USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 18
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blind to the lack of true hospitality when it exhibited itself in others. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe in her delightfully written Reminis- cences tells with sufficient point of the enter- tainment she and her husband received at the hands of the poet Wordsworth. After their letter of introduction had been presented a note came inviting them to take tea with the poet and his family that evening. When they arrived, however, the sole topic of conversation was a money loss the Wordsworths had recently sustained by an investment in American secur- ities, - and the tea to which they had been bidden proved to be merely a cup of tea served without a table. Yet even this meagre hos- pitality was lavish in comparison with that of the Bostonian who, in return for the cordial entertainment that had been offered him and his while in Europe invited his former hostess to call at his house on a Sunday evening after tea, at which time his wife and himself would go with her to church and give her a place in their pew !
It was such a society as this that Mrs. Harri- son Gray Otis attempted to humanize when, with European salons in mind, she threw her house open every Saturday afternoon and every Thursday evening to all her set - and many more. The stirring philanthropic interests of the day she embraced with ardor, and she soon
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proved that, where people of congenial tastes and real mental alertness are met together, there can be true hospitality on slender physical nutriment. For the "mighty bowls of hot stewed oysters " she substituted tea and cakes. And she even served " this and nothing more " at her home at the corner of Mt. Vernon and Joy Streets, during the week when she kept open house in celebration of the opening of the Boston and Montreal road and had President Fillmore and Lord Elgin among her guests! Mrs. Otis dared to be herself - always.
When the spirit moved she even ventured to write a book, thus blandly disregarding those who would place all literary women beyond the pale. The Barclays of Boston is interesting reading by reason of its reflection of the social theories of its author. "From the first days of their marriage," it declares, " Mr. and Mrs. Barclay were always at home in the evening, cheerful and happy, and delighted to see pleasant faces around them. This being perfectly under- stood, and also, from its great rarity, extremely appreciated, there was no lack of visitors. In- deed, no one can exaggerate the value of such a house as theirs had always been in a com- munity where so few are opened in the same way. They conferred a great social blessing on many who, having no ties of kindred, looked upon their fireside as an oasis in the desert;
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their house was, also, a resource for strangers; they received all the nobilities who passed through the city, and thereby derived a very signal advantage from foreign intercourse, which does a vast deal, in America, toward rubbing off the dust collected by describing, diurnally, the same circle of opinions and feelings.
" Everything was in daily use in Mrs. Bar- clay's home; she had no one article of table equipage that was better than another, and this saved a world of trouble, time and temper, the two latter of dominant importance in all households; for, if there is a bit of porcelain that excels another, it is sure never to be forth- coming, in an American establishment, when it is most required. Her dinners were excellent, and served unpretendingly, she having no desire to ape foreign fashions with a few serv- ants, and to adopt the affectation of forcing three waiters to perform the service of thirty. If any shortcomings occurred, they were never perceived, or commented upon, simply because there was no ostentatious pretension.
" Mr. Barclay, being eminently hospitable, invited his friends freely; his wife gave them a gracious welcome, and he a hearty one; and their guests were not confined to the prosperous and those who revelled in luxuries, but em- braced poor scholars, artists, and others, to whom a well-appointed repast was a boon
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indeed, and the charm of social intercourse a greater one still."
It was, however, in the sanitary commission work of the Civil War period that Madame Otis, as she came to be called, contributed what was perhaps the greatest service of her life. But here again she did things in her own way regardless of what " society " might say. For when there was a chance to make five dollars for the Northern cause by selling a kiss to a sailor she sold the kiss. At the beginning of the war she had been asked to take charge of the Evans House, which had been turned over to the city of Boston for the soldiers' use, and she did this, as she did everything, with marked executive ability. Hundreds of thousands of dollars passed through her hands and she herself gave $50,000, as well as all her time, to this fund for the soldiers. It is said that she never missed a day at her post throughout the war, never bought a new gown during that period and usually walked to the office to save cab hire. It was she, too, who, by opening her house for a public reception each Washington's Birthday, drew public attention to the desira- bility of making that day a national holiday. The honoring of Washington particularly ap- pealed to her and she worked for it in many ways. She helped secure funds for the purchase of Thomas Ball's equestrian statue of Washing-
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ton; 1 and for the purchase of Washington's tomb at Mt. Vernon she gave a ball at the Boston Theatre, on March 4, 1859, which is chronicled as being " more splendid in its array of fair women and brave men, and nobler in its purpose than anything which has ever preceded it." This affair netted ten thousand dollars.
