THIRD JOURNEY IN EUROPE
1872-1874
When Lowell went to Europe in the summer of 1872, he left his college
routine behind him; with his new-found liberty, he seemed to find all
the expression he cared for in familiar talk with the many friends, old
and new, whom he encountered in his travels, and in letters to friends
at home and abroad. Once only, as will be seen, did he break into
poetry, but the two years of his absence contain so little to add to the
record of his production that it seems the natural course, as it is most
pleasant to the biographer, to let this holiday in Lowell’s life be told
for the most part in his letters. The letters printed by Mr. Norton[48]
are not drawn upon, except now and then for a needful phrase.
_To Thomas Hughes._
ROYAL VICTORIA HOTEL, KILLARNEY,
20 July, 1872.
MY DEAR HUGHES,--Finding I could land in Queenstown, I did so with
most infinite discomfort, and here I am in Ireland, having on my
way hither done Blarney Castle which is well-nigh as good as
Kenilworth. Here, to my surprise, I find a gigantic new R. C.
Cathedral, See of the Bishop of Kerry. However, I am not writing a
guide-book. I wish to ask if you are in London, and how long you
will remain. I am of two minds,--one to go straight to the
Continent, the other to stay a week or two in London in lodgings
and see things quietly in that blessed season when everybody is out
of town. You I “lot” upon seeing. Will you write me at the
Grosvenor Hotel, Chester (where I shall turn up by and by), and let
me know? I am not even sure if Parliament have adjourned. Think of
it! Just like our Yankee impudence, isn’t it? But the truth is, the
last paper I saw was dated 9th July, and I hate to make
acquaintance again with the World and its goings-on.
I must run to my breakfast, or rather to Madame, of whom I have
visions wandering disconsolate in search of me who am ensconced in
the smoking-room, where I happened to see an inkstand last night.
In the hope of seeing you soon,
Affectionately yours always,
J. R. LOWELL.
_To the Same_.
CHESTER, 28 July, 1872.
Your letter and I arrived here together last night. We shall stay
here three or four days to recruit from the Irish accent,--which
somehow wearied me wonderfully.
If lodgings may be had by the week, to renew or no at will, you
would greatly oblige me by taking plain and inexpensive ones for
us, where I can let my cup fill again from a tap that rather
dribbles than runs. Travelling, I find, drains. A pleasant landlady
I should prefer to splendor. I get more than enough of that in the
hotels....
If you should find lodgings, I will engage them, beginning with
Friday next. If I once get a perch to which I can return at need, I
can take short flights wherever I will, without such heaps of
luggage. Will you telegraph or write me here? If no lodgings, tell
me of some quiet hotel,--not on the American caravanserai system,
whither we can go.
_To Miss Grace Norton._
11 DOVER STREET, PICCADILLY,
Aug. 4, 1872.
...Dublin interested me much.... From Dublin to Chester, where we
stayed five days, and where Charles Kingsley (who is a canon there)
was very kind. We had the advantage of going over the Cathedral
with him, and over the town with the chief local antiquary. We fell
quite in love with it and with the delightful walk round the walls.
We arrived in London night before last.
Affectionately yours,
LLUMBAGO LLOWELL.
_To C. E. Norton._
11 DOVER STREET, PICCADILLY,
13 August, 1872.
Give my love to Grace and relieve the anxiety of her mind by
telling her I have found J. H. at the Tavistock Hotel, Covent
Garden, where he is Mr. ’Omes. I have tried in vain to get him up
hither. He goes to Dresden on Thursday to meet some friends whom he
learned to know at the Fosters’ and whom he likes. Then he is
coming round slowly to Paris, where we are to meet and decide on
plans. Meanwhile I have resolved to stay here till you come, if you
come soon enough.[49] If not, I shall cross over to you. I go down
to Yorkshire (I mean Cumberland) on Friday or Saturday to see the
Storys. I can show Fanny York, Durham, and Fountain’s Abbey on the
way,--and Ripon, though I did not think it much twenty years ago.
We shall spend a few days with the Storys at “Crosby Lodge on Eden”
(which has a pleasant name, as if it stood in a garden of
cucumbers), and then work downward through the Lake Country and so
back to London. We have very central lodgings here, with what I
value above all, a pleasant landlady. Our rooms are very small, but
they can be smoked in, being bachelor apartments construed into the
dual. As it is not the season, we shall probably have no trouble in
getting them again when we come back. Now if you are coming over
early in September, you see it would be better for us to stay till
you come.
We have been having a very pleasant time thus far, though I have
not yet quite got over the feeling of the ball and chain. It will
take a good while. I do not know whether I told you I had resigned
my professorship? I did so the night before we sailed that there
might be no discussion. I found that at any rate my salary ceased
during my absence, and so I thought it a good chance. I do not
altogether like this matter of the salary. It prevents any
professor who has not some private fortune of his own from having
any vacation at all.[50] But I am glad it happened so, for it just
turned the scale with me in favor of the wiser decision,--as I
think it is. I cannot yet get over the dulness it ground into me. I
begin to think I am too old ever to shake it wholly off....
