USA > Massachusetts > Middlesex County > Old landmarks and historic fields of Middlesex > Part 3
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Dr. Morse engaged much in controversy, Unitarianism hav- ing begun publicly to assert itself in his time, and in some in- stances to obtain control of the old Orthodox houses of wor- ship. The struggle of Dr. Holmes to maintain himself against the wave of new ideas forms a curious chapter in religious con- troversial history. The energy with which Jedediah Morse engaged in the conflict seriously affected his health, but he kept his church true to its original, time-honored doctrines. Dr. Morse, who was the townsman and classmate of Dr. Holmes, is understood to have introduced the latter at Cambridge.
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
On some occasion, Dr. Gardiner of Trinity Church, Boston, who, by the way, was a pupil of the celebrated Dr. Parr, went to preach in the church at Cambridge, and, as a matter of course, many of the professors went to hear him. Unitarianism had ap- peared in the Episcopal, as well as the Congregational Church.
Dr. Gardiner began his discourse somewhat in this wise : " My brethren, there is a new science discovered ; it is called Biblical criticism. Do you want to know what Biblical criti- cism is ? I will tell you.
' Off with his head ! So much for Buckingham.' Cooke.
' Off with his head ! So much for Buckingham.' Kemble.
Mr. Cooper says neither are right, but that it should be ren- dered, ' Off with his head ! so much for Buckingham !' My friends that is Biblical criticism." We leave the reader to imagine the effect upon the grave and reverend professors of the College.
Dr. Morse was sole editor of the Panoplist from 1806 to 1811, and was prominent in establishing the Andover Theo- logical Seminary. He engaged at times in missionary work, the records of marriages performed by him at the Isles of Shoals being still in existence there. One of his last labors was a visit to the Indian tribes of the Northwest, under the direction of the government, a report of which he published in 1832.
At the time of the excitement in New England against secret societies, when the most direful apprehensions existed that religion itself was to be overthrown by Free-Masonry, the Illuminati, or bugbears of a similar character, Dr. Morse was one of the overseers of Harvard College and a distinguished alarmist. As such, he opposed with all his might the proposal of the Phi Beta Kappa Society to publish "The Literary Mis- cellany," which afterwards appeared under their auspices. It was conjectured that this literary association, with its then unrevealed Greek initials, was an off-shoot of some order of Masonry, and hence the Doctor's vigilance to prevent the en- trance of any corrupting influences within the walls of the seminary.
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The old parsonage which was the residence of Dr. Morse was situated in what is now Harvard Street, between the City Hall and Church, the house standing quite near the latter, while the garden extended down the hill on the ground now occupied by Harvard Row, quite to the City Hall. It was a two-story wooden house, removed many years since from its historic site on the ancient Town Hill.
Dr. Morse's more distinguished son, Samuel Finley Breese, known to all the world for making electricity the instantaneous messenger of his will, has now, as we write, been dead scarcely more than a twelvemonth. His eulogy, thanks to his own in- vention, was pronounced simultaneously from St. Petersburg to California ; his memory received the homage of crowned heads, as well as of our own republican court, such as has rarely, if ever, been accorded to any explorer in the pathways of science. As the savans of the Old World have in times past bowed be- fore a Franklin, a Rumford, and a Bowditch, they have once more been called upon to inscribe in their high places of honor the name of an American.
Samuel F. B. Morse was not born at the parsonage, but in the house of Thomas Edes, on Main Street, to which Dr. Morse had removed while his own roof was undergoing some repairs. The house, which is also noted as the first erected in Charlestown after its destruction in 1775, stands at the corner of Main Street Court at a little distance from the Unitarian Church.
Young Morse seconded his father's passion for geography by one as strongly marked for drawing, and the blank margin of his Virgil occupied far more of his thoughts than the text. His penchant for art, exhibited in much the same manner as Allston's, his future master, did not meet with the same en- couragement. A caricature, founded upon some fracas among the students at Yale, and in which the faculty were burlesqued, was seized, handed to President Dwight, and the author, who was no other than our friend Morse, called up. The delinquent received a severe lecture upon his waste of time, violation of college laws, and filial disobedience, without exhibiting any
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signs of contrition ; but when at length Dr. Dwight said to him, " Morse you are no painter ; this is a rude attempt, a com- plete failure," he was touched to the quick, and could not keep back the tears. On being questioned by his fellow-students as to what Dr. Dwight had said or done, "He says I am no painter !" roared Morse, cut to the heart through his darling passion.
