A MORTAL ANTIPATHY

A MORTAL ANTIPATHY

By Oliver We ndell Holmes

CONTENTS

PREFACE.

INTRODUCTION.

THE NEW PORTFOLIO: FIRST OPENING.

A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.

I. GETTING READY.

II. THE BOAT-RACE.

III. THE WHITE CANOE.

IV. THE YOUNG SOLITARY

V. THE ENIGMA STUDIED.

VI. STILL AT FAULT.

VII. A RECORD OF ANTIPATHIES

VIII. THE PANSOPHIAN SOCIETY.

IX. THE SOCIETY AND ITS NEW SECRETARY.

X. A NEW ARRIVAL.

XI. THE INTERVIEWER ATTACKS THE SPHINX.

XII. MISS VINCENT AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.

XIII. DR. BUTTS READS A PAPER.

XIV. MISS VINCENT'S STARTLING DISCOVERY.

XV. DR. BUTTS CALLS ON EUTHYMIA.

XVI. MISS VINCENT WRITES A LETTER.

XVII. Dr. BUTTS'S PATIENT.

XVIII. MAURICE KIRKWOOD'S STORY OF HIS LIFE.

XIX.

THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.

XX. DR. BUTTS REFLECTS.

XXI. AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION.

XXII. EUTHYMIA.

XXIII. THE MEETING OF MAURICE AND EUTHYMIA.

XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.

POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.

MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.

DR. BUTTS TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.

DR. BUTTS TO MRS. BUTTS.

PREFACE.

"A MORTAL ANTIPATHY"was a truly hazardous experiment. A very wise and very distinguished physician who is as much at home in literature as he is in science and the practice of medicine, wrote to me in referring to this story:"I should have been afraid of my subject."He did not explain himself, but I can easily understand that he felt the improbability of the physiological or pathological occurrence on which the story is founded to be so great that the narrative could hardly be rendered plausible. I felt the difficulty for myself as well as for my readers, and it was only by recalling for our consideration a series of extraordinary but well-authenticated facts of somewhat similar character that I could hope to gain any serious attention to so strange a narrative.

I need not recur to these wonderful stories. The re is, however, one, not to be found on record elsewhere, to which I would especially call the reader's attention. It is that of the middle-aged man, who assured me that he could never pass a tall hall clock without an indefinable terror. While an infant in arms the heavy weight of one of these tall clocks had fallen with a loud crash and produced an impression on his nervous system which he had never got over.

The lasting effect of a shock received by the sense of sight or that of hearing is conceivable enough.

But there is another sense, the nerves of which are in close relation with the higher organs of consciousness. The strength of the associations connected with the function of the first pair of nerves, the olfactory, is familiar to most persons in their own experience and as related by others. Now we know that every human being, as well as every other living organism, carries its own distinguishing atmosphere. If a man's friend does not know it, his dog does, and can track him anywhere by it. This personal peculiarity varies with the age and conditions of the individual. It may be agreeable or otherwise, a source of attraction or repulsion, but its influence is not less real, though far less obvious and less dominant, than in the lower animals. It was an Atmospheric impression of this nature which associated itself with a terrible shock experienced by the infant which became the subject of this story. The impression could not be outgrown, but it might possibly be broken up by some sudden change in the nervous system effected by a cause as potent as the one which had produced the disordered condition.

This is the best key that I can furnish to a story which must have puzzled some, repelled others, and failed to interest many who did not suspect the true cause of the mysterious antipathy.

BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August, 1891. O. W. H.

A MORTAL ANTIPATHY.

FIRST OPENING OF THE NEW PORTFOLIO.

INTRODUCTION.

"And why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"

Pray, do you remember, when there was an Accession to the nursery in which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the baby? And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no other in existence?

Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully and show them to callers, namely, to the whole family of readers belonging to my list of intimates, and such other friends as may drop in by accident. And so it shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its fellows as a portfolio.

The re are a few personal and incidental matters of which I wish to say something before reaching the contents of the Portfolio, whatever these may be. I have had other portfolios before this,—two, more especially, and the first thing I beg leave to introduce relates to these.

Do not throw this volume down, or turn to another page, when I tell you that the earliest of them, that of which I now am about to speak, was opened more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession, for fifty years make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, without giving it the charm of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my readers would accept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but fifty years ago,—there are too many talkative old people who know all about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware. A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them—the delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.