We have been seeing all sorts of things (persons are out of town)
since we have been here. The Hogarths delight me again, and I have
twice seen the Rake’s Progress, which I did not get at when I was
here before. Hogarth’s color is as fine as his invention and
dramatic powers. He astonishes me always by his soft brilliancy and
harmony. I have _lots_ of things to talk over when we meet.
_To the Same._
11 DOVER STREET, PICCADILLY,
15 September, 1872.
Here we are back again in our old lodgings, with the nicest of
possible landladies, Mrs. Bennett. We spent ten days with the
Storys at Crosby Lodge, and while there went to Naworth and Corbie
Castles and Lanercost Abbey. Naworth interested me specially as
being an old border keep tamed to modern civilities, and I liked
the Howards, father and son, more even than their dwelling. On our
way north we saw Peterboro, Lincoln, York, Fountain’s Abbey, Ripon,
Durham, and Carlisle. My old impression was confirmed, and Durham
lords it over all of them in my memory. Again, also, as twenty
years ago, the Cumberland people seemed more American in look and
manner than other English folk. Our visit with the Storys was very
pleasant--for a friendship of forty years’ standing is no common
thing--and William is absolutely unchanged. I found that I had
grown away from him somewhat, but not in a way to lessen our
cordiality, and as always in such cases, I held my tongue on
controversial points.
From Cumberland we went right through to Grasmere, lodging at the
old Swan Inn (the only one left), which pleased me more than it did
Fanny. We drove to Dungeon Ghyll Force and Keswick, and then to
Lichfield. Here I had a most amusing evening in the smoking-room,
listening to the talk of the city magnates, full of _Philisterei_,
if you will, but with a full Shakespearian flavor and a basis of
English good sense that pleased me. From Lichfield through
Worcester to Hereford and thence to Gloucester, whose cathedral I
liked best on the whole, its centre tower being less squat than the
others. But the northern minsters beat ’em.
Thence to Tintern, where we spent four days, doing Ragland
meanwhile. From Tintern to Chepstow we took boat down the Wye, and
very delightful it was. Thence to Bristol, where we slept, saw St.
Mary Radcliffe and the cathedral, and then through to London. The
sight of masts at Bristol was a cordial to me, and I thought them
the finest trees I had seen in England.
I have not been over well since I have been in England. “Flying
gout” I am fain to call it, and I am now drinking _Vichy_ in the
hope to make it fly altogether. But it is partly _dumps_, I fancy,
for travelling bores me horribly. I am wretched at not finding a
letter from Mabel here, and J. H. and Rowse have vanished, leaving
no sign. I shall be all ready to come over so soon as I hear from
you. You will find me dull, but honestly willing to brighten. A few
days with you will do me infinite good. It is abroad that one truly
misses friends. At home one is always expecting them back, and they
do half come back in a thousand things that daily recall them. But
here!
_To the Same._
11 DOVER STREET, PICCADILLY,
20 September, 1872.
... I will take the room at your hotel to begin on Monday, and
shall without doubt be in Paris on Monday night at 8.15, according
to the railway guide. I can only hope that trains are more punctual
in France than here, where I have literally not found _one_ up to
time since I landed in Ireland, and often more than an hour behind
it....
My gout seems to have left off threatening, though it bullied me
well for some weeks, but I have been out of sorts ever since I got
here, _why_ I can’t divine. We have had letters from Mabel, in good
health and happy, which have done me great good....
_To the Same._
HOTEL DE LORRAINE, RUE DE BEAUNE, NO. 7,
16 October, 1872.
... We like our new quarters very much.[51] Moreover, our living
(_vin et bois y compris_) costs us about fifty francs a week less
than at the Hotel Windsor, and we get a better dinner here for
three francs than there for six. Moreover, everything here is
French. Even the quarter of the town where we are has an
indefinable Gallic flavor like the soupçon of garlic in their
cookery. There are three or four regular habitués of the table
(_dont trois decorés_) who seem to be scientific men; at any rate,
one is a surgeon, and another who has lots of _esprit_ an _avocat_,
I suspect. On parle toujours et quelquefois tous ensemble, aussi
qu’a force d’écouter consciencieusement je m’habitue sans le savoir
à la langue. Un beau matin je me trouve parlant à merveille
débitant les mots avec toute l’insouciance d’un aqueduc qui n’a pas
aucune responsabilité des eaux qu’il verse. Si je veille pendant la
nuit, je m’occupe à composer des petits discours qui auraient mis
le peu Massillon hors de lui d’envie.
Je ne suis pas encore allé chez M. Littré, mais je te remercie
beaucoup pour la lettre et la presenterai en très peu de jours.
J’ai acheté une de les plumes d’or que tu m’as louées mais soit la
pauvreté du papier (à très bon marché) ou bien des idées, elle
refuse de marcher dans une langue aussi facile que doit lui etre la
française.
