USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > One hundred years of Mount Vernon Church, 1842-1942 > Part 17
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There were the Pratts-Aunt Sarah and her sister; Aunt Sarah was short and hump-backed, and wore her gray hair in a netted chignon with a long gray curl over each shoulder. She bore her infirmity with a blithe smile and a twinkle in her blue eyes, and walked up the aisle with a cer- tain grace and dignity-I think it was the grace of God.
There were the Brewster sisters and often their sister Mrs. Howe; and her little girl with whom I used to have tea-parties in her house and mine, the cooks of each house vying with each other to make the smallest soda- biscuit and the tiniest butter balls for the children.
There were especially dear Dr. Kirk and the two maiden sisters who kept house for him in a big house on Staniford Street; and sometimes a third sister, Mrs. Centre, a widow; there I was often asked to supper all by myself. In a recess near the dining-room was a nest of little lacquered Japanese tables which I was allowed to pull out-gingerly, one by one. It was a magic performance to get them all out, and a more magic one to get them back, and they had a lovely, mysterious, chrysanthemum-y smell.
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Annie Tyler used to come and fetch me to spend the day at her house. I was always awed a little by Mrs. Tyler, who was still and stately as the two great Canton vases, tall as I was, standing one on each side of the white marble mantelpiece in the parlor on Temple Street. I remember how scandalized Annie was one day when she was bringing me home and I ran away from her and, recklessly naughty, rang all the door bells as I ran past. You see, she wasn't my mother!
There were the Stearns family, with four young daughters. There was an old gentleman who sat in a pew in front, whom I used to watch when the service seemed too long; he wore a full-bottomed dark wig, and it was my delight to watch the gray wisps drop out from under, one by one, un- til he had a little gray fringe about an inch and a half long all across the back of his neck. After I learned to tell time, the clock was a great com- fort; but I glanced at it surreptitiously, always promptly discountenanced by my mother. Rarely she let me lie down in the pew and put my head in her lap.
As I grew older, new people drifted in, of whom also I became very fond. There was "Aunt Howe" who lived just around the corner from the church, and who joined it on profession of faith at the age of eighty- two. She was the childless widow of Mr. Jabez Howe, long the French buyer of the old established firm of C. F. Hovey & Company. As a bride she went out to Paris to live. She had a big round mahogany dining-table with a tip-top; and a gold-banded white French china dinner-set, ini- tialed with a gold H. These were dated by the fact that, near the begin- ning of his reign, she was presented at the Court of King Louis Philippe who was crowned in 1830. She gave us, long after, the table and some of the china, and the ermine which had trimmed her presentation gown. She was a tiny little lady who made up in spunk what she lacked in size. She lived in a big house on Somerset Street, and in winter her niece, Miss Fannie Dickerman, and often one of the Dickerman boys kept her com- pany. She had a cook, a maid Elizabeth, and a butler, who had all grown gray in her service-the butler a short, stout, fussy, rather dour and im- portant personage. She told us once, about the arrival of a guest, who had a little square horse-hair hat-box trunk-also out of a distant past. "I told James," said she, "to take that little trunk upstairs, and he said 'he guissed he'd have to go git Elizabuth to help him'. Hn! While he'd gone to 'git Elizabuth to help him,' I picked up the trunk and carried it upstairs myself!"
With so many pews full of youngster growing up, you can imagine that it was not long before we had a very successful Young People's So- ciety, the meetings of which were known as the "Literaries." The enter-
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tainment was almost always produced entirely by home talent, and many an interesting and creditable evening was the result. The Society met usually in private homes, except when admission was by ticket for some larger and more pretentious affair. I can remember how important and pleased I was when I was allowed to be "Seven Times One" in Jean In- gelow's Songs of Seven-sitting as a preternaturally quiet little tableau under a big straw hat, on a green grass bank, and apparently pulling a petal from an artificial daisy. Another time I was oiled and covered with flour, even to my hair, as a piece of "Living Statuary" for about two minutes, shown twice-and Oh! what a sticky mess afterwards! Later, when I was old enough to be a regular member of the Society, I filled a variety of rôles: a Turkish woman in long, baggy, orange-colored trousers and a purple and gilt jacket, at a Fair of All Nations; a district schoolgirl in pigtails, a sunbonnet and a blue gingham dress; a Greek woman in a white marble temple which Dr. Hawes and I constructed with great ef- fort; "Romola" in Living Pictures; "Huldy" in The Courtin' by James Russell Lowell; the Queen Mother in Hamlet; and Oh! the cheek of it! I blush to tell it-Helen of Troy in A Dream of Fair Women.
