Letters of Charles Eliot Norton to James Russell Lowell

EDITED BY SARA NORTON AND M. A. DE WOLFE HOWE

‘ IF you see to the inscription over my grave,’ Norton once wrote to Lowell, ‘you need only say, “He had good friends, whom he loved.’” At an earlier day Lowell had written to Norton: ‘It is almost my happiest thought that with all the drawbacks of temperament. (of which no one is more conscious than myself) I have never lost a friend. For I would rather be loved than anything else in this world.'

The touches of sentiment through the long and abundant correspondence between Lowell and Norton are highly characteristic of the two men, and reveal an affectionate relation maintained without an interruption through a close friendship of more than forty years. Inheriting many things in common from their New England forbears of that straitest sect from which the frank expression of warm feeling is not usually expected, they found themselves similarly possessed of this somewhat exotic gift, endearing them to many friends — and to each other.

But there were many other bonds of intimate association — a Cambridge boyhood with the same background of learning and simple dignity that dwelt in such places as Elmwood and Shady Hill; a love of letters naturally born of such surroundings; an enthusiasm for the forward movements in political, social, and intellectual life; a joint participation in editorial labors—first on the new Atlantic, with Lowell as editor and Norton as one of the earliest contributors, then as fellow editors of the older North American Review. In later years a parallel experience as professors at Harvard, an enduring sympathy of aim, bound them together when Lowell went out into the larger world as a public servant, and Norton remained at Cambridge, a confidant and counsellor in all that concerned the truest service of their country and the finer civilization which both the friends held dearly at heart.

Norton, the younger of the two, led, moreover, so essentially domestic a life from beginning to end that his friends were almost inevitably the friends of his family; and in no instance was this more strikingly exemplified than in the friendship with Lowell, the friend of three generations at Shady Hill. It is, therefore, natural that in any record of Norton’s life his letters to Lowell should bear an uncommon significance. The passages drawn here from letters covering a wide range of years illustrate many points in their community of interests.

The letters begin in the fifties, when the Nortons were spending the summer in a house they had recently built at Newport, where Lowell often visited them. In the first of the letters that have been preserved, there is a detailed account of an expedition to Narragansett by Norton and three friends, and of the hospitality of that quaint character ‘ Joe ’ Hazard, at his strange tower near the Pier. The letter, too long for reproduction, has a pleasant flavor of Rhode Island in its pages. To the summers spent, in Newport the Nortons owed their close friendship with a branch of the Middleton family of South Carolina. The following letter was written while Mr. Norton was paying a visit, with one of his sisters, to these friends on their island plantation of Edisto, near Charleston.

MIDWAY, EDISTO ISLAND
Good Friday Night, April 6, 1855.
MY DEAR LOWELL: —It is almost midnight, but I do not feel like going to bed, on the contrary I feel like writing to you. . . . Here it. is perfect summer. I am writing by an open door that leads onto a piazza, below which is a garden, while beyond the garden at the foot of a steep bank flows a beautiful little river from whose opposite side stretches a wide spread of marshes, bordered far off by tall pine woods whose outline is here and there broken by cultivated fields. The air is close and damp with low-lying clouds, and in the south now and then comes a bright gleam of lightning. There is scarcely a sound but the whistling of the frogs, — and as I write these words I hear the pattering of a soft rain.
This place is Mr. Middleton’s cotton plantation, and the island on which it is produces the finest cotton in the world, the long, silky Sea Island cotton which is used for only the most delicate stuffs. We are some thirty miles south of Charleston, and to the softness of the Southern climate is added the luxury of sea air. One might fancy it the genuine, original Lotus island, for it woos one to voluptuous ease and indolence, and makes day-dreaming the natural condition of life.
Think of being woke up in the morning as I was yesterday and shall be to-morrow by the singing of mockingbirds on a tree that grows near my window. Such a flood of song as they pour out would drown the music of all the nightingales that ever sang on the Brenta. Their song is the true essence of all sweet summer sounds, so rich in melody, so various, so soft and delicate, and then so loud and joyful that nothing more exquisite was ever heard even in the enchanted gardens of romance.
We are seeing plantation life to great advantage, — for this has the reputation of being one of the best managed plantations, and Mr. Middleton is a man of such kindness and liberality of heart that few better masters of slaves are to be found. But slavery in its mildest form is yet very sad, and it is on such a plantation, where the slaves are all contented, and well cared for so far as their physical condition is concerned, where they are treated with the consideration due to human beings, so far as their relations to each other and to their master extend, that one feels most bitterly the inherent evils of the system, and recognizes most, distinctly the perplexities that it involves, and the responsibilities that it enforces. I have had much talk with all sorts of persons since being here, in regard to this subject. I have used the greatest freedom in expressing my own opinions, and it has been very pleasant to find that men were willing to discuss the subject fully and freely, and, however you might differ from them, without impatience or ill-feeling. It seems generally to be taken for granted that a great difference of opinion must exist, and that such difference is no ground for vexation. I confess that the result of these talks has been only to deepen the conviction that one of the worst effects of slavery is to deaden the moral feelings and to obscure the intellects of the masters. There are those, indeed, who escape this influence, but they are few.
It is a very strange thing to hear men of character and cultivation . . . expressing their belief in open fallacies and monstrous principles, and convincing themselves with utmost honesty of feeling that they really and truly do believe in these things. It seems to me sometimes as if only the women here read the New Testament, and as if the men regarded Christianity rather as a gentlemanly accomplishment than as anything more serious, — as if they felt confident that they had secured seats in the coupé of the diligence that runs to the next world, and had their passports properly viséd for St. Peter. It is very different with the women, — there are many who are as clear-sighted in regard to the wrong, and as devoted to the fulfillment of their duty in respect to it, as truly Christian women should be; — but they are bewildered often, and their efforts are limited by weakness, inexperience and opposition. Their eyes fill with tears when you talk with them about it, while the men often look at you with a certain scornful pity for having yielded to the prevailing sentimentality of the day so far as to believe slavery anything but a blessing.
For my part I see no remedy but the gradual and slow progress of the true spirit of Christianity, bringing together black and white, quickening common sympathies, and by degrees elevating both classes, the one from the ignorance and brutality in which it is now sunk, the other from the indifference and the blindness of mind in which it rests content. Rut this is a work of ages.
I am losing all confidence (if I ever had any) in the idea that any immediate, compulsory measures would improve the condition of either masters or slaves. — I ought to have written you a different letter from this, and told you more of what we are seeing and enjoying. We are really having a delightful time. . . .
Ever gratefully and affectionately yours,
C. E. N.

