Page 72 - Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor

probably at the beginning of the Christmas vacation, 1836, he says, "Here I
am alone in Bob's room with a blazing fire, in an atmosphere of 'poesy' and

soft coal smoke. Pope, Dante, a few of the older English poets, Byron, and
last, not least, some of my own compositions, lie around me. Mark my

modesty. I don't put myself in the same line with the rest, you see.... Been
quite 'grouty' all the vacation, 'black as Erebus.' Discovered two points of
very striking resemblance between myself and Lord Byron; and if you will

put me in mind of it, I will propound next term, or in some other letter,
'Vanity, thy name is Lowell!'"

And again, in a letter to his mother, he says, "I am engaged in several
poetic effusions, one of which I dedicated to you, who have always been

the patron and encourager of my youthful muse. If you wish to see me as
much as I do you, I shall be satisfied."

This is Mrs. Lowell's answer to the last wish. She and Dr. Lowell were then
making a visit to Europe: "Babie Jamie: Your poetry was very pleasing to

me, and I am glad to have a letter, but not to remind me of you, for you are
seldom long out of my head.... Don't leave your whistling, which used to

cheer me so much. I frequently listen to it here, though far from you." In
later years Lowell would often tell how he used to whistle as he came near
home from school, in order to let his mother know he was coming, and she

seldom failed to be sitting at her window to welcome him.

Early in 1837 Lowell was elected to the Hasty Pudding Club. "At the very
first meeting I attended," he writes to his friend, Shackford, "I was chosen
secretary, which is considered the most honorable office in the club, as the

records are kept in _verse (mind,_ I do not say _poetry_). This first brought
my rhyming powers into notice, and since that I have been chosen to

deliver the next anniversary poem by a vote of twenty out of twenty-four."

Not long afterward he writes to his friend Loring, "I have written about a

hundred lines of my poem (?), and I suspect it is going to be pretty good. At
least, some parts of it will take." And after a few lines he goes on, "I am as

busy as a bee--almost. I study and read and write all the time." A little later
he writes a letter to Loring in Scotch dialect verse.