THE SPANISH MISSION
1877-1880
The preparation which Lowell had received for efficient service as
Minister of the United States to Spain certainly did not lie in the
discharge of so-called political duties. To be delegate to a district
convention and presidential elector would scarcely qualify one for a
diplomatic post, and to many of his countrymen no doubt he seemed but a
dilettante statesman. Yet he was better trained than many a man who has
been more energetic in party organization. He was a fair Spanish scholar
so far as familiarity with the literature goes. When he first entered on
his duties he was, it is true, depressed by his inability to use the
language freely; his pride was mortified with the ease with which others
could use it, and both his French, of such use in diplomacy, and his
Italian got in his way. But a couple of months after he had reached his
post he could say: “I can talk now with comparative ease and write notes
without fear of scandal. What I wanted was the familiar and every-day
forms. I am getting them. But all along I have insisted on conducting my
official business in Spanish, and have already astonished ’em at the
Foreign Office here. They say in their Oriental way that I speak
Castilian like a native and pronounce it perfectly. Of course I haven’t
turned goose since I came, to believe all this, but I really am getting
on.”
But if colloquial Spanish was not at first at his command, he had a very
valuable instrument in his familiarity with Spanish literature. The man
who knows and loves the best literature of the country to which he is
accredited has the key wherewith to unlock the nature of the men with
whom he has to deal. Lowell, to whom Calderon was as a nightingale in
his study, was not taken unawares when asked to go to Spain. He did not
need to cram for an examination. When qualifying himself for his post at
Harvard, twenty years before, he had made himself acquainted with
Spanish, and both his studies and his teaching since that day had led
him into such an acquaintance with its language, literature, and
history, that he could say playfully that he knew more Spanish than most
Spaniards.
At first sight it might seem that the somewhat isolated and secluded
life he had led would have disqualified Lowell for the life of a
diplomat; that greater commerce with men was essential to the training
of one whose business it was to deal directly with men in matters
possibly of high consequences. But if Lowell was a scholar and somewhat
of a recluse, it must be remembered that his most frequent converse was
with picked men, and that, moreover, in his studies and reading his
attention had been concentrated on literature which was expressive of
great thoughts, great emotions, and great dramatic situations, so that
both in life and in literature he was at home and moved with ease in
high society.
In diplomatic life, the minister can scarcely escape the consciousness
of his representative character. The men with whom he has most to do
remind him of it; they are themselves in the same category. The reader
of Shakespeare’s Histories is struck with the fine impersonation of
their countries which the leading characters convey as it were in the
tones of their voice. France, England, Scotland become in their
impassioned language not geographical entities, nor even nations merely,
but incarnate in them. So at courts, aided by the very trappings and
ceremonies of their office, private gentlemen become for the nonce
figures in a pageant and feel themselves such. They speak, it may be, in
their natural voice, and talk for the most part with ministers of state
as man to man, with friendly accent and in négligé forms even; but the
consciousness of their representative function is never remote, it is
always alert and ready against surprise. I suspect it becomes even more
easy for a scholar than for a man of affairs to play the part well on
such a stage. And it is this same sense which lies behind much of the
sensitiveness as to rank and punctilio. The ambassador takes precedence
of the minister; thus the minister of a great country is irritated at
finding himself in the procession behind the ambassador of a country of
a second order, not because his personal pride is wounded, but because
his country has felt a slight. These things touch a man of the great
world more than a mere man of the world. The scholar who is absolutely
content with high thinking and plain living in his own home may be
abnormally sensitive to appearances in the embassy over which he
presides. It is an illustration of this that when at his presentation to
the King there was some blunder, and Lowell was kept waiting twenty
minutes beyond the hour appointed for his audience, and the introducer
apologized, Lowell replied it was nothing to him personally, but it
should be remembered it was not he, but the United States that was kept
waiting.
Another illustration appears in the despatch which Lowell sent Mr.
Evarts, 3 February, 1878, detailing the course he pursued when he
received a telegram from the President congratulating the King upon his
approaching marriage. “I communicated the substance of it,” he writes,
“to the Minister of State and asked for an audience that I might present
it in person to His Majesty. On Monday (the 21st ultimo), accordingly, I
was received by King Alfonso in private audience and delivered my
message, at the same time adding that it gave me particular pleasure to
be the bearer of it. The King in reply desired me to convey to the
President his great pleasure in receiving this expression of sympathy
from the chief magistrate of a people with which he wished always to
maintain and draw closer the most friendly relations. A very gracefully
timed compliment to the messenger followed....
“I think that this act of courtesy on the part of the President has
really given pleasure here, and has not been entirely lost in the throng
of special ambassadors who have been despatched hither with numerous
suites to pay the royal compliments of the occasion.
“As these special ambassadors had been received in public audience, I
had some doubt whether I ought to consent, as being in this case the
immediate representative of the President, to be received privately. But
the time was too short for much consideration. The audience was to be at
half-past one o’clock, and I received notice of it only the night
before. Had it been a _letter_ of the President, I should have insisted
on its being received publicly. As it was, I thought it most prudent and
graceful to admit the distinction between extraordinary ambassadors sent
with great pomp to bring gifts and decorations, and a mere minister
plenipotentiary, especially as it would have otherwise been impossible
to deliver the message at all before the wedding. The difficulty was
heightened by my having only just risen from a very severe attack of
illness, which made it necessary for me to economize my strength in
order to take any part at all in the ceremonies.”
To all this must surely be added, that his very abstinence from
political party associations at home deepened Lowell’s sense of his
position. His conception of the nation which he represented was not
embarrassed by the vapors too often engendered by “practical politics.”
