Still, Ticknor could not help imagining now that the servant lifting him, helping him out of his chair, was a perfect grown image of George Junior, who had died at the age of five. Ticknor was still sad at George Junior’s death thirty years later, very sad, because he could no longer see his bright smile or hear his glad voice even in his mind; because he turned his head at some familiar sound and the boy was not there; because he listened for his son’s light step, which did not come.
Longfellow entered the library, bashfully bearing a gift. It was a clasped sack with gold fringe. “Please, stay seated, Professor Ticknor,” he urged.
Ticknor offered cigars, which from their cracked wrappers, seemed to have been offered and rejected through many years by infrequent guests. “My dear Mr. Longfellow, what have you here?”
Longfellow placed the sack on Ticknor’s desk. “Something I thought you, more than anyone, would like to see.”
Ticknor looked at him in anticipation. His black eyes were impassable.
“I received it this morning from Italy. Read the letter that came with it.” Longfellow handed it to Ticknor. It was from George Marsh, of the Dante Centennial Committee in Florence. Marsh was writing to assure Longfellow that there should be no concern over the acceptance of his translation of Inferno by the Florentine Committee.
Ticknor began to read: “ ‘The Duke of Caietani and the Committee shall gratefully receive the first American reproduction of the great poem as a contribution most fitting the solemnity of the Centenary, and at the same time as a worthy homage from the New World to one of the chief glories of the country of its discoverer Columbus.’ “
“Why would you not feel assured?” Ticknor asked bemusedly.
Longfellow smiled. “I suppose that in his kind way, Mr. Marsh is asking me to hurry. But is it not said Columbus was far from punctual?”
“ ‘Please accept from our Committee,’ “ Ticknor continued reading, “ ‘in appreciation of your upcoming contribution, one of the seven sacks containing Dante Alighieri’s ashes, taken lately from his tomb in Ravenna.’ “
This sent a faint crimson delight into Ticknor’s cheeks, and his eyes drifted toward the sack. His cheeks were no longer that hot red shade that, in collusion with dark hair, had led people to think him Spanish in his youth. Ticknor unfastened the clasp, opened the sack, and stared at what could have been coal dust. But Ticknor let some run through his fingers, like the tired pilgrim coming at last to holy water.
“For how many years did it seem I searched the wide earth for fellow scholars of Dante, with little success,” Ticknor said. He swallowed hard, thinking, For how many years? “I tried to teach so many members of my family how Dante made me a better man, with little understanding. Did you notice, Longfellow, that last year there was not a club or society in Boston that did not hold a celebration to honor the three-hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s birthday? Yet how many outside Italy think this year, the six-hundredth anniversary of Dante’s birth, worthy of note? Shakespeare brings us to know ourselves. Dante, with his dissection of all others, bids us know one another. Tell me of the fortunes of your translation.”
Longfellow took a deep breath. Then he narrated a story of murder; about Judge Healey punished as a Neutral, Elisha Talbot as a Simoniac, Phineas Jennison as a Schismatic. He explained how the Dante Club had traced Lucifer’s path through the city and had come to understand that he paced himself by the progress of their translation.
“You can help us,” Longfellow said. “Today begins a new phase for our fight.”
“Help.” Ticknor seemed to taste the word as he might a new wine and then dribble it back in disgust. “Help to do what, Longfellow?”
Longfellow leaned back, surprised.
“Foolish to try to stop something like this,” Ticknor said without sympathy. “Did you know, Longfellow, that I have begun to give away my books?” He pointed with his ebony cane at the bookshelves all around the room. “I’ve given nearly three thousand volumes already to the new public library, piece by piece.”
“A wonderful gesture, Professor,” Longfellow said sincerely.
“Piece by piece until I fear I shall have nothing left of myself.” He pushed down into his plush rug with his shiny black scepter. A wry part-smile, part-scowl stirred his tired mouth. “My very first memory of my life is the death of Washington. My father when he came home that day could not speak, so overcome was he with the news; I was terrified that he could be so stricken and I begged Mother to send for a doctor. For some weeks everyone, even the smallest children, wore black crepe on their sleeve. Did you ever pause to consider why it is that if you kill one person you are a murderer but if you kill a thousand you are a hero, as was Washington? I once thought to ensure the future of our literary arenas by study and instruction, by deference to tradition. Dante pleaded that his poetry carry on beyond him in a new home, and for forty years I toiled for him. The fate of literature prophesied by Mr. Emerson has come to life by the events you describe—literature that breathes life and death, that can punish, and can absolve.”
“I know you cannot sanction what has happened, Professor Ticknor,” Longfellow said thoughtfully. “Dante disfigured as a tool for murder and personal vengeance.”
Ticknor’s hands shook. “Here at last is a text of old, Longfellow, converted into a present power, a power of judgment before our eyes! No, if what you’ve discovered is true, when the world learns of what has happened in Boston—even if that is ten centuries from now—Dante shall not be disfigured, shall not be tainted or ruined. He will be revered as the first true creation of the American genius, the first poet to unleash the majestic power of all literature upon the unbelievers!”
“Dante wrote to remove us from times when death was incomprehensible. He wrote to give us hope for life, Professor, when we have none left, to know that our lives, our prayers, make a difference to God.”
Ticknor sighed helplessly and pushed the gold-fringed sack forward. “Remember your gift, Mr. Longfellow.”
Longfellow smiled. “You were the first to believe it all possible.” Longfellow placed the sack of ashes in Ticknor’s old hands, which grasped it greedily.
“I am too old to help anyone, Longfellow,” Ticknor apologized. “But shall I give you this advice? You are not after a Lucifer—that is not the culprit you describe. Lucifer is pure dumbness when Dante finally meets him in frozen Cocytus, sobbing and mute. You see, that is how Dante triumphs over Milton—we long for Lucifer to be astounding and clever so we may defeat him, but Dante makes it more difficult. No. You are after Dante—it is Dante who decides who should be punished and where they go, what torments they suffer. It is the poet who takes those measures, yet by making himself the journeyer, he tries to make us forget: We think he too is another innocent witness to God’s work.”
Meanwhile in Cambridge, James Russell Lowell saw ghosts.
When he was in his easy chair with winter light streaming through, he had a distinct vision of the face of Maria, his first love, and was drawn to her by the resemblance. “By and by,” he kept repeating. “By and by.” She was sitting with Walter on her knee, and she said reassuringly to Lowell, “See what a fine, strong boy he is grown into.”
Fanny Lowell told him that he seemed to be entranced, and she insisted that Lowell take to bed. She would fetch a doctor, or Dr. Holmes if he liked. But Lowell ignored her, because he felt so happy; he left Elmwood by the back way. He thought of how his poor mother, in the asylum, used to promise him that she was most content during her fits. Dante had said that the greatest sorrow was remembering past happiness, but Dante was wrong on that formulation—dead wrong, thought Lowell. There are no happinesses like our sad, regretful ones. Joy and sorrow were sisters, and very like each other too, as Holmes had said, or else both would not bring tears as they equally did. Lowell’s poor baby son, Walter, Maria’s last dead child, his rightful heir, seemed palpable to him as he walked the streets trying to think of anything, anything but sweet Maria, anything. But Walter’s ghostly presence was not so much an image now as a babbling feeling that shadowed him, that was in him, as a pregnant woman feels life pressing within her stomach. He also thought he saw Pietro Bachi passing him on the street, saluting, taunting as if to say, “I shall always be here to remind you of failure.” You’ve never fought for anything, Lowell.