Elsie Venner

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> Elsie Venner

ELSIE VENNER

By Oliver Wendell Holmes



PREFACE.

This tale was published in successive parts in the "Atlantic Monthly,"
under the name of "The Professor's Story," the first number having
appeared in the third week of December, 1859. The critic who is curious
in coincidences must refer to the Magazine for the date of publication of
the chapter he is examining.

In calling this narrative a "romance," the Author wishes to make sure of
being indulged in the common privileges of the poetic license. Through
all the disguise of fiction a grave scientific doctrine may be detected
lying beneath some of the delineations of character. He has used this
doctrine as a part of the machinery of his story without pledging his
absolute belief in it to the extent to which it is asserted or implied.
It was adopted as a convenient medium of truth rather than as an accepted
scientific conclusion. The reader must judge for himself what is the
value of various stories cited from old authors. He must decide how much
of what has been told he can accept either as having actually happened,
or as possible and more or less probable. The Author must be permitted,
however, to say here, in his personal character, and as responsible to
the students of the human mind and body, that since this story has been
in progress he has received the most startling confirmation of the
possibility of the existence of a character like that which he had drawn
as a purely imaginary conception in Elsie Venner.

BOSTON, January, 1861.




A SECOND PREFACE.

This is the story which a dear old lady, my very good friend, spoke of as
"a medicated novel," and quite properly refused to read. I was always
pleased with her discriminating criticism. It is a medicated novel, and
if she wished to read for mere amusement and helpful recreation there was
no need of troubling herself with a story written with a different end in
view.

This story has called forth so many curious inquiries that it seems worth
while to answer the more important questions which have occurred to its
readers.

In the first place, it is not based on any well-ascertained physiological
fact. There are old fables about patients who have barked like dogs or
crowed like cocks, after being bitten or wounded by those animals. There
is nothing impossible in the idea that Romulus and Remus may have imbibed
wolfish traits of character from the wet nurse the legend assigned them,
but the legend is not sound history, and the supposition is nothing more
than a speculative fancy. Still, there is a limbo of curious evidence
bearing on the subject of pre-natal influences sufficient to form the
starting-point of an imaginative composition.

The real aim, of the story was to test the doctrine of "original sin" and
human responsibility for the disordered volition coming under that
technical denomination. Was Elsie Venner, poisoned by the venom of a
crotalus before she was born, morally responsible for the "volitional"
aberrations, which translated into acts become what is known as sin, and,
it may be, what is punished as crime? If, on presentation of the
evidence, she becomes by the verdict of the human conscience a proper
object of divine pity and not of divine wrath, as a subject of moral
poisoning, wherein lies the difference between her position at the bar of
judgment, human or divine, and that of the unfortunate victim who
received a moral poison from a remote ancestor before he drew his first
breath?

It might be supposed that the character of Elsie Veneer was suggested by
some of the fabulous personages of classical or mediaeval story. I
remember that a French critic spoke of her as cette pauvre Melusine. I
ought to have been ashamed, perhaps, but I had, not the slightest idea
who Melusina was until I hunted up the story, and found that she was a
fairy, who for some offence was changed every Saturday to a serpent from
her waist downward. I was of course familiar with Keats's Lamia, another
imaginary being, the subject of magical transformation into a serpent.
My story was well advanced before Hawthorne's wonderful "Marble Faun,"
which might be thought to have furnished me with the hint of a mixed
nature,--human, with an alien element,--was published or known to me. So
that my poor heroine found her origin, not in fable or romance, but in a
physiological conception fertilized by a theological dogma.

I had the dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant
effort to dramatize "Elsie Veneer." Unfortunately, a physiological
romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic
efforts of stage representation. I can therefore say, with perfect
truth, that I was not disappointed. It is to the mind, and not to the
senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the
character and events objective on the stage, or to make them real by
artistic illustrations, are almost of necessity failures. The story has
won the attention and enjoyed the favor of a limited class of readers,
and if it still continues to interest others of the same tastes and
habits of thought I can ask nothing more of it.