It was for the Boston Theatre ball of a year later, - that given in 1860 to the then Prince of Wales, the late Edward VII of England, - that Mrs. Otis's mantua-makers designed for her the famous gown of old lace and purple velvet shown in the life-size portrait of her by George P. A. Healy herewith reproduced.
The first waltz ever danced on an American floor had for its participants Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis and Lorenzo Papanti. Since the annals of Boston society were for years bound up with the dancing academy of the Papantis, - father and son, - we may well enough pause here to consider this man's romantic career. Scion of a noble house of Colonna, Lorenzo Papanti, because a younger son, became an officer in the royal guard of the Duke of Tus- cany as a means to making his own way in the world. While in this capacity he com- mitted a political misdemeanor which soon obliged him to flee his native land in the night.
1 Characterized by Wendell Phillips as a "riding-master on a really good horse, heroically staring up Commonwealth Avenue."
MRS. HARRISON GRAY OTIS.
From the painting by G. P. A. Healy, in the possession of the Bostonian Society.
MRS. JULIA WARD HOWE. From the bust by Clevenger, in the possession of the Howe family. Page 310.
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With barely time to get letters of introduction and to take clothing, - in which he did not fail to include his full court regalia, however, - he made his way to the old frigate Ironsides, the officers of which, knowing his story, took him aboard as a member of their band. In Boston he presented his letters and for a time eked out a scanty livelihood playing in the orchestra of the Boston Theatre. Then, with the help of his society friends, he founded Papanti's dancing academy. For a long term of years the little assembly room at 23 Tremont Street, opposite the old Boston Museum, was the scene of many juvenile trials and youthful triumphs. For
there the two Papantis, father and son, succes- sively taught little slippered feet to glide and not stumble, and awkward but well-meaning Boston youths how to bear themselves with courtly grace. Hundreds of memories centre about the tall spare man who there called out his directions over his violin bow and who was never visible save in the impressive elegance of a dress coat and a well-fitting curly wig.
But though Papanti was teaching Boston's young people to dance, social life was still very simple in the quaint old city. Few people went away in summer, previous to 1850, and those who did strayed not further than Nahant, which Tom Appleton had wittily dubbed " cold roast Boston." Many parts of Boston
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were still green with gardens, and in the softly cool evenings of September people sat on their front door-steps after the early tea necessitated by the one o'clock dinner and perhaps sang together to the accompaniment of a guitar. On " the Fourth " the leading women of the city stood on their own house-balconies and enjoyed the floral processions directed by Rev. Charles Barnard of what was then the Warren Street Chapel. Life was simple for the most part. Girls walked to parties in couples and young men " saw them home." This was not a lengthy or involved process. For Boston was a city every part of which was then within ten minutes of every other part.
Arlington Street was considered "very far out." Even as late as 1860 everything relating to the Back Bay was so new that, for a long time, Dr. Gannett's church, just beyond the Public Garden, was referred to as " the Federal Street Society's new edifice." It was in one of the grand mansions on Arlington Street that a reception was held one evening for Fanny Kemble, to which Mrs. Stowe went in the simple little black gown which she had worn on a train-journey made for the purpose of spending the day with her friend, Mrs. Fields. Mrs. Kemble was in an elaborate costume of purple and silver brocade, but Mrs. Stowe's black stuff gown passed in the crowd all right.
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Which would seem to prove that such things occasionally happened.
