Lowell not only presided at the meeting in Cambridge, but he became permanent chairman of the committee then formed for the organization of voters in Cambridge, a function which had been performed hitherto by office-holders under the government. The Congressional district to which Cambridge belonged then included also Jamaica Plain, and similar action was taken there under the leadership of the Rev. James Freeman Clarke. As a result of the movement Lowell and Dr. Clarke were selected at the district convention as delegates to the Republican convention in Cincinnati which was to nominate a candidate for the presidency.[62]
Lowell was very much interested in the position in which he found himself, nor could he help looking at himself in this new rôle with an amusing distrust. “Last night,” he wrote to Leslie Stephen, 10 April, 1876, “I appeared in a new capacity as chairman of a political meeting, where I fear I made an ass of myself. It was got up by young men who wish to rouse people to their duty in attending caucuses and getting them out of the hands of the professionals.... I think the row is likely to do good, however, in getting us better candidates in the next presidential election, and waking everybody up to the screaming necessity of reform in our Civil Service.”
It was about this time also, apparently, that Lowell’s name began to be connected with the diplomatic service of the country. It would seem as if his old friend Robert Carter had interested himself in the matter. At any rate, Lowell wrote him 13 April, 1876: “I am much obliged to you for your friendly interest, but you misunderstood my note to Page. I wrote it in haste to save the mail at John’s room, borrowing therefor his last sheet of paper. What I _meant_ to say was that if, when the Russian Embassy was offered me, it had been the English instead, I should have hesitated before saying _no_. But with the salary cut down as it is now, I couldn’t afford to take it, for I could not support it decently.” A glimpse of his financial embarrassment at this time is seen in a letter to the same correspondent two days later, when, replying to the request for the gift, apparently, of his Fourth of July Ode to a newspaper, he says: “I can’t afford to give it away. The greater part of my income was from Western railroad bonds that have stopped payment, and the _Atlantic_ (to which I have promised what I may write) will pay me $300 for it.” On the 19th of April, he writes again to Mr. Carter: “I return Mr. Fish’s letter. There is no more chance of their sending me to St. James’s than to the moon, though I might not be unwilling to go. On the old salary I might manage, and it might do my health good. I have little doubt it was offered to L[ongfellow] with the understanding that he would decline. I have not seen him for a few days. But it is too large a plum for anybody not ‘inside politics.’ It is the only mission where the vernacular sufficeth. Meanwhile you will be amused to hear that I am getting inside politics after a fashion. I shall probably head the delegation from our ward to the State convention.”