When I was about six years old, our beloved Dr. Kirk was called home. My father said to my mother, "Very soon that child has got to get her first idea of death. I want her to get it not from some dead animal lying in the street, but from the face of Dr. Kirk; it is perfectly beautiful. Dress her and bring her to the funeral and I will take her when the service is over, and show him to her." So into a fresh frock and my Sunday coat and hat I was put, which made me feel that it was a very important oc- casion. All that I remember about it is, that after the service my father came and picked me up in his arms, and stood me upon one of the big rosewood cubes beside the pulpit steps, where I could look down upon that heavenly face. "I have brought you up here," said he, "to say good- bye to dear Dr. Kirk. We shall not see him here any more, for he has gone to be with God. I want you to see how happy and peaceful he looks."
Sir Francis Bacon says, "The first Creature of God in the workes of the Dayes was the Light of the Sense. The last was the Light of Reason, And his Sabbath Worke ever since, is the Illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed Light, upon the Face, of the Matter or Chaos; Then he breathed Light, into the Face of Man; and still he breatheth and inspir- eth Light, into the Face of his Chosen."
I have never forgotten the still moment while I gazed soberly at that God-lit face, nor ceased to thank my father for it, and for his wise and loving forestallment of any fear of death, thenceforth and forever, in both my childish and my adult mind.
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I came to Mount Vernon Church at the age of three, joined it just be- fore my eleventh birthday, and have seen its congregations change and change again; have looked upon many of its God-lit faces in farewell; but always it has been to me a place of love and friendliness, filled with the presence of the Living God.
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K
SOME BOYHOOD REMINISCENCES OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH AND OF THE BOSTON OF DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY
by
EDWARD SOUTHWORTH HAWES
I
F FIRST A BIT of topography, a little ramble over the slopes of Beacon Hill, with "notes and observations," starting from the western corner of Temple and Cambridge Streets. There are several reasons, which I hope will unfold themselves as we go on, for choosing this now forgotten spot as our point of departure.
Before beginning our travels, let us glance about us. Diagonally across Cambridge and Staniford Streets we see Dr. Kirk's house, 5 Staniford St. Down Cambridge St. is the West Church, "Dr. Bartol's Church," now a branch of the Public Libary. Just beyond is Lynde St., on the right of which, near the top of the slope, ( number 35) Deacon Crowell lived for a few years, before removing to the South End. Chester Crowell was one of my pals in the early seventies, a cousin (or was it a nephew?) of Mrs. Crowell. Irving, Deacon Crowell's eldest son, was somewhat younger than we, Oswald ("Ossie") was a small boy, and Ralph-well, I don't know whether he had yet appeared on the scene. The Crowell house had large front and back parlors; I remember a "Literary" held there, and what a gauche, bashful youngster I felt myself. So much for Lynde St. Next beyond it stood and still stands the Harrison Gray Otis house.
Now, looking again from our corner of Temple St., let us glance east- ward. Next beyond Temple is Bowdoin St., and then comes Bowdoin Square, not so spacious then as now. The Revere House, still in those days a famous hotel, was a little farther on.
Now we will start our walk up Temple St. on the right hand side. Two or three doors up, my Uncle Asa Southworth and Aunt Jane, with cousins Jennie and Lizzie, lived for a time. They also were Mount Vernonites. Uncle Asa's office was in Barristers' Hall in Court St., a rather forbidding looking building of rough granite, its name but not its aspect now pre- served in Pemberton Square. The next landmark is the dignified granite structure of Grace Church (1836), orginally Protestant Episcopal, but when that parish came to an end in 1865, converted to the service of Meth-
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odism-not that it makes, in these days, so much difference as it did once; 'tis only that between P. E. and M. E. For true religion is essentially one, and all the sects and creeds of those that worship the Great Spirit are learning by slow degrees to live and let live and to work in harmony, every one using its own forms of worship and its own methods, in the service of mankind. This is of course only a hasty digression into a very wide and important field. It needs qualification and amplification; but I think it is really connected with our subject, because it represents the spirit and the teaching, today and heretofore, of Mount Vernon Church.
