literary way, he submitted to others' judgment in all such matters. I +doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he was +usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but sometimes +if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, without +reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in the +Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal +handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him, +and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had +done their part. He held up four fingers, "Quattro," he said in Italian, +and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, "I +thought they might have made it cinque." + +Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in +mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure +to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that +he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of +getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the +payment to me. "It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a +watch." + +I do not believe at any time Lowell was able to deal with money + + "Like wealthy men, not knowing what they give." + +more probably he felt a sacredness in the money got by literature, which +the literary man never quite rids him self of, even when he is not a +poet, and which made him wish to dedicate it to something finer than the +every day uses. He lived very quietly, but he had by no means more than +he needed to live upon, and at that time he had pecuniary losses. He was +writing hard, and was doing full work in his Harvard professorship, and +he was so far dependent upon his salary, that he felt its absence for the +year he went abroad. I do not know quite how to express my sense of +something unworldly, of something almost womanlike in his relation to +money. + +He was not only generous of money, but he was generous of himself, when +he thought he could be of use, or merely of encouragement. He came all +the way into Boston to hear certain lectures of mine on the Italian +poets, which he could not have found either edifying or amusing, that he +might testify his interest in me, and show other people that they were +worth coming to. He would go carefully over a poem with me, word by +word, and criticise every turn of phrase, and after all be magnanimously +tolerant of my sticking to phrasings that he disliked. In a certain line + + "The silvern chords of the piano trembled," + +he objected to silvern. Why not silver? I alleged leathern, golden, and +like adjectives in defence of my word; but still he found an affectation +in it, and suffered it to stand with extreme reluctance. Another line of +another piece: + + "And what she would, would rather that she would not" + +he would by no means suffer. He said that the stress falling on the last +word made it "public-school English," and he mocked it with the answer a +maid had lately given him when he asked if the master of the house was at +home. She said, "No, sir, he is not," when she ought to have said "No, +sir, he isn't." He was appeased when I came back the next day with the +stanza amended so that the verse could read: + + "And what she would, would rather she would not so" + +but I fancy he never quite forgave my word silvern. Yet, he professed +not to have prejudices in such matters, but to use any word that would +serve his turn, without wincing; and he certainly did use and defend +words, as undisprivacied and disnatured, that made others wince. + +He was otherwise such a stickler for the best diction that he would not +have had me use slovenly vernacular even in the dialogue in my stories: +my characters must not say they wanted to do so and so, but wished, and +the like. In a copy of one of my books which I found him reading, I saw +he had corrected my erring Western woulds and shoulds; as he grew old he +was less and less able to restrain himself from setting people right to +their faces. Once, in the vast area of my ignorance, he specified my +small acquaintance with a certain period of English poetry, saying, +"You're rather shady, there, old fellow." But he would not have had me +too learned, holding that he had himself been hurt for literature by his +scholarship. + +His patience in analyzing my work with me might have been the easy effort +of his habit of teaching; and his willingness to give himself and his own +was no doubt more signally attested in his asking a brother man of +letters who wished to work up a subject in the college library, to stay a +fortnight in his house, and to share his study, his beloved study, with +him. This must truly have cost him dear, as any author of fixed habits +will understand. Happily the man of letters was a good fellow, and knew +how to prize the favor-done him, but if he had been otherwise, it would +have been the same to Lowell. He not only endured, but did many things +for the weaker brethren, which were amusing enough to one in the secret +of his inward revolt. Yet in these things he was considerate also of the +editor whom he might have made the sharer of his self-sacrifice, and he +seldom offered me manuscripts for others. The only real burden of the +kind that he put upon me was the diary of a Virginian who had travelled +in New England during the early thirties, and had set down his +impressions of men and manners there. It began charmingly, and went on +very well under Lowell's discreet pruning, but after a while he seemed to +fall in love with the character of the diarist so much that he could not +bear to cut anything. + + + +IX. + +He had a great tenderness for the broken and ruined South, whose sins he +felt that he had had his share in visiting upon her, and he was willing +to do what he could to ease her sorrows in the case of any particular +Southerner. He could not help looking askance upon the dramatic shows of +retribution which some of the Northern politicians were working, but with +all his misgivings he continued to act with the Republican party until +after the election of Hayes; he was away from the country during the +Garfield campaign. He was in fact one of the Massachusetts electors +chosen by the Republican majority in 1816, and in that most painful hour +when there was question of the policy and justice of counting Hayes in +for the presidency, it was suggested by some of Lowell's friends that he +should use the original right of the electors under the constitution, and +vote for Tilden, whom one vote would have chosen president over Hayes. +After he had cast his vote for Hayes, he quietly referred to the matter +one day, in the moment of lighting his pipe, with perhaps the faintest +trace of indignation in his tone. He said that whatever the first intent +of the constitution was, usage had made the presidential electors +strictly the instruments of the party which chose them, and that for him +to have voted for Tilden when he had been chosen to vote for Hayes would +have-been an act of bad faith. + +He would have resumed for me all the old kindness of our relations before +the recent year of his absence, but this had inevitably worked a little +estrangement. He had at least lost the habit of me, and that says much +in such matters. He was not so perfectly at rest in the Cambridge +environment; in certain indefinable ways it did not so entirely suffice +him, though he would have been then and always the last to allow this. I +imagine his friends realized more than he, that certain delicate but +vital filaments of attachment had frayed and parted in alien air, and +left him heart-loose as he had not been before. + +I do not know whether it crossed his mind after the election of Hayes +that he might be offered some place abroad, but it certainly crossed the +minds of some of his friends, and I could not feel that I was acting for +myself alone when I used a family connection with the President, very +early in his term, to let him know that I believed Lowell would accept a +diplomatic mission. I could assure him that I was writing wholly without +Lowell's privity or authority, and I got back such a letter as I could +wish in its delicate sense of the situation. The President said that he +had already thought of offering Lowell something, and he gave me the +pleasure, a pleasure beyond any other I could imagine, of asking Lowell +whether he would accept the mission to Austria. I lost no time carrying +his letter to Elmwood, where I found Lowell over his coffee at dinner. He +saw me at the threshold, and called to me through the open door to come +in, and I handed him the letter, and sat down at table while he ran it +through. When he had read it, he gave a quick "Ah!" and threw it over +the length of the table to Mrs. Lowell. She read it in a smiling and +loyal reticence, as if she would not say one word of all she might wish +to say in urging his acceptance, though I could see that she was +intensely eager for it. The whole situation was of a perfect New England +character in its tacit significance; after Lowell had taken his coffee we +turned into his study without further allusion to the matter. + +A day or two later he came to my house to say that he could not accept +the Austrian mission, and to ask me to tell the President so for him, and +make his acknowledgments, which he would also write himself. He remained +talking a little while of other things, and when he rose to go, he said +with a sigh of vague reluctance, "I should like to see a play of +Calderon," as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could +still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was +found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish +mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was sent to Madrid. + + + + +X. + +When we met in London, some years later, he came almost every afternoon +to my lodging, and the story of our old-time Cambridge walks began again +in London phrases. There were not the vacant lots and outlying fields of +his native place, but we made shift with the vast, simple parks, and we +walked on the grass as we could not have done in an American park, and +were glad to feel the earth under our feet. I said how much it was like +those earlier tramps; and that pleased him, for he wished, whenever a +thing delighted him, to find a Cambridge quality in it. + +But he was in love with everything English, and was determined I should +be so too, beginning with the English weather, which in summer cannot be +overpraised. He carried, of course, an umbrella, but he would not put it +up in the light showers that caught us at times, saying that the English +rain never wetted you. The thick short turf delighted him; he would +scarcely allow that the trees were the worse for foliage blighted by a +vile easterly storm in the spring of that year. The tender air, the +delicate veils that the moisture in it cast about all objects at the +least remove, the soft colors of the flowers, the dull blue of the low +sky showing through the rifts of the dirty white clouds, the hovering +pall of London smoke, were all dear to him, and he was anxious that I +should not lose anything of their charm. + +He was anxious that I should not miss the value of anything in England, +and while he volunteered that the aristocracy had the corruptions of +aristocracies everywhere, he insisted upon my respectful interest in it +because it was so historical. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this +demand, but it is certain that he was very happy in England. He had come +of the age when a man likes smooth, warm keeping, in which he need make +no struggle for his comfort; disciplined and obsequious service; society, +perfectly ascertained within the larger society which we call +civilization; and in an alien environment, for which he was in no wise +responsible, he could have these without a pang of the self-reproach +which at home makes a man unhappy amidst his luxuries, when he considers +their cost to others. He had a position which forbade thought of +unfairness in the conditions; he must not wake because of the slave, it +was his duty to sleep. Besides, at that time Lowell needed all the rest +he could get, for he had lately passed through trials such as break the +strength of men, and how them with premature age. He was living alone in +his little house in Lowndes Square, and Mrs. Lowell was in the country, +slowly recovering from the effects of the terrible typhus which she had +barely survived in Madrid. He was yet so near the anguish of that +experience that he told me he had still in his nerves the expectation of +a certain agonized cry from her which used to rend them. But he said he +had adjusted himself to this, and he went on to speak with a patience +which was more affecting in him than in men of more phlegmatic +temperament, of how we were able to adjust ourselves to all our trials +and to the constant presence of pain. He said he was never free of a +certain distress, which was often a sharp pang, in one of his shoulders, +but his physique had established such relations with it that, though he +was never unconscious of it, he was able to endure it without a +recognition of it as suffering. + +He seemed to me, however, very well, and at his age of sixty-three, I +could not see that he was less alert and vigorous than he was when I +first knew him in Cambridge. He had the same brisk, light step, and +though his beard was well whitened and his auburn hair had grown ashen +through the red, his face had the freshness and his eyes the clearness of +a young man's. I suppose the novelty of his life kept him from thinking +about his years; or perhaps in contact with those great, insenescent +Englishmen, he could not feel himself old. At any rate he did not once +speak of age, as he used to do ten years earlier, and I, then half +through my forties, was still "You young dog" to him. It was a bright +and cheerful renewal of the early kindliness between us, on which indeed +there had never been a shadow, except such as distance throws. He wished +apparently to do everything he could to assure us of his personal +interest; and we were amused to find him nervously apprehensive of any +purpose, such as was far from us, to profit by him officially. He +betrayed a distinct relief when he found we were not going to come upon +him even for admissions to the houses of parliament, which we were to see +by means of an English acquaintance. He had not perhaps found some other +fellow-citizens so considerate; he dreaded the half-duties of his place, +like presentations to the queen, and complained of the cheap ambitions he +had to gratify in that way. + +He was so eager to have me like England in every way, and seemed so fond +of the English, that I thought it best to ask him whether he minded my +quoting, in a paper about Lexington, which I was just then going to print +in a London magazine, some humorous lines of his expressing the mounting +satisfaction of an imaginary Yankee story-teller who has the old fight +terminate in Lord Percy's coming + + "To hammer stone for life in Concord jail." + +It had occurred to me that it might possibly embarrass him to have this +patriotic picture presented to a public which could not take our Fourth +of July pleasure in it, and I offered to suppress it, as I did afterwards +quite for literary reasons. He said, No, let it stand, and let them make +the worst of it; and I fancy that much of his success with a people who +are not gingerly with other people's sensibilities came from the +frankness with which he trampled on their prejudice when he chose. He +said he always told them, when there was question of such things, that +the best society he had ever known was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He +contended that the best English was spoken there; and so it was, when he +spoke it. + +We were in London out of the season, and he was sorry that he could not +have me meet some titles who he declared had found pleasure in my books; +when we returned from Italy in the following June, he was prompt to do me +this honor. I dare say he wished me to feel it to its last implication, +and I did my best, but there was nothing in the evening I enjoyed so much +as his coming up to Mrs. Lowell, at the close, when there was only a +title or two left, and saying to her as he would have said to her at +Elmwood, where she would have personally planned it, "Fanny, that was a +fine dinner you gave us." Of course, this was in a tender burlesque; but +it remains the supreme impression of what seemed to me a cloudlessly +happy period for Lowell. His wife was quite recovered of her long +suffering, and was again at the head of his house, sharing in his +pleasures, and enjoying his successes for his sake; successes so great +that people spoke of him seriously, as "an addition to society" in +London, where one man more or less seemed like a drop in the sea. She was +a woman perfectly of the New England type and tradition: almost +repellantly shy at first, and almost glacially cold with new +acquaintance, but afterwards very sweet and cordial. She was of a dark +beauty with a regular face of the Spanish outline; Lowell was of an ideal +manner towards her, and of an admiration which delicately travestied +itself and which she knew how to receive with smiling irony. After her +death, which occurred while he was still in England, he never spoke of +her to me, though before that he used to be always bringing her name in, +with a young lover-like fondness. + + + + +XI. + +In the hurry of the London season I did not see so much of Lowell on our +second sojourn as on our first, but once when we were alone in his study +there was a return to the terms of the old meetings in Cambridge. He +smoked his pipe, and sat by his fire and philosophized; and but for the +great London sea swirling outside and bursting through our shelter, and +dashing him with notes that must be instantly answered, it was a very +fair image of the past. He wanted to tell me about his coachman whom he +had got at on his human side with great liking and amusement, and there +was a patient gentleness in his manner with the footman who had to keep +coming in upon him with those notes which was like the echo of his young +faith in the equality of men. But he always distinguished between the +simple unconscious equality of the ordinary American and its assumption +by a foreigner. He said he did not mind such an American's coming into +his house with his hat on; but if a German or Englishman did it, he +wanted to knock it off. He was apt to be rather punctilious in his shows +of deference towards others, and at one time he practised removing his +own hat when he went into shops in Cambridge. It must have mystified the +Cambridge salesmen, and I doubt if he kept it up. + +With reference to the doctrine of his young poetry, the fierce and the +tender humanity of his storm and stress period, I fancy a kind of baffle +in Lowell, which I should not perhaps find it easy to prove. I never +knew him by word or hint to renounce this doctrine, but he could not come +to seventy years without having seen many high hopes fade, and known many +inspired prophecies fail. When we have done our best to make the world +over, we are apt to be dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. As +he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, +and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely +perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. But +with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds for +truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was still +with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. I am sure that +though he did not agree with me in some of my own later notions for the +redemption of the race, he did not like me the less but rather the more +because (to my own great surprise I confess) I had now and then the +courage of my convictions, both literary and social. + +He was probably most at odds with me in regard to my theories of fiction, +though he persisted in declaring his pleasure in my own fiction. He was +in fact, by nature and tradition, thoroughly romantic, and he could not +or would not suffer realism in any but a friend. He steadfastly refused +even to read the Russian masters, to his immense loss, as I tried to +persuade him, and even among the modern Spaniards, for whom he might have +had a sort of personal kindness from his love of Cervantes, he chose one +for his praise the least worthy, of it, and bore me down with his heavier +metal in argument when I opposed to Alarcon's factitiousness the +delightful genuineness of Valdes. Ibsen, with all the Norwegians, he put +far from him; he would no more know them than the Russians; the French +naturalists he abhorred. I thought him all wrong, but you do not try +improving your elders when they have come to three score and ten years, +and I would rather have had his affection unbroken by our difference of +opinion than a perfect agreement. Where he even imagined that this +difference could work me harm, he was anxious to have me know that