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If any familiar face should appear at the front of the procession that constantly crossed the threshold of 148, Charles Street, it should be that of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, for many years a near neighbor, and to the end of his life a devoted visitor and friend. Here, then, is an unpublished letter written from his summer retreat while Fields was still actively associated with the “Old Corner Bookstore” of Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, and in the year before his marriage with Annie Adams:—

Pittsfield, Sept. 6th, 1853

My dear Mr. Fields:—

Thank you for the four volumes, and the authors of three of them through you. You did not remember that I patronized you to the extent of Aleck before I came up; never mind, I can shove it round among the young farmeresses and perhaps help to work off the eleventh thousand of the most illustrious of all the Smiths.

I shall write to Hillard soon. I have been reading his book half the time today and with very great pleasure. I am delighted with the plan of it—practical information such as the traveller that is to be or that has been wishes for, with poetical description enough to keep the imagination alive, and sound American thought to give it manly substance. It is anything but a flash book, but I have not the slightest doubt that it will have a permanent and very high place in travelling literature. Many things have pleased me exceedingly,—when I have read a little more I shall try to tell him what pleases me most,—as I suppose like most authors he likes as many points for his critical self-triangulation as will come unasked for.

Hawthorne’s book has been not devoured, but bolted by my children. I have not yet had a chance at it, but I don’t doubt I shall read it with as much gusto as they, when my turn comes. When you write to him, thank him if you please for me, for I suppose he will hardly expect any formal acknowledgment.

I bloomed out into a large smile of calm delight on opening the delicate little “Epistle Dedicatory” wherein your name is embalmed. I cannot remember that our friend has tried that pace before; he wrote some pleasing lines I remember to Longfellow on the ship in which he was to sail when he went to Europe some years—a good many—ago.

Don’t be too proud! Wait until you get a prose dedication from a poet,—if you have not got one already,—and then consider yourself immortal.

Yours most truly,

O. W. Holmes

AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF DR. HOLMES

This letter contains several provocations to curiosity. “Aleck, ... the most illustrious of all the Smiths,” was obviously Alexander Smith, the Scottish poet of enormous but strictly contemporaneous vogue, in whom the English reviewers of the time detected a kinship to Tennyson, Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare. George S. Hillard’s new book was “Six Months in Italy,” and Hawthorne’s, “not devoured, but bolted” by the Holmes children, was “Tanglewood Tales.” The “delicate little ‘Epistle Dedicatory’” has been found elusive.

From this early letter of Dr. Holmes a seven-league step may be taken to a passage in a diary Mrs. Fields was writing in 1860,—the year following the removal of the Holmes household from Montgomery Place to Charles Street,—before her long unbroken series of journals began. The occasion described was one of those frequent breakfasts in the Fields dining-room, which bespoke, in the term of a later poet, the “wide unhaste” of the period. Of the guests, N. P. Willis was then at the top of his distinction as a New York editor; George T. Davis, a lawyer of Greenfield, Massachusetts, afterwards of Portland, Maine, a classmate of Dr. Holmes, was reputed one of the most charming table-companions and wits of his day: the tributes to his memory at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society after his death in 1877 stir one’s envy of his contemporaries; George Washington Greene of Rhode Island was perhaps equally known as the friend of Longfellow and as the grandson and biographer of General Nathanael Greene; Whipple was, of course, Edwin P. Whipple, essayist and lecturer; the household of three was completed by Mrs. Fields’s sister, Miss Lizzie Adams.

Thursday, September 21, 1860.—Equinoctial clearing after a stormy night and morning. Willis came to breakfast, and Holmes and George T. Davis, G. W. Greene, Whipple, and our little household of three. Holmes talked better than all, as usual. Willis played the part of appreciative listener. G. T. Davis told wonderful stories, and Mr. Whipple talked more than usual. Holmes described the line of beauty which is made by any two persons who talk together congenially thus 〰, whereas, when an adverse element comes in, it proceeds thus Ʌ; and by and by one which has a frightful retrograde movement, thus ∕. Then blank despair settles down upon the original talker. He said people should dovetail together like properly built mahogany furniture. Much of all this congeniality had to do with the physical, he said. “Now there is big Dr. ——; he and I do very well together; I have just two intellectual heart-beats to his one.” Willis said he thought there should be an essay written upon the necessity that literary men should live on a more concentrated diet than is their custom. “Impossible,” said the Professor, “there is something behind the man which drives him on to his fate; he goes as the steam-engine goes and one might as well say to the engine going at the rate of sixty miles, ‘you had better stop now,’ and so make it stop, as to say it to a man driven on by a vital preordained energy for work.” Each man has a philosophical coat fitted to his shoulders, and he did not expect to find it fitting anybody else.

