USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 4
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
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interesting volumes of literary criticism and reminiscence, which deal piously with the very period I have surveyed.
Another partner in the firm of Ticknor and Fields in the old days was John S. Clark, later a partner of Louis Prang, whose pioneering work as an art publisher had. a generation ago such wide and worthy fame. Mr. Prang was one of the German republicans, like his friend, Carl Schurz, who came over here about 1848, and whose whole life thereafter was identified with Boston. Prang's chromos, like the Rogers groups, were a real boon to the American people, marking a distinct uplift in the popular art of our dining rooms and parlors. Mr. Prang was a man of most gentle, strong, truthful and winning nature, and we were good friends for many years.
Mr. Clark was a lifelong friend of John Fiske, of whom in his later life he prepared an admirable biography. In 1880 Fiske had just entered upon his brilliant scientific and literary career; his "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" was published in 1874. From my return from Europe to the end of his life, in 1901, I knew him well. His last work was his preparation for the address which he had been invited to give at the King Alfred millennial commemoration at Winchester in September of that year. He died suddenly here in Massachu- setts at midsummer. While sadly he was not at Winchester, it chanced that my wife and I were among the few Americans that were. Colonel Higginson was also there, representing the Massachusetts Historical Society. I repre- sented the American Antiquarian Society, and wrote a paper upon the millen- nial, which was published in its proceedings. Mr. Fiske's place was taken at short notice by Lord Rosebery, whose address at the unveiling of the noble King Alfred statue by Thornycroft we heard. It was an admirable oration, but we could not help feeling how much more adequate and distinguished Mr. Fiske's treatment of the subject would have been.
John Fiske was a remarkable man, on the whole the most considerable figure, save Howells, in our Boston and Cambridge literary life since the golden age. His versatility, range and immense capacity for work were impressive. He called himself a disciple of Herbert Spencer, but the disciple was a greater mind than the master. Herbert Spencer wrote no book so important as Fiske's "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," which was not the best of his writings. No other man did so much to domesticate Darwinism and the philosophy of evolu- tion here in the day when, through much opposition in religious circles, they were making their way, and, owing to the charm of his literary style, no other in his time treated our American history, from Columbus to the Constitution, in a way that attracted and stimulated so many readers. I wrote various articles about his work. To help me about one biographical article he pre- pared for me an interesting account, in his beautiful chirography and invariable violet ink, of his education up to the time he came to Harvard. Years after- wards, when I was lecturing in St. Louis, I was invited by Mr. W. K. Bixby, the well-known millionaire bibliophile, to come to see his collection. Among the many treasures on the shelves was a long row of the manuscripts of Fiske's successive volumes, bound in rich morocco. Fiske always wrote on large uni- form sheets and preserved the manuscripts when the printer was done with them. As my eye ran along the row, it caught the title, "Autobiography."
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I remarked that I had not known that Fiske ever wrote anything autobio- graphical except something sent me for my own use. As I said it, I glanced at the first page, which began with the statement that the work was prepared for me. I had loaned it to Mrs. Fiske for some purpose; she had neglected to return it, and it went with the rest.
More important than Mr. Clark in the house of Ticknor and Fields was James R. Osgood. As I have said, he was Mr. Fields' right-hand man, and the house became, after Mr. Fields' retirement, James R. Osgood and Company, by and by becoming Houghton, Osgood and Company and then the Houghton Mifflin Company. I knew Mr. Houghton and Mr. Mifflin, both true to the great traditions. When we came home from Europe in the autumn of 1914, following the outbreak of the World War, Mr. Mifflin was one of my pleas- antest companions on the steamer. I think that was the last time I saw him. James R. Osgood died long before.
Some of our literary folk may recall that Osgood was the hero of the famous walking match projected by Dickens' business agent and himself during the novelist's last visit to America in 1867-68. Dickens and James T. Fields acted as seconds. Dickens gave a notable dinner after it to his literary friends at the Parker House, which was his home during his whole Boston stay, as the Tremont House had been during his earlier visit in 1842. His rooms were the corner ones on the third floor looking toward the City Hall. It is to be regretted that the Dickens Room in the new Parker House could not have been in a little better location, but we are grateful that the hotel still remembers its illustrious guest and has a Dickens Room with fitting pictures and mementoes.
