Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor Part 11

This was not the sort of work, however, that the college authorities expected of him. He was lazy and got behind his cla.s.ses, so that near the end of his course he was rusticated, or suspended from college for some weeks. He had been chosen cla.s.s poet, but on account of his suspension he could not read his poem, though it was printed.

He was sent to Concord during this interval to carry on his studies under the minister of the town. Here he found it pretty dull, though Emerson and Th.o.r.eau were there. But he did not then care for either one of them. In one of his letters he said, "I feel like a fool. I must go down and see Emerson and if he doesn't make me feel more like one, it won't be for want of sympathy. He is a good-natured man in spite of his doctrines."

Of Th.o.r.eau he said, "I met (him) last night, and it is exquisitely amusing to see how he imitates Emerson's tone and manner. With my eyes shut I shouldn't know them apart."

In the autumn he came back to Cambridge and took his degree of Bachelor of Arts with his cla.s.s.

CHAPTER IV

HOW LOWELL STUDIED LAW

While at Concord, Lowell wrote to his friend Loring, as though explaining himself.

"Everybody almost is calling me 'indolent.' 'Blind dependent on my own powers' and 'on fate.' Confound everybody! since everybody confounds me. Everybody seems to see but one side of my character, and that the worst. As for my dependence on my own powers, 'tis all fudge. As for fate, I believe that in every man's breast are the stars of his fortune, which, if he choose, he may rule as easily as does the child the mimic constellations in the orrery he plays with. I acknowledge, too, that I have been something of a dreamer, and have sacrificed, perchance, too a.s.siduously on that altar to the 'unknown G.o.d,' which the Divinity has builded not with hands in the bosom of every decent man, sometimes blazing out clear with flame, like Abel's sacrifice, heaven-seeking; sometimes smothered with greenwood and earthward, like that of Cain. Lazy quota! I haven't dug, 'tis true, but I have done as well, and 'since my free soul was mistress of her choice, and could of books distinguish her election,' I have chosen what reading I pleased and what friends I pleased, sometimes scholars and sometimes not."

Once out of college he had to take up some profession. Had poetry been a profession, he would have taken that; but such a choice at that time would have been considered sheer folly. He did not consider that he had any "call" to be a minister, still less a doctor. As there was nothing else left, he began the study of law. It is truly amusing to see how he manages to "wriggle along" until he takes his degree of LL.B. and is admitted to the bar.

First, he announces that he is "reading Blackstone with as good a grace and as few wry faces as he may." Only a few days later he declares, "A very great change has come o'er the spirit of my dreams.

I have renounced the law." He is going to be a business man, and sets about looking for a place, in a store. He is going to give up all thoughts of literary pursuits and devote himself to money-making. He also says, "I have been thinking seriously of the ministry, but then--I have also thought of medicine, but then--still worse!"

A few days pa.s.s by. He goes into Boston and hears Webster speak in a case before the United States Court. "I had not been there an hour before I determined to continue in my profession and study as well as I could."

Still, it was hard work to keep at his law studies. He is soon writing to his friend George Loring, "I sometimes think that I have it in me, and shall one day do somewhat; meantime I am schooling myself and shaping my theory of poesy."

Six weeks later: "I have written a great deal of _pottery_ lately. I have quitted the law forever." Then he inquires if he can make any money by lecturing at Andover. He already has an engagement to lecture at Concord, where he has hopes to "astonish them a little."

A fortnight later we find him in a "miserable state. The more I think of business the more really unhappy do I feel, and think more and more of studying law." What he really wants to do all the time is to write poetry. "I don't know how it is," he says, "but sometimes I actually _need_ to write somewhat in verse." Sunday is his work day in the "pottery business."

As for the law, it is settled at last. He writes to his friend, "Rejoice with me, for to-morrow I shall be free. Without saying a word to any one, I shall quietly proceed to Dane Law College to recitation.

Now shall I be happy again as far as that is concerned."

A fortnight later he declares, "I begin to like the law, and therefore it is quite interesting. I am determined that I _will_ like it and therefore I _do_."

In the summer of 1840 he completed his studies and was admitted to the bar. A little later he opened an office in Boston. Misfortune had overtaken his father, and his personal property had been nearly swept away. It was now necessary for the young man to earn his own living.

His friends were therefore glad that he had his profession to depend on.

CHAPTER V

LOVE AND LETTERS

Lowell always had a presentiment that he should never practice law. He was always dreaming of becoming independent in some other way. "Above all things," he declares, "should I love to sit down and do something literary for the rest of my natural life."

