Yet all this time, with his frugal living and his vain effort to be even with the world, he could not refrain from obeying his generous impulses. His gift of “A Fable for Critics” to Briggs illustrates this spirit, and a passage in one of his letters shows the secret giver who is perhaps a little more lovable in the eyes of the Lord than the cheerful public one. Mr. Briggs had written to him 16 November, 1849: “On Monday evening Page and I were at Willis’s house, and in the course of a conversation about Poe, Willis mentioned that you had written him a very pleasant letter about Poe, and enclosed something really handsome for Mrs. Clemm. ‘I could not help thinking,’ said Willis, ‘that if Lowell had known what Poe wrote to me about him just previous to his death, he would hardly have been so liberal.” “What a contemptible idea of me Willis must have,” Lowell replied, “to think that anything Poe might say of me would make any difference in my feeling pity for his poor mother-in-law. I confess it does not raise my opinion of Willis. I knew before as well as I know now, that Poe must have been abusing me, for he knew that ever since his conduct toward you about the Broadway Journal I had thought meanly of him. I think Willis would hardly care to see some letters of Poe to me in which he is spoken of. My ‘pleasant letter’ to W. was about ten lines, rather less than more I fancy, and my ‘generous donation’ was five dollars! I particularly requested of him that it should be anonymous, which I think a good principle, as it guards us against giving from any unworthy motive. That Willis should publish it at the street corners only proves the truth of Swift’s axiom that any man may gain the reputation of generosity by £20 a year spent judiciously.”
When Hawthorne lost his place in the Salem Custom House, Lowell with other of his friends made active effort to set him on his feet. He wrote to Mr. Duyckinck, 13 January, 1850: “Perhaps you know that Hawthorne was last spring turned out of an office which he held in the Salem Custom House, and which was his sole support. He is now, I learn, very poor, and some money has just been raised for him by his friends in this neighborhood. Could not something be also done in New York? I know that you appreciate him, and that you will be glad to do anything in your power. I take it for granted that you know personally all those who would be most likely to give. I write also to Mr. O’Sullivan, who is a friend of Hawthorne’s, but am ignorant whether he is now in New York. Of course Hawthorne is entirely ignorant that anything of the kind is going on, and it would be better that ‘a bird in the air’ should seem to have carried the news to New York, and that if anything be raised, it should go thence, directly, as a spontaneous gift.”
The money which Lowell and others collected for Hawthorne was sent in the most anonymous fashion through Mr. George S. Hillard, and Hawthorne acknowledged the gift in a letter which moves one by its mingling of gratitude and humiliation. “I read your letter,” he writes to Hillard, “in the vestibule of the post office [at Salem]; and it drew—what my troubles never have—the water to my eyes; so that I was glad of the sharply cold west wind that blew into them as I came homeward, and gave them an excuse for being red and bleared.
“There was much that was very sweet—and something too that was very bitter—mingled with that same moisture. It is sweet to be remembered and cared for by one’s friends—some of whom know me for what I am, while others, perhaps, know me only through a generous faith—sweet to think that they deem me worth upholding in my poor work through life. And it is bitter, nevertheless, to need their support. It is something else besides pride that teaches me that ill-success in life is really and justly a matter of shame. I am ashamed of it, and I ought to be. The fault of a failure is attributable—in a great degree at least—to the man who fails. I should apply this truth in judging of other men; and it behooves me not to shun its point or edge in taking it home to my own heart. Nobody has a right to live in the world, unless he be strong and able, and applies his ability to good purpose.
“The money, dear Hillard, will smooth my path for a long time to come. The only way in which a man can retain his self-respect, while availing himself of the generosity of his friends, is by making it an incitement to his utmost exertions, so that he may not need their help again. I shall look upon it so—nor will shun any drudgery that my hand shall find to do, if thereby I may win bread.”
Nearly four years later, when Hawthorne had leapt into fame and prosperity after the publication of “The Scarlet Letter,” he wrote again to Hillard from Liverpool: “I herewith send you a draft on Ticknor for the sum (with interest included) which was so kindly given me by unknown friends, through you, about four years ago. I have always hoped and intended to do this, from the first moment when I made up my mind to accept the money. It would not have been right to speak of this purpose, before it was in my power to accomplish it; but it has never been out of my mind for a single day, nor hardly, I think, for a single working hour. I am most happy that this loan (as I may fairly call it, at this moment) can now be repaid without the risk on my part of leaving my wife and children utterly destitute. I should have done it sooner; but I felt that it would be selfish to purchase the great satisfaction for myself, at any fresh risk to them. We are not rich, nor are we ever likely to be; but the miserable pinch is over.
“The friends who were so generous to me must not suppose that I have not felt deeply grateful, nor that my delight at relieving myself from this pecuniary obligation is of any ungracious kind. I have been grateful all along, and am more so now than ever. This act of kindness did me an unspeakable amount of good; for it came when I most needed to be assured that anybody thought it worth while to keep me from sinking. And it did me even greater good than this, in making me sensible of the need of sterner efforts than my former ones, in order to establish a right for myself to live and be comfortable. For it is my creed (and was so even at that wretched time) that a man has no claim upon his fellow creatures, beyond bread and water, and a grave, unless he can win it by his own strength or skill. But so much the kinder were those unknown friends whom I thank again with all my heart.”[82]
Aside from his modest salary from the Standard, Lowell’s income from his writings was meagre enough. In publishing his volumes of poetry, he appears to have been largely if not entirely at the expense of manufacture, and in the imperfectly organized condition of the book market at that time, he had himself to supervise arrangements for selling his volume of poems in New York. There are one or two hints that, after his release from contributing to the Standard, he contemplated some new editorial position, perhaps even meditated a fresh periodical venture. At any rate, his friend Briggs remonstrated with him, in a letter written 15 March, 1849: “Don’t, my dear friend, think of selling yourself to a weekly or monthly periodical of any kind, except as a contributor deo volente. The drudgery of editorship would destroy you, and bring you no profit. Make up your mind resolutely to refuse any offers, let them be never so tempting. In a mere pecuniary point of view, it would be more profitable for you to sell your writings where you could procure the best pay for them; they will be worth more and more as your wants grow.” And in December, 1850, Emerson, who was enlisting Hawthorne’s interest in a new magazine projected by Mr. George Bradburn, “that impossible problem of a New England magazine,” as he calls it, writes: “I told him to go to Lowell, who had been for a year meditating the like project.”
It is possible that there was some plan for turning the Massachusetts Quarterly Review into a brisker and more distinctly literary journal. At any rate, Lowell, writing to Emerson 19 February, 1850, says: “The plan seems a little more forward. I have seen Parker, who is as placable as the raven down of darkness, and not unwilling to shift his Old Man of the sea to other shoulders. Longfellow also is toward, and talks in a quite Californian manner of raising funds by voluntary subscription.”
The Massachusetts Quarterly, which had been started in 1847 as an organ of more progressive thought than the North American Review, was under the management of Theodore Parker, and Lowell was evidently a welcome though not constant contributor, as this letter to the editor intimates:—