
Luke Batterham
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'HAWTHORNE'S TREACHERY': Lowell complains of betrayal by Nathaniel Hawthorne's son, Julian. Lowell had been generous to Nathaniel Hawthorne when he was in financial straits and helpful to his son Julian when at Harvard. On returning from serving as Minister to Great Britain in 1885 he had entertained Julian, only to find him printing their conversation as an interview in the New York World (see Martin Duberman, J.R. Lowell, 1966, p.487, fn. 56). As he says here: "I am not used to being rolled in the gutter, & I think it would take a good deal of practice to make me comfortable there. It was worse than treachery, for he reported me from memory, could he have done it verbatim, with all the necessary qualifications & glosses of tone, look, or manner, I shouldn't have minded so much. I should have been sorrier for him than for myself"; confessing himself especially irked at Nathaniel's reporting of his comments about the Prince of Wales: "H.'s father would have understood what I was thinking of à demi-mot & his eye would have twinkled. It was the Harvard Address which I was to make in a few days & which H. interrupted just as I was beginning to block it out, that was in my mind & I was tickling my fancy with the thought how nice it would be if I had my own nigger to do it for me while I smoked my pipe & got all the credit".