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Lot 119

LOWELL (JAMES RUSSELL)

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £600 inc. premium

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LOWELL (JAMES RUSSELL)

Five autograph letters signed and an unsigned autograph verse letter, five to the Louisa and Mary Lawrence, one to their sister-in-law Lady Lawrence, sending one of his books "with the errata corrected in my own neat hand which will add to its value whenever it goes to the bookstall!" ("...I commonly hate my own books..."), describing his cheery Christmas ("...I write to you instead of going to Church – but I sent my oblation to the offertory... & keep on the safe side – with God as against Evolution – but I do hate going to Church...") while warning them that he is beginning to look on Christmas "as sourly as my Puritan ancestors did", describing his reading, including Terence ("...rather amusing for a poor devil who had to do his writing before America was discovered..."), sympathising with the disgraced Parnell ("...I pity him. I don't like to see anybody tumble..."), and discussing social matters, 12 pages, in good condition, 8vo, Paris, London, Southborough, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, 26 October 1883 to 18 December 1890

Footnotes

'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".

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