USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 20
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
Boylston is represented in a négligé costume, with a dressing- gown of blue damask, the usual purple-velvet cap on his head, and his feet encased in slippers. This portrait was painted at the request of the corporation in partial acknowledgment of the bequest of £ 1500 lawful money by Boylston, to found a profes- sorship of oratory and rhetoric, of which John Quincy Adams was the first professor. The portrait ordered by the College was a copy from the original by Copley, and was directed to be hung in the Philosophy Room beside those of Hancock and Hollis.
The portraits of Thomas Hollis, one of a family celebrated for its many benefactions to the College, and of President Holyoke, are also by Copley ; that of John Lovell, the tory schoolmaster of Boston, is a Smibert. The full length of John Adams ex- hibits a figure full of animation, attired in an elegant suit of brown velvet, with dress sword and short curled wig. As a whole, it may fairly claim to take rank with the superb portrait of Colonel Josiah Quincy in the possession of his descendants, and overshadows the full length of J. Q. Adams by Stuart, hanging near it. There is also a portrait of Count Rumford.
All these portraits are admirable studies of the costumes of their time, and as such have an interest rivalling their purely artistic merits. One of the irreparable consequences of the great fire in Boston, of November, 1872, was the loss of a score or more of Copley's portraits which were stored within the burnt district.
In 1806 the College corporation having represented to the General Court that the proceeds of the lottery granted for the use of the University by an act passed June 14, 1794, were in- sufficient, and that great and expensive repairs were necessary to be made on Massachusetts Hall, they were empowered by an act passed March 14, to raise $ 30,000 by lottery, to erect the " new building called Stoughton Hall," and for the purpose of repairing Massachusetts, under direction of the President and Fellows, who were to appoint agents and publish the schemes in the papers.
A lottery had been authorized as early as 1765 to raise
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A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED.
funds for the "new building " (Harvard Hall), another in 1794, - in which the College itself drew the principal prize (No. 18,547) of ten thousand dollars, -and still another in 1811. ILLIARD & METCALE Hfint.
When the camps were formed at Cambridge, the College buildings were found very convenient for barracks ; but as the greater part of the troops encamped during the summer of 1775, they were made available for every variety of military offices as well as for a certain number of soldiers. In June Captain Smith was ordered to quar- ter in No. 6, and Captain Sephens in No. 2 of Massa- chusetts, while Mr. Adams, a sutler, was assigned to No. 17. The commissariat was in the College yard, where the details from all the posts came to draw rations. Nearly two thousand men were sheltered in the five College buildings standing in the winter of 1775- 76, of which Harvard received 640, Stoughton 240, and the chapel 160.
( Harvard Hall, as it now appears, was rebuilt in 1765. The fire which destroyed its < predecessor was supposed to have originated under the hearth of the library, where a fire had been kept for the use of the General Court, which was then
BOSTON, JULY, 1811.
Y
P. J. Jackson
of Massachusetts, passed the 14th day of March, 1806.
THIS TICKET will entitle the bearer to such PRIZE, as may be ( drawn against its number ; agreeably to an act of the General Court
No. 74100
Manager.
T
Sixth Class.
Harvard College Lottery.
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
sitting there on account of the prevalence of small-pox in Bos- ton. Two days after this accident the General Court passed a resolve to rebuild Harvard Hall. The new edifice contained a chapel, dining-hall, library, museum, philosophy chamber, and an apartment for the philosophical apparatus.
Several interesting incidents are associated with the rebuild- ing of Harvard. When the Rev. George Whitefield was first in New England he was engaged in an acrimonious controversy with the President and some of the instructors of the College. Upon learning of the loss the seminary had sustained, White- field, putting all animosities aside, solicited contributions in England and Scotland with generous results. On the occasion of the last visit of this celebrated preacher to America every attention was paid him by the President and Fellows of the University. Dr. Appleton, who had moderately opposed Whitefield's teachings, invited him to preach in his pulpit, and the scene is said to have been one of great interest.