At another breakfast, in 1861, we find, besides the favorite humorist of the day, Dr. Holmes’s son and namesake, then a young officer in the Union army, now Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Sunday, December 8, 1861.—Yesterday morning “Artemus Ward,” Mr. Browne, breakfasted with us, also Dr. Holmes and the lieutenant, his son. We had a merry time because Jamie was in grand humor and represented people and incidents in the most incomparable manner. “Why,” said Dr. Holmes to him afterward, “you must excuse me that I did not talk, but the truth is there is nothing I enjoy so much as your anecdotes, and whenever I get a chance I can’t help listening to them.” The Professor complimented Artemus upon his great success and told him the pleasure he had received. Artemus twinkled all over, but said little after the Professor arrived. He was evidently immensely possessed by him. The young lieutenant has mostly recovered from his wound and speaks as if duty would recall him soon to camp. He will go when the time comes, but home evidently never looked half so pleasant before. Poor fellows! Heaven send us peace before long!

The finely bound copy of Dr. Holmes’s Fourth of July Oration at the Boston City Celebration of 1863, to which the following passage refers, is one of the rarities sought by American book-collectors. It was a practice of Dr. Holmes at this time to have his public speeches set up in large, legible type for his own reading at their delivery. One of these, an address to the alumni of Harvard on July 16, 1863, with the inscription, “Oliver Wendell Holmes to his friend James T. Fields. One of six copies printed,” is found among the Charles Street papers, and contributes, like the passage that follows, to the sense of pleasant intimacy between the neighboring houses.

August 3, 1863.—Dr. Holmes dropped in last night about his oration which the City Council have had printed and superbly bound. He has addressed it to the “Common Council” instead of the “City Council,” and he is much disturbed. J. T. F. told him it made but small consequence, and he went off comforted. One of the members of the Council told Mr. F. it was amusing to see “the Professor” while this address was passing through the press. He was so afraid something would be wrong that he would come in to see about it half a dozen times a day, until it seemed as if he considered this small oration of more consequence than the affairs of the state. Yet laugh as they may about these little peculiarities of “our Professor,” he is a most wonderful man.

Reduced facsimile of first page of Dr. Holmes’ 1863 Address to the Alumni of Harvard

In explanation of the ensuing bit, it need only be said that in October of 1863 Señorita Isabella Cubas was appearing at the Boston Theatre in “The Wizard Skiff, or the Massacre of Scio,” and other pantomimes. “The Wizard Skiff,” according to the “Advertiser,” was given on the fourteenth. On the sixteenth, a characteristic announcement read: “At ¼ past 8 Señorita Cubas will dance La Madrilena.” The tear of Dr. Holmes at the spectacle may be remembered with the “poetry and religion” anecdote of Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Fanny Ellsler.

October 16, 1863.—Mr. F. went in two evenings since to find Professor Holmes. His wife said he was out. “I don’t know where he is gone, I am sure, Mr. Fields,” she said in her eager way, “but he said he had finished his work and asked if he might go, and I told him he might, though he would not tell where he was going.”

Yesterday the “where” transpired. “By the way,” said the Professor, “have you seen that little poem by Mrs. Waterston upon the death of Colonel Shaw, ‘Together’? It made me cry. However, I don’t know how much that means, for I went to see the ‘beautiful Cubas’ in a pantomime the other night, and the first thing I knew down came a great round fat tear and went splosh on the ground. Wasn’t I provoked!”

FROM THE PLAY-BILL OF THE NIGHT OF DR. HOLMES’S “GREAT ROUND FAT TEAR”

The next fragment is neither a letter nor a passage from the diary, but a bit of excellent fooling, in Dr. Holmes’s handwriting, on a sheet of note paper. The meteorological records of 1864 would probably show that there were heavy rains in the course of the year. From Dr. Holmes’s interest in the tracing of Dr. Johnson’s footsteps an even century before his own, it is easy to imagine his fancy playing about the rainfall of the century ahead. I cannot find that this jeu d’esprit, with its entirely characteristic flavor of the “Breakfast Table,” was ever printed by its author.

Letter from the last man left by the Deluge of the year 1964 to the last woman left by the same

My dear Sole Survivoress:—

Love is natural to the human breast. The passion has seized me, and you, fortunately, cannot doubt as to its object.

Adored one, fairest, and indeed only individual of your sex, can you, could you doubt that if the world still possessed its full complement of inhabitants, 823,060,413 according to the most recent estimate, I should hesitate in selecting you from the 411,530,206½ females in existence previous to the late accident? Believe it not! Trust not the deceivers who—but I forget the late melancholy occurrence for the moment!

