USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Romantic days in old Boston : the story of the city and of its people during the nineteenth century > Part 22
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24
To reach the study, which was the heart of the house, one climbed a fascinating flight of winding stairs, - giving glimpses here and there of all kinds of beautiful things, Oriental rugs, pictures and bits of statuary, - or else, en- trusting one self to a tiny iron cage, was literally lifted, by a man above and a woman below, - right into the presence of the poet. Aldrich must have been a singularly fair-minded man. He and Whitman never got on - so widely differentiated in temperament were they - and I don't think the younger poet could easily have forgiven the elder for the way in which, one day at Pfaff's, he replied, to his eager, "Oh, Walt, did you know I had a poem in this
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH'S HOME AT PONKAPOG.
.
THOMAS BAJLEY ALDRICH'S STUDY, 59 MT. VERNON STREET. I'rom a photograph by Louis A. Holman.
STABLESIE
OLD BOSTON CUSTOM HOUSE IN WHICH HAWTHORNE SERVED AS A YOUNG MAN.
387
IN OLD BOSTON
week's Home Journal?" with a nonchalant, "Oh, yes, Tom. They shoved the paper under my door this morning and I heard your little tinkle." Yet on the walls of Aldrich's study, I noticed opposite a portrait of Edwin Booth a photograph of Walt Whitman!
Bancroft and Hawthorne can be more easily connected with the Boston Custom House than with any other institution of the city, for it was while the historian was collector of the Port that he gave Hawthorne that place in the government's service from which the young genius was able to save money enough to buy some stock in Brook Farm. Hawthorne, be- cause of his shy temperament and his poverty, was so obscure as to have been practically unknown in Boston during this period. His son-in-law records that his chief distinction, to the popular eye, at this time, lay in the fact that he was extremely fond of martial music and could generally be found -" a tall shapely figure rendered military by the thick mustache, - following any procession headed by a band! "
The historian Prescott belongs undeniably to Boston. The house at 55 Beacon Street in which he lived from 1845 to 1859 is still standing and is one of the most picturesque of the old homes opposite the Common. Here, he wrote the History of the Conquest of Peru and the History of the Reign of Philip the Second.
388
ROMANTIC DAYS
That Boston home of John Lothrop Motley in whose garret he, as a lad, used to play with Wendell Phillips and Tom Appleton, was on Walnut Street, but it is with the houses at 11 Chestnut Street and at 2 Park Street that the later life of the author of the Rise of the Dutch Republic is associated. Parkman, too, is identified with Chestnut Street. For nearly thirty years he occupied the house which is there numbered fifty, painstakingly working out, without the use of his eyes, his marvellous series of works dealing with France and England in North America.
One thing which has always helped to make Boston a literary centre - and will continue so to do in spite of the envious elsewhere-is its great library advantages. Colonel Higginson, when writing for Harper's Magazine the series of historical articles used by that publication in 1885, had to obtain his books in Boston and Cambridge and have them sent to New York for consultation. The collections at the Harvard College library are easily accessible to Boston literary workers, and the State Library, the Athenæum and the Boston Public Library are rich mines for those who must use many books.
The Boston Athenæum sprang from a maga- zine, which, like many another young venture of its kind, did not pay, and after six months was abandoned by its projector, Phineas Adams,
1 I
a
C
a & 0 R i
389
IN OLD BOSTON
a poor Harvard student. Its printers, Monroe & Francis, determined, however, to carry it on, and Rev. William Emerson, the father of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was invited to become its editor. Through him a number of gentlemen and scholars of the day became interested in the magazine, and after binding themselves into a club, continued it under the name Monthly Anthology and Boston Review.
There were in all nineteen of these men, and they, it appears, are entitled to be remembered as the founders of the Boston Athenæum. For they soon organized, from the profits of the magazine, and from private subscriptions, the nucleus of the library.
The "Reading Room," as it was originally called, was opened in Joy's Building on Congress Street, Jan. 1, 1807. In February of that same year the subscribers were incorporated as " pro- prietors of the Boston Athenaeum." John Sylvester, William Emerson, William S. Shaw, William Tudor, Jr., Peter O. Thacher and Edmund T. Davis being among the promoters of the undertaking.
