USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 3
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The more ordinary details of our life as young Bostonians may have their interest for people of today. Before breakfast invariably came family prayers, one function at which attendance was com- pulsory. The whole family assembled, waited in silence and solem- nity if anybody was late, so it was horribly embarrassing to appear before them. We gathered in the study, the two little ones sitting on low chairs with backs of Gothic design like those in the chancel at. church. It was the desire of our lives to outgrow those chairs, with worsted-work seats into which we ground our elbows when kneel- ing. The pattern of mine, a variegated dog on a green background, not exactly ecclesiastical, was burned into my soul. Kneeling up straight did not become a custom till years later. But first we "read round," each person reading three verses at a time. Then we got to
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our knees, and the Rector made quite a long extemporaneous prayer, a little too departmental and subjective to be enjoyable. It brought one an uncomfortable feeling that our parents and the Al- mighty were taking our faults pretty seriously, and gave us uneasy consciences for the moment. Our minds wandered somewhat be- fore the end came, and we joyously swung into the Lord's Prayer. Truth compels me to achnit that the whole ceremony was, as we should have agreed, nicest when it was over. But we had a vague idea that somebody must have enjoyed it, God perhaps, or Father and Mother. And then after a rather tense silence, we scrambled to our feet and made for the dark stairway which led to breakfast.
There was no gleam of beauty about an area dining-room, with its bare walls adorned only by a few unattractive engravings. The windows let in but little light, and our upward glances through them revealed, from the table at least, a monotonous procession of legs, passing and re-passing on the sidewalk. Nevertheless, that room was a warm and happy meeting-place, and breakfast, even by the flare of a dim gaslight on gray mornings, was lavishly, indigest- ibly, adequate. It is amazing to think of the meat and fried potatoes, boiled eggs, hot biscuit (the maids got up at five o'clock to set those biscuit) and piles of buckwheat cakes with unlimited syrup. I remember when cereals came in, and were advertised by dietitians. Oatmeal was the first to appear, not predigested but quite solid and only soluble after hours of cooking. But it was Scotch, and the Scotch were proverbially healthy, so we ate it. Fruit was never considered as part of a matutinal menu.
After breakfast our mother went through the daily dishwashing task which was considered indispensable to an average New Eng- land family regime. It was understood that the lady of the house washed her breakfast glass and silver at least, and generally china also, with her own hands. The plates and dishes were gathered up, piled according to rule, in which process we daughters helped, and then the maid brought in on a tray a little wooden tub with brass hoops, filled with boiling hot suds, and laid thin spotless towels, smooth from the iron, beside it. The washing was done with a fluffy long-handled mop with which the tumblers and spoons could be
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deftly lifted out of the hot water and transferred to the edge of the tray. Our mother had no faith in the integrity of a household where this ceremony was not duly performed. If anything went wrong with the arrangements of a young married relative, in after years, she invariably asked anxiously, "Well, but do you wash your break- fast-dishes? I'm sure it would all go better if you did!"
Father always sat on with his paper in hand, and read aloud bits of news for his wife's comment; the mail came and family letters were opened. On some mornings, Arria told amusing experiences of the night before, and made everyone laugh over the latest bon mot of Boston's wit, Tom Appleton, or the delightful humor of Minnie Pratt and Helen Bell, daughters of the brilliant Rufus Choate, who were parishioners of my father.
Next came the departure to school after a search for caps and mufflers in the dark basement closet of Ninety-eight. The light went out in the dark dining-room after our goodby hugs, and we set sail from it as from a snug harbor-joyous crafts with varied destina- tions. There was much to be done by the mother of so active a family; marketing, planning, and sewing. Our clothes were at that time something of a problem. She herself always dressed well and suitably; her morning gowns quite simple, and handsome black silk for afternoon or colored ones, their full skirts trimmed with a large Grecian key pattern in black velvet for dinner-parties, and fine lace caps with little velvet bows. My sister wore plain school or street dresses, made often with straight loose jackets, but she had light silks with low necks, short sleeves and lovely sashes for parties. Our dressmaking was done by a Miss Balze. She used to be with us for quite long periods in the spring and fall; a tall, healthy person, whose knowledge of the fashions inspired us with unbounded con- fidence. We used to watch, fascinated, her mouthful of pins and the great shears from whose adventurous path the breadth of silk and cloth fell away in a shimmering swath as she balanced across her knees the cutting-board. It was a large affair with a semi-circular opening on one side that looked as if a giant had taken a bite out of it; this was designed to make it fit better against one's thighs and give a purchase to the cutter by supporting her elbows.
