The Grand Panjandrum: Mellow Years of Justice Holmes

JOHN S. MONAGAN

Editor's Note: This article is excerpted from the recently published book entitled The Grand Panjandrum: Mellow Years of Justice Holmes written by John S. Monagan and published by University Press of America.. The book details Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' relationship with Lady Clare Castletown utilizing extensive excerpts from the Justice's lengthy correspondence with Lady Clare.

Lady C

While much of Wendell's flirting with the ladies could be dismissed as harmless posturing, his long and fervid relationship with Lady Clare Castletown must be placed in an entirely different category. Emily Ursula Clare Saint Leger, the daughter of the Fourth Viscount Doneraile, was the wife of Bernard Edward Barnaby Ftzpatiick Baron Castletown of Upper Ossory. He was a graduate of Eton and Oxford (Brasenose) and had served as a life guards officer, as sheriff of Queen's County and as a member of Parliament for Portarlington. His family estates comprised 22,510 acres in Queen's (now Laois) County, Ireland, with an income before the First World War of what amounts to $850,000 in today's dollars. Although elected as a Conservative, one commentator said of him: "No one except Lord C. himself can, I think, say what his political principles are: I should make even that reservation with reservations."¹ The principal residence of the Castle-towns in Ireland was at Grantstown (Granston) in Queen's County, but they lived also at the house of her family, Doneraile Court, situated north of Mallow in Cork County. They also had a house at Chester Square in London.

While Lady Clare possessed wealth and status, it is apparent that the simple pastoral life she was leading and the personality of her husband did not satisfy the needs of her nature. Without children to occupy her attention, she was ripe to be captivated by the handsome and charming visitor from Massachusetts. Her husband loved horseplay, big-game shoots, and wardroom humor. This general knocking about doubtless grew less congenial over the years to a gentler soul who found pleasure in discussing art and literature with a more sympathetic person, such as Wendell, while other guests were shooting or riding to the hounds.

That there was some abnormality in the relations between Clare and her husband, Barney Fitzpatrick, is apparent in his book of memoirs which was published in 1926, the year of her death; the book barely mentions his wife of forty-nine years. Accordingly, her search for sympathetic understanding was not limited, as testified to by "intimate" letters recorded in the Archives office in London. While she encouraged Wendell's advances, she was a "friend and clearly a lover" of the melodramatically named Percy Latouche of Newbery, Kilcullen, County Kildare, Ireland. Clare was just fortythree-and Wendell fifty-five-when they met. He experienced an emotional trauma which rivalled the physical blow of the bullet that had struck him at Ball's Bluff thirty-five years before. She swept him off his feet and the passion and strength of his sentiments surge through the 103 letters he wrote her over the next thirty years--copies of which are on deposit in the Harvard Law School Library. Begun in Cork City, immediately after his departure at the close of is first visit to Doneraile, the correspondence continues until the time of her death in 1926 and contains some of the tenderest and most sensuous prose written by this master of the English language. Some of them rank with the great love letters of all time.

Since none of Lady Castletown's letters survive, the picture created by this correspondence is somewhat one-sided; it leaves the lady as a vague and mysterious figure while revealing in a blaze of light all the intimacies of Wendell's emotional nature. The survival of her letters is all the more significant in view of his efforts to keep the exchange secret. He had her address her letters to him at the Court House in Boston and his letters were frequently written from the same place. With characteristic caution, he admonished her to dispose of his letters. On September 5, 1898, he sent a warning: "By the by permit me to suggest that you do not put my letters into the waste paper basket which you trust so much. Fire or fragments and the waterways when you destroy if you do as I do."

From the very beginning of the correspondence, it is apparent that Lady Castletown had set profound vibrations in motion. Wendell's first letter was written at 8:00 p.m., the evening of his departure from Doneraile, on August 22, 1896, on stationery of The Queen's Hotel in Queenstown (now Cobh), some forty miles away, where he had gone to take the boat to Boston.

My dear Lady,

It is the stopping so sudden that hurts as your countryman truly remarked. I am here. I have eaten my dinnerwithout heart and my only amusement is to imagine just how far you have got with your new pleasures. I saw them getting into the vehicle and I approve your judgment.

I forgot to steal some notepaper and I can't write with this pen. I only cling to your hand for a moment until the earth puts its shoulder between us–which is more than the world can do I hope in twenty years. Goodbye dear friend goodbye, my heart aches to think how long it may be.

Hon. 0. w. H.

Court House, Boston

The next letter, written on the stationery of the Cunard Royal Steamship Etniia was begun on the next day, Sunday, August 23, 1896, and contained entries for subsequent days, constituting a mini-journal of the trip as well as a cri du coeur.

My dear Lady,

I sent you a line of farewell last and now am well Out to sea. But still I can't break off. There are so many things I should have said but only thought of too late. And yet when you get this the telegrapher will be in the ascendant once more. Ah well, I also am one having authority - (Do you think the cheek of that, how horrid?)

24th. Last night I talked with an old Catholic priest who united with me in the odious vice of smoking. I talked with him because he came aboard with me from Queenstown and he seemed to keep me a little nearer to Hibernia. It is a gray morning with a leaden sea and I too am somewhat leaden–not from the sea–You are reading my Qucenstown letter....

