CASTLES IN SPAIN
[Speech of Charles Eliot Norton at the "Whittier Dinner," in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and the twentieth birthday of the "Atlantic Monthly," given by the publishers of the magazine, Boston, December 17, 1877. William Dean Howells, then editor of the "Atlantic," officiated as chairman. Mr. Norton spoke for James Russell Lowell, the first editor of the "Atlantic," then serving as United States Minister to Spain.]
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:—We miss to-night one man to whom many names are equally befitting: the humorist, the wit, the wise thinker, the poet, the scholar, the worker, the friend—but the man who, of all others, should be here to do honor to our guest. We miss the first editor of the "Atlantic," whose comprehensive sympathies, wide as his vast, broad genius; whose cultivated taste, whose various and thorough learning gave to our Monthly, from the beginning, first place among American magazines and secured for it that deserved popularity which you, sir [Mr. Howells], are doing so much to maintain. The same qualities which made him eminent as an editor will make him eminent as the representative abroad of what is best in the social and political life of our country. No man could more truly exhibit, as comprehending them in himself, the high spirit, the noble aims, the varied achievements of a generous and large-minded nation—a nation not always so careful as it ought to be that its ministers accredited to foreign powers should be servants creditable to itself. But in the place that he now fills I cannot but regard him as, in a special sense, the envoy of the company gathered around this table. I believe that every one of us has, or at least has had, possessions in Spain that require to be well looked after; they are possessions of extraordinary, enormous, quite incalculable value, of which the title deeds are not always as complete as we could wish. Lowell himself had large estates of this sort:—
"When I was a beggarly boy,
I lived in a cellar damp,
I had not a friend, nor a toy,
But I had Aladdin's lamp.
"When I could not sleep for the cold,
I had fire enough in my brain,
And I built with their roofs of gold
My beautiful castles in Spain."
And so too, he, the friend of us all, whose presence makes us all glad to-night, and whom we always greet with all love and honor, has had possessions in the same fair land:—
"How much of my heart, O Spain,
Went out to thee in days of yore!
What dreams romantic filled my brain,
And summoned back to life again
The Paladins of Charlemagne,
The Cid Campeador?"
How many "castles in Spain not built of stone" has he dwelt in, and with what delightful hospitality has he welcomed us as guests within their spacious and splendid halls! And even you, sir, for whose sake we have met to-night, even you, modest as your retirement has seemed to be in that quiet home, which you have made dear to the lovers of poetry and purity and peace, you have privately had your speculations in real estate in that land of romance, from which you have drawn large revenues. You will pardon me for reminding you of one of them, where—
"On the banks of the Xenil, the dark Spanish maiden
Comes up with fruit of the tangled vine laden."
I have sometimes fancied that even the Concord River had its springs somewhere in the snowy Sierras of Estremadura, toward which the windows of the sage-poet's dwelling were turned, and from whose heaven-reaching summits he has so often caught the fresh airs of celestial breath. Few of us, indeed, have had the good fortune to add to their vast real estates in Spain any substantial articles of personal property, but one of us, rich in the gifts of Don Quixote's land, has actually a piece of plate, a silver punch bowl, which at times, when filled, has, I doubt not, given him assurance of undisputed rights in the most magnificent castles:—
"A Spanish galleon brought the bar—so runs the ancient tale—
'Twas hammered by an Antwerp smith, whose arm was like a flail."
And even you and I, Mr. Editor, and all the rest of us, possess, as I have said, our smaller domains in that distant land, all of them with castles; but not all the castles, I fear, in good repair or quite habitable; and some of us would be perplexed to say if they lay in Granada or Andalusia, La Mancha—or to tell exactly how many turrets they had, or how large a company they could accommodate with good entertainment. Now, sir, such being the case, all of us having such real, but too often, alas! neglected possessions in Spain, I am not surprised that Lowell writes to me that he finds the Spanish Legation one of the busiest in Europe. He is to establish our titles, and the work is not without its difficulties. Let us send him our God-speed. May he come back to us to assure us, as he better than any other can do, of the henceforth undisturbed enjoyment of all our castles in Spain. [Applause.]