X.
AT THE DINNER TO AMERICAN AUTHORS.
Thedinner of the Incorporated Society of Authors, on July 25, 1888, was given to the “American Men and Women of Letters” who happened to be in London on that date. Mr.Lowellspoke as follows:
I confess that I rise under a certain oppression. There was a time when I went to make an after-dinner speech with a light heart, and when on my way to the dinner I could think over my exordium in my cab and trust to the spur of the moment for the rest of my speech. But I find as I grow older a certain aphasia overtakes me, a certain inability to find the right word precisely when I want it; and Ifind also that my flank becomes less sensitive to the exhilarating influences of that spur to which I have just alluded. I had pretty well made up my mind not to make any more after-dinner speeches. I had an impression that I had made quite enough of them for a wise man to speak, and perhaps more than it was profitable for other wise men to listen to. I confess that it was with some reluctance that I consented to speak at all to-night. I had been bethinking me of the old proverb of the pitcher and well which is mentioned, as you remember, in the proverb; and it was not altogether a consolation to me to think that that pitcher, which goes once too often to the well, belongs tothe class which is taxed by another proverb with too great length of ears. But I could not resist. I certainly felt that it was my duty not to refuse myself to an occasion like this—an occasion which deliberately emphasizes, as well as expresses, that good feeling between our two countries which, I think, every good man in both of them is desirous to deepen and to increase. If I look back to anything in my life with satisfaction, it is to the fact that I myself have, in some degree, contributed—and I hope I may believe the saying to be true—to this good feeling. You alluded, Mr. Chairman, to a date which gave me, I must confess, what we call on the other side of the water“a rather large contract.” I am to reply, I am to answer to literature, and I must confess that a person like myself, who first appeared in print fifty years ago, would hardly wish to be answerable for all his own literature, not to speak of the literature of other people. But your allusion to sixty years ago reminded me of something which struck me as I looked down these tables.Sixty years ago the two authors you mentioned, Irving and Cooper, were the only two American authors of whom anything was known in Europe, and the knowledge of them in Europe was mainly confined to England. It is true that Bryant’s “Water-Fowl” had already begun itsflight in immortal air, but these were the only two American authors that could be said to be known in England. And what is even more remarkable, they were the only American authors at that time—there were, and had been, others known to us at home—who were capable of earning their bread by their pens. Another singular change is suggested to me as I look down these tables, and that is the singular contrast they afford between the time when Johnson wrote his famous lines about those ills that assail the life of the scholar, and by the scholar he meant the author—Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.And I confess when I remember that verse it strikes me as a singular contrastthat I should meet with a body of authors who are able to offer a dinner instead of begging one; that I have sat here and seen “forty feeding like one,” when one hundred years ago the one fed like forty when he had the chance. You have alluded also, in terms which I shall not qualify, to my own merits. You have made me feel a little as if I were a ghost revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon, and reading with considerable wonder my own epitaph. But you have done me more than justice in attributing so much to me with regard to International Copyright. You are quite right in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that has been written onthe subject; and there are others you did not name who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright, particularly the secretaries of our international society—Mr. Lathrop and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground, on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps,you do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of international copyright, being confident that its practical application would so recommend it to the American people that we should get afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure that our American publishers were so muchmore wicked than their English brethren would have been if they had had the chance. I cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The fact is that it has been partly due to a certain—may I speak of our ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in making a distinction between literary property and other property. That has been at the root of the whole evil.I, of course, understand, as everybodyunderstands, that all property is the creature of municipal law. But you must remember that it is the conquest of civilization, that when property passes beyond the boundaries of thatmunicipiumit is still sacred. It is not even yet sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an idea, has been something that it is very difficult for the average man to comprehend. It is not difficult for the average man to comprehend that there may be property in a form which genius or talent gives to an idea. He can see it. It is visible and palpable, this property in an idea when it is exemplified in a machine, but it is hardly so apprehensible when it is subtly interfusedin literature. Books have always been looked on somewhat asferæ naturæ, and if you have ever preserved pheasants you know that when they fly over your neighbor’s boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow’s books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie—and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie,feræ naturæalways you see—was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for reprinting his works. I cannot help feeling as I stand here that thereis something especially—I might almost use a cant word and say monumentally—interesting in a meeting like this. It is the first time that English and American authors, so far as I know, have come together in any numbers, I was going to say to fraternize when I remembered that I ought perhaps to add to “sororize.” We, of course, have no desire, no sensible man in England or America has any desire, to enforce this fraternization at the point of the bayonet. Let us go on criticising each other; it is good for both of us. We Americans have been sometimes charged with being a little too sensitive; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who always have their faultstold to them, and the reference to whose virtues perhaps is sometimes conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a fairly good opinion of each other. They can afford it; and if difficulties arise between the two countries, as they unhappily may,—and when you alluded just now to what De Tocqueville said in 1828 you must remember that it was only thirteen years after our war,—you must remember how long it has been to get in the thin end of the wedge of International Copyright; you must remember it took our diplomacy nearly one hundred years to enforce its generous principle of the alienableallegiance, and that the greater part of the bitterness which De Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred were serving on board English ships when at last they were delivered. These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle. I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the right; that they areapt to look at their side of the question only. Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I neverthink of London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred streams—streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we,as well as you, have inherited a common trust in the noble language which, in its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that trust. We have also inherited certain traditions political and moral, and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find quite enough occupation for our united thought and feeling.