he +meant me none; and he was at the trouble to write me a letter when a +Boston paper had perverted its report of what he said in a public lecture +to my disadvantage, and to assure me that he had not me in mind. When +once he had given his liking, he could not bear that any shadow of change +should seem to have come upon him. He had a most beautiful and endearing +ideal of friendship; he desired to affirm it and to reaffirm it as often +as occasion offered, and if occasion did not offer, he made occasion. It +did not matter what you said or did that contraried him; if he thought he +had essentially divined you, you were still the same: and on his part he +was by no means exacting of equal demonstration, but seemed not even to +wish it. + + + + +XII. + +After he was replaced at London by a minister more immediately +representative of the Democratic administration, he came home. He made a +brave show of not caring to have remained away, but in truth he had +become very fond of England, where he had made so many friends, and where +the distinction he had, in that comfortably padded environment, was so +agreeable to him. + +It would have been like him to have secretly hoped that the new President +might keep him in London, but he never betrayed any ignoble +disappointment, and he would not join in any blame of him. At our first +meeting after he came home he spoke of the movement which had made Mr. +Cleveland president, and said he supposed that if he had been here, he +should have been in it. All his friends were, he added, a little +helplessly; but he seemed not to dislike my saying I knew one of his +friends who was not: in fact, as I have told, he never disliked a plump +difference--unless he disliked the differer. + +For several years he went back to England every summer, and it was not +until he took up his abode at Elmwood again that he spent a whole year at +home. One winter he passed at his sister's home in Boston, but mostly he +lived with his daughter at Southborough. I have heard a story of his +going to Elmwood soon after his return in 1885, and sitting down in his +old study, where he declared with tears that the place was full of +ghosts. But four or five years later it was well for family reasons that +he should live there; and about the same time it happened that I had +taken a house for the summer in his neighborhood. He came to see me, and +to assure me, in all tacit forms of his sympathy in a sorrow for which +there could be no help; but it was not possible that the old intimate +relations should be resumed. The affection was there, as much on his +side as on mine, I believe; but he was now an old man and I was an +elderly man, and we could not, without insincerity, approach each other +in the things that had drawn us together in earlier and happier years. +His course was run; my own, in which he had taken such a generous +pleasure, could scarcely move his jaded interest. His life, so far as it +remained to him, had renewed itself in other air; the later friendships +beyond seas sufficed him, and were without the pang, without the effort +that must attend the knitting up of frayed ties here. + +He could never have been anything but American, if he had tried, and he +certainly never tried; but he certainly did not return to the outward +simplicities of his life as I first knew it. There was no more +round-hat-and-sack-coat business for him; he wore a frock and a high hat, +and whatever else was rather like London than Cambridge; I do not know +but drab gaiters sometimes added to the effect of a gentleman of the old +school which he now produced upon the witness. Some fastidiousnesses +showed themselves in him, which were not so surprising. He complained of +the American lower class manner; the conductor and cabman would be kind +to you but they would not be respectful, and he could not see the fun of +this in the old way. Early in our acquaintance he rather stupified me by +saying, "I like you because you don't put your hands on me," and I heard +of his consenting to some sort of reception in those last years, "Yes, if +they won't shake hands." + +Ever since his visit to Rome in 1875 he had let his heavy mustache grow +long till it dropped below the corners of his beard, which was now almost +white; his face had lost the ruddy hue so characteristic of him. I fancy +he was then ailing with premonitions of the disorder which a few years +later proved mortal, but he still bore himself with sufficient vigor, and +he walked the distance between his house and mine, though once when I +missed his visit the family reported that after he came in he sat a long +time with scarcely a word, as if too weary to talk. That winter, I went +into Boston to live, and I saw him only at infrequent intervals, when I +could go out to Elmwood. At such times I found him sitting in the room +which was formerly the drawing-room, but which had been joined with his +study by taking away the partitions beside the heavy mass of the old +colonial chimney. He told me that when he was a newborn babe, the nurse +had carried him round this chimney, for luck, and now in front of the +same hearth, the white old man stretched himself in an easy-chair, with +his writing-pad on his knees and his books on the table at his elbow, and +was willing to be entreated not to rise. I remember the sun used to come +in at the eastern windows full pour, and bathe the air in its warmth. + +He always hailed me gayly, and if I found him with letters newly come +from England, as I sometimes did, he glowed and sparkled with fresh life. +He wanted to read passages from those letters, he wanted to talk about +their writers, and to make me feel their worth and charm as he did. He +still dreamed of going back to England the next summer, but that was not +to be. One day he received me not less gayly than usual, but with a +certain excitement, and began to tell me about an odd experience he had +had, not at all painful, but which had very much mystified him. He had +since seen the doctor, and the doctor had assured him that there was +nothing alarming in what had happened, and in recalling this assurance, +he began to look at the humorous aspects of the case, and to make some +jokes about it. He wished to talk of it, as men do of their maladies, +and very fully, and I gave him such proof of my interest as even inviting +him to talk of it would convey. In spite of the doctor's assurance, and +his joyful acceptance of it, I doubt if at the bottom of his heart there +was not the stir of an uneasy misgiving; but he had not for a long time +shown himself so cheerful. + +It was the beginning of the end. He recovered and relapsed, and +recovered again; but never for long. Late in the spring I came out, and +he had me stay to dinner, which was somehow as it used to be at two +o'clock; and after dinner we went out on his lawn. He got a long-handled +spud, and tried to grub up some dandelions which he found in his turf, +but after a moment or two he threw it down, and put his hand upon his +back with a groan. I did not see him again till I came out to take leave +of him before going away for the summer, and then I found him sitting on +the little porch in a western corner of his house, with a volume of Scott +closed upon his finger. There were some other people, and our meeting +was with the constraint of their presence. It was natural in nothing so +much as his saying very significantly to me, as if he knew of my heresies +concerning Scott, and would have me know he did not approve of them, that +there was nothing he now found so much pleasure in as Scott's novels. +Another friend, equally heretical, was by, but neither of us attempted to +gainsay him. Lowell talked very little, but he told of having been a +walk to Beaver Brook, and of having wished to jump from one stone to +another in the stream, and of having had to give it up. He said, without +completing the sentence, If it had come to that with him! Then he fell +silent again; and with some vain talk of seeing him when I came back in +the fall, I went away sick at heart. I was not to see him again, and I +shall not look upon his like. + +I am aware that I have here shown him from this point and from that in a +series of sketches which perhaps collectively impart, but do not assemble +his personality in one impression. He did not, indeed, make one +impression upon me, but a thousand impressions, which I should seek in +vain to embody in a single presentment. What I have cloudily before me +is the vision of a very lofty and simple soul, perplexed, and as it were +surprised and even dismayed at the complexity of the effects from motives +so single in it, but escaping always to a clear expression of what was +noblest and loveliest in itself at the supreme moments, in the divine +exigencies. I believe neither in heroes nor in saints; but I believe in +great and good men, for I have known them, and among such men Lowell was +of the richest nature I have known. His nature was not always serene or +pellucid; it was sometimes roiled by the currents that counter and cross +in all of us; but it was without the least alloy of insincerity, and it +was never darkened by the shadow of a selfish fear. His genius was an +instrument that responded in affluent harmony to the power that made him +a humorist and that made him a poet, and appointed him rarely to be quite +either alone. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + I believe neither in heroes nor in saints + It is well to hold one's country to her promises + Liked being with you, not for what he got, but for what he gave + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Studies of Lowell, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES OF LOWELL *** + +***** This file should be named 3393.txt or 3393.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/9/3393/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.12.12.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES--Studies of Lowell + +by William Dean Howells + + + + +I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge +when I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in +1860. I saw him more and more after I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; +and I now wish to record what I knew of him during the years that passed +between this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try to +paint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall +only claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do +not keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did? + + + + +I. + +It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my consular post at +Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out to see Lowell +at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him from Italy. +The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and a sand- +box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowell +thought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put the +thing in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a +pasteboard pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as +I knew the place--a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time I +suppose the inkpot continued as dry as the sand-box. + +My visit was in the heat of August, which is as fervid in Cambridge as it +can well be anywhere, and I still have a sense of his study windows +lifted to the summer night, and the crickets and grasshoppers crying in +at them from the lawns and the gardens outside. Other people went away +from Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowell +always stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for his +town. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and he must have +made me sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go with him for +a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one help him +idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work; and +no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from any +pleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always been +kind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both. + +He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shy +youth to all the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was not +much; I loved him, and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me, +but in Lowell I was always conscious of an older and closer and stricter +civilization than my own, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative +status. His democracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart, +and his denied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was so +noble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our long acquaintance +I found it well to come to open rebellion, as I more than once did, +he admitted my right of insurrection, and never resented the outbreak. +I disliked to differ with him, and perhaps he subtly felt this so much +that he would not dislike me for doing it. He even suffered being taxed +with inconsistency, and where he saw that he had not been quite just, he +would take punishment for his error, with a contrition that was sometimes +humorous and always touching. + +Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn with Italy, and he was +interested but not much encouraged by what I could tell him of the +feeling in Venice against the Austrians. He seemed to reserve a like +scepticism concerning the fine things I was hoping for the Italians in +literature, and he confessed an interest in the facts treated which in +the retrospect, I am aware, was more tolerant than participant of my +enthusiasm. That was always Lowell's attitude towards the opinions of +people he liked, when he could not go their lengths with them, and +nothing was more characteristic of his affectionate nature and his just +intelligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, but he +loved many sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with, and he +suffered even prejudices counter to his own if they were not ignoble. +In the whimsicalities of others he delighted as much as in his own. + + + + +II. + +Our associations with Italy held over until the next day, when after +breakfast he went with me towards Boston as far as "the village": for so +he liked to speak of Cambridge in the custom of his younger days when +wide tracts of meadow separated Harvard Square from his life-long home at +Elmwood. We stood on the platform of the horsecar together, and when I +objected to his paying my fare in the American fashion, he allowed that +the Italian usage of each paying for himself was the politer way. +He would not commit himself about my returning to Venice (for I had not +given up my place, yet, and was away on leave), but he intimated his +distrust of the flattering conditions of life abroad. He said it was +charming to be treated 'da signore', but he seemed to doubt whether it +was well; and in this as in all other things he showed his final fealty +to the American ideal. + +It was that serious and great moment after the successful close of the +civil war when the republican consciousness was more robust in us than +ever before or since; but I cannot recall any reference to the historical +interest of the time in Lowell's talk. It had been all about literature +and about travel; and now with the suggestion of the word village it +began to be a little about his youth. I have said before how reluctant +he was to let his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch with my +juniority had made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him +thinking of the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. +He would never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. He +told once of having been on a brief journey when he was six years old, +with his father, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood in the evening, +and his father saying, " Ah, this is a pleasant place! I wonder who +lives here--what little boy?" At another time he pointed out a certain +window in his study, and said he could see himself standing by it when he +could only get his chin on the window-sill. His memories of the house, +and of everything belonging to it, were very tender; but he could laugh +over an escapade of his youth when he helped his fellow-students pull +down his father's fences, in the pure zeal of good-comradeship. + + + + +III. + +My fortunes took me to New York, and I spent most of the winter of 1865-6 +writing in the office of 'The Nation'. I contributed several sketches of +Italian travel to that paper; and one of these brought me a precious +letter from Lowell. He praised my sketch, which he said he had read +without the least notion who had written it, and he wanted me to feel the +full value of such an impersonal pleasure in it. At the same time he did +not fail to tell me that he disliked some pseudo-cynical verses of mine +which he had read in another place; and I believe it was then that he +bade me "sweat the Heine out of" me, "as men sweat the mercury out of +their bones." + +When I was asked to be assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and came +on to Boston to talk the matter over with the publishers, I went out to +Cambridge and consulted Lowell. He strongly urged me to take the +position (I thought myself hopefully placed in New York on The Nation); +and at the same time he seemed to have it on his heart to say that he had +recommended some one else for it, never, he owned, having thought of me. + +He was most cordial, but after I came to live in Cambridge (where the +magazine was printed, and I could more conveniently look over the +proofs), he did not call on me for more than a month, and seemed quite to +have forgotten me. We met one night at Mr. Norton's, for one of the +Dante readings, and he took no special notice of me till I happened to +say something that offered him a chance to give me a little humorous +snub. I was speaking of a paper in the Magazine on the "Claudian +Emissary," and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like +"Who in the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary?" "You are in +Cambridge, Mr. Howells," Lowell answered, and laughed at my confusion. +Having put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, and at parting he +said, with a light of half-mocking tenderness in his beautiful eyes, +"Goodnight, fellow-townsman." "I hardly knew we were fellow-townsmen," I +returned. He liked that, apparently, and said he had been meaning to +call upon me; and that he was coming very soon. + +He was as good as his word, and after that hardly a week of any kind of +weather passed but he mounted the steps to the door of the ugly little +house in which I lived, two miles away from him, and asked me to walk. +These walks continued, I suppose, until Lowell went abroad for a winter +in the early seventies. They took us all over Cambridge, which he knew +and loved every inch of, and led us afield through the straggling, +unhandsome outskirts, bedrabbled with squalid Irish neighborhoods, and +fraying off into marshes and salt meadows. He liked to indulge an excess +of admiration for the local landscape, and though I never heard him +profess a preference for the Charles River flats to the finest Alpine +scenery, I could well believe he would do so under provocation of a fit +listener's surprise. He had always so much of the boy in him that he +liked to tease the over-serious or over-sincere. He liked to tease and +he liked to mock, especially his juniors, if any touch of affectation, or +any little exuberance of manner gave him the chance; when he once came to +fetch me, and the young mistress of the house entered with a certain +excessive elasticity, he sprang from his seat, and minced towards her, +with a burlesque of her buoyant carriage which made her laugh. When he +had given us his heart in trust of ours, he used us like a younger +brother and sister; or like his own children. He included our children +in his affection, and he enjoyed our fondness for them as if it were +something that had come back to him from his own youth. I think he had +also a sort of artistic, a sort of ethical pleasure in it, as being of +the good tradition, of the old honest, simple material, from which +pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought. He liked +giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, where he +masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered his early +kindness for them. + + + + +IV. + +In those walks of ours I believe he did most of the talking, and from his +talk then and at other times there remains to me an impression of his +growing conservatism. I had in fact come into his life when it had spent +its impulse towards positive reform, and I was to be witness of its +increasing tendency towards the negative sort. He was quite past the +storm and stress of his anti-slavery age; with the close of the war which +had broken for him all his ideals of inviolable peace, he had reached the +age of