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.


The [purple glebed clusters] [half-ripened apples] their life-dews
have bled;
How sweet is the [breath] [taste] of the [fragrance they shed]
[sugar of lead]!
For summer's [last roses] [rank poisons] lie hid in the [wines]
[WINES!!!]
That were garnered by [maidens who laughed through the vines.]
[stable-boys smoking long-nines.]

Then a [smile] [scowl], and a [glass] [howl], and a [toast]
[scoff], and a [cheer] [sneer],
For all [the good wine, and we've some of it here] [strychnine and
whiskey, and ratsbane and beer]
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
[Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!] [Down, down,
with the tyrant that masters us all!]


The company said I had been shabbily treated, and advised me to
charge the committee double,--which I did. But as I never got my
pay, I don't know that it made much difference. I am a very
particular person about having all I write printed as I write it.
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a double
re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression of all my productions,
especially verse. A misprint kills a sensitive author. An
intentional change of his text murders him. No wonder so many poets
die young!

I have nothing more to report at this time, except two pieces of
advice I gave to the young women at table. One relates to a
vulgarism of language, which I grieve to say is sometimes heard
even from female lips. The other is of more serious purport, and
applies to such as contemplate a change of condition,--matrimony,
in fact.

--The woman who "calculates" is lost.

--Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.



CHAPTER III



[The "Atlantic" obeys the moon, and its LUNIVERSARY has come round
again. I have gathered up some hasty notes of my remarks made
since the last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to
remember this is TALK; just as easy and just as formal as I choose
to make it.]

--I never saw an author in my life--saving, perhaps, one--that did
not purr as audibly as a full-grown domestic cat, (Felis Catus,
LINN.,) on having his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful
hand.

But let me give you a caution. Be very careful how you tell an
author he is DROLL. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does,
be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you
CRIED over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send
you a copy. You can laugh over that as much as you like--in
private.

--Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of being funny?--Why,
there are obvious reasons, and deep philosophical ones. The clown
knows very well that the women are not in love with him, but with
Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. Passion
never laughs. The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a
procession.

If you want the deep underlying reason, I must take more time to
tell it. There is a perfect consciousness in every form of wit
--using that term in its general sense--that its essence consists in
a partial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It throws a
single ray, separated from the rest,--red, yellow, blue, or any
intermediate shade,--upon an object; never white light; that is the
province of wisdom. We get beautiful effects from wit,--all the
prismatic colors,--but never the object as it is in fair daylight.
A pun, which is a kind if wit, is a different and much shallower
trick in mental optics throwing the SHADOWS of two objects so that
one overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special
effects, but always keeps its essential object in the purest white
light of truth.--Will you allow me to pursue this subject a little
further?

[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody happened to scrape
the floor with his chair just then; which accidental sound, as all
must have noticed, has the instantaneous effect that the cutting of
the yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the charm,
and that breakfast was over.]

--Don't flatter yourselves that friendship authorizes you to say
disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer
you come into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact
and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare,
leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his enemies; they
are ready enough to tell them. Good-breeding NEVER forgets that
amour-propre is universal. When you read the story of the
Archbishop and Gil Blas, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor
old man's delusion; but don't forget that the youth was the greater
fool of the two, and that his master served such a booby rightly in
turning him out of doors.

--You need not get up a rebellion against what I say, if you find
everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly
mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I
once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for
its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken
ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should
have shown up the little great man, who had once belabored me in
his feeble way. But one can generally tell these wholesale thieves
easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them
in the pillory. I doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made
on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any
larceny.

