just finished a life of Longfellow in the “American Men of Letters”
series.
GEORGE WILLIS COOKE.
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
IN BEACON STREET
“It is strange,” remarks Lady Wilde, “how often a great genius has
given a soul to a locality.” We may prefer our own illustration to
hers, and remember in simpler fashion what Judd’s “Margaret” did for
a little village in Maine, or what Howe did for a little Western
town, instead of insisting that Walter Scott created Scotland or
Byron the Rhine. But the remark suggests, perhaps, quite as forcibly,
what locality has done for genius. The majority of writers who have
tried to deal with people, whether as novelists, poets, or essayists,
localize their human beings until “local color” becomes one of the most
essential factors of their success. Sometimes, like Judd and Howe, they
make the most of a very narrow environment; sometimes, like Cable, they
make their environment include a whole race, till the work becomes
historical as well as photographic; sometimes, like Mrs. Jackson, they
travel for a new environment; sometimes, like Howells and James, they
travel from environment to environment, and write now of Venice,
now of London, now of Boston, with skill equal to the ever-varying
opportunity; sometimes, like George Eliot writing “Romola,” or Harriet
Prescott Spofford writing “In a Cellar,” they stay at home and give
wonderful pictures of a life and time they have never known--compelled,
at least, however, to seek the environment of a library. Even
Shakspeare, who was certainly not a slave to his surroundings, sought
local color from books to an extent that we realize on seeing Irving’s
elaborate efforts to reproduce it. Even Hawthorne, escaping from
the material world whenever he could into the realm of spirit and
imagination, made profound studies of Salem or Italy the basis from
which he flew to the empyrean. To understand perfectly how fine such
work as this is, one must have, one’s self, either from experience or
study, some knowledge of the localities so admirably reproduced.
The genius of Oliver Wendell Holmes was almost unique in the fact that,
dealing almost exclusively with human beings--not merely human nature
exhibited in maxims--rarely wandering into discussions of books or art
or landscape--it was almost entirely independent of any environment
whatever. He was anchored to one locality almost as securely as Judd
was to New England or Howe to the West; for a chronological record
of the events of his life makes no mention of any journeys, except
the two years and a half as medical student in Europe, when he was
twenty-four years old, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” in 1887. He
spent every winter in Boston, every summer at Beverly Farms, which,
like Nahant, may almost be called “cold roast Boston”; yet during
the fifty years he wrote from Boston, he neither sought his material
from his special environment nor tried to escape from it. It is
human nature, not Boston nature, that he has drawn for us. Once, in
“Elsie Venner,” there is an escape like Hawthorne’s into the realm
of the psychological and weird; several times in the novels there
are photographic bits of a New England “party,” or of New England
character; but the great mass of the work which has appealed to so wide
a class of readers with such permanent power appeals to them because,
dealing with men and women, it deals with no particular men and women.
Indeed, it is hardly even men, women, and children that troop through
his pages; but rather man, woman, and child. His human beings are no
more Bostonians than the ducks of his “Aviary” are Charles River ducks.
They are ducks. He happened to see them on the Charles River; nay,
within the still narrower limits of his own window-pane; still, they
are ducks, and not merely Boston ducks. The universality of his genius
is wonderful, not because he exhibits it in writing now a clever novel
about Rome, now a powerful sketch of Montana, and anon a remarkable
book about Japan; but it is wonderful because it discovers within the
limits of Boston only what is universal. To understand perfectly how
fine such work as this is, you need never have been anywhere, yourself,
or have read any other book; any more than you would have to be one
of the “Boys of ’29” to appreciate the charming class-poems that have
been delighting the world, as well as the “Boys,” for fifty years. In
“Little Boston” he has, it is true, impaled some of the characteristics
which are generally known as Bostonian; but his very success in doing
this is of a kind to imply that he had studied his Bostonian only in
Paris or St. Louis; for the peculiar traits described are those no
Bostonian is supposed to be able to see for himself, still less to
acknowledge. If Dr. Holmes were to have spent a winter in New York, he
would have carried back with him, not material for a “keen satire on
New York society,” but only more material of what is human. Nay, he
probably would not have carried back with him anything at all which
he had not already found in Boston, since he seems to have found
everything there.
So there is no need of knowing how or where Dr. Holmes lived, or what
books he read, to understand and enjoy his work. But all the same,
one likes to know where he lived, from a warm, affectionate, personal
interest in the man; just as we like to know of our dearest friends,
not only that they dwell in a certain town, but that their parlor is
furnished in red, and that the piano stands opposite the sofa. Of his
earliest home, at Cambridge, he has himself told us in words which we
certainly will not try to improve upon. Later came the home of his
early married life in Montgomery Place, of which he has said: “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.” A few
brief, half-mystical allusions such as this are all that we gain from
his writings about his personal surroundings, as a few simple allusions
to certain streets and buildings are all that localize the “Autocrat”
as a Bostonian. For the man who has almost exceptionally looked into
his own heart to write has found in his heart, as he has in his city,
never what was personal or special, always what was human and universal.
