Source of book: I own this
In 1858, if you had predicted that
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. would be only the second most famous Oliver
Wendell Holmes, you probably would have been laughed at. After all, he was a
famous wit, a respected and influential physician, researcher, and academic.
Oh, and his poems too were wildly popular.
So what happened? Well, nothing
that would tarnish the reputation of Oliver Sr. Only that his son, Oliver
Wendell Holmes Jr. would be appointed to the Supreme Court by president
Theodore Roosevelt, serve for 30 years with distinction, and become one of the
most cited and most revered justices (particularly by us progressive sorts) of
all time.
I mean, in addition to broadly
supporting civil rights in general and writing opinions which have stood the
test of time, he is the originator of the “free speech would not protect a man
in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic” line.
But don’t forget about Oliver Sr.
either. I suspect kids these days don’t read his poems for school like I did,
but they really should. I enjoyed his writing in high school, but really hadn’t
ended up with any of his works in my library - they just aren’t that readily
available in hardback.
A bit about Senior. He grew up in
New England, the son of a minister, and grew up reading literature. It is
unsurprising that he started writing poetry young - he was a descendent of
America’s first published poet, Anne
Bradstreet.
His father had hoped he would go
into the ministry himself, but, after a miserable year at the Calvinist
Phillips Academy, where he wrote that he deplored the "bigoted,
narrow-minded, uncivilized" attitudes of many of the teachers, he was
accepted into Harvard, and studied law.
(Throughout his life, Holmes would
deplore Calvinist doctrine - particularly that of “total depravity,” which he
noted led to madness and suicide. I am completely with him on this.)
He found he did not particularly
enjoy law, however, and preferred writing poetry. Around this time, he had his
first big hit with “Old
Ironsides,” which is credited with preserving the USS Constitution,
which was scheduled to be dismantled. I memorized this poem for school back in
the day, although I can only recall a few lines now.
Despite this success, he never
seriously considered a literary career. He switched to medicine, and opened a
practice, but ended up spending his time primarily as a teacher and researcher.
As a result, he became a famous reformer. I won’t get into all the details, but
he worked to end the use of bloodletting as a treatment (his research and that
of others led to the conclusion that it was useless), discredited homeopathy as
the quackery it is, and studied childbed fever - publishing his findings a few
years before Semmelweiss came to the same conclusion in Europe.
Oh, and he coined the term
“anesthesia.”
As a teacher, he was well beloved
by his students, but his tenure also caused controversy on two occasions.
He had the audacity to advocate
for the admission of women (gasp!) and African-Americans (double gasp!) to
Harvard. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful, as the good old boys had no desire
to open their club.
Other fun facts: Arthur Conan
Doyle named his famous detective after Holmes. 1809 was not only the birth year
of Holmes, but also Poe, Tennyson, Edward Fitzgerald, Abraham Lincoln, Charles
Darwin, and William Gladstone. What a year that was.
The one blemish I could find in
his belief system is that he was not an abolitionist. He naively believed that
slavery could be ended peacefully, and found abolitionist rhetoric to be
inflammatory. So, kind of the “white moderate” MLK found distasteful. He was,
however, a supporter of the Union.
In any case, a man who was a true
original, and the kind of thinker I aspire to be: preferring evidence to dogma,
advocating for equality, and enjoying witty conversation with other
thinkers.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast
Table had its origins in 1931, with a pair of essays in The New-England
Magazine. These would later be reworked and incorporated in part into the
later series that would become this book.
In the 1850s, Holmes, along with a
“who’s who” of New England writers - Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Stowe,
Emerson - founded The Atlantic, which many of us still read. These
essays were then published in the magazine, and later collected into a
book.
One of many delightful illustrations by Raymond Holden in my edition
It is a bit difficult to
categorize the essays. Are they fiction? Non-fiction? The problem is that they
are written ostensibly by the title character, who is not exactly Holmes, but
not exactly not Holmes either. They partly tell a story of characters in a
boarding house. Which resembles one Holmes lived in in the 1830s, and was
filled with characters similar to those in the essays. So sort of
fiction there.
But also, the essays are mostly
wit and opinions, which is non-fiction, and poems, which are, well,
poetry.
Since I am not entirely certain, I
think I will have to index this under all three categories, and let the reader
decide.
Further complicating the way the
essays read is that the narrator is not the only voice. There is “the
professor” who is the central character of the sequel, who might be Holmes, but
is played for laughs quite often. The professor’s poems and writings are often
spoofs, parodies, and intended to be amusing in no small part because of how
seriously the professor takes them.
The book is amusing in a gently
comedic way - Holmes is out to poke light fun, not be mean-spirited. Society,
particularly upper-class New Englanders like Holmes himself, is the butt of the
jokes.
The one sour note in the book is
probably unavoidable. Holmes was a man of his times, and there are a number of
casual assumptions about women and various minorities that are really cringe. I
think I have referred to these as “casual racism” and “casual sexism” before,
and I think that is the best way to describe them. These are just base
assumptions that few white males of the time would even have noticed - and
indeed, female authors often assume the same gender stereotypes to be true in
their writings.
