MR. LOWELL IN SPAIN
The reader ought to understand that while the Spanish mission has
always been spoken of by uninformed people as a somewhat lazy corner in
that somewhat old-fashioned salon which takes the name of “Diplomacy,”
the United States minister in Spain has always been walking amidst hot
coals, or explosive friction matches. Some drowsy people, whose
principal business in life has been to cut off the coupons from
securities which other people had earned for them, waked up with
surprise when they learned that this country had at last taken up the
gauntlet of war. The United States meant to finish the job which Drake
and Burleigh and Howard and Elizabeth left unfinished three centuries
ago. But other people were not surprised. If they have cared about the
history of the hundred years which have made the United States a
nation,—and which have seen ten or twelve changes either of
constitution or of dynasty in Spain,—men have known that open
questions, some of them of great seriousness, have all the time
entangled the diplomatic web which was woven between the two nations.
Into the heritage of these complications Lowell came when—in a pacific
time—he presented his credentials at Madrid. The sovereign then on the
throne was Alfonso XII., and one of Lowell’s earliest dispatches
describes the ceremonies attending his marriage with Mercedes, the
young princess. The minister of foreign affairs was Don Fernando
Calderon Collantes. The short-lived republic which began in 1873, on
the abdication of Amadeo of Savoy, had, in its time, given way, and the
old Bourbon family had returned in the person of Alfonso XII.
In the short period of the republic I happened to be editing the
magazine called “Old and New,” in Boston. Like most intelligent
Americans, I hoped to see republican government extend itself in Europe.
I wanted, at all events, that our readers should know the truth about
it. I struck high, as an editor always should do. So I waited on
Charles Francis Adams, the same who had carried through our
negotiations with England in the civil war with such masterly success.
If there ever were a Republican and Democrat, it was he; if there ever
were a person confident in the strength of America, it was he; and I
certainly expected his sympathy in the cause of the new-born Spanish
republic.
I asked him to write our article on Spain and the new republic. He
listened to me with all his perfect courtesy; and then he advised me—I
might say he bade me—take no stock in the enterprise. I pressed him; I
said, “Surely, we want to extend republican institutions in Europe?”
And he smiled, sadly enough, and said, “Do not expect anything of
Spain, Mr. Hale. _The truth is not in them._”
In this old Bible axiom of Covenanters and of Puritans is the secret of
all the difficulties between England and Spain in Drake’s time, between
this country and Spain in Jefferson’s day, and in each of the crises of
negotiation since. Spain and her statesmen really think that a lie well
stuck to is as good as the truth. Our representatives do not think so.
The difference makes a jar when the neophyte in diplomacy discovers it.
In the unpublished “Pickering correspondence” are some curious
memoranda which show what Jefferson thought and planned. Jefferson had
seen the real Philip Nolan killed, and nine American companions of his
kept in lifelong imprisonment in Mexico because the Spanish government
violated its own passports. This all began as early as 1801. In 1825
Mr. Alexander Everett, our minister in Spain, offered the Spanish
government one hundred millions for Cuba. Under Mr. Polk’s government,
twenty years after, the offer was renewed. Mr. Soulé, our minister in
Madrid between 1853 and 1855, complicated matters by his personal
quarrels. He fought a duel with Turgot, the French minister, and
incurred the dislike, naturally enough, of the French government. At a
conference of three American foreign ministers at Ostend in 1854,
Buchanan, Mason, and himself, Soulé pressed the importance of the
annexation of Cuba to the United States, and carried with him both of
his coadjutors.
But it is not at all necessary that we should enter into the details of
these complications. The history of all this diplomacy has been
admirably written by Professor Hart, and is published in “Harper’s
Magazine” of June, 1898. We should probably have gone to war with Spain
at Mr. Soulé’s suggestion, but that at that moment, in 1854 and 1855,
the weak government of that weakest of men, Franklin Pierce, was in
very hot water at home. The administration had offended the whole North
by its operations in Kansas, and it was no time to ask for a war which
seemed likely to end in the annexation of another slave State to the
Union. Mr. Soulé was recalled, and some sort of _modus vivendi_ was
patched up which carried us through the civil war. Mr. Lincoln
appointed Mr. Koerner as our minister in Spain, who was succeeded by
Mr. John Parker Hale.