misgiving. I do not mean that I ever heard him express doubt of +what he had helped to do, or regret for what he had done; but I know that +he viewed with critical anxiety what other men were doing with the +accomplished facts. His anxiety gave a cast of what one may call +reluctance from the political situation, and turned him back towards +those civic and social defences which he had once seemed willing to +abandon. I do not mean that he lost faith in democracy; this faith he +constantly then and signally afterwards affirmed; but he certainly had no +longer any faith in insubordination as a means of grace. He preached a +quite Socratic reverence for law, as law, and I remember that once when +I had got back from Canada in the usual disgust for the American custom- +house, and spoke lightly of smuggling as not an evil in itself, and +perhaps even a right under our vexatious tariff, he would not have it, +but held that the illegality of the act made it a moral of fence. This +was not the logic that would have justified the attitude of the anti- +slavery men towards the fugitive slave act; but it was in accord with +Lowell's feeling about John Brown, whom he honored while always +condemning his violation of law; and it was in the line of all his later +thinking. In this, he wished you to agree with him, or at least he +wished to make you; but he did not wish you to be more of his mind than +he was himself. In one of those squalid Irish neighborhoods I confessed +a grudge (a mean and cruel grudge, I now think it) for the increasing +presence of that race among us, but this did not please him; and I am +sure that whatever misgiving he had as to the future of America, he would +not have had it less than it had been the refuge and opportunity of the +poor of any race or color. Yet he would not have had it this alone. +There was a line in his poem on Agassiz which he left out of the printed +version, at the fervent entreaty of his friends, as saying too bitterly +his disappointment with his country. Writing at the distance of Europe, +and with America in the perspective which the alien environment clouded, +he spoke of her as "The Land of Broken Promise." It was a splendid +reproach, but perhaps too dramatic to bear the full test of analysis, +and yet it had the truth in it, and might, I think, have usefully stood, +to the end of making people think. Undoubtedly it expressed his sense of +the case, and in the same measure it would now express that of many who +love their country most among us. It is well to hold one's country to +her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is +their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not +suppose it was the "common man" of Lincoln's dream that Lowell thought +America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender +of the common man's hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted +line her sincerity with the uncommon man: the man who had expected of her +a constancy to the ideals of her youth end to the high martyr-moods of +the war which had given an unguarded and bewildering freedom to a race of +slaves. He was thinking of the shame of our municipal corruptions, the +debased quality of our national statesmanship, the decadence of our whole +civic tone, rather than of the increasing disabilities of the hard- +working poor, though his heart when he thought of them was with them, +too, as it was in "the time when the slave would not let him sleep." + +He spoke very rarely of those times, perhaps because their political and +social associations were so knit up with the saddest and tenderest +personal memories, which it was still anguish to touch. Not only was he + + "--not of the race + That hawk, their sorrows in the market place," + +but so far as my witness went he shrank from mention of them. I do not +remember hearing him speak of the young wife who influenced him so +potently at the most vital moment, and turned him from his whole +scholarly and aristocratic tradition to an impassioned championship of +the oppressed; and he never spoke of the children he had lost. I recall +but one allusion to the days when he was fighting the anti-slavery battle +along the whole line, and this was with a humorous relish of his Irish +servant's disgust in having to wait upon a negro whom he had asked to his +table. + +He was rather severe in his notions of the subordination his domestics +owed him. They were "to do as they were bid," and yet he had a +tenderness for such as had been any time with him, which was wounded when +once a hired man long in his employ greedily overreached him in a certain +transaction. He complained of that with a simple grief for the man's +indelicacy after so many favors from him, rather than with any +resentment. His hauteur towards his dependents was theoretic; his actual +behavior was of the gentle consideration common among Americans of good +breeding, and that recreant hired man had no doubt never been suffered to +exceed him in shows of mutual politeness. Often when the maid was about +weightier matters, he came and opened his door to me himself, welcoming +me with the smile that was like no other. Sometimes he said, "Siete il +benvenuto," or used some other Italian phrase, which put me at ease with +him in the region where we were most at home together. + +Looking back I must confess that I do not see what it was he found to +make him wish for my company, which he presently insisted upon having +once a week at dinner. After the meal we turned into his study where we +sat before a wood fire in winter, and he smoked and talked. He smoked a +pipe which was always needing tobacco, or going out, so that I have the +figure of him before my eyes constantly getting out of his deep chair to +rekindle it from the fire with a paper lighter. He was often out of his +chair to get a book from the shelves that lined the walls, either for a +passage which he wished to read, or for some disputed point which he +wished to settle. If I had caused the dispute, he enjoyed putting me in +the wrong; if he could not, he sometimes whimsically persisted in his +error, in defiance of all authority; but mostly he had such reverence for +the truth that he would not question it even in jest. + +If I dropped in upon him in the afternoon I was apt to find him reading +the old French poets, or the plays of Calderon, or the 'Divina Commedia', +which he magnanimously supposed me much better acquainted with than I was +because I knew some passages of it by heart. One day I came in quoting + + "Io son, cantava, io son dolce Sirena, + Che i marinai in mezzo al mar dismago." + +He stared at me in a rapture with the matchless music, and then uttered +all his adoration and despair in one word. "Damn!" he said, and no more. +I believe he instantly proposed a walk that day, as if his study walls +with all their vistas into the great literatures cramped his soul +liberated to a sense of ineffable beauty of the verse of the 'somma +poeta'. But commonly be preferred to have me sit down with him there +among the mute witnesses of the larger part of his life. As I have +suggested in my own case, it did not matter much whether you brought +anything to the feast or not. If he liked you he liked being with you, +not for what he got, but for what he gave. He was fond of one man whom I +recall as the most silent man I ever met. I never heard him say +anything, not even a dull thing, but Lowell delighted in him, and would +have you believe that he was full of quaint humor. + + + + +V. + +While Lowell lived there was a superstition, which has perhaps survived +him, that he was an indolent man, wasting himself in barren studies and +minor efforts instead of devoting his great powers to some monumental +work worthy of them. If the robust body of literature, both poetry and +prose, which lives after him does not yet correct this vain delusion, the +time will come when it must; and in the meantime the delusion cannot vex +him now. I think it did vex him, then, and that he even shared it, and +tried at times to meet such shadowy claim as it had. One of the things +that people urged upon him was to write some sort of story, and it is +known how he attempted this in verse. It is less known that he attempted +it in prose, and that he went so far as to write the first chapter of a +novel. He read this to me, and though I praised it then, I have a +feeling now that if he had finished the novel it would have been a +failure. "But I shall never finish it," he sighed, as if he felt +irremediable defects in it, and laid the manuscript away, to turn and +light his pipe. It was a rather old-fashioned study of a whimsical +character, and it did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I +believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse +such as we have fragmentarily in 'The Nooning' and 'FitzAdam's Story'. +Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the +universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in +the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He +liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself +all the whim and fancy which the more dramatic talent indulges through +its personages. + +He enjoyed writing such a poem as "The Cathedral," which is not of his +best, but which is more immediately himself, in all his moods, than some +better poems. He read it to me soon after it was written, and in the +long walk which we went hard upon the reading (our way led us through the +Port far towards East Cambridge, where he wished to show me a tupelo-tree +of his acquaintance, because I said I had never seen one), his talk was +still of the poem which he was greatly in conceit of. Later his +satisfaction with it received a check from the reserves of other friends +concerning some whimsical lines which seemed to them too great a drop +from the higher moods of the piece. Their reluctance nettled him; +perhaps he agreed with them; but he would not change the lines, and they +stand as he first wrote them. In fact, most of his lines stand as he +first wrote them; he would often change them in revision, and then, in a +second revision go back to the first version. + +He was very sensitive to criticism, especially from those he valued +through his head or heart. He would try to hide his hurt, and he would +not let you speak of it, as though your sympathy unmanned him, but you +could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my remembrance from +a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed; and once when in a +notice of my own I had put one little thorny point among the flowers, he +confessed a puncture from it. He praised the criticism hardily, but I +knew that he winced under my recognition of the didactic quality which he +had not quite guarded himself against in the poetry otherwise praised. +He liked your liking, and he openly rejoiced in it; and I suppose he made +himself believe that in trying his verse with his friends he was testing +it; but I do not believe that he was, and I do not think he ever +corrected his judgment by theirs, however he suffered from it. + +In any matter that concerned literary morals he was more than eager to +profit by another eye. One summer he sent me for the Magazine a poem +which, when I read it, I trembled to find ,in motive almost exactly like +one we had lately printed by another contributor. There was nothing for +it but to call his attention to the resemblance, and I went over to +Elmwood with the two poems. He was not at home, and I was obliged to +leave the poems, I suppose with some sort of note, for the next morning's +post brought me a delicious letter from him, all one cry of confession, +the most complete, the most ample. He did not trouble himself to say +that his poem was an unconscious reproduction of the other; that was for +every reason unnecessary, but he had at once rewritten it upon wholly +different lines; and I do not think any reader was reminded of Mrs. +Akers's "Among the Laurels" by Lowell's "Foot-path." He was not only +much more sensitive of others' rights than his own, but in spite of a +certain severity in him, he was most tenderly regardful of their +sensibilities when he had imagined them: he did not always imagine them. + + + + +VI. + +At this period, between the years 1866 and 1874, when he unwillingly went +abroad for a twelvemonth, Lowell was seen in very few Cambridge houses, +and in still fewer Boston houses. He was not an unsocial man, but he was +most distinctly not a society man. He loved chiefly the companionship of +books, and of men who loved books; but of women generally he had an +amusing diffidence; he revered them and honored them, but he would rather +not have had them about. This is over-saying it, of course, but the +truth is in what I say. There was never a more devoted husband, and he +was content to let his devotion to the sex end with that. He especially +could not abide difference of opinion in women; he valued their taste, +their wit, their humor, but he would have none of their reason. I was by +one day when he was arguing a point with one of his nieces, and after it +had gone on for some time, and the impartial witness must have owned that +she was getting the better of him he closed the controversy by giving her +a great kiss, with the words, "You are a very good girl, my dear," and +practically putting her out of the room. As to women of the flirtatious +type, he did not dislike them; no man, perhaps, does; but he feared them, +and he said that with them there was but one way, and that was to run. + +I have a notion that at this period Lowell was more freely and fully +himself than at any other. The passions and impulses of his younger +manhood had mellowed, the sorrows of that time had softened; he could +blamelessly live to himself in his affections and his sobered ideals. +His was always a duteous life; but he had pretty well given up making man +over in his own image, as we all wish some time to do, and then no longer +wish it. He fulfilled his obligations to his fellow-men as these sought +him out, but he had ceased to seek them. He loved his friends and their +love, but he had apparently no desire to enlarge their circle. It was +that hour of civic suspense, in which public men seemed still actuated by +unselfish aims, and one not essentially a politician might contentedly +wait to see what would come of their doing their best. At any rate, +without occasionally withholding open criticism or acclaim Lowell waited +among his books for the wounds of the war to heal themselves, and the +nation to begin her healthfuller and nobler life. With slavery gone, +what might not one expect of American democracy! + +His life at Elmwood was of an entire simplicity. In the old colonial +mansion in which he was born, he dwelt in the embowering leafage, amid +the quiet of lawns and garden-plots broken by few noises ruder than those +from the elms and the syringas where + + "The oriole clattered and the cat-bird sang." + +From the tracks on Brattle Street, came the drowsy tinkle of horse-car +bells; and sometimes a funeral trailed its black length past the corner +of his grounds, and lost itself from sight under the shadows of the +willows that hid Mount Auburn from his study windows. In the winter the +deep New England snows kept their purity in the stretch of meadow behind +the house, which a double row of pines guarded in a domestic privacy. +All was of a modest dignity within and without the house, which Lowell +loved but did not imagine of a manorial presence; and he could not +conceal his annoyance with an over-enthusiastic account of his home in +which the simple chiselling of some panels was vaunted as rich wood- +carving. There was a graceful staircase, and a good wide hall, from +which the dining-room and drawing-room opened by opposite doors; behind +the last, in the southwest corner of the house, was his study. + +There, literally, he lived during the six or seven years in which I knew +him after my coming to Cambridge. Summer and winter he sat there among +his books, seldom stirring abroad by day except for a walk, and by night +yet more rarely. He went to the monthly mid-day dinner of the Saturday +Club in Boston; he was very constant at the fortnightly meetings of his +whist-club, because he loved the old friends who formed it; he came +always to the Dante suppers at Longfellow's, and he was familiarly in and +out at Mr. Norton's, of course. But, otherwise, he kept to his study, +except for some rare and almost unwilling absences upon university +lecturing at Johns Hopkins or at Cornell. + +For four years I did not take any summer outing from Cambridge myself, +and my associations with Elmwood and with Lowell are more of summer than +of winter weather meetings. But often we went our walks through the +snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only +well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable +expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow's +house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious +faith as he ever did in my presence. He was speaking of the New +Testament, and he said, The truth was in it; but they had covered it up +with their hagiology. Though he had been bred a Unitarian, and had more +and more liberated himself from all creeds, he humorously affected an +abiding belief in hell, and similarly contended for the eternal +punishment of the wicked. He was of a religious nature, and he was very +reverent of other people's religious feelings. He expressed a special +tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was +also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I +suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems +are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling +providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will +repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the +strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years +of his life, I asked him if he believed there was a moral government of +the universe, he answered gravely and with a sort of pain, The scale was +so vast, and we saw such a little part of it. + +As to tine notion of a life after death, I never had any direct or +indirect expression from him; but I incline to the opinion that his hold +upon this weakened with his years, as it is sadly apt to do with men who +have read much and thought much: they have apparently exhausted their +potentialities of psychological life. Mystical Lowell was, as every poet +must be, but I do not think he liked mystery. One morning he told me +that when he came home the night before he had seen the Doppelganger of +one of his household: though, as he joked, he was not in a state to see +double. + +He then said he used often to see people's Doppelganger; at another time, +as to ghosts, he said, He was like Coleridge: he had seen too many of +'em. Lest any weaker brethren should be caused to offend by the +restricted oath which I have reported him using in a moment of transport +it may be best to note here that I never heard him use any other +imprecation, and this one seldom. + +Any grossness of speech was inconceivable of him; now and then, but only +very rarely, the human nature of some story "unmeet for ladies" was too +much for his sense of humor, and overcame him with amusement which he was +willing to impart, and did impart, but so that mainly the human nature of +it reached you. In this he was like the other great Cambridge men, +though he was opener than the others to contact with the commoner life. +He keenly delighted in every native and novel turn of phrase, and he +would not undervalue a vital word or a notion picked up out of the road +even if it had some dirt sticking to it. + +He kept as close to the common life as a man of his patrician instincts +and cloistered habits could. I could go to him with any new find about +it and be sure of delighting him; after I began making my involuntary and +all but unconscious studies of Yankee character, especially in the +country, he was always glad to talk them over with me. Still, when I had +discovered a new accent or turn of speech in the fields he had +cultivated, I was aware of a subtle grudge mingling with his pleasure; +but this was after all less envy than a fine regret. + +At the time I speak of there was certainly nothing in Lowell's dress or +bearing that would have kept the common life aloof from him, if that life +were not always too proud to make advances to any one. In this +retrospect, I see him in the sack coat and rough suit which he wore upon +all out-door occasions, with heavy shoes, and a round hat. I never saw +him with a high hat on till he came home after his diplomatic stay in +London; then he had become rather rigorously correct in his costume, and +as conventional as he had formerly been indifferent. In both epochs he +was apt to be gloved, and the strong, broad hands, which left the +sensation of their vigor for some time after they had clasped yours, +were notably white. At the earlier period, he still wore his auburn hair +somewhat