which he said was the finest dinner he had ever seen, the most
perfect in all its appointments, decorated with the largest
profusion of flowers, in as perfect taste as he had ever seen.
“Why, even the chair you sat in was so delicately padded as
to give pleasure to that weak spot in the back which we all
inherit from the fall of Adam.” The other was at Mrs. Charles
Dorr’s, where there were sixteen at table and the room “for
heat was like the black hole at Calcutta,” but the company
was very brilliant. Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Parkman, Dr.
Hayes, etc. He sat next Mrs. ——; says she is a thorough-bred
woman of society, the daughter of a politician, the wife, first
of a millionaire and now of a man of society. “I like such a
woman now and then; she never makes a mistake.” Mrs. —— was
thoroughly canvassed at the table, “picked clean as any duck
for the spit and then roasted over a slow fire,” as O. W. H.
afterward remarked to Mrs. Parkman, who is a very just woman
and who weighed her well in the balances.
When they arrived at L.’s, my basket of flowers stood,
surrounded by other gifts, and Longfellow himself sat crowned
with all the natural loveliness of his rare nature. The day
must have been a happy one for him.... O. W. H. had three
perfect verses of a little poem in his hand which he read, and
then Lowell talked, and they had great merriment and delight
together.
[Illustration: FIELDS, THE MAN OF BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIPS]
The two following passages from the diary for 1868 seem to indicate that
Dr. Holmes made a double use of his poem, “Bill and Joe,” written in this
year, included in his “Poems of the Class of ’29,” and according to the
entry of July 17, read at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner of 1868:—
_January 16, 1868._—We had just finished dinner when Professor
Holmes came in with his poem, one of the annual he contributes
to the class-supper of the “Boys of ’29.” He read it through
to us with feeling, his voice growing tremulous and husky at
times. It was pleasant to see how he enjoyed our pleasure in
it. The talk turned naturally after a little upon the question
of Chief Justice, when he took occasion to run over in his
mind the character and qualifications of some of our chief
barristers. “As for Bigelow[4] (who has just gone out of office
and it is his successor over whom they are struggling), as for
Bigelow, it is astonishing to see how every bit of that man’s
talent has been brought into use; all he has is made the most
of. Why, he’s like some cooks, give ’em a horse and they will
use every part of him except the shoes.”
_Friday, July 17, 1868._—Last evening Dr. Holmes came in
fresh from the Phi Beta dinner at Cambridge.[5] He said, “I
can’t stop and I only came to read you my verses I read at
the dinner, they made such a queer impression. I didn’t mean
to go, but James Lowell was to preside and sent me word that
I really must be there, so I just wrote these off, and here
they are—I don’t know that I should have brought them in to
read to you, but Hoar declares they are the best I have ever
done.” At length, in the exquisite orange of sunset, he read
those delightful verses, full, full of feeling, “Bill and Joe.”
We did not wonder the Phi Beta boys liked them. I shall be
surprised if every boy, especially those who find the almond
blossoms in the hair, as W. says, does not like them, and if
they do _not_ win for him a more universal reputation than he
has yet won....
I was impressed last night with the nervous energy of O. W.
H. His leg by a slight quiver kept time to the reading of his
verses, and his talk fell before and after like swift rain.
He does not go away from town but sways between Boston and
Cambridge all these perfect summer days; receiving yesterday,
the hottest day of this or many years, Motley at dinner, and
going perpetually, and writing verses and letters not a few.
His activity is wonderful; think of writing letters these warm
delicious evenings by gaslight in a small front study on the
street! It hurts him less than his wife, partly because the
intellectual vivacity and excitement keeps him up, partly
because he is physically fitted to bear almost everything but
cold. How fortunate for the world that while he lives he should
continue his work so faithfully. He will have no successor, at
least for many a long year, after we have all gone to sleep
under our green counterpanes and Nature has tucked us up well
in yearly violets.
Earlier in the year Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Stowe met in Charles Street.
