Part 19

That Holmes suffers but little by the persistence of his ‘juvenilia’ and ‘early verses’ is due to their frankly comic and grotesque character. The reader is spared faded sentiment, and he is heartily amused by the ingenuity of the conceits, the sparkle of the rhymes, the satire, the epigrammatic wit. There is mirth still in that brilliant essay in verbal gymnastics ‘The Comet’ (a dyspeptic’s dream), in ‘The September Gale’ (a boy’s lament for his Sunday breeches, blown from the line one fatal wash-day and never recovered), in ‘The Spectre Pig’ (a parody on Dana’s ‘Buccaneer’), in ‘The Height of the Ridiculous,’ ‘Daily Trials,’ ‘The Treadmill Song,’ ‘The Dorchester Giant,’ ‘The Music-Grinders,’ and the heartlessly funny poem entitled ‘My Aunt.’

Holmes was the readiest and the happiest of ‘occasional’ poets. No one was so apt as he in meeting the needs of the moment, in brightening with rhymed felicities the banquet, the class reunion, or in greeting the distinguished stranger. He had rare skill in fitting the word to the audience; it was impossible for him to be dull, and being good-humored, it was difficult for him to say ‘No’ when committees were importunate. Of his three hundred and twenty-seven poems, nearly one half are poems of occasion. He wrote the greeting to Charles Dickens, to the Prince Imperial, a poem for the Moore celebration, for the dedication of the Stratford Fountain, for the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Harvard College. His poems for the Class of 1829, forty-four in number, reflect the history of the times as well as the mood of the writer. The most famous of them is ‘The Boys’ (1859). Its motive, that boy-nature never quite dies in the man, and its defiant optimism were calculated to have rejuvenating effect on a group of classmates then thirty years out of college.

This art requires a quality of mind akin to that of the improvisatore. Holmes was Boston’s poet laureate. His power to put an idea into self-singing measure saved the battle-ship ‘Constitution,’ and did much to save the ‘Old South’ Church.

In his finer work there is a delicious blending of thoughtfulness and humorous fancy. Only Holmes could have given the lines on ‘Dorothy Q.’ their most original touch,--asking what would have been the result for _him_ had prospective great-grandmother said ‘No’ instead of ‘Yes’:--

Should I be I, or would it be One tenth another to nine tenths me?

Half the pathos in that fragile and beautiful piece of workmanship, ‘The Last Leaf,’ derives from the humor, from the blending of laughter and tears. Even in the exquisite piece, attributed to Iris, ‘Under the Violets,’ a description of a young girl’s burial-place, the lighter touch is not wholly wanting:--

When, turning round their dial-track, Eastward the lengthening shadows pass, Her little mourners, clad in black, The crickets, sliding through the grass, Shall pipe for her an evening mass.

His highest flights are represented by ‘The Chambered Nautilus’ and ‘Musa,’ by the quaint and fanciful ‘Homesick in Heaven,’ and by the simple and pathetic little lament entitled ‘Martha.’ His claim to the name of poet must rest on these, on his fine setting of the romance of Agnes Surriage, and on his tributes to Bryant and to Everett.

VI

FICTION AND BIOGRAPHY

Holmes wrote three novels. Although readable, original, based on a thorough comprehension of the scenes described, the life, antecedents, prejudices, habits, and manners of the people portrayed, nevertheless they strike one as being experiments in fiction rather than true novels. They may be classed with similar attempts by J. G. Holland and Bayard Taylor. Each of these writers was a practised craftsman. The trained man of letters can write a volume which he, his friends, his publishers, the public, and many fair-minded critics agree in calling a novel. But the book in question does not become a novel from having been cast in the orthodox form. It resembles a novel more nearly than it resembles anything else, nevertheless it is not a veritable novel. Any reader can feel it, though he may not be able to say just where the difference lies, or how there happens to be a difference. Many a writer, it would seem, has only to continue his efforts to arrive finally at the making of a true novel. He falls short because his mind is working in an unwonted medium rather than because he lacks inventive ability.

