A Mortal Antipathy

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> A Mortal Antipathy

A MORTAL ANTIPATHY

By Oliver Wendell Holmes




PREFACE.


"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY" was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and
very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he
is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to
this story: "I should have been afraid of my subject." He did not explain
himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of
the physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is
founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered
plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers,
and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of
extraordinary but well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character
that I could hope to gain any serious attention to so strange a
narrative.

I need not recur to these wonderful stories. There is, however, one, not
to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the
reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me
that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror.
While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had
fallen with aloud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system
which he had never got over.

The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of
hearing is conceivable enough.

But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation
with the higher organs of consciousness. The strength of the
associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the
olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience and as
related by others. Now we know that every human being, as well as every
other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere. If a
man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere
by it. This personal peculiarity varies with the age and conditions of
the individual. It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction
or repulsion, but its influence is not less real, though far less obvious
and less dominant, than in the lower animals. It was an atmospheric
impression of this nature which associated itself with a terrible shock
experienced by the infant which became the subject of this story. The
impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by
some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as
the one which had produced the disordered condition.

This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have
puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not
suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891.
O. W. H.




A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.

FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.




INTRODUCTION.

"And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"

Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in
which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly
spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all
conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the
baby? And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as
a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no
other in existence?

Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born
thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to
callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of
intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it
shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its
fellows as a portfolio.

There are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say
something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever these
may be. I have had other portfolios before this,--two, more especially,
and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.

Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you
that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was
opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession,
for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving
it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my
readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but
fifty years ago,--there are too many talkative old people who know all
about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware.
A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough
of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them--the
delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.

When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its
legend,--or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could
have had their way,--Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug.
Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with
that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with
the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have
been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or
knowing much about it.

Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.

In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of
attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our
first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the
comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in
that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.

How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in
the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in
it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait
of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated
gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,--they looked like gentlemen and ladies,
too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and
Allston's lovely Italian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women,
not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable
rocking-horse,--you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival
landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in
those days; and the Murillo,--not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the
portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a
hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and
dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's
coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing;
and West's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with
the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the
Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or
criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in
those earlier years when we looked at them through the japanned
fish-horns?

If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the
Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in
which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous
Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary
butterflies. The father was editor of the "Boston Recorder," a very
respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by
that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of
the week as "the Sahbuth." The son was the editor of several different
periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of
many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which he
studied on the outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with a
certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat
frothed over by his worldly experiences.

Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first
Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published
in his father's paper, I think, and signed "Roy." He had started the
"American Magazine," afterwards merged in the "New York Mirror." He had
then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of
verse. He had just written

"I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,
They idly give me joy,
As if I should be glad to know
That I was less a boy."

He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being
very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in
luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to
show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was
something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an anticipation of
Oscar Wilde. There used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture
of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had
kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded
me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared
with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but
the fresh-cheecked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded
out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me at this
moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the door of
Saint Paul's Church, on a sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year
1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent young
American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all
done their best work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a
school-boy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his
way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was
destined to outdo and to outlive. Not one of the great histories, which
have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our school-books
depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts from the
orations and speeches of Webster and Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis,
his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers, Halleck's Marco
Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American Flag, and Percival's
Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping and Genius Waking,--and not getting
very wide awake, either. These could be depended upon. A few other
copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's "Columbia, Columbia," and
Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were already effaced, as many of the
favorites of our own day and generation must soon be, by the great wave
which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still are
legible.

About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled
"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers," which made some talk for a while, and is
now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be read
the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones. The
"London Athenaeum" spoke of it as having been described as a "tomahawk
sort of satire." As the author had been a trapper in Missouri, he was
familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its owners.
Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an army officer, educated at West
Point, he came back to his native city about the year 1830. He wrote an
article on Bryant's Poems for the "North American Review," and another on
the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk. In this last-mentioned article he
tells this story as the great warrior told it himself. It was an
incident of a fight with the Osages.

"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the
scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed furiously
upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance
through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my
father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."

This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary
warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very
much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked him
in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous
epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one
else escaped.

If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating,
some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find
in the pages of "Truth" a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard
of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the
little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read
the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing
in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly
with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he had
dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof
which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of
whom had known worse days than those which they were passing within its
friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I
heard after he disappeared from general observation.

