P. S. You will perceive that the last sentence is figurative, and
implies that I shall watch and fast over your proposition for forty-
eight hours. But I couldn't on any account be so sneaky as to get up
and recite poor old "Hanover" over again. Oh, no! If anything, it must
be of the "paullo majora."
"Silvae sint consule dignae." Let us have a brand-new poem or none.
Yours as on the preceding page.
The next letters which I find as having passed between the two friends
are dated in the year 1851, and it must have been about this period
that their relations began to grow closer. In every succeeding year
they became more and more intimate; and when death interrupted their
communication, Dr. Holmes's untiring kindness to me continued to the
end. Unfortunately for this record, the friendship was not maintained
by correspondence. Common interests brought the two men together
almost daily, long before Dr. Holmes bought a house in Charles Street
within a few doors of our own, and such contiguity made correspondence
to any great extent unnecessary.
The removal from Montgomery Place, where he had lived some years, to
Charles Street was a matter of great concern. He says in the
"Autocrat" that "he had no idea until he pulled up his domestic
establishment what an enormous quantity of roots he had been making
during the years he had been planted there." Before announcing his
intention, he came early one morning, with his friend Lothrop Motley,
to inspect our house, which was similar to the one he thought of
buying. I did not know his intention at the time, but I was delighted
with his enthusiasm for the view over Charles River Bay, which in
those days was wider and more beautiful than it can ever be again.
Nothing would satisfy him but to go to the attic, which he declared,
if it were his, he should make his study.
Shortly after, the doctor took possession of his new house, but
characteristically made no picturesque study in which to live. He
passed many long days and evenings, even in summer, in a lower room
opening on the street, which wore the air of a physician's office, and
solaced his love for the picturesque by an occasional afternoon at his
early home in Cambridge. Of a visit to this latter house I find the
following description in my note-book: "Drove out in the afternoon and
overtook Professor Holmes" (he liked to be called "Professor" then),
"with his wife and son, who were all on their way to his old homestead
in Cambridge. They asked us to go there with them, as it was only a
few steps from where we were. The professor went to the small side
door, and knocked with a fine brass knocker which had just been
presented to him from the old Hancock House. It was delightful to see
his pleasure in everything about the old house. There hung a portrait
of his father, Abiel Holmes, at the age of thirty-one,--a beautiful
face it was; there also a picture of the reverend doctor's first wife,
fair, and perhaps a trifle coquettish, or what the professor called 'a
little romantic;' the old chairs from France were still there; but no
modern knickknacks interfered with the old-fashioned, quiet effect of
the whole. He has taken for his writing-room the former parlor looking
into the garden. He loves to work there, and he and his wife evidently
spend a good deal of time at the old place. There is a legend that
Washington spent three nights there, and that Dr. Bradshaw stepped
from the door to make a prayer upon the departure of the troops from
that point. Behind the house are some fine trees where we sat in the
shade talking until the shadows grew long upon the grass."
During the very last years of Dr. Holmes's life he used to talk often
of the old Cambridge home and the days of his childhood there. "I can
remember, when I shut my eyes," he said one day, "just as if it were
yesterday, how beautiful it was looking out of the windows of my
father's house, how bright and sunshiny the Common was in front, and
the figures which came and went of persons familiar to me. One day
some one said, 'There go Russell Sturgis and his bride;' and I looked,
and saw what appeared to me then two radiant beings! All this came
back to me as I read a volume of his reminiscences lately privately
printed, not published, by his children."
Dr. Holmes's out-of-door life was not limited, however, to his
excursions to Cambridge. Early in the morning, sometimes before
sunrise, standing at my bedroom window overlooking the bay, I have
seen his tiny skiff moving quickly over the face of the quiet water;
or, later, drifting down idly with the tide, as if his hour of
exercise was over, and he was now dreamily floating homeward while he
drank in the loveliness of the morning. Sometimes the waves were high
and rough, and adventures were to be had; then every muscle was given
a chance, and he would return to breakfast tired but refreshed. There
was little to be learned about a skiff and its management which he did
not acquire. He knew how many pounds a boat ought to weigh, and every
detail respecting it. In the "Autocrat" he says,--"My present fleet on
the Charles River consists of three rowboats: 1. A small flat-bottomed
skiff of the shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A
fancy 'dory' for two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with
my young folks. 3. My own particular water-sulky, a 'skeleton' or
'shell' race-boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers, which
boat I pull with ten-foot sculls, alone, of course, as it holds but
one, and tips him out if he does not mind what he is about." The
description is all delightful, and a little later on there is a
reference to such a morning as I have already attempted to recall. "I
dare not publicly name the rare joys," he says, "the infinite
delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June morning when the river
and bay are smooth as a sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along
ripping it up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing
after me, like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, but the
seam still shining for many a long rood behind me.... To take shelter
from the sunbeams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and look
down its interminable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy growths,
studded with minute barnacles, and belted with rings of dark muscles,
while overhead streams and thunders that other river whose every wave
is a human soul flowing to eternity as the river below flows to the
ocean,--lying there, moored unseen, in loneliness so profound that the
columns of Tadmor in the desert could not seem more remote from life,
--the cool breeze on one's forehead,--... why should I tell of these
things!"