If _Elsie Venner_ and _The Guardian Angel_ fail of being true novels, they are at least highly successful studies in fiction and have given and will continue to give a world of pleasure. If _A Mortal Antipathy_ falls short of the excellence attained by the other two, it has at least the virtue of having been written by a man who could not be uninteresting, no matter what was his age or his humor.

_Elsie Venner_ is a study in prenatal influences. The motive is gruesome enough. A young woman, bitten by a snake, transmits certain tendencies thus derived to her child. The subject was better adapted to Hawthorne’s pen than to the Autocrat’s. A man of science knows too much. Imagination is hampered. ‘What is’ and ‘What might be’ are in perpetual conflict. A poet (such as Hawthorne essentially was) throws science to the winds. Holmes goes at the problem in a brisk, business-like way. Hawthorne would have treated it as a mystery, not dragging it into broad light.

_Elsie Venner_ was dramatized and staged. Holmes went to see it. What he thought of the play at the time is not recorded, but in after years he pronounced it ‘bad, very bad.’

_The Guardian Angel_ also deals with the question of heredity. The problem of how many of our ancestors come out in us, and just how they make themselves felt, was always fascinating to Holmes. There are no snakes in this story to account for Myrtle Hazard’s peculiarities, but something quite as enigmatical, namely, an Indian. One character in _The Guardian Angel_ has come near to achieving immortality--Gifted Hopkins, the minor poet, whose name was an inspiration. He represents a harmless and much-abused race. The successful in his own craft are even more impatient with him than the mockers among the laity, probably because Gifted, in the innocence of his heart, desires to have his verses read, and sends them to eminent poets under the mistaken impression that they will be welcome. Holmes confessed that he had been hard on Gifted Hopkins.

The memoir of _John Lothrop Motley_, in addition to being a formal record of personal history and literary achievement, is a spirited defence of a proud, a gifted, and (in the biographer’s opinion) an ill-used man, a man who, after years of successful public service, was needlessly and wantonly humbled and mortified. Hence the note of fine indignation which vibrates through the narrative.

The life of _Emerson_ contributed by Holmes to the series of ‘American Men of Letters’ was a surprise to the public. To call for judgment on the most transcendental of New England authors by the least transcendental, to invite the poet of ‘The One-Hoss Shay’ to pronounce on the poet of ‘The Sphinx,’ seems an odd if not a humorous performance. Whoever suggested it did a wise thing, and the result of the suggestion was a useful and agreeable piece of biographical writing.

The work is thoroughly done, even to an analysis of the individual essays. Who will, may view Emerson through the Autocrat’s eyes. They had a close bond in their liking for the tangible facts of life. ‘Too much,’ says Holmes, ‘has been made of Emerson’s mysticism. He was an intellectual rather than an emotional mystic, and withal a cautious one. He never let go the string of his balloon.’

* * * * *

That we read Holmes on Emerson less for the sake of Emerson than for the sake of Holmes suggests the possibility that we read all the Autocrat’s books in the same spirit. Without question his work is of value in the degree in which it reveals its author. He could not be impersonal, he could not be dramatic. But he was fortunate in that he could always be himself. He was one of the most delightful of men. And being likewise one of the friendliest of writers he is most successful when the form of his books, like _The Autocrat_ and _Over the Teacups_, permits him, as it were, to bring his easy chair into the centre of the room while we gather about him anxious to have him begin to talk, hoping that he will be in no haste to leave off.

FOOTNOTES:

[45] J. T. Morse, Jr.

XIII

_John Lothrop Motley_

REFERENCES:

=O. W. Holmes=: _John Lothrop Motley, a Memoir_, 1879.

=G. W. Curtis= (edited): _The Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, D. C. L._, 1889.