long; it was darker than his beard, which was branching and +full, and more straw-colored than auburn, as were his thick eyebrows; +neither hair nor beard was then touched with gray, as I now remember. +When he uncovered, his straight, wide, white forehead showed itself one +of the most beautiful that could be; his eyes were gay with humor, and +alert with all intelligence. He had an enchanting smile, a laugh that +was full of friendly joyousness, and a voice that was exquisite music. +Everything about him expressed his strenuous physical condition: he would +not wear an overcoat in the coldest Cambridge weather; at all times he +moved vigorously, and walked with a quick step, lifting his feet well +from the ground. + + + + +VII. + +It gives me a pleasure which I am afraid I cannot impart, to linger in +this effort to materialize his presence from the fading memories of the +past. I am afraid I can as little impart a due sense of what he +spiritually was to my knowledge. It avails nothing for me to say that +I think no man of my years and desert had ever so true and constant a +friend. He was both younger and older than I by insomuch as he was a +poet through and through, and had been out of college before I was born. +But he had already come to the age of self-distrust when a man likes to +take counsel with his juniors as with his elders, and fancies he can +correct his perspective by the test of their fresher vision. Besides, +Lowell was most simply and pathetically reluctant to part with youth, +and was willing to cling to it wherever he found it. He could not in any +wise bear to be left-out. When Mr. Bret Harte came to Cambridge, and the +talk was all of the brilliant character-poems with which he had then +first dazzled the world, Lowell casually said, with a most touching, +however ungrounded sense of obsolescence, He could remember when the +'Biglow Papers' were all the talk. I need not declare that there was +nothing ungenerous in that. He was only too ready to hand down his +laurels to a younger man; but he wished to do it himself. Through the +modesty that is always a quality of such a nature, he was magnanimously +sensitive to the appearance of fading interest; he could not take it +otherwise than as a proof of his fading power. I had a curious hint of +this when one year in making up the prospectus of the Magazine for the +next, I omitted his name because I had nothing special to promise from +him, and because I was half ashamed to be always flourishing it in the +eyes of the public. "I see that you have dropped me this year," he +wrote, and I could see that it had hurt, and I knew that he was glad to +believe the truth when I told him. + +He did not care so much for popularity as for the praise of his friends. +If he liked you he wished you not only to like what he wrote, but to say +so. He was himself most cordial in his recognition of the things that +pleased him. What happened to me from him, happened to others, and I am +only describing his common habit when I say that nothing I did to his +liking failed to bring me a spoken or oftener a written acknowledgment. +This continued to the latest years of his life when the effort even to +give such pleasure must have cost him a physical pang. + +He was of a very catholic taste; and he was apt to be carried away by a +little touch of life or humor, and to overvalue the piece in which he +found it; but, mainly his judgments of letters and men were just. +One of the dangers of scholarship was a peculiar danger in the Cambridge +keeping, but Lowell was almost as averse as Longfellow from contempt. +He could snub, and pitilessly, where he thought there was presumption and +apparently sometimes merely because he was in the mood; but I cannot +remember ever to have heard him sneer. He was often wonderfully patient +of tiresome people, and sometimes celestially insensible to vulgarity. +In spite of his reserve, he really wished people to like him; he was +keenly alive to neighborly good-will or ill-will; and when there was a +question of widening Elmwood avenue by taking part of his grounds, he was +keenly hurt by hearing that some one who lived near him had said he hoped +the city would cut down Lowell's elms: his English elms, which his father +had planted, and with which he was himself almost one blood! + + + + +VIII. + +In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and +pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he +was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his +finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their +inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his +poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was +usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took +him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in +abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it. + +The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and +to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called +'Among My Books' and 'My Study Windows'. He wished to name these more +soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which +they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they +took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a +literary way, he submitted to others' judgment in all such matters. +I doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he +was usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but +sometimes if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, +without reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in +the Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal +handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him, +and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had +done their part. He held up four fingers, "Quattro," he said in Italian, +and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, +"I thought they might have made it cinque." + +Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in +mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure +to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that +he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of +getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the +payment to me. "It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a +watch." + +I do not believe at any time Lowell was able to deal with money + + "Like wealthy men, not knowing what they give." + +more probably he felt a sacredness in the money got by literature, which +the literary man never quite rids him self of, even when he is not a +poet, and which made him wish to dedicate it to something finer than the +every day uses. He lived very quietly, but he had by no means more than +he needed to live upon, and at that time he had pecuniary losses. He was +writing hard, and was doing full work in his Harvard professorship, and +he was so far dependent upon his salary, that he felt its absence for the +year he went abroad. I do not know quite how to express my sense of +something unworldly, of something almost womanlike in his relation to +money. + +He was not only generous of money, but he was generous of himself, when +he thought he could be of use, or merely of encouragement. He came all +the way into Boston to hear certain lectures of mine on the Italian +poets, which he could not have found either edifying or amusing, that he +might testify his interest in me, and show other people that they were +worth coming to. He would go carefully over a poem with me, word by +word, and criticise every turn of phrase, and after all be magnanimously +tolerant of my sticking to phrasings that he disliked. In a certain line + + "The silvern chords of the piano trembled," + +he objected to silvern. Why not silver? I alleged leathern, golden, and +like adjectives in defence of my word; but still he found an affectation +in it, and suffered it to stand with extreme reluctance. Another line of +another piece: + + "And what she would, would rather that she would not" + +he would by no means suffer. He said that the stress falling on the last +word made it "public-school English," and he mocked it with the answer a +maid had lately given him when he asked if the master of the house was at +home. She said, " No, sir, he is not," when she ought to have said " No, +sir, he isn't." He was appeased when I came back the next day with the +stanza amended so that the verse could read: + + "And what she would, would rather she would not so" + +but I fancy he never quite forgave my word silvern. Yet, he professed +not to have prejudices in such matters, but to use any word that would +serve his turn, without wincing; and he certainly did use and defend +words, as undisprivacied and disnatured, that made others wince. + +He was otherwise such a stickler for the best diction that he would not +have had me use slovenly vernacular even in the dialogue in my stories: +my characters must not say they wanted to do so and so, but wished, and +the like. In a copy of one of my books which I found him reading, I saw +he had corrected my erring Western woulds and shoulds; as he grew old he +was less and less able to restrain himself from setting people right to +their faces. Once, in the vast area of my ignorance, he specified my +small acquaintance with a certain period of English poetry, saying, +"You're rather shady, there, old fellow." But he would not have had me +too learned, holding that he had himself been hurt for literature by his +scholarship. + +His patience in analyzing my work with me might have been the easy effort +of his habit of teaching; and his willingness to give himself and his own +was no doubt more signally attested in his asking a brother man of +letters who wished to work up a subject in the college library, to stay a +fortnight in his house, and to share his study, his beloved study, with +him. This must truly have cost him dear, as any author of fixed habits +will understand. Happily the man of letters was a good fellow, and knew +how to prize the favor-done him, but if he had been otherwise, it would +have been the same to Lowell. He not only endured, but did many things +for the weaker brethren, which were amusing enough to one in the secret +of his inward revolt. Yet in these things he was considerate also of the +editor whom he might have made the sharer of his self-sacrifice, and he +seldom offered me manuscripts for others. The only real burden of the +kind that he put upon me was the diary of a Virginian who had travelled +in New England during the early thirties, and had set down his +impressions of men and manners there. It began charmingly, and went on +very well under Lowell's discreet pruning, but after a while he seemed to +fall in love with the character of the diarist so much that he could not +bear to cut anything. + + + +IX. + +He had a great tenderness for the broken and ruined South, whose sins he +felt that he had had his share in visiting upon her, and he was willing +to do what he could to ease her sorrows in the case of any particular +Southerner. He could not help looking askance upon the dramatic shows of +retribution which some of the Northern politicians were working, but with +all his misgivings he continued to act with the Republican party until +after the election of Hayes; he was away from the country during the +Garfield campaign. He was in fact one of the Massachusetts electors +chosen by the Republican majority in 1816, and in that most painful hour +when there was question of the policy and justice of counting Hayes in +for the presidency, it was suggested by some of Lowell's friends that he +should use the original right of the electors under the constitution, +and vote for Tilden, whom one vote would have chosen president over +Hayes. After he had cast his vote for Hayes, he quietly referred to the +matter one day, in the moment of lighting his pipe, with perhaps the +faintest trace of indignation in his tone. He said that whatever the +first intent of the constitution was, usage had made the presidential +electors strictly the instruments of the party which chose them, and that +for him to have voted for Tilden when he had been chosen to vote for +Hayes would have-been an act of bad faith. + +He would have resumed for me all the old kindness of our relations before +the recent year of his absence, but this had inevitably worked a little +estrangement. He had at least lost the habit of me, and that says much +in such matters. He was not so perfectly at rest in the Cambridge +environment; in certain indefinable ways it did not so entirely suffice +him, though he would have been then and always the last to allow this. +I imagine his friends realized more than he, that certain delicate but +vital filaments of attachment had frayed and parted in alien air, and +left him heart-loose as he had not been before. + +I do not know whether it crossed his mind after the election of Hayes +that he might be offered some place abroad, but it certainly crossed the +minds of some of his friends, and I could not feel that I was acting for +myself alone when I used a family connection with the President, very +early in his term, to let him know that I believed Lowell would accept a +diplomatic mission. I could assure him that I was writing wholly without +Lowell's privity or authority, and I got back such a letter as I could +wish in its delicate sense of the situation. The President said that he +had already thought of offering Lowell something, and he gave me the +pleasure, a pleasure beyond any other I could imagine, of asking Lowell +whether he would accept the mission to Austria. I lost no time carrying +his letter to Elmwood, where I found Lowell over his coffee at dinner. +He saw me at the threshold, and called to me through the open door to +come in, and I handed him the letter, and sat down at table while he ran +it through. When he had read it, he gave a quick " Ah!" and threw it +over the length of the table to Mrs. Lowell. She read it in a smiling +and loyal reticence, as if she would not say one word of all she might +wish to say in urging his acceptance, though I could see that she was +intensely eager for it. The whole situation was of a perfect New England +character in its tacit significance; after Lowell had taken his coffee we +turned into his study without further allusion to the matter. + +A day or two later he came to my house to say that he could not accept +the Austrian mission, and to ask me to tell the President so for him, and +make his acknowledgments, which he would also write himself. He remained +talking a little while of other things, and when he rose to go, he said +with a sigh of vague reluctance, "I should like to see a play of +Calderon," as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could +still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was +found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish +mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was sent to Madrid. + + + + +X. + +When we met in London, some years later, he came almost every afternoon +to my lodging, and the story of our old-time Cambridge walks began again +in London phrases. There were not the vacant lots and outlying fields of +his native place, but we made shift with the vast, simple parks, and we +walked on the grass as we could not have done in an American park, and +were glad to feel the earth under our feet. I said how much it was like +those earlier tramps; and that pleased him, for he wished, whenever a +thing delighted him, to find a Cambridge quality in it. + +But he was in love with everything English, and was determined I should +be so too, beginning with the English weather, which in summer cannot be +overpraised. He carried, of course, an umbrella, but he would not put it +up in the light showers that caught us at times, saying that the English +rain never wetted you. The thick short turf delighted him; he would +scarcely allow that the trees were the worse for foliage blighted by a +vile easterly storm in the spring of that year. The tender air, the +delicate veils that the moisture in it cast about all objects at the +least remove, the soft colors of the flowers, the dull blue of the low +sky showing through the rifts of the dirty white clouds, the hovering +pall of London smoke, were all dear to him, and he was anxious that I +should not lose anything of their charm. + +He was anxious that I should not miss the value of anything in England, +and while he volunteered that the aristocracy had the corruptions of +aristocracies everywhere, he insisted upon my respectful interest in it +because it was so historical. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this +demand, but it is certain that he was very happy in England. He had come +of the age when a man likes smooth, warm keeping, in which he need make +no struggle for his comfort; disciplined and obsequious service; society, +perfectly ascertained within the larger society which we call +civilization; and in an alien environment, for which he was in no wise +responsible, he could have these without a pang of the self-reproach +which at home makes a man unhappy amidst his luxuries, when he considers +their cost to others. He had a position which forbade thought of +unfairness in the conditions; he must not wake because of the slave, it +was his duty to sleep. Besides, at that time Lowell needed all the rest +he could get, for he had lately passed through trials such as break the +strength of men, and how them with premature age. He was living alone in +his little house in Lowndes Square, and Mrs. Lowell was in the country, +slowly recovering from the effects of the terrible typhus which she had +barely survived in Madrid. He was yet so near the anguish of that +experience that he told me he had still in his nerves the expectation of +a certain agonized cry from her which used to rend them. But he said he +had adjusted himself to this, and he went on to speak with a patience +which was more affecting in him than in men of more phlegmatic +temperament, of how we were able to adjust ourselves to all our trials +and to the constant presence of pain. He said he was never free of a +certain distress, which was often a sharp pang, in one of his shoulders, +but his physique had established such relations with it that, though he +was never unconscious of it, he was able to endure it without a +recognition of it as suffering. + +He seemed to me, however, very well, and at his age of sixty-three, I +could not see that he was less alert and vigorous than he was when I +first knew him in Cambridge. He had the same brisk, light step, and +though his beard was well whitened and his auburn hair had grown ashen +through the red, his face had the freshness and his eyes the clearness of +a young man's. I suppose the novelty of his life kept him from thinking +about his years; or perhaps in contact with those great, insenescent +Englishmen, he could not feel himself old. At any rate he did not once +speak of age, as he used to do ten years earlier, and I, then half +through my forties, was still "You young dog" to him. It was a bright +and cheerful renewal of the early kindliness between us, on which indeed +there had never been a shadow, except such as distance throws. He wished +apparently to do everything he could to assure us of his personal +interest; and we were amused to find him nervously apprehensive of any +purpose, such as was far from us, to profit by him officially. He +betrayed a distinct relief when he found we were not going to come upon +him even for admissions to the houses of parliament, which we were to see +by means of an English acquaintance. He had not perhaps found some other +fellow-citizens so considerate; he dreaded the half-duties of his place, +like presentations to the queen, and complained of the cheap ambitions he +had to gratify in that way. + +He was so eager to have me like England in every way, and seemed so fond +of the English, that I thought it best to ask him whether he minded my +quoting, in a paper about Lexington, which I was just then going to print +in a London magazine, some humorous lines of his expressing the mounting +satisfaction of an imaginary Yankee story-teller who has the old fight +terminate in Lord Percy's coming + + "To hammer stone for life in Concord jail." + +It had occurred to me that it might possibly embarrass him to have this +patriotic picture presented to a public which could not take our Fourth +of July pleasure in it, and I offered to suppress it, as I did afterwards +quite for literary reasons. He said, No, let it stand, and let them make +the worst of it; and I fancy that much of his success with a people who +are not gingerly with other people's sensibilities came from the +frankness with which he trampled on their prejudice when he chose. +He said he always told them, when there was question of such things, +that the best society he had ever known was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. +He contended that the best English was spoken there; and so it was, when +he spoke it. + +We were in London