USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Stockbridge > Stockbridge, 1739-1939; a chronicle > Part 18
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An adequate nineteenth-century E. Phillips Oppenheim, Mr. James brought a smoothness to Stockbridge which suggested London drawing rooms. He had met Campbell, Southey, and Byron and was known to be a friend of Walter Scott's. Urbanely used to success, he took his talent with sophisticated ease and never worked after eleven in the morning. The first draft of his manuscript, which he rarely changed, was dictated to his secretary, an invaluable catchall of a person who was his master's valet, the brother of an Irish baronet, and the master of several different languages as well. James went in mildly for gentleman farming and declared, somewhat as if he were writing one of his novels, that although he knew "many localities where individual features constituting landscape pageantry were vastly more imposing, nowhere had he seen the most desirable all grouped together in a combination so charming and complete."
James's man-of-the-world exterior prevented any more than superficial cordiality on the unsocial Hawthorne's part. At first the American novelist found himself equally tongue- tied by the fantastic Melville, with the bushy hair and full, square beard, who came down from Pittsfield to call. It was only after a walk upon Monument Mountain when it rained, and they waited in the shelter of a cave, that the two men discovered each other. After that Melville came more and more often and Hawthorne would celebrate the occasion by mixing a wonderful drink of champagne and beaten egg; or the two men would lie in the barn and take sun baths and talk philosophy.
Oliver Wendell Holmes and Longfellow were not far away in Pittsfield; Holmes on his grandfather's farm and Longfellow with his wife's family, the Appletons. Nathan Appleton, his father-in-law, had bought some property in Stockbridge-later owned by Mr. Southmayd-and gave it to
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Longfellow, who intended to build. But the plan was given up and only a weathered letter from the poet to Thomas Wells about repairing fences remains to take the place of all the literary reminiscences that might have been.
In 1853, Henry Ward Beecher rented a house upon the Lenox road, where he spent several summers. He had first looked at Dr. West's old house and decided against it-fortu- nately for all the religious proprieties. The ghost of the little doctor would surely have haunted this huge sensual man, with his broad beaver hat and lionesque head, who held congregations spellbound by his particular blend of religious emotionalism. Several of his Star Papers, written during his stay, expressed his delight in the country. He rolled in it like a great St. Bernard dog. He put God into nature and exulted in the synthesis, discovering the spiritual value of mountains and of clouds.
From Lenox George William Curtis drove over to Stock- bridge to call, and even Thoreau, that inner god of the New England shrine, conferred at least one anecdote upon Berk- shire, an anecdote of characteristically charmless touch. He spent the night in the old observatory on Greylock while mice nibbled his toes and he nibbled scraps of country news- papers which littered the floor, as the only intellectual nourishment he could find.
So the literary reel went on, two steps forward, bow and back again to your place. The Berkshires were lovely for a holiday. Only Hawthorne wouldn't keep in step. "My soul gets troublous with too much peace and rest. I need to smell sea breezes and dock mud and to tread pavements." And again, "This is a horrible, horrible, most horrible, climate- I detest it !- I hate Berkshire with my whole soul and would joyfully see its mountains laid flat." Hawthorne was the exception who proved the rule, however, and Fanny Kemble's enthusiasm kept everybody going. She would read Romeo
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and Juliet upon Greylock or give a picnic party on the lake. Literary excursions were organized upon Monument Moun- tain and Melville declared that if Longfellow were indeed at the Oxbow, "The winged horse would neigh at sight of him." Pitt Palmer at Mark Hopkins's instigation, continued to publish his poems. Mrs. Theodore and Mrs. Charles collaborated upon writing a hymn for their darling William Ellery Channing who pronounced them the most docile of authoresses. Mark Hopkins came down from Williamstown to give the young gentlemen and ladies of Stockbridge a course on anatomy, and Oliver Wendell Holmes read a poem entitled The New Eden at the Horticultural Fair.
Berkshire had bred no new school of thought, established no literary precedent. Nature alone was capitalized and written up so that rustic innocence fled forever before culti- vated pens. Stockbridge began to learn that like the dairy maid its face was its fortune. So the distinguished visitors came, wrote their descriptions and went away again. Literature, before the era of wealth or fashion, found time for self-renewal within the rim of hills.
