IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS
1845-1849
In the spring of 1844 Mrs. White had taken her daughter Maria to
Philadelphia to spare her the rigors of the North, and they had found
lodgings at 127 Arch Street, with Friend Parker, a kindly Quakeress, who
had made them acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Davis, influential
members of the Society of Friends. An intimacy grew up between them, for
they had a strong bond of sympathy in their common zeal for the cause of
anti-slavery and other reforms, and a few weeks after the return of the
Whites to Watertown, Maria wrote to her new friends: “I have talked so
much to James of Philadelphia, that I have inspired him with a desire to
try its virtues if he has an opportunity. We shall probably be married
in the spring and I wish very much to spend it there, instead of in our
bleak New England, and we should do so if we heard of any opening or
employment for him during so short a period as three months. I suppose
the season for lectures would be over then, and I fear that Destiny has
not been so kind as to arrange any exact labors for him then, simply
because he wishes to go. But should you hear of any situation for a
literary man at that time, however small the recompense, might I not
depend on your kindness to let us know of it?”
For some reason the marriage took place as we have seen at the close of
1844, and not in the spring of 1845. Mr. and Mrs. Lowell stayed a day or
two in New York at the New York Hotel, whose splendor amazed them, and
reached Philadelphia on the first day of the new year. By a happy
augury, the weather had been delightful on their journey, and they had
almost a breath of summer in midwinter. They went at once to Friend
Parker’s, and settled down to happy work. The scheme of lecturing had
come to nothing, but Mr. Davis had arranged that Lowell should do some
editorial work on the _Pennsylvania Freeman_. That paper had taken the
place of the _National Enquirer_, when Benjamin Lundy relinquished its
management. Whittier went to Philadelphia in the spring of 1838 to edit
the _Freeman_, and remained there two years, when his frail health
compelled him to retire. The paper had been temporarily suspended in the
interest of the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, but had been revived
and was now under the editorial control of C. C. Burleigh and J. Miller
McKim.
The situation of the young pair is sketched in the following letter to
Robert Carter:--
127 ARCH STREET, PHILADELPHIA,
Jan’y 14, 1845.
MY DEAR BOY,--Here we are situated as pleasantly as can be, and I
write to inform you of the fact a great deal sooner than you
expected, having been in Philadelphia just a fortnight to-morrow. I
shall not attempt to give you any statistical information with
regard to anything here, for I know that if I should try to
describe the Hall of Independence, or anything else, you would
contradict me stoutly till I convicted you out of some Geography or
other, and then you would manage to change sides and appear to be
confuting me. You see that your obstinacy about Boston Common has
cheated you out of a minute detail of all the curiosities of this
city, together with an account of the riots, taken from the mouth
of one of the leaders of the mob who was shot dead at the first
fire of the military. But this is a melancholy subject.
Why did you not (you rascal!) slip even so much as a little note
into the package you sent through the Anti-Slavery office? Speaking
of letters, I mailed one at Worcester from Maria to Sarah Page,
directed to your care, and the Post Office being closed, I ventured
to mail it without paying the postage, trusting that the kind
providence which has hitherto taken care of you above your deserts
may have enabled you to redeem it from the claws of the Brookline
postmaster.
Owen writes me that the “Conversations” is selling well, and
Peterson[46] says that the notices are all of the most favorable
kind. I have seen Graham and shall probably be able to make a good
arrangement for him after my new book has been puffed a little
more. He has grown fat, an evidence of success. He lives in one of
the finest houses in Arch Street, and keeps his carriage. He says
he would have given me $150.00 for the “Legend of Brittany” for his
Magazine without the copyright. I am sorry I did not think of this
at the time.
I shall get along very easily while I am here. I am engaged to
write leaders for the _Pennsylvania Freeman_ (which comes out once
a fortnight) and am to be paid $5.00 for each. I was unwilling to
take anything, but they say I must and I suppose I ought. I wrote
one for the next Thursday’s paper entitled “Our Position;” it is
not very good, but I shall do better as I get used to it.
I have not seen the first number of the _Broadway Journal_ yet, but
the second is quite entertaining and well done. The type is a
little too large. Are you going to write a notice of my book for
the paper? Briggs has written to me since I got here, but says
nothing about it. I unfortunately missed seeing him in New York.
We have a little room in the third story (back) with white muslin
curtains trimmed with evergreen, and are as happy as two mortals
can be. I think Maria is better, and I _know_ I am--in health I
mean, in spirit we both are. She is gaining flesh and so am I, and
my cheeks are grown so preposterously red that I look as if I had
rubbed them against all the red brick walls in the city.
I have seen your friend ---- since I came here. Somebody called on
us the very evening after we arrived, and on going downstairs who
should it be but our interesting friend. He attacked me upon the
subject of a vegetable diet, and I replied by fun, which rather
disconcerted him. He has not been here since.
I have felt a little of the swell of fashionable society since I
have been here. Dr. Elwyn, a kinsman of mine, hearing that I was in
town, called upon me and has been very attentive ever since. He is
an agreeable man and somewhat literary for Philadelphia. His
mother, who has lately quitted Episcopacy for Presbyterianism,
called on us to-day, and told me that her “pastor,” the Rev. Dr.
Bethune, was coming to see me. Authorship might have taken the
place of misery in Shakespeare’s aphorism.
The abolitionists here are very pleasant and kind.... Maria sends
her best love. I mean Mrs. Lowell sends it. Give my kind
remembrances to Austin and to Owen. The package of the latter came
safe.
God bless you! Most lovingly yours,
J. R. L.
Mrs. Lowell sings her second in this duet in a letter to Mrs. Hawthorne,
written two days later, in which she says: “We are most delightfully
situated here in every respect, surrounded with kind and sympathizing
friends, yet allowed by them to be as quiet and retired as we choose;
but it is always a pleasure to know you can have society if you wish for
it, by walking a few steps beyond your own door. We live in a little
chamber on the third story, quite low enough to be an attic, so that we
feel classical in our environment: and we have one of the sweetest and
most motherly of Quaker women to anticipate all our wants, and make us
comfortable outwardly as we are blest inwardly. James’s prospects are as
good as an author’s _ought_ to be, and I begin to fear we shall not have
the satisfaction of being so _very_ poor after all. But we are, in spite
of this disappointment of our expectations, the happiest of mortals or
spirits, and cling to the skirts of every passing hour, though we know
the next will bring us still more joy.”[47]
The young couple had no resources save their faculty for writing. Mrs.
Lowell brought no dowry, but she had poetic sensibility, and fell to
translating into verse from German poetry, especially from Uhland.
