Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 12

"The notion that useless suffering is in any sense a satisfaction for sin, and not simply an evil added to a previous one."

In reviewing the life and the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Doctor Holmes with his usual fairness and kindly spirit toward all mankind, declares that the spiritual nature seems to be a natural endowment, like a musical ear.

"Those who have no ear for music must be very careful how they speak about that mysterious world of thrilling vibrations which are idle noises to them. And so the true saint can be appreciated only by saintly natures. Yet the least spiritual man can hardly read the remarkable 'Resolutions' of Edwards without a reverence akin to awe for his purity and elevation. His beliefs and his conduct we need not hesitate to handle freely. The spiritual nature is no safeguard against error of doctrine or practice; indeed it may be doubted whether a majority of all the spiritual natures in the world would be found in Christian countries. Edwards' system seems, in the light of to-day, to the last degree barbaric, mechanical, materialistic, pessimistic. If he had lived a hundred years later, and breathed the air of freedom, he could not have written with such old-world barbarism as we find in his volcanic sermons....

"There is no sufficient reason for attacking the motives of a man so saintly in life, so holy in aspirations, so patient, so meek, so laborious, so thoroughly in earnest in the work to which his life was given. But after long smothering in the sulphurous atmosphere of his thought, one cannot help asking, is this,--or anything like this,--the accepted belief of any considerable part of Protestantism? If so, we must say with Bacon, 'It were better to have no opinion of G.o.d than such an opinion as is unworthy of him.'"

In speaking of the old reproach against physicians, that where there were three of them together there were two atheists, Doctor Holmes pertinently remarks: "There is, undoubtedly, a strong tendency in the pursuits of the medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, or, at least, very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads oftenest--to heal wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the given conditions,--it is very difficult for him to believe in a world where wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a respite from pain, where sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where the art of torture is the only faculty which remains to the children of that same Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has often been pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no doubt, frequently repudiated him as a monstrosity.

"On the other hand, the physician has often been renounced for piety as well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity, led upward by what he sees the source of all the daily marvels wrought before his own eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that song of praise which the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; and if this heathen could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we need not be surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among the crowd of medical 'atheists.'"

In coming back again as a regular contributor to the magazine which Doctor Holmes was so prominently identified with a quarter of a century ago, he indulges in a few entertaining reflections. "When I sat down to write the first paper I sent to the _Atlantic Monthly_," he says, "I felt somewhat as a maiden of more than mature effloresence may be supposed to feel as she pa.s.ses down the broad aisle in her bridal veil and wealth of orange blossoms. I had written little of late years. I was at that time older than Goldsmith was when he died, and Goldsmith, as Doctor Johnson says, was a plant that flowered late. A new generation had grown up since I had written the verses by which, if remembered at all, I was best known. I honestly feared that I might prove the superfluous veteran who has no business behind the footlights. I can as honestly say that it turned out otherwise. I was most kindly welcomed, and now I am looking back on that far-off time as the period--I will not say of youth--for I was close upon the five-barred gate of the _cinquantaine_, though I had not yet taken the leap--but of marrowy and vigorous manhood. Those were the days of unaided vision, of acute hearing, of alert movements, of feelings almost boyish in their vivacity. It is a long cry from the end of a second quarter of a century in a man's life to the end of the third quarter. His companions have fallen all around him, and he finds himself in a newly peopled world.

His mental furnishing looks old-fashioned and faded to the generation which is crowding about him with its new patterns and fresh colors.

Shall he throw open his apartments to visitors, or is it not wiser to live on his memories in a decorous privacy, and not risk himself before the keen young eyes and relentless judgment of the new-comers, who have grown up in strength and self-reliance while he has been losing force and confidence. If that feeling came over me a quarter of a century ago, it is not strange that it comes back upon me now. Having laid down the burden, which for more than thirty-five years I have carried cheerfully, I might naturally seek the quiet of my chimney corner, and purr away the twilight of my life, unheard beyond the circle of my own fireplace. But when I see what my living contemporaries are doing, I am shamed out of absolute inertness and silence. The men of my birth year are so painfully industrious at this very time that one of the same date hardly dares to be idle. I look across the Atlantic and see Mr. Gladstone, only four months younger than myself, and standing erect with patriots'

