Part 3

_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.

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.

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.