_Wednesday morning, January 29, 1868._—Last night Professor
Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, her daughter Georgie, and the Howellses,
took tea here. The Professor came early and was in good talking
trim—presently in came Mrs. Stowe, and they fell shortly into
talk upon Homeopathy and Allopathy. He grew very warm, declared
that cases cited of cures proved nothing, and we were all
“incompetent” to judge! We could not but be amused at his heat,
for we were more or less believers in Homeopathy against his
one argument for Allopathy. In vain Mrs. Stowe and I tried to
turn and stem the fiery tide: Georgie or Mrs. Howells would
be sure to sweep us back into it again. However, there were
many brilliant things said, and sweet and good and interesting
things too. The Professor told us one curious fact, that
chemists had in vain analyzed the poison of rattlesnakes and
could not discover the elements of destruction it undoubtedly
possesses. Also that, when Indians poison their arrows with
it, they hang up the liver of a white wolf and make one snake
after another bite it until the liver is entirely impregnated;
they then leave it to dry until disintegrated, when they
moisten and apply round the necks of the arrows—_not on the
point_. He had a long quiet chat with Mrs. Stowe before the
evening ended. They compared their early Calvinistic education
and the effect produced upon their characters by such training.
_Tuesday, April 13, 1869._—Dr. Holmes and his wife and Mr.
Whittier dined here. The talk was free, totally free from all
feeling of constraint, as it could not have been had another
person been present. Whittier says he is afraid of strangers,
and Dr. Holmes is never more delightful than under just such
auspices. Dr. Holmes asked Whittier’s undisguised opinion
of Longfellow’s “New England Tragedies”—“honest opinion
now,” said he. “Well, I liked them,” said Whittier, half
reluctantly—evidently he had found much that was beautiful and
in keeping with the spirit of the times of which Longfellow
wrote, and their passionless character did not trouble him as
it had O. W. H. Presently, he added that he was surprised to
find how he had preserved almost literally the old text of the
old books he had lent Longfellow twelve years ago, and had
measured it off into verse. “Ah,” said O. W. H., “you have
said the severest thing after all—‘measured off’; that’s just
what he has done. It is one of the easiest, the very commonest
tricks of the rhymster to be able to do this. I am surprised to
see the ease with which I can do it myself.” They spoke then
of “Evangeline,” which both agreed in awarding unqualified
praise. “Only,” said Whittier, “I always wondered there was
no terrible outburst of indignation over the outrage done to
that poor colony. The tide of the story runs as smoothly as if
nothing had occurred. I long thought of working up that story
myself, but I am glad I did not, only I can’t understand its
being so calm.” They talked on religious questions of course,
the Professor holding that sin being finite, and of such a
nature that we could both outgrow it and root it up, Whittier
still returning to the ground that sin was a “very real thing.”
It is impossible to represent the clearness and swiftness
of Dr. Holmes’s talk. The purity of heart and strength of
endeavor evident in the two poets makes their atmosphere a very
elevating one and they evidently naturally rejoiced in each
other’s society.
Mrs. Holmes had not been out to dine before this winter.
Jamie sent us a pot of strawberries growing, which delighted
everybody.
Before the following passage was written, in 1871, Dr. Holmes had moved
from Charles Street to Beacon Street; Mr. Fields, in impaired health,
had retired from active business as a publisher and was devoting himself
chiefly to writing and lecturing; and Mrs. Fields, already interested
in the establishment of Coffee Houses for the poor in the North End and
elsewhere, had begun the notable work in public charities to which her
energies were so largely given for the remaining forty-four years of her
life. In the Coöperative Workrooms, still rendering their beneficent
services, and in the larger organization of the Associated Charities,
embodying a principle now widely adopted throughout the land, the labors
of this generous spirit, never content to give all it had to the gracious
life within its own four walls, have borne enduring fruits.
1871.—Thursday afternoon last (June 22) went to Cambridge for
a few visits, and coming home stopped at Dr. Holmes’s, at
his new house on Beacon St. Found them both at home, sitting
lonely in the oriel window looking out upon a glorious sunset.
They were thinking of the children who have flown out of their
nest. Dr. Holmes was very friendly and sweet. He talked most
affectionately with J., told him he no longer felt a spur to
write since he had gone out of business; he needed just the
little touch of praise and encouragement he used to administer
to make him do it; now he did not think he should ever write
any more worth mentioning. He had been in to see the Coffee
House and entertained us much by saying he met President
Eliot near the door one day just as he was going in, but he
was ashamed of doing so until they had parted company. There
was something so childlike in this confession that we all
laughed heartily over it. However he got in at last, and “tears
as big as onions stood in my eyes when I saw what had been
accomplished.” “You must be a very happy woman,” he went on
to say. I told him of the new one in Eliot Street about to be
opened this coming week.