But it will be no betrayal of trust for us to follow out the dim
outline a little, and tell how the five shadows flitted together from
Montgomery Place to Charles Street. Then, after another dozen years,
still another change seemed desirable. Dr. Holmes felt as few men do
the charm of association, and the sacredness of what is endeared by
age; but the very roundness of his nature which made him appreciate
not only what is human, but everything that is human, made him keenly
alive to the charm of what is new if it is beautiful. A rounded nature
finds it hard to be consistent. He wrote once: “It is a great happiness
to have been born in an old house haunted by recollections,” and he
asserted more than once the dignity of having, not only ancestors, but
ancestral homes; yet if we were to have reminded him of this in his
beautiful new house with all the latest luxuries and improvements, we
can imagine the kindly smile with which he would have gazed round the
great, beautiful room, with its solid woods and plate-glass windows,
and said gently: “I know I ought to like the other, and I do, but
how can I help liking this, too?” Yes, the charming new architecture
and the lovely new houses were too much for them; they would flit
again--though with a sigh. Not out of New England--no, indeed! not away
from Boston--certainly not. Hardly, indeed, out of Charles Street; for
although a “very plain brown-stone front would do,” provided its back
windows looked upon the river, the river they must have.
Dr. Holmes wanted, not big front windows from which to study the
Bostonians, but a big bay-window at the back, from which he could see
the ducks and gulls and think how like to human nature are all their
little lives and loves and sorrows. So little is there in his work of
what is personal, that it is possible there are people--in England--who
really think the “Autocrat” dwelt in the boarding-house of his books.
But those who believe with him that, as a rule, genius means ancestors,
are not surprised to know that Dr. Holmes himself had many more than
the average allowance of ancestors, and that, as a descendant of
Dudley, Bradstreet, the Olivers, Quincys, and Jacksons, his “hut of
stone” fronted on one of Boston’s most aristocratic streets, though
the dear river behind it flows almost close to its little garden gate.
Under his windows all the morning trooped the loveliest children
of the city in the daintiest apparel, wheeled in the costliest of
perambulators by the whitest-capped of French nurses. Past his door
every afternoon the “swellest” turn-outs of the great city passed on
their afternoon parade. Near his steps, at the hour for afternoon tea,
the handsomest _coupés_ came to anchor and deposited their graceful
freight. But this is not the panorama, that the Doctor himself was
watching. Whether in the beautiful great dining-room, where he was
first to acknowledge the sway at breakfast, luncheon and dinner, of
a still gentler Autocrat than himself, or in the library upstairs,
which was the heart of the home, he was always on the river side of the
house. The pretty little reception-room downstairs on the Beacon Street
side, he would tell you himself, with a merry smile, is a good place
for your “things”; you yourself must come directly up into the library,
and look on the river, broad enough just here to seem a beautiful lake.
I know of no other room in the heart of a great city where one so
completely forgot the nearness of the world as in this library. Even if
the heavy doors stood open into the hall, one forgot the front of the
house and thought only of the beautiful expanse of water that seemed
to shut off all approach save from the gulls. News from the humming
city must come to you, it would seem, only in sound of marriage or
funeral bells in the steeples of the many towns, distinct but distant,
looming across the water. And this, not because the talk by that
cheerful fire was of the “Over-Soul” or the “Infinite,” so unworldly,
so introspective, so wholly of things foreign or intellectual. Nothing
could be more human than the chat that went on there, or the laugh that
rang out so cheerily at such frequent intervals. Even with the shadow
of a deep personal grief over the hearthstone, a noble cheerfulness
that would not let others feel the shadow kept the room bright though
the heart was heavy. Are there pictures? There is certainly one
picture; for although a fine Copley hangs on one wall, and one of the
beautiful framed embroideries (for which Dr. Holmes’s daughter-in-law
is famous) on another, who will not first be conscious that in a
certain corner hangs the original portrait of Dorothy Q.? Exactly as
it is described in the poem, who can look at it without breathing
gratefully
“O Damsel Dorothy, Dorothy Q.,
Great is the gift _we_ owe to you,”
and thinking almost with a shudder that if,
“a hundred years ago,
Those close-shut lips had answered No,”
there would have been no Dr. Holmes. Somebody there might have been;
but though he had been only “one-tenth another to nine-tenths” _him_,
assuredly the loss of even a tenth would have been a bitter loss.
