"In person Holmes is a little under the medium height, though it
does not strike you so when you see him, especially on the street,
where he wears a tall silk hat and carries a cane. As a young man,
he was, like Longfellow, a good deal of an exquisite in dress; and
he has always been very neat and careful in his attire. He is quick
and nervous in his movements, and conveys, in speaking, the
impression of energy and intense vitality; and yet he has a poet's
sensitiveness to noises, and a dread of persons of superabundant
vitality and aggressiveness. When the fountain of laughter and
smiles is stirred within him his face lights up with a winning
expression, and a laughing, kindly glance of the eye. When he warms
up to a subject in conversation he is a very rapid, vivacious
speaker."
Dr. Holmes has been accused of being an egotist, and he undoubtedly does
like to talk of himself; but he talks always in such charming fashion
that nobody regrets the subject of his discourse, but would fain have
him go on and on without pause or limit. He is a hearty, happy man, who
is a good deal in love with life, and seldom dwells upon its darker
side. But he has a very earnest and serious side to his nature, and is
far from being a mere laughing philosopher. He enjoys out-of-door life,
as every poet must, and though he likes best to live in the city, he
takes great delight in the country also. He spent seven summers upon a
farm of his own in the enchanting Berkshire region, near Pittsfield, and
he says these seven summers stand in his memory like the seven golden
candlesticks seen in the beatific vision of the holy dreamer. He loves
rowing, racing, and walking through green country lanes. The New England
wild-flowers are especially dear to him, and he has all a poet's love
for that shyest and most beautiful of all, the trailing arbutus. He is
very fond also of perfumes, and likes the odorous blossoms best. He has
always had his dream of fair women, and he is a great favorite with
women of all ages. He is not averse to the pleasures of the table, and
likes plenty of friends around him, with mirth and good cheer, at his
dinner hour.
He has been accused of being somewhat aristocratic in his feelings, and
is doubtless a lover of the best society, as he interprets that
word,--not mere wealth or fashion, but good blood, generous culture
through more than one generation, and a general refinement in manners
and in thought. What he calls the Brahmin caste of New England is
doubtless very good society indeed; and who shall blame the good
Autocrat if he visits in that circle by choice? He would not, perhaps,
like the old scholar of whom he tells, give as his toast "to all the
people who on the earth do dwell," but he would select some very choice
and rare little coterie of those people, and toast them with the most
contagious enthusiasm.
That he is a man of fastidious tastes goes without saying, and rather
critical of men and women, in manners as well as morals. An acute
observer of small social phenomena, he does not deem it beneath his
dignity to criticise the man who cannot pronounce "view," and the woman,
even if it be Margaret Fuller, who says "nawvels." That he is a
sensitive man he told us long ago, and that--
"There are times
When all this fret and tumult that we hear
Do seem more stale than to the sexton's ear
His own dull chimes.
"From crib to shroud!
Nurse o'er our cradle screameth lullaby,
And friends in boots tramp round us as we die,
Snuffling aloud.
"Children with drums
Strapped round them by the fond paternal ass,
Peripatetics with a blade of grass
Between their thumbs.
"Cockneys that kill
Thin horses of a Sunday,--men with clams,
Hoarse as young bisons roaring for their dams,
From hill to hill.
"Soldiers with guns,
Making a nuisance of the blessed air,
Child-crying bellmen, children in despair,
Screeching for buns.
"Storms, thunders, waves!
Howl, crash, and bellow, till ye get your fill.
Ye sometimes rest; men never can be still
But in their graves."
Sometimes these daily trials are exaggerated to a quite unbearable
point, as in the case of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, who suffered intense
tortures in later life from the ordinary every-day noises; but in the
case of Dr. Holmes, as with most people with healthy nerves, these
things only give a whimsical annoyance. The battles of Mrs. Carlyle with
Chanticleer, as she depicts them, have all the interest of a new Iliad,
and the days before Troy have not been studied with more breathless
interest than some of her encounters with the makers of the many noises
with which London is filled. Dr. Holmes, too, has had his battle with
the music-grinders, as who has not? Do we not all know "these crusaders
sent from some infernal clime"? and have we not all felt with him the
relief when "silence like a poultice comes to heal the blows of sound"?
Do we not all know the "Treadmill Song," also, in practical life? and
are we not intensely weary of it sometimes? Not many of us can say with
him, at the close of one of our "treadmill" days,--
"It's pretty sport; suppose we take
A round or two for fun."
or add,--
"If ever they should turn me out
When I have better grown,
Now hang me but I mean to have
A treadmill of my own."
But this has been the good Doctor's spirit through life. He has taken
his troubles lightly, and his labors have sat easily upon him. He has
laughed where many would have wept, and he has joked where some would
have been serious, if not savage. But that he has done serious work, and
that it has been work which has borne fruit, who can doubt? His
professional labors are perhaps least known of any of his various
activities, but they were many and varied, and not barren of good
results. As a single illustration, take his treatise upon "The
Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever," concerning which he has said:--
"When, by permission of Providence, I held up to the professional
public the damnable facts connected with the conveyance of poison
from one young mother's chamber to another's,--for doing which
humble office I desire to be thankful that I have lived, though
nothing else good should ever come of my life,--I had to bear the
sneers of those whose position I had assailed, and, as I believe,
have at last demolished, so that nothing but the ghosts of dead
women stir among the ruins."
He fought Homoeopathy in the liveliest manner for many years, and
latterly threw some hot shot into the ranks of the Allopathists
themselves, in an attack upon the excessive use of drugs in medical
practice. The Medical Society were considerably excited by this vigorous
onslaught, the ripe result of thirty years' study and experience, and
disclaimed all responsibility for its sentiments.
"Throw out opium," said Dr. Holmes: "throw out a few specifics
which a physician is hardly needed to apply; throw out wine, which
is a food, and the vapors of ether producing anaesthesia; and then
sink the whole materia medica, _as now used_, to the bottom of the
sea: the result would be all the better for mankind, and all the
worse for the fishes."
Of his life-long battle against the Calvinistic theology all his readers
know. He has never lost an opportunity of declaring his antipathy to the
theology of his fathers, and of pouring sarcasm and ridicule upon it.
His father was a Calvinistic divine of the strictest sect; but Dr.
Holmes himself has been a life-long Unitarian, and an aggressive one. He
owns a pew in King's Chapel and is a regular attendant. Perhaps he is a
little of a fatalist. At any rate he always has eyes for--