Lowells speak only...

You have no doubt heard the old toast:

Here's to the City of Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod;
Where Lowells speak only to Cabots,
And Cabots speak only to God.

When I lived in the monastery at Brookline, it was in a mansion that had once belonged to the Cabot estate. Across the street some of the Lowells had lived.

One who had lived there was the poet, Amy Lowell, pictured above. A largely self-educated woman -- although she lived until 1923, in her social class education for women was not considered important -- she wrote poetry, lectured on it, published and promoted it. She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize after her death. She was the first woman ever to be invited to lecture at Harvard. The fact that her brother Lawrence was at the time President of Harvard may have had something to do with it. As you can see from the photo, she was a large and powerful woman and is generally considered to have been a lesbian. She died from a hernia she got when she single-handedly (well, she probably used both her hands) lifted a buggy that had been driven off the road in a thunderstorm out of a ditch and back onto the road.

Joe is taking a course in modern literature and every week I type a short paper for him. Today it was about a poem of Amy Lowell's.

Small world.