Dickens' merry account of the walking match, written according to pre- vious understanding, was an extravaganza which has its place in the biog- raphies of the great novelist, where Osgood figures as the "Boston Bantam." Osgood brought the puzzling manuscript to me in the countingroom to copy for the printer, for I was certainly - then, not now - a better writer than Charles Dickens! The copies were printed on luxurious sheets for the guests and favored ones, and some of them exist in Boston, treasured heirlooms, to this day.
Dickens' visit, undertaken largely through Mr. Fields' urging, was unques- tionably the greatest literary event in Boston at that period. The tickets for his readings, which were in Tremont Temple, were sold at 124 Tremont street, the headquarters of the enterprise. There were eighteen Boston read- ings altogether, and I suspect I am the only man living who heard them all. These rich Boston Dickens memories, along with Dickens interests generally, are piously conserved by the enthusiastic Boston Branch of the Dickens Fellow- ship, which, until the old Parker House was pulled down, held its monthly meetings in the famous Crystal Room, and holds them now in the chapel of the Swedenborgian church on Bowdoin street. The president of the Fellow- ship, Edward F. Payne, has published a large illustrated volume, "Dickens Days in Boston," which is a miracle of research and of reverence, and constitutes a salient chapter of the Boston record here surveyed.
The current of Boston literary life reflected in the Ticknor and Fields associations of the early part of this period and in the history of the publishing
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firms derived in apostolic succession from that illustrious house is the current with which my own memories chiefly have to do. It has also been the chief current of that life, but by no means the only one. As we have seen, the name of that historic house has gone through many transformations. There is, however, one great publishing house whose name has never changed in the two generations since as a boy I entered the service of Ticknor and Fields. Little, Brown and Company, then located on Washington street, had the largest and finest bookstore of which I have recollection in Boston. Today the publishing firin occupies a whole building on Beacon street, fronting the Common. I cannot remember in the old house any one named Little or any one named Brown, but I do remember the scholarly Mr. Bartlett, the compiler of the famous "Familiar Quotations." Much more intimately do I remember, in the old time and in the new, Charles W. Allen, during all his later life the head of the house. When I began as a boy in Ticknor and Fields' countingroom he, too, was a boy there, although going soon to a better position with Little and Brown, and boys to each other we remained until he died. It was always "Bill" and "Joe" with us; and when I went to his funeral in Trinity Church my heart was heavy with the thought that outside of my home there was no man left in Boston to greet me by my Christian name. Charles Allen was a rare spirit, and the spirit never dulled from youth to age. He belonged to a fine Roxbury family; his brother became a professor in the Institute of Technology. Devoted to what was best in literature and every form of beauty, Charles Allen's pre- eminent devotion in the early day was to music; he belonged to a little orchestra of his Roxbury fellows who took themselves very seriously and gave periodical concerts, with programs of the highest character.
Roberts Brothers were important publishers half a century ago, with a fine list of books. I never knew a man named Roberts there. The only man we knew was Mr. Niles, who was certainly the center of things and cer- tainly a man of the finest character and the best taste. His house published Louisa Alcott's books, which still seem to be as popular among my young friends as they were fifty years ago. The story was that "Little Women" had first been offered to Mr. Fields, who, although his literary judgment was usually unerring, declined it; and so it went to Mr. Niles, who was soon selling it by the hundred thousand. I knew Miss Alcott and admired her, as everybody did who knew her; and I hope that "Little Women" is still selling by the thousand and may go on in its wholesome mission till doomsday.
Edwin Ginn in 1880 was already well launched on the publishing career which was eventually to make his firm the leading educational publishing house in Boston or perhaps in the country. The firm was then Ginn and Heath; but presently the two divided their list and went their separate and successful ways. To Mr. Ginn I shall return later. Mr. Heath was my valued friend until his death,- a high-minded, public-spirited, cultivated, sympathetic man, univer- sally beloved. One of his partners in the firm of D. C. Heath and Company was Charles H. Ames. Mr. Heath and Mr. Ames were both Amherst men and almost lifelong friends. Ames came to Boston immediately after his graduation in 1870, and Boston and Newton were his home until his death in 1911. In all that time he was a distinct force in our educational life. He was the best
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VIEW WEST OVER THE PUBLIC GARDEN POND LOUISBURG SQUARE HULL STREET LOOKING TOWARD CHRIST CHURCH (OLD NORTH CHURCH), SALEM STREET
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FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
friend I ever had, except his sister, who became my wife. He was a man of rare gifts, with a genius for friendship, for society, for learning, and for teaching; untiringly devoted to philosophy and natural sciences, especially geology. He should have been a college professor; but was compelled to a business life, which he never liked, in which, however, he was successful, as he would have been in anything he undertook.
