Over the Teacups

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. >> Over the Teacups


No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and its different
members will soon be to you as if they had never been. But do you think
that I can forget them? Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow the
love (or the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular or
the plural?) of Number Five and the young Tutor who is so constantly
found in her company? Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations
with the "Cracked Teacup,"--the poor old fellow with whom I have so much
in common, whose counterpart, perhaps, you may find in your own complex
personality?

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library--the
section devoted to literary cripples, imbeciles, failures, foolish
rhymesters, and silly eccentrics--one of the least conspicuous and most
hopelessly feeble of the weak-minded population of that intellectual
almshouse. I open it and look through its pages. It is a story. I have
looked into it once before,--on its first reception as a gift from the
author. I try to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing
to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes them all, and cries over
them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book back
among its dusty companions, and, sitting down in my reflective
rocking-chair, think how others must forget, and how I shall remember,
the company that gathered about this table.

Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other?
Will the cracked Teacup hold together, or will he go to pieces, and find
himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which drove
him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young
Doctor's crown yet received the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom
and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and her young
friend the Tutor,--have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did
they get through the tutto tremante passage, reading from the same old
large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the best, and in
reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near
to each other?

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state
of affairs, bring these two young people together. I say two young
people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the
younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any
tenderer feeling than that of friendship would intrude itself between
them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was
drifting. It was his first experience in matters concerning the heart,
and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course. Did he tell her he
loved her? Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage
to say so outright. But sometimes they looked each other straight in the
eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one consciousness to the
other. Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does,
will she yield to the dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that
fortress so long thought impregnable? Will he go on writing such poems
to her as "The Rose and the Fern" or "I Like You and I Love You," and be
content with the pursuit of that which he never can attain? That is all
very well, on the "Grecian Urn" of Keats,--beautiful, but not love such
as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet
seen.

"Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal,--yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

.........................

"More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm, and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting and forever young!"

And so, good-bye, young people, whom we part with here. Shadows you have
been and are to my readers; very real you have been and are to me,--as
real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.

As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need
not think that I shall spread another board and invite him to listen to
the conversations which take place around it. If, from time to time, he
finds a slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may
welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted what I have offered him from
the board now just being cleared.

..........................

It is a good rule for the actor who manages the popular street drama of
Punch not to let the audience or spectators see his legs. It is very
hard for the writer of papers like these, which are now coming to their
conclusion, to keep his personality from showing itself too conspicuously
through the thin disguises of his various characters. As the show is now
over, as the curtain has fallen, I appear before it in my proper person,
to address a few words to the friends who have assisted, as the French
say, by their presence, and as we use the word, by the kind way in which
they have received my attempts at their entertainment.

This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to
my readers. I may be allowed to look back upon the succession of serial
articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. "The
Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" was the first of the series. It was
begun without the least idea what was to be its course and its outcome.
Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript grew under
my hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the
thoughts and fancies which came into my head. A very odd-looking object
was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal
shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun
for consideration, and made use of it or let it alone as my second
thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever
told in print,--I am not sure whether I have or not,--I will tell over
again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I rejected as not very
edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.

Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but
occasionally obstinate sex? The answer was that a woman is (sometimes)
more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor pun
very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the
blotter, where it was standing when one of the next numbers of "Punch"
came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit upon
by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on
this side of the Atlantic. This fact may be added to the chapter of
coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.

The "Autocrat" had the attraction of novelty, which of course was wanting
in the succeeding papers of similar character. The criticisms upon the
successive numbers as they came out were various, but generally
encouraging. Some were more than encouraging; very high-colored in their
phrases of commendation. When the papers were brought together in a
volume their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the present time
the "Autocrat" has maintained its position. An immortality of a whole
generation is more than most writers are entitled to expect. I venture
to think, from the letters I receive from the children and grandchildren
of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least,
it will continue to be read, and even to be a favorite with some of its
readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his
poor little planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it
through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be called to wander in his
future pilgrimages. I say "poor little planet." Ever since I had a ten
cent look at the transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the telescope
in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me from what it used
to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in the universe, but nothing
ever brought the fact home like the sight of the sister planet sailing
across the sun's disk, about large enough for a buckshot, not large
enough for a full-sized bullet. Yes, I love the little globule where I
have spent more than fourscore years, and I like to think that some of my
thoughts and some of my emotions may live themselves over again when I am
sleeping. I cannot thank all the kind readers of the "Autocrat" who are
constantly sending me their acknowledgments. If they see this printed
page, let them be assured that a writer is always rendered happier by
being told that he has made a fellow-being wiser or better, or even
contributed to his harmless entertainment. This a correspondent may take
for granted, even if his letter of grateful recognition receives no
reply. It becomes more and more difficult for me to keep up with my
correspondents, and I must soon give it up as impossible.

