"Remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe."
For many years a pair of tiny baby-shoes, half-worn, hung over a
picture-frame in the poet's study, and told their sad tale of the little
feet that had gone on before. Like Sydney Smith, Lowell learned to think
that "children are horribly insecure,--that the life of a parent is the
life of a gambler;" and he held the one who still remained to him with
a trembling grasp for a long time. Happily, she was spared to him, and
still adds interest and pleasure to his life.
Mr. and Mrs. Lowell went to Europe in 1851, and spent a year in travel,
partly for the benefit of Mrs. Lowell's health, which was always
delicate. They spent the greater part of their time in Italy, although
they made brief tours in France, Switzerland, and England. About a year
after their return Mrs. Lowell died, and another little mound in Sweet
Auburn was
"Folded close under deepening snow."
During the nine years of their married life all had been peaceful and
beautiful, and now there seemed nothing left but--
"To the spirit its splendid conjectures,
To the flesh its sweet despair,"
and many hopeless tears over--
"the thin-worn locket
With its anguish of deathless hair."
For a long time the heart of the poet would admit of no consolation. He
replied to every attempt to soften his grief,--
"There's a narrow ridge in the graveyard,
Would scarce stay a child in his race;
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vague of Space.
"Your logic, my friend, is perfect,
Your morals most drearily true;
But since the earth clashed on _her_ coffin,
I keep hearing that, and not you.
"Console if you will, I can bear it;
'Tis a well-meant alms of breath;
But not all the preaching since Adam,
Has made Death other than Death.
"It is pagan; but wait till you feel it,--
That jar of the earth, that dull shock,
When the ploughshare of deeper passion
Tears down to our primitive rock.
"Communion in spirit! forgive me,
But I, who am earthy and weak,
Would give all my incomes from dream-land
For a touch of her hand on my cheek.
"That little shoe in the corner,
So worn and wrinkled and brown,
With its emptiness confutes you,
And argues your wisdom down."
On the same day that Mrs. Lowell died a child was born to Mr.
Longfellow, who sent to his friend the beautiful poem, "The Two Angels."
"'T was at thy door, O friend, and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine
Whispered a word that had a sound like death."
In 1854 Mr. Lowell was appointed as Mr. Longfellow's successor to the
chair of _belles-lettres_ in Harvard University,--a place for which he
was most admirably fitted by nature and by training. He went abroad
again and studied for two years, chiefly in Dresden, when he returned
and began his lectures, which were much enjoyed by his cultivated
audience. He dwelt with loving care upon Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and
Cervantes, in particular, and made a deep impression upon all who
listened to him.
In 1857 Mr. Lowell was married for the second time, to Miss Frances
Dunlap of Portland, Maine, who had had charge of the education of his
daughter while he was abroad. They returned to the ancestral home at
Elmwood soon after the marriage, and continued to reside there until the
poet was appointed Minister to Spain by President Hayes, when they
repaired together to that country. Upon his transfer to the Court of St.
James, they removed to London, where both were universally and justly
popular. Few ladies have received such warm encomiums in England as Mrs.
Lowell, and few have as richly deserved them. No man whom our nation has
sent to represent us in England has been so highly praised by the
English press as Mr. Lowell, and probably no one has been so much liked
by the class of people with whom he came chiefly in contact. There
seemed to be much wonder in court circles there that America could
produce so finished a gentleman as Mr. Lowell; and perhaps they had had
some reason to doubt this, if they judged by the average American
tourist. They wondered, too, at his delightful public speaking,--a thing
to which Englishmen are not as much accustomed as Americans. They have a
heavy, labored way of speaking, extremely painful to listeners
accustomed to the ease of American speakers; and they were never weary
of listening to the pleasing and graceful oratory of Mr. Lowell. He was
called upon constantly to address the people, upon all sorts of
occasions, and invariably received the highest praise for his efforts.
