Authors and Friends Part 9

_Dr. H._

I shall keep it in the study.

_Very dry._

_Mrs. H._

I don't think that's fair.

_Rain._

_Dr. H._

I'm sorry. Can't help it.

_Very dry._

_Mrs. H._

It's--too--too--ba-a-ad.

_Much rain._

_Dr. H._

(Music omitted.) 'Mid pleas-ures and paaal-a-a-c-es.

_Set Fair._

_Mrs. H._

I _will_ have it! You horrid-- _Stormy._

You see what a wonderful instrument this is that you have given me.

But, my dear Mr. Fields, while I watch its changes it will be a constant memorial of unchanging friendship; and while the dark hand of fate is traversing the whole range of mortal vicissitudes, the golden index of the kind affections shall stand always at SET FAIR. Yours ever,

O. W. HOLMES.

There are many notes also showing how the two friends played into each other's hands. This one is a sample:--

21 CHARLES STREET, July 17, 1864.

MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,--_Can_ you tell me anything that will get this horrible old woman of the C---- California off from my shoulders?

Do you know anything about this pestilent ma.n.u.script she raves about?

This continent is not big enough for me and her together, and if she doesn't jump into the Pacific I shall have to leap into the Atlantic --I mean the original damp spot so called. Yours always,

O. W. HOLMES.

P. S. To avoid the necessity of the latter, I have written to her, cordially recommending suicide as adapted to her case.

Surely there must have been something peculiarly exasperating about this applicant for literary honors, because Dr. Holmes erred, if at all, in the opposite direction. He was far more apt to write and to behave as the following note recommends: "Will you read this young lady's story, and let me know what you propose to do with it? A young woman of tender feelings, I think, and to be treated very kindly."

Again: "Will it be too late for a few paragraphs about Forcey the Willson? If not, in what paper? And can you tell me anything? Will you do it yourself?"

The number of these notes is legion, bringing every variety of form and subject and problem to his friend as editor or publisher, or for private advice. In one of them he says, "Please give me your grandpaternal council." But I have quoted enough upon this head to give an idea of the kind and busy brain not too deeply immersed in its own projects to have a tender regard for those of others. Meanwhile his own work was continually progressing. Lowell had already made him feel that he was the mainspring of the "Atlantic," which at the time of the war attained the height of its popularity, and achieved a position where it found no peer. The care which Dr. Holmes bestowed upon the finish of his work, the endless labor over its details, are almost inconceivable when we remember that "this power of taking pains," which Carlyle calls one of the attributes of genius, was combined with a gay, mercurial temperament ready to take fire at every chance spark.

One Sunday afternoon in the sad spring of 1864, during the terrible days of the war, he came in to correct a poem. "I am ashamed," he said, "to be troubled by so slight a thing when battles are raging about us; but I have written:--

Where Genoa's deckless caravels were blown.

Now Columbus sailed from Palos, and I must change the verse before it is too late."

This habit of always doing his best is surely one of the fine lessons of his life. It has given his prose a perfection which will carry it far down the sh.o.r.es of time. The letter sent during the last summer of his life to be read at the celebration of Bryant's birthday was a model of simplicity in the expression of feeling. It was brief, and at another time would have been written and revised in half a day; but in his enfeebled condition it was with the utmost difficulty that he could satisfy himself. He worked at it patiently day after day, until his labor became a pain; nevertheless, he continued, and won what he deserved--the applause of men practiced in his art who were there to listen and appreciate.

Any record of Dr. Holmes's life would be imperfect which contained no mention of the pride and pleasure he felt in the Sat.u.r.day Club.