He knew his country, as we have already seen by an examination of his
political writings, and even when most full of concern for her
integrity, he always kept before him the ideal of a land devoted to
freedom and progress. That he was an idealist made him more readily an
actor on the diplomatic stage where America met Spain when Lowell
conversed with Silvela. But his idealism did not get in the way of his
plain business sense. Rather it helped him and supplied that
consciousness of dignity which might have forsaken him had he regarded
himself merely as a business agent.
The drawback to his satisfaction with the office was his consciousness
that he disliked business and was not apt at it; and business after all
was what lay constantly beneath all the courtly exchange of civility.
“You would have laughed,” he wrote to an intimate friend, “if you could
have seen my anxiety when I had to give a receipt for an indemnity of
five hundred thousand dollars. I was so afraid of making a blunder. It
kept me awake night after night, even when I had signed it, and gave me
such palpitations of the heart that I have had pains there ever since.
It was not myself I was thinking of--but the guild--I didn’t wish
another of those ‘d--d littery fellers’ to come to grief.” And to Mr.
Putnam he wrote: “I like the Spaniards very well so far as I know them,
and have an instinctive sympathy with their want of aptitude for
business.” Of course he relied much on the subordinate officers of the
legation, but he knew well that he could not leave the business to
them, and he had, besides, for a while the interest in the details of a
life which was novel to him, as well as the pride which would not suffer
him to be a mere figure-head.
* * * * *
The Lowells were about a month on their way from Boston to Madrid. They
spent a few days in London, and Lowell was in a holiday mood both there
and in Paris, where they also made a brief halt in the same pleasant inn
in the Latin Quarter in which they had been so much at home three years
before. The tranquil enjoyment of little scenes which his letters from
the two capitals disclose betokens a mind unvexed by many cares. He was
entering upon a new and untried experience, but he was too old to feel
an undue excitement, and too well poised to borrow trouble from
ignorance of superficial duties. He was rid of the rather irksome and
too familiar occupations of the academic life, he was yet in his freedom
to assume novel responsibilities, and he set his face toward Madrid with
an equanimity which was no doubt heightened by the feeling that he was
not Professor Lowell on a vacation, but Minister Lowell about to realize
his new function.
The Lowells reached Madrid on the fourteenth of August, and on the
eighteenth of the month Lowell was presented at court, the King being at
his summer residence at La Granja, about fifty miles from Madrid. He has
given a brief narrative of the ceremony[69] which was his initiation
into diplomatic life, and, as we have seen, he began at once his work
at the legation, insisting upon using his Spanish in all negotiations.
But the first few weeks in Madrid were anything but agreeable, since
besides the worries of house-hunting he was tortured with gout, which
after a couple of months permitted him to hobble to the office, only if
he put on large walking shoes and handled a crutch.
Meantime he had found a pleasant apartment at No. 7 Cuesta de Santo
Domingo, with a large endowment of sunshine. Indeed, the sunshine of
Spain warmed his spirits thoroughly. “The weather,” he writes, “is
beyond any I ever saw. I got out on the balcony this morning, and there
was all the warmth and, what is more, all the freshness and hopefulness
of spring.” And to Mr. Longfellow: “It beats Italy. Such limpidity of
sky!” After he was well adjusted in his new quarters, he wrote: “Our
household is truly _Complutensian_. Our cook is an old Alsacian woman,
toothless as one of Gil Blas’s robbers. She speaks French, German,
Spanish, and perhaps Arabic, for she lived eight years in Algeria. Our
chambermaid, Pepa, is a brown-yellow Spaniard with an immense wad of
false hair on the back of her head, like all her class here. My valet
and factotum is an Italian from Trieste, speaking French, English, and
Spanish. His wife (Fanny’s maid) is a Parisienne. Since Babel there have
been few such chances for learning the languages. My man has four names
according to the tongue I address him in, Giacomo, Santiago, Jacques,
James. With Carolina I sometimes jabber a little German. Our rooms are
not yet furnished, though we have been in them seven weeks. Except the
dining-room. We bought ten old chairs, highbacked and covered with a
flowered plush, which oddly enough exactly matched our wall-paper. They
are handsome, and I believe were just finished when I bought ’em (period
of Philip II.). However, they are worm-eaten, which has a savor of
authenticity about it, and the maker has been more successful in
reproducing the past than Mareschal McMahon seems to be. By the time I
get them home, they will be genuine old Spanish chairs at any rate, and
there is such a thing as considering too nicely.”
His diplomatic duties at first gave him some concern. He wrote to his
daughter, 18 November, 1877: “Mamma has told you of my tribulations with
gout--first in one foot, then in t’other. I could not write any letters
during those six weeks. And then I had my moral acclimatization to go
through with, which is not by any means ended yet. It _was_ rather tough
at first--in a perfectly strange country, the only stranger, as it were,
for all my fellow-diplomats had either been here some years or had
experience elsewhere;--unable to speak the language fluently, and in a
labyrinth of etiquette where, as in some old gardens, if you take a step
in the wrong direction you are deluged with cold water. Well, philosophy
is an admirable umbrella, but when we are caught in a sudden shower it’s
no use remembering how we left it standing in the corner, as we always
do.”
Lowell thought himself too old to find the ceremonial parts of his
occupation even amusing. They bored him; but he had a genuine human
interest in the living part of what he saw and did. It was for him like
reading a bit of history, not from books but from men, and it was not
long before he had an opportunity of taking part in a ceremony, the
marriage of the young King; and in the narrative which he gives of the
event, as well as preliminary comments in despatches to the State
Department, 13 December, 1877--6 February, 1878,[70] he not only gives
an agreeable description of the affair, but indicates with some
clearness his own personal interest as a student.
