The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

O >> Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist) >> The Complete PG Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.


As for the kind of monument such as I see from my library window
standing on the summit of Bunker Hill, and have recently seen for the
first time at Washington, on a larger scale, I own that I think a
built-up obelisk a poor affair as compared with an Egyptian monolith of
the same form. It was a triumph of skill to quarry, to shape, to
transport, to cover with expressive symbols, to erect, such a stone as
that which has been transferred to the Thames Embankment, or that which
now stands in Central Park, New York. Each of its four sides is a page
of history, written so as to endure through scores of centuries. A
built-up obelisk requires very little more than brute labor. A child can
shape its model from a carrot or a parsnip, and set it up in miniature
with blocks of loaf sugar. It teaches nothing, and the stranger must go
to his guide-book to know what it is there for. I was led into many
reflections by a sight of the Washington Monument. I found that it was
almost the same thing at a mile's distance as the Bunker Hill Monument
at half a mile's distance; and unless the eye had some means of
measuring the space between itself and the stone shaft, one was about as
good as the other. A mound like that of Marathon or that at Waterloo, a
cairn, even a shaft of the most durable form and material, are fit
memorials of the place where a great battle was fought. They seem less
appropriate as monuments to individuals. I doubt the durability of these
piecemeal obelisks, and when I think of that vast inverted pendulum
vibrating in an earthquake, I am glad that I do not live in its shadow.
The Washington Monument is more than a hundred feet higher than
Salisbury steeple, but it does not look to me so high as that, because
the mind has nothing to climb by. But the forming taste of the country
revels in superlatives, and if we could only have the deepest artesian
well in the world sunk by the side of the tallest column in all
creation, the admiring, not overcritical patriot would be happier than
ever was the Athenian when he looked up at the newly erected Parthenon.

I made a few miscellaneous observations which may be worth recording.
One of these was the fact of the repetition of the types of men and
women with which I was familiar at home. Every now and then I met a new
acquaintance whom I felt that I had seen before. Presently I identified
him with his double on the other side. I had found long ago that even
among Frenchmen I often fell in with persons whose counterparts I had
known in America. I began to feel as if Nature turned out a batch of
human beings for every locality of any importance, very much as a
workman makes a set of chessmen. If I had lived a little longer in
London, I am confident that I should have met myself, as I did actually
meet so many others who were duplicates of those long known to me.

I met Mr. Galton for a few moments, but I had no long conversation with
him. If he should ask me to say how many faces I can visually recall, I
should have to own that there are very few such. The two pictures which
I have already referred to, those of Erasmus and of Dr. Johnson, come up
more distinctly before my mind's eye than almost any faces of the
living. My mental retina has, I fear, lost much of its sensitiveness.
Long and repeated exposure of an object of any kind, in a strong light,
is necessary to fix its image.

* * * * *

Among the gratifications that awaited me in England and Scotland was
that of meeting many before unseen friends with whom I had been in
correspondence. I have spoken of Mr. John Bellows. I should have been
glad to meet Mr. William Smith, the Yorkshire antiquary, who has sent me
many of his antiquarian and biographical writings and publications. I do
not think I saw Mr. David Gilmour, of Paisley, whose "Paisley Folk" and
other writings have given me great pleasure. But I did have the
satisfaction of meeting Professor Gairdner, of Glasgow, to whose
writings my attention was first called by my revered instructor, the
late Dr. James Jackson, and with whom I had occasionally corresponded. I
ought to have met Dr. Martineau. I should have visited the Reverend
Stopford Brooke, who could have told me much that I should have liked to
hear of dear friends of mine, of whom he saw a great deal in their hours
of trial. The Reverend Mr. Voysey, whose fearless rationalism can hardly
give him popularity among the conservative people I saw most of, paid me
the compliment of calling, as he had often done of sending me his
published papers. Now and then some less known correspondent would
reveal himself or herself in bodily presence. Let most authors beware of
showing themselves to those who have idealized them, and let readers not
be too anxious to see in the flesh those whom they have idealized. When
I was a boy, I read Miss Edgeworth's "L'Amie Inconnue." I have learned
to appreciate its meaning in later years by abundant experiences, and I
have often felt unwilling to substitute my real for my imaginary
presence. I will add here that I must have met a considerable number of
persons, in the crowd at our reception and elsewhere, whose names I
failed to hear, and whom I consequently did not recognize as the authors
of books I had read, or of letters I had received. The story of my
experience with the lark accounts for a good deal of what seemed like
negligence or forgetfulness, and which must be, not pardoned, but sighed
over.