Harvard Hall was planned by Governor Bernard, - a great friend of the College, whatever else his demerits, - and while it was building he would not suffer the least departure from his plan. It is said he could repeat the whole of Shakespeare. That he was somewhat sensitive to the many lampoons levelled at him may be inferred from his complaint to the council of a piece in the Boston Gazette, which ended with these lines :-
" And if such men are by God appointed, The devil may be the Lord's anointed."
Shortly after the arrival of the troops from England in 1768, which was one of Bernard's measures, the portrait of the Gov- ernor which hung in Harvard Hall was found with a piece cut out of the breast, exactly describing a heart. The mutilated picture disappeared and could never be traced.
After Bernard's return home it was reported, and currently believed, that he was driven out of the Smyrna Coffee House in London, by General Oglethorpe, who told him he was a dirty, factious scoundrel, who smelled cursed strong of the hangman. The General ordered the Governor to leave the
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A DAY AT HARVARD, CONTINUED.
room as one unworthy to mix with gentlemen, but offered to give him the satisfaction of following him to the door had he anything to reply. The Governor, according to the account, left the house like a guilty coward.
Harvard, the building of which Thomas Dawes superintended, stands on a foundation of Braintree stone, above which is a course of dressed red sandstone with a belt of the same material between the stories. It is composed of a central building with a pediment at either front, to which are joined two wings of equal height and length, each having a pediment at the end. There are but two stories, the lower tier of windows being arched, and the whole structure surmounted by a cupola. It was in the Philosophy Room of Harvard that Washington was received in 1789, and after breakfasting inspected the library, museum, &c.
The three buildings which we have described are those seen by Captain Goelet in 1750 .* He says : -
" After dinner Mr. Jacob Wendell, Abraham Wendell, and self took horse and went to see Cambridge, which is a neat, pleasant village, and consists of about an hundred houses and three Col- leges, which are a plain old fabrick of no manner of architect, and the present much out of repair, is situated on one side of the Towne and forms a large Square ; its apartments are pretty large. Drank a glass wine with the collegians, returned and stopt at Richardson's where bought some fowles and came home in the evening which we spent at Wetherhead's with sundry gentlemen."
Hollis and the second Stoughton Hall, both standing to the north of Harvard, are in the same style of architecture. The first, named for Thomas Hollis, was begun in 1762 and com- pleted in 1763. It was set on fire when Old Harvard was consumed, and was struck by lightning in 1768. Thomas Dawes was the architect. Stoughton was built during the years 1804, 1805. They have each four stories, and are exceed- ingly plain " old fabrics " of red brick. Standing in front of the interval between these is Holden Chapel, built in 1745 at
* N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register.
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the cost of the widow and daughters of Samuel Holden, one of the directors of the Bank of England. It was first used for the College devotions, subsequently for the American courts-martial, and afterwards for anatomical lectures and dissections. It be- came in 1800 devoted to lecture and recitation rooms for the professors and tutors. Holworthy Hall, which stands at right angles with Stoughton, was erected in 1812. Besides the five brick edifices standing in 1800, was also what was then called the College House, a three-story wooden building, standing without the College yard, containing twelve rooms with studies. It was originally built in 1770 for a private dwelling, and pur- chased soon after by the College corporation. University Hall, built in 1812-13 of Chelmsford granite, is placed upon the site of the old Bog Pond and within the limits of the Wiggles- worth Ox Pasture. This building had once a narrow escape from being blown up by the students, the explosion being . heard at a great distance. A little southeast of Hollis is the supposed site of the Indian college.
It does not fall within our purpose to recite the history of the more modern buildings grouped around the interior quad- rangle, with its magnificent elms and shady walks ; its elegant and lofty dormitories, and its classic lore. Our business is with the old fabrics, the ancient pastimes and antiquated cus- toms of former generations of Senior and Junior, Sophomore and Freshman.
It was a warm spring afternoon when we stood within the quadrangle and slaked our thirst at the wooden pump. A longing to throw one's self upon the grass under one of those inviting trees was rudely repelled by the painted admonition, met at every turn, to " Keep off the Grass." The government does not waste words ; it orders, and its regulations assimilate to those of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not. Never- theless, a few benches would not seem out of place here, when we recall how the sages of Greece instructed their disciples as they walked or while seated under some shady bough, as Soc- rates is described by Plato.