Chapter XI
THE VILLAGE EXPANDS
R EGARDLESS of the opinion of visiting celebrities, the village went on its way, meeting new needs as they arose. By 1824, the revolt against the Calvinism of Edwards and West had grown so strong that a new church was in demand. The Methodists had held meetings since the year 1837, but so far their sect had not gained much ground. Long before this, in 1770, the first service of the Episcopal Church had been held in Stockbridge and the first child baptized in that faith. By 1834 five families were Episcopalian, and Dr. Caleb Hyde, a sound churchman and a public-spirited man, considered "that now is the time to build up the Church in Stockbridge, the whole community are in a state of excite- ment, a new order must take place and we believe the peaceful and . . . regular system of our church will embrace the most respectable and enlightened part of our people." At his instigation St. Paul's Episcopal Society was formed in Laurel Cottage. Judge Byington, always interested in village affairs, presided at the meeting and a few months afterwards young Dr. Samuel P. Parker conducted services in the shabby old Academy on Elm Street. Though the windows were small and dirty and there were no cushions on the benches, the English-born Anne Ashburner opened her heart in unspeakable relief at the prayers and litany "so pleadingly read in a sweet earnest voice by our teacher."
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In 1844, the first Episcopal church was built upon the site of the present one. Made of wood, it had a square, perpen- dicular gothic tower and carried on "the sweet tradition set by Anglican churches in Kent and Sussex." At first the parish could not afford an organ, so ministering ladies paid Henry Carter $5 a month for playing his tuning fork. Not long after Dr. Parker came Mr. Allen, who gave a Stock- bridge boy his first impression of the Church of England: "Mr. Allen was the embodiment of austere ecclesiastical tradition in look and manner, erect, clean-shaven. He walked through the street, as a man set apart from other men, a Levite, an incarnation of the awe-inspiring respectability of the English Church. Archbishop Laud must have looked like Mr. Allen, especially when Mr. Allen mounted the pulpit; stole, surplice, immaculately starched, as in Heaven's laundry, gown caught up with a proud reverence in his left hand, his sermon, of moderate, dignified brevity in his right, the embodiment of God-originated, Holy Church perpetu- ated, impeccable ecclesiasticism. Seeing him, I learned the history of all those proud men-Hildebrand, Thomas à Becket, Wolsey, Richelieu-who attained by their interpreta- tion of Holy Writ the right to a high place of command in the church militant. All he lacked was a tonsure; and I think he must have put his hand up now and again to feel if he had it or not."
No sooner had the Episcopal Church been established than the Unitarians of the village, numbering at that time only one family, of Sedgwick affiliations, invited Dr. Charles Follen to preach to them. Catherine, and Eliza Pomeroy were delighted, especially Eliza, who could hardly force her- self to hear Dr. Field, even the meager twice a year that her father thought decent.
During Dr. Parker's ministry his interest had not been primarily in his church, but in the school he kept for boys.
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His anxiety for their entertainment brought a new and exciting suggestion to his mind. It was in the summer of 1841 that he led a small band, armed with lighted flares, up the slope of Bear Mountain and into the northern end of the rocky gorge known as the Ice Glen. The lights went out and the boys had a hard time scrambling through, but it was worth trying again and soon became an annual affair.
The custom was still young when Sophia Hawthorne, who had come over with her husband and children to stop at the Dudley Fields', wrote, "We went to a bridge where we could see the torchlight party come out of the Ice Glen and it looked as if a host of stars had fallen out of the sky and broken into pieces." Afterwards she watched the girls from Mrs. Charles Sedgwick's school at Lenox get into an "endless omnibus," Mrs. Charles in the midst of them. The girls looked like a bouquet of bright flowers as they waved good-by and the boys waved and shouted in return.
In later years the parade became more elaborate. A procession formed at the Red Lion Inn-at that time known as the Stockbridge House-and marched down the street to the foot of Laurel Hill, where a huge bonfire shot into flame, lighting up fantastic costumes. Everyone held hands and danced around it, singing songs, then lighted kerosene-soaked torches and started for the Glen. Red, blue and white Bengal lights had been placed on the highest rocks along the way. As the procession, still singing, worked its way through the narrow passage to an open field at the other end, it might have been some fantastic scene from a romantic novel.