Ticknor and Fields were not only the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly" . but also of the "North American Review," founded as far back as 1815, "Every Saturday" and "Our Young Folks." The "Atlantic Monthly" was ten years old when I came to Boston. Its first editor was James Russell Lowell, and, as I saw him often at 124 Tremont street, I may say that I have known every editor of the "Atlantic," some of them slightly, some of them well. There has never been a time, from 1856 to the present, when the "Atlantic" has not been the best magazine in the country, and it is that today under Ellery Sedgwick. Howells, who came to Boston to become the editor in 1866, was succeeded in 1881 by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Aldrich had come to Boston to become the editor of "Every Saturday" at the same time that Howells came to become editor of the "Atlantic." "Every Saturday" was made up of reprints of recent articles in the European periodicals, somewhat after the order of "Littell," although later and unsuccessfully transformed into a general illustrated journal like "Harper's Weekly." It died just in time to enable Mr. Aldrich to take Howells' place on the "Atlantic." Aldrich was succeeded as editor of the "Atlantic" by Horace Scudder and he in turn by Walter Hines Page. Mr. Scudder, although not a man of genius, like Howells and Aldrich, was a man of fine culture, high standards and untiring industry, and he made a good editor. The sum total of his literary work was very great. The valuable "American Commonwealths" series illustrates his fine editorial work, and had he written no other book than his "Life of Noah Webster," the best book that exists on that immensely useful American, he would have my lasting gratitude. Walter Page was a man of very different type and traditions from his predecessors, but he had warm friends in Boston. He was, primarily at least, a man of affairs more than a man of letters, and "The World's Work," which he founded, represented him better than the "Atlantic." I remember my pleasant inter- course with him in London, where he had become our ambassador, in the summer of 1914, just before the outbreak of the war, which so suddenly plunged him into overwhelming responsibilities. With Bliss Perry, who succeeded him on the "Atlantic," the historic magazine returned more closely to its old traditions.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was one of the most notable figures in the literary life of Boston in the first half of the period here under survey, the time iinme- diately following our golden age, into whose great group he was, like Howells, adopted as a younger member of the illustrious family. A man of remarkable versatility, vivacity and wit, the range of his exquisite poetry was much wider than most persons then realized or now recall, and "Marjorie Daw" was only the cleverest of his many clever stories. "The Story of a Bad Boy" was one of the best boys' stories ever written in America. It helped to make old Portsmouth, the birthplace of James T. Fields, yet more a shrine for us of 124 Tremont street. It had been Aldrich's boyhood home and was the scene
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of his story. After his death, the old Nutter house, the "Bad Boy's" home, was happily secured by Mrs. Aldrich and made, with its old-fashioned rooms and furniture, a charming memorial place. I went to Portsmouth with a goodly Boston company for its dedication. Hamilton Mabie presided, and Howells and others spoke appropriately, but the occasion was in danger of becoming lugubrious, when Mark Twain, who had come up from Hartford in his everyday gray clothes instead of black, saved the situation by remind- ing us how Aldrich would laugh at the solemn scene if he could look in, and proceeding to transform it into something more vital and human. Aldrich and Mark Twain had been close friends for half a lifetime. In Mrs. Aldrich's volume of reminiscences, "Crowding Memories," which is one of the good source-books for the survey of this Boston period, there is nothing more amus- ing than the story of Aldrich's first bringing Mark Twain, a stranger to Mrs. Aldrich, home to dinner at the little home at 84 Pinckney street, the new home which inspired Longfellow's "Hanging of the Crane."
