Chapter XI

BEFORE THE LIVERPOOL PHILOMATHIC SOCIETY.

The Hon. J. RUSSELL LOWELL, formerly the United States representative at the Court of St. James, was the special guest on Wednesday night, November 23, 1888, at a banquet of the Liverpool Philomathic Society, held at the Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool. In response to the toast, “The Guest of the Evening,” Mr. LOWELL, who met with a cordial reception, referred at the outset to what he termed a rather pathetic incident of his literary history. He said:

It is connected, with the first volume which introduced
me to the English public. It was not the “Bigelow Papers”
or “Biglow Papers”--I beg pardon--(_laughter_), but it
was a little volume of rather immature poetry which some
enthusiast on this side of the water reprinted privately.
He was good enough to send me a copy. Perhaps it is known
to you that we have a protective system. (_Laughter_.)
The book was accordingly liable to duty as coming to its
author, and for the information of whomsoever it might
concern there had been written on the outside “Value 6d.”
(_Laughter_.) I laid it to heart at once, and I said to
myself, “Here is a piece of criticism you can appreciate,
and which, perhaps, may do you a great deal of good.”
(_Laughter_.)

As I was saying, I do not intend to make you any formal
speech, and I should not have come here had it not been
that I think it the duty of every man who can say anything
that affects the people, whether by his pen or by his
tongue, to go anywhere where expression is given to the
friendly feeling which it is the desire of all wise and all
honest men, I think, to deepen between the two countries
which you and I represent. You have been good enough, Mr.
President, also to refer to my career as a diplomatist in
England, and you were quite right in saying that it was
my endeavor to maintain those relations--those friendly
relations--and I hope not without some success. (_Cheers_.)
But I cannot listen to this compliment, I cannot accept
it, without saying that I was followed by an American
representative who has the same feeling, and who has
represented America as ably in my judgment as she was
ever represented in England. (_Cheers_.) That reminds me
that we have been rather remarkably represented here in
England. If you look over the list of our Ministers you
will find that we have had three Adamses, one after the
other, grandfather, father and son--one of the most really
striking instances of heredity I know of (_laughter_); and
the last Mr. Adams wore at the Court of Queen Victoria,
as he told me, the regalia in which his grandfather was
robed when he made his bow before George III. as the first
American Minister in England, and was, I am bound to say,
very civilly received by His Majesty. (_Laughter._) Those
are only three illustrations, but we have many others.
We have had Galitz, for instance, a prominent American
diplomatist--though he was not an American by birth, but
was a naturalized Swiss.

There has been lately--I am not going to say a word about
politics; I always rigidly avoid them--but I have seen a
number of allusions in the newspapers lately to a certain
tension, as the journalists like to call it, between the
two countries. I cannot help thinking it is the result of
a little irritation on both sides; but I have always felt
that nothing was more foolish and that nothing ought to be
more rigidly left to children than the “You’re another.”
(_Laughter and cheers._) Now, I dare say metaphysically,
you are another; but there are occasions when the telling
one that he is “another” is apt to have a disastrous
effect, and I think we ought to avoid it. (_Cheers._) When
we look at the enormous extension of the race which speaks
English (as we call it, for I am always desirous to avoid
confining it to the English race, as we used to term it
in our pride); when we consider this growth (though I do
not quite agree with the figures of some of my friends,
I do not believe we shall be a population of one hundred
millions or two hundred millions so soon as is expected);
when we consider this growth we find a remarkable fact,
and one which no thoughtful man can help observing and
reflecting upon. England is the greatest of colonizing
races. This is a great distinction, and ennobles a nation.
England has put a girdle of three prosperous and vigorous
communities around the globe. Of course, it is not for me
to say a word about Imperial federation. I am not sure
Imperial federation would be a good thing. I am not sure,
even if it were a good thing, it is not a dream. It is not
for me to say; but it seems to me nobody who looks far
can help seeing that the time may not be far distant when
the good understanding among all these English-speaking
people and their enormous resources may have great weight
in deciding the destinies of mankind. (_Cheers._) Now, I
am one of those who believe that civilization and freedom
are better married than divided, that they go better
together. Nobody who has studied history would say they
do not exist apart, but it is in divorce, and each is the
worse for it. (_Cheers._) The duty which has been laid upon
the English-speaking races, so far as we can discover, has
been to carry ever the great lessons of liberty combined
with order. (_Cheers._) That is the great secret of
civilization. We may have our different laws and different
forms of government; but so long as we sympathize with any
idea that so far transcends all geographical boundaries
and all municipal limits as that, I think you will agree
with me that nothing can be more important than to preserve
the friendliest relations between the two greatest
representatives of this conquering and colonizing race.
(_Cheers._)

I did not intend to detain you so long as I have (_cries of
“Go on”_), but I have also in my experience of after-dinner
speeches observed that a speech is like an ill-broken
horse; it is apt to take the bit between its teeth and to
bolt at the most unexpected moment. A speaker frequently
brings up, not where he intended to bring up, but where
his steed chooses to land him. I suppose that before
coming here I ought to have studied carefully the history
of Liverpool, with which I ought to have appeared to have
been familiar from my earliest childhood. (_Laughter._)
Unfortunately, there was no history of Liverpool in my
friend Tom Brown’s library. (_Laughter._) There were
histories of inferior places--Chester, and so on--but no
history of Liverpool; and I therefore cannot give you a
great deal of information which I have no doubt would have
been new and very interesting to you, and which would make
the staple of a proper after-dinner speech. But there is
one thing I remember about Liverpool. I have always felt a
sort of literary gratitude to Liverpool, strange as you
may think it. In my father’s library I remember very well
three quarto volumes stood side by side more years ago
than I like to say. Two of these volumes were “Lorenzo the
Magnificent,” and the other was “Poggio Bracciolini.” I,
of course, when I was a boy, did not know precisely the
meaning of those books; but they did to a certain extent
afford me an introduction to the “Renaissance in Italy.”
I thought--but Sir James Picton corrects me--that it was
Roscoe who translated the life of the second Lorenzo; but
it was his son, I am informed, who translated another book
which gave me my first acquaintance with the Italian
Novelists, and which was a book which I remember buying
when I was making a library of my own very early in life.

But to an American Liverpool generally represents the
gate by which he enters the Old World; for as our
ancestors went across West to find a new world there in
that unexplored Atlantic, as they thought it might be,
we go back Eastward to find our new world in the old--a
new world of continental instruction and freshness. And
I am glad, linked as we are in history and speaking, as
I am given to understand, a language which at least can
be understood the one by the other (_laughter_)--I am
glad to find that my countrymen linger more and more in
the land of their ancestors. Formerly Bristol was the
great port through which intercourse with America was
kept up, but now certainly Liverpool is one end of the
three-thousand-mile loom on which the shuttles which are
binding us all in visible ties more and more together are
continually shooting to and fro. Liverpool is also the gate
by which Americans leave the Old World to go home, and I
am to a certain extent, as a person who crosses the seas
not infrequently, interested in a discussion which I saw
in the newspapers the other day as to the difficulties of
embarcation at Liverpool. But I have encountered one which
I did not expect, and that difficulty has been put in my
way by the Philomathic Society. You have made it harder
to get away from Liverpool than I should have expected
or supposed, and I shall carry away with me when I go
to-morrow the recollections of this pleasant meeting with
you, of its cordiality, of the pleasant things that have
been said to me, and that we often accept things that we do
not deserve. (_Laughter and cheers._)

✠

_A Selection_ ...

... _from the Publications of_

Transcriber’s Note:

Two misspelled words were corrected. Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.