One is glad to say that at this time the drift of the somewhat wayward
movements of Spanish administration was in our favor. A curious little
anecdote, which I think has never been printed, illustrates this; and
as it has an indirect bearing on after diplomacy, I will repeat it
here. After our civil war had ground along for nearly three years,
Louis Napoleon, as will be remembered, took a hand in it. He formed the
ingenious plan of uniting other nations in a change of the
international law governing blockades. The admiralty law of the world
at present extends the jurisdiction of any nation for one marine league
from its shores. If, therefore, a blockade-runner could get within
three miles of Jamaica, Cuba, or Porto Rico, he was safe from any
interference from our blockading fleet. Napoleon ingeniously proposed
that, instead of one league, this limit of local sovereignty should be
extended to three leagues from shore. He knew well enough that England
would never consent to this change; but he had that audacity which
enabled him to persuade the Spanish minister to come into his plan.
Maps of the West Indies are now plenty, and any reader who will look at
the position of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the little French islands in the
West Indies will see how seriously such an extension of a neutral limit
would have hindered the operations of our blockading fleets. All this
negotiation was conducted with great secrecy, and orders were sent from
Spain to the West Indies, instructing the local authorities there to
extend threefold the range of their dominion over the sea. These orders
had already gone when Mr. Horatio Perry, our secretary of legation at
that time, got wind of this treachery of our ally.
What Mr. Perry did in this issue was wise. He told his wife. She went
immediately and told the Duchess of Montpensier, who had none too great
love of Louis Napoleon, “the nephew of his uncle,” and the occupant of
Louis Philippe’s throne. She told her sister, the queen. The queen sent
at once for Mr. Perry.
He told her what the emperor had done, and what her own ministers had
done. I suppose he said, “You are injuring your best friends,—at the
solicitation of this intriguer, whom you hate, and who is your worst
enemy.” The queen said this was the first she had heard of the matter,
and she would send for her prime minister.
So she did. And he came. And she asked him if this thing had been done.
And he confessed that it had; Her Majesty had signed the order on such
or such a day.
“But no one told me what it meant,” said poor Isabella. “No one told me
that this was a heavy blow to my American allies.”
No. No one had told her. The minister explained that as well as he
could. If Her Majesty disliked it, he was sorry, but he was too late to
help it. Why too late? the queen asked. Because a steamer had gone to
the West Indian fleet with the orders which changed one league to three
leagues.
Then Queen Isabella spoke the words which, as I count it, were the best
words of her life:—
“It is not too late for me to accept your resignations.”
And when it came to that, it proved that the Señor Don did not want to
resign, and the other Señores Dons did not want to resign, and they
found a fast steamer to take out orders rescinding the other orders.
And so the Emperor Napoleon got a slap in his face, and so the blockade
was maintained for the next year.
And so Spain scored one on her private account with the Washington
government, and Isabella II. found one decent thing on the credit side
when she stood at the bar of St. Peter or history.
Whoever will refer to the published state papers will find no reference
to this interesting incident. It is the sort of thing they leave out in
printing. But you can see that it must have taken place in the autumn
of 1863, if you will read between the lines.
As I have said, the intelligent reader of these lines has read
Professor Hart’s admirable review of the diplomacy of the United States
and Spain regarding Cuba for a hundred years; or, if he has not read
it, he had better read it as soon as he can find the “Harper’s” for
June, 1898. He will learn that in that century there were but two cases
of direct interference with the destinies of Cuba, one by President
John Quincy Adams in 1826, and one by President Grant in 1875. At the
same time he will find that there were filibusters in 1849, 1851, again
in the years 1868–78, again in 1884–85, when the American
administration gave these filibusters neither aid nor comfort. In 1854
and 1873 there came reasons for war, and they were not regarded.
Simply, these references to events of the utmost importance will show
the reader what were the traditions of our legation in Madrid when Mr.
Lowell arrived there, in August of 1877.
I must have talked with him about the Spanish politics of his time, for
I saw him often in London, just before I visited Spain in 1882, and I
traveled there with the benefit of his instructions. But I kept no
notes of what he said, and I dare not refer any of my own impressions
directly to him. For myself in Spain I had only the poor chance which a
traveler of forty days has to learn from the daily newspapers, from
table-d’hôte talk, and from interviews, too short, with intelligent men
of all parties and professions.
