CHAPTER IV: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Never but once did I enjoy the privilege of meeting the author of "ElsieVenner"--Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was at a dinner given by Mr. Lowell,and of conversation with Dr. Holmes I had very little. He struck me asbeing wonderfully erect, active, and vivacious for his great age. Hespoke (perhaps I should not chronicle this impression)--he spoke much,and freely, but rather as if he were wound up to speak, so to say--woundup, I mean, by a sense of duty to himself and kindness to strangers, whowere naturally curious about so well-known a man. In his aspect therewas a certain dryness, and, altogether, his vivacity, his ceaselessness,and a kind of equability of tone in his voice, reminded me of what Homersays concerning the old men around Priam, above the gate of Troy, howthey "chirped like cicalas on a summer day." About the matter of histalk I remember nothing, only the manner remains with me, and mine mayhave been a false impression, or the manner may have been accidental, andof the moment: or, again, a manner appropriate for conversation withstrangers, each coming up one after the other, to view respectfully sogreat a lion. Among his friends and intimates he was probably adifferent man, with a tone other and more reposeful.
He had a long, weary task before him, then, to talk his way, evercourteous, alert, attentive, through part of a London season. Yet, whenit was all over, he seems to have enjoyed it, being a man who tookpleasure in most sorts of experience. He did not affect me, for that onetime, with such a sense of pleasure as Mr. Lowell did--Mr. Lowell, whom Iknew so much better, and who was so big, strong, humorous, kind, learned,friendly, and delightfully natural.
Dr. Holmes, too, was a delightful companion, and I have merely tried tomake a sort of photographic "snap-shot" at him, in a single casualmoment, one of myriads of such moments. Turning to Dr. Holmes's popular,as distinct from his professional writings, one is reminded, as one oftenis, of the change which seems to come over some books as the reader growsolder. Many books are to one now what they always were; some, like theWaverley novels and Shakespeare, grow better on every fresh reading.There are books which filled me, in boyhood or in youth, with a sort ofadmiring rapture, and a delighted wonder at their novelty, theirstrangeness, freshness, greatness. Thus Homer, and the best novels ofThackeray, and of Fielding, the plays of Moliere and Shakespeare, thepoems of--well, of all the real poets, moved this astonishment ofadmiration, and being read again, they move it still. On a differentlevel, one may say as much about books so unlike each other, as those ofPoe and of Sir Thomas Browne, of Swift and of Charles Lamb.
There are, again, other books which caused this happy emotion of wonder,when first perused, long since, but which do so no longer. I am not muchsurprised to find Charles Kingsley's novels among them.
In the case of Dr. Holmes's books, I am very sensible of thisdisenchanting effect of time and experience. "The Professor at theBreakfast Table" and the novels came into my hands when I was very young,in "green, unknowing youth." They seemed extraordinary, new, fantasiesof wisdom and wit; the reflections were such as surprised me by theirdepth, the illustrations dazzled by their novelty and brilliance.Probably they will still be as fortunate with young readers, and I am tobe pitied, I hope, rather than blamed, if I cannot, like the wise thrush--
"Recapture The first fine careless rapture."
By this time, of course, one understands many of the constituents of Dr.Holmes's genius, the social, historical, ancestral, and professionalelements thereof. Now, it is the business of criticism to search out andillustrate these antecedents, and it seems a very odd and unlucky thing,that the results of this knowledge when acquired, should sometimes be apartial disenchantment. But we are not disenchanted at all by this kindof science, when the author whom we are examining is a great naturalgenius, like Shakespeare or Shelley, Keats or Scott. Such natures bringto the world far more than they receive, as far as our means of knowingwhat they receive are concerned. The wind of the spirit that is not ofthis earth, nor limited by time and space, breathes through their words,and thoughts, and deeds. They are not mere combinations, however deftand subtle, of _known_ atoms. They must continually delight, andcontinually surprise; custom cannot stale them; like the heaven-born Lawsin Sophocles, age can never lull them to sleep. Their works, when theyare authors, never lose hold on our fancy and our interest.