January 23, 1883.




PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION.

I have nothing of importance to add to the two preceding Prefaces. The
continued call for this story, which was not written for popularity, but
with a very serious purpose, has somewhat surprised and, I need not add,
gratified me. I can only restate the motive idea of the tale in a little
different language. Believing, as I do, that our prevailing theologies
are founded upon an utterly false view of the relation of man to his
Creator, I attempted to illustrate the doctrine of inherited moral
responsibility for other people's misbehavior. I tried to make out a
case for my poor Elsie, whom the most hardened theologian would find it
hard to blame for her inherited ophidian tastes and tendencies. How,
then, is he to blame mankind for inheriting "sinfulness" from their first
parents? May not the serpent have bitten Eve before the birth of Cain,
her first-born? That would have made an excuse for Cain's children, as
Elsie's ante-natal misfortune made an excuse for her. But what
difference does it make in the child's responsibility whether his
inherited tendencies come from a snake-bite or some other source which he
knew nothing about and could not have prevented from acting? All this is
plain enough, and the only use of the story is to bring the dogma of
inherited guilt and its consequences into a clearer point of view.

But, after all, the tale must have proved readable as a story to account
for the large number of editions which it has reached.

Some readers have been curious about the locality the writer was thought
to have in view. No particular place was intended. Some of the
characters may have been thought to have been drawn from life; but the
personages mentioned are mostly composites, like Mr. Galton's compound
photographic likenesses, and are not calculated to provoke scandal or
suits for libel.

O. W. H.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 3, 1891.




ELSIE VENNER.




CHAPTER I.

THE BRAHMIN CASTE OF NEW ENGLAND.

There is nothing in New England corresponding at all to the feudal
aristocracies of the Old World. Whether it be owing to the stock from
which we were derived, or to the practical working of our institutions,
or to the abrogation of the technical "law of honor," which draws a sharp
line between the personally responsible class of "gentlemen" and the
unnamed multitude of those who are not expected to risk their lives for
an abstraction,--whatever be the cause, we have no such aristocracy here
as that which grew up out of the military systems of the Middle Ages.

What we mean by "aristocracy" is merely the richer part of the community,
that live in the tallest houses, drive real carriages, (not "kerridges,")
kidglove their hands, and French-bonnet their ladies' heads, give parties
where the persons who call them by the above title are not invited, and
have a provokingly easy way of dressing, walking, talking, and nodding to
people, as if they felt entirely at home, and would not be embarrassed in
the least, if they met the Governor, or even the President of the United
States, face to face. Some of these great folks are really well-bred,
some of them are only purse-proud and assuming,--but they form a class,
and are named as above in the common speech.

It is in the nature of large fortunes to diminish rapidly, when
subdivided and distributed. A million is the unit of wealth, now and
here in America. It splits into four handsome properties; each of these
into four good inheritances; these, again, into scanty competences for
four ancient maidens,--with whom it is best the family should die out,
unless it can begin again as its great-grandfather did. Now a million is
a kind of golden cheese, which represents in a compendious form the
summer's growth of a fat meadow of craft or commerce; and as this kind of
meadow rarely bears more than one crop, it is pretty certain that sons
and grandsons will not get another golden cheese out of it, whether they
milk the same cows or turn in new ones. In other words, the
millionocracy, considered in a large way, is not at all an affair of
persons and families, but a perpetual fact of money with a variable human
element, which a philosopher might leave out of consideration without
falling into serious error. Of course, this trivial and, fugitive fact
of personal wealth does not create a permanent class, unless some special
means are taken to arrest the process of disintegration in the third
generation. This is so rarely done, at least successfully, that one need
not live a very long life to see most of the rich families he knew in
childhood more or less reduced, and the millions shifted into the hands
of the country-boys who were sweeping stores and carrying parcels when
the now decayed gentry were driving their chariots, eating their venison
over silver chafing-dishes, drinking Madeira chilled in embossed coolers,
wearing their hair in powder, and casing their legs in long boots with
silken tassels.

