POLITICS AND THE WAR
In 1856, the year when Lowell’s name first appears as a professor in
the Harvard catalogue, he is one of eleven professors. In 1891, the
year of his death, there were fifty-seven professors and assistant
professors. The number of “tutors” and “instructors,” to follow the
college titles, increases in the same proportion. Lowell’s name does
not appear on the list of the “Faculty” in 1855, I suppose because he
was in Europe. The Faculty consisted of thirteen gentlemen, of whom
President Eliot, then one of the junior members, and Professor James
Mills Peirce are now the only survivors. Of his associates in the
Faculty, Dr. Walker and Professors Felton, Peirce, Bowen, and Lovering
had been his teachers when he was himself an undergraduate twenty years
before. Of the others, Professor Sophocles, older than he, had been
Greek professor in Amherst before Lowell was at Cambridge. Professors
Child, Lane, Jennison, Cooke, Chase, Eliot, and James Peirce were his
juniors. In the cordial and simple courtesies of Cambridge life, all
these gentlemen are to be spoken of in any calendar of his friends.
After his college work begins, his name appears on the list of the
Faculty. And it remains on the catalogue during the eight years when he
was in Spain and England as American minister. He went to Europe in
1855, after his appointment as professor, and remained there more than
a year; he made another visit in August, 1872, and remained abroad
until July, 1874. His proper duties at Cambridge, therefore, were
between September, 1856, and the summer of 1872, and from October,
1874, to his appointment as minister to Spain in the spring of 1877,
covering in both periods nearly nineteen years.
The earlier of these periods—that from 1856 to 1872—includes the whole
civil war and the most acute of the struggles which preceded it. He
watched with great interest the Kansas trials, and had at one time the
idea of taking Hosea Biglow out to Kansas to send his prophecies from
what was really the seat of war. He was himself learning, and the world
was learning, that Minerva was not unwilling when he wrote prose;
although it was as late as 1846 that he expressed himself so doubtfully
in that matter. It is a pity that the best of his political essays, in
the “Standard,” in the “Atlantic,” and in the “North American,” cannot
be published together in a volume for popular circulation. In one
volume of the Riverside edition of his collected works are four of the
best. If these were in a separate volume, and a few more of the same
sort were printed with them, it would be good reading for the New
Stuarts, for Philistines, Pharisees, and Lynch-men. It will be many
years, I fear, before we are done with them.
His cousin, Mr. Lawrence Lowell, thus characterizes these essays:—
“During the period of war and reconstruction Lowell wrote a number of
political essays, but these are not as remarkable as his poetry or
his criticism. Although very influential in forming public opinion,
and although containing many wise sayings and many striking aphorisms
on government, they are, in the main, a forcible exposition of the
opinions held by intelligent Republicans. Beginning with a distrust
of Lincoln’s tentative policy, they finally express unbounded
admiration for the statesmanship that could wait until the times were
ripe, and give the lead when the people were ready to follow. The
essays show how thoroughly the writer had become estranged from the
abolitionists. He regards the conflict at the outset, not as a
crusade against slavery, but as a struggle to restore order and
maintain the unity of the nation as a question of national existence,
in which the peculiar institution of the South is not at issue; and,
although before the war was over he saw that no lasting peace was
possible unless slavery was forever destroyed, he held that opinion
in common with men who had never harbored a thought of abolition
before the secession of South Carolina. In short, he no longer writes
as the prophet of 1848, but as a citizen and a statesman.”
In an earlier chapter I have already referred to the “Anti-Slavery
Standard,” so long a brilliant exception to the dullness, almost
proverbial, of what are called the “organs” of causes or of societies.
Lowell’s connection with the “Standard” for many years brought him into
close connection with a man after his own heart, Sydney Howard Gay,
well known among all journalists, historians, and men of letters in
America. He will be remembered for the untold services which he
rendered to the country in and after the civil war, and to good
letters, good history, and good journalism before the war, in the war,
after the war, and, indeed, as long as he lived.