The first officers were appointed April 7, 1807, as follows: Hon. Theophilus Parsons, president, Hon. John Davis, vice president, John Lowell, treasurer, William S. Shaw, sec- retary, Rev. William Emerson, Rev. John T. Kirkland, D. D., Peter Thacher, R. H. Gardiner
390
ROMANTIC DAYS
and Rev. J. S. Buckminster, trustees. To these were added, July 16, Hon. Harrison Gray Otis, Samuel Eliot and James Perkins.
A decided spurt to the new undertaking was given by an article in the Monthly An- thology for May, 1807, written by Rev. John T. Kirkland, D. D., president of Harvard College. Soon after this 150 shares at $300 were sold, thus adding what an old writer on the subject has termed "a large number of respectable names " to the corporation. Shares today bring about $400, and are eagerly sought by good Bostonians. -
For some time after its inception the Athenæum was the only library of importance accessible in any way to the public. The older " Boston Library," a proprietary institution, which for- merly had its quarters in Franklin Street over the arch [hence Arch Street], - moving later to Boylston Place, - was neither so general nor so extensive as the younger institution, and the Public Library was not established for many years, and then only after a plan for making the Athenæum public had failed. But the Anthol- ogy Club's institution was much more than a library. Like the original Athenæum in Rome, its purpose was the promotion of literary and scientific studies, and anything tending towards these ends found encouragement there. Its art exhibitions used to bring in a yearly income
WILLIAM SMITH SHAW, FIRST LIBRARIAN OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM.
Copyright, 1903, by Trustees of the Boston Atheneum. JAMES PERKINS, WHO GAVE TO THE ATHENAEUM ITS EARLY HOME ON PEARL STREET.
Page 396.
96
OLD READING ROOM OF THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM, BEACON STREET.
EXTERIOR OF ATHENAEUM TODAY.
391
IN OLD BOSTON
of from $1000 to $2000, which, with various special funds, was spent judiciously in acces- sions.
The Atheneum has had many homes. From Congress Street it went to Scollay's Building, in what is today Scollay Square, and in March, 1809, a house was purchased on Tremont Street, on the site of what was until a few years ago the home of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Here it continued, its collection of books gradually increasing in number until 1822, when it received from James Perkins the noble gift of his mansion house on Pearl Street, to be used as the library's home. At this time it possessed over 17,000 volumes and 10,000 pamphlets.
The rules provided for the free accommoda- tion in the reading room of the governor and his council, the lieutenant-governor and mem- bers of the Massachusetts legislature, judges of the supreme courts and courts of the United States, officers and resident graduates of Har- vard, Amherst and Williams College, and of the Hanover theological school, the presidents of the American Academy, the historical society, the medical society, the agricultural society, the Salem Athenaeum and the East India Marine Society of Salem, as well as clergymen settled in Boston. These last dignitaries were further allowed to take books home.
392
ROMANTIC DAYS
It is interesting to learn that early habitués of the Athenæum were greatly shocked by an innovation which gave to Hannah Adams, the first American woman to earn her living with her pen - and a very scanty living it was - the freedom of the library. This was in Miss Adams' old age, after she had become deaf as well as nearly blind. But in spite of her infirm- ities she retained her keen love of books and was frequently so lost in the dusty tomes that she forgot to eat and could not be roused by the librarian when he departed at noon to satisfy his healthy man's appetite. He would lock her up with the books, therefore, only to find when he returned that she was as unconscious of him as before. Miss Adams herself seems to have felt the strangeness of her occupation, for she laments in her memoirs that circum- stances forced her to " do business out of the female line and so expose herself to the ridicule of males." The portrait of this first woman worker has an honored place on the walls of one of the Athenaeum rooms, along with the pictures of many famous literary men who have used the library.
The corner-stone of the original building on Beacon Street was laid in April, 1847, and the building was completed and occupied in 1849. The corporation had the good fortune to acquire, in 1848, a large part of George Washington's
---
393
IN OLD BOSTON
library for the small sum of $4000. These books were in a very good state of preservation, and are now, of course, worth many times the original price paid. Best of all, the Washington library beautifully pieces out the very valuable collection of historical works for which, with works on biography and art, the Athenæum is famous. Another priceless set of books in the Athenæum are those volumes given to King's Chapel in 1698 by William III.