I

HIS LIFE

Motley was born at Dorchester, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1814. His great-grandfather, John Motley, came from Belfast, Ireland, early in the Eighteenth Century, and settled at Falmouth, now Portland, Maine. His father, Thomas Motley, a prosperous merchant of Boston, married Anna Lothrop, daughter of the Reverend John Lothrop. The historian, the second-born of their eight children, was named in honor of his maternal grandfather.

After a course of study under Cogswell and Bancroft at the Round Hill School, Motley entered Harvard College and was graduated in 1831. He was noted both at Northampton and Cambridge for intellectual brilliancy rather than studiousness, for a regal manner which did not tend to make him universally popular, and for rare personal beauty as was becoming in a youth whose parents were reputed in their younger days ‘the handsomest pair the town of Boston could show.’ He was a wit. ‘Give me the luxuries of life and I will dispense with the necessaries,’ is one of his best-known sayings. His passions were literary, he admired Shelley and enjoyed the cleverness of Praed. Although fond of versifying, he seems to have printed little or nothing.

After graduation Motley spent two years (1832–33) at German universities. He went first to Göttingen, where he made the acquaintance of Bismarck. They were fellow-students the next year at Berlin. ‘We lived in closest intimacy, sharing meals and outdoor exercise,’ said Bismarck in a letter to Holmes.

His period of foreign study having come to an end, Motley read law in Boston and was admitted to the bar. In 1837 he married Miss Mary Benjamin, a young woman noted for her beauty, cleverness, and an open-hearted sincerity which ‘made her seem like a sister to those who could help becoming her lovers.’[46] Two years after his marriage Motley made his literary beginning by publishing a novel, _Morton’s Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial_, and in 1849 he published yet another, _Merry-Mount, a Romance of the Massachusetts Colony_. Neither was successful. Perhaps the second failure was required to emphasize the lesson taught by the first, that the author’s gifts were not for imaginative work.[47] He was more fortunate with a group of three essays printed in the ‘North American Review,’ one on ‘Peter the Great’ (1845), one on ‘Balzac’ (1847), the third on ‘The Polity of the Puritans’ (1849).

The first subject was suggested to Motley during a residence of several months in St. Petersburg as Secretary to the American Legation (1841–42). This taste of diplomatic life seems not to have been wholly relished. Motley’s wife could not accompany him, and homesickness and a Russian winter conspired to drive him back to America. He gained some knowledge of practical politics by serving a term in the Massachusetts legislature (1849). Neither law, nor diplomacy, nor yet politics, seemed at that time to offer a field in which he could work to best advantage. More and more he was tending towards literature. So absorbed had he become in the history of Holland that he felt it ‘necessary to write a book on the subject, even if it were destined to fall dead from the press.’ He had made some progress when he heard of Prescott’s projected history of Philip the Second. Thinking it ‘disloyal’ not to declare his ambition of invading a part of Prescott’s own domain, he went to lay his plan before the elder historian. Prescott immediately offered the use of books from his library and was in all ways cordial and enthusiastic.

It soon became evident that a history of Holland could not be written in America. In 1851 Motley took his family and went abroad, and for the next five years toiled unweariedly among the archives of Dresden, The Hague, Brussels, and Paris. His energy and plodding patience surprised the friends who remembered Motley for a brilliant young man who heretofore had played industriously at work rather than actually worked. ‘He never shrank from any of the drudgery of preparation,’ said his daughter, Lady Harcourt, in after years.

The three volumes of _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ were at length ready for the press. Motley was forced to publish at his own expense. Notwithstanding hostile criticisms, the success was undeniable. The book was immediately translated into French, German, and Dutch. Of two French versions the one published in Paris was edited, with an introduction, by Guizot.

The historical series as we have it comprises nine volumes. The works appeared in the following order: _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_, 1856; _History of the United Netherlands_, 1860–68; _The Life and Death of John of Barneveld_, 1874. Motley’s plan included a history of the Thirty Years’ War. But he was not to be granted length of days sufficient for the writing of this ‘last act of a great drama.’