25th. The farther I get away the harder does it seem. Meantime I imagine the divertissements of Doneraile continuing and am not the more unselfishly happy on the account.

26th. A distraction and a misery. I am nailed to preside at one of these infernal concerts in aid of whatever they do aid. If I try to think of something to say I shall not have to think of you.

27th. Yesterday was, and to-day begins, under the shadow of their hellish entertainment–but I sit and meditate about you and when I ought to be preparing a speech. The speech will be a poor thing in consequence and you none the happier unless you tell me this makes you so. If, as I asked you, you have written to me don't answer this unless you want to wait for my answer--so will a regular course be established–but write you must. No one sees your letters and they shall be destroyed if you prefer....

The feigned irritation at his shipboard role is characteristic of Wendell, but the impression and ambiguity of his observations accompanied a troubled incoherence that is not characteristic. This is not the calm Olympian of the letters to Pollock or Laski.

Wendell received the letter which he awaited so eagerly and responded immediately:

Commonwealth of Massachusetts,

Supreme Judicial Court,

Court House, Boston, Saturday Sept. 5/'96

Dear Lady,

I have just this moment received your most adorable letter. It is what I have been longing for and is water to my thirst. You say and do everything exactly as I should have dreamed. I shall take it out and read it and be happy again. Do I often come back? I love your asking it. I think my letter from shipboard answered for that time and now I answer for since then and hereafter. Oh yes indeed I do and shall. I do not forget easily, believe me–and your letter was all that was wanting to assure me that we should abide together. If you believe that, distance is easily, or at least more easily, borne. I say your letter was all that was wanting to assure me. Possibly one thing more--an assurance that you too do not forget easily when the moment is past. (Later. Tell me that for I have been thinking and thinking about it.) If you say it I shall believe it. I still carry in my pocket a handkerchief (one of my own with a little infinitesimal dark smear upon it–with it I once rubbed away a–Do you remember?

Isn't that fool thing for a serious Judge?... By the by, I ordered the second imprint of my speeches to be sent to you as soon as I arrive. Read them again and the 2nd memorial day one which you haven't seen, love them a little, for I put my heart into the accidental occasion–just that is to say to one who cares, you will understand that there is high ambition and an ideal in this externally dull routine and much of the passion of life.... I was not able to get to Bev. Farms on my arrival a week ago Saturday. All was prepared to receive me–my nephew of whom I told you has gone and got engaged and he and his young woman were expecting me at 7 1/2 p.m. When the thing was over, my wife, though far from well went to the livery stables for a driver and a pair of horses and posted through the night to Boston, 30 or 40 miles, arriving about 11/2 in the morning– would not wake me–but, there she was in the morning. Imagine my joy–but also my shame to have her make the effort rather than myself–although I knew I ought not to do it on the infernal consideration of health which I have to remember all the time....

Well dear leady I must stop for the moment. Write to me soon. I long every day to hear from you, and live Doneraile over--I picture you to myself in all sorts of ways. By and by we shall settle into some sort of rhythm in writing but I have not yet learned patience in waiting. The thing to believe and take comfort in, however, is that we are not going to part company– and I am very sure that if we do it will not be I who does it–I am only less confident that it will not be you.

H.

The thought of Fanny, far from well, posting through the night over the thirty odd miles to Boston arouses our compassion and there is a slightly hollow ring in Wendell's expression of regret. One may well ask whether it was necessary at all for him to describe to Lady C. this somewhat demeaning exercise of Fanny.

There is great ambiguity in the words "abide together" in their suggestion as to both past and future activity and speculation is stimulated as to the composition of the "dark smear" and its source. One wonders also in what ways he pictured her to himself.

The cryptic signature was one he was to use at various times.

Wendell sent a brief, informal and urgent note prefiguring his later discussion of the permanence of their intimacy and, although undated, it apparently was dispatched soon after his letter of September fifth:

Monday 10 a.m.

Court House

It is so hard to stop. Will you remember me when the other amusements begin? as they will if they have not already. The suggestion of p. 77 is of ambiguous import–but you didn't mean it so did you. Which is which from our point of view? How much more we might have talked had I dared assume that you thought our intimacy permanent. I think it so unless you forbid me. At 7 this a.m. which is 12 with you I was awake and thinking of you. Where were you? Answer this soon. I must to work. I know I am forgetting a lot of things I wanted to say but they will come in time.

Goodbye H.

I open this to add two things--please send me the photographs as soon as may be–also I hate that little colored picture in your scrap book wh. someone gave you of a woman and dog–I don't mean the photograph of you.

The reference to "p. 77" is unclear but tantalizing. It seems unlikely that Lady Clare could have written a letter of this length. Perhaps this was the citation of a passage in some book known to both of them, but one is left to wonder where it was and what its import.

Wendell's next full letter was written while on the circuit he had described to Lady C. and its mood is somewhat more settled than that of those preceding it. The judgment of his host city reveals a marked provincialism:

Worcester, Mass.

WORCESTER CLUB

Sept. 30/96

Wednesday 7 3/4 P.M.

