My first recollection of Doctor Holmes is seeing him standing on a
bench at a college dinner when I was a boy, in the year 1836. He was
full of life and fun, and was delivering--I do not say reading--one of
his little college poems. He always writes them with joy, and recites
them--if that is the word--with a spirit not to be described. For he
is a born orator, with what people call a sympathetic voice, wholly
under his own command, and entirely free from any of the tricks of
elocution. It seems to me that no one really knows his poems to the
very best, who has not had the good fortune to hear him read some of
them.
[Illustration: Oliver Wendell Holmes Boston, May 24th, 1893.]
But I had known all about him before that. As little boys, we had by
heart, in those days, the song which saved "Old Ironsides" from
destruction. That was the pet name of the frigate "Constitution,"
which was a pet Boston ship, because she had been built at a Boston
shipyard, had been sailed with Yankee crews, and, more than once, had
brought her prizes into Boston Harbor.
We used to spout at school:
"Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Spread every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
Ah me! There had been a Phi Beta anniversary not long before, where
Holmes had delivered a poem. You may read "Poetry, a Metrical Essay,"
in the volumes now. But you will look in vain for the covert allusions
to Julia and Susan and Elizabeth and the rest, which, to those who
knew, meant the choicest belles of our little company. Have the queens
of to-day any such honors?
Nobody is more accessible than Doctor Holmes. I doubt if any doorbell
in Boston is more rung than his. And nowhere is the visitor made more
kindly at home. His own work-room takes in all the width of a large
house in Beacon Street; a wide window commands the sweep of the mouth
of Charles River; in summer the gulls are hovering above it, in winter
you may see them chaffing together on bits of floating ice, which is
on its way to the sea. Across that water, by stealthy rowing, the
boats of the English squadron carried the men who were to die at
Concord the next day, at Concord Bridge. Beyond is Bunker Hill
Monument; and just this side of the monument Paul Revere crossed the
same river to say that that English army was coming.
[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S BIRTH-PLACE AT CAMBRIDGE, MASS., ERECTED IN
1725, A.D. FROM PHOTO BY WILFRID A. FRENCH.]
For me, I had to deliver on Emerson's ninetieth birthday an address on
my memories of him and his life. Holmes used to meet him, from college
days down, in a thousand ways, and has written a charming memoir of
his life. I went round there one day, therefore, to ask some
questions, which might put my own memories of Emerson in better light,
and afterwards I obtained his leave to make this sketch of the talk of
half an hour. When we think of it here, if we ever fall to talking
about such things, every one would say that Holmes is the best talker
we have or know. But when you are with him, you do not think whether
he is or is not. You are under the spell of his kindness and genius.
Still no minute passes in which you do not say to yourself: "I hope I
shall remember those very words always."
[Illustration: GARDEN DOOR OF THE CAMBRIDGE HOUSE.]
Thinking of it after I come home, I am reminded of the flow and fun of
the Autocrat. But you never say so to yourself when you are sitting in
his room.
I had arranged with my friend Mr. Sample that he should carry his
camera to the house, and it was in gaps in this very conversation that
the picture of both of us was taken. I told Doctor Holmes how pleased
I was at this chance of going to posterity under his escort.
I told him of the paper on Emerson which I had in hand, and thanked
him, as well as I could, in a few words, for his really marvellous
study of Emerson in the series of American authors. I said I really
wanted to bring him my paper to read. What I was trying to do, was to
show that the great idealist was always in touch with his time, and
eager to know what, at the moment, were the real facts of American
life.
_I._ I remember where Emerson stopped me on State Street once, to
cross-question me about some details of Irish emigration.
_Holmes._ Yes, he was eager for all practical information. I used to
meet him very often on Saturday evenings at the Saturday Club; and I
can see him now, as he bent forward eagerly at the table, if any one
were making an interesting observation, with his face like a hawk as
he took in what was said. You felt how the hawk would be flying
overhead and looking down on your thought at the next minute. I
remember that I once spoke of "the three great prefaces," and quick as
light Emerson said, "What are the three great prefaces?" and I had to
tell him.
_I._ I am sure I do not know what they are. What are they?
_Holmes._ They are Calvin's to his "Institutes," Thuanus's to his
history, and Polybius's to his.
_I._ And I have never read one of them!