I visited several of the well-known clubs, either by special invitation,
or accompanied by a member. The Athenaeum was particularly attentive,
but I was unable to avail myself of the privileges it laid freely open
before me during my stay in London. Other clubs I looked in upon were:
the Reform Club, where I had the pleasure of dining at a large party
given by the very distinguished Dr. Morell Mackenzie; the Rabelais, of
which, as I before related, I have been long a member, and which was one
of the first places where I dined; the Saville; the Savage; the St.
George's. I saw next to nothing of the proper club-life of London, but
it seemed to me that the Athenaeum must be a very desirable place of
resort to the educated Londoner, and no doubt each of the many
institutions of this kind with which London abounds has its special
attractions.

My obligations to my brethren of the medical profession are too numerous
to be mentioned in detail. Almost the first visit I paid was one to my
old friend and fellow-student in Paris, Dr. Walter Hayle Walshe. After
more than half a century's separation, two young friends, now old
friends, must not expect to find each other just the same as when they
parted. Dr. Walshe thought he should have known me; my eyes are not so
good as his, and I would not answer for them and for my memory. That he
should have dedicated his recent original and ingenious work to me,
before I had thought of visiting England, was a most gratifying
circumstance. I have mentioned the hospitalities extended to me by
various distinguished members of the medical profession, but I have not
before referred to the readiness with which, on all occasions, when
professional advice was needed, it was always given with more than
willingness, rather as if it were a pleasure to give it. I could not
have accepted such favors as I received had I not remembered that I, in
my time, had given my services freely for the benefit of those of my own
calling. If I refer to two names among many, it is for special reasons.
Dr. Wilson Fox, the distinguished and widely known practitioner, who
showed us great kindness, has since died, and this passing tribute is
due to his memory. I have before spoken of the exceptional favor we owed
to Dr. and Mrs. Priestley. It enabled us to leave London feeling that we
had tried, at least, to show our grateful sense of all the attentions
bestowed upon us. If there were any whom we overlooked, among the guests
we wished to honor, all such accidental omissions will be pardoned, I
feel sure, by those who know how great and bewildering is the pressure
of social life in London.

I was, no doubt, often more or less confused, in my perceptions, by the
large number of persons whom I met in society. I found the
dinner-parties, as Mr. Lowell told me I should, very much like the same
entertainments among my home acquaintances. I have not the gift of
silence, and I am not a bad listener, yet I brought away next to nothing
from dinner-parties where I had said and heard enough to fill out a
magazine article. After I was introduced to a lady, the conversation
frequently began somewhat in this way:--

"It is a long time since you have been in this country, I believe?"

"It is a _very_ long time: fifty years and more."

"You find great changes in London, of course, I suppose?"

"Not so great as you might think. The Tower is where I left it. The
Abbey is much as I remember it. Northumberland House with its lion is
gone, but Charing Cross is in the same old place. My attention is drawn
especially to the things which have not changed,--those which I
remember."

That stream was quickly dried up. Conversation soon found other springs.
I never knew the talk to get heated or noisy. Religion and politics
rarely came up, and never in any controversial way. The bitterest
politician I met at table was a quadruped,--a lady's dog,--who refused a
desirable morsel offered him in the name of Mr. Gladstone, but snapped
up another instantly on being told that it came from Queen Victoria. I
recall many pleasant and some delightful talks at the dinner-table; one
in particular, with the most charming woman in England. I wonder if she
remembers how very lovely and agreeable she was? Possibly she may be
able to identify herself.

People--the right kind of people--meet at a dinner-party as two ships
meet and pass each other at sea. They exchange a few signals; ask each
other's reckoning, where from, where bound; perhaps one supplies the
other with a little food or a few dainties; then they part, to see each
other no more. But one or both may remember the hour passed together all
their days, just as I recollect our brief parley with the brig
Economist, of Leith, from Sierra Leone, in mid ocean, in the spring of
1833.

I am very far from despising the science of gastronomy, but if I wished
to institute a comparison between the tables of England and America, I
could not do it without eating my way through the four seasons. I will
say that I did not think the bread from the bakers' shops was so good as
our own. It was very generally tough and hard, and even the muffins were
not always so tender and delicate as they ought to be. I got impatient
one day, and sent out for some biscuits. They brought some very
excellent ones, which we much preferred to the tough bread. They proved
to be the so-called "seafoam" biscuit from New York. The potatoes never
came on the table looking like new fallen snow, as we have them at home.
We were surprised to find both mutton and beef overdone, according to
our American taste. The French talk about the Briton's "_bifteck
saignant_," but we never saw anything cooked so as to be, as we
should say, "rare." The tart is national with the English, as the pie is
national with us. I never saw on an English table that excellent
substitute for both, called the Washington pie, in memory of him whom we
honor as first in pies, as well as in war and in the hearts of his
countrymen.

