James Russell Lowell, A Biography; vol 2/2

by Horace Elisha Scudder

The Introduction, though undertaken apparently with a reluctant rather than an eager mind, and bearing indeed some marks of a perfunctory performance, is yet not only interesting in itself but valuable as a mirror in which to catch a passing reflection of its author’s mind. Aware that the book to follow would deal largely with those advances in civilization which publishers and writers in their bookkeeping like to record to the credit of the world, he cannot forbear at the outset gently reminding his readers that with all our statistics we cannot “make ourselves independent of the inextinguishable lamps of heaven,” and with a sort of under-the-breath doubt if he may not be letting his own temperament get in the way of more exact standards of measurement, he allows himself for a moment to pause over the changes in civilization, which accepted as progress do yet obliterate some very wonderful prints which the foot of man has made. It is the old song of laudator temporis acti, sung to the air of his own brooding age.

But having thus, as it were, satisfied his conscience by discharging the debt he owed to his own personal taste in the matter of what constitutes progress, he takes up the real business of the Introcduction and quickly becomes forgetful of himself the philosopher in the pleasure which the poet and artist in him may take with a very large and plastic substance. Near the close of the paper he writes: “Should the doctrines of Natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest, and Heredity, be accepted as Laws of Nature, they must profoundly modify the thought of men and, consequently, their action.” He himself, with his aversion to the speculations of science, had but a bowing acquaintance with those investigations of Darwin and Huxley and their fellows which brought about so great a revolution of thought in his lifetime, and clearly was impatient of what he regarded as the encroachment of science upon the humanities in the formation of intellectual beliefs; but he was, after all, a child of his time, and his thought had been, whether he would or no, modified by the results of scientific investigation. At any rate, he had the poet’s faculty for appropriating results, and the picture which he draws in this Introduction of the evolution of the earth and of man’s early mastery of it is a striking piece of imaginative writing, touched here and there with a dash of wit which one almost fancies was Lowell’s intellectual aside to the Balaam-like prophecy he was compelled to deliver.

It is, however, when he emerges in his thought upon those great plains of society where his mind was most wont to dwell, that Lowell falls into an earnestness of tone which quite as surely indicates that he had been warmed by the fire he had kindled into a healthy and natural vigor, and when, from a rapid survey of the world’s past growing more and more present under his touch, he comes to forecast the world’s future, it is with a voice familiar through his recent addresses and poems and letters that we hear him speak. Again he recurs to that significant element in modern life about which his mind was constantly revolving, the political organization of men in its relation to their individual character, and his definitions of Democracy are here more precise, more carefully formulated than in any of his writings. The main passage is so notable that it deserves to be read again, apart from its context, as the last statement made by one whose whole life was, in a measure, occupied with an exposition of the truths here laid down.

“In casting the figure of the World’s future, many new elements, many disturbing forces, must be taken into account. First of all is Democracy, which, within the memory of men yet living, has assumed almost the privilege of a Law of Nature, and seems to be making constant advances towards universal dominion. Its ideal is to substitute the interest of the many for that of the few as the test of what is wise in polity and administration, and the opinion of the many for that of the few as the rule of conduct in public affairs. That the interest of the many is the object of whatever social organization man has hitherto been able to effect seems unquestionable; whether their opinions are so safe a guide as the opinions of the few, and whether it will ever be possible, or wise if possible, to substitute the one for the other in the hegemony of the World, is a question still open for debate. Whether there was ever such a thing as a Social Contract or not, as has been somewhat otiosely discussed, this, at least, is certain,—that the basis of all Society is the putting of the force of all at the disposal of all, by means of some arrangement assented to by all, for the protection of all, and this under certain prescribed forms. This has always been, consciously or unconsciously, the object for which men have striven, and which they have more or less clumsily accomplished. The State—some established Order of Things, under whatever name—has always been, and must always be, the supremely important thing; because in it the interests of all are invested, by it the duties of all imposed and exacted. In point of fact, though it be often strangely overlooked, the claim to any selfish hereditary privilege because you are born a man is as absurd as the same claim because you are born a noble. In a last analysis, there is but one natural right; and that is the right of superior force. This primary right having been found unworkable in practice, has been deposited, for the convenience of all, with the State, from which, as the maker, guardian, and executor of Law, and as a common fund for the use of all, the rights of each are derived, and man thus made as free as he can be without harm to his neighbor. It was this surrender of private jurisdiction which made civilization possible, and keeps it so. The abrogation of the right of private war has done more to secure the rights of man, properly understood,—and, consequently, for his well-being,—than all the theories spun from the brain of the most subtle speculator, who, finding himself cramped by the actual conditions of life, fancies it as easy to make a better world than God intended, as it has been proved difficult to keep in running order the world that man has made out of his fragmentary conception of the divine thought. The great peril of democracy is that the assertion of private right should be pushed to the obscuring of the superior obligation of public duty.”

Having thus discoursed upon what is most fundamental in political thinking, he passes, after a brief reflection upon the growing function of the press, to enquire into that new factor in the problem of the future which takes the name of Socialism. He distinguishes here, as elsewhere, between socialism as a new reading of the law of rights and duties, and State Socialism. He repeats his warning against this form which he holds destructive of a genuine democracy, for he distrusts the robbery of man’s freedom of development in character for the sake of paying him back in the paper promises of security from misfortune. The whole latter part of this Introduction, in spite of its hurried manner, is a footnote to the history of Lowell’s thought on some of the greatest of themes.

