The reader ought to understand that while the Spanish mission has always been spoken of by uninformed people as a somewhat lazy corner in that somewhat old-fashioned salon which takes the name of “Diplomacy,” the United States minister in Spain has always been walking amidst hot coals, or explosive friction matches. Some drowsy people, whose principal business in life has been to cut off the coupons from securities which other people had earned for them, waked up with surprise when they learned that this country had at last taken up the gauntlet of war. The United States meant to finish the job which Drake and Burleigh and Howard and Elizabeth left unfinished three centuries ago. But other people were not surprised. If they have cared about the history of the hundred years which have made the United States a nation,—and which have seen ten or twelve changes either of constitution or of dynasty in Spain,—men have known that open questions, some of them of great seriousness, have all the time entangled the diplomatic web which was woven between the two nations.

Into the heritage of these complications Lowell came when—in a pacific time—he presented his credentials at Madrid. The sovereign then on the throne was Alfonso XII., and one of Lowell’s earliest dispatches describes the ceremonies attending his marriage with Mercedes, the young princess. The minister of foreign affairs was Don Fernando Calderon Collantes. The short-lived republic which began in 1873, on the abdication of Amadeo of Savoy, had, in its time, given way, and the old Bourbon family had returned in the person of Alfonso XII.

In the short period of the republic I happened to be editing the magazine called “Old and New,” in Boston. Like most intelligent Americans, I hoped to see republican government extend itself in Europe.

I wanted, at all events, that our readers should know the truth about it. I struck high, as an editor always should do. So I waited on Charles Francis Adams, the same who had carried through our negotiations with England in the civil war with such masterly success. If there ever were a Republican and Democrat, it was he; if there ever were a person confident in the strength of America, it was he; and I certainly expected his sympathy in the cause of the new-born Spanish republic.

I asked him to write our article on Spain and the new republic. He listened to me with all his perfect courtesy; and then he advised me—I might say he bade me—take no stock in the enterprise. I pressed him; I said, “Surely, we want to extend republican institutions in Europe?” And he smiled, sadly enough, and said, “Do not expect anything of Spain, Mr. Hale. The truth is not in them.”

In this old Bible axiom of Covenanters and of Puritans is the secret of all the difficulties between England and Spain in Drake’s time, between this country and Spain in Jefferson’s day, and in each of the crises of negotiation since. Spain and her statesmen really think that a lie well stuck to is as good as the truth. Our representatives do not think so. The difference makes a jar when the neophyte in diplomacy discovers it.

In the unpublished “Pickering correspondence” are some curious memoranda which show what Jefferson thought and planned. Jefferson had seen the real Philip Nolan killed, and nine American companions of his kept in lifelong imprisonment in Mexico because the Spanish government violated its own passports. This all began as early as 1801. In 1825 Mr. Alexander Everett, our minister in Spain, offered the Spanish government one hundred millions for Cuba. Under Mr. Polk’s government, twenty years after, the offer was renewed. Mr. SoulÉ, our minister in Madrid between 1853 and 1855, complicated matters by his personal quarrels. He fought a duel with Turgot, the French minister, and incurred the dislike, naturally enough, of the French government. At a conference of three American foreign ministers at Ostend in 1854, Buchanan, Mason, and himself, SoulÉ pressed the importance of the annexation of Cuba to the United States, and carried with him both of his coadjutors.

But it is not at all necessary that we should enter into the details of these complications. The history of all this diplomacy has been admirably written by Professor Hart, and is published in “Harper’s Magazine” of June, 1898. We should probably have gone to war with Spain at Mr. SoulÉ’s suggestion, but that at that moment, in 1854 and 1855, the weak government of that weakest of men, Franklin Pierce, was in very hot water at home. The administration had offended the whole North by its operations in Kansas, and it was no time to ask for a war which seemed likely to end in the annexation of another slave State to the Union. Mr. SoulÉ was recalled, and some sort of modus vivendi was patched up which carried us through the civil war. Mr. Lincoln appointed Mr. Koerner as our minister in Spain, who was succeeded by Mr. John Parker Hale.