It is still damp in our—I beg your pardon—in my neighborhood. I hope you are careful of your precious health—so much depends upon it! The dodo is extinct—what if Man—but pardon me. Let me recommend long india-rubber boots—they will excite no remark, for reasons too obvious to mention.

May I hope for a favorable answer to my suit by the bearer of this message, the carrier-goose, who was with me during the rainy season in the top of the gigantic pine?

If any more favored suitor—What am I saying? If any recollection of the past is to come between me and happiness, break it gently to me, for my nerves have been a good deal tried by the loss of the human species (with the exception of ourselves) and there is something painful in the thought of shedding tears in a world so thoroughly saturated with liquid.

I am (by the force of circumstances)

Your Only lover and admirer

Ultimus Smith

O. W. H. Fixit.

Facsimile of the Conclusion of Ultimus Smith’s Declaration

A few brief items of May of 1864 bring back a time of sadness for all the friends of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

May 11, 1864.—J. T. F. went to see Dr. Holmes about Hawthorne’s health. The latter came to town looking very very ill. O. W. H. thinks the shark’s tooth is upon him, but would not have this known. Walked and talked with him; then carried him to “Metcalf’s and treated him to simple medicine as we treat each other to ice cream.”

O. W. H. picked up a New York pamphlet full of sneers against Boston “Mutual Admiration Society.” “These whipper-snappers of New York will do well to take care,” he says; “the noble race of men now so famous here is passing down the valley—then who will take their places! I am ashamed to know the names of these blackguards. There is ——, a stick of sugar-candy —— and, ——, who is not even a gum-drop, and plenty like them.”

Sunday. May 14.—Terrible days of war and change....

May 19.—Hawthorne is dead.

Less than a year later came the record of another death—unique in that every survivor of the war-time seems to have remembered the very moment and circumstances of learning the overwhelming fact.

April 15, 1865.—Last night when I shut this book I wondered a little what event or person would come next, powerful enough to compel me to write a few words; and before I was dressed this morning the news of the assassination of the President became our only thought. The President, Seward, and his son!

Mrs. Andrew came in before nine o’clock to ask if we thought it would be expected of her to receive “the Club” on Monday. We decided “No,” immediately, which chimed with her desire.

The city is weighed down by sadness. But Dr. Holmes expresses his philosophy for the consolation of all. “It will unite the North,” he says. “It is more than likely that Lincoln was not the best man for the work of re-construction,” etc. His faith keeps him from the shadows which surround many.

But it is a black day for us all. J. Wilkes Booth is in custody. Poor Edwin is in Boston.

April 22.—False report. Up to this date J. Wilkes Booth has not been taken. A reward of nearly $200,000 is set upon his head, but we believe him to have fled into Maryland or farther south, with some marauding party.

Henry Howard Brownell, the author of “War Lyrics,” appears in the following extract, with Dr. Holmes, whose high opinion of this singer of naval battle was set forth in print of no uncertain tone. Of Forceythe Willson, a poet, not yet thirty years old, of whom great things were expected, Mrs. Fields wrote later in the same volume of the journal: “He affects me like a wild Tennyson.... He is an indigenous growth of our middle states. He was a pupil of Horace Mann, and appreciated him.”

April 29, 1865.—Club dinner for J. T. F. Mr. Brownell was present, author of “The Bay Fight,” as Dr. Holmes’s guest. Dr. H. said privately to us, “Well, ’tain’t much for some folks to do what I’m doing for this man, but it’s a good deal for me. I don’t like that kind of thing, you know. I find myself unawares in something the position of a lion-hunter, which is unpleasant!!!” He has lately discovered that Forceythe Willson, the author of a noble poem called the “Color Sergeant” [“The Old Sergeant”], has been living two years in Cambridge. He wrote to him and told him how much he liked his poem and said he would like to make his acquaintance. “I will be at home,” the young poet replied to the elder, “at any time you may appoint to call upon me.” This was a little strange to O. W. H., who rather expected, as the elder who was extending the right hand, to be called upon, I suppose, although he did not say so. He found a fortress of a man, “shy as Hawthorne,” and “one who had not learned that the eagle’s wings should sometimes be kept down, as we people who live in the world must,” said the Professor to me afterward. “In State” by F. W. is a great poem.

More than a year later is found this characteristic glimpse of Dr. Holmes in the elation of finishing one of his books.

Wednesday, September 12, 1866.—After an hour J. went in to see Dr. Holmes. This was important. He had promised a week ago to hear him read his new romance, and he did not wish to show anything but the lively interest he really feels....

