On New Year’s Day, 1882, Lowell sent another poem, “Estrangement,” to Mr. Gilder for the Century. “I am pleased,” he wrote, “that you liked the little poem I sent you, and the more that you asked for another. Here is one you are welcome to, if you like it. I rather do, but that is nothing, and I shall like you none the less if you don’t. Treat me like a gentleman and not like a poet,—I mean as you would a gentleman and not a poet. I am tough and have myself played Herod to many an infant muse, and mine is approaching her second childhood.”
His social life drew from him occasional verses, as when he planted a tree at Inverary, or thanked Miss Dorothy Tennant, who afterward married Henry M. Stanley, for a drawing of little street Arabs, or sent a sonnet home in honor of Whittier’s seventy-fifth birthday, or gave a posset cup to a god-child. He was happy in pleasing young friends with verses, sometimes inserting them in books which he gave them, or writing them in their albums.
Early in 1882 he was saddened by the sudden death of R. H. Dana, one of the earliest of his friends and lately fresh in his recollection since he had seen much of him in his recent stay in Rome. “We had known each other,” he wrote to Mr. George Putnam, “at least fifty-five years. He is a great loss, and the more that his career was incomplete. He never filled the place he ought in public affairs. One weakness neutralized the legitimate effect of his very remarkable abilities. Death seems to be hitting right and left among my contemporaries. So far as I am concerned, I take the warning with perfect equanimity.” It was somewhat in the same mood that he wrote to his friend Field: “I have no news except that for about a week I have been having a head again. I have temporarily reformed and live cleanly like Falstaff. No wine, no black coffee, and—you won’t believe it, but ’tis true—no baccy till afternoon and then a short allowance. You see I am in earnest. At the same time that I take these precautions I confess that I don’t hanker arter much more of this world, and shouldn’t mind much if—. I notice that the men in my platoon are dropping right and left. I wish I relished life as much as you. Give my love to——, who will see by the way I spell her name that I am in good humor though I feel as if I had Luke’s iron crown on.”
He was drawn in colored chalks at this time by Mr. Sandys, and another portrait also was painted by Mrs. Merritt, which now hangs in the Faculty Room in University Hall at Harvard. “I am off for private view at Academy,” he writes to Mr. Field, 28 April, 1882; “two portraits of myself there. They are very unlike each other, and my duty to the artist requires me to try and look as much like each as I can. What am I to do? They will be in different rooms doubtless, and so I can manage it perhaps.”
It was a light matter to toy with verse now and then, but as for prose, the most be attempted beyond his despatches to his government were the speeches he made now and then. Mr. Aldrich had asked for a paper on a certain subject for the Atlantic, and he replied, 8 May, 1882: “If I could, how gladly I would! But I am piece-mealed here with so many things to do that I cannot get a moment to brood over anything, as it must be brooded over if it is to have wings. It is as if a setting hen should have to mind the doorbell. Now, you must wait till I come home to be Boycotted in my birthplace by my Irish fellow-citizens (who are kind enough to teach me how to be American) who fought all our battles and got up all our draft-riots. Then, in the intervals of firing through my loopholes of retreat I may be able to do something for the Atlantic. I am now in the midst of the highly important and engrossing business of arranging for the presentation at Court of some of our fair citoyennes. Whatever else you are, never be a minister!” Mr. Bowker relates of Lowell that “at one time he had given offence to an American lady of doubtful reputation, who had asked him to present her at Court, and on his dexterously evading that responsibility, had asked him point blank whether he was unwilling because he had heard certain things about her. He could not answer in the negative, and she went off vowing vengeance. A few months afterwards, when the Irish criticisms were hottest, she reappeared and had the effrontery to tell him that she had stirred up the whole business herself, out of revenge. Mr. Lowell added, on telling this story, that he proposed to accomplish at least one thing, to keep his country respectable, even if he had to resign to do it.”
One of the most admirable of his little speeches was that on unveiling the bust of Fielding at Taunton, 4 September, 1883. He spoke as an author, as one who had reflected upon the great office of literature, and as a critic who could measure Fielding’s power by the standard of Shakespeare and Cervantes, and perhaps even more effectively as one of the English race who was enough differentiated by his American birth, and enough instructed by his familiarity with racy men of the soil, to appreciate the essential English manliness of the great writer. This address is indeed one of the most striking commentaries on the fitness of Lowell to act as a spokesman for the common Englishry of two countries. His point of view was at once that of an onlooker and of one indigenous. Three years later, when reprinting the address in his volume “Democracy and other Addresses,” he refers to one passage in the speech as follows: “I am constantly bothered by the disenchanting effect of my sense of humor (of which I speak in the Fielding address) which makes me too fair to both sides. This often makes me distrustful of myself. I am sometimes inclined to call Genius not ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains’ (though that is much), but an infinite capacity for being one-sided.”
There was a somewhat humorous episode in Lowell’s career in the autumn of 1883. It is a time-honored custom at the ancient and sturdy little University of St. Andrews for the student body to elect once a year a Lord Rector of the University whose duties are limited to a single address. There is a tacit understanding that politics shall not enter into the election, and that the choice shall be the students’ own, without interference from the officers of the faculty. This does not of course preclude an interest on the part of professors, and Shairp, Campbell, and Baynes especially took a lively interest in the proposal that Lowell should succeed Sir Theodore Martin. At first Mr. Mallock appeared as opposition candidate, but his name was withdrawn when it was found that he had been set up by some indiscreet person with a view to bettering his chances for Parliament, and the Right Hon. Edward Gibson was proposed. A protest was lodged against Lowell’s nomination on the ground that he was an alien. The whole business created a lively discussion in and out of print, and Punch entered the lists with these lines:—
“An alien? Go to! If fresh, genial wit
In sound Saxon speech be not genuine grit,
If the wisdom and mirth he has put into verse for us
Don’t make him a ‘native,’ why, so much the worse for us.
Whig, Tory, and Rad should club votes, did he need ’em,
To honor the writer who gave Bird o’ Freedom
To all English readers. A few miles of sea
Make Lowell an alien? Fiddle-de-dee!
’Tis crass party spirit, Bœotian, dense,
That is alien indeed—to good taste and good sense.”
The excitement ran high, and Lowell was elected by a considerable majority. But his opponents pushed the matter further, and demonstrated that he was really ineligible by reason of his “extra-territoriality.” As Lowell put it in writing to Professor Child: “My official extra-territoriality will, perhaps, prevent my being rector at St. Andrews, because it puts me beyond the reach of the Scottish Courts in case of malversation in office. How to rob a Scottish University suggests a serious problem.” To avoid further complications Lowell resigned. He good-humoredly told his friends at home that his only regret was in being prevented from adding the dignified line “Univ. Sanct. Andr-Scot-Dom. Rect.” to his name in the Harvard catalogue. His student friends could do nothing but accept the situation. Later, they begged him, when they knew he was to be at St. Andrews, to address them unofficially. It was not long before the expiration of his term as American minister, and he wrote, 27 January, 1885:—
“Circumstances over which I have no control will prevent my being with you at St. Andrews next Friday. I feel deeply touched by the continued kindness of the students of your ancient University, and greatly honored by their wish to see me and hear me. I am somewhat consoled in my disappointment by the reflection that neither your eyes nor your ears will lose so much as is kindly implied by the invitation with which you have honored me. It is I who miss a pleasure whose loss I shall always regret; for young friends have a charm and value of their own, as he feels most sensibly who has reached a period in life when old ones are only too frequently saying good-by forever.”