James Russell Lowell

James Russell Lowell
James Russell Lowell circa 1855.
Literary movement	Romanticism

James Russell Lowell (February 22, 1819, Cambridge, Massachusetts – August 12, 1891, Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American Romantic poet, critic, editor, and diplomat. He is associated with the Fireside Poets.

Lowell graduated from Harvard College in 1838, despite his reputation as a troublemaker, and went on to earn a law degree from Harvard Law School. He published his first collection of poetry in 1841 and married Maria White in 1844. He and his wife soon become involved in abolitionism, with Lowell expressing his thoughts in his poetry and taking a job in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as editor of an abolitionist newspaper. He and Maria White had several children, though only one survived past childhood. After moving back to Cambridge, Lowell was one of the founders of a journal called The Pioneer, which lasted only three issues. He gained notoriety in 1848 with the publication of A Fable for Critics, a book length poem satirizing contemporary critics and poets. The same year, he published The Biglow Papers, which increased his fame. He would publish several other poetry collections and essay collections throughout his literary career.

Maria White died in 1853 and Lowell accepted a professorship of languages at Harvard in 1854. He traveled to Europe before officially assuming his role in 1856, which he held for twenty years. He married his second wife, Frances Dunlap, shortly thereafter in 1857. That year Lowell also became editor of The Atlantic Monthly. It was not until 20 years later that Lowell received his first political appointment: the ambassadorship to Spain and, later, to England. He spent his last years in Cambridge, in the same estate where he was born, where he also died in 1891.

Biography

Early life

The first of the Lowell family ancestors to come to the United States from Britain was Percival Lowle, who settled in Newbury, Massachusetts in 1639. James Russell Lowell was born February 22, 1819, the son of the Rev. Charles Russell Lowell, Sr. (1782–1861), a minister at a Unitarian church in Boston who had previously studied theology at Edinburgh, and Harriett Brackett Spence Lowell. Lowell was the youngest of six children; his older siblings were Charles, Rebecca, Mary, William, and Robert. Lowell's mother built in him an appreciation for literature at an early age, especially in poetry, ballads, and tales from her native Orkney. He attended school under Sophia Dana, who would later marry George Ripley, and, later, studied at a school run by a particularly harsh disciplinarian, where one of his classmates was Richard Henry Dana, Jr.

Beginning in 1834, at the age of 15, Lowell attended Harvard College, though he was not a good student and often got into trouble. His sophomore year alone, he was absent from required chapel attendance fourteen times and from classes fifty-six times. In his last year there, he wrote, "During Freshman year, I did nothing, during Sophomore year I did nothing, during Junior year I did nothing, and during Senior year I have thus far done nothing in the way of college studies". His senior year, he became one of the editors of Harvardiana literary magazine, to which he contributed prose and poetry that he admitted was of low quality. As he said later, "I was as great an ass as ever brayed & thought it singing". Lowell was elected the poet of the class of 1838 and, as was tradition, was asked to recite an original poem on Class Day, the day before Commencement, on July 17, 1838. Lowell, however, was suspended and not allowed to participate. Instead, his poem was printed and made available thanks to subscriptions paid by his classmates.

Not knowing what vocation to choose, he vacillated among business, the ministry, medicine and law. Having decided to practice law, he enrolled at the Harvard Law School in 1840 and was admitted to the bar two years later. While studying law, however, he contributed poems and prose articles to various magazines. During this time, Lowell was admittedly depressed and often had suicidal thoughts. He once confided to a friend that he held a cocked pistol to his forehead and considered killing himself at the age of 20.

Marriage and family

Lowell met Maria White through her brother William, a classmate at Harvard, in late 1839. The two became engaged in the autumn of 1840; her father Abijah White, a wealthy merchant from Watertown, insisted that their wedding be postponed until Lowell had gainful employment. They were finally married on December 26, 1844, shortly after the groom published Conversations on the Old Poets, a collection of previously-published essays. A friend described their relationship as "the very picture of a True Marriage"; Lowell himself believed the was made up "half of earth and more than of Heaven". Like Lowell, she wrote poetry and the next twelve years of Lowell's life were deeply affected by her influence. He said his first book of poetry, A Year's Life (1841), "owes all its beauty to her", though it only sold 300 copies. Her character and beliefs led her to become involved in the movements directed against intemperance and slavery. White was a member of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and convinced Lowell to become an abolitionist. Lowell had previously expressed antislavery sentiments but White urged him towards more active expression and involvement. His second volume of poems, Miscellaneous Poems, expressed these antislavery thoughts and its 1,500 copies sold well.