Jamie returned in two hours perfectly enchanted. The novel exceeded his hopes. No diminishing of power is to be seen; on the contrary it seems the perfect fruit of a life. It is to be called “The Guardian Angel.” Four parts are already completed and large books of notes stand ready for use and reference. Mrs. Holmes came in to tell Mr. Fields she wished Wendell would not publish anything more. He would only call down newspaper criticism, and where was the use. “Well, Amelia, I have written something now which the critics won’t complain of. You see it’s better than anything I have ever done.” “Oh, that’s what you always say, Wendell, but I wish you’d let it alone!” “But don’t you see, Amelia, I shall make money by it, and that won’t come amiss.” “No indeed, Mr. Fields, not in these times with our family, you know.” “But there’s one thing,” said the little Professor, suddenly looking up to Mr. Fields; “if anything should happen to me before I get the story done, you wouldn’t come down upon the widder for the money, would you now?” Then they had a grand laugh all round. He is very nervous indeed about his work and read it with great reluctance, yet desired to do so. He had read it to no one as yet until Mr. Fields should hear it.

Wendell, his son, had just returned from England, bringing a young English Captain of Artillery home with him for the night, the hotels being crowded. The captain’s luggage was in the entry. The Professor drew J. aside to show him how the straps of the luggage were arranged in order to slip in the address-card. “D’ye see that—good, ain’t it? I’ve made a drawing of that and am going to have some made like it.”

Near the end of 1866, Mrs. Fields, after a few words of realization that something lies beyond the age of thirty, pictures “the Autocrat” at her own breakfast-table, with General John Meredith Read, afterwards minister to Greece, and already, before that age of thirty which the diarist was just completing, an important figure in the military and political life of New York. A few sentences from the following passage are found in Mrs. Fields’s article on Dr. Holmes, which appeared first in the “Century Magazine,” and then in “Authors and Friends.”

It comes over me to put down here and now the fact that this year for the first time others perceived, as well as myself, that I have passed the freshness and lustre of youth—but I do not feel the change as I once thought I must—life is even sweeter than ever and richer though I can still remember the time when thirty years seemed the desirable limit of life—now it opens before me full of uncompleted labor, full of riches and plans—the wealth of love, the plans of eternity.

Friday morning.—Professor Holmes and Adjutant General Read of New York (a young man despite his title) breakfasted here at eight o’clock. They were both here punctually at quarter past eight, which was early for the season, especially as the General was late out, at a ball, last night. He was only too glad of the chance, however, to meet Dr. Holmes, and would have made a far greater effort to accomplish it. The talk at one time turned upon Dickens. Dr. Holmes said he thought him a greater genius than Thackeray and was never satisfied with admiring his wondrous powers of observation and fertility of reproduction; his queer knack at making scenes, too, was noticeable, but especially the power of beginning from the smallest externals and describing a man to the life though he might get no farther than the shirt-button, for he always failed in profound analysis. Hawthorne, beginning from within, was his contrast and counterpart. But the two qualities which Dickens possesses and which the world seems to take small account of, but which mark his peculiar greatness, are the minuteness of his observations and his endless variety. Thackeray had sharp corners in him, something which led you to see he could turn round short upon you some day, although sadness was an impressive element in his character—perhaps a sadness belonging to genius. Hawthorne’s sadness was a part of his genius—tenderness and sadness.

MRS. FIELDS

From a crayon portrait made by Rowse in 1863

On Monday, February 25, 1867, Mrs. Fields made note of the Saturday Club dinner of two days before, at which the guests were George William Curtis, “Petroleum V. Nasby,” and Dr. Hayes of Arctic fame, of whom Mrs. Fields had written a few days before: “He wears a corrugated face, and his slender spirited figure shows him the man for such resolves and expeditions. We were carried away like the hearers of an Arabian tale with his vivid pictures of Arctic life.” But apparently he was not the chief talker at the Saturday Club meeting, for Mrs. Fields wrote of it: “Dr. Holmes was in great mood for talk, but Lowell was critical and interrupted him frequently. ‘Now, James, let me talk and don’t interrupt me,’ he once said, a little ruffled by the continual strictures on his conversation.” But by the time that Longfellow’s sixtieth birthday came round on the following Wednesday, Dr. Holmes was ready for it with the verses, “In gentle bosoms tried and true,” recorded in Longfellow’s diary, and for another encounter with Lowell, who also celebrated the day with a poem, beginning “I need not praise the sweetness of his song.” Mrs. Fields’s diary records her husband’s account of the evening:—

