The poet Whittier always calls to mind the prophet-bards of the olden time. There is much of the old Semitic fire about him, and ethical and religious subjects seem to occupy his entire mind. Like his own Tauler, he walks abroad, constantly
"Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;
As one who, wandering in a starless night,
Feels momently the jar of unseen waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea
Breaking along an unimagined shore."
His poems are so thoroughly imbued with this religious spirit that they seem to us almost like the sacred writings of the different times and nations of the world. They come to the lips upon all occasions of deep feeling almost as naturally as the Scriptures do. They are current coin with reformers the world over. They are the Alpha and Omega of deep, strong religious faith. Whoever would best express his entire confidence in the triumph of the right, and his reliance upon God's power against the devices of men, finds the words of Whittier upon his lips; and to those who mourn and seek for consolation, how naturally and involuntarily come back lines from his poems they have long treasured, but which perhaps never had a personal application until now! To the wronged, the down-trodden, and the suffering they appeal as strongly as the Psalms of David. He is the great High Priest of Literature. But few priests at any time have had such an audience and such influence as he. The moral and religious value of his work can scarcely be overstated. Who can ever estimate the power which his strong words had in the days that are now but a fading memory,—in the great conflict which freed the bodies of so many million slaves? And who can ever estimate the power his strong words have had throughout his whole career in freeing the minds of other millions from the shackles of unworthy old beliefs? His blows have been strong, steady, persistent. He has never had the fear of man before his eyes. No man has done more for freedom, fellowship, and character in religion than he. Hypocrisy and falsehood and cant have been his dearest foes, and he has ridden at them early and late with his lance poised and his steed at full tilt. Indeed, for a Quaker, Mr. Whittier must be said to have a great deal of the martial spirit. The fiery, fighting zeal of the old reformers is in his blood. You can imagine him as upon occasion enjoying the imprecatory Psalms. In his anti-slavery poems there is a depth of passionate earnestness which shows that he could have gone to the stake for his opinions had he lived in an earlier age than ours. That he did risk his life for them, even in our own day, is well known. During the intense heat of the anti-slavery conflict he was mobbed once and again by excited crowds; but he was not to be intimidated by all the powers of evil, and continued to speak his strong words and to sing his inspiring songs, whether men would hear or whether they would forbear. And those Voices of Freedom, whatever may be thought of them by mere critics and litterateurs, will outlast any poems of their day, and sound "down the ringing grooves of Time" when much that is now honored has been forgotten. He will be known as the Poet of a great Cause, the Bard of Freedom, as long as the great anti-slavery conflict is remembered. He is a part, and an important part, of the history of his country, a central figure in the battalions of the brave. Those wild, stirring bugle-calls of his cheered the little army, and held it together many a time when the cause was only a forlorn hope; and they came with their stern defiance into the camp of the enemy with such masterful power that some gallant enemies deserted to his side. They were afraid to be found fighting against God, as Whittier had convinced them they were doing. There is the roll of drums and the clash of spears in these stirring strains; there are echoes from Thermopylæ and Marathon, and the breath of the old Greek heroes is in the air; there is a hint of the old Border battle-cries from Scotland's hills and tarns; from Jura's rocky wall we can catch the cheers of Tell; and the voice of Cromwell can often be distinguished in the strain.
There is also the sweep of the winds through the pine woods, and the mountain blasts of New England, and the strong fresh breath of the salt sea; all tonic influences, in short, which braced up the minds of the men of those days to a fixed and heroic purpose, from which they never receded until their end was achieved. It has become the fashion in these days of dilettanteism to say that earnestness and moral purpose have no place in poetry, and small critics have arisen who claim that Mr. Whittier has been spoiled as a poet by his moral teachings. To these critics it is only necessary to point to the estimation in which Mr. Whittier's poetry is held by the world, and to the daily widening of his popularity among scholars and men of letters as well as among the people, to teach them that this ruined poetry is likely to live when all the merely pretty poetry they so much admire is forgotten forever. The small poets who are afraid of touching a moral question for fear of ruining their poems would do well to compare Poe, who is the leader of their school and its best exponent, with Mr. Whittier, and to ask themselves which is the more likely to survive the test of time. Let them also ponder the words of Principal Shairp, one of the finest critics of the day, when he says of the true mission of the poet, that "it is to awaken men to the divine side of things; to bear witness to the beauty that clothes the outer world, the nobility that lies hid, often obscured, in human souls; to call forth sympathy for neglected truths, for noble and oppressed persons, for down-trodden causes; and to make men feel that through all outward beauty and all pure inward affection God himself is addressing them." They would do well also to ponder the words of Ruskin, who believes that only in as far as it has a distinct moral purpose is any literary work of value to the world. Is not the opinion of such men as these to be considered of weight in this matter? And is it not an impertinence in little men like some of those who have lately written of Mr. Whittier, to speak in a patronizing and supercilious tone of his work, as if the very qualities which distinguish it from the work of the weaklings had ruined it as poetry?
