And on the 24th he says: “I can scarcely get through with one letter without pain, and everything that I write retards my cure, and so keeps me the longer here. But I love Keats so much that I think I can write something good about him.... If you knew how I am placed, you would not write me so. I am forbidden to write under pain of staying here forever or losing my eyes.” And in the same letter, “I must not write any more.”

“Have you got any copy for the third number? Do not ask any conservatives to write, for it will mar the unity of the magazine. We shall be surer of success if we maintain a uniform course and have a decided tendency either one way or the other. We shall at least gain more influence in that way.”

In New York he often met Willis personally, and the more he saw of him the better he liked him. I think this was what happened with most people who met Willis. It certainly was so with me. In personal intimacy the studied affectation of his printed work disappeared. It was studied, as almost any one could guess without seeing him. Willis also was at this time under Dr. Elliott’s care for treatment of his eyes. He told Dr. Elliott that Lowell had written the most remarkable poetry that had been written in this country, and that he was destined to be the brightest star that had yet risen in American literature. He told Lowell himself that he was more popular and more talked about than any other poet in the land, and promised him that he would help the “Pioneer” in every way. At this time Willis was as highly regarded by young people, especially by the sort of people who read magazines, as any literary man in America.

Elizabeth Barrett, not yet married, had written for the Boston “Miscellany,” and on the 20th of January Lowell acknowledges four poems from her.[[7]] There were but three numbers of the “Pioneer” published. It has been the fashion to speak of it in a pitying tone, as if it were a mere foolish enterprise of two callow boys. But if between the numbers or between the articles one reads, as I have done, the correspondence between Lowell and his “true friend and brother,” Robert Carter, one feels that the “Pioneer” failed of success only from a series of misfortunes. Looking back upon it now, it is easy to say that it needed capital for a beginning. Most things do in our modern world. It is clear enough in this case that the strongest reason for undertaking it was that Lowell lived and was at the beginning of his successful career. Without him there would have been no “Pioneer.” Knowing this, when you find that through January and February he was prohibited from writing, that week after week he was submitting to operations on his eyes, and that he was in actual danger of permanent blindness, you cease to ask why the “Pioneer” died at the end of its third number, and you wonder, on the other hand, that it lived at all.

When one remembers the currency which Lowell’s volumes of essays have had from the very beginning, he reads with special interest more than amusement the following note from Miss White, who had seen the publisher, which is pathetic. It describes the persuasion necessary to induce anybody to attempt the bold venture of issuing the first in that remarkable series:—

“I went to see Mr. Owen this afternoon, to talk to him about publishing James’s prose volume. He expressed himself greatly pleased with the articles, but said he wished to wait until James’s prose was better known to the public before he ventured upon it. Then I told him of the flattering notices of his ‘Old Dramatists’ that appeared at the time they came out, and of the lavish praise his prose style received. He said that changed the face of affairs wholly; that if he were as sure of the public as himself he should not hesitate. He said he wished to see you and talk about it with you also.”

Let all young writers remember this, that the public knows what it wants, whether publishers are doubtful or no. I may add the remark, which I believe to be wholly true, of one of the most successful publishers of our day, “No one on earth knows, when a book is published, whether it will sell five thousand copies or not. But if five thousand copies are sold, nothing is more certain than that twenty-five thousand can be.”

LOWELL’S LIST OF FRIENDS TO WHOM HE PRESENTED COPIES OF “CONVERSATIONS ON THE OLD POETS”
“The Don” was Robert Carter
[transcription]

Mr. Lowell and Miss White were married in the end of December, 1844, with the good wishes, I might say, of everybody. Among her other exquisite faculties she had a sense of humor as keen as his, and both of them would run on, in the funniest way, about their plans for economical housekeeping. Sheet-iron air-tight stoves had just come into being. I believe I never see one to this day without recollecting in what an amusing vein of absurd exaggeration she once showed, in her lively talk, how much they were going to save in the detail of domestic life by the use of that most unromantic bit of household machinery.