[Speech of Charles Eliot Norton at the "Whittier Dinner," in celebration
of the poet's seventieth birthday, and the twentieth birthday of the
"Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers of the magazine, Boston,
December 17, 1877. William Dean Howells, then editor of the
"Atlantic," officiated as chairman. Mr. Norton spoke for James Russell
Lowell, the first editor of the "Atlantic," then serving as United
States Minister to Spain.]
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--We miss to-night one man to whom
many names are equally befitting: the humorist, the wit, the wise
thinker, the poet, the scholar, the worker, the friend--but the man who,
of all others, should be here to do honor to our guest. We miss the
first editor of the "Atlantic," whose comprehensive sympathies, wide as
his vast, broad genius; whose cultivated taste, whose various and
thorough learning gave to our Monthly, from the beginning, first place
among American magazines and secured for it that deserved popularity
which you, sir [Mr. Howells], are doing so much to maintain. The same
qualities which made him eminent as an editor will make him eminent as
the representative abroad of what is best in the social and political
life of our country. No man could more truly exhibit, as comprehending
them in himself, the high spirit, the noble aims, the varied
achievements of a generous and large-minded nation--a nation not always
so careful as it ought to be that its ministers accredited to foreign
powers should be servants creditable to itself. But in the place that he
now fills I cannot but regard him as, in a special sense, the envoy of
the company gathered around this table. I believe that every one of us
has, or at least has had, possessions in Spain that require to be well
looked after; they are possessions of extraordinary, enormous, quite
incalculable value, of which the title deeds are not always as complete
as we could wish. Lowell himself had large estates of this sort:--
"When I was a beggarly boy,
I lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend, nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.
"When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And I built with their roofs of gold
My beautiful castles in Spain."
And so too, he, the friend of us all, whose presence makes us all glad
to-night, and whom we always greet with all love and honor, has had
possessions in the same fair land:--
"How much of my heart, O Spain,
Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne,
The Cid Campeador?"
How many "castles in Spain not built of stone" has he dwelt in, and with
what delightful hospitality has he welcomed us as guests within their
spacious and splendid halls! And even you, sir, for whose sake we have
met to-night, even you, modest as your retirement has seemed to be in
that quiet home, which you have made dear to the lovers of poetry and
purity and peace, you have privately had your speculations in real
estate in that land of romance, from which you have drawn large
revenues. You will pardon me for reminding you of one of them, where--
"On the banks of the Xenil, the dark Spanish maiden
Comes up with fruit of the tangled vine laden."
I have sometimes fancied that even the Concord River had its springs
somewhere in the snowy Sierras of Estremadura, toward which the windows
of the sage-poet's dwelling were turned, and from whose heaven-reaching
summits he has so often caught the fresh airs of celestial breath. Few
of us, indeed, have had the good fortune to add to their vast real
estates in Spain any substantial articles of personal property, but one
of us, rich in the gifts of Don Quixote's land, has actually a piece of
plate, a silver punch bowl, which at times, when filled, has, I doubt
not, given him assurance of undisputed rights in the most magnificent
castles:--
"A Spanish galleon brought the bar--so runs the ancient tale--
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail."
And even you and I, Mr. Editor, and all the rest of us, possess, as I
have said, our smaller domains in that distant land, all of them with
castles; but not all the castles, I fear, in good repair or quite
habitable; and some of us would be perplexed to say if they lay in
Granada or Andalusia, La Mancha--or to tell exactly how many turrets
they had, or how large a company they could accommodate with good
entertainment. Now, sir, such being the case, all of us having such
real, but too often, alas! neglected possessions in Spain, I am not
surprised that Lowell writes to me that he finds the Spanish Legation
one of the busiest in Europe. He is to establish our titles, and the
work is not without its difficulties. Let us send him our God-speed. May
he come back to us to assure us, as he better than any other can do, of
the henceforth undisturbed enjoyment of all our castles in Spain.
[Applause.]