James Russell Lowell and His Friends

by Edward Everett Hale

As I have said, the intelligent reader of these lines has read Professor Hart’s admirable review of the diplomacy of the United States and Spain regarding Cuba for a hundred years; or, if he has not read it, he had better read it as soon as he can find the “Harper’s” for June, 1898. He will learn that in that century there were but two cases of direct interference with the destinies of Cuba, one by President John Quincy Adams in 1826, and one by President Grant in 1875. At the same time he will find that there were filibusters in 1849, 1851, again in the years 1868–78, again in 1884–85, when the American administration gave these filibusters neither aid nor comfort. In 1854 and 1873 there came reasons for war, and they were not regarded. Simply, these references to events of the utmost importance will show the reader what were the traditions of our legation in Madrid when Mr. Lowell arrived there, in August of 1877.

I must have talked with him about the Spanish politics of his time, for I saw him often in London, just before I visited Spain in 1882, and I traveled there with the benefit of his instructions. But I kept no notes of what he said, and I dare not refer any of my own impressions directly to him. For myself in Spain I had only the poor chance which a traveler of forty days has to learn from the daily newspapers, from table-d’hôte talk, and from interviews, too short, with intelligent men of all parties and professions.

I conceived a very high respect for the rank and file of the Spanish people. Ignorant? Yes, if reading and writing are the tests of ignorance, for only one fifth of the population can read their own language. But the people themselves, the average people, as I saw them, seemed to me a very civil, friendly, self-respecting, thoughtful, and industrious people. They were ready to oblige a stranger, and they did not expect a penny or a shilling, as an Englishman or an Irishman does when he has obliged a stranger.

I see that careful students of the position now say that the class of people in administration in Spain, the people who make and unmake ministries and dynasties, are more absolutely separate from what I call the rank and file than anywhere else in the world. I had a suspicion of this when I was in Spain.

At the same time I observed that the circulation of the daily newspapers in Madrid was as great as is that of the papers in Boston, the two cities being near the same size. They were bitter and violent in their satire and in their attacks on each other. I think there were three bright and well-illustrated comic dailies, each with a large colored cartoon. Here, I think, was the tribute to the people who could not read. I suppose that the proportion of people who can read is much larger in Madrid than in the whole nation.

Sagasta was at the helm in 1882, as he is in 1898. I find that I wrote of him then, “If you trusted the newspapers, you would say that there is only one man in Spain, or possibly two, who wanted Sagasta to stay in,—that this one was Sagasta himself,—that the other was possibly his confidential private secretary. You would say that everybody else was wild to have such an absurd pretender pushed from his throne, and every morning you would be sure that he would fall before the next day, and would be at once forgotten.”

But at the same time I wrote, “As it seems to me, Sagasta is one of the ablest men in Europe, and I think the king has as high an opinion of Sagasta as any of us can form.... And I think the king is a remarkable young man, and that if he can hold on for five years longer, as he has for the last eight, he will be counted not only as one of the wisest sovereigns in Europe, but as one of the wisest of the nineteenth century.”

This, so far as the young king goes, is very strong; it now seems absurd. But one hopes so much from young kings! and this fine fellow—he was that at least—died when he was not thirty-one. The first story any one told you of him, when I was in Spain, was this: that when he was asked to take the crown, after the republic of Castelar had broken down, he said, “Yes, I will come if you wish. Only, when you want me to go, tell me so, and I will go. Remember, all along, that I am the first republican in Europe.”

Of the young king, Lowell himself gives his opinion in this anecdote:—

“On Saturday, the 26th [of October, 1878], the king received the felicitations of the diplomatic body. Among other things, he said to me, ‘I almost wish he had hit me, I am so tired.’ Indeed, his position is a trying one, and I feel sure that if he were allowed more freely to follow his own impulses and to break through the hedge of etiquette which the conservative wing of the restoration have planted between him and his people, his natural qualities of character and temperament would make him popular.”