There is, however, in New England, an aristocracy, if you choose to call
it so, which has a far greater character of permanence. It has grown to
be a caste,--not in any odious sense;--but, by the repetition of the same
influences, generation after generation, it has acquired a distinct
organization and physiognomy, which not to recognize is mere stupidity,
and not to be willing to describe would show a distrust of the
good-nature and intelligence of our readers, who like to have us see all
we can and tell all we see.

If you will look carefully at any class of students in one of our
colleges, you will have no difficulty in selecting specimens of two
different aspects of youthful manhood. Of course I shall choose extreme
cases to illustrate the contrast between them. In the first, the figure
is perhaps robust, but often otherwise,--inelegant, partly from careless
attitudes, partly from ill-dressing,--the face is uncouth in feature, or
at least common,--the mouth coarse and unformed,--the eye unsympathetic,
even if bright,--the movements of the face are clumsy, like those of the
limbs,--the voice is unmusical,--and the enunciation as if the words were
coarse castings, instead of fine carvings. The youth of the other aspect
is commonly slender, his face is smooth, and apt to be pallid,--his
features are regular and of a certain delicacy,--his eye is bright and
quick,--his lips play over the thought he utters as a pianist's fingers
dance over their music, and his whole air, though it may be timid, and
even awkward, has nothing clownish. If you are a teacher, you know what
to expect from each of these young men. With equal willingness, the
first will be slow at learning; the second will take to his books as a
pointer or a setter to his field-work.

The first youth is the common country-boy, whose race has been bred to
bodily labor. Nature has adapted the family organization to the kind of
life it has lived. The hands and feet by constant use have got more than
their share of development,--the organs of thought and expression less
than their share. The finer instincts are latent and must be developed.
A youth of this kind is raw material in its first stage of elaboration.
You must not expect too much of any such. Many of them have force of will
and character, and become distinguished in practical life; but very few
of them ever become great scholars. A scholar is, in a large proportion
of cases, the son of scholars or scholarly persons.

That is exactly what the other young man is. He comes of the Brahmin
caste of New England. This is the harmless, inoffensive, untitled
aristocracy referred to, and which many readers will at once acknowledge.
There are races of scholars among us, in which aptitude for learning, and
all these marks of it I have spoken of, are congenital and hereditary.
Their names are always on some college catalogue or other. They break
out every generation or two in some learned labor which calls them up
after they seem to have died out. At last some newer name takes their
place, it maybe,--but you inquire a little and you find it is the blood
of the Edwardses or the Chauncys or the Ellerys or some of the old
historic scholars, disguised under the altered name of a female
descendant.

There probably is not an experienced instructor anywhere in our Northern
States who will not recognize at once the truth of this general
distinction. But the reader who has never been a teacher will very
probably object, that some of our most illustrious public men have come
direct from the homespun-clad class of the people,--and he may, perhaps,
even find a noted scholar or two whose parents were masters of the
English alphabet, but of no other.

It is not fair to pit a few chosen families against the great multitude
of those who are continually working their way up into the intellectual
classes. The results which are habitually reached by hereditary training
are occasionally brought about without it. There are natural filters as
well as artificial ones; and though the great rivers are commonly more or
less turbid, if you will look long enough, you may find a spring that
sparkles as no water does which drips through your apparatus of sands and
sponges. So there are families which refine themselves into intellectual
aptitude without having had much opportunity for intellectual
acquirements. A series of felicitous crosses develops an improved strain
of blood, and reaches its maximum perfection at last in the large
uncombed youth who goes to college and startles the hereditary
class-leaders by striding past them all. That is Nature's republicanism;
thank God for it, but do not let it make you illogical. The race of the
hereditary scholar has exchanged a certain portion of its animal vigor
for its new instincts, and it is hard to lead men without a good deal of
animal vigor. The scholar who comes by Nature's special grace from an
unworn stock of broad-chested sires and deep-bosomed mothers must always
overmatch an equal intelligence with a compromised and lowered vitality.
A man's breathing and digestive apparatus (one is tempted to add
muscular) are just as important to him on the floor of the Senate as his
thinking organs. You broke down in your great speech, did you? Yes,
your grandfather had an attack of dyspepsia in '82, after working too
hard on his famous Election Sermon. All this does not touch the main
fact: our scholars come chiefly from a privileged order, just as our best
fruits come from well-known grafts, though now and then a seedling apple,
like the Northern Spy, or a seedling pear, like the Seckel, springs from
a nameless ancestry and grows to be the pride of all the gardens in the
land.

