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AROUND A VILLAGE GREEN
MAPY ADÈLE AMUN
Go 974.402 Am47al 1419163
350
M. L
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01101 2462
J. C. K. Soltin
. Mrs. Henry. A. Reynolds amen anting. Soc. workedin 20 april 1940
Mary Adèle Allen.
Copyright 1939 by Mary Adele Allen Holyoke, Massachusetts
THE AMERICAN YOUTHS' DIPLOMA,
PATIENCE.
PERSEVERANCE,
VIRTUE.
THE HILL OF SCIENCE.
Remember the Greater in the clay of
Morfo Many Acadela Janny
awarded the DIPLOMA For moral and gented Department and for Faithfulness and untiring Industry in the prosecution of hel Studies and Emplorinents during the
STUDIEJ PURSUED Orthography Frammere ropaphy
Derm ending topics Behold you Mount ; where Science rears her head, Whose sterp avant the young and lovely trad. Where Springs Perian, spread their golden Love, And gusking fountains their rich treasure pour, Where childhood lifis the fourytube on high, And oradled beauty in hu mothers yr, Sous murored deep a ray which God has given, To gold the mount and light his steps to Heaven MLG
igended
you have opportunity
GRADE OF SCHOLARSHIP
Published by 0.0. Wickham 77 Fulton $ X York ..
AMERICAN YOUTH'S DIPLOMA
Awarded to a child of seven for moral and genteel Deportment and for Faithfulness and untiring Industry in the prosecution of her Studies and Employments during the term April, 1846.
Around a Village Green ~
Sketches of Life in Amberst
by Mary Adele Allen
Published by THE KRAUSHAR [PRESS NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
To all who have a loving thought for old Amherst.
1419163
CONTENTS
Page
The First President's House 9 The First Parish . 19
The Village Church, 1867-1877 26
The Congregation Enters 40
The Boltwood House 47
School Days in Amherst 57 Love of Flowers 65
An Evening of Relics and Recipes 73
Faculty Street 79
The First President's House Once More 85
bosh .o.d
ILLUSTRATIONS
American Youth's Diploma Frontispiece
The First President's House Facing Page 9
The Village Church and Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins . Facing Page 26 The Boltwood House and Mr. and Mrs. Boltwood. . Facing Page 47 Amherst Coach . Facing Page 94
Loodones # 3.50 10-11-67 Pm. 8652
PREFACE
Some years ago I encountered a magazine sketch that told of a dis- tinguished judge going back to his old home in Maine and stopping by the wooded wayside, as in his boyhood days, to eat " iv'ries." What were " iv'ries "? The word baffled me. No dictionary gave it. No student of English dialects that I knew could explain it.
A former teacher had advised me once, if I were ever in straits like this, to put the word away in my mind and wait. Sometime, he said, I would be sure to come across it again in an unexpected way.
About five years after reading about the judge and his taste for " iv'ries," I was sitting on deck, returning from England in late August. A young man threw himself into the steamer-chair next to mine. Almost his first remark was: "I am leaving my father and mother in England and going home, because I want to eat iv'ries in Maine." I sat up in my chair. "What are iv'ries?" I asked. "It is the name for the little checkerberries before they turn red. They are ivories."
This incident comes to my mind as I recall the sayings and teach- ings of my childhood, sayings and teachings that have proved their truth as life went on. Among the old maxims was one which read: " Conversation is a pleasant pastime," and another: "Writing is eternal." Often I have spent pleasant hours recalling with others these memories of an Amherst childhood. I put them now into writing so that they may last as long as there are any who return to that lovely countryside with a taste for " iv'ries."
M. A. A.
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THE FIRST PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
Its corner stone was laid by Noah Webster at the close of the inauguration of President Moore on September 18, 1821, the day before the formal opening of the College. Photograph taken by Lovell in 1866. The house was remodeled for Psi Upsilon in 1879.