Throughout the forty years of its prime he was not only the most brilliant talker of that distinguished company, but he was also the most faithful attendant. He was seldom absent from the monthly dinners either in summer or in winter, and he lived to find himself at the head of the table where Aga.s.siz, Longfellow, Emerson, and Lowell had in turn preceded him. Could a shorthand writer have been secretly present at those dinners, what a delightful book of wise talk and witty sayings would now lie open before us! Fragments of the good things were sometimes brought away, as loving parents bring sugar- plums from a feast to the children at home; but they are only fragments, and bear out but inefficiently the reputation which has run before them. The following pathetic incident, related on one of those occasions by Dr. Holmes, need not, however, be omitted:--

"Just forty years ago," he said one day, "I was whipped at school for a slight offense--whipped with a ferule right across my hands, so that I went home with a blue mark where the blood had settled, and for a fortnight my hands were stiff and swollen from the blows. The other day an old man called at my house and inquired for me. He was bent, and could just creep along. When he came in he said: 'How do you do, sir; do you recollect your old teacher Mr. ----?' I did, perfectly! He sat and talked awhile about indifferent subjects, but I saw something rising in his throat, and I knew it was that whipping. After a while he said, 'I came to ask your forgiveness for whipping you once when I was in anger; perhaps you have forgotten it, but I have not.' It had weighed upon his mind all these years! He must be rid of it before lying down to sleep peacefully."

Speaking of dining at Taft's, an excellent eating-house at Point Shirley for fish and game, Dr. Holmes said: "The host himself is worth seeing. He is the one good _un_cooked thing at his table."

He had been to Philadelphia with one of his lectures, but he did not have a free chance at any conversation afterward. "I did go to Philadelphia," he said, "with _one_ remark, but I brought it back unspoken. It struck in."

Soon after Dr. Holmes's removal to Charles Street began a long series of early morning breakfasts at his publisher's house--feasts of the simplest kind. Many strangers came to Boston in those days, on literary or historical errands--men of tastes which brought them sooner or later to the "Old Corner" where the "Atlantic Monthly" was already a power. Of course one of the first pleasures sought for was an interview with Dr. Holmes, the fame of whose wit ripened early-- even before the days of the "Autocrat." It came about quite naturally, therefore, that they should gladly respond to any call which gave them the opportunity to listen to his conversation; and the eight-o'clock breakfast hour was chosen as being the only time the busy guests and host could readily call their own. Occasionally these breakfasts would take place as frequently as two or three times a week. The light of memory has a wondrous gift of heightening most of the pleasures of this life, but the conversation of those early hours was far more stimulating and inspiring than any memory of it can ever be. There were few men, except Poe, famous in American or English literature of that era who did not appear once at least. The unexpectedness of the company was a great charm; for a brief period Boston enjoyed a sense of cosmopolitanism, and found it possible, as it is really possible only in London, to bring together busy guests with full and eager brains who are not too familiar with one another's thought to make conversation an excitement and a source of development.

Of Dr. Holmes's talk on these occasions it is impossible to give any satisfactory record. The simple conditions of his surroundings gave him a sense of perfect ease, and he spoke with the freedom which marked his nature. It was one of the charms by which he drew men to himself that he not only wore a holiday air of finding life full and interesting, but that he believed in freedom of speech for himself, and therefore wished to find it in others. This emanc.i.p.ation in expression did not extend altogether into the practical working of his life. Conventionalities had a strong hold upon him. He loved to avoid the great world when it was inconvenient, and to get a certain freedom outside of it; but once in the current, the manners of the Romans were his own. He reminded one sometimes of Hawthorne's saying that "in these days men are born in their clothes," although Dr. Holmes's conventions were more easily shuffled off than a casual observer would believe. Nothing could be farther from the ordinary idea of the romantic "man of genius" than was his well-trimmed little figure, and nothing more surprising and delightful than the way in which his childlikeness of nature would break out and a.s.sert itself. He declared one morning that he had discovered the happiest animal in creation-- "next to a poet, of course, if we may call him an animal; it is the acheron, the parasite of the honey-bee. And why? Because he attaches himself to the wing of the bee, is carried without exertion to the sweetest flowers, where the bee gathers the honey while the acheron eats it; and all the while the music of the bee attends him as he is borne through the air."

He met Hawthorne for the first time, I think, in this informal way.

Holmes had been speaking of Renan, whose books interested him.

