Emerson was too young and too modest, and had too much real regard and respect for Everett, to make the reply which one thinks of now: “Whatever the bolts were made of, they were thunderbolts; and from Vulcan’s time to this time, people had better stand out from under when a thunderbolt is falling.” I can see Emerson now, as he smiled and was silent.
After thirty years people did not say much about “thirsty cloud” or “empty wind.” Emerson was in the zenith of his fame. He was “the Buddha of the West,”—that is Doctor Holmes’s phrase. He was “the Yankee Plato,”—I believe that is Lowell’s. And Phi Beta made amends for any vague questioning in the past by the enthusiasm with which it received him for the second time.
A queer thing happened on that morning. Emerson had a passion to the last for changing the order of his utterances. He would put the tenth sheet in place of the fifth, and the fifth in place of the fifteenth, up to the issue of the last “extra” of an oration. It was Miss Ellen Emerson, I think, who took upon herself the duty of putting these sheets in order on this occasion, and sewing them so stiffly together that they could not be twitched apart by any sudden movement at the desk. But the fact that they were sewed together was an embarrassment to him. What was worse was that he met his brother, William Emerson, that morning. I think they looked over the address together, and in doing so it happened that Waldo Emerson took William Emerson’s glasses and William took Waldo’s. Waldo did not discover his error till he stood in the pulpit before the assembly. Worse than either, perhaps, some too careful janitor had carried away the high desk from the pulpit of the church, and had left Emerson, tall and with the wrong spectacles, to read the address far below his eyes. It was not till the first passage of the address was finished that this difficulty of the desk could be rectified; but the whole audience was in sympathy with him, and the little hitch, if one may call it so, which this made seemed only to bring them closer together.
The address will be found in the eighth volume of his works, and will be remembered by every one who heard it; but, on the whole, what impresses me the most in memory is the hearty thoroughness and cordiality of Lowell’s congratulations when Emerson turned round after finishing the oration. “Par nobile fratrum,” as one said; and one felt glad to have seen two such men together on such a day. Lowell himself said of it, a few days later:—
“Emerson’s oration was more disjointed than usual even with him. It began nowhere and ended everywhere; and yet, as always with that divine man, it left you feeling that something beautiful had passed that way, something more beautiful than anything else, like the rising and setting of stars. Every possible criticism might have been made on it, except that it was not noble. There was a tone in it that awakened all elevating associations. He boggled, he lost his place, he had to put on his glasses; but it was as if a creature from some fairer world had lost his way in our fogs, and it was our fault and not his. It was chaotic, but it was all such stuff as stars are made of, and you could not help feeling that if you waited awhile all that was nebulous would be hurled into planets, and would assume the mathematical gravity of system. All through it I felt something in me that cried, ‘Ha, ha! to the sound of trumpets!’”
On the 9th of July, 1872, Lowell and Mrs. Lowell sailed for Europe, without any plans, as he himself says. They remained abroad two years. They landed in England, but early in the winter he established himself, for six months as it proved, in Paris. They were in a nice little hotel there, where he is still remembered cordially,—the Hotel de France et Lorraine. Here they lived quietly from November to the next summer.
He was in Paris in the last years of M. Thiers. The interests of politics centred on the relations between President Thiers and the Commission of Thirty,—long since, I am afraid, forgotten by this reader. Lowell writes of Thiers’s resignation, which closed his long career of public life, “I think it was the egotism of Thiers that overset him rather than any policy he was supposed to have.”
Of this sojourn in Paris a near friend of his gives me the following pleasant note:—
“In the little office of the Hotel France et Lorraine, Rue de Beaune, Paris, hangs a fairly good likeness of James Russell Lowell, a large photograph, I think, taken some years before his death. It is, and has been for twenty years and more, the presiding presence of the little sanctum where Madame and Monsieur sit and make out their (very reasonable) bills and count their gains. The hotel is still a most attractive retreat for a certain class of us, who like quiet and comfort without display. Rue de Beaune is a narrow little street leading off the Quai Voltaire, which runs parallel to the Seine. On the opposite shore of the river are the fine buildings of the Tuileries and the Louvre; between flows the steady stream, covered with little steamers, pleasure-boats, bateaux-mouches, tugs. The great Pont-Royal crosses the river, very near Rue de Beaune, to the Rue des Pyramides through the gardens of the Tuileries. It is one of the prettiest though not the gayest parts of Paris. The bridge and adjoining streets are crowded with life on foot and on omnibus; but take one step into Rue de Beaune, and you find silence, peace, and repose.
“In the winter of 1872-73 Mr. and Mrs. Lowell were living at this modest but well-known hotel, in its grandest apartments au premier. Somewhat dark and dingy even then, more so now, but neat and comfortable. The house must be very old. It is built round a little cour, or rather two little courts; and a winding staircase leads up through the principal part to the landings of the several stories. There were two parlors, if I remember, communicating. The walls were lined with bookcases, filled with Mr. Lowell’s books, and other furniture of the cosy, comfortable order, when they established themselves in these congenial quarters.