Let me introduce you to a young man who belongs to the Brahmin caste of
New England.




CHAPTER II.

THE STUDENT AND HIS CERTIFICATE.

Bernard C. Langdon, a young man attending Medical Lectures at the school
connected with one of our principal colleges, remained after the Lecture
one day and wished to speak with the Professor. He was a student of
mark,--first favorite of his year, as they say of the Derby colts. There
are in every class half a dozen bright faces to which the teacher
naturally, directs his discourse, and by the intermediation of whose
attention he seems to hold that of the mass of listeners. Among these
some one is pretty sure to take the lead, by virtue of a personal
magnetism, or some peculiarity of expression, which places the face in
quick sympathetic relations with the lecturer. This was a young man with
such a face; and I found,--for you have guessed that I was the
"Professor" above-mentioned,--that, when there was anything difficult to
be explained, or when I was bringing out some favorite illustration of a
nice point, (as, for instance; when I compared the cell-growth, by which
Nature builds up a plant or an animal, to the glassblower's similar mode
of beginning,--always with a hollow sphere, or vesicle, whatever he is
going to make,) I naturally looked in his face and gauged my success by
its expression.

It was a handsome face,--a little too pale, perhaps, and would have borne
something more of fulness without becoming heavy. I put the organization
to which it belongs in Section B of Class 1 of my Anglo-American
Anthropology (unpublished). The jaw in this section is but slightly
narrowed,--just enough to make the width of the forehead tell more
decidedly. The moustache often grows vigorously, but the whiskers are
thin. The skin is like that of Jacob, rather than like Esau's. One
string of the animal nature has been taken away, but this gives only a
greater predominance to the intellectual chords. To see just how the
vital energy has been toned down, you must contrast one of this section
with a specimen of Section A of the same class,--say, for instance, one
of the old-fashioned, full-whiskered, red-faced, roaring, big Commodores
of the last generation, whom you remember, at least by their portraits,
in ruffled shirts, looking as hearty as butchers and as plucky as
bull-terriers, with their hair combed straight up from their foreheads,
which were not commonly very high or broad. The special form of physical
life I have been describing gives you a right to expect more delicate
perceptions and a more reflective, nature than you commonly find in
shaggy-throated men, clad in heavy suits of muscles.

The student lingered in the lecture-room, looking all the time as if he
wanted to say something in private, and waiting for two or three others,
who were still hanging about, to be gone.

Something is wrong!--I said to myself, when I noticed his
expression.--Well, Mr. Langdon,--I said to him, when we were alone,--can
I do anything for you to-day?

You can, Sir,--he said.--I am going to leave the class, for the present,
and keep school.

Why, that 's a pity, and you so near graduating! You'd better stay and
finish this course and take your degree in the spring, rather than break
up your whole plan of study.

I can't help myself, Sir,--the young man answered.--There 's trouble at
home, and they cannot keep me here as they have done. So I must look out
for myself for a while. It's what I've done before, and am ready to do
again. I came to ask you for a certificate of my fitness to teach a
common school, or a high school, if you think I am up to that. Are you
willing to give it to me?

Willing? Yes, to be sure,--but I don't want you to go. Stay; we'll make
it easy for you. There's a fund will do something for you, perhaps.
Then you can take both the annual prizes, if you like,--and claim them in
money, if you want that more than medals.

I have thought it all over,--he answered,--and have pretty much made up
my mind to go.

