USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 29
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To find that the owner, Mr. Sidney Bridgman, was willing to sell his delightful old house was a great satisfaction, and the upshot of that discovery was that my mother made the purchase for me. The loan was an investment which I was able, in later years, to pay off and justify fully.
The Henshaw house was built in a familiar old pattern, with large rooms, low-studded but airy, built around a huge chimney which furnished two fireplaces on each floor, and crowned its roof, another chimney giving similar fireplaces in the rear. The big front door, with its stately knocker, opened into a tiny hall between the two first-floor drawing-rooms, and a staircase ascending cross- wise, of fine woodwork with a picturesque railing. At its summit I had to make a slight change, cutting through a narrow hall beside the chimney, in order to connect the front of the house with the back hall, from which two very steep stairways, one up and one down, led to the dining-room below and the third story. The latter extended over the ell, and we put four small bedrooms there, but kept that addition in conformity with the proportions of the main building,
An architect whose age and experience made him competent for the task, planned these alterations, and also drove about the
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county to search for old verandahs, that we might run a porch along the east side of the house. He succeeded in finding one after a long hunt, with a row of arches at its top and a broad flooring which by rights should have sloped a little, close to the ground, as the truly antique ones did, for the sake of having the water run off it when it was washed; but this we had to sacrifice in order to keep a narrow path beside it. All that summer, while the building was going on, the townspeople used to drop in, and watch the carpen- ters; they were terribly afraid that my additions would spoil it, and what wonder? It was good to see their interest in it, and to be able to satisfy them that there would be no innovations tending to mar its antiquity or its comfort.
My husband came up during the summer, and his taste, too, on which I relied, was satisfied with the success of the alterations. He himself was deeply happy, for he had been made editor of Ainslee's Magazine, the very goal toward which he had been work- ing during the summer, and for which he was so manifestly fitted. It was a glorious piece of news, and its effect upon him had justified to the full our decision to work out separate destinies with time and liberty. He spent the first few days with us at "109," as the house came to be called, and we established the babies in one of the long second-floor rooms. There was an ample back yard for them to play in, with some old fruit trees and a little dog-house for Nan's collie.
It can be imagined that my "undertaking," as it was termed by friends and relatives, who perhaps thought that a trifle more high-sounding than "boarding-house," looked somewhat tremen- dous and demanding. All sorts of help was provided; advice from authoritative sources, encouragement from college functionaries, and an equipment of good workers, among whom Mary Brown, a large-hearted and capable soul, stood out preeminent as ruler of the kitchen and disciplinarian of the children, who of course had to be trained to revere her authority. I don't know how I could ever have undertaken that first year's venture if it had not been for Mary's great popularity with the younger generation, and her good sense in meeting its wants without overrunning the regula- tions of the house. She was a hostess in herself, and began by serving
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a sumptuous meal on the evening of the girls' arrival; fourteen of them, from north, south, east, and west; fresh-faced young crea- tures bringing suitcases, motliers, and trunks, and settling in with all the twitter of southbound birds in a big elm tree. They sported golf-capes, most of them, of gray or black or brown with plaid lin- ings, Scotch patterns or otherwise, also tams, which were soon dis- carded, however, since the college girls went barcheaded in their own district. Their hair was twisted into little knots in the nape of the neck, or, in the case of a few, turned up behind and sur- mounted with a bow; they wore buttoned shoes, high or low, and nobody carried powder-boxes; the natural complexion was still preserved. They answered, "Yes, Mrs. Sessions," or "No, Mrs. Ses- sions," quite punctiliously, when interrogated by the housemother.
