USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 17
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rymple, Montague, and his brother officers ostensibly to sip Ralph's mulled port or Vidania, but really, as we may believe, to see the daughter of the house. For some unknown cause the father did not favor Linzee's suit. There was an aunt whom Sukey visited in town, and to whose house the gallant captain had the open sesame, but who manœuvred, as only aunts in 1772 (and they have not forgot their cunning) knew how, to keep the lovers apart.
But John Linzee was no faint-heart, and he married Sukey Inman. George Inman, her brother, entered the British army. Linzee commanded the Falcon at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he did us all the mischief he could, and figured else- where on our coasts. In 1789 he happened again to cast anchor in Boston harbor, and opened his batteries this time with a peaceful salute to the famous stars and stripes flying from the Castle. It is well known that Prescott, the historian. married a granddaughter of Captain Linzee.
The interior of Inman's house possessed no striking features. It was roomy, but so low-studded that you could easily reach the ceilings with your hand when standing upright. The deep fireplaces, capacious cupboards, and secret closets were all there. Our last visit to the mansion was to find it divided asunder, and being rolled away to another part of the town, where we have no wish to follow. It was not a pleasant sight to see this old house thus mutilated, with its halls agape and its cosey bedchambers literally turned out of doors, - a veri- table wreck ashore.
Inman was arrested in 1776. He had been of the king's council and an addresser of Hutchinson. He became a refugee in Boston, and his mansion passed into the custody of the Pro- vincial Congress, who assigned it to General Putnam.
Putnam, as we remember, commanded the centre of the American position, comprising the works and camps in Cam- bridge. The commission of major-general was then no sine- cure, and we may opine that Old Put had his hands busily employed. Those long summer days of 1775 were full of care and toil, but the summer evenings were not less glorious than
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now, and the General must have often sat on the refugee's lawn, watching the camp-fires of the investing army, or tracing in the heavens the course of some fiery ambassador from the hostile shore.
One day while Putnam was on Prospect Hill he summoned all his captains to headquarters. It was stated to them that a hazardous service was contemplated, for which one of their number was desired to volunteer. A candidate stepped for- ward, eager to signalize himself. A draft of six men from each company was then made. At the appointed time the chosen band appeared before the General's quarters, fully armed and equipped. Old Put complimented their appearance and com- mended their spirit. He then ordered every man to lay aside his arms for an axe, and directed their march to a neighboring swamp to cut fascines.
When Putnam was with Amherst in Canada, that general, to his great annoyance, found that the French had a vessel of twelve guns stationed on a lake he meant to pass over with his army. While pondering upon the unexpected dilemma he was accosted by Putnam with the remark, "General, that ship must be taken." " Ay," says Amherst, "I'd give the world she were taken." " I'll take her," says Old Put. "Give me some wedges, a beetle, and a few men of my own choice." Amherst, though unable to see how the ship was to be taken by such means, willingly complied. At night Putnam took a boat, and, gaining the ship's stern unperceived, with a few quick blows drove his wedges in such a manner as to disable the rudder. In the morning the vessel. being unmanageable, came ashore, and was taken.
With the single exception of Washington there is not a name on the roll of the Revolution more honored in the popu- lar heart than that of Putnam. He was emphatically a man of action and of purpose. At what time he received his famous sobriquet we are unable to say, but he was Old Put at Cam- bridge, and will be to posterity.
We can imagine the young fledglings of the army calling the then gray-haired veteran by this familiar nickname, but when
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it comes to the dignified commander-in-chief, it shows us not only that he had a grim sense of the humorous, but that he was capable of relaxing a little from his habitual dignity of thought and expression. " I suppose," says Joseph Reed, in a letter to Washington, -- " I suppose 'Old Put' was to command the de- tachment intended for Boston on the 5th instant, as I do not know of any officer but himself who could have been depended on for so hazardous a service." And the General replies : "The four thousand men destined for Boston on the 5th, if the minis- terialists had attempted our works at Dorchester or the lines at Roxbury, were to have been headed by Old Put."
He had nearly attained threescore when the war broke out, but the fires which a life filled with extraordinary adventures had not dimmed still burned brightly in the old man's breast. Only think of a sexagenarian so stirred at the scent of battle as to mount his horse and gallop a hundred and fifty miles to the scene of conflict. Whether we remember him in the wolf's lair, at the Indian torture, or fighting for his country, we recognize a spirit which knew not fear and never blenched at danger.