February 28, 1867.—Thursday morning. Jamie had a most brilliant evening at Longfellow’s. A note came in from O. W. H. towards night, saying he was full of business and full of his story, but he must go to L.’s. Lowell’s poem in the morning had helped to stir him. J. reached his door punctually at eight. There stood the little wonder with hat and coat on and door ajar, his wife beside him. “I wouldn’t let him go with anybody else,” she said. “Mr. Fields, he ought not to go out tonight; hear him, how he wheezes with the asthma. Now, Wendell, when will you get home?” “Oh,” said he, “I don’t know. I put myself into Mr. Fields’s hands.” “Well, Mr. Fields, how early can you get him home?” “About twelve,” was the answer. “Now that’s pretty well,” said the Doctor. “Amelia, go in and shut the door. Mr. Fields will take care of me.” So between fun and anxiety they chatted away until they were fairly into the street and in the car. “I’ve been doing too much lately between my lectures and my story, and the fine dinners I have been to, and I ought not to go out tonight. Why, it’s one of the greatest compliments one man ever paid another, my going out to Longfellow’s tonight. By the way, Mr. Fields, do you appreciate the position you hold in our time? There never was anything like it. Why, I was nothing but a roaring kangaroo when you took me in hand, and I thought it was the right thing to stand up on my hind legs, but you combed me down and put me in proper shape. Now I want you to promise me one thing. We’re all growing old, I’m near sixty myself; by and by the brain will begin to soften. Now you must tell me when the egg begins to look addled. People don’t know of themselves.”

He had been to two large dinners lately, one at G. W. Wales’s, which he said was the finest dinner he had ever seen, the most perfect in all its appointments, decorated with the largest profusion of flowers, in as perfect taste as he had ever seen. “Why, even the chair you sat in was so delicately padded as to give pleasure to that weak spot in the back which we all inherit from the fall of Adam.” The other was at Mrs. Charles Dorr’s, where there were sixteen at table and the room “for heat was like the black hole at Calcutta,” but the company was very brilliant. Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Parkman, Dr. Hayes, etc. He sat next Mrs. ——; says she is a thorough-bred woman of society, the daughter of a politician, the wife, first of a millionaire and now of a man of society. “I like such a woman now and then; she never makes a mistake.” Mrs. —— was thoroughly canvassed at the table, “picked clean as any duck for the spit and then roasted over a slow fire,” as O. W. H. afterward remarked to Mrs. Parkman, who is a very just woman and who weighed her well in the balances.

When they arrived at L.’s, my basket of flowers stood, surrounded by other gifts, and Longfellow himself sat crowned with all the natural loveliness of his rare nature. The day must have been a happy one for him.... O. W. H. had three perfect verses of a little poem in his hand which he read, and then Lowell talked, and they had great merriment and delight together.

FIELDS, THE MAN OF BOOKS AND FRIENDSHIPS

The two following passages from the diary for 1868 seem to indicate that Dr. Holmes made a double use of his poem, “Bill and Joe,” written in this year, included in his “Poems of the Class of ’29,” and according to the entry of July 17, read at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinner of 1868:—

January 16, 1868.—We had just finished dinner when Professor Holmes came in with his poem, one of the annual he contributes to the class-supper of the “Boys of ’29.” He read it through to us with feeling, his voice growing tremulous and husky at times. It was pleasant to see how he enjoyed our pleasure in it. The talk turned naturally after a little upon the question of Chief Justice, when he took occasion to run over in his mind the character and qualifications of some of our chief barristers. “As for Bigelow[4] (who has just gone out of office and it is his successor over whom they are struggling), as for Bigelow, it is astonishing to see how every bit of that man’s talent has been brought into use; all he has is made the most of. Why, he’s like some cooks, give ’em a horse and they will use every part of him except the shoes.”

Friday, July 17, 1868.—Last evening Dr. Holmes came in fresh from the Phi Beta dinner at Cambridge.[5] He said, “I can’t stop and I only came to read you my verses I read at the dinner, they made such a queer impression. I didn’t mean to go, but James Lowell was to preside and sent me word that I really must be there, so I just wrote these off, and here they are—I don’t know that I should have brought them in to read to you, but Hoar declares they are the best I have ever done.” At length, in the exquisite orange of sunset, he read those delightful verses, full, full of feeling, “Bill and Joe.” We did not wonder the Phi Beta boys liked them. I shall be surprised if every boy, especially those who find the almond blossoms in the hair, as W. says, does not like them, and if they do not win for him a more universal reputation than he has yet won....

I was impressed last night with the nervous energy of O. W. H. His leg by a slight quiver kept time to the reading of his verses, and his talk fell before and after like swift rain. He does not go away from town but sways between Boston and Cambridge all these perfect summer days; receiving yesterday, the hottest day of this or many years, Motley at dinner, and going perpetually, and writing verses and letters not a few. His activity is wonderful; think of writing letters these warm delicious evenings by gaslight in a small front study on the street! It hurts him less than his wife, partly because the intellectual vivacity and excitement keeps him up, partly because he is physically fitted to bear almost everything but cold. How fortunate for the world that while he lives he should continue his work so faithfully. He will have no successor, at least for many a long year, after we have all gone to sleep under our green counterpanes and Nature has tucked us up well in yearly violets.