One is glad to say that at this time the drift of the somewhat wayward movements of Spanish administration was in our favor. A curious little anecdote, which I think has never been printed, illustrates this; and as it has an indirect bearing on after diplomacy, I will repeat it here. After our civil war had ground along for nearly three years, Louis Napoleon, as will be remembered, took a hand in it. He formed the ingenious plan of uniting other nations in a change of the international law governing blockades. The admiralty law of the world at present extends the jurisdiction of any nation for one marine league from its shores. If, therefore, a blockade-runner could get within three miles of Jamaica, Cuba, or Porto Rico, he was safe from any interference from our blockading fleet. Napoleon ingeniously proposed that, instead of one league, this limit of local sovereignty should be extended to three leagues from shore. He knew well enough that England would never consent to this change; but he had that audacity which enabled him to persuade the Spanish minister to come into his plan.

Maps of the West Indies are now plenty, and any reader who will look at the position of Cuba, Porto Rico, and the little French islands in the West Indies will see how seriously such an extension of a neutral limit would have hindered the operations of our blockading fleets. All this negotiation was conducted with great secrecy, and orders were sent from Spain to the West Indies, instructing the local authorities there to extend threefold the range of their dominion over the sea. These orders had already gone when Mr. Horatio Perry, our secretary of legation at that time, got wind of this treachery of our ally.

What Mr. Perry did in this issue was wise. He told his wife. She went immediately and told the Duchess of Montpensier, who had none too great love of Louis Napoleon, “the nephew of his uncle,” and the occupant of Louis Philippe’s throne. She told her sister, the queen. The queen sent at once for Mr. Perry.

He told her what the emperor had done, and what her own ministers had done. I suppose he said, “You are injuring your best friends,—at the solicitation of this intriguer, whom you hate, and who is your worst enemy.” The queen said this was the first she had heard of the matter, and she would send for her prime minister.

So she did. And he came. And she asked him if this thing had been done. And he confessed that it had; Her Majesty had signed the order on such or such a day.

“But no one told me what it meant,” said poor Isabella. “No one told me that this was a heavy blow to my American allies.”

No. No one had told her. The minister explained that as well as he could. If Her Majesty disliked it, he was sorry, but he was too late to help it. Why too late? the queen asked. Because a steamer had gone to the West Indian fleet with the orders which changed one league to three leagues.

Then Queen Isabella spoke the words which, as I count it, were the best words of her life:—

“It is not too late for me to accept your resignations.”

And when it came to that, it proved that the SeÑor Don did not want to resign, and the other SeÑores Dons did not want to resign, and they found a fast steamer to take out orders rescinding the other orders. And so the Emperor Napoleon got a slap in his face, and so the blockade was maintained for the next year.

And so Spain scored one on her private account with the Washington government, and Isabella II. found one decent thing on the credit side when she stood at the bar of St. Peter or history.

Whoever will refer to the published state papers will find no reference to this interesting incident. It is the sort of thing they leave out in printing. But you can see that it must have taken place in the autumn of 1863, if you will read between the lines.

As I have said, the intelligent reader of these lines has read Professor Hart’s admirable review of the diplomacy of the United States and Spain regarding Cuba for a hundred years; or, if he has not read it, he had better read it as soon as he can find the “Harper’s” for June, 1898. He will learn that in that century there were but two cases of direct interference with the destinies of Cuba, one by President John Quincy Adams in 1826, and one by President Grant in 1875. At the same time he will find that there were filibusters in 1849, 1851, again in the years 1868–78, again in 1884–85, when the American administration gave these filibusters neither aid nor comfort. In 1854 and 1873 there came reasons for war, and they were not regarded. Simply, these references to events of the utmost importance will show the reader what were the traditions of our legation in Madrid when Mr. Lowell arrived there, in August of 1877.

I must have talked with him about the Spanish politics of his time, for I saw him often in London, just before I visited Spain in 1882, and I traveled there with the benefit of his instructions. But I kept no notes of what he said, and I dare not refer any of my own impressions directly to him. For myself in Spain I had only the poor chance which a traveler of forty days has to learn from the daily newspapers, from table-d’hÔte talk, and from interviews, too short, with intelligent men of all parties and professions.