If the General sometimes swore big oaths, - and we are not disposed to dispute it, - they were, in a measure, inocuous ; such, for example, as Uncle Toby used at the bedside of the dying lieutenant. Your camp is a sad leveller, and though the Continental officers could not have had a more correct example than their illustrious chief, yet it was much the fashion among gentlemen of quality of that day, and especially such as em- braced the military profession, to indulge themselves in a little profanity. Say what we will, our Washingtons and our Have- locks are the rara aves of the camp. We have history for it that " our army swore terribly in Flanders." We believe the Revolution furnishes a similar example : and we fear the Great Rebellion tells the same story.
It was perhaps to remedy this tendency, and that the spiritual wants of the soldiery might not suffer, that a prayer was composed by Rev. Abiel Leonard, chaplain to General Put- nam's regiment, and printed by the Messrs. Hall in Harvard
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College in 1775. Putnam was no courtier, but brusque, hearty, and honest. The words attributed to the Moor might have been his own : -
" Rude am I in my speech,
And little blessed with the set phrase of peace ; For since these arms of mine had seven years' pith, Till now some nine moons wasted, they have used Their dearest action in the tented field."
Putnam's summer costume was a waistcoat without sleeves for his upper garment. Across his brawny shoulders was thrown a broad leathern belt, from which depended a hanger, and thus he appeared as he bestrode his horse among the camps at Cambridge. Those sneering Marylanders scouted this carelessness in the bluff old captain's attire, and said he was much better to head a band of sicklemen or ditchers than musketeers.
The day following the battle of Bunker Hill, a young lady who had been assisting Dr. Eustis in the care of our wounded wished to send a letter to her parents in Boston. Her heart was full of anguish at the death of Warren, and her pen un- skilled in cold set phrase. The officer at the lines to whom she handed her missive, in order that it might go in with the first flag, returned it, saying, " It is too d-d saucy." The lady went to General Ward, who advised her to soften the expres- sions a little. General Putnam, who was sitting by, read the letter attentively, and exclaimed, " It shall go in if I send it at the mouth of a cannon !" He demanded a pass for it, and the fair writer received an answer from her friends within forty- eight hours.
Putnam's old sign of General Wolfe, which he displayed when a tavern-keeper at Brooklyn, Connecticut, is still pre- served.
Before we depart from Cambridgeport the reader will permit us a pilgrimage to the homes of Margaret Fuller and Washing- ton Allston. Margaret was born in a house now standing in Cherry Street, on the corner of Eaton Street, with three splen- did elms in front, planted by her father on her natal day. The
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large square building, placed on a brick basement, is removed about twenty feet back from the street. It is of wood, of three stories, has a veranda at the front reached by a flight of steps, and a large L, and now appears to be inhabited by several families. Miss Fuller went to Edward Dickinson's school, situ- ated in Main Street, nearly opposite Inman, where Rev. S. K. Lothrop and O. W. Holmes were her classmates. Her father, Timothy Fuller, and herself are still remembered by the elder people wending their way on a Sabbath morn to the old brick church of Mr. Gannett.
Allston lived in a house at the corner of Magazine and Auburn Streets. His studio was nearly opposite his dwelling, in the rear of the Baptist church, in a building erected for him. It was confidently asserted by Americans in England, that had Allston remained there he might have reached a high position in the Royal Academy ; but he was devotedly attached to his country and to a choice circle of highly prized friends at home.
Allston realized whatever prices he chose to ask for his pic- tures. Stuart only demanded $ 150 for a kit-kat portrait and $ 100 for a bust, but Allston's prices were much higher. Being asked by a lady if he did not require rest after finishing a work, he replied : "No, I only require a change. After I finish a portrait I paint a landscape, and then a portrait again." He delighted in his art.
He was received in Boston on his return from England with every mark of affection and respect, and his society was courted in the most intelligent and cultivated circles. Even the young ladies, the belles of the period, appreciated the polish and charm of his manners and address, and were well pleased when he made choice of one of them as a partner in a cotillon, then the fashionable dance at evening parties.
