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Yankee from Olympus: Justice Holmes and His Family
Yankee from Olympus Justice Holmes and His Family Author:Catherine Drinker Bowen The story of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes is, in a broad sense, the story of his country. The narrative cannot being with the flat date of his birth - 1841. This was a man whose presence carried tradition. His roots reached deep into American earth it was the strength of these roots that permitted so splendid a flowering. Wendells, Olivers, Jac... more »ksons, Holmeses solid people, sound people and adventurous people. They left Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junior, a superb inheritance, one that balanced him as the nine tenths of the iceberg we do not see balances that glittering pinnacle. To know Justice Holmes at eighty courtly, witty, scholarly, kind it is well to have acquaintance with his Calvinist grandfather, Abiel Holmes, with his handsome, worldly great-grandfather, Judge Wendell, with his mother from whom he inherited, he said, a trace of melancholy. Above all it is well to know his father, the sturdy Yankee who wrote bad verse and good books professor of anatomy, talkative five-foot-five Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table who lived upon applause and said so with engaging frankness. It is not hard to know these people. They were articulate, given to writing down what they saw and thought. And they were passionately interested in their country. In the books they wrote, in their letters, their diaries, the welfare of the American Union plays a large part. Because of this, the opening page of our story fell naturally into place.« less