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In wartime there were few garnishings to be bought for gowns, so they were adorned with varied arrangements of their own ma- terial. Here Miss Balze shone. She could "ketch down" a fold of silk with such cunning, and such invisible stitches, as to make it assume a corkscrew effect, very fetching indeed when four or five rows of it encircled a full skirt. Our mother had a mouse-colored alpaca street-dress trimmed with it one spring, which we thought marvel- ous. Then she could make, with remarkable speed, sharp pointed trimmings for the edges of basques and peplums, turning the fabric in and pinching it with her powerful thumb into the necessary out- lines. We children did not expect anything so elaborate on our little plaided or checked frocks. As Scotch plaids were much in vogue then, every lady possessed a cloak of blue-and-green tartan to wear in rainy weather. Those Boston plaid cloaks were as characteristic as the Boston bags. Even younger people wore them; and men often hung plaid shawls over their coats in cold weather.
The rectory children heartily disliked dancing classes, but were more willing to attend the occasional children's parties to which we were invited, although society life brought its disappointments too. Most of the other little girls wore white frocks and lovely sashes, with openwork stockings, gloves, and slippers to match them, and blue lockets of enamel or turquoise on gold chains; lockets that opened. Our poplins, thought to be in better taste for ministers' children, seemed dark and thick, and we had light brown kid gloves instead of white ones, a real trial. We used to wish mother were not quite so sensible. But the fact that wherever we went we were graciously received and affectionate messages sent to our parents, made us come home in a more contented mood. After it was all over the home verdict was that clothes did not matter, so long as one was "neat," as it was put; I must say that seemed to us rather a meagre alternative.
After one birthday feast at the Gardiners', six-year-old Molly lapsed slightly from her accustomed politeness. She thanked our hostess prettily for giving us such a pleasant time and supper, added, however, with just a tinge of disappointment, "But I could have had cull-up oranges at home." Harriet, who came for is, was dorph
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mortified by this; her pride in the infallibility of the family breed- ing had received a blow.
One great source of happiness was our visits to Grandmother Sargent's house in Roxbury. They were the delight of our child- hood, eagerly anticipated by older and younger ones alike. The house and grounds stood at the top of the hill above Cedar Square, a sloping, rocky little park whose paths wound about between clus- ters of the small, straight trees which gave it its name. You could get out of the horse-car, as we called it then, at the square and walk up a steep grade. But there was a far more interesting way of reach- ing the place. You took a Forest Hills car and rode out through the South End, along a continuation of Washington Street, and past the Roxbury Post Office and drug-store and Dr. Putnam's church with its quaint spire. That was like a real country village. Then pretty soon came a sort of cliff rising up out of the sidewalk, a ledge of rock on top of which the old Guild estate was built. An early chronicler says of it: "Up westward from the town it is something rocky; whence it hath the name of Roxberry."
Now you reached a place where a long, steep flight of steps had been cut into the rock, and the car conductor would obligingly let you out when requested at the stop known as Juniper Terrace. It was a deliciously private, special way of getting to Grandmother's, which we felt belonged to us exclusively. When we had climbed to the top of the steps, there stood a little house, built after a Swiss pattern, I think, different from the usual city architecture, so that it was like being in a foreign country. We called it going to Switzerland. Finally we reached the steps and terrace at the summit of which stood the large white house, a commanding mansion with spacious verandas on its east and west sides. It looked out over the then picturesque slopes of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, rocky hill- sides with patches of woods and scattered estates.
