Lowell meant to call his volume “A June Idyll and other Poems,” but Mr. Fields pointed out that Whittier’s new volume just about to appear was to carry the title of “A Summer Idyll.”[33] Lowell retorted: “Why the devil should Whittier bag my title? I can’t claim a copyright in ‘Idyll,’ that is in the dictionary--but, June ‘Idyll’ was mine. It will be thought his poem suggested mine, as it was with the ‘Present Crisis,’ though mine was written two years before. However, J. G. W. is welcome to anything of mine, for he is a trump, and after all the milk is spilt. But if his volume is not advertised, might I not insist? It’s of more consequence to me than to him, for I have nothing else that will look so well in the vanguard. But if it’s all up, how would ‘Appledore and other Poems’ do? It is a pretty name enough, and the poem is one of my longest,--though not, perhaps, the one I would otherwise have put first. My dedication, I think, is good, and that will take the edge off.”
Mr. Fields suggested that he should give the volume the title of his place, “Elmwood,” but Lowell replied: “I can’t bear ‘Elmwood,’ and the more I think of it, the more I can’t bear it--’tis turning one’s household gods upon the town, as it were. No, never! They have endured me for fifty years, and I won’t desert ’em in their old age. Let me have my hermitage to myself. (I had eight visitors this morning--one of whom wanted me to read ‘The Biglow Papers’ to him.) But I have it now. Instead of ‘June Idyll,’ which was the _pis aller_ of a prosaic mind, I shall call it ‘Under the Willows.’ Like all great discoveries, it is simple, and, you may depend upon it, it is _the_ thing. It means everything and nothing. I can’t make the poem over so as to suit ‘Elmwood,’ and so I shall settle upon this, fixed as a butterfly, stable as the Horse-railway stables. You can’t move me. The man that moved Chicago couldn’t move me. I am happy, and discharge my mind of the whole concern. I shall now devote my evening to the ‘Flying Dutchman’ in peace, and write you something clever for the _Atlantic_. I snap my fingers at you and Bazin,[34] wore he even the helmet of Mambrino. Nothing can touch me further. ‘Under the Willows and other Poems’--it satisfies every want, and will be immensely popular. The basketmakers will buy up the first edition and the gunpowder makers the second. Then comes the general public, mad with curiosity to know what the d--l I mean. I am charmed with my own powers of invention. A duller man would have said ‘Under the Elms,’ or some such things. Let me alone for tickling the fancy of a purchaser. _I_ know what they want.”