In 1840 it would have been difficult, even for a person inside the
sacred circle of the abolitionists, to explain, in a manner
satisfactory to every one, the difference between “old organization,”
“new organization,” and the shades of feeling and thought in either, or
among “come-outers” or “come-outer” societies, which were neither of
the new nor old. For an outsider it would have been impossible to make
such explanations then. And, fortunately, any such discrimination is
now as unnecessary as it is impossible. They were all free lances, who
obeyed any leader when they chose, and, if they did not like his
direction, told him so and refused to follow. A sufficient section of
anti-slavery people, however, to carry out their purposes, established
the “Anti-Slavery Standard.”
At a meeting quite celebrated in those times, in which the original
Anti-Slavery Society divided itself between what was called the “old
organization” and the “new organization,” the old organization,
sometimes called the “Garrisonians,” determined to establish this
paper. This was in the year 1840, and the first editor was a gentleman
named Nathaniel P. Rogers, a brilliant and vigorous writer from New
Hampshire. He died in 1846. His essays have been published, with a Life
by John Pierpont.
The motto of the new journal was “Without concealment and without
compromise.” It was under the general superintendence of what is spoken
of afterwards as the “executive committee;” and, if I understand it
rightly, this executive committee was chosen annually at the meetings
of the “old organization.” An outsider, perhaps, would have said that
Garrison’s “Liberator” would answer the purpose of an organ; and, so
far as devotion to the main cause went, of course it would. But
Garrison, on his part, would never have ground the crank of anybody’s
organ. And, on the other side, the Anti-Slavery Society did not want,
as such, to accompany him on such side-crusades as he might wish to
undertake in the course of the great enterprise. For an instance, most,
if not all, of the people who united to establish the “Standard” would
choose to vote, if they wanted to do so, and frequently did vote. But
he whom in those days men called an abolitionist pure and simple, whom
one could underwrite as A 1, would have abominated any vote at any
election.
This was the explanation given me by the person best qualified to
answer my question when I asked, “Why the ’National Anti-Slavery
Standard’ _and_ the ‘Liberator’?”
In 1844 Mr. Gay became the editor of the “Standard.” He was an
abolitionist through and through. He even gave up the study of law,
because he felt that he could not swear to sustain the Constitution of
the United States, and so could not enter at the bar. He had very rare
gifts of editorial promptness and sagacity; and, as the “Standard”
itself shows, had the unselfishness and the knowledge of men which
enabled him to engage as fellow-workmen men and women of remarkable
ability. Henry Wilson speaks of him as the man who deserved well of his
country because he kept the “Tribune” a war paper in spite of Greeley.
Lowell had written before 1846 for the anti-slavery papers, as the
reader knows. Mrs. Chapman, a lady distinguished among the
abolitionists, had suggested to Gay that Lowell would give strength to
the “Standard.” How droll it seems now that anybody should be advising
anybody to engage his services! All the same, Mrs. Chapman did, and he
was retained to write once a week for the “Standard.” In an early
letter of his to Gay, as early as June of 1846, he says that he is
“totally unfitted” for the position of an “editorial contributor.” He
was sure that Garrison and Mrs. Chapman overrated his popularity. “In
the next place,”—this is edifying now,—“if I have any vocation, it is
the making of verse. When I take my pen for that, the world opens
itself ungrudgingly before me, everything seems clear and easy, as it
seems sinking to the bottom would be as one leans over the edge of his
boat in one of those dear coves at Fresh Pond. But when I do prose, it
is _invitâ Minervâ_. My true place is to serve the cause as a poet.”
In the same letter he suggests what we now call a “funny column.” He
calls it a “Weekly Pasquil.” “I am sure I come across enough comical
thoughts in a week to make up a good share of such a corner, and Briggs
and yourself [Gay] and Quincy could help.”
Edmund Quincy began in the “Standard” that series of letters signed
“Byles,” which with infinite fun and spirit revealed Boston to the
decorous senses of those people who had supposed that they were the
“upper four hundred.” The letters were afterward carried on in the
“Tribune” for many years. In this instance, as in the transfer of Mr.