He did not then think of marrying, and it does not require much to support a single man. Though he opened a law office in Boston, it does not appear that he did any business. He wrote a story ent.i.tled "My First Client," but one of his biographers unkindly suggests that this may have been purely imaginary.

All through his letters we see his ambitious yearning. "George," says he in one place, "before I die your heart shall be gladdened by seeing your wayward, vain, and too often selfish friend do something that shall make his name honored. As Sheridan once said, 'It's _in_ me, and' (we'll skip the oath) 'it shall come _out_!'"

His bachelor dreams were soon dissipated, however. He went to visit a friend of his, W.A. White, and there met the young man's sister Maria.

He thought her a very pleasant and pleasing young lady, and he discovered that she knew a great deal of poetry. She could repeat more verse than any other one of his acquaintances, though he laments that she was more familiar with modern poets than with the "pure wellsprings of English poesy."

The friends.h.i.+p grew apace. In the same fall that he began the pretended practice of law he became engaged to her, and she caused a fresh and voluminous outpouring of verse. His productions were printed in various periodicals, such as the _Knickerbocker Magazine_, to which Longfellow had contributed, and the _Southern Literary Messenger_, which Poe once edited.

Miss White was a most charming and interesting young lady. She was herself a poet, and had a delicate intellectual sympathy that enabled her to enter into her lover's ambitions, and a.s.sist him even in the minutest details of his work.

It is fair to suppose that Lowell's friends brought every possible pressure to bear upon him to make him give up poetry and _dig_ at the law. His father's financial losses had left him without an inherited income; he was engaged to a beautiful girl and anxious to be married; in some way he must earn his living, and if possible do more. Such was not the effect, however. He devoted himself to poetry with an almost feverish activity. He has made up his mind that he will do something great; for only so can he hope possibly to make literature a paying profession.

It was Maria who inspired most of his verse at this time. One of his best poems even to this day was written directly for her. It is called "Irene'." It may be taken as the best possible description of his lady herself:

Hers is a spirit deep, and crystal-clear; Calm beneath her earnest face it lies, Free without boldness, meek without a fear, Quicker to look than speak its sympathies; Far down into her large and patient eyes I gaze, deep-drinking of the infinite, As, in the mid-watch of a clear, still night, I look into the fathomless blue skies.

As the struggle between money and law on the one side and literature on the other still went on, he expressed his feelings on the subject to his friend Loring in the following stanza, which puts the whole argument into a nutsh.e.l.l:

They tell me I must study law.

They say that I have dreamed and dreamed too long, That I must rouse and seek for fame and gold; That I must scorn this idle gift of song,

And mingle with the vain and proud and cold.

Is, then, this petty strife The end and aim of life, All that is worth the living for below?

_O G.o.d! then call me hence, for I would gladly go_!

Thus he had finally come to the conclusion that he would rather die than give up literature.

"Irene" won the good opinion of many. The young poet, though but twenty-one, felt that he was beginning to be a lion. His next definite step was to publish a volume of verses. Says he, "I shall print my volume. Maria wishes me to do it, and that is enough."

So his first volume, "A Year's Life," was published, with the motto in German, "I have lived and loved."

The young poet's friends were very much opposed to this publication, for the reason that a rising young lawyer is not helped on in his profession at all by being known as a poet. Who would employ a _poet_ to defend his business in a court room? No one! A hard-headed business man is wanted. Walter Scott was a lawyer of much such a temperament as Lowell's, and when he put forth a similar volume he suffered as it was certain that Lowell would suffer. But it is probable that Lowell was now fully determined to give up law altogether.

"I know," he declares pa.s.sionately, "that G.o.d has given me powers such as are not given to all, and I will not 'hide my talent in mean clay.'

I do not care what others may think of me or of my book, because if I am worth anything I shall one day show it. I do not fear criticism as much as I love truth. Nay, I do not fear it at all. In short, I am happy. Maria fills my ideal and I satisfy her. And I mean to live as one beloved by such a woman should live. She is every way n.o.ble.

People have called 'Irene' a beautiful piece of poetry. And so it is.

It owes all its beauty to her."

It is very plain that she was on the side of the poet, not of the worldly-minded persons who advocated the law, business, money-making.

She did not dread the prospect of being a poor man's wife. To be the wife of a poet, a man of courage and ambition and n.o.bleness of heart, was far more to her. The turning point in Lowell's life was past; and he had been led to that turning point by the little woman who was soon to become his wife.

CHAPTER VI

THE UNCERTAIN SEAS OF LITERATURE