James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

But better times for American letters or for the independent profession of literary men were at hand. “Graham’s Magazine” and “Godey’s Lady’s Book” had achieved what was called a large circulation. Stimulated by their success, two young publishers in Boston, named Bradbury and Soden, determined to try a magazine in New England which should appeal for its support to the supposed literary class of the country, as Blackwood did, and, in America, the “Portfolio,” the “Knickerbocker,” and the “Literary Messenger.” But it was also to print fashion-plates, and so appeal to the women of the country, even if they did not care for literature. So it was to be called “The Boston Miscellany of Literature and Fashion.” There were to be forty-six pages of literature, with a good steel engraving, in every number, and two pages of fashion, with a fashion-plate.

My brother was to be responsible for the literature, and somebody, I think in New York, for the fashion, with which the former had nothing to do. I remember he had to explain this to Mrs. Stowe, whom he had asked to contribute. She had declined because she had been shocked by a décolletée figure on one of these plates. Dear Mrs. Stowe, in her English progress ten years afterwards, had an opportunity to reconcile herself with dresses much more pronounced.

The “Atlantic” to-day calls itself a journal of literature, art, science, and politics. It does not undertake to reconcile fashion with literature. If Messrs. Bradbury and Soden had been questioned, they would have said, what was true, that there was no class of readers who could sustain creditably a purely literary magazine. The rate at which the poor “Knickerbocker” was expiring was evidence of this. But they would have said that there were a great many factory-girls in the country for whom there was no journal of fashion. They would have said that these girls could be relied upon to float the literary magazine, if in each number there was a love-story which they would be glad to read. And I remember that there was great glee in the counting-room when it was announced that a thousand copies of the new magazine had been sold in Lowell.

My brother was very stiff about concessions to the fashionable side. Two pages might be fashion, and as bad fashion as the publishers wanted, but his forty-six pages were to be the best which he could command. After a few numbers had been issued, he made a negotiation with Duyckinck, the editor of the “Arcturus,” by which the short-lived magazine was transferred to him. This gave him the help of some of the bright New Yorkers. They sent to him their accumulated manuscripts, and I then saw the handwriting of Elizabeth Barrett—Mrs. Browning—for the first time. Soon after this these young men in Boston made the personal acquaintance of their New York correspondents, and from that time began Lowell’s close friendship with Mr. Charles F. Briggs.

Of other writers rising to fame, who were secured for the “Miscellany,” was Hawthorne, who, to the great pleasure of all of us, contributed the article “A Virtuoso’s Collection.” Lowell probably met him for the first time at Elizabeth Peabody’s. Hawthorne soon after married her charming sister. As a nom de plume for a great deal of his work, Hawthorne assumed the French translation of his name. His stories in the “Democratic Review” of this time were attributed to “Monsieur d’Aubépine.” Lowell says of him in his Concord address: “You would think me extravagant, I fear, if I said how highly I rate the genius of Hawthorne in the history of literature. At any rate, Hawthorne taught us one great and needful lesson; and that is, that our own past was an ample storehouse for the brightest works of imagination or fancy.”

CHARLES F. BRIGGS

It is interesting now to see that Walt Whitman, who then called himself Walter, had begun as early as this his literary career.

The page of the “Miscellany” was an imitation as precise as possible of the page which Edward Moxon in London had adopted for several of his popular series. All these young men had read and enjoyed the first part of Browning’s “Bells and Pomegranates,” which had appeared with Moxon’s imprint in this form in 1842.

I speak at this length of the “Miscellany,” of which we print a facsimile of one page, because in that year Lowell really made his determination to lead a literary life. It was not the life of a poet simply, but a life of letters, to which from this time he looked forward. To the volume of the “Miscellany” published in 1842 he contributed the following: three articles on “Old English Dramatists,” the two sketches “My First Client” and “Getting Up,” and, in verse, the sonnet to Keats, “The Two,” “To Perdita Singing,” “Fantasy,” “The Shepherd of King Admetus,” and two unnamed sonnets.