“Nowhere in the world,” he writes, “could a spectacle have been
presented which recalled so various, so far-reaching, and, in some
respects, so sublime associations, yet rendered depressing by a sense of
anachronism, of decay, and of that unreality which is all the sadder for
being gorgeous. The Roman amphitheatre (_panem et circenses_), the
united escutcheons from whose quartering dates the downfall of Saracenic
civilization and dominion in Spain; the banners of Lepanto and of the
Inquisition fading together into senile oblivion on the walls of the
Atocha; the names and titles that recalled the conquest of western
empires, or the long defeat whose heroism established the independence
of the United Provinces, and proved that a confederacy of traders could
be heroic; the stage-coaches, plumed horses, blazing liveries, and
running footmen of Louis Quatorze; the partisans of Philip III.’s
body-guard, the three-cornered hats, white breeches, and long black
gaiters of a century ago, mingled pell-mell with the French shakos and
red trousers of to-day; the gay or sombre costumes from every province
of Spain, some recalling the Moor and some the motley mercenaries of
Lope de Figueroa; the dense and mostly silent throng which lined for
miles the avenue to the church, crowding the windows with white
mantillas, fringing the eaves and ridge-poles, and clustered like
swarming bees on every kind of open ground;--all these certainly touched
the imagination, but, in my case at least, with a chill as of the dead
man’s hand that played so large a part in earlier incantations to recall
the buried or delay the inevitable. There was everything to remind one
of the past; there was nothing to suggest the future.
“And yet I am unjust. There were the young King and his bride radiant
with spirit and hope, rehearsing the idyl which is charming alike to
youth and age, and giving pledges, as I hope and believe, of more
peaceful and prosperous years to come for a country which has had too
much glory and too little good housekeeping. No one familiar with
Spanish history, or who has even that superficial knowledge of her
national character, which is all that a foreigner is capable of
acquiring, can expect any sudden or immediate regeneration. The bent of
ages is not to be straightened in a day by never so many liberal
constitutions, nor by the pedantic application of theories drawn from
foreign experience, the result of a wholly different past.
“If the ninety years since the French Revolution have taught anything,
it is that institutions grow, and cannot be made to order,--that they
grow out of an actual past, and are not to be conspired out of a
conjectural future,--that human nature is stronger than any invention of
man. How much of this lesson has been learned in Spain, it is hard to
say; but if the young King apply his really acute intelligence, as those
who know him best believe he will, to the conscientious exercise of
constitutional powers and the steady development of parliamentary
methods, till party leaders learn that an ounce of patience is worth a
pound of passion, Spain may at length count on that duration of
tranquillity the want of which has been the chief obstacle to her
material development. Looked at in this light, the pomps of the wedding
festival on the 23d of last month may be something more than a mere
show. Nor should it be forgotten that here it is not the idea of Law but
of Power that is rooted in the consciousness of the people, and that
ceremonial is the garment of Authority....
“The ceremony over, the King and Queen, preceded by the Cabinet
Ministers, the special ambassadors, and the grandees of Spain, and
followed by other personages, all in coaches of state, drove at a
foot-pace to the Palace, where their Majesties received the
congratulations of the Court, and afterwards passed in review the
garrison of Madrid. By invitation of the President of the Council, the
Foreign Legations witnessed the royal procession from the balconies of
the Presidency. It was a very picturesque spectacle, and yet so
comically like a scene from _Cinderella_ as to have a strong flavor of
unreality. It was the past coming back again, and thus typified one of
the chronic maladies of Spain. There was no enthusiasm, nothing more
than the curiosity of idleness which would have drawn as great a crowd
to gape at the entry of a Japanese ambassador. I heard none of the
shouts of which I read in some of the newspapers the next day. No
inference, however, should be drawn from this as to the popularity or
unpopularity of the King. The people of the capital have been promised
the millennium too often, and have been too constantly disappointed to
indulge in many illusions. Spain, isolated as in many respects she is,
cannot help suffering in sympathy with the commercial depression of the
rest of the world, and Spaniards, like the rest of mankind, look to a
change of ministry for a change in the nature of things. The internal
policies of the country (even if I could hope to understand them, as I
am studying to do) do not directly come within my province; but it is
safe to say that Spain is lucky in having her ablest recent statesman at
the head of affairs,[71] though at the cost of many other private
ambitions. That he has to steer according to the prevailing set of the
wind is perhaps rather the necessity of his position than the fault of
his inclination. 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.”
The difference between a despatch and a letter to a friend is scarcely
so marked as the likeness. It is a little more studied, has a little
more the air of a composition, and fewer sly asides, yet it is after all
Lowell speaking of the things that interest him, rather than the
American minister aware of an audience in the State Department. In the
same despatch he carries forward the narrative by an account of his
participation in the ceremonial bull-fight, and in this passage one
might fancy him turning aside for a moment to have a few words
colloquially with Mr. Evarts and half assuming Parson Wilbur’s tone.
“On Friday took place the first bull-fight, at which every inhabitant of
Madrid and all foreigners commorant therein deemed it their natural
right to be present. The latter, indeed, asserted that the teleological
reason for the existence of legations was to supply their countrymen
with tickets to this particular spectacle for nothing. Though I do not
share in the belief that the sole use of a foreign minister is to save
the cost of a _valet de place_ to people who can perfectly well afford
to pay for one, I did all I could to have my countrymen fare as well as
the rest of the world. And so they did, if they were willing to buy the
tickets which were for sale at every corner. The distribution of them
had been performed on some principle unheard of out of Spain and
apparently not understood even there, so that everybody was
dissatisfied, most of all those who got them.
