Clockwise, from upper left: Rev. Henry M. Field, Cyrus W. Field,
David Dudley Field and Stephen J. Field.
tree, the old Elm of Pittsfield Park, as "sorely in need of a new wig of green leaves."
Many of Dr. Holmes's writings have local association with Berkshire. In his Pittsfield home he wrote his Lowell Lectures on nineteenth-century English. It was kept very quiet from the neighbors, but it was whispered that out in the barn, the poet had a mysterious little room where strange things went in and stranger yet came out. He never wrote poetry here. In this domain he was the man of science. It is said that the "Last Leaf;" that inimitable lyric, over which one hardly knows whether to laugh or cry, was suggested by Major Thomas Melville, the grandfather of Hermann Melville. The last to wear the Revolutionary costume, Holmes had often seen him loiter past with "his old three-cornered hat and his breeches and all that." In quite a different vein is "Astræa," the poem afterwards delivered at Yale before the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The Doctor never went anywhere but he was asked to write a poem. More than once he complied with this request in Berkshire. "The Dedication of the Pittsfield Cemetery" and "The New Eden" are such Berkshire poems. More than one character and bit of scenery described in "Elsie Venner" is thought to have had its original in Pittsfield.
In 1844 came the famous Berkshire Jubilee, when Berkshire sons from far
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