John Holmes

“ This is quite an adventure."
"What do you suppose it's all about?" I asked.
"I don't know any more than you do, Jenkins," said Holmes, "save this, that old Bob Hollister isn't playing penny-ante. When he goes on to a job as elaborately as all this, you can bet your last dollar that the game runs into five figures, and, like a loyal subject of his Gracious Majesty King Edward VII, whom may the Lord save, he reckons not in dollars but in pounds sterling."
"Who can Cato be, I wonder?" I asked.
"We'll know at eight o'clock," said Holmes. "I intend to have him up." ”

“ I asked.
"Real?" laughed Holmes. "Yes—he's a real Lord of the Lifters, if that's what you mean, but if you mean does he belong to the peerage, no. His real name is Bob Hollister. He has served two terms in Pentonville, escaped once from a Russian prison, and is still in the ring. He's never idle, and if he comes to the Powhatan you can gamble your last dollar on it that he has a good, big stake somewhere in the neighborhood. ”

“ Holmes died, 4 April 1748, at the age of fifty-nine, leaving considerable property (two farms and 200l. a year) to St. John's College, and was buried in the college chapel. He married Sarah, widow of Robert England, who survived him, and died 3 Dec. 1750. She was also a benefactor to the college, and portraits of both of them are in the college hall. A monument was erected to Holmes in the college chapel at her direction. The only work which has been ascribed to him is ‘The Country Parson's Advice to his Parishioners of the Younger Sort,’ published anonymously at Oxford, 1742, 12mo ”

“ For four nights now I haven't had a minute's normal sleep, and this fight you've just put up has regularly knocked me out."
"One more day Jenkins," he pleaded. "She goes day after to-morrow, and so do we."
"We?" I cried. "After her?"
"Nope—she to Chicago—we to New York," said Holmes. "Stick it out, there's a good fellow," and of course I yielded. ”

“ Win or lose he's doomed to be on the wrong side of the market just because of those very qualities that make him a lovable person—kind to everybody but himself, and weak as dish-water. For Heaven's sake, Raffles, if the poor devil has anything left don't take it from him."
"Your sympathy for Rand does you credit," said Holmes. "But I have just as much of that as you have, and that is why, at half-past five o'clock to- morrow afternoon, I'm going to hold him up, in the public eye, and incontinently rob him of $25,000."
"Twenty-five thousand dollars? ”

“ He disappeared into his bedroom, and returned in a few minutes in the character of an amiable and simple-minded Nonconformist clergyman. His broad black hat, his baggy trousers, his white tie, his sympathetic smile, and general look of peering and benevolent curiosity were such as Mr. John Hare alone could have equalled. It was not merely that Holmes changed his costume. His expression, his manner, his very soul seemed to vary with every fresh part that he assumed. The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime. ”

“ This was his only publication in the field of music, and his third and final book. Holmes's last years were spent at the old house in Covington, devoted to arranging his large library, collected from the bookshops of the world, and to his music. His life was one of endless ease, the universal pursuit of wealth being neither necessary nor engaging. He had lived parts of more than forty years of his life at Holmesdale when he left it for the last time in the fall of 1908 to spend the winter at Hot Springs, Virginia, where he died suddenly on December 14, 1908. ”

“ Holmes left me at this point, and for two days I heard nothing from him. On the morning of the third day he telephoned me to meet him at the stage-door of the Metropolitan Opera-House at four o'clock. "Bring your voice with you," said he, enigmatically, "we may need it." ”

“ Robinson-Jones herself.
"Look at that, Jenkins!" He said, gleefully, when the thing was all over. "A check for $10,000."
"Well—that isn't so much, considering the value of the necklace," said I.
"That's the funny part of it," laughed Holmes. "Every stone in it was paste, but Mrs. Robinson-Jones never let on for a minute. She paid her little ten thousand rather than have it known."
"Great Heavens!—really?" I said.
"Yes," said Holmes, replacing the check in his pocket-book. "She's almost as nervy as Nervy Jim himself. She's what I call a dead-game sport." ”