Maria was in poor health and, thinking her lungs could heal there, the couple moved to Philadelphia shortly after their marriage. In Philadelphia, he became a contributing editor for the Pennsylvania Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper. In the spring of 1845, the Lowells returned to Cambridge to make their home at Elmwood and had four children, though only one survived past infancy. Their first, Blanche, was born December 31, 1845, but lived only fifteen months; Rose, born in 1849, survived only a few months as well; their only son, Walter, was born in 1850 but died in 1852. Lowell was very affected by the loss of all but one of his children. His grief over the loss of his first daughter in particular was expressed in his poem "The First Snowfall" (1847).

Literary career

Elmwood, former home of James Russell Lowell, in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Lowell's earliest poems were published without pay in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1840. Lowell was inspired to new efforts towards self-support and joined with his friend Robert Carter in founding a literary journal, The Pioneer. The periodical was characterized by most of its content being new rather than previously-published elsewhere and by having very serious criticism which covered not only literature but also art and music. Lowell wrote that it would "furnish the intelligent and reflecting portion of the Reading Public with a rational substitute for the enormous quantity of thrice-diluted trash, in the shape of namby-pamby love tales and sketches, which is monthly poured out to them by many of our popular Magazines". William Wetmore Story noted the journal's higher taste, writing that, "it took some stand & appealled to a higher intellectual Standard than our puerile milk o watery namby-pamby Mags with which we are overrun". The first issue of the journal included the first appearance of "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe. Lowell, shortly after the first issue, was treated for an eye disease in New York and, in his absence, Carter did a poor job managing the journal. After three monthly numbers, beginning in January 1843, the magazine ceased publication, leaving Lowell $1,800 in debt. Poe mourned the journal's demise, calling it "a most severe blow to the cause—the cause of a Pure Taste".

Fame as a satirist

James Russell Lowell, Library of Congress image from Brady-Handy Collection

Lowell's mother was in poor mental health, and his wife was physically frail. These troubles combined with a lack of money conspired to make Lowell almost a recluse, but he continued to produce writings which show the interest he took in affairs. He contributed poems to the daily press, prompted by the slavery question; early in 1846, he was a correspondent of the London Daily News, and in the spring of 1848 he formed a connection with the National Anti-Slavery Standard of New York, agreeing to contribute weekly either a poem or a prose article. He was asked to contribute half as often to the Standard after only one year to make room for contributions from Edmund Quincy.

A Fable for Critics, one of his most popular works, was published in 1848. A satire, Lowell published it anonymously and took good-natured jabs at his contemporary poets and critics. It proved popular, and the first three thousand copies sold out quickly. Not all the subjects included were pleased, however. Edgar Allan Poe, who had been referred to as part genius and "two-fifths sheer fudge", reviewed the work in the Southern Literary Messenger and called it "'loose'—ill-conceived and feebly executed, as well in detail as in general... we confess some surprise at his putting forth so unpolished a performance". Lowell offered the profits from the book's success, which proved relatively small, to his New York friend Charles Frederick Briggs, despite his own financial needs.

In 1848, Lowell also published The Biglow Papers, later named by the Grolier Club as the most influential book of 1848. The first 1,500 copies sold out within a week and a second edition was soon issued, though Lowell made no profit having had to absorb the cost of stereotyping the book himself. The book presented three main characters, each representing different aspects of American life and using authentic American dialects in their dialogue.

The death of Lowell's mother, and the fragility of his wife's health, led Lowell, his wife, their daughter Mabel and their infant son Walter, to go to Europe in 1851. To pay for the trip, Lowell sold land around Elmwood, intending to sell of further acres of the estate over time to supplement his income, ultimately selling off 25 of the original 30 acres. The family went to Italy, where Walter died suddenly in Rome, and they received news of the illness of Lowell's father. They returned in November 1852, and Lowell published some recollections of his journey in the magazines, collecting the sketches later in a prose volume, Fireside Travels. He also took part in the editing of an American edition of the British Poets. His wife Maria, who had been suffering from poor health for many years, became very ill in the spring of 1853 before finally dying on October 27 of tuberculosis. Just before her burial, her coffin was opened so that her daughter Mabel could see her face while Lowell "leaned for a long while against a tree weeping", according to the Longfellows, who were in attendance. Despite his self-described "naturally joyous" nature, life for Lowell at Elmwood was further complicated by the invalidism of his father and the deteriorating mental disorder of his sister Rebecca.

