It is not materially anticipating to record here what Lowell wrote of Garrison a couple of years later, when he was defining his own position on abolitionism, to his friend Briggs: “Garrison is so used to standing alone that, like Daniel Boone, he moves away as the world creeps up to him, and goes farther into the wilderness. He considers every step a step forward, though it be over the edge of a precipice. But, with all his faults (and they are the faults of his position), he is a great and extraordinary man. His work may be over, but it has been a great work. Posterity will forget his hard words, and remember his hard work. I look upon him already as an historical personage, as one who is in his niche.... I love you (and love includes respect); I respect Garrison (respect does not include love). There never has been a leader of Reform who was not also a blackguard. Remember that Garrison was so long in a position where he alone was right and all the world wrong, that such a position has created in him a habit of mind which may remain, though circumstances have wholly changed. Indeed, a mind of that cast is essential to a Reformer. Luther was as infallible as any man that ever held St. Peter’s keys.” But the most condensed expression of his feeling toward this remarkable man, who so dominated the anti-slavery movement, is to be found in the verses addressed to him beginning—
“In a small chamber, friendless and unseen.”[55]
In May, 1846, occurred one of those personal incidents which stirred deeply the heart of the anti-slavery crusader and was made the occasion of public testimony. The Rev. Charles Turner Torrey, who had been an active writer and worker in the cause, and in 1834 was shut up in the penitentiary in Baltimore for having aided slaves to escape, died in May, 1846, of disease brought on by ill usage. He was of New England birth and his body was brought to Boston for burial. Besides the burial service there was a public meeting in Faneuil Hall on the evening of 18 May. Dr. Henry I. Bowditch, an ardent supporter of the anti-slavery cause and one of the committee in charge, wrote to Lowell on the 3d of the month, telling him that private advices led them to expect hourly the news of Torrey’s death, and that the plan was on foot for a public funeral service. If this is done,” he says, “we shall hope to hear from the poets of our land, the true ministers of God and of Christ, at the present era.... May I receive from your heart of love and high-souled honor sentiments such as I have not a few times obtained from your free-hearted poetry?” No appeal could have used so cogent an argument as that which thus characterized the poet, and Lowell responded with the lines, “On the Death of Charles Turner Torrey,” which were read at the meeting in Faneuil Hall by Dr. Channing. Dr. Bowditch thanked the poet for the response to his request, but doubted if the poem was not of too charitable a tenor. “Your poetry,” he says, “is a harbinger of better hours, but not for this century, as I fear we have missed the great idea of our existence and a new cycle of time must pass its round, and a new, a lovelier race of beings must settle on this earth ere man shall truly appreciate the divine doctrine you enunciate in the last line of your verses.”
Lowell had now become clearly identified with the anti-slavery cause and did not shrink from using the phrase “we abolitionists.” His reputation as a poet had steadily risen. He was contemplating a second series of his “Conversations,” and though he rarely used the instrument of poetry in direct attack, much of his verse sounded those notes of freedom and truth which were, even when abstractly used, rightly regarded as dominant notes in the songs of the times. The leaders of the anti-slavery cause welcomed him as an important coadjutor. At this time the National Anti-Slavery Standard was passing through one of the several changes sure to overtake the management of a journal which was the organ of such a bundle of individualities as would make up a reform party. The Standard was the official paper of the American Anti-Slavery Society, as the Liberator was the individual mouthpiece of Mr. Garrison. The Standard had been conducted successively by Mrs. Lydia Maria Child and her husband, David Lee Child. The former, who had marked literary ability and a fondness for the art of literature, had directed the paper in such a way as to win the attention of other than pronounced abolitionists; the latter had a stronger interest in legal and constitutional questions, and his disquisitions, which were inordinately long, must have wearied the readers whom it was desirable to gain over. Those who merely wished to hear their beliefs sounded may have had no fault to find, but these did not need conversion. The paper, therefore, passed in 1844 into the hands of Mrs. Chapman, Edmund Quincy,[56] and Sydney Howard Gay, who augmented the energy and diversity of the journal, but did not succeed in arresting the decline of its subscription list. In the spring of 1846 the paper had only about 1400 paying subscribers.
A further change seemed desirable, and the sensible one was made of concentrating the responsibility in the hands of one person, Mr. Gay, and endeavoring to reënforce him with an imposing list of regular contributors. This list was published 11 June, 1846, and comprised these names: Eliza Lee Follen, Rev. John Weiss, Charles F. Briggs, Wendell Phillips, James Russell Lowell, Maria Weston Chapman, Dr. William F. Channing, Rev. Thomas T. Stone, Edmund Quincy, and, a little later, Rev. Samuel May. It will be seen thus that there was a tolerable admixture of literature with polemics. Lowell had been urged to take a prominent place, and consented out of readiness to cast in his lot with the men and women who were heading the forlorn hope. He was perfectly aware, however, of a certain incompatibility of temper and aims which disqualified him from an unreserved submersion of his powers in this cause. The letter in which he gives in his adherence to the plan defines with much clearness his own consciousness of his vocation, and the very humorousness of the introduction intimates that he held off from the task of stating his position, as well as exhibits a mercurial temperament that would inevitably refuse to be kept within very exact limits. The letter is so important a disclosure of Lowell’s mind at this time that it must be given entire, though the most significant part has already been printed by Mr. Norton. Mr. Gay had written him under date of May, 1846: “It is with no little satisfaction that I welcome you into our company of standard-bearers to the anti-slavery host. I have long wished to see you actively engaged among us, and even had I no personal interest in the matter, the position you have chosen is precisely the one I should best like to see you in. You could nowhere do more good, and in no other way could you become so thoroughly identified with the cause. It is the historical cause of our day, and as the Future will know you as a Poet, she should find in our records additional evidence that you understood and fulfilled your mission.”