It is what it is, to a degree, and
the best I can say is that future readers will undoubtedly read what we write
in our own time, and cringe a bit at our blind spots. I’ll also note that
Holmes isn’t hateful at all - he means no harm, but doesn’t even notice his
assumptions.
Despite these flaws, and despite
the fact that I vehemently disagree with Holmes about whether puns are a good
form of humor, this book really is incredibly witty. There are so many great
lines, percipient observations, and insights into human nature. The man had a
way with words.
I’ll share my favorites.
In addition to an introduction by
Van Wyck Brooks, my Heritage edition contains three of Holmes’ prefaces: the
original in 1858, a later edition in 1882, and one more in 1891. I love a line
from the second one.
And now, for the first time for many years I have read them
myself, thinking that they might be improved by various corrections and
changes. But it is dangerous to tamper in cold blood and in after life with
what was written in the glow of an earlier period. Its very defects are a part
of its organic individuality. It would spoil any character these records may
have to attempt to adjust them to the present age of the world or of the
author. We have all of us, writers and readers, drifted away from many of our
former habits, tastes, and perhaps beliefs.
As I occasionally re-read posts on
this blog, I am struck by how much I have changed over the last 14 years. I
hope for the better. This is why the only edits I make on past posts is to
correct typographical errors. Any other notations preserve the original and
just add a comment from the present.
So, with that, let me share my
favorite witty passages.
I was just going to say, when I was interrupted, that one of
the many ways of classifying minds is under the heads of arithmetic and
algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or
variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical
proposition has the more general character of the expression a + b = c. We are
mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters
instead of figures.
This gives a bit of the style of
the Autocrat. As does this one:
What are the great faults of conversation? Want of ideas,
want of words, want of manners, are the principal ones, I suppose you think. I
don’t doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks
than anything else; - long arguments on special points between people who
differ on the fundamental principles upon which those points depend.
This, by the way, is why I mostly
avoid engaging with right wingers. We disagree on the fundamental principles -
indeed the very nature of truth and reality.
It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a
professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some three years
and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes to
make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more than this. Now, most decent
people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every
year, - and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. The clergy, however,
rarely hear any sermons except what they preach themselves. A dull preacher
might be conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi
heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. And, on the other hand,
an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening to a succession of wise
teachers, might become actually better educated in theology than any one of
them.
He later makes a quip about his
own tendencies.
I will say, by the way, that it is a rule I have long
followed, to tell my worst thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts to the
young people I talk with.
This next one is part of a longer
discussion of memories and how they affect - and scar - us.
The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in
a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their apparent age runs up
miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude.
How about this one as well?
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked.
Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is
thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A
weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often
saves a man from going mad.
***
Don’t flatter yourself that friendship authorizes you to say
disagreeable things to your intimates. On the contrary, the nearer you come
into relation with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy become.
Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, leave your friend to learn
unpleasant truths from his enemies; they are ready enough to tell them.
Then, there is this one, about
having overindulged on a particularly excellent pie.
I took more of it than was good for me, - as much as 85º, I
should think, - and had an indigestion in consequence. While I was suffering
from it, I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay which too
a very melancholy view of creation. When I got better, I labeled them all
“Pie-crust,” and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings.
***
Men, like peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before
they begin to decay. I don’t know what it is, - but it is a fact, that most
writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault at about
the time when they are beginning to grow old.
On occasion, the Autocrat borrows bon
mots from other writers. In this case, Sir Thomas Browne.
“Every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or
some way makes good the faculties of himself.”
Perhaps a reminder that this isn’t
some modern “woke” affectation - great thinkers for centuries have noted that
all of us thrive better when we are able to live in accordance with our own
gifting and true self.
There is another passage that
talks about our tendency to compare ourselves with our early friends - “how far
we have come.” It is both quite funny and yet pretty pointed.
There is one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind
which is really moving onward. It is this: that one cannot help using his early
friends as the seaman uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then we
throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a string of thought tied to him,
and look, - I am afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compassion,
- to see the rate at which the string reels off, while he lies there bobbing up
and down, poor fellow! and we are dashing along with the white foam and bright
sparkle at our bows…
Here is another hilarious moment:
A lyric conception - my friend, the Poet, said - hits me like
a bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my cheeks when
it struck, and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes a creeping as
of centipedes running down the spine, - then a gasp and a great jump of the
heart, - then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head, - then a
long sigh, - and the poem is written.
On this subject, he compares poems
to the great violins (and to a Meerschaum).
Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, like a
meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum; - the more
porous it is, the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of
absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity, - its
tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually
stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves. So you
see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our
nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can
penetrate.
The meerschaum and Stradivarius
are mentioned in one of the poems in this book, another I read and enjoyed as a
kid, “Contentment.”
You never need think you can turn over any old falsehood
without a terrible squirming and scattering of the horrid little population
that dwells under it.
Fascinating how the Trump Era has
done this - his lies have revealed the disgusting and deplorable underbelly of
America. Another currently relevant quote:
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, - and
the fools know it.
This one too:
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them
all.
And one more! Holmes is on a roll
here.