Since your departure, my dear boy, I have bucaneered (’tis a free
translation of bouquiné, corresponding to my exploits in turning my
native tongue into French--for I like to be consistent) among the
stalls, but Fortune packed her trunk (the baggage!) at the same
time with you, and I have not prospered much. One attribute of
deity I have not arrogated presumptuously but enjoy by a privilege
of nature, to wit (_à savoir_), that of confounding the counsels
of the wicked, for I puzzle the dealers awfully now and then with
my _discours_. I suppose it must be that I inadvertently mix in too
much of l’ancien Français. ’Tis as if one should talk pure Chaucer
to Burnham.[52] However, I bought the seventeen volume Byron for
$40, and have sent it to my grandson’s (I mean Petit fils--you see
how I am getting translated) to be bound. If it were not for this
confounded pen (saving your reverence) I would write you a cheerful
letter--but what can one do when it takes so long to write the
first half of a sentence that one forgets the last? I assure you I
had several clever things to say, but they are stuck in my pen--a
very unfortunate position of things, because you will see they have
gone out of my head....
_To the Same._
PARIS, 1 November, 1872.
... Now for _bouquiniste_ news. I think I did not tell you that I
had picked up a splendid quarto (with fine port) of Montaigne’s
Travels. It is a beauty. Also _Nouveaux Memoires pour servir à
l’histoire du Cartesianisme_, a tiny tome in vellum with Ste.
Beuve’s autograph and pencil marks. Best of all, I got at an
auction _Le Chevalier au Cigne_, which I have long vainly sought,
four volumes quarto _demi mar._ for $33.50. I should not have
thought it dear at a hundred. I am going out presently after a copy
of the _Poètes Champenois_, which I have found at Aubry’s, for
$180. Pillet asked $350 for an incomplete set. After this last
extravagance I shall retire from business for a while, for I am
getting beyond my depth. Aubry has a copy of _Renard_ bound for
$40. Shall I buy it for you? It includes Chabaillé’s supplementary
fifth volume....
We are having a nice time, though I felt like Dante when he turned
round and missed Virgil, when I found that Rowse had flown.
However, three days after John [Holmes] arrived in excellent health
and spirits--likes our hotel, and will stay _ad libitum_. His knee
is not quite right, but otherwise he is robustious. He confided to
me yesterday that the first time we walked out, he wished me to
guide him to where he could get some oysters! He thought they would
quite set him up. He is very droll with his German, and delightful
to the last degree. In French he is as inarticulate as one of his
favorite shell-fish. We have a little woman who comes to talk with
us an hour a day, and so soon as I get _fluid_ I am going to
Littré. I already enter into conversation at table with gusto.
_To the Same._
PARIS, 14 November, 1872.
... I am very glad you sent the Emersons to me. I have engaged him
a lovely little apartment _au premier_ at 8 frs. the day. I think I
shall take it myself when they go, for I am more and more minded to
stay the winter through. We are all well and send lots of love to
all of you. Fanny is at work on French exercises all day, and as
for me, when I get my French suit of clothes I shall be a thorough
Gaul. I am ready for a revolution (or at any rate an _e mute_)
to-morrow. It is pretty chilly here now, and I almost wish the
Commune had put off their bonfires till the middle of November,
when they would have done some good. I am writing on a marble
table, and my fingers are numb as gutta percha.
_To the Same._
PARIS, 6 December, 1872.
There has been an untoward gap in my correspondence, because I have
fallen back a little into home habits, and have been pegging away
at Old French again.... But the days are so short! and it has been
such gloomy weather. Fifty-seven days of rain, think of it, and the
only excitement the _crue_ of the Seine. Yes, we are beginning to
have another, for we are threatened with a revolution. The Right
are resolved to push things to extremes, and would rather have a
military triumvirate than Thiers with a ministry of his own
choosing. The French look upon Paris as the metropolis of the
world, but I am more and more struck with a certain provincialism
of mind shown in the importance they attach to their own
personality. Every one of them has the flavor of a village great
man. It is not individuality I mean, but value of self. No man can
bring himself to get out of the way, even though it is the country
he is blocking. I pick up a good deal at my _table d’hôte_ and am
more and more pleased with it.
I have not yet been to call on Littré, but I shall before long. My
French still refuses to go trippingly from my tongue. However, I
manage now to converse at table, and plunge into general discussion
bravely. In the intervals of the rain (for it does not always rain
all day long, though it rains every day) I take long walks in every
direction, and am grown pretty intimate with Paris. I still like it
and the people. By the way, Clarice (the maid who waits at
breakfast) said to me this morning: “Les aristocrats ne veulent pas
que la basse classe soit instruite. Ils croient que le peuple sait
trop déja. Avec la République nous aurions l’instruction
obligatoire. Ah, ce serait une chose très bonne pour nous.” I am
inclined to believe that the people know more than my friend, the
Marquis de Grammont, thinks!
_To the Same._
PARIS, 11 January, 1873.