I conceived a very high respect for the rank and file of the Spanish
people. Ignorant? Yes, if reading and writing are the tests of
ignorance, for only one fifth of the population can read their own
language. But the people themselves, the average people, as I saw them,
seemed to me a very civil, friendly, self-respecting, thoughtful, and
industrious people. They were ready to oblige a stranger, and they did
not expect a penny or a shilling, as an Englishman or an Irishman does
when he has obliged a stranger.
I see that careful students of the position now say that the class of
people in administration in Spain, the people who make and unmake
ministries and dynasties, are more absolutely separate from what I call
the rank and file than anywhere else in the world. I had a suspicion of
this when I was in Spain.
At the same time I observed that the circulation of the daily
newspapers in Madrid was as great as is that of the papers in Boston,
the two cities being near the same size. They were bitter and violent
in their satire and in their attacks on each other. I think there were
three bright and well-illustrated comic dailies, each with a large
colored cartoon. Here, I think, was the tribute to the people who could
not read. I suppose that the proportion of people who can read is much
larger in Madrid than in the whole nation.
Sagasta was at the helm in 1882, as he is in 1898. I find that I wrote
of him then, “If you trusted the newspapers, you would say that there
is only one man in Spain, or possibly two, who wanted Sagasta to stay
in,—that this one was Sagasta himself,—that the other was possibly his
confidential private secretary. You would say that everybody else was
wild to have such an absurd pretender pushed from his throne, and every
morning you would be sure that he would fall before the next day, and
would be at once forgotten.”
But at the same time I wrote, “As it seems to me, Sagasta is one of the
ablest men in Europe, and I think the king has as high an opinion of
Sagasta as any of us can form.... And I think the king is a remarkable
young man, and that if he can hold on for five years longer, as he has
for the last eight, he will be counted not only as one of the wisest
sovereigns in Europe, but as one of the wisest of the nineteenth
century.”
This, so far as the young king goes, is very strong; it now seems
absurd. But one hopes so much from young kings! and this fine fellow—he
was that at least—died when he was not thirty-one. The first story any
one told you of him, when I was in Spain, was this: that when he was
asked to take the crown, after the republic of Castelar had broken
down, he said, “Yes, I will come if you wish. Only, when you want me to
go, tell me so, and I will go. Remember, all along, that I am the first
republican in Europe.”
Of the young king, Lowell himself gives his opinion in this anecdote:—
“On Saturday, the 26th [of October, 1878], the king received the
felicitations of the diplomatic body. Among other things, he said to
me, ‘I almost wish he had hit me, I am so tired.’ Indeed, his
position is a trying one, and I feel sure that if he were allowed
more freely to follow his own impulses and to break through the hedge
of etiquette which the conservative wing of the restoration have
planted between him and his people, his natural qualities of
character and temperament would make him popular.”
To us in America it is interesting to remember that in the court of
this young king, who made so favorable an impression in his short reign
of eleven years, was one whom we may call an American lady. That is to
say, Madam Calderon, to whom the important charge of the education of
his sisters was intrusted, was the wife and afterward the widow of
Calderon de la Barca, a distinguished Spanish diplomatist. She was Miss
Fanny Inglis, born in Scotland, the granddaughter of Colonel Gardner,
of Preston Pans. In her youth she removed to Boston with her sister,
Mrs. McLeod, and there was a teacher in her sister’s school. She was a
very brilliant, conscientious, and agreeable person, and as the wife of
Calderon de la Barca when he was Spanish minister to the United States,
and afterwards in Mexico, made, as she deserved, a wide circle of
friends. She had the charge of this prince as soon as he needed a
governess, and of his sisters. The Spanish government showed its
appreciation of her services by presenting to her a beautiful home,
above the Alhambra, in Granada, where many of her old American friends
subsequently visited her. She died in the royal palace at Madrid, in
the winter of 1881–82.
Of our legation in Madrid Lowell himself says, in a private note, that
the secretary of legation whom he found there says that it is the
hardest-worked legation in Europe.
I myself have known personally five or six gentlemen who have held the
position, and all of them have given me the same impression. I remember
one of these gentlemen told me that he was still at work on a claim
which one of our captains had against the Spanish government for
interference with his vessel ten years before. The _mañana_ policy had
dragged the thing along so far. So that in that legation one had to
keep in mind the history of half a dozen Spanish dynasties.