“The day was as disagreeable as the Prince of the Powers of the Air
could make it, even with special reference to a festival. A furious and
bitterly cold wind discharged volleys of coarse dust, which stung like
sleet, in every direction at once, and seemed always to threaten rain or
snow, but, unable to make up its mind as to which would be most
unpleasant, decided on neither. Yet the broad avenue to the amphitheatre
was continually blocked by the swarm of vehicles of every shape, size,
color, and discomfort that the nightmare of a bankrupt livery stabler
could have invented. All the hospitals and prisons for decayed or
condemned carriages seemed to have discharged their inmates for the day,
and all found willing victims. And yet all Madrid seemed flocking toward
the common magnet on foot also.
“I attended officially, as a matter of duty, and escaped early. It was
my first bull-fight, and will be my last. To me it was a shocking and
brutalizing spectacle in which all my sympathies were on the side of the
bull. As I came out I was nearly ridden down by a mounted guard, owing
to my want of any official badge. For the moment I almost wished myself
the representative of Liberia. Since this dreadful day 16,000 spectators
who were so happy as to be present have done nothing but blow their
noses and cough.”
In a private letter written after the festivities, Lowell refers to a
diplomatic dinner and reception which came at the close, and says: “The
uniforms (there are six special embassies here with very long tails) and
diamonds were very brilliant. But to me, I confess, it is all vanity and
vexation of spirit. I like America better every day.” The
picturesqueness soon satisfied, and he shows in this despatch how his
mind dwelt rather on the life which gave rise to and was typified in the
ceremonial. He read it not at all as a supercilious American, whose
pride in the barrenness of show at home might be as great as Castilian
pride in superfluity of decoration, but as a scholar intent on
discovering those fundamental truths of history which are seen all the
more clearly through the medium of a mind at home in the rarefied air of
a genuine American freedom.
Meanwhile his personal tastes led him to the book-shops and he fell to
buying books, easily pardoning any extravagance he might be led into by
the reflection that his treasures would go ultimately to the library of
his college, where indeed they did finally rest. These dips into the
refreshing waves of literature made him conscious of where his real
interest lay, but he was nevertheless not a perfunctory giver of his
service. “I try to do my duty,” he writes to his friend Child, “but feel
sorely the responsibility to people three thousand miles away, who know
not Joseph and probably think him unpractical.” By necessity of his
office, he was compelled to a good deal of social activity, and this,
though it brought him in contact with interesting persons, was so
opposed to a long habit that it wearied him. He found himself looking
critically at the society into which he was thrown. He saw little
evidence of exact scholarship in the educated men, and a general
disposition toward an indolent attitude regarding all important matters.
But the engaging side of the Spanish character appealed to him. As he
wrote to Child: “There is something oriental in my own nature which
sympathizes with this ‘let her slide’ temper of the hidalgos.”
At this time he began confidentially to whisper to friends at home that
he doubted if he could stand it much more than a year; but from the
middle of April, 1877, he took a two months’ leave of absence and with
Mrs. Lowell made an agreeable journey which brought him back in better
content to his life in Madrid. They travelled first from Madrid to
Tarbes, thence to Toulouse, Carcassonne, Nismes, Avignon, and Arles.
From France they went to Genoa, to Pisa and to Naples, whence they took
steamer to Athens, where they stayed a week or so. Lowell’s official
position not only drew upon him a little official ceremony, but it
tinctured his reflections also, leading him to observe and note matters
which might have some bearing upon international questions or might
affect in a way his own special function as minister to Spain.
“I have just come back from the Palace,” he writes to Mr. Norton from
Athens, 31 May, 1878, “where I was presented to the King, a fine young
Dane, good-looking and intelligent, and with whom I cannot help feeling
a great deal of sympathy just now. For never was man or kingdom in a
more difficult position. Greece was quite willing to make a snatch at
the chestnuts in the fire, even at the risk of burning her own fingers,
and they wouldn’t let her. I have seen decayed gentlemen who lived very
comfortably on the former glories of their family, and drove about in an
imaginary coach of their grandfathers’--but with Greece, if one can’t
say exactly _noblesse oblige_, it at least makes her uneasy, and the
laurels of Miltiades are a wakeful bed. She has an immense claim, and no
resources to make it good--not even the documents that prove clear
descent. It is curious, but I have not seen a face of the type that
statues and medals have taught us to consider Greek. In a regiment that
marched by yesterday at least seven eighths of the men, perhaps nine
tenths, had the nose of the dying gladiator, which I take it is
Slavonic. Yet continuity of language is certainly something, and I am so
stupid that I can’t get over my astonishment at seeing the street-signs,
and hearing the newspapers cried in Greek.”
A sudden opportunity to go to Constantinople shortened the stay in
Athens, and Lowell had a glimpse of the Orient. “My Eastern peep,” he
wrote after his return to Madrid, “has been of service in enabling me to
see how Oriental Spain still is in many ways. Without the comparison I
couldn’t be sure of it.”
The return of the Lowells to Madrid was just before the death of the
young Queen Mercedes, and both in his despatch to the government, dated
3 July, 1878, and in his private letters, Lowell gave expression to more
than merely official concern over the sudden taking-off. His despatch,
in particular, is full of such details as would be noticed by one
genuinely alert, and not merely carrying out the performance of official
etiquette. Here, for example, are a couple of passages which show the
artist and the man of feeling much more than the diplomat:--
“During the last few days of the Queen’s illness, the aspect of the city
had been strikingly impressive. It was, I think, sensibly less noisy
than usual, as if it were all a chamber of death in which the voice must
be bated. 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 the 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.
