James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

As it proved, he was brought face to face with large numbers of persons who would otherwise never have seen him, by delivering lectures in various courses through the Northern and Northwestern States; but this did not begin until a period as late as 1855. What I have said of his easy speaking is the remark of a person who heard him, as I have often heard him. I never spoke with any one who had heard him who did not say the same thing. But he himself did not always feel the sort of confidence in his power in this way which would have seemed natural. I am told by many persons who had to introduce him upon such occasions, that he would be doubtful and anxious about his power with an audience before he began. And he was excessively sensitive about any accident by which he forgot a word or in any way seemed to himself to have tripped in his discourse.

In 1853 he was invited to deliver a course of lectures before the Lowell Institute. These lectures were eventually delivered in January and February of 1855.

JOHN LOWELL, JR.
From a painting by Chester Harding, in the possession of Augustus Lowell, Boston

Because the great system of public instruction which is carried on by this Institute bears the name of his family, I will give some little account of it here. Stimulated by the success of what we have been speaking of, the lyceum system of the Northern States, John Lowell, Jr., a cousin of James Russell Lowell, had founded this Institute. His wife and all his children had died. His own health was delicate, and he undertook a long journey abroad. While in Egypt he made his will, in which he left $250,000 for the beginning of a fund for carrying on public instruction by means of lectures. It is said that it was executed literally under the shadow of the ruins of Luxor.

By this instrument he left to trustees the sum which has been named, the interest of which should be expended for maintaining free public lectures for the instruction of any who should choose to attend. The will provided that nine tenths of the income should be thus expended for the immediate purposes of every year. The remaining tenth is every year added to the principal fund. The investments have been carefully and successfully made, and as the will went into effect in the year 1839, the fund is now very much larger than it was when he died.

It has been admirably administered from the beginning. The first Americans in the walks of science or of literature have been proud to be enrolled on the list of its lecturers, and in many instances the most distinguished savants from Europe have been called over with the special purpose of lecturing to its audiences.

Before 1855 Lowell was, I may say, universally known and universally admired. The announcement that he was to deliver a course of twelve lectures on English poetry was gladly received in Boston. It proved at once that it would be necessary to repeat the lectures in the afternoons for a new audience of those who could not enter the hall in the evening. But in both afternoon and evening courses multitudes were turned away for whom there was no room in the hall. A much larger “audience” was made up by the people who read the lectures from day to day in the newspaper. My father and brother, who then conducted the “Daily Advertiser,” arranged with Mr. Lowell that his old friend Mr. Robert Carter should prepare the manuscript for that paper, and thus the “Advertiser” printed each lecture on the day after its second delivery, with the omission only of some of the extracts from the poets of whom he was speaking.

These reports were carefully preserved by some scrap-book makers, and from one of the scrap-books thus made the Rowfant Club of Cleveland printed an elegant limited edition in 1897.

I borrow from another the description of Mr. Lowell’s manner as a speaker in delivering these and similar addresses. This writer, who is not known to me, says, first, that Mr. Lowell never imitates the stump speaker and never falls into the drollery of the comedian. “His pronunciation is clear and precise; the modulations of his voice are unstudied and agreeable, but he seldom if ever raised a hand for gesticulation, and his voice was kept in its natural compass. He read like one who had something of importance to utter, and the just emphasis was felt in the penetrating tone. There were no oratorical climaxes, and no pitfalls set for applause.”