of the seasons, the author has pencilled little sketches of boyhood,
youth, manhood, and age. The temptation to the obvious in morals and
sentiment must have been great; but again Mitchell’s literary skill and
his humor carry him through successfully.
_Seven Stories with Basement and Attic_ is a group of narratives
drawn from the author’s ‘plethoric little note books of travel.’ The
‘Basement’ is the introduction, the ‘Attic’ the conclusion. The first
story, ‘Wet Day at an Irish Inn,’ shows how, if he be observant, a man
may have adventures without taking the trouble to cross the street in
search of them. Three of the stories are French (‘Le Petit Soulier,’
‘The Cabriolet,’ and ‘Emile Roque’); another is Swiss (the ‘Bride of
the Ice King’); yet another is Italian (‘Count Pesaro’), and all are
exquisite, written in a style which for sweetness and unaffected ease
is, if not a lost art, at all events a neglected one. It has been said
that our young men would not care to write in this fashion to-day; it
is a question whether our young men would be able to do so.
One novel stands to ‘Ik Marvel’s’ credit, _Doctor Johns_, a story of
a New England country parsonage, well written because its author could
not write otherwise, faithful and exact because he knew the life,
yet going no deeper than other attempts to explain the New England
character, the externals of which are so easy to portray and the real
essence so baffling.
Among the best of ‘Ik Marvel’s’ books are those dealing with rural
life. _My Farm of Edgewood_ sets forth the author’s adventures in
buying a country home, and his subsequent adventures in settling
therein and making life variously profitable. It is a successful
attempt to magnify the office of gentleman-farmer. The attractiveness
of the life is not over-emphasized, nor is it pretended that that is
legitimate farming which produces big crops regardless of expense.
The picture as a whole is seductive in ways not to be referred to
the literary skill of the artist. It is odd enough how a lay-reader,
unused to carrots and cabbages, will follow every detail of Mitchell’s
experiment. Here must be some outcroppings of the primitive instinct.
Moreover, the book relates to home-making, a subject perennially dear
to the American heart. Our restlessness has never unsettled us in that
regard.
_Wet Days at Edgewood_ is a companion volume. The days here celebrated,
nine in number, were made bright by readings about ‘old farmers, old
gardeners, and old pastorals.’ Rejoicing in the strong common sense
of ancient writers on husbandry, and in the quaint flavor of their
style, ‘Ik Marvel’ chats of Roman farm and villa life, recalling what
Varro and Columella had to say about the art of tilling the soil. He
takes pleasure in the reflection that ‘yon open furrow ... carries
trace of the ridging in the “Works and Days;” that the brown field of
half-broken clods is the fallow (Νεός) of Xenophon,’ and that ‘Cato
gives orders for the asparagus.’
Then he comes to modern times, to the days of Thomas Tusser, Sir Hugh
Platt, Gervase Markham, Samuel Hartlib, Jethro Tull, and William
Shenstone, men who farmed practically, or theoretically, or even
poetically. ‘Ik Marvel’ loves them all, even those whose enthusiasm was
in the ratio of their helplessness. No less dear to him is Goldsmith,
who wrote what passes for a rural tale and is not rural at all, but
comically urban, and Charles Lamb, who hated the country and gladly
avowed it.
These are Mitchell’s principal works. Having read thus far, it were
a pity to overlook the two volumes on _English Lands, Letters, and
Kings_, and a greater pity to overlook the instructive and entertaining
_American Lands and Letters_. In brief, the reader who insists on
knowing ‘Ik Marvel’ only by _Reveries of a Bachelor_ does his author an
injustice and robs himself of many hours of literary delight.
Sentimentalism will always manifest itself in literature in one
form or another. That there will be a return to the manner which we
associate with ‘Ik Marvel’ is not likely, yet it was sentimentalism
in its manliest form. The continued popularity of _Reveries of a
Bachelor_ suggests that Americans of to-day are not quite as cynical
and irreverent as they are sometimes painted, or as they love to paint
themselves.
FOOTNOTES:
[61] There were to have been two volumes of _Battle Summer_,
called respectively the ‘Reign of the Blouse’ and the ‘Reign
of the Bourgeoisie.’ Only the first was published.
[62] Reprinted under the title _Out-of-Town Places_, 1884.
XVIII
_JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL_
REFERENCES:
=F. H. Underwood=: _The Poet and the Man: Recollections and
Appreciations of James Russell Lowell_, 1893.