A perfectly gentlemanly young man, of courteous address and mild
utterance, but means at least as much as he says. There are some people
whose rhetoric consists of a slight habitual under-statement. I often
tell Mrs. Professor that one of her "I think it's sos" is worth the
Bible-oath of all the rest of the household that they "know it's so."
When you find a person a little better than his word, a little more
liberal than his promise, a little more than borne out in his statement
by his facts, a little larger in deed than in speech, you recognize a
kind of eloquence in that person's utterance not laid down in Blair or
Campbell.

This was a proud fellow, self-trusting, sensitive, with
family-recollections that made him unwilling to accept the kind of aid
which many students would have thankfully welcomed. I knew him too well
to urge him, after the few words which implied that he was determined to
go. Besides, I have great confidence in young men who believe in
themselves, and are accustomed to rely on their own resources from an
early period. When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully,
the World, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to
find it come off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away
timid adventurers. I have seen young men more than once, who came to a
great city without a single friend, support themselves and pay for their
education, lay up money in a few years, grow rich enough to travel, and
establish themselves in life, without ever asking a dollar of any person
which they had not earned. But these are exceptional cases. There are
horse-tamers, born so,--as we all know; there are woman-tamers, who
bewitch the sex as the pied piper bedeviled the children of Hamelin; and
there are world-tamers, who can make any community, even a Yankee one,
get down and let them jump on its back as easily as Mr. Rarey saddled
Cruiser.

Whether Langdon was of this sort or not I could not say positively; but
he had spirit, and, as I have said, a family-pride which would not let
him be dependent. The New England Brahmin caste often gets blended with
connections of political influence or commercial distinction. It is a
charming thing for the scholar, when his fortune carries him in this way
into some of the "old families" who have fine old houses, and city-lots
that have risen in the market, and names written in all the stock-books
of all the dividend-paying companies. His narrow study expands into a
stately library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hundreds,
and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian
sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of cloth and paper.

The Reverend Jedediah Langdon, grandfather of our young gentleman, had
made an advantageous alliance of this kind. Miss Dorothea Wentworth had
read one of his sermons which had been printed "by request," and became
deeply interested in the young author, whom she had never seen. Out of
this circumstance grew a correspondence, an interview, a declaration, a
matrimonial alliance, and a family of half a dozen children. Wentworth
Langdon, Esquire, was the oldest of these, and lived in the old
family-mansion. Unfortunately, that principle of the diminution of
estates by division, to which I have referred, rendered it somewhat
difficult to maintain the establishment upon the fractional income which
the proprietor received from his share of the property. Wentworth
Langdon, Esq., represented a certain intermediate condition of life not
at all infrequent in our old families. He was the connecting link
between the generation which lived in ease, and even a kind of state,
upon its own resources, and the new brood, which must live mainly by its
wits or industry, and make itself rich, or shabbily subside into that
lower stratum known to social geologists by a deposit of Kidderminster
carpets and the peculiar aspect of the fossils constituting the family
furniture and wardrobe. This slack-water period of a race, which comes
before the rapid ebb of its prosperity, is familiar to all who live in
cities. There are no more quiet, inoffensive people than these children
of rich families, just above the necessity of active employment, yet not
in a condition to place their own children advantageously, if they happen
to have families. Many of them are content to live unmarried. Some mend
their broken fortunes by prudent alliances, and some leave a numerous
progeny to pass into the obscurity from which their ancestors emerged; so
that you may see on handcarts and cobblers' stalls names which, a few
generations back, were upon parchments with broad seals, and tombstones
with armorial bearings.

In a large city, this class of citizens is familiar to us in the streets.
They are very courteous in their salutations; they have time enough to
bow and take their hats off,--which, of course, no businessman can afford
to do. Their beavers are smoothly brushed, and their boots well
polished; all their appointments are tidy; they look the respectable
walking gentleman to perfection. They are prone to habits,--they
frequent reading-rooms,--insurance-offices,--they walk the same streets
at the same hours,--so that one becomes familiar with their faces and
persons, as a part of the street-furniture.