The Arena. Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891

The Arena. Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891
Various

Various

The Arena / Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

BY GEORGE STEWART, D. C. L., LL. D

To the year 1809, the world is very much indebted for a band of notable recruits to the ranks of literature and science, statesmanship and military renown. One need mention only a few names to establish that fact, and grand names they are, for the list includes Darwin, Gladstone, Erastus Wilson, John Hill Burton, Manteuffel, Count Beust, Lord Houghton, Alfred Tennyson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Each of these has played an important part in the world’s history, and impressed the age with a genius that marks an epoch in the great department of human activity and progress. The year was pretty well advanced, and the month of August had reached its 29th day, when the wife of Dr. Abiel Holmes presented the author of “The American Annals” with a son who was destined to take his place in the front line of poets, thinkers, and essayists. The babe was born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the centre of a Puritan civilization, which could scarcely have been in touch and harmony with the emphasized Unitarianism emanating from Harvard. But Abiel Holmes was a genial, generous-hearted man, and despite the severity of his religious belief, contrived to live on terms of a most agreeable character with his neighbors. A Yale man himself, and the firm friend of his old professor, the president of that institution, who had given him his daughter Mary to wed (she died five years after her marriage), we may readily believe that for a time, Harvard University, then strongly under the sway of the Unitarians, had little fascination for him. But his kindly nature conquered the repugnance he may have felt, and he soon got on well with all classes of the little community which surrounded him. By his first wife he had no children. But five, three daughters and two sons, blessed his union with Sarah Wendell, the accomplished daughter of the Hon. John Wendell, of Boston. We may pass briefly over the early years of Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was educated at the Phillips Academy at Exeter, and subsequently entered Harvard University, where he was graduated, with high honors, in 1829, and belonged to that class of young fellows who, in after life, greatly distinguished themselves. Some of his noblest poems were written in memory of that class, such as “Bill and Joe,” “A Song of Twenty-nine,” “The Old Man Dreams,” “Our Sweet Singer,” and “Our Banker,” all of them breathing love and respect for the boys with whom the poet studied and matriculated. Young Holmes was destined for the law, but Chitty and Blackstone apparently had little charm for him, for after a year’s trial, he abandoned the field and took up medicine. His mind could not have been much impressed with statutes, for all the time that he was supposed to be conning over abstruse points in jurisprudence, he was sending to the printers some of the cleverest and most waggish contributions which have fallen from his pen. The Collegian,—the university journal of those days,—published most of these, and though no name was attached to the screeds, it was fairly well known that Holmes was the author. The companion writers in the Collegian were Simmons, who wrote over the signature of “Lockfast”; John O. Sargent, poet and essayist, whose nom de plume was “Charles Sherry”; Robert Habersham, the “Mr. Airy” of the group; and that clever young trifler, Theodore Snow, who delighted the readers of the periodical with the works of “Geoffrey La Touche.” Of these, of course, Holmes was the life and soul, and though sixty years have passed away since he enriched the columns of the Collegian with the fruits of his muse, more than half of the pieces survive, and are deemed good enough to hold a place beside his maturer productions. “Evening of a Sailor,” “The Meeting of the Dryads,” and “The Spectre Pig,”—the latter in the vein of Tom Hood at his best,—will be remembered as among those in the collection which may be read to-day with the zest, appreciation, and delight which they inspired more than half a century ago. Holmes’ connection with the Collegian had a most inspiriting effect on his fellow contributors, who found their wits sharpened by contact with a mind that was forever buoyant and overflowing with humor and good nature. In friendly rivalry, those kindred intellects vied with one another, and no more brilliant college paper was ever published than the Collegian, and this is more remarkable still, when we come to consider the fact, that at that time, literature in America was practically in its infancy. Nine years before, Sydney Smith had asked his famous question, “Who reads an American book? who goes to an American play?” And to that query there was really no answer. Six numbers of the Collegian were issued, and they must have proved a revelation to the men and women of that day, whose reading, hitherto, had almost been confined to the imported article from beyond the seas, for Washington Irving wrote with the pen of an English gentleman, Bryant and Dana had not yet made their mark in distinctively American authorship, and Cooper’s “Prairie” was just becoming to be understood by the critics and people.

