Studies of Lowell | Page 9

hide his hurt, and he would
not let you speak of it, as though your sympathy unmanned him, but
you could see that he suffered. This notably happened in my
remembrance from a review in a journal which he greatly esteemed;
and once when in a notice of my own I had put one little thorny point
among the flowers, he confessed a puncture from it. He praised the
criticism hardily, but I knew that he winced under my recognition of
the didactic quality which he had not quite guarded himself against in
the poetry otherwise praised. He liked your liking, and he openly
rejoiced in it; and I suppose he made himself believe that in trying his
verse with his friends he was testing it; but I do not believe that he was,
and I do not think he ever corrected his judgment by theirs, however he
suffered from it.

In any matter that concerned literary morals he was more than eager to
profit by another eye. One summer he sent me for the Magazine a poem
which, when I read it, I trembled to find in motive almost exactly like
one we had lately printed by another contributor. There was nothing for
it but to call his attention to the resemblance, and I went over to
Elmwood with the two poems. He was not at home, and I was obliged
to leave the poems, I suppose with some sort of note, for the next
morning's post brought me a delicious letter from him, all one cry of
confession, the most complete, the most ample. He did not trouble
himself to say that his poem was an unconscious reproduction of the
other; that was for every reason unnecessary, but he had at once
rewritten it upon wholly different lines; and I do not think any reader
was reminded of Mrs. Akers's "Among the Laurels" by Lowell's
"Foot-path." He was not only much more sensitive of others' rights than
his own, but in spite of a certain severity in him, he was most tenderly
regardful of their sensibilities when he had imagined them: he did not
always imagine them.

VI.
At this period, between the years 1866 and 1874, when he unwillingly
went abroad for a twelvemonth, Lowell was seen in very few
Cambridge houses, and in still fewer Boston houses. He was not an
unsocial man, but he was most distinctly not a society man. He loved
chiefly the companionship of books, and of men who loved books; but
of women generally he had an amusing diffidence; he revered them and
honored them, but he would rather not have had them about. This is
over-saying it, of course, but the truth is in what I say. There was never
a more devoted husband, and he was content to let his devotion to the
sex end with that. He especially could not abide difference of opinion
in women; he valued their taste, their wit, their humor, but he would
have none of their reason. I was by one day when he was arguing a
point with one of his nieces, and after it had gone on for some time, and
the impartial witness must have owned that she was getting the better
of him he closed the controversy by giving her a great kiss, with the
words, "You are a very good girl, my dear," and practically putting her
out of the room. As to women of the flirtatious type, he did not dislike
them; no man, perhaps, does; but he feared them, and he said that with

them there was but one way, and that was to run.
I have a notion that at this period Lowell was more freely and fully
himself than at any other. The passions and impulses of his younger
manhood had mellowed, the sorrows of that time had softened; he
could blamelessly live to himself in his affections and his sobered
ideals. His was always a duteous life; but he had pretty well given up
making man over in his own image, as we all wish some time to do,
and then no longer wish it. He fulfilled his obligations to his
fellow-men as these sought him out, but he had ceased to seek them.
He loved his friends and their love, but he had apparently no desire to
enlarge their circle. It was that hour of civic suspense, in which public
men seemed still actuated by unselfish aims, and one not essentially a
politician might contentedly wait to see what would come of their
doing their best. At any rate, without occasionally withholding open
criticism or acclaim Lowell waited among his books for the wounds of
the war to heal themselves, and the nation to begin her healthfuller and
nobler life. With slavery gone,