out of the season, and he was sorry that he could not +have me meet some titles who he declared had found pleasure in my books; +when we returned from Italy in the following June, he was prompt to do me +this honor. I dare say he wished me to feel it to its last implication, +and I did my best, but there was nothing in the evening I enjoyed so much +as his coming up to Mrs. Lowell, at the close, when there was only a +title or two left, and saying to her as he would have said to her at +Elmwood, where she would have personally planned it, "Fanny, that was a +fine dinner you gave us." Of course, this was in a tender burlesque; +but it remains the supreme impression of what seemed to me a cloudlessly +happy period for Lowell. His wife was quite recovered of her long +suffering, and was again at the head of his house, sharing in his +pleasures, and enjoying his successes for his sake; successes so great +that people spoke of him seriously, as "an addition to society" in +London, where one man more or less seemed like a drop in the sea. +She was a woman perfectly of the New England type and tradition: almost +repellantly shy at first, and almost glacially cold with new +acquaintance, but afterwards very sweet and cordial. She was of a dark +beauty with a regular face of the Spanish outline; Lowell was of an ideal +manner towards her, and of an admiration which delicately travestied +itself and which she knew how to receive with smiling irony. After her +death, which occurred while he was still in England, he never spoke of +her to me, though before that he used to be always bringing her name in, +with a young lover-like fondness. + + + + +XI. + +In the hurry of the London season I did not see so much of Lowell on our +second sojourn as on our first, but once when we were alone in his study +there was a return to the terms of the old meetings in Cambridge. He +smoked his pipe, and sat by his fire and philosophized; and but for the +great London sea swirling outside and bursting through our shelter, and +dashing him with notes that must be instantly answered, it was a very +fair image of the past. He wanted to tell me about his coachman whom he +had got at on his human side with great liking and amusement, and there +was a patient gentleness in his manner with the footman who had to keep +coming in upon him with those notes which was like the echo of his young +faith in the equality of men. But he always distinguished between the +simple unconscious equality of the ordinary American and its assumption +by a foreigner. He said he did not mind such an American's coming into +his house with his hat on; but if a German or Englishman did it, he +wanted to knock it off. He was apt to be rather punctilious in his shows +of deference towards others, and at one time he practised removing his +own hat when he went into shops in Cambridge. It must have mystified the +Cambridge salesmen, and I doubt if he kept it up. + +With reference to the doctrine of his young poetry, the fierce and the +tender humanity of his storm and stress period, I fancy a kind of baffle +in Lowell, which I should not perhaps find it easy to prove. I never +knew him by word or hint to renounce this doctrine, but he could not come +to seventy years without having seen many high hopes fade, and known many +inspired prophecies fail. When we have done our best to make the world +over, we are apt to be dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. +As he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, +and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely +perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. +But with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds +for truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was +still with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. I am sure +that though he did not agree with me in some of my own later notions for +the redemption of the race, he did not like me the less but rather the +more because (to my own great surprise I confess) I had now and then the +courage of my convictions, both literary and social. + +He was probably most at odds with me in regard to my theories of fiction, +though he persisted in declaring his pleasure in my own fiction. He was +in fact, by nature and tradition, thoroughly romantic, and he could not +or would not suffer realism in any but a friend. He steadfastly refused +even to read the Russian masters, to his immense loss, as I tried to +persuade him, and even among the modern Spaniards, for whom he might have +had a sort of personal kindness from his love of Cervantes, he chose one +for his praise the least worthy, of it, and bore me down with his heavier +metal in argument when I opposed to Alarcon's factitiousness the +delightful genuineness of Valdes. Ibsen, with all the Norwegians, he put +far from him; he would no more know them than the Russians; the French +naturalists he abhorred. I thought him all wrong, but you do not try +improving your elders when they have come to three score and ten years, +and I would rather have had his affection unbroken by our difference of +opinion than a perfect agreement. Where he even imagined that this +difference could work me harm, he was anxious to have me know that he +meant me none; and he was at the trouble to write me a letter when a +Boston paper had perverted its report of what he said in a public lecture +to my disadvantage, and to assure me that he had not me in mind. When +once he had given his liking, he could not bear that any shadow of change +should seem to have come upon him. He had a most beautiful and endearing +ideal of friendship; he desired to affirm it and to reaffirm it as often +as occasion offered, and if occasion did not offer, he made occasion. +It did not matter what you said or did that contraried him; if he thought +he had essentially divined you, you were still the same: and on his part +he was by no means exacting of equal demonstration, but seemed not even +to wish it. + + + + +XII. + +After he was replaced at London by a minister more immediately +representative of the Democratic administration, he came home. He made a +brave show of not caring to have remained away, but in truth he had +become very fond of England, where he had made so many friends, and where +the distinction he had, in that comfortably padded environment, was so +agreeable to him. + +It would have been like him to have secretly hoped that the new President +might keep him in London, but he never betrayed any ignoble +disappointment, and he would not join in any blame of him. At our first +meeting after he came home he spoke of the movement which had made Mr. +Cleveland president, and said he supposed that if he had been here, +he should have been in it. All his friends were, he added, a little +helplessly; but he seemed not to dislike my saying I knew one of his +friends who was not: in fact, as I have told, he never disliked a plump +difference--unless he disliked the differer. + +For several years he went back to England every summer, and it was not +until he took up his abode at Elmwood again that he spent a whole year at +home. One winter he passed at his sister's home in Boston, but mostly he +lived with his daughter at Southborough. I have heard a story of his +going to Elmwood soon after his return in 1885, and sitting down in his +old study, where he declared with tears that the place was full of +ghosts. But four or five years later it was well for family reasons that +he should live there; and about the same time it happened that I had +taken a house for the summer in his neighborhood. He came to see me, +and to assure me, in all tacit forms of his sympathy in a sorrow for +which there could be no help; but it was not possible that the old +intimate relations should be resumed. The affection was there, as much +on his side as on mine, I believe; but he was now an old man and I was an +elderly man, and we could not, without insincerity, approach each other +in the things that had drawn us together in earlier and happier years. +His course was run; my own, in which he had taken such a generous +pleasure, could scarcely move his jaded interest. His life, so far as it +remained to him, had renewed itself in other air; the later friendships +beyond seas sufficed him, and were without the pang, without the effort +that must attend the knitting up of frayed ties here. + +He could never have been anything but American, if he had tried, and he +certainly never tried; but he certainly did not return to the outward +simplicities of his life as I first knew it. There was no more round- +hat-and-sack-coat business for him; he wore a frock and a high hat, and +whatever else was rather like London than Cambridge; I do not know but +drab gaiters sometimes added to the effect of a gentleman of the old +school which he now produced upon the witness. Some fastidiousnesses +showed themselves in him, which were not so surprising. He complained of +the American lower class manner; the conductor and cabman would be kind +to you but they would not be respectful, and he could not see the fun of +this in the old way. Early in our acquaintance he rather stupified me by +saying, "I like you because you don't put your hands on me," and I heard +of his consenting to some sort of reception in those last years, "Yes, +if they won't shake hands." + +Ever since his visit to Rome in 1875 he had let his heavy mustache grow +long till it dropped below the corners of his beard, which was now almost +white; his face had lost the ruddy hue so characteristic of him. I fancy +he was then ailing with premonitions of the disorder which a few years +later proved mortal, but he still bore himself with sufficient vigor, +and he walked the distance between his house and mine, though once when I +missed his visit the family reported that after he came in he sat a long +time with scarcely a word, as if too weary to talk. That winter, I went +into Boston to live, and I saw him only at infrequent intervals, when I +could go out to Elmwood. At such times I found him sitting in the room +which was formerly the drawing-room, but which had been joined with his +study by taking away the partitions beside the heavy mass of the old +colonial chimney. He told me that when he was a newborn babe, the nurse +had carried him round this chimney, for luck, and now in front of the +same hearth, the white old man stretched himself in an easy-chair, with +his writing-pad on his knees and his books on the table at his elbow, and +was willing to be entreated not to rise. I remember the sun used to come +in at the eastern windows full pour, and bathe the air in its warmth. + +He always hailed me gayly, and if I found him with letters newly come +from England, as I sometimes did, he glowed and sparkled with fresh life. +He wanted to read passages from those letters, he wanted to talk about +their writers, and to make me feel their worth and charm as he did. +He still dreamed of going back to England the next summer, but that was +not to be. One day he received me not less gayly than usual, but with a +certain excitement, and began to tell me about an odd experience he had +had, not at all painful, but which had very much mystified him. He had +since seen the doctor, and the doctor had assured him that there was +nothing alarming in what had happened, and in recalling this assurance, +he began to look at the humorous aspects of the case, and to make some +jokes about it. He wished to talk of it, as men do of their maladies, +and very fully, and I gave him such proof of my interest as even inviting +him to talk of it would convey. In spite of the doctor's assurance, +and his joyful acceptance of it, I doubt if at the bottom of his heart +there was not the stir of an uneasy misgiving; but he had not for a long +time shown himself so cheerful. + +It was the beginning of the end. He recovered and relapsed, and +recovered again; but never for long. Late in the spring I came out, +and he had me stay to dinner, which was somehow as it used to be at two +o'clock; and after dinner we went out on his lawn. He got a long-handled +spud, and tried to grub up some dandelions which he found in his turf, +but after a moment or two he threw it down, and put his hand upon his +back with a groan. I did not see him again till I came out to take leave +of him before going away for the summer, and then I found him sitting on +the little porch in a western corner of his house, with a volume of Scott +closed upon his finger. There were some other people, and our meeting +was with the constraint of their presence. It was natural in nothing so +much as his saying very significantly to me, as if he knew of my heresies +concerning Scott, and would have me know he did not approve of them, that +there was nothing he now found so much pleasure in as Scott's novels. +Another friend, equally heretical, was by, but neither of us attempted to +gainsay him. Lowell talked very little, but he told of having been a +walk to Beaver Brook, and of having wished to jump from one stone to +another in the stream, and of having had to give it up. He said, without +completing the sentence, If it had come to that with him! Then he fell +silent again; and with some vain talk of seeing him when I came back in +the fall, I went away sick at heart. I was not to see him again, and I +shall not look upon his like. + +I am aware that I have here shown him from this point and from that in a +series of sketches which perhaps collectively impart, but do not assemble +his personality in one impression. He did not, indeed, make one +impression upon me, but a thousand impressions, which I should seek in +vain to embody in a single presentment. What I have cloudily before me +is the vision of a very lofty and simple soul, perplexed, and as it were +surprised and even dismayed at the complexity of the effects from motives +so single in it, but escaping always to a clear expression of what was +noblest and loveliest in itself at the supreme moments, in the divine +exigencies. I believe neither in heroes nor in saints; but I believe in +great and good men, for I have known them, and among such men Lowell was +of the richest nature I have known. His nature was not always serene or +pellucid; it was sometimes roiled by the currents that counter and cross +in all of us; but it was without the least alloy of insincerity, and it +was never darkened by the shadow of a selfish fear. His genius was an +instrument that responded in affluent harmony to the power that made him +a humorist and that made him a poet, and appointed him rarely to be quite +either alone. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +I believe neither in heroes nor in saints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +It is well to hold one's country to her promises . . . . . . . . . . . . +Liked being with you, not for what he got, but for what he gave. . . . . + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Studies of Lowell, by W. D. Howells + diff --git a/old/whlow10.zip b/old/whlow10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..eda986c --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whlow10.zip diff --git a/old/whlow11.txt b/old/whlow11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..62c5faa --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whlow11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1525 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of Studies of Lowell, by W. D. Howells +#40 in our series by William Dean Howells + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + + + + +LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES--Studies of Lowell + +by William Dean Howells + + +STUDIES OF LOWELL + +I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge +when I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in +1860. I saw him more and more after I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; +and I now wish to record what I knew of him during the years that passed +between this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try to +paint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall +only claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do +not keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did? + + + + +I. + +It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my consular post at +Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out to see Lowell +at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him from Italy. +The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and a sand- +box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowell +thought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put the +thing in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a +pasteboard pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as +I knew the place--a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time I +suppose the inkpot continued as dry as the sand-box. + +My visit was in the heat of August, which is as fervid in Cambridge as it +can well be anywhere, and I still have a sense of his study windows +lifted to the summer night, and the crickets and grasshoppers crying in +at them from the lawns and the gardens outside. Other people went away +from Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowell +always stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for his +town. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and he must have +made me sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go with him for +a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one help him +idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work; and +no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from any +pleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always been +kind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both. + +He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shy +youth to all the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was not +much; I loved him, and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me, +but in Lowell I was always conscious of an older and closer and stricter +civilization than my own, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative +status. His democracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart, +and his denied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was so +noble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our long acquaintance +I found it well to come to open rebellion, as I more than once did, +he admitted my right of insurrection, and never resented the outbreak. +I disliked to differ with him, and perhaps he subtly felt this so much +that he would not dislike me for doing it. He even suffered being taxed +with inconsistency, and where he saw that he had not been quite just, he +would take punishment for his error, with a contrition that was sometimes +humorous and always touching. + +Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn with Italy, and he was +interested but not much encouraged by what I could tell him of the +feeling in Venice against the Austrians. He seemed to reserve a like +scepticism concerning the fine things I was hoping for the Italians in +literature, and he confessed an interest in the facts treated which in +the retrospect, I am aware, was more tolerant than participant of my +enthusiasm. That was always Lowell's attitude towards the opinions of +people he liked, when he could not go their lengths with them, and +nothing was more characteristic of his affectionate nature and his just +intelligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, but he +loved many sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with, and he +suffered even prejudices counter to his own if they were not ignoble. +In the whimsicalities of others he delighted as much as in his own. + + + + +II. + +Our associations with Italy held over until the next day, when after +breakfast he went with me towards Boston as far as "the village": for so +he liked to speak of Cambridge in the custom of his younger days when +wide tracts of meadow separated Harvard Square from his life-long home at +Elmwood. We stood on the platform of the horsecar together, and when I +objected to his paying my fare in the American fashion, he allowed that +the Italian usage of each paying for himself was the politer way. +He would not commit himself about my returning to Venice (for I had not +given up my place, yet, and was away on leave), but he intimated his +distrust of the flattering conditions of life abroad. He said it was +charming to be treated 'da signore', but he seemed to doubt whether it +was well; and in this as in all other things he showed his final fealty +to the American ideal. + +It was that serious and great moment after the successful close of the +civil war when the republican consciousness was more robust in us than +ever before or since; but I cannot recall any reference to the historical +interest of the time in Lowell's talk. It had been all about literature +and about travel; and now