Children's Stories in American Literature, 1660-1860

by Henrietta Christian Wright

The stay at Andover lasted but a year, during which time Holmes discovered that he could write verse, and gained a little reputation thereby, which led to his being made class-poet when he left school to enter Harvard, in his sixteenth year. Throughout his college life he kept his reputation as a maker of humorous verse, and was perhaps the most popular member of the various societies and clubs for which Harvard was noted. He was graduated in his twentieth year, and within a year of this time had decided to study medicine, and after a two years' course in Boston went abroad to attend lectures in Paris and Edinburgh.

But the practice of medicine included but a few years of Holmes's life, as in 1847 he accepted the chair of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, holding the position for thirty-five years.

During his years of study and practice, Holmes had gained gradually the reputation of a clever literary man whose name was familiar to the readers of the best periodicals of the day. This reputation began with the publication of a poem, Old Ironsides, which was inspired by the proposition to destroy, as of no further use, the old frigate Constitution, which had done such glorious service during the war of 1812. These verses, which begin the literary life of Holmes, ring with a noble patriotism which flashed its fire into the hearts of thousands of his countrymen and made the author's name almost a household word. They were published originally in the Boston Advertiser, but so furious was the storm aroused that within a short time they had been copied in newspapers all over the land, printed on handbills that placarded the walls, and circulated in the streets from hand to hand. It was a satisfaction to the young patriot to know that his appeal had not been made in vain, and that the old ship was allowed to rest secure in the keeping of a grateful nation. A few years later Holmes published his first volume of poems, collected from various periodicals, and gained medals for some essays on medical subjects. For many years after this his literary work consisted chiefly of fugitive poems, written very often for special occasions, such as class anniversaries and dinners.

It was, however, by the publication of a series of essays in the Atlantic Monthly, which was started in 1857, with James Russell Lowell as editor, that Holmes began his career as the household intimate of every lover of reading in America. These essays, which are now collected in four volumes, appeared in the Atlantic, at intervals between the series, between 1857 and 1859, and thus cover almost the entire period of the author's life as a man of letters.

The first series—The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table—struck the key-note for the rest, a note which showed the author's heart attuned in its broad yet subtle sympathy to the heart of his race, and created such a friendship as rarely exists between author and reader. In the Autocrat Holmes introduces a variety of characters which at intervals flit throughout the rest of the series.

The papers are thrown into the form of talks at the breakfast-table between the author and his fellow-boarders, and so strong is the personal flavor that they seem to the reader like the home-letters of an absent member of the family. The landlady and her son, Benjamin Franklin, the sharp-eyed spinster in black, the young fellow "whose name seems to be John and nothing else," and the school-teacher, appear and disappear side by side with Little Boston, Iris, and the characters of the other series, and emphasize the life-likeness of the whole. It never seems in reading these papers that the dramatis personæ are anything else than living human beings, with whom Holmes actually converses around the boarding-house table or at his own fireside. The series, besides The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table, includes The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, and Over the Teacups, the last being separated from the others by an interval of thirty years.

One of the chief charms of these essays is found in the bits of biography which stamp them in so many cases as personal history. One may read here the nature of the man who could thus step back into the realm of childhood, appreciate the delicate grace of girlhood, enjoy the robust enthusiasm of young manhood, and pause with reverent sympathy before the afflicted. Behind each character portrayed one feels the healthful, generous throb of a humanity to which no ambition of soul could seem foreign or no defect appeal in vain. Scattered throughout the volumes are many charming verses, to some of which Holmes owes his fame as a poet. In The Autocrat at the Breakfast-Table occurs, among others, the celebrated poem, The Chambered Nautilus, which shows perhaps the highest point to which Holmes's art as a poet has reached. This poem, founded upon the many-chambered shell of the pearly nautilus, is made by the poet to illustrate the progress of the soul in its journey through life; the spiritual beauty of the verse shows it a genuine reflection of that soul illumination which made of the poet's Puritan ancestors a peculiar people. Many other poems bear the mark of this spiritual insight, and stamp the author as possessing the highest poetic sense. But it is perhaps in his humorous poems that Holmes has appealed to the greatest number of readers. Throughout the verse of this class runs the genuine Yankee humor, allied to high scholarship and the finest literary art.

Many of the verses seem but an echo in rhyme of the half-serious, half-whimsical utterances of the Breakfast-Table Series. Who but the Autocrat himself could have given literary form to the exquisite pathos of The Last Leaf, the delicious quaintness of Dorothy Q, or the solemn drollery of The Katy Did?

Many of the more popular poems are simply vers d'occasion, written for some class reunion, college anniversary, or state dinner. These poems, collected under the title Poems of the Class of '29, show Holmes in his most charming mood of reminiscence. Through all his poetry shines here and there an intense sympathy with nature, for running side by side with his appreciation of human interests we see ever that deep love of nature which is the mark of the true poet. Trees and flowers, the seasons, the meadows, rivers, clouds, and the enchanting mysteries of twilight touch his heart to sympathetic vibrations, and their beauty enters into and becomes a part of himself. In this sense some of his most charming recollections cease to be merely remembrance; they are the very air and sunlight which he breathed and which became incorporated into his being. Thus the old garden whose fragrance lingers so loving in his memory and is enshrined with such tender grace in his pages is not a description, but a breath of that far-away childhood which still shines for him immortally beautiful; and the fire-flies flitting across the darkened meadows bring once again to his mind the first flash of insight into the wonder and meaning of the night.

In some charming pages he has told us of his love for trees, particularly of the old elms which are the pride of the New England villages, and in equally poetic vein he has emphasized the beauty of the pond-lily, the cardinal flower, the huckleberry pasture, and the fields of Indian corn.