At the end of the summer of 1871, when Mr. and Mrs. Fields were beginning
to learn the charms of the North Shore town of Manchester, where they
established the “Gambrel Cottage” on “Thunderbolt Hill” which gave a
summer synonym to the hospitality of Charles Street, they journeyed one
day to Nahant for a midday dinner with Longfellow. Here Mrs. Fields’s
sister, Louisa, Mrs. James H. Beal, was a neighbor of the poet. Another
neighbor was the late George Abbot James, and in Longfellow’s diary for
September 4, 1871, is the entry: “Call on Dr. Holmes at Mr. James’s.
Sumner still there. We discuss the new poets.” Mrs. Fields reports a
continuation of the talk with the same friends.
_Wednesday, September 6, 1871._—Dined with Mr. Longfellow at
Nahant. The day was warm with a soft south wind blowing, and as
we crossed the beach white waves were curling up the sands....
The dear poet saw us coming from afar and walked to his little
gate to meet us with such a sweet cordial welcome that it was
worth going many a mile to have that alone. The three little
ladies, his daughters, and Ernest’s wife, were within, but
they came warmly forward to give us greeting; also Mr. Sam.
Longfellow was of the party. A few moments’ chat in the little
parlor, when Longfellow saw Holmes coming in the distance (he
had an opera-glass, being short-sighted, and was sitting on
the piazza with J.). “Hullo!” said he, “here comes Holmes,
and all dressed up too, with flowers in his button-hole.”
Sure enough, here was _the_ Professor to have dinner with
us also. He was full of talk as ever and looking remarkably
well. Longfellow asked with much interest about Balaustion and
Joaquin Miller, neither of which he had read. Holmes criticized
as if unbearable and beyond the pale of decency Browning’s
cutting of words, “Flower o’ the pine,” and such characteristic
passages. Longfellow spoke of a volume of poems he had received
of late from England in which “saw” was made to rhyme with
“more.” Holmes said Keats often did that. “Not exactly, I
think,” said L., “‘dawn’ and ‘forlorn,’ perhaps.” “Well,”
said H., “when I was in college” (I think he said college,
certainly while at Cambridge) “and my first volume was about
to appear, Mrs. Folsom saw the sheets and fortunately at the
very last moment for correction discovered I had made ‘forlorn’
rhyme with ‘gone,’ and out of her own head and without having
time to consult with me she substituted ‘sad and wan.’”[6]
The Professor went on to say that he must confess to a tender
feeling of regret for his “so forlorn” to this very day, but he
supposed every writer of poems must have his keen regrets for
the numerous verses he could recall where he had wrestled with
the English language and had lost something of his thought in
his struggle with the necessities of art. We shortly after went
to dinner, where the talk still continued to turn on art and
artists, chiefly musical, the divorcement of music and thought;
a thinker or man of intellect in listening to music comes to a
comprehension of it, Holmes said, mediately, but a musician
feels it directly through some gift of which the thinker knows
nothing. Longfellow always recalls with intense delight hearing
Gounod sing his own music in Rome—his voice was hardly to be
mentioned among the fine voices of the world, indeed it was
small, but his rendering was exquisite. Canvassing T. B. Read’s
poems and speaking of “Sheridan’s Ride,” which has been so
highly praised, “Yes,” said Holmes, “but there are very poor
lines in it, but how often, to use Scripture phrase, there
is a fly in the ointment.” The talk went bowling off to Père
Hyacinthe. “He was very pleasant,” said Holmes, “it was most
agreeable to meet him, but you could only go a short distance.
His desire was to be a good Catholic, and ours is of course
quite different. It was like speaking through a knot-hole after
all.”
The dumb waiter bounced up. “We cannot call that a _dumb_
waiter,” said L., “but I had an odd dream the other night.
I thought Greene (G. W.) came bouncing up on the waiter in
that manner and stepped off in a most dignified fashion with
a crushed white hat on his head. He said he had just been to
drive with a Spanish lady.”
Sumner (Charles) came up to the piazza. He had dined elsewhere
and came over as soon as possible for a little talk. Holmes
talked on, although we all said, “Mr. Sumner—here is Mr.