Gay’s services to the “Tribune,” the “Standard” led the way for some of
the signal achievements in the interesting history of that paper.
Lowell’s correspondence with Gay is excellent reading for young men who
have fallen in love with their own picture of journalism, and are
fascinated by the charm of that picture. To us, reading after fifty
years, it is edifying, not to say amusing, to find that, after rather
more than a year, the “Executive Committee” of the “Standard” feared
that they were flinging their money away in paying this young poet four
dollars and eighty cents a week for his contributions. Think of that,
gentlemen who manage the treasuries of weekly or monthly journals now!
James Lowell, in the very prime of his life, is writing for you. He is
just beginning on the “Biglow Papers.” And you find that the work is
not worth five dollars a week, and notify your working editor that he
must be dropped!
Lowell’s letter in reply is manly and courteous. He even says that he
has felt somewhat cramped by the knowledge that a corresponding editor
ought to recognize the views of an “Executive Committee.” “I have felt
that I ought to work in my own way, and yet I have also felt that I
ought to try to work in their way, so that I have failed of working in
either.”
Young authors may read with interest these words,—not too proud: “I
think the Executive Committee would have found it hard to get some two
or three of the poems I have furnished from any other quarter.” “Beaver
Brook,” for instance, “To Lamartine,” or several of the early Biglow
papers! No! It would be hard to get them furnished “from any other
quarter.” And the anonymous Executive Committee flinched at the four
dollars and eighty cents which had to be paid for each of these! With
one and another such jar, however, the connection between Lowell and
the “Standard” lasted, in one or another form, for four or five years.
I hope it is not too late for us still to expect a full memoir of Mr.
Gay’s life and work. As a permanent contribution to literature, “The
Popular History of America” will preserve his memory. It is the first
of the composite histories wrought by the hands of many experts; but it
all went under his careful supervision, and ought to be called by his
name. At Chicago, at New York, in the “Tribune,” and as coadjutor with
Mr. Bryant in the “Evening Post” office, he showed what his great
capacity as an editor was.
I have never seen in print his story of that fearful night when Lincoln
was killed. But one hears it freely repeated in conversation, and I see
no reason why it should not be printed now.
With the news of the murder of Lincoln, there came to New York every
other terrible message. The office of the “Tribune,” of course,
received echoes from all the dispatches which showed the alarm at
Washington. There were orders for the arrest of this man, there were
suspicions of the loyalty of that man. No one knew what the morrow
might bring.
In the midst of the anxieties of such hours, to Mr. Gay, the
acting-editor of that paper, there entered the foreman of the
typesetting-room. He brought with him the proof of Mr. Greeley’s
leading article, as he had left it before leaving the city for the day.
It was a brutal, bitter, sarcastic, personal attack on President
Lincoln,—the man who, when Gay read the article, was dying in
Washington.
Gay read the article, and asked the foreman if he had any private place
where he could lock up the type, to which no one but himself had
access. The foreman said he had. Gay bade him tie up the type, lock the
galley with this article in his cupboard, and tell no one what he had
told him. Of course no such article appeared in the “Tribune” the next
morning.
[Illustration: SYDNEY HOWARD GAY]
But when Gay arrived on the next day at the office, he was met with the
news that “the old man” wanted him, and the intimation that “the old
man” was very angry. Gay waited upon Greeley.
“Are you there, Mr. Gay? I have been looking for you. They tell me that
you ordered my leader out of this morning’s paper. Is it your paper or
mine? I should like to know if I cannot print what I choose in my own
newspaper!” This in great rage.
“The paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article is in type upstairs, and
you can use it when you choose. Only this, Mr. Greeley: I know New
York, and I hope and believe, before God, that there is so much virtue
in New York that, if I had let that article go into this morning’s
paper, there would not be one brick upon another in the ‘Tribune’
office now. Certainly I should be sorry if there were.”