"The Professor at the Breakfast Table" followed immediately on the heels
of the "Autocrat." The Professor was the alter ego of the first
personage. In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in
this second series no great effort was made to create a character wholly
unlike the first. The Professor was more outspoken, however, on
religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on
himself and the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he may
have used some irritating expressions, unconsciously, but not
unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than
the sting of an epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned
me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted cargo of the drugs
which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the
bottom of the sea, it would be "all the better for mankind and all the
worse for the fishes." If I had not put that snapper on the end of my
whip-lash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my
antithesis provoked. Thirty years set that all right, and the same
thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such abusive
words as "heretic" and "infidel," applied to persons who differ from the
old standards of faith, are chiefly interesting as a test of breeding,
being seldom used by any people above the social half-caste line. I am
speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics I do not
know, but I suspect that with them also it is a good deal a matter of
breeding. There were not wanting some who liked the Professor better
than the Autocrat. I confess that I prefer my champagne in its first
burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest likes it better after it has
stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him. The first of my series
came from my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork; it
startled me a little to see what I had written, and to hear what people
said about it. After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I
looked upon the product of my wine-press more coolly. Continuations
almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my own second effort,
but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to
dispute them.

"The Poet at the Breakfast Table" came some years later. This series of
papers was not so much a continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly
hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant expectations, and was
received as well as I had any right to anticipate. It differed from the
other two series in containing a poem of considerable length, published
in successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of self-communing,
and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not
to be found elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the whole
volume, not long since, in preparation for a new edition, and was rather
more pleased with it than I had expected to be. An old author is
constantly rediscovering himself in the more or less fossilized productions
of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have read the
"Autocrat," but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few
minutes, not always without some degree of edification.

These three series of papers, "Autocrat," "Professor," "Poet," are all
studies of life from somewhat different points of view. They are largely
made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively
human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could
be more natural than that love should find its way among the young people
who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table? Nothing is
older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than that same old
story. A bit of gilding here and there has a wonderful effect in
enlivening a landscape or an apartment. Napoleon consoled the Parisians
in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides. Boston has
glorified her State House and herself at the expense of a few sheets of
gold leaf laid on the dome, which shines like a sun in the eyes of her
citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching traveller. I think
the gilding of a love-story helped all three of these earlier papers. The
same need I felt in the series of papers just closed. The slight
incident of Delilah's appearance and disappearance served my purpose to
some extent. But what should I do with Number Five? The reader must
follow out her career for himself. For myself, I think that she and the
Tutor have both utterly forgotten the difference of their years in the
fascination of intimate intercourse. I do not believe that a nature so
large, so rich in affection, as Number Five's is going to fall defeated
of its best inheritance of life, like a vine which finds no support for
its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along the ground from which
nature meant that love should lift it. I feel as if I ought to follow
these two personages of my sermonizing story until they come together or
separate, to fade, to wither,--perhaps to die, at last, of something like
what the doctors call heart-failure, but which might more truly be called
heart-starvation. When I say die, I do not mean necessarily the death
that goes into the obituary column. It may come to that, in one or both;
but I think that, if they are never united, Number Five will outlive the
Tutor, who will fall into melancholy ways, and pine and waste, while she
lives along, feeling all the time that she has cheated herself of
happiness. I hope that is not going to be their fortune, or misfortune.
Vieille fille fait jeune mariee. What a youthful bride Number Five would
be, if she could only make up her mind to matrimony! In the mean time
she must be left with her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the
winds to them, for they have been shorn very close, every one of them, of
their golden fleece of aspirations and anticipations.

I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words to my distant
friends who take interest enough in my writings, early or recent, to wish
to enter into communication with me by letter, or to keep up a
communication already begun. I have given notice in print that the
letters, books, and manuscripts which I receive by mail are so numerous
that if I undertook to read and answer them all I should have little time
for anything else. I have for some years depended on the assistance of a
secretary, but our joint efforts have proved unable, of late, to keep
down the accumulations which come in with every mail. So many of the
letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it is hard to let them
go unacknowledged. The extreme friendliness which pervades many of them
gives them a value which I rate very highly. When large numbers of
strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on the strength of what he
has written, it tends to make him think of himself somewhat indulgently.
It is the most natural thing in the world to want to give expression to
the feeling the loving messages from far-off unknown friends must excite.
Many a day has had its best working hours broken into, spoiled for all
literary work, by the labor of answering correspondents whose good
opinion it is gratifying to have called forth, but who were unconsciously
laying a new burden on shoulders already aching. I know too well that
what I say will not reach the eyes of many who might possibly take a hint
from it. Still I must keep repeating it before breaking off suddenly and
leaving whole piles of letters unanswered. I have been very heavily
handicapped for many years. It is partly my own fault. From what my
correspondents tell me, I must infer that I have established a dangerous
reputation for willingness to answer all sorts of letters. They come
with such insinuating humility,--they cannot bear to intrude upon my
time, they know that I have a great many calls upon it,--and
incontinently proceed to lay their additional weight on the load which is
breaking my back.