Books there are in this library, of course; but you were as little
conscious of the books as you were of the world. You were only really
conscious of the presence in the room, and the big desk on which was
lying the pen that wrote both “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table”
and “The Professor.” As you took it up, it was pretty to see the look
that stole over Dr. Holmes’s face; it was the twinkle of a smile that
seemed to mean, “Yes, it was the pen that did it! _I_ never could
have done it in the world!” His success gave him a deep and genuine
pleasure, largely due to the surprise of it. At forty-six he believed
he had done all that could be expected of him, and was content to rest
his reputation--as well he might--on those earlier poems, which will
always make a part of even his latest fame. But the greater fame which
followed was--not greatness thrust upon him, for genius such as his
is something more than the patience which is sometimes genius,--but
certainly greatness _dragged out of him_. The editors of the proposed
_Atlantic_ insisted that he should write for it. The Doctor did not
yield, till, as he himself tells it, with another twinkling smile,
they invited him to a “convincing dinner at Porter’s.” Feeling very
good-natured immediately after, he promised to “try,” and a little
later sent off a few sheets which he somewhat dubiously hoped would
“do.” The storm of greeting and applause that followed even these
first sheets filled him with amazement, but with genuine delight. It
was beautiful to see how deeply it touched him to know that thousands
of readers think “The Autocrat” the most charming book they own. For
this was not the arrogant satisfaction of the “master” who announces:
“Listen! I have composed the most wonderful sonata that the world has
ever heard!” Still less was it the senseless arrogance of a foolish
violin that might say: “Listen! you shall hear from me the most superb
music you can imagine!” Rather was it the low-voiced, wondering content
of an æolian harp, that lying quietly upon the window-sill, with no
thought that it is there for anything but to enjoy itself, suddenly
finds wonderful harmonies stealing through its heart and out into the
world, and sees a group of gladdened listeners gathering about it. “How
wonderful! how wonderful that I have been chosen to give this music to
the world! Am I not greatly to be envied?” As the harp thus breathes
its gratitude to the breeze that stirs it, so Dr. Holmes looked his
gratitude to the pen that “helped” him; with something of the same
wonder at personal success that made Thackeray exclaim: “Down on your
knees, my boy! That is the house where I wrote ‘Vanity Fair’!” Do we
not all love Thackeray and Holmes the better for caring so much about
our caring for them?
But it is growing late and dark. Across the river--one almost says
across the bay--the lights are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool
breeze touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the paved and
lighted street, the crowding houses, the throng of carriages, and to
realize that the great, throbbing, fashionable world has been so near
to us all the afternoon while we have been so far from it!
Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden consciousness strikes us of what
very pleasant places Boston literary lines seem to fall into! Is it
that literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or that in Boston
only the fortunate people are literary? For as we think of brilliant
names associated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Commonwealth
Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough Streets, it certainly seems as if the
Bohemia of plain living and high thinking--so prominent a feature
of New York literary and artistic life--had hardly a foothold in
aristocratic, literary Boston.
Finally, if it seems wonderful that living almost exclusively in one
locality, Dr. Holmes should have succeeded as few have succeeded in
dealing with the mysteries of universal human nature, still more
wonderful is it, perhaps, that dealing very largely with the foibles
and follies of human nature, nothing that he ever wrote has given
offence. True, this is partly owing to his in tense unwillingness to
hurt the feelings of any human being. No fame for saying brilliant
things that came to this gentlest of autocrats and most genial of
gentlemen, tinged with a possibility that any one had winced under his
pen, seemed to him of any value, or gave him any pleasure. But, as a
matter of fact, no bore has ever read anything Dr. Holmes has written
about bores with the painful consciousness, “Alas! I was that bore!”
We may take to ourselves a good deal that he says, but never with a
sense of shame or humiliation. On the contrary, we laugh the most
sincerely of any one, and say “Of course! that is exactly it! Why,
I have done that thing myself a thousand times!” And so the genial,
keen-eyed master of human nature writes with impunity how difficult
he finds it to love his neighbor properly till he gets away from him,
and tells us how he hates to have his best friend hunt him up in the
cars and sit down beside him, and explains that, although a radical,
he finds he enjoys the society of those who believe more than he does
better than that of those who believe less; and neighbor and best
friend, radical and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the joke,
each only remembering how _he_ finds it hard to love _his_ neighbor,
and how _he_ hates to talk in the cars. The restless “interviewer,” who
may perhaps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, never found
himself treated, after he left, with any less courtesy than that which
allowed him to be happy while he was “interviewing,” to the misery of
his hapless victim. The pen that “never dared to be as funny as it
could be,” never permitted itself to be as witty as it might have been,
at the expense of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, when the
interviewer was gone, turned again to his ducks in the beautiful aviary
outside his window, and only vented his long-suffering in some general
remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how the bird
Sees a flat log come floating down the stream;
Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger;--
Ah! were _all_ strangers harmless as they seem!
And the very latest stranger who may have inflicted the blow that drew
out that gentlest of remonstrances, would be the first to laugh and to
enjoy the remonstrance as a joke!
