Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes Part 13

CHAPTER XVI.

THE HOME CIRCLE.

Doctor Holmes has two sons and one daughter. Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, his eldest child, was born in 1841. When a young lad, he attended the school of Mr. E.S. Dixwell, in Boston, and it was here that he met his future wife, Miss Fannie Dixwell. In his graduating year at Harvard College (1861), he joined the Fourth Battalion of Infantry, commanded by Major Thomas G. Stevenson. The company was at that time stationed at Fort Independence, Boston Harbor, and it was there that young Holmes wrote his poem for Cla.s.s Day. He served three years in the war, and was wounded first in the breast at Ball's Bluff, and then in the neck at the Battle of Antietam.

In Doctor Holmes' _Hunt after the Captain_, we have not only a vivid picture of war times, but a most touching revelation of fatherly love and solicitude. The young captain was wounded yet again at Sharpsburgh, and was afterwards brevetted as Lieutenant-Colonel. During General Grant's campaign of 1864 he served as aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General H.G. Wright. After the war he entered the Harvard Law School, and in 1866 received the degree of LL. B. Since then he has practised law in Boston, and has written many valuable articles upon legal subjects.

His edition of Kent's _Commentaries on American Law_, to which he devoted three years of careful labor, has received the highest encomiums, and his volume on _The Common Law_ forms an indispensable part of every law student's library.

In 1882, he was appointed Professor in the Harvard Law School, and a few weeks later was elected Justice in the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts.

At the Lawyers' Banquet, given January 30th, 1883, at the Hotel Vendome, Honorable William G. Russell thus introduced the father of the newly-appointed judge:

"We come now to a many-sided subject, and I know not on which side to attack him with any hope of capturing him. I might hail him as our poet, for he was born a poet; they are all born so. If he didn't lisp in numbers, it was because he spoke plainly at a very early age. I might hail him as physician, and a long and well-spent life in that profession would justify it; but I don't believe it will ever be known whether he has cured more cases of dyspepsia and blues by his poems or his powders and his pills. I might hail him as professor, and as professor _emeritus_ he has added a new wreath to his brow. I might hail him as Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, for there he had a long reign. He will defend himself with courage, for he never showed the white feather but once, and that is, that he does not dare to be as funny as he can. A tough subject, surely, and I must try him on the tender side, the paternal. I give you the father who went in search of a captain, and, finding him, presents to us now his son, the judge."

On rising, Doctor Holmes held up a sheet of paper, and said, "You see before you" (referring to the paper) "all that you have to fear or hope. For thirty-five years I have taught anatomy. I have often heard of the roots of the tongue, but I never found them. The danger of a tongue let loose you have had opportunity to know before, but the danger of a sc.r.a.p of paper like this is so trivial that I hardly need to apologize for it."

His Honor's father yet remains, His proud paternal posture firm in; But, while his right he still maintains To wield the household rod and reins, He bows before the filial ermine.

What curious tales has life in store, With all its must-bes and its may-bes!

The sage of eighty years and more Once crept a nursling on the floor,-- Kings, conquerors, judges, all were babies.

The fearless soldier, who has faced The serried bayonets' gleam appalling, For nothing save a pin misplaced The peaceful nursery has disgraced With hours of unheroic bawling.

The mighty monarch, whose renown Fills up the stately page historic, Has howled to waken half the town, And finished off by gulping down His castor oil or paregoric.

The justice, who, in gown and cap, Condemns a wretch to strangulation, Has scratched his nurse and spilled his pap, And sprawled across his mother's lap For wholesome law's administration.

Ah, life has many a reef to shun Before in port we drop our anchor, But when its course is n.o.bly run Look aft! for there the work was done.

Life owes its headway to the spanker!

Yon seat of justice well might awe The fairest manhood's half-blown summer; There Parsons scourged the laggard law, There reigned and ruled majestic Shaw,-- What ghosts to hail the last new-comer!

One cause of fear I faintly name,-- The dread lest duty's dereliction Shall give so rarely cause for blame Our guileless voters will exclaim, "No need of human jurisdiction!"

What keeps the doctor's trade alive?

Bad air, bad water; more's the pity!

But lawyers walk where doctors drive, And starve in streets where surgeons thrive, Our Boston is so pure a city.

What call for judge or court, indeed, When righteousness prevails so through it Our virtuous car-conductors need Only a card whereon they read "Do right; it's naughty not to do it!"

The whirligig of time goes round, And changes all things but affection; One blessed comfort may be found In heaven's broad statute which has bound Each household to its head's protection.

If e'er aggrieved, attacked, accused, A sire may claim a son's devotion To s.h.i.+eld his innocence abused, As old Anchises freely used His offspring's legs for locomotion.

You smile. You did not come to weep, Nor I my weakness to be showing; And these gay stanzas, slight and cheap, Have served their simple use,--to keep A father's eyes from overflowing.