I made a comparison at table some time since, which has often
been quoted and received many compliments. It was that of the mind of a bigot
to the pupil of the eye; the more light you pour on it, the more it
contracts.
(Holmes notes that he later
discovered Thomas Moore had used the simile some time before - they realized
the same thing independently.)
But yes, this has, unfortunately,
been my experience over the last decade.
Another passage that I found
fascinating was the one on class. Holmes shared some of his age’s assumptions
that some people were just naturally better than others, and thus became rich
and privileged through their own merit - this is a key American myth.
What I did find interesting is
that Holmes saw better than others that privilege feeds on itself - if you grow
up privileged, you have advantages that look a lot like merit that you can pass
on to your children. As an example in my own life, because I grew up with
literate parents, I was exposed to books very young and started life out better
read than my peers who had parents trying to learn a new language.
This is by no means a reason I
feel ashamed - no rational person truly hates the good things they have, and an
education isn’t soul-corrupting the way excessive wealth is. But I also
recognize that it is an unearned advantage. Thus, I want to help others who
didn’t have it to succeed at learning as well.
Here is what Holmes had to
say:
Money kept two or three generations transforms a race, - I
don’t mean merely in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and bone.
Money buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more kindly, of course,
than in close, back streets; it buys country places to give them happy and
healthy summers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and
mutton.
That’s pretty progressive
thinking.
Beware of making your moral staple consist of the negative
virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach others to abstain, from all that is
sinful or hurtful. But making a business of it leads to emaciation of
character, unless one feeds largely also on the more nutritious diet of active
sympathetic benevolence.
Another way I would put this is
that legalism - that “negative virtue” - makes one feel self-righteous without
having to actually be virtuous. In the subculture I was raised in - and indeed,
as current events show, this is endemic to conservative religion in this
country - focus on abstaining from things - and demanding others do so -
entirely has taken the place of empathy and loving one’s neighbor.
An interesting note here is that
Holmes deplored the temperance movement. The above quote may explain why.
You may set it down as a truth which admits of few
exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise,
and will be contented with nothing less.
For pithy quotes, I will end with
this one, which is quite the fascinating observation. Ignore the casual racism,
and note the point.
Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I suspect.
The shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut; his dwelling is all door
and no walls; everybody can come in. To make a morning call on an Esquimaux
acquaintance, one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and
no door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has. One might, very
probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where
the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where
they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of
civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean
dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature.
Indeed. One can, of course, expand
the idea to that of clothing, and note that the cultural chauvinism of northern
Europeans continues today, insisting that more coverage is more “civilized” or
even “godly.”
I would be remiss without
featuring a few poems. There are many I left out, including some witty
parodies. But these three are my favorites.
Sun and Shadow
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green,
To the
billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon
bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half
dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now
dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the
chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now
white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun
gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her
pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—
Of
breakers that whiten and roar;
How
little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They
see him who gaze from the shore!
He
looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the
rock that is under his lee,
As he
drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er
the gulfs of the desolate sea.
Thus
drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where
life and its ventures are laid,
The
dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see
us in sunshine or shade;
Yet
true to our course, though the shadows grow dark,
We'll
trim our broad sail as before,
And
stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask
how we look from the shore!
Holmes lived in an era of
incredible scientific change, and also of demographic and cultural change. I
admire that he seems to have adapted to that change better than most men then
and now. This poem captures the combination of hope and anxiety at what lay
ahead.
The Chambered Nautilus
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
I love this one for so many
reasons. Nautiluses are really cool creatures. They do indeed build themselves
a new chamber as they outgrow each old one, until there is a spiral of old
apartments. For Holmes, this is how we are to live our lives and cultivate our
souls. Rather than trying to stay stuffed in the same box we started, we should
build new ways of thinking and being as we grow and change.
Finally, this hilarious poem that
so few seem to know about these days. On the surface, it is a humorous story -
and I have used it to describe how a certain appliance we had once fell to
pieces all at once in multiple areas.
But it also is a metaphor. Some
have said it represents a satire of New England rationality - an overemphasis
on logic and objectivity.
Others, however, see in it a
takedown of Calvinism. And, indeed, an entire way of doing theology. By trying
to make every part strong, a theological superstructure often goes to pieces
all at once. This was true to a significant degree of my own deconstruction.
Whether it was merely a characteristic of theological superstructures in
general, or the result of a perfect storm of events that shook me to my core:
my parents’ rejection of my wife, the rise of Trump, a child coming out.
However you wish to see it, enjoy.
The Deacon's
Masterpiece Or, The Wonderful One Hoss Shay
Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it — ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot, —
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without, —
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell
yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown
'N' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it could n' break daown:
"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t 's mighty
plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;
'N' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees,
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
—
Last of its timber, — they could n't sell 'em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through."
"There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll
dew!"
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren — where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; — it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten; —
"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came; —
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundreth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER, — the Earthquake-day, —
There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There could n't be, — for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there was n't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whipple-tree neither less nor more,
And the back crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, 'Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-horse shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson. — Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text, —
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet'n-house clock, —
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.
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