Sumner,” without perceiving that the noble Senator was sitting
just outside the cottage window waiting for us to rise, and
began to converse about him. Longfellow grew nervous and rose
to speak with Sumner—still Holmes did not perceive, and went
on until Jamie relieved us from a tendency to convulsions by
voting that we should join the Senator. Then Sumner related the
substance of an amusing letter of Cicero’s he had just been
reading in which Cicero gives an account to his friend of a
visit he had just received from the Emperor Julius Cæsar. He
had invited Julius to pass a few days with him, but he came
quite unexpectedly with a thousand men! Cicero, seeing them
from afar, debated with another friend what he should do with
them, but at length managed to encamp them. To feed them was
a less easy matter. The emperor took everything quite easily,
however, and was very pleasant, “but,” adds Cicero, “he is not
the man to whom I should say a second time, ‘if you are passing
this way, give me a call.’”
Again, in 1873, Longfellow, Holmes, and Sumner are found together at
the dinner-table with Mrs. Fields, this time in Charles Street. When
she made use of her diary at this point, for her article on Dr. Holmes
which appeared first in the “Century Magazine” (1895), it was with many
omissions. The passage is now given almost entire. It should be said that
the Misses Towne, mentioned at the beginning of it, were friends and
summer neighbors at Manchester.
_Saturday, October 11, 1873._—Helen and Alice Towne have come
to pass Sunday with us. Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Greene, Dr.
Holmes came to dine. Mr. Sumner seemed less strong than of late
and I fancied he suffered somewhat while at table during the
evening, but he told me he was working at his desk or reading
during fourteen consecutive hours not infrequently at present,
as he was in the habit of doing when uninterrupted by friendly
visits. He said he was very fond of the passive exercise of
reading; the active exercise of composition was of course
agreeable in certain moods, but reading was a never-ending
delight. He spoke of Lord Brougham, and Mrs. Norton and her two
beautiful sisters. Both he and Mr. Longfellow recalled them in
their youthful loveliness, but Mr. Sumner said when he was in
England the last time he saw the Duchess of Somerset, who was a
most poetic looking creature in her youth and (I believe) the
youngest of the three sisters, so changed he should never have
guessed who it might be. She was grown a huge red-faced woman.
(Longfellow laughed, referring to her second marriage and
said, “Yes, she had turned a Somerset!”) Dr. Holmes sparkled
and coruscated as I have seldom heard him before. We are more
than ever convinced that no one since Sydney Smith was ever so
brilliant, so witty, spontaneous, naïf, and unfailing as Dr.
Holmes. He talked much about his class in College: “There never
was such vigor in any class before, it seems to me—almost every
member turns out sooner or later distinguished for something.
We have had every grade of moral status from a criminal to a
Chief Justice, and we never let any one of them drop. We keep
hold of their hands year after year and lift up the weak and
failing ones till they are at last redeemed. Ah, there was
one exception—years ago we voted to cast a man out who had
been a defaulter or who had committed some offense of that
nature. The poor fellow sank down, and before the next year,
when we repented of this decision, he had gone too far down and
presently died. But we have kept all the rest. Every fourth man
in our class is a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our class, who
wrote ‘My Country, ’tis of Thee.’ Sam. Smith will live when
Longfellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into
oblivion—and yet what is there in those verses to make them
live? Do you remember the line ‘Like _that_ above’? I asked
Sam. what ‘that’ referred to—he said ‘that rapture’!!—(The
expression of the rapid talker’s face of contempt as he said
this was one of the most amusing possible.)—Even the odds and
ends of our class have turned out something.... Longfellow, I
wish I could make you talk about yourself.”—“But I never do,”
said L. quietly. “I know you never do, but you confessed to me
once.”—“No, I don’t think I ever did,” said L. laughing
Greene was for the most part utterly speechless. He attended
with great assiduity to his dinner, which was a good one, and
Longfellow was watchful and kind enough to send him little
choice things to eat which he thought he would enjoy.
Holmes was abstemious and never ceased talking—“Most men write
too much. I would rather risk my future fame upon one lyric
than upon ten volumes. But I have said Boston is the hub of the
universe. I will rest upon that.”
All this report is singularly dry compared with the wit and
humor which radiated about the table. We laughed till the tears
ran down our cheeks. Longfellow was intensely amused. I have
not seen him laugh so much for many a long day. We ladies sat
at the table long after coffee and cigars in order to hear the
talk....