The Ice Glen parade expressed the emphasis upon scenery brought to the fore by visitors, but in the first half of the nineteenth century Stockbridge still had its roots essentially in the soil of agricultural and economic necessity. It had to find an outlet for its agricultural products, and for its manu- factures. Now a new one was available.
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As early as 1826, Theodore Sedgwick, together with some other citizens, raised enough money to survey a possible railroad route through Stockbridge to the Connecticut River. Young Albert Hopkins assisted in the undertaking. He began the survey at West Stockbridge and worked his way east, through Stockbridge, Lee, Becket, Otis, and Blandford; but the project was never completed and Albert went back to work on his father's farm.
The following year Sedgwick presented a bill to the Massachusetts Legislature providing for the construction of the Boston and Albany Railroad. Horses instead of steam power would have to be used in getting over the high grades, and the cars could not be expected to go more than ten miles an hour. The report of the Directors of Internal Improve- ment was conservative. It suggested two ways of approaching the problem: first, constructing a railroad without "stationary powers"-which meant the use of twenty-two horses to pull the cars between Boston and Albany, and would cost $21 for twenty passengers-or a railroad with "stationary powers" for which only sixteen horses were needed and which would cost $16.50. It would be difficult to estimate the increase of traveling from so "easy, safe and rapid a conveyance." Such proposals seemed to Basil Hall "loaded with anticipated magnificence." "What would you carry on your railroad, if you had it?" he asked Theodore. In the Captain's opinion the country was not in the least suited to such an undertaking and several navigable rivers afforded better means of com- merce than any railroad could provide.
Nevertheless the idea persisted. Several possible routes were proposed, one going right through the village; but the first railroad actually built was the West Stockbridge and Hudson and Berkshire which opened for travel in 1838. The Stock- bridge and Pittsfield Railroad was chartered in 1847 and on January 1, 1850, the first train ran through to Stockbridge.
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Despite the railroads, had Elijah Williams come to life again in the years before the Civil War, he would not have been greatly confused. He would have easily understood selectmen's bills, for instance, one of which included:
To half a day disposing of town poor $ .50
To half a day viewing bridge by factory $ .50
For two coffins and a hearse $17.50
Dig child's grave and vaccinate $ 2.00
To abate nuisance-viz dead horse from river
$10.00
Farmers still brought their butter and eggs to trade at Cyrus Williams's store, the largest in the county, just as they had to Timothy Edwards's. The same products had merely increased in amount. In Stockbridge alone 43,035 pounds of butter were churned, 28,625 pounds of cheese made, and 14,780 bushels of oats, 2,242 bushels of rye, 11,228 bushels of fruit were grown in the course of a year. Although manu- factures had become more complicated, they were the great oaks grown from the acorns of Elijah's day. The woolen mill in Glendale now used 208,000 pounds of wool annually and produced 275,000 yards of satinet. The lumber mills on Yale Hill were busy cutting 50,000 feet of lumber. There were two establishments for the making of wagons and sleighs, one chair and cabinet manufactory, while two tanner- ies, one of them right below the Ashburners, turned out 800 pairs of boots and 1,000 pairs of shoes annually. In 1833, the combined water power and plants of Curtisville were sold for the large sum of $30,000 to the Curtisville Manufacturing Company, and in 1849, Rewey & Evans built the first paper mill in the district.
What wonder that the village felt in mellow mood. The years had been fruitful; it now stood ready to receive the congratulations which it felt were due. Accordingly it took its part in the first Boost-the-Berkshires movement, known as the Berkshire Jubilee. It was time to welcome home the
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distinguished sons and daughters which the county had sent forth. It was time also to show them what had been happening at home: how although the old fishing holes were what they used to be, the old oaken bucket intact and the squirrel and partridge still to be hunted in the same old hills, nevertheless the great Western Railroad had come in, and the "uplifted hand of labor, honest, thriftful labor could be descried in the quarries and lime furnaces, and the grist and saw mills which sprang up on almost every stream . . . We are willing to set our Berkshire villages, whether in educa- tion, in refinement or in wealth, in contrast with any commercial metropolis in the country . . . Come from the pent up atmosphere of the city and breathe the fresh moun- tain air of New England! Come and see our beautiful lakes, our green fields and our famous trout brooks, leaping along in the bright sunshine."