Doctor Holmes' daughter, who bore her mother's name, Amelia Jackson, married the late John Turner Sargent. In her _Sketches and Reminiscences of the Radical Club_, we have some pithy remarks of Doctor Holmes'. To speak without premeditation, he says, on a carefully written essay, made him feel as he should if, at a chemical lecture, somebody should pa.s.s around a precipitate, and when the mixture had become turbid should request him to give his opinion concerning it. The fallacies continually rising in such a discussion from the want of a proper understanding of terms, always made him feel as if quicksilver had been subst.i.tuted for the ordinary silver of speech. The only true way to criticize such an essay was to take it home, slowly a.s.similate it, and not talk about it until it had become a part of one's self.

Edward, the youngest son of Doctor Holmes, had chosen the same profession as his brother.

It was at Mrs. Sargent's home, at Beverly Farms, that Doctor Holmes pa.s.sed most of his summers. The pretty, cream-colored house, with its broad veranda in front, can be easily seen from the station; but to appreciate the charms of this pleasant country home, one should catch a glimpse of the cosey interior.

Robert Rantoul, John T. Morse and Henry Lee were neighbors of Doctor Holmes at Beverly Farms, and Lucy Larcom's home was not far distant.

After eighteen years' residence at No. 8 Montgomery Place, Doctor Holmes moved to 164 Charles street, where he lived about twelve years. His home in Boston was at No. 296 Beacon street.

"We die out of houses," says the poet, "just as we die out of our bodies.... The body has been called the house we live in; the house is quite as much the body we live in.... The soul of a man has a series of concentric envelopes around it, like the core of an onion, or the innermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural garment of flesh and blood. Then his artificial integuments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a stately mansion. And then the whole visible world, in which Time b.u.t.tons him up as in a loose, outside wrapper.... Our houses shape themselves palpably on our inner and outer nature. See a householder breaking up and you will be sure of it. There is a sh.e.l.l fish which builds all manner of smaller sh.e.l.ls into the walls of its own. A house is never a home until we have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives besides those of our own past. See what these are and you can tell what the occupant is."

The poet's home on Beacon street well ill.u.s.trates the above extract. I shall not soon forget the charming picture that greeted me, one gray winter day, as I was ushered into the poet's cheerful study. A blazing wood fire was crackling on the hearth, and the ruddy glow was reflected now on the stately features of "Dorothy Q.," now on the Copley portrait of old Doctor Cooper, and now with a peculiar Rembrandt effect upon the low rows of books, the orderly desk, and the kind, cordial face of the poet himself. An "Emerson Calendar" was hanging over the mantel, and after calling my attention to the excellent picture upon it of the old home at Concord, Doctor Holmes began to talk of his brother poet in terms of warmest affection.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hand written Poem signed by Oliver Wendell Holmes]

As he afterwards remarked at the Nineteenth Century Club, the difference between Emerson's poetry and that of others with whom he might naturally be compared, was that of algebra and arithmetic. The fascination of his poems was in their spiritual depth and sincerity and their all pervading symbolism. Emerson's writings in prose and verse were worthy of all honor and admiration, but his manhood was the n.o.blest of all his high endowments. A bigot here and there might have avoided meeting him, but if He who knew what was in men had wandered from door to door in New England, as of old in Palestine, one of the thresholds which "those blessed feet" would have crossed would have been that of the lovely and quiet home of Emerson.

The view from the broad bay window in Doctor Holmes' study, recalled his own description:

Through my north window, in the wintry weather, My airy oriel on the river sh.o.r.e, I watch the sea-fowl as they flock together, Where late the boatman flashed his dripping oar.

The gull, high floating, like a sloop unladen, Lets the loose water waft him as it will; The duck, round-breasted as a rustic maiden, Paddles and plunges, busy, busy still.

A microscopical apparatus placed under another window in the study, reminds the visitor of the "man of science," while the books--

A mingled race, the wreck of chance and time That talk all tongues and breathe of every clime--

speak in eloquent numbers of the "man of letters."

There is the Plato on the lower shelf, with the inscription, Ezra Stiles, 1766, to which Doctor Holmes alludes in his tribute to the New England clergy. Here is the hand-lens imported by the Reverend John Prince, of Salem, and just before us, in the "unpretending row of local historians," is Jeremy Belknap's _History of New Hamps.h.i.+re_, "in the pages of which," says Doctor Holmes, "may be found a chapter contributed in part by the most remarkable man in many respects, among all the older clergymen,--preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in State and national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Was.h.i.+ngton offered it to him. This manifold individual," adds Doctor Holmes, "was the minister of Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Ess.e.x County, Ma.s.sachusetts, the Reverend Mana.s.seh Cutler."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. HOLMES' LIBRARY, BEACON ST.]

Here is the _Aetius_ found one never-to-be-forgotten rainy day, in that dingy bookshop in Lyons, and here the vellum-bound _Tulpius_, "my only reading," says Doctor Holmes, "when imprisoned in quarantine at Ma.r.s.eilles, so that the two hundred and twenty-eight cases he has recorded are, many of them, to this day still fresh in my memory."