Lowell, with increased confidence bred of the facility with which he had
dashed off the “Conversations,” and with an unfailing spring of poetry,
was ready for any sort of venture. His faithful friend, Mr. Briggs, who
had just launched the first number of his new literary weekly, _The
Broadway Journal_, was eager for contributions from both. “I am very
proud,” he wrote on receiving Mrs. Lowell’s translation, “The Wreath,”
from the German of Uhland, to be the first to introduce her new name to
the public,” and he proposed all manner of topics for Lowell to write
on, such as a paper on Hawthorne and one on Emerson, for a series of
articles on “Our American Prose Writers,” which had been initiated with
one on the now forgotten W. A. Jones. Lowell himself complained of a
native indolence, and Briggs, who was skeptical of the force of this
objection, proposed a very natural corrective:--
“There is no such stimulus to execution,” he writes, “as a sure reward.
Now I would like to make a contract with you to furnish me with a column
or two, or more, of prose matter, to suit yourself, in the shape of
criticism, gossip, or anything else, once a week for six months or a
year. You have no idea how easy a thing of this kind becomes when you
know that you must do it. If you get nothing else by such an undertaking
than the business habit, it would be worth your while. What will you do
it for? If our means were sufficient, or success were secure, I would
make you an offer that would be sufficiently tempting, but I am loath to
make you one that may seem too small. Consider now, and let me know.”
Lowell’s affection for Briggs and his sympathy with him in his risky
venture of a weekly literary journal made him at first well-disposed to
contribute freely in response to the editor’s urgent invitation, and he
was most generous in his attitude respecting payment. “You have been in
business, my dear friend,” he writes to Briggs, “and know exactly how
much you ought to give me with a proper regard to your own balance sheet
at the end of the year. I know that your inclination will be to give me
more than that. But more you ought not to give nor I to take. I leave it
for you to decide. I should not like to bind myself to write every week,
though I have no doubt that I shall be able to, and I have some fears
that a contingent want of money may hereafter prove as sharp a spur to
me as a contract.”
Mr. Briggs in reply was more explicit as to terms: “In regard to the
compensation, it would be well to read Emerson’s essay on that subject.
According to him, compensation is inevitable, therefore one need never
give himself any trouble on the subject. Nature settles the whole
business. You will be sure to receive due compensation for whatever you
may do for the _B. J._ Poe writes for me at the rate of one dollar a
column. If you will do so, I shall esteem it a capital bargain. The
poetry I will pay for separately on a different principle.” Accordingly,
a day or two after, Lowell wrote: “I send you the first of a series of
four or five letters which you may print if you like it. If you do not
like it, reject it without scruple. It may be a little too abolition for
you as yet. I do not think it good at all, but Maria thinks better of it
than I do (bating one or two coarse expressions in it). I do not
consider it mine. I wrote it only in the hope of doing some good. So you
may alter it as much as you please, if it will serve your turn. If, on
the other hand, you like it, I think I may promise that the next will be
better. I am in a great hurry, I have only time to say that I like your
terms and am perfectly content to help you as much as I can.... I always
expect to be taken at my word, so reject this without scruple.”
The letter thus sent purported to be by one Matthew Trueman, a country
cousin to a supposed Member of Congress, scalping him for his vote on
the question of the annexation of Texas. It was intended to be the first
of a series in which the whole question of annexation was to be argued.
It was addressed to no one in particular, but only to some hypothetical
scoundrel. It will be remembered that annexation was the all-absorbing
topic of political discussion during the winter of 1844-1845. Lowell
could not do otherwise from his anti-slavery principles than bitterly
condemn the action of Congress, and this letter was an outburst of
satire and invective; but it did not see the light, and it was not
followed by others in the same vein.
The editor of _The Broadway Journal_ began fencing with the author. He
wondered to whom it was addressed. He thought perhaps it would be best
not to print the whole. “Your satire,” he wrote, “bruises instead of
cutting the flesh, and makes a confounded sore place without letting out
any of the patient’s bad blood. I will make as full a selection as I
can; but there are certain expressions that could not be safely used in
public.” He regrets that his friend should have lost so much time over
the letter, but thinks it must have done him good by drawing off his
superfluous zeal. “I shall think better of you myself for knowing that
you can feel so strongly and write so harshly,” he adds: “it justifies
the opinion that I expressed of you in my notice of your
‘Conversations;’” and after a further discussion of abolitionism in
principle and practice, he begs him to write something about
Philadelphia, or art, the academy, the abominable white doors, the poor
watery oysters, everything and anything. “Put all your abolitionism into
rhyme,” he concludes: “everybody will read it in that shape, and it will
do good. Don’t forget that you are a poet and go to writing newspaper
articles.”
The letter was shrewd, kind, reasonable to an uninterested reader, but
must have been exacerbating to Lowell. Mr. Briggs could not conceal the
final ground of his refusal, that to publish this and similar letters
would be to jeopard the fortunes of _The Broadway Journal_, and in the
sensitive condition of the mind of the out and out abolitionist, this
was arrant cowardice. A good deal of correspondence followed, and Lowell
lost his interest in the _Journal_, though he retained his strong
affection for his friend and sent him, as well as a few poems, a
slashing criticism of the exhibition in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
Arts, and a review of Halleck’s “Alnwick Castle, with other Poems,” but
_The Broadway Journal_ itself died out of existence shortly, Mr. Briggs
parting company with it at the end of a half year.[48] In sending the
former of the two prose articles mentioned above, Lowell wrote:--
PHILADELPHIA, Feb’y 15.
MY DEAR FRIEND,--I send you something which will help you fill up,
and will show my _willingness_ to help till I can send something
better. I am so continually interrupted here, and have been so long
used to having all my time to myself, that I have not been able yet
to acquire the habit of using anything but the very titbits of my
time. I have begun several articles for you, but failed in
satisfying myself, but before long hope to send you something to
your taste. I will send a poem at any rate. Halleck, I see, is
about to publish a new edition, which I should like to write a
notice of if you have made no other arrangement.
This notice of the “Academy” I have written, you see, as editorial,
and you can modify it as you please.
