USA > New York > Onondaga County > Syracuse > Sixty-odd, a personal history > Part 4
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All this meant to us a rather eventful, taken-for-granted activity which did not touch us very deeply nor frighten us. The sharpness of calamity reached us in other ways. As a baby I had experienced the extremity of terror. Once the little carriage in which I sat had been pushed into a crowd on Boston Common by a too- curious young nurse who wanted to see what was going on. A cannon was touched off and exploded with awful suddenness be- fore the bystanders had fallen back to a safe distance. I had been brought home in a nervous convulsion which alarmed the family seriously and left its traces in twitching muscles and agonized sensi- tiveness to loud sounds. As I grew older the cannonading on the Common was an almost daily horror, and the military funerals an unbearable experience, long-drawn-out. Some forenoon or after- noon when the Garden was quiet and the hum of traffic monoto- nous, I would be conscious of a dull, persistent sound like the beat- ing of a heavy pulse, no clang, no reverberation, merely a soft thud, the vibrations making their way through the thick rumble of vehicles and the clap of horses' hoofs over pavements. It did not seem to grow louder, but it kept up mercilessly, that horrible puise- beat, and I knew what was coming. Then there would be another sound, even more mournful, the tolling of bells-sometimes one, sometimes many. And to the eye of a tense watcher, there would ap- pear a procession coming up or down Boylston Street, a train of
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black carriages (with some of their curtains down) drawn by horses with plumes and trappings that made their eyes glare out of round holes. Then came biers, sometimes one, sometimes more, on catafal- ques, with sable hangings and coffins draped in flags. I knew that dead bodies of soldiers were inside; it was only necessary to hear the talk of the crowd on the sidewalk, in which we were caught if a funeral train surprised us in the Public Gardens.
Harriet and the other nurses told about wounds, and legs shot away and bullet-holes in foreheads, though they had never seen any. Sometimes a horse with an empty saddle was led along behind an officer's bier; then the old men sitting on the garden benches would cry and wipe their bleary eyes with bandana handkerchiefs. And all the time there was the muffled beating of the drums and the slow, slow clopping of hoofs.
Then came the band, playing a dirge. That was a musical experience, solenin, gripping. It was not cheap, inadequate music, but a fit accompaniment for a grand and dignified burial pageant. Out of the midst of the dark, moving masses came the strains of the Dead March in Saul or the tragic minor chords of Beethoven and Mendelssohn; not common things. We heard our mother say how beautiful and fitting those dirges were. I listened with a thumping heart, dreaded it, but I could not get away from it while the car- riages and the biers and the soldiers crawled mournfully along Arlington Street, around to Beacon, and finally disappeared along Charles Street on their way to Mount Auburn.
More exciting and less mournful were the parades of victorious soldiers after a battle. First there was the cannonading from the Common. I would rush in an agony of fright to the dark closet and bury my head in the mattresses and pillows stored there till nurse Harriet or an older sister or brother opened the door, crying, "It's all over!" But there was still marching and shouting to be lived through and the blare of the bands and the repugnant strains of the Star Spangled Banner. And that began with "Oh, say"-a phrase which the well-bred child was forbidden to utter under any provoca- tion! But I fervently chanted "My Country 'tis of Thee," feeling its dignified musical background instinctively. We sang Julia Ward
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Howe's Battle Hymn of the Republic which gave us deep confi- dence. Our father loved to troll out its impressive lines. John Brown's Body, which had furnished the melody for it, was rather cheerful; one didn't like to think of bodies mouldering in graves, but souls getting out of them and marching on suggested some- thing interesting.
The Rector, who did not believe in running away from scarey things, helped his little daughter to endure the clanging of the brass bands sometimes, by holding her close with his strong arm, her feet on the sill of the basement dining-room window where solid earth broke the vibrations somewhat. Feeling that bulwark I could face the music, which at the bottom of my heart I loved. When it was over I could experience with spent breath and pounding heart a sort of heroic exaltation. This was the nearest a child came to war and its atmosphere.
I remember vividly the story told to a little group in Mother's room about a young soldier who had been mortally wounded in the war. As he was about to die he kept repeating, "They killed us! We had a right to live." The listener, shocked at this, felt it to be an unpatriotic attitude for a dying soldier to take, a boy who had given his life to save his country. He must have been out of his mind, they felt. Father listened, but only said something about taking the sword and perishing by the sword. I was puzzled because I knew that the young soldier had been killed by a gun or a cannon. Mother said that perhaps a time would come when the world would feel as the boy had, but the others felt that no one could feel that way now, not while we were fighting for such a noble cause. So the debate ended in a wave of patriotism.