The lower parts of the walls of Grace Church were a favorite place for us boys to climb about, into the adjacent grass-plot. A little above was Mr. Hagar's house, and a short way farther on we come to the corner of Derne St., where, on the site now occupied by the Suffolk Law School, stood the house in which the present writer was born, on Nov. 12, 1860.
Temple St. now ends there, but in the old days it ran on up the hill to Mt. Vernon St. For the moment however we must stop to consider Derne St. Going westward we come to a narrow street or alley running straight down to Cambridge St. This is Ridgway Lane. It affords an excellent view of the West Church. It was handy for us youngsters, for if we were not sure of the time and hoped we might stay out a little longer and still get home by the appointed limit of our play hour, we had only to run to the head of Ridgway Lane and look at the clock on Dr. Bartol's church. From there on, after passing several houses, we come to Hancock St., of which I will not speak at present.
The other side of Derne St. from Hancock to Bowdoin has been swept away to make room for the extension of the State House, and the little park. Between Hancock and Temple, with its lower façade on Derne St., and extending up the hill to within a hundred and twenty feet or so of Mt. Vernon St., was the grand old Boston Reservoir, one of the finest and most impressive pieces of architecture in the city. After the comple- tion of Chestnut Hill Reservoir it was no longer needed, it was cumber- ing a lot of ground which was wanted for the new part of the State House, and so the massive pile of granite was demolished. We were grieved to see it go, but no doubt under the circumstances the removal was fully jus- tified. It was not like the irreparable loss caused by the destruction of the John Hancock house in 1865.
We next pass rapidly through the block between Temple and Bowdoin Sts. There were houses on both sides, of which I will mention only one, that of Mr. William Frost, on the north side near Bowdoin. Mr. Frost was rather a noticeable personage in the church. He was tall and slender, and dressed with sober elegance. In the times in which I remember him he had almost lost his sight, and I think he finally became entirely blind.
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He had a voice, gentle but at the same time penetrating, and an impres- sive manner of speech. He was much interested in questions of theology and in the text and interpretation of the scriptures, and had some acquain- tance, perhaps a thorough one, with New Testament Greek. In the Fri- day evening Prayer and Conference meeting he used often to ask Dr. Herrick-Mr. Herrick then, I think-about the original Greek of some difficult passage, and whether our English version gave the true meaning of the text. This sometimes led to a learned theological discussion. Dr. Herrick was seldom at a loss, for he knew his Greek too. Occasionally they would agree to postpone the discussion for further study. To all this I listened in open-eared admiration. It was yards over my head, and I presume over the heads of most of the older people as well. But Dr. Her- rick never allowed these debates to run on very long.
Now back to Temple St. and up the hill, which here became fairly steep. On the right was the Reservoir, and the side of a house fronting on Mt. Vernon Street. In the yard behind that house stood a fine horse- chestnut tree of unusual size. On the opposite side was a row of houses. In one of them, about half way up, Deacon Tyler and his family lived. They were charming people, the Tylers. My sister and I witnessed an amusing little incident that happened in front of their house one cold snowy afternoon, though we did not learn of the amusing side until after- wards. "Over the hill" was then, as indeed it is now, the shortest way from "down-town" to-Oh no! not to the North Station, but to the Low- ell, the Eastern or the Fitchburg Depot (pronounced depo). We were sitting in our second story window at the corner of Derne watching the people as they came down. They were having a poor time, for there had been rain and sleet, it had grown colder, a film of ice had formed over the rather steeply sloping brick sidewalk, and now the snow was falling and gathering on top. They slipped, they staggered, some fell, and some took to the middle of the street. We saw one poor lady who had appar- ently been shopping; she had several parcels. In front of the Tyler house she slipped and fell. She was evidently hurt and shaken, but in a mo- ment she got to her feet, made her way to the door-steps, and sank down, a helpless looking object. A few minutes later Mr. Tyler appeared, com- ing home up the hill. We saw him stop, bend over the lady and hold a brief conversation with her. Then he gathered up her parcels, gave her his arm, and escorted her down the hill. So she was safe, and that was that. But that was not all of that. Two or three evenings after (it may have been at a church "Sociable") Mr. Tyler himself thus described the incident to a little group: "I came home that afternoon, and found a lady sitting at the foot of my doorsteps. She seemed dazed and unable to stand. So I bent down" (and he must have done some bending, for I think he was fully six
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feet tall) "and said 'Madam, are you intoxicated?' " I do not know what else was said, but he evidently gave her the help she needed, perhaps all the way to the depot. I wonder what the good Deacon would have done if she had "owned the soft impeachment." My belief is that he would have helped her just the same; he was the simplest and kindest of men. I wonder also whether Mrs. Tyler did not suggest to him afterward, very sweetly, that he might have expressed his concern somewhat differently.