Professorship and second marriage

At the invitation of his cousin, he delivered a course of lectures on English poets at the Lowell Institute in Boston in the winter of 1855. This first formal appearance as a critic and historian of literature at once gave him a new standing in the community. As a result of his lectures, he appointed as the Smith Professor of Modern Languages at Harvard College, after the retirement of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for a $1,200 annual salary. Lowell accepted the appointment, with the proviso that he should have a year of study abroad, leaving his daughter Mabel in the care of a governess named Frances Dunlap. He spent it mainly in Germany, visiting Italy, and increasing his acquaintance with the French, German, Italian and Spanish languages.

He returned to America in the summer of 1856 and began his college duties. Towards the end of his professorship, then-president of Harvard Charles Eliot Norton noted that Lowell seemed to have "no natural inclination" to teach; Lowell agreed, but retained his position for twenty years. As a teacher he proved a quickener of thought amongst students, rather than a close instructor. His power lay in the interpretation of literature rather than in linguistic study, and his influence over his pupils was exercised by his own fireside as well as in the relation, always friendly and familiar, which he held to them in the classroom.

Lowell had intended never to remarry after the death of his wife Maria White. However, in 1857, surprising his friends, he became engaged to Frances Dunlap, who many described as simple and unattractive. They married on September 16, 1857, in a ceremony performed by his brother. Lowell wrote, "My second marriage was the wisest act of my life, & as long as I am sure of it, I can afford to wait till my friends agree with me".

The war years and beyond

The Atlantic Monthly, 1857

In the autumn of 1857, The Atlantic Monthly was established, and Lowell was its first editor. He at once gave the magazine the stamp of high literature and of bold speech on public affairs. In January 1861, Lowell's father died of a heart attack, inspiring Lowell to move his family back to Elmwood. As he wrote to his friend Briggs, "I am back again to the place I love best. I am sitting in my old garret, at my old desk, smoking my old pipe... I being to feel more like my old self than I have these ten years". Shortly thereafter, in May, he left The Atlantic Monthly when James Thomas Fields took over as editor; the magazine had been purchased by Ticknor and Fields for $10,000 two years before. Lowell maintained an amicable relationship with the new owners and continued to submit his poetry and prose for the rest of his life. His prose, however, was more abundantly presented in the pages of The North American Review during the years 1862–1872. For the Review, Lowell served as a coeditor along with Charles Eliot Norton. This magazine especially gave him the opportunity of expression of political views during the eventful years of the American Civil War. It was in The Atlantic during the same period that he published a second series of The Biglow Papers. Both his collegiate and editorial duties stimulated his critical powers, and the publication in the two magazines, followed by republication in book form of a series of studies of great authors, gave him an important place as a critic.

He wrote on a remarkably broad array of writers, including Shakespeare, Dryden, Lessing, Rousseau, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, Carlyle, Thoreau, Swinburne, Chaucer, Emerson, Pope, and Gray. He wrote also a number of essays, such as My Garden Acquaintance, A Good Word for Winter, and On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners which were incursions into the field of nature and society. Although the great bulk of his writing was now in prose, he made after this date some of his most notable ventures in poetry.

In 1868, he issued the next collection in Under the Willows and Other Poems, but in 1865 he had delivered his Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, and the successive centennial historical anniversaries drew from him a series of stately odes. It was also during this period that he was made a non-resident professor at the recently-established Cornell University. On January 24, 1867, Lowell served as a pallbearer in the funeral of friend and publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis.

Political appointments

James Russell Lowell in his later years

Lowell resigned from his Harvard professorship in 1874, though he was convinced to continue teaching through 1877. It was in 1876 that Lowell first stepped into the field of politics. That year, he served as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, speaking on behalf of presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes. In May 1877, after the election, newly-elected president Hayes, an admirer of The Biglow Papers, sent William Dean Howells to Lowell with a handwritten note offering Lowell an ambassadorship to either Austria or Russia; Lowell declined. Instead, Lowell was offered and accepted the role of minister to the court of Spain at an annual salary of $12,000. Lowell sailed from Boston on July 14, 1877, and, though he expected he would be away for a year or two, he would not return to the United States until 1885, with the violinist Ole Bull renting Elmwood for a portion of that time. The Spanish media referred to him condescendingly as "José Bighlow". Even so, Lowell was well-prepared for his political role, having been trained in law, as well being able to read in multiple languages. He had trouble socializing while in Spain, however, and amused himself by sending humorous dispatches to his political bosses in the United States, many of which were later collected and published posthumously in 1899 as Impressions of Spain.