The truth is that I gave very little thought to the things set before
me, in the excitement of constantly changing agreeable companionship. I
understand perfectly the feeling of the good liver in Punch, who
suggests to the lady next him that their host has one of the best cooks
in London, and that it might therefore be well to defer all conversation
until they adjourned to the drawing-room. I preferred the conversation,
and adjourned, indefinitely, the careful appreciation of the
_menu_. I think if I could devote a year to it, I might be able to
make out a graduated scale of articles of food, taking a well-boiled
fresh egg as the unit of gastronomic value, but I leave this scientific
task to some future observer.

The most remarkable piece of European handiwork I remember was the steel
chair at Longford Castle. The most startling and frightful work of man I
ever saw or expect to see was another specimen of work in steel, said to
have been taken from one of the infernal chambers of the Spanish
Inquisition. It was a complex mechanism, which grasped the body and the
head of the heretic or other victim, and by means of many ingeniously
arranged screws and levers was capable of pressing, stretching,
piercing, rending, crushing, all the most sensitive portions of the
human body, one at a time or many at once. The famous Virgin, whose
embrace drove a hundred knives into the body of the poor wretch she took
in her arms, was an angel of mercy compared to this masterpiece of
devilish enginery.

Ingenuity is much better shown in contrivances for making our daily life
more comfortable. I was on the lookout for everything that promised to
be a convenience. I carried out two things which seemed to be new to the
Londoners: the Star Razor, which I have praised so freely, and still
find equal to all my commendations; and the mucilage pencil, which is a
very handy implement to keep on the writer's desk or table. I found a
contrivance for protecting the hand in drawing corks, which all who are
their own butlers will appreciate, and luminous match-boxes which really
shine brightly in the dark, and that after a year's usage; whereas one
professing to shine by night, which I bought in Boston, is only visible
by borrowed light. I wanted a very fine-grained hone, and inquired for
it at a hardware store, where they kept everything in their line of the
best quality. I brought away a very pretty but very small stone, for
which I paid a large price. The stone was from Arkansas, and I need not
have bought in London what would have been easily obtained at a dozen or
more stores in Boston. It was a renewal of my experience with the
seafoam biscuit. "Know thyself" and the things about thee, and "Take the
good the gods provide thee," if thou wilt only keep thine eyes open, are
two safe precepts.

Who is there of English descent among us that does not feel with Cowper,

"England, with all thy faults, I love thee still"?

Our recently naturalized fellow-citizens, of a different blood and
different religion, must not suppose that we are going to forget our
inborn love for the mother to whom we owe our being. Protestant England
and Protestant America are coming nearer and nearer to each other every
year. The interchange of the two peoples is more and more frequent, and
there are many reasons why it is likely to continue increasing.

Hawthorne says in a letter to Longfellow, "Why don't you come over,
being now a man of leisure and with nothing to keep you in America? If I
were in your position, I think I should make my home on this side of the
water,--though always with an indefinite and never-to-be-executed
intention to go back and die in my native land. America is a good land
for young people, but not for those who are past their prime. ... A man
of individuality and refinement can certainly live far more comfortably
here--provided he has the means to live at all--than in New England. Be
it owned, however, that I sometimes feel a tug at my very heart-strings
when I think of my old home and friends." This was written from
Liverpool in 1854.

We must not forget that our fathers were exiles from their dearly loved
native land, driven by causes which no longer exist. "Freedom to worship
God" is found in England as fully as in America, in our day. In placing
the Atlantic between themselves and the Old World civilizations they
made an enormous sacrifice. It is true that the wonderful advance of our
people in all the arts and accomplishments which make life agreeable has
transformed the wilderness into a home where men and women can live
comfortably, elegantly, happily, if they are of contented disposition;
and without that they can be happy nowhere. What better provision can be
made for a mortal man than such as our own Boston can afford its wealthy
children? A palace on Commonwealth Avenue or on Beacon Street; a
country-place at Framingham or Lenox; a seaside residence at Nahant,
Beverly Farms, Newport, or Bar Harbor; a pew at Trinity or King's
Chapel; a tomb at Mount Auburn or Forest Hills; with the prospect of a
memorial stained window after his lamented demise,--is not this a pretty
programme to offer a candidate for human existence?

Give him all these advantages, and he will still be longing to cross the
water, to get back to that old home of his fathers, so delightful in
itself, so infinitely desirable on account of its nearness to Paris, to
Geneva, to Rome, to all that is most interesting in Europe. The less
wealthy, less cultivated, less fastidious class of Americans are not so
much haunted by these longings. But the convenience of living in the Old
World is so great, and it is such a trial and such a risk to keep
crossing the ocean, that it seems altogether likely that a considerable
current of re-migration will gradually develop itself among our people.