"The Story of a Bad Boy" was first published in "Our Young Folks." I read it month by month as it came. It surely had no warmer welcome than in our circle at 124 Tremont street, and Aldrich genuinely shared our pleasure. The editors of "Our Young Folks" were John T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom, both of them rare spirits. If there were better boys' stories than Trowbridge's appearing in America in those days, I do not know what they were, and his autobiographical volume, "My Own Story," is a charming work, giving invaluable glimpses of his time and place. Not less charming is Miss Larcom's "A New England Girlhood," a girlhood which included, along with so much of interest, several years of work in one of the early Lowell cotton mills. This was the time when those factory girls edited and wrote "The Lowell Offering," which attracted Dickens' attention and admiration during his first visit here in 1842 and found its way into his "American Notes." I reprinted a large part of an issue of "The Lowell Offering" among my "Old South Leaflets." Miss Larcom lived until 1893, spending her later years largely in Boston, where I saw her often, always with happy harking back to the old "Young Folks" days. Mr. Trowbridge lived until 1916, his home always by the shiore of Fresh Pond at Arlington, and as long as he lived he used often when in town to climb to my office on the upper floor at 20 Beacon street for revival of the pleasant old memories. His great shock of white hair was not whiter at the last than it had been for twenty years, and his ruddy cheeks kept ever ruddy and as youthful as his smile.
He had another friend on the upper floor of 20 Beacon street in the person of Charles A. Walker, the artist, and Mr. Walker had a yet closer friend in Joseph Jefferson, who was almost a daily visitor whenever he was playing Rip Van Winkle in Boston. Jefferson, it will be recalled, dabbled in paint- ing assiduously during his summer holidays by Buzzards Bay, and he and Mr. Walker went on many painting trips together. We were a happy family on that upper floor. Another painter, who not only painted there, but lived there, was Charles W. Sanderson. He loved music as much as he loved paint- ing, and impromptu concerts were ever going on when Perabo or another pianist dropped in. My own room was the corner one, looking down on the
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Common and the State House yard and out Beacon street to the Back Bay spires. There was certainly no more striking view from a Boston office win- dow. A charming picture of it which Sanderson painted and gave to me hangs on the wall beside me as I write. Near it is one by him of Monadnock, which he loved so well, even if not quite so religiously as I do, for Monadnock is the mountain of my boyhood region as it is of the region of my summer home, and my wife views it as her only rival.
The centuries and half-centuries respect the almanac as little as the maga- zines do. The February "Atlantic" and "Harper's" come the last week in January, and the centuries similarly come ahead of time. The sixteenth century began with 1492; the seventeenth for us with 1588; the eighteenth with 1688; the nineteenth with 1789. The present survey of the last half- century in Boston, thus far chiefly literary, although here coming down, in terms of the "Atlantic Monthly," our representative magazine, close to the present, begins a dozen years before 1880, because that is prescribed by the contrasts and didactics of the situation. As we look back to the earlier time and compare it with today, we realize keenly that it is a contrast between a period of great distinction and a period of mediocrity. But as Bostonians we may fairly ask, What of it? Are other places so much better off? In 1906, after visiting the United States, H. G. Wells, in a volume about his visit, devoted a chapter to Boston. It was a rather lugubrious chapter. All the good books which he found in the bookshop windows were antiques,- Emerson and Lowell had no successors. The commonest picture on our parlor walls was of the "Winged Victory," without a head, and he thought it most appro- priate. We Bostonians are upon fit occasion an humble folk, but I as one could not brook impeachment from London, and as I chanced at the time to be giving the address at the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Bostonian Society, I injected a rejoinder.
The earlier Boston period which Mr. Wells had chosen to point his dis- paragement chanced to be the time when I went from Boston for my studies in England and Germany. In England, Gladstone and Disraeli were then the leaders in political life; Darwin, Huxley and Tyndall were the brilliant leaders of a great scientific group; Thomas Hill Green, James Martineau and Herbert Spencer adorned English philosophy; Tennyson and Browning were English poets; George Eliot and Thomas Hardy were writing novels; Thomas Carlyle still prophesied at Chelsea; Freeman, Froude, Stubbs, Gardiner and Green were writing history; Dean Stanley, Stopford Brooke, Spurgeon and Canon Liddon were in the pulpit; Jewett was still a leading force at Oxford and J. R. Seeley at Cambridge; and Watts, Leighton, William Morris, Rossetti and Burne-Jones made English art illustrious. There were twenty men in England who could properly be called great; when I spoke in 1906 there was not one. If our great men slept in Mount Auburn and Sleepy Hollow, theirs slept in Westminster Abbey and related repositories. Illustrious galaxies are intermittent and occasional. The World War was the penalty of the world's decadence; it was the performance of second-rate men. Had Gladstone, Bis- marck and Gambetta been at the helm instead of Asquith, Poincaré and Bethmann-Hollweg, it would not have occurred.
