James Lorimer Graham Jr.

James Lorimer "Lorrie" Graham Jr. (January 21, 1835 – June 30, 1876) was the American Consul in Florence.[1]

Early life

James Lorimer "Lorrie" Graham Jr. was born in New York City on January 21, 1835, the son of Gen. Nathan Burr Graham.[2] He was the brother of R.M.C. Graham, President of the Metropolitan Insurance Company and nephew of James Lorimer Graham and John A. Graham.[1] His father, Gen. Nathan Burr Graham, belonged to a prominent New York family, and his mother, Marie Antoinette McCoskry, came of good old Scotch stock. Her uncle, Robert McCoskry, was one of the founders and the first President of the Chemical Bank.[2]

Graham was educated in New York until he was about sixteen, and was then sent to Amiens, France, to complete his education. There he lived for some years with a cousin who had married a French gentleman of position and prominence, pursuing his studies. On account of his precocious literary skill he was selected to deliver a poetical address of welcome to Alphonse de Lamartine, when that statesman visited the school in 1848.[1] Afterwards spent some time in Paris in completing his education.[2]

During his sojourn abroad he became a proficient French scholar, and retained all his life his fluency and perfect accent, so rare to any foreigner, and was often mistaken for a Frenchman.[2]

Career

After graduation he lived for a time in Rio Janeiro, Brazil.[1] Back to New York City he left again aboard of the steamer USS San Francisco from New York to San Francisco, first steamship which attempted to make the trip[2] and which sank off Cape Hatteras. Walt Whitman was a fellow passenger, and composed a poem about the shipwreck. The ship belonged to the old shipping house of Rowland & Aspinwall, with whom Graham was then enrolled as a clerk. He and one of the younger Aspinwalls were the only passengers in the cabin; but the ship carried many emigrants; and when it was wrecked, the passengers were picked up by different sailing vessels, and carried off to various ports; so that many weeks elapsed after the loss of the ship was reported before Lorrie appeared once more at his father's home in New York, emaciated from illness, starvation and exposure, and having saved nothing but the clothes on his back, and one opal stud.[2] The injuries he sustained left him lasting physical disturbances.[1]

He was a librarian and editor of the Putnam's Magazine, a monthly periodical featuring American literature and articles on science, art, and politics. Circa 1869 he was named United States Consul General in Florence. When the capital was transferred to Rome, Graham remained behind, preferring to accept the simple position of Consul rather than change his Italian home.[1]

He was a member of the Century Club and one of its first librarian, and was a member of the Geographical Society.[1]

Personal life

On November 19, 1855, he married Josephine A. Garner (1837-1892), the daughter of Thomas Garner, a wealthy merchant of New York[2] and sister of Commodore William T. Garner.[1] In New York City he lived at 3 E. 17th Street, while in Florence he resided at Casa Guidi, Palazzo di Valfonda and Via Manzoni. His homes were always opened, with the most free and bountiful hospitality, to his countrymen, and very few who visited Florence escaped a welcome there.[1]

It has been suggested that, even if married, Graham was gay.[3]

He was friends with painters and sculptors: John Frederick Kensett, Frederic Edwin Church, Régis François Gignoux, Emanuel Leutze, John Cranch and Christopher Pearse Cranch, Eastman Johnson, William Holman Hunt, Hiram Powers, George Henry Boughton, F. O. C. Darley, Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Couture, George Henry Yewell, Thomas Ball, Jervis McEntee, Launt Thompson; writers in prose and verse: Bayard Taylor, Richard Monckton Milnes, 1st Baron Houghton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Astor Bristed, George Perkins Marsh, Robert Browning, Anthony Trollope, Richard Henry Stoddard, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Adelaide Anne Procter, Thomas Buchanan Read, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Alexander Wheelock Thayer; actors, statesmen and men of affairs: John Lorimer Worden, George B. McClellan, Cardinal John McCloskey, Charlotte Cushman, and Edwin Booth.[2]

He died on June 30, 1876, in Florence, and is buried inside the English Cemetery, Florence, the medallion on his tombstone is by Launt Thompson. Bayard Taylor wrote his obituary in The New York Tribune.[1] His wife later remarried to Giuseppe Mateini.[4]

Legacy

He left his Library and collections to the Century Association of New York.[2]