... My life runs on in the same canal. A walk before breakfast
round the parallelogram formed by the Pont de Solferino at one end
and the Pont des Arts at the other, then a walk after breakfast
with John up to the Pont Neuf and across to the courtyard of the
Tuileries where we sit and collogue over our cigars, feeding the
sparrows between whiles; then home, and John to Schiller’s Thirty
Years’ War and I to my Old French. In the dusk I generally take a
longer walk by myself, or else the same one with John. I have got a
whole closet full of books, and have reached the end of my tether,
having just received an account from the Barings showing that I
have overdrawn £104. However, the books are a kind of investment.
But I begin to foresee that I shall not stay abroad so long as I
expected. I thought I was all right now, but as usual my income is
never so large as my auguries. Fortunately, I like Cambridge better
than any other spot of the earth’s surface, and if I can only
manage to live there shall be at ease yet....
_To the Same._
PARIS, 18 March, 1873.
... I shall probably be in England before you go, for Hughes writes
me (this is between ourselves) that there is a chance of their
giving me a D. C. L. at Oxford, which I should like. I am not, I
think, overfond of decorations, but I should like this one, for I
cannot get over a superstitious respect for what goes into the
college triennial catalogue.
_To Thomas Hughes._
PARIS, 19 March, 1873.
... What you say of the quiet lives that would come to the front in
England in a time of stress, I believe to be true of us also. I
cannot think such a character as Emerson’s--one of the simplest and
noblest I have ever known--a freak of chance, and I hope that my
feeling that the country is growing worse is nothing more than men
of my age have always felt when they looked back to the _tempus
actum_.... If I had dreamed you would have run over to Paris,
wouldn’t I have told you where I was! But, in fact, I have lingered
on here from week to week aimlessly, having come abroad to do
nothing, and having thus far succeeded admirably.
_To Leslie Stephen._
PARIS, 29 April, 1873.
... I think I have made up my mind to run over to London for a day
or two, to bid the Nortons good-by, for I cannot bear to have the
sea between us before I see them again. If I do, I shall arrive
about the 7th of May, and I shall count on seeing you as much as
possible.... I have read your “Are we Christians?” and liked it, of
course, because I found _you_ in it, and that is something that
will be dear to me so long as I keep my wits. I think I should say
that you lump _shams_ and _conventions_ too solidly together in a
common condemnation. All conventions are not shams by a good deal,
and we should soon be Papuans without them. But I dare say I have
misunderstood you.
_To the Same._
PARIS, 3 May, 1873.
I shall arrive Monday night, and have taken a chamber at the
Queen’s Hotel, which is described to me as “somewhere behind the
Burlington Arcade,” which is tolerably central. I shall not think
of billeting myself on you, especially as you are not yet fairly
settled. But I wish to see as much of you as may be. I must see
your new nest as I did the old one, for that was a great
satisfaction to me, and I recall it often in fancy. I must make the
acquaintance of Miss Laura, too, in whom I feel an added interest
now that I have got my step, and am a grandfather.[53] You would
laugh at the number of perambulators (as they call baby-wagons
nowadays) and ponies that I have bought for that wonderful boy, as
I lie awake at night and hear the tramp of the _sergent de ville_
under my windows. I have carried him through college so many times,
that he must be a prodigy of learning by this time. I do not know
whether I ought to betray it even to you, but he has more than once
shown a tendency to be _fast_, though I have reclaimed him. I am
quite sure he is steady now, and does not drink more than is good
for him. That story of the police court was much exaggerated.
I don’t wonder that you feel sad at the thought of losing the
Nortons. They have been and are more to me than I can tell. But you
will see them all again, when you come to make your visit to me,
which I look upon as pledged. It is as easy to get to us as to
Switzerland, and you shall sleep now and then in the ice-chest to
make you comfortable. The roof of the barn is pretty slippery and
the ground below hard enough to give you a smart Alpine shock. By
the way, what you say about Switzerland in July delights me.
Remember that my address is always to the care of the Barings, and
let me know where you are to be and when. I have a sort of
glimmering of Lausanne, where I could exist cheaply, for though on
pleasure I am bent, I am forced to have a frugal mind. But I am
more and more convinced that a man (especially a grandfather) is
most comfortable when he has worn his ruts deepest, and I should
fly over the deep to-morrow if I could. It is ignoble, but it is
true. I always hated the sights _qu’il faut voir_, and now there is
no hope of strangeness anywhere. Man is a most uninventive
animal--you scratch through the nationality and there _he_ is
underneath--the very bore you were running away from. However, I am
rested and grown so stout that I have positively had to let out a
reef in my trousers.
I reckon on a very jolly time in London, because I shall always be
in the tremor of going away--though I am almost sorry that I am
going when I think of saying good-by to the Nortons. I am sorry you
did not see more of Emerson; he is good to love, and if his head be
sometimes in thin and difficult air, his heart never is. He must
have left London, then? Gay told me he met you at the Nortons, and
kept calling you Stevens, and I irascibly correcting him as I would
a vicious proofsheet. I don’t know why, but I am always exasperated
when anybody pluralizes you. Whether it is that I hold you to be
unique, or that I was once cheated by a man named Stevens, I can’t
tell. However, Gay is a good fellow and a good artist for all that.
Why is it that people do so? They always call Child _Childs_ in the
same fashion.
