The little child filled a large place in Lowell’s letters to his intimate friends. Briggs had sent a message to the newcomer, and Lowell replied: “Blanche was asleep when I read your kind wishes about her, and I did not dare to disturb her in an occupation in which she is sedulously perfecting herself by the most diligent practice. She has not yet learned our method of speech, and I to my sorrow have almost forgotten hers, so that I cannot honestly send any authentic messages from her to you. If you have been more happy than I in retaining a knowledge of the dialect of your infancy, you will perhaps be able to make something out of her remarks on hearing that she had loving friends so far away. ‘A goo (pianissimo) ah goo, errrrrr, ahg—(cut off by a kind of melodious jug-jug in her throat, as if she liked the phrase so well she must needs try to swallow it) ah! (fortissimo) a goo,’ followed by a smile which began in the dimple on her chin, and thence spread, like the circles round a pebble thrown into sunshiny water, with a golden ripple over the whole of her person, being most distinctly ecstatic in her fingers and toes. The speech was followed by a searching glance at her father, in whose arms she had her throne, to assure herself of his identity, and of her consequent security.”
A more exact knowledge of the amount of the legacy received from Mr. White’s estate and the income to be derived from it led the Lowells to abandon their first intention of going abroad soon, but, apparently in anticipation of such an emergency, Lowell had resolved to acquire a better colloquial knowledge of French. “As an evidence of my proficiency,” he writes to Briggs, “let me set down here an impromptu translation of that Chevy Chace of the nursery, ‘Three children sliding on the ice.’ As it is my first attempt at the ‘higher walks’ of French poetry, you must read it with due allowance.
“Trois enfants glissants sur la glace,
Tous en un jour d’été,
Tous tomberent, as it came to pass,
Les autres s’enfuyaient.”[54]
There was an incident at this time which illustrates the sensitiveness of the anti-slavery mind. The weight of literature was thrown against slavery, and it was a matter of pride and rejoicing that the most popular American poet, Longfellow, should bear his testimony in a thin volume of “Poems on Slavery.” But a Philadelphia publishing house, Cary & Hart, brought out a handsomely illustrated volume of his poetical works, from which this group of poems was omitted, and the leaders of the anti-slavery movement were indignant at what they regarded as the poet’s pusillanimity. Their journals attacked him bitterly, especially the National Anti-Slavery Standard, edited by Mrs. Chapman, Edmund Quincy, and Sydney Howard Gay. Lowell’s comments on the matter are interesting as throwing light on the attitude of his mind upon the question of the poet and his mission, which we have seen was so vital a one in his early history. He wrote to Briggs 18 February, 1846: ... “I never wrote a letter which was not a sincere portrait of my mind at the time, and therefore never one whose contents can hold a rod over me. My pen has not yet traced a line of which I am either proud or ashamed, nor do I believe that many authors have written less from without than I, and therefore more piously. And this puts me in mind of Longfellow’s suppression of his anti-slavery pieces. Sydney Gay wishes to know whether I think he spoke too harshly of the affair. I think he did, even supposing the case to be as he put it, and this not because I agree with what he tells me is your notion of the matter—that it is interfering with the freedom of an author’s will (though I think you were ironing with that grave face of yours)—for I do not think that an author has a right to suppress anything that God has given him—but because I believe that Longfellow esteemed them of inferior quality to his other poems. For myself, when I was printing my second volume of poems, Owen wished to suppress a certain ‘Song sung at an Anti-Slavery Picnic.’ I never saw him, but he urged me with I know not what worldly arguments. My only answer was—‘Let all the others be suppressed if you will—that I will never suppress.’ I believe this was the first audible knock my character made at the door of Owen’s heart—he loves me now and I him. My calling is clear to me. I am never lifted up to any peak of vision and moments of almost fearful inward illumination I have sometimes—but that, when I look down, in hope to see some valley of the Beautiful Mountains, I behold nothing but blackened ruins, and the moans of the downtrodden the world over, but chiefly here in our own land, come up to my ear instead of the happy songs of the husbandmen reaping and binding the sheaves of light yet these, too, I hear not seldom. Then I feel how great is the office of Poet, could I but even dare to hope to fill it. Then it seems as if my heart would break in pouring out one glorious song that should be the gospel of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That way my madness lies.”