“ Holmes "has attempted as a politician ... such a desire to be admired by everybody, that he has ceased for weeks to be regarded by anybody.... In the Dartmouth College Cause, he sunk lower at the bar than he had in the Hall of Legislature." (Daggett to Mason, March 18, 1818, Hillard: Memoir and Correspondence of Jeremiah Mason, 199.) ”

“ Holmes knocked out the ashes of his pipe with a quiet chuckle.
“I am glad you were not forced to break his woolly head, Watson. I observed your maneuvres with the poker. But he is really rather a harmless fellow, a great muscular, foolish, blustering baby, and easily cowed, as you have seen. He is one of the Spencer John gang and has taken part in some dirty work of late which I may clear up when I have time. His immediate principal, Barney, is a more astute person. They specialize in assaults, intimidation, and the like. ”

“ He is a devil of a fellow and must lead her a most uneasy life. Yet I have heard that she is devoted to him. But what is amiss at Shoscombe?"
"Ah, that is just what I want to know. And here, I expect, is the man who can tell us."
The door had opened and the page had shown in a tall, clean-shaven man with the firm, austere expression which is only seen upon those who have to control horses or boys. Mr. John Mason had many of both under his sway, and he looked equal to the task. He bowed with cold self-possession and seated himself upon the chair to which Holmes had waved him. ”

“ Had they ever looked carefully at nature, and possessed any but the meanest ambitions, they could hardly have failed to sympathize with the sailing clouds of The Cornfield and The Valley Farm, the glistening meadows of The Leaping Horse, the storm and rainbow of the large Salisbury Cathedral, the tremendous desolation of The Old Sarum, or the hush that falls with the twilight of The Cenotaph. ”

“ They forget the horrors of the struggle, the peril of disaster, the chances of life and death. They are conscious only of glory and delight. Their eyes gleam, their hearts throb, the earth changes to beauty, the heavens break into song. And straightway deeds of valor become easy, heroism commonplace, and sacrifice the order of the day. ”

“ Founding his art upon the dull tradition of the Eclectics, he made the masses graceful, filled void spaces with appropriate detail, drew trees that had some resemblance to the trees of nature, painted a sea that could glitter with waves that actually seemed to splash, and spread over all a sky that was like a real sky—no convenient conventional twilight, but veritable day, with a warm sun in full view. ”

“ Holmes scribbled a receipt upon a sheet of his note-book and handed it to him.
“And Mademoiselle’s address?” he asked.
“Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St. John’s Wood.”
Holmes took a note of it. ”

“ Instead of climbing up, up the ladder of achievement to wealth and fame, and thus away from the common people, he proceeded deliberately to move down—down to the depths of human misery and woe, down to where men toiled desperately and died miserably, down to the dark places of sweat and tears and blood. ”

“ All that we are shown is a vision of morning when the air is still dim with the mist that drifts up slowly from the valleys to melt before the rising sun, which is still low down on the horizon, so that the trees cast only obscure shadows over the sloping fields. ”

“ There are the uniforms in which the soldiers are clad, the gleaming swords and rifles which they carry, the brilliant flags which flutter over their heads, the crashing music which marks the time for their marching feet. Everywhere, in camp, on the march, on the battlefield, there is color, glitter, glory, beauty of sight and sound, the whole paraphernalia of "pomp and circumstance." ”

“ The colour is so splendid, the touch so free and delicate, that the spectator cannot fail to be enchanted, though in his inmost heart he may know all the time that the deep tones of the sky, the glow and the swing of the warm foliage, are merely masterpieces of magnificent convention and like nothing that ever was upon the face of the earth.
Gainsborough and Wilson were not the only painters of the eighteenth century who helped to restore the dignity of landscape. ”

“ Paul, Wycliff, Huss, Savanarola, Martin Luther, John Knox, George Fox, John Wesley, Joseph Priestly, Theodore Parker—how the names multiply, all as sweet as honey to our lips, of those who refused to barter their souls even for the good will of men. ”