The parents were all prepared to go with their daughters to the Registrar, and oversee their arrangements for lessons and were quite solicitous for their comfort, as well as for the furnishing of their rooms. Some mothers displayed a grim determination, even after the first day's experience and eye-opening, to keep on steering their progeny; others gave in. I felt for them all. I don't know how many tinies I promised to try to see that the children donned winter flannels, considered indispensable in those days, and remind them of their rubbers; but without assurance that I could be responsible for their taking these wise precautions. They provided their own desks and scrap-baskets, curtains and cushions, and had washstands in their rooms. The walls were immediately adorned with banners of all types and dimensions, and hanging photograph racks, or fishnets looped about here and there. Cots were covered with col- ored spreads and thus converted into sofas. This storm of decor was very exciting; an avalanche of youth, with nothing Tenny- sonian about it to be sure, nor yet a hint of art; but with vigor and spirit that reminded me of my own vivid adolescence. I felt myself enlisted already in the cause of the Coming Generation.
When we had our first house-meeting, I found little to an- nounce except to stress the fact that we were all equally implicated in the matter of loyalty to the college and observance of its rules. Between us, we must systematize our common life to make it a fit
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setting for the winter's achievement. The girls were to make their own beds, receive clean sheets and towels at stated intervals, and have their lights out at ten o'clock; and they would find a pitcher of milk and a plate of cookies in the upper hall at half-past nine, as Mary Brown's contribution to the general welfare. And I was to consider them my helpers in the up-bringing of the children, with full freedom to discipline the boys, since I was not the lioness type of mother. The children were kept to a hard-and-fast rule that they should never enter any room on the second floor, save their own nursery, under any pretext whatever, nor accept so much as a cracker in the way of refreshment. I must gratefully bear testimony to the fact that the students carried out these regulations nobly, and ab- stained from exploiting the boys. The two were brought up on alternate petting and snubbing, which made for unselfconscious- ness. Theories on the education of small children were not yet in the market at that moment, with the exception of Froebel's teach- ing. It was the day of oatmeal and raw apples, for the most part, and pre-digested foods were yet to come.
College activities were over by six o'clock, and except for oc- casional lectures, theatre, or a good concert, everybody had a holi- day hour after supper, from seven to eight. A number of us liked reading, and there were enough Dickens-lovers to bring about a nightly gathering in the library at the close of the after-dinner dane- ing. I read Dickens aloud, with Our Mutual Friend as the first book. The attendance was entirely spontaneous, and kept up for seven years, until the number of evening committee-meetings and other engagements made it impossible to go on. The company never wanted to stop at eight o'clock, though now and then studious ones slipped away early. We read at least two books in the course of a season and I think the two favorite ones, if I can trust to the mem- ory of our count, were Bleak House and Nicholas Nickleby, each one read four times. Sometimes friends from outside dropped in at that hour, and listened. No other author could hold our public so well.
On Saturday nights there were usually entertainments in the different houses. Nearly every campus house had its individual
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shows and its talented performers. At our house we entertained the usual quota of Sunday dinner-guests, and had a Sunday-night supper which at that time was a special kind of hospitality, informal and with many groups and amateur waitresses. It was a "lap tea," as they used to call those informal collations in Boston.
Athletics, however, had become an increasingly important part of the college scheme. The picture of Senda Berenson, head of that department for years, comes to the fore-a slight graceful figure fascinating to her pupils, with a faculty for putting common sense . into the heads of her countless adorers, and a charmer among her colleagues and drawing-room followers. She and her sister Elizabeth, also in the gymnasium, were high-ranking alumnae of the college. The annual basketball game was an outstanding event, with energetic cheering and singing from the crowded galleries.
But so were the dances. Even then the "Junior Prom" had its garden-party and ball in May, chaperoned by the higher officials and selected housemothers. And on Washington's Birthday there was a large meeting in College Hall, with a speaker of note and a patri- otic address. The girls were seated by classes, wearing white frocks with sashes of their class colors. My first household was mostly com- posed of 1904's who wore the royal purple, and that dignified shade is especially associated with the events of the first four years, as I recall the loyalties, the triumphs, the enthusiasms into which I found myelf entering. Somehow or other the fourteen girls, the children, Mary Brown and her helpers, the collie, the cat and I had welded ourselves into a family before the end of our second season.