Among many scholastic honors which in the nature of things fell to Motley’s share may be mentioned the conferring of the degree of D. C. L. by Oxford, and the election to full membership in the Institute of France.

Shortly after the fall of Fort Sumter, Motley published in the London ‘Times’ two letters on the significance and justice of the war. They had a marked effect in England and were reprinted in America. In June, 1861, the Austrian government having refused to accept the minister sent to Vienna, Motley was accredited to the mission. After discharging the duties of his office with marked ability during the four troubled years of Lincoln’s administration, and through two years of Johnson’s, he resigned because of an affront offered him by his own government.[48]

During the political campaign of 1868 Motley gave an address in Music Hall, Boston, on ‘Four Questions for the People at the Presidential Election.’ On December 16, as orator at the sixty-first anniversary of the New York Historical Society, he spoke on ‘Historic Progress and American Democracy.’ In the spring of 1869 President Grant assigned Motley to the English mission, and in July, 1870, recalled him. The reasons given for this summary act have never been satisfactory to Motley’s friends. It is a question for experts. If Motley’s indiscretion (or offence) was great, his punishment was severe, and the manner of it not undeserving of the epithet brutal.[49]

Motley’s health is believed to have been affected by distress of mind over the recall. But the real disaster of his latter years was the loss of his wife. He survived her only two and a half years. His death occurred at Kingston Russell, near Dorchester, England, on May 29, 1877.

Dean Stanley in his tribute to Motley at Westminster Abbey used the striking phrase, ‘an historian at once so ardent and so laborious.’ J. R. Green, who heard the sermon, thought the phrase ‘most happy.’ Said Green: ‘I should have liked Stanley to have pointed out the thing which strikes me most in Motley, that alone of all men past and present he knit together not only America and England, but that Older England which we left on Frisian shores, and which grew into the United Netherlands. A child of America, the historian of Holland, he made England his adopted country, and in England his body lies.’

II

HIS CHARACTER

Motley’s letters afford the best insight into his generous, affectionate, richly endowed, and manly nature. They mirror his complete happiness in the home circle, his chivalrous devotion to the woman of his choice, his loyalty to his friends, and his passionate love of native land. They do not show--nor was it intended by the editor that they should--his fiery impatience, his quick resentment, his sensitive pride, his occasional and pardonable bitterness.

A dominant trait of Motley’s character was intensity of the patriotic sentiment. Much was required of a ‘good American’ who, living in Europe during the Civil War, frequented the circles Motley frequented--much in the way of tact, patience, and, above all, courage and hopefulness. Motley, who was far from being a placid, unreflecting optimist, had need of all his philosophy as he saw everywhere proofs of satisfaction in America’s misfortune. He had not only to meet a frank antagonism which could be understood and dealt with, but a hostility which took the galling form of suave assurances that his country was positively going to the dogs, and on the whole it was a very good thing that it was. If gentlemen did not exactly call on him for the purpose of telling him so, they managed sometimes to leave that impression. Motley’s services to his country in meeting every form of attack, direct or insidious, in the spirit of high confidence, were very great. The extent of his usefulness has not yet been fully measured.

He was free from literary vanity and would have been quite unmoved had his books come short of their actual fortune. His way of accepting the real or the superficial tributes to success shows the man. Honorary degrees, elections to learned societies, drawing-room lionizing, passing compliments, were taken exactly for what they were worth. He was as far removed from the absurdity of being elated by these things as he was from the absurdity of pretending not to care. No one could have been more alive to the significance of a degree from Oxford, yet Motley seems to have got the most of comfort on that occasion from the odd spectacle of the Doctors marching in the rain, and among them old Brougham ‘with his wonderful nose wagging lithely from side to side as he hitched up his red petticoats and stalked through the mud.’

