Part 7 (2/2)
”My wife is very sensible of your brave hospitality, offered in your note a fortnight since, and resists all my attempts to defend your hearth from such a crowd. Of course I am too glad to be persuaded to come to you, and so it is our desire to spend the Sunday of my last lecture at your house.”
In the other he says:--
”I ought to have acknowledged and thanked you for the plus-Arabian hospitality which warms your note. It might tempt any one but a galley-slave, or a scholar who is tied to his book-crib as the other to his oar, to quit instantly all his dull surroundings, and fly to this lighted, genial asylum with doors wide open and nailed back.”
There is a brief glimpse of Emerson upon his return from California which it is a pleasure to recall. He came at once, even before going to Concord, to see Mr. Fields. ”We must not visit San Francisco too young,” he said, ”or we shall never wish to come away. It is called the 'Golden Gate,' not because of its gold, but because of the lovely golden flowers which at this season cover the whole face of the country down to the edge of the great sea.” He smiled at the namby- pamby travelers who turned back because of the discomforts of the trip into the valley of the Yosemite. It was a place full of marvel and glory to him. The only regret attending the trip seems to have been that he was obliged to miss the meetings of the Sat.u.r.day Club, which were always dear to him.
The following extract gives a picture of him about this time:--”A call from Mr. Emerson, who talked of Lowell's 'joyous genius.' He said: 'I have read what he has done of late with great interest, and am sorry to have been so slow as not to have written him yet, especially as I am to meet him at the club dinner to-day. How is Pope?' he continued, crossing the room to look at an authentic portrait by Richardson of that great master of verse. 'Such a face as this should send us all to re-reading his works again.' Then turning to the bust of Tennyson, by Woolner, which stood near, he said, 'The more I think of this bust and the grand self-a.s.sertion in it, the more I like it....' Emerson came in after the club dinner; Longfellow also.
Mrs. G---- was present, and bragged grandly, and was very smart in talk. Afterward Emerson said he was reminded of Carlyle's expression with regard to Lady Duff Gordon, whom he considered a female St. Peter walking fearlessly over the waves of the sea of humbug.”
Opportunities for social communication were sacred in his eyes, and never to be lightly thrown aside. He wore an expectant look upon his face in company, as if waiting for some new word from the last comer.
He was himself the stimulus, even when disguised as a listener, and his additions to the evenings called Mr. Alcott's Conversations were marked and eagerly expected. Upon the occasion of Longfellow's last departure for Europe in 1869, a private farewell dinner took place, where Emerson, Aga.s.siz, Holmes, Lowell, Greene, Norton, Whipple, and Dana all a.s.sembled in token of their regard. Emerson tried to persuade Longfellow to go to Greece to look after the Klephs, the supposed authors of Romaic poetry, so beautiful in both their poetic eyes.
Finding this idea unsuccessful, he next turned to the Nile, to those vast statues which still stand awful and speechless witnesses of the past. He was interesting and eloquent, but Longfellow was not to be persuaded. It was an excellent picture of the two contrasting characters,--Longfellow, serene, considerate, with his plans arranged and his thought resting in his home and his children's requirements; Emerson, with eager, unresting thought, excited by the very idea of travel to plunge farther into the strange world where the thought of mankind was born.
This lover of hospitalities was also king in his own domain. In the winter of 1872 Mr. Fields was invited to read a lecture in Concord, and an early invitation came bidding us to pa.s.s the time under his roof-tree. A few days before, a note was received, saying that Emerson himself was detained in Was.h.i.+ngton, and could not reach home for the occasion. His absence, however, was to make no difference about our visit. He should return at the earliest possible moment. The weather turned bitterly cold before we left Boston. It was certainly no less bleak when we reached Concord. Even the horse that carried us from the station to the house had on his winter coat. Roaring fires were blazing when we reached the house, which were only less warm than our welcome.
After supper, just as the lecture hour was approaching, I suddenly heard the front door open. In another moment there was the dear sage himself ready with his welcome. He had lectured the previous evening in Was.h.i.+ngton, and left in the earliest possible train, coming through without pause to Concord. In spite of the snow and cold, he said he should walk to the lecture-room as soon as he had taken a cup of tea, and before the speaker had finished his opening sentence Mr. Emerson's welcome face appeared at the door.
After the lecture the old house presented a cheerful countenance.
Again the fire blazed, friends sent flowers, and Mr. Alcott joined in conversation. ”Quite swayed out of his habit,” said Emerson, ”by the good cheer.” The spirit of hospitality led the master of the house to be swayed also, for it was midnight before the talk was ended. It was wonderful to see how strong and cheerful and unwearied he appeared after his long journey. ”I would not discourage this young acolyte,”
he said, turning to the lecturer of the evening and laughing, ”by showing any sense of discomfort.”
When we arose the next morning the sun was just dawning over the level fields of snow. The air was fresh, the sky cloudless, the glory of the scene indescribable. The weight of weariness I had brought from the city was lifted by the scene before me, and by the influence of the great nature who was befriending us within the four walls. It was good to look upon the same landscape which was the source of his own inspirations.