Mr. Greeley was cowed. He said not a word, nor ever alluded to the
subject again. I suppose the type is locked up in the cupboard of the
“Tribune” office at this hour.
It was by this sort of service that Mr. Gay earned Mr. Wilson’s praise
that “he kept Mr. Greeley up to the war.”
Mr. Lowell’s correspondence with Mr. Gay makes one wish that we had Mr.
Gay’s side as well. The letters which are printed in Lowell’s
correspondence are well worthy the study of young journalists.
It will be readily seen that here was a college professor well in touch
with the responsibilities of the time. Writing occasionally for such a
paper as the “Standard,” responsible for the tone and politics of the
“Atlantic,” and afterwards of the “North American,” he could tell the
world what he thought in those times of storm and earthquake; and he
did not fail to use his opportunity. Meanwhile the war was drawing
nearer and nearer. Strictly speaking, the war began when Franklin
Pierce, on the part of the government of the United States, acting by
the United States marshal, took possession of the Hotel of the Emigrant
Aid Company, in Lawrence, Kansas, in May, 1856, and destroyed it.
The class of youngsters who entered Harvard College in 1856, when
Lowell began his work there, graduated in 1860, and were eager to go
into the army. Of that class sixty-four enlisted, of whom thirteen were
killed. Thirty-six of the next class enlisted in the army or navy;
thirty of the next class; and thirty-two of the class of 1863. Lowell
was in personal relations with most of these young men. He had five
young relatives who died in the service,—General Charles Russell Lowell
and his brother James Jackson Lowell, William Lowell Putnam, Warren
Dutton Russell, and Francis Lowell Dutton Russell, who was only twenty
when he died. William Putnam was the son of the sister whose account of
the childhood of Lowell has been already referred to.
Mr. Leslie Stephen has referred pathetically to Lowell’s white-heat
patriotism as the war went on,—he watching it with such associations.
“The language of the most widely known English newspapers at the time
could hardly have been more skillfully framed for the purpose of
irritating Lowell, if it had been consciously designed to that end....
He showed me the photograph of a young man in the uniform of the United
States army, and asked me whether I thought that that lad looked like
‘a blackguard.’ On my giving the obvious reply, he told me that the
portrait represented one of the nephews he had lost in the war. Not
long afterward I read his verses in the second series of the ‘Biglow
Papers,’ the most pathetic, I think, that he ever wrote, in which he
speaks of the ‘three likely lads,’
‘Whose comin’ step there’s ears thet won’t,
No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin’.’”
These “three likely lads” were General Charles Russell Lowell, his
brother James Jackson Lowell, and William Lowell Putnam, their cousin
and the poet’s nephew.
In the autumn of 1860 Charles Lowell took charge of the Mount Savage
Iron Works at Cumberland, Maryland. On the 20th of April, 1861, hearing
of the attack made the preceding day in Baltimore on the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment, Lowell instantly abandoned his position and set
out for Washington. He put himself at once at the disposal of the
government, and about the middle of June received his commission as
captain in the Third Regiment of United States Cavalry. For
distinguished services at Williamsburg and Slatersville he was
nominated for the brevet of Major. At South Mountain, in bearing orders
to General Reno, he showed a bravery which excited universal
admiration. In recognition of his gallantry in this battle, General
McClellan assigned to Lowell the duty of presenting to the President
the trophies of the campaign. In November, 1862, he was ordered to
report to Governor Andrew for the purpose of organizing the Second
Massachusetts Cavalry, of which he was appointed Colonel. In the May
following he left Boston with his regiment, and was soon placed in
command of the cavalry of the Department of Washington. For many months
he was occupied in resisting the incursions of Mosby. “I have often
said,” writes Colonel Mosby, “that of all the Federal commanders
opposed to me, I had the highest respect for Colonel Lowell, both as an
officer and as a gentleman.” It was at Cedar Creek, while leading his
command, that he received his mortal wound. His commission as
Brigadier-General of Volunteers, “determined on days before,” was
signed on the 19th of October, too late for him to wear the honor he
had earned so well. “We all shed tears,” said Custer, “when we knew we
had lost him.”
