CHAPTER XXXI SATURDAY CLUB
In 1877, about the time of my election to the Senate, I was chosen a member of the famous Saturday Club. I always attended the meetings when I could be in Boston until after the death of my brother, when every man who was a member when I was chosen was dead, except Mr. Norton and Judge Gray and the younger Agassiz and Mr. Howells, and all of them had ceased to be constant attendants.
They used to meet at the Parker House in Boston once a month.
Each member was at liberty to bring a guest.
I suppose there was never a merely social club with so many famous men in it or another where the conversation was more delightful since that to which Johnson and Burke and Goldsmith and Garrick and Reynolds belonged. There was plenty of sparkling wit and repartee and plenty of serious talk from philosophers and men of letters and science. Agassiz and Jeffries Wyman would sometimes debate Darwin's theory of evolution, which Darwin had confided to Asa Gray, another member, long before he made it known to the public. Holmes and Lowell contributed their wit, and Judge Hoar, whom Lowell declared the most brilliant man in conversation he had ever known, his shrewd Yankee sense and his marvellous store of anecdote. Some of the greatest members, notably Emerson and Longfellow and Whittier, were in general quite silent. But it was worth going a thousand miles if but to see one of them, or to hear the tones of his voice.
In the beginning I suspected Dr. Holmes of getting himself ready for the talk at the dinner as for a lecture. But I soon found that was utterly unjust. He was always as good if a new subject were brought up, which he could not have expected and which was wholly out of the range of his experience. His stream was abundant and sparkling and clear, whenever you might tap the cask. "Take another glass of wine, Judge," he said to one of the members who was starting near midnight to drive twenty miles in the cold rain of autumn, "Take another glass of wine; it will shorten the distance and double the prospect."
Dr. Holmes and I were born on the same day of the year, although
I was seventeen years behind him. I sent to the delightful
Autocrat the following note which reached him on the morning
of his eightieth birthday.
WORCESTER, Aug. 28th, 89.
My dear Dr. Holmes: Let me add my salutation to those of so many of your countrymen, and so many who are not your countrymen, save in the republic of letters, on your birthday. You may well be amused to think how many political reputations have risen and set during your long and sunny reign. I was led to think of this by the fact that my own birthday also comes Aug. 29th. But alas!
Consules sunt quotannis et novi proconsules,
Solus aut Rex aut Poeta non quotannis nascitur.
Of Governors and Senators we have an annual crop. But Autocrats and Poets come but once in eighty years. The asteroids must not envy the Georgium Sides his orbit of fourscore years, but rather rejoice in his beneficent and cheerful light, and in the certainty that it will keep on shining so long as there is a star in the sky.
I am
Faithfully yours
GEO. F. HOAR.
I got the following pleasant reply:
BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 30, 1889.
My dear Mr. Hoar,
Your note of felicitation upon my having reached that "length of days" which Wisdom, if I remember correctly, holds in her right hand, was the first I received and is the first I answer. Briefly, of course, but with heartfelt sincerity, for I hardly thought that you whose hand is on the wheel that governs the course of the Nation, would find time to remember so small an event as my birthday.
You cannot doubt that it was a great pleasure to me to read your name at the bottom of a page containing so much that it was kind in you to write and most agreeable for me to read.
Please accept my warmest and most grateful acknowledgments, and believe me
Faithfully yours,
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
NAMES OF THE MEMBERS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB WHEN I
USED TO ATTEND ITS MEETINGS.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Francis Parkman,
Edwin P. Whipple, Alexander Agassiz,
Horatio Woodman, R. H. Dana,
John S. Dwight, Wolcott Gibbs,
Samuel G. Ward, Horace Gray,
R. H. Dana, Jr., Edward N. Perkins,
Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray,
Benjamin Pierce, W. D. Howells,
J. R. Lowell, Edmund Quincy,
H. W. Longfellow, E. L. Godkin,
J. L. Motley, William B. Rogers,
C. C. Felton, William Amory,
O. W. Holmes, James Freeman Clarke,
E. R. Hoar, Phillips Brooks,
William H. Prescott, William W. Story,
John G. Whittier, George F. Hoar,
Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Lowell,
T. G. Appleton, O. W. Holmes, Jr.,
J. M. Forbes, Theodore Lyman,
Charles E. Norton, William James,
J. Elliot Cabot, Francis A. Walker,
Samuel G. Howe, Charles F. Adams, Jr.,
Frederick H. Hedge, F. L. Olmsted,
Estes Howe, R. Pumpelly,
Charles Sumner, H. H. Richardson,
Henry James, William Endicott, Jr.,
Martin Brimmer, William C. Endicott,
James T. Fields, William W. Goodwin,
S. W. Rowse, John C. Gray,
John A. Andrew, Edward C. Pickering,
Jeffries Wyman, Thomas B. Aldrich,
E. W. Gurney, Edward W. Emerson,
W. M. Hunt, Walbridge A. Field,
Charles F. Adams, Sen., Henry L. Higginson,
Charles W. Eliot, Edward W. Hooper,
Charles C. Perkins, Henry P. Walcott.