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 6
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The two great Boston Unitarian prophets in 1880 were Edward Everett Hale and James Freeman Clarke. Both were then at the zenith of their power and of their influence in Boston. Doctor Clarke died in 1888, and Doctor Hale was his biographer. Doctor Hale lived until 1909, his long life of eighty- seven years being almost entirely identified with this city of his birth. Boston was always conscious of Doctor Clarke's presence in the town as an inspiration and reinforcement of every good cause. He was the revered friend of all our intellectual leaders. He was the minister at Emerson's funeral. Doctor Holmes spoke of him as our "Saint James." Governor Andrew, Julia Ward Howe and Mary Hemenway belonged to his congregation. So did that most useful and devoted citizen, William H. Baldwin, the founder of that splendid institution, the Boston Young Men's Christian Union. I was always in close touch with Mr. Baldwin, whoin I greatly liked, and once or twice every winter I went to speak at his Sunday evening meetings at the Union Hall.
I knew Doctor Clarke's successor, Charles G. Ames, better than I knew Doctor Clarke; we were close friends during his whole life in Boston. His
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was a rare spirit and a rare mind,- the most Emersonian mind in the Boston pulpit of the time, expressing itself in the most Emersonian style, sententious, pregnant, witty, homely, transcendental, uplifting. In our Twentieth Century Club and in every circle which he touched he was an unfailing reliance and delight.
My relation with Doctor Hale began almost as soon as my life in Boston began, and grew ever closer and stronger to the end of his life. I knew him as a young admirer knows an illustrious man, in the old Ticknor and Fields days, for he was one of the charmed circle at 124 Tremont street, his "Man Without a Country" having appeared just before I came there. He took an interest in my European studies, and was one of the kindest in welcoming me home. Just before I came I had written in London some articles on the English Broad Church leaders, Arnold of Rugby, Robertson of Brighton, and Dean Stanley, which, published in the "Unitarian Magazine," had won warm praise both from him and from James Freeman Clarke. This helped me in my first public work, which was a course of lectures at the beginning of 1880 on "Pioneers of German Religious Thought" --- Lessing, Kant and Fichte.
I have sometimes wondered since at the temerity of the venture, for I was almost unknown beyond a circle of personal friends, and the subject certainly was not popular. But the little Wesleyan Hall in Bromfield street was well filled. In a front seat at the first lecture sat a venerable, white-haired man, who listened intently, and at the close hastened to grasp my hand and say: "I am Mr. Alcott. Where can I see you?" Always on the lookout for budding Transcendentalists, he had come down especially from Concord and the next morning we had a long talk. Charles Allen told me that General Banks came in from Waltham for every lecture, and that he was at that time profoundly interested in religio-philosophical subjects. Doctor Hale, too, came to one of the lectures. I did not know he was there, but the next day there came a glowing letter from him, inclosing a commendation of my work, which still warms my heart. As I seemed likely to enter upon a career of lec- turing, he wrote, he thought his letter might help me, as indeed it did. It was a representative case of his ubiquitous providence. In hard days that fol- lowed, the cheer that came to me from evenings in his study at the old home in Highland street could not be told. Our public interests largely coincided, our co-operation grew ever closer and more constant, and my reverence for his memory is one of the sanctities of my life. Among all public men he and Howells have meant the most to me; and among all men whom I have ever known, in Europe or America, his personality was distinctly the most impres- . sive. He lived with full devotion and with all his might in every circle of his life. He was the incarnation of the Boston spirit. He loved Massachusetts all the way from Cape Cod to Berkshire. But his strong local enthusiasms were only sustenance and provocation for his life in larger circles. His "Man Without a Country" is our patriotic classic. The United States itself was only prophecy and program for a united world, and the earth itself was but a precinct of the kingdom of heaven in the making.
