Noted Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Explains in a Very Literary Style Why He Is Unwilling to Accept an Invitation to Speak Anywhere Too Far Away During His Lecturing Season

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was a physician, poet, author and lecturer. But he could not always accommodate those who invited him to speak.

Autograph Letter Signed, 2 pages, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, September 16, 1850, to someone apparently in Troy, New York, who wanted him to lecture there. “If persuasive eloquence and persevering entreaty could move me from the course which I am obliged to lay down for myself, Mr. Brooks would have sent me to Troy had Troy been remote as ancient Ilium. It is a determination however with me not to accept invitations from a distance during the lecturing season, and it is rarely convenient for me to do so at any other. In the cold season I usually get a severe cold or a lumbago or something of the kind if I attempt to travel, and as I lecture almost daily I am very shy of such encumbrances. In the warm season I am in the country with my family which I am unwilling to leave alone for any considerable excursions. The exceptions I have made have been rare and prompted only by peculiar and urgent reasons. I thank you and any unknown friends I might have in Troy for the kind and flattering invitation they have extended to me. It would give me great pleasure to see your city and to do what I could to please those who are willing to believe I have the power of pleasing them. I do not, I must own, feel able to promise it, and I trust it will not cost anybody half the trouble to hear my apologies that it does me to be obliged to make them.” Holmes spent his summers on property his mother owned in Pittsfield in the cooler Berkshire Mountains and as Troy, New York is less than 50 miles from Pittsfield it shows how determined Holmes was not to, as he says, move from his course. The Brooks he mentions may be Rev. Charles Brooks, then affiliated with Harvard.

Although Holmes had published several famous poems such as Old Ironsides and The Last Leaf by the time of this letter he was first and foremost a physician and lecturer on medical themes at this stage of his life. In 1847, Holmes was hired as Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard Medical School, where he served as dean until 1853 and taught until 1882. His famous book of essays The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table and his best novel, Elsie Venner, were written in the late 1850’s and he began once again to turn his hand mainly to poetry, The Deacon’s Masterpiece or The One Hoss Shay being perhaps the most famous.