My eyes gave out some time ago, so I will only say that I shall go
straight to Cleveland Place Tuesday morning, and if you dropt in on
your way down town, it would be the best possible world so long as
it lasted.
_To C. E. Norton._
(Passenger by “Olympus.”)
PARIS, 13 May, 1873.
I am so wont to carry Home about with me and to say “here,” when I
mean Cambridge, even in Paris, that I did not fairly realize to
myself that you were all going away till I was meditating over my
pipe on board the Channel steamer. I made up my mind that I would
fling an old shoe after you in the shape of a good-by that should
surprise you after you were fairly embarked. I need not say how
happy my three days with you in London were, nor how sweet it was
to renew the old, old friendship with you all. We don’t make new
friends, at least not in the same sense, for it is the privilege of
old friendship that it knows all our weaknesses and accounts for
them beforehand, taking almost a kind of pleasure in them as we do
in bad weather that we have prophesied.
I wish I could have gone with you to Oxford, but Fanny was so happy
at seeing me a day sooner than she expected that I was glad I
didn’t. However, I made a memorandum never to leave her behind
again in future.... They had taken good care of her while I was
away, for somehow or other everybody in the house is fond of her.
The best wish I can make for you is that every day of your passage
may be as fine as this which is a mixture of all that is sweetest
in spring time. May the dry masts of your steamer be covered with
leaves and flowers like Joseph’s rod, and may the porpoises gamble
about you for the children’s sake....
No iceberg come anigh thee,
No curdling east wind try thee,
The wreaths of the wake
Whirl in moons for thy sake,
And the fogs furl off and fly thee!
My heart is fuller than I dreamed of with this parting, but it is
not foreboding I am sure. I shall find you all again after many
days, and we shall have many happy hours together....
_To T. B. Aldrich._
PARIS, 28 May, 1873.
... I shall stay out my two years, though personally I would rather
be at home. In certain ways this side is more agreeable to my
tastes than the other,--but even the buttercups stare at me as a
stranger and the birds have a foreign accent....
Before this reaches you I shall have been over to Oxford to get a
D. C. L. So by the time you get it this will be the letter of a
Doctor and entitled to the more respect. Perhaps, in order to get
the full flavor, you had better read this passage first, if you
happen to think of it. Do you not detect a certain flavor of
parchment and Civil Law?...
_To Thomas Hughes._
PARIS, 2 June, 1873.
... We shall leave Paris to-morrow or next day, stopping in Rheims
to see the churches, at Louvain for the Town House, and so on to
Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges.... If I don’t see you in Oxford, I
shall stop long enough in London to get a glimpse of you. Our plan
is to go to Switzerland and Germany, and so down to Italy for the
winter. Then back to Paris, and so over to England on our way home
next year. I hate travelling with my whole soul, though I like well
enough to “be” in places....
_To Mrs. Lewis A. Stimson._
BRUGES, 25 June, 1873.
... I have been over to Oxford to be doctored, and had a very
pleasant time of it. You would respect me if you could have seen me
in my scarlet gown.... We go from here in a day or two to
Holland--then up the Rhine to Switzerland, where we join the
Stephens and Miss Thackeray.
_To C. E. Norton._
VENICE, 30 October, 1873.
... Since we left Bruges, we have been up the Rhine, and then
across to Nürnberg, where we spent a fortnight in great
contentment. Before this, however, we had made a pretty good giro
in the Low Countries, going wherever there was a good cathedral or
Town Hall.... When we reached Geneva we found ourselves so
comfortable that we stayed two months and did some reading. I liked
the town, and especially the walks in its neighborhood, very much.
Then we went to Chamonix, and then over the Simplon to the Italian
lakes, whence we came hither. Venice charms me more than ever. We
keep a gondola and go about leisurely seeing all the lovely
things.... The weather has not been very good, but there has been
only one day when we could not go out in the gondola without the
_coperto_, either toward the Lido or over the lagunes to watch the
sunset, or through the smaller canals to find that the very back
lanes of Venice are finer than the highstreets anywhere else....
I am recovering a little facility in Italian--to be lost again when
I get beyond the daily sound of it. I give Fanny a lesson every day
in the Promessi Sposi, which has so often served as a go-cart to
those who are learning to take their first steps in the language.
She reads aloud to me, so that I save my eyes and practise my ears
at the same time. She is a very good scholar for she puts zeal into
whatever she does, and is making great progress. It is odd to me
how the familiar phrases cling round my brain like bats to the roof
of a cage, and are set flying all of a sudden by a chance footfall.
I am very much struck, by the way, to find how much more vividly I
remember the Venetian pictures than any others. I can’t help
thinking it implies a peculiar merit in them. I recall them as I do
natural objects--the Staubbach for example, or Hogarth....
_To Thomas Hughes._
VENICE, Thanksgiving Day, 1873.
... I can’t “do” anything over here except study a little now and
then, and I long to get back to my reeky old den at Elmwood. Then I
hope to find I have learned something in my two years abroad.... I
am looking forward to home now, and shouldn’t wonder if I took up
my work at Harvard again, as they wish me to do. We leave Venice
probably to-morrow for Verona. Thence to Florence, Rome, and
Naples....