Besides his immediate and gifted family connections, Allston was much attached to Isaac P. Davis and Loammi Baldwin, the eminent engineer. The painting of " Elijah in the Wilder- ness " remained at the house of the former in Boston until it was purchased by Labouchiere, who saw it there. It has been
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repurchased by Mrs. S. Hooper, and is now in the Athenæum Gallery. No distinguished stranger went away from Boston without seeing Allston ; among others he was visited by Mrs. Jameson, who was taken by the artist to his studio, where he exhibited to her several of his unfinished works and sketches. It was a most interesting interview.
Allston's " Jeremiah," an immense canvas, with figures larger than life, was ordered by Miss Gibbs. "Saul and the Witch of Endor " and " A Bookseller and a Poet " were painted for Hon. T. H. Perkins. "Miriam on the Shore of the Red Sea," a magnificent work, with figures nearly life-size, was executed for Hon. David Sears. The " Angel appearing to Peter in Prison " was painted for Dr. Hooper. A landscape and exqui- site ideal portrait, finished for Hon. Jonathan Phillips, were destroyed in the great fire of 1872. " Rosalie," an ideal por- trait, was painted for Hon. N. Appleton. " The Valentine," another ideal subject, became the property of Professor Ticknor. " Amy Robsart " was done for John A. Lowell, Esq. Besides these the painter executed works for Hon. Jonathan Mason, N. Amory, F. C. Gray, Richard Sullivan, Loammi Baldwin, - for whom the exquisite " Florimel " of Spenser was painted, - Theodore Lyman, Samuel A. Eliot, Warren Dutton, and others. This catalogue will serve to show who were Allston's patrons. For each subject the price varied from seven to fifteen hundred dollars. About 1830 a number of Boston gentlemen advanced the artist $ 10,000 for his unfinished " Belshazzar."
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A DAY AT HARVARD.
CHAPTER IX.
A DAY AT HARVARD.
"Ye fields of Cambridge, our dear Cambridge, say Have you not seen us walking every day ? Was there a tree about which did not know The love betwixt us two ?"
C AMBRIDGE seems to realize the injunction of a sagacious statesman of antiquity : " If you would have your city loved by its citizens, you must make it lovely."
The location of this settlement was, according to Governor Dudley, due to apprehensions of the French, which caused the colonists to seek an inland situation. They decided to call it Newtown, but in 1638 the name was changed in honor of the old English university town. Cambridge was made a port of entry in 1805, hence Cambridgeport. It became a city in 1846.
The broad, level plain where Winthrop, Dudley, Bradstreet, and the rest bivouacked in the midst of the stately forest in 1631, and looked upon it as
" That wild where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot ";
where they posted their trusty servants, with lighted match, at the verge of the encampment, and the moon's rays glittered on steel cap and corselet ; where they nightly folded their herds within the chain of sentinels, until they had hedged themselves round about with palisades ; where they repeated their simple prayers and sung their evening hymn ; where learning erected her first temple in the wilderness ; and where a host of armed men sprung forth, Minerva-like, ready for action, -- the abode of the Muses, the domain of Letters, - this is our present walk among the habitations of the living and the dead.
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Old William Wood, author of the first printed account of Massachusetts, says : -
" Newtown was first intended for a city, but upon more serious consideration, it was thought not so fit, being too far from the sea ; being the greatest inconvenience it hath. This is one of the neatest and best compacted towns in New England, having many fair struc- tures, with many handsome contrived streets. The inhabitants most of them are very rich."
Old Cambridge a hundred years after its settlement was, as we have mentioned, the peculiar abode of a dozen wealthy and aristocratic families. Their possessions were as extensive as their purses were long and their loyalty approved. They were of the English Church, were intermarried, and had every tie - social position, blood, politics, religion, and we know not what else- to bind them together in a distinct community. The old Puritan stock had mostly dispersed. Many had passed into Connecticut, others into Boston ; and still others, finding their ancient limits much too narrow, had, in the language of that day, " sat down" in what are now Arlington and Lexington, and were long known distinctively as the "farmers." These latter, with the fragment still adhering to the skirts of the an- cient village, had their meeting-house and the College, which they still kept free from heresy, - not, however, without con- tinual watchfulness, nor without attempts on the part of the Episcopalians to obtain a foothold.