The library is well endowed, having an in- come-producing fund which amounts to half a million. For many years the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the oldest literary institu- tion in Boston and the second oldest in America, had its headquarters here, but now these are in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
There are in all 1049 stockholders, who, with their families, are privileged to use the library, and may themselves go to the shelves for any- thing they wish. Students and authors from a distance are always welcome, however, and the courteous attendants succeed admirably in making even casual investigators feel at home in the pleasant old halls, where Tabby the Wise, the Athenæum cat, who seems to have assimi- lated the quiet air of refinement and culture which pervades the classic old library, sleeps comfortably in a sunny corner, a fit symbol of
394
ROMANTIC DAYS
the unstrenuous life for which this institution stands.
This cat was not the only frequenter of the Athenæum to enjoy cozy naps within its sacred precincts. A number of venerable Bos- tonians come here every day quite as much, it would seem, for the sake of the soporific as the scholarly properties of the place.
Hawthorne has penned one of his most characteristic, although least known tales, about a good old Boston worthy whom he used to see nodding over his newspaper at the Athe- næum. The story is called "The Ghost of Dr. Harris," and was written from Liverpool in 1856 for Mrs. J. P. Heywood, to whom the great romancer had once told it. It tells in Hawthorne's own charming and inimitable style how he saw the old gentleman Harris reading the newspaper in his accustomed place the evening of the day on which the man had passed away! There is one startling sentence which states that the old man was probably reading the very newspaper in which his own death must have been announced. The story was first printed in the Nineteenth Century of February, 1900, and has never been added to the works of Hawthorne, though it is in his best vein.
Hawthorne's Concord neighbor, Emerson, used to come to the Atheneum a great deal,
e E h W t a C d
1 E I S a S
395
IN OLD BOSTON
even as late as 1875. His daughter, Miss Ellen Emerson, usually accompanied him, carrying his papers and books and her satchel. They would sit by one of the windows overlooking the burying ground and make arrangements as to how they would spend their day in the city. One of the older attendants has strikingly described a conversation between Emerson and Longfellow, carried on as the two great New Englanders stood together overlooking the peaceful cemetery. The author of " Hiawatha," she recalls, was erect and sprightly and smiling as usual, while the transcendentalist, taller in stature, lounged back with his shoulders against a set of Memoirs of the French Revolution and regarded his vivacious companion, his strong-cut features beaming with pleasure at the encounter with his long-time friend and sympathizer.
Emerson, this attendant recalls, exemplified in his choice of books his own maxim not to read any publication until it was a year old. But this was, perhaps, necessarily so, inasmuch as he wished always to keep for a long time the books he took out, and recent publications are not permitted to be held for a long period. The record book at the Athenæum in 1867 has down against the Concord scholar Chester- field's letters, Swedenborg's Lyra Apostolica, Huxley, Dryden and Dante. In 1877, which
396
ROMANTIC DAYS
was only five years before his death, Emerson took out Jean Paul's works, Darwin's Sights and Insights, Landor's Famous Women, Rus- kin's Ethics of the Dust, Balzac's Illusions, Butler's Year of Consolation, and Middlemarch, as well as Horace.
William F. Poole, who originated Poole's Index, was at one time [1856-68] the librarian of the Atheneum, and it was here that the chief part of the work which has since lightened the labor of so many writers, was done. Others who have served in this capacity are William Smith Shaw, one of the founders (1813-1822); Seth Bass (1825-1846); Charles Folsom, an ex-librarian of Harvard (1847-1856); Charles Ammi Cutter, originator of Cutter's system of classification (1869-1892); William Coolidge Lane, now librarian at Harvard (1893-1897); and Charles Knowles Bolton, the present librarian, appointed in 1898.
Frequent alarums having been sounded about the folly of continuing to house the Athenæum treasures in a building known not to be fire- proof it was decided, some ten years ago, so to modernize the old structure as to make it a safe repository for its collections if this could be done without sacrificing the Georgian façade or the grace and charm of the building's interior. As if by magic the feat was accomplished by the architects entrusted with the task; and today
c
S t
e f
0
397
IN OLD BOSTON
the Athenaeum of Boston's Golden Age lives on at the same old stand, with two additional stories !
For a bookish city Boston was astonishingly slow in providing library accommodation for those who needed it most, i. e. for those who could have no share in the rich privileges of the Athenæum. And the idea of a public library emanated, not from a Bostonian at all, but from a Frenchman, Alexandre Vattemare, who was born in Paris near the close of the eight- eenth century. Though bred a surgeon Vatte- mare in middle life became an impersonator. In the course of his professional tourings, the awful waste of books, imperfectly catalogued and glued to their shelves, impressed itself upon him and he determined to devote time, energy and property to " give the intellectual treasures of the cultivated world the same dissemination and equalization which commerce had already given to its material ones." His aim was nothing less than to establish in every quarter of the world " free public libraries and museums ever open to the use of the people." When he came to America, in 1839, he found that he must not only bring books but create free libraries to put them in, but, nothing daunted, he began a vigorous agitation of the whole matter.
