Produced by David Widger
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
By Oliver Wendell Holmes
TO MY READERS.
“A new Preface” is, I find, promised with my story. If there are any
among my readers who loved Aesop's Fables chiefly on account of the
Moral appended, they will perhaps be pleased to turn backward and learn
what I have to say here.
This tale forms a natural sequence to a former one, which some may
remember, entitled “Elsie Venner.” Like that,--it is intended for two
classes of readers, of which the smaller one includes the readers of the
“Morals” in Aesop and of this Preface.
The first of the two stories based itself upon an experiment which some
thought cruel, even on paper. It imagined an alien element introduced
into the blood of a human being before that being saw the light. It
showed a human nature developing itself in conflict with the ophidian
characteristics and instincts impressed upon it during the pre-natal
period. Whether anything like this ever happened, or was possible,
mattered little: it enabled me, at any rate, to suggest the limitations
of human responsibility in a simple and effective way.
The story which follows comes more nearly within the range of common
experience. The successive development of inherited bodily aspects
and habitudes is well known to all who have lived long enough to see
families grow up under their own eyes. The same thing happens, but less
obviously to common observation, in the mental and moral nature. There
is something frightful in the way in which not only characteristic
qualities, but particular manifestations of them, are repeated from
generation to generation. Jonathan Edwards the younger tells the story
of a brutal wretch in New Haven who was abusing his father, when the old
man cried out, “Don't drag me any further, for I did n't drag my father
beyond this tree.” [The original version of this often-repeated story
may be found in Aristotle's Ethics, Book 7th, Chapter 7th.] I have
attempted to show the successive evolution of some inherited qualities
in the character of Myrtle Hazard, not so obtrusively as to disturb the
narrative, but plainly enough to be kept in sight by the small class of
preface-readers.
If I called these two stories Studies of the Reflex Function in its
higher sphere, I should frighten away all but the professors and the
learned ladies. If I should proclaim that they were protests against
the scholastic tendency to shift the total responsibility of all human
action from the Infinite to the finite, I might alarm the jealousy of
the cabinet-keepers of our doctrinal museums. By saying nothing
about it, the large majority of those whom my book reaches, not being
preface-readers, will never suspect anything to harm them beyond the
simple facts of the narrative.
Should any professional alarmist choose to confound the doctrine of
limited responsibility with that which denies the existence of any
self-determining power, he may be presumed to belong to the class of
intellectual half-breeds, of which we have many representatives in our
new country, wearing the garb of civilization, and even the gown of
scholarship. If we cannot follow the automatic machinery of nature into
the mental and moral world, where it plays its part as much as in the
bodily functions, without being accused of laying “all that we are evil
in to a divine thrusting on,” we had better return at once to our
old demonology, and reinstate the Leader of the Lower House in his
time-honored prerogatives.
As fiction sometimes seems stranger than truth, a few words may
be needed here to make some of my characters and statements appear
probable. The long-pending question involving a property which had
become in the mean time of immense value finds its parallel in the great
De Haro land-case, decided in the Supreme Court while this story was in
progress (May 14th, 1867). The experiment of breaking the child's
will by imprisonment and fasting is borrowed from a famous incident,
happening long before the case lately before one of the courts of
a neighboring Commonwealth, where a little girl was beaten to death
because she would not say her prayers. The mental state involving utter
confusion of different generations in a person yet capable of forming
a correct judgment on other matters, is almost a direct transcript
from nature. I should not have ventured to repeat the questions of
the daughters of the millionaires to Myrtle Hazard about her family
conditions, and their comments, had not a lady of fortune and position
mentioned to me a similar circumstance in the school history of one of
her own children. Perhaps I should have hesitated in reproducing Myrtle
Hazard's “Vision,” but for a singular experience of his own related to
me by the late Mr. Forceythe Willson.