It was believed before the Revolution that the Ministry seriously contemplated the firmer establishment of the Church of England by creating bishoprics in the colonies, - a measure which was warmly opposed by the Congregational clergy in and out of the pulpit. Tithes and ceremonials were the bugbears used to stimulate the opposition and arouse the prejudices of the populace. Controversy ran high, and caricatures appeared, in one of which the expected bishop is seen taking refuge on board a departing vessel, while a mob on the wharf is pushing the bark from shore and pelting the unfortunate ecclesiastic with treatises of national law.
The large square wooden house which stands on Main
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Street, directly opposite Gore Hall, was built by the Rev. East Apthorp, D. D., son of Charles Apthorp, an eminent Boston merchant of Welsh descent. It was probably erected in 1761, the year in which Dr. Apthorp was settled in Cambridge, and was regarded, on account of its elegance and proximity to the University, with peculiar distrust by Mayhew and his orthodox contemporaries. It was thought that if the ministerial plan was carried out Dr. Apthorp had an eye to the Episcopate, and his mansion was alluded to as "the palace of one of the humble successors of the Apostles." So uncomfortable did his antag- onists render his ministry, that Dr. Apthorp gave up his charge and removed to England in the latter part of 1764.
The pleasant old house seems next to have been occupied by John Borland, a merchant of the capital, who abandoned it on the breaking out of hostilities, and took refuge in Boston, where he died the same year (1775) from the effects of a fall.
Under the new order of things the mansion became the headquarters of the Connecticut troops, with Old Put at their head, on their arrival at Cambridge, and Putnam probably re- mained there until after the battle of Bunker Hill. It con- tinued a barrack, occupied by three companies, until finally cleared and taken possession of by the Committee of Safety, the then executive authority of the province.
Its next inhabitant was "John Burgoyne, Esquire, lieu- tenant-general of his Majesty's armies in America, colonel of the queen's regiment of light dragoons, governor of Fort William in North Britain, one of the representatives of the Commons of Great Britain, and commanding an army and fleet on an expedition from Canada," etc., etc., etc. Such is a faith- ful enumeration of the titles of this illustrious Gascon as pre- fixed to his bombastic proclamation, and which must have left the herald breathless long ere he arrived at the " Whereas." For a pithy history of the campaign which led to Burgoyne's enforced residence here, commend us to the poet : -
" Burgoyne gaed up, like spur an' whip, Till Fraser brave did fa', man ; Then lost his way ae misty day, In Suratoga. shaw. man."
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The house fronts towards Mount Auburn Street, and over- looked the river when Cambridge was yet a conservative, old- fashioned country town. That street was then the high-road, which wound around the foot of the garden, making a sharp curve to the north where it is now joined by Harvard Street. It was, therefore, no lack of respect to the Rev. Edward Holy- oke, the inhabitant of the somewhat less pretending dwelling of the College presidents, that caused Dr. Apthorp to turn his back in his direction.
The true front bears a strong family resemblance to the Vassall-Longfellow mansion, the design of which was perhaps followed by the architect of this. The wooden balustrade which surmounted, and at the same time relieved, the bare outline of the roof was swept away in the great September gale of 1815. A third story, which makes the house look like an ill-assorted pair joined in matrimonial bands for life, is said to be the work of Mr. Borland, who required additional space for his household slaves. The line of the old cornice shows where the roof was separated from the original structure. The posi- tion of the outbuildings, now huddled together in close con- tact with the house, has been changed by the stress of those circumstances which have from time to time denuded the estate of portions of its ancient belongings. The clergyman's grounds extended to Holyoke Street on the one hand, and for an equal distance on the other, and were entered by the carriage-drive from the side of Harvard Street.
As it now stands, about equidistant from the avenues in front and rear, it seems a patrician of the old régime, withdraw- ing itself instinctively from contact with its upstart neighbors. The house which John Adams's apprehensions converted into a Lambeth Palace was, happily for its occupant, never the seat of an Episcopal see, or it might have shared the fate with which Wat Tyler's bands visited the ancient castellated residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury.