It is hard to write when one is first married. The Jews gave a man
a year’s vacation. I hope to serve you sooner, and meanwhile remain
Your loving friend,
J. R. L.
P. S. Maria and I both like the _Journal_ exceedingly.
The other vehicle for Lowell’s more exclusively literary work during the
winter of 1845 was _Graham’s Magazine_, published in Philadelphia. He
had been a contributor since the spring of 1841, when he used the
signature “H. Perceval,” which he had been employing in initial form in
the _Southern Literary Messenger_. His contributions were all poems,
some of which he had preserved in the two volumes already published, but
in the number for February, 1845, there appeared his biographical and
critical sketch of Poe in the series “Our Contributors,” which ran for a
score of numbers and was accompanied by steel portraits. Graham was
desirous of including Lowell in the series with a portrait by Page, but
for some reason the plan fell through. In this sketch of Poe, Lowell
used a discursive manner, giving expression in a lively fashion to his
judgments of other poets in the past, but not hesitating to speak
emphatically of the genius of Poe, whom he did not know personally.
“Mr. Poe,” he wrote, “is at once the most discriminating, philosophical,
and fearless critic upon imaginative works who has written in America.
It may be that we should qualify our remarks a little, and say that he
_might be_, rather than that he always _is_, for he seems sometimes to
mistake his phial of prussic acid for his inkstand.... Mr. Poe has that
indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius.”
Lowell had offered to write this sketch in May, 1844, and had been
supplied with biographical material by Poe himself, who moreover read
the article in manuscript which Lowell sent at the end of September
through their common friend, Mr. Briggs. During this winter of 1845 Poe
was a lively subject of discussion by Lowell and his friends, for he was
the most conspicuous figure in American literature at that time. His
“Raven” appeared in _The American Review_ for February, and his series
of papers on plagiarism, with their acuteness, their ostentation of
learning, and their malice, was trailing through the _Mirror_ and _The
Broadway Journal_. His name was linked with that of Briggs in the
editorship of the _Journal_, and Briggs sometimes found it difficult to
make clear to his friends just how responsibility was apportioned
between them. It was impossible to regard this very insistent figure as
an intellectual or æsthetic abstraction, and his personality was always
getting in the way of a fair judgment. In a letter to Briggs, 16
January, 1845, Lowell remarks: “From a paragraph I saw yesterday in the
_Tribune_ I find that Poe has been at me in the _Mirror_. He has at
least that chief element of a critic--a disregard of persons. He will be
a very valuable coadjutor to you.” Briggs, who was at this time a warm
defender of Poe, had read the article in the _Mirror_, which was a
review of the “Conversations,” and assured Lowell that it was extremely
laudatory and discriminating, and a few days later, after strongly
praising “The Gold Bug” which he had just read, he says: “Do not trouble
yourself about anybody’s gloriometer.... I have always misunderstood Poe
from thinking him one of the Graham and Godey species, but I find him as
different as possible. I think that you will like him well when you come
to know him personally.” Briggs copied “The Raven” into his magazine and
wrote enthusiastically to Lowell about it. But Lowell was deeply
offended by what he termed “the grossness and vulgarity” of Poe’s
treatment of Longfellow, especially in his offhand allusion to Mrs.
Longfellow and her children. Briggs again came to Poe’s defence. “The
allusion to Mrs. Longfellow,” he wrote, “was only a playful allusion to
an abstract Mrs. Longfellow, for Poe did not know even that Longfellow
was married; look at the thing again and you will see that it contains
nothing offensive. Poe has, indeed, a very high admiration for
Longfellow, and so he will say before he is done. For my own part I did
not use to think well of Poe, but my love for you and implicit
confidence in your judgment led me to abandon all my prejudices against
him, when I read your account of him. The Rev. Mr. Griswold, of
Philadelphia, told me some abominable lies about him, but a personal
acquaintance with him has induced me to think highly of him. Perhaps
some Philadelphian has been whispering foul things in your ear about
him. Doubtless his sharp manner has made him many enemies. But you will
think better of him when you meet him.”
Lowell, however, refused to be convinced. “The Rev. Mr. Griswold,” he
said petulantly, “is an ass, and, what’s more, a knave, and even if he
had said anything against Poe, I should not have believed it. But
neither he nor any one else ever did. I remain of my old opinion about
the allusion to Mrs. Longfellow. I remain of my old opinion about Poe,
and I have no doubt that Poe estimates Longfellow’s poetical abilities
more highly than I do perhaps, but I nevertheless do not like his two
last articles. I still think Poe an invaluable contributor, but I like
such articles as his review of Miss Barrett better than these last.”
Up to this time Lowell appears to have known Poe only through
correspondence.[49] A few weeks later, when he was returning from
Philadelphia to Cambridge, he called upon him, but the interview gave
little satisfaction, due to the fact, mentioned by Mr. Briggs, that Poe
was tipsy at the time. A few weeks later Lowell defended himself, in a
letter to Briggs, against a charge of plagiarism made by Poe, and summed
up his impressions as follows: “Poe, I am afraid, is wholly lacking in
that element of manhood which, for want of a better name, we call
character. It is something quite distinct from genius,--though all great
geniuses are endowed with it. Hence we always think of Dante Alighieri,
of Michelangelo, of Will Shakespeare, of John Milton,--while of such men
as Gibbon and Hume we merely recall the works, and think of them as the
author of this and that. As I prognosticated, I have made Poe my enemy
by doing him a service.... Poe wishes to kick down the ladder by which
he rose. He is welcome. But he does not attack me at a weak point. He
probably cannot conceive of anybody’s writing for anything but a
newspaper reputation or for posthumous fame, which is much the same
thing magnified by distance. I have quite other aims.”
Finally, Briggs himself lost all patience with Poe, and replied to this
letter: “You have formed a correct estimate of Poe’s characterless
character. I have never met a person so utterly deficient of high
motive. He cannot conceive of anybody’s doing anything except for his
own personal advantage; and he says, with perfect sincerity and entire
unconsciousness of the exposition which it makes of his own mind and
heart, that he looks upon all reformers as madmen; and it is for this
reason that he is so great an egoist; he cannot conceive why the world
should not feel an interest in whatever interests him, because he feels
no interest himself in what does not personally concern him.”
In all his critical writing after this time, Lowell never discussed Poe.
His offhand characterization in “A Fable for Critics,”
“Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge,
* * * * *
Who has written some things quite the best of their kind,
But the heart somehow seems all squeezed out by the mind,”
passes at once into a lecture on his treatment of Longfellow. Poe was
not a blackboard on which Lowell wrote his own virtues, but it is an
illustration of the dominant ethical note in Lowell’s nature, especially
at this time, that open as he was to the influence of poetry, and
keenly sensitive to the melody and color to be found in exquisite
language, he could not detach poetry from character. In his leaning
toward reform, he tried to take poetry with him as a fellow-worker, but
I do not think this really affected his judgment of Poe, and Briggs’s
amusing report of Poe’s consignment of reformers to the mad-house was
not likely to gall him; his sense of humor would correct any irritation.