Gifted Hopkins (under various alliasis) has been a frequent
correspondent of mine. I have also received a good many communications,
signed with various names, which must have been from near female
relatives of that young gentleman. I once sent a kind of encyclical
letter to the whole family connection; but as the delusion under which
they labor is still common, and often leads to the wasting of time,
the contempt of honest study or humble labor, and the misapplication of
intelligence not so far below mediocrity as to be incapable of affording
a respectable return when employed in the proper direction, I thought
this picture from life might also be of service. When I say that no
genuine young poet will apply it to himself, I think I have so far
removed the sting that few or none will complain of being wounded.
It is lamentable to be forced to add that the Reverend Joseph Bellamy
Stoker is only a softened copy of too many originals to whom, as a
regular attendant upon divine worship from my childhood to the present
time, I have respectfully listened, while they dealt with me and mine
and the bulk of their fellow-creatures after the manner of their sect.
If, in the interval between his first showing himself in my story and
its publication in a separate volume, anything had occurred to make
me question the justice or expediency of drawing and exhibiting such a
portrait, I should have reconsidered it, with the view of retouching its
sharper features. But its essential truthfulness has been illustrated
every month or two, since my story has been in the course of
publication, by a fresh example from real life, stamped in darker colors
than any with which I should have thought of staining my pages.
There are a great many good clergymen to one bad one, but a writer
finds it hard to keep to the true proportion of good and bad persons in
telling a story. The three or four good ministers I have introduced in
this narrative must stand for many whom I have known and loved, and some
of whom I count to-day among my most valued friends. I hope the best and
wisest of them will like this story and approve it. If they cannot all
do this, I know they will recognize it as having been written with a
right and honest purpose.
BOSTON, 1867.
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.
It is a quarter of a century since the foregoing Preface was written,
and that is long enough to allow a story to be forgotten by the public,
and very possibly by the writer of it also. I will not pretend that I
have forgotten all about “The Guardian Angel,” but it is long since
I have read it, and many of its characters and incidents are far from
being distinct in my memory. There are, however, a few points which hold
their place among my recollections. The revolt of Myrtle Hazard from the
tyranny of that dogmatic dynasty now breaking up in all directions has
found new illustrations since this tale was written. I need only refer
to two instances of many. The first is from real life. Mr. Robert
C. Adams's work, “Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason,” is the
outcome of the teachings of one of the most intransigeant of our New
England Calvinists, the late Reverend Nehemiah Adams. For an example in
fiction,--fiction which bears all the marks of being copied from real
life,--I will refer to “The Story of an African Farm.” The boy's honest,
but terrible outburst, “I hate God,” was, I doubt not, more acceptable
in the view of his Maker than the lying praise of many a hypocrite who,
having enthroned a demon as Lord of the Universe, thinks to conciliate
his favor by using the phrases which the slaves of Eastern despots are
in the habit of addressing to their masters. I have had many private
letters showing the same revolt of reasoning natures against doctrines
which shock the more highly civilized part of mankind in this nineteenth
century and are leading to those dissensions which have long shown as
cracks, and are fast becoming lines of cleavage in some of the largest
communions of Protestantism.
The principle of heredity has been largely studied since this story
was written. This tale, like “Elsie Venner,” depends for its deeper
significance on the ante-natal history of its subject. But the story
was meant to be readable for those who did not care for its underlying
philosophy. If it fails to interest the reader who ventures upon it,
it may find a place on an unfrequented bookshelf in common with other
“medicated novels.”
Perhaps I have been too hard with Gifted Hopkins and the tribe of
rhymesters to which he belongs. I ought not to forget that I too
introduced myself to the reading world in a thin volume of verses; many
of which had better not have been written, and would not be reprinted
now, but for the fact that they have established a right to a place
among my poems in virtue of long occupancy. Besides, although the
writing of verses is often a mark of mental weakness, I cannot forget
that Joseph Story and George Bancroft each published his little book,
of rhymes, and that John Quincy Adams has left many poems on record, the
writing of which did not interfere with the vast and important labors of
his illustrious career.
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 7, 1891. O. W. H.
THE GUARDIAN ANGEL
CHAPTER I. AN ADVERTISEMENT.