=E. E. Hale=: _James Russell Lowell and his Friends_, 1899.
=H. E. Scudder=: _James Russell Lowell, a Biography_, 1901.
=Ferris Greenslet=: _James Russell Lowell, his Life and Work_,
1905.
I
HIS LIFE
The Lowells of New England are descendants of Percival Lowell, a
prosperous Bristol merchant who came to America in 1639 and settled
at Newbury, Massachusetts. The family has been distinguished through
its various representatives for public spirit and business acumen as
well as for a devotion to letters. The grandfather of the poet, Judge
John Lowell, was author of the clause in the Bill of Rights abolishing
slavery in Massachusetts. One of his sons was founder of the great
manufacturing city on the Merrimac which bears his name. A grandson
established the Lowell Institute, a system of popular instruction by
free courses of lectures,--a system unique, in that it aims to bring to
its audiences representative scholars, chosen less for their skill in
the graceful but often specious art of public speaking than for solid
attainments.
James Russell Lowell, the youngest son of the Reverend Charles
Lowell, minister of the West Church in Boston, was born at Cambridge,
Massachusetts, in the colonial mansion known as ‘Elmwood,’ on February
22, 1819. His mother, Harriet (Spence) Lowell, was a daughter of Keith
Spence, of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.[63]
Under William Wells (an English pedagogue of the old school) Lowell
prepared for college, entered Harvard, and after some disciplinary
tribulations was graduated with his class (1838). He studied law and
was admitted to the bar (August, 1840), but remained briefless during
the few months of his efforts to begin a practice.
While waiting for clients, he busied himself with literature. He was
early a rhymer. At twelve years of age his skill in making verse
had astonished his schoolfellows, one of whom rushed home in great
excitement to announce that ‘Jemmy Lowell thought he was going to be a
poet.’
With the fearlessness of youth and in the hope of bettering himself
financially, Lowell, aided by his friend Robert Carter, started a
magazine, ‘The Pioneer.’ According to the prospectus, dated October
15, 1842, the editors proposed to supply ‘the intelligent and
reflecting portion of the Reading Public with a substitute for the
enormous quantity of thrice diluted trash, in the shape of namby-pamby
love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured out to them....’ Only
three numbers of ‘The Pioneer’ were issued.[64] The ‘Reading Public’
was joined to its idols and declined to encourage ‘a healthy and manly
Periodical Literature.’
In 1841 was published _A Year’s Life_, Lowell’s first volume of verse;
it was followed by _Poems_ (1844), by a volume of prose, _Conversations
on Some of the Old Poets_ (1845), and by Poems, ‘second series’ (1848).
The ‘Ianthe’ of _A Year’s Life_ was easily identified with Maria White,
the gifted and beautiful girl who, in December, 1844, became the poet’s
wife. The first year of their married life was passed in Philadelphia,
whither Lowell had taken his bride to protect her from the harsh New
England winter. Their financial resources were few, but of gayety and
courage there was no lack. Lowell aspired to live by his pen. What with
the small sums paid him (rather against his will) for editorial work
on ‘The Pennsylvania Freeman,’ what with the hardly larger sums for
contributions to ‘Graham’s Magazine’ and ‘The Broadway Journal,’ he
managed to subsist.
Nevertheless, it seemed best for a number of reasons that the young
people return to Cambridge and make a common home at ‘Elmwood’ with
Lowell’s parents. In June of this year (1846) appeared ‘A Letter from
Mr. Ezekiel Biglow of Jaalam to the Hon. Joseph T. Buckingham, editor
of the Boston Courier, inclosing a poem of his son, Mr. Hosea Biglow.’
This was the first of _The Biglow Papers_, the initial attack of many
attacks Lowell was to make on slavery with the weapons of satire
and ridicule. During 1847 three more ‘papers’ were printed in the
‘Courier;’ the remaining five appeared in ‘The National Anti-Slavery
Standard.’
When the ‘Standard’ passed from the control of a board of editors into
the hands of Sydney Howard Gay, Lowell became a salaried contributor,
and for a time his name appeared as corresponding editor. He was
allowed a free hand. Abolitionist though he was, his abolitionism was
tempered with a deal of sympathy for slaveholders. And he had interests
which most reformers of the time lacked, a passionate love of letters,
for example. Hence it was that in the midst of leader-writing he was
penning _A Fable for Critics_ and _The Vision of Sir Launfal_.