Here, too, is the _Schenckius_,--"the folio filled with _casus rariores_, which had strayed in among the rubbish of the bookstall on the boulevard--and here the n.o.ble old _Vesalius_, with its grand frontispiece not unworthy of t.i.tian, and the fine old _Ambroise Parie_, long waited for even in Paris and long ago, and the colossal Spigelius, with his eviscerated beauties, and Dutch Bidloo with its miracles of fine engraving and bad dissection, and Italian Mascagni, the despair of all would-be imitators, and pre-Adamite John de Ketam, and antediluvian _Berengarius Carpensis_," and many other rare volumes, dear to the heart of every bibliophile.

Glancing again from the window, I catch a glimpse of the West Boston Bridge, and recall the poet's description of the "crunching of ice at the edges of the river as the tide rises and falls, the little cl.u.s.ter of tent-like screens on the frozen desert, the excitement of watching the springy hoops, the mystery of drawing up life from silent, unseen depths." With his opera gla.s.s he watches the boys and men, black and white, fis.h.i.+ng over the rails of the bridge "as hopefully as if the river were full of salmon." At certain seasons, he observes, there will now and then be captured a youthful and inexperienced codfish, always, however, of quite trivial dimensions. The fame of the exploit has no sooner gone abroad than the enthusiasts of the art come flocking down to the river and cast their lines in side by side, until they look like a row of harp-strings for number. "That a codfish is once in a while caught," says Doctor Holmes, "I have a.s.serted to be a fact; but I have often watched the anglers, and do not remember ever seeing one drawn from the water, or even any unequivocal symptom of a bite. The spring sculpin and the flabby, muddy flounder are the common rewards of the angler's toil.

The silhouette figures on the white background enliven the winter landscape, but now the blazing log on the hearthstone rolls over and the whole study is aglow with light! Truly "winter _is_ a cheerful season to people who have open fireplaces;" and who will not agree with our poet-philosopher when he says, "A house without these is like a face without eyes, and that never smiles. I have seen respectability and amiability grouped over the air-tight stove; I have seen virtue and intelligence hovering over the register; but I have never seen true happiness in a family circle where the faces were not illuminated by the blaze of an open fireplace."

A well-known journalist writes as follows of Doctor Holmes "at home."

"All who pay their respects to the distinguished Autocrat will find the genial, merry gentleman whose form and kindly greeting all admirers have antic.i.p.ated while reading his sparkling poems. He is the perfect essence of wit and hospitality--courteous, amiable and entertaining to a degree which is more easily remembered than imparted or described. If the caller expects to find blue-blood sn.o.bbishness at 296 Beacon street, he will be disappointed. It is one of the most elegant and charming residences on that broad and fas.h.i.+onable thoroughfare, but far less pretentious, both inwardly and outwardly, than many of the others. For an uninterrupted period of forty-seven years, Doctor Holmes has lived in Boston, and for the last dozen years he has occupied his present residence on Beacon street.

"The chief point of attraction in the present residence--for the visitor as well as the host--is the magnificent and s.p.a.cious library, which may be more aptly termed the Autocrat's workshop. It is up one flight, and seemingly occupies the entire rear half of the whole building on this floor. It is a very inviting room in every respect, and from the s.p.a.cious windows overlooking the broad expanse of the Charles River, there can be had an extensive view of the surrounding suburbs in the northerly, eastern and western directions. On a clear day there can be more or less distinctly described the cities and towns of Cambridge, Arlington, Medford, Somerville, Malden, Revere, Everett, Chelsea, Charlestown and East Boston. Even in the picture can be recognized the lofty tower of the Harvard Memorial Hall, which is but a few steps from the doctor's birthplace and first home. Arthur Gilman, in his admirable pen and pencil sketches of the homes of the American poets, makes a happy and appropriate allusion to the Autocrat's library. 'The ancient Hebrew,' he says, 'always had a window open toward Jerusalem, the city about which his most cherished hopes and memories cl.u.s.tered, and this window gives its owner the pleasure of looking straight to the place of his birth, and thus of freshening all the happy memories of a successful life.'

"In renewing his old-time acquaintance with the _Atlantic_ family circle, the Autocrat recognized the modern invention of the journalistic interviewer, and submitted some plans for his regulation, to be considered by the various local governments. His idea is that the interviewer is a product of our civilization, one who does for the living what the undertaker does for the dead, taking such liberties as he chooses with the subject of his mental and conversational manipulations, whom he is to arrange for public inspection. 'The interview system has its legitimate use,' says Doctor Holmes, 'and is often a convenience to politicians, and may even gratify the vanity and serve the interests of an author.' He very properly believes, however, that in its abuse it is an infringement of the liberty of the private citizen to be ranked with the edicts of the council of ten, the decrees of the star chamber, the _lettres de cachet_, and the visits of the Inquisition. The interviewer, if excluded, becomes an enemy, and has the columns of a newspaper at his service in which to revenge himself. If admitted, the interviewed is at the mercy of the interviewer's memory, if he is the best meaning of men; of his accuracy, if he is careless; of his malevolence, if he is ill-disposed; of his prejudices, if he has any, and of his sense of propriety, at any rate.