“At the time of the royal marriage I told you that the crowd in the
streets was indifferent and silent. My own impression was confirmed by
that of others. 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 virtue, 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.” How the death of the Queen affected Lowell’s
imagination may further be seen in the sonnet which he then wrote, but
which was not published till he collected his final volume of poetry.
The furlough which Lowell had taken greatly refreshed him, and he took
up his life again with vigor and gayety, applying himself not only to
the duties of the legation, but to the better acquisition of the Spanish
language, a fuller knowledge of the literature, and the study of those
larger matters of Spanish polity and character with which it became a
minister to acquaint himself. “I have come back,” he wrote to his
daughter, “a new man, and have flung my _blue_ spectacles into the paler
Mediterranean. I really begin to find life at last tolerable here, nay,
to enjoy it after a fashion.”
Here is an outline of his days, as he gives it in a letter to a friend:
“Get up at 8, from 9 sometimes till 11 my Spanish professor, at 11
breakfast, at 12 to the legation, at 3 home again and a cup of
chocolate, then read the papers and write Spanish till a quarter to 7,
at 7 dinner, and at 8 drive in an open carriage in the Prado till 10, to
bed at 12 to 1. In cooler weather we drive in the afternoon. I am very
well,--cheerful and no gout.”
He set to work systematically on Spanish with a cultivated Spaniard who
could speak no English, and with whom he read and talked every day,
besides turning French and English literature into Spanish. “I am
working now at Spanish,” he writes, 2 August, 1878, “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 isn’t saying much.
Considering how hard it has always been for me to _speak_ a
language--even one I knew pretty well--I am making good progress, for I
did not begin till my return six weeks ago. Before that I hadn’t the
spirit for it.” Of his tutor, Don Herminigildo Gines de los Rios, he
adds: “He is a fine young fellow who lost a professor’s chair for his
liberal principles, and is now professor in the Free University they are
trying to found here. I like him very much.”
Three months later he wrote: “I am beginning to talk Spanish pretty
well, but my previous knowledge of the language is a great hindrance.
This may seem a paradox, but it isn’t. What I mean is that I know too
much to catch it by ear. I understand all that is said to me, and
accordingly cannot (without a conscious effort) pay attention to the
forms of speech. They go in at one ear and out at the other. But I can
write it now with considerable ease and correctness. I am to be admitted
to the Academy this month, I believe.”
Lowell had been a year now at his post, and could venture to write of
the internal politics of Spain with greater assurance because he had a
more exact knowledge. His despatch to the government, No. 108, dated 26
August, 1878,[72] is a studied analysis of the character of the parties
and leaders that composed the political situation. He begins by
explaining his own reticence heretofore. “I have always been chary,” he
writes, “of despatches concerning the domestic politics of Spain,
because my experience has taught me that political prophets who make
even an occasional hit, and that in their own country, where they may
be presumed to know the character of the people, and the motives likely
to influence them, are as rare as great discoverers in science. Such a
conjunction of habitual observation with the faculty of instantaneous
logic that suddenly precipitates the long accumulation of experience in
crystals whose angles may be measured and their classification settled,
can hardly be expected of an observer in a foreign country. Its history
is no longer an altogether safe guide, for with the modern facility of
intercommunication, influences from without continually grow more and
more directly operative, and yet wherever, as in Spain, the people is
almost wholly dumb, there are few means of judging how great the
infiltration of new ideas may have been. Where there is no well-defined
national consciousness with recognised organs of expression, there can
be no public opinion, and therefore no way of divining what its attitude
is likely to be under any given circumstances.”
In forming his judgment Lowell seems to have used the broad means which
great ambassadors have always had recourse to. That is, he did not
merely sift the opinions he received from Spaniards, or put himself
under the tutelage of any one man, but he attended the debates of the
Cortes, he read the more intelligent journals, he talked with leaders of
Spanish opinion, and be availed himself of converse with those
foreigners travelling in Spain, whose impressions could be valued, and
behind all lay an old acquaintance with Spanish history and literature,
constantly added to, and an apprehension of Spanish character,
reënforced by personal intercourse. In a word, he went about the
business of an American minister to Spain with the same painstaking care
and the same breadth of view which, as a scholar, he would employ on the
interpretation of a great piece of literature. He did not neglect the
commercial side of his business, but he properly made it subordinate,
holding that he was not merely representing the country as an eminent
consul, but was assisting at the high court of international comity. In
the analysis which he attempts, he testifies to the kind of training
which he brings to the task, by fixing his attention mainly on the
leaders of parties, and studying their characters and aims. Especially
is this true of his acute examination of the qualities of Señor Cánovas
del Castillo, whom he regards as not only the ablest politician, but
capable also of being Spain’s most far-seeing statesman, and he makes
his observation more effective by the comparison which he draws between
him and Señor Castelar.
Mr. Adee, who, when Lowell went to Spain, was chargé d’affaires, in his
intelligent and appreciative Introduction to “Impressions of Spain,”
remarks that “necessarily lacking the knowledge of the true springs of
national impulse deep down in the heart of the masses, he dealt with the
surface indications, and analyzed the character and motives of the men
on top, whose peculiarities most caught his attention.” It is quite as
much to the point that Lowell did not assume a profound knowledge of
the Spanish people, and that he wrote of the phenomena most on the field
of his own activity as a minister resident. He was, moreover, too sound
a scholar and too shrewd a man to indulge in philosophizing on a nation
from the data furnished even by long study and some personal experience.