Mrs. George Ticknor ruled as a " social queen " in the famous house at the head of Park Street at which Lafayette had stayed in 1824. Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, who herself shared in the gracious hospitality exercised in this hospitable mansion by the wife of the Spanish historian, declares that the one Boston woman - with the exception of Emily Marshall - upon whom the appellation of social queen may rightly be bestowed is Mrs. Ticknor. " From the beginning of her married life until her death she was a queen. There was only one Mrs. Ticknor, by implication, and greatly honored were those who had access to her house, - to the parlor and to the library upstairs, the throne room as it were. There she and Mr. Ticknor received nightly. About half-past nine the waiter brought in a tray of cakes and ices, sometimes cakes only. The nobility and the scholars of Europe met there as nowhere else. Prescott, Motley, G. S. Hillard were often to be seen. I have never seen any society equal to what was there, quiet cordiality shading off into degrees of welcome, high-bred courtesy in discussion and courtly grace of movement. Politics were discussed, never scan- dal. The basis of life was character and litera- ture, its usage was good English and deferential
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manners. As years passed on the daughter, Anna, founded (in 1873) the 'Society To En- courage Study at Home,' which was all done by correspondence. It was study at home for home. No one ever posed or worked for a career. Mrs. Ticknor was actively interested in the health of the students and it was all wonderful and graceful. But the annual meetings at her house were never held in the library. That was for the intimate circle of the elect."
As soon as Mrs. Howe - who in 1844 had gone with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, to live in the vicinity of the institution the noble doctor was carrying on in South Boston for the education of the blind - took up a Boston residence she, too, by virtue of her wit and charm became a " social queen," a distinction which she continued to enjoy until the end of her long life. The few who were really her intellectual kindred had, of course, journeyed faithfully to South Boston to see her. None the less, she discovered and wittily remarked that "in Boston Love crosses a bridge but Friendship stops at the Common." When there was no longer a bridge to cross Mrs. Howe's drawing-room, at 13 Chestnut Street, became a favorite gather- ing-place for choice varieties of the genus Bostonian. It was while living here- though
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she was in Washington and not Boston at the time -that Mrs. Howe wrote her " Battle Hymn."
This house must always be chiefly associated, however, with Mrs. John T. Sargent and her assembly of Transcendentalists. Charles Lamb's remark about the fat woman seated in the doorway that "it was a shrewd zephyr that could escape her " had its application to the person of distinction who could get in - and out - of Boston without going to the Radical Club. Not that Mrs. Sargent per- secuted her lions or tracked them worryingly to their lairs. Instead she made her house on the Monday when the Radical Club was meeting there a resort so intellectually stimulating that no one wished to escape. The Radical Club had its origin in the spring of the year '67 in the growing desire of certain ministers and lay- men for larger liberty of faith, fellowship and communion. It had no formal organization and its members represented all religious de- nominations. The Club's first meeting was held at 17 Chestnut Street, the residence of Rev. Cyrus Bartol, and for a time it oscillated between that number and thirteen. But it never went outside of Chestnut Street and it soon came to regard the roomy parlor of Mrs. Sargent's home as its permanent headquarters. Then it grew in fame and numbers until at its
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closing session in 1880,1 nearly two hundred were present.
A journalist once remarked that the primary distinction of this club was that it survived for years without a kitchen. In other words it had a real reason for being. But it would be difficult to say how much of its success the club owed to Mrs. Sargent and to the gentle stimulus of the home in which it met. One habitué has spoken of the beautiful old harp in the corner of the spacious parlors and, on the wall, the life-size picture of Mr. Sargent's mother playing upon it; of the Gobelin tapestry and other famous relics of Paris's splendor and sorrow during the sad days of 1789. All the furnishings of the old parlors came originally from the Tuileries and were sent over by Col. James Swan, an ancestor of the Sargents, and the close friend and financial agent of the nobility and royalty in France. Two ships were loaded with these furnishings the purpose in sending them being to equip suitable dwelling places in America for many of the nobility who were to escape from France and take temporary harbor here. The plan miscarried and the con- tents of the first ship found their way, long after- wards, to the parlor of the house on Chestnut Street.
1 Mrs. Sargent died at the New York residence of her son, Frank- lin Haven Sargent, May 31, 1904, aged 77.
PARLOR AT 13 CHESTNUT STREET IN WHICH THE RADICAL CLUB MET.