At this moment, writing when we are in war with Spain and the plaza of
Santiago de Cuba is again historical, it is impossible not to go back a
quarter of a century. At that time the governor of Santiago shot,
without trial, in that plaza, fifty-four men, most of them American
citizens. They had been captured in the Virginius, a filibustering
steamer; but according to any law of any nation which pretended to any
civilization, they deserved and should have received trial. It was then
that Mr. Fish sent to Mr. Sickles, our minister in Spain, the dispatch
to which I have referred, “If Spain cannot redress these outrages, the
United States will.”
Why was Spain let off then? It seems such a pity now. A short shrift
then would have saved two or three hundred thousand lives which have
been lost in the barbarism of Spanish administration since. Whoever
will read the complicated correspondence of that year will see that
General Grant exercised the utmost forbearance. Spain was at that
moment a republic: what American wanted to crush a poor little European
republic which could hardly hold its head above water? The gentlemen in
authority in Madrid descended to the most pathetic petitions that they
might be excused,—if only this time we would let them off from what
they deserved, no such barbarism should ever be tolerated again. The
minister of foreign affairs would come over himself to the American
legation to plead a postponement of justice. At the end Spain promised
to pension the families of the people her viceroy had murdered. So
General Grant gave way, and when, four years after, Mr. Lowell arrived,
it was his duty to show that we had forgiven, and were trying to forget.
Of the foreign dispatches from our ministers, our government means to
print only that which is wholly harmless in future diplomacy. There is,
therefore, but little of Lowell’s in print which bears upon the
questions most interesting now. But once and again he says that, when
the Spanish government had paid something which it owed, the foreign
minister would beg that notice might be taken of it, as showing their
friendly wish to do their duty when they could.
Here is a little scrap, unimportant enough in itself, but fairly
pathetic now in its open confession by a Spanish minister of the power
for reserve or deception which such a minister has—or thinks he has.
In inclosing it Lowell says:—
(April 2, 1878.) “The interpellation of General Salamanca may either
indicate that there is some doubt in the mind of the party to which
he belongs as to the complete pacification of Cuba, or that he
thought it a good topic about which to ask a question that might be
embarrassing to the ministry. The answer of Señor Canovas admits, as
you will see, that armed resistance still exists, and seems to imply
even more than it admits. I am not sure that it would be safe to draw
any inference from this, as Señor Canovas has, from the first, shown
great discretion and reserve with regard to the recent events and
Cuba.”...
(Inclosure.) “Señor Canovas.... For the rest, the government, in
fact, knows concerning the internal condition of Cuba, concerning the
preliminaries of capitulation, and concerning other points, more than
it has hitherto had occasion to lay before the members of this body.
But this is not what I said before; I did not say that the government
had not more information on this than it had communicated to
Congress, for if that were the case, I should not have had occasion
to suggest what I have suggested.... Concerning what preceded the
capitulation, concerning the capitulation itself, concerning what the
government expects after the capitulation, concerning what it
believes will result from the capitulation, concerning the possible
length of the war, concerning the reasons the government has for
hoping what it may hope and fearing what it may fear,—the government
has its own knowledge, and thinks it inopportune, at present, to
enter into discussion. But concerning the fact of the forces which
have submitted, concerning what remains to be done in the way of
pacification, the government has no kind of secret.”
Señor Canovas was the minister who was murdered last year.
With such cares, and in such difficult surroundings, Lowell spent the
close of 1877 and the years 1879 and 1880. He was then summoned, very
unexpectedly, to transfer his residence to London as United States
minister to England.
In the mean time, with his astonishing power of work, he not only
attended curiously well to the work of the legation, but had devoted
himself sedulously to the study of the Spanish language and literature.
His private letters have the most amusing and interesting references to
such studies. When he was presented to the king, he made his speech in
English, the king answered him in Spanish, then came forward and
exchanged a few compliments in French. But very soon it appears that he
was determined not to be dependent on any interpreter, or on the
accomplishment of any of the foreign officers with whom he had to do.
“I am turned schoolboy again, and have a master over me once more,—a
most agreeable man, Don Herminegildo Giner de los Bios, who comes to me
every morning at nine o’clock for an hour. We talk Spanish together (he
doesn’t understand a word of English), and I work hard at translation
and the like.” And again: “This morning I wrote a note to one of the
papers here, in which my teacher found only a single word to change.
Wasn’t that pretty well for a boy of my standing?”