Grandmother was always at the door to welcome us, hearing our excited voices as we came along under the hedge. Mary Lincoln had never lost the fine presence of her girlhood. Tall, straight, with the bright serenity which carried her unruffled through years of family change and care; loving but not over-demonstrative, sympathetic
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and resourceful; dignity and repose in her bearing, few wrinkles on her calm brow: this was the woman whom her stepchildren had loved as an own mother, the revered mistress of the big house.
On entering, one noticed at once the handsome curving stair- case, below which ticked a tall clock. At the right of the hall was the sunny library, and behind it a dining room with heavy mahog- any table and chairs and on a side-table the big samovar, a relic of Grandfather Sargent's Russian trips. But the portal through which we passed with greatest exhilaration led into the back hall, and there at one's right was the "Christmas closet," entrance into which was a privilege rarely accorded to children but a distinction of the highest order. The moment Grandmother turned the key in the door one perceived a fragrance, exotic and rare; a mixture of spices, fruits, syrups, nuts-words cannot describe the richness of that mix- ture, the product of age-old sweetness to which Europe and Asia had contributed and which seemed to cling to the very walls and shelves, immaculate though they were. There stood cases of figs, boxes of great juicy prunes, chests of tea from China, bottles of rare wine, tight little kegs of olives, blue-and-white ginger jars with basket handles, Guava jellies, tins of pilot-biscuit and hard crackers, red Edam cheeses, sewed-up bags of coffee beans, raisins, preserved strawberries and round cans with the thin, scalloped sugar cookies that only Grandmother's cooks could manufacture to perfection. And a cake-box with plum cake-what child could view these dainties without a watering mouth? Eating between meals was not allowed at ninety-eight Boylston Street, but there was always special indulgence at Cedar Square and if we really got into the Christmas closet at Grandma's heels, we did not leave it empty-handed.
When we spent the night at Grandmother's we were tucked into great softly pillowed beds, in rooms which, like the Christmas closet, were redolent of refreshing odors. Whether it was from the fragrant sheets-perhaps a suggestion of lavender-or the pungent, stimulat- ing camphor in which the blankets had been laid away, or the fine Castile soap, or the delicate, faintly perceptible aroma of old pol- ished mahogany, or possibly a little vase on the bureau with a sprig of rose geranium or lemon verbena offsetting a few flowers, I would
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not venture to say. Probably all those perfumes had mingled and stayed in the air for years, renewed from season to season. Sea air blew in at the windows, and an old chair with high back and flow- ered chintz hangings seemed to keep guard over the dreamers. That upper story was very like Dickens' description of Bleak House. The halls, reaching away back and overlooking the kitchen garden, had little steps up and down and the windows gave views of lovely country foregrounds, with the Boston dome and spires visible beyond.
The top floor, the sunniest of all, with slanting ceilings and dormer windows, was a unique and fascinating place. Here lived our Aunt Frances who was a little old lady with a face and figure which bore startling resemblance to Queen Victoria (it pleased her very much to be told that), and many talents and peculiarities which were inextricably mixed. She had the whole third story to herself and kept it bright with blooming plants and canary birds in every variety of cages, whole families of singing feathered creatures. An unsatisfied maternal instinct made her love children. We liked to help her make scrap-books for hospitals, dress dolls and collect toys for sick or neglected babies. She addressed us in extravagantly affec- tionate terms, and demanded more demonstration than we, ungrate- ful little creatures, were capable of giving in return. But we turned over her scraps of silk, and the beads and worsteds from which she made pretty trifles, ate her marvelous molasses candy, welcomed her visits when illness laid us low and she brought soft jelly, or when her cool currant shrub and lemonade refreshed us on hot after- noons. We always climbed to her attic in jovial mood.
By and by Jamie, or Father, would come to take us home and Aunt Frances and Grandmother would stow away something worth- while in our coat pockets and send a package to Mother too. Cedar Square was the happiest of hospices. My Grandmother lived on to welcome us there until we had grown almost into young-ladyhood.