As far as my own feelings and admiration can inform me, Dr. Holmes,though a most interesting and amiable and kindly man and writer, was notof this class. As an essayist, a delineator of men and morals, anunassuming philosopher, with a light, friendly wit, he certainly does nothold one as, for example, Addison does. The old _Spectator_ makes mesmile, pleases, tickles, diverts me now, even more than when I lay on thegrass and read it by Tweedside, as a boy, when the trout were sluggish,in the early afternoon. It is only a personal fact that Dr. Holmes, readin the same old seasons, with so much pleasure and admiration andsurprise, no longer affects me in the old way. Carlyle, on the otherhand, in his "Frederick," which used to seem rather long, now entertainsme far more than ever. But I am well aware that this is a meresubjective estimate; that Dr. Holmes may really be as great a genius as Iwas wont to think him, for criticism is only a part of our impressions.The opinion of mature experience, as a rule, ought to be sounder thanthat of youth; in this case I cannot but think that it is sounder.
Dr. Holmes was a New Englander, and born in what he calls "the Brahmincaste," the class which, in England, before the sailing of the _MayFlower_, and ever since, had always been literary and highly educated. "Ilike books; I was born and bred among them," he says, "and have the easyfeeling, when I get into their presence, that a stable-boy has amonghorses." He is fond of books, and, above all, of old books--strange, oldmedical works, for example--full of portents and prodigies, such as thoseof Wierus.
New England, owing to its famous college, Harvard, and its steadymaintenance of the literary and learned tradition among the clergy, was,naturally, the home of the earliest great American school of writers.These men--Longfellow, Lowell, Ticknor, Prescott, Hawthorne, and so manyothers--had all received the same sort of education as Europeans ofletters used to receive. They had not started as printers' devils, ornewspaper reporters, or playwrights for the stage, but were academic. Itdoes not matter much how a genius begins--as a rural butcher, or anapothecary, or a clerk of a Writer to the Signet. Still, the NewEnglanders were academic and classical. New England has, by this time,established a tradition of its literary origin and character. Herchildren are sons of the Puritans, with their independence, theirnarrowness, their appreciation of comfort, their hardiness in doingwithout it, their singular scruples of conscience, their sense of theawfulness of sin, their accessibility to superstition. We can read ofthe later New Englanders in the making, among the works of Cotton Mather,his father Increase Mather, and the witch-burning, periwig-hating,doctrinal Judge Sewall, who so manfully confessed and atoned for hismistake about the Salem witches. These men, or many of them, were deeply-learned Calvinists, according to the standard of their day, a day lastingfrom, say, the Restoration to 1730. Cotton Mather, in particular, iserudite, literary--nay, full of literary vanity--mystical, visionary,credulous to an amusing degree.
But he is really as British as Baxter, or his Scottish correspondent andcounterpart, Wodrow. The sons or grandsons of these men gained the Warof Independence. Of this they are naturally proud, and the circumstanceis not infrequently mentioned in Dr. Holmes's works. Their democracy isnot roaring modern democracy, but that of the cultivated middle classes.Their stern Calvinism slackened into many "isms," but left a kind ofreligiosity behind it. One of Dr. Holmes's mouthpieces sums up his wholecreed in the two words _Pater Noster_. All these hereditary influencesare consciously made conspicuous in Dr. Holmes's writings, as inHawthorne's. In Hawthorne you see the old horror of sin, the old terrorof conscience, the old dread of witchcraft, the old concern aboutconduct, converted into aesthetic sources of literary pleasure, ofliterary effects.
As a physician and a
man of science, Dr. Holmes added abundant knowledgeof the new sort; and apt, unexpected bits of science made popular,analogies and illustrations afforded by science are frequent in hisworks. Thus, in "Elsie Venner," and in "The Guardian Angel," "heredity"is his theme. He is always brooding over the thought that each of us isso much made up of earlier people, our ancestors, who bequeath to us somany disagreeable things--vice, madness, disease, emotions, tricks ofgesture. No doubt these things are bequeathed, but all in such newproportions and relations, that each of us is himself and nobody else,and therefore had better make up his mind to _be_ himself, and forhimself responsible.