In July of 1855 Lowell went to Europe, and by the time the next letter was written the Nortons were planning to follow him. This letter tells the Newport news — of the Longfellows, Appleton, the Storys, Curtis, and Stillman. Its pages of a wider interest deal with two books which were new in 1855, and have not yet passed from remembrance.

[NEWPORT] September 23, 1855.
. . . The summer is not the time for new pictures or new books, and there have been few of either in which you would have been much interested. Longfellow’s new poem, the ‘Song of Hiawatha,’ will very soon appear. He gave me half of it to read a month or two ago. It is very different from anything that he has done before, and being wholly founded on our Indian legends is too remote from the interests of present life, and too distinct in the tone of sentiment from that of our day, to give him full scope for the display of his finest and most peculiar poetic characteristics. It has a little the air of having been crammed for, and written not from the fullness of the heart but the fullness of the head. Still there is much in it that is very charming, — it is fresh, simple, free from conceits and prettinesses, and the octosyllabic blank verse in which it is written is exquisitely modulated, and managed with all the melodious skill with which Longfellow always controls the metres that he uses.
Hiawatha is the hero of the story, which is in part purely mythical in its character, in part simply descriptive of Indian life in the forest. He is one of the heroes, half human, half divine, of the ancient times, and the story of his deeds is told by the poet to the later generations. He is the fighter with the winds, the conqueror of the maize, the redresser of wrongs and the deliverer of his people. But perhaps my criticism on the poem is wrong. It is at any rate imperfect, as I have seen, as I said, only the first half, and Longfellow tells me that the part I have not seen is better than that which I have. . . .
A new book called Leaves of Grass has just come out which is worth knowing about. It is a quarto volume of unmetrical poetry, and its author, according to his own account, is ‘Walt Whitman, one of the roughs, a kosmos,’ It is a book which has excited Emerson’s enthusiasm. He has written a letter to this ‘one of the roughs,’ which I have seen, expressing the warmest admiration and encouragement. It is no wonder that he likes it, for Walt Whitman has read the Dial and Nature, and combines the characteristics of a Concord philosopher with those of a New York fireman. There is little original thought but much original expression in it. There arc some passages of most vigorous and vivid writing, some superbly graphic description, great stretches of imagination, — and then passages of intolerable coarseness, — not gross and licentious, but simply disgustingly coarse. The book is such, indeed, that one cannot leave it about for chance readers, and would be sorry to know that any woman had looked into it past the title-page. I have got a copy for you, for there are things in it that you will admire, and it is worth having merely as a literary curiosity, for the external appearance of it, the covers, the portrait, the print, are as odd as the inside. . . .
Two years later Lowell had returned to America, and Norton was still in Europe. The Atlantic Monthly was about to begin its existence. The letter that follows reveals Norton’s early identification with the magazine and something of the service he could render to its first editor.

PARIS, Hotel de l’Empire, June 20, 1857.
MY DEAR LOWELL: —. . . I am glad to hear of the plan for the new magazine. Of course it will succeed with you as its editor, and with such liberal arrangements for its beginning. But such things are never permanent in our country. They burn brightly for a little while, and then burn out, — and some other light takes their place. It would be a great thing for us if any undertaking of this kind could live long enough to get affections and associations connected with it, whose steady glow should take the place of, and more than supply, the shine of novelty, and the dazzle of a first go-off. I wish we had a Sylvanus Urban a hundred and fifty years old. I wish, indeed, we had anything so old in America; would give a thousand of our new lamps for the one old, battered, but true magical light. Like Aladdin’s maid (was it his maid?) we do not know the value of the old. — I will do all I can for you, and will write the article you want about the Catacombs, but not till I come home, which will be, I hope, in less than two months. How glad I shall be to be at home, and to see you once more!
I was just writing to Mrs. Gaskell when your letter came, and I told her of the plan for the magazine, and of your suggestion that she should write for it. You said nothing about terms, except that contributors would be paid well; so I took the responsibility of telling her that if she would write a story in two or three numbers she should receive for it at least half as much again as she is paid for what she writes for the Household Words, and should have the same rights of reprinting, etc. If this was going too far I am sorry, — but I shall be glad to be personally responsible to her for it, — for she is not rich and depends much on what she is able to earn by writing. I dare say I shall hear from her about it in a day or two, — if not I shall see her at Manchester before long, and will bring you or send you word about it.
Will you not write to Clough and ask him for contributions? He might like to write. I will try to get some new poetry from him. He ought not to give up poetry altogether, — though hard work and care may make it difficult; while a good and happy wife has cleared away from his heart many of the perplexities which found their expressions in verse.
When did I last write to you ? Was it from Rome, — when the spring had filled the Campagna with larks and anemones, or was it later from Venice when summer was making the city glorious with sunshine? It was hard parting from Rome, and would have been much harder if I had not had the happiness of travelling with Mrs. Gaskell. You have read the life of Miss Brontë, which is almost as much an exhibition of Mrs. Gaskell’s character as of Miss Brontë’s, — and you know what a lovely and admirable character she has. Seeing her as intimately as one sees a companion on a journey, I learned every day to feel towards her a deeper affection and respect. She is like the best things in her books; full of generous and tender sympathies, of thoughtful kindness, of pleasant humor, of quick appreciation, of utmost simplicity and truthfulness, and uniting with peculiar delicacy and retirement, a strength of principle and purpose and straightforwardness of action, such as few women possess. I know no biography that has so deep and touching an interest as this of Miss Brontë, — none other written so tenderly, sympathetically and faithfully. I have seen no notice of it as yet that seems to me to do it the least justice,— the reviews are cold and unappreciative. But it is a book that will be read with tears, and make those who read it better and stronger, and readier to bear the trials of life, — a hundred years hence, as it is read now.¹ . . .