General Lowell’s brother, James Jackson Lowell, was but twenty-three
years old when the war began. He was born in the very Elmwood where, as
this writer hopes, this reader feels at home. His early youth was spent
in Boston, where he was a student in the public Latin School. Before he
entered college, the family had removed to Cambridge again.
[Illustration:
ELMWOOD
_From a photograph by Miss C.E. Peabody, Cambridge, Mass._]
He spent the four years from 1854 as an undergraduate in Cambridge,
taking his bachelor’s degree in 1858, at the second Commencement after
his uncle entered on his duties there. He took the highest place in his
class when he graduated; a favorite with his class, “liked as much as
he was admired.” “While he would walk a dozen miles for wild flowers,
skate all day, and dance as long as the music would play, he found no
study too dry, and would have liked to embrace all science and all
literature.”
He showed the interest in public affairs which such a young man ought
to show, and such as was suggested to him by his ancestry on his
father’s side and his mother’s alike. He was at the Dane Law
School,—the school connected with the University at Cambridge,—when the
war broke out. James Lowell and his cousin, William Putnam, also at the
Law School, undertook to raise recruits for a Massachusetts regiment.
After some delay they and their recruits were assigned to the Twentieth
Regiment, Lowell taking a commission as First Lieutenant, and Putnam
that of Second. They received their commissions on the 10th of July.
They were sent to the front in September.
After a few days in Washington they were ordered to Poolesville in
Maryland, and they were encamped there until October 20. On the 21st of
October they were led across the Potomac by General Lane, who atoned
for this mistake by his life. The wretched and useless battle of Ball’s
Bluff was fought, Putnam was so severely wounded that he died in a few
days, Schmitt, their captain, was wounded, and Lowell shot in his
thigh. He returned home until his wound was healed, and joined his
regiment on the Potomac as the movement of McClellan against Richmond
went forward. He saw rather than joined in the fighting at Fair Oaks,
and on the 26th of June writes, in good spirits, that he has hopes of
seeing Richmond before the month is over. But, alas! on the 29th the
regiment was ordered to join McClellan’s retreat to the Potomac, and on
the 30th he received a mortal wound at Glendale.
His cousin, William Lowell Putnam, was an only son. The friend and
teacher of the two, Professor Child, says: “A nobler pair never took
the field. Putnam, with his fair hair, deep eyes, and uncontaminated
countenance, was the impersonation of knightly youth. He was our
Euryalus, _quo pulchrior alter non fuit Æneadum_. The cousins were
beautifully matched in person, mental accomplishments, and pure heroism
of character.”
I copy Professor Child’s words with a certain special tenderness for a
personal remembrance of “Willie Putnam,” as most of his friends called
him. I was in Salignac’s drill corps, before the war began, at a time
when the drill was carried on in a large hall, at the corner of Summer
Street and Washington Street in Boston. The hall was not long enough
for the battalion to form in line, and two right angles were necessary,
so that we stood at parade with our backs to three sides of the wall.
Day by day, for I know not how many weeks, in presenting arms at
parade, I “presented arms,” not so much to the commanding officer, as
to this beautiful boy, who at the distance of thirty or forty yards
presented arms to me. Among three or four hundred young men, most of
them younger than I, I did not know his name. In June he was enlisting
men, and Salignac and the drill corps, and I among the rest, saw him no
longer. In October he was killed; and then for the first time, when I
saw his picture, did I know that the noble, cheerful face I had so
often saluted was that of this fine young man, in whose career, for
many reasons, I was interested so deeply.
[Illustration:
ROBERT GOULD SHAW
WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL
JAMES JACKSON LOWELL]
Such were three of five relatives who went to the war, almost from
Elmwood itself. One sees how Lowell’s personal interest in them
affected all he wrote in poetry or prose in the great crisis.