All this doctrine of heredity, still so dimly understood, Dr. Holmesderives from science. But, in passing through his mind, that of a NewEnglander conscious of New England's past, science takes a stain ofromance and superstition. Elsie Venner, through an experience of hermother's, inherits the nature of the serpent, so the novel is as far fromcommon life as the tale of "Melusine," or any other echidna. The fantasyhas its setting in a commonplace New England environment, and thusrecalls a Hawthorne less subtle and concentrated, but much more humorous.The heroine of the "Guardian Angel," again, exposes a character inlayers, as it were, each stratum of consciousness being inherited from adifferent ancestor--among others, a red Indian. She has manypersonalities, like the queer women we read about in French treatises onhysterics and nervous diseases. These stories are "fairy tales ofscience," by a man of science, who is also a humourist, and has a touchof the poet, and of the old fathers who were afraid of witches. The"blend" is singular enough, and not without its originality offascination.
Though a man of science Dr. Holmes apparently took an imaginativepleasure in all shapes of superstition that he could muster. I mustquote a passage from "The Professor at the Breakfast Table," aspeculiarly illustrative of his method, and his ways of half accepting theabnormally romantic--accepting just enough for pleasure, like Sir WalterScott. Connected with the extract is a curious anecdote.
"I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when I wasa boy, that diabolised my imagination,--I mean, that gave me a distinctapprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled round theneighbourhood where I was born and bred. The first was a series of markscalled the 'Devil's footsteps.' These were patches of sand in thepastures, where no grass grew, where even the low-bush blackberry, the'dewberry,' as our Southern neighbours call it, in prettier and moreShakespearian language, did not spread its clinging creepers, where eventhe pale, dry, sadly-sweet 'everlasting' could not grow, but all was bareand blasted. The second was a mark in one of the public buildings nearmy home,--the college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I donot think many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,--littlehaving been said about the story in print, as it was considered verydesirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In the north-west corner, and on the level of the third or fourth storey, there aresigns of a breach in the walls, mended pretty well, but not to bemistaken. A considerable portion of that corner must have been carriedaway, from within outward. It was an unpleasant affair, and I do notcare to repeat the particulars; but some young men had been using sacredthings in a profane and unlawful way, when the occurrence, which wasvariously explained, took place. The story of the Appearance in thechamber was, I suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to thebuilding there could be no question; and the zigzag line, where themortar is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible.
"The queer burnt spots, called the 'Devil's footsteps,' had neverattracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence thatthey had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss M., a'Goody,' so called, who was positive on the subject, but had a strangehorror of referring to an affair of which she was thought to knowsomething . . . I tell you it was not so pleasant for a little boy ofimpressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel-roofed house, withuntenanted locked upper chambers, and a most ghostly garret,--with'Devil's footsteps' in the fields behind the house, and in front of itthe patched dormitory, where the unexplained occurrence had taken placewhich startled those godless youths at their mock devotions, so that oneof them was epileptic from that day forward, and another, after adreadful season of mental conflict, took to religion, and became renownedfor his ascetic sanctity."
It is a pity that Dr. Holmes does not give the whole story, instead ofhinting at it, for a similar tale is told at Brazenose College, andelsewhere. Now take, along with Dr. Holmes's confession to a grain ofsuperstition, this remark on, and explanation of, the curiouscoincidences which thrust themselves on the notice of most people.
"Excuse me,--I return to my story of the Commonstable. Young fellowsbeing always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre fare of theevening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to impale a slice ofmeat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the fork, holding it, beneaththe table, so that they could get it at tea-time. The dragons thatguarded this table of the Hesperides found out the trick at last, andkept a sharp look-out for missing forks;--they knew where to find one, ifit was not in its place. Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting somany years to hear of this College trick, I should hear it mentioned a_second time_ within the same twenty-four hours by a College youth of thepresent generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened to me andto every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid succession by thesetwinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like chain-shot.