The intimation given above, that Lowell could not quite afford the luxury of being a bystander in his old age, reminds us how close he sailed to the wind throughout his life, yet how faithfully he kept off the reefs of debt. At times he had enough to live on comfortably; when he could not live what is called comfortably, he simply drew in, and at least knew not the discomfort of living beyond his means. He had not now the resources of his professorship, and he was fain to increase the income which his small estate and his copyrights brought him by such tasks as the Introduction we have considered, and other more congenial literary labors. His reputation, fortunately, had now turned capital so far as the quick assets of his writing went. He could command good prices from editors, but by a not uncommon fortune periodical work yielded him much better return than his accumulating books. In a letter written to Thomas Hughes, 10 January, 1887, he makes this frank statement of his affairs: “Rejoice with me that I am getting popular in my old age, and hope to pay my this year’s trip to the dear old Home without defrauding my grandchildren.[98] I get twenty-five cents, I think it is, on copies [of “Democracy”] sold during the first eight months after publication, and then it goes into my general copyright, for which I am paid £400 a year. Not much after nearly fifty years of authorship, but enough to keep me from the almshouse.”

His friends sometimes chided him for not reckoning in his price the worth of his name, but he had it not in him to drive sharp bargains. Still, now and then he braced himself, as when he wrote to a friendly editor respecting a poem he had sent him: “Another magazine would have given me——. I am not speaking of intrinsic but of commercial values, of course. I think one ought to make hay while the sun shines, and mine, after a good deal of cloudy weather, seems to be shining now. As I don’t know how long this meteoric phenomenon is to last, I must be diligent with my windrows and cocks that my crop may be in the mow before a change of weather. As an author, you will sympathize with me, while as editor, you will ask me blandly how flint-skins are quoted in the last prices current. I fancy you with that dual expression of countenance typified by Hamlet as ‘one dropping and one auspicious eye’—only I see that I have got the epithets in the wrong order for the metre.”

In the letter to Mr. Hughes last quoted, Lowell says: “I am going to talk on politics to the people of Chicago on my next birthday,” and he went to Chicago to fulfil this engagement. The Union League Club of that city had proposed to celebrate Washington’s birthday by public exercises in Music Hall, consisting mainly of Lowell’s address, which was announced to be on “American Politics.” The house was completely filled and Lowell was given a hearty welcome. The audience, however, was greatly taken aback at the first words of the speaker, for he said when he came forward that he had changed his subject and would speak not on “American Politics,” but upon the principles of literary criticism as illustrated by Shakespeare’s Richard III., a paper which he had read in 1883 before the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, and which was included, after his death, in “Latest Literary Essays and Addresses.” He went on to say that in announcing politics as the subject of his address he had not fully realized the conditions under which it was to be delivered; that he was accustomed to speak frankly, but that he found himself the guest and, in a manner, the representative of the Club. What he had to say would plainly give offence to his hosts, and he was thus compelled on the score of courtesy to change his subject.

The situation was one which might have led those present to detect some irony in Lowell’s politeness. The Union League Club was a Republican organization under the control of the Blaine wing of the party. It had succeeded in getting rid of those Republicans who had been hostile to Blaine, amongst whom was the gentleman who was Lowell’s host. But Lowell had made no concealment of the position he occupied. He made it clear enough at this time, a couple of days later when he was a guest of the Harvard Club of Chicago: “I stood outside of party,” he then said, “for nearly twenty-five years, and I was perfectly happy, I assure you.... Party organization, no doubt, is a very convenient thing, but a great many people, and I feel very strongly with them, feel that when loyalty to party means worse disloyalty to conscience, it is then asking more than any good man or any good citizen ought to concede.”

Upon his return from Chicago Lowell gave six lectures on the Old Dramatists before the Lowell Institute. Though in accepting the invitation he was returning to an early love he had never forsaken, the preparation was a burden. “I haven’t time for a word more,” he wrote to Mr. Gilder, 3 March, 1887, “for I begin a course of lectures next Tuesday and haven’t yet begun to write them, though I have done a deil o’ thinking,” and to Mr. Higginson on 8 March: “I am fagged to death. I never ought to have consented to the Lowell Lectures. If I get over them without breaking down, I shall be happy. After they are (if I am not) over, I will try to do what you ask. But my brains are husks just now.” Perhaps there was no better barometer of Lowell’s spirits than his temper regarding out of door life. Time was when the frosty winter air was elixir to him, but now he writes: “It is growing colder as my legs inform me—for I have had no fire to-day. I look out of window and see that the sun is gone behind a cloud, and the white lines of snow along the walls marking out the landscape as if for a tennis-court of Anakim. I don’t like winter so well as I used. It tempts the rheumatism out of all its ambushes, as the sun thaws out snakes. And the walking is like bad verses.” The confession gains force when one considers that all his life Lowell had been indifferent to the need of a top coat, and preferred to work in his study at a temperature of 60°.