DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMESDR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMESIN BEACON STREET
DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
“It is strange,” remarks Lady Wilde, “how often a great genius has given a soul to a locality.” We may prefer our own illustration to hers, and remember in simpler fashion what Judd’s “Margaret” did for a little village in Maine, or what Howe did for a little Western town, instead of insisting that Walter Scott created Scotland or Byron the Rhine. But the remark suggests, perhaps, quite as forcibly, what locality has done for genius. The majority of writers who have tried to deal with people, whether as novelists, poets, or essayists, localize their human beings until “local color” becomes one of the most essential factors of their success. Sometimes, like Judd and Howe, they make the most of a very narrow environment; sometimes, like Cable, they make their environment include a whole race, till the work becomes historical as well as photographic; sometimes, like Mrs. Jackson, they travel for a new environment; sometimes, like Howells and James, they travel fromenvironment to environment, and write now of Venice, now of London, now of Boston, with skill equal to the ever-varying opportunity; sometimes, like George Eliot writing “Romola,” or Harriet Prescott Spofford writing “In a Cellar,” they stay at home and give wonderful pictures of a life and time they have never known—compelled, at least, however, to seek the environment of a library. Even Shakspeare, who was certainly not a slave to his surroundings, sought local color from books to an extent that we realize on seeing Irving’s elaborate efforts to reproduce it. Even Hawthorne, escaping from the material world whenever he could into the realm of spirit and imagination, made profound studies of Salem or Italy the basis from which he flew to the empyrean. To understand perfectly how fine such work as this is, one must have, one’s self, either from experience or study, some knowledge of the localities so admirably reproduced.
The genius of Oliver Wendell Holmes was almost unique in the fact that, dealing almost exclusively with human beings—not merely human nature exhibited in maxims—rarely wandering into discussions of books or art or landscape—it was almost entirely independent of any environment whatever. He was anchored to one locality almost as securely as Judd was to New England or Howe to the West; for a chronological record of the events ofhis life makes no mention of any journeys, except the two years and a half as medical student in Europe, when he was twenty-four years old, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” in 1887. He spent every winter in Boston, every summer at Beverly Farms, which, like Nahant, may almost be called “cold roast Boston”; yet during the fifty years he wrote from Boston, he neither sought his material from his special environment nor tried to escape from it. It is human nature, not Boston nature, that he has drawn for us. Once, in “Elsie Venner,” there is an escape like Hawthorne’s into the realm of the psychological and weird; several times in the novels there are photographic bits of a New England “party,” or of New England character; but the great mass of the work which has appealed to so wide a class of readers with such permanent power appeals to them because, dealing with men and women, it deals with no particular men and women. Indeed, it is hardly even men, women, and children that troop through his pages; but rather man, woman, and child. His human beings are no more Bostonians than the ducks of his “Aviary” are Charles River ducks. They are ducks. He happened to see them on the Charles River; nay, within the still narrower limits of his own window-pane; still, they are ducks, and not merely Boston ducks. The universality of hisgenius is wonderful, not because he exhibits it in writing now a clever novel about Rome, now a powerful sketch of Montana, and anon a remarkable book about Japan; but it is wonderful because it discovers within the limits of Boston only what is universal. To understand perfectly how fine such work as this is, you need never have been anywhere, yourself, or have read any other book; any more than you would have to be one of the “Boys of ’29” to appreciate the charming class-poems that have been delighting the world, as well as the “Boys,” for fifty years. In “Little Boston” he has, it is true, impaled some of the characteristics which are generally known as Bostonian; but his very success in doing this is of a kind to imply that he had studied his Bostonian only in Paris orSt.Louis; for the peculiar traits described are those no Bostonian is supposed to be able to see for himself, still less to acknowledge. IfDr.Holmes were to have spent a winter in New York, he would have carried back with him, not material for a “keen satire on New York society,” but only more material of what is human. Nay, he probably would not have carried back with him anything at all which he had not already found in Boston, since he seems to have found everything there.
So there is no need of knowing how or whereDr.Holmes lived, or what books he read, tounderstand and enjoy his work. But all the same, one likes to know where he lived, from a warm, affectionate, personal interest in the man; just as we like to know of our dearest friends, not only that they dwell in a certain town, but that their parlor is furnished in red, and that the piano stands opposite the sofa. Of his earliest home, at Cambridge, he has himself told us in words which we certainly will not try to improve upon. Later came the home of his early married life in Montgomery Place, of which he has said: “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.” A few brief, half-mystical allusions such as this are all that we gain from his writings about his personal surroundings, as a few simple allusions to certain streets and buildings are all that localize the “Autocrat” as a Bostonian. For the man who has almost exceptionally looked into his own heart to write has found in his heart, as he has in his city, never what was personal or special, always what was human and universal.