THE FIRST PRESIDENT'S HOUSE
I N offering these reminiscences of old Amherst days, I am giving the impressions of my early life in that beautiful town. There are incidents which stand out unforgettable. When I was about seven years old, Professor Julius Seelye took me on his knee and looked down at me through his great spectacles and said, " I want you to have a good memory." He was interested in me because I used to play with his children around his big fish pond in the rear of his grounds, and because he knew my father and mother. "Now the way to have a good memory," said Professor Seelye, " is never to allow yourself to forget anything you have seen or heard. Sometimes you will have to sit down and think a long time before you can recall a thing once known, but if you think long enough and make this your habit, you will surely recall what you desire. Whatever you have once had in your mind is never lost."
His words made a great impression on me. I began practising them. They led me to discover a prescription for putting myself to sleep that has never failed. If you cannot sleep, try to recall every detail of the usual walk you took as early in life as you can remember - every rough stone, every tree, every bit of fence, every house you passed. This recipe has helped to keep fresh these pictures of my daily life in Amherst.
How often in later years have I gone forth, in memory, from our big front door down the broad stone doorsteps, where my brother and I used to crack nuts, down the brick path with moss between the bricks - a sprig of grass - I stoop and pick it out - past the big buttonwood tree, with its buttons on the lawn, and bits of bark too, and twigs (or, if I choose a June day, I look up at the Queen of the Prairie rose climb- ing up to the height of the buttonwood tree, and down to find a robin on the lawn with a big blackheart cherry from our cherished tree) out through the broad white gate on to the street with its flagstone sidewalk. I seem to see the flagstones as the students in some prank turned them up one moonlight night, until the whole street looked like a cemetery. Then across the Common - now the close-clipped village green - by the little narrow footpath, through grass grown high, amid clover blossoms and daisies, bumblebees and butterflies everywhere, a " devil's darning-needle " shooting by,- to the clump of blue star- grass, where I stop (in front of the Lord Jeffery of today) to pick
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white violets and wild strawberry blooms in the marshy ground. I go no farther; the calm of the Pelham Hills has come upon me, and I sleep.
Our house in Amherst was built in 1821-22 for the first President of Amherst College, and was always known as the First President's House. It was the sight of the country round when it was finished, for it had no posts in the corners of the rooms - the first house ever seen without them by the country folk. The large panes of glass in the windows, also, were new to them. There were nine open fireplaces in it. The walls were constructed of double brick, making the house warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and the window seats were correspondingly deep. President Moore died in this house. His suc- cessor, President Humphrey, lived here until, in 1834, the new Presi- dent's House was erected opposite the college grounds.
The trustees then sold the First President's House to William C. Fowler, who was professor of rhetoric and elocution and who came to Amherst in 1838. There is no record of any occupant of the house in the interim. Professor Fowler married the daughter of Noah Webster.
One day in 1858 Professor Fowler said to my father: " Adams, I hear you are to be married soon. I am going to sell my house, and I should like to have you buy it." So my father bought the house, and we lived there until 1879; then it was sold to the Psi Upsilon fraternity and we removed to a neighboring town.
Psi U. added a third story, and made use of the building until 1912, when it was demolished to make room for the present fraternity house. Thanks to Allen Cox, the architect of the new house, the three old buttonwood or sycamore trees are standing today. They were brought down from Sunderland in 1821 and, according to family tradition, were fifty years old when transplanted. The old farmers said that they would not live, but they are still sturdy trees. Beneath the center tree lies our dog Prince, who was run over by the New London North- ern train - so slow a train that we never thought it possible that it could run over a living thing.
The room on the first floor of the old house, to the left as you entered, was the President's study. Here for a long time faculty meet- ings were held and students came with fear and trembling to receive official reprimands. The study could also be entered by an outside door at the south. This entrance, though not so pretentious as the front door, had broad stone steps with iron scrapers for muddy boots. A beautiful single red rose grew with southern luxuriance on a trellis above it.
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Professor Fowler would have no door cut from the library into the adjoining dining-room because he said the charm of taking a lady on your arm into the long, broad hall, and so to the dining-room, would be lost. This cutting of a door seems to have been a matter of discussion in several faculty houses. It was rumored that one professor said that his wife wanted a door cut from the parlor into the dining-room and he did not want it cut, so they compromised and did not cut the door.