That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all
that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel
engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising
establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,--to manifestations of
this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years.
The "Scarlet Letter" was an unhinted possibility. The "Voices of the
Night" had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still
in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes,
which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk
into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a
scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.

What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating
in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other
in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any
against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the
small litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use. His
attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little
discipline, and though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with
it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble writer
Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or
equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors
before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the
Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an
American writer, "who made long since a happy snatch at fame," which must
have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot identify
him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not
wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable
writer of light verse,--all these are commended to the keeping of that
venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load
that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge, after making
a show of paying every possible attention to them so long as he is kept
in sight.

It was a good time to open a portfolio. But my old one had boyhood
written on every page. A single passionate outcry when the old warship I
had read about in the broadsides that were a part of our kitchen
literature, and in the "Naval Monument," was threatened with demolition;
a few verses suggested by the sight of old Major Melville in his cocked
hat and breeches, were the best scraps that came out of that first
Portfolio, which was soon closed that it should not interfere with the
duties of a profession authorized to claim all the time and thought which
would have been otherwise expended in filling it.

During a quarter of a century the first Portfolio remained closed for the
greater part of the time. Only now and then it would be taken up and
opened, and something drawn from it for a special occasion, more
particularly for the annual reunions of a certain class of which I was a
member.

In the year 1857, towards its close, the "Atlantic Monthly," which I had
the honor of naming, was started by the enterprising firm of Phillips &
Sampson, under the editorship of Mr. James Russell Lowell. He thought
that I might bring something out of my old Portfolio which would be not
unacceptable in the new magazine. I looked at the poor old receptacle,
which, partly from use and partly from neglect, had lost its freshness,
and seemed hardly presentable to the new company expected to welcome the
new-comer in the literary world of Boston, the least provincial of
American centres of learning and letters. The gilded covering where the
emblems of hope and aspiration had looked so bright had faded; not
wholly, perhaps, but how was the gold become dim!---how was the most fine
gold changed! Long devotion to other pursuits had left little time for
literature, and the waifs and strays gathered from the old Portfolio had
done little more than keep alive the memory that such a source of supply
was still in existence. I looked at the old Portfolio, and said to
myself, "Too late! too late. This tarnished gold will never brighten,
these battered covers will stand no more wear and tear; close them, and
leave them to the spider and the book-worm."

In the mean time the nebula of the first quarter of the century had
condensed into the constellation of the middle of the same period. When,
a little while after the establishment of the new magazine, the "Saturday
Club" gathered about the long table at "Parker's," such a representation
of all that was best in American literature had never been collected
within so small a compass. Most of the Americans whom educated
foreigners cared to see-leaving out of consideration official
dignitaries, whose temporary importance makes them objects of
curiosity--were seated at that board. But the club did not yet exist,
and the "Atlantic Monthly" was an experiment. There had already been
several monthly periodicals, more or less successful and permanent, among
which "Putnam's Magazine" was conspicuous, owing its success largely to
the contributions of that very accomplished and delightful writer, Mr.
George William Curtis. That magazine, after a somewhat prolonged and
very honorable existence, had gone where all periodicals go when they
die, into the archives of the deaf, dumb, and blind recording angel whose
name is Oblivion. It had so well deserved to live that its death was a
surprise and a source of regret. Could another monthly take its place
and keep it when that, with all its attractions and excellences, had died
out, and left a blank in our periodical literature which it would be very
hard to fill as well as that had filled it?

This was the experiment which the enterprising publishers ventured upon,
and I, who felt myself outside of the charmed circle drawn around the
scholars and poets of Cambridge and Concord, having given myself to other
studies and duties, wondered somewhat when Mr. Lowell insisted upon my
becoming a contributor. And so, yielding to a pressure which I could not
understand, and yet found myself unable to resist, I promised to take a
part in the new venture, as an occasional writer in the columns of the
new magazine.

That was the way in which the second Portfolio found its way to my table,
and was there opened in the autumn of the year 1857. I was already at
least

'Nel mezzo del cammin di mia, vita,'

when I risked myself, with many misgivings, in little-tried paths of what
looked at first like a wilderness, a selva oscura, where, if I did not
meet the lion or the wolf, I should be sure to find the critic, the most
dangerous of the carnivores, waiting to welcome me after his own fashion.