But it will be no betrayal of trust for us to follow out the dim outline a little, and tell how the five shadows flitted together from Montgomery Place to Charles Street. Then, after anotherdozen years, still another change seemed desirable.Dr.Holmes felt as few men do the charm of association, and the sacredness of what is endeared by age; but the very roundness of his nature which made him appreciate not only what is human, but everything that is human, made him keenly alive to the charm of what is new if it is beautiful. A rounded nature finds it hard to be consistent. He wrote once: “It is a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by recollections,” and he asserted more than once the dignity of having, not only ancestors, but ancestral homes; yet if we were to have reminded him of this in his beautiful new house with all the latest luxuries and improvements, we can imagine the kindly smile with which he would have gazed round the great, beautiful room, with its solid woods and plate-glass windows, and said gently: “I know I ought to like the other, and I do, but how can I help liking this, too?” Yes, the charming new architecture and the lovely new houses were too much for them; they would flit again—though with a sigh. Not out of New England—no, indeed! not away from Boston—certainly not. Hardly, indeed, out of Charles Street; for although a “very plain brown-stone front would do,” provided its back windows looked upon the river, the river they must have.
Dr.Holmes wanted, not big front windowsfrom which to study the Bostonians, but a big bay-window at the back, from which he could see the ducks and gulls and think how like to human nature are all their little lives and loves and sorrows. So little is there in his work of what is personal, that it is possible there are people—in England—who really think the “Autocrat” dwelt in the boarding-house of his books. But those who believe with him that, as a rule, genius means ancestors, are not surprised to know thatDr.Holmes himself had many more than the average allowance of ancestors, and that, as a descendant of Dudley, Bradstreet, the Olivers, Quincys, and Jacksons, his “hut of stone” fronted on one of Boston’s most aristocratic streets, though the dear river behind it flows almost close to its little garden gate. Under his windows all the morning trooped the loveliest children of the city in the daintiest apparel, wheeled in the costliest of perambulators by the whitest-capped of French nurses. Past his door every afternoon the “swellest” turn-outs of the great city passed on their afternoon parade. Near his steps, at the hour for afternoon tea, the handsomestcoupéscame to anchor and deposited their graceful freight. But this is not the panorama, that the Doctor himself was watching. Whether in the beautiful great dining-room, where he was first to acknowledge the sway at breakfast, luncheon and dinner, of a still gentlerAutocrat than himself, or in the library upstairs, which was the heart of the home, he was always on the river side of the house. The pretty little reception-room downstairs on the Beacon Street side, he would tell you himself, with a merry smile, is a good place for your “things”; you yourself must come directly up into the library, and look on the river, broad enough just here to seem a beautiful lake. I know of no other room in the heart of a great city where one so completely forgot the nearness of the world as in this library. Even if the heavy doors stood open into the hall, one forgot the front of the house and thought only of the beautiful expanse of water that seemed to shut off all approach save from the gulls. News from the humming city must come to you, it would seem, only in sound of marriage or funeral bells in the steeples of the many towns, distinct but distant, looming across the water. And this, not because the talk by that cheerful fire was of the “Over-Soul” or the “Infinite,” so unworldly, so introspective, so wholly of things foreign or intellectual. Nothing could be more human than the chat that went on there, or the laugh that rang out so cheerily at such frequent intervals. Even with the shadow of a deep personal grief over the hearthstone, a noble cheerfulness that would not let others feel the shadow kept the roombright though the heart was heavy. Are there pictures? There is certainly one picture; for although a fine Copley hangs on one wall, and one of the beautiful framed embroideries (for whichDr.Holmes’s daughter-in-law is famous) on another, who will not first be conscious that in a certain corner hangs the original portrait of Dorothy Q.? Exactly as it is described in the poem, who can look at it without breathing gratefully
“O Damsel Dorothy, Dorothy Q.,Great is the giftweowe to you,”
and thinking almost with a shudder that if,
“a hundred years ago,Those close-shut lips had answered No,”
there would have been noDr.Holmes. Somebody there might have been; but though he had been only “one-tenth another to nine-tenths”him, assuredly the loss of even a tenth would have been a bitter loss.
