James Russell Lowell's Residence in Spain

James Russell Lowell's residence in Spain from 1877 until 1880 as the United States minister has been recognized as the most important link in the chain of his Hispanophile interests.* As early as 1851, Lowell had expressed a wish to visit Spain and later he had sought the diplomatic appointment to Madrid by remarking gently to the influential middleman in the affair, William Dean Howells, that I should like to see a play of Calderon.' Some of Lowell's impressions of Spain have been mentioned by almost all his biographers and critics, but his intellectual and cultural activities in Madrid have not received much attention in previous studies.2 It is the purpose of this paper to reconstruct these neglected phases of Lowell's tour of duty in the Spanish capital as a contribution toward the history of the literary relations between Spain and the United States during the nineteenth century. American literature was not entirely unknown in Spain at that time: Irving, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, and Longfellow were available in translation and enjoyed some popularity.3 Lowell himself must have been familiar to the reading public because the young king, Alfonso XII, quoted his verses during the official presentation at La Granja.4 Certain Spaniards formed an immediate comparison with Washington Irving who, after a previous Iberian sojourn, had served as the American minister for almost

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• The “friends” of the United States

  Andrés Sánchez-Padilla•American Nineteenth Century History•2020

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