In our kitchen was the table upon which Noah Webster wrote some of the dictionary while staying with the Fowlers. It was a plain English deal table. My brother and I always cut the candy on it when we had a candy-pull, a favorite entertainment for young people in those days. There, too, stood a highboy - we used it then for a tool chest - that had belonged to General Mack. His widow, the daughter of Reverend David Parsons, gave it to my grandmother. There was an enormous fireplace in our kitchen, and back of the fire-board we kept the original kettle and crane. When the fire-board was down, the high mantel made a favorite retreat for boys and girls in the game of blind man's buff. Eugene Field, when he came back to Amherst for a visit, loved to play this game. I can feel his long hand now almost grasping me as his lank form sped behind me up the stairs. Then there was the much coveted slide down the banisters, Eugene Field leading the way. He was a great playmate. He assured us that somersaults were a very healthy exercise, and that we should never go around a bed or chair if we could somersault it. We were apt disciples, and so there were nice little round hollows on all the best counterpaned beds which our frolicking heads went over. The elders frowned upon such proceed- ings, but there was in Amherst a spirit of friendliness to youth and of sympathy with its occasional outbursts.
Both Eugene Field and his brother " Rosie " were in my mother's Sunday school class. Eugene, as usual, was " not bad, just full of the Old Nick." Our house looked as though a whirlwind had blown through it after that class came to supper. But Eugene Field remem- bered the good times he had on these occasions, and a quarter of a cen- tury later came to call on my mother when he chanced to be near our home. His aunt, Mrs. Jones, lived at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Amity Street, and it was her daughter, Miss Mary French, who was really his guardian. He used to appear in Amherst at any time unannounced, often coming in on a late train from Northampton. On one occasion he rang the bell of the front door of his aunt's house at midnight and shouted down the quiet street, " Let me in, Auntie. I'm married." That was the first they knew of his taking a wife.
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There were many informal gatherings among the congenial spirits of the younger people, sugaring-offs at Plumtrees, sleigh-rides to Pelham, fishing parties to Belchertown, which yielded such fish as " pumpkin-seeds " and bullheads and occasional pickerel; watermelon parties at South Amherst, picnics at Shutesbury, where steak was broiled in the open and sweet potatoes roasted in the ashes and coffee boiled with an aroma such as can be obtained only from a tin coffee- pot over a blazing log. The big yellow coach drawn by four horses that ran between Amherst and Northampton was available for these pic- nics. Another favorite drive was to Whately Glen, where there was real sport in clambering over the rocks and big moss-covered boulders in the bed of the stream. One had to be sure-footed to escape pools and tiny waterfalls. We would catch a glimpse of the cardinal flower in its sheltered haunt, and sometimes a fringed gentian. The countryside meant much to us. To know the beauty of Amherst one must have looked upon the July meadows filled with nodding lilies and meadow- rue, and seen the sunrise on the Pelham Hills, and watched the setting sun burning in glory on the many-paned windows of the old Orient House.
In the evening there was much calling among the older people and reading aloud from Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy," Young's " Night Thoughts," Thomson's " Seasons," Herbert and Pollok and Shakespeare. Both in conversation and in letters the English poets were frequently quoted. One closed a letter then, not with modern abruptness, but with a gentle paragraph beginning, "My wood fire burns low and I must bid you good-night."
The most beautiful woman who ever went out of Amherst, so people said, once lived in our house, Emily Fowler, Professor Fowler's daugh- ter. She married Gordon L. Ford, and was the mother of Paul Leicester Ford and Worthington Ford. Her wedding cards are before me now, on glazed paper, and in an envelope with a tiny edge of silver lace, a touch of city elegance. Emily Fowler's girlhood friends in- cluded Helen Hunt and Emily Dickinson, leading spirits among the young ladies who were invited to levees, as the college receptions were then called.
Both Mrs. Jones and Miss Mary French, already mentioned in con- nection with Eugene Field, entertained delightfully. Miss French had much the same charm of manner that Emily Fowler was said to have, and her evening parties were the most brilliant in Amherst. She and her mother seemed to have the gift of hospitality that put everyone at ease. Their big house was brilliantly lighted for an evening com- pany. " Lights and flowers everywhere, and to make your way through
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the company and speak to everyone," was Miss French's formula for a successful hostess. She arranged hanging baskets in the windows, filled with bright red salvias or other gay flowers that gave a gracious accent to the long white lace curtains that hung from the high ceiling. There were masses of beautiful flowers all through the rooms, and bouton- nières in the hall for the gentlemen as they entered, and sometimes camellias for the ladies' hair.