grievances on one shoulder, and Pharaoh's pyramids on the other--an Atlas whose intervals of repose are paroxysms of learned labor; I listen to Tennyson, another birth of the same year, filling the air with melody long after the singing months of life are over; I come nearer home, and here is my very dear friend and college cla.s.smate, so certain to be in every good movement with voice or pen, or both, that, where two or three are gathered together for useful ends, if James Freeman Clarke is not with them, it is because he is busy with a book or a discourse meant for a larger audience; I glance at the placards on the blank walls that I am pa.s.sing, and there I see the colossal head of Barnum, the untiring, inexhaustible, insuperable, ever-triumphant and jubilant Barnum, who came to his atmospheric life less than a year before I began to breathe the fatal mixture, and still wages his t.i.tanic battle with his own past superlatives. How can one dare to sit down inactive with such examples before him? One must do something, were it nothing more profitable than the work of that dear old Penelope, of almost ninety years, whom I so well remember hemming over and over again the same piece of linen, her attendant scissors removing each day's work at evening; herself meantime being kindly nursed in the illusion that she was still the useful martyr of the household."

An author, in Doctor Holmes' opinion, should know that the very characteristics which make him the object of admiration to many, and endear him to some among them, will render him an object of dislike to a certain number of individuals of equal, it may be of superior, intelligence. The converse of all this is very true.

"There will be individuals--they may be few, they may be many--who will so instantly recognize, so eagerly accept, so warmly adopt, even so devoutly idolize, the writer in question, that self-love itself, dulled as its palate is by the hot spices of praise, draws back overcome by the burning stimulants of adoration. I was told, not long since, by one of our most justly admired auth.o.r.esses, that a correspondent wrote to her that she had read one of her stories fourteen times in succession."

There is a deep meaning in these elective affinities. Each personality is more or less completely the complement of some other. Doctor Holmes thinks it should never be forgotten by the critic that "every grade of mental development demands a literature of its own; a little above its level, that it may be lifted to a higher grade, but not too much above it, so that it requires too long a stride--a stairway, not a steep wall to climb. The true critic is not the sharp _captator verborum_; not the brisk epigrammatist, showing off his own cleverness, always trying to outflank the author against whom he has arrayed his wits and his learning. He is a man who knows the real wants of the reading world, and can prize at their just value the writings which meet those wants."

There is also another side of the picture. Doctor Holmes does not forget the trials of authorship. The writer who attains a certain measure of popularity "will be startled to find himself the object of an embarra.s.sing devotion, and almost appropriation, by some of his parish of readers. He will blush at his lonely desk, as he reads the extravagances of expression which pour over him like the oil which ran down upon the beard of Aaron, and even down to the skirts of his garments--an extreme unction which seems hardly desirable. We ought to have his photograph as he reads one of those frequent missives, oftenest traced, we may guess, in the delicate, slanting hand which betrays the slender fingers of the sympathetic sisterhood.

"A slight sense of the ridiculous at being made so much of qualifies the placid tolerance with which the rhymester or the essayist sees himself preferred to the great masters in prose and verse, and reads his name glowing in a halo of epithets which might belong to Bacon or Milton. We need not grudge him such pleasure as he may derive from the illusion of a momentary revery, in which he dreams of himself as clad in royal robes and exalted among the immortals. The next post will probably bring him some slip from a newspaper or critical journal, which will strip him of his regalia, as Thackeray, in one of his ill.u.s.trations, has disrobed and denuded the grand monarque. He saw himself but a moment ago a colossal figure in a drapery of rhetorical purple, ample enough for an Emperor, as Bernini would clothe him. The image breaker has pa.s.sed by, belittling him by comparison, jostling him off his pedestal, levelling his most prominent feature, or even breaking a whole ink bottle against him as the indignant moralist did on the figure in the vestibule of the opera house--the shortest and most effective satire that ever came from that fountain of approval and commendation. Such are some of the varied experiences of authorship."

Out of his literary career as a successful writer, Doctor Holmes was able to formulate many rules for the self-protection of authors, which were adopted unanimously at an authors' a.s.sociation which was held in Washington last September, and the remainder of his "talk" is devoted to extracts from their proceedings. Appended are a few of them:

Of visits of strangers to authors. These are not always distinguishable from each other, and may justly be considered together. The stranger should send up his card if he has one; if he has none, he should, if admitted, at once announce himself and his object, without circ.u.mlocution, as thus; "My name is M. or N., from X. or Y. I wish to see and take the hand of a writer whom I have long admired for his,"

etc., etc. Here the author should extend his hand, and reply in substance as follows: "I am pleased to see you, my dear sir, and very glad that anything I have written has been a source of pleasure or profit to you." The visitor has now had what he says he came for, and, after making a brief polite acknowledgment, should retire, unless, for special reasons, he is urged to stay longer.

