Boston, February 16, 1861.
My Dear Motley:
It is a pleasing coincidence for me that the same papers which are just
announcing your great work are telling our little world that it can also
purchase, if so disposed, my modest two-volume story. You must be having a
respite from labor. You will smile when I tell you that I have my first
vacation since you were with us, — when was it? in ’57? — but so it is. It
scares me to look on your labors, when I remember that I have thought it
something to write an article once a month for the “Atlantic Monthly”; that is
all I have to show, or nearly all, for three and a half years, and in the
meantime you have erected your monument, more perennial than bronze, in these
two volumes of alto-relievo. I will not be envious, but I must wonder — wonder
at the mighty toils undergone to quarry the ore before the mold could be shaped
and the metal cast. I know you must meet your signal and unchallenged success
with little excitement, for you know too well the price that has been paid for
it. A man does not give away the best years of a manhood like yours without knowing
that his plant has got to pay for his outlay. You have won the name and fame
you must have foreseen were to be the accidents of your career. I hope, as you
partake the gale with your illustrious brethren, you are well ballasted with
those other accidents of successful authorship.
I am thankful for your sake that you are out of this
wretched country. There was never anything in our experience that gave any idea
of it before. Not that we have had any material suffering as yet. Our factories
have been at work, and our dividends have been paid. Society — in Boston, at
least — has been nearly as gay as usual. I had a few thousand dollars to raise
to pay for my house in Charles Street, and sold my stocks for more than they
cost me. We have had predictions, to be sure, that New England was to be left
out in the cold if a new confederacy was formed, and that the grass was to grow
in the streets of Boston. But prophets are at a terrible discount in these
times, and, in spite of their predictions, Merrimac sells at 1125. It is the
terrible uncertainty of everything — most of all the uncertainty of opinion of
men. I had almost said of principles. From the impracticable abolitionist, as
bent on total separation from the South as Carolina is on secession from the
North, to the hunker, or submissionist, or whatever you choose to call the
wretch who would sacrifice everything and beg the South's pardon for offending
it, you find all shades of opinion in our streets. If Mr. Seward or Mr. Adams
moves in favor of compromise, the whole Republican party sways like a field of
grain before the breath of either of them. If Mr. Lincoln says he shall execute
the laws and collect the revenue though the heavens cave in, the backs of the
Republicans stiffen again, and they take down the old revolutionary king's
arms, and begin to ask whether they can be altered to carry Minie bullets.
In the meantime, as you know very well, a monstrous
conspiracy has been hatching for nobody knows how long, barely defeated in its
first great move by two occurrences —Major Anderson's retreat to Fort Sumter,
and the exposure of the great defalcations. The expressions of popular opinion
in Virginia and Tennessee have encouraged greatly those who hope for union on
the basis of a compromise; but this evening's news seems to throw doubt on the
possibility of the North and the border States ever coming to terms; and I see
in this same evening's paper the threat thrown out that if the Southern ports
are blockaded fifty regiments will be set in motion for Washington! Nobody
knows, everybody guesses. Seward seems to be hopeful. I had a long talk with
Banks; he fears the formation of a powerful Southern military empire, which
will give us trouble. Mr. Adams predicts that the Southern Confederacy will be
an ignominious failure.
A Cincinnati pamphleteer, very sharp and knowing, shows how
pretty a quarrel they will soon get up among themselves. There is no end to the
shades of opinion. Nobody knows where he stands but Wendell Phillips and his
out-and-outers. Before this political cataclysm we were all sailing on as
quietly and harmoniously as a crew of your good Dutchmen in a trekschuit. The
club has flourished greatly, and proved to all of us a source of the greatest
delight. I do not believe there ever were such agreeable periodical meetings in
Boston as these we have had at Parker's. We have missed you, of course, but
your memory and your reputation were with us. The magazine which you helped to
give a start to has prospered since its transfer to Ticknor and Fields. I
suppose they may make something directly by it, and as an advertising medium it
is a source of great indirect benefit to them. No doubt you will like to hear
in a few words about its small affairs. I don't believe that all the Oxfords
and Institutes can get the local recollections out of you. I suppose I have
made more money and reputation out of it than anybody else, on the whole. I
have written more than anybody else, at any rate. Miss Prescott's stories have
made her quite a name. Wentworth Higginson's articles have also been very
popular. Lowell's critical articles and political ones are always full of
point, but he has been too busy as editor to write a great deal. As for the
reputations that were toutes faites, I don't know that they have gained
or lost a great deal by what their owners have done for the “Atlantic.” But oh,
such a belaboring as I have had from the so-called “Evangelical” press for the
last two or three years, almost without intermission! There must be a great
deal of weakness and rottenness when such extreme bitterness is called out by
such a good-natured person as I can claim to be in print. It is a new
experience to me, but is made up by a great amount of sympathy from men and
women, old and young, and such confidences and such sentimental épanchements that if
my private correspondence is ever aired I shall pass for a more questionable
personage than my domestic record can show me to have been.
Come, now, why should I talk to you of anything but yourself
and that wonderful career of well-deserved and hardly won success which you
have been passing through since I waved my handkerchief to you as you slid away
from the wharf at East Boston? When you write to me, as you will one of these
days, I want to know how you feel about your new possession, a European name. I
should like very much, too, to hear something of your every-day experiences of
English life, how you like the different classes of English people you meet — the
scholars, the upper class, and the average folk that you may have to deal with.
You know that, to a Bostonian, there is nothing like a Bostonian's impression
of a new people or mode of life. We all carry the Common in our heads as the
unit of space, the State House as the standard of architecture, and measure off
men in Edward Everetts as with a yardstick. I am ashamed to remember how many
scrolls of half an hour's scribblings we might have exchanged with pleasure on
one side, and very possibly with something of it on the other. I have heard so
much of Miss Lily's praises that I should be almost afraid of her if I did not
feel sure that she would inherit a kindly feeling to her father and mother's
old friend. Do remember me to your children; and as for your wife, who used to
be Mary once, and I have always found it terribly hard work to make anything
else of, tell her how we all long to see her good, kind face again. Give me
some stray half-hour, and believe me always your friend,
O. W. Holmes
SOURCE: George William Curtis, editor, The
Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley in Two Volumes, Library Edition,
Volume 2, p. 113-7
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