This he writes to his daughter and to Miss Norton: “I like the
Spaniards, and find much that is only too congenial in their genius for
to-morrow. I am working now at Spanish as I used to work at Old
French,—that is, all the time, and with all my might. I mean to know it
better than they do themselves, which is not saying much.... This is
the course of my day: get up at eight; from nine, sometimes till
eleven, my Spanish professor; at eleven breakfast, at twelve to the
legation, at three home again and a cup of chocolate, then read the
paper and write Spanish till a quarter to seven, at seven dinner, and
at eight drive in an open carriage in the Prado till ten, to bed twelve
to one.”
He writes to a friend in 1878 that he found that the minister of state
for foreign affairs sometimes smoked a pipe in the secrecy of home. “I
was sure he must be blistering his tongue with Spanish mundungus, and
sent him a package of mine. He writes to say, ‘It is the best I ever
smoked in my life; I had no idea there was anything so good.’ So I sent
him yesterday ten more packages, and have promised to keep his pipe
full for so long as I am here.”
Of his own work in his vocation as diplomatist he says: “I am beginning
to feel handier in my new trade, but I had a hard row to hoe at first.
All alone, without a human being I had ever seen before in my life, and
with unaccustomed duties, feeling as if I were beset with snares on
every hand, obliged to carry on the greater part of my business in a
strange tongue, it was rather trying for a man with so sympathetic and
sensitive a temperament as mine, and I don’t much wonder the gout came
upon me like an armed man. Three attacks in five months! But now I
begin to take things more easily. Still, I don’t like the business
much, and feel that I am wasting my time. Nearly all I have to do
neither enlists my sympathies much nor makes any call on my better
faculties. I feel, however, as if I were learning something, and I dare
say I shall find I have when I get back to my own chimney-corner again.
I like the Spaniards, with whom I find many natural sympathies in my
own nature, and who have had a vast deal of injustice done them by this
commercial generation. They are still Orientals to a degree one has to
live among them to believe. But I think they are getting on. The
difficulty is that they don’t care about many things that we are fools
enough to care about, and the balance in the ledger is not so entirely
satisfactory to them as a standard of morality as to some more advanced
nations. They employ inferior races (as the Romans did) to do their
intellectual drudgery for them, their political economy, scholarship,
history, and the like. But they are advancing even on these lines, and
one of these days—But I won’t prophesy. Suffice it that they have
plenty of brains, if ever they should condescend so far from their
_hidalguia_ as to turn them to advantage. They get a good deal out of
life at a cheap rate, and are not far from wisdom, if the old Greek
philosophers who used to be held up to us as an example knew anything
about the matter.”
It must have been a joy to Mr. Evarts, in the Department of State at
home, to read Lowell’s dispatches when they came. It is reserved for
those who have the inner keys to the inner bureau of the department to
read them all; but here are some passages which have been printed in
the government reports,—because harmless,—which make one understand why
he was sent to England when there was a vacancy there:—
(February 6, 1878.) “In these days of newspaper enterprise, when
everything that happens ought to happen, or might have happened is
reported by telegraph to all quarters of the world, the slow-going
dispatch-bag can hardly be expected to bring anything very fresh or
interesting in regard to a public ceremonial which, though intended
for political effect, had little political significance. The next
morning frames of fireworks are not inspiring, unless to the
moralist; and Madrid is already quarreling over the cost and
mismanagement of a show for the tickets to which it was quarreling a
week ago.”
...“Whoever has seen the breasts of the peasantry fringed with charms
older than Carthage and relics as old as Rome, and those of the upper
classes plastered with decorations, will not expect Spain to become
conscious of the nineteenth century and ready to welcome it in a day.”
...“A nation which has had too much glory and too little good
housekeeping.”...
Here is the pathetic account of the young queen’s death. She was the
first wife of Alfonso XII. The present queen regent (the Austrian) is
the second:—
(July 3, 1878.) “Groups gathered and talked in undertone. About the
palace there was a silent crowd day and night, and there could be no
question that the sorrow was universal and profound. On the last day
I was at the palace just when the poor girl was dying. As I crossed
the great interior courtyard, which was perfectly empty, I was
startled by a dull roar not unlike that of vehicles in a great city.
It was reverberated and multiplied by the huge cavern of the palace
court. At first I could see nothing that accounted for it, but
presently found that the arched corridors all around the square were
filled, both on the ground floor and the first story, with an anxious
crowd, whose eager questions and answers, though subdued to the
utmost, produced the strange thunder I had heard. It almost seemed
for a moment as if the palace itself had become vocal.
