“a hundred years ago,
Those close-shut lips had answered No,”
there would have been no Dr. Holmes. Somebody there might have been; but though he had been only “one-tenth another to nine-tenths” him, assuredly the loss of even a tenth would have been a bitter loss.
Books there are in this library, of course; but you were as little conscious of the books as you were of the world. You were only really conscious of the presence in the room, and the big desk on which was lying the pen that wrote both “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table” and “The Professor.” As you took it up, it was pretty to see the look that stole over Dr. Holmes’s face; it was the twinkle of a smile that seemed to mean, “Yes, it was the pen that did it! I never could have done it in the world!” His success gave him a deep and genuine pleasure, largely due to the surprise of it. At forty-six he believed he had done all that could be expected of him, and was content to rest his reputation—as well he might—on those earlier poems, which will always make a part of even his latest fame. But the greater fame which followed was—not greatness thrust upon him, for genius such as his is something more than the patience which is sometimes genius,—but certainly greatness dragged out of him. The editors of the proposed Atlantic insisted that he should write for it. The Doctor did not yield, till, as he himself tells it, with another twinkling smile, they invited him to a “convincing dinner at Porter’s.” Feeling very good-natured immediately after, he promised to “try,” and a little later sent off a few sheets which he somewhat dubiously hoped would “do.” The storm of greeting and applause that followed even these first sheets filled him with amazement, but with genuine delight. It was beautiful to see how deeply it touched him to know that thousands of readers think “The Autocrat” the most charming book they own. For this was not the arrogant satisfaction of the “master” who announces: “Listen! I have composed the most wonderful sonata that the world has ever heard!” Still less was it the senseless arrogance of a foolish violin that might say: “Listen! you shall hear from me the most superb music you can imagine!” Rather was it the low-voiced, wondering content of an æolian harp, that lying quietly upon the window-sill, with no thought that it is there for anything but to enjoy itself, suddenly finds wonderful harmonies stealing through its heart and out into the world, and sees a group of gladdened listeners gathering about it. “How wonderful! how wonderful that I have been chosen to give this music to the world! Am I not greatly to be envied?” As the harp thus breathes its gratitude to the breeze that stirs it, so Dr. Holmes looked his gratitude to the pen that “helped” him; with something of the same wonder at personal success that made Thackeray exclaim: “Down on your knees, my boy! That is the house where I wrote ‘Vanity Fair’!” Do we not all love Thackeray and Holmes the better for caring so much about our caring for them?
But it is growing late and dark. Across the river—one almost says across the bay—the lights are twinkling, and we must go. As the cool breeze touches our faces, how strange it seems to see the paved and lighted street, the crowding houses, the throng of carriages, and to realize that the great, throbbing, fashionable world has been so near to us all the afternoon while we have been so far from it!
Now, as we go down the steps, a sudden consciousness strikes us of what very pleasant places Boston literary lines seem to fall into! Is it that literary people are more fortunate in Boston, or that in Boston only the fortunate people are literary? For as we think of brilliant names associated with Beacon Street, Boylston Street, Commonwealth Avenue, Newbury and Marlborough Streets, it certainly seems as if the Bohemia of plain living and high thinking—so prominent a feature of New York literary and artistic life—had hardly a foothold in aristocratic, literary Boston.
Finally, if it seems wonderful that living almost exclusively in one locality, Dr. Holmes should have succeeded as few have succeeded in dealing with the mysteries of universal human nature, still more wonderful is it, perhaps, that dealing very largely with the foibles and follies of human nature, nothing that he ever wrote has given offence. True, this is partly owing to his in tense unwillingness to hurt the feelings of any human being. No fame for saying brilliant things that came to this gentlest of autocrats and most genial of gentlemen, tinged with a possibility that any one had winced under his pen, seemed to him of any value, or gave him any pleasure. But, as a matter of fact, no bore has ever read anything Dr. Holmes has written about bores with the painful consciousness, “Alas! I was that bore!” We may take to ourselves a good deal that he says, but never with a sense of shame or humiliation. On the contrary, we laugh the most sincerely of any one, and say “Of course! that is exactly it! Why, I have done that thing myself a thousand times!” And so the genial, keen-eyed master of human nature writes with impunity how difficult he finds it to love his neighbor properly till he gets away from him, and tells us how he hates to have his best friend hunt him up in the cars and sit down beside him, and explains that, although a radical, he finds he enjoys the society of those who believe more than he does better than that of those who believe less; and neighbor and best friend, radical and conservative, laugh alike and alike enjoy the joke, each only remembering how he finds it hard to love his neighbor, and how he hates to talk in the cars. The restless “interviewer,” who may perhaps have gained entrance to the pleasant library, never found himself treated, after he left, with any less courtesy than that which allowed him to be happy while he was “interviewing,” to the misery of his hapless victim. The pen that “never dared to be as funny as it could be,” never permitted itself to be as witty as it might have been, at the expense of any suffering to others. The gentle Doctor, when the interviewer was gone, turned again to his ducks in the beautiful aviary outside his window, and only vented his long-suffering in some general remark thrown carelessly in, as he describes how the bird
Sees a flat log come floating down the stream;
Stares undismayed upon the harmless stranger;—
Ah! were all strangers harmless as they seem!
And the very latest stranger who may have inflicted the blow that drew out that gentlest of remonstrances, would be the first to laugh and to enjoy the remonstrance as a joke!
And so came to the Autocrat what he prized as the very best of all his fame—the consciousness that he never made a “hit” that could wound. So truly was this his temperament, that if you praised some of the fine lines of his noble poem on “My Aviary,” he would say gently: “But don’t you think the best line is where I spare the feelings of the duck?” and you remember,—
Look quick! there’s one just diving!
And while he’s under—just about a minute—
I take advantage of the fact to say
His fishy carcase has no virtue in it,
The gunning idiot’s worthless hire to pay.