In these two odes as well as in the one given on the great centennial day, the Fourth of July, 1876, Lowell spoke with no uncertain sound regarding those eternal truths of freedom and country which made patriotism with him a solemn passion. But so much the more impossible was it for him to close his eyes to the signs of defection from high ideals, or his lips when the impulse of speech came to him. In his poem on Agassiz written while still in Europe and obliged, as he has elsewhere said, always to be on the defensive, he gave expression to his deep scorn in a few lines which have not lost their sting, though a quarter of a century has passed since they were written. No one whose memory carries him back to the days of Grant’s second administration can forget the breathless fear of what next might be disclosed, and an American like Lowell, compelled to read the elegant extracts of peculation and fraud in high places which the English press in those days culled as examples of American public life, was even more keenly impressed than if he were in the midst of it all and could yet brace himself with the knowledge of better things mingled with these.[59] But the second stanza of the Agassiz was mild compared with the condensed bitterness of “The World’s Fair, 1876,” which he printed in the Nation, or the sarcastic arraignment in “Tempora Mutantur,” printed in the same journal. The longer poem, with its etchings of Tweed and Fisk, bitten in with an acid that is keener than any used in the “Biglow Papers,” is preserved in “Heartsease and Rue,” a record of shame that is wholesomely unpleasant to recall whenever one is disposed to be complacent. The other was set up for the same volume, but afterward withdrawn. It could well be spared from Lowell’s works, but has a stronger claim in a record of his life and character.
THE WORLD’S FAIR, 1876.
Columbia, puzzled what she should display
Of true home-make on her Centennial Day,
Asked Brother Jonathan: he scratched his head,
Whittled a while reflectively, and said,
“Your own invention and own making, too?
Why, any child could tell ye what to do:
Show ’em your Civil Service, and explain
How all men’s loss is everybody’s gain;
Show your new patent to increase your rents
By paying quarters for collecting cents;
Show your short cut to cure financial ills
By making paper collars current bills;
Show your new bleaching-process, cheap and brief,
To wit, a jury chosen by the thief;
Show your State Legislatures; show your Rings;
And challenge Europe to produce such things
As high officials sitting half in sight
To share the plunder and to fix things right.
If that don’t fetch her, why, you only need
To show your latest style in martyrs,—Tweed:
She’ll find it hard to hide her spiteful tears
At such advance in one poor hundred years.”
These verses, as may readily be guessed, brought out wrathful rejoinders, and Lowell was accused of having made a cheap exchange of his democratic principles for aristocratic snobberies when absent from his country. The situation called out a vigorous defence of Lowell in an article by Mr. Joel Benton, entitled “Mr. Lowell’s Recent Political Verse,” which was published in The Christian Union of 10 December, 1875. Lowell acknowledged the service in a letter to Mr. Benton which was printed after Lowell’s death in The Century Magazine, November, 1891. It is so valuable a witness to Lowell’s mind that I give it here again.[60]
To Joel Benton.
Elmwood, January 19, 1876.
Dear Sir,—I thank you for the manly way in which you put yourself at my side when I had fallen among thieves, still more for the fitting and well-considered words with which you confirm and maintain my side of the quarrel. At my time of life one is not apt to vex his soul at any criticism, but I confess that in this case I was more than annoyed, I was even saddened. For what was said was so childish and showed such shallowness, such levity, and such dulness of apprehension both in politics and morals on the part of those who claim to direct public opinion (as, alas! they too often do) as to confirm me in my gravest apprehensions. I believe “The World’s Fair” gave the greatest offence. They had not even the wit to see that I put my sarcasm into the mouth of Brother Jonathan, thereby implying and meaning to imply that the common-sense of my countrymen was awakening to the facts, and that therefore things were perhaps not so desperate as they seemed.
I had just come home from a two years’ stay in Europe, so it was discovered that I had been corrupted by association with foreign aristocracies! I need not say to you that the society I frequented in Europe was what it is at home—that of my wife, my studies, and the best nature and art within my reach. But I confess that I was embittered by my experience. Wherever I went I was put on the defensive. Whatever extracts I saw from American papers told of some new fraud or defalcation, public or private. It was sixteen years since my last visit abroad, and I found a very striking change in the feeling towards America and Americans. An Englishman was everywhere treated with a certain deference: Americans were at best tolerated. The example of America was everywhere urged in France as an argument against republican forms of government. It was fruitless to say that the people were still sound when the Body Politic which draws its life from them showed such blotches and sores. I came home, and instead of wrath at such abominations, I found banter. I was profoundly shocked; for I had received my earliest impressions in a community the most virtuous, I believe, that ever existed.... On my return I found that community struggling half hopelessly to prevent General Butler from being put in its highest office against the will of all its best citizens. I found Boutwell, one of its senators, a chief obstacle to Civil-Service reform (our main hope).... I saw Banks returned by a larger majority than any other member of the lower house.... In the Commonwealth that built the first free school and the first college, I heard culture openly derided. I suppose I like to be liked as well as other men. Certainly I would rather be left to my studies than meddle with politics. But I had attained to some consideration, and my duty was plain. I wrote what I did in the plainest way, that he who ran might read, and that I hit the mark I aimed at is proved by the attacks against which you so generously defend me. These fellows have no notion what love of country means. It is in my very blood and bones. If I am not an American, who ever was?
I am no pessimist, nor ever was, ... but is not the Beecher horror disheartening? Is not Delano discouraging? and Babcock atop of him?... What fills me with doubt and dismay is the degradation of the moral tone. Is it or is it not a result of Democracy? Is ours a “government of the people by the people for the people,” or a Kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools? Democracy is, after all, nothing more than an experiment like another, and I know only one way of judging it—by its results. Democracy in itself is no more sacred than monarchy. It is Man who is sacred: it is his duties and opportunities, not his rights, that nowadays need reinforcement. It is honor, justice, culture, that make liberty invaluable, else worse than worthless if it mean only freedom to be base and brutal. As things have been going lately, it would surprise no one if the officers who had Tweed in charge should demand a reward for their connivance in the evasion of that popular hero. I am old enough to remember many things, and what I remember I meditate upon. My opinions do not live from hand to mouth. And so long as I live I will be no writer of birthday odes to King Demos any more than I would be to King Log, nor shall I think our cant any more sacred than any other. Let us all work together (and the task will need us all) to make Democracy possible. It certainly is no invention to go of itself any more than the perpetual motion.
Forgive me for this long letter of justification, which I am willing to write for your friendly eye, though I should scorn to make any public defence. Let the tenor of my life and writings defend me.