Nevertheless, whatever he lets fall about Spain, as well as his more
studied expression, indicates that kind of insight which was one of
Lowell’s gifts of nature, and stood him in good stead as a critic of
books, of men, and of nations.
It may militate against a respect for Lowell’s judgment in such matters,
that after a score of years the vaticinations which he ventured to
express in this despatch have not yet found a realization; yet twenty
years is a short period in a nation’s life, and these opinions carry
with them so much political faith, and are delivered with so much
moderation, that they form interesting reading to-day, and may well be
repeated here.
“My own conclusion,” he writes, “is that sooner or later (perhaps sooner
than later) the final solution (of existing political problems) will be
a conservative republic like that of France. Should the experiment there
go on prosperously a few years longer, should the French Senate become
sincerely republican at the coming elections, the effect here could not
fail to be very great, perhaps decisive. In one respect, the Spanish
people are better prepared for a Republic than might at first be
supposed. I mean that republican habits in their intercourse with each
other are and have long been universal. Every Spaniard is a caballero,
and every Spaniard can rise from the ranks to position and power. This
also is in part from the Mahometan occupation of Spain. _Del rey ninguno
abajo_ is an ancient Spanish proverb implying the equality of all below
the King. Manners, as in France, are democratic, and the ancient
nobility here as a class are even more shadowy than the dwellers in the
Faubourg Saint Germain.
“In attacking Señor Cánovas the opposition papers dwell upon the
censorship of the press, upon the reëstablishment of monachism under
other names, and upon the onerous restrictions under which the free
expression of thought is impossible. The ministerial organs reply to the
first charge that more journals were undergoing suspension at one time
during the liberal administration of Señor Sagasta than now, and this is
true. The fact is that no party, and no party leader, in Spain, is
capable of being penetrated with the truth, perhaps the greatest
discovery of modern times, that freedom is good above all because it is
safe. Señor Cánovas is doing only what any other Spaniard would do in
his place, that is, endeavoring to suppress opinions which he believes
to be mischievous. But of the impolitic extreme to which the principle
is carried under his administration, though, I suspect, without his
previous consent, the following fact may serve as an example. Señor
Manuel Merelo, professor in the Instituto del Cardenal Cisneros,
published in 1869 a compendium of Spanish history for the use of
schools. In speaking of the Revolution of 1868, he wrote, ‘It is said
that the light conduct (_las léviandades_) of Queen Isabel II. was one
of the causes of this catastrophe.’ After an interval of nine years, he
has been expelled from his chair and his book suppressed.
“If any change should take place, which I confess I do not expect, but
which, in a country of personal government and _pronunciamentos_, is
possible to-morrow, I think the new administration will find that with
the best intentions in the world a country which has been misgoverned
for three centuries is not to be reformed in a day. At the same time, I
believe Spain to be making rapid advances toward the conviction that a
reform is imperative, and can only be accomplished by the good-will and,
above all, the good sense of the entire nation. There are strong
prejudices and rooted traditions to be overcome, but with time and
patience I believe that Spain will accomplish the establishment of free
institutions under whatever form of government.”
In the course of Lowell’s incumbency, General Grant visited Spain on his
journey round the world, and the embassy, of course, was busy in its
attention to the great American. Lowell’s despatch to his government is
a model of orderly, dignified statement of the incidents attending
Grant’s visit, without the least of that free, personal note which
characterizes so many of Lowell’s despatches. His letters home on the
same event naturally are more gossipy, but they express well his
admiration of Grant’s qualities.
In the spring of 1879 Lowell seems to have been in some uncertainty
about his continued stay. There had been some talk of transferring him
to Berlin, which he did not desire, but the President emphatically
declared his wish that Lowell should remain at Madrid. He longed to be
at home, yet since he had become adjusted to the place, he wished to
secure the advantage and increase his acquaintance with Spain and the
character of the Spanish. He was alert and ready now to make more
confident notes regarding the people among whom he was living. In
speaking of a friend who had been most kind to them, and who had a
quartering of English race in her, he says:--
“She speaks both languages equally well, but is, I think, cleverer in
Spanish, and gives it a softness of intonation which is almost
unexampled here where the voices of the women are apt to be harsh and
clattering like those of the Irish. Doesn’t Madame Daulnay say something
of the kind? Nothing strikes me more than the rarity of agreeable
voices, and (what I never noticed in any other country) one hears in the
street the same tones as in the _salon_. I am for once inclined to admit
an influence of climate. To jump from the physical to the moral, the
Spaniards are the most provincial people conceivable, as much so as we
were forty years ago. It is comfortable, for they think they have the
best of everything--even of governments, for aught I know. But the
everything must be Spanish. Even their actors they speak of in a way
that would be extravagant even of Rachel, and I never saw worse.
Perhaps the most oriental thing in this semi-oriental people is the
hyperbole of praise which the critics allow themselves. It is quite
beyond belief. The press, by the way, at least that of Madrid, is
remarkably decorous, and never hints at private scandal. It may be
because the duel is still a judicial ceremony--though hardly, for there
is never any harm done. It may be that every one is conscious of a
skylight in his own roof, through which a stone might come. On the
whole, I think it is a relic of the old Spanish _hidalguia_, of which in
certain ways I think there is a good deal left. But I don’t pretend to
know the Spaniards yet--if ever I shall. When a man at sixty doesn’t yet
know himself, he is apt to get startled and carried off by the readiness
with which he hears shallow men pronounce judgment on a whole people.