Emerson was already in the breakfast-room at eight o'clock. There was much talk about the lack of education in English literature among our young people. Emerson said a Boston man who usually appeared sufficiently well informed asked him if he had ever known Spinoza. He talked also of Walt Whitman and Coventry Patmore, and asked the last news of Allingham: when suddenly, as it seemed, the little horse came again, in his winter coat, and carried us to the station, and that day was done.
There is a bit of description of Emerson as he appeared at a political meeting in his earlier years which I love to remember. The meeting was called in opposition to Daniel Webster, and Emerson was to address the people. It was in Cambridgeport. When he rose to speak he was greeted by hisses, long and full of hate; but a friend said, who saw him there, that he could think of nothing but dogs baying at the moon. He was serene as moonlight itself.
The days came, alas! when desire must fail, and the end draw near. One morning he wrote from Concord: ”I am grown so old that, though I can read from a paper, I am no longer fit for conversation, and dare not make visits. So we send you our thanks, and you shall not expect us.”
It has been a pleasure to rehea.r.s.e in my memory these glimpses of Emerson, and, covered with imperfections as they are, I have found courage for welding them together in the thought that many minds must know him through his work who long to ask what he was like in his habit as he lived, and whose joy in their teacher can only be enhanced by such pictures as they can obtain of the righteousness and beauty of his personal behavior.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS AND UNPUBLISHED LETTERS
Dr. Holmes's social nature, as expressed in conversation and in his books, drew him into communication with a very large number of persons. It cannot be said, however, in this age marked by altruisms, that he was altruistic; on the contrary, he loved himself, and made himself his prime study--but as a member of the human race, he had his own purposes to fulfill, his own self-appointed tasks, and he preferred to take men only on his own terms. He was filled with righteous indignation, in reading Carlyle, to find a pa.s.sage where, hearing the door-bell ring one morning when he was very busy, he exclaimed that he was afraid it was ”the man Emerson!” Yet Dr. Holmes was himself one of the most carefully guarded men, through his years of actual production, who ever lived and wrote. His wife absorbed her life in his, and mounted guard to make sure that interruption was impossible. Nevertheless, he was eminently a lover of men, or he could not have drawn them perpetually to his side.
His writings were never aimed too high; his sole wish was to hit the heart, if possible; but if a shot hit the head also, he showed a childlike pride in the achievement.
When the moment came to meet men face to face, what unrivaled gayety and good cheer possessed him! He was king of the dinner-table during a large part of the century. He loved to talk, but he was excited and quickened by the conversation of others, for reverence was never absent from his nature. How incomparable his gift of conversation was, it will be difficult, probably impossible, for any one to understand who had never known him. It was not that he was wiser, or wittier, or more profound, or more radiant with humor, than some other distinguished men; the shades of Macaulay, Sydney Smith, De Quincey, and Coleridge rise up before us from the past, and among his contemporaries we recall the sallies of Tom Appleton, the charm of Aga.s.siz, of Cornelius Felton, and others of the Sat.u.r.day Club; but with Dr. Holmes suns.h.i.+ne and gayety came into the room. It was not a determination to be cheerful or witty or profound; but it was a natural expression, like that of a child, sometimes overclouded and sometimes purely gay, but always open to the influences around him, and ready for ”a good time.” His power of self-excitement seemed inexhaustible. Given a dinner-table, with light and color, and somebody occasionally to throw the ball, his spirits would rise and coruscate astonis.h.i.+ngly. He was not unaware if men whom he considered his superiors were present; he was sure to make them understand that he meant to sit at their feet and listen to them, even if his own excitement ran away with him. ”I've talked too much,” he often said, with a feeling of sincere penitence, as he rose from the table. ”I wanted to hear what our guest had to say.” But the wise guest, seizing the opportunity, usually led Dr. Holmes on until he forgot that he was not listening and replying. It was this sensitiveness, perhaps, which made his greatest charm--a power of sympathy which led him to understand what his companion would say if he should speak, and made it possible for him to talk in a measure for others as well as to express himself.
Nothing, surely, could be more unusual and beautiful than such a gift, nor any more purely his own. His conversation reminded one of those beautiful _danseuses_ of the South upon whom every eye is fastened, by whom every sense is fascinated, but who dance up to their companions, and lead them out, and make them feel all the exhilaration of the occasion, while the leader alone possesses all the enchantment and all the inspiration. Of course conversation of this kind is an outgrowth of character. His reverence was one source of its inspiration, and a desire to do everything well which he undertook. He was a faithful friend and a keen appreciator; he disliked profoundly to hear the depreciation of others. His character was clear-cut and defined, like his small, erect figure; perfect of its kind, and possessed of great innate dignity, veiled only by delightful, incomparable gifts and charms.
Our acquaintance and friends.h.i.+p with him lasted through many years, beginning with my husband's early a.s.sociation. I think their acquaintance began about the time when the doctor threatened to hang out a sign, ”The smallest fevers gratefully received,” and when the young publisher's literary enthusiasm led him to make some excuse for asking medical advice.
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