The letters reveal so many pleasant traits as to make it difficult to comprehend the hostility which pursued the writer. Holmes throws a deal of light on that question by a single remark. Motley, he says, ‘did not illustrate the popular type of politician.’ The fact is, he illustrated everything that was opposed to that type. An uncompromising upholder of the democratic theory, a bitter foe of absolutism, a eulogist of the people, Motley was himself an aristocrat to the finger-tips. ‘He had a genuine horror of vulgarity in all its forms,’ said one of his friends, and doubtless he showed it. An ‘instinctive repugnance to bad manners and coarse-grained men’ was a trait ill-suited to popularity. Motley’s high-bred bearing alone constituted an offence. But he was incapable of so much policy as was involved in pretending to a bonhomie that was unnatural to him. He had a pliancy of nature fitted to the complex needs of a very complex social organization, but that was not enough to satisfy all his exacting countrymen. And among them were those who disliked him for being the gentleman he was.

III

THE WRITER

The historian of the Dutch Republic writes as one who thinks nobly, admires with enthusiasm, and hates without pettiness. ‘His thoughts are masculine, full of argumentation,’ and as are his thoughts so is his style. Often the language seems charged with his own energy and chivalric impulsiveness. At such times the style is eager, mettlesome, impetuous, it glows with intensity of feeling.

Motley was not a ‘fine’ writer in the sense of being visibly scrupulous about the choice of words and the balance of sentences. He impresses one as of the opinion that a man can ill afford to give too much time to the problem of expression. But he is far from being indifferent to the reader. He is not merely willing, he prefers to please, provided that in so doing he is not diverted from his main purpose. The prevailing characteristics of his style are a natural dignity and a manly negligence.

He imparts vividness by means of detailed conversations among the actors of the historic drama. These colloquies have at times the air of being inventions of the historian, like the speeches in Xenophon. Conscious that a device intended to give reality might affect the sceptical mind quite otherwise, Motley more than once explained that ‘no historical personage is ever made, in the text, to say or write anything, save what, on ample evidence, he is known to have said or written.’

The reader who turns from Prescott to Motley at once discovers that the younger historian weaves a dense, firm web. Appropriating an admirable figure invented by Henry James and used with respect to Balzac’s style, it may be said that if Motley’s work is not at every point cloth of gold, it has at least a metallic rigidity.

IV

THE HISTORIES

The struggle of the Dutch for religious and political liberty was to have been ‘only an episode’ in Prescott’s _Philip the Second_. Motley’s broad treatment of the theme requires nine octavo volumes. _The Rise of the Dutch Republic_ (in three volumes) covers the time between the abdication of Charles the Fifth and the murder of William of Orange. The _History of the United Netherlands_ (in four volumes) takes up the narrative at the death of William and carries it on to the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce. _John of Barneveld_, is ‘the natural sequel’ to the two preceding works, and ‘a necessary introduction’ to the history of the Thirty Years’ War.

These works from first to last are marked by passionate admiration of the spirit which makes for liberty. Admitting the turbulent character of that spirit in the early history of the Netherlands, the historian does not deplore it. Sedition and uproar meant life. ‘Those violent little commonwealths had blood in their veins! They were compact of proud, self-helping muscular vigor.’ And to Motley ‘the most sanguinary tumults which they ever enacted in the face of day were better than the order and silence born of the midnight darkness of despotism.’

The treatment then is strongly partisan. There is a fervor in the account of the deeds and sufferings of those patriots who thought no sacrifice too great if thereby the sum total of human liberty was increased.

Motley does not pretend that the leaders in this struggle were always disinterested. The motives swaying humanity are wondrously complex. But after all deductions are made, it was a struggle of light against darkness, and with such a struggle it was possible to sympathize unqualifiedly. There are cool-blooded critics who view such an attitude with disdain. This, they say, is not the temper in which history should be written. History must be calm, impartial, scientific. Perhaps the reasonable reply is that history must be of many sorts and the product of many types of mind; that one sort never really excludes the other. Also it is well to remember that a great historical master of our time,[50] and one whose creed was by no means narrow, pleaded always for this deep and passionate motive in the work, and laughed at the modern Oxford product which can balance questions but is able to accomplish nothing.