Looking up at the open windows of the dormitories, we saw
2
QUADRANGLE, HARVARD COLLEGE.
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that not a few were garnished with booted or slippered feet. This seemed the favorite attitude for study, by which knowl- edge, absorbed at the pedal extremities, is conducted by the inclined plane of the legs to the body, finally mounting as high as its source, siphon-like, to the brain. Any movement by which the feet might be lowered during this process would, we are persuaded, cause the hardly gained learning to flow back again to the feet. Others of the students were squatted in Indian fashion, their elbows on their knees, their chins resting in their palms, with knitted brows and eyes fixed on vacancy, in which, did we possess the conjurer's art, the coming University boat- race or the last base-ball tournament would, we fancy, appear instead of Latin classics. Perhaps we have not rightly inter- preted the expressions of others, which seemed to say, in the language of one whose brain was stretched upon the same rack a century and a quarter ago :-
" Now algebra, geometry, Arithmetick, astronomy, Opticks, chronology and staticks, All tiresome parts of mathematics, With twenty harder names than these, Disturb my brains and break my peace."
It was formerly the practice of the Sophomores to notify the Freshmen to assemble in the Chapel, where they were indoc- trinated in the ancient customs of the College, the latter being required "to keep their places in their seats, and attend with decency to the reading." Among these customs, descended from remote times, was one which forbade a Freshman "to wear his hat in the College yard, unless it rains, hails, or snows, provided he be on foot, and have not both hands full." The same prohibition extended to all undergraduates when any of the governors of the College were in the yard. These absurd " relics of barbarism " had become entirely obsolete before 1800.
The degrading custom which made a Freshman subservient to all other classes, and obliged him to go of errands like a pot- boy in an alehouse, the Senior having the prior claim to his service, died a natural death, without the interposition of
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authority. It became the practice under this state of things for a Freshman to choose a Senior as a patron, to whom he acknowledged service, and who, on his part, rendered due pro- tection to his servitor from the demands of others. These petty offices, when not unreasonably required, could be enforced by an appeal to a tutor. The President and immediate govern- ment had also their Freshmen. It is noteworthy that the abolition of this menial custom was recommended by the Over- seers as early as 1772; but the Corporation, which, doubtless, de- rived too many advantages from a continuance of the practice, rejected the proposal.
Another custom obliged the Freshman to measure his strength with the Sophomore in a wrestling-match, which usually took place during the second week in the term on the College play- ground, which formerly bounded on Charlestown road, now Kirkland Street, and included about an acre and a half. This playground was enclosed by a close board fence, which began about fifty feet north of Hollis and extended back about three hundred feet, separating the playground from the College buildings. The playground had a front on the Common of about sixty-five feet, and was entered on the side of Hollis.
" This enclosure, an irregular square, contained two thirds or more of the ground on which Stoughton stands, the greater part of the land on which Holworthy stands, together with about the same quantity of land in front of the same, the land back of Holworthy, including part of a road since laid out, and perhaps a very small portion of the western extremity of the Delta, so called." *
This was the College gymnasia, where the students, after evening prayers, ran, leaped, wrestled, played at quoits or cricket, and at good, old-fashioned, obsolete bat and ball, - not the dangerous pastime of to-day, but where you stood up, man- fashion, with nothing worse resulting than an occasional eye in mourning : -
" Like sportive deer they coursed about, And shouted as they ran, Turning to mirth all things of earth, As only boyhood can."
* Willard.
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Any account of Harvard which ignored the clubs would be incomplete. Besides the Phi Beta Kappa was the Porcellian, founded by the Seniors about 1793. It was originally called the Pig Club, but, for some unknown reason, this homely but ex- pressive derivation was translated into a more euphonious title. A writer remarks that learned pigs have sometimes been on ex- hibition, but, to our mind, to have been educated among them would be but an ill passport into good society. There was also the Hasty Pudding Club, - a name significant of that savory, farinaceous substance, the dish of many generations of New- Englanders. Whether this society owed its origin to sumptuary regulations we are unable to say ; but a kettle of the article, steaming hot, suspended to a pole, and borne by a brace of students across the College yard, were worth a visit to Old Harvard to have witnessed.