But Lowell did hold his head high and was intoxicated with the spirit of
idealism; he and his wife stimulated each other, and breathing this air,
he was not in a mood to be indulgent toward what he conceived to be
lower ideals. The biographical essay which a few years later he wrote on
Keats shows clearly how desirous he was of bringing the few known facts
of that poet’s life into accord with a lofty conception of the poetic
spirit; standing uncomfortably near Poe, he was in danger of
interpreting his poetry by the comment which his life afforded.
Although literature then as always was the constant factor in Lowell’s
resolve, the circumstances in which he was placed, and his own uneasy
sense that he ought to bear his part in the moral uprising, led him to
expend a good deal of energy this winter in political and ethical
writing. He was living in the midst of the Society of Friends and
breathing an atmosphere of anti-slavery reform; the great debate on
Texas was raging, and, more than all, his wife by his side kept a steady
flame of zeal burning. He let himself out once in verse when he sent to
the _Boston Courier_ some stanzas headed “Another Rallying Cry by a
Yankee,” in which, with a vehemence that allowed little breathing space
for wit or humor, he declaimed against the iniquity of the Texas
resolutions, then on the eve of passage, and made a passionate appeal to
his native state to hold herself aloof from any compromise with slavery.
“O Spirit of the noble Past, when the old Bay State was free,”
he began, and employed all the resources of type to make his protest
heard:--
“And though all other deeds of thine, dear Fatherland, should be
Washed out, like writing upon sand, by Time’s encroaching sea,
That single word shall stand sublime, nor perish with the rest,
‘THOUGH THE WHOLE WORLD SANCTION SLAVERY, IN GOD’S NAME WE PROTEST!’”
The final stanza was a burst of state independence:
“No, if the old Bay State were sunk, and, as in days of yore,
One single ship within her sides the hope of Freedom bore,
Run up again the pine tree flag, and on the chainless sea
That flag should mark, where’er it waved, the island of the free!”
In these verses, as in others of a similar nature, Lowell seems almost
to have followed the lead of Whittier, who employed the same stanza in
several of his anti-slavery poems written before this time.
In his eager, impulsive desire to right wrongs, and his impatience at
compromise, he chafed under the restraints laid upon him. The rebuff he
received when he undertook to scarify the conscience of Congress in the
pages of _The Broadway Journal_ irritated him. He had hoped that the
_Journal_ would be a “powerful weapon in the hands of reform,” and was
disheartened. “The reason I have written no prose for him (Briggs),” he
wrote his friend Carter, “has been because I knew not what to write
about. The _Journal_ shut its doors in the face of every subject in
which I was mainly interested, and I could not bring myself (in writing
for a friend especially) to undertake subjects in which, feeling no
interest, I could not possibly write well.” He had engaged to write
regularly for the _Pennsylvania Freeman_, but even here he did not, in
his own mind, have a clear field. “I do not feel entirely free,” he says
in a letter to Carter, “in what I write for the paper, as its conductors
are rather timid.” That is the complaint of most young reformers, and
yet the constraint which appears in his articles is due rather to the
caution with which he feels his way along a path where he is likely to
be misjudged than to any outside repressive influence. At least this may
be inferred from a reading of two articles which he contributed to the
_Freeman_ and which were no doubt looked upon as very radical
utterances. They had for their heading “The Church and Clergy,” and were
deliberate inquiries into the nature of the religious bodies in America
as tested by the attitude which they took, organically, toward the great
question of political reform, especially as regarded the subject of
slavery. In a letter to Longfellow written a few weeks after this date,
Lowell puts his belief into two or three pregnant sentences. “Christ,”
he says, “has declared war against the Christianity of the world, and it
must down. There is no help for it. The Church, that great bulwark of
our practical Paganism, must be reformed from foundation to weathercock.
Shall we not wield a trowel, nay, even carry the heavy bricks and mortar
for such an enterprise? But I will not ride over you with my
hard-mouthed hobby.”
In the two editorial articles referred to, Lowell takes the ground that
when there is dereliction to pure ideals on the part of the more refined
and intellectual members of the church, especially of those in the
priestly order, there will be the greater zeal of the more brutal and
unintelligent in defence of the church, and instances the cries of the
Jewish populace for the crucifixion of the Saviour, the mob at Athens
that condemned Socrates to drink the hemlock, and, taking a very recent
example: “It was the most brutal and degraded of the English population
which assaulted the pure-minded Wesley, and cock-fighting, horse racing,
drunken priests and justices established their orthodoxy to the
satisfaction of so competent a constituency by reviling or indicting
him. Now that it has become necessary to protest against Protestantism,
it is the ignorant and unthinking who are so eager to defend the right
of private judgment by tarring and feathering all who differ with them.”
The mass of men, Lowell goes on to say, love an easy religion, which
affords a cheap and marketable kind of respectability. “Puritanism has
always been unpopular among them as a system which demands too much and
pays too little.” The clergy, too, in the United States, being
dependent upon their hearers for support, unconsciously slip into the
habit of adapting themselves to the prejudices and weaknesses of their
supporters. Thus by degrees the church and religion are held to be
synonymous terms, and the church becomes a kind of private estate,
silent in the face of a great evil which the great body of Christian
people has learned to tolerate. In point of fact true religious
sentiment is the most powerful weapon in the world against slavery and
all other social vices, but the religious system of the country as
corrupted by connivance with evil is the greatest obstacle in the way.
The only sure way of accomplishing its great object is for the church to
keep in advance of popular morality, and “the surest and safest test for
deciding when the time has arrived for the church to take another step
forward is by observing whether it is reverenced by the wisest of its
members as merely an external symbol of some former manifestation of
Divinity, or is reverenced as containing in itself a present and living
Divineness.”
But why, it might be asked, should the clergy be picked out for blame in
the matter of upholding slavery, rather than any other class, as that of
the merchants for example? The answer is plain. If the church professed
to be no more than a society of private citizens meeting once a week,
the clergyman would be simply the chairman of the gathering, and a
mouthpiece of the majority. But the church sets up the claim to be of
divine origin and the depository of truth. If this be so, it should
always be in advance of public opinion. “It should not wait till the
Washingtonians, by acting the part which, in virtue of the station it
arrogates to itself, should have been its own, had driven it to sign the
pledge and hold fellowship with the degraded and fallen. It should not
wait until the Abolitionists, by working a change in the sentiment of
the people, have convinced it that it is more politic to sympathize with
the slave than with the slave-owner, before it ventures to lisp the
alphabet of anti-slavery. The glorious privilege of leading the forlorn
hope of truth, of facing the desperate waves of prejudice, of making
itself vile in the eyes of men by choosing the humblest means of serving
the despised cause of the master it professes to worship, all these
belong to it in right of the position it assumes.” And he calls upon the
clergy to produce certificates of martyrdom before he will accept the
claims they set up for themselves.