Of autograph-seekers. The increase in the number of applicants for autographs is so great that it has become necessary to adopt positive regulations to protect the author from the exorbitant claims of this cla.s.s of virtuosos. The following propositions were adopted without discussion:

No author is under any obligation to answer any letter from an unknown person applying for his autograph. If he sees fit to do so, it is a gratuitous concession on his part.

No stranger should ask for more than one autograph.

No stranger should request an author to copy a poem, or even a verse. He should remember that he is one of many thousands; that one thousand fleas are worse than one hornet, and that a mob of mosquitoes will draw more blood than a single horse leech.

Every correspondent applying for an autograph should send a card or blank paper, in a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or herself). If he will not take the trouble to attend to all this, which he can just as well as to make the author do it, he must not expect the author to make good his deficiencies. [Accepted by acclamation].

Sending a stamp does not const.i.tute a claim on an author for answer.

[Received with loud applause]. The stamp may be retained by the author, or, what is better, devoted to the use of some appropriate charity, as for instance, the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons.

Alb.u.ms. An alb.u.m of decent external aspect may, without impropriety, be offered to an author, with the request that he will write his name therein. It is not proper, as a general rule, to ask for anything more than the name. The author may, of course, add a quotation from his writings, or a sentiment, if so disposed; but this must be considered as a work of supererogation, and an exceptional manifestation of courtesy.

Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source of gratification to an author to contribute to the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he cannot keep him awake by his writings. He should therefore cheerfully inscribe his name on the sc.r.a.p of satin or other stuff (provided always that it be sent him in a stamped and directed envelope), that it may take its place in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended.

Letters of admiration. These may be accepted as genuine, unless they contain specimens of the writer's own composition, upon which a critical opinion is requested, in which case they are to be regarded in the same light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as meaning more than their looks imply. Genuine letters of admiration, being usually considered by the recipient as proofs of good taste and sound judgment on the part of his unknown correspondent, may be safely left to his decision as to whether they shall be answered or not.

The author of _Elsie Venner_ thus excuses himself for opening the budget of the grievances of authors. "In obtaining and giving to the public this abstract of the proceedings of the a.s.sociation, I have been impelled by the same feelings of humanity which led me to join the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believing that the sufferings of authors are as much ent.i.tled to sympathy and relief as those of the brute creation."

The birthday of the Emperor of j.a.pan is the princ.i.p.al holiday of the year among his subjects, and as Sat.u.r.day, November 3d, 1883, was the thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of Mutsuhito Tenno, the reigning Emperor, it was appropriately celebrated by the j.a.panese gentlemen in Boston. The j.a.panese department at the Foreign Exhibition was closed, and in the evening a banquet was given at the Parker House, about sixty gentlemen a.s.sembling in response to the invitation of Mr.

S.R. Takahashi, chief of the imperial j.a.panese commission to the Boston Foreign Exhibition. The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated with the j.a.panese and American colors, and at the head of the hall were portraits of the Emperor and Empress of j.a.pan, with the colors of that country between them. The occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was especially interesting as it was a departure from the custom at ordinary dinners here, several gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer the duty of proposing the toasts. One of the most delightful orations of the evening given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows:

"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," being taught in ten lessons, but I never heard that a nation's literature could have justice done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of mine--one of my thirty-two great-great-great-great-grandmothers--a noted poetess in her day, thus addressed her little brood of children:

Alas! my birds, you wisdom want Of perils you are ignorant; Ofttimes in gra.s.s, on trees, in flight, Sore accidents on you may light; Oh, to your safety have an eye, So happy may you live and die.

"In accepting your kind invitation, I confess that I was ignorant of my perils. I did not follow the counsel of my grandmamma with the four g's in having an eye to my own safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of being called on to answer for American literature, one of those 'previous engagements,' which crop out so opportunely, would have stood between me and my present trying position. I had meant, if called upon, to say a few words about a j.a.panese youth who studied law in Boston, a very cultivated and singularly charming young person, who died not very long after his return to his native country. Some of you may remember young Enouie--I am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I know that I cannot p.r.o.nounce it properly; for from his own lips it was as soft as an angel's whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, the loveliness of his character, captivated all who knew him. We loved him, and we mourned for him as if he had been a child of our own soil. But of him I must say no more.

"In speaking of American literature we naturally think first of our historical efforts. We see that books hold but a small part of American history. The axe and the ploughshare are the two pens with which our New World annals have been princ.i.p.ally written, with schoolhouses as notes of interrogation, and steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration and grat.i.tude. Within half a century the railroad has ruled our broad page all over, and rewritten the story, with States for new chapters and cities for paragraphs. This is the kind of history which he who runs may read, and he must run fast and far if he means to read any considerable part of it.