“ Thus, at the time of Constable's birth, while art on the Continent had practically ceased to exist, there were three distinct schools of landscape-painting in England to guide a rising artist. The classical tradition had been ably sustained by the refined taste and majestic genius of Wilson; the princely realism of Rubens had turned to delicate romance in the hands of Gainsborough; while water-colour, though still in its childhood, was already giving indications of its capacity. ”

“ Holmes's books have been sold by her authorized publishers; how many have been sold in pirated editions cannot, of course, be ascertained. Mrs. Holmes died at Brockport, New York, October 6, 1907.
Bibliography. Allibone's Dictionary of Authors (Philadelphia, 1897, v. ii) ; The Nation (October 10, 1907) .
THE SCHOOLMASTER
[From Lena Rivers (New York, 1856) ]
And now Mr. Everett was daily expected. Anna, who had no fondness for books, greatly dreaded his arrival, thinking within herself how many pranks she'd play off upon him, provided 'Lena would lend a helping hand, which she much doubted. ”

“ Now heroism, which is performed under circumstances such as these, is heroism still. But I want to lay down the principle that such heroism is of a type inferior to that performed under the drab, uninspiring, familiar circumstances of daily life. The soldier who goes marching into battle with the flag before his eyes and wild music in his ears, is a brave man—but the sailor who leaps into the foaming sea, the miner who descends into the flaming pit, the locomotive engineer who dies at his post of duty, without so much as a single human voice, perhaps, to give him cheer, is a braver man. ”

“ It is only necessary to compare his work with that of his predecessors or contemporaries, to realize how vast was the revolution that he initiated, more especially in the matter of colour, which he treated with a combination of frankness and temperance as yet unsurpassed. No man has hitherto combined so much of that beauty of aspect which we all admire in the Art of the past, with so large a measure of the wind and sunshine which have become the condition of the painting of our own day. ”

“ The death of his mother was an especially heavy blow to his affectionate nature. She had not only done all she could to bring his courtship to a successful issue, but had continued to encourage his artistic efforts, when his professional prospects seemed most desperate. ”

“ When we think of French culture and talent we are apt to form a false opinion of them, from associating them either with work done in periods of unusual social or political excitement, with the neurotic products of over-civilized city life, or with intellects that are French only by geographical accident. ”

“ An eternal striving for nature and for novelty too often overstrained a technical accomplishment that was far from complete, so that he is frequently unworthy of his reputation. He lacked the stores of experience that Constable had accumulated by unceasing study of the old masters, and in their place had little more than the intention of being sincere at all costs. ”

“ He has a great share of feeling, and it has sadly hurt him ... I am sure your heart is too good not to feel for my father. He would wish to make us all happy if he could. Pray do not come to town just yet. ”

“ To blame him for not anticipating the feeling for a less conventional spacing, which has been stimulated during the last forty years by the discovery of the art of Japan, would be as unfair as to insist on the fact that his technique is less supremely certain or his taste less intensely sensitive than that of the greatest artists of the past. ”

“ Gainsborough was the first to free English landscape from the incubus of the historical tradition. Nowadays we may not find in his landscapes that "portrait-like representation of nature" which Reynolds found there, for the clouds and trees and the life of the country-side appear to us only through the veil of an exquisite artistic temperament, which passes over all that might be hard or ugly or inharmonious. In early life Gainsborough painted the oak with skill and truth, but in his mature work all except the figures and animals was generalized and idealized. ”

“ In the work of the primitives of Italy and the Low Countries we are constantly meeting with delicate renderings of natural fact—a trim town, a green meadow, woods and waters unstirred by the wind, a distant blue peak, and, almost always, a space of liquid air beyond. Yet the landscape element is kept strictly subordinate to the main matter of the picture, both in tone, colour, and proportion, while the technical treatment is as simple and precise as that employed for the figures. ”