If a student was asked in those days to state frankly her reasons for coming to college, she would have answered that she came for the living as well as the learning: the Life. I am afraid I shall have to repeat that word many times, in one connection or another. Books were not all, said they; they must have experience. Not only the country girl, whose opportunities might have been limited, but the daughters of the privileged, wanted to get away from con- ventionalities and leading-strings into a freer existence and a wider companionship.
If some of them tended to put social advancement ahead of
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their academic pursuits, it was apparently because of a lack of bal- ance and perspective, often attributable to home or community backgrounds. They were not like the graduates of English colleges, as I had seen them, nor like the hard-working students one met in Germany. And yet they had the power to change the face of Amer- ican life, later on, as wives and mothers, voters, scientists, writers. Some day our universities would not only be turning out statesmen and stateswomen, but shaping them; at present they appeared to be spending most of their energy in protecting them.
So, in thinking over this question, and watching one person- ality after another, I was reminded sometimes of the time when I was sixteen, and sat looking off from the summit of Mount Warner at the distant buildings of the two colleges, one almost a century old and the other just beginning, meditating on the Fine Art of Liking People and feeling vaguely that it had something to do with the enrichment of existence outside the realm of letters. And when my college children came out of the classroom with a disappoint- ing readiness to discard the loftier intellectual values and turn with fervor to basketball or dancing or masculine attractions, I understood. I too had much to learn, and the faculty of making rapid adjustments, inherent in youth, was a more serious challenge to the adult. Well if we can acquire that before it grows too late! More life, and fuller; that was to be mine too, and please God, I said to myself, my husband's, my children's. The Dark Tower had disappeared, and the landscape bloomed where thistles had been.
I am sure the pattern of living in the Henshaw House was partly, at least, a product of the former existence under its roof- tree. We developed customs which our visitors sometimes called New-Englandy; little ways of making the house life inclusive, not setting it off as a mere unit; and inventing simple enjoyments.
A custom started in the early days of our history was the search for a secret passage on All Saints' eve. There really was such a thing; I had discovered it in exploring the old structure of the house, and had also heard an ancient legend which told of an underground gallery, leading from our cellar to the Connecticut river. This stupendous piece of masonry loomed high in its imagi-
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nary setting of historical tradition, but was never logically explained either as an escape from Indians or from the English, although General Burgoyne became involved in it to some degree, which made the report of his having spent a night in the house doubly intriguing. No one could ever quite determine, by the way, which of the two south chambers sheltered him. However, the search for a secret staircase was enhanced by this rumor, and the search be- came a permanent institution.
"Mountain day" was one of the high-spots of the year's activity, and we had our own way of celebrating it. We owned, for the moment, a trolley-car, placarded PRIVATE, and driven by a skilful motorman who felt a measure of proprietorship in our party, and answered with a jocund acquiescence to its demands; the same man each season. In this chariot we sped eastward to the Pelham Hill range and its scattered villages-the most brilliant of land- scapes on a clear October morning. In the course of twenty Moun- tain Days I remember scarcely any weather but the marvelous clearness which brings out the regal magnificence of autumn color. Just once it failed us. We started from home on a humid morning with the thermometer at seventy or over, and nobody thought to bring rubbers or heavy coats. We changed our programme and went to Montague, at the north end of Mount Toby, by trolley, to be served with dinner by the ladies of the church, and dance afterwards in a ball-room with an old-style spring floor. The day seemed aus- picious, but I felt doubtful of a gray cloud which gathered over the Deerfield hills as we sped northward along the banks of the Connecticut. Just after we left Greenfield a cold wind and a heavy snow-squall met us; by the time we reached Montague the tempera- ture had dropped almost to the freezing point, and the trolley- car's passengers tumbled shivering into the inn, glad of a blazing fire. The dinner was sumptuous, and the dance very jolly and warm- ing; but the prospect of driving home in an open car, with no pro- tection from icy blasts save a few thin jackets, was devastating to . the spirits of the housemother. I was sure that half the party would be down with pneumonia before morning if something was not done about it.