Much regret was felt in England when he was called home; much also in
this country by those who had the honor of the nation at heart, although
the whole people were glad to welcome him back to his native land once
more. Mrs. Lowell died during their residence in London, and the
sympathies of the world went out to the husband in his affliction.
Mr. Lowell came to the aid of the despised Abolitionists at an early
day. While it was still inviting social ostracism and public indignity
to do so, he bravely lifted up his voice in their defence, and began
lending his vigorous and powerful pen to the cause they represented. All
the traditions of his life seemed to bind him to the conservative
classes; but he broke away from them, and boldly faced their derision
and their sneers, to do what seemed right in his own eyes. As far back
as the publication of the "Fable for Critics," he had dared to praise
Whittier, whom all the conservatives affected to despise,--
"For singing and striking in front of the war,
And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor."
It still required bravery as well as kindliness to say of the despised
Quaker:--
"All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard
Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard;
Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave,
When to look but a protest in silence was brave!
All honor and praise to the women and men
Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then!"
And greater bravery still was required in those days to dare introduce
the name of Parker into literature without denunciation or derision. Of
the church which had put its ban upon "the Orson of parsons" he said:--
"They had formerly damned the Pontifical See,
And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.;
But he turned up his nose at their murmuring and shamming,
And cared (shall I say) not a d---- for their damning.
So they first read him out of their church, and next minute
Turned round and declared he had never been in it.
But the ban was too small, or the man was too big;
For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig
(He don't look like a man who would _stay_ treated shabbily,
Sophroniscus' son's head o'er the features of Rabelais);
He bangs and bethwacks them,--their backs he salutes
With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots."
He concluded his long description of the great arch-heretic in these
words:--
"Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest.
There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest,
If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least;
His gestures all downright, and some, if you will,
As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill;
But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke,
Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak:
You forget the man wholly, you're thankful to meet
With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street;
And to hear, you're not over particular whence,
Almost Taylor's profusion, quite Latimer's sense."
The first of the Biglow Papers had appeared even before this,--as early
as 1846, during the progress of the Mexican war,--and had showed his
countrymen very plainly where he was to be found in the coming struggle.
These brilliant coruscations of wit were the first gleams of light which
irradiated the sombre anti-slavery struggle. The Abolitionists were men
too much in earnest to enliven their arguments with wit or humor, and
the whole conflict thus far had been stern and solemn in the extreme.
This had prevented much popular enthusiasm, except in natures as earnest
as their own; and many men who had before been indifferent to the
subject were at once attracted and interested by the raillery and satire
of Lowell. They enjoyed his keen thrusts, and began to talk with one
another about them, and unconsciously imbibed a little of their spirit.
Some of the more jingling rhymes caught the ear of the street, and in a
little while
"John P.
Robinson he
Sez he wun't vote for Governor B."
was heard on every hand. And even across the sea, we are told,
travellers would hear some one repeating the catch,--
"But John P.
Robinson he
Sez they didn't know everything down in Judee."
The first series of these papers undoubtedly had a powerful influence in
forming public opinion upon the subject of the abolition of slavery; and
the second series exerted a still more potent influence in favor of
sustaining the government in the prosecution of the war, and in urging
it to the emancipation of the slaves. Early in the war he wrote,--
"It's slavery that's the fangs and thinkin' head,
And ef you want salvation, cresh it dead."
He suffered much in his own family from the war, three of his favorite
nephews being killed,--one at Winchester, one at Seven Pines, and one at
Ball's Bluff. Another relative was the gallant Colonel Shaw, who led the
colored troops in the assault on Fort Wagner, and who there gave up his
heroic life. In the "Commemoration Ode"--the greatest poem which Lowell
has ever written--he celebrates the death of these young heroes in
fitting verse, and gives their names to immortality. The effect of the
poem at the time was simply overpowering, so many other hearts were
bleeding with his own; and it at once took its place as one of the
noblest poems in the language. The poet William W. Story came over from
Rome purposely to hear Lowell deliver this ode, and felt abundantly paid
for the journey by the pathos and sublimity of the scene, which has
seldom been equalled in this country.