Memorials

George Henry Boughton

"My very dear and good old friend, Jas. Lorimer Graham, was to me, as a young and struggling artist, a sort of Deputy Providence. When Providence itself seemed to be carelessly looking after what seemed to my youthful mind as "minor matters," Lorrie was not only there but all there to see that I, for one, did not become the prey of black despair for want of either moral or material light or sweetness (or coin of the realm). I remember I did not so much love him on the principle of "If he be not kind to me what care I how kind he be!" But rather that he seemed to radiate kindness and graceful good fellowship all about him. He appeared to draw to him by the rare gift of personal magnetism all of the best of human sympathy. The love of those who loved him for the love, that was the light of his life. His love was his religion, and his hate was only for one thing, meanness. Narrowness he disliked; but he could tolerate it when confused with an idea of "exclusiveness." This he merely looked on as a disease. My memories and experiences of Lorrie are so many, and varied and personally intimate, that I hesitate to parade the latter, and have no pardonable time to inflict you with the former. I may simplify by saying that when the days were darkest and most hopeless, he came like the "Little god from the clouds," and so charmingly and gracefully, and patronizingly, and as the darkey hymn says, "Jest rolled dem clouds away!" You will, I am sure, knowing him, believe me, and almost fancy you saw how he did it. Lorrie was a born practical joker, and his kindest acts partook of this light side of his nature. Sometimes the joke was not so very practical; but the kind object and outcome of it never failed to be a welcome success. I owe to Lorrie Graham some of the brightest and best memories of my life. If I went into detail, I should need more space than you could spare me. Among his books given to the Club may be his "Book of Good Fellows." In that you will see a bit of a parody by me, a faint hint of what I thought of him then. And since then you will believe me the light has not been dimmed about his memory. I am intensely glad that he has left his bookish treasures to the dear old Century Club. Lovely books were his soul's delight, and my (quite uncalled for, I'm sure) prayer is, that they may love and treasure and enjoy them for his sake, and practically forever."

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Epicede

In memory of James Lorimer Graham, Jr., who died at Florence, April 30th, 1876,

I.

Life may give for love to death

Little; what are life's gifts worth

To the dead, wrapt round with earth?

Yet from lips of living breath

Sighs or words we are fain to give.

All that yet, while yet we live,

Life may give for love to death.

II.

Dead so long before his day,

Passed out of the Italian sun

To the dark where all is done,

Fallen upon the verge of May;

Here at life's and April's end

How should song salute my friend

Dead so long before his day?

III.

Not a kindlier life or sweeter

Time, that lights and quenches men,

Now may quench or light again,

Mingling with the mystic metre.

Woven of all men's lives with his,

Not a cleaner note than this.

Not a kindlier life or sweeter.

IV.

In this heavenliest part of earth

He that living loved the light,

Light and song, may rest aright.

One in death, if strange in birth.

With the deathless dead that make

Life the lovelier for their sake

In this heavenliest part of earth.

V.

Light and song sleep at last ;

Struggling hands and suppliant knees

Get no goodlier gift than these :

Song that holds remembrance fast.

Light that lightens death, attend

Round their graves who have to friend

Light and song and sleep at last.

Bayard Taylor

WHEN HE DEPARTS.

I.

When he departs, whose sun-like glow

Has warmed our light, convivial air —

Whose music taught our own to flow —

Who gave our meetings grace so fair.

Should we not meet, as now, to greet

And pledge him in our heart of hearts;

To stay with wine and song his feet.

When he departs?

II.

When he departs, a gentle shade

Shall touch the mirth he loved to wake;

The jest shall droop, the wit shall fade.

The wine in dimmer sparkles break:

Yet hours like these shall still appease.

With joy remembered, memory's smarts.

And keep him ours, o'er lands and seas.

When he departs!

III.

When he departs, we love him most

Who wins the love that wakes regret:

If wine were tears, we still should toast —

If wine were blood, we'd pledge him yet!

So warm and kind, he's linked and twined

With all that's fondest in our hearts.

And firmer friends he leaves behind

When he departs!

IV

When he departs — yet, ah! the strain

But does our fervent feelings wrong:

Our hearts confess a tenderer pain

Than hovers round the lips of Song.

Delaying still, as he would will,

We'll check to-night the sigh that starts,

And one last cup of gladness fill

When he departs!

Edmund Clarence Stedman

AD GRAHAMUM ABEUNTEM.

Take, France, from whom we take so much

Of wisdom and of folly.

