Elmwood, the day before
you wrote
your last letter; viz.,
Sep. 28, 1861.
My dear Sibyl, — Will you kindly tell me what has
happened next week, so that I may be saved from this daily debauch of
newspapers? How many “heroic Mulligans” who, “meurent et ne se rendent pas"
to the reporters, with the privilege of living and surrendering to the enemy?
How many “terrific conflicts” near Cheat Mountain (ominous name), with one
wounded on our side, and enemy's loss supposed to be heavy? How many times we
are to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect? How many times the Potomac is
to be “hermetically sealed”? How often Mr. Seward is to put newspaper
correspondents on the level of Secretaries of State? etc., etc. I ask all these
questions because your so-welcome letter, which I received on Wednesday the
25th, was dated to-morrow the 29th. There is something very impressive to the
imagination in a letter from the future, and to be even a day in advance of the
age is a good deal — how much more five or six! How does it seem to come back?
Is not everything weary and stale? Or do you live all the time in a balloon,
thus seeing over the lines of Time, the old enemy of us all? Pray tell me how
much foolisher I shall be this day twelve-month. Well, at any rate, you can't
see far enough to find the day when your friendship shall not be one of my
dearest possessions. . . .
Has it begun to be cold with you? I had a little Italian bluster
of brushwood fire yesterday morning, but the times are too hard with me to
allow of such an extravagance except on the brink of gelation. The horror of my
tax-bill has so infected my imagination that I see myself and all my friends
begging entrance to the P.H. (From delicacy I use initials.) I fancy all of you
gathering fuel on the Newport beaches. I hope you will have lots of
wrecks—Southern privateers, of course. Don't ever overload yourself. I can't
bear to think of your looking like the poor women I met in the Pineta at
Ravenna just at dusk, having the air of moving druidical altars or sudden
toadstools.
Our trees are beginning to turn — the maples are all ablaze,
and even in our ashes live their wonted fires. The Virginia creeper that
I planted against the old horse-chestnut stump trickles down in blood as if its
support were one of Dante's living wood. The haze has begun, and the lovely
mornings when one blesses the sun. I confess our summer weather too often puts
one in mind of Smithfield and the Book of Martyrs.
I have had an adventure. I have dined with a prince. After
changing my mind twenty times, I at last sat down desperately and “had the
honour to accept.” And I was glad of it — for H.I.H.’s resemblance to his uncle
is something wonderful. I had always supposed the portraits of the elder Nap
imperialized, but Jerome N. looks as if he had sat for that picture where the
emperor lies reading on a sofa — you remember it. A trifle weaker about the
mouth, suggesting loss of teeth; but it is not so, for his teeth are exquisite.
He looks as you would fancy his uncle if he were Empereur de Ste. Hélène,
roi d’Yvetôt. I sat next to Colonel Ragon, who led the forlorn hope at the
taking of the Malakoff and was at the siege of Rome. He was a very pleasant
fellow. (I don't feel quite sure of my English yet — J'ai tant parlé Français
que je trouve beaucoup de difficulté à m'y déshabituer.) Pendant — I mean
during — the dinner Ooendel Homes récitait des vers vraiment jolis. Il arrivait
déjà au bout, quand M. Ragon, se tournant vers moi d'un air mêlé d'intelligence
et d'interrogation, et à la même fois d'un Colomb qui fait la découverte d'un
monde tout nouveau, s'écria, “C'est en vers, Monsieur, n'est ce pas?”
St'anegdot charmang j'ai rahcontay ah Ooendell daypwee, avec days eclah de
reer. (See Bolmar.) Mr. Everett made a speech où il y avait un soupçon de
longueur. The prince replied most gracefully, as one
"Who saying
nothing yet saith all."
He speaks French exquisitely — foi de professeur. Ho parlato
anche Italiano col Colonello, chi è stato sei anni in Italia, and I believe I
should have tried Hebrew with the secretary of legation, who looked like a Jew,
if I had had the chance. After dinner the prince was brought up and presented
to me! Please remember that when we
meet. The political part of our conversation of course I am not at liberty to
repeat (! !), but he asked me whether I myself occupied of any work literary at
present? to which I answered, no. Then he spoke of the factories at Lowell and
Lawrence, and said how much the intelligence of the operatives had interested
him, etc., etc. He said that Boston seemed to have much more movement
intellectual than the rest of the country (to which I replied, nous le
croyons, au moins); astonished himself at the freedom of opinion here, etc., at
the absence of Puritanism and the like. I thought him very intelligent and
thanked him for his bo deescoor o saynah Frongsay shure lays ahfair deetahlee.
(See Bolmar again, which I took in my pocket.) . . .
Ever yours,
J. R. L.
SOURCE: Charles Eliot Norton, Editor, Letters of James Russell
Lowell, Volume 1, p. 352-5
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