Mr. Howells in 1880 was living in a pretty house with a broad veranda, built by William R. Mead, on the top of the hill at Belmont. Mrs. Howells,
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WASHINGTON STATUE, PUBLIC GARDEN
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY MONUMENT, BACK BAY PARK
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who was an artist, harking back to the beginning of their married life at Venice, had inscribed on the library wall the apt Shakespearean phrase, "From Venice as far as Belmont." Their home was one of my happiest resorts, -- and it was a joy to sit on the veranda at evening and see the lights come out in Cam- bridge and Boston. Too soon the home was changed to New York, but there, too, chiefly at the high apartment overlooking Central Park, came happy reunions. To the end of his life Howells was pre-eminently my "guide, phi- losopher and friend," and, as the days go on, he bulks ever larger in my mind. None of our men of letters since has been his equal, none since the golden age. An early revival of interest in his novels especially is certain. There have come none since he wrote so good as "The Rise of Silas Lapham," "A Modern Instance," "The Landlord at the Lion's Head," "A Hazard of New Fortunes," and half a dozen more. His books of travel in Italy, in Spain, in England, remain ever charming, and his literary and critical essays are always pene- trating and illuminating. His love for Boston and Cambridge was abiding and he sleeps at Mount Auburn.
The years following 1880 were the years of the Concord School of Philoso- phy, in which, with much of philosophical Boston and Cambridge, I took a deep interest. My Leipzig studies had been largely in philosophy. Follow- ing my Wesleyan Hall lectures, I was asked by a group of the young Unitarian ministers to conduct a class in Kant, which I hope proved half as interesting to them as it did to me. Some time later I had a Kant class at the Hotel Ven- dôme. Before this last I had a class in Aristotle at the hoine of Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells of blessed memory. It was her plan, and she did all the work. I think forty women must have come and paid a high price for it. I always believed that, in her untiring beneficence, Mrs. Wells thought that I needed the money quite as much as they needed Aristotle, which in that critical period of my apprenticeship was undoubtedly the case. Here again I wonder whether today a parlor full of busy women could be gathered once a week for eight or ten weeks for discussions of Aristotle. To the Concord School we went a good deal, going up by the morning train and coming back only after the evening session. I remember lecturing three times, on subjects related to Dante, Fichte and Emerson. Bronson Alcott and Frank B. Sanborn originated and managed the school, which was indeed a noteworthy achievement. Emerson often came to the sessions and more than once he lectured, the town hall being taken for these occasions. John Fiske's "Destiny of Man" and "The Idea of God" were first read by him at the Concord School. Thomas Davidson, that philosophic knight errant and keen Aristotelian, was present every summer.
The leading spirit throughout was undeniably William T. Harris. Doctor Harris, who had had a distinguished educational career as superintendent of the St. Louis public schools, had gathered in St. Louis a noteworthy group of philosophical students, establishing in this connection the yet more note- worthy "Journal of Speculative Philosophy." Charles H. Ames, on his western trips, had come into touch with this movement, and became an ardent disciple of Doctor Harris, communicating his enthusiasm to ine, and my studies of Doctor Harris's "Journal" were a distinct influence in determining the course
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of my work in German philosophy. Doctor Harris, after his St. Louis work, had taken up his residence in Concord, living in Alcott's old home, the Orchard House; I think he stayed in Concord up to the time he went to Washington for his work as National Commissioner of Education. Ames and I used to go up there to visit him, and Sundays there remain elect memories. Doctor Harris still seems to me the most comprehensive and penetrating philosophical thinker we have had in America in this time.
It was Doctor Hale who in 1889 persuaded me to join him in editing the "New England Magazine," a work which we continued together for a year, when I became the sole editor. This work was one of my chief interests until 1901, when I gave it up to help Edwin Ginn in planning the World Peace Founda- tion. The "New England Magazine" had led a precarious existence for two or three years before 1889 and when the matter of a new departure, something more ambitious, came up, Doctor Hale, who always liked literary adventures, and especially liked to have editing of some sort on his hands, urged that this would be a capital organ for me in my Old South work and other historical and political enterprises.
