ROBERT GOULD SHAW
WILLIAM LOWELL PUTNAM CHARLES RUSSELL LOWELL
JAMES JACKSON LOWELL
Such were three of five relatives who went to the war, almost from Elmwood itself. One sees how Lowell’s personal interest in them affected all he wrote in poetry or prose in the great crisis.
Professor Child, whom I cited in the passage above, took the most eager interest in the war, as, indeed, in one way or another, all the professors at Cambridge did. He was one of the Faculty who had joined it since they dragged Lowell through college “by the hair of his head,” as he and Cutler dragged Loring through. Eager in everything in the way of public spirit, Professor Child made it his special duty to prepare a “Song-book” for the soldiers who were going to the field. Who is doing it now for the liberators of to-day? He made everybody who could, write a war-song, and he printed a little book of these songs, with the music, which he used to send to the front with every marching regiment. I had the pleasure of telling him once that I had heard one of his songs sung by some privates of our Twenty-fourth in the camp before Bermuda Hundred. This curious collection is already rare. It was called “War Songs for Freemen,” and was dedicated to the army of the United States. Professor Child enlisted Charles T. Brooks, the Newport poet, Dr. Hedge, Dr. Holmes, and Mrs. Howe, both the Lelands, Mrs. T. Sedgwick, and some anonymous writers, to join in furnishing songs. He included some good translations from the German. He wrote two or three himself, which show his fun and audacity. Here is the last verse of “The Lass of the Pamunky:”—
“Fair hands! but not too nice or coy
To soothe my pangs with service tender.
Soft eyes! that watched a wasted boy,
All loving, as your land’s defender!—
Oh! I was then a wretched shade,
But now I ’m strong and growing chunky—