with the suggestion of the word village it +began to be a little about his youth. I have said before how reluctant +he was to let his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch with my +juniority had made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him +thinking of the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. +He would never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. He +told once of having been on a brief journey when he was six years old, +with his father, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood in the evening, +and his father saying, "Ah, this is a pleasant place! I wonder who +lives here--what little boy?" At another time he pointed out a certain +window in his study, and said he could see himself standing by it when he +could only get his chin on the window-sill. His memories of the house, +and of everything belonging to it, were very tender; but he could laugh +over an escapade of his youth when he helped his fellow-students pull +down his father's fences, in the pure zeal of good-comradeship. + + + + +III. + +My fortunes took me to New York, and I spent most of the winter of 1865-6 +writing in the office of 'The Nation'. I contributed several sketches of +Italian travel to that paper; and one of these brought me a precious +letter from Lowell. He praised my sketch, which he said he had read +without the least notion who had written it, and he wanted me to feel the +full value of such an impersonal pleasure in it. At the same time he did +not fail to tell me that he disliked some pseudo-cynical verses of mine +which he had read in another place; and I believe it was then that he +bade me "sweat the Heine out of" me, "as men sweat the mercury out of +their bones." + +When I was asked to be assistant editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and came +on to Boston to talk the matter over with the publishers, I went out to +Cambridge and consulted Lowell. He strongly urged me to take the +position (I thought myself hopefully placed in New York on The Nation); +and at the same time he seemed to have it on his heart to say that he had +recommended some one else for it, never, he owned, having thought of me. + +He was most cordial, but after I came to live in Cambridge (where the +magazine was printed, and I could more conveniently look over the +proofs), he did not call on me for more than a month, and seemed quite to +have forgotten me. We met one night at Mr. Norton's, for one of the +Dante readings, and he took no special notice of me till I happened to +say something that offered him a chance to give me a little humorous +snub. I was speaking of a paper in the Magazine on the "Claudian +Emissary," and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like +"Who in the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary?" "You are in +Cambridge, Mr. Howells," Lowell answered, and laughed at my confusion. +Having put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, and at parting he +said, with a light of half-mocking tenderness in his beautiful eyes, +"Goodnight, fellow-townsman." "I hardly knew we were fellow-townsmen," I +returned. He liked that, apparently, and said he had been meaning to +call upon me; and that he was coming very soon. + +He was as good as his word, and after that hardly a week of any kind of +weather passed but he mounted the steps to the door of the ugly little +house in which I lived, two miles away from him, and asked me to walk. +These walks continued, I suppose, until Lowell went abroad for a winter +in the early seventies. They took us all over Cambridge, which he knew +and loved every inch of, and led us afield through the straggling, +unhandsome outskirts, bedrabbled with squalid Irish neighborhoods, and +fraying off into marshes and salt meadows. He liked to indulge an excess +of admiration for the local landscape, and though I never heard him +profess a preference for the Charles River flats to the finest Alpine +scenery, I could well believe he would do so under provocation of a fit +listener's surprise. He had always so much of the boy in him that he +liked to tease the over-serious or over-sincere. He liked to tease and +he liked to mock, especially his juniors, if any touch of affectation, or +any little exuberance of manner gave him the chance; when he once came to +fetch me, and the young mistress of the house entered with a certain +excessive elasticity, he sprang from his seat, and minced towards her, +with a burlesque of her buoyant carriage which made her laugh. When he +had given us his heart in trust of ours, he used us like a younger +brother and sister; or like his own children. He included our children +in his affection, and he enjoyed our fondness for them as if it were +something that had come back to him from his own youth. I think he had +also a sort of artistic, a sort of ethical pleasure in it, as being of +the good tradition, of the old honest, simple material, from which +pleasing effects in literature and civilization were wrought. He liked +giving the children books, and writing tricksy fancies in these, where he +masked as a fairy prince; and as long as he lived he remembered his early +kindness for them. + + + + +IV. + +In those walks of ours I believe he did most of the talking, and from his +talk then and at other times there remains to me an impression of his +growing conservatism. I had in fact come into his life when it had spent +its impulse towards positive reform, and I was to be witness of its +increasing tendency towards the negative sort. He was quite past the +storm and stress of his anti-slavery age; with the close of the war which +had broken for him all his ideals of inviolable peace, he had reached the +age of misgiving. I do not mean that I ever heard him express doubt of +what he had helped to do, or regret for what he had done; but I know that +he viewed with critical anxiety what other men were doing with the +accomplished facts. His anxiety gave a cast of what one may call +reluctance from the political situation, and turned him back towards +those civic and social defences which he had once seemed willing to +abandon. I do not mean that he lost faith in democracy; this faith he +constantly then and signally afterwards affirmed; but he certainly had no +longer any faith in insubordination as a means of grace. He preached a +quite Socratic reverence for law, as law, and I remember that once when +I had got back from Canada in the usual disgust for the American custom- +house, and spoke lightly of smuggling as not an evil in itself, and +perhaps even a right under our vexatious tariff, he would not have it, +but held that the illegality of the act made it a moral of fence. This +was not the logic that would have justified the attitude of the anti- +slavery men towards the fugitive slave act; but it was in accord with +Lowell's feeling about John Brown, whom he honored while always +condemning his violation of law; and it was in the line of all his later +thinking. In this, he wished you to agree with him, or at least he +wished to make you; but he did not wish you to be more of his mind than +he was himself. In one of those squalid Irish neighborhoods I confessed +a grudge (a mean and cruel grudge, I now think it) for the increasing +presence of that race among us, but this did not please him; and I am +sure that whatever misgiving he had as to the future of America, he would +not have had it less than it had been the refuge and opportunity of the +poor of any race or color. Yet he would not have had it this alone. +There was a line in his poem on Agassiz which he left out of the printed +version, at the fervent entreaty of his friends, as saying too bitterly +his disappointment with his country. Writing at the distance of Europe, +and with America in the perspective which the alien environment clouded, +he spoke of her as "The Land of Broken Promise." It was a splendid +reproach, but perhaps too dramatic to bear the full test of analysis, +and yet it had the truth in it, and might, I think, have usefully stood, +to the end of making people think. Undoubtedly it expressed his sense of +the case, and in the same measure it would now express that of many who +love their country most among us. It is well to hold one's country to +her promises, and if there are any who think she is forgetting them it is +their duty to say so, even to the point of bitter accusation. I do not +suppose it was the "common man" of Lincoln's dream that Lowell thought +America was unfaithful to, though as I have suggested he could be tender +of the common man's hopes in her; but he was impeaching in that blotted +line her sincerity with the uncommon man: the man who had expected of her +a constancy to the ideals of her youth end to the high martyr-moods of +the war which had given an unguarded and bewildering freedom to a race of +slaves. He was thinking of the shame of our municipal corruptions, the +debased quality of our national statesmanship, the decadence of our whole +civic tone, rather than of the increasing disabilities of the hard- +working poor, though his heart when he thought of them was with them, +too, as it was in "the time when the slave would not let him sleep." + +He spoke very rarely of those times, perhaps because their political and +social associations were so knit up with the saddest and tenderest +personal memories, which it was still anguish to touch. Not only was he + + "--not of the race + That hawk, their sorrows in the market place," + +but so far as my witness went he shrank from mention of them. I do not +remember hearing him speak of the young wife who influenced him so +potently at the most vital moment, and turned him from his whole +scholarly and aristocratic tradition to an impassioned championship of +the oppressed; and he never spoke of the children he had lost. I recall +but one allusion to the days when he was fighting the anti-slavery battle +along the whole line, and this was with a humorous relish of his Irish +servant's disgust in having to wait upon a negro whom he had asked to his +table. + +He was rather severe in his notions of the subordination his domestics +owed him. They were "to do as they were bid," and yet he had a +tenderness for such as had been any time with him, which was wounded when +once a hired man long in his employ greedily overreached him in a certain +transaction. He complained of that with a simple grief for the man's +indelicacy after so many favors from him, rather than with any +resentment. His hauteur towards his dependents was theoretic; his actual +behavior was of the gentle consideration common among Americans of good +breeding, and that recreant hired man had no doubt never been suffered to +exceed him in shows of mutual politeness. Often when the maid was about +weightier matters, he came and opened his door to me himself, welcoming +me with the smile that was like no other. Sometimes he said, "Siete il +benvenuto," or used some other Italian phrase, which put me at ease with +him in the region where we were most at home together. + +Looking back I must confess that I do not see what it was he found to +make him wish for my company, which he presently insisted upon having +once a week at dinner. After the meal we turned into his study where we +sat before a wood fire in winter, and he smoked and talked. He smoked a +pipe which was always needing tobacco, or going out, so that I have the +figure of him before my eyes constantly getting out of his deep chair to +rekindle it from the fire with a paper lighter. He was often out of his +chair to get a book from the shelves that lined the walls, either for a +passage which he wished to read, or for some disputed point which he +wished to settle. If I had caused the dispute, he enjoyed putting me in +the wrong; if he could not, he sometimes whimsically persisted in his +error, in defiance of all authority; but mostly he had such reverence for +the truth that he would not question it even in jest. + +If I dropped in upon him in the afternoon I was apt to find him reading +the old French poets, or the plays of Calderon, or the 'Divina Commedia', +which he magnanimously supposed me much better acquainted with than I was +because I knew some passages of it by heart. One day I came in quoting + + "Io son, cantava, io son dolce Sirena, + Che i marinai in mezzo al mar dismago." + +He stared at me in a rapture with the matchless music, and then uttered +all his adoration and despair in one word. "Damn!" he said, and no more. +I believe he instantly proposed a walk that day, as if his study walls +with all their vistas into the great literatures cramped his soul +liberated to a sense of ineffable beauty of the verse of the 'somma +poeta'. But commonly be preferred to have me sit down with him there +among the mute witnesses of the larger part of his life. As I have +suggested in my own case, it did not matter much whether you brought +anything to the feast or not. If he liked you he liked being with you, +not for what he got, but for what he gave. He was fond of one man whom I +recall as the most silent man I ever met. I never heard him say +anything, not even a dull thing, but Lowell delighted in him, and would +have you believe that he was full of quaint humor. + + + + +V. + +While Lowell lived there was a superstition, which has perhaps survived +him, that he was an indolent man, wasting himself in barren studies and +minor efforts instead of devoting his great powers to some monumental +work worthy of them. If the robust body of literature, both poetry and +prose, which lives after him does not yet correct this vain delusion, the +time will come when it must; and in the meantime the delusion cannot vex +him now. I think it did vex him, then, and that he even shared it, and +tried at times to meet such shadowy claim as it had. One of the things +that people urged upon him was to write some sort of story, and it is +known how he attempted this in verse. It is less known that he attempted +it in prose, and that he went so far as to write the first chapter of a +novel. He read this to me, and though I praised it then, I have a +feeling now that if he had finished the novel it would have been a +failure. "But I shall never finish it," he sighed, as if he felt +irremediable defects in it, and laid the manuscript away, to turn and +light his pipe. It was a rather old-fashioned study of a whimsical +character, and it did not arrive anywhere, so far as it went; but I +believe that it might have been different with a Yankee story in verse +such as we have fragmentarily in 'The Nooning' and 'FitzAdam's Story'. +Still, his gift was essentially lyrical and meditative, with the +universal New England tendency to allegory. He was wholly undramatic in +the actuation of the characters which he imagined so dramatically. He +liked to deal with his subject at first hand, to indulge through himself +all the whim and fancy which the more dramatic talent indulges through +its personages. + +He enjoyed writing such a poem as "The Cathedral," which is not of his +best, but which is more immediately himself, in all his moods, than some +better poems. He read it to me soon after it was written, and in the +long walk which we went hard upon the reading (our way led us through the +Port far towards East Cambridge, where he wished to show me a tupelo-tree +of his acquaintance, because I said I had never seen one), his talk was +still of the poem which he was greatly in conceit of. Later his +satisfaction with it received a check from the reserves of other friends +concerning some whimsical lines which seemed to them too great a drop +from the higher moods of the piece. Their reluctance nettled him; +perhaps he agreed with them; but he would not change the lines, and they +stand as he first wrote them. In fact, most of his lines stand as he +first wrote them; he would often change them in revision, and then, in a +second revision go back to the first version. + +He was very sensitive to criticism, especially from those he valued +through his head or heart. He would try to hide his hurt, and he would +not let you speak of it, as though your sympathy unmanned him, but you +could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my remembrance from +a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed; and once when in a +notice of my own I had put one little thorny point among the flowers, he +confessed a puncture from it. He praised the criticism hardily, but I +knew that he winced under my recognition of the didactic quality which he +had not quite guarded himself against in the poetry otherwise praised. +He liked your liking, and he openly rejoiced in it; and I suppose he made +himself believe that in trying his verse with his friends he was testing +it; but I do not believe that he was, and I do not think he ever +corrected his judgment by theirs, however he suffered from it. + +In any matter that concerned literary morals he was more than eager to +profit by another eye. One summer he sent me for the Magazine a poem +which, when I read it, I trembled to find in motive almost exactly like +one we had lately printed by another contributor. There was nothing for +it but to call his attention to the resemblance, and I went over to +Elmwood with the two poems. He was not at home, and I was obliged to +leave the poems, I suppose with some sort of note, for the next morning's +post brought me a delicious letter from him, all one cry of confession, +the most complete, the most ample. He did not trouble himself to say +that his poem was an unconscious reproduction of the other; that was for +every reason unnecessary, but he had at once rewritten it upon wholly +different lines; and I do not think any reader was reminded of Mrs. +Akers's "Among the Laurels" by Lowell's "Foot-path." He was not only +much more sensitive of others' rights than his own, but in spite of a +certain severity in him, he was most tenderly regardful of their +sensibilities when he had imagined them: he did not always imagine them. + + + + +VI. + +At this period, between the years 1866 and 1874, when he unwillingly went +abroad for a twelvemonth, Lowell was seen in very few Cambridge houses, +and in still fewer Boston houses. He was not an unsocial man, but he was +most distinctly not a society man. He loved chiefly the companionship of +books, and of men who loved books; but of women generally he had an +amusing diffidence; he revered them and honored them, but he would rather +not have had them about. This is over-saying it, of course, but the +truth is in what I say. There was never a more devoted husband, and he +was content to let his devotion to the sex end with that. He especially +could not abide difference of opinion in women; he valued their taste, +their wit, their humor, but he would have none of their reason. I was by +one day when he was arguing a point with one of his nieces, and after it +had gone on for some time, and the impartial witness must have owned that +she was getting the better of him he closed the controversy by giving her +a great kiss, with the words, "You are a very good girl, my dear," and +practically putting her out of the room. As to women of the flirtatious +type, he did not dislike them; no man, perhaps, does; but he feared them, +and he said that with them there was but one way, and that was to run. + +I have a notion that at this period Lowell was more freely and fully +himself than at any other. The passions and impulses of his younger +manhood had mellowed, the sorrows of that time had softened; he could +blamelessly live to himself in his affections and his sobered ideals. +His was always a duteous life; but he had pretty well given up making man +over in his own image, as we all wish some time to do, and then no longer +wish it. He fulfilled his obligations to his fellow-men as these sought +him out, but he had ceased to seek them. He loved his friends and their +love, but he had apparently no desire to enlarge their circle. It was +that hour of civic suspense, in which public men seemed still actuated by +unselfish aims, and one not essentially a politician might contentedly +wait to see what would come of their doing their best. At any rate, +without occasionally withholding open criticism or acclaim Lowell waited +among his books for the wounds of the war to heal themselves, and the +nation to begin her healthfuller and nobler life. With slavery gone, +what might not one expect of American democracy! + +His life at Elmwood was of an entire simplicity. In the old colonial +mansion in which he was born, he dwelt in the embowering leafage, amid +the quiet of lawns and garden-plots broken by few noises ruder than those +from the elms and the syringas where + + "The oriole clattered and the cat-bird sang." + +From the tracks on Brattle Street, came the drowsy tinkle of horse-car +bells; and sometimes a funeral trailed its black length past the corner +of his grounds, and lost itself from sight under the shadows of the +willows that hid Mount Auburn from his study windows. In the winter the +deep New