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I slipped away to interview the leading merchant of Montague with regard to providing extra clothing. Nothing in that line but men's denim overalls and gingham shirts. No flannels; but there was one resource left. I bought four large rolls of cotton batting, and returned with it to the cloak-room where our inadequate outer garments had been stored. One by one the girls were called in and padded, shaking with laughter, their shirt-waists lined, and special attention paid to knee-joints and wrists. They emerged with a wobbling and cautious gait, and an obvious difficulty in holding the wadding pat.
They would have reached Northampton intact, however, had it not been that on our arrival in Turners Falls somebody proposed that we should all get out and make a trip to the waterfall. The trolley-car was not supposed to make any stops, but they got round the motorman with fair words, and dashed off en masse when he screwed down the brakes. The casually-pinned battings came off as they ran, in a trail of little flakes which made the main street of the town look like the aftermath of a game of hare and hounds. But little recked the hares; they were back in ten minutes, quite unconscious of the effect their sally had produced. Nobody would confess to being chilled on the way back, but all the brooms in the house, next day, did not remove completely the traces of that ex- cursion.
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In the summer of 1904 there was one more gathering at Forty Acres; a last reunion, which made us feel its nearness to the world beyond. We had sometimes spoken of the certainty that some change must come, for the Bishop had been growing weaker all through that year; his memory was going, he had a tendency to great lassitude, and now and then a wandering consciousness fol- lowed by a bad chill.
On the eleventh of July, a perfect midsummer day when the stillness of the air was intense and almost breathless, we sat watch- ing him breathe more and more softly, his wife close beside him. The farm life was going on as usual; under the window two young Jersey heifers were cropping the grass, a sound he loved; a cat-bird was giving its gentle cry now and then, and we heard other sounds from the old attic above; a nest of swallows in the chimney, the stirring of little squirrels among the beams.
There were reporters, from the larger papers of New York state and Massachusetts, all about. Every half hour or so they would come quietly into the house, that my husband or I might tell them of changes in my father's condition. For Archie was with us, our mainstay, as always, in sorrow, and this time he took the place of both my father's sons, for our oldest brother was ill in Hanover, and my brother James was not able to reach us until the next day.
It was an uplifting day; there was no dread or sense of tragedy. The end of a life like our father's could not be calamity; it was merely a quiet passing from this world's turmoil and uncertainty into calm for the worn body. We could envy him, and pray, Let perpetual light shine upon him, when the afternoon shadows
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lengthened under the windows of his room, reaching across the yard as the cows came back from the pasture. My mother was still sitting at his bedside, where his opening eyes had sought her for a fortnight past.
For the last time, young men came to the door. There was no more sound of breathing in the east chamber. Mother had gone back to her own room; the rest of us were going quietly about the tasks which must be accomplished before night. Archie and I were able to tell the press what it needed to know of plans for the con- ing days, and to send the many dispatches that notified relatives and friends.
I shall always remember the tact and gentleness of those re- porters. They had to drive to Northampton-there was no tele- graph line from Hadley then-but the news was flashed to the great cities at once, and we were told afterwards that it had reached Syracuse just as business-men were leaving their offices at five o'clock, and that many of them turned from the bulletin-boards in tears. One of the papers the next morning had for its headline, in great letters, THE BEST-LOVED MAN IN SYRACUSE over a notice of his death. The working-people asked to have a little button made; it was struck off by the thousand, and worn by telegraph boys, fac- tory-hands, salesmen and women, wage-earners all over the city. I have one now, with his face on a black ground, and the words, We mourn Bishop Huntington.
My husband made me go back to the Phelps House early that evening, since I had lost sleep the night before, and there would be much to do next day. Telegrams were coming, boys bicycling over from the Western Union with great bundles of them; I fell into a deep sleep at once, but with the thought in my mind that I must write a long letter next morning, and send it off by early mail to my beloved brother in Hanover. He would want to know more than the dispatch we had sent could say.