Dear Lady

I am here for a few days on circuit (address always Court House Boston) for one of the hardest weeks of the year--and I did hope that it would be mitigated by a letter from you. I have received two-the last Sept. 6 in answer to mine written at sea. I have written 2 since that and sent you my book. Oh it is time that I heard. This is only to give you a fillip and to repeat Rip Van Winkle's are we so soon forgotten when we are dead? Little things still happen which connect me with Donerail every closely in an external way. I don't need them–believe me, but there is a sort and delight in them. For instance a day or two ago I put on for the first time the thick boots on which I took my last walk with you and found them stiff from the wetting of that day and dull from the oiling they got afterwards. But

I am no good for a letter at this moment after law and jaw from 9 to 6.... If a letter or letters of yours don't cross this I shall think ill of you, but they will. I find your writing adorable–you talk--and yet we got to know each other and that is much. How you would hate this town where I am spending a week. How dull and squalid the whole business and surroundings would seem--and yet when you put into them that they afford a chance to do a part of one's work they don't trouble you and your spirit is as calm as great fatigue will let it be. I shall go back to my hotel in a moment–play a game of solitaire on my bed, read a little Hegel and turn in early.

Goodbye–as I said this is put to stir you up–and forbid you to forget me. I think of you and think and think–and sit in the conservatory.

H.

Don' t forget to send me the photograph.

Wendell refers to the Doneraile "conservatory"--as he does more specifically later--as a place holding magical memories for him.

His next letter was written a week later and makes a significant reference to Fanny, but, while purporting to clarify his feelings about the two ladies, makes even more ambignous the exact state of his relation to each:

COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS

Supreme Judicial Court,

Court House, Boston.

Thursday a.m.

October 7, 1896

Dear Literal Lady,

I have received your third letter (Sept 25th recd. last–Two answers begun before this and burned. It didn't matter–the quickest mail closed Friday) It is adorable like its predecessors. I have read them until I learn them. I should think mine are very slow in getting to you. I have written two or three since the one you mentioned–the last from Woreester last week.... But you were literal. Does my writing--did my talk sound as if I thought we were casual acquaintances? Such a surmise is a million years in the past… All I meant was to reproduce my first feeling that one cannot assume at once from the fact that one has talked with an open heart that the other is doing more than yielding for a moment to a fancy of the moment and showing an intimacy by which she may not be prepared to abide. We were both very loud in our profession of familiarity with somewhat cynical views of life, but thank the Lord we neither of us are cynical at bottom and my guards are down long ago. I believe you seriously and sincerely and it would be a deep grief to me to dream it possible that any thing could interrupt our affection. My life is my wife and my work but as you see that does not prevent a romantic feeling which it would cut me to the heart to have you repudiate. But why talk like that? You must know me pretty well, and as I said I believe in you. As the little boy said when the other one said 'Give me the core' (of the apple). 'There ain't going to be no core'– There ain't going to be no repudiation and lam rather ashamed to have squared off so at you–I won't begin my letter over again but pass to other themes. You speak of the touch of isolation in my speeches. It has reference to my work. One cannot cut a new path as I have tried to do without isolation. I have felt horribly alone. But the result has been far more immediate than I have dared dream of its being and the real danger perhaps is that when one has been for a moment in the lead, he should wrap himself in his solitude and sit down and before he knows it instead of being in advance the procession has passed him and his solitude is in the rear....while you are reading I am sitting in court and writing decisions when you don't break up my work as you are doing now. You have done enough disturbance to please even your imperious demands. I have been dreaming with you when I should have been deciding whether an ambiguous document is a promissory note.... I haven't been reading much–mainly a book of Hegel's. The beast has insights, but these are wrapped up in such a humbugging method and with so much that is unintelligible or unreal or both that you have to work your way. Now I am going to call on Lady Playfair an amiable Boston girl and to ask her if she knows you. If she does she will have an excess of what otherwise she has to offer.... I send her a bunch of roses when she comes here, and she talks to me about an old friend whom this time I have seen as lately as she. Oh my very dearest friend how I do long to see you. I know your hands reach across the sea and I kiss them. I continually hunger and thirst for letters. But oh if I could see you. Au revoir.

H.

In differentiating between the objects of his affection, Wendell shows a scholastic capacity to distinguish when he says that his life is equally in his "wife" and his "work"--but that he can still harbor a "romantic feeling" for the new object of his affections. How far from a true understanding of the judicial mind, one speculates, must have been those advocates in the Boston Court House arguing before him the ambiguities of an alleged promissory note. Here, too, Wendell seizes the opportunity, offered him by Lady Clare, to picture himself as the romantically lone mariner navigating for the first time seas of thought which no other has previously sailed.

In a letter written at the beginning of the week after the national election--the outcome of which he appears to have miscalculated--Wendell figuratively rides the range of subjects:

Monday a.m.

November 9, 1896.