Through the course of the Civil War, Lowell and Norton were fellow residents of Cambridge, with constant opportunities for personal intercourse. From the letters written while one or the other was away from home, the following may well be taken for its record of the impression made by New York more than fifty years ago, and for its evidence of the good counsel that Norton was giving with reference to Lowell’s most important contribution to the political thought of the period — in the writing of the second series of Biglow Papers. In the February (1862) number of the Atlantic ‘Mason and Slidell: A Yankee Idyll’ was printed. Apparently upon Norton’s advice, Birdofredum Sawin’s ‘ Letter to Mr. Hosea Biglow ’ appeared in the March number.

The Albemarle, NEW YORK.
December 19, 1861.
MY DEAR JAMES: — . . . This is a wonderful city. It has greatly changed since you and I were here eighteen years ago. There is a special fitness in the first syllable of its name, for it is essentially New, and seems likely always to remain so. It is all of the New world, and what Villemain says of Joinville is true in another sense of the impression that a stranger receives from New York, — On dirait que les objets sont nés dans le monde le jour où il les a vus. The only old things here are yesterday’s newspapers. People do not seem to live here, — they pass the nights and spend the days in the city, — that is all. The persons whom I meet in the street do not have, to my eyes, the air of belonging here, or of being at home. They look restless, and even the children have tired faces as if they had been seeing sights too long.
The New Yorkers have got Aladdin’s lamp, and build palaces in a night. The city is gay, entertaining, full of costly things, — but its lavish spending does not result in magnificence, it is showy rather than fine, and its houses and churches and shops and carriages are expensive rather than beautiful. Architecture is not practised as a fine art, it is known here only as a name for the building trade.
Boston is farther off than it used to be from New York. We are provincials, with a very little city of our own. This is really metropolitan, and has great advantages. A few years hence and Boston will be a place of the past, with a good history no doubt, but New York will be alive. It seems to be getting what Paris has so much of, — a confidence in the immortality of the present moment. It does not care for past or future.
My windows look out on the junction of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, and there is not a livelier place in the world.
The news from England, I trust, is not so bad as it seems. The manner in which the country has received it is most satisfactory, — and there is apparently no reason to fear war as the result of any popular excitement here, or of any want of temper or discretion on the part of the Administration. It is a fortunate thing for us that Seward has regained so much of the public confidence. He will feel himself strong enough not to be passionate or violent. — I cannot believe that the English ministry mean war, — if they do they will get it and its consequences.
How good the new number of the Alantic is! I have read and reread your letters in it, always with a fuller sense of the overflowing humor, wit and cleverness of them. You are as young, my boy, as you were in the old time. It seems to me indeed (you will take what I say for what it is worth, and of this you are a better judge than I am), that there is some risk from the very abundance of your power lest the popularity and effect of this new series of the Biglow Papers should not be as great as it ought to be. This letter of B. Sawin’s is too full, and contains too much. I know that the necessity of the case forced you into details in order to place your characters on the stage in an intelligible way. But I am afraid that the public will be impatient of detail, and will complain of divided interest. It was this that prevented common readers from appreciating the delightful fun and humor of ‘Our Own.’ The truth is that for popularity — that is for wide, genuine, national popularity — there is need of unity of effect. One blow must be struck, not ten. Moreover our people are more in earnest now than they ever have been before, they are not in the vein for being amused by the most humorous touches of satire unless there be a simple, perfectly direct moral underneath. The conclusion to which I want to come is this, — that you must interrupt the series of Birdofreedom’s letters, by some shorter pieces of Hosea’s own, the shorter the better if so be that they give expression and form to any one of the popular emotions or sentiments of the moment; — and more than this that you should make them as lyrical and as strong as possible, binding the verses together with a taking refrain. The pieces in the old Biglow Papers that have become immortal are the lyrics; — the John P. Robinson; the Gen. Cass says some one’s an ass; the Apostles rigged out in their swallow-tail coats, and so on. — Am I right? I believe so. And if I am, I am sure that you can do what I think should be done. You have a fine chance (me judice) at this moment to put the popular feeling toward England into verse which shall ring from one end of the country to the other. Do let Hosea do it, and send it with one of his brief old-fashioned letters to the publishers for the next number, — and keep back Birdofreedom till March. If you hit the nail of the minute such a ringing blow on the head as you can hit it, all the people will cheer and laugh, and throw up their hats in your honor. I am so proud of you, and love you so well that I not only want you to do the best for the country but am sure that you can do it. — And love gives me the precious right to write thus freely to you.
Thank you very much for the little note you sent me the morning I came away. Give my love to Fanny and to Mabel. Your loving
CHARLES E. N.