[Illustration: THE HOUSE IN RUE MONSIEUR LE PRINCE WHERE DOCTOR HOLMES
LIVED FOR TWO YEARS WHEN STUDYING MEDICINE IN PARIS.]
_Holmes._ And I had then never read but one of them. It was a mere
piece of encyclopaedia learning of mine.
_I._ What I shall try to do in my address is to show that Emerson
would not have touched all sorts of people as he did, but for this
matter-of-fact interest in his daily surroundings--if he had not gone
to town-meetings, for instance. Was it you or Lowell who called him
the Yankee Plato?
_Holmes._ Not I. It was probably Lowell, in the "Fable for Critics." I
called him "a winged Franklin," and I stand by that. Matthew Arnold
quoted that afterwards, and I was glad I had said it.
_I._ I do not remember where you said it. How was it?
Doctor Holmes at once rose, went to the turning book-stand, and took
down volume three of his own poems, and read me with great spirit the
passage. I do not know how I had forgotten it.
"Where in the realm of thought, whose air is song,
Does he, the Buddha of the West, belong?
He seems a winged Franklin, sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secrets of the skies;
And which the nobler calling,--if 'tis fair
Terrestrial with celestial to compare,--
To guide the storm-cloud's elemental flame,
Or walk the chambers whence the lightning came,
Amidst the sources of its subtile fire,
And steal their effluence for his lips and lyre?"
Here he said, with great fun, "One great good of writing poetry is to
furnish you with your own quotations." And afterwards, when I had made
him read to me some other verses from his own poems, he said, "Oh,
yes, as a reservoir of the best quotations in the language, there is
nothing like a book of your own poems."
[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S RESIDENCE IN BEACON STREET, BOSTON.]
I said that there was no greater nonsense than the talk of Emerson's
time, that he introduced German philosophy here, and I asked Holmes if
he thought that Emerson had borrowed anything in the philosophical
line from the German. He agreed with me that his philosophy was
thoroughly home-bred, and wrought out in the experience of his own
home-life. He said that he was disposed to believe that that would be
true of Emerson which he knew was true of himself. He knew Emerson
went over a great many books, but he did not really believe that he
often really read a book through. I remember one of his phrases was,
that he thought that Emerson "tasted books;" and he cited a bright
lady from Philadelphia, whom he had met the day before, who had said
that she thought men of genius did not rely much upon their reading,
and had complimented him by asking if he did so. Holmes said:
"I told her--I had to tell her--that in reading my mind is always
active. I do not follow the author steadily or implicitly, but my
thought runs off to right and left. It runs off in every direction,
and I find I am not so much taking his book as I am thinking my own
thoughts upon his subject."
_I._ I want to thank you for your contrast between Emerson and
Carlyle: "The hatred of unreality was uppermost in Carlyle; the love
of what is real and genuine, with Emerson." Is it not perhaps possible
that Carlyle would not have been Carlyle but for Emerson? Emerson
found him discouraged, and as he supposed alone, and at the very
beginning led him out of his darkest places.
I think it was on this that Doctor Holmes spoke with a good deal of
feeling about the value of appreciation. He was ready to go back to
tell of the pleasure he had received from persons who had written to
him, even though he did not know them, to say of how much use some
particular line of his had been. Among others he said that Lothrop
Motley had told him that, when he was all worn out in his work in a
country where he had not many friends, and among stupid old manuscript
archives, two lines of Holmes's braced him up and helped him through:
"Stick to your aim: the mongrel's hold will slip,
But only crowbars loose the bulldog's grip."
He was very funny about flattery. "That is the trouble of having so
many friends, everybody flatters you. I do not mean to let them hurt
me if I can help it, and flattery is not necessarily untrue. But you
have to be on your guard when everybody is as kind to you as everybody
is to me."
[Illustration: THE BAY WINDOW IN DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY.]
He said, in passing, that Emerson once quoted two lines of his, and
quoted them horribly. They are from the poem called "The Steamboat:"
"The beating of her restless heart,
Still sounding through the storm."
Emerson quoted them thus:
"The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm."
[Illustration: A CORNER IN DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY.]