A canvas, executed by Morse at the age of nineteen, of the Landing of the Pilgrim's may be seen at the Charlestown City Hall. He accompanied Allston to Europe, where he became a pupil of West, and, it is said, also, of Copley, though the latter died two years after Morse reached England. He exhibited his "Dying Hercules" at the Royal Academy in 1813, re- ceiving subsequently from the London Adelphi a prize gold medal for a model of the same in plaster. In 1815 he returned to America and pursued portrait painting, his price being fifteen dollars for a picture. Morse became a resident of New York about 1822, and painted Lafayette when the latter visited this country.
Various accounts have been given of the manner in which Morse first imbibed the idea of making electricity the means of conveying intelligence, the one usually accepted being that, while returning from Europe in 1832, on board the packet ship Sully, a fellow-passenger related some experiments he had witnessed in Paris with the electro-magnet, which made such an impression upon one of his auditors that he walked the deck the whole night. Professor Morse's own account was that he gained his knowledge of the working of the electro-magnet while attending the lectures of Dr. J. Freeman Dana, then professor of chemistry in the University of New York, delivered before the New York Athenæum. "I witnessed," says Morse, "the effects of the conjunctive wires in the different forms described by him in his lectures, and exhibited to his audience. The electro-magnet was put in action by an intensity battery ; it was made to sustain the weight of its armature, when the conjunctive wire was connected with the poles of the battery, or the circuit was closed ; and it was made 'to drop its load ' upon opening the circuit."
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Morse's application to the Twenty-Seventh Congress for aid to put his invention to the test of practical illustration was only carried by a vote of eighty-nine to eighty-seven. The in- ventor went to Washington with exhausted means and heartsick with despondency. Two votes saved, perhaps, this wonderful discovery from present obscurity. With the thirty thousand dollars he obtained, Morse stretched his first wires from Wash- ington to Baltimore, - we say wires, because the principle of the ground circuit was not then known, and only discovered, we believe, by accident, so that a wire to go and another to return between the cities was deemed necessary by Morse to complete his first circuit. The first wire was of copper.
The first message, now in the custody of the Connecticut Historical Society, was dictated by Miss Annie G. Ellsworth. With trembling hand Morse must have spelled out the words,-
" WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT !"
With an intensity of feeling he must have waited for the "aye, aye " of his distant correspondent. It was done; and the iron thread, freighted with joy or woe to men or nations, now throbs responsive to the delicate touch of a child. It now springs up from the desert in advance of civilization ; its spark o'erleaps the ocean and well-nigh spans the globe itself. No man can say that its destiny is accomplished ; but we have lived to grasp the lightning and play with the thunderbolt.
The telegraph was at first regarded with a superstitious dread in some sections of the country. Will it be credited that in a Southern State a drouth was attributed to its occult influences, and the people, infatuated with the idea, levelled the wires with the ground ? The savages of the plains have been known to lie in ambush watching the mysterious agent of the white man, and listening to the humming of the wires, which they vaguely associated with evil augury to themselves. So common was it for the Indians to knock off the insulators with their rifles, in order to gratify their curiosity in regard to the "singing cord," that it was, at first, extremely difficult to keep the lines in re- pair along the Pacific railway.
As you go towards Charlestown Neck. when about half-way
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
from the point where Main and Warren Streets unite, you see at your right hand the old-fashioned two-story wooden house in which Charlotte Cushman passed some of her early life.
She was born in Boston, in that part of the town ycleped the North End, and in an old house that stood within the present enclosure of the Hancock School yard. It should not be forgotten that that sterling actor, John Gilbert, was born in the next house. Here young John spoke his first piece and here the great curtain was rung up for little Charlotte. When the lights shall be at last turned off, and darkness envelop the stage, there will be two wreaths of immortelles to be added to the tributes which that famed old quarter already claims for its long roll of celebrated names.
It is related that, when a child, Charlotte was one day in- cautiously playing on Long Wharf, where her father kept a store, and there fell into the water. She was rescued and taken home dripping wet, but instead of an ecstatic burst of joy at the safety of her darling, her mother gave her a sound whip- ping. Perhaps this was only one of those sudden revulsions which Tom Hood exemplifies in his " Lost Heir."