Up near the top of the hill our family lived for a few years (1862- 1866), at number 80. We went back to our old house at the corner of Derne St. (61 Temple St.) in '68 or '69, and remained there for some twenty-five years, so that most of my early recollections, until I left home, centre around that spot. I have many pleasant memories of our life at number 80. I must omit most of these, but there are one or two episodes which I do want to include. One winter, perhaps '64 or '65, there was an unusually heavy storm, and in our back yard the snow was so deep that my father was able, for the children's pleasure and, I suspect, his own, to fashion a cavern, entered by a mysterious tunnel where the taller members of the family had to stoop, but lofty and spacious within. Illuminated by a kerosene lamp its glittering walls became an Aladdin's palace. That same snow-storm blocked the railways, and several of our friends and rel- atives who lived out of town came to us for refuge. We were marooned for two days, and by the end our provisions were about exhausted.
Our stay in that house covered the latter half of the Civil War. At the time of the surrender of Richmond I was not quite four and a half years old. Father came home late in the afternoon and called out as he started up the stairs, "Richmond is taken." The family was gathered in my par- ents' chamber, and Cousin Hannah Southworth (my mother's cousin, really), was so overcome with joy that she sat down hard on the bed and broke a slat. On such trifling pegs does Memory hang her precious wares.
A fortnight later Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. I remember rather vaguely the excitement and mourning that followed, the throngs of people, the black draperies. I remember being taken to church; a sermon was preached, but of that of course I have no recollection, nor even of Dr. Kirk in the pulpit. Finally a little later, as the troops came home, I remember a Massachusetts regiment marching past the house.
We now go on to the top of the hill, where Temple St. ended (or be- gan) at Mt. Vernon St. To the right on the north side of Mt. Vernon, a row of houses extended in my day to Hancock. On the other side was the back of the original Bulfinch State House. I believe some slight changes had been made, but not such as to mar the beauty of the building. At the corner of the State House grounds a little east of the head of Temple St., Mt. Vernon turned at a right angle and ran down to Beacon, opposite the
154 ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF MOUNT VERNON CHURCH
corner of the Common and the head of Park St. There was a fairly high granite wall at the right, surmounted by a tall iron fence, an admirable place for us to climb along, clinging to the railings. To the east from the head of Temple, the north side of Mt. Vernon ran straight on for some fifty feet farther. There stood two houses, and pleasant ones they must have been, looking south down the bend to the Common. Beyond them Beacon Hill Place ran through to Bowdoin St., but we will not pass through it yet. From here, of course, the easterly side of what I have called the bend of Mt. Vernon ran down to Beacon. There was a rather overpowering mansion, a grass plot, and a row of six or eight good houses on that side.
Beacon Hill Place deserves a good bit of attention, for its size. It was, for a guess, 20 feet wide and 75 or 80 long. As we enter, please notice the long bar or skeleton gate at the right, with which it could be barred off. The right side was entirely occupied by the blank wall of the Way house, a huge mansion with a great brown-stone façade on Mount Vernon St., matched by another on Bowdoin. It had to be big, to house Mr. Way's art collection, part of which, the Egyptian, is now in the Art Museum. But it is the other side of Beacon Hill Place that really concerns us. It was occupied by three very good houses, each with a grass plot in front, in the middle one of which lived one of the founders and staunch sup- porters of Mount Vernon Church, Deacon Daniel Safford, a man deeply religious, public spirited and benevolent, and at the same time a shrewd, energetic, successful man of business. His business had to do with metals and iron work. I never saw him, as he died in 1856. I know that he built the great iron fence around the Common, part of which still remains, as sturdy as ever. It is told of him that when the weather vane which shows the shifting winds (of doctrine? No.) on the spire of the Park Street Church was to be put in place, he would not risk the life of any of his workmen, but climbed to the top of the gilded ball and set the vane him- self, lifting it alone. Mrs. Safford outlived him by many years. She was a handsome, comfortable looking Mother in Israel, kind, hospitable, a Lady Bountiful. I fancy I see her now, perhaps at a "Sociable," attired in a full-skirted dress of lilac silk, with a lace shawl over her shoulders, and a large cameo, or possibly a painted brooch. Of course I may be im- agining these details of dress, but such is the picture I have in mind, and such a costume would have been appropriate to the time, and to her sta- tion in life. It must be admitted, I fear, that there were stations in life, even in Mt. Vernon Church, in those days.
