Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 18

and George William Curtis followed in an address, answering to the toast "Literature"--

A kind of medicine in itself.

--_Measure for Measure._

All factions, he declared, claimed Oliver Wendell Holmes, and all peoples spoke of him in praise. He then mentioned many of the poet's songs, reciting a stanza occasionally and commenting on them in a touching manner. The next toast was "The Press"--

But words are things, and a small drop of ink Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.

--_Byron._

This was responded to by Whitelaw Reid in a humorous address in which he closely connected Doctor Holmes with the profession of journalism. It was a late hour when the company separated, and the last toast given, found a hearty, though silent response from all present--

Good-night, good-night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow.

--_Romeo and Juliet._

Before closing this long chapter of "honors to Doctor Holmes," we cannot refrain from giving the following cordial tribute from John Boyle O'Reilly:

"Oliver Wendell Holmes:--the wise, the witty, the many ideald, philosopher, poet, physician, novelist, essayist, professor, but, best of all, the kind, the warm heart. A man of unexpected tastes, ranging in all directions from song to science, and from theology to boatracing.

Me met one day on Tremont street an acquaintance fond of athletic exercise, and he stopped himself with a pathetic little sigh.

"'Ah, you send me back fifty years,' he said. 'As you walked then with a swing, you reminded me of an old friend who was dead before you were born; and he was a good man with his hands, too.'

"Never was a more healthy, natural, lovable man than Doctor Holmes."

CHAPTER XX.

IN LATER YEARS.

It was not until the spring of 1886 that Doctor Holmes made his second trip to Europe. A whole half century had elapsed since his return home from the three years spent abroad when he was completing his medical studies.

In this second European tour he was accompanied by his daughter, Mrs.

Sargent; and he gives his own delightful account of it in "One Hundred Days in Europe," which first appeared as a serial in the _Atlantic Monthly_, and has since been published in book form, with a charming dedication to his daughter. "The Sailing of the Autocrat" was celebrated by T.B. Aldrich in a fine poem, from which we quote a few lines as embodying the tender love and ardent admiration of the whole American people:--

"O Wind and Wave, be kind to him!

For him may radiant mornings break From out the bosom of the deep, And golden noons above him bend, And fortunate constellations keep Bright vigils to his journey's end!

Take him, green Erin, to thy breast!

Keep him, gray London--for a while!

_In him we send thee of our best, Our wisest word, our blithest smile_-- Our epigram, alert and pat, That kills with joy the folly hit-- Our Yankee Tzar, our Autocrat Of all the happy realms of wit!

Take him and keep him--but forbear To keep him more than half a year....

His presence will be sunshine there, His absence will be shadow here!"

We delight to recall with what distinguished honors he was received abroad from the highest dignitaries of church and state, as well as from his own literary compeers. It was during this visit in England that the London _Spectator_ wrote, "No literary American--unless it be Mr.

Lowell, and we should not except even him--occupies precisely the same place as Doctor Holmes in Englishmen's regard. They have the feeling for him which they had for Charles Lamb, Charles d.i.c.kens, and John Leech, in which admiration somewhat blends into and is indistinguishable from affectionateness."

The Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Cambridge all conferred their honorary degrees upon him, and he has given us his own inimitable description of the manner in which he was entertained by Carlyle and by Tennyson.

At a club dinner given to him in London, he said to the bishop of Gloucester:

"I think we are all unconsciously conscious of each other's brain waves at times. The fact is that words and even signs are a very poor sort of language, compared with the direct telegraphy between souls. The mistake we make is to suppose that the soul is circ.u.mscribed and imprisoned by the body. Now, the truth is, I believe I extend a good way outside my body. Well, I should say at least three or four feet all round, and so do you, and it is our extensions that meet. Before words pa.s.s or we shake hands, our souls have exchanged impressions, and they never lie."

In reply to a toast at the farewell banquet given him in Liverpool by the Medical Society of London, he said:

"I cannot do justice to the manner in which I have been everywhere received. Any phrase of mine would be a most inadequate return for the months of loving and a.s.siduous attentions through which I have been living. You need not ask me, therefore, the almost stereotyped question, how I like England and Scotland. I cannot help loving both, and I only regret I could not accept the welcome awaiting me from my friends in warmhearted Ireland."