The only way to do this, I suppose, would be to read all history, to
compare the action of different races or nations under similar
circumstances (if circumstances ever are similar), and then, eliminating
all points of likeness common to human nature, to analyze what was left,
if anything should be left.”
Since it was determined that he should continue to be minister to Spain,
Lowell proposed to use his yearly furlough by a hurried visit home in
the summer of 1879, leaving Mrs. Lowell at Tours. “I wish Fanny could
spend the summer with you in Maiche,” he writes to Mr. John W. Field
who, with his wife, had been their companions for a while in Spain; “but
we both think the other plan wiser, though not so agreeable. She will
learn more French in Tours, and I think we can find a good family for
her to go into through the French _pasteur_ or the British chaplain, for
there are both in the town. I hope to be in Paris by the 25th, and to
find you still here. Delay for a day or two, I beseech you, for my sake.
I can’t stay long, for I have to give a week to my friends in England on
my way through. I can hardly contain myself at the thought of going
home. It excites me more than I could have conceived--at my time of
life! Were I as young as you it wouldn’t be surprising.”
This was written 15 June, 1879. On the 20th he wrote a line to the same
friend to say that they could not start that day, as they had intended,
and he could not say when they should, since Mrs. Lowell was not well
enough to travel. “Nothing serious,” he adds, but as the days passed his
tone changed. Serious indeed her illness proved to be. On the 9th of
July he wrote: “Twice yesterday the doctors thought all was over. No
motion of the heart could be detected--the hands and feet and nose
became cold--and the dear face had all the look of death--the eyes
altogether leaden and fixed. She had been without speech for twelve
hours. What speech she had had for several days had been mere delirium.
Suddenly at about six in the afternoon she revived as by a miracle, said
she wished to be changed to another bed, was willing to take stimulants
in order to strengthen her for it, and insisted that she could move
herself from one bed to the other. This, of course, was out of the
question. After being changed she was perfectly tranquil, though
excessively weak. During the operation she spoke French to the Sœur who
is nursing her, English to me, and Spanish to her maid, all coherently.
Both doctors declared they had never seen such a case, or heard of it,
and that according to all experience she ought to have died ten times
over and days before. I have had two, one to relay the other, so that
one could be at her bedside all the time. One has slept in the
house--when he _could_ sleep. The question now is of building up
strength. It has been typhus of the most malignant kind. That has run
its course. All danger is not yet over, but hope has good grounds. The
chances are now in her favor, especially as she wishes to live. I will
tell you more hereafter. God be praised!”
But the recovery was very slow, with many relapses and with periods of
mental disorder. The original purpose was held to as long as it seemed
possible, but at last, as summer passed into autumn and autumn into
winter, it was plain that all plans of travel must be abandoned. Mr.
Field made them a flying visit, then both Mr. and Mrs. Field came to
Madrid to be with them and give them help and comfort. Their friends
Señor and Señora de Riaño were most attentive, and Mr. Dwight Reed,
Lowell’s secretary, had been almost indispensable. “I should have gone
quite desperate without him,” Lowell writes; and again, 18 October:
“Reed has been a great help. He comes every day to dinner and distracts
me a little with rumors from the outer world. He is a thoroughly
kind-hearted and affectionate fellow. But I can’t tell you what the
loneliness of my night has sometimes been, when I have heard the clock
strike every hour and every quarter till daylight came again to bring
the certainty that she was no better.”
It was not till the end of December that Lowell could speak and write of
his wife with anything like relief from the burden of anxiety. During
this time he took long walks with his friend Mr. Field, and attended to
his necessary work at the legation. His spirits began to rise, but the
strain he had been undergoing had been intense. Later, when the critical
condition was over, though relapses still occurred, he could rehearse
something of his experience: “I have had a very long and very terrible
trial, which the strange country and alien tongue have made worse, and
these ups and downs almost desperate. And yet without the intervals of
reason and hopeful convalescence from time to time, I know not how I
could have endured it. Indeed I cannot now comprehend how I pulled
through. Friendship has helped us, it is true. During the first weeks
Doña Emilia de Riaño (Gayangos’s daughter) came every night to watch
with Fanny, and her husband, Don Juan, came to see me every day. And my
secretary, a most true-hearted, affectionate fellow, sat up with me
night after night when I could not sleep, and kept me from eating into
myself all the time. Otherwise I was without even an acquaintance, for
everybody leaves Madrid during the summer. Lately the dear Fields have
been a great prop.
“If I could only get her away! But that is out of the question at
present. And all the while I have had to write cool little bulletins to
Mabel, turning the fair side outward when my heart was aching with
anxiety and apprehension. I must have expiated many sins this summer. I
feel now as if nothing could kill me, and am saddened more than ever
with a conclusion arrived at long ago by experience, that this poor
human nature of ours _gets used_ to almost anything--a conclusion of
far-reaching and, in some ways, disheartening consequence.”
* * * * *
As the year waned, Lowell found himself required to give his attention
to the change of the Spanish ministry, a political event which caused
more excitement than he had seen at any time during his stay in Madrid.
He analyzed the situation in his despatch to the government, No. 222,
dated 15 December, 1879, and in his conclusion wrote: “It is hardly yet
time to estimate the effect of recent events on the peninsular or
colonial destinies of the country, but the result thus far has been to
weaken the man who has hitherto been acknowledged leader and inspirer of
the Liberal-Conservative, and one might say therefore of the Dynastic,
party of Spain. Yet it should be remembered in estimating his chances
that he is a man of far greater resources, of prompter courage in taking
responsibility, and of more convincing and persuasive oratory than any
of his contemporaries and rivals in party-leadership. All sorts of wild
rumors are in circulation, but I am inclined to await events rather than
to trust in the vaticinations of journalists who mutually excite and
outbid each other in the bewildering competition of immediate
inspiration.”
