The genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was born in the city of
Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 1809, upon the day given to the
Commencement exercises of Harvard College. It was the day of small
things in that institution, and the day of small things in American
literature. The child who was born that day was destined to add much to
the estimation in which both were held. He occupied a professor's chair
in the University for thirty-five years, and did good work in it too;
and he is one of the little group of illustrious men who have helped to
make a distinctively American literature, which is now honored
throughout the world. As we believe with Dr. Holmes that "it is an
ungenerous silence which leaves all the fair words of honestly-earned
praise to the writer of obituary notices and the marble-worker," we
shall endeavor to set forth in this paper some of the good points in the
character and work of this distinguished man,--perhaps the best beloved
of our native authors.
The Rev. Abiel Holmes, the father of our hero, was one of the typical
New England ministers of that day; the mother, Sarah Wendell, was from a
Dutch family, who came to Boston from Albany in the eighteenth century.
The old gambrel-roofed house where the poet was born stood close to the
buildings of Harvard University, and to the south flows the Charles
River, so often celebrated by Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell. The
environs of Cambridge are particularly beautiful, and have been the
subjects of many charming descriptions by all these writers. The old
yellow hip-roofed house was about one hundred and sixty years old when
it was moved away to make room for modern improvements. The New England
colonists knew how to build a house, and the work of their hands puts to
shame the sham edifices of the present day, which come up like Jonah's
gourd in a night. The mansion-houses of New England are among her most
precious inheritances; and we can scarcely blame the families, in whose
hands they have remained until this time, for feeling a certain pride in
them.
The study was the great attraction to Oliver and his brother John. It
was a large heavy-beamed room, lined upon all sides with books,--which
was almost an unheard-of thing in this country at that time. Here the
boys were allowed to choose for themselves what they would read, and
here they doubtless formed the scholarly tastes of after-days. The
contrast between this library and that of the Whittier household, with
its less than a dozen books, is a great one, and has something to do
with the distinctive flavor of the work of the two men. There is a wild
woodsy flavor about Whittier to this day, pungent and stimulating; and
about all that Holmes has written is the atmosphere of books,--a smell
of Russia-leather, as it were, and the mustiness of old tomes. The
childhood of Oliver was very happy, and the memory of it has lingered
with him through life; he has always been very fond of talking of it and
writing about it. Of the old garden surrounding the manse, he has
written eloquently, and one can almost see it for himself from his
description,--with its lilac-bushes, its pear-trees, its peaches (for
they raised peaches in New England in those days), its lovely
nectarines, and white grapes. Old-fashioned flowers grew in the
borders,--hyacinths, coming up even through the snow; tulips, adding
their flaming splendor to the spring, although they are so much more
like autumn flowers; peonies, of mammoth size and gorgeous coloring;
flower-de-luce, lilies, roses--damask, blush, and cinnamon,--larkspurs,
lupines, and royal hollyhocks. Then there were the vegetables growing
with the flowers,--"beets, with their handsome dark-red leaves, carrots,
with their elegant filagree foliage, parsley, that clung to the earth
like mandrakes, radishes, illustrations of total depravity, a prey to
every evil underground emissary of the powers of darkness."
The Holmes boys were lively and frolicsome, not unlike what we have been
accustomed to hear of ministers' sons in general, and some of their
pranks were remembered in Cambridge for many a year. In one of Dr.
Holmes's college poems he hints at some of these "high old times:"--
"I am not well to-night; methinks the fumes
Of overheated punch have something dimmed
The cerebellum or pineal gland,
Or where the soul sits regnant."
Still, there was nothing worse than boyish fun in any of their larks,
and they were studious beyond their years.