The Old South historical work had been started tentatively by Mrs. Mary Hemenway soon after she had made the decisive generous contribution to save the Old South Meeting House from destruction in 1876. She resolved that it should not stand as a mere mausoleum for the great ghosts, but should be a living temple of patriotism and especially a school in American history and good citizenship for the young people of Boston. With the help of other devoted women, she had arranged various historical lectures and festivals at the Old South and established prizes for historical essays by members of the graduating classes in the Boston high schools. This was just as I came home from Germany. I had been deeply interested while in Leipzig in the saving of the Old South and was stirred to rather definite visions of the historical and educational uses which the old Meeting House could be made to serve. I wrote an article about it, which I sent home to Boston friends, and later Mrs. Goddard brought this to the attention of Mrs. Hemenway. It proved to be the word for which she was waiting and she invited me in 1883 to take the direction of the Old South work and give it the definition and expansion which was possible and necessary. The result was that for twenty-five years the Old South work was one of my main interests; and few works have given me greater satisfaction. The Old South summer lectures for young people on the Wednesday afternoons of July and August, with the old Meeting House always well filled, became some- thing of an institution. The prizes for essays were continued, gradually attract- ing large numbers of young essayists, and these were duly organized into an Old South Historical Society, doing excellent work, which still exists.
There were winter lectures for teachers. Mrs. Hemenway was one of the first to recognize John Fiske's ability as a historical writer, and at an early period secured lectures by him, continued for many years, for the Boston teachers and general public. Much of the material in his successive historical volumes had been previously used in his Old South lectures. Mr. Fiske's history of the American Revolution is dedicated "To Mrs. Mary Hemenway in recognition of the rare foresight and public spirit which saved from destruction one of the
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noblest historical buildings in America and made it a center for the teaching of American history and the principles of good citizenship."
The first president of the Old South Historical Society was Harry L. South- wick, who by and by became and still continues the president of the Emerson School of Oratory. It would be pleasant to name a score of prominent pro- fessors, teachers, journalists and other public workers who found early inspi- ration in these associations. The Society organized annual historical pil- grimages - to Plymouth, New Bedford, Portsmouth, the Whittier country and a dozen places - which proved very popular and drew large numbers. The Washington's Birthday celebration was the red-letter festival of the year. At first in connection with the lectures, and then irrespective of them, I under- took the preparation of the "Old South Leaflets," chiefly reprints of important historical papers with notes and lists for reading and study, of which two hundred were issued before I gave up the work. These have proved useful in schools and colleges throughout the country, carrying the Old South influence a long way from home.
Mary Hemenway was one of the most remarkable women in the Boston of her time. Her patriotism, her generosity and her enthusiasm for education were unbounded. She started and long maintained the teaching of cooking for the girls in the Boston schools. More important was her establishment of courses in physical training and of the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics to train teachers for the work. This school, liberally endowed, was ultimately made a department of Wellesley College, then as before under the control of Miss Amy M. Homans, who for half a lifetime was Mrs. Hemenway's sagacious and indefatigable helper. For many years I was in close touch with Mrs. Hemenway and her work, with ever growing regard for her spirit and her powers. Years afterward her stately mansion on Mount Vernon street was purchased by Edwin Ginn and made the headquarters for the World Peace Foundation, and by an interesting coincidence the beautiful old sitting-room with its sculptured mantelpiece, where I had spent so many hours with Mrs. Hemen- . way, became my own office as director of the Foundation.
I was editor of the "New England Magazine" from 1889 to 1901. The work was attractive and appealing, and enabled me to promote many interests affecting New England history and life, besides furnishing me, in the Editor's Table, a pulpit for preaching upon the political and social issues of the time. It was the time of the conflict about Venezuela, our Spanish War and England's Boer War, the conquest of the Philippines and the anti-imperialist movement, so that there was much occasion for preaching. It was an illustrated magazine, and my successive young art editors, Louis A. Holman and William F. King- man, were fine fellows to work with. Mr. Holman, a Rembrandt enthusiast among other things, now has a charming print shop on Park street. For a time I had as assistant a gifted young Canadian, Walter Blackburn Harte, who had done much good newspaper work before he came to us in Boston, and whose literary enthusiasm, love of right things, patient application and appealing personality were so rare that I still think with sorrow of his too early death.