In January 1880, Lowell was informed he was appointed Minister to England, his nomination made without his knowledge as far back as June 1879. He was granted a salary of $17,500 with about $3,500 for expenses. While serving in this capacity, he addressed an alleged importation of diseased cattle and made recommendations that predated the Pure Food and Drug Act. As Queen Victoria commented, she had never seen an ambassador who "created so much interest and won so much regard as Mr. Lowell". Lowell held this role until the close of Chester A. Arthur's presidency in the spring of 1885, despite his wife's failing health. As a man of letters Lowell was already well known in England, and he was in much demand as an orator on public occasions, especially of a literary nature; but he also proved himself a sagacious publicist, and made himself a wise interpreter of each country to the other. During his time in England, he befriended the author Henry James, who referred to him as "conspicuously American".

Later years and death

He returned to the United States by June 1885, living with his daughter and her husband in Southboro, Massachusetts. He then spent time in Boston with his sister before returning to Elmwood in November 1889. Shortly after his retirement from public life he published Democracy and Other Addresses, all of which had been delivered in England. The title address was an epigrammatic confession of political faith as hopeful as it was wise and keen. The close of his stay in England was saddened by the death of his second wife in 1885. After his return to the United States he made several visits to England.

His public life had made him more of a figure in the world; he was decorated with the highest honors Harvard University could pay officially, and with highest honors from University of Oxford, Cambridge, University of St Andrews, University of Edinburgh and University of Bologna. He issued Political Essays and a collection of his poems Heartsease and Rue in 1888 and occupied himself with revising and rearranging his works, which were published in ten volumes in 1890.

In the last few months of his life, Lowell struggled with gout, sciatica in his left leg, and chronic nausea; by the summer of 1891, doctors believed that Lowell had cancer in his kidneys, liver, and lungs. His last few months, he was administered opium for the pain and was rarely fully conscious. He died on August 12, 1891, at Elmwood and, after services in the Harvard chapel, was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. After his death his literary executor, Norton, published a brief collection of his poems, and two volumes of added prose, besides editing his letters.

Writing style and literary theory

Early in his career, James Russell Lowell's writing was influenced by Swedenborgianism, causing Frances Longfellow (wife of the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) to mention that "he has been long in the habit of seeing spirits". He composed his poetry rapidly when inspired by an "inner light" but could not write to order. He subscribed to the common nineteenth-century belief that the poet was a prophet but went further, linking religion, nature, and poetry, as well as social reform. Evert Augustus Duyckinck and others welcomed Lowell as part of Young America, a New York-based movement. Though not officially affiliated with them, he shared some of their ideals, including the inherent insight a writer has into the moral nature of humanity and their obligation for literary action in addition to their aesthetic function. Unlike many of his contemporaries, including members of Young America, Lowell did not advocate for the creation of a new national literature. Instead, he called for a natural literature, regardless of country, caste, or race, and warned against provincialism which might "put farther off the hope of one great brotherhood". He agreed with his neighbor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that "whoever is most universal, is also most national". As Lowell said, "I believe that no poet in this age can write much that is good unless he gives himself up to [the radical] tendency... The proof of poetry is, in my mind, that it reduces to the essence of a single line the vague philosophy which is floating in all men's minds, and so render it portable and useful, and ready to the hand... At least, no poem ever makes me respect is author which does not in some way convey a truth of philosophy". For example, Lowell's character Hosea Biglow says in verse:

Ef you take a sword an' dror it,
An go stick a feller thru,
Guv'ment aint to answer to it,
God'll send the bill to you.

A scholar of linguistics, Lowell was one of the founders of the American Dialect Society. He used this interest in his writing, particularly in The Biglow Papers, presenting a heavily ungrammatical phonetic spelling of the Yankee dialect. In using this vernacular, Lowell intended to get closer to the common man's experience and was rebelling against more formal and, as he thought, unnatural representations of Americans in literature. As he wrote in his introduction to The Biglow Papers, "few American writers or speakers wield their native language with the directness, precision, and force that are common as the day in the mother country". Though intentionally humorous, this accurate presentation of the dialect was pioneering work in American literature.

Lowell is considered one of the Fireside Poets, a group of writers from New England in the 1840s who all had a substantial national following and their work was often read aloud by the family fireplace. Besides Lowell, the main figures from this group were Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, and Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Beliefs

Although he was an abolitionist, Lowell's opinions on African-Americans wavered. Even before his marriage to the abolitionist Maria White, Lowell wrote: "The abolitionists are the only ones with whom I sympathize of the present extent parties." After his marriage, Lowell at first did not share White's enthusiasm for the cause but was eventually pulled in. The couple often gave money to fugitive slaves, even when his own financial situation was not strong, especially if they asked to free a spouse or child.

