Chapter X: At the Dinner to American Authors

The dinner 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. LOWELL spoke 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 I
find 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 to
the 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 its flight 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 contrast that 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
on the 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 much
more 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 everybody understands, 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 that
_municipium_ it 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 interfused in
literature. Books have always been looked on somewhat as
_feræ 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 naturæ_ always 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 there is 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 faults told 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 alienable allegiance, 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 are apt 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 never think 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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