Mr. Phillips having been won over, the plans for the new magazine were rapidly pushed forward. In all this Mr. Underwood was the active manager, but Mr. Phillips as the head of the business now took the leading place. At an early date, Tuesday, 5 May, 1857, he called together the men on whom he most relied to give the enterprise distinction, and gave them a dinner at the Parker House. Fortunately an account of this meeting is in his own words in a letter to a niece:—
“I must tell you about a little dinner party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state that the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve until you come. But to the party: my invitations included only R. W. Emerson,[114] H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the ‘Dutch Republic’ man), O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot,[115] and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and ‘literary man’ out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country beside.
“Mr. Emerson took the first post of honor at my right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my left. The exact arrangement of the table was as follows:—
| Mr. Underwood | ||
| Cabot | Lowell | |
| Motley | Holmes | |
| Longfellow | Emerson | |
| Phillips |
“They seemed so well pleased that they adjourned, and invited me to meet them again to-morrow (the 20th), when I shall again meet the same persons, with one other (Whipple, the essayist) added to that brilliant constellation of philosophical, poetic, and historical talent. Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language. Though all this is known to you, you will pardon me for intruding it upon you. But still I have the vanity to believe that you will think them the most natural thoughts in the world to me. Though I say it that should not, it was the proudest day of my life.”[116]
There was another writer not at the dinner whose coöperation it was important to secure. Mrs. Stowe returned in June to America from England, whither she had gone to secure copyright for “Dred,” and Mr. Phillips at once laid his plan before her. She approved it most heartily and promised to give it her cordial support. It is not impossible that she made a definite promise of a serial novel to begin with the first number, but the sudden death a month later of her son Henry brought such a mental strain upon her that it was nearly a year before she could undertake any continued writing. The first number of the Atlantic Monthly contained a brief allegory by her, “The Minister’s Mourning Veil,” and she contributed later an essay, but “The Minister’s Wooing” was not begun in the magazine till December, 1858.
As a result of these preliminary plans, Mr. Underwood was dispatched in June to England to secure the aid of English authors, and Mr. Lowell was asked to take the position of editor. Lowell had already taken an active part in creating an interest in the venture among writers. Underwood had turned to him as his most important ally, and Longfellow records in his diary, 29 April, 1857: “Lowell was here last evening to interest me in a new Magazine to be started in Boston by Phillips and Sampson. I told him I would write for it if I wrote for any Magazine.” Dr. Holmes christened the magazine, and Lowell, from the first, reckoned upon him for contributions. In 1885, when Dr. Holmes was resuming his regular prose contributions after a long intermission, he wrote in the introductory paper:[117] “He (Mr. Lowell) thought there might be something in my old portfolio which would be not unacceptable in the new magazine. I ... wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell urged me with such earnestness to become a contributor, and so, yielding to a pressure which I could not understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the magazine.” Lowell, reading this number of the Atlantic in London, wrote to Dr. Holmes: “The first number of your New Portfolio whets my appetite. Let me make one historical correction. When I accepted the editorship of the Atlantic, I made it a condition precedent that you were the first contributor to be engaged. Said I not well?”[118]
Emerson apparently had asked if the contributions were to be signed, for Lowell wrote him, 14 September, 1857: “All the articles will be anonymous, but you will be quite helpless, for your name is written in all kinds of self-betraying anagrams over yours. But as far as we are concerned there shall be as strict honor as the XIXth century allows of. Your wishes shall govern the position of the article [‘Illusions,’ in the first number], though I should have preferred to give it the precedence. I am afraid that where that is will be the head of the table, whether or no.”
In the same first number appeared four of Emerson’s poems, printed in a group: “The Romany Girl,” “The Chartist’s Complaint,” “Days,” and “Brahma.” Emerson seems to have raised some question about this, for in the same letter Lowell writes: “About the poems I ought to say that when I spoke of printing all four I was perhaps greedy, and Mr. Underwood says we can’t afford it, reckoning each as a separate poem—which means giving $50 apiece for them. Forgive me for coming down into the kitchen thus, but as I got the magazine into the scrape I must get it out. My notion was that all the poems would be published at once in a volume, and that therefore it would be alike to you. I ought to have thought that you sent them for selection,—and I will never be so rapacious again till I have another so good chance. If I am to have only one, give me ‘Days.’ That is as limpid and complete as a Greek epigram. I quarrel, though, with one word ‘hypocritic,’ which I doubt does not give the very shade of meaning you intended. I think you did wish to imply intentional taking-in? I will take the liberty to draw your notice to one or two things in the proofs (of the poems), leaving them to your own judgment entirely.... It is not often that a magazine carries such freight as your ‘Illusions.’... How about Mr. Thoreau?”
It was not “Days” so much as “Brahma” that seized upon the imagination. Mr. Trowbridge, in his article on “The Author of Quabbin,” says it was “more talked about and puzzled over and parodied than any other poem of sixteen lines published within my recollection. ‘What does it mean?’ was the question readers everywhere asked; and if one had the reputation of seeing a little way into the Concord philosophy, he was liable at any time to be stopped on the street by some perplexed inquirer, who would draw him into the nearest doorway, produce a crumpled newspaper clipping from the recesses of a waistcoat pocket, and, with knitted brows, exclaim, ‘Here! you think you understand Emerson; now tell me what all this is about,—If the red slayer think he slays,’ and so forth.”