"I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking it asan unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a furrow ofsubsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a great manythoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these instantly arrest ourattention. Now we shall probably never have the least idea of theenormous number of impressions which pass through our consciousness,until in some future life we see the photographic record of our thoughtsand the stereoscopic picture of our actions.
"Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, andsaying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had beenwaltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possiblethat you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all I have beensaying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then. Thenumber of these living elements in our bodies illustrates theincalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughtsaccounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences inthe world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in theworld of outward events."
Now for the anecdote--one of Mark Twain's.
Some years ago, Mark Twain published in _Harper's Magazine_ an article on"Mental Telegraphy." He illustrated his meaning by a story of how heonce wrote a long letter on a complicated subject, which had popped intohis head between asleep and awake, to a friend on the other side ofAmerica. He did not send the letter, but, by return of post, receivedone from his friend. "Now, I'll tell you what he is going to say," saidMark Twain, read his own unsent epistle aloud, and then, opening hisfriend's despatch, proved that they were essentially identical. This iswhat he calls "Mental Telegraphy"; others call it "Telepathy," and theterm is merely descriptive.
Now, on his own showing, in our second extract, Dr. Holmes should haveexplained coincidences like this as purely the work of chance, and Irather incline to think that he would have been right. But Mark Twain,in his article on "Mental Telegraphy," cites Dr. Holmes for a story ofhow he once, after dinner, as his letters came in, felt constrained totell, _a propos des bottes_, the story of the last challenge to judicialcombat in England (1817). He then opened a newspaper directed to himfrom England, the _Sporting Times_, and therein his eyes lighted on anaccount of this very affair--Abraham Thornton's challenge to battle whenhe was accused of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. Holmeswas disposed to accept "Mental Telegraphy" rather than mere chance as thecause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems tohave bee
n a favourite of his. It occurs in, "The Professor," in thefifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty frequently; probably that iswhy the printed version was sent to him; still, he was a little staggeredby the coincidence. There was enough of Cotton Mather in the man ofscience to give him pause.
The form of Dr. Holmes's best known books, the set concerned with thebreakfast-table and "Over the Teacups," is not very fortunate. Muchconversation at breakfast is a weariness of the flesh. We want to eatwhat is necessary, and then to go about our work or play. If Americancitizens in a boarding-house could endure these long palavers, they musthave been very unlike the hasty feeders caricatured in "MartinChuzzlewit." Macaulay may have monologuised thus at his breakfastparties in the Albany; but breakfast parties are obsolete--anunregrettable parcel of things lost. The monologues, or dialogues, werepublished serially in the _Atlantic Monthly_, but they have had avitality and a vogue far beyond those of the magazine _causerie_. Someof their popularity they may owe to the description of the otherboarders, and to the kind of novel which connects the fortunes of thesepersonages. But it is impossible for an Englishman to know whether theseAmerican types are exactly drawn or not. Their fortunes do not stronglyinterest one, though the "Sculpin"--the patriotic, deformed Bostonian,with his great-great-grandmother's ring (she was hanged for a witch)--isa very original and singular creation. The real interest lies in thewit, wisdom, and learning. The wit, now and then, seems to-day rather inthe nature of a "goak." One might give examples, but to do so seems ill-natured and ungrateful.
There are some very perishable puns. The learning is not so _recherche_as it appeared when we knew nothing of Cotton Mather and Robert Calef,the author of a book against the persecution of witches. Calef, ofcourse, was in the right, but I cannot forgive him for refusing to see alady, known to Mr. Mather, who floated about in the air. That she did sowas no good reason for hanging or burning a number of parishioners; but,did she float, and, if so, how? Mr. Calef said it would be a miracle, sohe declined to view the performance. His logic was thin, though of afamiliar description. Of all old things, at all events, Dr. Holmes wasfond. He found America scarcely aired, new and raw, devoid of historyand of associations. "The Tiber has a voice for me, as it whispers tothe piers of the Pons AElius, even more full of meaning than mywell-beloved Charles, eddying round the piles of West Boston Bridge." Nodoubt this is a common sentiment among Americans.