When the first Portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its legend,—or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could have had their way,—Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Caesar. Aug. Div., Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with that legend, but the truth is I was not very familiarly acquainted with the precious metals at that period of my career, and, there might have been a good deal of such coin in circulation without my handling it, or knowing much about it.

Permit me to indulge in a few reminiscences of that far-off time.

In those days the Athenaeum Picture Gallery was a principal centre of attraction to young Boston people and their visitors. Many of us got our first ideas of art, to say nothing of our first lessons in the comparatively innocent flirtations of our city's primitive period, in that agreeable resort of amateurs and artists.

How the pictures on those walls in Pearl Street do keep their places in the mind's gallery! Trumbull's Sortie of Gibraltar, with red enough in it for one of our sunset after-glows; and Neagle's full-length portrait of the blacksmith in his shirt-sleeves; and Copley's long-waistcoated gentlemen and satin-clad ladies,—they looked like gentlemen and ladies, too; and Stuart's florid merchants and high-waisted matrons; and Allston's lovely It alian scenery and dreamy, unimpassioned women, not forgetting Florimel in full flight on her interminable rocking-horse,—you may still see her at the Art Museum; and the rival landscapes of Doughty and Fisher, much talked of and largely praised in those days; and the Murillo,—not from Marshal Soup's collection; and the portrait of Annibale Caracci by himself, which cost the Athenaeum a hundred dollars; and Cole's allegorical pictures, and his immense and dreary canvas, in which the prostrate shepherds and the angel in Joseph's coat of many colors look as if they must have been thrown in for nothing; and We st's brawny Lear tearing his clothes to pieces. But why go on with the catalogue, when most of these pictures can be seen either at the Athenaeum building in Beacon Street or at the Art Gallery, and admired or criticised perhaps more justly, certainly not more generously, than in those earlier years when we looked at them through the japanned fish-horns?

If one happened to pass through Atkinson Street on his way to the Athenaeum, he would notice a large, square, painted, brick house, in which lived a leading representative of old-fashioned coleopterous Calvinism, and from which emerged one of the liveliest of literary butterflies. The father was editor of the"Boston Recorder,"a very respectable, but very far from amusing paper, most largely patronized by that class of the community which spoke habitually of the first day of the week as"the Sahbuth."The son was the editor of several different periodicals in succession, none of them over severe or serious, and of many pleasant books, filled with lively descriptions of society, which he studied on the outside with a quick eye for form and color, and with a certain amount of sentiment, not very deep, but real, though somewhat frothed over by his worldly experiences.

Nathaniel Parker Willis was in full bloom when I opened my first Portfolio. He had made himself known by his religious poetry, published in his father's paper, I think, and signed"Roy."He had started the"American Magazine,"afterwards merged in the"New York Mirror."He had then left off writing scripture pieces, and taken to lighter forms of verse. He had just written

"I'm twenty-two, I'm twenty-two,

They idly give me joy,

As if I should be glad to know

That I was less a boy."

He was young, therefore, and already famous. He came very near being very handsome. He was tall; his hair, of light brown color, waved in luxuriant abundance; his cheek was as rosy as if it had been painted to show behind the footlights; he dressed with artistic elegance. He was something between a remembrance of Count D'Orsay and an Anticipation of Oscar Wilde. The re used to be in the gallery of the Luxembourg a picture of Hippolytus and Phxdra, in which the beautiful young man, who had kindled a passion in the heart of his wicked step-mother, always reminded me of Willis, in spite of the shortcomings of the living face as compared with the ideal. The painted youth is still blooming on the canvas, but the fresh-cheeked, jaunty young author of the year 1830 has long faded out of human sight. I took the leaves which lie before me at this moment, as I write, from his coffin, as it lay just outside the door of Saint Paul's Church, on a sad, overclouded winter's day, in the year 1867. At that earlier time, Willis was by far the most prominent young American author. Cooper, Irving, Bryant, Dana, Halleck, Drake, had all done their best work. Longfellow was not yet conspicuous. Lowell was a school-boy. Emerson was unheard of. Whittier was beginning to make his way against the writers with better educational advantages whom he was destined to outdo and to outlive. Not one of the great histories, which have done honor to our literature, had appeared. Our school-books depended, so far as American authors were concerned, on extracts from the orations and speeches of We bster and Everett; on Bryant's Thanatopsis, his lines To a Waterfowl, and the Death of the Flowers, Halleck's Marco Bozzaris, Red Jacket, and Burns; on Drake's American Flag, and Percival's Coral Grove, and his Genius Sleeping and Genius Waking,—and not getting very wide awake, either. The se could be depended upon. A few other copies of verses might be found, but Dwight's"Columbia, Columbia,"and Pierpont's Airs of Palestine, were already effaced, as many of the favorites of our own day and generation must soon be, by the great wave which the near future will pour over the sands in which they still are legible.