I was curious to know about Doctor Holmes's experience of country
life, he knows all nature's processes so well. So he told me how it
happened that he went to Pittsfield. It seems that, a century and a
half ago, his ancestor, Jacob Wendell, had a royal grant for the whole
township there, with some small exception, perhaps. The place was at
first called Pontoosoc, then Wendelltown, and only afterward got the
name of Pittsfield from William Pitt. One part of the Wendell property
descended to Doctor Holmes's mother. When he had once seen it he was
struck with its beauty and fitness for a country home, and asked her
that he might have it for his own. It was there that he built a house
in which he lived for eight or nine years. He said that the Housatonic
winds backwards and forwards through it, so that to go from one end of
his estate to the other in a straight line required the crossing it
seven times. Here his children grew up, and he and they were enlivened
anew every year by long summer days there.
He was most interesting and animated as he spoke of the vigor of life
and work and poetical composition which come from being in the open
air and living in the country. He wrote, at the request of the
neighborhood, his poem of "The Ploughman," to be read at a cattle-show
in Pittsfield. "And when I came to read it afterwards I said, 'Here it
is! Here is open air life, here is what breathing the mountain air and
living in the midst of nature does for a man!' And I want to read you
now a piece of that poem, because it contained a prophecy." And while
he was looking for the verses, he said, in the vein of the Autocrat,
"Nobody knows but a man's self how many good things he has done."
So we found the first volume of the poems, and there is "The
Ploughman," written, observe, as early as 1849.
"O gracious Mother, whose benignant breast
Wakes us to life, and lulls us all to rest,
How thy sweet features, kind to every clime,
Mock with their smile the wrinkled front of time!
We stain thy flowers,--they blossom o'er the dead;
We rend thy bosom, and it gives us bread;
O'er the red field that trampling strife has torn,
Waves the green plumage of thy tasselled corn;
Our maddening conflicts sear thy fairest plain,
Still thy soft answer is the growing grain.
Yet, O our Mother, while uncounted charms
Steal round our hearts in thine embracing arms,
Let not our virtues in thy love decay,
And thy fond sweetness waste our strength away.
No! by these hills, whose banners now displayed
In blazing cohorts Autumn has arrayed;
By yon twin summits, on whose splintery crests
The tossing hemlocks hold the eagles' nests;
By these fair plains the mountain circle screens,
And feeds with streamlets from its dark ravines,--
True to their home, these faithful arms shall toil
To crown with peace their own untainted soil;
And, true to God, to freedom, to mankind,
If her chained bandogs Faction shall unbind,
These stately forms, that bending even now
Bowed their strong manhood to the humble plough,
Shall rise erect, the guardians of the land,
The same stern iron in the same right hand,
Till o'er the hills the shouts of triumph run,
The sword has rescued what the ploughshare won!"
Now, in 1849, I, who remember, can tell you, every-day people did not
much think that Faction was going to unbind her bandogs and set the
country at war; and it was only a prophet-poet who saw that there was
a chance that men might forge their ploughshares into swords again.
But you see from the poem that Holmes was such a prophet-poet, and
now, forty-four years after, it was a pleasure to hear him read these
lines.
[Illustration: DOROTHY Q. FROM THE PORTRAIT IN DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY.]
I asked him of his reminiscences of Emerson's famous Phi Beta Kappa
oration at Cambridge, which he has described, as so many others have,
as the era of independence in American literature. We both talked of
the day, which we remembered, and of the Phi Beta dinner which
followed it, when Mr. Everett presided, and bore touching tribute to
Charles Emerson, who had just died. Holmes said: "You cannot make the
people of this generation understand the effect of Everett's oratory.
I have never felt the fascination of speech as I did in hearing him.
Did it ever occur to you,--did I say to you the other day,--that when
a man has such a voice as he had, our slight nasal resonance is an
advantage and not a disadvantage?"
I was fresher than he from his own book on Emerson, and remembered
that he had said there somewhat the same thing. His words are: "It is
with delight that one who remembers Everett in his robes of rhetorical
splendor; who recalls his full-blown, high-colored, double-flowered
periods; the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech,
with just enough of nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding-board
its proper value in the harmonies of utterance,--it is with delight
that such a one recalls the glowing words of Emerson whenever he
refers to Edward Everett. It is enough if he himself caught enthusiasm
from those eloquent lips. But many a listener has had his youthful
enthusiasm fired by that great master of academic oratory." I knew,
when I read this, that Holmes referred to himself as the "youthful
listener," and was glad that within twenty-four hours he should say so
to me.