It is perhaps to Mr. Whittier's ancestry that we may trace this intense consecration of life to all its higher purposes; for he came of a people who had endured persecution for conscience' sake for generations, and who had loved liberty with a love passing that of woman, and sacrificed much for her sake. The depths of feeling which Mr. Whittier has always sounded when the persecutions of the Quakers have risen before his vision can only be understood by those who are thoroughly familiar with the details of these persecutions, and who know the harmless character of the men and women thus outraged. Mr. Whittier knows this well, and it stirs his blood to this day, as it stirred the blood of his father and mother when they recounted these things to his childish ears. Though so much deep feeling was latent in their natures, the outward lives of his parents were serene and calm. Mr. Whittier has, in that exquisite little idyl "Snowbound," given us a graphic and authentic picture of his childhood's home, and in a measure of the life lived there. It is a quiet little New England interior, painted by a master's hand from love of his work. It is every whit as delightful as "The Cotter's Saturday Night;" and it is realistically true in every detail. Here we have the family portraits drawn to life,—the father, who
"Rode again his ride
On Memphremagog's wooded side;
Sat down again to moose and samp
In trapper's hut and Indian camp;
Lived o'er the old idyllic ease
Beneath St. François' hemlock trees;"
and showed how
"Again for him the moonlight shone
On Norman cap and bodiced zone;
Again he heard the violin play
Which led the village dance away,
And mingled in its merry whirl
The grandam and the laughing girl."
The mother,
"While she turned her wheel
Or run the new-knit stocking-heel,
Told how the Indian hordes came down
At midnight on Cocheco town,
And how her own great-uncle bore
His cruel scalp-mark to fourscore.
Recalling in her fitting phrase,
So rich and picturesque and free,
(The common unrhymed poetry
Of simple life and country ways,)
The story of her early days."
The uncle,
"Innocent of books,
Was rich in lore of fields and brooks,—
The ancient teachers never dumb
Of Nature's unhoused lyceum.
In moons and tides and weather wise,
He read the clouds as prophecies,
And foul or fair could well divine
By many an occult hint and sign,
Holding the cunning-warded keys
To all the woodcraft mysteries."
The picture is very attractive of this
"Simple, guileless, childlike man,
Content to live where life began;
Strong only on his native grounds,
The little world of sights and sounds."
Next,
"The dear aunt, whose smile of cheer
And voice in dreams I see and hear,—
The sweetest woman ever Fate
Perverse denied a household mate,
Who, lonely, homeless, not the less
Found peace in love's unselfishness."
Then the elder sister,
"A full, rich nature, free to trust,
Truthful and almost sternly just,
Impulsive, earnest, prompt to act,
And make her generous thought a fact,
Keeping with many a light disguise
The secret of self-sacrifice."
The youngest sister, with "large, sweet, asking eyes," and the
"Brisk wielder of the birch and rule,
The master of the district school,"
make up the customary group; and it is safe to say that they were royal company on that winter night.
Another description of the life of his boyhood may be found in "The Barefoot Boy." No other language will describe so well those careless, happy years of the genuine country boy.
"Oh for boyhood's time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight
Through the day and through the night,
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pend,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
"Oh for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread,—
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O'er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs' orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch: pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy."
Is not this an accurate picture of what a poet's childhood should be?
In his early youth we have the one hint of a romance which his life contains, and he shall give us that also in his own words:—
"How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory, at the thought of thee!
