USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 35
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The portrait I have the honor to offer you is a copy by Mildred Carola Jordan,* a graduate of the Yale School of the Fine Arts, of Duché's portrait painted in England and now the property of the Diocese of Connecticut, to which it was pre- sented by Bishop White of Pennsylvania on behalf of a sister
* Now Mrs. Charles Alling Tuttle.
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of the artist. Trinity College has long been the custodian of the canvas which holds the place of honor in the Alumni Hall of the College at Hartford.
I take pleasure in acknowledging the kindness of President Luther of Trinity in giving the copyist every facility for her work. I also wish gratefully to acknowledge the assistance rendered by the Rev. Samuel Hart, of the Berkeley Divinity School of Middletown, in loaning the copyist a fine early impression of the superb line engraving made in 1786 by W. Sharp from the original canvas, then undimmed by age.
Though I was myself brought up in the Congregational Order, I am interested in everything that pertains to the his- tory of Connecticut, and it has long seemed to me that it has not been sufficiently known that Seabury, a native of Con- necticut and the first Bishop of the Church in Connecticut, and that Jarvis, a native of Connecticut and the second Bishop of the Church in Connecticut, were both graduates of Yale College.
Very respectfully, (Signed) GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR
NOTE : It is not generally known that Bishop Seabury's mitre (which he had the rare good sense to wear rarely) is pre- served in a glass case in Trinity College at Hartford, where it may be seen to-day by the curious in "episcopal millinery." Impressive only by its size, no prelatical head since Seabury's time could begin to fill it.
President Luther showed me the relic when the Bishop's portrait was being copied, and I conceived the idea that nothing could be at once more appropriate and more decorative than a carved representation of the mitre on the frame I was to have made for my copy of the portrait. Accordingly I sent the frame-maker to Hartford, where he was privileged to examine and measure the mitre, which he subsequently carved in solid oak in the center of the upper member of the frame.
And so it happened that the Bishop "at length and at last"
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and nearly a century and a quarter after he was rebuffed* by old President Stiles at the Yale Commencement of 1785, joined the great and the near-great figures in the Yale Com- mons Gallery of Portraits, with his mitre over his head- Time's revenge was thus made complete.
Of "all the [Yale] Saints, who from their labors rest," none there in that great hall approaches the grand prelatical air of Samuel Seabury, Yale 1748, Primus Episcopus Americanus.
As to the spirit in which the Primate received the Presiden- tial rebuff and whether or no a chair was found for him on the Academic platform with the other "bishops," history is silent.
The Primate reposes in the old burying-ground in New Lon- don, under an altar-tomb bearing the following inscription :
"Here lyeth the body of Samuel Seabury, D.D. Bishop of Connecticut and Rhode Island, who departed from this transitory scene, February 25th, Anno Domini 1796, in the 68th year of his age, and the 12th of his Episcopal consecration.
"Ingenious without pride, learned without pedantry, good without sever- ity, he was duly qualified to discharge the duties of the Christian and the Bishop. In the pulpit he enforced Religion; in his conduct he exempli- fied it. The poor he assisted with his charity; the ignorant he blessed with his instruction. The friend of men, he ever designed their good ; the enemy of vice, he ever opposed it. Christian! dost thou aspire to happiness ? Seabury has shown the way that leads to it."
* In his "Life and Correspondence of Bishop Seabury" (1882), Dr. Beardsley tells the following anecdote :
"Bishop Seabury met his clergy in convocation at New Haven, accord- ing to adjournment, on Wednesday, the 14th of September, while Yale College was holding its annual commencement. Dr. Stiles was then the president of the institution, and the bishop entering the meeting- house during the exercises, some one suggested that he be invited, cut of respect to his office, to take a seat upon the stage among other dis- tinguished persons; to which the president replied : 'We are all bishops here, but if there be room for another, he can occupy it.'"
As our much lov'd Bishop Lines ("Lines of Newark"), Yale 1872, told me the story, a chair on the platform was asked for "the Bishop" (Seabury), whereupon President Stiles retorted, "If a chair can be found for Mr. Seabury, he may have it." Those bewigged early ministers of our estab- lished order developed temperatures whenever the word "Bishop" was pronounced, and hence the ungracious retort of President Stiles. Perhaps, too, he detected the odor of papacy about good Mr. Seabury's clothes.