I conceived a very high respect for the rank and file of the Spanish people. Ignorant? Yes, if reading and writing are the tests of ignorance, for only one fifth of the population can read their own language. But the people themselves, the average people, as I saw them, seemed to me a very civil, friendly, self-respecting, thoughtful, and industrious people. They were ready to oblige a stranger, and they did not expect a penny or a shilling, as an Englishman or an Irishman does when he has obliged a stranger.

I see that careful students of the position now say that the class of people in administration in Spain, the people who make and unmake ministries and dynasties, are more absolutely separate from what I call the rank and file than anywhere else in the world. I had a suspicion of this when I was in Spain.

At the same time I observed that the circulation of the daily newspapers in Madrid was as great as is that of the papers in Boston, the two cities being near the same size. They were bitter and violent in their satire and in their attacks on each other. I think there were three bright and well-illustrated comic dailies, each with a large colored cartoon. Here, I think, was the tribute to the people who could not read. I suppose that the proportion of people who can read is much larger in Madrid than in the whole nation.

Sagasta was at the helm in 1882, as he is in 1898. I find that I wrote of him then, “If you trusted the newspapers, you would say that there is only one man in Spain, or possibly two, who wanted Sagasta to stay in,—that this one was Sagasta himself,—that the other was possibly his confidential private secretary. You would say that everybody else was wild to have such an absurd pretender pushed from his throne, and every morning you would be sure that he would fall before the next day, and would be at once forgotten.”

But at the same time I wrote, “As it seems to me, Sagasta is one of the ablest men in Europe, and I think the king has as high an opinion of Sagasta as any of us can form.... And I think the king is a remarkable young man, and that if he can hold on for five years longer, as he has for the last eight, he will be counted not only as one of the wisest sovereigns in Europe, but as one of the wisest of the nineteenth century.”

This, so far as the young king goes, is very strong; it now seems absurd. But one hopes so much from young kings! and this fine fellow—he was that at least—died when he was not thirty-one. The first story any one told you of him, when I was in Spain, was this: that when he was asked to take the crown, after the republic of Castelar had broken down, he said, “Yes, I will come if you wish. Only, when you want me to go, tell me so, and I will go. Remember, all along, that I am the first republican in Europe.”

Of the young king, Lowell himself gives his opinion in this anecdote:—

“On Saturday, the 26th [of October, 1878], the king received the felicitations of the diplomatic body. Among other things, he said to me, ‘I almost wish he had hit me, I am so tired.’ Indeed, his position is a trying one, and I feel sure that if he were allowed more freely to follow his own impulses and to break through the hedge of etiquette which the conservative wing of the restoration have planted between him and his people, his natural qualities of character and temperament would make him popular.”

To us in America it is interesting to remember that in the court of this young king, who made so favorable an impression in his short reign of eleven years, was one whom we may call an American lady. That is to say, Madam Calderon, to whom the important charge of the education of his sisters was intrusted, was the wife and afterward the widow of Calderon de la Barca, a distinguished Spanish diplomatist. She was Miss Fanny Inglis, born in Scotland, the granddaughter of Colonel Gardner, of Preston Pans. In her youth she removed to Boston with her sister, Mrs. McLeod, and there was a teacher in her sister’s school. She was a very brilliant, conscientious, and agreeable person, and as the wife of Calderon de la Barca when he was Spanish minister to the United States, and afterwards in Mexico, made, as she deserved, a wide circle of friends. She had the charge of this prince as soon as he needed a governess, and of his sisters. The Spanish government showed its appreciation of her services by presenting to her a beautiful home, above the Alhambra, in Granada, where many of her old American friends subsequently visited her. She died in the royal palace at Madrid, in the winter of 1881–82.

Of our legation in Madrid Lowell himself says, in a private note, that the secretary of legation whom he found there says that it is the hardest-worked legation in Europe.

I myself have known personally five or six gentlemen who have held the position, and all of them have given me the same impression. I remember one of these gentlemen told me that he was still at work on a claim which one of our captains had against the Spanish government for interference with his vessel ten years before. The maÑana policy had dragged the thing along so far. So that in that legation one had to keep in mind the history of half a dozen Spanish dynasties.