Mr. Norton was a constant observer of the birthdays of his family and friends. Nearly always, when the 22nd of February came round, there was a birthday message to Lowell. The coincidence of the date with that of Washington’s birthday could not always be ignored. Here it is playfully suggested — and there is a pleasant glimpse of Mr. Howells during his editorship of the Atlantic.

SHADY HILL, February 23, 1874.
MY DEAREST JAMES: — As we still keep Sunday as a fast and not a feast, we did not celebrate your birthday yesterday, except in our hearts, but today all the bells have been ringing, and the guns firing, and the flags streaming, in honor of the happy anniversary. The children have all had holiday, the shops have been shut as well as the schools, even the post-office has been closed since early morning, and the ‘express’ has not been on the road. Cambridge has been glad for her poet. Your statue, which stands where the old elm used to stand, in the square, has worn a laurel crown all day, — and to-night, as I passed by, there was a crowd around it listening to a beautiful youth, who with a sweet full voice, was reciting to them some of those poems of yours which they had all known by heart so long. There was a pretty procession of children this morning strewing the path to Elmwood with branches of the fir, and carrying baskets of spring flowers to adorn the house. It is a happy day, and a sweet and tender sentiment fills every heart. — All that I have written, if not literally true of Cambridge, is spiritually true of Shady Hill and its inmates. We have been glad and grateful for you . . .
I am beginning to work in preparation for my new department. Fortunately I am impressed with a sense of my ignorance, and I shrink from making an exposure of it; so that I am driven to work hard. The gulf to be filled is very deep, and too wide to be spanned by any suspension bridge.
I thought Howells would be here to-night to read me part of the new novel he has just finished. ... It is a pleasure to see him now-a-days, he looks so much at ease, and his old sweet humor becomes ever more genial and comprehensive. He is in just such relations to the public that he makes the very editor needed for the Atlantic ; — there is not much in the magazine that is likely to be read twice save by its writers, and this is what the great public likes. — There must be a revival of letters in America, if literature as an art is not to become extinct. You should hear Godkin express himself in private on this topic. He speaks with more than his usual vigour.
I am going in two or three days to New York for a short visit to the Godkins. I do it reluctantly, for I am more than ever inclined to stay quietly at home,— but Godkin has not been well, and is somewhat depressed, and I am glad to go to do what I can for him. I am anxious that he should get a long vacation this coming summer. . . .

The ensuing group of letters was written within a year of Norton’s return from a five-years’ sojourn in Europe, whence Lowell, who had followed him there, was on the point of returning. The news of Agassiz’s death had touched Lowell to noble utterance. Norton’s part in the first disposition of the ‘Elegy,’and his expressions following the death of Sumner give the letters an interest beyond that of mere memorials of friendship. The long service of Professor Norton as a teacher at Harvard was just beginning. In 1872 his wife had died in Dresden.

SHADY HILL, March 13, 1874.
MY DEAREST JAMES: — Yesterday your ‘Elegy’ came safe. Such poetry being meant to live would insure the safety of any ship which bore it across the ocean. It is a noble poem, manly and forthright as you wished it to be; full of fine characterization, of genuine feeling, of literal truth sublimated by the heats of imagination. I like no part of it better than the passage about Clough. You do scant, justice in comparison to Emerson. — Emerson was here this morning and I read the poem to him, to his great interest and delight; — he had to hurry away at the end, to go to a recitation (he was in Cambridge as one of an examining committee) and had only time to say, — ‘How large and fine a work!’ and bid me give you all affectionate regards from him. He seemed in excellent health and heart, — far better than a year ago. He had been much moved by Sumner’s death; but this death touches Longfellow more nearly than any one else. I saw him this afternoon. He was serene as usual, but he looked as if he had had a heavy blow.
Poor Sumner! What a sad life his seems to one who looks beneath the shows of things! He illustrates the difference between bigness and greatness. He will hardly look more heroic to future generations than he does to us, but his figure will fill a large place in our history. I have a very kindly feeling to his memory; I should like to have more respect for it.
We shall try to get Hoar for his successor, but our Massachusetts politics are so ‘mixed’ just now that I am afraid some much inferior man will get the place. Butler’s recent course has at length really aroused the spirit of honest men, and the forces are drawing off on either side for a battle that shall decide the fate of the Republican party. If we win it, the party is safe; if Butler wins it, we will break up the party. The better portion of the party will follow the lead of Massachusetts. I have been in New York, staying for a few days with Godkin, and, after much talk with him and Olmsted, came home to have a three hours’ talk yesterday with John Forbes. He has taken his gloves off, and you know what that means when the Scotch blood is up.
I wait for your next letter to know what you wish me to do with your poem. I have my own wishes about it, and I hope yours will not be very different. It is too beautiful and fine a poem for the Atlantic. But I am no critic of your poetry, — save as a lover is the best critic of all. I see you in it all, and seeing and feeling you in the lines I know them to be good from first syllable to last, good in the high sense of the word with all its best associations. . . .

