Produced by David Widger
LITERARY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES—Studies of Lowell
by William Dean Howells
I have already spoken of my earliest meetings with Lowell at Cambridgewhen I came to New England on a literary pilgrimage from the West in1860. 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 passedbetween this date and that of his death. If the portrait I shall try topaint does not seem a faithful likeness to others who knew him, I shallonly claim that so he looked to me, at this moment and at that. If I donot keep myself quite out of the picture, what painter ever did?
It was in the summer of 1865 that I came home from my consular post atVenice; and two weeks after I landed in Boston, I went out to see Lowellat Elmwood, and give him an inkstand that I had brought him from Italy.The bronze lobster whose back opened and disclosed an inkpot and asand-box was quite ugly; but I thought it beautiful then, and if Lowellthought otherwise he never did anything to let me know it. He put thething in the middle of his writing-table (he nearly always wrote on apasteboard pad resting upon his knees), and there it remained as long asI knew the 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 as fervid in Cambridge as itcan well be anywhere, and I still have a sense of his study windowslifted to the summer night, and the crickets and grasshoppers crying inat them from the lawns and the gardens outside. Other people went awayfrom Cambridge in the summer to the sea and to the mountains, but Lowellalways stayed at Elmwood, in an impassioned love for his home and for histown. I must have found him there in the afternoon, and he must havemade me sup with him (dinner was at two o'clock) and then go with him fora long night of talk in his study. He liked to have some one help himidle the time away, and keep him as long as possible from his work; andno doubt I was impersonally serving his turn in this way, aside from anypleasure he might have had in my company as some one he had always beenkind to, and as a fresh arrival from the Italy dear to us both.
He lighted his pipe, and from the depths of his easychair, invited my shyyouth to all the ease it was capable of in his presence. It was notmuch; I loved him, and he gave me reason to think that he was fond of me,but in Lowell I was always conscious of an older and closer and strictercivilization than my own, an unbroken tradition, a more authoritativestatus. His democracy was more of the head and mine more of the heart,and his denied the equality which mine affirmed. But his nature was sonoble and his reason so tolerant that whenever in our long acquaintance Ifound it well to come to open rebellion, as I more than once did, headmitted my right of insurrection, and never resented the outbreak. Idisliked to differ with him, and perhaps he subtly felt this so much thathe would not dislike me for doing it. He even suffered being taxed withinconsistency, and where he saw that he had not been quite just, he wouldtake punishment for his error, with a contrition that was sometimeshumorous and always touching.
Just then it was the dark hour before the dawn with Italy, and he wasinterested but not much encouraged by what I could tell him of thefeeling in Venice against the Austrians. He seemed to reserve a likescepticism concerning the fine things I was hoping for the Italians inliterature, and he confessed an intere