The whole discussion is characterized by sincerity and a scarcely veiled
sarcasm, and is interesting not only as showing Lowell’s thought at the
time on a burning subject, but also as disclosing a certain academic air
as if he had written carefully and with restraint, perhaps thinking how
it would sound to his father’s ear. There is hardly more than a faint
suggestion of the wit and humor which marked his later political
writing, and there is one passage which may be noted as distinctly
literary in tone. “In many parts of Germany,” he writes, “there are
legends of buried churches and convents, whose bells are often heard,
and in which, now and then, some person by a lucky chance can hear the
monks chanting the ritual of many centuries ago. It seems to us that the
religion of our churches is of very much the same subterranean and
traditionary kind. To one walking in the pure light of upper day, the
sound of their service seems dim and far off, and, if he catches a word
here and there, it is an obsolete language which does not appeal to the
present heart and soul, but only to a vague reverence for what is
ancient, a mysterious awe for what is past.”
The winter had been passed in this experimental fashion, Mrs. Lowell
translating poems from the German by her husband’s side, as he wrote now
verse, now prose, intent on the questions of the day, yet never really
giving himself out except now and then in some spontaneous bit of
poetry. They made hosts of friends in Philadelphia and spent the last
few weeks of their stay on a visit to the Davis family, with whom they
had become close companions. Mrs. Hallowell, who was a child at the
time, recalled the delight that attended their stay, especially the
pleasure given the children by Mrs. Lowell, who told them fairy tales
and recited ballads, giving the Caldon Low in a soft crooning voice
sweeter than singing. They took a short driving tour with their hosts
through Chester County, but near the end of May set out on their return
to Cambridge, stopping by the way for a week’s visit with Mr. and Mrs.
Briggs in Staten Island. They went home by way of Albany in order to
see Page, and by the middle of June were established at Elmwood, where
they formed one household with Lowell’s father, mother, and sister.
Lowell had not found himself out yet. He had, indeed, a premonitory
consciousness of his strength. “I shall do something as an author yet,”
he wrote to Briggs, 21 August, 1845. “It is my laziness and my
dissatisfaction at everything I write that prevents me from doing more.”
But he adds, “there is something, too, in feeling that the best part of
your nature and your performance lies unmined and unappreciated.” For
the present he seems to have written chiefly under the impulse created
by some sudden affair, as in the verses “On the Capture of Fugitive
Slaves near Washington,” which appeared in the _Boston Courier_, 19
July, 1845. The lines were prefaced by this note to the editor, Mr.
Buckingham:--
“Reading lately in the newspapers an account of the capture of some
fugitive slaves, within a few miles of the Capital of our Republic, I
confess my astonishment at finding no comments made upon what seemed to
me an act of unparalleled inhumanity. Thirty unfortunate disciples of
the Declaration of Independence pursued and captured by some two hundred
armed minions of tyranny! It seems strange that a burst of indignation
from one end of our free country to the other did not follow so
atrocious a deed. At least it seemed a proper occasion for sympathy on
the part of one of our daily papers which a year or two ago indorsed
Lord Morpeth’s sentiment that
‘Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.’
Though such a mode of emancipation is totally abhorrent to my feelings,
and though I would earnestly deprecate any attempt at insurrection on
the part of our slave population, yet I confess to the weakness of being
so far human in my feelings as to sympathize deeply with these unhappy
beings who have been thwarted in their endeavor to convert themselves
from chattels into men by the peaceful method of simply changing their
geographical position. Under these feelings, and believing you to be a
man with sufficient confidence in the justness of your own opinions not
to fear to publish sentiments which may chance to go beyond or even
directly contravene your own, I wrote the following lines.”
There is a prophetic ring to the verses which indicates how surely
Lowell’s poetic spirit had absorbed the underlying truth of
abolitionism. The poem is far less declamatory, more profoundly
indignant than the Texas verses which he had printed in the same paper.
The intimation which he gave in his prefatory note, that his sentiment
might be unacceptable even to so hearty and honest a hater of slavery as
Mr. Buckingham, plainly points to the doubt expressed whether a higher
allegiance might not demand a revolt from the constitution and union if
they were found to be the impregnable defence of slavery,--a doubt which
was already certainty in the minds of the most radical of the
abolitionists; but the stage of doubt was as far as Lowell ever went,
and this may be taken as the utmost expression which he ever
reached.[50] The poem was vigorous enough to make an impression, and
successive numbers of the _Courier_ show two long-winded writers
knocking away at the spectre of Dissolution which the poem had
raised.[51]
Although the summer of 1845 does not seem to have yielded much in the
way of verse or prose, Lowell had quite definitely taken ground as a man
of letters. There was no more talk of the law, and he even dropped lines
of correspondence which had marked his old carelessness of occupation.
“You hint in your last letter,” he wrote to E. M. Davis in October, that
it must be very easy for me to write, because writing is my profession,
while in truth this is precisely what makes it hard. You must recollect
that it is vacation time with me when the pen is out of my hand. Before
I became an author I used to write multitudes of letters to my friends.
Then, wherever I set my foot, thoughts rose up before me short winged
and chirping as the flights of grasshoppers which spring from the path
of one who walks in September stubble-fields. The post-office was my
safety-valve, which eased me in a trice of all my too explosive
thoughts, humors, and moods. Now my thoughts take a higher and wider
flight, and are not so easily followed and defined by the eye. I
confess that my opinions seem to me of less importance.”[52]
By his regular and his random writing Lowell had met the expense of his
winter in Philadelphia, and with his simple mode of life and his horror
of debt it was not a very serious problem which his livelihood
presented. Elmwood gave shelter, and the young couple shared the family
economy. A little more ease, however, was to come through the accession
of Mrs. Lowell to a share in the estate of her father, who died suddenly
in September of this year. “I suppose,” Lowell writes in the letter just
quoted, “that when the estate is settled (Mr. White died intestate) we
shall be the possessors of $20,000 or more. I confess I hardly feel so
independent as before. I believe that in this age poverty needs to have
apostles, and I had resolved to be one, but I suppose God knows what is
best for me, or the event would not have happened. That I should ever
have lived to be such a nabob!”[53]
One of the effects of this modest fortune was to give the Lowells a
further sense of independence and to lead them to form plans of travel
and life abroad, for from the first the frailty of Mrs. Lowell’s health
had been a factor in all their problems. They meant to go again to
Philadelphia the next spring, and they looked forward to going to Italy
in the coming fall for a two or three years’ residence. “Now that we
know the amount of our property,” Mrs. Lowell wrote shortly after to
Mrs. Davis, “it seems quite doubtful whether we shall be able to travel
much; but we can live in Italy as cheaply as at home, and have all the
advantages of climate and beautiful works of art besides.”