England snows kept their purity in the stretch of meadow behind +the house, which a double row of pines guarded in a domestic privacy. +All was of a modest dignity within and without the house, which Lowell +loved but did not imagine of a manorial presence; and he could not +conceal his annoyance with an over-enthusiastic account of his home in +which the simple chiselling of some panels was vaunted as rich wood- +carving. There was a graceful staircase, and a good wide hall, from +which the dining-room and drawing-room opened by opposite doors; behind +the last, in the southwest corner of the house, was his study. + +There, literally, he lived during the six or seven years in which I knew +him after my coming to Cambridge. Summer and winter he sat there among +his books, seldom stirring abroad by day except for a walk, and by night +yet more rarely. He went to the monthly mid-day dinner of the Saturday +Club in Boston; he was very constant at the fortnightly meetings of his +whist-club, because he loved the old friends who formed it; he came +always to the Dante suppers at Longfellow's, and he was familiarly in and +out at Mr. Norton's, of course. But, otherwise, he kept to his study, +except for some rare and almost unwilling absences upon university +lecturing at Johns Hopkins or at Cornell. + +For four years I did not take any summer outing from Cambridge myself, +and my associations with Elmwood and with Lowell are more of summer than +of winter weather meetings. But often we went our walks through the +snows, trudging along between the horsecar tracks which enclosed the only +well-broken-out paths in that simple old Cambridge. I date one memorable +expression of his from such a walk, when, as we were passing Longfellow's +house, in mid-street, he came as near the declaration of his religious +faith as he ever did in my presence. He was speaking of the New +Testament, and he said, The truth was in it; but they had covered it up +with their hagiology. Though he had been bred a Unitarian, and had more +and more liberated himself from all creeds, he humorously affected an +abiding belief in hell, and similarly contended for the eternal +punishment of the wicked. He was of a religious nature, and he was very +reverent of other people's religious feelings. He expressed a special +tolerance for my own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was +also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I +suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems +are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling +providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will +repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the +strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years +of his life, I asked him if he believed there was a moral government of +the universe, he answered gravely and with a sort of pain, The scale was +so vast, and we saw such a little part of it. + +As to tine notion of a life after death, I never had any direct or +indirect expression from him; but I incline to the opinion that his hold +upon this weakened with his years, as it is sadly apt to do with men who +have read much and thought much: they have apparently exhausted their +potentialities of psychological life. Mystical Lowell was, as every poet +must be, but I do not think he liked mystery. One morning he told me +that when he came home the night before he had seen the Doppelganger of +one of his household: though, as he joked, he was not in a state to see +double. + +He then said he used often to see people's Doppelganger; at another time, +as to ghosts, he said, He was like Coleridge: he had seen too many of +'em. Lest any weaker brethren should be caused to offend by the +restricted oath which I have reported him using in a moment of transport +it may be best to note here that I never heard him use any other +imprecation, and this one seldom. + +Any grossness of speech was inconceivable of him; now and then, but only +very rarely, the human nature of some story "unmeet for ladies" was too +much for his sense of humor, and overcame him with amusement which he was +willing to impart, and did impart, but so that mainly the human nature of +it reached you. In this he was like the other great Cambridge men, +though he was opener than the others to contact with the commoner life. +He keenly delighted in every native and novel turn of phrase, and he +would not undervalue a vital word or a notion picked up out of the road +even if it had some dirt sticking to it. + +He kept as close to the common life as a man of his patrician instincts +and cloistered habits could. I could go to him with any new find about +it and be sure of delighting him; after I began making my involuntary and +all but unconscious studies of Yankee character, especially in the +country, he was always glad to talk them over with me. Still, when I had +discovered a new accent or turn of speech in the fields he had +cultivated, I was aware of a subtle grudge mingling with his pleasure; +but this was after all less envy than a fine regret. + +At the time I speak of there was certainly nothing in Lowell's dress or +bearing that would have kept the common life aloof from him, if that life +were not always too proud to make advances to any one. In this +retrospect, I see him in the sack coat and rough suit which he wore upon +all out-door occasions, with heavy shoes, and a round hat. I never saw +him with a high hat on till he came home after his diplomatic stay in +London; then he had become rather rigorously correct in his costume, and +as conventional as he had formerly been indifferent. In both epochs he +was apt to be gloved, and the strong, broad hands, which left the +sensation of their vigor for some time after they had clasped yours, +were notably white. At the earlier period, he still wore his auburn hair +somewhat long; it was darker than his beard, which was branching and +full, and more straw-colored than auburn, as were his thick eyebrows; +neither hair nor beard was then touched with gray, as I now remember. +When he uncovered, his straight, wide, white forehead showed itself one +of the most beautiful that could be; his eyes were gay with humor, and +alert with all intelligence. He had an enchanting smile, a laugh that +was full of friendly joyousness, and a voice that was exquisite music. +Everything about him expressed his strenuous physical condition: he would +not wear an overcoat in the coldest Cambridge weather; at all times he +moved vigorously, and walked with a quick step, lifting his feet well +from the ground. + + + + +VII. + +It gives me a pleasure which I am afraid I cannot impart, to linger in +this effort to materialize his presence from the fading memories of the +past. I am afraid I can as little impart a due sense of what he +spiritually was to my knowledge. It avails nothing for me to say that +I think no man of my years and desert had ever so true and constant a +friend. He was both younger and older than I by insomuch as he was a +poet through and through, and had been out of college before I was born. +But he had already come to the age of self-distrust when a man likes to +take counsel with his juniors as with his elders, and fancies he can +correct his perspective by the test of their fresher vision. Besides, +Lowell was most simply and pathetically reluctant to part with youth, +and was willing to cling to it wherever he found it. He could not in any +wise bear to be left-out. When Mr. Bret Harte came to Cambridge, and the +talk was all of the brilliant character-poems with which he had then +first dazzled the world, Lowell casually said, with a most touching, +however ungrounded sense of obsolescence, He could remember when the +'Biglow Papers' were all the talk. I need not declare that there was +nothing ungenerous in that. He was only too ready to hand down his +laurels to a younger man; but he wished to do it himself. Through the +modesty that is always a quality of such a nature, he was magnanimously +sensitive to the appearance of fading interest; he could not take it +otherwise than as a proof of his fading power. I had a curious hint of +this when one year in making up the prospectus of the Magazine for the +next, I omitted his name because I had nothing special to promise from +him, and because I was half ashamed to be always flourishing it in the +eyes of the public. "I see that you have dropped me this year," he +wrote, and I could see that it had hurt, and I knew that he was glad to +believe the truth when I told him. + +He did not care so much for popularity as for the praise of his friends. +If he liked you he wished you not only to like what he wrote, but to say +so. He was himself most cordial in his recognition of the things that +pleased him. What happened to me from him, happened to others, and I am +only describing his common habit when I say that nothing I did to his +liking failed to bring me a spoken or oftener a written acknowledgment. +This continued to the latest years of his life when the effort even to +give such pleasure must have cost him a physical pang. + +He was of a very catholic taste; and he was apt to be carried away by a +little touch of life or humor, and to overvalue the piece in which he +found it; but, mainly his judgments of letters and men were just. +One of the dangers of scholarship was a peculiar danger in the Cambridge +keeping, but Lowell was almost as averse as Longfellow from contempt. +He could snub, and pitilessly, where he thought there was presumption and +apparently sometimes merely because he was in the mood; but I cannot +remember ever to have heard him sneer. He was often wonderfully patient +of tiresome people, and sometimes celestially insensible to vulgarity. +In spite of his reserve, he really wished people to like him; he was +keenly alive to neighborly good-will or ill-will; and when there was a +question of widening Elmwood avenue by taking part of his grounds, he was +keenly hurt by hearing that some one who lived near him had said he hoped +the city would cut down Lowell's elms: his English elms, which his father +had planted, and with which he was himself almost one blood! + + + + +VIII. + +In the period of which I am speaking, Lowell was constantly writing and +pretty constantly printing, though still the superstition held that he +was an idle man. To this time belongs the publication of some of his +finest poems, if not their inception: there were cases in which their +inception dated far back, even to ten or twenty years. He wrote his +poems at a heat, and the manuscript which came to me for the magazine was +usually the first draft, very little corrected. But if the cold fit took +him quickly it might hold him so fast that he would leave the poem in +abeyance till he could slowly live back to a liking for it. + +The most of his best prose belongs to the time between 1866 and 1874, and +to this time we owe the several volumes of essays and criticisms called +'Among My Books' and 'My Study Windows'. He wished to name these more +soberly, but at the urgence of his publishers he gave them titles which +they thought would be attractive to the public, though he felt that they +took from the dignity of his work. He was not a good business man in a +literary way, he submitted to others' judgment in all such matters. +I doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he +was usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but +sometimes if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, +without reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in +the Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal +handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him, +and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had +done their part. He held up four fingers, "Quattro," he said in Italian, +and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, +"I thought they might have made it cinque." + +Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in +mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure +to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that +he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of +getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the +payment to me. "It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a +watch." + +I do not believe at any time Lowell was able to deal with money + + "Like wealthy men, not knowing what they give." + +more probably he felt a sacredness in the money got by literature, which +the literary man never quite rids him self of, even when he is not a +poet, and which made him wish to dedicate it to something finer than the +every day uses. He lived very quietly, but he had by no means more than +he needed to live upon, and at that time he had pecuniary losses. He was +writing hard, and was doing full work in his Harvard professorship, and +he was so far dependent upon his salary, that he felt its absence for the +year he went abroad. I do not know quite how to express my sense of +something unworldly, of something almost womanlike in his relation to +money. + +He was not only generous of money, but he was generous of himself, when +he thought he could be of use, or merely of encouragement. He came all +the way into Boston to hear certain lectures of mine on the Italian +poets, which he could not have found either edifying or amusing, that he +might testify his interest in me, and show other people that they were +worth coming to. He would go carefully over a poem with me, word by +word, and criticise every turn of phrase, and after all be magnanimously +tolerant of my sticking to phrasings that he disliked. In a certain line + + "The silvern chords of the piano trembled," + +he objected to silvern. Why not silver? I alleged leathern, golden, and +like adjectives in defence of my word; but still he found an affectation +in it, and suffered it to stand with extreme reluctance. Another line of +another piece: + + "And what she would, would rather that she would not" + +he would by no means suffer. He said that the stress falling on the last +word made it "public-school English," and he mocked it with the answer a +maid had lately given him when he asked if the master of the house was at +home. She said, "No, sir, he is not," when she ought to have said "No, +sir, he isn't." He was appeased when I came back the next day with the +stanza amended so that the verse could read: + + "And what she would, would rather she would not so" + +but I fancy he never quite forgave my word silvern. Yet, he professed +not to have prejudices in such matters, but to use any word that would +serve his turn, without wincing; and he certainly did use and defend +words, as undisprivacied and disnatured, that made others wince. + +He was otherwise such a stickler for the best diction that he would not +have had me use slovenly vernacular even in the dialogue in my stories: +my characters must not say they wanted to do so and so, but wished, and +the like. In a copy of one of my books which I found him reading, I saw +he had corrected my erring Western woulds and shoulds; as he grew old he +was less and less able to restrain himself from setting people right to +their faces. Once, in the vast area of my ignorance, he specified my +small acquaintance with a certain period of English poetry, saying, +"You're rather shady, there, old fellow." But he would not have had me +too learned, holding that he had himself been hurt for literature by his +scholarship. + +His patience in analyzing my work with me might have been the easy effort +of his habit of teaching; and his willingness to give himself and his own +was no doubt more signally attested in his asking a brother man of +letters who wished to work up a subject in the college library, to stay a +fortnight in his house, and to share his study, his beloved study, with +him. This must truly have cost him dear, as any author of fixed habits +will understand. Happily the man of letters was a good fellow, and knew +how to prize the favor-done him, but if he had been otherwise, it would +have been the same to Lowell. He not only endured, but did many things +for the weaker brethren, which were amusing enough to one in the secret +of his inward revolt. Yet in these things he was considerate also of the +editor whom he might have made the sharer of his self-sacrifice, and he +seldom offered me manuscripts for others. The only real burden of the +kind that he put upon me was the diary of a Virginian who had travelled +in New England during the early thirties, and had set down his +impressions of men and manners there. It began charmingly, and went on +very well under Lowell's discreet pruning, but after a while he seemed to +fall in love with the character of the diarist so much that he could not +bear to cut anything. + + + +IX. + +He had a great tenderness for the broken and ruined South, whose sins he +felt that he had had his share in visiting upon her, and he was willing +to do what he could to ease her sorrows in the case of any particular +Southerner. He could not help looking askance upon the dramatic shows of +retribution which some of the Northern politicians were working, but with +all his misgivings he continued to act with the Republican party until +after the election of Hayes; he was away from the country during the +Garfield campaign. He was in fact one of the Massachusetts electors +chosen by the Republican majority in 1816, and in that most painful hour +when there was question of the policy and justice of counting Hayes in +for the presidency, it was suggested by some of Lowell's friends that he +should use the original right of the electors under the constitution, +and vote for Tilden, whom one vote would have chosen president over +Hayes. After he had cast his vote for Hayes, he quietly referred to the +matter one day, in the moment of lighting his pipe, with perhaps the +faintest trace of indignation in his tone. He said that whatever the +first intent of the constitution was, usage had made the presidential +electors strictly the instruments of the party which chose them, and that +for him to have voted for Tilden when he had been chosen to vote for +Hayes would have-been an act of bad faith. + +He would have resumed for me all the old kindness of our relations before +the recent year of his absence, but this had inevitably worked a little +estrangement. He had at least lost the habit of me, and that says much +in such matters. He was not so perfectly at rest in the Cambridge +environment; in certain indefinable ways it did not so entirely suffice +him, though he would have been then and always the last to allow this. +I imagine his friends realized more than he, that certain delicate but +vital filaments of attachment had frayed and parted in alien air, and +left him heart-loose as he had not been before. + +I do not know whether it crossed his mind after the election of Hayes +that he might be offered some place abroad, but it certainly crossed the +minds of some of his friends, and I could not feel that I was acting for +myself alone when I used a family connection with the President, very +early in his term, to let him know that I believed Lowell would accept a +diplomatic mission. I could assure him that I was writing wholly without +Lowell's privity or authority, and I got back such a letter as I could +wish in its delicate sense of the situation. The President said that he +had already thought of offering Lowell something, and he gave me the +pleasure, a pleasure beyond any other I could imagine, of asking Lowell +whether he would accept the mission to Austria. I lost no time carrying +his letter to Elmwood, where I found Lowell over his coffee at dinner. +He saw me at the threshold, and called to me through the open door to +come in, and I handed him the letter, and sat down at table while he ran +it through. When he had read it, he gave a quick "Ah!" and threw it +over the length of the table to Mrs. Lowell. She read it in a smiling +and loyal reticence, as if she would not say one word of all she might +wish to say in urging his acceptance, though I could see that she was +intensely eager for it. The whole situation was of a perfect New England +character in its tacit significance; after Lowell had taken his coffee we +turned into his study without further allusion to the matter. + +A day or two later he came to my house to say that he could not accept +the Austrian mission, and to ask me to tell the President so for him, and +make his acknowledgments, which he would also write himself. He remained +talking a little while of other things, and when he rose to go, he said +with a sigh of vague reluctance, "I should like to see a play of +Calderon," as if it had nothing to do with any wish of his that could +still be fulfilled. "Upon this hint I acted," and in due time it was +found in Washington, that the gentleman who had been offered the Spanish +mission would as lief go to Austria, and Lowell was sent to Madrid. + + + + +X. + +When we met in London, some years later, he came almost every afternoon +to