"Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and
distance, as if she had other thoughts than theirs, and was not of
them. I remember her so well, as she appeared at school and later,
that I regret that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or
marble in the day of her best looks. None know her aspect who have
not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and
afterwards, was tall, fair-complexioned, with a watery aquamarine
lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make small, as one does
who looks at the sunshine. A remarkable point about her was that
long flexible neck, arching and undulating in strange sinuous
movements, which one who loved her would compare to those of a
swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the ophidian who
tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial, _de
haut en bas_, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of
women in breadth and audacity."
In due time young Holmes was graduated from Harvard, with a class which
he has helped to make well known by his annual college poems. The boys
of '29 were a noble and talented set of men, and quite a number of them
still live, among our most honored citizens. Some of his well-known
humorous poems were written for the college papers, among them "The
Dorchester Giant," "Evening, by a Tailor," "The Spectre Pig," and "The
Height of the Ridiculous." For a few years after he left college he went
on "writing as funny as he could," then discontinued his literary work
for some time, and only permanently renewed it with the starting of the
"Atlantic Monthly" in 1857. Here he began "The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table," and followed it with that brilliant series of papers and of
novels which made him known the world over, as one of our most original
and characteristic writers. Long before this he had been married, and
settled down for life in the city of Boston. His wife, to whom he was
united in 1840, was Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of Judge Jackson of the
Massachusetts Supreme Court. They lived in one house for over twenty
years, in Montgomery Place, near Bromfield Street. Holmes says of it, in
"The Professor at the Breakfast Table:"--
"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 into
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. Peace be to those walls forever, for the
many pleasant years he passed in them."
The three children born to him were Oliver Wendell, Amelia Jackson, and
Edward. They all live near the old home, and the second generation is
beginning to be a prominent factor in the family affairs. The daughter
is Mrs. John T. Sargent, of Beverly Farms, near Boston, where Dr. Holmes
has passed the summer months for several years past. All readers will
remember the Doctor's famous "Hunt after the Captain," published in the
"Atlantic" during the war, and the thrilling interest the country took
in it. The "Captain" was the elder son, then just graduated from
Harvard, and belonging to the Fourth Battalion of Infantry. He was
thrice wounded, and the terror and anxiety of his friends at home cannot
be described in words. He is now an associate justice of the Supreme
Court of Massachusetts.
For a few years Dr. Holmes was much in demand as a lecturer; but he
never enjoyed that business very well, and after a while refused to go
upon any terms. In 1856 he thus defined his terms to an applicant for a
lecture:--
"My terms, when I stay over night, are fifteen dollars and
expenses, a room with a fire in it, in a public-house, and a
mattress to sleep on,--not a feather-bed. As you write in your
individual capacity, I tell you at once all my habitual exigencies.
I am afraid to sleep in a cold room; I can't sleep on a
feather-bed; I will not go to private houses."
In the "Autocrat" there is an account of his lecturing experiences by
the landlady, which gives a pretty good idea of some of his personal
traits:--
"He was a man who loved to stick around home, as much as any cat
you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth
pulled as go anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went
away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself
goin' about lecterin' two or three winters; talkin' in cold country
lyceums; as he used to say, goin' home to cold parlors and bein'
treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a
cold bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with a
cold in his head as bad as a horse distemper. Then he'd look kind
of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how kind some of the good
women was to him; how one spread an edderdown comforter for him,
and another fixed up somethin' hot for him after the lecter, and
another one said, 'There, now you smoke that cigar of yours after
the lecter just as if you was at home,'--and if they'd all been
like that, he'd have gone on lecterin' forever; but as it was, he
got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred nateral death to puttin'
himself out of the world by such violent means as lecterin'."
In fact, Holmes is eminently a Bostonian, and has never been really
happy off his native pavements. He, however, studied medicine in Paris
in his youth, and has made one or two visits to Europe since.
The Atlantic Club for a long time furnished Holmes excellent company,
and he in turn furnished the club with the wittiest and most sparkling
talk which this country probably has known:--
"Such jests, that, drained of every joke,
The very bank of language broke;
Such deeds that laughter nearly died
With stitches in his belted side."
Among those who took part in these delightful re-unions were Emerson,
Longfellow, Felton, Holmes, Agassiz, Lowell, Whipple, Motley, Charles
Eliot Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot
Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits _par excellence_,
though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a
seraphic smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every
good sally, though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton,
who met Dr. Holmes at the Saturday Club, writes:--
"Dr. Holmes was highly talkative and agreeable; he converses very
much like the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table,--wittily, and in a
literary way, but perhaps with too great an infusion of
physiological and medical metaphor. He is a little deaf, and has a
mouth like the beak of a bird; indeed, he is, with his small body
and quick movements, very like a bird in his general aspect."
When Charles Kingsley was in Boston he met Holmes, who came in, frisked
about, and talked incessantly, Kingsley intervening with a few words
only occasionally. At last Holmes whisked himself away, saying, "And now
I must go." "He is an insp-sp-sp-ired j-j-j-h-ack-daw," said Kingsley.