[Illustration: DOROTHY Q'S HOUSE IN QUINCY, MASS.[1]]
So we fell to talking of his own Phi Beta poem. A good Phi Beta poem
is an impossibility; but it is the business of genius to work the
miracles, and Holmes's is one of the few successful Phi Beta poems in
the dreary catalogue of more than a century. The custom of having
"_the_ poem," as people used to say, as if it were always the same, is
now almost abandoned.
[Illustration: DOCTOR O. W. HOLMES DELIVERING HIS FAREWELL ADDRESS AS
PARKMAN PROFESSOR OF ANATOMY IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY,
NOVEMBER 28, 1882. FROM A PROOF PRINT IN THE POSSESSION OF DOCTOR JAMES
R. CHADWICK.]
Fortunately for us both, a tap was heard at the door, and Mr. John
Holmes appeared, his brother. Mr. John Holmes has not chosen to
publish the bright things which he has undoubtedly written, but in all
circles where he favors people with his presence he is known as one of
the most agreeable of men. Everybody is glad to set him on the lines
of reminiscences. The two brothers, with great good humor, began
telling of a dinner party which Doctor Holmes had given, within a few
days, to a number of gentlemen whose average ages, according to them,
exceeded eighty. One has to make allowance for the exaggeration of
their fun, but I think, from the facts which they dropped, that the
average must have been maintained. One would have given a good deal to
be old enough to be permitted to be at that dinner. This led to talk
of the Harvard class of 1829, for whose meetings Holmes has written so
many of his charming poems. He said that they are now to have a dinner
within a few days, and named the gentlemen who were to be there. Among
them, of course, is Doctor Samuel F. Smith, the author of "America." I
noticed that Doctor Holmes always called him "My country 'tis of
thee," and so did all of us. And then these two critics began
analyzing that magnificent song. "It will not do to laugh at it.
People show that they do not know what they are talking about when
they speak lightly of it. Did you ever think how much is gained by
making the first verse begin with the singular number? Not _our_
country, but '_My_ country,' '_I_ sing of thee'? There is not an
American citizen but can make it his own, and does make it his own, as
he sings it. And it rises to a Psalm-like grandeur at the end." "It is
a magnificent hold to have upon fame to have sixty million people sing
the verses that you have written." John Holmes said: "How good
'templed hills' is, and that is not alone in the poem." Both John
Holmes and I plead to be permitted to come to the class dinner, but
Doctor Holmes was very funny. He pooh-poohed us both; we were only
children, and we were not to be present at so rare a solemnity. For
me, I already felt that I had been wicked in wasting so much of his
time. But he has the gift of making you think that you are the only
person in the world, and that he is only living for your pleasure.
Still I knew, as a matter of fact, that this was not so, and very
unwillingly I took myself away.
* * * * *
As I walked home I meditated on the fate of a first-rate book in our
time. Holmes had expressed unaffected surprise that I spoke with the
gratitude which I felt about his "Life of Emerson." The book must have
cost him the hard work of a year. It is as remarkable a study as one
poet ever made of another. Yet I think he said to me that no one had
seemed to understand the care and effort which he had given to it.
Here is the position in the United States now about the criticism of
such work. At about the time that the "North American Review" ceased
to review books, there came, as if by general consent, an end to all
elaborate criticism of new books here.
I think myself that this is a thing very much to be regretted. In old
times, whoever wrote a good book was tolerably sure that at least one
competent person would study it and write down what he thought about
it; and, from at least one point of view, an author had a prospect of
knowing how his book struck other people. Now we have nothing but the
hasty sketches, sometimes very good, which are written for the daily
or weekly press.
[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES'S SUMMER RESIDENCE AT BEVERLY FARMS.]