Occasionally, like Hawthorne, they sigh for an historical atmosphere, andthen, when they come to Europe and get it, they do not like it, and thinkSchenectady, New York, "a better place." It is not easy to understandwhat ailed Hawthorne with Europe; he was extremely caustic in hiswritings about that continent, and discontented. Our matrons were sostout and placid that they irritated him. Indeed, they are a littleheavy in hand, still there are examples of agreeable slimness, even inthis poor old country. Fond as he was of the historical past, Mr. Holmesremained loyal to the historical present. He was not one of thoseAmericans who are always censuring England, and always hankering afterher. He had none of that irritable feeling, which made a greatcontemporary of his angrily declare that _he_ could endure to hear "YeMariners of England" sung, because of his own country's successes, sometime ago. They were gallant and conspicuous victories of the Americanfrigates; we do not grudge them. A fair fight should leave no rancour,above all in the victors, and Dr. Holmes's withers would have beenunwrung by Campbell's ditty.
He visited England in youth, and fifty years later. On the anniversaryof the American defeat at Bunker's Hill (June 17), Dr. Holmes got hisdegree in the _old_ Cambridge. He received degrees at Edinburgh and atOxford, in his "Hundred Days in Europe" he says very little about thesehistoric cities. The men at Oxford asked, "Did he come in the 'One HossShay'?" the name of his most familiar poem in the lighter vein. Thewhole visit to England pleased and wearied him. He likened it to the_shass caffy_ of Mr. Henry Foker--the fillip at the end of the longbanquet of life. He went to see the Derby, for he was fond of horses, ofracing, and, in a sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had the greatboldness once, _audax juventa_, to write a song in praise of thatcomfortable creature--wine. The prudery of many Americans about thejuice of the grape is a thing very astonishing to a temperate Briton. Anadmirable author, who wrote an account of the old convivial days of anAmerican city, found that reputable magazines could not accept such adegrading historical record. There was no nonsense about Dr. Holmes. Hispoems were mainly "occasional" verses for friendly meetings; or humorous,like the celebrated "One Horse Shay." Of his serious verses, the"Nautilus" is probably too familiar to need quotation; a noble fancy isnobly and tunefully "moralised." Pleasing, cultivated, and so forth, areadjectives not dear to poets. To say "sublime," or "magical," or"strenuous," of Dr. Holmes's muse, would be to exaggerate. How far hemaintained his scholarship, I am not certain; but it is odd that, in hispreface to "The Guardian Angel," he should quote from "Jonathan Edwardsthe younger," a story for which he might have cited Aristotle.
Were I to choose one character out of Dr. Holmes's creations as myfavourite, it would be "a frequent correspondent of his," and of mine--theimmortal Gifted Hopkins. Never was minor poet more kindly and geniallyportrayed. And if one had to pick out three of his books, as the bestworth reading, they would be "The Professor," "Elsie Venner," and "TheGuardian Angel." They have not the impeccable art and distinction of"The House of the Seven Gables" and "The Scarlet Letter," but theycombine fantasy with living human interest, and with humour. With SirThomas Browne, and Dr. John Brown, and--may we not add Dr. WeirMitchell?--Dr. Holmes excellently represents the physician in humaneletters. He has left a blameless and most amiable memory, unspotted bythe world. His works are full of the savour of his native soil,naturally, without straining after "Americanism;" and they are national,not local or provincial. He crossed the great gulf of years, between thecentral age of American literary production--the time of Hawthorne andPoe--to our own time, and, like Nestor, he reigned among the thirdgeneration. As far as the world knows, the shadow of a literary quarrelnever fell on him; he was without envy or jealousy, incurious of his ownplace, never vain, petulant, or severe. He was even too good-humoured,and the worst thing I have heard of him is that he could never say "no"to an autograph hunter.