To Sydney Howard Gay.
Elmwood, June 16, 1846.
My dear Gay,—if[57] there be any disjointedness in this letter, you must lay it to the fact that I am officiating this morning as general nurseryman and babytender, and am consequently obliged every now and then to ripple the otherwise smooth current of my epistolary communications with such dishevelled oratorical flourishes as “kitser, kee—eetser!” “jigger jig, jigger jig!” and the like accompanied with whatever extemporary hushmoney may be within grasp in the shape of spoons, whistles, pieces of paper and rattles. As I can conceive of no severer punishment that could be inflicted on certain authors than to be Robinson Crusoed on some desolate island with no companion but the offspring of their brain, so I do not know of any blessing more absorbing of all the faculties, demanding more presence of mind and more of that eternal vigilance which is the price of liberty, but which in this case fails to attain it, than that of being islanded in a room eighteen feet square with the “sole daughter of one’s house and home.” Then, besides these parental responsibilities, there are the aliena negotia centum which have in the present instance made a gap of three hours between this sentence and the last. Added to all these is the metallic pen which I resisted manfully, but to which I have succumbed at last, and which, while it obliterates all distinctions of chirography, has, in conjunction with the other accoutrements of easy writing (such as Reviews and newspapers), hastened the decline and fall, and finally made complete shipwreck of the letterwriters, as well as of the foliomakers. It is no longer ‘the mob of gentlemen who write with ease,’ but the very mob itself—that profanum vulgus whom Horace Naso (sic) would have us hate and keep at arm’s length—can buy steel pens by the gross and proceed Master of arts per saltum. We have got now to that pitch when uneducated men (self-educated they are called) are all the rage, and the only learned animals who continue to be popular are pigs. The public will rush after a paper which they are told is edited by a practical printer, and is eager to shape its ideas after the model of men who have none. We shall ere long see advertised “Easy lessons in Latin by a gentleman who can bring testimonials that he knows no more of the language than Mr. Senator Webster;” “The High School Reader, being a selection of popular pieces for reading and declamation by a Lady, who is just learning the alphabet under the distinguished tuition of herself, and who is nearly mistress of that delightful mélange of literary miscellanies.” The injury to letters arising from an author’s losing that space for meditation which was formerly afforded him by the wise necessity of mending his pen is incalculable. Every one nowadays can write decently and nobody writes well. “Painfulness” is obsolete as a thing as well as in the capacity of a noun. No more Horace Walpoles, no more Baxters, and Whole Duties of men!
But one would think that I had the whole summer before me for the writing of this letter. Let me come a little nearer the matter in hand. I wish a distinct understanding to exist between us in regard to my contributions for the Standard. When Mrs. Chapman first proposed that I should become a contributor I told her frankly that it was a duty for which (having commenced author very early and got indurated in certain modes of authorship and life) I was totally unfitted. I was satisfied with the Standard as it was. The paper has never been so good since I have seen it, and no abolitionist could reasonably ask a better. I feared that an uncoalescing partnership of several minds might deprive the paper of that unity of conception and purpose in which the main strength of every understanding lies. This, however, I did not urge, because I knew that a change was to be made at any rate. At the same time I was not only willing but desirous that my name should appear, because I scorned to be indebted for any share of my modicum of popularity to my abolitionism without incurring at the same time whatever odium might be attached to a complete identification with a body of heroic men and women whom not to love and admire would prove me unworthy of either of those sentiments, and whose superiors in all that constitutes true manhood and womanhood I believe never existed. There were other considerations which weighed heavily with me to decline the office altogether. In the first place, I was sure that Mrs. Chapman and Mr. Garrison greatly overrated my popularity and the advantage which it would be to the paper to have my name attached to it. I am not flattering myself (I have too good an opinion of myself to do so), but judge from something Garrison said to me. It is all nonsense. However it may be in that glorious Hereafter (toward which no man who is good for anything can help casting half an eye) the reputation of a poet who has a high idea of his vocation, is resolved to be true to that vocation and hates humbug, must be small in his generation. The thing matters nothing to me, one way or the other, except when it chances to take in those whom I respect, as in the present case. I am teres atque rotundus, a microcosm in myself, my own author, public, critic, and posterity, and care for no other. But we abolitionists must get rid of a habit we have fallen into of affirming all the geese who come to us from the magic circle of Respectability to be swans. I said so about Longfellow and I said so about myself. What does a man more than his simple duty in coming out for the truth? and if we exhaust our epithets of laudation at this stage of the business, what shall we do if the man turns out to be a real reformer, and does more than his duty? Beside, is it any sacrifice to be in the right? Has not being an abolitionist (as Emerson says of hell) its “infinite satisfactions” as well as those infiniti guai that Dante tells us of? To my mind
“All other pleasures are not worth its pains.”