I confess that I rise under a certain oppression. There was a time when I went to make an after-dinner speech with a light heart, and when on my way to the dinner I could think over my exordium in my cab and trust to the spur of the moment for the rest of my speech. But I find as I grow older a certain aphasia overtakes me, a certain inability to find the right word precisely when I want it; and Ifind also that my flank becomes less sensitive to the exhilarating influences of that spur to which I have just alluded. I had pretty well made up my mind not to make any more after-dinner speeches. I had an impression that I had made quite enough of them for a wise man to speak, and perhaps more than it was profitable for other wise men to listen to. I confess that it was with some reluctance that I consented to speak at all to-night. I had been bethinking me of the old proverb of the pitcher and well which is mentioned, as you remember, in the proverb; and it was not altogether a consolation to me to think that that pitcher, which goes once too often to the well, belongs tothe class which is taxed by another proverb with too great length of ears. But I could not resist. I certainly felt that it was my duty not to refuse myself to an occasion like this—an occasion which deliberately emphasizes, as well as expresses, that good feeling between our two countries which, I think, every good man in both of them is desirous to deepen and to increase. If I look back to anything in my life with satisfaction, it is to the fact that I myself have, in some degree, contributed—and I hope I may believe the saying to be true—to this good feeling. You alluded, Mr. Chairman, to a date which gave me, I must confess, what we call on the other side of the water“a rather large contract.” I am to reply, I am to answer to literature, and I must confess that a person like myself, who first appeared in print fifty years ago, would hardly wish to be answerable for all his own literature, not to speak of the literature of other people. But your allusion to sixty years ago reminded me of something which struck me as I looked down these tables.
Sixty years ago the two authors you mentioned, Irving and Cooper, were the only two American authors of whom anything was known in Europe, and the knowledge of them in Europe was mainly confined to England. It is true that Bryant’s “Water-Fowl” had already begun itsflight in immortal air, but these were the only two American authors that could be said to be known in England. And what is even more remarkable, they were the only American authors at that time—there were, and had been, others known to us at home—who were capable of earning their bread by their pens. Another singular change is suggested to me as I look down these tables, and that is the singular contrast they afford between the time when Johnson wrote his famous lines about those ills that assail the life of the scholar, and by the scholar he meant the author—
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol.
And I confess when I remember that verse it strikes me as a singular contrastthat I should meet with a body of authors who are able to offer a dinner instead of begging one; that I have sat here and seen “forty feeding like one,” when one hundred years ago the one fed like forty when he had the chance. You have alluded also, in terms which I shall not qualify, to my own merits. You have made me feel a little as if I were a ghost revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon, and reading with considerable wonder my own epitaph. But you have done me more than justice in attributing so much to me with regard to International Copyright. You are quite right in alluding to Mr. Putnam, who, I think, wrote the best pamphlet that has been written onthe subject; and there are others you did not name who also deserve far more than I do for the labor they have expended and the zeal they have shown on behalf of International Copyright, particularly the secretaries of our international society—Mr. Lathrop and Mr. G. W. Green. And since I could not very well avoid touching upon the subject of International Copyright, I must say that all American authors without exception have been in favor of it on the moral ground, on the ground of simple justice to English authors. But there were a great many local, topical considerations, as our ancestors used to call them, that we were obliged to take into account, and which, perhaps,you do not feel as keenly here as we did. But I think we may say that the almost unanimous conclusion of American authors latterly has been that we should be thankful to get any bill that recognized the principle of international copyright, being confident that its practical application would so recommend it to the American people that we should get afterwards, if not every amendment of it that we desire, at least every one that is humanly possible. I think that perhaps a little injustice has been done to our side of the question; I think a little more heat has been imported into it than was altogether wise. I am not so sure that our American publishers were so muchmore wicked than their English brethren would have been if they had had the chance. I cannot, I confess, accept with patience any imputation that implies that there is anything in our climate or in our form of government that tends to produce a lower standard of morality than in other countries. The fact is that it has been partly due to a certain—may I speak of our ancestors as having been qualified by a certain dulness? I mean no disrespect, but I think it is due to the stupidity of our ancestors in making a distinction between literary property and other property. That has been at the root of the whole evil.