I have other memories of a more personal character connected with little Beacon Hill Place, but we must really be getting on. The exit to Bowdoin St. was marked by a series of large iron posts with big smooth
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round heads, just right for easy leap frog. Exactly opposite stands the Church of the New Jerusalem. The depth to which the summit of Bow- doin St. was shaved off at the time of the last alteration is easily judged if one looks at the front of this church, under which a new supporting story had to be built. The body of the church was previously at the same level as the end of Beacon Hill Place. The history of the changes in the height and grading of the hill is most interesting. It is of course well known to antiquarians, but probably many of our citizens know nothing about it. I should like very much to write in some detail about the three peaks of Trimountain, but can only say here that the middle and highest, Sentry (Beacon) Hill was lowered about 80 feet; the eastern peak, Cot- ton (Pemberton) Hill, the summit of which was in what is now upper Pemberton Square, and somewhat lower than Sentry, was cut down the same amount; and the western, near Joy or Walnut St., lower but more spreading, was distributed to grade the slope down to the river between Beacon and Pinckney Streets.
II
We make a jump now directly to the front of Mount Vernon Church in Ashburton Place. There is no need to describe the façade; it is still there, not seriously changed. Behind it was a plain hall some twelve feet wide, with four entrances to the church; at each end of this hall were stairs, leading up to the galleries and down to the lower floor. The side rails of the stairs were supported by perfectly plain round shafts; after the sale of the building these flights were removed, and my father pro- cured one of the uprights and had an excellent cane made from it. We will not enter the church itself for the present, but will go down and start at the bottom. There was the same sort of entrance hall here as above. The Chapel was directly under the Church, but some 30 ft. narrower, and somewhat less deep. Running from the main hall along the east side of the Chapel to the back entrance of the building at the head of Allston Place, was a corridor with three rooms on the right. Let us suppose we have come up the five or six granite steps and entered by that door. First, a small vestibule, with folding doors leading to the corridor. Inside, on the right, a fairly wide space from which a narrow stairway led to the pul- pit in the church above; there were also closets, storage space, and per- haps the furnace. On our left came first Room I. That was the Church Committee Room; it was also used on Sunday for the Infant Class. Room 2 was the Young People's Room, where they had their prayer meetings and debates. Room 3 was the kitchen. A mingled odor of sanctity and coffee pervaded the corridor. The three rooms I think, were all of the same size, some 20 ft. square.
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Like most young boys (and girls too, I fancy), my chums and I were roamers; we liked to "poke around." For one thing it pleased us, when nobody was about, to steal in, perhaps by the back way like thieves and robbers, and go up the stairs that led to the pulpit. We never did anything out of the way; we merely liked to explore. The heaven of heavens was the garret. I am not dead sure how we got there, but I think the stairs went up from the gallery close by the organ. I don't remember the place as being all floored over; anyhow we had a safe, easy walk the whole length of it. In the middle was a tall cone-shaped wooden case, lined, I rather think, with metal; it may have led up to a ventilator. It was from there that the central chandelier hung, and from there it was lighted, the illumination being furnished in those days by gas. There was a door in the case, which we could open, and then from our point of vantage we had a glimpse down into the church. But our favorite place was a solitary window over the Allston Place entrance. What a view, what a height, and if in our young enthusiasm we should lean too far out, what an immeasurable distance down to those stone steps! As a matter of fact, we were very careful not to stick our necks out too far. I remember though-tell it not in Gath, lest the sensibilities of the daughters of the Philistines be shocked -that we would sometimes spit from that window, and marvel at the length of time that elapsed before the sound of the impact came back to us. We might have computed the height in feet if we had known a little elementary physics. I should guess it as not far from seventy.
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