Both these men were resolute to meet the people halfway. Both of them were Democrats in partisan connection, not because they believed in the heresies of such men as Polk and Dallas, but because they believed in the People. There was nothing of the white-kid glove, gilt-edged paper, “u in honour” nonsense about them. Naturally, such believers as they were regarded as unorthodox in the trade of that day.
Their great onslaught on decorous publishing was made when they printed and sold Macaulay’s History for fifty cents a volume at retail.
Such a firm as this won its way up from selling books at auction, at retail, on winter evenings, to publishing large editions and placing them everywhere in America. And when the fullness of time for such an enterprise came, they determined to publish “The Atlantic Monthly.” The plan was matured in the autumn of 1857. Through the kindness of a friend, I am able to reprint here Mr. Phillips’s own description, at the time, of a famous dinner in which the enterprise was first announced—I ought not to say in public, for this was a private dinner. But I may say that that dinner-party was the first of a series which the Saturday Club of Boston has held from that day to this day. Mr. Phillips wrote, “I must tell you about a little dinner-party I gave about two weeks ago. It would be proper, perhaps, to state that the origin of it was a desire to confer with my literary friends on a somewhat extensive literary project, the particulars of which I shall reserve till you come. But to the party: My invitations included only R.W. Emerson, H.W. Longfellow, J.K. Lowell, Mr. Motley (the ‘Dutch Republic’ man), O.W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. Underwood, our literary man. Imagine your uncle as the head of such a table, with such guests. The above named were the only ones invited, and they were all present. We sat down at three P.M., and rose at eight. The time occupied was longer by about four hours and thirty minutes than I am in the habit of consuming in that kind of occupation, but it was the richest time intellectually by all odds that I have ever had. Leaving myself and ‘literary man’ out of the group, I think you will agree with me that it would be difficult to duplicate that number of such conceded scholarship in the whole country beside.
“Mr. Emerson took the first post of honor at my right, and Mr. Longfellow the second at my left. The exact arrangement of the table was as follows:
| Mr. Underwood. | |
| Cabot. | Lowell. |
| Motley. | Holmes. |
| Longfellow. | Emerson. |
| Phillips. | |
“They seemed so well pleased that they adjourned, and invited me to meet them again to-morrow, when I shall again meet the same persons, with one other (Whipple, the essayist) added to that brilliant constellation of philosophical, poetical, and historical talent. Each one is known alike on both sides of the Atlantic, and is read beyond the limits of the English language. Though all this is known to you, you will pardon me for intruding it upon you. But still I have the vanity to believe that you will think them the most natural thoughts in the world to me. Though I say it that should not, it was the proudest day of my life.”
In this letter he does not tell of his own little speech, made at the launch. But at the time we all knew of it. He announced the plan of the magazine by saying, “Mr. Cabot is much wiser than I am. Dr. Holmes can write funnier verses than I can. Mr. Motley can write history better than I. Mr. Emerson is a philosopher and I am not. Mr. Lowell knows more of the old poets than I.” But after this confession he said, “But none of you knows the American people as well as I do.”
This was the truth, and they knew it was the truth. The “Atlantic,” at that moment, asserted its true place. It was not “The Boston Miscellany;” it was the journal for the nation, which at that time had no Pacific slope which needed to be named.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1862)