I
doubt if he ever put a price upon anything he sold, and I dare say he was
usually surprised at the largeness of the price paid him; but sometimes
if his need was for a larger sum, he thought it too little, without
reference to former payments. This happened with a long poem in the
Atlantic, which I had urged the counting-room authorities to deal
handsomely with him for. I did not know how many hundred they gave him,
and when I met him I ventured to express the hope that the publishers had
done their part. He held up four fingers, "Quattro," he said in Italian,
and then added with a disappointment which he tried to smile away, "I
thought they might have made it cinque."
Between me and me I thought quattro very well, but probably Lowell had in
mind some end which cinque would have fitted better. It was pretty sure
to be an unselfish end, a pleasure to some one dear to him, a gift that
he had wished to make. Long afterwards when I had been the means of
getting him cinque for a poem one-tenth the length, he spoke of the
payment to me. "It came very handily; I had been wanting to give a
watch."
I do not believe at any time Lowell was able to deal with money
"Like wealthy men, not knowing what they give.
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