Appendix A - Sources from The World [New York]

Summary

[Question marks in square brackets (in some, but not all, cases following ellipses) mark words or passages in the texts below which are not clearly legible in their original printed form.]

Sunday 24 October 1886, p. 9.

LOWELL IN A CHATTY MOOD. HE TALKS FREELY TO JULIAN HAWTHORNE ABOUT HIS ENGLISH EXPERIENCES.

Boston, Oct. 22 – Mr. James Russell Lowell, freed from official restraints, seems to feel like one who, after long struggling with the perplexities of a foreign language, at length finds himself at liberty to use his native tongue oncemore. This is strictly a simile. Few languages are foreign to Mr. Lowell, and he certainly speaks English of notable purity. The Spanish hidalgos discovered no flaws in his Castilian; and those who have perused the lucubrations of Mr. Hosea Bigelow will be willing to admit that Mr. Lowell can talk American. But the language of diplomacy, thoroughly though he is versed in it, has never, I think, been altogether agreeable to him. A man who can put a truth with such exquisite plainness and point as Mr. Lowell can, must sometimes have groaned in spirit over the ambiguous innuendoes of official phraseology. But if, in the course of human events, there should ever arise the need to send an ambassador to Europe to offer some impertinent nation the alternative of peace or war, then the public choice might well fall on Mr. Lowell. No other man could speak the momentous words with firmer emphasis or with such unerring aim.

Meanwhile he expands and invites his soul. It is his design to spend his summers in England and his winters in this country. ‘In fact,’ said he, ‘if I could afford it, I would live altogether on the other side. The climate suits me. I remember when I first landed at Liverpool, years and years ago, I said to myself, “This is my native air!” and then,’ he added, ‘I have more personal friends now in England than I have here. If I were to stay here I should be alone.’ Mr. Lowell’swife died a little while ago and his only daughter has been married upward of a dozen years.