At a meeting held in the Masonic Temple
,
5
1
398
ROMANTIC DAYS
on the evening of May 5, 1841, M. Vattemare first presented his idea. After hearing what "the renowned Frenchman "-he was so styled by Mayor Chapman in his introductory ad- dress - had to say, a committee consisting of Dr. Walter Channing, Rev. Ezra S. Gannett, Rev. G. W. Blagden and Charles Francis Adams was appointed to submit plans and estimates for a building. Yet since we were then having one of our periodic " bad times " it was six years more before anything further was done. Then, in 1847, Mayor Quincy (Josiah Quincy Jr.) interested himself in the project and offered five thousand dollars towards a public library on condition that ten thousand dollars additional for the same purpose should be raised. M. Vattemare had meanwhile for- warded fifty valuable volumes which were being stored in the City Hall, and these were, soon joined by gifts of books from Edward Everett, Robert C. Winthrop, S. A. Eliot and others, all of which were placed in the City Hall under the care of Edward Capen.
In August, 1850, Mayor Bigelow contributed $1000 towards the library fund, and Edward Everett, persistently advising the erection of a building, Joshua Bates, a native of Boston, - who afterwards became a prominent member of the firm of Baring Brothers, - donated to the city of his birth (in 1852) the handsome sum
BATES HALL READING ROOM IN THE OLD BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY.
CHARLES COFFIN JEWETT, FIRST SUPERINTENDENT OF THE BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.
From a photograph by Chickering, in the possession of Miss Mary Boyle O'Reilly. Page 403.
ARCHBISHOP WILLIAMS. From the painting by Frederic Vinton.
399
IN OLD BOSTON
of $50,000 for a Public Library. Now at last the matter was put into definite shape. Steps were taken to purchase the Wheeler estate on Boylston Street; in the meantime, the lower floor of the Adams schoolhouse on Mason Street was fitted up for library purposes and a board of trustees and a librarian were elected. The Mason Street reading room was opened to the public March 20, 1854, and in May of the same year the circulation of books for home use began.
The thing in which Vattemare had been principally interested was a system of inter- national exchanges of volumes concerning the growth, development and history of each country. He saw that Boston received nearly one hundred such works from France and Boston duly gave back a long list of books to the citizens of Paris. Meanwhile there continued to arrive from Mr. Bates a rich accumulation of the higher class of books. To organize this most important part of the library and give chief control over the whole to a skilled hand a city ordinance was passed (March, 1853) creating the office of superintendent of the Boston Public Library. The first incumbent was Charles Coffin Jewett. Upon his death, January 9, 1868, Justin Winsor was appointed.
The reading-room and lower hall library of the building on Boylston Street were opened in 1858, and there, for nearly thirty years, all
400
ROMANTIC DAYS
Boston was made welcome to a collection of books which constantly increased in variety and value. To facilitate the use of these Arthur Mason Knapp, that "giant among reference librarians " for twenty-four years gave heart, soul and mind in devoted service to the public.
The old Corner Bookstore, and some of the literary clubs and famous literary households of the city, must be mentioned before we leave this subject of Boston as a literary centre. James T. Fields was the genius loci at the corner of School and Washington Streets, and hardly a man whose name now forms a part of New England's contribution to literature but loafed around the first "Old Corner' Book Store," so far as he loafed at all. George William Curtis has said of this institution :
"It was a very remarkable group of men - indeed, it was the first group of really great American authors - which familiarly fre- quented the corner as the friend of Fields. There had been Bryant and Irving and Cooper and Halleck and Paulding and Willis of New York, but there had been nothing like the New England circle which compelled the world to acknowledge that there was an American litera- ture."