On the last day of the year their first child was born, and they gave
her the name of Blanche in gentle allusion to Mrs. Lowell’s maiden name.
Lowell wrote the news in a brief note on New Year’s Day, 1846, to Mr.
Davis: “Our little daughter Blanche was born yesterday afternoon at
3-1/2 o’clock. She is a very fine hearty child, very fair and white,
with red cheeks, and looks already a month old. Maria, thank God, is
quite well.... Our fair has been eminently successful, more so than any
hitherto. I received your tract only a day or two since, having only
been to Boston once or twice for the last two months. I am much obliged
to you for it, though my thankfulness is almost used up by the baby.”
How happy the parents were in their anticipation may be read in the
affectionate terms in which Lowell had confided their hopes late in
August to his friend Briggs. “Never mind what our child will be (if it
should be born safely), we can at least enjoy our parentship now and
fancy what glories we please of our little darling. We have christened
it long ago. If she is a girl she is to be named Blanche (White), a
sweet name, thus uniting Maria’s family name with mine. If a boy we
shall call him Perceval, that being the given name of the first Lowle
who set foot in America, and having, moreover, a pretty diminutive
(Percie), an important thing for a boy. Now, do not set your wits at
work to discover prophetically the unhearworthy nickname which the
perverse ingenuity of boys will twist out of it at school. He shall
never go to school. The only reason I have for a preference of sex is
that girls ordinarily resemble the father most, and boys the mother.
Therefore I hope for a boy, and if you knew Maria (I call her mother
already) as well as I do, you would hope so too. It is true I can never
persuade her of the force of this argument--because she does not know
how good she is. When people arrive at that pitch of consciousness they
are generally good for nothing.” And then follows the half-prophetic
passage: I have never forgotten the sympathy I felt with your hopes and
your disappointment in a similar case.... I look upon death so
constantly and surely as but a continuation of life (after the glad
removal or subsidence of the plethora of flesh which now chokes half the
spirit out of us) that I shall be quite willing to send before us such
an ambassador as our little angel would be if he goes sooner than we do.
At all events, nothing can ever take away from me the joy I have already
had in it.” The haunting fear which every young father has at such a
time, and which Lowell intimates in these lines, was not made real at
once, but the child lived with them only a brief fourteen months. It is
touching to find Mrs. Lowell a month before the birth of her child
writing verses of profound sympathy entitled “The Slave Mother,” in
which she reflects the anguish such a mother feels on the birth of her
child; and on the same day Lowell was writing his poem “The Falcon,”
though in its original form, entitled “The Falconer,” it was longer and
filled with a certain savage indignation over the quarry upon which the
falcon, Truth, descends. Both poems were contributed to “The Liberty
Bell,” published for the anti-slavery bazaar which was held each
December in Boston. This was the social rally of the abolitionists and a
resource with which to meet the modest demands of a crusade into which
men and women threw themselves without counting the cost. Before and
after her marriage Mrs. Lowell took an active part in the bazaar under
the generalship of Mrs. Chapman. Lowell hits off the characteristics of
those who were conspicuous in the local movement most wittily in his
“Letter from Boston,” which he sent to the _Pennsylvania Freeman_, at
the close of 1846.
The little child filled a large place in Lowell’s letters to his
intimate friends. Briggs had sent a message to the newcomer, and Lowell
replied: “Blanche was asleep when I read your kind wishes about her, and
I did not dare to disturb her in an occupation in which she is
sedulously perfecting herself by the most diligent practice. She has not
yet learned our method of speech, and I to my sorrow have almost
forgotten hers, so that I cannot honestly send any authentic messages
from her to you. If you have been more happy than I in retaining a
knowledge of the dialect of your infancy, you will perhaps be able to
make something out of her remarks on hearing that she had loving friends
so far away. ‘A _goo_ (pianissimo) _ah_ goo, errrrrr, ahg--(cut off by a
kind of melodious jug-jug in her throat, as if she liked the phrase so
well she must needs try to swallow it) ah! (fortissimo) a goo,’ followed
by a smile which began in the dimple on her chin, and thence spread,
like the circles round a pebble thrown into sunshiny water, with a
golden ripple over the whole of her person, being most distinctly
ecstatic in her fingers and toes. The speech was followed by a searching
glance at her father, in whose arms she had her throne, to assure
herself of his identity, and of her consequent security.”
A more exact knowledge of the amount of the legacy received from Mr.
White’s estate and the income to be derived from it led the Lowells to
abandon their first intention of going abroad soon, but, apparently in
anticipation of such an emergency, Lowell had resolved to acquire a
better colloquial knowledge of French. “As an evidence of my
proficiency,” he writes to Briggs, “let me set down here an impromptu
translation of that Chevy Chace of the nursery, ‘Three children sliding
on the ice.’ As it is my first attempt at the ‘higher walks’ of French
poetry, you must read it with due allowance.