Lowell was also involved in other reform movements. He urged for better conditions for factory workings, opposed to capital punishment, and supported the temperance movement. His friend Longfellow was especially concerned about Lowell's fanaticism for temperance, worrying that Lowell would ask him to destroy his wine cellar.

Criticism and legacy

Grave of James Russell Lowell at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 1849, Lowell said of himself, "I am the first poet who has endeavored to express the American Idea, and I shall be popular by and by". Poet Walt Whitman said: "Lowell was not a grower—he was a builder. He built poems: he didn't put in the seed, and water the seed, and send down his sun—letting the rest take care of itself: he measured his poems—kept them within formula." Fellow Fireside Poet John Greenleaf Whittier praised Lowell, writing two poems in his honor, and calling him "our new Theocritus" and "one of the strongest and manliest of our writers–a republican poet who dares to speak brave words of unpopular truth". British author Thomas Hughes referred to Lowell as one of the most important writers in the country: "Greece had her Aristophanes; Rome her Juvenal; Spain has had her Cervantes; France her Rabelais, her Molière, her Voltaire; Germany her Jean Paul, her Heine; England her Swift, her Thackeray; and America has her Lowell." Lowell's satires were an inspiration for writers like Mark Twain, William Dean Howells, H. L. Mencken, and Ring Lardner.

Poet Richard Armour, however, questioned Lowell's ability, writing : "As a Harvard graduate and an editor for the Atlantic Monthly, it must have been difficult for Lowell to write like an illiterate oaf, but he succeeded." Contemporary critic and editor Margaret Fuller wrote, "his verse is stereotyped; his thought sounds no depth, and posterity will not remember him". Ralph Waldo Emerson noted that, though Lowell had significant technical skill, his poetry "rather expresses his wish, his ambition, than the uncontrollable interior impulse which is the authentic mark of a new poem... and which is felt in the pervading tone, rather than in brilliant parts or lines". Even his friend Richard Henry Dana, Jr. questioned Lowell's abilities, calling him "very clever, entertaining & good humored... but he is rather a trifler, after all." Years later, the poet Amy Lowell, featured her ancestor James Russell Lowell in her poem A Critical Fable (1922), the title mocking A Fable for Critics. Here, he says that he does not believe that women will ever be equal to men in the arts and "the two sexes cannot be ranked counterparts". Modern literary critic Van Wyck Brooks wrote that Lowell's poetry was forgettable: "one read them five times over and still forgot them, as if this excellent verse had been written in water".

The Union Grammar School in San Francisco was renamed Lowell High School in 1894 in his honor. The James Russell Lowell Elementary School in Watertown, MA, Lowell Elementary School in Brainerd, MN, Lowell Elementary Math, Science and Technology School in Sioux Falls, SD, and Lowell Elementary School in Philadelphia, PA were named also in his honor.In Chicago James Russell Lowell Elementary School was also named in his honor.

Lowell's nephew, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr, became a Brigadier General in the American Civil War and fell at the battle of Cedar Creek.

Selected list of works

Poetry collections

• A Year's Life (1841)
• Miscellaneous Poems (1843)
• The Biglow Papers (1848)
• A Fable for Critics (1848)
• Poems (1848)
• The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848)
• Under the Willows (1868)
• The Cathedral (1870)
• Heartsease and Rue (1888)

Essay collections

• Conversations on the Old Poets (1844)
• Fireside Travels (1864)
• Among My Books (1870)
• My Study Window (1871)
• Among My Books (second collection, 1876)
• Democracy and Other Addresses (1886)
• Political Essays (1888)

Further reading

• Greenslet, Ferris. James Russell Lowell, His Life and Work. Boston: 1905.
• Hale, Edward Everett. James Russell Lowell and His Friends. Boston: 1899.
• Scudder, Horace Elisha. James Russell Lowell: A Biography. Volume 1, Volume 2. Published 1901.

Sources

• Duberman, Martin. James Russell Lowell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966.
• Heymann, C. David. American Aristocracy: The Lives and Times of James Russell, Amy, and Robert Lowell. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1980. ISBN 0396076084
• Nelson, Randy F. The Almanac of American Letters. Los Altos, California: William Kaufmann, Inc., 1981. ISBN 086576008X
• Sullivan, Wilson. New England Men of Letters. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972. ISBN 0027886808
• Wagenknecht, Edward. James Russell Lowell: Portrait of a Many-Sided Man. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.

External links

• Works by James Russell Lowell at Project Gutenberg
• Works by James Russell Lowell at Internet Archive
• Full View Books with PDF downloads at Google Books
• The Complete Writings of James Russell Lowell, edited by Charles Eliot Norton