At this moment, writing when we are in war with Spain and the plaza of Santiago de Cuba is again historical, it is impossible not to go back a quarter of a century. At that time the governor of Santiago shot, without trial, in that plaza, fifty-four men, most of them American citizens. They had been captured in the Virginius, a filibustering steamer; but according to any law of any nation which pretended to any civilization, they deserved and should have received trial. It was then that Mr. Fish sent to Mr. Sickles, our minister in Spain, the dispatch to which I have referred, “If Spain cannot redress these outrages, the United States will.”

Why was Spain let off then? It seems such a pity now. A short shrift then would have saved two or three hundred thousand lives which have been lost in the barbarism of Spanish administration since. Whoever will read the complicated correspondence of that year will see that General Grant exercised the utmost forbearance. Spain was at that moment a republic: what American wanted to crush a poor little European republic which could hardly hold its head above water? The gentlemen in authority in Madrid descended to the most pathetic petitions that they might be excused,—if only this time we would let them off from what they deserved, no such barbarism should ever be tolerated again. The minister of foreign affairs would come over himself to the American legation to plead a postponement of justice. At the end Spain promised to pension the families of the people her viceroy had murdered. So General Grant gave way, and when, four years after, Mr. Lowell arrived, it was his duty to show that we had forgiven, and were trying to forget.

Of the foreign dispatches from our ministers, our government means to print only that which is wholly harmless in future diplomacy. There is, therefore, but little of Lowell’s in print which bears upon the questions most interesting now. But once and again he says that, when the Spanish government had paid something which it owed, the foreign minister would beg that notice might be taken of it, as showing their friendly wish to do their duty when they could.

Here is a little scrap, unimportant enough in itself, but fairly pathetic now in its open confession by a Spanish minister of the power for reserve or deception which such a minister has—or thinks he has.

In inclosing it Lowell says:—

(April 2, 1878.) “The interpellation of General Salamanca may either indicate that there is some doubt in the mind of the party to which he belongs as to the complete pacification of Cuba, or that he thought it a good topic about which to ask a question that might be embarrassing to the ministry. The answer of SeÑor Canovas admits, as you will see, that armed resistance still exists, and seems to imply even more than it admits. I am not sure that it would be safe to draw any inference from this, as SeÑor Canovas has, from the first, shown great discretion and reserve with regard to the recent events and Cuba.”...

(Inclosure.) “SeÑor Canovas.... For the rest, the government, in fact, knows concerning the internal condition of Cuba, concerning the preliminaries of capitulation, and concerning other points, more than it has hitherto had occasion to lay before the members of this body. But this is not what I said before; I did not say that the government had not more information on this than it had communicated to Congress, for if that were the case, I should not have had occasion to suggest what I have suggested.... Concerning what preceded the capitulation, concerning the capitulation itself, concerning what the government expects after the capitulation, concerning what it believes will result from the capitulation, concerning the possible length of the war, concerning the reasons the government has for hoping what it may hope and fearing what it may fear,—the government has its own knowledge, and thinks it inopportune, at present, to enter into discussion. But concerning the fact of the forces which have submitted, concerning what remains to be done in the way of pacification, the government has no kind of secret.”

SeÑor Canovas was the minister who was murdered last year.

With such cares, and in such difficult surroundings, Lowell spent the close of 1877 and the years 1879 and 1880. He was then summoned, very unexpectedly, to transfer his residence to London as United States minister to England.

In the mean time, with his astonishing power of work, he not only attended curiously well to the work of the legation, but had devoted himself sedulously to the study of the Spanish language and literature. His private letters have the most amusing and interesting references to such studies. When he was presented to the king, he made his speech in English, the king answered him in Spanish, then came forward and exchanged a few compliments in French. But very soon it appears that he was determined not to be dependent on any interpreter, or on the accomplishment of any of the foreign officers with whom he had to do. “I am turned schoolboy again, and have a master over me once more,—a most agreeable man, Don Herminegildo Giner de los Bios, who comes to me every morning at nine o’clock for an hour. We talk Spanish together (he doesn’t understand a word of English), and I work hard at translation and the like.” And again: “This morning I wrote a note to one of the papers here, in which my teacher found only a single word to change. Wasn’t that pretty well for a boy of my standing?”