"A long while ago," he began, "I said Rome or Reason; now I am half inclined to put it, Rome or Renan." Then suddenly turning to Hawthorne, he said, "By the way, I would write a new novel if you were not in the field, Mr. Hawthorne." "I am not," said Hawthorne; "and I wish you would do it." There was a moment's silence. Holmes said quickly, "I wish you would come to the club oftener." "I should like to," said Hawthorne, "but I can't drink." "Neither can I." "Well, but I can't eat." "Nevertheless, we should like to see you." "But I can't talk, either." After which there was a shout of laughter. Then said Holmes, "You can listen, though; and I wish you would come."

On another occasion, when Lowell was present, he was talking of changes in physical conditions. Dr. Holmes said, now, at the age of fifty-four, he could eat almost anything set before him, which he could by no means do formerly. Lowell found opportunity somehow at this point to laugh at Holmes for having lately said in print that "Beecher was a man whose thinking marrow was not corrugated by drink or embrowned by meerschaum." Lowell said _he_ had no "thinking marrow," and objected to such anatomical terms applied to the best part of a man.

By and by Lowell came out of his critical mood, and said pleasantly, after some talk upon lyric poetry in general, "I like your lyrics, you know, Holmes." "Well," said Holmes, pleased, but speaking earnestly and with a childlike honesty, "but there is something too hopping about them. To tell the truth, nothing has injured my reputation so much as the too great praise which has been bestowed upon my 'windfalls.' After all, the value of a poet to the world is not so much his reputation as a writer of this or that poem, as the fact that the poet is known to be one who is rapt out of himself at times, and carried away into the region of the divine; it is known that the spirit has descended upon him, and taught him what he should speak."

Holmes's admiration of d.i.c.kens's genius was very sincere. "He is the greatest of all of them," he loved to say. "Such fertility, such Shakespearean breadth,--there is enough of him; you feel as you do when you see the ocean."

Speaking of the difficulty of being a good listener, he said that it was a terrible responsibility for him to listen to a story. He could never be rid of the feeling that he must remember accurately, or all would be lost. There was one story in particular, told by a friend remarkable as a raconteur, which tried him more than anything he knew in the world,--of the kind. He felt like one of the old Greek chorus with strophe and antistrophe, and it was a weight upon his mind lest he should not laugh properly at the end. I recall one day, when the subject of Walt Whitman's poetry was introduced, Dr. Holmes said he abhorred playing the critic, partly because he was not a good reader, --had read too cursorily and carelessly; but he thought the right thing had not been said about Walt Whitman. "His books sell largely, and there is a large audience of friends in Washington who praise and listen. Emerson believes in him; Lowell not at all; Longfellow finds some good in his 'yaup;' but the truth is, he is in an amorphous condition."

Longfellow was once speaking of an address he had heard which he considered quite a perfect performance. "Yes--yes," said Dr. Holmes; "I don't doubt it was very good; but the speaker is such an unpleasant person! He is just one of those fungi that always grow upon universities."

The following extract is from a brief diary:

"Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Greene, Dr. Holmes, came to dine. The latter sparkled and coruscated as I have seldom heard him before. We are more than ever convinced that no one since Sydney Smith was ever so brilliant, so witty, spontaneous, naif, and unfailing as he."

In speaking of his own cla.s.s in college he said: "There never was such vigor in any cla.s.s before, it seems to me. Almost every member turns out sooner or later distinguished for something. We have had every grade of moral status from a criminal to a chief justice, and we never let any one of them drop. We keep hold of their hands year after year, and lift up the weak and failing ones till they are at last redeemed.

Ah, there was one exception! Years ago we voted to cast a man out who had been a defaulter or who had committed some offense of that nature.

The poor fellow sank down, and before the next year, when we repented of this decision, he had gone too far down and presently died. But we have kept all the rest!

"Every fourth man in our cla.s.s is a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our cla.s.s, who wrote 'My Country 't is of Thee.' Sam. Smith will live when Longfellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into oblivion....

"Queer man, ----. Looked ten years older than he was, like Caliban.

Calibans look always ten years older than they are. A perfect potato of a man. If five hundred pieces of a man had been flung together from different points and stuck, they could not have been more awkwardly concocted than he was.