After her removal to Charlestown Charlotte went to Miss Austin's school. This lady was a relative of William Austin, the author of "Peter Rugg." Charlotte was a good scholar, and almost always had the badge of excellence suspended from her neck. She was very strong physically, as some of her schoolmates bear witness to this day. Although she displayed considerable aptitude as a reader, her predilection was, at this time, altogether in favor of a musical career, and she cultivated her voice assiduously to that end.
Her first appearance in public was at a social concert given at the hall No. 1 Franklin Avenue, in Boston, March 25th, 1830, where she was assisted by Mr. Farmer, Mr. John F. Pray, Messrs. Stedman, Morris, and others. She also sang at one of Mrs. Wood's Concerts, and that lady, pleased with her fine contralto voice, advised her to turn her attention to the lyric drama. Mr. Maeder, the husband of Clara Fisher, brought her out as the Countess, in Les Noces de Figaro, in April, 1835, at the Tremont Theatre.
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THE GATEWAY OF OLD MIDDLESEX.
Her voice failing, she determined to adopt the acting branch of the profession, and studied under the direction of W. E. Burton, the celebrated comedian. Having mastered the part of Lady Macbeth, she appeared with complete success at the New York theatres in this and other leading characters. At this time she brought out her youngest sister, Susan, herself assuming male parts. She was manageress of one of the Phila- delphia theatres until Mr. Macready, in 1844, invited her to accompany him in a professional tour of the Northern States, which gave her an opportunity of displaying her tragic powers to advantage.
During her tour with Macready, she played in Boston at the Old Melodeon, with scarcely a single voice of the press raised in her favor. Her benefit, at which the tragedian, with charac- teristic littleness, refused to appear, was a pecuniary loss to her. But it was during this trip that Macready said to her one day, in his brusque, pompous way, "Girl, you would do well in London." This remark was not lost on the quick-witted Yankee maiden.
The next year found her in London, but she had kept her own counsel, and even Mr. Macready did not know her inten- tion. In vain, however, she solicited an engagement, for she had neither fame nor beauty to recommend her. But at last, when she had spent almost her last farthing, - except the little sum at her banker's, laid aside to take her back home in case all else should fail, - a ray of hope appeared. Maddocks, the manager of the Princess's Theatre, proposed to her to appear in company with Mr. Forrest, who was then, like herself, seeking an opening at the London theatres. The shrewd manager thought that perhaps two American Stars might fill his house.
Charlotte's reply was characteristic of her acuteness. " Give me," she said to the manager, "a chance first. If I succeed, I can well afford to play with Mr. Forrest ; if I fail, I shall be only too glad to do so." She made her début as Bianca in Fazio. The first act, in which the dialogue is tame, passed off ominously. The audience were attentive, but undemonstrative. The actress retired to her dressing-room much depressed with
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the fear of failure. "This will never do, Sally," she remarked to her negro waiting-maid, then and still her affectionate at- tendant.
" No, indeed, it won't, miss ; but you'll fetch um bimeby," said the faithful creature. The play quietly proceeded until Bianca spoke the lines, -
" Fazio, thou hast seen Aldabella !"
Those words, in which love, anger, and jealousy were all struggling for the mastery, uttered with indescribable accent and energy, startled the audience out of its well-bred, cold- blooded propriety ; cheers filled the house, and Miss Cushman remained mistress of the situation.
She afterwards appeared in conjunction with Mr. Forrest ; but that gentleman, who had then for the nonce put a curb upon his fashion of tearing a passion to tatters, was overshadowed by her. Forrest resented the preference of the public by extreme rudeness to Charlotte on the stage, and by various unfriendly acts, which caused a rupture that was never healed. Forrest played Othello on the occasion above mentioned, Miss Cush- man sustaining the part of Emilia. Her performance was throughout intelligent, impressive, natural, without any strain- ing after effect ; while her energy, at times, completely carried the audience along with her.
By the friendship of Charles Kemble and of Mr. Phelps of Sadler's Wells she attracted the favorable notice of royalty. It is a fact as singular as it is true, that, on her return from England, Boston, the city of her birth, was the only place in which she did not at once meet a cordial reception ; but her talents compelled their own recognition and buried the few paltry detractors out of sight. She appeared at the Federal Street Theatre and won an enthusiastic verdict of popular favor within that old temple of histrionic art.