SIIADY HILL, March 15, 1874.
MY DEAREST JAMES : — I wish you could have seen Howells’s face yesterday afternoon when (having received your letter from Rome in the morning) I took to him your poem, — there was more pleasure in it than I have seen in any grown face for a long time. ‘Oh!’ said Mrs. H. when he told her what had come, ‘ oh! how splendid! why, that will carry the Atlantic for six months.’ There was something touching and pretty in the little woman’s delight in the lift to her husband’s work. It was as if he had accomplished something great himself; she knew at least that he had now got a good handful of pure wheat to offer in the place of his common sackful of the most unnutritious chaff.—And then I read them some parts of the ‘Elegy,’ for I am sure such a poem needs the interpretation of the voice, and it was pretty again, and pleasant to me, to see their common sympathy of appreciation and delight.
I have read the poem five times from beginning to end, and have thought more of it each time. I am afraid to read it often again for fear I should begin to like it better than some old poems dear to me with many a precious association.
The manuscript is in perfect order. No words omitted or illegible. I asked Howells to let me see the proof, and I will make sure that no great blunder occurs in the printing. One line I think must be changed, but I shall ask Longfellow’s counsel. I cannot recall it exactly, but it is the line in which you speak of Agassiz’s quiet and kindly disregard of Tyro while ‘He puffs his smoke with inattentive ears.’ That’s not the line, yours is far better, but the ‘puffing with the ears’ is what jars on mine. No doubt some easy correction of the verbal ambiguity will suggest itself.²
You are to have not less than $300 for the poem; and if you do not desire me not to do so, I will put the amount in a bill of exchange and remit it to Barings on your account. Do not allow your debt to them to make any dent on your mind. Did n’t they keep moneys of yours for years? Spend, dearest boy, and accumulate debt at 4 per cent. You never will run in debt so cheaply elsewhere; . . .
Poor Sumner lies buried in Mount Auburn. I took Eliot and Rupert ³ to see the funeral procession this afternoon. They were disappointed in the show, for there was no music (as there should have been) and there were no soldiers (as there might have been); only a detachment of mounted police, then a carriage or two, then the hearse with outriders, then a long line of carriages. — Sumner’s gift to the Library is most welcome, and is gracefully and feelingly made. I feel very kindly to the poor fellow, for I knew him best when I was a boy, and he was very kind to me. I should have liked to pay him all tender respect as to an old friend, but I could not join in honoring him as statesman. At this moment it looks as if the attempt would be made to exalt him into an ideal character; he is very near apotheosis. And there is poor Mrs. Sumner!
If you should be in Rome when this reaches you, please give kindest remembrances from me to the Storys. I wish I could be with you in Rome for a day. My mood would fit its sadness.
— With much love to Fanny, Your ever loving,
C. E. N.

SHADY HILL, June 6, 1874.
MY DEAREST JAMES : — It is pleasant to think that this is my last letter to you abroad, and that a month from to-day you may be at Elmwood, and we may once more talk together. I have missed you more than you would wish to be missed during this past year. It has been a bitter year for me, and I have often longed for the help of your presence and affection. I have lived a solitary life, and the more so for your absence. — Your letter from Paris came to me ten days ago. I was glad to know that you were so far on your way home, and you seemed all the nearer from the memories of the days we spent together on the Rue de Rivoli. I wish I had been with you there now. — You were quite wrong in your judgment of your poem. It should have greatly pleased and satisfied you. No poem of yours has made a more immediate and deeper impression on the public, with the exception of the ‘Commemoration Ode.’ A mere material proof of this is, that it carried up the sales of the Atlantic quite above their usual mark. Howells told me that one of the distributing houses ordered 500 extra copies, — a fact, he said, quite unexampled in his experience as editor. But what is better than this is, that the few whose judgments you would value have agreed in their admiration of the poem. . . .
I find that the full-blooded manliness, and intense sense of life and the earth, in the poem, strike every sensitive reader, and that its imaginative truth and sympathy touch every one. They not only recognize the Agassiz they have known, but they see him more completely than they saw him in actual presence. You are the only doubter as to the worth of the poem.
I am sorry you are not to be here for the dedication of the Memorial Hall, and the meeting of the Alumni; — you will be greatly missed. The services of dedication are to take place on the 23d, the day before Commencement; and, on Commencement, the Alumni are to dine in the hall. — Mr. Adams is to make the Address at the dedication, and Eliot will have some words to say in receiving the keys of the building, delivered to him in trust by the Chairman of the Committee of the Alumni.
The College is in every way prospering, and Eliot’s energy and admirable sense are unfailing. By the way, you are assumed to be Professor, and will be expected to resume your duties next term. Your return will be most heartily welcomed. . . .
George Curtis is to deliver a eulogy on Sumner next Tuesday, before the Legislature, in the Music Hall, — the fifth eulogy in Boston on the late Senator! I am sorry the subject is so hackneyed; the moment of emotion is past, and the funeral baked-meats are already cold. . . .

Throughout the correspondence with Lowell there are so many indications of the important place which George William Curtis, the friend of both, held in Mr. Norton’s interest and affection that a selection which should fail to recognize this fact would be quite imperfect. A passage from a single letter written at Ashfield, while Lowell was Minister to Spain, may stand as typical of many.