Old hopes which long in dust have lain,
Old dreams, come thronging back again,
And boyhood lives again in me;
I feel its glow upon my cheek,
Its fulness of the heart is mine,
As when I leaned to hear thee speak,
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
I hear again thy low replies,
I feel thy hand within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringèd lids of hazel eyes,
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they."
It is very tender, very beautiful and touching, and, doubtless, it left on him "an impress Time has worn not out." And we doubt if even yet, when the shadows of age are gathering very deeply around the gentle poet, that memory has faded.
"Not yet has Time's dull footstep worn
To common dust that path of flowers."
We cannot but wonder who the favored "Playmate" of the poet was, and we sympathize with him when he asks,—
"I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,—
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
"I see her face, I hear her voice:
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father's kine?"
And we feel an intense interest in knowing whether or not she cares, when he tells her,—
"The winds so sweet with birch and fern,
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
"And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,—
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!"
Mr. Whittier has never married, and his favorite sister long presided over his home in Amesbury, where his mother and the dear aunt also came after the father's death. It was the bitterest loss of his life when this beautiful sister died, and he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her in "Snowbound":—
"With me one little year ago,
The chill weight of the winter snow
For months upon her grave has lain;
And now, when summer south winds blow
And brier and harebell bloom again,
I tread the pleasant paths we trod,
I see the violet-sprinkled sod
Whereon she leaned, too frail and weak
The hillside flowers she loved to seek,
Yet following me where'er she went
With dark eyes full of love's content.
The birds are glad; the brier-rose fills
The air with sweetness; all the hills
Stretch green to June's unclouded sky;
But still I wait with ear and eye
For something gone which should be nigh,
A loss in all familiar things,
In flower that blooms, and bird that sings.
And while in life's late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou art far,
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?"
This sister Elizabeth was herself a remarkable woman, and one of whom the world would have heard more but for her great modesty. She was gifted with a fine poetic taste, and was not only appreciative, but might have been creative as well. A few of her poems appear in her brother's collected works. She was beautiful in person, delicate and dark-eyed, and possessed of exquisite taste in everything. The village of Amesbury still cherishes her memory and recounts her virtues. The tie between the sister and brother was of the closest kind, and their home life together for so many years as beautiful as any recorded in literature. After her death a niece kept his house for some time; but though she was all devotion to him, the old home was never home after the dear sister had left it.
Mr. Whittier is a man to feel very much the loneliness of his later life, bereft as he has been of all his family friends except one brother. But he is very lovingly and tenderly cared for by some distant relatives, who live at Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass., where he has passed the most of his time the last few years. It is a most beautiful place, and the poet takes great delight in it, preferring it even to his own home at Amesbury, where he lived so long and where the greater part of his literary work was done. The house and grounds remind one of an old English manor-house and its surroundings. The old forest trees still beautify it, while clumps of evergreens have been planted here and there, with many shrubs and flowers. In the distance rise the blue hills of Essex and Middlesex, and near at hand babbles a noisy brook, seeking the not distant sea. All the beautiful trees of New England grow here,—hickories, chestnuts, maples, birches, pines, and beeches; and Whittier, who is a famous lover of trees, passes much time in these shady coverts.
Mr. Whittier's own house at Amesbury is a plain white painted wooden house, consisting of an upright and ell, like many old-fashioned farm-houses, and surrounded by a picket-fence. It is roomy and comfortable, and the study is a very cosey and attractive place, with its open wood-fire and its well-filled book-shelves. One familiar with its appearance thus describes it:—
"One side is filled with a desk and books, among which Irish ballads have a place of honor; and an old-fashioned Franklin fireplace with polished brasses throws its cheerful blaze over carpet, lounge, and easy-chairs, and on walls covered with many souvenirs,—a water-color of Harry Fenn's, Hill's picture of the early home, fringed gentians painted by Lucy Larcom, and other trifles which give character to the room. In this nook the 'lords of thought' have been made welcome; here came Alice and Phœbe Cary on their romantic pilgrimage, and here have come many others of the illustrious women of the day, most of whom he reckons as his friends in this generation as he did Lydia Maria Child and Lucretia Mott and their contemporaries in the last."
Mr. Whittier's personal appearance is thus described by George W. Bungay in his "Crayon Sketches:"—
"His temperament is nervous bilious; he is tall, slender, and straight as an Indian; has a superb head; his brow looks like a white cloud under his raven hair; eyes large, black as sloes, and glowing with expression, . . . those star-like eyes flashing under such a magnificent forehead."