The occasion proved a triumphant one. A wooden stand, with seats enough to hold more than 5,000 people, was set up on a hill just outside Pittsfield. As the exercises began a heavy rain interrupted the speakers, accompanied by the rushing sound of the opening of umbrellas. But the weather had cleared by the time Mark Hopkins stepped upon the platform. His sermon was a high-water mark of deep religious emotion, yet as he stood there he need not have said a word. His mere presence was the reason and the answer to the Berkshire Jubilee: he typified the best the county had produced.
Afterwards a round of hymns, poems, odes, speeches, and toasts followed close upon each other's heels hardly inter- rupted by a magnificent banquet held upon the grounds of The Young Ladies Institute the next day. Dr. Allen put on his tortoise-shell pince-nez and read a very long poem. Julius Rockwell followed with two pieces by William Pitt Palmer, The Mother Land's Home Call and The Reponse of the
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Home Comers. Sentiment had a luxurious blooming in Mr. Palmer's loyal heart:
"Return, and boyhood's faded spring Shall bloom round manhood's homeward track;
And memory's refluent sunshine fling The shadow from life's dial back!"
Edward Carter then read a blushingly feminine poem by Mrs. Sigourney, entitled The Stockbridge Bowl:
"The Stockbridge Bowl !- Hast ever seen How sweetly pure and bright, Its foot of stone, and rim of green Attract the traveller's sight ?- "
Charles Sedgwick read an ode by Fanny Kemble, and Oliver Wendell Holmes supplied a needed touch of comic relief:
"Then come from all parties, and parts, to our feast Though not at the 'Astor,' we'll give at least A bite at an apple, a seat on the grass,
And the best of cold-water-at nothing a glass."
The great actor, Macready, made a short speech. Theodore Sedgwick proposed a toast summing up the self-confidence of his generation: "The stock of New England . .. the stock of old England, their virtue, their intelligence with equality added." The Reverend David Dudley Field said a prayer, and his son Dudley oracularly offered the sentiment, "The Children of Berkshire. They have only to be steadfast to the principles into which they were born." By this time nearly everyone was in tears.
Almost while everyone was talking, "the Mother Land" was changing. The emigration westward which had been going on through the years, had drawn away many of the original smaller farmers and tradesmen. Their places were gradually filled by Irishmen who, like the New Englanders in the West, brought their own institutions with them. Much had happened since Deacon Ingersoll's widow had exclaimed, "The shop turned into a Cathedral! No, I would rather burn
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232
it!" at the suggestion that Mass be celebrated in the small hat shop she had rented to one of the town's first Irishmen. Some years afterwards, Mass was said on the grounds of the present golf club and the story went that one woman walked seven miles to take part. It remained for Jane Sedgwick, a niece of Catherine's, who had swung to the opposite pole from William Ellery Channing, to build St. Joseph's, the Catholic Church. "We have had a great occasion in our dear valley," wrote her aunt in the year 1866, "the laying of the corner stone of the Catholic church in a beautiful spot just under Laurel Hill. Think of my being able to see a procession of Irish Catholics from one end of the Village to the other."
Changes were coming slowly, shaping Stockbridge along its modern lines. In 1825, the Housatonic National Bank had opened with a capital of $100,000. In 1839, the Town Hall had been built. In 1842, the name Stockbridge Academy was changed to Williams Academy, in honor of Cyrus Williams, who bequeathed it a fund of $3,000. In 1866, the old school districts were abolished, and several years later separate schools were built in Curtisville and Glendale, and a new building put up in Stockbridge under the double title of Williams Academy and Stockbridge High School. Acad- emy funds were appropriated for the building of the high school even though the population did not require it by statute law.
One of the first principals of the Academy was E. W. B. Canning, a cultivated, kindly gentleman who wrote upon historical subjects, and whose pupils always remembered how the scene before Bennington jumped right out of the pages when he taught it, and how they could almost hear the prayers of Dr. West. Miss Lucy Bliss had charge of several generations of Stockbridge's ABC's who tagged behind her on the way to school, struggling to see who could hold her hand. Not until 1914 did the school building change its old
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gray wooden front for the brick colonial building of the present time.