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Stories Told in New Haven: An Evening with Bishop Williams
Seabury's successors in the Episcopal office were Jarvis, Brownell and Williams, and now the lawn sleeves are worn by the Rt. Rev. Chauncey Bunce Brewster, Yale 1868, a native of Windham.
Bishop Williams was a great wit and raconteur, as well as a great figure in the Church. Thirty-odd years ago, I had a wonderful time listening to his talk in the old brick "palace," as the Episcopal residence was then called by the students of the Berkeley Divinity School, over which he presided in Mid- dletown. After his death, the "palace" was carefully restored by Dean Hart and is now an ornament to one of the finest streets in the State. Two or three years later, I spent an evening with the Bishop on the invitation of my friend, the Rev. Charles Newton Morris, Yale 1882, who, as a student at the Berkeley Divinity School, had taken me to call upon the Bishop in the "palace." My friend was now the incum- bent of All Saints' Mission on Howard Avenue. The Bishop had come down for confirmation and I was invited over to spend the evening. Time has not erased from my memory the stories the Bishop told that evening in a cloud of tobacco smoke and in the odor of spiritus frumenti. Asked to define a "high churchman," he said, "A high churchman is one who thinks highly of the church." A lover of mortuary verse, he recited (with perhaps an excess of glee), the famous inscrip- tion on the tomb in Stamford of the Rev. John Davenport, grandson of the Rev. John Davenport of New Haven :
"At honorary distance keep, nor dare disturb the peaceful sleep of Rev- erend Davenport. None but his sons, the sacred tribes; or those whom heavenly Wisdom guides, may to his URN resort."
If those old ministers of the Standing Order were not bishops in the apostolic succession, they were, at least, popes in temporal power, expecting as much reverence and often getting it.
Nor was Bishop Williams less amused by the inscription placed by "Parson Peters," whose "General History of Con-
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necticut" has furnished so much copy for the "Defenders of the Faith" (Calvinistic), upon the headstone erected to the memory of his second consort, who died but a few days after their marriage,-
"A Wedding Changed to Lamentation, Ye Greatest Grief in All Crea- tion, A Mourning Groom in Desperation."
It is needless to add that the "Greatest Grief in All Crea- tion" did not prevent "Parson Peters" from marrying again.
Bishop Williams, who had the strongest objection to abbre- viations in inscriptions, averred that he was always fearful of the services in old St. John's, Stamford, lest he should betray his amusement over the inscription on the tablet in its chancel to the Rev. Ebenezer Dibblee, D.D., one of the early mission- aries of the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, succinctly described on the tablet as "A Mis- sionary of the Soc for the Prop of the Gosp in For Parts." But the abbreviation of names given in baptism most offended the Bishop, who playfully suggested that Deity did not recog- nize initials, but only names sanctified by the sacrament of baptism,-surely a proper view for a churchman. What the "Venerable Society"-it was often so called-accomplished in the way of propagating the gospel in these parts is presuma- bly recorded above. What we may be certain of is that the naïvely delightful book-plate of the Society, a rare item, has brought happiness to many ardent collectors of ex-Libris.
