[Speech of Oliver Wendell Holmes at the banquet of the Boston
Merchants' Association at Boston, Mass., May 23, 1884, in honor of the
Hon. John Lowell.]
MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--It was my intention, when I
accepted the public invitation to be with you this evening, to excuse
myself from saying a word. I am a professor emeritus, which means pretty
nearly the same thing as a tired-out or a worn-out instructor. And I do
seriously desire that, having during the last fifty years done my share
of work at public entertainments, I may hereafter be permitted, as a
post-prandial emeritus, to look on and listen in silence at the
festivals to which I may have the honor of being invited--unless,
indeed, I may happen to wish to be heard. [Applause.] In that case I
trust I may be indulged, as an unspoken speech and an unread poem are
apt to "strike in," as some complaints are said to, and cause inward
commotions. [Applause.] Judge Lowell's eulogy will be on every one's
lips this evening. His soundness, his fairness, his learning, his
devotion to duty, his urbanity,--these are the qualities which have
commended him to universal esteem and honor. [Applause.] I will not say
more of the living; I wish to speak of the dead.
In respectfully proposing the memory of his great-great-grandmother
[laughter], I am speaking of one whom few if any of you can remember.
[Laughter.] Yet her face is as familiar to me as that of any member of
my household. She looks upon me as I sit at my writing-table; she does
not smile, she does not speak; even the green parrot on her hand has
never opened his beak; but there she is, calm, unchanging, in her
immortal youth, as when the untutored artist fixed her features on the
canvas. To think that one little word from the lips of Dorothy Quincy,
your great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, decided the question
whether you and I should be here to-night [laughter], in fact whether we
should be anywhere [laughter] at all, or remain two bodiless dreams of
nature! But it was Dorothy Quincy's "Yes" or "No" to Edward Jackson
which was to settle that important matter--important to both of us,
certainly--yes, Your Honor; and I can say truly, as I look at you and
remember your career, important to this and the whole American
community. [Applause.]
The picture I referred to is but a rude one, and yet I was not ashamed
of it when I wrote a copy of verses about it, three or four of which
this audience will listen to for the sake of Dorothy's great-grandson. I
must alter the pronouns a little, for this occasion only:--
Look not on her with eyes of scorn--
Dorothy Q. was a lady born;
Ay! since the galloping Normans came
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.
O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift (we) owe to you!
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring--
All (our) tenure of heart and hand,
All (our) title to house and land;
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life!
What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered "No!"
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill--
Should (we) be (we), or could it be
One-tenth (two others) and nine-tenths (we)?
Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes:
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;
But never a cable that holds so fast
Through all the battles of wave and blast,
And never an echo of speech or song
That lives in the babbling air so long!
There were tones in the voice that whispered then
You may hear to-day in a hundred men.
O lady and lover, now faint and far
Your images hover--and here we are,
Solid and stirring in flesh and bone--
Edwards and Dorothys--all their own--
A goodly record for time to show
Of a syllable whispered so long ago.
[Applause prolonged.]
I give you: "The memory of Dorothy Jackson, born Dorothy Quincy, to
whose choice of the right monosyllable we owe the presence of our
honored guest and all that his life has achieved for the welfare of the
community." [Great applause and cheers.]