Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Dewey Decimal Classification, and Me -- Garbo
To begin with, there were two famous men, father and son, named Oliver Wendell Holmes. The son was a Justice of the Supreme Court.
The Justice's father was a physician, poet, and writer. He's the guy I'm writing about today.
The elder Holmes was most famous for two works: a book of poetry, The Chambered Nautilus, and a compilation of gently humorous magazine essays. The latter appeared in book form about ten years before the Civil War began, and was published as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
(As opposed to The Automat of the Breakfast Table. )
An autocrat, as you may well know, is someone who wields total power, which has been formally or informally granted or tolerated by the people and/or the government. In this case, the autocrat of Oliver Wendell Holmes' book is a funny guy ("The Author") who has discussions over breakfast at a rooming house. The banter takes place between a group of fellows, each of whom is a different kind of professional man or notable character.
Here's a typical excerpt from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table:
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.
[Our landlady turned pale;—no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff’s nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were carelessly.]
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.
Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John’s ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas’s ideal John; never the real John, nor John’s John, but often very unlike either.
Three Thomas.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas’s ideal Thomas.
3. John’s ideal Thomas.
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas’s attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.
[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me viâ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.]
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table was one of the first books I spotted when, at age 17 or so, I went to the library to look for authors who, like Erma Bombeck, wrote humorous essays. The books in each section were arranged by title so "Autocrat" was the first one. I had no idea what an autocrat was and never heard of the elder Holmes but may have learned a speck of history about Holmes Jr. in school.
Honestly, I think I may have had The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table conflated with Clarence Day's Life With Father, which had been made into a movie I'd seen on Indianapolis' low-power TV station.
But autocrat or no autocrat, I did know I was in approximately the right area of the library, because at Creston Junior High, our librarian Mrs. Guyer had taken the seventh-graders 'round the stacks and given us a brief summary of what we called the Dewey Decimal System but which modern librarians call the Dewey Decimal Classification.
I love the photo (below) of the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification. He looks like someone I would know. Besides getting library books into findable order, Dewey was an advocate of spelling reform, which eliminated the use of silent, double, or extra letters. This led him to change the spelling of his name from Melville Dewey to Melvil Dui. The surname change didn't go over with people, so he changed his last name back to the original but kept "Melvil."
I can still see the layout of the main branch of the Indy library, circa 1974, in my mind. I remember that the humorous essay section began on the top row of a set of gray metal shelves. They went off to my right as I stood facing the same direction as the front entrance of the library. And I remember the library's copy of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table as being bound in somewhat-worn, but still handsome red leatherette. The first edition of the book came out in the 1850s and I would imagine the copy I took off the library shelf was a reprint from perhaps the turn of the (20th) century. I didn't understand much of the humor and i could make almost nothing of the included poetry, but it was a start. I knew I just had to keep going along the shelf, opening front covers, then scanning a few pages to see if what used to be funny was still funny now.
Next week: Jean Kerr.
The Justice's father was a physician, poet, and writer. He's the guy I'm writing about today.
The elder Holmes was most famous for two works: a book of poetry, The Chambered Nautilus, and a compilation of gently humorous magazine essays. The latter appeared in book form about ten years before the Civil War began, and was published as The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
(As opposed to The Automat of the Breakfast Table. )
An autocrat, as you may well know, is someone who wields total power, which has been formally or informally granted or tolerated by the people and/or the government. In this case, the autocrat of Oliver Wendell Holmes' book is a funny guy ("The Author") who has discussions over breakfast at a rooming house. The banter takes place between a group of fellows, each of whom is a different kind of professional man or notable character.
Here's a typical excerpt from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table:
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking together, it is natural enough that among the six there should be more or less confusion and misapprehension.
[Our landlady turned pale;—no doubt she thought there was a screw loose in my intellects,—and that involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff’s nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up. I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize the carving-knife; at any rate, he slid it to one side, as it were carelessly.]
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dialogue between John and Thomas.
Three Johns.
1. The real John; known only to his Maker.
2. John’s ideal John; never the real one, and often very unlike him.
3. Thomas’s ideal John; never the real John, nor John’s John, but often very unlike either.
Three Thomas.
1. The real Thomas.
2. Thomas’s ideal Thomas.
3. John’s ideal Thomas.
Only one of the three Johns is taxed; only one can be weighed on a platform-balance; but the other two are just as important in the conversation. Let us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an artful rogue, we will say; therefore he is, so far as Thomas’s attitude in the conversation is concerned, an artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be found who knows himself as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as others see him, there must be at least six persons engaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the least important, philosophically speaking, is the one that we have called the real person. No wonder two disputants often get angry, when there are six of them talking and listening all at the same time.
[A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me viâ this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the three that remained in the basket, remarking that there was just one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practical inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mean time he had eaten the peaches.]
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table was one of the first books I spotted when, at age 17 or so, I went to the library to look for authors who, like Erma Bombeck, wrote humorous essays. The books in each section were arranged by title so "Autocrat" was the first one. I had no idea what an autocrat was and never heard of the elder Holmes but may have learned a speck of history about Holmes Jr. in school.
Honestly, I think I may have had The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table conflated with Clarence Day's Life With Father, which had been made into a movie I'd seen on Indianapolis' low-power TV station.
But autocrat or no autocrat, I did know I was in approximately the right area of the library, because at Creston Junior High, our librarian Mrs. Guyer had taken the seventh-graders 'round the stacks and given us a brief summary of what we called the Dewey Decimal System but which modern librarians call the Dewey Decimal Classification.
I love the photo (below) of the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification. He looks like someone I would know. Besides getting library books into findable order, Dewey was an advocate of spelling reform, which eliminated the use of silent, double, or extra letters. This led him to change the spelling of his name from Melville Dewey to Melvil Dui. The surname change didn't go over with people, so he changed his last name back to the original but kept "Melvil."
Mrs. Guyer's lesson on the Dewey numbering system was the tool I needed to figure out how to find people who'd written funny stuff. Once I'd gotten off the city bus downtown and bounded youthfully up the steps of the Indianapolis Public Library and then through the Doric pillars to the front door.
I could found my way to Nonfiction and then to the area where the books had numbers between 810 and 820 written (in white grease-pencil) at the bottom of each book's spine.
I can still see the layout of the main branch of the Indy library, circa 1974, in my mind. I remember that the humorous essay section began on the top row of a set of gray metal shelves. They went off to my right as I stood facing the same direction as the front entrance of the library. And I remember the library's copy of The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table as being bound in somewhat-worn, but still handsome red leatherette. The first edition of the book came out in the 1850s and I would imagine the copy I took off the library shelf was a reprint from perhaps the turn of the (20th) century. I didn't understand much of the humor and i could make almost nothing of the included poetry, but it was a start. I knew I just had to keep going along the shelf, opening front covers, then scanning a few pages to see if what used to be funny was still funny now.
Next week: Jean Kerr.
 |
| Garbo |
Comments
Post a Comment