Of Lowells and Their Passions

WHEN ROBERT LOWELL arrived at Harvard as a freshman in the autumn of 1935, he brought a weighty burden with him. Surrounded by reminders of his family's immense wealth and power (his uncle, Abbott Lawrence Lowell, was then president of the University, and construction of Lowell House was underway), and further intimidated by the monolithic literary reputations of the preceding generations of Lowells, the young student found his burning aspirations dampened.

Such is the stuff of literary biography. C. David Heymann--determined neither to vindicate nor condemn the person and literary excesses of James Russell Lowell, his grand-niece, Amy Lowell, or her nephew, Robert Lowell--has coherently reconstructed in his book, American Aristocracy, a history of the influence the members of the Lowell family exerted on both American life and on each other. His three literary biographies fit neatly together. Singly, each subject provides ample material for an entire book; together, the biographies meld into a literary genaeology, examining the effect that great sums of inherited money and 13 generations of a traceable breeding can bring to bear on an artist.

Perhaps because of the extensive material on each individual Lowell, Heymann cencentrates his efforts on biography rather than literary criticism, and, as a result, the book lacks balance. Heymann often mentions important works of these three poets simply to illuminate events in their lives, rather than for any literary purpose. Quoting "In a Garden," a poem written by Amy Lowell in 1915 and considered shockingly explicit at the time, I wished for night and you./I wanted to see you in the swimming pool,.../Night, and the water, and you, in your whiteness, bathing!") Heymann skips over literary examination, and finds its significance to be that:

Amy Lowell's audience found it impossible to resist a literal interpretation of these poems; they saw the sister of the president of Harvard cavorting nude with female amorists in bathtubs and swimming pools. What the Bostonian intended as harmless and playful looked lewd and lascivious, as though she were flaunting her nude figure and amorous desires in the faces of her beholders...seeing this unexpectedly large woman stand upon a stage reciting verse of this nature, and knowing at the same time that she was a Lowell, was enough to knock the stuffing out of any self-respecting crowd.

This scant literary attention criticism is excuseable, at least with respect to Amy Lowell, since she was a far more interesting person than poet. As D.H. Lawrence commented once to her in a letter, "How much nicer, finer, bigger you are, intrinsically, than your poetry." (Amy stood five foot two and weighed over 250 pounds.) Sole heir to a large portion of the family's original fortune, Amy's comportment, her eccentricities and the scandals which followed her made her one of the most talked-about literary figures of her era.

Because she never married, Amy--people whispered everywhere--must have been a lesbian. Her poems, while rarely overtly referring to women, nevertheless were often distinctly sapphic in tone. Bursting fat, Amy was at the same time loud, outspoken, dictatorial and argumentative. Carl Sandburg once mentioned that, "to argue with her [was] like arguing with a big, blue wave." She chainsmoked Havana cigars in public. Her greatest offenses, though, seemed to be her ambition to become educated and to gain respect as a poetess--two things unspeakably improper for a woman in the early twentieth century, especially for one of Amy Lowell's wealthy Boston Brahmin caste. Despite her gigantic dimensions, Amy Lowell was still a debutante, and as such, was expected to marry, raise a family, and join her contemporaries in the local sewing circle and in their fashionable charity balls. That Army Lowell would have none of it is a tribute to her superior mind and stubborn individualism.

Still, Heymann concentrates the greatest portion of American Aristocracy on Rober Lowell (1917-1977), the greatest literary talent of all the Lowells. Although Heymann remains reluctant to form a judgement on the matter, Harvard did little for Lowell's career. In addition to the burdens Robert Lowell carried with him, he found the University "stifling in its approach to the humanities and its indifference to anything that could be construed as modern. The Advocate rejected his poems and cut him from its comp. T.S. Eliot later described the Advocate of that time toThe Paris Review as an arena for literary brawling, in which "everyone threw his poems into a basket, and then they held a round-robin to see who could say the most sarcastic things about the other man's work." After two years in Cambridge, Lowell transferred to Kenyon College. His parents, furious that he would not return to Uncle Abbott's school, sent him to a psychiatrist.

Refusing to strain the comparison between the three Lowells, Heymann concludes that their styles had limited similarities, outside of each's violent dislike for being compared with the others. Robert Lowell's poem "T.S. Eliot" was the result of a conversation Lowell once had with Eliot about the notorious Aunt Amy:

Caught between the two streams of traffic, in the gloom of Memorial Hall and Harvard's wardead...And he: 'Don't you loathe to be compared with your relatives? I do. I've just found two of mine reviewed by Poe. He wiped the floor with them...and I was delighted...

On the other hand, Heymann finds that each of the Lowells coped, through their writing, with the difficulty of being a legacy of the "American aristocracy." The world expected rigidly defined behavior and achievement from the Lowells, but at the same time it chewed and swallowed those Lowells who did conform to its strangely-conceived notion of aristocracy. It spit back only the truly talented, individual and interesting morsels like James, Amy and Robert.

Although Heymann sees mainly the negative influences of the Lowell family on each of these poets, and their negative influence on each other, American Aristocracy does succeed as a comparative work. Heymann shows that power can hardly cushion a poet attempting to assert the validity of his or her expression, that money cannot buy literary respect, and that the ability to pen lines that seize readers has little to do with heredity. Rhyme and gene conditions do not necessarily mix. This message of the Lowell family leaps out of American Aristocracy. Again and again Heymann shows that distinguished writing flows only from distinguished living in its harshest sense. Only the three Lowells who actually reached down the throat of their heritage, grabbing their lives by the bowels and shaking them inside out, managed to leave behind--after the unpleasant ordeal--a literary legacy fit to form a kicking post and sounding board for the next generation.