About this time, in the year 1832, came out a small volume entitled"Truth, a Gift for Scribblers,"which made some talk for a while, and is now chiefly valuable as a kind of literary tombstone on which may be read the names of many whose renown has been buried with their bones. The"London Athenaeum"spoke of it as having been described as a"tomahawk sort of satire."As the author had been a trapper in Missouri, he was familiarly acquainted with that weapon and the warfare of its owners. Born in Boston, in 1804, the son of an Army officer, educated at We st Point, he came back to his native city about the year 1830. He wrote an Article on Bryant's Poems for the"North American Review,"and another on the famous Indian chief, Black Hawk. In this last-mentioned article he tells this story as the great warrior told it himself. It was an incident of a fight with the Osages.

"Standing by my father's side, I saw him kill his antagonist and tear the scalp from his head. Fired with valor and ambition, I rushed furiously upon another, smote him to the earth with my tomahawk, ran my lance through his body, took off his scalp, and returned in triumph to my father. He said nothing, but looked pleased."

This little red story describes very well Spelling's style of literary warfare. His handling of his most conspicuous victim, Willis, was very much like Black Hawk's way of dealing with the Osage. He tomahawked him in heroics, ran him through in prose, and scalped him in barbarous epigrams. Bryant and Halleck were abundantly praised; hardly any one else escaped.

If the reader wishes to see the bubbles of reputation that were floating, some of them gay with prismatic colors, half a century ago, he will find in the pages of"Truth"a long catalogue of celebrities he never heard of. I recognize only three names, of all which are mentioned in the little book, as belonging to persons still living; but as I have not read the obituaries of all the others, some of them may be still flourishing in spite of Mr. Spelling's exterminating onslaught. Time dealt as hardly with poor Spelling, who was not without talent and instruction, as he had dealt with our authors. I think he found shelter at last under a roof which held numerous inmates, some of whom had seen better and many of whom had known worse days than those which they were passing within its friendly and not exclusive precincts. Such, at least, was the story I heard after he disappeared from general observation.

That was the day of Souvenirs, Tokens, Forget-me-nots, Bijous, and all that class of showy annuals. Short stories, slender poems, steel engravings, on a level with the common fashion-plates of advertising establishments, gilt edges, resplendent binding,—to manifestations of this sort our lighter literature had very largely run for some years. The"Scarlet Letter"was an unhinted possibility. The"Voices of the Night"had not stirred the brooding silence; the Concord seer was still in the lonely desert; most of the contributors to those yearly volumes, which took up such pretentious positions on the centre table, have shrunk into entire oblivion, or, at best, hold their place in literature by a scrap or two in some omnivorous collection.

What dreadful work Spelling made among those slight reputations, floating in swollen tenuity on the surface of the stream, and mirroring each other in reciprocal reflections! Violent, abusive as he was, unjust to any against whom he happened to have a prejudice, his castigation of the small litterateurs of that day was not harmful, but rather of use. His attack on Willis very probably did him good; he needed a little discipline, and though he got it too unsparingly, some cautions came with it which were worth the stripes he had to smart under. One noble writer Spelling treated with rudeness, probably from some accidental pique, or equally insignificant reason. I myself, one of the three survivors before referred to, escaped with a love-pat, as the youngest son of the Muse. Longfellow gets a brief nod of acknowledgment. Bailey, an American writer,"who made long since a happy snatch at fame,"which must have been snatched away from him by envious time, for I cannot identify him; Thatcher, who died early, leaving one poem, The Last Request, not wholly unremembered; Miss Hannah F. Gould, a very bright and agreeable writer of light verse,—all these are commended to the keeping of that venerable public carrier, who finds his scythe and hour-glass such a load that he generally drops the burdens committed to his charge, after making a show of paying every possible attention to them so long as he is kept in sight.