The Dante Club

But the Lowells from time immemorial had had sons. Jamey Lowell himself had three nephews who had served and died in the Union army. That was destined. Lowell’s grandfather had been the author of the original anti-slavery law in Massachusetts. But J. R. Lowell had borne no sons, no James Lowell Juniors to contribute to the greatest cause of their age. Walt had been such a sturdy boy for a few months; he would have been as tall and brave as Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, certainly.

Lowell let his hands indulge themselves in pulling at the corners of his walrus-tusk mustache, the wet tips curling like a sultan’s. He thought of The North American Review and how much of his time it swallowed. Organizing manuscripts and submissions was beyond the pale of his talents, and he had formerly left these tasks to his more punctilious co-editor, Charles Eliot Norton, before the latter left for a European journey undertaken for Mrs. Norton to recover her health. Questions of style, grammar, and punctuation in other people’s articles—and the pressure of personal appeals from qualified and unqualified friends alike wanting to be published—all robbed from Lowell his head for writing. And the routine of teaching, too, further dismantled poetic impulses. More than ever, he felt the Harvard Corporation was always looking over his shoulder, racking and sifting and pickaxing and hoeing and shoveling and dredging and scratching (and, he feared, also damning) his brain like so many Californian immigrants. All he needed to recover his imagination was to lie under a tree for a year, with no other industry than to watch the dapples of sunlight on the grass. He had envied Hawthorne on his last visit to his friend in Concord, for the rooftop tower he had built himself could only be entered by a secret trapdoor, upon which the novelist placed a heavy chair.

Lowell did not hear the light tread up the stairs and did not notice when the door of the bathroom opened wider. Fa

Lowell sat up guiltily. “There’s hardly a breeze in here, dear.”

Fa

Lowell wrapped himself in his dressing gown and took the stairs two at a time. The gawky young man, wide horse’s teeth protruding from under his upper lip, idled at the piano as though nervously preparing for a concert.

“Sir, beg your pardon for the bother… I was coming along Brattle and thought I heard a loud sound from the old Craigie House… I thought to call on Professor Longfellow to check if all was right—all the fellas do say he is such a kind one—but I ain’t never met him so…”

Lowell’s heart raced with panic. He grabbed the boy by his shoulders. “What was the sound you heard, lad?”

“A great impact. A crash of sorts.” The young man tried unsuccessfully to demonstrate the sound with a gesture. “The little mutt—uh, Trap, is it?– barking enough to raise Pluto. And a loud shout, I believe, sir. I have never raised the hue and cry before, sir.”

Lowell told the boy to wait and rushed to his dressing closet, grabbing his slippers and the plaid trousers to which, under ordinary circumstances, Fa

“Jamey, you shan’t go out at this hour,” insisted Fa

“It’s Longfellow,” he said. “The boy thinks something might be the matter.”

She grew quiet.

Lowell promised Fa

Longfellow was still rather shaken when he came to the door, and shaken further by the sight of Lowell’s gun. He apologized for the commotion and described the incident without embellishment, insisting that his imagination had merely been momentarily agitated.

“Karl,” Lowell said, and took the yardman’s son by his shoulders again. “You hurry to the police station for a patrolman.”

“Oh, that won’t be needed,” Longfellow said.

“There has been a wave of robberies, Longfellow. The police will check the whole neighborhood and make sure it is safe. Now, don’t you be selfish.”

Lowell waited for Longfellow to put up more of a fight, but he did not. Lowell nodded to Karl, who sped off to the Cambridge station with a boy’s enthusiasm for emergencies. Inside the Craigie House study, Lowell slumped in the chair next to Longfellow and adjusted his dressing gown over his trousers. Longfellow apologized for drawing Lowell out for such a petty matter and insisted he return to Elmwood. But he also insisted on brewing some tea.

James Russell Lowell sensed there was nothing petty about Longfellow’s fear.

“Fa

Even now, Lowell felt uncomfortable saying Fa

“Perhaps it was just a tourist here to see Washington’s house.” Longfellow laughed gently. “Did I tell you that one came by the other week to see ‘General Washington’s headquarters, if you please’? On his way out, pla

They both laughed. “Daughter of Eve! What did you tell him?”

“I said that if Shakespeare has moved nearby I had not met him.”

Lowell leaned back in the easy chair. “Good answer as any. I think that the moon never sets in Cambridge, which accounts for the number of lunatics here. Working on Dante at this hour?” The proofs Longfellow had taken out were on his green table. “My dear friend. Your pen is wet at all times. You’ll tire yourself out by and by.”

“I do not grow at all weary. Of course, there are times I feel it drag, like wheels in deep sand. But something urges me on with this work, Lowell, and will not let me rest.”

Lowell studied the proof sheet.

“Canto Sixteen,” Longfellow said. “It’s due to go to the printer’s, but I am reluctant to part with it. When Dante meets the three Florentines, he says, ‘S’i’ fossi stato dal foco coperto…’ “

“ ‘Could I have been protected from the fire’ “—Lowell read his friend’s translation as Longfellow recited the Italian—” ‘I should have thrown myself down among them, and I think my Leader would have suffered it.’ Yes, we should never forget that Dante is no mere observer of Hell; he too is in physical and metaphysical danger along the way.”

“I ca

Trap began barking at Longfellow and scratched his pants leg.

Longfellow smiled. “Trap has been to the printing office so often he thinks he has translated Dante all along.”