Nothing in this period has been more impressive than the momentous advance in the higher education. President Eliot's work at Harvard began
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some years before 1880; and that revolutionary work made him the greatest figure in the whole history of American education. He found Harvard a small, although an illustrious, institution; he left it in its teaching body, its student body and its scope one of the greatest universities in the world. The Massa- chusetts Institute of Technology was founded by William B. Rogers shortly before President Eliot's term at Harvard began. His brilliant successor, General Francis A. Walker, I knew well; he was a marked figure in Boston life. The Institute is today the leading technical school in the United States and second to none in the world. The life of Boston University almost exactly covers this half-century. President Warren, its founder, was a great and prophetic man. Today the University has more than ten thousand students, and its new buildings by the Charles, opposite Harvard, will be one of the finest academic groups of the country. Wellesley College, like Smith College, came into being at almost the same time; a generation before that there was not a public high school for girls in Boston.
I have been associated in my life with no other movement, save the cause of international peace, which I consider of so great import as that for the political and educational rights of women. There is nothing of which I am prouder than the fact that at the same time my wife was president of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association and I was president of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage. The illustrious leaders, Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe, Ednah D. Cheney and Anna Shaw were my friends. Of the real pioneer, Lucy Stone, her daughter, Alice Stone Blackwell, has just given us a noble biography. Henry B. Blackwell was as devoted to the cause as his wife. Colonel Higginson was equally devoted, as he was to every brave advance, and William Lloyd Garrison, Jr., and Francis Garrison were untiring workers. In the old Ticknor and Fields days Colonel Higginson, already a marked figure in our literary life, lived at Newport, but he soon returned to Cambridge. I succeeded him as president of the Free Religious Association, and the last time that I saw him was when, in feeble health, he came to our May festival.
The Free Religious Association was founded in Boston as far back as 1867, Emerson being one of its founders. In 1903 we commemorated the centenary of Emerson's birth by a month of lectures upon his work and influence, the morning lectures at Concord, the evening lectures in Boston. They were by our best thinkers, Doctor Hale, for instance, giving the address on "Emerson's Religion," and had large audiences.
During my quarter-century as a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I remember no other meeting so impressive as that commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of President Eliot's admission to the Society. The memor- able feature was his own address, with his generous tribute to his fellow-workers at Harvard, who had done so much toward the success of his administration. It is grateful to know that the noble biography of President Eliot just given us is the work of the son of William James, that rarest spirit among the Harvard teachers of his time. I knew him well and loved and honored him. In the hall of memory rise such noble Harvard figures as Charles Carroll Everett, Josiah Royce, Kuno Francke and William C. Lane; Charles E. Fay of Tufts, my close friend through this whole period, founder of the Appalachian Club, most daring
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of mountain climbers to the last, and ever ascending spiritual heights; and that radiant spirit, Alice Freeman Palmer, whose beautiful biography by Professor Palmer is one of the sacramental books.
One of my fellow-students at Leipzig had been G. Stanley Hall. When he came home, he lived for some years in one of the Boston suburbs and we were much together. Then came his distinguished work at Johns Hopkins, and then his work as organizer and first president of Clark University. For a generation we were close friends, and during his Worcester life I spent many Sundays with him. He was a pioneer and a great stimulator in many fields of our educational life.