Shaking the dust of the law office from his shoes, Oliver Wendell Holmes, abandoning literature for a time, plunged boldly into the study of a profession for which he had always evinced a strong predilection. The art and practice of medical science had ever a fascination for him, and he made rapid progress at the university. Once or twice he yielded to impulse, and wrote a few bright things, anonymously, for the Harbinger,—the paper which Epes Sargent and Park Benjamin published for the benefit of a charitable institution, and dedicated as a May gift to the ladies who had aided the New England Institution for the Education of the Blind. In 1833, Holmes sailed for Paris, where he studied medicine and surgery, and walked the hospitals. Three years were spent abroad, and then the young student returned to Cambridge to take his medical degree at Harvard, and to deliver his metrical Essay on Poetry, before the Phi-Beta-Kappa Society. In this year too, 1836, he published his first acknowledged book of poems,—a duodecimo volume of less than two hundred pages. In this collection his Essay on Poetry appeared. It describes the art in four stages, viz., the Pastoral or Bucolic, the Martial, the Epic, and the Dramatic. In illustration of his views, he furnished exemplars from his own prolific muse, and his striking poem of “Old Ironsides” was printed for the first time, and sprang at a bound into national esteem. And in this first book, there was included that little poem, “The Last Leaf,” better work than which Holmes has never done. It is in a vein which he has developed much since then. Grace, humor, pathos, and happiness of phrase and idea, are all to be found in its delicious stanzas:—

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o’er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets,
Sad and wan;
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
“They are gone!”

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow.

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff;
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

In 1838, Doctor Holmes accepted his first professorial position, and became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth. Two years later, he married, and took up the practice of medicine in Boston. In 1847, he returned to his old love, accepting the Parkman professorship of anatomy and physiology, in the Medical School at Harvard. While engaged in teaching, he prepared for publication several important books and reports relating to his profession, and his papers in the various medical journals attracted great attention by their freshness, clearness, and originality. But it is not as a medical man that Doctor Holmes may be discussed in this paper. We have to deal altogether with his literary career,—a career, which for its brilliancy has not been surpassed on this side of the Atlantic.

As a poet he differs much from his contemporaries, but the standard he has reached is as high as that which has been attained by Lowell and Longfellow. In lofty verse he is strong and unconventional, writing always with a firm grasp on his subject, and emphasizing his perfect knowledge of melody and metre. As a writer of occasional verse he has not had an equal in our time, and his pen for threescore years has been put to frequent use in celebration of all sorts of events, whether military, literary, or scientific. Bayard Taylor said, “He lifted the ‘occasional’ into the ‘classic’,” and the phrase happily expresses the truth. The vivacious character of his nature readily lends itself to work of this sort, and though the printed page gives the reader the sparkling epigram and the graceful lines, clear-cut always and full of soul, the pleasure is not quite the same as seeing and hearing him recite his own poems, in the company of congenial friends. His songs are full of sunshine and heart, and his literary manner wins by its simplicity and tenderness. Years ago, Miss Mitford said that she knew no one so thoroughly original. For him she could find no living prototype. And so she went back to the time of John Dryden to find a man to whom she might compare him. And Lowell in his “Fable for Critics,” describes Holmes as

“A Leyden-jar full-charged, from which flit
The electrical tingles, of hit after hit.”

His lyrical pieces are among the best of his compositions, and his ballads, too few in number, betray that love which he has always felt for the melodious minstrelsy of the ancient bards. Whittier thought that the “Chambered Nautilus” was “booked for immortality.” In the same list may be put the “One-Hoss Shay,” “Contentment,” “Destination,” “How the Old Horse Won the Bet,” “The Broomstick Train,” and that lovely family portrait, “Dorothy Q—,” a poem with a history. Dorothy Quincy’s picture, cold and hard, painted by an unknown artist, hangs on the wall of the poet’s home in Beacon Street. A hole in the canvas marks the spot where one of King George’s soldiers thrust his bayonet. The lady was Dr. Holmes’ grandmother’s mother, and she is represented as being about thirteen years of age, with

Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead, with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.

And the poet goes on:—

What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered no,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still,
The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill!
Should I be I, or would it be
One tenth another, to nine tenths me?

Soft is the breath of a maiden’s yes,
Not the light gossamer stirs with less;