I was disappointed on Saturday not to get a letter from you–and 10 and behold, this morning I get a perfectly dear one which makes me happy, when I was blue, and has given me as much of a start as McKinley's election has given the country. Really I am not expressing in cold words the delight I feel. Understand it–also I loved your[?] at one place in the letter. As Lord Coke says Littleton's 'etc.' covered a multitude of nice points.... It is quite sure that I do want a tremendous lot of your sympathy and I never doubt that you would give it to me in all the serious interest of my work if I had the chance to explain all that I was thinking about from moment to moment. I take all for granted dear friend as I hope and believe you do. At the same time I want you to keep telling me of it until the air hums. Please don't let it be so long again. what a dreadful thing distance is.... I have just read two improper French books--one light wicked and amusing–the other serious and rather[?]. The latter (Aphrodite) let me to reflect for the 1000000000th time on the illusion of freedom. A man says I am going to let myself slip and have my heart out–and he finds that Out of restraint he got an infinity by suggestion which vanishes before the finite act. I told my wife, a propos, that morals were like an intelligent French stage dress which by partial concealment effects an indecency that one would vainly strive for with the nude. You must keep one stocking on if you want a figure to look undressed.

After intervening letters, a hasty line from Wendell expresses his exasperation that the demands of the workaday world tear him from extended communication with his "dear lady."

Friday

December 4/96

1 PM

My Dear Lady

A letter from you, ah so short and hurried, has come this minute- -and the mail closes at 3 and I have much that must be done meantime, but I will send you a line (I am interrupted by a notice that a Congressman whom I invited to lunch is waiting for me–and for you)–a line to kiss your dear hands–and to tell you that you are mistress of the troublant in your discourse–by Jove–but I long to see you.

I will write soon–but you don't deserve it for you might take more trouble for a fellow.

Remember me meantime amid your diversions.

Yours ever

OWH

The modem reader irrelevantly feels a twinge of nostalgia at the confidence of the writer in the punctual performance of the postal service. The politically sensitive is intrigued by Wendell's seeking out a member of Congress for lunch--a mundane relationship of a type rarely mentioned in his letters--and wonders if the conference may have had some relationship to the recent election which will transfer administration of the government in Washington to members of Wendell's party. A student of Wendell's tendresse will note his fascination with the kissing of hands as well as his expression of permanent dedication at the close.

Later that same day after the congressional lunch, and repentant over the brevity of this note, Wendell wrote a longer and less harried reply to Lady C.

Following several previous letters and inspired by a particularly warm missive from Lady Clare, Wendell (on February 2, 1897) soared into an emotional response, tempered, however, by a longish but colorful critique of the French novels he had been reading.

There is no salutation this time:

Yesterday as I hoped I received one from you marked Jan. 23 that thrilled me through and through. The sadness, the passionate eloquence and the ever elusive shimmer of it, which you command so well, I loved them all. Were you thinking of some past I know nothing about or the present I wonder, with a man's skeptical stupid tenderly solicitous mind. Adorable exasperating gift of the little joker--now you see it and now you don't. I saw you at all events as I always long to see you and it makes me happy when I do. I shall send you by this mail the photograph I had taken for you as I wrote the other day... .1 had it green for Ireland. I hope you will like it. You will see that lam looking at you as you bid me do–and I was thinking of you in the conservatory, I believe, so far as it is possible to think of anything after being emptied of all content by the glare and the fussy manipulation of the photographer.... Tell me when you receive it and if it is all right so that I can have the negative destroyed.

I have been reading P. Loti's Galilee. I took it up some time ago but dropped it and now have taken it up again and finished it. Pecheurd'Islande for the first time makes articulate the sense of the antediluvian. What I have often tried to describe as I realized it coming down the [~1 to the top of the [?] Glacier⁴ where one seems to have got behind the scenes into the workshop of creation–where behemoth was made–where man was not expected and it was sacrilege to go. Then Au Maroc gives you a similar feeling about man–the feeling that I go looking at the photograph of the pharaoh–and thinking that there was the actual part of one who stood on the arrete at the top of all the recorded self knowledge of the race, that is, at the beginning of History–and looking back at the ascent on the other side–the feeling that it gives me to think that a hundred and fifty successive men, who could be gathered in a small room, take us back to the ....... –Galilee is something of the same with the figure of Christ living in it for a moment. Yet I suspect his thought to be rather banal–and that his gift is his amazing power of description of which he makes the 19th cent, cocktail– bitter, sweet, hot, cold, strong. As Jules Lemaitre says, he likes Renan, though, for a different combination he is troublant– in Renan it is the union of passion or rather enthusiasm and irony, both equally genuine. In P.L. it is the primitif and the affine. I kiss your hands... I met my philanthropic cousin last night and asked her why she didn't send me the improving article on Charities which she promised me for you. I wish I knew more definitely why you are always sad. Women are more often so than men, I think. They have more time to think at large and apart from the matter in hands. I can't stop to sympathize with the sorrows of the race even if I were not bitterly conscious that I do not love my fellow man as much as I ought. But I infer that with you it is more specified. I have some things to feel sad about. For one my old partner, with whom I studied, and to whom I am bound by a thousand ties, is very ill–a great head, a strong heart and a mighty energy–Yet I am such a damned egotist, I am so full of my work, so eager to prove my power–that I get the fundamental vital happiness Out of life in spite of everything. I should think better of myself if I were more miserable. Goodbye. You are very dear.

O.W.H.

Regardless of his balancing of his initial surge of emotion with a more detached intellectual commentary, he makes plain the profundity of his feeling and the continuing strength of his commitment. Further quotation is not required to demonstrate that this attachment was powerful and not an ephemeral fancy.