The hypocrisy of kind-hearted people is one of the most painful
exhibitions of human weakness. It has occurred to me that it might be
profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents.
If those which were actually written and sent were to be printed in
parallel columns with those mentally formed but not written out responses
and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal conflicts an
honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he finds himself
driven to the wall by a correspondence which is draining his vocabulary
to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify as little, as
the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official communication.

No. 1. Want my autograph, do you? And don't know how to spell my name.
An a for an e in my middle name. Leave out the l in my last name. Do
you know how people hate to have their names misspelled? What do you
suppose are the sentiments entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards
those who address them in writing as Thomson?

No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the best I ever wrote,
hey? Well, I didn't write those lines. What is more, I think they are
as detestable a string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had
written. A very pleasant frame of mind I am in for writing a letter,
after reading yours!

No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom I never saw and never
expect to see, has cut another tooth; but why write four pages on the
strength of that domestic occurrence?

No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broomstick poem, do you? You
give me to understand that Wilmington is not in Essex County, but in
Middlesex. Very well; but are they separated by running water? Because
if they are not, what could hinder a witch from crossing the line that
separates Wilmington from Andover, I should like to know? I never meant
to imply that the witches made no excursions beyond the district which
was more especially their seat of operations.

As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish, of
course, that I could have performed it more to my own satisfaction and
that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have
at the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple
reason for this disappointment is that most of us overrate our capacity.
We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our
endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no
more be taken literally than the golden crowns, which we do not expect or
want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which we do not want or
expect to hold in our hands. Is it not too true that many religious
sectaries think of the last tribunal complacently, as the scene in which
they are to have the satisfaction of saying to the believers of a creed
different from their own, "I told you so"? Are not others oppressed with
the thought of the great returns which will be expected of them as the
product of their great gifts, the very limited amount of which they do
not suspect, and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of their
self-love, when they are called to their account? If the ways of the
Supreme Being are ever really to be "justified to men," to use Milton's
expression, every human being may expect an exhaustive explanation of
himself. No man is capable of being his own counsel, and I cannot help
hoping that the ablest of the archangels will be retained for the
defence of the worst of sinners. He himself is unconscious of the
agencies which made him what he is. Self-determining he may be, if you
will, but who determines the self which is the proximate source of the
determination? Why was the A self like his good uncle in bodily aspect
and mental and moral qualities, and the B self like the bad uncle in look
and character? Has not a man a right to ask this question in the here or
in the hereafter,--in this world or in any world in which he may find
himself? If the All-wise wishes to satisfy his reasonable and reasoning
creatures, it will not be by a display of elemental convulsions, but by
the still small voice, which treats with him as a dependent entitled to
know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong in his
adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him
to have full allowance made for it. No melodramatic display of warring
elements, such as the white-robed Second Adventist imagines, can meet the
need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified
and impressed the more timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious
caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler
manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face
to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."

I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more and more troublesome as
I grow older. There are times when it seems natural enough to employ
that form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and the use of it
as the vehicle of the commonplace is so prevalent that one is not much
tempted to select it as the medium for his thoughts and emotions. The
art of rhyming has almost become a part of a high-school education, and
its practice is far from being an evidence of intellectual distinction.
Mediocrity is as much forbidden to the poet in our days as it was in
those of Horace, and the immense majority of the verses written are
stamped with hopeless mediocrity.

When one of the ancient poets found he was trying to grind out verses
which came unwillingly, he said he was writing--

INVITA MINERVA.

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers,
--She will not hear thy call;
She steals upon thee unawares,
Or seeks thee not at all.

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought
Endymion's fragrant bower,
She parts the whispering leaves of thought
To show her full-blown flower.

For thee her wooing hour has passed,
The singing birds have flown,
And winter comes with icy blast
To chill thy buds unblown.

Yet, though the woods no longer thrill
As once their arches rung,
Sweet echoes hover round thee still
Of songs thy summer sung.

Live in thy past; await no more
The rush of heaven-sent wings;
Earth still has music left in store
While Memory sighs and sings.

I hope my special Minerva may not always be unwilling, but she must not
be called upon as she has been in times past. Now that the teacups have
left the table, an occasional evening call is all that my readers must
look for. Thanking them for their kind companionship, and hoping that I
may yet meet them in the now and then in the future, I bid them goodbye
for the immediate present, then in the future, I bid them goodbye for the
immediate present.