We can talk over that and other matters by the light of a cigar. I will be at home Monday, at any rate, and you would be pretty sure to find me any afternoon but Wednesday, I remain very sincerely (and dilatorily) J. R. LOWELL. TO MRS. FRANCIS G. SHAW Elmwood, Nov. 25, 1849. I am glad you like my poems. I wish I didthat is, I wish they were better. And I think they will be one of these days when I have written better ones to cast back an enlightening glow on the old. But I am not flattered by your liking. You like them because Page does, and, between ourselves, that is his weakest point, as you, I see, with your woman's wit have discovered. Page is wiser than you, and likes them because he knows I am better than they, which you do not. . . TO C. F. BRIGGS Elmwood, Nov. 25, 1849. My new edition will be out about the 10th of December, and I think that with Ticknor's publishing I shall, for the first time, make something by my poems. I shall clear at least $100 by the first edition, and every subsequent one will be clear gain, as I shall have no expense about the plates. I expect to publish a wholly new volume in May, about which I shall write you in some other letter. I write this in haste, merely to show that I have not forgotten nor ceased to love you. How soon I shall come to New York is uncertain. I am expecting a visit from Miss Bremer. Mr. Downing wrote me a note, saying how much she, etc., etc., about me, and so Maria wrote and asked her to tarry with us a short time. She wrote a charming letter in reply, and will be with us in the course of next week. . . . I think you will find my poems improved in the new edition. I have not altered much, but I have left out the poorest and put others in their places. My next volume, I think, will show an advance. It is to be called "The Nooning."* Now guess what it will be. The name suggests pleasant thoughts, does it not? But I shall not tell you anything about it yet, and you must not mention it. . TO SYDNEY H. GAY Elmwood, Dec. 22, 1849. .. Print that as if you loved it. Let not a comma be blundered. Especially I fear they will put “gleaming" for "gloaming" in the first line unless you look to it. May you never have the key which shall unlock the whole meaning of the poem to you!... *The design for a volume with this title was not carried out, though cherished for many years. See the prefatory note to "Fitzadam's Story" in "Heartsease and Rue." "The First Snow-Fall." III 1850-1856 DOMESTIC SORROW AND JOY.-VISIT TO EUROPE. DEATH OF HIS SON AT ROME.-DECLINE OF MRS. LOWELL'S HEALTH. -RETURN TO AMERICA.-DEATH OF MRS. LOWELL.LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH POETS. - APPOINTMENT TO PROFESSORSHIP IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY.-SECOND VISIT TO EUROPE. LETTERS TO C. F. BRIGGS, E. M. DAVIS, S. H. GAY, FRANCIS G. SHAW, C. E. NORTON, MISS ANNA LORING, F. H. UNDERWOOD, MISS JANE NORTON, W. J. STILLMAN, JAMES T. FIELDS, JOHN HOLMES, DR. ESTES HOWE, MRS. ESTES HOWE. THE happiness of Lowell's domestic life was a second time rudely broken in upon by the death of his little daughter Rose, in the spring of 1850-just three years after the death of her sister Blanche. These sorrows told heavily upon him, and still more upon his wife, whose health was always delicate and uncertain. They were made happy, at the end of the year, by the birth of a son, Walter, who became soon a child of uncommon loveliness and promise. Their circumstances were now such that they resolved to go to Europe in the summer of 1851, not without hope that the voyage and travel would be of benefit to Mrs. Lowell. Except to his father, Lowell wrote few letters during their absence. Some record of their voyage and of their life in Italy is to be found in "Leaves from My Journal in Italy and Elsewhere,' but there is no reference in the published narrative to the calamity which fell upon them in Rome, in the spring of 1852, in the death of their little boy. It was a grievous blow, and one from which Mrs. Lowell never recovered. They remained abroad till the autumn. The next year was passed very quietly at home. Mrs. Lowell's health sank steadily, and on October 27, 1853, she died. TO C. F. BRIGGS Elmwood, Jan. 23, 1850. My dear Friend,-I have never thanked you for your gift of a box of cigars. I am smoking one of them at this very moment. I know not in what light to regard them other than as a kind of parishioner's gift to the Rev. Mr. Wilbur, though there may be a covert satire in thus throwing that gentleman's weakness into his very teeth. My great-grandfather, who was minister of Newbury, and who, being very much of a gentleman and scholar, held out against Whitefield and his extravagances, used to take (I have no doubt) the grocer's share of his salary in tobacco. He was a terrible smoker, and there is still extant in the house he lived in at Newbury a painted panel representing a meeting of the neighboring clergy, each with his pipe and his — pot. I have a great regard for this excellent man's memory, strengthened by his note-books and by his * First published in 1854 in "Fireside Travels," and now to be found in the first volume of Lowell's Prose Writings. + This interesting old panel was afterwards transferred to Elmwood, and set above the mantelpiece in the study. portrait in gown, bands, and wig, painted (alas!) by one of his parishioners. Therefore I scruple not to thank you for this compliance with my weakness, and feel that I have an ancestral right to pronounce the cigars excellent. . . My "new book" is to be called "The Nooning." Maria invented the title for me, and is it not a pleasant one? My plan is this. I am going to bring together a party of half a dozen old friends at Elmwood. They go down to the river and bathe, and then one proposes that they shall go up into a great willow-tree (which stands at the end of the causey near our house, and has seats in it) to take their nooning. There they agree that each shall tell a story or recite a poem of some sort. In the tree they find a countryman already resting himself, who enters into the plan and tells a humorous tale, with touches of Yankee character and habits in it. I am to read my poem of the "Voyage of Leif" to Vinland, in which I mean to bring my hero straight into Boston Bay, as befits a Bay-state poet. Two of my poems are already written The Fountain of Youth" (no connection with any other firm), and the other an "Address to the Muse," by the Transcendentalist of the party. I guess I am safe in saying that the first of these two is the best thing I have done yet. But you shall judge when you see it. But "Leif's Voyage" is to be far better. I intend to confute my critics, not with another satire, but by writing better. It is droll that they should say I want variety. Between "Columbus" and Hosea Biglow I think there is some range and some variety of power shown. I cannot help think one 66 |