On Saturday, the 18th day of June, 1859, the “State Banner and Delphian
Oracle,” published weekly at Oxbow Village, one of the principal centres
in a thriving river-town of New England, contained an advertisement
which involved the story of a young life, and stained the emotions of
a small community. Such faces of dismay, such shaking of heads, such
gatherings at corners, such halts of complaining, rheumatic wagons, and
dried-up, chirruping chaises, for colloquy of their still-faced tenants,
had not been known since the rainy November Friday, when old Malachi
Withers was found hanging in his garret up there at the lonely house
behind the poplars.
The number of the “Banner and Oracle” which contained this advertisement
was a fair specimen enough of the kind of newspaper to which it
belonged. Some extracts from a stray copy of the issue of the date
referred to will show the reader what kind of entertainment the paper
was accustomed to furnish its patrons, and also serve some incidental
purposes of the writer in bringing into notice a few personages who are
to figure in this narrative.
The copy in question was addressed to one of its regular
subscribers,--“B. Gridley, Esq.” The sarcastic annotations at
various points, enclosed in brackets and italicised that they may be
distinguished from any other comments, were taken from the pencilled
remarks of that gentleman, intended for the improvement of a member of
the family in which he resided, and are by no means to be attributed to
the harmless pen which reproduces them.
Byles Gridley, A. M., as he would have been styled by persons acquainted
with scholarly dignities, was a bachelor, who had been a schoolmaster,
a college tutor, and afterwards for many years professor,--a man of
learning, of habits, of whims and crotchets, such as are hardly to be
found, except in old, unmarried students,--the double flowers of college
culture, their stamina all turned to petals, their stock in the life
of the race all funded in the individual. Being a man of letters, Byles
Gridley naturally rather undervalued the literary acquirements of the
good people of the rural district where he resided, and, having known
much of college and something of city life, was apt to smile at the
importance they attached to their little local concerns. He was, of
course, quite as much an object of rough satire to the natural observers
and humorists, who are never wanting in a New England village,--perhaps
not in any village where a score or two of families are brought
together,--enough of them, at any rate, to furnish the ordinary
characters of a real-life stock company.
The old Master of Arts was a permanent boarder in the house of a very
worthy woman, relict of the late Ammi Hopkins, by courtesy Esquire,
whose handsome monument--in a finished and carefully colored
lithograph, representing a finely shaped urn under a very nicely groomed
willow--hung in her small, well-darkened, and, as it were, monumental
parlor. Her household consisted of herself, her son, nineteen years of
age, of whom more hereafter, and of two small children, twins, left upon
her doorstep when little more than mere marsupial possibilities, taken
in for the night, kept for a week, and always thereafter cherished by
the good soul as her own; also of Miss Susan Posey, aged eighteen, at
school at the “Academy” in another part of the same town, a distant
relative, boarding with her.
What the old scholar took the village paper for it would be hard to
guess, unless for a reason like that which carried him very regularly to
hear the preaching of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker, colleague of the
old minister of the village parish; namely, because he did not believe a
word of his favorite doctrines, and liked to go there so as to growl to
himself through the sermon, and go home scolding all the way about it.
The leading article of the “Banner and Oracle” for June 18th must have
been of superior excellence, for, as Mr. Gridley remarked, several of
the “metropolitan” journals of the date of June 15th and thereabout
had evidently conversed with the writer and borrowed some of his ideas
before he gave them to the public. The Foreign News by the Europa at
Halifax, 15th, was spread out in the amplest dimensions the type of the
office could supply. More battles! The Allies victorious! The King and
General Cialdini beat the Austrians at Palestro! 400 Austrians drowned
in a canal! Anti-French feeling in Germany! Allgermine Zeiturg talks of
conquest of Allsatia and Loraine and the occupation of Paris! [Vicious
digs with a pencil through the above proper names.] Race for the Derby
won by Sir Joseph Hawley's Musjid! [That's what England cares for!