Books there are in this library, of course; but you were as little conscious of the books as you were of the world. You were only really conscious of the presence in the room, and the big desk on which was lying the pen that wrote both “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” and “The Professor.” As you took it up, it was pretty to see the look that stole overDr.Holmes’s face; it was the twinkle of asmile that seemed to mean, “Yes, it was the pen that did it!Inever could have done it in the world!” His success gave him a deep and genuine pleasure, largely due to the surprise of it. At forty-six he believed he had done all that could be expected of him, and was content to rest his reputation—as well he might—on those earlier poems, which will always make a part of even his latest fame. But the greater fame which followed was—not greatness thrust upon him, for genius such as his is something more than the patience which is sometimes genius,—but certainly greatnessdragged out of him. The editors of the proposedAtlanticinsisted that he should write for it. The Doctor did not yield, till, as he himself tells it, with another twinkling smile, they invited him to a “convincing dinner at Porter’s.” Feeling very good-natured immediately after, he promised to “try,” and a little later sent off a few sheets which he somewhat dubiously hoped would “do.” The storm of greeting and applause that followed even these first sheets filled him with amazement, but with genuine delight. It was beautiful to see how deeply it touched him to know that thousands of readers think “The Autocrat” the most charming book they own. For this was not the arrogant satisfaction of the “master” who announces: “Listen! I have composed the most wonderful sonata that the world has ever heard!” Still lesswas it the senseless arrogance of a foolish violin that might say: “Listen! you shall hear from me the most superb music you can imagine!” Rather was it the low-voiced, wondering content of an æolian harp, that lying quietly upon the window-sill, with no thought that it is there for anything but to enjoy itself, suddenly finds wonderful harmonies stealing through its heart and out into the world, and sees a group of gladdened listeners gathering about it. “How wonderful! how wonderful that I have been chosen to give this music to the world! Am I not greatly to be envied?” As the harp thus breathes its gratitude to the breeze that stirs it, soDr.Holmes looked his gratitude to the pen that “helped” him; with something of the same wonder at personal success that made Thackeray exclaim: “Down on your knees, my boy! That is the house where I wrote ‘Vanity Fair’!” Do we not all love Thackeray and Holmes the better for caring so much about our caring for them?
But it is growing late and dark. Across the river—one almost says across the bay—the lights are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool breeze touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the paved and lighted street, the crowding houses, the throng of carriages, and to realize that the great, throbbing, fashionable world has been so near to us all the afternoon while we have been so far from it!
Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden consciousness strikes us of what very pleasant places Boston literary lines seem to fall into! Is it that literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or that in Boston only the fortunate people are literary? For as we think of brilliant names associated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough Streets, it certainly seems as if the Bohemia of plain living and high thinking—so prominent a feature of New York literary and artistic life—had hardly a foothold in aristocratic, literary Boston.
Finally, if it seems wonderful that living almost exclusively in one locality,Dr.Holmes should have succeeded as few have succeeded in dealing with the mysteries of universal human nature, still more wonderful is it, perhaps, that dealing very largely with the foibles and follies of human nature, nothing that he ever wrote has given offence. True, this is partly owing to his in tense unwillingness to hurt the feelings of any human being. No fame for saying brilliant things that came to this gentlest of autocrats and most genial of gentlemen, tinged with a possibility that any one had winced under his pen, seemed to him of any value, or gave him any pleasure. But, as a matter of fact, no bore has ever read anythingDr.Holmes has written about bores with the painful consciousness, “Alas! I was thatbore!” We may take to ourselves a good deal that he says, but never with a sense of shame or humiliation. On the contrary, we laugh the most sincerely of any one, and say “Of course! that is exactly it! Why, I have done that thing myself a thousand times!” And so the genial, keen-eyed master of human nature writes with impunity how difficult he finds it to love his neighbor properly till he gets away from him, and tells us how he hates to have his best friend hunt him up in the cars and sit down beside him, and explains that, although a radical, he finds he enjoys the society of those who believe more than he does better than that of those who believe less; and neighbor and best friend, radical and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the joke, each only remembering howhefinds it hard to lovehisneighbor, and howhehates to talk in the cars. The restless “interviewer,” who may perhaps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, never found himself treated, after he left, with any less courtesy than that which allowed him to be happy while he was “interviewing,” to the misery of his hapless victim. The pen that “never dared to be as funny as it could be,” never permitted itself to be as witty as it might have been, at the expense of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, when the interviewer was gone, turned again to his ducks in the beautiful aviary outside his window,and only vented his long-suffering in some general remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how the bird
Sees a flat log come floating down the stream;Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger;—Ah! wereallstrangers harmless as they seem!
And the very latest stranger who may have inflicted the blow that drew out that gentlest of remonstrances, would be the first to laugh and to enjoy the remonstrance as a joke!
And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as the very best of all his fame—the consciousness that he never made a “hit” that could wound. So truly was this his temperament, that if you praised some of the fine lines of his noble poem on “My Aviary,” he would say gently: “But don’t you think the best line is where I spare the feelings of the duck?” and you remember,—
Look quick! there’s one just diving!And while he’s under—just about a minute—I take advantage of the fact to sayHis fishy carcase has no virtue in it,The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to pay.
And not even “while they are under” wouldDr.Holmes ridicule his fellow-men. It is neverwewhom he was laughing at: it is simply human nature on its funny side; and it is a curious fact that none of us resent being considered to have the foiblesof human nature provided they are not made to appear personal foibles. So, while remembering the intensity of the pleasure he has given us, let us remember, what he would care far more to hear, that he has never given any of us anythingbutpleasure.
Alice Wellington Rollins.