At the mid-century mark, Henry J. Carter kept a boarding school for boys on the spot where Jonathan Edwards's house had stood, and about 1854 he sold it to Ferdinand Hoffman who had come to the village due to a mistake. For the past few years the sufferings of Hungarian exiles had succeeded those of Italians in warm Stockbridge hearts. A fair was given for Kossuth whose portrait hung, garlanded with laurel leaves, at the Academy. Six ladies clubbed together to take lessons in any or all of the languages Hungarians had at their fingertips. When, through the kind offices of an absent- minded friend, Ferdinand Hoffman, who could speak only German, turned up instead, everyone, including the young German, was equally confused. In 1855, he opened the Edwards Place School. His prospectus pointed out that "the situation of the school could present no incitement to wrong, while the taste must be cultivated by the beauty of the surrounding scenery." Parents were assured that the pre- ceptors did not lose sight of the fact "that boyhood is naturally an imperfect state." Imperfect is a mild word indeed judging from the relentless records which were kept of the pupils' behavior, for Mr. Hoffman had transplanted to the New World some of the rigorous methods he had learned at the Prussian government school at Pforte. For seventeen years he trained and pruned these sturdy New England saplings, many of which later grew into trees of magnitude and grandeur.
Years had gone by since Harriet Martineau and Catherine had walked by the river bank, and during this time oppo- sition to slavery had become more and more outspoken. In 1842, shortly before his death, William Ellery Channing
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preached a sermon in Lenox upon the emancipation of slaves in the West Indies. His congregation was deeply moved at his words: "Among these vast works of God the soul naturally goes forth and cannot endure the thought of a chain." When the Reverend George Uhler, preaching at Curtisville in 1857, boldly declared, "Ministers must preach against slavery. Christians must pray and labor and vote for its overthrow," David Curtis, Daniel Fairchild, and others insisted upon having the sermon published. A note of more practical cooperation showed itself in two underground railways, one to the south and the other to the northwest of the village.
Yet, although sympathy with the negro had become more vocal, there was still a strong desire to avert war, and in January, 1853, forty-five citizens signed a Petition of Peace addressed to the Honorable Senate and House of Represen- tatives of the United States:
"The undersigned citizens of the town of Stockbridge in the State of Massachusetts, deploring the great and manifold evils of war, and believing it possible to supersede its alleged necessity, as an Arbiter of Justice among Nations, by the timely adoption of wise & feasible substitutes, respectfully petition your Honorable Bodies to take such action as you may deem best for this most desirable end, by securing in our treaties with other nations, a provision for referring to the decision of Umpires all misunderstandings that cannot be satisfactorily adjusted by an amicable negotiation."
Such pleas, however, were unavailing and the approaching storm only gathered force. When it finally broke there was no such cleavage in public opinion as had existed during the War of 1812. Harriet Martineau, back in England, could consider herself correct in the statement that "the North worshipped that parchment idol, The Act of Union," for although, when "that bullying state of South Carolina" seceded, many minds echoed the exclamation, "Let the damned little thing go," there is no record of protest when
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war was declared. Solid Republican majorities upon the voting lists argued no difference of opinion in regard to politics. At first slavery and even the Union were not the direct home-thrust that Bennington had been. When, in 1861, the President called for 75,000 men only forty-two enlisted from Stockbridge, although names eligible for military service in the years immediately preceding the Civil War numbered as many as 121. Later on the town voted a bounty of $125, to every man who would volunteer, and finally a draft was necessary. As the war went on, the system of sending substitutes gained ground. Charles Lynch joined the Union Army, but after a few weeks in camp he was needed back again on the farm. Someone had to take the homemade cheese to Hudson between three and four in the morning and his father was getting old.
Yet patriotism found adequate expression in the eighty townsmen who fought at The Wilderness, Petersburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam and other battles of the war. Canning was with the army of the Potomac. James Dwight wrote home from the valley of the Shenandoah. As in Revolutionary days the town voted various sums for the support of soldiers' families. "It seems hardly the fitting time to make large expenditures on our own homes. Thoughts of those fighting for us have possessed us," noted the minutes of a village society. By 1864, $39,891 had been expended, $5,416 for the soldiers' fund for families, $11,600 in individual contributions, and $22,875 in bounties.
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