"But we must not forget our political history, perishable in great measure as to its form, long enduring in its results. This literature is the index of our progress--in both directions--forward and the contrary.

From the days of Washington and Franklin to the times still fresh in our memory, from the Declaration of Independence to the proclamation which enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, with all its terrible blunders and short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest expression the world has yet seen of what a free people and a free press have to say and to show for themselves.

"But besides 'Congressional Doc.u.ments' and the like, the terror of librarians and the delight of paper-makers, we do a good deal of other printing. We make some books, a good many books, a great many books, so many that the hyperbole at the end of St. John's gospel would hardly be an extravagance in speaking of them. And among these are a number of histories which hold an honorable place on the shelves of all the great libraries of Christendom. Why should I enumerate them? For history is a Boston specialty. From the days of Prescott and Ticknor to those of Motley and Parkman, we have always had an historian or two on hand, as they used always to have a lion or two in the Tower of London.

"Next to the historians naturally come the story-tellers and romancers.

The essential difference is--I would not apply the rough side of the remark to historians like the best of our own, but it is very often the fact--that history tells lies about real persons and fiction tells truth through the mouths of unreal ones. England threw open the side doors of its library to Irving. The continent flung wide its folding doors to Cooper. Laplace was once asked who was the greatest mathematician of Germany. 'Pfaff is the greatest,' he answered. 'I thought Gauss was,'

the questioner said. 'You asked me,' rejoined Laplace, 'who was the greatest mathematician of Germany. Gauss was the greatest mathematician of Europe.' So, I suppose we might say _The Pilot_ is or was the most popular book ever written in America, but _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ is the most popular story ever published in the world. And if _The Heart of Mid Lothian_ added a new glory of romance to the traditions of Auld Reekie, _The Scarlet Letter_ did as much for the memories of our own New England. I need not speak of the living writers, some of whom are among us, who have changed the old scornful question into 'Who _does not_ read an American book?'

"As to poetical literature, I must confess that, except a line or two of Philip Freneau's, I know little worthy of special remembrance before the beginning of this century, always excepting, as in duty bound, the verses of my manifold grandmother. The conditions of the country were unfavorable to the poetical habit of mind. The voice that broke the silence was that of Bryant, a clear and smooth baritone, if I may borrow a musical term, with a gamut of a few notes of a grave and manly quality. Then came Longfellow, the poet of the fireside, of the library, of all gentle souls and cultivated tastes, whose Muse breathed a soft contralto that was melody itself, and Emerson, with notes that reached an octave higher than any American poet--a singer whose

Voice fell like a falling star.

Like that of the bird addressed by Wordsworth--

At once far off and near,

it was a

Cry Which made [us] look a thousand ways, In bush and tree and sky;

for whether it soared from the earth or dropped from heaven, it was next to impossible to divine.

"I will not speak of the living poets of the old or the new generation.

It belongs to the young to give the heartiest welcome to the new brood of singers. Samuel Rogers said that when he heard a new book praised, he read an old one. Mr. Emerson, in one of his later essays, advises us never to read a book that is not a year old. This I will say, that every month shows us in the magazines, and even in the newspapers, verse that would have made a reputation in the early days of the _North American Review_, but which attracts little more notice than a breaking bubble.

"A great improvement is noticeable in the character of criticism, which is leaving the hands of the 'general utility' writers and pa.s.sing into the hands of experts. The true critic is the last product of literary civilization. It costs as great an effort to humanize the being known by that name as it does to make a good church-member of a scalping savage.

Criticism is a n.o.ble function, but only so in n.o.ble hands. We have just welcomed Mr. Arnold as its worthy English representative; we could not secure our creditors more handsomely than we have done by leaving Mr.

Lowell in pledge for our visitor's safe return.

"One more hopeful mark of literary progress is seen in our cyclopaedias, our periodicals, our newspapers, and I may add our indexes. I would commend to the attention of our enlightened friends such works as Mr.

Pool's great _Index to Periodical Literature_, Mr. Alibone's _Dictionary of Authors_, and the _Index Medicus_, now publishing at Washington--a wonderful achievement of organized industry, still carried on under the superintendence of Doctor Billings, and well deserving examination by all scholars, whatever their calling.

"We have learned so much from our j.a.panese friends, that we should be thankful to pay them back something in return. With art such as they have, they must also have a literature showing the same originality, grace, facility and simple effectiveness. Let us hope they will carry away something of our intellectual products, as well as those good wishes which follow them wherever they show their beautiful works of art and their pleasant and always welcome faces."