I got up at half-past five, and in the misty stillness wrote ten pages, telling him how sorely we had missed him all that day, how my mother longed to see him as soon as he could come, and how much it would mean to her to have her oldest son take his father's
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place, and be able to lean on him. The letter was to go at half-past seven, by the mailman who passed the house.
At seven, when Archie came into the room, I gave it to him, stamped and directed. When he took it and held it a moment, I said, "Hadn't you better take it right out, so that it will be sure to get off early?" Then he said, "I can't, dear," and put his arms around me as he falteringly told me that George, too, was gone from us; he had died very suddenly of heart-failure, barely three hours after his father's going; word of that had not reached Han- over till afterward. My mother had found the message among the other telegrams brought to her.
For nie, the world seemed to have crumbled. The numbness of despair, without relieving tears, descended upon me. Two fathers gone; only fellow-mourners left. The exaltation of the day before turned to darkness.
We left brave young Nan, who had the most treasured recollec- tion of us all in the remembrance of her grandfather's last smile, to care for the little boys, after we had told them of his going. They too had a special memory. They had been taken over to say good- night to him a week before; a bird had sung softly as they stood by his bed in the sunset light, and Roger, then eight, always remem- bered that Grandfather opened his eyes and smiled, saying, "Hear that? It is the robin's vesper song."
Somehow the sense and symbol of mourning could not be as- sociated with the two people whose obsequies were to be carried out. My mother dreaded a church funeral, and so we had a simple service at the house.
My brother George's body was brought from Hanover, and his wife and children came to us, so our diminished family circle was together in the old house. James had reached us the day before; his luminous spirit, like a torch, kept our faith and hope rekindled, and even a spark of humor flickered here and there; for the two sleepers, with calm and peace written on their faces, lay in the long room side by side, the sun shining through the syringa bushes, and the doors only partly closed, so that we had moments of feeling them still among us, and included them in the family congeniality.
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We liked to speak of things which would have made them smile, and to remind one another of their sayings. Some of the leading clergy of the diocese were among these guests; many more of the Central New York clergy were to come, vested, to meet the funeral train at the little Hadley cemetery. Some two hundred people from Northampton and Hadley and from other states were gathered there. I recollect the ring of strong men's voices as we said the Apostles' Creed at the house, and its affirmation of the faith for which the father and son had stood, their lives its witness. Then the little train of carriages-and we had seen to it that they were open country vehicles, not city wagons-drove slowly down the road be- lind the two more funereal ones. It was like a triumphal proces- sion, for as we went, the church bells of all the neighboring villages rang. We could hear, in the afternoon stillness, not only the Hat- field bell, which all its life had been a familiar sound, but the lighter tone from the little North Hadley belfry, the solemn notes of Old Hadley's tolling, with deeper, distant echoes from North- ampton.
"For all the neighbors held him half akin," wrote our kinsman, Dr. William Huntington later in The Outlook:
"Scholar and prelate? Yes, But here, to them, long summers had he been Plain farmer too, no less.
"Nay, always that; a master seedsman he; The furrows knew his tread; As ever, with a faithful hand and free, He sowed the children's bread."
The procession was met by a train of white-robed clergy at the head of a little lane leading to the graveyard, and the vested choir of St. John's Northampton. After the first interment we walked over to my brother's grave, on the northwest side, for the second com- mittal service; and there, as we stood singing, we who had learned from him to find messages to our souls in bits of nature's beauty,
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noticed a pair of homing swallows which, flying past, dipped so low over the open grave that their wings almost brushed our faces. A white moth lighted on the casket as it was lowered.
I went over, at my mother's wish, to keep house for her during the next two months of the vacation. The children came there with me, and my brother's boys and girls visited us from time to time. There was a silence and a sadness about the old place, especially at evening. Its soul had gone, and a young life was beginning to take the place of the old; some things would never be again. But we were happy and hopeful, reading aloud together, and answering the many letters, eight hundred of which came in the first month. My brother James, who stayed on for some time with us, helped us answer these.
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