[Speech of James Russell Lowell at the dinner of the Incorporated
Society of Authors, London, July 25, 1888, given to the "American Men
and Women of Letters" who happened to be in London on that date.]
MR. CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:--I confess that I rise
under a certain oppression. There was a time when I went to make an
after-dinner speech with a light heart, and when on my way to the dinner
I could think over my exordium in my cab and trust to the spur of the
moment for the rest of my speech. But I find as I grow older a certain
aphasia overtakes me, a certain inability to find the right word
precisely when I want it; and I find also that my flank becomes less
sensitive to the exhilarating influences of that spur to which I have
just alluded. I had pretty well made up my mind not to make any more
after-dinner speeches. I had an impression that I had made quite enough
of them for a wise man to speak, and perhaps more than it was profitable
for other wise men to listen to. [Laughter.] I confess that it was with
some reluctance that I consented to speak at all to-night. I had been
bethinking me of the old proverb of the pitcher and the well which is
mentioned, as you remember, in the proverb; and it was not altogether a
consolation to me to think that that pitcher, which goes once too often
to the well, belongs to the class which is taxed by another proverb with
too great length of ears. [Laughter.] But I could not resist. I
certainly felt that it was my duty not to refuse myself to an occasion
like this--an occasion which deliberately emphasizes, as well as
expresses, that good feeling between our two countries which, I think,
every good man in both of them is desirous to deepen and to increase. If
I look back to anything in my life with satisfaction, it is to the fact
that I myself have, in some degree, contributed--and I hope I may
believe the saying to be true--to this good feeling. [Applause.]
You alluded, Mr. Chairman, to a date which gave me, I must confess, what
we call on the other side of the water "a rather large contract." I am
to reply, I am to answer to Literature, and I must confess that a
person like myself, who first appeared in print fifty years ago, would
hardly wish to be answerable for all his own literature, not to speak of
the literature of other people. But your allusion to sixty years ago
reminded me of something which struck me as I looked down these tables.
Sixty years ago the two authors you mentioned, Irving and Cooper, were
the only two American authors of whom anything was known in Europe, and
the knowledge of them in Europe was mainly confined to England. It is
true that Bryant's "Water-Fowl" had already begun its flight in immortal
air, but these were the only two American authors that could be said to
be known in England. And what is even more remarkable, they were the
only American authors at that time--there were, and had been, others
known to us at home--who were capable of earning their bread by their
pens. Another singular change is suggested to me as I look down these
tables, and that is the singular contrast they afford between the time
when Johnson wrote his famous lines about those ills that assail the
life of the scholar, and by the scholar he meant the author--
"Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol."
And I confess when I remember that verse it strikes me as a singular
contrast that I should meet with a body of authors who are able to offer
a dinner instead of begging one; that I have sat here and seen "forty
feeding like one," when one hundred years ago the one fed like forty
when he had the chance. [Laughter.]
You have alluded also, in terms which I shall not qualify, to my own
merits. You have made me feel a little as if I were a ghost revisiting
the pale glimpses of the moon, and reading with considerable wonder my
own epitaph. But you have done me more than justice in attributing so
much to me with regard to International Copyright. You are quite right
in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that
has been written on the subject; and there are others you did not name
who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and
the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright,
particularly the secretaries of our international society--Mr. Lathrop
and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon
the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American
authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground,
on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a
great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call
them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps, you
do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the
almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that
we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of
international copyright, being confident that its practical application
would so recommend it to the American people that we should get
afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every
one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice
has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat
has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure
that our American publishers were so much more wicked than their English
brethren would have been if they had had the chance. [Laughter.] I
cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that
there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends
to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The
fact is that it has been partly due to a certain--may I speak of our
ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no
disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in
making a distinction between literary property and other property. That
has been at the root of the whole evil.
I, of course understand, as everybody understands, that all property is
the creature of municipal law. But you must remember that it is the
conquest of civilization, that when property passes beyond the
boundaries of that _municipium_ it is still sacred. It is not even yet
sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an
idea, has been something that it is very difficult for the average man
to comprehend. It is not difficult for the average man to comprehend
that there may be property in a form which genius or talent gives to an
idea. He can see it. It is visible and palpable, this property in an
idea when it is exemplified in a machine, but it is hardly so
apprehensible when it is subtly interfused in literature. Books have
always been looked on somewhat as _feræ naturæ_, and if you have ever
preserved pheasants you know that when they fly over your neighbor's
boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something
more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me
to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow's books had been sold in
England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie--and you will
observe the felicity of its being a game pie, _feræ naturæ_ always you
see--was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for
reprinting his works.
I cannot help feeling as I stand here that there is something especially--I
might almost use a cant word and say monumentally--interesting in a meeting
like this. It is the first time that English and American authors, so
far as I know, have come together in any numbers, I was going to say
to fraternize, when I remembered that I ought perhaps to add to
"sororize." We, of course, have no desire, no sensible man in
England or America has any desire, to enforce this fraternization at the
point of the bayonet. Let us go on criticising each other; it is good for
both of us. We Americans have been sometimes charged with being a little
too sensitive; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who
always have their faults told to them, and the reference to whose virtues
perhaps is sometimes conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that
both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a
fairly good opinion of each other. They can afford it; and if difficulties
arise between the two countries, as they unhappily may,--and when you
alluded just now to what De Tocqueville said in 1828 you must remember that
it was only thirteen years after our war,--you must remember how long it
has been to get in the thin end of the wedge of International Copyright;
you must remember it took our diplomacy nearly one hundred years to enforce
its generous principle of the alienable allegiance, and that the greater
part of the bitterness which De Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the
impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred
were serving on board English ships when at last they were delivered.
These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for
enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two
countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not
think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle.
[Applause.]
I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are
apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the
right; that they are apt to look at their side of the question only.
Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of
judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know
where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has
been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England
among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in
greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its
manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the
centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome
was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I never think of
London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that
palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred
streams--streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other
thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me
beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing
roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like
the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always
indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess
that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring
loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we, as well
as you, have inherited a common trust in the noble language which, in
its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of
human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been
unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that
trust. We have also inherited certain traditions, political and moral,
and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find
quite enough occupation for our united thought and feeling.
[Long-continued applause.]