Neither make too much of flaws and occasional overstatements. Some
persons seem to think that absolute truth, in the form of rigidly
stated propositions, is all that conversation admits. This is
precisely as if a musician should insist on having nothing but
perfect chords and simple melodies,--no diminished fifths, no flat
sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now it is fair to say,
that, just as music must have all these, so conversation must have
its partial truths, its embellished truths, its exaggerated truths.
It is in its higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal
element as much as pictures or statues. One man who is a little
too literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men of
esprit.--"Yes," you say, "but who wants to hear fanciful people's
nonsense? Put the facts to it, and then see where it is!"
--Certainly, if a man is too fond of paradox,--if he is flighty and
empty,--if, instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those
harmonious discords, often so much better than the twinned octaves,
in the music of thought,--if, instead of striking these, he jangles
the chords, stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember
that talking is one of the fine arts,--the noblest, the most
important, and the most difficult,--and that its fluent harmonies
may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single harsh note. Therefore
conversation which is suggestive rather than argumentative, which
lets out the most of each talker's results of thought, is commonly
the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is not easy, at the
best, for two persons talking together to make the most of each
other's thoughts, there are so many of them.

[The company looked as if they wanted an explanation.]

When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is
natural enough that among the six there should be more or less
confusion and misapprehension.

[Our landlady turned pale;--no doubt she thought there was a screw
loose in my intellects,--and that involved the probable loss of a
boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a
sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I
understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring
theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down
of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to
Falstaff's nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe
the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the
carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were
carelessly.]

I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here,
that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be
recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.

Three Johns.

1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike
him.
3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, nor John's John, but
often very unlike either.

Three Thomas.

1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
3. John's ideal Thomas.


Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a
platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the
conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and
ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men
the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly
conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks
from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him
to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as
Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful
rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply
to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found
who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as
others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every
dialogue between two. Of these, the least important,
philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real
person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are
six of them talking and listening all at the same time.

[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made
by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me
at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little
known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me via this unlettered
Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket,
remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him
that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the
mean time he had eaten the peaches.]

--The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers are very commonly
of little value; not merely because they sometimes overrate their
own flesh and blood, as some may suppose; on the contrary, they are
quite as likely to underrate those whom they have grown into the
habit of considering like themselves. The advent of genius is like
what florists style the BREAKING of a seedling tulip into what we
may call high-caste colors,--ten thousand dingy flowers, then one
with the divine streak; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up in
old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the
seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It is a
surprise,--there is nothing to account for it. All at once we find
that twice two make FIVE. Nature is fond of what are called
"gift-enterprises." This little book of life which she has given into
the hands of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old
story-books bound over again. Only once in a great while there is a
stately poem in it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of
art, or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the
million-fold millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are
commonly the first to find the "gift" that came with the little book.

It may be questioned whether anything can be conscious of its own
flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still
more eloquently silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of
any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man knows his
own voice; many men do not know their own profiles. Every one
remembers Carlyle's famous "Characteristics" article; allow for
exaggerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the
self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great law just
stated. This incapacity of knowing its own traits is often found
in the family as well as in the individual. So never mind what
your cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say
about that fine poem you have written, but send it (postage-paid)
to the editors, if there are any, of the "Atlantic,"--which, by the
way, is not so called because it is A NOTION, as some dull wits
wish they had said, but are too late.

--Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest persons, has
mingled with it a something which partakes of insolence. Absolute,
peremptory facts are bullies, and those who keep company with them
are apt to get a bullying habit of mind;--not of manners, perhaps;
they may be soft and smooth, but the smile they carry has a quiet
assertion in it, such as the Champion of the Heavy Weights,
commonly the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears
upon what he very inelegantly calls his "mug." Take the man, for
instance, who deals in the mathematical sciences. There is no
elasticity in a mathematical fact; if you bring up against it, it
never yields a hair's breadth; everything must go to pieces that
comes in collision with it. What the mathematician knows being
absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering question, it should
tend, in the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of thinking.
So of those who deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts
of external nature; only in a less degree. Every probability--and
most of our common, working beliefs are probabilities--is provided
with BUFFERS at both ends, which break the force of opposite
opinions clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no
spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. All this
must react on the minds which handle these forms of truth.