my lodging, and the story of our old-time Cambridge walks began again +in London phrases. There were not the vacant lots and outlying fields of +his native place, but we made shift with the vast, simple parks, and we +walked on the grass as we could not have done in an American park, and +were glad to feel the earth under our feet. I said how much it was like +those earlier tramps; and that pleased him, for he wished, whenever a +thing delighted him, to find a Cambridge quality in it. + +But he was in love with everything English, and was determined I should +be so too, beginning with the English weather, which in summer cannot be +overpraised. He carried, of course, an umbrella, but he would not put it +up in the light showers that caught us at times, saying that the English +rain never wetted you. The thick short turf delighted him; he would +scarcely allow that the trees were the worse for foliage blighted by a +vile easterly storm in the spring of that year. The tender air, the +delicate veils that the moisture in it cast about all objects at the +least remove, the soft colors of the flowers, the dull blue of the low +sky showing through the rifts of the dirty white clouds, the hovering +pall of London smoke, were all dear to him, and he was anxious that I +should not lose anything of their charm. + +He was anxious that I should not miss the value of anything in England, +and while he volunteered that the aristocracy had the corruptions of +aristocracies everywhere, he insisted upon my respectful interest in it +because it was so historical. Perhaps there was a touch of irony in this +demand, but it is certain that he was very happy in England. He had come +of the age when a man likes smooth, warm keeping, in which he need make +no struggle for his comfort; disciplined and obsequious service; society, +perfectly ascertained within the larger society which we call +civilization; and in an alien environment, for which he was in no wise +responsible, he could have these without a pang of the self-reproach +which at home makes a man unhappy amidst his luxuries, when he considers +their cost to others. He had a position which forbade thought of +unfairness in the conditions; he must not wake because of the slave, it +was his duty to sleep. Besides, at that time Lowell needed all the rest +he could get, for he had lately passed through trials such as break the +strength of men, and how them with premature age. He was living alone in +his little house in Lowndes Square, and Mrs. Lowell was in the country, +slowly recovering from the effects of the terrible typhus which she had +barely survived in Madrid. He was yet so near the anguish of that +experience that he told me he had still in his nerves the expectation of +a certain agonized cry from her which used to rend them. But he said he +had adjusted himself to this, and he went on to speak with a patience +which was more affecting in him than in men of more phlegmatic +temperament, of how we were able to adjust ourselves to all our trials +and to the constant presence of pain. He said he was never free of a +certain distress, which was often a sharp pang, in one of his shoulders, +but his physique had established such relations with it that, though he +was never unconscious of it, he was able to endure it without a +recognition of it as suffering. + +He seemed to me, however, very well, and at his age of sixty-three, I +could not see that he was less alert and vigorous than he was when I +first knew him in Cambridge. He had the same brisk, light step, and +though his beard was well whitened and his auburn hair had grown ashen +through the red, his face had the freshness and his eyes the clearness of +a young man's. I suppose the novelty of his life kept him from thinking +about his years; or perhaps in contact with those great, insenescent +Englishmen, he could not feel himself old. At any rate he did not once +speak of age, as he used to do ten years earlier, and I, then half +through my forties, was still "You young dog" to him. It was a bright +and cheerful renewal of the early kindliness between us, on which indeed +there had never been a shadow, except such as distance throws. He wished +apparently to do everything he could to assure us of his personal +interest; and we were amused to find him nervously apprehensive of any +purpose, such as was far from us, to profit by him officially. He +betrayed a distinct relief when he found we were not going to come upon +him even for admissions to the houses of parliament, which we were to see +by means of an English acquaintance. He had not perhaps found some other +fellow-citizens so considerate; he dreaded the half-duties of his place, +like presentations to the queen, and complained of the cheap ambitions he +had to gratify in that way. + +He was so eager to have me like England in every way, and seemed so fond +of the English, that I thought it best to ask him whether he minded my +quoting, in a paper about Lexington, which I was just then going to print +in a London magazine, some humorous lines of his expressing the mounting +satisfaction of an imaginary Yankee story-teller who has the old fight +terminate in Lord Percy's coming + + "To hammer stone for life in Concord jail." + +It had occurred to me that it might possibly embarrass him to have this +patriotic picture presented to a public which could not take our Fourth +of July pleasure in it, and I offered to suppress it, as I did afterwards +quite for literary reasons. He said, No, let it stand, and let them make +the worst of it; and I fancy that much of his success with a people who +are not gingerly with other people's sensibilities came from the +frankness with which he trampled on their prejudice when he chose. +He said he always told them, when there was question of such things, +that the best society he had ever known was in Cambridge, Massachusetts. +He contended that the best English was spoken there; and so it was, when +he spoke it. + +We were in London out of the season, and he was sorry that he could not +have me meet some titles who he declared had found pleasure in my books; +when we returned from Italy in the following June, he was prompt to do me +this honor. I dare say he wished me to feel it to its last implication, +and I did my best, but there was nothing in the evening I enjoyed so much +as his coming up to Mrs. Lowell, at the close, when there was only a +title or two left, and saying to her as he would have said to her at +Elmwood, where she would have personally planned it, "Fanny, that was a +fine dinner you gave us." Of course, this was in a tender burlesque; +but it remains the supreme impression of what seemed to me a cloudlessly +happy period for Lowell. His wife was quite recovered of her long +suffering, and was again at the head of his house, sharing in his +pleasures, and enjoying his successes for his sake; successes so great +that people spoke of him seriously, as "an addition to society" in +London, where one man more or less seemed like a drop in the sea. +She was a woman perfectly of the New England type and tradition: almost +repellantly shy at first, and almost glacially cold with new +acquaintance, but afterwards very sweet and cordial. She was of a dark +beauty with a regular face of the Spanish outline; Lowell was of an ideal +manner towards her, and of an admiration which delicately travestied +itself and which she knew how to receive with smiling irony. After her +death, which occurred while he was still in England, he never spoke of +her to me, though before that he used to be always bringing her name in, +with a young lover-like fondness. + + + + +XI. + +In the hurry of the London season I did not see so much of Lowell on our +second sojourn as on our first, but once when we were alone in his study +there was a return to the terms of the old meetings in Cambridge. He +smoked his pipe, and sat by his fire and philosophized; and but for the +great London sea swirling outside and bursting through our shelter, and +dashing him with notes that must be instantly answered, it was a very +fair image of the past. He wanted to tell me about his coachman whom he +had got at on his human side with great liking and amusement, and there +was a patient gentleness in his manner with the footman who had to keep +coming in upon him with those notes which was like the echo of his young +faith in the equality of men. But he always distinguished between the +simple unconscious equality of the ordinary American and its assumption +by a foreigner. He said he did not mind such an American's coming into +his house with his hat on; but if a German or Englishman did it, he +wanted to knock it off. He was apt to be rather punctilious in his shows +of deference towards others, and at one time he practised removing his +own hat when he went into shops in Cambridge. It must have mystified the +Cambridge salesmen, and I doubt if he kept it up. + +With reference to the doctrine of his young poetry, the fierce and the +tender humanity of his storm and stress period, I fancy a kind of baffle +in Lowell, which I should not perhaps find it easy to prove. I never +knew him by word or hint to renounce this doctrine, but he could not come +to seventy years without having seen many high hopes fade, and known many +inspired prophecies fail. When we have done our best to make the world +over, we are apt to be dismayed by finding it in much the old shape. +As he said of the moral government of the universe, the scale is so vast, +and a little difference, a little change for the better, is scarcely +perceptible to the eager consciousness of the wholesale reformer. +But with whatever sense of disappointment, of doubt as to his own deeds +for truer freedom and for better conditions I believe his sympathy was +still with those who had some heart for hoping and striving. I am sure +that though he did not agree with me in some of my own later notions for +the redemption of the race, he did not like me the less but rather the +more because (to my own great surprise I confess) I had now and then the +courage of my convictions, both literary and social. + +He was probably most at odds with me in regard to my theories of fiction, +though he persisted in declaring his pleasure in my own fiction. He was +in fact, by nature and tradition, thoroughly romantic, and he could not +or would not suffer realism in any but a friend. He steadfastly refused +even to read the Russian masters, to his immense loss, as I tried to +persuade him, and even among the modern Spaniards, for whom he might have +had a sort of personal kindness from his love of Cervantes, he chose one +for his praise the least worthy, of it, and bore me down with his heavier +metal in argument when I opposed to Alarcon's factitiousness the +delightful genuineness of Valdes. Ibsen, with all the Norwegians, he put +far from him; he would no more know them than the Russians; the French +naturalists he abhorred. I thought him all wrong, but you do not try +improving your elders when they have come to three score and ten years, +and I would rather have had his affection unbroken by our difference of +opinion than a perfect agreement. Where he even imagined that this +difference could work me harm, he was anxious to have me know that he +meant me none; and he was at the trouble to write me a letter when a +Boston paper had perverted its report of what he said in a public lecture +to my disadvantage, and to assure me that he had not me in mind. When +once he had given his liking, he could not bear that any shadow of change +should seem to have come upon him. He had a most beautiful and endearing +ideal of friendship; he desired to affirm it and to reaffirm it as often +as occasion offered, and if occasion did not offer, he made occasion. +It did not matter what you said or did that contraried him; if he thought +he had essentially divined you, you were still the same: and on his part +he was by no means exacting of equal demonstration, but seemed not even +to wish it. + + + + +XII. + +After he was replaced at London by a minister more immediately +representative of the Democratic administration, he came home. He made a +brave show of not caring to have remained away, but in truth he had +become very fond of England, where he had made so many friends, and where +the distinction he had, in that comfortably padded environment, was so +agreeable to him. + +It would have been like him to have secretly hoped that the new President +might keep him in London, but he never betrayed any ignoble +disappointment, and he would not join in any blame of him. At our first +meeting after he came home he spoke of the movement which had made Mr. +Cleveland president, and said he supposed that if he had been here, +he should have been in it. All his friends were, he added, a little +helplessly; but he seemed not to dislike my saying I knew one of his +friends who was not: in fact, as I have told, he never disliked a plump +difference--unless he disliked the differer. + +For several years he went back to England every summer, and it was not +until he took up his abode at Elmwood again that he spent a whole year at +home. One winter he passed at his sister's home in Boston, but mostly he +lived with his daughter at Southborough. I have heard a story of his +going to Elmwood soon after his return in 1885, and sitting down in his +old study, where he declared with tears that the place was full of +ghosts. But four or five years later it was well for family reasons that +he should live there; and about the same time it happened that I had +taken a house for the summer in his neighborhood. He came to see me, +and to assure me, in all tacit forms of his sympathy in a sorrow for +which there could be no help; but it was not possible that the old +intimate relations should be resumed. The affection was there, as much +on his side as on mine, I believe; but he was now an old man and I was an +elderly man, and we could not, without insincerity, approach each other +in the things that had drawn us together in earlier and happier years. +His course was run; my own, in which he had taken such a generous +pleasure, could scarcely move his jaded interest. His life, so far as it +remained to him, had renewed itself in other air; the later friendships +beyond seas sufficed him, and were without the pang, without the effort +that must attend the knitting up of frayed ties here. + +He could never have been anything but American, if he had tried, and he +certainly never tried; but he certainly did not return to the outward +simplicities of his life as I first knew it. There was no more round- +hat-and-sack-coat business for him; he wore a frock and a high hat, and +whatever else was rather like London than Cambridge; I do not know but +drab gaiters sometimes added to the effect of a gentleman of the old +school which he now produced upon the witness. Some fastidiousnesses +showed themselves in him, which were not so surprising. He complained of +the American lower class manner; the conductor and cabman would be kind +to you but they would not be respectful, and he could not see the fun of +this in the old way. Early in our acquaintance he rather stupified me by +saying, "I like you because you don't put your hands on me," and I heard +of his consenting to some sort of reception in those last years, "Yes, +if they won't shake hands." + +Ever since his visit to Rome in 1875 he had let his heavy mustache grow +long till it dropped below the corners of his beard, which was now almost +white; his face had lost the ruddy hue so characteristic of him. I fancy +he was then ailing with premonitions of the disorder which a few years +later proved mortal, but he still bore himself with sufficient vigor, +and he walked the distance between his house and mine, though once when I +missed his visit the family reported that after he came in he sat a long +time with scarcely a word, as if too weary to talk. That winter, I went +into Boston to live, and I saw him only at infrequent intervals, when I +could go out to Elmwood. At such times I found him sitting in the room +which was formerly the drawing-room, but which had been joined with his +study by taking away the partitions beside the heavy mass of the old +colonial chimney. He told me that when he was a newborn babe, the nurse +had carried him round this chimney, for luck, and now in front of the +same hearth, the white old man stretched himself in an easy-chair, with +his writing-pad on his knees and his books on the table at his elbow, and +was willing to be entreated not to rise. I remember the sun used to come +in at the eastern windows full pour, and bathe the air in its warmth. + +He always hailed me gayly, and if I found him with letters newly come +from England, as I sometimes did, he glowed and sparkled with fresh life. +He wanted to read passages from those letters, he wanted to talk about +their writers, and to make me feel their worth and charm as he did. +He still dreamed of going back to England the next summer, but that was +not to be. One day he received me not less gayly than usual, but with a +certain excitement, and began to tell me about an odd experience he had +had, not at all painful, but which had very much mystified him. He had +since seen the doctor, and the doctor had assured him that there was +nothing alarming in what had happened, and in recalling this assurance, +he began to look at the humorous aspects of the case, and to make some +jokes about it. He wished to talk of it, as men do of their maladies, +and very fully, and I gave him such proof of my interest as even inviting +him to talk of it would convey. In spite of the doctor's assurance, +and his joyful acceptance of it, I doubt if at the bottom of his heart +there was not the stir of an uneasy misgiving; but he had not for a long +time shown himself so cheerful. + +It was the beginning of the end. He recovered and relapsed, and +recovered again; but never for long. Late in the spring I came out, +and he had me stay to dinner, which was somehow as it used to be at two +o'clock; and after dinner we went out on his lawn. He got a long-handled +spud, and tried to grub up some dandelions which he found in his turf, +but after a moment or two he threw it down, and put his hand upon his +back with a groan. I did not see him again till I came out to take leave +of him before going away for the summer, and then I found him sitting on +the little porch in a western corner of his house, with a volume of Scott +closed upon his finger. There were some other people, and our meeting +was with the constraint of their presence. It was natural in nothing so +much as his saying very significantly to me, as if he knew of my heresies +concerning Scott, and would have me know he did not approve of them, that +there was nothing he now found so much pleasure in as Scott's novels. +Another friend, equally heretical, was by, but neither of us attempted to +gainsay him. Lowell talked very little, but he told of having been a +walk to Beaver Brook, and of having wished to jump from one stone to +another in the stream, and of having had to give it up. He said, without +completing the sentence, If it had come to that with him! Then he fell +silent again; and with some vain talk of seeing him when I came back in +the fall, I went away sick at heart. I was not to see him again, and I +shall not look upon his like. + +I am aware that I have here shown him from this point and from that in a +series of sketches which perhaps collectively impart, but do not assemble +his personality in one impression. He did not, indeed, make one +impression upon me, but a thousand impressions, which I should seek in +vain to embody in a single presentment. What I have cloudily before me +is the vision of a very lofty and simple soul, perplexed, and as it were +surprised and even dismayed at the complexity of the effects from motives +so single in it, but escaping always to a clear expression of what was +noblest and loveliest in itself at the supreme moments, in the divine +exigencies. I believe neither in heroes nor in saints; but I believe in +great and good men, for I have known them, and among such men Lowell was +of the richest nature I have known. His nature was not always serene or +pellucid; it was sometimes roiled by the currents that counter and cross +in all of us; but it was without the least alloy of insincerity, and it +was never darkened by the shadow of a selfish fear. His genius was an +instrument that responded in affluent harmony to the power that made him +a humorist and that made him a poet, and appointed him rarely to be quite +either alone. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +I believe neither in heroes nor in saints +It is well to hold one's country to her promises +Liked being with you, not for what he got, but for what he gave + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Studies of Lowell +by William Dean Howells + diff --git a/old/whlow11.zip b/old/whlow11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d00e7ec --- /dev/null +++ b/old/whlow11.zip |