The winter of 1851–52 Lowell spent with his family in Italy, and the
following spring and summer in journeyings through France, England,
Scotland, and Wales. In October he sailed for home, having as ship
companions Thackeray and Arthur Hugh Clough. Just a year later Mrs.
Lowell died (October 27, 1853). For months afterward Lowell was in
‘great agony of mind, and he had to force himself into those laborious
hours which one instinctively feels contain a wise restorative.’[65]
He abounded in literary plans, some of which (and among them a novel)
were never carried out, whereas others, his papers in ‘Putnam’s
Magazine’ and his lectures on English Poetry, before the Lowell
Institute, were in a high degree successful. Each lecture of the
Institute course had to be given twice, so great was the demand for
tickets. Lowell was very nervous over his first platform experience,
and not a little pleased when he found that he could hold the audience
an hour and a quarter (‘they are in the habit of going out at the end
of the hour’). The singular merit of the lectures led to his being
appointed to the chair of belles-lettres at Harvard, just resigned by
Longfellow. After a year’s study abroad the new professor entered on
his academic duties (September, 1856).
In 1857 Lowell married Miss Frances Dunlap, of Portland, Maine. She
was a woman of reserved though gracious manners and rare beauty, who
through her serene temper and fine critical sagacity, together with
a keen sense of the humorous, exerted a most beneficent influence on
Lowell’s life.
The burdens of college work were not so heavy as to prevent Lowell’s
assuming the editorship of ‘The Atlantic Monthly,’ a new literary
magazine with an anti-slavery bias. He held this post from 1857 to
1861, and proved to be one of the best of editors, though routine
was irksome to him, and the vagaries of contributors called for
more patience than he could at all times command. Two years after
leaving the ‘Atlantic’ he undertook to edit the ‘North American
Review’ in company with Charles Eliot Norton, on whom fell the chief
responsibilities. Lowell, for his part, contributed to the ‘Review’
many notable papers on politics and literature.
The Civil War called out much of Lowell’s most spirited prose and not a
little of his best poetry. A second series of _Biglow Papers_ appeared
in the ‘Atlantic,’ and for the commemoration of sons of Harvard who had
fought for the Union, Lowell wrote his magnificent _Commemoration Ode_.
This noble performance was literally an improvisation, written in a
single night.
At this point we may take note of Lowell’s publications, subsequent
to the _Poems_, ‘second series.’ They are: _A Fable for Critics_,
1848; _The Biglow Papers_, 1848; _Fireside Travels_, 1864; _The
Biglow Papers_, ‘second series,’ 1866; _Under the Willows and Other
Poems_, 1869; _The Cathedral_, 1870; _Among My Books_, 1870; _My
Study Windows_, 1871; _Among My Books_, ‘second series,’ 1876;
_Three Memorial Poems_, 1877; _Democracy and Other Addresses_, 1887;
_Political Addresses_, 1888; _Heartsease and Rue_, 1888.
There appeared posthumously _Latest Literary Essays_, 1891; _The Old
English Dramatists_, 1892; _Letters of James Russell Lowell, edited by
C. E. Norton_, 1893; _Last Poems_, 1895; _The Anti-Slavery Papers of
James Russell Lowell_, 1902.
Lowell resigned his professorship in 1872 and went abroad for two
years. Oxford conferred on him the degree of D. C. L. and Cambridge
that of LL. D.; it pleased him to regard the Cambridge degree ‘as in
a measure a friendly recognition of the University’s daughter in the
American Cambridge.’ In 1874 he returned home, and on the opening of
college was persuaded to resume his lectures.
During the presidential campaign of 1876 Lowell became politically
active in ways new to him. He was a delegate to the Republican National
convention and a presidential elector. His fellow-townsmen had wished
him to accept a nomination for representative in Congress; but Lowell
refused, believing himself unqualified for the post.
Not long after his inauguration President Hayes, at the instance of
W. D. Howells, offered Lowell the Austrian mission, an honor the poet
felt impelled to decline; when, however, it was learned that he would
be very willing to go to Spain, the appointment was made. He arrived
in Madrid on August 14, 1878. Two years later he was transferred to
England. Reappointed by President Garfield, he held this important
charge until the close of President Arthur’s administration.
Few ministers have been as popular as he. And not the least factor of
his popularity in England was his sturdy patriotism. Lowell was the
author of the essay ‘On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners,’ an
essay which an ingratiating Anglican clergyman[66] says was meant to be
‘overheard’ in England. It were more exact to say that the essay was
meant to be heard, and heard distinctly. ‘They honor stoutness in each
other,’ said Emerson, noting the traits of the English people. And it
is not unreasonable to believe that they also admire the same virtue in
others.