Twelve days later, in despatch No. 223, Lowell returned to the subject
of the change of ministry, and after some shrewd and witty conjectures
as to the course of events, drawn in part from his study of the Spanish
mind, he took up a more serious matter.
“The crucial question for the new cabinet will not, I conceive, arise
from domestic politics, but rather from the economic reforms demanded by
the Island of Cuba. Señor Cánovas assured me a week ago that he ‘was
ready and should be glad to concede any reforms that would not produce a
deficit in the Cuban budget, but that he could not consent to make the
island a burden on the peninsula.’ The minister of Ultramar said
substantially the same thing to me last evening. I told him smilingly
that I had a deep interest in the matter, because I feared that I should
have my hands full of Cuban claims if they delayed much longer.
“The Cuban deputies and senators are, I believe, very much discontented
with the turn things have taken. Several have already gone home, and
more are to follow. The affairs of Cuba certainly look ominous, but
those who prophesy a general movement for separation there seem to
forget that the island is inhabited by two distinct and mutually
suspicious races, and that the whites, being of Spanish origin, are as
obstinately divided in political sentiment as their kinsmen here.
General Grant’s visit to Cuba seems to attract some attention. The
Minister for Foreign Affairs asked me about it yesterday. I answered
carelessly that I knew nothing more than what I saw in the newspapers;
that the same motives no doubt carried the general thither that had
carried him to Europe and Asia; that he was also to visit Mexico, a
circumstance which I had seen connected by some journalists with an
apocryphal movement in that country for annexation to the United States.
You can infer what rumors are rife by a question asked me by the
Pro-nuncio here, ‘whether negotiations were on foot for a purchase of
Cuba by the United States.’ I told him that such a report was very
likely to arise from the well-known fact that General Prim when in power
had favored such a scheme, and turned the conversation to something
else.”
Early in 1880, entirely without Lowell’s knowledge or motion, a
suggestion from one or two friends, conspiring with the wishes of the
State Department at Washington, led to the offer of a transfer from
Madrid to London. On 22 January, Lowell wrote to his daughter: “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. 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.’ You see that is
in very agreeable terms, and at least shows that Government is satisfied
with my conduct here. I was afraid of its effects on mamma at first; but
she was pleased, and began at once to contrive how I could accept, which
she wished me to do. I answered: ‘Feel highly honored by the President’s
confidence. Could accept if allowed two months delay. Impossible to move
or leave my wife sooner.’”
How intimately Lowell connected the change with the condition of his
wife, and how her state subdued any exhilaration he might have felt,
appears further from a letter written 13 February, 1880, to a friend who
had been moving in the matter at home. “I did not know that you had any
hand in it when I wrote to Mr. Evarts and told him that had I been
consulted I should have had grave doubts about accepting. Accordingly I
wish you would contrive to let them know at Washington that I was in
utter ignorance of what my friends were doing. Indeed, I hardly know
even now what I shall (or rather what I can) do. When the telegram came
Fanny had been going on well for six weeks, but about a fortnight ago
came another relapse and she is now in a very nervous state again,--not
absolutely out of her head, but incapable of controlling herself.... If
this relapse should prove transitory like the others, I shall probably
be obliged to leave Fanny here, and go to London for my presentation,
and then come back on leave. For I cannot very well renounce the
appointment now after having consented to accept it. Fanny was so well
when the telegram came that I did not hesitate to consult her about it.
She was very much pleased and insisted on my accepting, but now I have
the dreadful suspicion that it was the excitement of this news that
upset her again. It is true that the change did not show itself for more
than a week, and there are reasons for attributing it to physical
causes, but I cannot shake off the bitter reproach of having been
imprudent. And yet what could I do? The doctor had told me that in a
month at farthest I should be able to move her, and she was so perfectly
herself then that I had no fears. It is now twelve o’clock (noon) and
she is still asleep. The nurse thinks her better. She woke for a few
moments, took some beef tea, and dropped off again. Sleep is always good
for her. I hope it is a good sign that this relapse has not been so bad
as the last before it. Before that she had been better for a few days
only and I was never sure that the excitement of the brain was more than
diminished. But when this began she had been perfectly self-possessed
for weeks, and we took great comfort together in the twenty-third psalm.
I am glad I was born long enough ago to have some _superstitions_ left.
They stand by one somehow, and the back feels that it has a brother
behind it.[73] I long to be at home again, and it will not be a great
while now. If we get to England, it is more than half way.”
Lowell carried out the plan he had outlined. His friends, Mr. and Mrs.
John W. Field, were in Madrid, and he left Mrs. Lowell under their
watchful supervision, and went reluctantly to England, reaching London 7
March, 1880. His friends kept him informed daily by telegraph and letter
of the condition of the invalid, and it so chanced that she had another
relapse shortly after he had left her. He was in despair, and heaped
reproaches upon himself for having gone; yet when he reasoned, he saw he
had done only what he must do. A more reassuring telegram came on the
9th of March, and on the 14th he was persuaded that Mrs. Lowell had
issued from this crisis and come fairly out on the other side. In a week
more, he had had his audience with the Queen, and taking brief leave of
absence, had set out for Madrid, whence he was now able to remove his
wife to England. The life of both of them was brightened during the
summer that followed by the coming of Mr. and Mrs. Burnett on a brief
visit from America.