The part in which Miss Cushman has achieved her greatest reputation in this country is that of Meg Merrilies in "Guy Mannering," a creation peculiarly her own. The character, not- withstanding its repulsive features, becomes in her hands weird,
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terrible, and fascinating. Her somewhat masculine physique and angular physiognomy have given more character to the as- sumption of such male parts as Ion and Romeo than is usually the case with her sex. But Miss Cushman is a real artiste, limited to no narrow sphere of her calling. She could play Queen Catharine and Mrs. Simpson in the same evening with equal success, and retains in no small degree, though verging on threescore, the energy and dramatic force of her palmy days.
At the opening of the Cushman School in Boston, Charlotte made an extempore address to the scholars, in which she ex- plained to them her grand principle of action and the secret of her success. "Whatever you have to do," she said, "do it with all your might."
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
CHAPTER II.
AN HOUR IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD.
" There, where your argosies with portly sail,- Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood, Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,- Do over-peer the petty traffickers." Merchant of Venice.
T T HERE is a singular fascination in viewing objects created expressly for our destruction. The wounded soldier will make the most convulsive efforts to see the place where he has been struck, and if the leaden bullet which has so nearly threat- ened his life be placed in his hand, he regards it thereafter with a strange, unaccountable affection. So, when we find ourselves within the government dockyard we cannot pass by the rows of cannon gleaming in the sunshine, or the pyramids of shot and shell, without wondering how many they are destined to destroy. We have not yet learned to dispense with war, and the problem "How to kill" yet taxes the busiest brain, the most inventive genius.
Somehow, too, there is a certain consciousness the moment you set foot within any little strip of territory over which Uncle Sam exercises exclusive authority. The trig, pipe-clayed marine paces stiffly up and down before the entrance, hugging his shining musket as if it were a piece of himself, and looking straight before him, though you would feel yourself more at ease if he would look at you. The officer you see coming, in the laced cap, and to whom you would fain address yourself, never allows your eye to meet his own, but marches straight on, as he would do if he were going to storm a battery. The workmen, even, pursue their labor without the cheerful cries and chaffing which enliven the toil of their brethren outside. The
VIEW OF BUNKER HILL FROM THE NAVY YARD, BEFORE THE ERECTION OF THE MONUMENT, FROM A PAINTING MADE IN 1825.
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AN HOUR IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD.
calkers' mallets seem to click in unison, the carpenters chip thoughtfully away on the live-oak frame. Everything is syste- matic, orderly, and precise, but rather oppressive withal.
In the first years of the nation's existence the government was obliged to make use of private yards, and that of Edmund Hartt, in Boston, may be considered the progenitor of this. Several vessels of the old navy, among them the famed Con- stitution, were built there, under supervision of officers ap- pointed by the government. Henry Jackson, formerly colonel of the Sixteenth Continental Regiment, was appointed naval agent by his bosom friend, General Knox, when the latter was Secretary of War, and Caleb Gibbs, first commander of Wash- ington's famous body-guard, was made naval storekeeper, with an office in Batterymarch Street, Boston. The yard at the bottom of Milk Street was also used for naval purposes by the govern- ment.
When Admiral Montague of the royal navy was stationed in our waters, he caused a survey of the harbor to be made, and is reported on good authority to have then said, "The devil got into the government for placing the naval depot at Halifax. God Almighty made Noddle's Island on purpose for a dockyard."
In 1799 the government despatched Mr. Joshua Humphries, the eminent naval architect, to Boston, to examine the pro- posed sites. The report was favorable to Charlestown, much to the chagrin of the proprietors of Noddle's Island, now East Boston, who had reckoned on a different decision. As Mr. John Harris, the principal owner of the tract selected, and Dr. Putnam, the government agent, were unable to agree upon terms, the affair was decided by a decree of the Middlesex Court of Sessions.
