The Vision of Sir Launfal | Page 2

to inquire into his ancestry, and two
or three hints may be given of the currents that met in this poet. On his
father's side he came from a succession of New England men who for
the previous three generations had been in professional life. The
Lowells traced their descent from Percival Lowell,--a name which
survives in the family,--of Bristol, England, who settled in Newbury,
Massachusetts, in 1639. The great-grandfather was a minister in
Newburyport, one of those, as Dr. Hale says, "who preached sermons
when young men went out to fight the French, and preached sermons
again in memory of their death when they had been slain in battle." The
grandfather was John Lowell, a member of the Constitutional
Convention of Massachusetts in 1780. It was he who introduced into
the Bill of Rights a phrase from the Bill of Rights of Virginia, "All men
are created free and equal," with the purpose which it effected of
setting free every man then held as a slave in Massachusetts. A son of
John Lowell and brother of the Rev. Charles Lowell was Francis Cabot
Lowell, who gave a great impetus to New England manufactures, and
from whom the city of Lowell took its name. Another son, and thus
also an uncle of the poet, was John Lowell, Jr., whose wise and
far-sighted provision gave to Boston that powerful centre of intellectual
influence, the Lowell Institute. Of the Rev. Charles Lowell, his son said,
in a letter written in 1844, "He is Doctor Primrose in the comparative
degree, the very simplest and charmingest of
sexagenarians, and not
without a great deal of the truest
magnanimity." It was characteristic
of Lowell thus to go to _The Vicar of Wakefield_ for a portrait of his
father. Dr. Lowell lived till 1861, when his son was forty-two.
[Illustration: Elmwood, Mr. Lowell's home in Cambridge.]
Mrs. Harriet Spence Lowell, the poet's mother, was of Scotch origin, a
native of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She is described as having "a

great memory, an extraordinary aptitude for language, and a passionate
fondness for ancient songs and ballads." It pleased her to fancy herself
descended from the hero of one of the most famous ballads, Sir Patrick
Spens, and at any rate she made a genuine link in the Poetic Succession.
In a letter to his mother, written in 1837, Lowell says: "I am engaged in
several poetical effusions, one of which I have dedicated to you, who
have always been the patron and encourager of my youthful muse." The
Russell in his name seems to intimate a strain of Jewish ancestry; at
any rate Lowell took pride in the name on this account, for he was not
slow to recognize the intellectual power of the Hebrew race. He was the
youngest of a family of five, two daughters and three sons. An older
brother who outlived him a short time, was the Rev. Robert Traill
Spence Lowell, who wrote besides a novel, The New Priest in
Conception Bay, which contains a delightful study of a Yankee, some
poems, and a story of school-boy life.
Not long before his death, Lowell wrote to an English friend a
description of Elmwood, and as he was very fond of the house in which
he lived and died, it is agreeable to read words which strove to set it
before the eyes of one who had never seen it. "'Tis a pleasant old house,
just about twice as old as I am, four miles from Boston, in what was
once the country and is now a populous suburb. But it still has some ten
acres of open about it, and some fine old trees. When the worst comes
to the worst (if I live so long) I shall still have four and a half acres left
with the house, the rest belonging to my brothers and sisters or their
heirs. It is a square house, with four rooms on a floor, like some houses
of the Georgian era I have seen in English provincial towns, only they
are of brick, and this is of wood. But it is solid with its heavy oaken
beams, the spaces between which in the four outer walls are filled in
with brick, though you mustn't fancy a brick-and-timber house, for
outwardly it is sheathed with wood. Inside there is much wainscot (of
deal) painted white in the fashion of the time when it was built. It is
very sunny, the sun rising so as to shine (at an acute angle to be sure)
through the northern windows, and going round the other three sides in
the course of the day. There is a pretty staircase with the quaint old
twisted banisters,--which they call balusters now; but mine are
banisters. My library occupies two rooms opening into each other by

arches