Studies of Lowell (from Literary Friends and Acquaintance) , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridge when I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in 1860. I saw him more and more after I went to live in Cambridge in 1866; and I now wish to record what I knew of him during the years that passed between this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try to paint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall only claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do not keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did?

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819948155
Langue	English

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STUDIES OF LOWELL
I have already spoken of my earliest meetings withLowell at Cambridge when I came to New England on a literarypilgrimage from the West in 1860. I saw him more and more after Iwent to live in Cambridge in 1866; and I now wish to record what Iknew of him during the years that passed between this date and thatof his death. If the portrait I shall try to paint does not seem afaithful likeness to others who knew him, I shall only claim thatso he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I do not keepmyself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did?
I.
It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home frommy consular post at Venice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston,I went out to see Lowell at Elmwood, and give him an inkstand thatI had brought him from Italy. The bronze lobster whose back openedand disclosed an inkpot and a sand-box was quite ugly; but Ithought it beautiful then, and if Lowell thought otherwise he neverdid anything to let me know it. He put the thing in the middle ofhis writing-table (he nearly always wrote on a pasteboard padresting upon his knees), and there it remained as long as I knewthe place— a matter of twenty-five years; but in all that time Isuppose the inkpot continued as dry as the sand-box.
My visit was in the heat of August, which is asfervid in Cambridge as it can well be anywhere, and I still have asense of his study windows lifted to the summer night, and thecrickets and grasshoppers crying in at them from the lawns and thegardens outside. Other people went away from Cambridge in thesummer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowell always stayed atElmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for his town. Imust have found him there in the afternoon, and he must have mademe sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go with himfor a long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some onehelp him idle the time away, and keep him as long as possible fromhis work; and no doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in thisway, aside from any pleasure he might have had in my company assome one he had always been kind to, and as a fresh arrival fromthe Italy dear to us both.
He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of hiseasychair, invited my shy youth to all the ease it was capable ofin his presence. It was not much; I loved him, and he gave mereason to think that he was fond of me, but in Lowell I was alwaysconscious of an older and closer and stricter civilization than myown, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritative status. Hisdemocracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart, and hisdenied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was sonoble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our longacquaintance I found it well to come to open rebellion, as I morethan once did, he admitted my right of insurrection, and neverresented the outbreak. I disliked to differ with him, and perhapshe subtly felt this so much that he would not dislike me for doingit. He even suffered being taxed with inconsistency, and where hesaw that he had not been quite just, he would take punishment forhis error, with a contrition that was sometimes humorous and alwaystouching.
Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn withItaly, and he was interested but not much encouraged by what Icould tell him of the feeling in Venice against the Austrians. Heseemed to reserve a like scepticism concerning the fine things Iwas hoping for the Italians in literature, and he confessed aninterest in the facts treated which in the retrospect, I am aware,was more tolerant than participant of my enthusiasm. That wasalways Lowell's attitude towards the opinions of people he liked,when he could not go their lengths with them, and nothing was morecharacteristic of his affectionate nature and his justintelligence. He was a man of the most strenuous convictions, buthe loved many sorts of people whose convictions he disagreed with,and he suffered even prejudices counter to his own if they were notignoble. In the whimsicalities of others he delighted as much as inhis own.
II.
Our associations with Italy held over until the nextday, when after breakfast he went with me towards Boston as far as“the village”: for so he liked to speak of Cambridge in the customof his younger days when wide tracts of meadow separated HarvardSquare from his life-long home at Elmwood. We stood on the platformof the horsecar together, and when I objected to his paying my farein the American fashion, he allowed that the Italian usage of eachpaying for himself was the politer way. He would not commit himselfabout my returning to Venice (for I had not given up my place, yet,and was away on leave), but he intimated his distrust of theflattering conditions of life abroad. He said it was charming to betreated 'da signore', but he seemed to doubt whether it was well;and in this as in all other things he showed his final fealty tothe American ideal.
It was that serious and great moment after thesuccessful close of the civil war when the republican consciousnesswas more robust in us than ever before or since; but I cannotrecall any reference to the historical interest of the time inLowell's talk. It had been all about literature and about travel;and now with the suggestion of the word village it began to be alittle about his youth. I have said before how reluctant he was tolet his youth go from him; and perhaps the touch with my juniorityhad made him realize how near he was to fifty, and set him thinkingof the past which had sorrows in it to age him beyond his years. Hewould never speak of these, though he often spoke of the past. Hetold once of having been on a brief journey when he was six yearsold, with his father, and of driving up to the gate of Elmwood inthe evening, and his father saying, “Ah, this is a pleasant place!I wonder who lives here— what little boy? ” At another time hepointed out a certain window in his study, and said he could seehimself standing by it when he could only get his chin on thewindow-sill. His memories of the house, and of everything belongingto it, were very tender; but he could laugh over an escapade of hisyouth when he helped his fellow-students pull down his father'sfences, in the pure zeal of good-comradeship.
III.
My fortunes took me to New York, and I spent most ofthe winter of 1865-6 writing in the office of 'The Nation'. Icontributed several sketches of Italian travel to that paper; andone of these brought me a precious letter from Lowell. He praisedmy sketch, which he said he had read without the least notion whohad written it, and he wanted me to feel the full value of such animpersonal pleasure in it. At the same time he did not fail to tellme that he disliked some pseudo-cynical verses of mine which he hadread in another place; and I believe it was then that he bade me“sweat the Heine out of” me, “as men sweat the mercury out of theirbones. ”
When I was asked to be assistant editor of theAtlantic Monthly, and came on to Boston to talk the matter overwith the publishers, I went out to Cambridge and consulted Lowell.He strongly urged me to take the position (I thought myselfhopefully placed in New York on The Nation); and at the same timehe seemed to have it on his heart to say that he had recommendedsome one else for it, never, he owned, having thought of me.
He was most cordial, but after I came to live inCambridge (where the magazine was printed, and I could moreconveniently look over the proofs), he did not call on me for morethan a month, and seemed quite to have forgotten me. We met onenight at Mr. Norton's, for one of the Dante readings, and he tookno special notice of me till I happened to say something thatoffered him a chance to give me a little humorous snub. I wasspeaking of a paper in the Magazine on the “Claudian Emissary, ”and I demanded (no doubt a little too airily) something like “Whoin the world ever heard of the Claudian Emissary? ” “You are inCambridge, Mr. Howells, ” Lowell answered, and laughed at myconfusion. Having put me down, he seemed to soften towards me, andat parting he said, with a light of half-mocking tenderness in hisbeautiful eyes, “Goodnight, fellow-townsman. ” “I hardly knew wewere fellow-townsmen, ” I returned. He liked that, apparently, andsaid he had been meaning to call upon me; and that he was comingvery soon.
He was as good as his word, and after that hardly aweek of any kind of weather passed but he mounted the steps to thedoor of the ugly little house in which I lived, two miles away fromhim, and asked me to walk. These walks continued, I suppose, untilLowell went abroad for a winter in the early seventies.