MRS. JOHN T. SARGENT, LEADING SPIRIT OF THE RADICAL CLUB
From a photograph in the possession of Franklin Haven Sargent,
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THE BACK BAY FROM THE PUBLIC GARDEN, 1860.
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There they formed the background for the most extraordinary gatherings ever held in an American city. Merely to name those who read papers, contributed to the discussion or sat quietly listening during the sessions of the Radical Club would be to call again the roll of the New England intellectuals. Emerson, who was quite a regular attendant at the beginning of the club's career, stopped going as soon as the meetings were opened to the press because he had an unconquerable aversion to being reported. He never could be brought to believe that interest had anything to do with the desire to know of the deliberations of the club; he set it all down to an improper curiosity which ought to be snubbed instead of humored. But those who were then reporters became later very distinguished in literature. Louise Chan- dler Moulton, whose brilliant accounts of the club's activities, published in the New York Tribune, did much to increase its fame and influence, Nora Perry, Grace Greenwood, Frank Sanborn, Samuel Bowles and Kate Field, all of whom helped the public to understand what the club was about. Frank Sanborn's address on the very modern subject of the newspaper is delightful reading as sketched in Mrs. Sar- gent's little volume, Reminiscences of the Radi- cal Club. Mostly, however, the topics discussed were much more abstruse than this.
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In 1873 the club gave a reception for Emerson and around the bright wood fire were gathered, among others, Whittier, Longfellow, Wendell Phillips, and the elder Henry James. Occasion- ally a big memorial festival would be held at the club, as on the occasion when Carl Schurz, Longfellow, James Freeman Clarke and many more assembled at a meeting in honor of Charles Sumner who had just passed away. Many eloquent and incisive things were said; but it is Whittier's quaint remark that gets quoted in connection with the affair, for, upon being asked to add his tribute he replied that he had no skill in speaking and that the idea of saying anything after all those delightful reminiscences reminded him of the dying peti- tion of the captain of the Dumfries rifles, " Don't let the awkward squad fire a salute over my grave."
Even when the club was not in session choice spirits assembled in these famous old parlors. Franklin Haven Sargent of New York has told me of his boyish memories of those childhood days when everybody of distinction in the world of art and literature sought out his sweet mother in her Chestnut Street home: "the Longfellow brothers, so quiet and gentle; Walt Whitman with his shaggy hair and ruddy face, who called me, as did Charlotte Cushman, ' the young Greek.' Miss Cushman was a
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great friend of my mother's. I remember her as a devoted whist player and tiring to me because I had to wait while she and my parents and William I. Bowditch played cards evenings.
" Kate Field, - strong-minded, - I liked be- cause she was of the theatre; Anna Dickinson, so awfully herself and badly dressed, a great chum of my father's; John Weiss, the nearest to genius of them all except - Emerson - so abstract yet human, sweet and deep. The sight of his regularly failing memory and faculties was painful. Colonel Higginson, gentleman and rhetorician, par excellence; my father, of the good old school, above all the gentleman; Mary Mapes Dodge, my mother's closest friend, brimming over with human nature and jokes.
One night, to my mother's dismay, the Chinese professor at Harvard stayed, after the others had gone, until 2 A. M .; finally, in des- peration, she offered him a cup of tea - and one sip and he was gone - the Chinese con- vention. -. . And more than anyone else I remember Wendell Phillips, my father's dearest friend, a wonderful orator and talker whom I revered for the martyrdom he had been through, a fanatic, but the most honest man I ever knew."
Such were some of those whom Mrs. Sargent drew about her fireside at 13 Chestnut Street. Certainly, she deserves a place among the social
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queens of the period. For she was the only woman who succeeded, during the most brilliant phase of Boston's life, in bringing together and holding its picked representatives of both sexes. And this she seems to have accomplished not so much by the possession of a brilliant mind as by virtue of that far greater gift, a warm and loving woman-heart.