Earlier in the year Dr. Holmes and Mrs. Stowe met in Charles Street.

Wednesday morning, January 29, 1868.—Last night Professor Holmes, Mrs. Stowe, her daughter Georgie, and the Howellses, took tea here. The Professor came early and was in good talking trim—presently in came Mrs. Stowe, and they fell shortly into talk upon Homeopathy and Allopathy. He grew very warm, declared that cases cited of cures proved nothing, and we were all “incompetent” to judge! We could not but be amused at his heat, for we were more or less believers in Homeopathy against his one argument for Allopathy. In vain Mrs. Stowe and I tried to turn and stem the fiery tide: Georgie or Mrs. Howells would be sure to sweep us back into it again. However, there were many brilliant things said, and sweet and good and interesting things too. The Professor told us one curious fact, that chemists had in vain analyzed the poison of rattlesnakes and could not discover the elements of destruction it undoubtedly possesses. Also that, when Indians poison their arrows with it, they hang up the liver of a white wolf and make one snake after another bite it until the liver is entirely impregnated; they then leave it to dry until disintegrated, when they moisten and apply round the necks of the arrows—not on the point. He had a long quiet chat with Mrs. Stowe before the evening ended. They compared their early Calvinistic education and the effect produced upon their characters by such training.

Tuesday, April 13, 1869.—Dr. Holmes and his wife and Mr. Whittier dined here. The talk was free, totally free from all feeling of constraint, as it could not have been had another person been present. Whittier says he is afraid of strangers, and Dr. Holmes is never more delightful than under just such auspices. Dr. Holmes asked Whittier’s undisguised opinion of Longfellow’s “New England Tragedies”—“honest opinion now,” said he. “Well, I liked them,” said Whittier, half reluctantly—evidently he had found much that was beautiful and in keeping with the spirit of the times of which Longfellow wrote, and their passionless character did not trouble him as it had O. W. H. Presently, he added that he was surprised to find how he had preserved almost literally the old text of the old books he had lent Longfellow twelve years ago, and had measured it off into verse. “Ah,” said O. W. H., “you have said the severest thing after all—‘measured off’; that’s just what he has done. It is one of the easiest, the very commonest tricks of the rhymster to be able to do this. I am surprised to see the ease with which I can do it myself.” They spoke then of “Evangeline,” which both agreed in awarding unqualified praise. “Only,” said Whittier, “I always wondered there was no terrible outburst of indignation over the outrage done to that poor colony. The tide of the story runs as smoothly as if nothing had occurred. I long thought of working up that story myself, but I am glad I did not, only I can’t understand its being so calm.” They talked on religious questions of course, the Professor holding that sin being finite, and of such a nature that we could both outgrow it and root it up, Whittier still returning to the ground that sin was a “very real thing.”

It is impossible to represent the clearness and swiftness of Dr. Holmes’s talk. The purity of heart and strength of endeavor evident in the two poets makes their atmosphere a very elevating one and they evidently naturally rejoiced in each other’s society.

Mrs. Holmes had not been out to dine before this winter. Jamie sent us a pot of strawberries growing, which delighted everybody.

Before the following passage was written, in 1871, Dr. Holmes had moved from Charles Street to Beacon Street; Mr. Fields, in impaired health, had retired from active business as a publisher and was devoting himself chiefly to writing and lecturing; and Mrs. Fields, already interested in the establishment of Coffee Houses for the poor in the North End and elsewhere, had begun the notable work in public charities to which her energies were so largely given for the remaining forty-four years of her life. In the Coöperative Workrooms, still rendering their beneficent services, and in the larger organization of the Associated Charities, embodying a principle now widely adopted throughout the land, the labors of this generous spirit, never content to give all it had to the gracious life within its own four walls, have borne enduring fruits.

1871.—Thursday afternoon last (June 22) went to Cambridge for a few visits, and coming home stopped at Dr. Holmes’s, at his new house on Beacon St. Found them both at home, sitting lonely in the oriel window looking out upon a glorious sunset. They were thinking of the children who have flown out of their nest. Dr. Holmes was very friendly and sweet. He talked most affectionately with J., told him he no longer felt a spur to write since he had gone out of business; he needed just the little touch of praise and encouragement he used to administer to make him do it; now he did not think he should ever write any more worth mentioning. He had been in to see the Coffee House and entertained us much by saying he met President Eliot near the door one day just as he was going in, but he was ashamed of doing so until they had parted company. There was something so childlike in this confession that we all laughed heartily over it. However he got in at last, and “tears as big as onions stood in my eyes when I saw what had been accomplished.” “You must be a very happy woman,” he went on to say. I told him of the new one in Eliot Street about to be opened this coming week.