Since the quoted letters provide an adequate picture of Wendell's mind and emotions, it is appropriate to pass over numerous other letters written in this period and jump to correspondence regarding his plans for a second visit to Lady Clare--a matter over which he fussed and fretted and to which he devoted a great deal of time and thought. Early in the vital year, he began to hash over the details of his trip, greeting his friend with a more intimate, if somewhat arch, Celtic cognomen:

COMMONWEALTH OF

MASSACHUSETTS

Supreme Judicial Court,

Court House, Boston

February 17, 1898.

Dear Hibernia,

You have the gift of graces and the gift of charm when you see fit to use them–that I swear. I can't tell you how the few words of your wire pleased me, apart from the weight they lifted off my mind. And it was a weight. Now I have received a second letter which shows that the burden has begun to lift a little from you even then. I proceed to answer that, I have very little doubt that I shall come over this summer unless something goes wrong unexpectedly. Unfortunately I cannot choose my time.… As my time is so short, and I have a good many friends and acquaintances in England I would rather not be torn by you going to France until I had left, especially as I have to be careful still. I loathe the idea of your finding another playmate however. You will do what you can to help me see as much of you as possible wont you? I imagine all sorts of adorable romantic visits or excursions such as England is full of–and some one or more of which it seems as if our [?]--even a hansom in London is an enchanted solitude. But indeed there will be enchantment wherever I see you and when I think of it with any realizing feeling my heart stands still. Would you dine with me some evg? Several people did, last time. You would smile if you saw some of my learned friends but I am not sure that I ought not to make more of a point of seeing the remarkable men who know anything I am interested in than I did the last time. I used to say that the common or garden judge didn't fizzle and that I would rather talk to a nice girl. Perhaps if I had been less interested in talking to nice girls it wd. have been better for my reputation, considered as an article to help or hurt my conduct. But I always have neglected it in that way, and have contented myself with grinding my teeth and raging inwardly when I heard the second rate exalted and talked of in terms of the 1st rate and when I heard myself talked of in any terms by people who didn't understand my aims and my ideas on the plane of which I talked–so there--laugh again at my egotism if you like. By the way I do despise the apologetic "Egoism" without the T which is in common use nowadays. Now then quick my charmeress tell me that something nice will be practical within the times I name. I have been working pretty hard for three weeks and went home with a headache yesterday. Today there is a lull and I have caught up with my work. Hence I have skipped from the bench into the adjoining room where being alone I kneel gallantly on one knee and kiss your beloved hands. . . .

Wendell's concern about being "careful still" seizes the attention. Does this mean that the secrecy of their attachment would be endangered if they met outside the normal channels of society in England? Is this inconsistent with his visions of "romantic excursions"? Does he envisage a time when for some reason he will no longer have to be careful?

That visits might be both adorable and romantic suggests a wide range of possible experiences, but one is brought up short by the tremulous inquiry which indicates that dinner together would be the peak of bliss and achievement.

His eager imagination could even make a Victorian hansom a place of enchantment, although its practical limitations as a place for serious dalliance are readily apparent.

Parenthetically, in this letter Wendell intrudes his constant and hypersensitive concern about being given his proper due as a first-rank figure in the world of thought; he demonstrates his almost petty concern about the niceties of language with his stricture on the use of egoism, an indulgence which his opposition has not affected.

After three other letters, Wendell wrote briefly, showing his anxiety about their meeting and his concern that his letters should not be seen by those who might not understand--or who might understand too well:

March 18/98

Dear Hibernia,

This is just to say that I dispatched a letter to you– "British Legation, Tangier, Morocco." If by any chance you are not there perhaps it were as well to send for it. Until I have reopened communication I hesitate to write freely. I shall wait anxiously for an answer to my inquiries whether your last letter meant that there was any, the slightest doubt of my seeing you somewhere. I has assumed that you would make an effort if one were necessary–I need not say that I would.

The spring is in the air and you are in my heart.

I kyh,

O.W.H.

Wendell was a fidgety swain indeed. After the certainty he had already expressed about his plans, as the time for sailing approached, he broke out in a rash of scruples and doubts. Conceivably Fanny's physical condition might have been a factor. She had suffered through a long siege of rheumatic fever in 1896; its effects were debilitating and her recovery slow. To be sure, Wendell did not mention this:

June 9/98

Beloved friend. I am nigh insane with the question of coming to England. I have made up my mind that I ought to put it off and my wife now urges me to go and threatens horrid results to me if I do not. I feel I shall be a selfish pig if I do, and I don't know. If I do not come you will know that I do not give up seeing you even for a time–i.e. put it off a year without deep sorrow. Since I began to write I have almost decided not to come. I will not go into the reasons which really amount to a delicate balancing of what is the fair thing etc. under existing circumstances–but I do entreat you neither to scold nor to turn away in vexation. I really believe that it disappoints me even more than I hope it will you–and that is a good deal. If I have entered into your life hold fast to me even though it has to be with a hand (I kiss it) stretched across the Atlantic. Life seems short and its chances few. One thing that tremendously urges me to go is the reflection that I am sur le retour and opportunities are not to be trifled with. Next year I shall hope to come–for if that were disappointed also–the next I am anchored with the summer equity. Oh my friend how will it be? Shall I get a cross answer or one of those in which you let out your adorable kindness?

