My dear Mr. Fields,--On Friday evening last I white-cravated myself,
took a carriage, and found myself at your door at 8 of the clock P. M.
A cautious female responded to my ring, and opened the chained portal
about as far as a clam opens his shell to see what is going on in
Cambridge Street, where he is waiting for a customer.
Her first glance impressed her with the conviction that I was a
burglar. The mild address with which I accosted her removed that
impression, and I rose in the moral scale to the comparatively
elevated position of what the unfeeling world calls a "sneak-thief."
By dint, however, of soft words, and that look of ingenuous simplicity
by which I am so well known to you and all my friends, I coaxed her
into the belief that I was nothing worse than a rejected contributor,
an autograph collector, an author with a volume of poems to dispose
of, or other disagreeable but not dangerous character.
She unfastened the chain, and I stood before her.
"I calmed her fears, and she was calm
And told"
me how you and Mrs. F. had gone to New York, and how she knew nothing
of any literary debauch that was to come off under your roof, but
would go and call another unprotected female who knew the past,
present, and future, and could tell me why this was thus, that I had
been lured from my fireside by the ignis fatuus of a deceptive
invitation.
It was my turn to be afraid, alone in the house with two of the
stronger sex; and I retired.
On reaching home, I read my note and found it was Friday the 16th, not
the 9th, I was invited for....
Dear Mr. Fields, I shall be very happy to come to your home on Friday
evening, the 16th February, at 8 o'clock, to meet yourself and Mrs.
Fields and hear Mr. James read his paper on Emerson. Always truly
yours,
O. W. HOLMES.
On occasions of social dignity few men have ever surpassed Dr. Holmes
in grace of compliment and perfection of easy ceremony. It was an
acquired gift; perhaps it always must be. But as soon as human nature
was given a chance to show itself, he was always eager, bringing an
unsated store of intellectual curiosity to bear upon every new person
or condition. He was generous to a fault in showing his own hand,
moving with "infinite jest" over the current of his experiences until
he could tempt his interlocutor out upon the same dangerous waters. If
others were slow to embark, he nevertheless interested them in the
history of his own voyage of life.
Dr. Holmes had never known any very difficult hand to hand struggle
with life, but he was quite satisfied with its lesser difficulties. He
could laugh at his own want of courage, as he called a certain lack of
love for adventure, and he could admire the daring of others. He was
happy in the circle of his home affections, and never cared to stray
faraway. He had a golden sense of comfort in his home life, an entire
satisfaction, which made his rare absences a penance. Added to this
was his tendency to asthma, from which he suffered often very
severely. In a letter written in 1867 from Montreal, whither he had
gone to obtain a copyright of one of his books, we can see how his
domestic habits, as well as his asthma, made any long absence
intolerable to him.
MONTREAL, October 23, 1867.
Dear Mr. Fields:... I am as comfortable here as I can be, but I have
earned my money, for I have had a full share of my old trouble.
Last night was better, and to-day I am going about the town. Miss
Frothingham sent me a basket of black Hamburg grapes to-day, which
were very grateful after the hotel tea and coffee and other
'pothecary's stuff.
Don't talk to me about taverns! There is just one genuine, clean,
decent, palatable thing occasionally to be had in them,--namely, a
boiled egg. The soups _taste_ pretty good sometimes, but their
sources are involved in a darker mystery than that of the Nile.
Omelettes taste as if they had been carried in the waiter's hat, or
fried in an old boot. I ordered scrambled eggs one day. It must be
that they had been scrambled for by _somebody_, but who--who in
the possession of a sound reason _could_ have scrambled for what
I had set before me under that name? Butter! I am thinking just now of
those exquisite little pellets I have so often seen at your table, and
wondering why the taverns _always_ keep it until it is old. Fool
that I am! As if the taverns did not know that if it was good it would
be eaten, which is not what they want. Then the waiters, with their
napkins,--what don't they do with those napkins! Mention any one thing
of which you think you can say with truth, "_That_ they do not
do."...