CHAPTER V

DIPLOMATIST

1877-1885

1. Spain.

WITH the natural inclination of a man of letters conscious of general powers of a high order, Lowell had been thinking half-whimsically all his life of a public career; and in his familiar letters he had joked about the chances of his election to Congress, or of being sent to represent his country at the Court of St. James. Yet in 1869 he seems to have been a good deal surprised when he received an intimation that owing to the friendly propaganda of Judge Hoar he had come very near being sent as Minister to Spain. In 1876, at the time of the political sally recounted in the last chapter, he was actually urged to stand for Congress. After the election of Hayes was finally established, the talk of sending Lowell abroad was revived. In the usual course of such matters, he was tioned" for London, for St. Petersburg, for Berlin, and for Vienna; but finally in the spring of

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1877 he was offered the mission to Madrid. The classical account of the circumstances of this arrangement is that by Mr. Howells. It has been often quoted, but it is too significant of Lowell's attitude toward his rôle of diplomatist and too charming in itself to be omitted. Mr. Howells, having some family connection with President Hayes, had written to him that he believed Lowell would accept a diplomatic post. The President replied that he should be gratified if Mr. Howells would find out if Lowell would accept the mission to Austria.

"I lost no time," writes Mr. Howells, " in carrying his letter over to Elmwood, where I found Lowell over his coffee at dinner. He saw me at the threshold, and called to me through the open door to come in, and I handed him the letter, and sat down at the table while he ran it through. When he had read it, he gave a quick

Ah!' and threw it the length of the table to Mrs. Lowell. She read it in a smiling and loyal reticence, as if she would not say one word of all she might wish in urging his acceptance, though I could see that she was intensely eager for it. The whole situation was of a perfect New England character in its tacit significance; after Lowell had taken his coffee we turned into his study without further allusion to the matter." 1

1 Literary Friends and Acquaintance, p. 238.

A day or two later Lowell went to Mr. Howells's house and told him that he could not accept the Austrian mission, and begged him to make proper acknowledgments to the President; but upon rising to leave he said with a half-whimsical sigh, "I should like to see a play of Calderon." This intimation was transmitted by Mr. Howells to Washington along with Lowell's declination of the Austrian mission, and in due time he was appointed to Madrid.

Lowell's characteristic frame of mind toward his new office is seen engagingly in his letters. Writing on June 5, 1877, to his daughter, Mrs. Burnett, a correspondence in which there could have been no suspicion of pose, he said, — “It will be of some use to me in my studies, and I shall not stay there long at any rate. But it is hard to leave Elmwood while it is looking so lovely. The canker worms have burned up all my elms and apple trees . . ."—and thereafter the talk is all of trees and birds, with no further reference to his new honors. Or take him in a little more whimsical vein to a little less intimate correspondent. On July 1, 1877, he wrote to Miss Grace Norton:

"I dare say I shall enjoy it after I get there, but at present it is altogether a bore to be honorabled at every turn. The world is a droll affair. And yet, between ourselves, dear Grace, I should

be pleased if my father could see me in capitals on the Triennial Catalogue."

Yet Lowell approached his new responsibility in a more sober spirit than would appear from this surface play of his habitual whimsicality. He knew his fitness for the post through his long and intimate knowledge of Spanish literature, which had given him some measure of comprehension of the difficult national mood of Spain, and of the none too accessible Spanish character. He must also have felt a sense of competence to deal with international issues, both because of his legal training and his familiarity with the history and politics of Europe, and because of that larger grasp of political relations which he had convincingly shown in his writings at two great national crises.

Just after his appointment, he was stunned by the death of two of his dearest friends, Miss Jane Norton and Edmund Quincy. So it was in a somewhat sad and sober mood that he sailed from Boston on the 14th of July, 1877. Because of his ministerial dignity he was escorted down the harbor, much to his annoyance, by a revenue cutter and a special tug.

While in Spain Lowell wrote nothing save dispatches, letters, and a sonnet or two, so that it is possible to forget his writing for a time, and

deal wholly with his work as a diplomatist. We must not forget, however, that in the dignified countenance of the American Minister, the shrewd eye of Hosea Biglow still twinkled, and that the hand which turned to writing dispatches about indemnities, or extraditions, was the same that had penned "The Vision of Sir Launfal" and the "Commemoration Ode."

Lowell arrived in Madrid on the 14th of August, 1877, and was presented four days later to the boy king, who was then at his summer palace at La Granja. His welcome was all that he could have wished. Mr. Adee, who was the chargé d'affaires, pending Lowell's arrival, says: "In the Spanish eye he came not to continue the disputatious and aggressive policy of Sickles and Cushing, but to revive the amiable traditions of Washington Irving's day." His reception, therefore, was planned for him in his character of man of letters. He was genially hailed by the Spanish press as "José Bighlow," and lines of his poetry were flatteringly quoted to him by the King and by the Minister for Foreign Affairs. For the latter, Manuel Silvela, Lowell formed a fast personal friendship. Silvela was a man of fine belletristic taste and considerable erudition. He found Lowell's tobacco excellent, and the two seem to have been more ready to chat about the Cid, Cervantes, or Calderon, than to discuss knotty questions of