Of course something still may happen to change my mind–but I regard it as definitely less likely than it has been heretofore.

Yours OWH

It is impossible to escape the feeling that Wendell enjoyed this Hamlet-like soliloquy. Perhaps he was showing the characteristic that the astute Fanny years later was to encapsulate for Felix Frankfurter. "Wendell has a new toy," she told Felix when he came calling and entered their presence in an atmosphere weighted with gloom, "it is called despair."

Then, eleven days later, the clouds dissipated, the sun shone forth and all was well:

POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS

Ju 18,98

6:37 p.m.

Boston

TO Lady Castletown Seventyeight Chester Sq. Ldn

Just settled sail Umbria June twenty eight

Justice

And so the die was finally cast and, apparently with Fanny's concurrence, "Justice" did sail on the Umbria, did reach London seven days later, and did meet his "Hiberia" again after a separation of two years. One cannot help speculating how differently this affair might have been conducted in the present day with its daily jet plane service between Boston and

The details of Wendell's visit are sparse. He did meet friends and people of stature in London as he had planned. He did visit Ireland and did spend some time with Lady Clare. Whether or not they were able to enjoy adorable and romantic excursions can only be inferred from a letter he wrote immediately upon his return, which describes not only his profound emotional experience, but also the physical and nervous near-collapse which he suffered. Significantly, even in the midst of prostration, he continued his admonition about the destination of any letters:

Beverly Farms Address

Court House

Boston

Sept. 5/98

I am here in the kind of collapse that comes after nervous tension. The weather is very hot and I suppose I still am relaxed by the opiate I took the first night. My trouble turned out lobe shingles which accounts for the neuralgia etc. It is getting better but I still can't sleep through even 6 or 7 hours without a dose. So don't mind beloved friend if I am dull this time. I hope my voyage letter caught the return steamer so that you will get it by the end of this week I think you will see from it howl yearn and long for you. Your telegram met me and gave me a joy which I can't express–only I did so wish that I had found some expression as you did which I could entrust to the telegraph. I loved your "tender" and hugged it to my heart. And now do you think you can meet time and distractions and still care for me so much? I believe you will. I firmly believe that time will make no difference to me. Oh my dear what a joy it is, to feel the inner chambers of one's soul open for the other to walk in and out at will. It was just beginning with you. Do not cut it off because of a little salt water.... [Here Wendell issues the warning about destroying letter which already been quoted]... As I talk literature dear Clare I kiss your feet and proceed to talk on. It is rather odd to read letters of Sir W. Knollys to his sister, saying how much he would like to make many a mother if his existing encumbrances only might be gathered away, as he had a lawful lady.... This is only a bulletin to repeat my love to you and tell you how I am.

Yours H

This is an amazingly revealing epistle. Perhaps the "voyage letter," being closer to the experience, would have contained more intimate details of their relations, but, no letter with the requisite date or context is included in the Harvard collection. In any case, there is ample material in the foregoing communique to reemphasize the depth of the passion Wendell had conceived and made apparent in previous letters and which, we must conclude, was encouraged and reciprocated by Lady Clare.

Wendell acknowledges that he belongs to Clare. Abandoning any formal salutation, he details the "nervous tension consequent upon their meeting and describes in sensual language their still-expanding intimacy. Even in the course of expressing his deep emotion, his caution asserts itself and he immediately turns to his warning about the destruction of the papers. Of all the revelations, the most significant is found in the reference--after figuratively kissing the feet of "dear Clare"--to the desire of Sir. W. Knollys to propagate widely if his existing "encumbrances" could be "gathered away." With Knollys, as with Wendell, there was an existing wife. When Wendell closed by repeating his "love," the word was manifestly not used euphemistically.

The last letter to Lady Clare is dated August 27, 1926; the final letter in this remarkable collection, written on stationery of the Supreme Court of the United States, is dated November 3, 1926, and is directed to Lord Castletown:

My dear Castletown

Please accept my thanks for your kind letter which relieves my wonder but increases my anxiety as to lady Castletown. I feared but did not know that she was ill. As I do not know the nature of the illness I can do nothing but hope it is not grave. Please give her my love and tell her I think about her a great deal and shall continue anxious until I hear more, & I hope better news. All goes well with me in spite of my 85 years, and I have been hard at work since the October term began--now relieved by three weeks adjournment with all my work done.

With regard to publishers I am rather helpless. From the very little I know I should think G. P. Putnam & Sons New York would be as likely as any that I know of to be interested in your work. Mr. George Haven Putnam who, I suppose, is the head of the firm, is an old soldier of the Civil War and has published reminiscences himself. I have an impression that he is rather in that line. A brother is head of the Library of Congress from which I first got your book before I got a copy for myself. I wish I could tell you more.

You do not say how your are yourself, but I infer that you are well.

Every sincerely yours

O.W. Holmes

Lady Castletown died on March 11, 1927.