And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as the very best of all his
fame--the consciousness that he never made a “hit” that could wound. So
truly was this his temperament, that if you praised some of the fine
lines of his noble poem on “My Aviary,” he would say gently: “But don’t
you think the best line is where I spare the feelings of the duck?” and
you remember,--
Look quick! there’s one just diving!
And while he’s under--just about a minute--
I take advantage of the fact to say
His fishy carcase has no virtue in it,
The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to pay.
And not even “while they are under” would Dr. Holmes ridicule his
fellow-men. It is never _we_ whom he was laughing at: it is simply
human nature on its funny side; and it is a curious fact that none
of us resent being considered to have the foibles of human nature
provided they are not made to appear personal foibles. So, while
remembering the intensity of the pleasure he has given us, let us
remember, what he would care far more to hear, that he has never given
any of us anything _but_ pleasure.
ALICE WELLINGTON ROLLINS.
JULIA WARD HOWE
JULIA WARD HOWE
AT “OAK GLEN,” NEWPORT
To those persons who have only visited the town of Newport, taken its
ocean drive, lunched at its Casino, strolled on its beach, and stared
at its fine carriages and the fine people in them, that fill Bellevue
Avenue of an afternoon, the idea of choosing Newport as a place to
rest in must seem a very singular one. If their visit be a brief one,
they may easily fail to discover that after leaving the limits of the
gay summer city, with its brilliant social life, its polo matches, its
races, balls, dinners, and fêtes, there still remains a district, some
twelve miles in length, of the most rural character. The land here is
principally owned by small farmers, who raise, and sell at exorbitant
and unrural prices, the fruit, vegetables, eggs, milk, butter and
cream which the Newport market-men, adding a liberal percentage, sell
again to their summer customers. The interior of the island is in many
respects the most agreeable part of it; the climate is better, being
much freer from heavy fogs and sea mists, and the thermometer neither
rises so high nor falls so low as in the town. The neighborhood of
Lawton’s Valley is one of the most charming and healthy parts; and it
is in this spot that Mrs. Howe has, for many years, made her summer
home. The house stands a little removed from the cross-road which
connects the East and West Roads, the two thoroughfares that traverse
the island from Newport to Bristol Ferry. Behind the house there is a
grove of trees--oaks, willows, maples, and pines--which is the haunt of
many singing birds. The quiet house seems to be the centre of a circle
of song, and the earliest hint of day is announced by their morning
chorus. In this glen “The Mistress of the Valley,” as Mrs. Howe has
styled herself, in one of her poems, spends many of her leisure hours,
during the six months which she usually passes at her summer home. Here
she sits with her books and needle-work, and of an afternoon there
is reading aloud, and much pleasant talk under the trees; sometimes
a visitor comes from town, over the five long miles of country road;
but this is not so common an occurrence as to take away from the
excitement created by the ringing of the door-bell. There are lotus
trees at Oak Glen, but its mistress can not be said to eat thereof, for
she is never idle, and what she calls rest would be thought by many
people to be very hard work. She rests herself, after the work of the
day, by reading her Greek books, which have given her the greatest
intellectual enjoyment of the later years of her life. In the summer
of 1886 she studied Plato in the original, and last year she read the
plays of Sophocles.
The day’s routine is something in this order: Breakfast, in the
American fashion, at eight o’clock, and then a stroll about the place,
after which the household duties are attended to; and then a long
morning of work. Letter-writing, which--with the family correspondence,
business matters, the autograph fiends and the letter cranks--is a
heavy burthen, is attended to first; and then whatever literary work
is on the anvil is labored at steadily and uninterruptedly until one
o’clock, when the great event of the day occurs. This is the arrival
of the mail, which is brought from town by Jackson Carter, a neighbor,
who combines the functions of local mail-carrier, milkman, expressman,
vender of early vegetables, and purveyor of gossip generally; to which
he adds the duty of touting for an African Methodist church. Jackson is
of the African race, and though he signs his name with a cross, he is
a shrewd, intelligent fellow, and is quite a model of industry. After
the newspapers and the letters have been digested, comes the early
dinner, followed by coffee served in the green parlor, which is quite
the most important apartment of the establishment. It is an open-air
parlor, in the shape of a semicircle, set about with a close, tall
green hedge, and shaded by the spreading boughs of an ancient mulberry
tree. Its inmates are completely shielded from the sight of any chance
passers-by; and in its quiet shade they often overhear the comments
of the strangers on the road outside, to whom the house is pointed
out. It was in this small paradise that “Mr. Isaacs” was written, and
read aloud to Mrs. Howe, chapter by chapter, as it was written by her
nephew, Marion Crawford. Sometimes there is reading aloud from the
newspapers and reviews here, and then the busiest woman in all Newport
goes back to her sanctum for two more working hours; after which she
either drives or walks till sunset.