ASHFIELD, September 17, 1878.
MY DEAR James:—. . . George Curtis and I have been taking a long walk this afternoon. The sunlight had an autumnal pallor, but the air was soft; the goldenrod fringed the roadside with its splendid plumes; here and there we saw and left many gentians; the blue jays were bickering on the edges of the woods; the streams were full with last week’s abundant rains. For sweet, easy, daily pleasantness George has no rival. It is perpetual summer with him. There is no change in him, except that each year makes his good still better. Time improves the best things. He is as busy and as serviceable in politics as ever, — and our long daily talks are more occupied with the shifting aspects of affairs in New York, or Maine, or Massachusetts, with the errors or good deeds of the Administration, with the prospects of the autumn political campaign, — than with all other topics put together. He has a capital, practical estimate of forces, and his judgment has been disciplined by long experience. He is one of the most prominent figures in New York politics just at this moment, but he looks on at his own part in the mêlée, and gives and takes heavy blows, with as much unconcern as if he were a third person to himself. We were laughing to-day at the heat of the battle around him, while he remains a cool spectator from the hills. His position has been one of real difficulty and delicacy, and is likely to be so, so long as Conkling succeeds in holding a majority of the Republican party in New York. . . .

The birthday letter of 1879, with its allusion to the Nation, to Godkin, and to Mr. George E. Woodberry, touches upon matters of intimate concern to the writer.

SHADY HILL, February 22, 1879.
MY DEAR JAMES : — I have celebrated your birthday in my heart, glad and grateful for all that my life owes and has so long owed to your love. Few men can look back on so many years of mutual affection as you and I can do, absolutely unshadowed by even the most passing cloud of difference. Fewer still have been so blessed in a friend as I in you. — It is long since we heard from you; but I take your silence to mean only good. I hope with all my heart that you are well and contented. I wish that on the first of every month you would send a postal-card to me with the two words Buenos dias. I will do as much. And, indeed, on my part there is little need of more, for the days pass so quietly with me, and one week is so like another, and each so like those that you have known, that there is little to tell you of personal experience. In essentials there is no change here since my last letter.
It is late in the evening. I had meant to begin my letter earlier, but just before tea Godkin came in, having been dining at the Saturday Club, whither I did not go to-day because I had some work that I wanted to accomplish. I had not seen Godkin since he went to New York at the beginning of November. He is well, and seemed in good spirits. He has come on to spend a few days with the Gurneys. I fear he is tried by the condition of the Nation; the subscription list declines, and the paper still depends on him so exclusively that he can get no release from constant work. He can find no one to relieve him, and the prospect of continuous labor is unlighted by any hope of a competent assistant. . . . The trouble is that he is so eminent in the field of political writing himself, that there is no second to him. He stands alone, without even a squire at his side. It is a great pity that he is thus unaided. It is, indeed, in part due to character, and I see nothing for it but that he must continue to work, till he grows too weary to work longer, and turns the paper over to some wholly new hands which will hardly be able to carry it on at its present level of ability.
Woodberry is now established in Cambridge for a few months, writing regularly for the Nation, and studying Italian with a view to the study of Venetian history. Godkin had not gone this evening when he came in to read me an article on the effect of our institutions on literature, suggested by the reading of old Mr. Dana’s prose and poetry. It was a thoughtful and interesting essay which I hope will appear in the Nation of next week.
When I referred to your birthday Woodberry spoke with warmth of your kindness to him. He is growing fast in power; the experience of life is serviceable to him; and if he keeps his health, and has sufficient energy, much that is good may be fairly expected from him. He has no successors in College with literary gifts that approach his in quality. I see him once a week regularly, for he is one of a class of young graduates and of Seniors, —eight in all, — with whom on Tuesday evenings I read Dante. It is interesting work, for they are a picked set, and all full of fresh interest and zeal in the study. By the end of the year we shall have read the whole Divine Comedy, and there will be eight more lovers of Dante in the land. In the ideal University I should like to be Professor of Dante. When you come home you and I must go to work on the edition of the Divine Comedy which we have so long planned. I was pleased the other day to receive from the good old Witte a new volume of his collected essays on Dante. . . .

Lowell’s appointment, as Minister to England came in January of 1880. Norton’s pleasure in the event, and his rational views on the financial considerations involved — a subject of frequent discussion in recent years — find expression in this letter.

SHADY HILL,January 22, 1880.
MY DEAREST JAMES: — The letters of the last two weeks from you and John Field have lightened our hearts, and made the beginning of the year happy for us. . . . By this time I wish that Fanny ⁴ may have got her invalid chair from London, and be able to move from room to room, and enjoy the fresh air at the windows.
I hope she is pleased with your appointment to London. I take it for granted that the Administration consulted you before making it, and appointing your successor at Madrid. It pleases me that the place should be offered to you, whether you accept it or not. Mabel writes to me, ‘I do so hope that Papa will feel he can afford to take the English mission. I can think of nothing better, for they just wish to get away from Madrid as soon as may be.’ I do not think the question of ‘afford’ ought to enter among those to be discussed in coming to a decision. It is an immense mistake, it seems to me, to think it necessary to live at a great expense and in a grand style as Ambassador. You can live with dignity and propriety in London on the Minister’s salary, and be just as much liked as if you spent double, and more respected. I think Motley never gained by his lavishness, but on the contrary exposed himself to criticism that was not unfounded. I am sure John Field will confirm me about this matter of expense in London, and of the way in which our Minister ought to live. There seems to be but one feeling throughout the country as to the fitness of your appointment, and a general expression of gratification in it. I inclose a note from Brimmer which has just come to me and will show you how people feel.
Howells and Curtis and I did our best to bring this about last June, — but the weather grew hot, and Congress and the Cabinet left Washington, — and then Fanny was taken ill.
I hope with all my heart that you will not suffer now from any reaction from the tense life of the last six months. Take care of yourself, my dear old fellow, for Fanny’s sake now.
Your faithful friend,
C. E. N.