This he writes to his daughter and to Miss Norton: “I like the Spaniards, and find much that is only too congenial in their genius for to-morrow. I am working now at Spanish as I used to work at Old French,—that is, all the time, and with all my might. I mean to know it better than they do themselves, which is not saying much.... This is the course of my day: get up at eight; from nine, sometimes till eleven, my Spanish professor; at eleven breakfast, at twelve to the legation, at three home again and a cup of chocolate, then read the paper and write Spanish till a quarter to seven, at seven dinner, and at eight drive in an open carriage in the Prado till ten, to bed twelve to one.”

He writes to a friend in 1878 that he found that the minister of state for foreign affairs sometimes smoked a pipe in the secrecy of home. “I was sure he must be blistering his tongue with Spanish mundungus, and sent him a package of mine. He writes to say, ‘It is the best I ever smoked in my life; I had no idea there was anything so good.’ So I sent him yesterday ten more packages, and have promised to keep his pipe full for so long as I am here.”

Of his own work in his vocation as diplomatist he says: “I am beginning to feel handier in my new trade, but I had a hard row to hoe at first. All alone, without a human being I had ever seen before in my life, and with unaccustomed duties, feeling as if I were beset with snares on every hand, obliged to carry on the greater part of my business in a strange tongue, it was rather trying for a man with so sympathetic and sensitive a temperament as mine, and I don’t much wonder the gout came upon me like an armed man. Three attacks in five months! But now I begin to take things more easily. Still, I don’t like the business much, and feel that I am wasting my time. Nearly all I have to do neither enlists my sympathies much nor makes any call on my better faculties. I feel, however, as if I were learning something, and I dare say I shall find I have when I get back to my own chimney-corner again. I like the Spaniards, with whom I find many natural sympathies in my own nature, and who have had a vast deal of injustice done them by this commercial generation. They are still Orientals to a degree one has to live among them to believe. But I think they are getting on. The difficulty is that they don’t care about many things that we are fools enough to care about, and the balance in the ledger is not so entirely satisfactory to them as a standard of morality as to some more advanced nations. They employ inferior races (as the Romans did) to do their intellectual drudgery for them, their political economy, scholarship, history, and the like. But they are advancing even on these lines, and one of these days—But I won’t prophesy. Suffice it that they have plenty of brains, if ever they should condescend so far from their hidalguia as to turn them to advantage. They get a good deal out of life at a cheap rate, and are not far from wisdom, if the old Greek philosophers who used to be held up to us as an example knew anything about the matter.”

It must have been a joy to Mr. Evarts, in the Department of State at home, to read Lowell’s dispatches when they came. It is reserved for those who have the inner keys to the inner bureau of the department to read them all; but here are some passages which have been printed in the government reports,—because harmless,—which make one understand why he was sent to England when there was a vacancy there:—

(February 6, 1878.) “In these days of newspaper enterprise, when everything that happens ought to happen, or might have happened is reported by telegraph to all quarters of the world, the slow-going dispatch-bag can hardly be expected to bring anything very fresh or interesting in regard to a public ceremonial which, though intended for political effect, had little political significance. The next morning frames of fireworks are not inspiring, unless to the moralist; and Madrid is already quarreling over the cost and mismanagement of a show for the tickets to which it was quarreling a week ago.”

...“Whoever has seen the breasts of the peasantry fringed with charms older than Carthage and relics as old as Rome, and those of the upper classes plastered with decorations, will not expect Spain to become conscious of the nineteenth century and ready to welcome it in a day.”

...“A nation which has had too much glory and too little good housekeeping.”...

Here is the pathetic account of the young queen’s death. She was the first wife of Alfonso XII. The present queen regent (the Austrian) is the second:—

(July 3, 1878.) “Groups gathered and talked in undertone. About the palace there was a silent crowd day and night, and there could be no question that the sorrow was universal and profound. On the last day I was at the palace just when the poor girl was dying. As I crossed the great interior courtyard, which was perfectly empty, I was startled by a dull roar not unlike that of vehicles in a great city. It was reverberated and multiplied by the huge cavern of the palace court. At first I could see nothing that accounted for it, but presently found that the arched corridors all around the square were filled, both on the ground floor and the first story, with an anxious crowd, whose eager questions and answers, though subdued to the utmost, produced the strange thunder I had heard. It almost seemed for a moment as if the palace itself had become vocal.