The Bishop was born in Deerfield in 1817, and, therefore, early enough to have known, in his boyhood, old people whose recollections went back well into the preceding century, and who, in turn, almost touched the tragedies of the Deerfield Massacre, which has provided more thrills than almost any one event in New England history. The school readers were redolent of it within the memory of many well-brought-up New Englanders of to-day. Deerfield was on the frontier of our pioneer civilization, and, perhaps, more than any other settlement, took the brunt of the border wars between the Colonists and the French and Indians. Bishop Williams' own family connection played a large part in the romance and
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tragedy of those border wars, and as a boy and young man he was an eager listener to the stories about them. He had himself been brought up in an old, half-fortified house, which boasted an underground passage leading out of the cellar, provided for some defensive purpose, but in the Bishop's boy- hood serving as a sanctuary for pies, which, in the old days, were cooked in generous batches in the hospitable ovens of the houses. I remember he said that an American Walter Scott would find in those border wars of ours material for stories as stirring as any the great Sir Walter ever wrote of his own Scottish border. The Bishop liked, as in the case of the traditions of Deerfield, to reach back into the past. As a student at Oxford (where he heard Newman preach in St. Mary's before he "went over to Rome"), he was told by old Dr. Rau of Magdalen, that when a boy he had talked with an aged woman who, as a little girl, had seen Charles II feed the swans in St. James' Park. He was much interested in what I had to tell him of my work in collecting material about the ill-fated pre-Revolutionary Anglican Mission at New Cam- bridge (now Bristol), and urged me to put my collections in permanent form. I tried to do it, but that is another story, not to be told here.
To illustrate his view that a hundred revolving years of Episcopacy had not made much of an impression on Con- necticut Congregationalism, the Bishop told the following story :
When in Scotland in 1884, to attend the celebration of the centenary of the consecration of Bishop Seabury in Aberdeen in 1784, the then Bishop of Aberdeen presented him (Williams) with a jewelled pastoral staff. In 1887, Bishop Seabury's church (St. James') at New London celebrated its cen- tenary, and Bishop Williams was requested by the Vestry to bring the pastoral staff to grace the occasion. A newspaper correspondent, presum- ably a Congregationalist, sent down from Hartford to report the proceed- ings, heard some one in the crowd refer to the "Bishop's pastoral staff." Unfamiliar with this symbol of the Episcopal office, but, as a resident of Hartford, quite familiar with the bright picture of the Governor's Staff, in all their glittering uniforms, he hastened to inform his paper that "among those present" was the Rt. Rev. John Williams, Fourth Bishop of Con- necticut, accompanied by his pastoral staff and others of the clergy!
And so the talk flowed on, but who can recapture conversa- tions of thirty odd years ago with any measure of their charm!
XLIV.
THE REV'D DOCTOR THEODORE T. MUNGER'S COMMENDATION OF CARDINAL NEWMAN'S "IDEA OF A UNIVERSITY."
(Reprinted from the Yale Alumni Weekly of Jan. 15th, 1915.)
FOREWORD: I have forgotten the controversy about the typical "Tom" which provoked the following letter to the Yale Alumni Weekly. That is of no importance now, and I should not include the letter in this book except that it shows the feeling of Dr. Munger, a great citizen of New Haven, on a topic of particular interest to the community. And since my book deals largely with old times and old ideals, I hope the article will not be thought out of place. At least it will pro- vide an interesting comparison between the great University ideal of a former age and the present ideal which tends to place research above the teaching function so eloquently urged by Newman and so warmly endorsed by Dr. Munger.
To the Editor of the Alumni Weekly:
The attempt to test the efficiency of Yale by its effect upon "Tom" (a hardy perennial), seems to me wrong in method and unproductive of result. I recall an evening spent fifteen years ago, more or less, with the late Rev. Dr. Theodore T. Munger, Yale 1851. During a discussion, Dr. Munger was moved to take down from his book shelves Cardinal New- man's "Idea of a University," and he read the following passage from it :-
"If then a practical end must be assigned to a University course, I say it is that of training good members of society. Its art is the art of social life, and its end is fitness for the world. It neither confines its views to particular professions on the one hand, nor creates heroes or inspires genius
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on the other. Works indeed of genius fall under no art; heroic minds come under no rule; a University is not a birthplace of poets or of immortal authors, of founders of schools, leaders of colonies, or conquerors of nations. It does not promise a generation of Aristotles or Newtons, of Napoleons or Washingtons, of Raphaels or Shakespeares, though such miracles of nature it has before now contained within its precincts. Nor is it content on the other hand with forming the critic or the experimentalist, the economist or the engineer, though such too it includes within its scope. But a University training is the great ordinary means to a great but ordinary end; it aims at raising the intellectual tone of society, at cultivating the public mind, at purifying the national taste, at supplying true principles to popular enthusiasm and fixed aims to popular aspiration, at giving enlarge- ment and sobriety to the ideas of the age, at facilitating the exercise of political power, and refining the intercourses of private life. It is the educa- tion which gives a man a clear, conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical, and discard what is irrele- vant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master any sub- ject with facility. It shows him how to accommodate himself to others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with them, how to bear with them. He is at home in any society, he has common ground with every class; he knows when to speak and when to be silent; he is able to converse, he is able to listen ; he can ask a question pertinently, and gain a lesson seasonably, when he has nothing to impart himself ; he is ever ready, yet never in the way; he is a pleasant companion, and a com- rade you can depend upon; he knows when to be serious and when to trifle, and he has a sure tact which enables him to trifle with gracefulness and to be serious with effect. He has the repose of a mind which lives in itself, while it lives in the world, and which has resources for its happiness at home when it cannot go abroad. He has a gift which serves him in public, and supports him in retirement, without which good fortune is but vulgar, and with which failure and disappointment have a charm. The art which tends to make a man all this, is in the object which it pursues as useful as the art of wealth or the art of health, though it is less susceptible of method, and less tangible, less certain, less complete in its result."