“Trois enfants glissants sur la glace,
Tous en un jour d’été,
Tous tomberent, as it came to pass,
Les autres s’enfuyaient.”[54]
There was an incident at this time which illustrates the sensitiveness
of the anti-slavery mind. The weight of literature was thrown against
slavery, and it was a matter of pride and rejoicing that the most
popular American poet, Longfellow, should bear his testimony in a thin
volume of “Poems on Slavery.” But a Philadelphia publishing house, Cary
& Hart, brought out a handsomely illustrated volume of his poetical
works, from which this group of poems was omitted, and the leaders of
the anti-slavery movement were indignant at what they regarded as the
poet’s pusillanimity. Their journals attacked him bitterly, especially
the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, edited by Mrs. Chapman, Edmund
Quincy, and Sydney Howard Gay. Lowell’s comments on the matter are
interesting as throwing light on the attitude of his mind upon the
question of the poet and his mission, which we have seen was so vital a
one in his early history. He wrote to Briggs 18 February, 1846: ... “I
never wrote a letter which was not a sincere portrait of my mind at the
time, and therefore never one whose contents can hold a rod over me. My
pen has not yet traced a line of which I am either proud or ashamed, nor
do I believe that many authors have written less from _without_ than I,
and therefore more piously. And this puts me in mind of Longfellow’s
suppression of his anti-slavery pieces. Sydney Gay wishes to know
whether I think he spoke too harshly of the affair. I think he _did_,
even supposing the case to be as he put it, and this not because I agree
with what he tells me is your notion of the matter--that it is
interfering with the freedom of an author’s will (though I think you
were _ironing_ with that grave face of yours)--for I do not think that
an author has a right to suppress anything that _God_ has given him--but
because I believe that Longfellow esteemed them of inferior quality to
his other poems. For myself, when I was printing my second volume of
poems, Owen wished to suppress a certain ‘Song sung at an Anti-Slavery
Picnic.’ I never saw him, but he urged me with I know not what worldly
arguments. My only answer was--‘Let all the others be suppressed if you
will--_that_ I will never suppress.’ I believe this was the first
audible knock my character made at the door of Owen’s heart--he loves me
now and I him. My calling is clear to me. I am never lifted up to any
peak of vision and moments of almost fearful inward illumination I have
sometimes--but that, when I look down, in hope to see some valley of the
Beautiful Mountains, I behold nothing but blackened ruins, and the moans
of the downtrodden the world over, but chiefly here in our own land,
come up to my ear instead of the happy songs of the husbandmen reaping
and binding the sheaves of light yet these, too, I hear not seldom. Then
I feel how great is the office of Poet, could I but even dare to hope to
fill it. Then it seems as if my heart would break in pouring out one
glorious song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of consolation
and strength to the oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew
on the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my madness
lies.”
In the same letter, with the long-reaching speculation of a father over
his first child, the subject of Blanche’s training is touched upon with
a half serious, half playful exaggeration. Lowell had been writing
humorously of his chivalric feelings toward dependents like the maid of
all work in the house, and he breaks out: “I mean to bring up Blanche to
be as independent as possible of all _man_ kind. I was saying the other
day to her mother (who has grown lovelier than ever) that I hoped she
would be a great, strong, vulgar, mud-pudding-baking, tree-climbing
little wench. I shall teach her to swim, to skate, and to walk twenty
miles a day as her father can--and by the time she is old enough, I do
not despair of seeing the world so good that she can walk about at night
alone without any danger. You ask the color of her eyes. They are said
to be like her father’s,--but, in my opinion, they are of quite too
heavenly a blue for that. But I do not think the color of the eyes of
much import. I never notice it in those I love, or in any eyes where I
can see deeper than the cornea and iris. I do not know the color of my
father’s eyes, or of any of my sisters’ (except from hearsay), nor
should I know that of Maria’s except from observations for that special
end. But where your glance is arrested at the surface, where these
windows are, as it were, daubed over with paint (like those of rooms
where menial or unsightly offices are performed which we do not wish the
world to see, or where something is exhibited for pay) to balk
insight--then the color is the chief sight noticeable. I do not believe
that the finest eyes have any special hue--and this is probably the
ground for the fallacy that poets’ eyes are gray--a kind of neutral
color.”
In January, 1846, the publication was begun of the _London Daily News_,
a paper which represented the most advanced liberal thought in politics
and was for a short time conducted by Dickens. For this paper Lowell
agreed to write a series of articles on “Anti-slavery in the United
States.” His name was not to appear. Indeed, the scheme intended an
historical sketch of the reform by one in sympathy with it, but not
confessedly by an abolitionist. In pursuance of the plan four articles
appeared in the months of February, March, April, and May, 1846, and the
manner of treatment plainly supposed a much longer continuance, but it
is probable that certain changes in the management of the paper rendered
a continuance inexpedient; for in June the paper was lessened from a
double sheet of eight pages to a single one of four, and the price
reduced, leaving small opportunity for the leisurely essays which had
formerly found place. The four papers did little more than clear the
way, and really brought the historical sketch only down to the
establishment of _The Liberator_ by Mr. Garrison. For the most part the
treatment is little more than an orderly and somewhat perfunctory
recital of well-known facts, but once or twice the writer breaks forth
into his more personal speech. Thus in the first article occurs this
passage:--
“Unless we draw an erring augury from the past, that devoted little band
who have so long maintained the bleak Thermopylæ of Freedom, remembering
those in bonds as bound with them, as now they are the scoff and by-word
of prospering iniquity, so will they be reckoned the Saints, Confessors,
and Martyrs in the calendar of coming time, and the statues of Garrison,
Maria Chapman, Phillips, Quincy, and Abby Kelley will fill those niches
in the National Valhalla which a degraded public sentiment has left
empty for such earthen demi-gods as Jackson, Webster and Clay.” Again
the final article, after dealing with the Missouri Compromise,
introduces Mr. Garrison upon the scene by quoting the preface to the
first number of _The Liberator_, and goes on to say:--
“Now for the first time indeed Slavery felt itself assailed genuinely
and in thorough earnest. But editors and other proprietors of public
opinion manufactories in the Free States were slower of perception. They
had not the warning of that instinctive terror which informed the
slaveholder of the approach of danger. But they were soon satisfied of
the dreadful truth that there existed in their very midst one truly
sincere and fearless man, and instantly a prolonged shriek of execration
and horror quavered from the Aroostook to the Red River. They saw, with
a thrill of apprehension for the security of their offices or of their
hold upon public consideration what treasonable conclusions might be
legitimately drawn from their own harmless premises, harmless only so
long as there was no man honest enough to make an application of them,
and so cast suspicion on the motives of all. If the pitch and tow
fulminations of Salmoneus had been suddenly converted into genuine bolts
of Jupiter, he could not have dropped them from his hands with a more
confounded alacrity. Here was a man gifted with a most excruciating
sincerity and frankness, a hungry conscience that could not be sated
with the cheap workhouse gruel of smooth words, and inconveniently
addicted to thinking aloud.”
The article closes with this striking diagnosis:--
“The advent of Garrison was indeed an event of historical moment. The
ban of outlawry was set on Slavery, and its doom was sealed. It matters
not that since that time Slavery has won some of its most alarming
victories. The nucleus of a sincere uncompromising hostility to it was
formed. A clear issue between right and wrong, disentangled from the
mists of extraneous interests, was presented to men’s minds. The
question was removed from the dust and bewilderment of political strife
to the clear and calm retirements of God’s justice and individual
conscience. Henceforth the struggle must be not between the Northern and
Southern States, but between barbarism and civilization, between cruelty
and mercy, between evil and good. This was already in itself a victory,
a triumph which would have been enough to round the long life struggle
of a reformer with peace. Exaltation was achieved by the mere look, as
it were, of an unknown, solitary, and friendless youth, so full was it
of the potent conjuration of honesty and veracity. Whatever may be the
contents of government mails and official bulletins, the shining feet of
the messengers of Nature are constant and swift to bring to the ears of
the lowly servant of Truth at least the sustaining news--that God still
exists, and that He may select even the bruised reed for his
instrument.”
