6 Conservative.
friends nud ncquaintauces by iny an
nouncement , apparently in quite a cas
ual sort of way , that I had been invited
to dine at Thackeray's house. I am
afraid I sometimes added , with an affec
tation of composure , as if I were speak
ing of quite nil ordinary event in one's
life , that it was to be a small dinner
party confined to a few literary men ,
and that I expected to hear some pleas
ant talk about literature. The time was
drawing close to the Christmas of 18G3.
I used to go down to the newspaper of
fice in the city every afternoon , and one
afternoon , not easily to be forgotten by
me in this world , I learned in the city
the terrible news of Thackeray's sudden
death. That was a darksome Christ
mas time for me. Thackeray was , as
lie is still , one of my great literary
heroes ; and now , just at the moment
when the possibility seemed to open on
mo of being admitted to his friendship ,
the chance was gone forever. I should
have mourned even if I had never met
him face to face ; but to have met him ,
to have been invited to his house , and
then to find all possibility of his friend
ship suddenly cut off from me , was
enough to make me think for the time
more of my own personal loss than of
the loss which the world of letters had
sustained. "
Of Meredith he says :
"I think the first impression which
George Meredith made on me was that
of extraordinary and exuberant vitality.
When I saw him for the first time he
had left his younger days a long way
behind him , and yet ho had the appear
ance and the movements of one endowed
dewed with a youth that could not fade ;
energy was in every movement ; vital
power spoke in every gesture. He loved
bodily exercises of all kinds ; he delighted
to take long , brisk walks 'spins' as he
called them along the highways and
the byways of the neighborhood , and he
loved to wander through the woods ,
and to lie in the grass , and I have no
doubt he would have enjoyed climbing
the trees. He seemed to have in him
much of the temperament of the fawn ;
he seemed to have sprung from the very
bosom of Nature herself. His talk was
wonderful , and perhaps , not the least
wonderful thing about it was that it
seemed BO very like his writing. Now
it was Richard Feverel who talked to
you , and now Harlej' Adrian , and then
Beauchauip not that ho ever repeated
any of the recorded sayings of these
men , but that he talked as one could
imagine any of them capable of talking
on any suggested subject. "
He was a great admirer of James
Russell Lowell :
"I had many opportunities of meet
ing Lowell during my early visits to
Boston , and afterward when he came
to London merely as a traveler ; and
still later when ho was settled in Lon
don for some time as American minis
ter hero. I admired him always ; but I
may be forgiven if I say that I admired
liiin most in his own home , and timid
liis own familiar surroundings at Cam
bridge , Mass. It seemed to me that I
understood him best under such condi
tions , perhaps because I had for so many
years come to associate him with the
poets and scholars and essayists ,
; he workers and the dreamers who
made that corner of the United States
so dear and so fascinating to ad
mirers in the old country. Lowell was ,
as everybody knows , one of the most
popular American ministers who ever
came to London. London society thor-
oiighly appreciated him and welcomed
: iim , 'went for' him with homage and
rapture , did all it could to spoil him
with praise and social flattery , but
could not prevent him from being the
poetical , fanciful , dreamy Lowell of the
college halls , and the homes , and the
lanes of Cambridge. Indeed , Lowell
developed in London a gift of which , so
far as L know , he had not given any
clear evidence at home. He became
one of the most delightful and fascinat
ing after-dinner speakers I have ever
lieard. I rank him second , and only
second , to Charles Dickens as an after-
dinner speaker. He never said anything
which was not freshoriginal , and strik
ing ; he made the most commonplace
theme sparkle with fancy and humor ,
with exquisite phrase and poetic sugges-
tiveness. I think the famous old illus
tration about the orator receiving in a
vapor from his audience that which he
gives back as a flood , would have ap
plied admirably to Lowell , for it seemed
to me that the manifest delight of his
London audiences had the effect of mak
ing him a great after-dinner speaker as
he went along. Yet I cannot help say
ing again that I liked him best as I
knew him first ; that the Lowell of Cam
bridge , Mass. , was more to me the real
Lowell , the poet and the critic , the
moralist , the thinker , and the dreamer ,
than the Lowell of London society , the
Lowell of London public dinners , and
fashionable dinner parties , and fashion
able drawing rooms. "
McCarthy had many meetings with
Longfellow during the time of his first
stay in America , and the general im
pression he derived from his intercourse
with him was that the man , on the
whole , was greater than his books :
"Now , I am not sure that I can very
clearly describe what I should wish to
convey , and what is in my own mind
upon this subject , I am old-fashioned
enough to be still an admirer of Long
fellow's poetry , and of 'Hyperion , ' and
of 'Outro-Mer. ' I am told that this is
not the right sort of thing to say at
the present moment ; and I believe that
to the immense popularity which Longfellow -
follow once enjoyed in England there
lias succeeded the familiar period of re
action , and that it is now thought the
thing to cry him down as it was once
thought the thing to cry him up. I do
not , however , profess to bo particularly
bound by the laws of fashion in poetry ,
and I hold to it that Longfellow was , in
liis way and within his limits , a genuine
poet. A stream is a stream though its
flow be not broad or deep ; and Long
fellow's was a genuine stream of song.
But what I desire to convey is that , if I
liad met Longfellow personally before I
had read his poems and his prose books ,
and had had a chance of talking to him
such as I did actually enjoy at various
times , about Nature , and scenery , and
books , and the impulses , thoughts , and
deeds that inspire books , and about the
life and the heart of man , I should have
expected to find in his printed works the
stamp of a literary order higher than
that to which , according to my judg
ment , the author attained. "
Nothing could be more admirable than
McCarthy's pen-picture of Holmes :
1 'I can well remember when and how
it was first borne in upon me that Oliver
Wendell Holmes was really growing to
be an old man. It was during the last
visit that I ever paid to Boston , some
ten or twelve years ago. Up to that
time I had always regarded Holmes as a
sort of walking , moving immortality ; a
being endowed with eternal youth ; a
being atall'events who could never grow
old. I had come to regard him much as
we all of late years had come to regard
Mr. Gladstone. One day , however , I
was walking near the Boston postoffice ,
when I heard a rapid footfall behind
me. There was something in the sound
of that footfall which filled me with an
inexplicable and a melancholy interest.
It was the sound of an uncertain tread ;
it might have been the tread of a child
only beginning to walk , or it might have
been the tread of some very old person.
Then I heard a voice calling my name ,
and I turned round , and there was Wen
dell Holmes. "
He adds :
' 'I went with my daughter to pay him
a visit , and he took us about Boston to
show us some curious old book shops and
print shops , which he loved to haunt.
Wo had to go in various omnibuses and
tramcars , and I was much amused and
touched by the gallantry and the alert
ness of the polite old cavalier. He
would persist in handing my daughter
in and out of every omnibus or traincar
made use of by us in our journey ings ;
he used to leap in and out with the agil
ity of a young man and gave his courtly
hand to my daughter as though he were
gome stalwart cavalier coming to the
aid of weak girlhood. My daughter
was a healthy and robust girl , who , one
might have thought , was better fitted
to help the old man ; but Oliver Wendell
Holmes never failed to lead the way for
--11
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