I, of course, understand, as everybodyunderstands, that all property is the creature of municipal law. But you must remember that it is the conquest of civilization, that when property passes beyond the boundaries of thatmunicipiumit is still sacred. It is not even yet sacred in all respects and conditions. Literature, the property in an idea, has been something that it is very difficult for the average man to comprehend. It is not difficult for the average man to comprehend that there may be property in a form which genius or talent gives to an idea. He can see it. It is visible and palpable, this property in an idea when it is exemplified in a machine, but it is hardly so apprehensible when it is subtly interfusedin literature. Books have always been looked on somewhat asferæ naturæ, and if you have ever preserved pheasants you know that when they fly over your neighbor’s boundaries he may take a pot shot at them. I remember that something more than thirty years ago Longfellow, my friend and neighbor, asked me to come and eat a game pie with him. Longfellow’s books had been sold in England by the tens of thousands, and that game pie—and you will observe the felicity of its being a game pie,feræ naturæalways you see—was the only honorarium he had ever received from this country for reprinting his works. I cannot help feeling as I stand here that thereis something especially—I might almost use a cant word and say monumentally—interesting in a meeting like this. It is the first time that English and American authors, so far as I know, have come together in any numbers, I was going to say to fraternize when I remembered that I ought perhaps to add to “sororize.” We, of course, have no desire, no sensible man in England or America has any desire, to enforce this fraternization at the point of the bayonet. Let us go on criticising each other; it is good for both of us. We Americans have been sometimes charged with being a little too sensitive; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who always have their faultstold to them, and the reference to whose virtues perhaps is sometimes conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a fairly good opinion of each other. They can afford it; and if difficulties arise between the two countries, as they unhappily may,—and when you alluded just now to what De Tocqueville said in 1828 you must remember that it was only thirteen years after our war,—you must remember how long it has been to get in the thin end of the wedge of International Copyright; you must remember it took our diplomacy nearly one hundred years to enforce its generous principle of the alienableallegiance, and that the greater part of the bitterness which De Tocqueville found in 1828 was due to the impressment of American seamen, of whom something like fifteen hundred were serving on board English ships when at last they were delivered. These things should be remembered, not with resentment but for enlightenment. But whatever difficulties occurred between the two countries, and there may be difficulties that are serious, I do not think there will be any which good sense and good feeling cannot settle. I think I have been told often enough to remember that my countrymen are apt to think that they are in the right, that they are always in the right; that they areapt to look at their side of the question only. Now, this conduces certainly to peace of mind and imperturbability of judgment, whatever other merits it may have. I am sure I do not know where we got it. Do you? I also sympathize most heartily with what has been said by the chairman with regard to the increasing love for England among my countrymen. I find on inquiry that they stop longer and in greater numbers every year in the old home, and feel more deeply its manifold charms. They also are beginning to feel that London is the centre of the races that speak English, very much in the sense that Rome was the centre of the ancient world. And I confess that I neverthink of London, which I also confess that I love, without thinking of that palace which David built, sitting in hearing of a hundred streams—streams of thought, of intelligence, of activity. And one other thing about London, if I may be allowed to refer to myself, impresses me beyond any other sound I have ever heard, and that is the low, unceasing roar that one hears always in the air. It is not a mere accident, like the tempest or the cataract, but it is impressive because it always indicates human will and impulse and conscious movement, and I confess that when I hear it I almost feel that I am listening to the roaring loom of time. A few words more. I will only say this, that we,as well as you, have inherited a common trust in the noble language which, in its subtle compositiveness, is perhaps the most admirable instrument of human thought and human feeling and cunning that has ever been unconsciously devised by man. May our rivalries be in fidelity to that trust. We have also inherited certain traditions political and moral, and in doing our duty towards these it seems to me that we shall find quite enough occupation for our united thought and feeling.
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