A death mask of Holmes, done by Mount Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borglum, greets visitors as they enter the exhibit. This life-size stone mask has ghostly quality of authenticity, giving the impression of a slumbering Holmes presiding over the show.
A case of memorabilia comes next. Among photos of Holmes lies a printed program from "Harvard College Class Day Exercises 21 June. 1861," for which he wrote the class poem. A Harvard Commencement address he delivered in 1911 and various Civil War mementoes. Including his sword, are also here.
Unlike many other Boston Brahmins of the day. Holmes chose to plunge into the Civil War rather than flee it. He was seriously wounded three times, but kept coming back for more. On a worn piece of paper he scrawled. "I am Capt. O W Holmes 20th Mass son of Oliver Wendell Holmes M.D. Boston," He later explained in his Civil War Diary. "I wrote the above when I was lying in a little house on the held of Antietam which was for a while within the enemy's lines as I thought I might faint and so be unable to tell who I was."
Separate cases contain selected Holmes papers from his terms on the Massachusetts and United States Supreme Courts. "I think in construing the constitution we should remember that it is a frame of government for men of opposite opinions and for the future," men of opposite opinions and for the future," he wrote in 1894, exemplifying the philosophy behind many of his decision.
Holmes had vowed to write a book before he reached 40 and fulfilled the promise with several weeks to spare. The exhibit contains an autographed, first edition copy of The Common Law, the book which earned him a Law School professorship. A collection of lectures originally delivered at Boston's Lowell Institute in 1880. The Common Law is now a classic legal text which contains the famous dictum. "The life of the law has not been logic it has been experience."
Holmes maintained a wide range of correspondents, both American and foreign. He exchanged letters with such luminaries as the British economist Harold J. Laski and the brothers William and Henry James. An excerpt from hi travel diary dated May 26, 1866 reads: "...Then with them [Henry Adams and his family] to Gladstones...had quite a long talk with the Panjandrum G[ladstone] himself--whereat people stared. G in consideration of my wounds made me sit and I was a great gun."
Holmes was often known as "the Great Liberal" and "the Great Dissenter," but, says Chadbourn. "He wasn't that liberal and he didn't dissent all that much." In a series of sedition cases after World War I, Holmes authored the majority opinion which found Americans guilty of collaboration with the enemy. In Abrams et al vs. the United States, however, he relented with a dissenting opinion on the same issue.
Holmes dissents carried as much weight as his concurring opinions and, as a later Supreme Court, Justice, Fells Frankfurter commented they often "shaped history."
Holmes read extensively throughout his life, but bad his clerks read to him after the death of his wife. "Do we have to improve our minds today? Can't we have a little murder" he pleaded with Hiss one day. The exhibit contains Holmes' diary listing every book he ever read: ironically, the last entry in Thornton wilder's Heaven's My Destination.
The learned scholar was not without a wry sense of humor. When Law School professor Austin Scott, then just a student, and a roommate named McNeil visited the Justice at his home, they followed the traditional procedure of sending their calling cards up to him beforehand. Holmes came lumbering down the stairs, flipping the cards and reciting a ditty.
Deal and shuffle,
Shuffle and deal,
Which is Scott,
And which McNeil?
The Law School acquired the Holmes papers in 1968, after the death of Mark DeWolfe Howe, Holmes' official biographer. Howe was also a Holmes clerk and a Law School professor. Chadbourn has been planning the exhibit since 1968 but felt compelled to present shows on Roscoe Pound and learned Hand firs, since their respective centennials have occurred in the past few years. The subject of her next presentation will be Felix Frankfurter.
No exhibit--not even one that is accompanied by the vivid recollections of those who knew the subject best--can bring a man back to life. But the exhibit at the Law School does succeed in giving a clear impression of what Holmes must have been like. Each item has been carefully selected, and the show progresses in a thoroughly logical fashion. This exhibit leaves you with a definite feeling for Holmes' depth of character, his awesome accomplishments, and his profound wisdom.
Perhaps Holmes best summarized his life when he quoted a line from a Latin poet on his 90th birthday:
Death Plucks my ear and says
"Live--I am coming."