Before he put the book down, Dr. Munger said that New- man's statement of the University idea had never been sur- passed-that it was the greatest statement the language contained upon the subject. A day or so later he sent me a copy of the passage he had selected to read to me, and from it I have transcribed the above quotation. I have threatened
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for years to send this to the Weekly, and have even wished that the Weekly might keep it set up in type to reprint every little while as a standard of comparison. If the efficiency of Yale be tested by Cardinal Newman's "Idea of a University," I think it will be seen that on the whole Yale measures up to it pretty well, and that those who are discouraged about "Tom" and his ilk may take heart.
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR
NOTE : Cardinal Newman's "Idea of a University," as I sense it, is that of training men for useful and happy lives, of fitting them for service in every relation of life, but he nowhere uses the word "service," any more than did President Hadley in his inaugural address delivered in October, 1889, yet "service" was at the time regarded as the key-note of the inaugural and, con- tinuously reiterated since, it was the key-note of his administration as President of Yale University.
It seems not inappropriate here to quote the following significant passage from Mr. Hadley's widely-discussed inaugural address as printed in The Yale Alumni Weekly of October 18, 1889:
"What shall it profit us if we gain the whole world and lose our own soul, if we develop the intellectual and material side of our education, and lose the traditional spirit of democracy and loyalty and Christianity ?
That there will be an advance in thoroughness of preparation for the special lines of work which our students are to undertake is a thing of which we may safely rest assured. That there shall be a similar advance in the general training for citizenship in the United States is an obligation for whose fulfilment our universities are responsible. The Yale of the future must count for even more than the Yale of the past in the work of city, state, and nation. It must come into closer touch with our political life, and be a larger part of that life. To this end it is not enough for her to train experts competent to deal with the financial and legal problems which are before us. Side by side with this training, she must evoke in the whole body of her students and alumni that wider sense of their obligation as members of a free commonwealth which the America of the twentieth century requires.
The central problem, which we all have to face, and about which all other problems group themselves, is this: How shall we make our educational system meet the world's demands for progress on the intellectual side, with- out endangering the growth of that which has proved most valuable on the moral side? And it. is the latter part which demands the most immediate attention from a college president, not necessarily because it is more im- portant in itself-for where two things are both absolutely indispensable, a comparison of relative values is meaningless-but because the individual professors can, and under the keen competition between universities must, attend in a large measure to the excellence of instruction in their several departments, while the action of the university as a whole, and the intelli- gent thought of the university administration, is requisite to prevent the sacrifice of the moral interest of the whole commonwealth."
XLV.
PLANTING THE DAVENPORT AND EATON MEMORIAL OAKS ON THE GREEN ON THE TWO HUNDRED SEVENTY- FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF DAVENPORT'S FIRST SERMON.
(Excerpts from a full page article in the New Haven Sunday Union of April 20, 1913.)