We found the interior of the house worthy of inspection. There is a broad, generous hall, with its staircase railed in with the curiously wrought balusters, which the taste of the times
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required to be different in form and design. A handsome re- ception-room opens at the left, a library at the right. The for- mer was the state apartment, and a truly elegant one. The ceilings are high, and the wainscots, panels, and mouldings were enriched with carvings. The fireplace has still the blue Dutch tiles with their Scripture allegories, and the ornamental fire-back is in its place.
Directly above is the state chamber, a luxurious apartment within and without. We say without, for we looked down upon the gardens, with their box-bordered walks and their un- folding beauties of leaf and flower, - the fruit-trees dressed in bridal blossoms, the Pyrus Japonica in its gorgeous crimson bloom, with white-starred Spirca and Deutzia gracilis en- shrouded in their fragrant mists.
" A brave old house ! a garden full of bees, Large dropping poppies, and queen hollyhocks, With butterflies for crowns, - tree peonies, And pinks and goldilocks."
In this bedchamber, which wooed the slumbers of the sybarite Burgoyne, the walls are formed in panels, ornamented with paper representing fruit, landscapes, ruins, etc., - a species of decoration both rare and costly at the period when the house was built. Mr. Jonathan Simpson, Jr., who married a daughter of Mr. Borland, became the proprietor after the old war. Mrs. Manning, the present occupant, has lived to see many changes from her venerable roof, and the prediction that her prospect would never be impaired answered by the overtopping walls of contiguous buildings.
We crave the reader's indulgence while we return for a moment upon our own footsteps to Dana Hill, upon which we have hitherto traced the defensive lines. The family for whom the eminence is named have been distinguished in law, politics, and letters, - from Richard Dana, of pre-Revolutionary fame, to his descendants of to-day.
The Dana mansion, surrounded by beautiful grounds, for- merly stood some two hundred feet back from the present Main Street, and between Ellery and Dana Streets. It was a
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wooden house, of two stories, not unlike in general appearance that of Mr. Longfellow, but was many years since destroyed by fire.
Judge Francis Dana, a law-student with Trowbridge, and who was succeeded as chief justice of Massachusetts by The- ophilus Parsons, filled many positions of high trust and respon- sibility both at home and abroad. The name of Ellery Street happily recalls that of the family of Mrs. Judge Dana. With the career of Richard H. Dana, poet and essayist, son of the judge, and with that of the younger Richard H. and Edmund his brother, grandsons of the jurist, the public are familiar.
When William Ellery Channing was an undergraduate he resided in the family mansion of the Danas, the wife of the chief justice being his maternal aunt. It is said that, although half a mile distant from college, he was always punctual at prayers, which were then at six o'clock through the whole year.
Between Arrow and Mount Auburn Streets was the estate of David Phips, the sheriff of Middlesex, colonel of the gover- nor's troop and son of Lieutenant-Governor 1 Spencer Phips. A proscribed royalist, his house, some time a hospital, was afterwards the residence of William Winthrop, and is now standing in fair preservation. The GOOKIN. estate is more interesting to the antiquary as that of Major-General Daniel Gookin, Indian superintendent in the time of Eliot, and one of the licensers of the printing- press in 1662, - an office supposed not to have been too arduous in his time, and not considered compatible with liberty in our own. What this old censor would have said to many of the so-called respectable publications of to-day is not a matter of doubtful conjecture. It was under Gookin's roof, and perhaps on this very spot, that Generals Goffe and Whalley were shel- tered until the news of the Restoration and Act of Indemnity caused them to seek another asylum.
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The large, square wooden house at the corner of Harvard and Quincy Streets, and which stands upon the extreme limit of the College grounds in this direction, was the first observatory at Harvard. It is at present the residence of Rev. Dr. Pea- body, chaplain of the College. William Cranch Bond, subse- quently professor of astronomy, was a skilful optician, who had, from innate love of the science of the heavens, established a small observatory of his own in Dorchester, where he pur- sued his investigations. He was invited to Harvard, and, with the aid of such instruments as could be obtained, founded in this house what has since grown to be a credit to the Univer- sity and to America. He had the assistance of some of the professors, and of President Hill and others. Triangular points were established in connection with this position at Milton Hill and at Bunker Hill. It was the intention to have erected an observatory on Milton Hill, but difficulties of a financial char- acter interposed, and President Quincy purchased Craigie Hill, the present excellent location.
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