The second Portfolio is closed and laid away. Perhaps it was hardly
worth while to provide and open a new one; but here it lies before me,
and I hope I may find something between its covers which will justify me
in coming once more before my old friends. But before I open it I want
to claim a little further indulgence.

There is a subject of profound interest to almost every writer, I might
say to almost every human being. No matter what his culture or
ignorance, no matter what his pursuit, no matter what his character, the
subject I refer to is one of which he rarely ceases to think, and, if
opportunity is offered, to talk. On this he is eloquent, if on nothing
else. The slow of speech becomes fluent; the torpid listener becomes
electric with vivacity, and alive all over with interest.

The sagacious reader knows well what is coming after this prelude. He is
accustomed to the phrases with which the plausible visitor, who has a
subscription book in his pocket, prepares his victim for the depressing
disclosure of his real errand. He is not unacquainted with the
conversational amenities of the cordial and interesting stranger, who,
having had the misfortune of leaving his carpet-bag in the cars, or of
having his pocket picked at the station, finds himself without the means
of reaching that distant home where affluence waits for him with its
luxurious welcome, but to whom for the moment the loan of some five and
twenty dollars would be a convenience and a favor for which his heart
would ache with gratitude during the brief interval between the loan and
its repayment.

I wish to say a few words in my own person relating to some passages in
my own history, and more especially to some of the recent experiences
through which I have been passing.

What can justify one in addressing himself to the general public as if it
were his private correspondent? There are at least three sufficient
reasons: first, if he has a story to tell that everybody wants to
hear,--if he has been shipwrecked, or has been in a battle, or has
witnessed any interesting event, and can tell anything new about it;
secondly, if he can put in fitting words any common experiences not
already well told, so that readers will say, "Why, yes! I have had that
sensation, thought, emotion, a hundred times, but I never heard it spoken
of before, and I never saw any mention of it in print;" and thirdly,
anything one likes, provided he can so tell it as to make it interesting.

I have no story to tell in this Introduction which can of itself claim
any general attention. My first pages relate the effect of a certain
literary experience upon myself,--a series of partial metempsychoses of
which I have been the subject. Next follows a brief tribute to the
memory of a very dear and renowned friend from whom I have recently been
parted. The rest of the Introduction will be consecrated to the memory
of my birthplace.

I have just finished a Memoir, which will appear soon after this page is
written, and will have been the subject of criticism long before it is in
the reader's hands. The experience of thinking another man's thoughts
continuously for a long time; of living one's self into another man's
life for a month, or a year, or more, is a very curious one. No matter
how much superior to the biographer his subject may be, the man who
writes the life feels himself, in a certain sense, on the level of the
person whose life he is writing. One cannot fight over the battles of
Marengo or Austerlitz with Napoleon without feeling as if he himself had
a fractional claim to the victory, so real seems the transfer of his
personality into that of the conqueror while he reads. Still more must
this identification of "subject" and "object" take place when one is
writing of a person whose studies or occupations are not unlike his own.

Here are some of my metempsychoses: Ten years ago I wrote what I called A
Memorial Outline of a remarkable student of nature. He was a born
observer, and such are far from common. He was also a man of great
enthusiasm and unwearying industry. His quick eye detected what others
passed by without notice: the Indian relic, where another would see only
pebbles and fragments; the rare mollusk, or reptile, which his companion
would poke with his cane, never suspecting that there was a prize at the
end of it. Getting his single facts together with marvellous sagacity
and long-breathed patience, he arranged them, classified them, described
them, studied them in their relations, and before those around him were
aware of it the collector was an accomplished naturalist. When--he died
his collections remained, and they still remain, as his record in the
hieratic language of science. In writing this memoir the spirit of his
quiet pursuits, the even temper they bred in him, gained possession of my
own mind, so that I seemed to look at nature through his gold-bowed
spectacles, and to move about his beautifully ordered museum as if I had
myself prepared and arranged its specimens. I felt wise with his wisdom,
fair-minded with his calm impartiality; it seemed as if for the time his
placid, observant, inquiring, keen-sighted nature "slid into my soul,"
and if I had looked at myself in the glass I should almost have expected
to see the image of the Hersey professor whose life and character I was
sketching.