Hooray for the Darby! Italy be deedeed!] Visit of Prince Alfred to
the Holy Land. Letter from our own Correspondent. [Oh! Oh! A West
Minkville?] Cotton advanced. Breadstuffs declining.--Deacon Rumrill's
barn burned down on Saturday night. A pig missing; supposed to have
“fallen a prey to the devouring element.” [Got roasted.] A yellow
mineral had been discovered on the Doolittle farm, which, by the report
of those who had seen it, bore a strong resemblance to California gold
ore. Much excitement in the neighborhood in consequence [Idiots! Iron
pyrites!] A hen at Four Corners had just laid an egg measuring 7 by 8
inches. Fetch on your biddies! [Editorial wit!] A man had shot an eagle
measuring six feet and a half from tip to tip of his wings.--Crops
suffering for want of rain [Always just so. “Dry times, Father Noah!”]
The editors had received a liberal portion of cake from the happy couple
whose matrimonial union was recorded in the column dedicated to Hymen.
Also a superior article of [article of! bah!] steel pen from the
enterprising merchant [shopkeeper] whose advertisement was to be found
on the third page of this paper.--An interesting Surprise Party [cheap
theatricals] had transpired [bah!] on Thursday evening last at the house
of the Rev. Mr. Stoker. The parishioners had donated [donated! GIVE is
a good word enough for the Lord's Prayer. DONATE our daily bread!] a
bag of meal, a bushel of beans, a keg of pickles, and a quintal of
salt-fish. The worthy pastor was much affected, etc., etc. [Of course.
Call'em. SENSATION parties and done with it!] The Rev. Dr. Pemberton and
the venerable Dr. Hurlbut honored the occasion with their presence.--We
learn that the Rev. Ambrose Eveleth, rector of St. Bartholomew's Chapel,
has returned from his journey, and will officiate to-morrow.
Then came strings of advertisements, with a luxuriant vegetation of
capitals and notes of admiration. More of those PRIME GOODS! Full
Assortments of every Article in our line! [Except the one thing you
want!] Auction Sale. Old furniture, feather-beds, bed-spreads [spreads!
ugh!], setts [setts!] crockery-ware, odd vols., ullage bbls. of this
and that, with other household goods, etc., etc., etc.,--the etceteras
meaning all sorts of insane movables, such as come out of their
bedlam-holes when an antiquated domestic establishment disintegrates
itself at a country “vandoo.”--Several announcements of “Feed,” whatever
that may be,--not restaurant dinners, anyhow,--also of “Shorts,”--terms
mysterious to city ears as jute and cudbear and gunnybags to such as
drive oxen in the remote interior districts.--Then the marriage column
above alluded to, by the fortunate recipients of the cake. Right
opposite, as if for matrimonial ground-bait, a Notice that Whereas
my wife, Lucretia Babb, has left my bed and board, I will not be
responsible, etc., etc., from this date.--Jacob Penhallow (of the late
firm Wibird and Penhallow) had taken Mr. William Murray Bradshaw into
partnership, and the business of the office would be carried on as usual
under the title Penhallow and Bradshaw, Attorneys at Law. Then came
the standing professional card of Dr. Lemuel Hurlbut and Dr. Fordyce
Hurlbut, the medical patriarch of the town and his son. Following this,
hideous quack advertisements, some of them with the certificates of
Honorables, Esquires, and Clergymen.--Then a cow, strayed or stolen
from the subscriber.--Then the advertisement referred to in our first
paragraph:
MYRTLE HAZARD has been missing from her home in this place since
Thursday morning, June 16th. She is fifteen years old, tall and womanly
for her age, has dark hair and eyes, fresh complexion, regular features,
pleasant smile and voice, but shy with strangers. Her common dress was a
black and white gingham check, straw hat, trimmed with green ribbon.
It is feared she may have come to harm in some way, or be wandering
at large in a state of temporary mental alienation. Any information
relating to the missing child will be gratefully received and properly
rewarded by her afflicted aunt,
MISS SILENCE WITHERS, Residing at the Withers Homestead, otherwise known
as “The Poplars,” in this village.