Another writer tells of:—
"The fine intellectual beauty of his expression, the blending brightness and softness of the clear dark eye, the union of manly firmness and courage with womanly sweetness and tenderness alike in countenance and character."
That clear and bright observer Mr. Wasson says:—
"The high cranium, so lofty, especially in the dome; the slight and symmetrical backward slope of the whole head; the powerful level brows, and beneath these the dark, deep eyes, so fun of shadowed fire; the Arabian complexion; the sharp-cut, intense lines of the face; the light, tall, erect stature; the quick, axial poise of the movement,—all these traits reveal the fiery Semitic prophet."
His smile is spoken of by all as irradiating his whole face. He is the most modest and one of the shyest of men. He can rarely be exhibited as a lion in Boston, though the celebrity-hunters often try to induce him thus to show himself. His fame has been a great surprise to him, and he can scarcely believe in it even now. When his seventieth birthday was celebrated by the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" by a Whittier Banquet, to which all the great writers in the country were invited, and where many fine tributes were paid to his genius, he especially wondered that all this honor was for him. The "Literary World" at the same time published many fine poems from distinguished authors addressed to him, and he replied in that journal to them, saying:—
"Beside that mile-stone where the level sun
Nigh unto setting sheds his last low rays
On word and work irrevocably done,
Life's blending threads of good and ill outspun,
I hear, O friends, your words of cheer and praise,
Half doubtful if myself or otherwise.
Like him who in the old Athenian days
A beggar slept, and crownèd Caliph woke."
Although shy in formal society, Mr. Whittier is of a social nature, and very much enjoys unrestrained intercourse with his friends. Visitors were always made welcome at Amesbury, and while his sister presided there the house was very attractive to those who enjoyed its hospitality. She was a witty and bright woman, who enlivened every social circle she graced; and Mr. Whittier himself has a fund of delicate humor, which lights up his conversations with those with whom he is on familiar terms, and he has a quiet way of drawing out the best there is in others, which causes every one to appear well in his presence. Children are his loyal and enthusiastic friends everywhere; and he was known among them in Amesbury as "the man with the parrot," that remarkable bird "Charlie" serving as a sort of connecting link between the poet and the little ones. He is always ready for a game of romps with the children even now, and they very much admire the stately old man who condescends to them so kindly. Long ago, when his little niece wanted the scarlet cape which other children wore, and there was objection upon the part of her Quaker mother, Mr. Whittier pleaded so well for the little one that she was allowed to indulge in the bright trappings of her mates. Mr. Whittier himself has never gone to the extremes of Quaker dress, and could hardly be distinguished from the world by that alone. But he uses the "thee" and "thou" of the Friends, and it is very charming to hear them from his lips. He has always been a faithful attendant, also, upon their meetings.
The kindliness of Mr. Whittier's nature has always led him to help others, especially young literary aspirants, and he has spent a great deal of his valuable time upon this class. He cannot bear to leave a letter unanswered or a request ungranted, and his correspondence has become very burdensome these latter years. He has long been subject to very severe neuralgic headaches, and can write now but a few minutes at a time; and those few precious minutes he often wastes on some impertinent stranger who has sent a great mass of manuscripts to him for criticism. The little time which these insatiable correspondents leave to him, he occupies very pleasantly in and about the grounds at Oak Knoll. He enjoys working in the fine flower-garden, feeding the squirrels, playing with the dogs, and driving the fine horses. He has many friends within a morning's drive,—Harriet Preston, Gail Hamilton, and others,—and driving about the country has always been one of his choice diversions. He is now seventy-eight years old,—a cheerful, kindly, essentially lovable old man. He still goes up to Boston occasionally to meet friends and look about the city, and runs over to Amesbury, where friends occupy his house and make him welcome; but for the most part he remains in his quiet retreat, cheerfully awaiting the change which must be near.