Commencement, Neal says, was formerly a festival second only to the day of the election of the magistrates, usually terined " Election Day." The account in "New England's First Fruits" gives the manner of conducting the academical exercises in 1642 :-
"The students of the first classis that have beene these foure yeeres * trained up in University learning (for their ripening in the knowl- edge of tongues and arts) and are approved for their manners, as they have kept their public Acts in former yeares, ourselves being present at them ; so have they lately kept two solemn Acts for their Commencement, when Governour, Magistrates and the Ministers from all parts, with all sorts of schollars, and others in great num- bers were present and did heare their exercises ; which were Latine and Greeke Orations, and Declamations, and Hebrew Analasis, Grammaticall, Logicall and Rhetoricall of the Psalms; And their answers and disputations in Logicall, Ethicall, Physicall, and Meta- physicall questions ; and so were found worthy of the first degree (commonly called Bachelour pro more Academiarum in Anglia) ; Being first presented by the President to the Magistrates and Minis- ters, and by him upon their approbation, solemnly admitted unto the same degree, and a booke of arts delivered into each of their hands, and the power given them to read Lectures in the hall upon
* Fixing the founding in 1638.
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any of the arts, when they shall be thereunto called, and a liberty of studying in the library."
Commencement continued to be celebrated as a red-letter day, second only to the republican anniversary of the Fourth of July. The merry-makings under the tents and awnings erected within the College grounds, for the entertainment of the guests, who had assembled to do honor to the literary triumphs of their friends or relatives, were completely eclipsed by the saturnalia going on without on the neighboring Common. This space was covered with booths, within which the hungry and thirsty might find refreshment, or the unwary be initiated into the mysteries of sweat-cloth, dice, or roulette. Side-shows, with performing monkeys, dogs, or perhaps a tame bear, less savage than his human tormentors, drew their gaping multi- tudes, ever in movement, from point to point. Gaming was freely indulged in, and the Maine Law was not. As the day waxed, the liquor began to produce its legitimate results, swearing and fighting taking the place of the less exciting ex- hibitions. The crowd surged around the scene of each pugilistic encounter, upsetting the booths, and vociferating encouragement to the combatants. The best man emerged with battered nose, eyes swelled and inflamed, his clothes in tatters, to receive the plaudits of the mob and the pledge of victory in another bowl of grog, while the vanquished sneaked away amid the jeers and derision of the men and the hootings of the boys. These orgies, somewhat less violent at the beginning of the present century, were by degrees brought within the limits of decency, and finally disappeared altogether. This was one of those " good old time " customs which we have sometimes known recalled with long-drawn sigh and woful shake of the head over our own days of State police, lemonade, and degeneracy. During the early years of the Revolution, and as late as 1778, there was no public Commencement at Harvard.
Dress was a matter to which students gave little heed at the beginning of the century. The College laws required them to wear coats of blue-gray, with gowns as a substitute, in warm weather, - except on public occasions, when black gowns were
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permitted. Little does your spruce young undergraduate of to-day resemble, in this respect, his predecessor, who went about the College grounds, and even the village, attired in summer in a loose, long gown of calico or gingham, varied in winter by a similar garment of woollen stuff, called lambskin. With a cocked hat on his head, and peaked-toed shoes on his feet, your collegian was not a bad counterpart of Dominie Sampson in dishabille, if not in learning. Knee-breeches began to be dis- carded about 1800 by the young men, but were retained by a few of the elders until about 1825, when pantaloons had so far established themselves that it was unusual to see small-clothes except upon the limbs of some aged relic of the old régime. Top-boots, with the yellow lining falling over, and cordovans, or half-boots, made of elastic leather, fitting itself to the shape of the leg, belonged to the time of which we are writing. The tendency, it must be admitted, has been towards improvement, and the present generation fully comprehends how
" Braid claith lends fouk an unca heeze ; Maks mony kail-worms butterflees ; Gies mony a doctor his degrees, For little skaith ; In short you may be what you please, W'i guid braid claith."
