James Russell Lowell and His Friends. Edward Everett Hale
brother was the editor of the “Boston Miscellany” in 1841, when Lowell and Story of their class were his chief coöperators. From that time forward he served the Boston “Advertiser,” frequently as its chief; and when he died, he was one of the editors of “Old and New,” his admirable literary taste and his delicate judgment presiding over that discrimination, so terrible to magazine editors, in the accepting or rejecting of the work of contributors.
All of these five boys, or young men, were favorite pupils of Professor Edward Tyrrell Channing. When, in September, 1837, they undertook the publication of “Harvardiana,” Lowell was eighteen, Hale was eighteen, Scates, King, and Lippitt but little older.
With such recourse the fourth volume started. It cost each subscriber two dollars a year. I suppose the whole volume contained about as much “reading matter,” as a cold world calls it, as one number of “Harper’s Magazine.” These young fellows’ reputations were not then made. But as times have gone by, the people who “do the magazines” in newspaper offices would have felt a certain wave of languid interest if a single number of “Harper” should bring them a story and a poem and a criticism by Lowell; something like this from William Story; a political paper by Rufus King; with General Loring, Dr. Washburn, Dr. Coolidge, and Dr. Ellis to make up the number.
Lowell’s intimate relations with George Bailey Loring began, I think, even earlier than their meeting in college. They continued long after his college life, and I may refer to them better in another chapter.
The year worked along. They had the dignity of seniors now, and the wider range of seniors. This means that they no longer had to construe Latin and Greek, and that the college studies were of rather a broader scope than before. It meant with these young fellows that they took more liberty in long excursions from Cambridge, which would sacrifice two or three recitations for a sea-beach in the afternoon, or perhaps for an evening party twenty miles away.
NATHAN HALE
Young editors always think that they have a great deal of unpublished writing in their desks or portfolios, which is of the very best type, and which, “with a little dressing over,” will bring great credit to the magazine. Alas! the first and second numbers always exhaust these reserves. Yet in the case of “Harvardiana” no eager body of contributors appeared, and the table of contents shows that the five editors contributed much more than half the volume.
Lowell’s connection with this volume ought to rescue it from oblivion. It has a curiously old-fashioned engraving on the meagre title-page. It represents University Hall as it then was—before the convenient shelter of the corridor in front was removed. “Blackwood,” and perhaps other magazines, had given popularity to the plan, which all young editors like, of an imagined conference between readers and editors, in which the editors tell what is passing in the month. Christopher North had given an appetite among youngsters for this sort of thing, and the new editors fancied that “Skillygoliana,” such an imagined dialogue, would be very bright, funny, and attractive. But the fun has long since evaporated; the brightness has long since tarnished. I think they themselves found that the papers became a bore to them, and did not attract the readers.
The choice of the title “Skillygoliana” was, without doubt, Lowell’s own. “Skillygolee” is defined in the Century Dictionary in words which give the point to his use of it: “A poor, thin, watery kind of broth or soup … served out to prisoners in the hulks, paupers in workhouses, and the like; a drink made of oatmeal, sugar, and water, formerly served out to sailors in the British navy.”
Here is a scrap which must serve as a bit of mosaic carried off from this half-built temple:—
SKILLYGOLIANA—III.
Since Friday morning, on each busy tongue,
“Shameful!” “Outrageous!” has incessant rung.
But what’s the matter? Why should words like these
Of dreadful omen hang on every breeze?
Has our Bank failed, and shown, to cash her notes,
Not cents enough to buy three Irish votes?
Or, worse than that, and worst of human ills,
Will not the lordly Suffolk take her bills?
Sooner expect, than see her credit die,
Proud Bunker’s pile to creep an inch more high.
Has want of patronage, or payments lean,
Put out the rushlight of our Magazine?
No, though Penumbra swears “the thing is flat,”
Thank Heaven, taste has not sunk so low as that!
… Has Texas, freed by Samuel the great,
Entered the Union as another State?
No, still she trades in slaves as free as air,
And Sam still fills the presidential chair,
Rules o’er the realm, the freeman’s proudest hope,
In dread of naught but bailiffs and a rope.
… What is the matter, then? Why, Thursday night
Some chap or other strove to vent his spite
By blowing up the chapel with a shell,
But unsuccessfully—he might as well
With popgun threat the noble bird of Jove,
Or warm his fingers at a patent stove,
As try to shake old Harvard’s deep foundations
With such poor, despicable machinations. …
Long may she live, and Harvard’s morning star
Light learning’s wearied pilgrims from afar!
Long may the chapel echo to the sound
Of sermon lengthy or of part profound,
And long may Dana’s gowns survive to grace
Each future runner in the learned race!
I believe Lowell afterwards printed among his collected poems one or two which first appeared in “Harvardiana.” Here is a specimen which I believe has never been reprinted until now:—
“Perchance improvement, in some future time,
May soften down the rugged path of rhyme,
Build a nice railroad to the sacred mount,
And run a steamboat to the muses’ fount!
* * * * * * * *
Fain would I more—but could my muse aspire
To praise in fitting strains our College choir?
Ah, happy band! securely hid from sight,
Ye pour your melting strains with all your might;
And as the prince, on Prosper’s magic isle,
Stood spellbound, listening with a raptured smile
To Ariel’s witching notes, as through the trees
They stole like angel voices on the breeze,
So when some strange divine the hymn gives out,
Pleased with the strains he casts his eyes about,
All round the chapel gives an earnest stare,
And wonders where the deuce the singers are,
Nor dreams that o’er his own bewildered pate
There hangs suspended such a tuneful weight!”
From “A Hasty Pudding Poem.”
In the winter of the senior year the class made its selection