...“The match was certainly not popular, nor did the bride call forth any marks of public sympathy. The position of the young queen was difficult and delicate, demanding more than common tact and discretion to make it even tenable, much more influential. On the day of her death the difference was immense. Sorrow and sympathy were in every heart and on every face. By her good temper, good sense, and womanly virtues, the girl of seventeen had not only endeared herself to those immediately about her, but had become an important factor in the destiny of Spain. I know very well what divinity doth hedge royal personages, and how truly legendary they become even during their lives, but it is no exaggeration to say that she had made herself an element of the public welfare, and that her death is a national calamity. Had she lived, she would have given stability to the throne of her husband, over whom her influence was wholly for good. She was not beautiful, but the cordial simplicity of her manner, the grace of her bearing, her fine eyes, and the youth and purity of her face gave her a charm that mere beauty never attains.”

We may call this dispatch the first version of his sonnet:—

Early in 1880 Lowell received unexpectedly a request from the Department of State that he would represent the nation in England. He writes to his daughter the following interesting account of his transfer:—

“Day before yesterday I was startled with a cipher telegram. My first thought was, ‘Row in Cuba! I shall have no end of bother!’ It turned out to be this: ‘President has nominated you to England [this President was Hayes]. He regards it as essential to the public service that you should accept and make your personal arrangements to repair to London as early as may be. Your friends whom I have conferred with concur in this view.’”

Then Mr. Lowell says that he was afraid of its effect on Mrs. Lowell, who was recovering from a long and desperate illness; but she was pleased, and began to contrive how he might accept. He goes on, “I answered, ‘Feel highly honored by President’s confidence. Could accept if allowed two months’ delay. Impossible to move or leave my wife sooner.’”

When I was in Madrid I heard this story. The two months’ delay did not prove necessary. Just at this juncture poor Mrs. Lowell was confined to her bed, and had been for some time. It happened that a candle set fire to the bed-curtains. The attendants fell on their knees to implore the assistance of the Holy Mother, but Mrs. Lowell sprang up and herself took the direction of the best methods for extinguishing the flames. So soon as nurses and others could be brought into shape, it proved that the adventure had not been an injury to their mistress, but rather an advantage. The doctor was summoned at once, and within a very short time was able to say that Mrs. Lowell could be removed with care and sent by steamer to England. Mr. Lowell was said to have telegraphed at once to Washington that he could transfer his residence immediately, as he was asked to do. Accordingly, by a well-contrived and convenient arrangement, the invalid was taken by rail to the sea, thence by steamer to England, and arrived there, with her husband, with no unfavorable results to her health.

In this sketch of Mr. Lowell’s life in Madrid I have not attempted, and indeed have not been able, to introduce even the names of the friends in whose society Mr. Lowell took pleasure while in Spain. But American scholars, and indeed the scholars of the world, have been so much indebted to SeÑor Don Pascual de Gayangos, whose recent death has been so widely regretted, that I ought not to close this chapter without referring to him.

This gentleman is another of the distinguished men born in 1809. In early life he studied in France. He visited England and married an English lady. When he was but twenty-two years of age he held a subordinate place in the administration at Madrid. He returned to England while yet a young man, and resided there. Articles of his will be found in the “Edinburgh Review” at that time. After the Oriental Society published a translation by him of “Almakkari’s History,” he was appointed professor of Arabic in Madrid. He had studied Arabic under De Sacy.

Every American student in Spain for the last half-century has been indebted to his courtesy, and, I may say, to his authority in Spain. As one of the humblest of those students I am glad to express their obligation to him.

His only daughter, a charming lady, married Don Juan Riano, a distinguished archÆologist, who is, I think, now in the diplomatic service of the Spanish government. Her son, Don Pascual’s grandson, is secretary to the queen, or has been so lately. All of them were near friends of Lowell.