An example of the merits of dress was somewhat ludicrously presented by a colloquy between two Harvard men who arrived at eminence, and who were as wide apart as the poles in their attention to personal appearance. Theophilus Parsons was a man very negligent of his outward seeming, while Harrison Gray Otis was noted for his fine linen and regard for his apparel. The elegant Otis, having to cross-examine a witness in court whose appearance was slovenly in the extreme, commented upon the man's filthy exterior with severity, and spoke of him as a " dirty fellow," because he had on a dirty shirt. Parsons, whose witness it was, objected to the badgering of Otis.
" Why," said Otis, turning to Parsons, with ill-concealed irony, " how many shirts a week do you wear, Brother Par- sons ? "
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" I wear one shirt a week," was the reply. " How many do you wear ? "
" I change my shirt every day, and sometimes oftener," said Otis.
" Well," retorted Parsons, "you must be a 'dirty fellow ' to soil seven shirts a week when I do but one."
There was a sensation in the court-room, and Mr. Otis sat down with his plumage a little ruffled.
" For though you had as wise a snout on, As Shakespeare or Sir Isaac Newton, Your judgment fouk would hae a doubt on, I'll tak my aith, Till they would see ye wi' a suit on O' guid braid claith."
The silken "Oxford Caps," formerly worn in public by the collegians, are well remembered. These were abandoned, in public places, through the force of circumstances alone, as they drew attentions of no agreeable nature upon the wearer when he wandered from the protecting ægis of his Alma Mater. In the neighboring city, should his steps unfortunately tend thither, the sight of his headpiece at once aroused the war-cries of the clans of Cambridge Street and the West End. " An Oxford Cap ! an Oxford Cap !" reverberated through the dirty lanes, and was answered by the instant muster of an ill-omened rabble of sans-culottes. Stones, mud, and unsavory eggs were showered upon the wretched " Soph," whose conduct on these occasions justified the derivation of his College title. Sometimes he stood his ground to be pummelled until within an inch of taking his degree in another world, and finally to see his silken helmet borne off in triumph at the end of a broomstick ; generally, however, he obeyed the dictates of discretion and took incon- tinently to his heels. At sight of these ugly black bonnets, worthy a familiar of the Inquisition, the whole neighborhood seemed stirred to its centre with a frenzy only to be assuaged when the student doffed his obnoxious casque or fled across the hostile border.
The collegians, with a commendable esprit du corps, and a
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valor worthy a better cause, clung to their caps with a chivalric devotion born alone of persecution. They learned to visit the city in bands instead of singly, but this only brought into action the reserves of " Nigger Hill," and enlarged the war. The North made common cause with the West, and South End with both. The Harvard boys armed themselves, and some dangerous night-affrays took place in the streets, for which the actors were cited before the authorities. Common-sense at length put an end to the disturbing cause, in which the stu- dents were obliged to confess the game was not worth the candle. The Oxford Caps were hung on the dormitory pegs, and order reigned in Warsaw.
It is not designed to enumerate the many distinguished sons of Old Harvard whose names illuminate history. This is now being done in a series of biographies from an able pen .* One of the first class of graduates was George Downing, who went to England and became Chaplain to Colonel Okey's regiment, in Cromwell's army, - the same whom he afterwards betrayed in order to ingratiate himself in the favor of Charles II. He was a brother-in-law of Governor Bradstreet and a good friend to New England. Doctor Johnson characterized him as the " dog Downing." He was ambassador to the states of Hol- land, and notwithstanding his reputation, soiled by the betrayal of some of his republican friends to the block, was a man of genius and address. No other evidence is needed to show that he was a scoundrel than the record of his treatment of his mother, in her old age, as related by herself : -
" But I am now att ten pounde ayear for my chamber and 3 pound for my seruants wages, and haue to extend the other tene pound a year to accomadat for our meat and drinck ; and for my clothing and all other necessaries I am much to seeke, and more your brother Georg will not hear of for me; and that it is onely couetousness that maks me aske more. He last sumer bought an- other town, near Hatly, called Clappum, cost him 13 or 14 thou- sand pound, and I really beleeue one of us 2 are couetous."
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