The summer of 1885 Lowell passed at Southborough, forty miles from
Boston, the home of his daughter, Mrs. Burnett. He made a number
of public addresses, gave a Lowell Institute course of lectures on
the ‘Old English Dramatists,’ argued the question of International
Copyright before a committee of the Senate, and is believed to have had
real influence in persuading representatives of this great country that
stealing is a sin. He found himself inveigled into an author’s reading,
and humorously bewailed his weakness in ever having written a line of
poetry. The demands upon him were enormous. It was now an effort for
him to do things, and if the grasshopper had not yet become a burden,
public occasions had, and more than once he was obliged to beg off from
keeping a promise inconsiderately made.
He enjoyed being in England for the summer, and usually divided his
time between London and Whitby. The last of these visits took place in
1889. The ensuing winter he gave to a careful revision of his writings.
In the spring of 1890 he was ill for six weeks, and though he recovered
enough to be able to move about a little and to welcome his friends,
serious work was out of the question. He wrote two or three short
papers, and had strong inducements held out to him to write more, but
the time for writing was past, and he knew it.
His sufferings during his last illness were great, but he bore them
like the man he was. Lowell died at ‘Elmwood,’ Cambridge, on August 12,
1891.
II
LOWELL’S CHARACTER
‘I am a kind of twins myself, divided between grave and gay,’
said Lowell, in one of those rare moments when he condescended to
self-analysis. The duality of temperament here pointed at is one secret
of the fascination he exerted on all who were privileged to know him
intimately. The fascination was certainly great and the tributes to
it numerous. Lowell’s personality was so winning, and the man was so
genuine, human, and lovable, that it is difficult to speak of him in
terms having even the semblance of impartiality. Although strong-willed
and positive, not indisposed now and then to indulge himself in
the luxury of stubbornness, he was open-minded, wholly unselfish,
kind-hearted, affectionate, and gentle; and while he had his reserves
he was democratic in all the best senses of the word, for his democracy
sprang from the depths of his nature. Changeable in his moods, he could
be teasing, whimsical, irritating; but when he was most mocking and
perverse he was most delightful.
There is something very attractive in Lowell’s attitude toward
literature and literary fame. Books were an essential part of his
life. He had mastered that difficult art of _reading_ as few men have
mastered it. He was rarely endowed as a poet and prose-writer. And yet
Lowell, the most complete illustration we have of the literary man,
showed no inclination to magnify the importance of letters.
As to his individual achievements, he not only never thought of himself
more highly than he ought to think, but was the rather inclined to
place too low an estimate on the value of his work. Self-distrust
increased with years. Nevertheless, Lowell indulged himself in no
philosophy of despair. He had had much to be grateful for. ‘I have
always believed that a man’s fate is born with him, and that he cannot
escape from it nor greatly modify it’ (Lowell once wrote to his friend
Charles Eliot Norton) ‘and that consequently every one gets in the long
run exactly what he deserves, neither more nor less.’ Lowell goes on to
say that the creed is a ‘cheerful’ one; he might have added that it is
no less sensible and manly than it is cheerful.
Whether he found his creed satisfactory at all times or was always
conscious that he had a creed, we cannot know, but he could be the
blithest of fatalists when it pleased him to be.
III
POET AND PROSE WRITER
Lowell’s prose is manly, direct, varied, flexible, generally
harmonious, abounding in passages marked by grace, beauty, and
sweetness, and capable of rising to genuine eloquence. In its
overflowing vitality and human warmth it is an adequate expression of
the man, imaging his mocking and humorous moods no less than his deep
sincerity, his strength of purpose, and his passion. Much of it has the
confidence and ease that go with successful improvisation. If Lowell
was ‘willing to risk the prosperity of a verse upon a lucky throw of
words,’ he was even more willing to take like chances with his prose.
His thought ran easily into figurative form, and the making of metaphor
was as natural to him as breathing. He would even amuse himself with
conceits, for he loved to play with language, to force words into
shapes he might perchance have condemned had he found them in the work
of another. But if style is to be representative, this playfulness,
however annoying to Lowell’s critics, is a virtue. A Lowell chastened
in his English and wholly academic would not be the Lowell we rejoice
in.