So it happens that I, for one, have never seen any fit recognition of
the gift which Doctor Holmes made to our time and to the next
generation when he made his study of Emerson's life for the "American
Men of Letters" series. Apparently he had not. Just think of it! Here
is a poet, the head of our "Academy," so far as there is any such
Academy, who is willing to devote a year of his life to telling you
and me what Emerson was, from his own personal recollections of a near
friend, whom he met as often as once a week, and talked with perhaps
for hours at a time, and with whom he talked on literary and
philosophical subjects. More than this, this poet has been willing to
go through Emerson's books again, to re-read them as he had originally
read them when they came out, and to make for you and me a careful
analysis of all these books. He is one of five people in the country
who are competent to tell what effect these books produced on the
country as they appeared from time to time. And, being competent, he
makes the time to tell us this thing. That is a sort of good fortune
which, so far as I remember, has happened to nobody excepting Emerson.
When John Milton died, there was nobody left who could have done such
a thing; certainly nobody did do it, or tried to do it. I must say, I
think it is rather hard that when such a gift as that has been given
to the people of any country, that people, while boasting of its
seventy millions of numbers, and its thousands of billions of acres,
should not have one critical journal of which it is the business to
say at length, and in detail, whether Doctor Holmes has done his duty
well by the prophet, or whether, indeed, he has done it at all.
[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES AND E. E. HALE. FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN IN
DOCTOR HOLMES'S STUDY, MAY 22, 1893.]
When we left Doctor Holmes, he and his household were looking forward
to the annual escape to Beverly. Somebody once wrote him a letter
dated from "Manchester-by-the-Sea," and Holmes wrote his reply under
the date "Beverly-by-the-Depot." And here let me stop to tell one of
those jokes for which the English language and Doctor Holmes were
made. A few years ago, in a fit of economy, our famous Massachusetts
Historical Society screwed up its library and other offices by some
fifteen feet, built in the space underneath, and rented it to the city
of Boston. This was all very well for the treasurer; but for those of
us who had passed sixty years, and had to climb up some twenty more
iron stairs whenever we wanted to look at an old pamphlet in the
library, it was not so great a benefaction. When Holmes went up, for
the first time, to see the new quarters of the Society, he left his
card with the words, "O. W. Holmes. High-story-call Society." We
understood then why the councils of the Society had been over-ruled by
the powers which manage this world, to take this flight towards
heaven.
I ought to have given a hint above of his connection and mine with the
society of "People who Think we are Going to Know More about Some
Things By and By." This society was really formed by my mother, who
for some time, I think, was the only member. But one day Doctor Holmes
and I met in the "Old Corner Bookstore," when the Corner had been
moved to the corner of Hamilton Place, and he was telling me one of
the extraordinary coincidences which he collects with such zeal. I
ventured to trump his story with another; and, in the language of the
ungodly, I thought I went one better than he. This led to a talk about
coincidences, and I said that my mother had long since said that she
meant to have a society of the people who believed that sometime we
should know more about such curious coincidences. Doctor Holmes was
delighted with the idea, and we "organized" the society then and
there; he was to be president, I was to be secretary, and my mother
was to be treasurer. There were to be no other members, no entrance
fees, no constitution, and no assessments. We seldom meet now that we
do not authorize a meeting of this society and challenge each other to
produce the remarkable coincidences which have passed since we met
before.
There is an awful story of his about the last time a glove was thrown
down in an English court-room. It is a story in which Holmes is all
mixed up with a marvellous series of impossibilities, such as would
make Mr. Clemens's hair grow gray, and add a new chapter to his
studies of telepathy. I will not enter on it now, with the detail of
the book that fell from the ninth shelf of a book-case, and opened at
the exact passage where the challenge story was to be described. No, I
will not tell another word of it; for if I am started upon it, it will
take up the whole of this number of Mr. McClure's Magazine. But
sometime, when Mr. McClure wants to make the whole magazine thrill
with excitement, he will write to Doctor Holmes, and ask him for that
story of the "challenge of battle."
[Illustration: O. W. HOLMES IN HIS FAVORITE SEAT AT BEVERLY.]
As for the story of his hearing Doctor Phinney at Rome, and the other
story of Mr. Emerson's hearing Doctor Phinney at Rome, I never tell
that excepting to confidential friends who know that I cannot tell a
lie. For if I tell it to any one else, he looks at me with a quizzical
air, as much as to say, "This is as bad as the story of the 'Man
Without a Country;' and I do not know how much to believe, and how
much to disbelieve."
[1] Also called the Peter Butler house. Sewall in his diary speaks of
it as Mr. Quincy's new house (1680-85). There Dorothy was born
and married.