At the end of the summer of 1871, when Mr. and Mrs. Fields were beginning to learn the charms of the North Shore town of Manchester, where they established the “Gambrel Cottage” on “Thunderbolt Hill” which gave a summer synonym to the hospitality of Charles Street, they journeyed one day to Nahant for a midday dinner with Longfellow. Here Mrs. Fields’s sister, Louisa, Mrs. James H. Beal, was a neighbor of the poet. Another neighbor was the late George Abbot James, and in Longfellow’s diary for September 4, 1871, is the entry: “Call on Dr. Holmes at Mr. James’s. Sumner still there. We discuss the new poets.” Mrs. Fields reports a continuation of the talk with the same friends.

Wednesday, September 6, 1871.—Dined with Mr. Longfellow at Nahant. The day was warm with a soft south wind blowing, and as we crossed the beach white waves were curling up the sands.... The dear poet saw us coming from afar and walked to his little gate to meet us with such a sweet cordial welcome that it was worth going many a mile to have that alone. The three little ladies, his daughters, and Ernest’s wife, were within, but they came warmly forward to give us greeting; also Mr. Sam. Longfellow was of the party. A few moments’ chat in the little parlor, when Longfellow saw Holmes coming in the distance (he had an opera-glass, being short-sighted, and was sitting on the piazza with J.). “Hullo!” said he, “here comes Holmes, and all dressed up too, with flowers in his button-hole.” Sure enough, here was the Professor to have dinner with us also. He was full of talk as ever and looking remarkably well. Longfellow asked with much interest about Balaustion and Joaquin Miller, neither of which he had read. Holmes criticized as if unbearable and beyond the pale of decency Browning’s cutting of words, “Flower o’ the pine,” and such characteristic passages. Longfellow spoke of a volume of poems he had received of late from England in which “saw” was made to rhyme with “more.” Holmes said Keats often did that. “Not exactly, I think,” said L., “‘dawn’ and ‘forlorn,’ perhaps.” “Well,” said H., “when I was in college” (I think he said college, certainly while at Cambridge) “and my first volume was about to appear, Mrs. Folsom saw the sheets and fortunately at the very last moment for correction discovered I had made ‘forlorn’ rhyme with ‘gone,’ and out of her own head and without having time to consult with me she substituted ‘sad and wan.’”[6] The Professor went on to say that he must confess to a tender feeling of regret for his “so forlorn” to this very day, but he supposed every writer of poems must have his keen regrets for the numerous verses he could recall where he had wrestled with the English language and had lost something of his thought in his struggle with the necessities of art. We shortly after went to dinner, where the talk still continued to turn on art and artists, chiefly musical, the divorcement of music and thought; a thinker or man of intellect in listening to music comes to a comprehension of it, Holmes said, mediately, but a musician feels it directly through some gift of which the thinker knows nothing. Longfellow always recalls with intense delight hearing Gounod sing his own music in Rome—his voice was hardly to be mentioned among the fine voices of the world, indeed it was small, but his rendering was exquisite. Canvassing T. B. Read’s poems and speaking of “Sheridan’s Ride,” which has been so highly praised, “Yes,” said Holmes, “but there are very poor lines in it, but how often, to use Scripture phrase, there is a fly in the ointment.” The talk went bowling off to Père Hyacinthe. “He was very pleasant,” said Holmes, “it was most agreeable to meet him, but you could only go a short distance. His desire was to be a good Catholic, and ours is of course quite different. It was like speaking through a knot-hole after all.”

The dumb waiter bounced up. “We cannot call that a dumb waiter,” said L., “but I had an odd dream the other night. I thought Greene (G. W.) came bouncing up on the waiter in that manner and stepped off in a most dignified fashion with a crushed white hat on his head. He said he had just been to drive with a Spanish lady.”

Sumner (Charles) came up to the piazza. He had dined elsewhere and came over as soon as possible for a little talk. Holmes talked on, although we all said, “Mr. Sumner—here is Mr. Sumner,” without perceiving that the noble Senator was sitting just outside the cottage window waiting for us to rise, and began to converse about him. Longfellow grew nervous and rose to speak with Sumner—still Holmes did not perceive, and went on until Jamie relieved us from a tendency to convulsions by voting that we should join the Senator. Then Sumner related the substance of an amusing letter of Cicero’s he had just been reading in which Cicero gives an account to his friend of a visit he had just received from the Emperor Julius Cæsar. He had invited Julius to pass a few days with him, but he came quite unexpectedly with a thousand men! Cicero, seeing them from afar, debated with another friend what he should do with them, but at length managed to encamp them. To feed them was a less easy matter. The emperor took everything quite easily, however, and was very pleasant, “but,” adds Cicero, “he is not the man to whom I should say a second time, ‘if you are passing this way, give me a call.’”