It was by a startling and sad coincidence that the United States and Eng- land, the pre-eminent champions of self-government and liberty, at the close of the nineteenth century were both engaged simultaneously in gross violation of their great tradition, - we in the subjugation of the Philippines and England in the Boer War. I often had occasion to treat these subjects together in my editorials, and some of these, reprinted as pamphlets, had a considerable reading in England. Long afterwards, introduced to the Bishop of Lincoln at a London reception, I was amazed to hear him say at once that one of those pamphlets on "The Present Crisis" made my name a "household word" in his home. He had been a strong "pro-Boer." The first time we ever heard Lloyd-George was at a "Pro-Boer" dinner to which William T. Stead took us in 1901, where Stead's own speech, with all the inspiration of a Hebrew prophet, was the real event of the evening. With the anti-imperialist movement in Boston I had the deepest sympathy. Massachusetts was the center of that movement. George F. Hoar . was the leader in the Senate of the opposition to our course in the Philippines, and the venerable George S. Boutwell was the leader of the popular organized opposition. I knew both men well, Senator Hoar more in connection with historical interests than with anti-imperialism. Mr. Boutwell often came to my office at 20 Beacon street, and his political reminiscences of earlier periods and men of high significance were memorable. Moorfield Storey, his successor as president of the Anti-imperialist League and also of the Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was my closer friend, and there have been few men in the Boston of my time whom I held in equal honor. From the beginning of his life, when he was Charles Sumner's secretary, to the end, he threw all the influence of his brilliant personal gifts, his broad scholarship, his pre-eminent legal ability and his incisive eloquence into the service of unprivi- leged men and races and into opposition to every form of oppression. Always good mannered, never offensive, never asleep, always battling for freedom, he was the one man in the Boston of this time who deserves a monument as the untiring protestant against injustice and the heroic champion of the rights of men.
In the election of 1900, at the height of the anti-imperialist crusade, I supported William J. Bryan for the presidency, which I had not done in 1896. By reason of this earnest advocacy, I was to my surprise nominated for Congress by the Democrats of my Boston district. I could not accept the nomination, as the Republican candidate for re-election was Samuel W. McCall, who besides being my friend was as good an anti-imperialist as myself and far better placed for influential opposition to the McKinley policies.
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I had once before taken a somewhat active part in a presidential campaign. This was in 1884, when Boston was the center of the so-called "Mugwump" movement. This, it will be remembered, was a secession of a large number of prominent Republicans from their party and their support of Grover Cleve- land, as a protest against the nomination of James G. Blaine. These men were largely my friends, and there was much conscience in their campaign. But it seemed to me an ill-timed and feebly reasoned virtue, and I was impelled to publish a pamphlet about it, "The Case of Mr. Blaine." The organs of the "Mugwump" movement were "Harper's Weekly," the "Nation" and the Boston Advertiser. The crusade against Mr. Blaine was mainly based upon the resurrection of the so-called "Mulligan Letters," certain correspondence between Mr. Blaine, then speaker of the House of Representatives, and a Boston commercial friend. This friend's bookkeeper, James Mulligan, in some spite against Mr. Blaine for fancied neglect, had taken the letters to Washington to show them to Mr. Blaine's political enemies on the eve of the Republican National Convention of 1876, where Mr. Blaine would be the leading candidate. The effort was to represent the letters, covering various business transactions, as evidence that Mr. Blaine had misused his influence in Congress to the unwarranted benefit of his friends in certain western railway ventures. I had carefully studied these allegations and become convinced that they were groundless. The principal purpose of my pamphlet was to show, by detailed citation, that in 1876, when all the letters and the facts were fully before the public, every one of the three newspapers now so bitter concerning facts which were entirely unchanged had reviewed them in sharp and prolonged editorial discussion and had completely vindicated Mr. Blaine. They were now opposing him on political grounds, some of which were not creditable, and this I claimed was their reason for treating precisely the same facts in a contrary way.
The pamphlet made something of a ripple for the moment, and for a time I was certainly a "popular author" in the "regular" circle in which I did not customarily revolve. These people made a campaign document of it, and altogether 250,000 of the pamphlets were sold and given away. I was always glad that I published it, because I felt that Mr. Blaine was grossly wronged, that he was entitled to election and that he would have given the country a distinguished administration. He was a man of brilliant powers and great political experience; he had an international mind, and especially a thorough understanding of the South American situation. Such a performance as Cleve- land's Venezuela message, that prolific source of so much jingoism for us, would have been impossible to him.
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