“A Year’s Life,” his maiden volume of poems, had been published in 1841, about the time of their engagement. We used to pretend that weeks in advance of the publication multitudes of young girls who took a tender interest in this most romantic of marriages walked daily from one to another of the half-dozen book-shops in little Boston to inquire if “A Year’s Life” were ready, and thus to stimulate the interest and curiosity of booksellers and their clerks. I think that the larger publishers of to-day even would say that the sale was more than is to be expected from any new volume of short poems. This was, of course, only a retail sale in Boston and the neighboring towns. There was as yet no demand for “Lowell’s Poems” in New York, Philadelphia, or London.
Seeing the future of the author’s poetical reputation, I think that young authors may be interested in reading the letter in which he first proposes modestly to print this book:—
“I think, nay I am sure, that I have written some worthy things, and though I feel well enough pleased with myself, yet it is a great joy to us all to be known and understood by others. I do long for somebody to like what I have written, and me for what I have written, who does not know me. You and I were cured of the mere cacoethes imprimendi (Rufus) by our connection with ‘Harvardiana:’ I think that so far we should be thankful to it, as it taught us that print was no proof of worthiness, and that we need not look for a movement of the world when our pieces were made known in print.
“Now, if you will find out how much it would cost to print 400 copies (if you think I could sell so many; if not, 300) in decent style (150 pages—less if printed closely), like Jones Very’s book, for instance, I could find out if I could get an indorser. I should not charge less than $1 per vol.—should you? I don’t care so much for the style of printing as to get it printed in any way.
“Jones Very’s style would be good, too, because it might be printed by our old printers, and that would be convenient about the proofs.”
In the subsequent collections of his poems he omitted many of those which are in this pioneer volume. And for this reason, among others, the volume is in great demand among collectors. But it is easy to see that he had even then—two years only after the class poem—outgrown the crudities of younger days which we find in turning over “Harvardiana.” There is serious purpose now, though it be expressed only in two or three words together. Some of these are the poems of a lover. Yes! but they are also the poems of a serious young man who knows that there is duty next his hand, and who is determined, with God’s help and with the help of her he loves best, to carry that duty through.
The spirit of the book reflects thus the same sense of a mission to mankind which appears in the letters which have been preserved from a full correspondence which he maintained with Heath, a young Virginian. Frank Heath, as his friends called him, graduated at Cambridge while Lowell was in the Law School, and a close intimacy had grown up between them. When Heath left college in August, 1840, he returned to Virginia. There is a careful letter from Lowell to him which has a curious interest now, in the light of the history which followed. Lowell begs him to lead the way and to make himself the typical man in the new history of Virginia by emancipating his own slaves and leading in the establishment of a new civilization there. In fact, Heath soon went to Europe, and was lost to his friends here for nearly twenty years in one or another German university. He returned to his own country in time to take a prominent post in the Confederate army, and I think he lost an arm in one of the battles of the rebellion.
The publication of “A Year’s Life” showed that Lowell was a poet. This was now beyond discussion. The papers in the “Miscellany” and the “Pioneer” now showed, what people in the little literary circles of America knew, that he wrote prose well and that he had more than an amateur’s knowledge of the older English literature. He could work steadily and faithfully.
In the autumn of 1843 and the winter of 1843–44, however, as has been said, he had trouble with his eyes, and he lived for some time in New York for their better treatment. Mrs. Lowell also, always of delicate health, required a more genial climate than Elmwood or Watertown would give her. Her lungs were delicate, and after their marriage, to escape the harsh climate of Boston, they spent the winter of 1844-45 in Philadelphia. It need not be said that in each city they made very near personal friends who felt and treasured the personal attraction of each of them,—an attraction which it is impossible to describe.
In the same winter the Southern party in Congress and the speculators who had bought Texan bonds for next to nothing were engaged in driving through the last Congress of President Tyler’s administration the “joint resolutions” by which Texas was annexed to the United States. There were no precedents for such annexation. What would seem the natural course in an agreement between two republics would have been a formal treaty between them. But it was known that no treaty for such a purpose could pass the United States Senate. It was determined, therefore, by the friends of annexation, who had such support as Mr. Tyler and his Cabinet could give, that they would drive these “joint resolutions” through Congress. And this was done. The resolutions passed the Senate by a majority of one only. They passed the day before Mr. Tyler went out of office. Here was the first pitched battle in Congress on a definite national issue between the North and South since that defeat of the North in the Missouri Compromise which had so excited Charles Lowell the year after his son was born. The whole country, North and South, was wild with excitement, as well it might be.