As the year 1874 opened, the question of Lowell’s return to college work
was mooted. He had felt a little piqued at being suffered to leave,
after sixteen years’ continuous service, without any concession from the
college. He thought at least he might have been granted leave of absence
on half pay, and when no proposal of this sort was made, he sent in a
definite resignation. Now the authorities intimated that they hoped he
would resume his old place. He was in doubt what he should do. He had
tasted the pleasures of freedom; he remembered well the uncongeniality
of much of his work; he was painfully conscious of lacking qualities
requisite for success in the profession of teaching; he had, moreover,
been disturbed by physical disabilities, especially in a blurring of
memory and a weakness in his head which alarmed him; the trouble, he
decided, was “flying gout,” a disorder to which he had been more or less
subject for many years, and which never left him for long after this
period. More disturbing still was the “drop of black blood” he had
inherited from his mother, which was apt to spread itself over the pupil
of his eye, darkening everything, and, as he said, temporarily inducing
a mood of suspicion or distrust.
On the other hand, he was at a time of life when uncertainties of income
were likely to create anxiety rather than to stimulate exertion. His
income from the sale of his land had proved less than he anticipated,
and he felt the need of a fixed increase. Moreover, he found that
college life had become more of a habit than he suspected; the putting
of the sea between him and it did not emancipate him, though it gave a
temporary exhilaration. He was timid about experiments in living. Yet he
was unwilling to allow himself to be governed in such a matter wholly by
financial considerations. As he wrote to a friend: “If the worst came, I
could sell my house and go into lodgings, which perhaps wouldn’t be so
unwise after all. At any rate, I can’t let that be a prevailing motive
to decide me about so sacred an office as that of Teacher.”
“I never was good for much as a professor,” he wrote to Mr. Norton, 2
February, 1874; “once a week, perhaps, at the best, when I could manage
to get into some conceit of myself, and so could put a little of my _go_
into the boys. The rest of the time my desk was as good as I. And then,
on the other hand, my being a professor wasn’t good for me--it damped
my gunpowder, as it were, and my mind, when it took fire at all (which
wasn’t often), drawled off in an unwilling fuse instead of leaping to
meet the first spark.” There was, besides all this, a possible
complication with a friend in whose light he would not stand, and
letting this tip the scales, he wrote refusing the reappointment. There
came in reply a letter from the president of the college, removing the
supposed complication and setting the whole matter in such a light that
Lowell revoked his decision and accepted the appointment. It was
characteristic of him, that though asked to send his final answer before
a certain date, he dismissed the subject from his mind, and wrote from
Paris three months later: “I don’t know whether I am a professor or no.
On the second of May it suddenly flashed across me that I was to say
_yes_ or _no_ before the first of that whimsical month, and that I had
forgotten all about it. I meant to say _yes_ on the whole, but if luck
has settled it _no_, perhaps it’s for the best.”
A more consuming interest had driven professorships out of his head. He
was in Florence at the time of this correspondence, and in Florence,
too, when he heard of the death of Agassiz, and on the eve of leaving
for Rome he was moved to write that elegy which, if it does not reach
the height of his odes in poetical spirit, has that endearing quality
which will continue to make it read as long as people continue to take
delight in the verses in which poets celebrate their friendships. But
Goldsmith’s “Retaliation,” Longfellow’s Introduction to the “Tales of a
Wayside Inn,” Emerson’s “Adirondacs,” and Holmes’s occasional poems are
in lighter vein than “Agassiz,” which stands midway in poetry between
such poems and Milton’s “Lycidas.” As in the case of the others, it has
a succession of portraits, but it strikes a deeper note; the elegiac
quality is present, and the complaint, the linking of personal grief
with universal emotion, the widening of sympathy, all serve to leave in
the mind rather the mood of restless enquiry into deep problems of life,
than of sensitive appreciation of a series of portraits. It is perhaps
worth noting that he had just been reading Leslie Stephen’s “Essays on
Free Thinking and Plain Speaking,” and had been stirred by the book into
more or less of an enquiry of his own attitude toward the great
questions of life and immortality. Referring to the book, he wrote to
Mr. Norton: “I emancipated myself long ago, and any friendly attempt to
knock off my shackles is apt to result in barking my shins, don’t you
see? Science has scuttled the old Ship of Faith, and now they would fain
persuade me that there is something dishonest as well as undignified in
drifting about on the hencoop that I had contrived to secure in the
confusion. They undertake to demonstrate to me that it’s a hencoop and
an unworthy perch for a philosopher. But I shall cling fast. ’Tis as
good as a line-of-battle ship if it only keep my head above water. I am
so made that I allow no distinction between natural and supernatural.
