Books: Lo, the Lowells

THE LOWELLS AND THEIR SEVEN WORLDS (442 pp.)—Ferris Greenslet—Houghton Mifflin ($4).

Lowells of one kind or another—learned, stately, pious, peculiar—have inhabited Boston and its environs almost as long as any other white men, and left their mark more indelibly than most. There have been Lowells commercial enough to take fortunes out of distilleries and cotton mills, Lowells august enough to serve as trustees of the Boston Athenaeum, Lowells literate enough to be represented on many a U.S. bookshelf.

Rumor is that Lowells talk only to Cabots; they have also apparently talked freely to Ferris Greenslet, former Houghton Mifflin editor-in-chief, and granted him permission to quote from family letters and papers. The, result is a short history of ten Lowell generations, down to and including that of the stout, imperious maiden lady who admired Keats and smoked long Manila cigars.*

Good, Noble, Occasionally Mistaken. Amy Lowell (1874-1925) was the Poetess-Pontifex. She once told Author Greenslet, “Ferris, you are a dear good boy, but you don’t know a thing about biography, not a God damned Thing.'” Author Greenslet knows enough, at any rate, to have written a highly readable series of biographical sketches. In tone they are semi-official and rather adoring; apparently Lowells are rarely inspired by anything less than noble impulses and a passion for good works, though now & then they may make “mistakes.” But at that, they are an interesting lot. Among them:

¶| “Old Judge” John Lowell, Harvard 1760, great-great-great-grandson of the original immigrant (from Bristol, England). A lawyer, banker, speculator, he made a fortune handling prize cases for local privateers and Tory estates confiscated during the Revolution.

¶ “Rebel” John Lowell, Harvard 1786, son of the “Old Judge.” Also a lawyer, he regarded himself as a rebel against the fearful republicanism of Jefferson and Madison, grew orchids under glass at his Roxbury, Mass, estate.

¶ Francis Cabot Lowell, Harvard 1793, half-brother of “Rebel” John. He went into trade: cotton-cloth manufacturing. Greenslet calls him “the first educated man … to expend his whole energy in organizing and improving the industry.” Lowell, Mass, is named for him.

¶ James Russell Lowell, Harvard 1838, son of another half-brother of “Rebel” John, and today the best known of the family. He was nevertheless its “problem child” because he married outside the Brahmin caste and had Abolitionist leanings. Author Greenslet is lukewarm about J.R.L.’s writings: “The truth is that, for all the ten volumes of his Collected Works, [he] never wrote a book. He only put newspaper and magazine contributions, poems, speeches and lectures together.”

¶ Colonel Charles Russell Lowell, Harvard 1854, nephew of J.R.L., killed in action in 1864 at Cedar Creek, Va., an engagement in which Captain William McKinley and Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes also fought. Had Lowell survived, suggests Greenslet, he might have been a better bet for the White House than either, and “Massachusetts would have had a president midway between John Quincy Adams and Calvin Coolidge.”

¶ Percival Lowell, Harvard 1866, great-grandson of “Rebel” John, brother of Amy and of Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell. An astronomer at 13, he forecast the orbit of the planet Pluto, though he never lived to see it through a telescope, endowed the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz.

¶ Amy Lowell, 19 years Percival’s junior, was brought up, so Boston said, “by the coachman.” As a child, she played tomboy, once ate so much at a party that her coat would not button across the stomach (“and,” she added, “it never buttoned again”). In later years she played the prodigious literary hostess at her mansion in Brookline, Mass., wrote Imagist poetry, worked on her Keats, traveled about in a mulberry-colored Pierce Arrow with liveried attendants.

One day the car broke down near a village garage. The garageman refused to make repairs without a cash payment, seemed dubious when Amy explained that her brother was president of Harvard. “Call him up,” said she; “he’ll tell you I’m good for the bill.” The garageman got Cambridge on the telephone. Said Lawrence: “What’s she doing now?” “She’s sitting across the road smoking a cigar.” “All right, that’s my sister.”

* Not discussed are such living Lowells as Boston Banker Ralph Lowell, Harvard 1912, president of Boston’s Harvard Club, trustee of Boston’s best charities and museums; young (29) Poet Robert Traill Spence Lowell Jr. (The Land of Unlikeness), Harvard ex-1939, Kenyon College 1940, husband of Novelist Jean Stafford (Boston Adventure). Poet Lowell served six months in federal prison rather than fight in World War II. Never officially a conscientious objector, he first tried several times to enlist, was rejected, later was drafted and refused to serve, on the grounds that the U.S. was out of danger and he would have no part in the bombing of civilians.