Books: The Postman Rings Twice

(2 of 3)

Sometimes their subject was the universe. Wrote Holmes: "My formula as a bettabilitarian (one who thinks you can bet about it but not know) is a spontaneity taking an irrational pleasure in a moment of rational sequence. . . . Functioning is all there is. ... I wonder if cosmically an idea is any more important than the bowels."

During the first 20 years, while their friendship was still somewhat stiff and formal, they wrote a good deal about the law. Even after their friendship mellowed, Pollock stuck sternly to his salutation—My dear Holmes. Holmes began to salute his correspondent occasionally as Dear F. P.; when Pollock was 82 he ventured to write My dear young Frederick, adding later "Frederick really is growing up." He seldom failed to send his love to "your Lady." Justice Holmes had a sharp eye for ladies, was once known to stare after a pretty girl and mutter: "Oh, to be 80 again!"

Sometimes they ventured to tell each other stories. Pollock writes cautiously: "It is said—I don't vouch for it—that when President Wilson et ux. were here Mrs. W. asked the Queen what she thought about the Freedom of the Seas, and the Queen answered that she had not quite made up her mind about mixed bathing." Both men were insatiable readers; but books were not an end in themselves but a part of life, and they treated them with less formality than they treated one another. Typical Pollock treatment:

>"Tolstoy had no business to be born in Europe. He should have been an Indian sage, and then his exit to meditate in the wilderness would have ... troubled nobody."

>"Bertrand Russell is a mighty clever philosopher, too clever I think. His theodicy so far as I make out consists in being angry with the gods for not existing, because if they did he would like to break their windows."

>"As for Wells's opinions on things in general, I have never thought them worth attention any more than Bernard Shaw's. Both are clever impostors but Shaw has the advantage of knowing it."

Holmes's opinions are even pithier:

>"When you open Pepys you get one leg on the flypaper at once and it is hard to get away."

>On Bergson's Creative Evolution—"I think he is churning the void to make cheese—but I find him full of stimulus."

>"Hegel can't persuade me that a syllogism can wag its tail."

In 1932 Holmes wrote his last letter and last literary opinion to Pollock. Then to their 57-year-old correspondence he set this last line: "Is this enough of my gossip?"