Some find the climate of the other side of the Atlantic suits them
better than their own. As the New England characteristics are gradually
superseded by those of other races, other forms of belief, and other
associations, the time may come when a New Englander will feel more as
if he were among his own people in London than in one of our seaboard
cities. The vast majority of our people love their country too well and
are too proud of it to be willing to expatriate themselves. But going
back to our old home, to find ourselves among the relatives from whom we
have been separated for a few generations, is not like transferring
ourselves to a land where another language is spoken, and where there
are no ties of blood and no common religious or political traditions. I,
for one, being myself as inveterately rooted an American of the
Bostonian variety as ever saw himself mirrored in the Frog Pond, hope
that the exchanges of emigrants and re-migrants will be much more evenly
balanced by and by than at present. I hope that more Englishmen like
James Smithson will help to build up our scientific and literary
institutions. I hope that more Americans like George Peabody will call
down the blessings of the English people by noble benefactions to the
cause of charity. It was with deep feelings of pride and gratitude that
I looked upon the bust of Longfellow, holding its place among the
monuments of England's greatest and best children. I see with equal
pleasure and pride that one of our own large-hearted countrymen has
honored the memory of three English poets, Milton, and Herbert, and
Cowper, by the gift of two beautiful stained windows, and with still
ampler munificence is erecting a stately fountain in the birthplace of
Shakespeare. Such acts as these make us feel more and more the truth of
the generous sentiment which closes the ode of Washington Allston,
"America to Great Britain:" We are one!

* * * * *

I have told our story with the help of my daughter's diary, and often
aided by her recollections. Having enjoyed so much, I am desirous that
my countrymen and countrywomen should share my good fortune with me. I
hesitated at first about printing names in full, but when I remembered
that we received nothing but the most overflowing hospitality and the
most considerate kindness from all we met, I felt sure that I could not
offend by telling my readers who the friends were that made England a
second home to us. If any one of them is disturbed by such reference as
I have made to him or to her, I most sincerely apologize for the liberty
I have taken. I am far more afraid that through sheer forgetfulness I
have left unmentioned many to whom I was and still remain under
obligations.

If I were asked what I think of people's travelling after the commonly
accepted natural term of life is completed, I should say that everything
depends on constitution and habit. The old soldier says, in speaking of
crossing the Beresina, where the men had to work in the freezing stream
constructing the bridges, "Faut du temperament pour cela!" I often
thought of this expression, in the damp and chilly weather which not
rarely makes English people wish they were in Italy. I escaped unharmed
from the windy gusts at Epsom and the nipping chill of the Kensington
garden-party; but if a score of my contemporaries had been there with
me, there would not improbably have been a funeral or two within a week.
If, however, the super-septuagenarian is used to exposures, if he is an
old sportsman or an old officer not retired from active service, he may
expect to elude the pneumonia which follows his footsteps whenever he
wanders far from his fireside. But to a person of well-advanced years
coming from a counting-room, a library, or a studio, the risk is
considerable, unless he is of hardy natural constitution; any other will
do well to remember, "Faut du temperament pour cela!"

Suppose there to be a reasonable chance that he will come home alive,
what is the use of one's going to Europe after his senses have lost
their acuteness, and his mind no longer retains its full measure of
sensibilities and vigor? I should say that the visit to Europe under
those circumstances was much the same thing as the _petit
verre_,--the little glass of Chartreuse, or Maraschino, or Curacoa,
or, if you will, of plain Cognac, at the end of a long banquet. One has
gone through many courses, which repose in the safe recesses of his
economy. He has swallowed his coffee, and still there is a little corner
left with its craving unappeased. Then comes the drop of liqueur,
_chasse-cafe_, which is the last thing the stomach has a right to
expect. It warms, it comforts, it exhales its benediction on all that
has gone before. So the trip to Europe may not do much in the way of
instructing the wearied and overloaded intelligence, but it gives it a
fillip which makes it feel young again for a little while.

Let not the too mature traveller think it will change any of his habits.
It will interrupt his routine for a while, and then he will settle down
into his former self, and be just what he was before. I brought home a
pair of shoes I had made in London; they do not fit like those I had
before I left, and I rarely wear them. It is just so with the new habits
I formed and the old ones I left behind me.

But am I not glad, for my own sake, that I went? Certainly I have every
reason to be, and I feel that the visit is likely to be a great source
of happiness for my remaining days. But there is a higher source of
satisfaction. If the kindness shown me strengthens the slenderest link
that binds us in affection to that ancestral country which is, and I
trust will always be to her descendants, "dear Mother England," that
alone justifies my record of it, and to think it is so is more than
reward enough. If, in addition, this account of our summer experiences
is a source of pleasure to many friends, and of pain to no one, as I
trust will prove to be the fact, I hope I need never regret giving to
the public the pages which are meant more especially for readers who
have a personal interest in the writer.