Again, in 1873, Longfellow, Holmes, and Sumner are found together at the dinner-table with Mrs. Fields, this time in Charles Street. When she made use of her diary at this point, for her article on Dr. Holmes which appeared first in the “Century Magazine” (1895), it was with many omissions. The passage is now given almost entire. It should be said that the Misses Towne, mentioned at the beginning of it, were friends and summer neighbors at Manchester.

Saturday, October 11, 1873.—Helen and Alice Towne have come to pass Sunday with us. Charles Sumner, Longfellow, Greene, Dr. Holmes came to dine. Mr. Sumner seemed less strong than of late and I fancied he suffered somewhat while at table during the evening, but he told me he was working at his desk or reading during fourteen consecutive hours not infrequently at present, as he was in the habit of doing when uninterrupted by friendly visits. He said he was very fond of the passive exercise of reading; the active exercise of composition was of course agreeable in certain moods, but reading was a never-ending delight. He spoke of Lord Brougham, and Mrs. Norton and her two beautiful sisters. Both he and Mr. Longfellow recalled them in their youthful loveliness, but Mr. Sumner said when he was in England the last time he saw the Duchess of Somerset, who was a most poetic looking creature in her youth and (I believe) the youngest of the three sisters, so changed he should never have guessed who it might be. She was grown a huge red-faced woman. (Longfellow laughed, referring to her second marriage and said, “Yes, she had turned a Somerset!”) Dr. Holmes sparkled and coruscated as I have seldom heard him before. We are more than ever convinced that no one since Sydney Smith was ever so brilliant, so witty, spontaneous, naïf, and unfailing as Dr. Holmes. He talked much about his class in College: “There never was such vigor in any class before, it seems to me—almost every member turns out sooner or later distinguished for something. We have had every grade of moral status from a criminal to a Chief Justice, and we never let any one of them drop. We keep hold of their hands year after year and lift up the weak and failing ones till they are at last redeemed. Ah, there was one exception—years ago we voted to cast a man out who had been a defaulter or who had committed some offense of that nature. The poor fellow sank down, and before the next year, when we repented of this decision, he had gone too far down and presently died. But we have kept all the rest. Every fourth man in our class is a poet. Sam. Smith belongs to our class, who wrote ‘My Country, ’tis of Thee.’ Sam. Smith will live when Longfellow, Whittier, and all the rest of us have gone into oblivion—and yet what is there in those verses to make them live? Do you remember the line ‘Like that above’? I asked Sam. what ‘that’ referred to—he said ‘that rapture’!!—(The expression of the rapid talker’s face of contempt as he said this was one of the most amusing possible.)—Even the odds and ends of our class have turned out something.... Longfellow, I wish I could make you talk about yourself.”—“But I never do,” said L. quietly. “I know you never do, but you confessed to me once.”—“No, I don’t think I ever did,” said L. laughing

Greene was for the most part utterly speechless. He attended with great assiduity to his dinner, which was a good one, and Longfellow was watchful and kind enough to send him little choice things to eat which he thought he would enjoy.

Holmes was abstemious and never ceased talking—“Most men write too much. I would rather risk my future fame upon one lyric than upon ten volumes. But I have said Boston is the hub of the universe. I will rest upon that.”

All this report is singularly dry compared with the wit and humor which radiated about the table. We laughed till the tears ran down our cheeks. Longfellow was intensely amused. I have not seen him laugh so much for many a long day. We ladies sat at the table long after coffee and cigars in order to hear the talk....

Sumner said he had been much displeased by a remark Professor Henry Hunt made to him a few days ago. He said Mr. Agassiz was an impediment in the path of science. What did such men as Hunt and John Fiske mean by underrating a man who has given such books to the world as Agassiz has done, not to speak of his untiring efforts in the other avenues of influence! “It means just this,” said Holmes: “Agassiz will not listen to the Darwinian theory; his whole effort is on the other side. Now Agassiz is no longer young, and I was reading the other day in a book on the Sandwich Islands of an old Fejee man who had been carried away among strangers, but who prayed he might be carried home, that his brains might be beaten out in peace by his son according to the custom of those lands. It flashed over me then that our sons beat out our brains in the same way. They do not walk in our ruts of thoughts or begin exactly where we leave off, but they have a new standpoint of their own. At present the Darwinian theory can be nothing but an hypothesis; the important links of proof are missing and cannot be supplied; but in the myriad ages there may be new developments.”

I thought the young ladies looked a little tired sitting, so about nine o’clock we left the table—still the talk went on for about four hours when they broke up.