Professor Child, whom I cited in the passage above, took the most eager
interest in the war, as, indeed, in one way or another, all the
professors at Cambridge did. He was one of the Faculty who had joined
it since they dragged Lowell through college “by the hair of his head,”
as he and Cutler dragged Loring through. Eager in everything in the way
of public spirit, Professor Child made it his special duty to prepare a
“Song-book” for the soldiers who were going to the field. Who is doing
it now for the liberators of to-day? He made everybody who could, write
a war-song, and he printed a little book of these songs, with the
music, which he used to send to the front with every marching regiment.
I had the pleasure of telling him once that I had heard one of his
songs sung by some privates of our Twenty-fourth in the camp before
Bermuda Hundred. This curious collection is already rare. It was called
“War Songs for Freemen,” and was dedicated to the army of the United
States. Professor Child enlisted Charles T. Brooks, the Newport poet,
Dr. Hedge, Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. Howe, both the Lelands, Mrs. T.
Sedgwick, and some anonymous writers, to join in furnishing songs. He
included some good translations from the German. He wrote two or three
himself, which show his fun and audacity. Here is the last verse of
“The Lass of the Pamunky:”—
“Fair hands! but not too nice or coy
To soothe my pangs with service tender.
Soft eyes! that watched a wasted boy,
All loving, as your land’s defender!—
Oh! I was then a wretched shade,
But now I ’m strong and growing chunky—
So Forward! and God bless the maid
That saved my life on the Pamunky!”
Here is a new verse of “Lilliburlero:”—
“‘Well, Uncle Sam,’ says Jefferson D.,
Lilliburlero, Old Uncle Sam,
‘You ’ll have to join my Confed’racy,’
Lilliburlero, Old Uncle Sam.
‘Lero, lero, that don’t appear, O! That don’t appear,’ says Old Uncle Sam.
‘Lero, lero, filibustero! That don’t appear,’ says Old Uncle Sam.”
Mr. Child was appointed professor in rhetoric in 1851, and by a new
appointment in 1876 professor of the English language and literature.
It is interesting to see that, although the use of the English language
had been admirably taught at Harvard long before, there was no
professor of English literature for two centuries and a half after the
college was founded. Is there one at Oxford or at the English Cambridge
to-day?
[Illustration: FRANCIS JAMES CHILD]
How well fitted Mr. Child was for these positions his published series
of ballads and other works show. His recent death gives me a right to
speak here of the tender love with which he was regarded by all the
Cambridge circle, and of the unselfish interest with which he gave time
and work to the help of all around him. One is glad to see this
interest surviving in the lives of his children.
I am not sure that this story of those days is quite decorous enough
for print. But I will risk it. Professor Calvin Ellis Stowe, who was a
classmate of Longfellow’s, told me that in the early days of ’61 he met
Longfellow in the streets of Boston. Both of them were in haste, but
Longfellow had time enough to ask if the Andover gentlemen were all
alive to their duty to the nation. Stowe said he thought they were, and
Longfellow said, “If the New Testament won’t do, you must give them the
Old.” Professor Stowe told me this in August of 1861, after the
anniversary exercises of the class at Andover. The division between
Rehoboam and Jeroboam had naturally played a very important part in the
chapel exercises, with the obvious distinction that in our time it was
the North which was in the right and the South which was in the wrong.
I am permitted to copy the following scraps from the journal of one of
Lowell’s pupils at that time:—
“In ’64, when I had come back from a service mostly civil, but under
direction of General Saxton, on Port Royal Islands, I had to give the
college steward a bond to secure whatever dues I might incur. Lowell
volunteered to sign the bond, and to say that he had perfect
confidence in me. December 22 he called at Divinity Hall, to invite
me to a five o’clock Christmas dinner; again on Christmas to turn the
hour into four o’clock. The other guests were John Holmes and
Caroline Norton, a young man and a niece of the host. Each man was
impressed into escort duty to a woman, and I was Mabel’s escort to
the table.