Since the Autocrat has himself told the story of this episode so
beautifully, no one else need attempt it. He drank in the very wine of
life with the air of those summer mornings.
Returning to some of Dr. Holmes's early letters, written before he
moved to Charles Street, I find him addressing his correspondent from
Pittsfield, where for seven years he enjoyed a country house in
summer. "But," he said one day many years later, "a country house, you
will remember, has been justly styled by Balzac '_une plaie
ouverte_.' There is no end to the expenses it entails. I was very
anxious to have a country retreat, and when my wife had a small legacy
of about two thousand dollars a good many years ago, we thought we
would put up a perfectly plain shelter with that money on a beautiful
piece of ground we owned in Pittsfield. Well, the architect promised
to put the house up for that. But it cost just twice as much, to begin
with; that wasn't much! Then we had to build a barn; then we wanted a
horse and carryall and wagon; so one thing led to another, and it was
too far away for me to look after it, and at length, after seven
years, we sold it. I couldn't bear to think of it or to speak of it
for a long time. I loved the trees, and while our children were little
it was a good place for them; but we had to sell it; and it was better
in the end, although I felt lost without it for a great while." Here
is a letter from Pittsfield which describes him there upon his arrival
one year in spring:--
PITTSFIELD, June 13, 1852.
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--I have just received your very interesting note,
and the proof which accompanied it. I don't know when I ever read
anything about myself that struck me so piquantly as that story about
the old gentleman. It is almost too good to be true, but you are not
in the habit of quizzing. The trait is so naturelike and Dickens-like,
no American--no living soul but a peppery, crotchety, good-hearted,
mellow old John Bull--could have done such a thing. God bless him!
Perhaps the verses are not much, and perhaps he is no great judge
whether they are or not: but what a pleasant thing it is to win the
hearty liking of any honest creature who is neither your relation nor
compatriot, and who must fancy what pleases him for itself and nothing
else!
I will not say what pleasure I have received from Miss Mitford's kind
words. I am going to sit down, and write her a letter with a good deal
of myself in it, which I am quite sure she will read with indulgence,
if not with gratification. If you see her, or write to her, be sure to
let her know that she must make up her mind to such a letter as she
will have to sit down to.
I am afraid I have not much of interest for you. It is a fine thing to
see one's trees and things growing, but not so much to tell of. I have
been a week in the country now, and am writing at this moment amidst
such a scintillation of fireflies and chorus of frogs as a cockney
would cross the Atlantic to enjoy. During the past winter I have done
nothing but lecture, having delivered between seventy and eighty all
round the country from Maine to western New York, and even confronted
the critical terrors of the great city that holds half a million and
P---- M----. All this spring I have been working on microscopes, so
that it is only within a few days I have really got hold of anything
to read--to say nothing of writing, except for my lyceum audiences. I
had a literary rencontre just before I came away, however, in the
shape of a dinner at the Revere House with Griswold and Epes Sargent.
What a curious creature Griswold is! He seems to me a kind of
naturalist whose subjects are authors, whose memory is a perfect fauna
of all flying, running, and creeping things that feed on ink. Epes has
done mighty well with his red-edged school-book, which is a very
creditable-looking volume, to say the least.
It would be hard to tell how much you are missed among us. I really do
not know who would make a greater blank if he were abstracted. As for
myself, I have been all lost since you have been away in all that
relates to literary matters, to say nothing of the almost daily aid,
comfort, and refreshment I imbibed from your luminous presence. Do
come among us as soon as you can; and having come, stay among your
devoted friends, of whom count