Aside from the last letter to Lord Castletown, there are 102 letters from Wendell to Lady Clare in the Holmes papers at the Harvard Law School Library. A letter or two may Lady Clare in the Holmes papers at the Harvard Law School Library. A letter or two may have been lost or abstracted, but, barring these, the collection forms a record of his communications over a period of thirty years. Her letters were destroyed by him–although a single cryptic note in the Frankfuter papers at the Library of Congress, reading "O.W.H. Lady Castletown [sic], Ireland" suggests that a letter or a photograph might have been removed.

Wendell wrote warm letters to many lady friends. He wrote 330 to Mrs. John Chipman Gray. On occasion, too, he verbally "kissed a lady's hand," but in none of the other series did the passion and sensual imagery kindle the pages as in the letters to Lady Clare. In them there is a unique sense of wonder and of delight.

Although the correspondence covered a period of thirty years, eighty-six letters, or 83 percent of the total, were written in the three years from Wendell's first meeting in 1896 to the period surrounding his second meeting in 1898. Apart from flurries in 1914 and 1916, these were the major years. He wrote eighteen in 1896, including two on December fourth; thirty-three in 1897, including five in December, and thirty-five in 1898, including four and a cable in June prior to his voyage. After 1898, there was a sudden drop in numbers--to two for the year--and then a long hiatus when no letters were sent, from that year until 1914. The letters were then resumed, but they had become more impersonal and detached.

Several possible reasons explain this change of direction. For one thing, Wendell became Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1899 and this promotion altered his obligations and way of life and restricted his freedom. For another, he and Lady Clare may have realized the difficulties that lay in the way of any change of their relationship. Finally, there is a strong suspicion that Fanny, knowing Wendell better than he knew himself, put her foot down, as she was supremely able to do.

Wendell made several other visits to the home of the Castletowns at Doneraile Court in Cork County. He stayed there in 1903 after he had gone on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States. At that time he made the acquaintance of the Anglicized Irish novelist and Roman Catholic canon, Patrick Augustine Sheehan, a friend of the Castletowns and pastor of the Doneraile parish church. This acquaintance ripened into a warm friendship and resulted in a charming exchange of letters (also discussed in Mr. Monagan's book--Ed.) which have recently been published. Wendell visited Ireland again in 1907 and he saw the Castle-towns in 1909 as he "flitted through London" on his way to receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws (D.C.L.) at Oxford. His last visit came in 1913, just before the first World War made steamship travel inadvisable.

By this time, the Castletowns had come upon hard times. The fall involved disastrous speculation, loss of property interests, receivership, vastly reduced income, physical decline for Lord Castletown and a painful eye operation for Lady Clare. Canon Sheehan told Wendell in March 1911 that Doneraile Court had had to be let and that the deer in the park had been killed and their meat sold. He added that "universal sympathy" had been "awakened for Lord and Lady Castletown, especially the latter." But conditions proved to be somewhat better than the canon had feared; Wendell was entertained in adequate style when, after again fussing about traveling without Fanny, he went on to Doneraile after "the season" in London had ended.

Canon Sheehan died later the same year. It is interesting to note that at no time during his ten-year friendship with Wendell did this Catholic pastor give any indication that he felt the intentions of his American friend toward Her Ladyship were anything other than strictly honorable.

In view of the warmth of the relations between Wendell and Lady Clare and the extent of their correspondence, it is somewhat strange that this remarkable romantic excursion has never come to light. There are only the briefest of references to the Castletowns in the major compilations of letters and biographies and the existence of this fascinating collection appears to be known to very few people. In fact, the existence of the letters was not known until Mark Howe, working on the authorized biography of Wendell and coming upon the Castle-town connection, concluded that letters must have survived. Advised by his wife, Molly (herself Irish, a novelist and former Abbey Theatre actress), he found a Joycean, Dublin character to investigate. This was Eoin "Pope" O'Mahoney, a feckless geneologist and descendant of Daniel O'Connell, the Irish Libertor. The sobriquet had been bestowed on O'Mahoney because of his exalted rank in the Knights of Malta, a Catholic order given to gorgeous uniforms and dedicated to the defense of the Papacy. O'Mahoney went down to Cork and discovered that, contrary to Wendell's direction, his letters had not been destroyed. They were in the possession of the latter day Lady Doneraile whose husband was a distant cousin of Lady Clare. Handwritten copies and typewritten transcripts of the letters were made and these were presented in 1967 from Lady Doneraile to the Harvard Law School Library. The present location of the original letters is not known, although one turns up from time to time in the hands of autograph dealers. A very recent investigation in this country and in Ireland indicated that Lady Mary Doneraile had died in 1975 and that the Doneraile title had lapsed.

Unfortunately, Mark Howe died in 1957 before he had completed the section of his biography dealing with the years of Wendell's acquaintance with Lady Clare. Since Howe's death, thirty years after that of Wendell, other judicial luminaries from Harvard and elsewhere have come to prominence and the keenness of interest in Wendell whom Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo praised so unstintingly has naturally diminished. Symbolically, the great Hopkinson portrait of Wendell has been removed from its prominent, designated place in the main reading room of the Harvard Law School Library and has been relegated to a less notable location in the dim light of a lower floor in Pound Hall. The work which Howe began was never finished, although selected scholars were authorized to continue the task. Thus, the attention of researchers has not been called to this treasure trove and no publication has been made until recently. One might conclude that fate intervened to keep secret-this Celtic interlude of Wendell and Lady Clare.