Fields' home at 148 Charles Street was similarly a rallying-place for authors and was noted for its delightful hospitality to
(
t
i U
a
T
a e K
a
to th th be
at it
401
IN OLD BOSTON
visiting celebrities. Crowded from entrance to attic with artistic objects and literary trophies, it long remained a delight to all so fortunate as to know it. For, beside its rare books and the intimate pictures, there were mementos of the many famous men and women who had been visitors for a longer or shorter period. In one little bedroom, provided with old furniture, antique engravings and bric-a-brac, there lodged at different times, as guests, Dickens, Thack- eray, Hawthorne, Trollope, Matthew Arnold, Kingsley, Miss Cushman, and Bayard Taylor. The late Sarah Orne Jewett made her home with Mrs. Fields while in Boston.
Of Thackeray, who stayed here in 1850, Fields tells a delicious story in his Yesterdays with Authors. He gave him a dinner at the Tremont House and American oysters had been provided. Thackeray had as yet made the acquaintance only of the small British species. A half dozen of the American variety were set before the Englishman, who looked at them in some amazement, and then gingerly picked up the smallest one.
" Try the big one," urged Fields.
"No," was the reply. "It is too much like the high priest's servant's ear that Peter cut off."
After some advice as to the proper mode of procedure, Thackeray achieved his first
402
ROMANTIC DAYS
American oyster, and he then remarked, " Pro- foundly grateful. I feel as if I had swallowed a little baby."
Another literary home which was long a centre of intellectual stimulus was that of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin P. Whipple, at 11 Pinckney Street. For thirty years they held "Sunday ,evenings" of rare hospitality and charm, to which came, among others, the brilliant Rufus Choate, one of the greatest forensic advocates America has ever produced.
For many years the hospitable home of Louise Chandler Moulton at 28 Rutland Square was another happy hunting-ground for authors and visiting celebrities. Her "Fridays " are now perpetuated, in some measure, by the weekly teas held in Trinity Court, during the winter months, by the Boston Authors' Club, of which Mrs. Moulton was long a valued and devoted member.
1 Chief in prestige of the literary clubs of the nineteenth century was the Saturday Club, inaugurated about the time the Atlantic Monthly was founded. It met on Saturday once a month at two o'clock in the mirror-room at Parker's and among its members were Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Motley, Whipple, Whittier, Professor Benjamin Pierce, Sumner, R. H. Dana, Dr. Holmes, Governor Andrew, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry James
403
IN OLD BOSTON
(the elder), Judge Hoar, Chief Justice Gray, Prescott, and later, President Eliot, Howells, Aldrich and Phillips Brooks. Agassiz, who was a great favorite in the club, always insisted on having a huge joint of roast mutton served entire, from which he cut his own slice, re- quiring the meat to be cooked more and more rare as he got on in years.
Of the Papyrus Club, made up of journalists, authors and painters, John Boyle O'Reilly was long a favorite member and for many years president. It was to O'Reilly, who had a peculiar love for things Egyptian, that the club, organized in 1872, owes its name. At the time of his death in 1890, O'Reilly and Arch- bishop John J. Williams were joint owners of the Pilot, a Roman Catholic paper of wide influence and marked readability. To O'Reilly, who has been called " the most romantic figure in literary Boston," a noble bust now stands on the Back Bay Fens. It is not without significance, I think, that Boston is the only city in the country which has thus honored a purely literary man.
CHAPTER XV
IN AND OUT OF SOME OLD BOSTON PLAYHOUSES
O NE reason why theatre-going has long been regarded as a highly commendable form of diversion in Boston is because several gentlemen of exceptional character have at different times been managers of theatres here. James A. Dickson, for instance, who in 1806 became joint lessee with Snelling Powell and John Bernard of Boston's first regular play- house, the old Federal Street Theatre, cherished sentiments of such respect for the religious rites of society that, often at a loss to himself, he closed his theatre on days of public fast and Church days, deeming this a duty he owed to the cause of society and good morals. James A. Dickson also conceived it to be his duty to share with society what he took from society. When Savannah, Georgia, and Portsmouth, New Hamp- shire, were successively visited by a devastating fire, a substantial check from Mr. Dickson promptly found its way to the sufferers.
With such a man controlling for many years the fortunes of our drama -for from 1798 to 1827 his theatre had a monopoly of the
405
IN OLD BOSTON
"legitimate" here in spite of the rivalry, for a brief period, of the Haymarket, which stood about where the Tremont Theatre is now - it was inevitable that the theatre should be an honored institution in the Boston of the nine- teenth century. Each summer Mr. Dickson went to London to recruit his company (during his life he crossed the ocean upwards of forty times), and he was instrumental in bringing to this country many of the popular favorites of the day, including George Frederick Cooke.1
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.