--Oh, you need net tell me that Messrs. A. and B. are the most
gracious, unassuming people in the world, and yet preeminent in the
ranges of science I am referring to. I know that as well as you.
But mark this which I am going to say once for all: If I had not
force enough to project a principle full in the face of the half
dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think
only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once
visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to
express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman
who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the
statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove
it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization,
notwithstanding.

[--It is my desire to be useful to those with whom I am associated
in my daily relations. I not unfrequently practise the divine art
of music in company with our landlady's daughter, who, as I
mentioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a
well-marked barytone voice of more than half an octave in compass,
I sometimes add my vocal powers to her execution of


"Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom."


not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet female is
present, to prevent misinterpretation or remark. I have also taken
a good deal of interest in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to,
sometimes called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of
that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and convenience,
adopted by some of his betters. My acquaintance with the French
language is very imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but
in Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the
peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, I think, is
doing well, between us, notwithstanding. The following is an
UNCORRECTED French exercise, written by this young gentleman. His
mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities; though, being
unacquainted with the French language, her judgment cannot be
considered final.


LE RAT DIES SALONS A LECTURE.


Ce rat ci est un animal fort singulier. Il a deux pattes de
derriere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il
fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire
pour le plupart, et porte un cerele blanchatre autour de son cou.
On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, on il demeure, digere,
s'il y a do quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eternue,
dort, et renfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire.
On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que cela. Il a l'air d'une
bete tres stupide, mais il est d'une sagacite et d'une vitesse
extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne
sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees.
Il vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux
divers. Il porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pectorales, avec
lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des journaux et des
livres, semblable aux suivans: !!!--Bah! Pooh! Il ne faut pas
cependant les prendre pour des signes d'intelligence. Il ne vole
pas, ordinairement; il fait rarement meme des echanges de
parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son chapeau a toujours un
caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au juste ce dont il se
nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avis que c'etait de l'odeur du cuir
des reliures; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourriture animale fort
saine, et peu chere. Il vit bien longtems. Enfin il meure, en
laissant a ses heritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture on il avait
existe pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes les nuits,
apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit on, a
minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, et
ayant a sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on trouve des
caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui prouve que le
spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Professeurs de
Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui ne savent rien du tout, du tout.


I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, or allowed to be
touched in any way, is not discreditable to B. F. You observe that
he is acquiring a knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is
learning French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances
will find it profitable to their children, and an economical mode
of instruction, to set them to revising and amending this boy's
exercise. The passage was originally taken from the "Histoire
Naturelle des Betes Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et Autres,"
lately published in Paris. This was translated into English and
published in London. It was republished at Great Pedlington, with
notes and additions by the American editor. The notes consist of
an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to
another book "edited" by the same hand. The additions consist of
the editor's name on the title-page and back, with a complete and
authentic list of said editor's honorary titles in the first of
these localities. Our boy translated the translation back into
French. This may be compared with the original, to be found on
Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.]

--Some of you boarders ask me from time to time why I don't write a
story, or a novel, or something of that kind. Instead of answering
each one of you separately, I will thank you to step up into the
wholesale department for a few moments, where I deal in answers by
the piece and by the bale.

That every articulately-speaking human being has in him stuff for
ONE novel in three volumes duodecimo has long been with me a
cherished belief. It has been maintained, on the other hand, that
many persons cannot write more than one novel,--that all after that
are likely to be failures.--Life is so much more tremendous a thing
in its heights and depths than any transcript of it can be, that
all records of human experience are as so many bound herbaria to
the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing,
fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distilling
leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All we can do
with books of human experience is to make them alive again with
something borrowed from our own lives. We can make a book alive
for us just in proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form
to our own experience. Now an author's first novel is naturally
drawn, to a great extent, from his personal experiences; that is,
is a literal copy of nature under various slight disguises. But
the moment the author gets out of his personality, he must have the
creative power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, in
order to tell a living story; and this is rare.

Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-story shall
clean him out, so to speak, of his best thoughts. Most lives,
though their stream is loaded with sand and turbid with alluvial
waste, drop a few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along.
Oftentimes a single CRADLING gets them all, and after that the poor
man's labor is only rewarded by mud and worn pebbles. All which
proves that I, as an individual of the human family, could write
one novel or story at any rate, if I would.

--Why don't I, then?--Well, there are several reasons against it.
In the first place, I should tell all my secrets, and I maintain
that verse is the proper medium for such revelations. Rhythm and
rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the
fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness
of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in
the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A
beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the
glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snowdrift of white arms
and shoulders laid bare, that, were she unadorned and in plain
calico, she would be unendurable--in the opinion of the ladies.

Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all my friends. I
should like to know if all story-tellers do not do this? Now I am
afraid all my friends would not bear showing up very well; for they
have an average share of the common weakness of humanity, which I
am pretty certain would come out. Of all that have told stories
among us there is hardly one I can recall who has not drawn too
faithfully some living portrait that might better have been spared.

Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I might be too dull
to write such a story as I should wish to write.

And finally, I think it very likely I SHALL write a story one of
these days. Don't be surprised at any time, if you see me coming
out with "The Schoolmistress," or "The Old Gentleman Opposite."
[OUR schoolmistress and OUR old gentleman that sits opposite had
left the table before I said this.] I want my glory for writing
the same discounted now, on the spot, if you please. I will write
when I get ready. How many people live on the reputation of the
reputation they might have made!

--I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possibility of my being
too dull to write a good story. I don't pretend to know what you
meant by it, but I take occasion to make a remark which may
hereafter prove of value to some among you.--When one of us who has
been led by native vanity or senseless flattery to think himself or
herself possessed of talent arrives at the full and final
conclusion that he or she is really dull, it is one of the
most tranquillizing and blessed convictions that can enter a
mortal's mind. All our failures, our shortcomings, our strange
disappointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from our
bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, at the feet of
that Omnipotence which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of
high intelligence,--with which one look may overflow us in some
wider sphere of being.

--How sweetly and honestly one said to me the other day, "I hate
books!" A gentleman,--singularly free from affectations,--not
learned, of course, but of perfect breeding, which is often so much
better than learning,--by no means dull, in the sense of knowledge
of the world and society, but certainly not clever either in the
arts or sciences,--his company is pleasing to all who know him. I
did not recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so
distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I think
there are a great many gentlemen and others, who read with a mark
to keep their place, that really "hate books," but never had the
wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre nous, I
always read with a mark.]

We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an "intellectual
man" was, as a matter of course, made up of nine-tenths, or
thereabouts, of book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if
he is actually so compounded, he need not read much. Society is a
strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best
worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If
_I_ were a prince, I would hire or buy a private literary tea-pot,
in which I would steep all the leaves of new books that promised
well. The infusion would do for me without the vegetable fibre.
You understand me; I would have a person whose sole business should
be to read day and night, and talk to me whenever I wanted him to.
I know the man I would have: a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive
fellow; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books
about it, which he can use handily, and the same of all useful arts
and sciences; knows all the common plots of plays and novels, and
the stock company of characters that are continually coming on in
new costume; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an epithet
and a wink, and you can depend on it; cares for nobody except for
the virtue there is in what he says; delights in taking off big
wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalming and
unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yet he is as tender and
reverential to all that bears the mark of genius,--that is, of a
new influx of truth or beauty,--as a nun over her missal. In
short, he is one of those men that know everything except how to
make a living. Him would I keep on the square next my own royal
compartment on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another
pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, whom he would
of course take--to wife. For all contingencies I would liberally
provide. In a word, I would, in the plebeian, but expressive
phrase, "put him through" all the material part of life; see him
sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, just to be
able to lay on his talk when I liked,--with the privilege of
shutting it off at will.