The Castletown affair presents a piquant puzzle. At this late date, what appraisal can be made? How far did it go, and did Fanny know about it?

If the letters had been written in our time, the conclusion that there had been a fully realized relation with physical intimacy would be irresistible. Supporting this conclusion, in the actual case, are the intense and sustained emotional involvement, the supersecrecy and destruction of the evidence suggesting guilt, the pitch and fervor of the language with its images of carnal conjunction, the proposals for romantic excursions, the tendency to extracurricular high jinks in some of the British country houses of that day and, finally, the reference Wendell made in one of the letters to Fanny's being an encumbrance to wider ranging on his part.

But, there is another side. We note Wendell's emphasis on symbols of minor substance: the handkerchief with its smudge (of what?), the conservatory, an unlikely place for anything but a furtive squeeze; the excessive use of the figure of kissing a hand (which Wendell used frequently to other correspondents) or, on occasion, the feet, but a complete lack of the specifics of more intimate amorous dalliance, the suggestion of a dinner a deux as the summit of daring misconduct. If Wendell's attitude toward war was Arthurian, perhaps his attitude toward love was Tennysonian and, as a latter-day Galahad, he kept his passion within bounds. It does appear, however, that his own evidence points in the other direction.

It is worthy of note that Wendell went out of his way with at least three people--Biddle, Corcoran, and Isabella Wigglesworth--to emphasize that he had never been unfaithful to his wife. "I've always liked the dames," he told Wigglesworth, "but I've never stepped over the edge." Was it meaningful that he volunteered this information? Biddle believed him, as did the others, but it appears that Wendell felt the need of a defense and the reiteration raises questions about its reliability.

Fanny was painfully aware of Wendell's tendency to philander, but there is no direct evidence that she knew of the Castletown affair. In estimating what Fanny knew and when she knew it, one is forced to rely upon inferences from the known facts, coupled with a knowledge of Fanny's character, her absorption in him, and her familiarity with his foibles. This story, retold by one of the secretaries, is an example of her technique in dealing with this phenomenon:

"One morning, the Justice had made one of his calls and was being entertained in her home by one of his charming lady friends. After they had settled down and were in the midst of their fete-a-fete, the doorbell rang and a card was brought in. It was Fanny's card and on it was written: 'Wendell, I'm downstairs waiting in the carriage.' Of course, he got up and left immediately."

Both Isabella Wigglesworth and Katharine Bundy, who as younger women knew Fanny, feel certain that she was aware of Lady Clare and Wendell's attraction to her. When asked if she thought that Fanny knew of the correspondence and involvement, Wiggiesworth said, "I have been wondering. I bet she did. She was no fool. I bet she urged him to go to see the lady and get it off his chest." Here is a possible and not unreasonable suggestion. Wendell was now fifty-seven and, acting with subtlety and understanding, Fanny pushed the affair to its conclusion. At any rate, the pitch of Wendell's interest in Cork declined markedly and he turned for solace and stimulation to his friends on Beacon Street and in Beverly Farms and to his coterie of devotees in Washington.[11]

Endnotes

1. G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland and Ireland (London: Gibbs, 1913). The quote is from Rev. A. B. Beavan.
2. Doneraile court was one of the Irish "great houses" built by the Anglo-Irish ascendancy and the seat of the Saint Leger family after whom the famous Saint Leger Stakes horse race was named. The surrounding park land has been taken over by the Irish government and the house with its chaste Georgian façade has been donated to and is being restored by the Irish Georgian Society. See Burke’s Guide to Irish Country Houses (Ireland: Mark Bence-Jones, 19789), vol. 1.
3. Pierre Loti (Julien Viaud) (1850-1923), naval officer and French novelist; an impressionist writer of penetrating melancholy who excelled in depicting exotic scenes.
4. Although the descriptive words are illegible in this letter, Wendell was probably repeating a description: "I came down from the Monch to the top of the Aletsch Glacier and felt as if we were committing a shuddery sacriledge, surprising Nature in her privacy before creation was complete. . . ." Letter to Baroness Moncheur, September 5, 1915. See Howe, The Shaping Years, pp. 237, 310.
5. Jules Francois-Elie Lemaitre (1853-1914), French critic and dramatist, member of the Academie Francais.
6. Joseph-Ernest Renan (1823-1892), French critic philologist and historian, author of Vie de Jesus.
7. Sur le retour: to be upon the decline of life.
8. Sir William Thomas Knollys (1797-1885), soldier, treasurer and comptroller of household of the Prince of Wales (1862-77); gentleman usher of the Black Rod (1877-83); father of Viscount Knollys, the letter writer.
9. George Haven Putnam (1844-1930), president of G. P. Putnam & Son, publishers (1872-1930), served in Union Army through Civil War, organized American Publishers’ Copyright League.
10. Mrs. John Chipman Gray ("Nina") was the wife of the Civil War veteran, lawyer, professor at the Harvard Law School who, uncharacteristically, combined teaching and practice; a close friend of Holmes, for a time Gray chose his secretaries. Author of the once-famous Rule Against Perpetuities and the Nature and Sources of the Law.
11. The affair was first publicly treated in John S. Monagan, "The Love Letters of Justice Holmes,"