In the same letter, with the long-reaching speculation of a father over his first child, the subject of Blanche’s training is touched upon with a half serious, half playful exaggeration. Lowell had been writing humorously of his chivalric feelings toward dependents like the maid of all work in the house, and he breaks out: “I mean to bring up Blanche to be as independent as possible of all man kind. I was saying the other day to her mother (who has grown lovelier than ever) that I hoped she would be a great, strong, vulgar, mud-pudding-baking, tree-climbing little wench. I shall teach her to swim, to skate, and to walk twenty miles a day as her father can—and by the time she is old enough, I do not despair of seeing the world so good that she can walk about at night alone without any danger. You ask the color of her eyes. They are said to be like her father’s,—but, in my opinion, they are of quite too heavenly a blue for that. But I do not think the color of the eyes of much import. I never notice it in those I love, or in any eyes where I can see deeper than the cornea and iris. I do not know the color of my father’s eyes, or of any of my sisters’ (except from hearsay), nor should I know that of Maria’s except from observations for that special end. But where your glance is arrested at the surface, where these windows are, as it were, daubed over with paint (like those of rooms where menial or unsightly offices are performed which we do not wish the world to see, or where something is exhibited for pay) to balk insight—then the color is the chief sight noticeable. I do not believe that the finest eyes have any special hue—and this is probably the ground for the fallacy that poets’ eyes are gray—a kind of neutral color.”
In January, 1846, the publication was begun of the London Daily News, a paper which represented the most advanced liberal thought in politics and was for a short time conducted by Dickens. For this paper Lowell agreed to write a series of articles on “Anti-slavery in the United States.” His name was not to appear. Indeed, the scheme intended an historical sketch of the reform by one in sympathy with it, but not confessedly by an abolitionist. In pursuance of the plan four articles appeared in the months of February, March, April, and May, 1846, and the manner of treatment plainly supposed a much longer continuance, but it is probable that certain changes in the management of the paper rendered a continuance inexpedient; for in June the paper was lessened from a double sheet of eight pages to a single one of four, and the price reduced, leaving small opportunity for the leisurely essays which had formerly found place. The four papers did little more than clear the way, and really brought the historical sketch only down to the establishment of The Liberator by Mr. Garrison. For the most part the treatment is little more than an orderly and somewhat perfunctory recital of well-known facts, but once or twice the writer breaks forth into his more personal speech. Thus in the first article occurs this passage:—
“Unless we draw an erring augury from the past, that devoted little band who have so long maintained the bleak Thermopylæ of Freedom, remembering those in bonds as bound with them, as now they are the scoff and by-word of prospering iniquity, so will they be reckoned the Saints, Confessors, and Martyrs in the calendar of coming time, and the statues of Garrison, Maria Chapman, Phillips, Quincy, and Abby Kelley will fill those niches in the National Valhalla which a degraded public sentiment has left empty for such earthen demi-gods as Jackson, Webster and Clay.” Again the final article, after dealing with the Missouri Compromise, introduces Mr. Garrison upon the scene by quoting the preface to the first number of The Liberator, and goes on to say:—
“Now for the first time indeed Slavery felt itself assailed genuinely and in thorough earnest. But editors and other proprietors of public opinion manufactories in the Free States were slower of perception. They had not the warning of that instinctive terror which informed the slaveholder of the approach of danger. But they were soon satisfied of the dreadful truth that there existed in their very midst one truly sincere and fearless man, and instantly a prolonged shriek of execration and horror quavered from the Aroostook to the Red River. They saw, with a thrill of apprehension for the security of their offices or of their hold upon public consideration what treasonable conclusions might be legitimately drawn from their own harmless premises, harmless only so long as there was no man honest enough to make an application of them, and so cast suspicion on the motives of all. If the pitch and tow fulminations of Salmoneus had been suddenly converted into genuine bolts of Jupiter, he could not have dropped them from his hands with a more confounded alacrity. Here was a man gifted with a most excruciating sincerity and frankness, a hungry conscience that could not be sated with the cheap workhouse gruel of smooth words, and inconveniently addicted to thinking aloud.”
The article closes with this striking diagnosis:—
“The advent of Garrison was indeed an event of historical moment. The ban of outlawry was set on Slavery, and its doom was sealed. It matters not that since that time Slavery has won some of its most alarming victories. The nucleus of a sincere uncompromising hostility to it was formed. A clear issue between right and wrong, disentangled from the mists of extraneous interests, was presented to men’s minds. The question was removed from the dust and bewilderment of political strife to the clear and calm retirements of God’s justice and individual conscience. Henceforth the struggle must be not between the Northern and Southern States, but between barbarism and civilization, between cruelty and mercy, between evil and good. This was already in itself a victory, a triumph which would have been enough to round the long life struggle of a reformer with peace. Exaltation was achieved by the mere look, as it were, of an unknown, solitary, and friendless youth, so full was it of the potent conjuration of honesty and veracity. Whatever may be the contents of government mails and official bulletins, the shining feet of the messengers of Nature are constant and swift to bring to the ears of the lowly servant of Truth at least the sustaining news—that God still exists, and that He may select even the bruised reed for his instrument.”