OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR.
A SIMPLY TERRIFIC LETTER FROM THE FUTURE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE TO HIS MITRESS: CLAIRE CASTLETOWN, THE LADY CASTLETOWN
“THE GREATEST EXPERIENCES OF LIFE ARE: WAR, WOMEN, A STORM AT SEA, AND THE MOUNTAINS”
HOLMES, OLIVER WENDELL, JR., (1841-1935). Associate Justice, United States Supreme Court, 1902-1932. Superb Autograph Letter Signed, “O.W. Holmes”, Four full pages, quarto. Beverly Farms, Massachusetts. August 7, 1897. To his mistress, Holmes writes:
“I am without the wife – you better. A letter from you came just after I had sent off one, made short because I had not heard from you – you are a dear, but your letter somehow enhanced a slight melancholy caused by the circumstance of losing my watch which seems to have popped out of my packet and instantly to have been picked up by a passing wagon and found my door. My watch was my fathers and it seems this a slight wrong to him. Well, can I say, I suppose because I was a little disturbed your letter had me a little sad. I hated the new man who was to take you out on the river and it seemed far away when you should leave England or Ireland. I am with you there – but in a chateau in Savoy it is different. Oh how I would like to be with you though in some such place. Do you know Dore’s illustration to the Contes Drolatiques of Balzac? Esp. to the Belle Imperia if I remember right – wonderful ghostly forest and precipices inhabited by the middle ages. I am or was an old Alpine Club man on the strength of having traveled with Leslie Stephen when he was president and having had a brief but vivid experience on the Bernese Oberland – and the romance of the mountains is in my soul forever. The greatest experiences of life are war, women, a storm at sea and the mountains. I forbear the philosophic generalizations which the lists suggests – but I would like to share this only with you. It would not be the silence of the show on the passing to return to life when one first hears running water on the descent, but slanting meadows full of flowers and woods haunted by the past, and a medieval castle and, oh, la-la – The place where I am has the merit of respecting all that on a minim [sic] scale. The rocks on granite all make noble contours and good trees – the woods ought to have associations, they look ready for them, and the ocean is an electric line to you. – Another thing that troubles me was that I was not sure and I still am not whether I read the address correctly, and I fancy this letter wandering like a blind boy in search of its victim, and unlike the youth, not finding her. I remember Ld Herschel (whom you mention) dining with him once when I lived in my first little house. I thought he was inclined to be just a trifle arrogant. You legal authorities sometimes are so, at least in legal directions, and I liked Lady Herschel. When I next went to England, the time I first saw you, I received discouraging accounts of her – left a card – received an inv. to dinner which cdn’t accept, and so farewell – I have not read the story by Sinclair. Don’t know him. Your husband I suppose is the man quoted in “Climbing in the Himalayans” wh. I think I mentioned reading and – some one spoke to me — of meeting and liking him. The region of his travels in – singularly interesting by that book in connection with “Where 3 Empires Meet” wh. later gives account of some of you during little English Exhibitions and fights and quite thrilled me 2 years ago. Do you note a certain tone of ease in this letter? I have finished my German book and have foregone taking another one and am feeling irresponsible. And have at got improvements on my mind. The tension is somewhat relaxed, and I am ready for pleasure. Last night I began Boissier Ciceron et Ses Amis – wh. Promises to be an entertaining picture of that time – which lives for the writer. It was odd to read last night. Your experience of dissatisfaction with this life you lead. I had first come in from bicycling with Brooks Adams, and he had spoken of the peculiarity of our two lives, seeing him whirl without being in it and – saying to him, what I no doubt I have said to you, that I thought the passion for being in it, especially strong or developed in women & among women, esp. in fashionable women in London, was fatal to one’s soul. It cuts off those lapses of leisure when one develops a point of view and a personality. And yet I wish – that if one is not intent on doing specific work which seems to him great and worth sacrifice, it is a fair question whether one can get so much out of life in any other way. The London woman of the world is sure to be pretty quick and superficially at least pretty civilized, familiar with many nuances nuances of ideas and feelings – the feeling of unrest and dissatisfaction, like my criticism, come very likely from the atmosphere of ambition and achievement in which are live and which seems to me a transitory ideal. The abiding one, on the ideal of the future ration, seems to me (likely) to be Content. I don’t think one takes a very large view until one has perceived the illusion of personality, which accepting of being somebody to feeling as a means of making us do our share in the world’s work – but if one has perceived that his only significance is as a wheel in the universe and has accepted that intellectually, I think one must have a pretty broad conception of what the world’s work is, and I do not believe that renunciation of our desires and natural impulses and faculties is the universal requirement. Good Society is shown to be a normal product by the fact that it exists, and it seems to me a desirable one and that to help to constitute it is a true Service. I do not even know whether Judgments of significance and worth have any application to the cosmos, but they seem to be a necessary part of human life and we can’t help applying such criteria to ourselves – Are these reflections too dry? Heaven knows they are not made in a pedantic spirit – and they are thinking aloud, which you will not resent. I like to sit down and let my pen follow its own course to you, not knowing beforehand when it will come out – but you gave me a jolly good scare by what you said about finding my letters dry at times – perhaps it was a difficult dryness – a Sécheresse d’ame which I, at least, am subject to, when I have been too intent on work or when the tide is out and life runs low. I hope you wont find that today- for although a trifle sluggish I am on deck and could see you I think you would not complain in that way. Once more I – you – say au revoir. O. W. Holmes /Beverly Farms / Massachusetts / United States of America. This for the dead letter office in case I miss you.”
[Post script along side of first page]:
“I was just called to window by a great piping of small voices – and saw our driver carrying a load of about fifteen small boys whom he had collected at Mrs. Holmes; request and is taking one with a couple horses to the Circus in a neighboring town – unless its peanuts and a great lark”.
It simply doesn’t get any better than this. The bulk of the correspondence between OWH and Lady Castletown is at Harvard, represented by xerox copies. This letter is however, not represented in that grouping and thus is ‘unknown’ to them. If you collect SCOTUS material or just exemplary Americana, then this letter is for you.
$8500.00