The genial "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was born in the city of Cambridge, in Massachusetts, in the year 1809, upon the day given to the Commencement exercises of Harvard College. It was the day of small things in that institution, and the day of small things in American literature. The child who was born that day was destined to add much to the estimation in which both were held. He occupied a professor's chair in the University for thirty-five years, and did good work in it too; and he is one of the little group of illustrious men who have helped to make a distinctively American literature, which is now honored throughout the world. As we believe with Dr. Holmes that "it is an ungenerous silence which leaves all the fair words of honestly-earned praise to the writer of obituary notices and the marble-worker," we shall endeavor to set forth in this paper some of the good points in the character and work of this distinguished man,—perhaps the best beloved of our native authors.
The Rev. Abiel Holmes, the father of our hero, was one of the typical New England ministers of that day; the mother, Sarah Wendell, was from a Dutch family, who came to Boston from Albany in the eighteenth century. The old gambrel-roofed house where the poet was born stood close to the buildings of Harvard University, and to the south flows the Charles River, so often celebrated by Holmes and Longfellow and Lowell. The environs of Cambridge are particularly beautiful, and have been the subjects of many charming descriptions by all these writers. The old yellow hip-roofed house was about one hundred and sixty years old when it was moved away to make room for modern improvements. The New England colonists knew how to build a house, and the work of their hands puts to shame the sham edifices of the present day, which come up like Jonah's gourd in a night. The mansion-houses of New England are among her most precious inheritances; and we can scarcely blame the families, in whose hands they have remained until this time, for feeling a certain pride in them.
The study was the great attraction to Oliver and his brother John. It was a large heavy-beamed room, lined upon all sides with books,—which was almost an unheard-of thing in this country at that time. Here the boys were allowed to choose for themselves what they would read, and here they doubtless formed the scholarly tastes of after-days. The contrast between this library and that of the Whittier household, with its less than a dozen books, is a great one, and has something to do with the distinctive flavor of the work of the two men. There is a wild woodsy flavor about Whittier to this day, pungent and stimulating; and about all that Holmes has written is the atmosphere of books,—a smell of Russia-leather, as it were, and the mustiness of old tomes. The childhood of Oliver was very happy, and the memory of it has lingered with him through life; he has always been very fond of talking of it and writing about it. Of the old garden surrounding the manse, he has written eloquently, and one can almost see it for himself from his description,—with its lilac-bushes, its pear-trees, its peaches (for they raised peaches in New England in those days), its lovely nectarines, and white grapes. Old-fashioned flowers grew in the borders,—hyacinths, coming up even through the snow; tulips, adding their flaming splendor to the spring, although they are so much more like autumn flowers; peonies, of mammoth size and gorgeous coloring; flower-de-luce, lilies, roses—damask, blush, and cinnamon,—larkspurs, lupines, and royal hollyhocks. Then there were the vegetables growing with the flowers,—"beets, with their handsome dark-red leaves, carrots, with their elegant filagree foliage, parsley, that clung to the earth like mandrakes, radishes, illustrations of total depravity, a prey to every evil underground emissary of the powers of darkness."
The Holmes boys were lively and frolicsome, not unlike what we have been accustomed to hear of ministers' sons in general, and some of their pranks were remembered in Cambridge for many a year. In one of Dr. Holmes's college poems he hints at some of these "high old times:"—
"I am not well to-night; methinks the fumes
Of overheated punch have something dimmed
The cerebellum or pineal gland,
Or where the soul sits regnant."
Still, there was nothing worse than boyish fun in any of their larks, and they were studious beyond their years.
Among their schoolmates was Margaret Fuller. Dr. Holmes says of her:—
"Her air to her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance, as if she had other thoughts than theirs, and was not of them. I remember her so well, as she appeared at school and later, that I regret that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day of her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her living. Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair-complexioned, with a watery aquamarine lustre in her light eyes, which she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. A remarkable point about her was that long flexible neck, arching and undulating in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her would compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not, to those of the ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, magisterial, de haut en bas, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing the talk of women in breadth and audacity."