Sumner said he had been much displeased by a remark Professor
Henry Hunt made to him a few days ago. He said Mr. Agassiz was
an _impediment_ in the path of science. What did such men as
Hunt and John Fiske mean by underrating a man who has given
such books to the world as Agassiz has done, not to speak of
his untiring efforts in the other avenues of influence! “It
means just this,” said Holmes: “Agassiz will not listen to the
Darwinian theory; his whole effort is on the other side. Now
Agassiz is no longer young, and I was reading the other day
in a book on the Sandwich Islands of an old Fejee man who had
been carried away among strangers, but who prayed he might be
carried home, that his brains might be beaten out in peace by
his son according to the custom of those lands. It flashed over
me then that our sons beat out our brains in the same way. They
do not walk in our ruts of thoughts or begin exactly where we
leave off, but they have a new standpoint of their own. At
present the Darwinian theory can be nothing but an hypothesis;
the important links of proof are missing and cannot be
supplied; but in the myriad ages there may be new developments.”
I thought the young ladies looked a little tired sitting, so
about nine o’clock we left the table—still the talk went on
for about four hours when they broke up.
[Illustration: LOUIS AGASSIZ]
With two letters from Dr. Holmes this rambling chronicle of his
friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Fields must end. The first of the
communications is a mere fragment of his everyday humor:
BEVERLY-FARMS-BY-THE-DEPOT
_July 18th, 1878_
DEAR MR. FIELDS:—
The Corner sends me a book directed to me here, but on opening
the outside wrapper I read “James T. Fields, Esq., Jamaica
Plain, Boston, Mass.” The book, which is sealed up (or stuck
up, like many authors), measures 7 × 5, nearly, and is
presumably idiotic, like most books which are sent us without
being ordered.
Perhaps you have received a similar package which on opening
you found directed to O. W. Holmes, Esq., Peak of Teneriffe,
Boston. If so, when the weather grows cool again and we can
make up our minds to face the title page of the dreaded volume,
we will make an exchange.
Always truly yours,
O. W. HOLMES
The second letter, written ten years after Dr. Holmes, in moving
from Charles to Beacon Street, had made the last of his “justifiable
domicides,” strikes a more serious note, revealing that quality of true
sympathy so closely joined in abundant natures with true humor. Mr.
Fields had died in April of 1881, and Mrs. Fields had applied herself
at once to the preparation of her volume, “James T. Fields: Biographical
Notes and Personal Sketches,” drawing freely upon the diaries from
which many of the foregoing pages, then passed over, are now taken. The
performance of this loving labor must have done much towards the first
filling of a life so grievously emptied. Already the intimate and beloved
companionship of Miss Jewett had come into it.
294 BEACON ST., _November 16, 1881_
MY DEAR MRS. FIELDS:—
I feel sure there will be but one voice with regard to your
beautiful memorial volume. If I had any misgivings that you
might find the delicate task too difficult—that you might be
discouraged between the wish to draw a life-like picture and
the fear of saying more than the public had a right to, these
misgivings have all vanished, and I am sure your finished task
leaves nothing to be regretted. As he was in life, he is in
your loving but not overwrought story. I do not see how a life
so full of wholesome activity and genuine human feeling could
have been better pictured than it is in your pages. Long before
I had finished reading your memoir in the proofs I had learned
to trust you entirely as to the whole management of the work
on which you had entered. All I feared was that your feelings
might be overtasked, and that the dread of coming before the
public when your whole heart was in the pages opened to its
calm judgment might be more than you could bear.
And now, my dear Mrs. Fields, there must come a period of
depression, almost of collapse, after the labor and the solace
of this tender, tearful, yet blessed occupation. I think you
need the kind thoughts and soothing words—if words have any
virtue in them—of those who love you more than while each day
had its busy hours in which the memory of so much that was
delightful to recall kept the ever-returning pangs of grief
a little while in abeyance. It must be so. But before long,
quietly, almost imperceptibly, there will, I hope and trust,
return to you the quieting sense of all that you have done and
all that you have been for that life which for so many happy
years you were privileged to share. How few women have so
perfectly fulfilled, not only every duty, but every ideal that
a husband could think of as going to make a happy home! This
must be and will be an ever-growing source of consolation.
Forgive me for saying what many others must have said to you,
but none more sincerely than myself.
I do not know how to express to you the feeling with which
Mrs. Holmes looks upon you in your bereavement. I should do
it injustice if I attempted to give it expression, for she
lives so largely in her sympathies and her endeavors to help
others that she could not but sorrow deeply with you in your
affliction and wish there were any word of consolation she
could add to the love she sends you.
Believe me, dear Mrs. Fields,
Affectionately yours,
O. W. HOLMES