Helen Hunt was a familiar name in my childhood. She was the daughter of Professor Fiske. The charm of her overflowing spirit and the grace with which she received her father's guests at Commencement time were still remembered.
Emily Dickinson, always Miss Emily to us, was living in retirement at the time I was born. I was one of the children who played in her yard and to whom she gave cookies out of the pantry window. I can see her now in her eager way handing the cookies to us through the half-open shutters. Her father, the Hon. Edward Dickinson, had the best woodpile in Amherst, and how we loved to play on it! He was a stern man to look upon, most dignified and elegant in tall, shining gray beaver and a stock and carrying a gold-headed cane. Once he unbent. After he was elected to Congress, the boys of the town had a big bon- fire to celebrate the event. The next morning one of the youngsters met him as he walked up the street for his morning's mail and said, " Mr. Dickinson, that was a fine bonfire we had last night." The new Congressman replied, "Yes, but I saw that my woodpile had grown very small during the night."
Miss Emily's garden had a touch that no one else's had. I think that others planted gardens with lemon verbenas, jockey club, sweet clover, and star of Bethlehem because Miss Emily had them in her garden. But the day lily seems to me to have been the real Amherst flower, not so often cherished in other places. You will recall that Miss Emily once put two day lilies in the hand of a caller as her intro- duction. I carried to our friends many bunches. We often picked fifty in a morning from the large clump at the south corner of our house. As long as the season lasted a silver cup was filled with them and placed on the marble-topped table in our parlor. Every morning in summer, too, there was put in the parlor, in a graceful glass vase, heliotrope, skeleton geranium, lemon verbena, mignonette, and a Bon Silene rose. Those Bon Silene roses are quite out of style now. They tell your age, if you know what they are.
Mr. Austin Dickinson, brother of Miss Emily, had what Miss Emily possessed, the instinctive Dickinson taste. He was the early beautifier of the town of Amherst. He knew the utility and the beauty
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of trees. Not only was he among the first to make his own grounds beautiful, but he extended his care to the village green and the college campus, which owe the adornment of trees to him.
College Hall was the meeting-house until 1868, when the village church was built. It is a historic place for me. I was baptized in College Hall while it was still the meeting-house, and later, after it had become college property, I was crowned Queen of the May there, and afterwards wound the Maypole and led the dancing. To have a Maypole dance in College Hall did not seem quite right to the older villagers then.
There was a Puritan feeling about the sacredness of the Sabbath. Elderly people who wrote letters to family friends on Sunday dated them as of Saturday. They knew that the Lord knew what they did, but example in daily conduct was necessary for youth. "Example thundered." A storm of disapproval went up from Amherst when it was announced that there would be a Sunday issue of the Springfield Republican, and this notwithstanding the fact that its editor, Mr. Sam Bowles, was a man greatly beloved and his paper the gospel to many families in town. One professor was heard to say, however, that he suffered six days a week from the Springfield Republican, and wished to be delivered from it on the seventh day. This, I suppose, was the forerunner of the college professor's independence of thought. As this particular professor was stricken with a severe illness of the brain the next day after this burst of righteous indignation, it was thought that his head was not level when he made the indictment. Many therefore deserted the ranks of the opposition and agreed to have the Sunday paper delivered by a boy on Sunday, but they were careful not to read it or to pay for it until Monday. One excellent lady said that she con- sidered it very good reading, quite as interesting as the Missionary Herald. She was the one who always marked an article in the Mission- ary Herald as " read," for fear she might inadvertently read it a second time.
We were allowed to take a walk late on Sunday afternoon. After the chimes were given to the College Church, we would sit on the steps of our south door and wait for the first peal of the bells. Then we would walk through the college grounds, past the old observa- tory - the Octagon - to the small formal garden where Sabrina was queen. She was one of the friends to be greeted as we passed. The garden where she stood had a border of tall yellow lilies with deep cups and dark purple fleurs-de-lis. We went on past North College and the Barrett Gymnasium to the slope by the College Church, where we picked up shagbarks and chestnuts in their season; then through the
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grove to the old well for a drink of cool water. Then we walked around the Appleton Cabinet. I had some knowledge of what the museum contained. Whenever we had guests it was my duty to escort them through the Cabinet, past case after case of insects and shells and minerals and birds, past slabs with tracks of dinosaurs and prints of raindrops that fell before man was on the earth, until we reached what I considered the Mecca of our pilgrimage, a big gorilla in a glass case, shot through the heart. His life's blood flowed out in what looked like red sealing-wax. He stood erect, a broken gun gripped in his paws. This walk, as we turned homeward past the Chapel, almost encircled the campus of that day.