...“The match was certainly not popular, nor did the bride call forth
any marks of public sympathy. The position of the young queen was
difficult and delicate, demanding more than common tact and
discretion to make it even tenable, much more influential. On the day
of her death the difference was immense. Sorrow and sympathy were in
every heart and on every face. By her good temper, good sense, and
womanly virtues, the girl of seventeen had not only endeared herself
to those immediately about her, but had become an important factor in
the destiny of Spain. I know very well what divinity doth hedge royal
personages, and how truly legendary they become even during their
lives, but it is no exaggeration to say that she had made herself an
element of the public welfare, and that her death is a national
calamity. Had she lived, she would have given stability to the throne
of her husband, over whom her influence was wholly for good. She was
not beautiful, but the cordial simplicity of her manner, the grace of
her bearing, her fine eyes, and the youth and purity of her face gave
her a charm that mere beauty never attains.”
We may call this dispatch the first version of his sonnet:—
DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES.
Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,
Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years,
Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears,
A life remote from every sordid woe,
And by a nation’s swelled to lordlier flow.
What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears
When, the day’s swan, she swam along the cheers
Of the Alcalá, five happy months ago?
The guns were shouting Io Hymen then
That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom;
The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men
To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb.
Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind,
Knowing what life is, what our humankind?
Early in 1880 Lowell received unexpectedly a request from the
Department of State that he would represent the nation in England. He
writes to his daughter the following interesting account of his
transfer:—
“Day before yesterday I was startled with a cipher telegram. My first
thought was, ‘Row in Cuba! I shall have no end of bother!’ It turned
out to be this: ‘President has nominated you to England [this
President was Hayes]. He regards it as essential to the public
service that you should accept and make your personal arrangements to
repair to London as early as may be. Your friends whom I have
conferred with concur in this view.’”
Then Mr. Lowell says that he was afraid of its effect on Mrs. Lowell,
who was recovering from a long and desperate illness; but she was
pleased, and began to contrive how he might accept. He goes on, “I
answered, ‘Feel highly honored by President’s confidence. Could accept
if allowed two months’ delay. Impossible to move or leave my wife
sooner.’”
When I was in Madrid I heard this story. The two months’ delay did not
prove necessary. Just at this juncture poor Mrs. Lowell was confined to
her bed, and had been for some time. It happened that a candle set fire
to the bed-curtains. The attendants fell on their knees to implore the
assistance of the Holy Mother, but Mrs. Lowell sprang up and herself
took the direction of the best methods for extinguishing the flames. So
soon as nurses and others could be brought into shape, it proved that
the adventure had not been an injury to their mistress, but rather an
advantage. The doctor was summoned at once, and within a very short
time was able to say that Mrs. Lowell could be removed with care and
sent by steamer to England. Mr. Lowell was said to have telegraphed at
once to Washington that he could transfer his residence immediately, as
he was asked to do. Accordingly, by a well-contrived and convenient
arrangement, the invalid was taken by rail to the sea, thence by
steamer to England, and arrived there, with her husband, with no
unfavorable results to her health.
In this sketch of Mr. Lowell’s life in Madrid I have not attempted, and
indeed have not been able, to introduce even the names of the friends
in whose society Mr. Lowell took pleasure while in Spain. But American
scholars, and indeed the scholars of the world, have been so much
indebted to Señor Don Pascual de Gayangos, whose recent death has been
so widely regretted, that I ought not to close this chapter without
referring to him.
This gentleman is another of the distinguished men born in 1809. In
early life he studied in France. He visited England and married an
English lady. When he was but twenty-two years of age he held a
subordinate place in the administration at Madrid. He returned to
England while yet a young man, and resided there. Articles of his will
be found in the “Edinburgh Review” at that time. After the Oriental
Society published a translation by him of “Almakkari’s History,” he was
appointed professor of Arabic in Madrid. He had studied Arabic under De
Sacy.
Every American student in Spain for the last half-century has been
indebted to his courtesy, and, I may say, to his authority in Spain. As
one of the humblest of those students I am glad to express their
obligation to him.
His only daughter, a charming lady, married Don Juan Riano, a
distinguished archæologist, who is, I think, now in the diplomatic
service of the Spanish government. Her son, Don Pascual’s grandson, is
secretary to the queen, or has been so lately. All of them were near
friends of Lowell.
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