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If it is with an irrepressible sadness that in the survey of the last half- century in Boston one contrasts the intellectual distinction of the earlier period with the current commonplace, it is with equal sadness that one recalls the physical aspect of the big town which in the 70's and 80's was passing, its fineness and simple beauty, compared with the planless drift and shrieking ugliness of the big city which has superseded it. I speak chiefly of the Boston of which the common American thinks, the Boston surrounding the Common, Beacon Hill and the Back Bay. When the visitor arrives in the town, at either the North Station or the South, his first experiences are devastating, when they could so easily be made inviting. We are without excuse, for quick and easy transformation is possible. In our Common, our Public Garden and our Charles River Basin, we had an opportunity unique among American cities, and we have despised it. Tremont street and Boylston street might have been made as beautiful as Princes street in Edinburgh; but the helter- skelter product of our hyper-individualism, rooted in utter lack of public archi- tectural taste or knowledge, and much more of intelligent civic control, makes the man who remembers the simple dignity of those streets two generations ago seek a place for repentance for his own share in permitting the destruction. Beautiful Arlington street is hastening to the abyss of desolation; and Beacon street itself is menaced, with the doctored State House and its surroundings at the top of the hill crowning our half-century's wanton adventurism.
Mr. Cram, in the Tercentenary year, submitted a noble plan for the redemption of the State House and its grounds, at a cost not exceeding that of the new State House which the State of Washington, a young state and, compared with Massachusetts, a poor state, has just erected at Olympia; but his plan fell on as deaf ears as the plan which he and his associates more recently submitted, after long study, for the enlargement of Park square and the creation there of a fitting civic center for Boston, with a new City Hall, a Civic Audi- torium and related public buildings. Action for this end is imperative; yet the carefully thought-out plan, invited by the Mayor, had the merest passing notice in the newspapers, followed by no general discussion or expression of public interest. A proper civic center for Boston has become a necessity. Park square, becomingly expanded and dignified, is clearly meant to be our Trafalgar square, and a replica of old St. Botolph's famous tower in the center would give it notable distinction and form a gracious bond between the old Boston and the new. But our people do not seem to care. They do not seem to care about the threat at this hour to throw away the unique opportunity afforded by our Charles River Basin. They do not seem to care when it is proposed to build a towering new Post Office on the spot where the old one was torn down. There are far better available sites; every one who looks on the now open square * sees clearly that it should be kept open; the richest business men of Boston survey the situation from their very bank windows and know that the right solution of the problem is not financially a hard one, that Berlin or Birmingham would solve it overnight, that the great Quincy would quickly have solved it, but they do not care.
* EDITORIAL NOTE .- Mr. Mead wrote before the new construction had begun on this site and the damage, as he regards it, had become irrevocable.
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The memory of our fifty years of blundering in architecture and city planning, of opportunities and beckonings recklessly ignored, is a nightmare. Yet no pious Bostonian who thinks of Trinity Church, of our splendid Public Library, of the magnificent Art Museum, of Symphony Hall, all creations of this fifty years, can be a pessimist. This fifty years has been the precise period of our wonderful Symphony Orchestra, which has given Boston an honored name through the whole musical world. As long as we remember Henry L. Higginson, its consecrated founder, as generous a giver to Harvard as to Boston, as long as we remember the names of George F. Parkman and George R. White, so long may we believe in the power and certainty of private munificence to enhance the welfare and the glory of Boston. Our magnificent park system, including the great Blue Hills Reservation and the Middlesex Fells, the accom- plishment in the period here surveyed of such fine ambition, foresight, energy and wisdom, is an earnest of what the same spirit can accomplish for the city itself when once brought into action.
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