There is none for me. I am as supernatural a ghost as was ever met
with. But I like Leslie’s book all the same. It is very able, honest,
and clever--full of wit and trained muscle.” And to Mr. Stephen himself
he wrote later: “My only objection to any part of your book is, that I
think our beliefs more a matter of choice (natural selection, perhaps,
but anyhow not logical) than you would admit, and that I find no fault
with a judicious shutting of the eyes.”[54]
When one compares the portraits in “Agassiz” with the earlier sketches,
sometimes of the same persons, in “A Fable for Critics,” one finds it
easy to mark the mellower, richer tints in the later work. The poem was
indeed almost a real posthumous work. Lowell, removed by an ocean’s
width from his old comrades and his familiar haunts, mingled the dead
and the living in his imagination and found in the whole concourse,
headed by Agassiz himself, a microcosm of that world in which he took
the greatest delight, the world of friendly, wise, and witty men. As in
the case of the Commemoration Ode, it drew virtue from him, for he had
put into it a large part of himself, and had been possessed by it.
Shortly after finishing it, he wrote of his experience in the
composition to Mr. Norton,[55] and later, when there had been time for
the sensation to cool, for an interchange of comment and criticism, and
for the poem itself to meet his eyes in its printed form, he wrote
again:--
“To tell the truth, my collapse from the happy excitement of composition
was so great, that when the poem came to me in print, it inspired me
with something like that disgust a freshman feels at sight of an empty
bottle the next morning after his first debauch. I have not been able to
read it through yet, but have only turned to such passages as you
thought needed retouching. In doing this a few others caught my eye. My
dear boy, don’t you see (to answer what I forgot before and what you
remind me of again) that Emerson and Longfellow are both, thank God,
still in the flesh, and that I should not have mentioned them at all,
but that I _saw_ them so vividly I couldn’t help it. This, too, is my
reply to what you say of a resemblance to a passage in Rogers (I thought
it was Beckford). I think I see what you mean, but I regard it not, for
the _thought_ is altogether unlike, and came to me (as the receivers of
stolen goods say) in the way of my business. I had gone out of myself
utterly. I was in the dining-room at Parker’s, and when I came back to
self-consciousness and solitude, it was in another world that I awoke,
and I was puzzled to say which. It was a case of possession but not of
self-possession. I was cold, but my brain was full of warm light, and
the passage came to me in its completeness without any seeming
intervention of mine. I was delighted, I confess, with this renewal of
imagination in me after so many blank years. If there be any verbal
coincidence with Rogers, I shall be surprised and sorry. It had never
occurred to me, and I think if anywhere it must be in the couplet
beginning: ‘In this abstraction.’ But I hope you will turn out to be
mistaken. I am glad the poem is liked, though I cannot yet see it
fairly. I thought it should be good by the state in which it left me and
by the unconscious way in which it came. The only part I _composed_ was
the concluding verses, which I suspect to be the weakest part. The verse
that cost me most trouble was the first, which, do what I would,
insisted on being as Johnsonian as ‘Observation, with extensive view.’
But it is hard to put a wire into a verse without stiffening the latter.
“I surrendered the last verse about Longfellow without a murmur. I
spoiled it by thinking more of the vehicle than what it was to carry.
But Emerson’s nose must stand.[56] I will give you ‘shrewd’ instead of
‘wise,’ however, for it is better and (I think) the word that came
first. I have not left my opinion of either of these two doubtful, for I
have celebrated one in prose, and the other in verse, which is more than
either of ’em has done for me, go to!
“I thank you heartily, my dear Charles, for all your criticisms. I like
to hear them, and when I don’t agree it is not from self-love, of which
(in such matters) I have as little as most men. But I have a respect for
things that are _given me_, as the greater part of this was, and my
poetry ought to show marks of design if it doesn’t. If I have done
anything good, I owe it more largely to your sympathy, which spurred me
out of my constitutional indolence and indifference, than to anything
else. I like to tell you so, for it is true. I value my own natural
gifts (as I think I have a right) but set no great store by my
performance. I came into the world with a strong dose of poppy in my
veins, and love dreaming better than doing. This has been a great
hindrance to me, and I have struggled hard against it, but never against
my consciousness of it.” ...
* * * * *
From Florence the Lowells went, 23 February, 1874, to Rome, and were
with the Storys at the Palazzo Barberini.
_To C. E. Norton._
ROME, 26 February, 1874.
... The journey from Florence was one long surprise in the snowy
mountains. There is much more than common, and I had never seen
them so before. But the almond-trees are in blossom. Rome saddens
me, I can’t quite say how. My associations with it are of so
peculiar and deep a kind, and so astonishingly undeadened by time.
Generally I find I have forgotten much, but here all my memories
seem of yesterday....
I have not much time to myself here in the Palazzo Barberini, as
you will easily fancy. I am thoroughly glad to find my old friend’s
statues so much to my liking. The Libyan Sybil, the Salome and the
Electra I especially like. But he is now at work on an Alcestis
which will be a long way ahead of anything he has done. It is
beautifully simple, graceful, and dignified.
_To the Same._
ROME, 2 March, 1874.