The purchase made by the United States was originally called Moulton's Point, from Robert Moulton, the ship-carpen- ter ; it has also been indifferently styled Moreton's and Morton's Point, in connection with accounts of the battle of Bunker Hill, it being the place where Howe's main body landed on that day. The site also embraced what was known in old times as Dirty Marsh. The point was quite early selected for
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
a fortification, and a small battery, or, as it was then called, a sconce, was thrown up, and armed with light pieces. The guns were secretly removed by the patriots in the autumn of 1774, without exciting the least suspicion of what was taking place on board the British vessels of war in the stream. Upon the evacuation of Boston this was one of the points which Wash- ington directed his chief of artillery to fortify.
That part of the town in the neighborhood of the yard was long ago called Wapping, a circumstance which it has been thought proper to distinguish by a street of that name. In the days of the Great Rebellion this now unsavory locality could not have been much inferior to its prototype by the Thames, and poor Jack, in making his exit from the yard after a long cruise, had to run the gauntlet of all the merciless land-sharks that infested the place. At one time, however, the neighbor- hood was of quite a different cast, and some of the artisans of the yard found a convenient residence here ; among others, Josiah Barker, for thirty-four years the distinguished naval con- structor at this station, lived in Wapping Street, in a house still standing on the north side of the street as you approach the yard from Chelsea Street.
The first records of this station begin in 1815, when an aggregate of forty-four officers and men was borne on the rolls, while it is said as many as six thousand were employed here during the Rebellion. In the beginning of the year men- tioned, which was just at the conclusion of war with Great Britain, there was but a single wharf in the yard. The frigates Congress, Macedonian, Constitution, the seventy-fours Washington and Independence, and the brig Chippewa were then lying here.
A lady who visited the yard in 1824, and recorded her impres- sions, gives a somewhat humorous account of the difficulties she encountered. She says :-
" The United States Navy-Yard is likewise located in Charles- town. A few marines are also stationed here; the most trifling, abandoned-looking men, from their appearance, to be found. I applied to the Commandant, Major W-, for liberty to inspect the
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AN HOUR IN THE GOVERNMENT DOCKYARD.
interior of the yard, but this haughty bashaw sent word 'he was en- gaged, and that I must report my business to the lieutenant,' - rather a reproach to Uncle Sam. As in duty bound, I obeyed his high- ness, and called on the lieutenant, whom I found unqualified to give the information I wished to obtain ; and, after undergoing sundry indignities from these mighty men of war, I had to give up the design."
Commodore Samuel Nicholson was the first commandant of the yard, and the somewhat peculiar architecture of the house used as a residence by the commodores is a specimen of his taste, -
" The brave old commodore, The rum old commodore."
When the Constitution was building, Nicholson, who was to have her, exercised a general supervision over her construction ; though, notwithstanding anything that has been said, Colonel George Claghorn was the principal and authorized constructor.
In consequence of the narrow limits of Hartt's Yard, it had been agreed that no spectators should be admitted on the day previous to that fixed for the launch, without the permission of Captain Nicholson, Colonel Claghorn, or General Jackson. While the workmen were at breakfast Colonel Claghorn had admitted some ladies and gentlemen to view the ship, but when they attempted to go on board Nicholson forbade their enter- ing. This was communicated to Colonel Claghorn. In the af- ternoon of the same day some visitors who had been denied an entrance to the ship by Nicholson were admitted by Claghorn, who, however, was not aware that they had been previously refused permission. The captain, who was furious when he saw the men he had just turned away approaching, exclaimed to Claghorn, " D-n it ! do you know whom you have admitted, and that I have just refused them ?" The latter replied that he did not know that circumstance, but, having passed his word, they might go on board. The whole party being assem- bled on the Constitution's deck, Colonel Claghorn went up to the captain and desired, with some heat, that he might not treat these visitors as he had done the ladies in the morning; to
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HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX.
which Nicholson replied that he should say no more to them, but that he had a right to command on board his own ship. To this Claghorn rejoined that he commanded on board the ship, and that if Captain Nicholson did not like the regula- tions, he might go out of her. Upon this the parties im- mediately collared each other, and Nicholson, who carried a cane, attempted to strike his adversary, but the bystanders in- terfered and separated the belligerents. The affair was settled by mutual apologies. Nicholson died in Charlestown in 1811, and was buried under Christ Church, in Boston. It was said that Preble, who was appointed to the Constitution under Nich- olson, declined serving with him, and expressed doubts of his courage. General Knox's son, Henry Jackson Knox, was a midshipman on board Old Ironsides on her first cruise.
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