THE PROFESSOR.
In 1839, Doctor Holmes was appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology
in Dartmouth College, and pleasantly describes in _The Professor_, his
"Autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where it comes loitering down from
its mountain fastnesses like a great lord swallowing up the small
proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes." The little country tavern
where he stayed while delivering his lectures, he calls "that
caravansary on the banks of the stream where Ledyard launched his log
canoe, and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Commencement
processions." And what a charming description this of the little town of
Hanover, "where blue Ascutney looked down from the far distance and the
'hills of Beulah' rolled up the opposite horizon in soft, climbing
masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he (the
Professor) used to look through his old 'Dollond' to see if the Shining
Ones were not within range of sight--sweet visions, sweetest in those
Sunday walks which carried him by the peaceful common, through the
solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the shadow of the rod
of Moses, to the terminus of his harmless stroll, the spreading
beech-tree."
In 1840, Doctor Holmes was married to Amelia Lee Jackson, a daughter of
Hon. Charles Jackson, formerly judge of the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts. The first home of the young couple was at No. 8,
Montgomery Place, the house at the left-hand side of the court, and next
the farther corner. Here Doctor Holmes resided for about eighteen
years,[7] and here all his children were born.
"When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five
lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time, and
one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own.
What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof
but his; children came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away,
threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock
company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep
sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling in that little court
where he lived in gay loneliness so long."
In order to devote himself more strictly to his practice in Boston,
Doctor Holmes resigned his professorship at Dartmouth College soon after
his marriage. During the summer months, however, he delivered lectures
before the Berkshire Medical School at Pittsfield, Mass., and
established his summer residence "up among those hills that shut in the
amber-flowing Housatonic, in the home overlooking the winding stream and
the smooth, flat meadow; looked down upon by wild hills where the tracks
of bears and catamounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter
snow--a home," he adds, "where seven blessed summers were passed which
stand in memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the beatific
vision of the holy dreamer."
The township of Pontoosuc, now Pittsfield, including some twenty-four
thousand acres, was bought by Doctor Holmes' great-grandfather, Jacob
Wendell, about the year 1734. It was on a small part of this large
possession that "Canoe Place," the pleasant summer home of Doctor
Holmes, was built.
Hawthorne was then living at Lenox, which is only a few miles from
Pittsfield, and in his contribution to Lowell's magazine, _The Pioneer_,
in 1843, he describes in his _Hall of Fantasy_, the poets he saw
"talking in groups, with a liveliness of expression, or ready smile, and
a light, intellectual laughter which showed how rapidly the shafts of
wit were glancing to and fro among them. In the most vivacious of
these," he adds, "I recognized Holmes."
Beside Hawthorne, there was Herman Melville, Miss Sedgwick and Fanny
Kemble near by on those "maple-shadowed plains of Berkshire," while
Bryant and Ellery Channing not unfrequently joined the brilliant circle
in their summer trips to the Stockbridge hills.
In the Boston home of Doctor Holmes, John Lothrop Motley was a welcome
visitor--a man whose "generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage
paid to his genius by the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive
to scholars could ever spoil." Both young men were members of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, and after the death of Motley, Holmes
became his biographer.
Charles Sumner formed another of this pleasant literary coterie, and is
described by Doctor Holmes, after a short acquaintance, as "an amiable,
blameless young man; pleasant, affable and cheerful." Years after, when
Sumner was assaulted in the Senate, Doctor Holmes, at a public dinner in
Boston, denounced in strong language, the shameful outrage as an assault
not only upon the man, but upon the Union.
At the Berkshire festivals, the poet was often called upon to furnish a
song, and brimful of wit and wisdom they always were, though often
composed upon the spur of the moment. Here is a part of one of them:
Come back to your mother, ye children, for shame,
Who have wandered like truants, for riches or fame!
With a smile on her face, and a sprig in her cap,
She calls you to feast from her bountiful lap.
Come out from your alleys, your courts, and your lanes,
And breathe, like young eagles, the air of our plains,
Take a whiff from our fields, and your excellent wives
Will declare it's all nonsense insuring your lives.
Come you of the law, who can talk, if you please,
Till the Man in the Moon will declare it's a cheese,
And leave 'the old lady that never tell lies,'
To sleep with her handkerchief over her eyes.
Ye healers of men, for a moment decline
Your feats in the rhubarb and ipecac line;
While you shut up your turnpike, your neighbors can go
The old roundabout road, to the regions below.
You clerk, on whose ears are a couple of pens,
And whose head is an anthill of units and tens,
Though Plato denies you, we welcome you still
As a featherless biped, in spite of your quill.
Poor drudge of the city! how happy he feels
With the burrs on his legs and the grass at his heels!
No _dodger_ behind, his bandannas to share,
No constable grumbling "You mustn't walk there!"
In yonder green meadow, to memory dear,
He slaps a mosquito and brushes a tear;
The dewdrops hang round him on blossoms and shoots,
He breathes but one sigh for his youth and his boots.
There stands the old schoolhouse, hard by the old church
That tree at its side had the flavor of birch;
O sweet were the days of his juvenile tricks,
Though the prairie of youth had so many "big licks."
By the side of yon river he weeps and he slumps,
The boots fill with water as if they were pumps;
Till, sated with rapture, he steals to his bed,
With a glow in his heart, and a cold in his head.
At the annual dinner of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 1843, Doctor
Holmes read the fine poem entitled _Terpsichore_.
Three years later he delivered _Urania, A Rhyme Lesson_ before the
Boston Mercantile Library Association. "To save a question that is
sometimes put," remarks the poet, "it is proper to say that in naming
these two poems after two of the Muses, nothing more was intended than a
suggestion of their general character and aim."
FOOTNOTES:
[7] From notes furnished by Dr. Holmes.