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I never remembered actually learning to read. I only recall three neat little blue volumes with stories in words of one syllable which were loose in the nursery for a long time, and Mother Goose in a gayer binding lying trampled among the blocks on the floor. One knew its rhymes by heart and didn't have to spell them out. But upstairs there was an unused room to which I went when Har- riet was busy with my little sister. The books there represented an overflow from the study, where new library-acquisitions were al- ways crowding out the old. Most of them consisted of theological works, which I rather suspect had been orthodox and Unitarian reading displaced by Episcopalian exegesis. Turning them untidily out on the floor to find pictures, I came upon three or four tall thin black volumes, between the covers of which grotesque illustra- tions and quite fine-printed text appeared alternately. They were an original English edition of Dickens' earliest works, with the Cruikshank engravings. I had never seen anything like them. I got hold of Oliver Twist first of all, and every one of those prints stands out vividly in my memory yet. Oliver trembling behind Mr. Brownlow at the book-stall, with Noah Claypole lurking near by; Fagin gnawing his fingernails in the prison cell; in another volume Mrs. Nickleby and Kate looking up at the leering old gentleman on the garden wall; Nell and her grandfather in still another volume, sitting on the hillside gazing down on London; Quilp's horrible dog-Heaven knows why that didn't give me bad dreams-frothing and straining at his chain. Those three or four books were the only ones we owned then, but they were utterly absorbing to me. How long I looked at those illustrations and wondered about them be-
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fore I discovered that I could read the black printed words of the story, I do not know. There is a blank between those first discov- eries and a winter day when I had brought Oliver Twist down from the chilly attic into the warm nursery and was lying face downward perusing it, and suddenly heard my sister's voice:
"Mother! What do you suppose this child is reading?"
There was an investigation and a subdued "Mercy! where did she find it?" Then Mother's decision, given with the bright, prac- tical finality which settled all such problems:
"Well, she certainly can't get any harm from it at the age of six." So Oliver and the rest remained my special and beloved friends. I went back to them again and again, finding companion- ship and amusement as well, for my humor responded even to phrases I could not understand. The very exaggerations delighted me. I heard my brothers and sister observe now and then that peo- ple they met were Dickensy-indeed that was rather a family habit; and I instinctively knew what it meant and whence their amuse- ment came. Those first bits of enjoyment took a definite place in iny mental background, and little by little other joys followed. There were more books in the attic bookcase which appealed to me. Some volumes of a not very good edition of Shakespeare had been put there, and I had heard of remarkable little girls who read Shakespeare at a tender age. But the unfamiliar language repelled mne. It was the same with Scott; Dickens had spoiled me for that too; the settings at the beginning of many of the novels were too hard to visualize, and the humans too long in coming forward dra- matically. But poetry was different; into that I plunged with abandon, finding a copy of Dana's anthology, the Household Book of Poetry and carrying it up from downstairs to the dingy old arni- chair whither I fled on Harriet's sweeping days. My older brother discovered me there, finally, and it was a delight to him to find how much I could repeat of the verses he loved. He bought me my first own poetry-book, compiled by Coventry Patmore, The Children's Garland. A book has always had a personality for me, and this was so trim, so smooth in its soft red shiny covers, with leaves of a creamy fineness and delicate, clear print. The delight of
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cutting the leaves of a new book came to me thus early in life, and I gradually learned to do it with the reserve and suspended enthu- siasm of the passionate reader. I have that beloved copy of The Children's Garland still; worn and faded but brave and intact.
But my parents began to feel that these energies would better be put under training; the educational advantages to be derived from promiscuous reading were not clear. A school was found for me, conducted by Miss Mary Gage, who lived in a little house at the corner of West Cedar and Mount Vernon streets; it had a sunny schoolroom jutting out over the sidewalk, looking down toward the Charles River and up toward Louisburg Square.
The principal was a fine woman, broad-minded, large and awe- inspiring, quite strict. The children read from First Readers; very easy and very dull after my more exciting home-reading. We did arithmetic from large pasteboard cards with columns of figures which could be made into addition, subtraction, multiplication or division-sums. I didn't like that either; I had not begun with the rest, and my card was always dog-eared. Geography was nicer, learned from little square books with maps and pictures. And the nicest thing of all was French, for which there was a good native teacher and small brown books, Chouqnet's First French Books. And music, chiefly do-re-mi-sol-fa out of text-books by Lowell Mason-oblong-shaped.
