Mr. Briggs replied at once, accepting the gift in the spirit in which it was given, delighting in the poem, and proposing to arrange immediately for its publication by Putnam. He was confident, as was Page, that the book would be a great hit, and promptly provided for the disposition of the profits. “One third,” he wrote, “should be invested for Queen Mab, to be given her on her eighteenth birthday; one third to be disposed of in the same manner for my little angel; and the other third to be given to Page, for which he should paint your portrait for me and mine for you. This would be making the best disposition of the fund that I could devise, and I think will not be displeasing to you. If the profits should be small, I will divide them equally between the little ones. It will be something quite new for two young ladies to receive their marriage portions from the profits of an American poem.”
Lowell was highly entertained by this proposal. “I could not help laughing,” he wrote, “as I read your proposed disposition of the expected finances. To look at you in the character of Alnaschar was something so novel as to be quite captivating to my imagination. Not that I have any fear that you will kick over the basket, but I am afraid the contents will hardly be so attractive to the public as to allow the proceeds of the sale to be divided into three. It is really quite a triumph to be able to laugh at my practical friend. However, I will not impoverish your future, but will let you enjoy it as long as it lasts.... I have now, in addition to what I sent you, and exclusive of Emerson, etc., about a hundred lines written, chiefly about Willis and Longfellow. But in your arrangements with the printer, you must reckon on allowing me at least a month. I cannot write unless in the mood.”
It was when about half the poem had been written that Lowell began his constant work for the Standard, and he was impatient to finish the poem, yet found it hard to get into the right mood. “I want to get my windows open,” he wrote to Briggs, 26 March, 1848, “and to write in the fresh air. I ought not to have sent you any part of it till I had finished it entirely. I feel a sense of responsibility which hinders my pen from running along as it ought in such a theme. I wish the last half to be as jolly and unconstrained as the first. If you had not praised what I sent you, I dare say you would have had the whole of it ere this. Praise is the only thing that can make me feel any doubt of myself.” And then, recurring to Briggs’s air castle to be built with the proceeds: “As to your plan for dividing the profits I will have nothing to do with it. I wish they might be a thousand dollars with all my heart, but I do not see that they will be more than enough to buy something for my little niece there in New York. If I had not thought it the only poem I ever wrote on which there was like to be some immediate profit, I should never have given it to you at all. In making it a present to you, I was giving myself a douceur, and the greater the sale the larger the bribe to myself. A part of the condition is that if it make a loss—I pay it. If this be not agreed to, the bargain is null, and I never will finish it.... Now that I have let you into the secret of the ‘Fable’ before it was finished, I hope you will write and give me a spur. I suppose you did not wish to say anything about it till after it became yours. But I wish to be dunned. Tell me whether its being published at any particular time will make any difference, etc., etc., and make any suggestions. I think I shall say nothing about Margaret Fuller (though she offer so fair a target), because she has done me an ill-natured turn.[69] I shall revenge myself amply upon her by writing better. She is a very foolish, conceited woman, who has got together a great deal of information, but not enough knowledge to save her from being ill-tempered. However, the temptation may be too strong for me. It certainly would have been if she had never said anything about me. Even Maria thinks I ought to give her a line or two.” Briggs begged him not to leave out Miss Fuller, “she will accuse you of doing it to spite her.”
The spring months went by with occasional dashes at the “Fable” and on 12 May, Lowell wrote to his friend: “I have begun upon the ‘Fable’ again fairly, and am making some headway. I think with what I sent you (which I believe was about 500 lines) it will make something over a thousand. I have done since I sent the first half, Willis, Longfellow, Bryant, Miss Fuller, and Mrs. Child. In Longfellow’s case I have attempted no characterization. The same (in a degree) may be said of S. M. F. With her I have been perfectly good humored, but I have a fancy that what I say will stick uncomfortably. It will make you laugh. So will L. M. C. After S. M. F. I make a short digression on bores in general which has some drollery in it. Willis I think good. Bryant is funny, and as far as I could make it immitigably just. Indeed I have endeavored to be so in all. I am glad I did B. before I got your letter.[70] The only verses I shall add regarding him are some complimentary ones which I left for a happier mood after I had written the comic part. I steal from him, indeed! If he knew me he would not say so. When I steal I shall go to a specie vault, not to a till. Does he think that he invented the past, and has a prescriptive title to it? Do not think I am provoked. I am simply amused. If he had riled me, I might have knocked him into a cocked hat in my satire. But that, on second thoughts, would be no revenge, for it might make him President, a cocked hat being now the chief qualification.[71] It would be more severe to knock him into the middle of next week, as that is in the future, and he has such a partiality toward the past.”
In the passage on bores, which follows the lines on Margaret Fuller, Lowell explains that—
“These sketches I made (not to be too explicit)
From two honest fellows who made me a visit,”—
but he is explicit enough regarding them in the same letter to Mr. Briggs: I had a horrible visitation the other evening from Mr. ——, of Philadelphia, accompanied by Messrs. —— and ——, of Boston. After their departure, I wrote the ‘digression on bores’ which I mentioned above. ——, I believe, likes my poetry, but likes his own too well to appreciate anybody’s else. He is about to start a magazine and has issued a prospectus of the very most prodigious description. One would think it to have been written with a quill plucked from the wing of ‘our country’s bird.’ He wished to have a portrait and memoir of me in his first number. I escaped from the more immediate crucifixion, however, on the ground that I had no sketch of myself that would answer his purpose. As his project may fail after the first number, I may get off altogether. I have sometimes given offence by answering such applications with a smile, so I have changed my tactics, and give assent.... I hope to finish the ‘Fable’ next week.”
On 24 July, Lowell wrote to Gay, who was in the secret, that he had finished the “Fable,” and shortly after he made a visit to New York, but it was not till near the end of August that he sent the last instalment of copy. The proof followed, and Lowell took occasion to make at least one omission, due apparently to better knowledge which led him to revise his judgment. He was too late, apparently, for another correction, for he wrote to Briggs, 4 October, asking him to strike out the four lines relating to Miss Fuller, beginning
“There is one thing she owns in her own single right,”
which still stand. The poem was printed from type, so that as each sheet was printed, and the type distributed, it was not possible, as in the case of electrotype plates, to make corrections up to the last moment before printing the entire book. In the same letter he writes:—