The Real Dr. Holmes, Part 1

Barbara, Alison and I pulled off Route 7 just north of Great Barrington, MA on a brisk, clear New England morning. We parked the car at the base of Monument Mountain in front of a stand of red pines. Amid the pines stood our guide, grizzly gray beard, layered clothes, leather knife case attached to his belt. As he stood there silent, our senses sharpened and tuned into the autumnal Berkshire setting before us. I felt the soft cushion of pine needles under my hiking shoes. I smelled the air, heavy with pine, but also with the mustiness of fallen leaves. There was no mist and through the trees I could see the hint of a white faced cliff.

We started off on our trail, in skiing terms a blue slope. It rose gently, winding around the side of the mountain instead of attacking it head on in double black diamond fashion. It was one of several trails used over the years by Mohegan Indians, loggers, horse drawn wagons, charcoal makers and local pleasure seekers. The most famous of those pleasure seekers was a group in 1850 that included Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. The outing that August morning made such an impression on the adventurers that five out of ten of them wrote about it in letters or journals, preserving the day in history and giving us, 159 years later, an accurate account of their actions and impressions.

Herman Melville was in the process of writing a nautical adventure. The inspiration for the book came from the profile of Mt. Greylock, a whale shaped mount to the north of Great Barrington. He was behind schedule with his editor who was encouraging him to befriend Hawthorne, a shy New England author who had just completed The Scarlett Letter. The two of them hit it off so well, that according to Melville, the advice and encouragement he got from Hawthorne that day put him back on track, and shaped the rest of Moby Dick. The odd man out was a third author, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. He however, brought the champagne, and was happy to pass it among his comrades. It seems that the good doctor kept a healthy dose in reserve for himself, and when the group reached Squaw’s Peak, he acted like the Harvard undergrad he once was, leaning out over the cliff’s edge, scaring his friends. We climbed that peak and I can tell you, it’s a long way down from the top.

Most of us know the name, Oliver Wendell Holmes from the doctor’s son, OWH, Jr., the “Great Dissenter” who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932. Holmes, Sr., though, is the one who intrigues me. He did more than just hang out on that limb. He was a great American in his own right. His medical writings presaged the discoveries of Pasteur in germ theory. As Dean of the Harvard Medical School he challenged the white establishment by admitting 3 black students. He was a poet, inventor and leading thinker of his time. Next week I will tell you more about his life and explore my growing kinship with him. I hope he will inspire you as he did another physician and author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose brilliant detective, Sherlock Holmes, was modeled after the real Dr. Holmes.

http://www.thetrustees.org/what-we-care-about/history-culture/hawthorne-melville.html