It is not materially anticipating to record here what Lowell wrote of
Garrison a couple of years later, when he was defining his own position
on abolitionism, to his friend Briggs: “Garrison is so used to standing
alone that, like Daniel Boone, he moves away as the world creeps up to
him, and goes farther into the wilderness. He considers every step a
step forward, though it be over the edge of a precipice. But, with all
his faults (and they are the faults of his position), he is a great and
extraordinary man. His work may be over, but it has been a great work.
Posterity will forget his hard words, and remember his hard work. I look
upon him already as an historical personage, as one who is in his
niche.... I love you (and love includes respect); I respect Garrison
(respect does not include love). There never has been a leader of Reform
who was not also a blackguard. Remember that Garrison was so long in a
position where he alone was right and all the world wrong, that such a
position has created in him a habit of mind which may remain, though
circumstances have wholly changed. Indeed, a mind of that cast is
essential to a Reformer. Luther was as infallible as any man that ever
held St. Peter’s keys.” But the most condensed expression of his feeling
toward this remarkable man, who so dominated the anti-slavery movement,
is to be found in the verses addressed to him beginning--
“In a small chamber, friendless and unseen.”[55]
In May, 1846, occurred one of those personal incidents which stirred
deeply the heart of the anti-slavery crusader and was made the occasion
of public testimony. The Rev. Charles Turner Torrey, who had been an
active writer and worker in the cause, and in 1834 was shut up in the
penitentiary in Baltimore for having aided slaves to escape, died in
May, 1846, of disease brought on by ill usage. He was of New England
birth and his body was brought to Boston for burial. Besides the burial
service there was a public meeting in Faneuil Hall on the evening of 18
May. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, an ardent supporter of the anti-slavery
cause and one of the committee in charge, wrote to Lowell on the 3d of
the month, telling him that private advices led them to expect hourly
the news of Torrey’s death, and that the plan was on foot for a public
funeral service. If this is done,” he says, “we shall hope to hear from
the poets of our land, the true ministers of God and of Christ, at the
present era.... May I receive from your heart of love and high-souled
honor sentiments such as I have not a few times obtained from your
free-hearted poetry?” No appeal could have used so cogent an argument as
that which thus characterized the poet, and Lowell responded with the
lines, “On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey,” which were read at the
meeting in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing. Dr. Bowditch thanked the poet
for the response to his request, but doubted if the poem was not of too
charitable a tenor. “Your poetry,” he says, “is a harbinger of better
hours, but not for this century, as I fear we have missed the great idea
of our existence and a new cycle of time must pass its round, and a new,
a lovelier race of beings must settle on this earth ere man shall truly
appreciate the divine doctrine you enunciate in the last line of your
verses.”
Lowell had now become clearly identified with the anti-slavery cause and
did not shrink from using the phrase “we abolitionists.” His reputation
as a poet had steadily risen. He was contemplating a second series of
his “Conversations,” and though he rarely used the instrument of poetry
in direct attack, much of his verse sounded those notes of freedom and
truth which were, even when abstractly used, rightly regarded as
dominant notes in the songs of the times. The leaders of the
anti-slavery cause welcomed him as an important coadjutor. At this time
the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_ was passing through one of the
several changes sure to overtake the management of a journal which was
the organ of such a bundle of individualities as would make up a reform
party. The _Standard_ was the official paper of the American
Anti-Slavery Society, as the _Liberator_ was the individual mouthpiece
of Mr. Garrison. The _Standard_ had been conducted successively by Mrs.
Lydia Maria Child and her husband, David Lee Child. The former, who had
marked literary ability and a fondness for the art of literature, had
directed the paper in such a way as to win the attention of other than
pronounced abolitionists; the latter had a stronger interest in legal
and constitutional questions, and his disquisitions, which were
inordinately long, must have wearied the readers whom it was desirable
to gain over. Those who merely wished to hear their beliefs sounded may
have had no fault to find, but these did not need conversion. The paper,
therefore, passed in 1844 into the hands of Mrs. Chapman, Edmund
Quincy,[56] and Sydney Howard Gay, who augmented the energy and
diversity of the journal, but did not succeed in arresting the decline
of its subscription list. In the spring of 1846 the paper had only about
1400 paying subscribers.
A further change seemed desirable, and the sensible one was made of
concentrating the responsibility in the hands of one person, Mr. Gay,
and endeavoring to reënforce him with an imposing list of regular
contributors. This list was published 11 June, 1846, and comprised
these names: Eliza Lee Follen, Rev. John Weiss, Charles F. Briggs,
Wendell Phillips, James Russell Lowell, Maria Weston Chapman, Dr.
William F. Channing, Rev. Thomas T. Stone, Edmund Quincy, and, a little
later, Rev. Samuel May. It will be seen thus that there was a tolerable
admixture of literature with polemics. Lowell had been urged to take a
prominent place, and consented out of readiness to cast in his lot with
the men and women who were heading the forlorn hope. He was perfectly
aware, however, of a certain incompatibility of temper and aims which
disqualified him from an unreserved submersion of his powers in this
cause. The letter in which he gives in his adherence to the plan defines
with much clearness his own consciousness of his vocation, and the very
humorousness of the introduction intimates that he held off from the
task of stating his position, as well as exhibits a mercurial
temperament that would inevitably refuse to be kept within very exact
limits. The letter is so important a disclosure of Lowell’s mind at this
time that it must be given entire, though the most significant part has
already been printed by Mr. Norton. Mr. Gay had written him under date
of May, 1846: “It is with no little satisfaction that I welcome you into
our company of standard-bearers to the anti-slavery host. I have long
wished to see you actively engaged among us, and even had I no personal
interest in the matter, the position you have chosen is precisely the
one I should best like to see you in. You could nowhere do more good,
and in no other way could you become so thoroughly identified with the
cause. It is the historical cause of our day, and as the Future will
know you as a Poet, she should find in our records additional evidence
that you understood and fulfilled your mission.”
_To Sydney Howard Gay._
ELMWOOD, June 16, 1846.