Take that which shall reward your clutch

And leave us melancholy!

Receive within your sunniest part.

Where life's ripe fruitage mellows,

This comrade boon of Song and Art

And peer of all Good Fellows.

-

Though at your envious bidding led

To leave us here regretful,

Your beauty cannot turn his head

Nor make his heart forgetful;

So, mind, we'd have you kindly treat,

Fair France, the lad we lend you.

And may he find your service sweet,

And may his love befriend you!

-

Our wits grow warmer for your wine.

But henceforth some could spare it.

While he's with you across the brine —

Not here with us to share it ;

See how the painters hang their heads,

The poets all are sorry.

And long to-night they'll shun their beds —

So loth to lose their Lorry.

-

Alack! the years will run their race,

And we are waxing grayer,

But he shall have, in every place,

Our benison and prayer:

He'll be our toast in this good land.

We'll be his posset yonder:

No seas, that loosen hand from hand,

Shall keep our souls asunder.

-

But how the red, red wine shall pour,

And how the wit shall waken.

When, back from sunny France, once more

He claims his seat forsaken!

The word shall flit from mouth to mouth.

And every one I name me

Shall bring, from North or East or South,

His "Welcome Hame to Jamie!"

-

Then Barker's handsome face will shine,

And Kensett's eyes will glisten,

And Lang shall sing our "Auld Lang Syne,"

And Gray the punch shall christen;

Venetian Cranch again shall chant

The fate of "Little Billee,"

Perennial Stansbury descant

Upon his latest filly;

-

And Bowles "Across the Continent"

Shall haste to share our glory,

And Barstow, ere the night be spent,

Shall tell his hundredth story;

While Mitchell from his Sabine Farm

Will gently glide atween us,

With Virgil yet beneath his arm.

To greet returned Maecenas;

-

And Bond shall bind again, as now.

Our circle-ends together.

And smooth his broad, judicial brow,

And make it sunny weather;

Bierstadt will leave his artist-throne

Among the Hudson breezes.

And Hunt and Thompson, famous grown,

Their architraves and friezes;

-

And Boker's laurelled head will loom

In mediaeval splendor,

While Taylor's muse shall hush the room.

And Stoddard's true and tender:

Methinks the draughts they'll swallow up

Will strain each swollen kidney.

While Curtis won't refuse his cup —

For once unlike his Sidney.

-

There's courtly Blodgett will be here

And Fisk will share our rations.

And Dodge — I hold his virtues dear

As though we wem't relations!

And, if to send a greeting back

To France our hearts desire,

Undaunted Field we shall not lack

Nor Field's immortal wire.

-

Even thus may Heaven keep us all,

Each young and elder brother.

Through weal and woe — whate'er befall —

To make this night another!

And should Fate clip his dull career

Who reads these wanton numbers,

Be sure his spirit's with you here

Altho' his body slumbers.

-

Then gently, France, receive your guest;

Bright be your ways before him.

And to these portals of the West

In his own time restore him.

Free float the ship, with no rude gales,

No evil sprites retarding —

But favoring zephyrs fill her sails,

With all good angels guarding!

Richard Henry Stoddard

WHAT can I give him, who so much hath given,—

That princely heart, so over kind to me,

Who, richly guerdoned both of earth and heaven,

Holds for his friends his heritage in fee?

No costly trinket of the golden ore, 5

Nor precious jewel of the distant Ind:

Ay me! these are not hoarded in my store,

Who have no coffers but my grateful mind.

What gift then,—nothing? Stay, this book of song

May show my poverty and thy desert,

Steeped as it is in love, and love’s sweet wrong,

Red with the blood that ran through Shakespeare’s heart.

Read it once more, and, fancy soaring free,

Think, if thou canst, that I am singing thee!

References

1. Taylor, Bayard (1876). "JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, JR". New York Tribune. Retrieved 5 October 2017. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
2. James Lorimer Graham, Jr.: January 17th, 1894. The Century Association. 1894. Retrieved 5 October 2017. This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
3. "E18L/ E12/ 1355/ JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, JR/ AMERICA/ NEW YORK/ 1835/ JAMES LORIMER GRAHAM, JR/ FLORENCE/ 1876// Launt.Thompson Jr 1878". Retrieved 5 October 2017.
4. James, Henry (2009). The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1872-1876. U of Nebraska Press. p. 244. Retrieved 5 October 2017.