The following self-explaining passage from a letter of August 3, 1880, deserves perhaps the attention of poets who are considering new editions of their complete works.

. . . After your letter came I went over the ‘Household’ edition of your Poems and marked those which it seemed to me might, with least loss, be omitted from the new edition. I gave the list to George Curtis and sent it to Child, and I inclose to you what they say concerning it. The objections to omitting anything are clear, — they must be weighed against the advantage of consigning to the past such pieces as have, in comparison with what is left, a lesser value both biographically and poetically. There are, of course, two interests to be considered, that, of the student of your poetry as an illustration of yourself, and that of the reader of your poetry as poetry, with only a minor thought of the poet. On the whole, the interest of the latter class should be the predominant consideration. The student of you will always be able to find the omitted pieces, the lover of the best in poetry will be thankful to you for selecting your best for him. How few are the poets of all time of whom a part is not better than the whole! I can think at this moment of but two whose whole is better than a part would be, — and in Dante’s case this is not true if one regards the poetry alone, but because the poet has a personal character of such supreme individuality as to make every expression of it matter of concern; while as to Shakespeare, his imagination is such an unique marvel in the history of the race as to make every expression of his genius of consequence as a measuring or divining rod of its limits.

But let your judgment in the matter be what it may, you will decide right. . . .

In the summer of 1881, the assassination of Garfield, the two hundredth anniversary of the Hingham meetinghouse with which Norton’s earliest American ancestors were associated, and the sensation created by Wendell Phillips’s Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge, gave occasion for a longer letter than usual to the absent friend.

ASHFIELD, August 31, 1881.
MY DEAR JAMES: — Every day for the past two months my thoughts have been with you even more regularly than usual, for in every day’s paper I have turned to Blaine’s dispatch to you as the best summing up of the President’s condition, and have shared with you in the alternations of hope and fear. This protracted anxiety, these partial reliefs, and frequent, disappointments have been very wearing, and have made us restless and uneasy. Many people, like the doctors at the bedside, have grown visibly older. It has been a comfort to have George Curtis close by, for there has been news to exchange, and hopes and fears to share; and, at such a time, there is a sort of relief in the mere speculation with such a friend concerning chances and consequences; and in the simple expression to each other of a common feeling.
Yesterday there seemed reason for hope. No paper has reached us yet to-day. We should have had a special telegram sent, up from the office, six miles away, if there were any decidedly ill news, so that I am beginning to hope that to-day’s accounts will continue encouraging.
If Garfield were to die now, the country is in a much better condition to meet the blow than if it had fallen two months ago. There has been much serviceable reflection and determination in these weeks. It is hardly possible that Arthur, who is not a dull man, should not have had some important lessons forced home to him. Conkling’s fate would have been very different. had Arthur become President on the 2nd July. But, perhaps, nothing has been of more service than the example of patience, fortitude, simplicity and sweet domestic worth shown by both Mr. and Mrs. Garfield under a trial so severe, and made enormously more grievous by the terrible glare of publicity in which they have had to endure it. This exhibition of admirable character has produced a great effect. The impression made by it is very deep. It is a blessing for the country that such a standard should have been held up. — I have felt how hard it must be for you to have to wait so long for the daily details from which you might form your own judgment in the case. It cannot now be many days before we shall be assured of life or death. I do not venture as yet to have any confident hope of Garfield’s recovery. . . .
I have had one occupation this summer quite out of the common course. There was to be a commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of the building of the old Meeting House at Hingham. It was built when my ancestor was the minister of the parish, and the Committee for this year’s celebration appealed to me to make the address. I did not want to do it, but five generations of my ancestors who had worshiped in that house were too strong with me: filial piety prevailed, and I undertook the task. The commemoration came off three weeks ago, and was altogether a successful occasion so far as giving satisfaction to the people and the parish was concerned, and in celebrating the venerable old building. These two centuries have been so very long in this country, as measured by change, that the old meeting-house seems older than many a building of far greater antiquity as measured by years in the old world. I was not sorry to read a good deal of the New England theology of the end of the 17th century, and to read over great part of the Magnalia and altogether to refresh and enlarge my knowledge of the early Colonial period. The second volume of Sewall’s Diary is quite as good and entertaining and instructive as the first, and if you have not had it, you should have it sent to you. It would steep you in New England. It is quite invaluable for its sincerity; its very dryness is delightful as a reflex of the times, and every page is full of genuine human nature. One learns to feel both respect and affection for the old Judge. He was as tender-hearted as he was stout-hearted, an upright, provincially-minded, clearheaded worthy. I often wished for you while I was reading and writing. New England is your province; and I wanted you to give your Imprimatur to my words.
I wished for you, too, for your own sake at Phi Beta. George Curtis was staying with me, having come to receive his LL.D. from Harvard, an honor that pleased him greatly. Commencement Day and Phi Beta were two of our loveliest summer days. Cambridge never since she became a city looked so pleasant at the end of June. There had been no canker-worms, or so few as to make no inroad on the beauty of the trees. The spring had been late and wet, and the June rains had been frequent, so that the foliage was far more abundant and richer than usual. There was a great crowd to hear Wendell Phillips, and he was well worth hearing. He had brought himself, for as he said, ‘I supposed they would not have asked me unless they had wanted me,’ and there he was, the most admirable natural orator of our time, artist to the last point in the forms of oratory, with all the power that perfect libertinism of speech secures for the speaker. As Longfellow was leaving the stage he said, ‘Yes, it was marvelous and delightful, but preposterous from beginning to end.’ As Phillips was speaking I could not but contrast him, and his looks, and his speech, with Emerson and his Phi Beta discourse.⁵ Phillips’s face reveals his temper. He has lost nobility of expression. His features moving or at rest have a bitter and malign look, — they are not the lineaments of Gospel books. It was a great and memorable performance. It will be one of the historic Phi Beta orations. Charles Eliot made a forcible and eloquent five-minute speech at the dinner, vigorously rejecting Phillips’s doctrine and exposing the essential fallacy of his discourse. He was surcharged with moral indignation, and without the slightest intonation, much less a word that, could give offence to Phillips, gave expression with characteristic manliness to the offended sentiment of serious men. . . .