In due time young Holmes was graduated from Harvard, with a class which he has helped to make well known by his annual college poems. The boys of '29 were a noble and talented set of men, and quite a number of them still live, among our most honored citizens. Some of his well-known humorous poems were written for the college papers, among them "The Dorchester Giant," "Evening, by a Tailor," "The Spectre Pig," and "The Height of the Ridiculous." For a few years after he left college he went on "writing as funny as he could," then discontinued his literary work for some time, and only permanently renewed it with the starting of the "Atlantic Monthly" in 1857. Here he began "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," and followed it with that brilliant series of papers and of novels which made him known the world over, as one of our most original and characteristic writers. Long before this he had been married, and settled down for life in the city of Boston. His wife, to whom he was united in 1840, was Amelia Lee Jackson, daughter of Judge Jackson of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. They lived in one house for over twenty years, in Montgomery Place, near Bromfield Street. Holmes says of it, in "The Professor at the Breakfast Table:"—
"When he entered that door, two shadows glided over the threshold; five lingered in the doorway when he passed through it for the last time,—and one of the shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death rained through every roof but his; children came into life, grew into maturity, wedded, faded away, threw themselves away; the whole drama of life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls forever, for the many pleasant years he passed in them."
The three children born to him were Oliver Wendell, Amelia Jackson, and Edward. They all live near the old home, and the second generation is beginning to be a prominent factor in the family affairs. The daughter is Mrs. John T. Sargent, of Beverly Farms, near Boston, where Dr. Holmes has passed the summer months for several years past. All readers will remember the Doctor's famous "Hunt after the Captain," published in the "Atlantic" during the war, and the thrilling interest the country took in it. The "Captain" was the elder son, then just graduated from Harvard, and belonging to the Fourth Battalion of Infantry. He was thrice wounded, and the terror and anxiety of his friends at home cannot be described in words. He is now an associate justice of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
For a few years Dr. Holmes was much in demand as a lecturer; but he never enjoyed that business very well, and after a while refused to go upon any terms. In 1856 he thus defined his terms to an applicant for a lecture:—
"My terms, when I stay over night, are fifteen dollars and expenses, a room with a fire in it, in a public-house, and a mattress to sleep on,—not a feather-bed. As you write in your individual capacity, I tell you at once all my habitual exigencies. I am afraid to sleep in a cold room; I can't sleep on a feather-bed; I will not go to private houses."
In the "Autocrat" there is an account of his lecturing experiences by the landlady, which gives a pretty good idea of some of his personal traits:—
"He was a man who loved to stick around home, as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters; talkin' in cold country lyceums; as he used to say, goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with a cold in his head as bad as a horse distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how kind some of the good women was to him; how one spread an edderdown comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot for him after the lecter, and another one said, 'There, now you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter just as if you was at home,'—and if they'd all been like that, he'd have gone on lecterin' forever; but as it was, he got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred nateral death to puttin' himself out of the world by such violent means as lecterin'."
In fact, Holmes is eminently a Bostonian, and has never been really happy off his native pavements. He, however, studied medicine in Paris in his youth, and has made one or two visits to Europe since.
The Atlantic Club for a long time furnished Holmes excellent company, and he in turn furnished the club with the wittiest and most sparkling talk which this country probably has known:—
"Such jests, that, drained of every joke,
The very bank of language broke;
Such deeds that laughter nearly died
With stitches in his belted side."
Among those who took part in these delightful re-unions were Emerson, Longfellow, Felton, Holmes, Agassiz, Lowell, Whipple, Motley, Charles Eliot Norton, Edmund Quincy, Francis H. Underwood, Judge Hoar, J. Elliot Cabot, and others. Lowell and Holmes were the wits par excellence, though Judge Hoar did not fall far behind. Emerson sat always with a seraphic smile upon his face, and Longfellow thoroughly enjoyed every good sally, though not adding to the mirth-making himself. Dr. Appleton, who met Dr. Holmes at the Saturday Club, writes:—
"Dr. Holmes was highly talkative and agreeable; he converses very much like the Autocrat at the Breakfast Table,—wittily, and in a literary way, but perhaps with too great an infusion of physiological and medical metaphor. He is a little deaf, and has a mouth like the beak of a bird; indeed, he is, with his small body and quick movements, very like a bird in his general aspect."
When Charles Kingsley was in Boston he met Holmes, who came in, frisked about, and talked incessantly, Kingsley intervening with a few words only occasionally. At last Holmes whisked himself away, saying, "And now I must go." "He is an insp-sp-sp-ired j-j-j-h-ack-daw," said Kingsley.
Mr. Kennedy, in his life of the poet, thus describes him:—
"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 Homœopathy 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 anæsthesia; 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—
Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending as they fall
In rushing river-tides.
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends.
From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,—
One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
One to the Peaceful Sea.