صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

is not in the storm or in the whirlwind, it is not in monarchies, or aristocracies, or democracies, but will be revealed by the still, small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart, prompting us to a wider and wiser humanity."

After the death of President Garfield and the accession of Vice-President Arthur to the presidential chair, there was the usual talk of a change in the diplomatic appointments, and Lowell was uncertain for a time whether he was to be kept at London. As Mr. Howells had had the pleasure of notifying Lowell of his first appointment to a diplomatic mission, so another of his liegemen, Mr. R. W. Gilder, had the pleasure of informing him officially from Mr. Frelinghuysen that he was to be retained in his post. But as the election of 1884 approached, Lowell could not fail to be aware that whichever way it might go his chance of remaining in England was slight. He had always been a vigorous opponent of Mr. Blaine and the Blaine faction in the Republican party: and despite his independence of party bonds and his personal admiration for Mr. Cleveland, he could scarcely hope to be retained in office by a Democratic President. So by the summer of 1884 he had begun to think of his return home.

Any regret that he may have felt at this was

forgotten in the overwhelming blow which came to him on the 19th of February, 1885, when Mrs. Lowell, who had been in uncertain health since her desperate attack of typhoid in Madrid five years before, died after a brief illness. He wrote to Mr. George Putnam two weeks later: “I am more than ever at a loss what to do with myself. We had always taken it for granted that she would outlive me that would have been best. But I cannot live alone in the old home.

It would be too dreary; "-and a fortnight later to Mrs. Clifford: "In trying to piece together the broken threads of my life again, the brightest naturally catch the eye first. I write only to say that I do not forget. I am getting on as one does gradually getting my wits together. . . . I have at last found something I can read - Calderon - he has stood me in stead before." And again, a month later, he wrote to Mr. Norton, "My future is misty to me.'

As soon as the news of Mr. Phelps's appointment as Lowell's successor reached England, a strong concerted movement was started to induce him to remain in that country. He was even sounded as to his willingness to accept a Professorship of English Language and Literature at Oxford, and had he consented to stand the post would have been his. But he was tired,

and longed for home. So, in June, 1885, he was back in America, established for a time at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Burnett, in Southborough, Massachusetts, whence he went in the summer to Washington, "carrying his head," as he wrote to Mr. Gilder, "as Bertran de Born did, like a lantern," to take a look at his decapitators.

The sum of Lowell's diplomatic service in England is perhaps seen best from the English point of view. The fullest estimate of it is to be gained from the memorial articles which appeared in the English press after his death in 1891. His personal success was recorded on every hand. “We could not have been prouder of him had he been one of us," says one writer; "His mind," says another," was at once fine and sagacious, idealistic and practical, humorous and businesslike, witty and sober. . . . With all his grace there was a plainness of purpose that could not be mistaken." The Queen is recorded to have said that during her long reign no ambassador or minister had created so much interest and won so much regard as Mr. Lowell. And it is important to note that his personal popularity stretched through all circles of English society. Just as he was leaving for America a numerous deputation" of the Workmen's Peace Society waited upon him and presented him with some

66

66

more than commonly warm resolutions engrossed on vellum. Mr. Watts-Dunton, writing in the Athenæum," said: "Fine as is the written work of Lowell, his unwritten work is finer still;" and he points out the curious fact that not only did he establish a new rapport between England and America, but also brought into being a relation hitherto undreamed of between the literary and official sets in England itself.

Yet, after all, the chief business of an American minister is not the admirable promotion of brotherly love between the writers and the statesmen of the country to which he is accredited; nor even, as is coming to be thought, to act as the business agent of his country's commerce. It is rather to stand not only as the spokesman but as the type and protagonist of his people, to embody and exhibit without undue violence of emphasis the national virtues and graces, to win the way of his people in international affairs by the arts of friendship. This Lowell did preeminently.

CHAPTER VI

LAST YEARS

1886-1891

FROM the time of Lowell's return to America in 1885 and his establishment at Deerfoot Farm, Southborough, the shadows of the fifth act begin to darken in his letters. There is a good deal of the mood of ainsi va le monde, and reflections upon death are not infrequent. The general tone of his correspondence is, nevertheless, indomitably cheerful. After his return to America he took up letter-writing as his chief occupation, finding, as he humorously complains, "a bushel of cold letters" waiting for him after each brief absence from home. So his letters of this last period, with their sunny texture shot with darker strands, afford, perhaps, a more full and expressive picture of his mind than those of any other period of his life.

He found his situation at Southborough for a time at least almost wholly to his taste. "... I am already," he writes, "in love with Southborough, which is a charmingly unadulterated New England village and with as lovely land

« السابقةمتابعة »