From this early letter of Dr. Holmes a seven-league step may be taken to a passage in a diary Mrs. Fields was writing in 1860,—the year following the removal of the Holmes household from Montgomery Place to Charles Street,—before her long unbroken series of journals began. The occasion described was one of those frequent breakfasts in the Fields dining-room, which bespoke, in the term of a later poet, the “wide unhaste” of the period. Of the guests, N. P. Willis was then at the top of his distinction as a New York editor; George T. Davis, a lawyer of Greenfield, Massachusetts, afterwards of Portland, Maine, a classmate of Dr. Holmes, was reputed one of the most charming table-companions and wits of his day: the tributes to his memory at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society after his death in 1877 stir one’s envy of his contemporaries; George Washington Greene of Rhode Island was perhaps equally known as the friend of Longfellow and as the grandson and biographer of General Nathanael Greene; Whipple was, of course, Edwin P. Whipple, essayist and lecturer; the household of three was completed by Mrs. Fields’s sister, Miss Lizzie Adams.
Thursday, September 21, 1860.—Equinoctial clearing after a stormy night and morning. Willis came to breakfast, and Holmes and George T. Davis, G. W. Greene, Whipple, and our little household of three. Holmes talked better than all, as usual. Willis played the part of appreciative listener. G. T. Davis told wonderful stories, and Mr. Whipple talked more than usual. Holmes described the line of beauty which is made by any two persons who talk together congenially thus 〰, whereas, when an adverse element comes in, it proceeds thus Ʌ; and by and by one which has a frightful retrograde movement, thus ∕. Then blank despair settles down upon the original talker. He said people should dovetail together like properly built mahogany furniture. Much of all this congeniality had to do with the physical, he said. “Now there is big Dr. ——; he and I do very well together; I have just two intellectual heart-beats to his one.” Willis said he thought there should be an essay written upon the necessity that literary men should live on a more concentrated diet than is their custom. “Impossible,” said the Professor, “there is something behind the man which drives him on to his fate; he goes as the steam-engine goes and one might as well say to the engine going at the rate of sixty miles, ‘you had better stop now,’ and so make it stop, as to say it to a man driven on by a vital preordained energy for work.” Each man has a philosophical coat fitted to his shoulders, and he did not expect to find it fitting anybody else.
At another breakfast, in 1861, we find, besides the favorite humorist of the day, Dr. Holmes’s son and namesake, then a young officer in the Union army, now Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Sunday, December 8, 1861.—Yesterday morning “Artemus Ward,” Mr. Browne, breakfasted with us, also Dr. Holmes and the lieutenant, his son. We had a merry time because Jamie was in grand humor and represented people and incidents in the most incomparable manner. “Why,” said Dr. Holmes to him afterward, “you must excuse me that I did not talk, but the truth is there is nothing I enjoy so much as your anecdotes, and whenever I get a chance I can’t help listening to them.” The Professor complimented Artemus upon his great success and told him the pleasure he had received. Artemus twinkled all over, but said little after the Professor arrived. He was evidently immensely possessed by him. The young lieutenant has mostly recovered from his wound and speaks as if duty would recall him soon to camp. He will go when the time comes, but home evidently never looked half so pleasant before. Poor fellows! Heaven send us peace before long!
The finely bound copy of Dr. Holmes’s Fourth of July Oration at the Boston City Celebration of 1863, to which the following passage refers, is one of the rarities sought by American book-collectors. It was a practice of Dr. Holmes at this time to have his public speeches set up in large, legible type for his own reading at their delivery. One of these, an address to the alumni of Harvard on July 16, 1863, with the inscription, “Oliver Wendell Holmes to his friend James T. Fields. One of six copies printed,” is found among the Charles Street papers, and contributes, like the passage that follows, to the sense of pleasant intimacy between the neighboring houses.
August 3, 1863.—Dr. Holmes dropped in last night about his oration which the City Council have had printed and superbly bound. He has addressed it to the “Common Council” instead of the “City Council,” and he is much disturbed. J. T. F. told him it made but small consequence, and he went off comforted. One of the members of the Council told Mr. F. it was amusing to see “the Professor” while this address was passing through the press. He was so afraid something would be wrong that he would come in to see about it half a dozen times a day, until it seemed as if he considered this small oration of more consequence than the affairs of the state. Yet laugh as they may about these little peculiarities of “our Professor,” he is a most wonderful man.
Reduced facsimile of first page of Dr. Holmes’ 1863 Address to the Alumni of Harvard
In explanation of the ensuing bit, it need only be said that in October of 1863 Señorita Isabella Cubas was appearing at the Boston Theatre in “The Wizard Skiff, or the Massacre of Scio,” and other pantomimes. “The Wizard Skiff,” according to the “Advertiser,” was given on the fourteenth. On the sixteenth, a characteristic announcement read: “At ¼ past 8 Señorita Cubas will dance La Madrilena.” The tear of Dr. Holmes at the spectacle may be remembered with the “poetry and religion” anecdote of Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Fanny Ellsler.