CHAPTER XI
THE OLD TIME HOSTELRIES AND THEIR STAGES
I I N the early days of New England 1 the tavern or "ordinary," was very closely connected with the meeting-house. At the time this relation was a necessary one, for it was only by thawing out at a tavern, before and after church, that human nature could pre- pare for and recover from the long dry sermons given in an unheated meeting-house. Was it because there was so much thought of a fiery hereafter in the religion of long-ago, I wonder, that the setting for devotional exercise was never a warm place? Or was it all merely a quiet arrangement to benefit the tavern-keeper?
Certainly, the discomforts of staging bene- fited the tavern-keeper. And the shrewd Yankees who started our early stage lines were not long in setting up, at convenient intervals along their routes, houses which in fact as well as on their sign-boards dispensed " refreshment for man and beast." Some who are always sighing for " the good old times " like, even in this twentieth century, to linger upon the
1 See Among Old New England Inns.
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charms of stage-coach days, the picturesque driver skilfully controlling his four handsome horses and heralding his approach by the wind- ing of a bugle, the bustle of interest as the stage arrived at each new village and the lure of shady roads with their fascinating vista of ever-changing horizon. Yet there were many disagreeable things about staging. Though Longfellow could spin such " Tales of The Way- side Inn " as to make us fairly ache for a share in the life of that hostelry, in prose, he thus refers to his first acquaintance with the place: " The stage left Boston about three o'clock in the morning, reaching the Sudbury Tavern for breakfast, a considerable portion of the route being travelled in total darkness and without your having the least idea who your companions might be!"
Samuel Breck tells us that, early in the nineteenth century, he was sometimes nine days going from New York to Boston.1 Yet Breck lived to look back on these as " good old times."
-- For the forced familiarity of the railroad trains was very distasteful to him. We find him writing, on July 22, 1835, " This morning at nine o'clock I took passage in a railroad car from Boston for Providence. Five or six other cars were attached to the 'loco' and uglier
1 Cf. Journey of Madam Knight in Among Old New England Inns.
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boxes I do not wish to travel in. They were huge carriages made to stow away some thirty human beings who sit cheek by jowl as best they can. Two poor fellows, who were not much in the habit of making their toilet, squeezed me into a corner, while the hot sun
drew from their garments a villainous compound of smells made up of salt fish, tar, and molasses.
"By and by, just twelve - only twelve - bouncing factory girls were introduced, who were going on a party of pleasure to Newport. ' Make room for the ladies,' bawled out the superintendent. 'Come, gentlemen, jump up on the top; plenty of room there.' 'I'm afraid of a bridge knocking my brains out,' said a passenger. Some made one excuse and some another. . The whole twelve were, however, introduced and soon made themselves at home sucking lemons and eating green apples."
And then, nothing being more difficult to sympathize with, on a railroad train, than your fellow-passenger's desire to eat fruit, Breck proceeds to give expression to the pent-up snobbery of his soul: "The rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd together in this modern improvement in travelling. . . . Steam, so use- ful in many respects, interferes with the comfort of travelling, destroys every salutary distinction in society, and overturns by its whirligig power
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the once rational, gentlemanly and safe way of getting along on a journey.
" Talk of ladies on board a steamboat or in a railroad car! There are none. I never feel like a gentleman there. . . . To restore herself to her caste, let a lady move in select company at five miles an hour and take her meals in comfort at a good inn. . The old-fashioned way, with one's own horses and carriages, with liberty to dine decently in a decent inn and be master of one's movements, with the delight of seeing the country and getting along rationally, that is the mode to which I cling." As a clinch- ing argument Mr. Breck might have quoted, and still been in character, the remark of that old-school blood who thus summarized his resentment of the railway as an institution: " You got upset in a coach - and there you were! You get upset in a rail-car and, damme, where are you? "
Josiah Quincy, who made the journey to New York by stage in 1826 in the company of Judge Story, thought himself very fortunate to reach his destination (travelling only in the " day-time ") on the fourth day in time for a late dinner. "The stage left Boston at 3 a. m. and at 2 A. M. a man was sent around to the houses of those who were booked for the passage. His instructions were to knock, pull the bell, and shout and disturb the neighborhood as
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much as possible, in order that the person who was to take the coach might be up and dressed when it reached his door. When the coach arrived there was no light inside and passengers waited until daybreak before they could see who were their fellow passengers."
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