He practised the art of poetry in many forms and always with success.
Of everything he wrote you might say that it had been his study, though
you might refrain from saying that ‘it had been all in all his study.’
In other words, as we read Lowell the question never arises whether or
not the poet is working in unfamiliar materials, but whether he might
not have given his product a higher finish, the materials and the form
remaining the same. He was no aspirant after flawless beauty. He wrote
spontaneously and was for the time wholly possessed by his theme. But
what he had written he had written; and if never content with the
result he at least compelled himself to be philosophical. He made a few
changes, to be sure, but (as was said of a far greater poet) he would
correct with an afterglow of poetic inspiration, not with a painful
tinkering of the verse.
It is by tinkering with the verse, however (the ‘higher’ tinkering),
that perfection is attained. And he who wrote with evident ease so many
lovely and felicitous lines could as easily have bettered lines that
are wanting in finish. It was not Lowell’s way. Too much may not be
required of a man who often felt the utmost repugnance to reading his
own writings, once they were in print.
IV
_POEMS_, _THE BIGLOW PAPERS_, _FABLE FOR CRITICS_, _VISION OF SIR
LAUNFAL_
Lowell’s first poetic flights were strong-winged. ‘Threnodia,’ ‘The
Sirens,’ ‘Summer Storm,’ ‘To Perdita, Singing,’ whatever their faults,
have a richness, a melody, a freedom of structure, an almost careless
grace, that are captivating. Here was no painful effort in production
with the inevitable result of frigidity and hardness.
The poet’s gift matured rapidly. There is strength in such poems as
‘Prometheus,’ ‘Columbus,’ ‘A Glance behind the Curtain,’ rare beauty
in ‘A Legend of Brittany,’ ‘Hebe,’ and ‘Rhœcus,’ a mystical power in
the haunting lines of ‘The Sower,’ passion and uplift in ‘The Present
Crisis,’ ‘Anti-Apis,’ the lines ‘To W. L. Garrison,’ and the ‘Ode to
France,’ while in ‘An Interview with Miles Standish’ is a promise of
that satirical power which was presently to find complete expression in
_The Biglow Papers_.
Early in his career Lowell announced his theory of the poet’s office,
which is to inspire to high thought and noble action, not merely to
please with pretty fancies and melodious verse. The ‘Ode,’ written in
1841, is an expression of his poetic faith. The ethical and reforming
bent in Lowell’s character was so strong as to make it difficult
for him, true bard though he was, to look on poetry as an art to be
cultivated for itself alone.
Inspiriting as were stanzas like ‘The Present Crisis,’ Lowell’s power
became most effective in the anti-slavery struggle when the outbreak
of the Mexican War led to the writing of _The Biglow Papers_. Printed
anonymously in a journal, copied into other newspapers, the question of
their authorship much debated, these satires were at last adjudicated
to the man who wrote them, but not until he himself had heard it
demonstrated ‘in the pauses of a concert’ that he was wholly incapable
of such a performance.
Of the characters of the little drama, Hosea Biglow, the country
youth, stands for the plain common-sense of New England, opposed to
the extension of slavery whatever the means employed, and above all
by legalized murder with an accompaniment of drums and fifes. The
Reverend Homer Wilbur acts as ‘chorus,’ and by his learned comments
surrounds the productions of the country muse with an atmosphere of
scholarship. Birdofredom Sawin is the clown of the little show.
Many finer touches have become obscure by the lapse of time, and _The
Biglow Papers_ is now provided with historical notes; but the energy,
the spirit, and the unfailing humor of the work are perennial. Lowell
was most fortunate in his verbal felicities. Who could have foreseen
that so much danger lurked in a middle initial, or that a plain name
of the sort borne by the former senator from Middlesex contained such
comic potentialities?
We were gittin’ on nicely up here to our village,
With good old idees o’ wut’s right an’ wut aint,
We kind o’ thought Christ went agin war an’ pillage,
An’ thet eppyletts worn’t the best mark of a saint;
But John P.
Robinson he
Sez this kind o’ thing’s an exploded idee.
Lowell was surprised at his own success. What he at first thought ‘a
mere fencing stick’ proved to be a weapon. The blade was two-edged, and
the Yankees did well to fall back a little when he lifted it against
the enemy. For in writing _The Biglow Papers_ Lowell took real delight
in noting the oddities and laughing at the foibles of his own New
Englanders, a people whom he loved with all tenderness, but to whose
faults he was not in the least blind.