The college professors preached in neighboring towns on Sunday and there were rumors of their prowess. There was one professor who was so skillful that he could turn over the leaf of his sermon with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand more elegantly than any preacher in the Connecticut Valley. He had a "vegetable sermon " that he preached again and again for large remuneration. He said that no crop ever yielded such a return as that sermon.
The preacher that we knew best was the minister of the village church, Reverend Mr. Jenkins. There was a door on the south side of the church with rich red hangings, leading to the parsonage. Through this entrance came the pastor, a handsome, dignified man, a few minutes before the morning service. He had the gift of interpret- ing the Scriptures as he read them. No one else whom I heard in those days interrupted the reading of Scriptures with comment. Often there was a children's sermon in his explanations. To their adult congregations the ministers preached arrow-striking sermons then. I have heard it said that a certain rich man spent the Sunday in Amherst while he was putting through a great cotton deal that added enor- mously to his wealth. Telegrams were coming to him all day. Rev- erend Mr. Phillips of Worcester preached that day upon the subject, " The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small." The rich man seemed depressed after he heard the sermon, and took an early Monday train out of town.
The etiquette of hymn books was a very subtle thing, and all my life I have had uncomfortable moments for fear I was not doing the right thing in a stranger's pew. The pew belonged to the owner; a visitor must not take a hymn book from the rack but must wait for the hostess to hand her the open book. At the end of the service the book must be returned to the hostess, not to the rack, with gracious thanks.
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There was no Sunday school at the College Church for the families of the faculty, and so the children of the professors all went to the colored Sunday school in Zion's Chapel, just back of College Hall. The superintendent was the daughter of one of the most prominent professors. Once the colored boys wanted to hold an exhibition. They proposed to march in with Miss Snell at the head of the proces- sion, all singing, " See the hostile host advancing, Satan leading on." Friends tried to dissuade Miss Snell from such an indignity, but she had the New England conscience and said that as superintendent of the Sunday school she must carry out her promise to the boys to sing the hymn of their choice. She was firm. So some of the professors kidnapped her on the eve of the performance, and thus saved the day.
Reverend Henry F. Allen, who married the daughter of Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the admired rector of Grace Church. So great was the friendship between the Congregational and Episcopal clergy- men, and the members of their parishes, that the Congregational Church was celebrating Easter at that early date. The Prayer Book was always used in a school I attended conducted by a young English- man who later became a professor in Smith College, Professor H. Norman Gardiner. I did not realize that the reading from the Epis- copal Prayer Book was a real education for us until I heard a promi- nent Episcopalian in Boston say in a public lecture that she never saw a Prayer Book until she was thirty years old. She was born in New England. Such a thing would have been impossible in Amherst sixty years ago. Only occasionally were we aware of doctrinal differences. I recall a small evening party at which Mr. Allen seemed very sad. One of his warm friends asked him if he were not well. He said, “ I grieve to think that I shall never have the companionship of these dear friends in the next world." He believed that their creeds would keep them apart in the life beyond.
Mrs. Allen used to give dances at her house on Lincoln Avenue. I went once with my father. We danced the lancers and the Virginia reel together. I was a child of ten and wore a blue serge dress and lemon-colored kid gloves. Every lady wore gloves in company. A few wore white kid gloves to church sociables, but the many did not squan- der white kid gloves on such occasions. The children were frequently asked with their parents to evening parties and " handed teas." The latter consisted invariably of escalloped oysters, chicken salad, cold tongue, rolls, pickled oysters, sometimes peaches and cream, and gold and silver cake, or sponge cake, and sometimes ice cream, though it was more frequently a frozen custard than a rich cream. Mrs. Allen insti- tuted game suppers such as had never been in fashion in Amherst.
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