... The sun is just about to set, and I see the moon rising white
over the stone pines that sentinel the gate of the Barberini
Gardens. We have been at Sant’ Onofrio and seen the incomparable
view thence. We started for the Vatican, but were too late, and so
walked on to Sant’ Onofrio. The mountains are white as
Switzerland--the farther ones I mean. I hardly knew the road from
Florence hither for this strangeness of snow. But the almond-trees
are in blossom, and the daisies and violets and other little field
flowers unknown to me.
_To Miss Norton._
ALBERGO CROCOLLE, NAPOLI,
Marzo 12, 1874.
... We left Rome after a fortnight’s visit to the Storys, which was
very pleasant _quoad_ the old friends, but rather wild and whirling
_quoad_ the new. Two receptions a week, one in the afternoon and
one in the evening, were rather confusing for wits so eremitical as
mine. I am not equal to the _grande monde_....
We have been twice to the incomparable Museum, which is to me the
most interesting in the world. There is the keyhole through which
we barbarians can peep into a Greek interior--provincial Greek,
Roman Greek if you will, but still Greek.
_To C. E. Norton._
HOTEL DE LORRAINE,
7 RUE DE BEAUNE, PARIS, 11 May, 1874.
... I expected to arrive here a fortnight earlier than I did, for
the fine weather began just as we were leaving Rome, and I dawdled
as one always does in that lovely air. I had one delightful drive
out to the Tavolato with Story, Dexter, Wild, and Tilton the day
before we left. We lunched under an arbor of dried canes, drank
_vino asciulto_, ate a _frittata_ and endless eggs _al tegame_, and
were like boys on a half-holiday. What a light that was half
shadow, and what shadows that were all light were over
everything!...
They explain all our bad weather here, and it is nearly all bad, by
the simple formula _ce sont les giboulées_, and you see I have been
lucky enough to get from a doctor in Rome a phrase that makes me
more content under the unseasonable performances of my own personal
meteorology. I have already accumulated a heap of catalogues, but
have bought no books. I shall buy a few more....
_To W. D. Howells._
PARIS, 13 May, 1874.
... We have taken our passage for the 24th June, and shall arrive,
if all go well, in time for the “glorious Fourth.” I hope we shall
find you in Cambridge. I long to get back, and yet am just
beginning to get wonted (as they say of babies and new cows) over
here. The delightful little inn where I am lodged is almost like
home to me, and the people are as nice as can be....
_To George Putnam._
PARIS, 19 May, 1874.
... For my own part, though I have had a great deal of
homesickness, I come back to Cambridge rather sadly. I have not
been over well of late. The doctor in Rome, however, gave my
troubles a name--and that by robbing them of mystery has made them
commonplace. He said it was _suppressed gout_. It has a fancy of
gripping me in the stomach sometimes, holding on like a slow fire
for seven hours at a time. It is wonderful how one gets used to
things, however. But it seems to be growing lighter, and I hope to
come home robust and red....
_To Thomas Hughes,_
PARIS, 27 May, 1874.
To see your handwriting again was almost like taking you by the
hand. I seem next door to you here, the distance is so short
compared with the long ferry between me and Mabel.
I had no thought of reproaching you with not answering my note from
Venice. I only wished you to know that I had written, for I should
not have done it if Field had not told me you wished to know where
I was. I never write if I can help it, and therefore am ready not
only to forgive, but even to sympathize with those who have the
same failing.
If I could get in at Mrs. Bennett’s again I should like it
particularly, for I was perfectly satisfied there. She was not a
bit the lodging-house landlady of tradition, but a really refined
woman, and her household matched her. But I fear that paradise is
closed against us, for when I was last in London somebody else had
discovered her, and hired the whole house. If you would be good
enough to ask and let me know I should be greatly obliged.... I
should want the lodgings for a fortnight. The steamer’s day is put
back to the 23d. On the whole I shall go back as young as I came
except my eyes, which fail me more and more....
_To the Same._
BRUNSWICK HOTEL, LONDON,
Thursday.
MY VERY DEAR FRIEND,--I was hoping to see your manly and tender
face once more before I go, but perhaps it is better as it is, for
I hate farewells--they always seem to ignore another world by the
stress they lay on the chances of never meeting again in this. We
shall meet somewhere, for we love one another. Your friendship has
added a great sweetness to my life, whether I look backward or
forward....
I had a delightful visit to Cambridge. Everybody was as warm as the
day was cold. When I go home I shall try to be half as good as the
public orator said I was.... Good-by and God bless you. With most
hearty love,
Yours always,
J. R. LOWELL.
The reference in the last sentence is to the generous language in which
the degree of Doctor of Laws was conferred upon him by the University of
Cambridge. He regarded the decoration as in a measure a friendly
recognition of the University’s daughter in the American Cambridge, but
he could not help being pleased by it. “You don’t know,” he wrote to a
friend, of the public orator’s Latin speech, “what an odd kind of
_posthumous_ feeling it gives one.”
The Lowells sailed from Liverpool 23 June, 1874, and after a foggy and
rainy passage were ten miles from Boston Light Friday evening, 3 July.
There the fog caught them again and forced them to lie off till the
morning, so that they reached Cambridge at half after nine o’clock on
the Fourth of July.