Fresh in mind still is the enthusiastic ovation given to our beloved Autocrat when the hundred days had pa.s.sed, and "Wind and Wave" brought safely home again "our wisest word, our blithest smile."

But grim Death, that had "rained through every roof save his," was soon to send a cruel shaft into the poet's happy home. On the 6th of February, 1888, the dear companion and helpmeet of his life for nearly half a century--

"Stole with soft step the shining archway through And left the past years' dwelling for the new."

Mrs. Holmes was a remarkably gifted woman, and singularly fitted to be the wife of a man of genius. She was devoted to her home and family, and the charm of her sweet womanliness will long be remembered by those who had the privilege of knowing her intimately. Doctor Holmes has himself told us that her simple, reticent "I think so," was valued by him as a far more encouraging sanction for action, than the dogmatic advice of a more arbitrary adviser. When the Civil War broke out, Mrs. Holmes was one of the first Boston women to enter actively into the work of the United States Sanitary Commission.

"She impressed us all," says one of her fellow workers, "as being so strong, steady, clear, and firm. There was not one among the whole body with whom we were so united as with her. And the strange thing about her was that she really had the executive ability and the clear mind, as well as the gentle and amiable spirit. She shirked no labor, even of the most menial, and was one of those who gave up almost all her time to the work. Her eldest son was at this time in the war, and went through six battles; and this, although she never complained, was a constantly harrowing pain to her."

The younger son of Doctor Holmes, Edward Jackson Holmes, died in 1884, leaving one son who bears the same name; and in 1889, his only daughter, Mrs. Sargent, pa.s.sed away. The aching void left in heart and home by these sad bereavements was felt still more keenly as, one after another, the old friends of his youth were laid to rest.

"I do not think," he said upon one of his last birthdays, "that one of the companions of my early years, of my boyhood, is left. When a man reaches my age, and then looks back fifty years, why, even that distance into the past to such a man leaves a pretty good gap behind it. Half a century from eighty years leaves a 'gap' of thirty years, and thirty years are a good many to most men."

At one of the Sat.u.r.day Club dinners, when fewer members than usual were present, Doctor Holmes remarked,

"This room is full of ghosts to me. I can see so many faces here that used to be here years ago, and that have since pa.s.sed from this life.

They are all real to me here, and I think if I were the only living person at one of these dinners, I could sit here and talk to those I see about me, and dine pleasantly, even alone."

Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell--all lifelong friends of Holmes--had already "pa.s.sed on." To other dearly-loved comrades, also, the great last summons had come. Ticknor, Prescott, Fields, Benjamin Pierce, James Freeman Clarke, Francis Parkman--all were gone.

"I feel," he often said with a sigh, "that I am living in another age and generation."

Little, indeed, did the young Oliver realize when he wrote that pathetic poem, "The Last Leaf," that he was the one of our five great poets destined to be the "last upon the tree!"

Upon his eightieth birthday, he remarked, "I have worn well, but you cannot cheat old age. The difficulty with me now in writing is that I don't like to start on anything. I always feel that people must be saying, 'Are you not rash at eighty years of age to write for young people who think a man old at forty?'"

But in his delightful series of papers, "Over the Teacups," we mark the same brilliant flashes of wit, the same keen intuition, the same warmhearted sympathy with all phases of human nature, that our beloved Autocrat showed in the Breakfast Table chats. As Doctor Holmes himself says:

"In sketching the characters, I have tried to make just the difference one would naturally find in a breakfast and a tea table set."

Another volume of poems, "Before the Curfew," and a series of essays ent.i.tled "Our New Portfolio," were published soon after. The last poem of Doctor Holmes printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ was written in his eighty-fourth year and dedicated to the memory of Francis Parkman. Some of its verses, however, pay a loving tribute also to his old friends Prescott and Motley:

"One wrought the record of a royal pair Who saw the great discoverer's sail unfurled, Happy his more than regal prize to share, The spoils, the wonders of the sunset world.

There, too, he found his theme; upreared anew Our eyes beheld the vanished Aztec shrines, And all the silver splendors of Peru That lured the conqueror to her fatal mines.

Nor less remembered he who told the tale Of empire wrested from the strangling sea; Of Leyden's woe, that turned his readers pale, The price of unborn freedom yet to be;