In this Phi Beta Kappa oration Phillips dealt with ‘The Scholar in a Republic,’ raising his voice for woman suffrage, Irish home rule, the success of the Nihilists in Russia, and citing with approbation ‘Landor’s sneer, that there is a spice of the scoundrel in most of our literary men.’ The power of his oratory, and the vigorous dissent of many of his hearers from the sentiments he was uttering, are illustrated by the true story of a Boston gentleman who heard the man behind him applauding and stamping his feet with the utmost enthusiasm, exclaiming at the same time, ‘The d— old liar, the d— old liar!’

The following letter marks the close of a memorable chapter in the social history of Cambridge and the literary history of America: it may fitly stand last in this selection.

SHADY HILL, March 28, 1882.
MY DEAR JAMES: —You have been much in my thoughts during these last days. I have wished that you were here, and I have felt how much you would wish to be here. I have known how deeply Longfellow’s death would touch you. It is an immeasurable change and loss for us who have known him so long and loved him so well. His friendship has been one of the steadiest and longest blessings of my life. It dates back almost half a century. I have gifts from him given to me when I was younger than my own Richard. I have a book in which he wrote my name forty-one years ago. And in all this time I have not a single recollection of him that is not sweet, pleasant, and dear. It is a delightful retrospect. Even the memory of his sorrow is beautiful. His life has been an essential part of the spiritual atmosphere of yours and mine.
Last Sunday week, the 19th, was a beautiful day, soft with the early breath of Spring. I went to see him in the afternoon, and heard, to my regret, that he was in bed with a cold, taken the day before, but that he was not seriously ill. An hour later I met Mrs. Ernest Longfellow who told me that there was nothing alarming in his attack. I had felt anxious, for of late he has seemed to lack vigor, and he has suffered from inability to do any mental work and from shifting neuralgic pains. One of the last times I saw him, I said as I entered his study, ‘ I hope this is a good day for you.’ ’Ah, Charles,’ he answered, with a not uncheerful smile, ‘there are no good days now.'
On Tuesday and on Wednesday I heard that he was better, but on Thursday I was alarmed at hearing that Dr. Minot had been sent for by Wyman for consultation, and on Thursday evening I saw Wyman and he told me there was no hope. He said that on Saturday Longfellow had been walking on his piazza in the afternoon, and came in feeling a chill. As the evening went on he became ill, he had a night of sickness, and ‘when I saw him on Sunday,’ said Wyman, he was already very ill, and bis strength very much gone.’ . . . On Wednesday ho slept much, but was cheerful when awake, and said, ‘I don’t understand all this anxiety.’ On Thursday it became plain that the end was not distant. He wandered a little from the effect of the opiates that were administered, but was for the most part tranquil and without pain. I saw Wyman again on Friday noon. Death might come at any moment, he said; and in the afternoon at a quarter past three the meeting-house bell began to toll. He had just died.
There is no reason to wish for his own sake that he had recovered. He did not desire longer life. A year ago I dined with him on his seventy-fourth birthday, and he said, ‘ Really I cannot think I am so old, it seems that the numerals have been reversed, the four should precede the seven.’ But since then there has been a great change. He had greatly aged in the twelvemonth, but he lost nothing of his familiar sweetness, or of the brightness of his smile of greeting.

Thursday, March 30.
The funeral services on Sunday were in all respects what they should have been. The coffin was in the library, —the large back room, — and here were the friends, while the immediate family were in the study. George Curtis came from New York, and was with me. The most striking incident was Emerson’s solitary approach to the coffin, and his long gaze at the face of the dead. Only the family and a few intimate friends went to the grave at Mt. Auburn. Emerson was there, — his memory gone, his mind wavering, but. his face pure and noble as ever, though with strange looks of perplexity wandering over it from time to time. The afternoon was raw, gray, Marchlike. Emerson took my arm up the path to the grave, — and his arm shook as we stood together there. I could not but think of Longfellow’s happier fate.
Yesterday I saw Alice and Annie. They were both well, sweet, simple, self-controlled as could be desired. They would not wish that their father had lived longer. There was nothing to wish different , and no reason to desire longer life for him. Everything in the end had been appropriate to the life. His greatest pleasure in the last month had been in Edith’s children. They meant to live on in the old home, and to keep everything unchanged so far as was possible. They had thought much of you, and of your sorrow with them. It is almost twenty-one years since their mother died. I stood on Sunday close by the spot where I had stood at her funeral. . . .