“The dinner and the chat were delightful. Holmes and Lowell sharpened
their wits upon each other, while the rest of us ate and laughed. I
was the only obdurate that would not take a smile of wine. After
dinner we were entertained with some of Blake’s curious pictures,
with snowflake shapes, and with books. Lowell had been ’weeding his
back garden,’ and he offered me the little stock of duplicates and
obsoletes: a Webster’s quarto dictionary was one of the books, and
the evening was Christmas; but the boys had a notion that his income
was almost pinchingly small for a man in his place; so, in the hope
that he might second-hand them off for five or ten dollars, I
declined them, and have been sorry ever since. I should have known
that if he wanted to sell them he would not even have shown them to
me, and that he did want to put them where they would be helpful and
well used.”
[Illustration: HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW (1860)]
I might almost say that such daily associations with the war account
for the form and spirit alike of the “Commemoration Ode.” No one who
was present when that ode was delivered can forget the occasion. It was
in every regard historical. Peace was concluded, and the country drew a
long breath with joy for the first time. An immense assembly of the
graduates came together. As many of them as could filed into the church
for religious services. Under the lead of Mr. Paine, the professor of
music, a college chorus sang “Salvam fac rempublicam.” I think this was
the first time that the music now well known was used for those words.
On such occasions at Cambridge the graduates entered the church in the
order of their seniority. I remember that on that occasion the
attendance was so large that my own class, which was twenty-six years
out of college, were among the last persons who could enter the
building. We stood in the aisles, because there were no seats for us.
After these services the whole body of the alumni sat at a Spartan
college feast in that part of “the yard,” as we say at Cambridge, which
is between Harvard and Holden Halls. And there Lowell delivered his
“Commemoration Ode.” His own intense interest was evident enough, but
it was reflected in what I might call the passionate interest with
which people heard. It was said afterwards, and I think this appears in
his letters, that the final business of writing this wonderful poem had
all been done in forty-eight hours before he delivered it. But then, as
the reader sees, it had been more than four years in the writing. The
inspiration had come from day to day, and he poured out here the
expression of what he had been thinking and feeling, in joy and sorrow,
in hope and fear, in learning and forgetting, for all that period of
crisis and strain.
I believe I may tell—and it shall close these broken reminiscences of
the war—a story which was familiarly told at the time, and which is
true. I have heard it in one or two forms, and to secure accuracy now I
have asked the gentleman whom I may call the hero of the story for his
own account of it. He was one of Lowell’s pupils, in the “battle class”
of 1862. He has sent it to me in the following words:—
“I spent the night before Commemoration Day on a lounge in Hollis 21,
the room of my classmate Hudson, who was a tutor. I could not
afterwards remember dreaming of anything in particular; but as I woke
I _heard_,
‘And what they dare to dream of, dare to die for.’
“‘Rather a good sentiment,’ I said to myself; ‘and it seems to be
appropriate to the day,’—then just dawning. And so I dropped off
again.
“The dinner was spread, as you remember, in the green bounded by
Harvard, Hollis, and Holden. My seat was just about in the middle.
Mr. Lowell was a few rods nearer Holden and a good deal nearer
Hollis,—about under the more southerly window of Hollis 21. When he
rose, there was a prolonged closing of the ranks,—I remember the
rustle of many feet on the grass,—and Mr. Lowell waited till all was
quiet before he began reading. As he read, when he came to the words,
‘Their higher instinct knew
Those love her best,’—
I began to feel, not that I had heard this before, but that
_something familiar was coming_.
‘Who to themselves are true,’
went on the reader. ‘Hullo!’ said I to myself, ‘I ought to know the
next line.’
‘And what they dare’—
“‘Yes, but it isn’t going to rhyme,’ and this without distinctly
repeating the rest of the line.”
When my friend had observed that “die for” would not rhyme with
“true,” Lowell came to his relief by saying,
“And what they dare to dream of, dare to do.”
So well authenticated a story of sympathy and telepathy seems worth
repeating.
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