Miss Gage was assisted by a pupil-teacher, a big girl with reddish hair who wore a dress of dull blue and was named Lily. She used to take the children into the back schoolroom to get drinks of water from a faucet and see that they did not play with it. She seemed to (lislike her job, and moved and talked very slowly. But she was con- sidered a mine of information, I discovered. There was a question that I did not want to ask of superior older sisters or brothers; to do that would be to admit their superiority, which, however, un- questioned, was not readily acknowledged by the inferior members of the family. Quite enough grist came to their mill as it was, and they had no patience, either, with foolish inquiries. It was best to try Lily and see what she could do. So one day after gazing at her intently over the top of a china water mug, I ventured to inquire;
"Can you think?"
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"Why yes, of course I can," was the answer.
"I can't. I don't know how, and I want to. I've got to find out. Could you tell me how you do it?"
"No," said the big girl, "I can't tell you. It does itself."
"Yes, but how do you know when it is doing it?"
No answer. I concluded it wasn't of much use to go to school if you couldn't find out a thing like that. I did not pursue my in- quiries further. Not long after, however, I started as I found myself saying to my nurse, "I don't think so." Of a sudden, realization burst upon me.
"Harriet," I cried. "Did you hear that? I've thought!"
"No, you said you didn't think," interrupted Molly.
"I said I didn't think that time, but it means I must have thought another time. Yes, it does do itself. How nice! I can think; I can think!"
The audience appeared mystified, not having appreciated the problem. But another step in the slow, involuntary process of self- realization had been taken. I had no more idea than before what thinking was. But I could do it; there was no more to worry about. It would happen, just as jumping and running, laughing and cry- ing would happen. And it was the same power that my brothers and sisters, with their superior talents, possessed. I could take for granted that I was thinking whether I had learned how or not. And so that little conversation was fraught with a significance which sends the memory of it back to me after many years.
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CHILD'S VIEW OF THE CIVIL WAR
But life at ninety-eight Boylston Street had its dark side. Over that warm protected circle lay the shadow of the Civil War. We were scarcely out of babyhood when it made itself felt in our ex- perience. We learned that as little children learn all situations, from the words and looks of those about us; there was some struggle going on in the world which touched all life, brooded in faces, came out in phrases and exclamations and pitiful sights. South and North were incomprehensible distinctions, but we grew to realize that there were spaces on the earth, not bounded by gardens and brick blocks, where there was cruelty and darkness. There were people, we heard, who were trying to make things better and to stop the fighting, and men who were doing their best to put an end to them with musket and cannon. A picture of General Mcclellan hung in the dining-room; we were told that he was a brave soldier, and so were General Sherman and General Grant, of whom we also saw pic- tures. We did not think General Grant looked so brave as the others, but we knew he was, of course. We knew, by the time we were four years old, what blue coats and brass buttons stood for. The streets were full of boys in blue, marching over the pavements in squads. We heard that there were other soldiers in gray, and gray was an ominous color; those were the men that had to be "all killed up." Our soldiers would fire guns at them, and they would fall down dead. The boys played soldiers and made them do that. No one would care if the gray soldiers, the rebels, were killed; they were bad; an enemy.
We sang Hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree and hoped some- body would; he was a terrible person, Jeff Davis! There were many
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such songs, echoing on street corners, floating out of open win- dows, squeaking from melodeons, tinkling from piano-keys, whis- tled or hummed. We heard words like tragic, ghastly, strategy and surrender, and guessed what they meant by the tones in which they were spoken. Such expressions seemed to compete with one an- other for effect in common conversation. Our mother and aunts were away whole forenoons working at the rooms of the Sanitary Commission. Our sister and her friends scraped lint, knitted stock- ings, rolled bandages. People came to the house bringing all sorts of things to be sent to the soldiers. We heard of poor black people in the cotton-fields and men standing over them with whips. We had the kind, rugged face of President Lincoln imprinted on our memories, from pictures and descriptions.
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