482
DANIEL AARON
(to borrow Emerson's phrase) a "maudlin agglutination" gave way to
a genteel consensus. Lowell reflected the parochialism and boyishness
of that society, and although he learned how to enjoy the charm and
variety of foreign scenes-especially London- he tended to measure a
place or a social group by the Cambridge touchstone.
There is no need to apologize for his innocent snobberies or mild
racial prejudices. Far more outspoken in defence of Negroes than most
of his friends and as an exposer of "vulgar errors" about the Negro
race, Lowell winced at his own inconsistencies. It was Emerson, not
Lowell, as Mr. Duberman shows, who is said to have blackballed
Frederick Douglass when the latter was proposed for membership in the
Town and Country Club; and no less an abolitionist than Theodore
Parker far exceeded Brahmin Boston's distaste for Jews, Negroes and
Irish Catholics.
1
Lowell's ambivalence about Jews and Jewishness might
be
described as only a peculiar form of a class obsession.
He wasn't warped by the discreetly held antipathies of the Saturday
Club, but the contentment with which he browsed in Boston's cultural
pastures and his impatience with any kind of "extra-vagance" (as
Thoreau hyphenated that word) might be regarded as less fortunate
consequences of his Brahmin upbringing. Thoreau brought out the worst
in
him
even though a few of Lowell's animadversions were as insightful
as they were ill-natured. Most of Lowell's contemporaries were no more
prescient about Thoreau than they were about Whitman and Melville,
but since he was ordinarily a great appreciator on the look out for fresh
talent, one can only conclude that his Harvard Yard esthetic did not
make
him
receptive to wildness or innovation.
Had he escaped from the Brahmin brotherhood, very likely the
symmetry and rhythm of his useful life would have been broken. Per–
haps he needed their definitions as well as their regard, and there is no
1 "Religious Emotion- religious Will I think never went further than with
the Jews. But their
intellect
was sadly pinched in those narrow foreheads. They
were cruel
also--always
cruel.
I
doubt not they did sometimes kill a Christian
Baby at the Passover, or the anniversary of Haman's famous day!
If
it had been
a Christian
Man
we should not blame them much, considering how they got
treated by men who worshipped a Jew for God. They were also
lecherous,
no
language on earth
I
think is so
rich
in terms for sexual mixing.- All Shemites
are given to flesh, what
mouths
they have--full of voluptuousness, only the
Negro beats them there. The African has the largest organs of generation in
the world, the most erotic heat; he is the most polygamous of men. The Negro
girls of Boston are only
chaste
in the sense of being run
after.
After their first
menstruation they invariably take a man- so say such who know.
I
think the
Jews come next-their
mouths
are African." Theodore Parker to D. A. Wasson,
Dec. 12, 1857.
