The duties of his office in the first part of his service were not onerous except as multitudinous details bring weariness, but the long illness of President Garfield during the summer of 1881 brought a strain upon the emotions, and called for the constant exercise of a refined courtesy. For, aside from the formal exchange of sympathy which would be inevitable under such circumstances, there was that spontaneous and varied expression of grief on all sides, to which Lowell refers with so much feeling and such exquisite reserve of speech in the address on Garfield which was given at the Memorial Meeting in Exeter Hall, 24 September, 1881, and is preserved in “Literary and Political Addresses.” Lowell was there speaking to Americans in the presence, as it were, of all England, and the note of sobriety and deep feeling and strong faith which he struck still has the beauty and richness with which it fell on the ears of his sympathetic audience. He was constantly called upon during that anxious season of the President’s illness to respond to letters of sympathy. A despatch which he sent to the Secretary of State a fortnight after the blow shows the same dignity in his official communication, and illustrates also the atmosphere in which he was living throughout the summer. It is No. 219, and is dated 16 July, 1881:—
“Warm expressions of sympathy with the President, with Mrs. Garfield, and with the people of the United States, and of abhorrence of the atrocious attempt on the President’s life have reached this Legation from all parts of England and Scotland. From the Queen to the artisan, the feeling has been universal and very striking in its manifestation. The first question in the morning and the last at night for the first ten days after the news came was always: ‘How is the President?’ Had the President’s life not been spared, the demonstration of feeling would have been comparable with that which followed the assassination of Mr. Lincoln.
“The interest of the Queen was shown in an unusually marked way, and was unmistakable in its sincerity and warmth. By her special request all our telegrams were at once forwarded to her at Windsor. At Marlborough House, on the 14th she sent for me, in order to express in person her very great satisfaction that the condition of the President was so encouraging.
“I need not waste words in telling you with what profound anxiety your telegrams were awaited, nor how much encouragement and consolation were brought by the later ones. I may be permitted to thank you, however, for the entire composure which characterized them, and which enabled me to maintain my own while prophets of evil were hourly sending me imaginary news.
“The impression produced here by the President’s dignity and fortitude may be almost called a political event, for I believe that it has done more to make a juster estimate of American character possible here than many years of commercial or even social intercourse would have done.”
It was with a great sense of relief from tension, after the death of the President, that Lowell took a leave of absence, and made a short trip to Italy. “I am just starting,” he writes to T. W. Higginson, 8 October, 1881, “for the continent on a leave of absence which I sorely need. Wish me joy, I am going to Italy! Whether I may not find somebody else in my chair at the Legation when I come back is one of those problems that I cannot solve, and care little about, though now that I have made friendships here I should like to stay on a little longer. Did you know that I have five grandchildren?”
Unfortunately Mrs. Lowell was not sufficiently restored to health to accompany him, but he had the good fortune to find Mr. and Mrs. Field at the end of his journey. “We reached Flushing,” he wrote Mrs. Lowell from Frankfort, 10 October, “at half-past six in the morning and there took the train for this place. We travelled several thousand miles, as it seemed to me, through Holland, every now and then seeing a hunchbacked church gathering its village under its wings like a clucking hen when she sees the hawk in the air, at every turn a windmill and low fields bordered with trees that always look just beginning to grow—Heaven knows why. After crossing the Prussian frontier, the dead level continued as far as Cologne. The only difference was that the trees were larger and often one saw pretty linden-alleys leading up to the little towns. The railway officials had a more close-buttoned military air, and were always saluting invisible superiors.”
On the 12th he wrote from Weimar: “I left Frankfort at noon on Monday and got here towards seven in the evening. The first half of the journey was through one of the loveliest valleys (of the broad and basking kind) I ever saw. The only name I recognized in this part of the way was Offenbach, where Goethe had his adventures with Lilli a hundred and more years ago, but after passing Elm the names grew more familiar and famous. Fulda, Gotha, Erfurt, Eisenach. Weimar is a neat little capital which looks about as large as Salem, and where the one stranger is as much stared at as there. Why it is a capital, and especially why it should be where it is, puzzles me. The park is really delightful, with fine trees and one of the most beautiful streams running through it I ever saw. The water is so clear as to seem almost luminous, the water-mosses are as green as those of the sea, and some horse-chestnuts that had fallen in shone like live coals. I walked about the town all the forenoon.”
He paid a visit to Goethe’s house and the next day went on to Dresden, where he reflected that it was just twenty-five years since he was living there, a young man then, an old man now, but that he should find the Sistine Madonna and a few other old friends as young as ever. From Dresden he went to Venice, and there he found his friend Mr. Field. “He is as young and social as ever,” he wrote to Mr. Norton, 31 October; “has made the acquaintance here of everybody he didn’t know before, and goes with me to Florence on Thursday. The Brownings have also been here, but go to-morrow morning. The weather has been brutto assai, only two partly fine days during the time I have been here, and to-day it rains. We hear of three inches of snow at Vicenza, and I can well believe it, so cold has it been. Che tempo straongante! Still, Venice has been beautiful and dear for all that. Browning begins to show his seventy years (he will be seventy next February) a little, though his natural [force] be not abated. I hear that I am to stay in England, all rumors to the contrary notwithstanding.[77] Fanny continues better. She did not venture to come with me. I shall probably go on as far as Rome, and get back to London in time for the best fogs.”
To Mrs. Lowell be wrote from Venice, 1 November: “To-day the sky is bright for the third time since my arrival. All the other days have been cloudy or rainy, with a cold tramontana blowing steadily and strongly.... You remember that Lady Gordon told me I should find a bateau mouche plying on the Grand Canal. I did not expect to be personally inconvenienced by it; but as it lessened the custom of the gondoliers they have all struck work this morning, and one can’t get a barca for love or money. Poor fellows, they will find, as others have done, that steam is stronger than they.... I have given up Rimini owing to the cold, and shall start for Florence day after to-morrow with Field, who is younger and livelier than ever,—and makes more acquaintances every day than I should in a year.”