As long ago as last January [my letter is dated Jan. 21st, 1913] I asked the Park Commission for permission to plant two white oak trees on the Green in commemoration of the 275th anniversary of the founding of New Haven. In my letter I expressed the hope that these trees might be known as the Davenport and Eaton Oaks, and so form living memorials of the Rev. Mr. John Davenport and of Governor Theophilus Eaton, who were the foremost figures in the founding of New Haven, and for a number of years thereafter the leaders of the plantation at Quinnipiac, as the locality now occupied by New Haven was called by the Indians.
The Park Commission granted my request, and preparations have now been made to plant two oak saplings on April 25, the very day of the month on which Mr. Davenport preached his first sermon here, 275 years ago, under a wide spreading oak, which stood, according to tradition, near the intersection of George and College Streets. A tablet to commemorate the landing of the founders was inserted 25 years ago in the west wall of a brick store at the corner of College and George Streets by order of the committee having charge of the celebra-
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tion, in 1888, of the 250th anniversary of the foundation of the city. This tablet bears the following inscription :
"1888. The Founders of this Town Landing Near this Spot Assembled Here for the Worship of God, on Their First Sunday, April 25, 1638."
Sites have been chosen for the memorial oaks directly back of Center Church. Large pits have already been dug and filled with rich loam and compost, so as to give the young trees the best possible chance of surviving the operation of transplanting and of making sturdy growth thereafter. These pits, eight feet in diameter and four feet deep, are now ready for the planting of the trees. The white oak thrives well in this locality, and although of slow growth, attains a great size. It is one of the most beautiful and satisfactory of our native trees. It is, moreover, largely immune from the insect pests which attack other trees, such as the elm and maple. No native tree growing on the Atlantic seaboard surpasses it in dignity of appearance, either when in foliage or bare of it.
The Davenport Oak will be placed nearest the church; the Eaton Oak will be placed in line with it, but up on the slope and close to the site of the old State House.
When Center Church celebrates, as it now proposes to do this fall, the 275th anniversary of the foundation of New Haven and the 100th anniversary of the building of the present church, we shall learn more about Eaton and Davenport, and the "seven pillars" of the church, and of others who were not pillars but perhaps not less worthy. The celebrations held in the past have been dignified and interesting, and there is every reason to believe that the forthcoming celebration will be worthy of the occasion and will serve to quicken the sense of the citizen of today to an appreciation of our local history, and to show him how well and at what pains and sacrifices the foundations of our city were laid, what privileges he enjoys owing to the wisdom and exertions of those that have gone
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before, and how clear is his duty to preserve, as well as to improve, the heritage handed down to him.
It has been thought best not to defer the planting of the memorial trees until fall when the double celebration is to be held, since the spring season is the most favorable for setting out the saplings, and since it may be necessary to replace them in the fall in case either or both fail to thrive. Moreover, it seems fitting to plant them, the Davenport oak in particular, on the actual anniversary of Davenport's first sermon under a spreading oak. There will be no formal ceremony connected with the planting of the trees. However, ex-President Taft has kindly consented to participate in such simple ceremonies as have been arranged. It is proposed that Dr. Maurer, as the successor of Mr. Davenport in the ministry of the First Church of Christ in New Haven, shall plant the Davenport Oak assisted by Mr. Cromie, the City Forester, and that Mr. Taft shall plant the Governor Eaton Oak, assisted by Mr. Amrhyn, the Superintendent of Parks. Mr. Taft, himself a former Chief Magistrate of the United States, will fittingly plant the Eaton Oak. Theophilus Eaton, from the time he came here up to the time of his death, was the chief magistrate of the New Haven Colony and one of the first figures in all of the American Colonies.
I am led to regret that I did not ask permission of the Park Commission to plant also an oak in memory of John Brockett, surveyor, who laid out the Green, probably in June or July, 1638, and who has no memorial of any description on the Green or anywhere in the city, notwithstanding the fact that New Haven is undoubtedly more indebted to him for the Green than to any other one person. The size of the Green, which covers some 16 acres, gives some idea of the size of the city which the founders planned to build. I have within a few weeks written to the Park Commission, suggesting the planting of an oak as a memorial to Brockett. I have received a favor- able reply from Mr. Henry F. English of the Commission.
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