The long winter ended at last. Before the snow melted there was some sort of victory, perhaps the occupation of Charleston; then out of a blur of events flashes recollection of a moist, bright early spring forenoon when Jamie came rushing into the house and up the stairs with a cry of "Mother! Mother! Richmond's evacuated!"
"You don't say so!" we heard Mother answer. "Is it really true?"
"Yes," called the Rector, not far behind him. "The news is just in."
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People were hurrying along the street; boys were carrying arm- fuls of papers. The windows were thrown up to let in the warm air; the sunshine lay across the garden-beds; there was an odor of damp earth. Bells rang, cannon boomed; one didn't mind that so very much, somehow, for there was gladness in the sound of them. Our jolly uncles stopped in, bringing bulletins, and ran up to my mother's room, where she sat smiling, at her table sewing. Evac- uated was a new, puzzling word. "What had they done to Rich- mond," we inquired of Harriet.
"Oh, got out of it," she said. "Stopped fightin'. It means the end of the war, I guess." And she hurried downstairs to spread the news in the basement. Our sister Arria arrived with some friends; they had still more to tell; they had read the dispatches, posted in an apothecary's window. All that day fresh news kept coming in. Our father joined the gathering in Mother's room. I remember his solemn, rhythmic tones:
"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks." 2033929
Other great days followed. We heard about Lee's surrender. The story seemed to take some of the temporary frivolity out of the public mind. We didn't know exactly what had happened, but we heard them talking about General Lee in a different way after that, almost as if they were sorry for him. Harriet said he was giving up fighting. It sounded as if he had turned out to be a nice man after all.
Then there were two weeks of hope and glory, and jubilant, weary regiments coming home. Then came Easter, the first we had understood very much about.
But we found the house strangely still when we came down to breakfast. Something had happened-had happened to the world. The faces of our elders were solemn; the family prayers breathed of sorrow. There was talking outdoors under the windows, but it was subdued, intense. Then we were told. President Lincoln, the good, the wise, the fatherly, the savior of the nation, was dead. The tri- umph of that last fortnight had ended in bitter bereavement.
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I seem to have no recollection of what happened through the day except that people were reading things all day long out of news- papers. I caught some words about a theatre, and about a man com- ing forward on a stage and shouting out a thing that sounded like the hissing of a snake. I could repeat it long after, making an at- tempt to imitate that hissing.
"S-s-sic s-s-s-semper-r tyr-r-rannis-s!" So they said it, and the sound seemed worse than the shot. And that was assassination! I flew to Harriet; she could get tragedy down to our leve !.
"Harriet! Harriet! What is assassination? Is it shooting? Is it murder?"
"It's worse than murder," she answered shakily. "It's the dread- fullest kind of killing." And we could elicit nothing more from her. The calamity was beyond comprehension. Our only course was to accept it and wait; no one wanted to be asked questions. I have a recollection of going out with Father toward the end of the day and sceing black drapings nailed up somewhere and an old negro stand- ing in front of a bulletin with tears streaming down his cheeks; of Father's long, absent-minded stride, and of the side-ache I got run- ning to keep up with him.
Before going to bed that night we learned to our great relief that the funeral was not to be in Boston, so nothing dismal marred our vision of the loved President. Father and Mother were prudent enough to keep from us the accounts of the fugitive Booth and his final apprehension. We only knew that he, too, was gone beyond our ken and judgment, and it did not trouble childish dreams.
Thenceforth our daily life returned to a more peaceful coursc. We knew little of the nation's great upheaval and of the sad after- math of the War. But bits of current news reached us; only bits, yet things not understood at once made sense as better comprehension came with growth. Father went as he had gone during the previous years to many meetings of an important kind in "Flannel" Hall, as we called Fancuil Hall: meetings where Garrison, Phillips, and others, spoke. We heard Father tell about them at breakfast, and he would read comments about them out of the newspapers to Mother. Then when a new Atlantic Monthly came or Littell's Liv-
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ing Age our whole family shared them. Lowell was still bringing out his Biglow Papers-and I don't think anybody was tired of his genial pacifism clothed in irresistible humor. Jamie, whose phe- nomenal memory reproduced anything he had once heard read aloud, would reel off quotations on all occasions, and we little ones caught phrases also. I see myself hopping down the stairs at Ninety- right, repeating
"John P. Robinson he Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B."
in a chant that lent itself to dancing-steps. And I recall a misty morning on Boston Common, waiting beside my father while he talked to a spare little gentleman whose face went into a hundred humorous wrinkles as they too quoted Lowell:
"Ez fer war, I call it murder,- There you hev it, plain an' flat . -
I lost the next lines but caught the last ;-
"An' you've got to git up airly Ef ye want to take in God."
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MUSIC IN BOSTON
Through all the ravages of the Civil War Boston had continued a city of special cultural advantages. The Huntingtons, who had moved into a larger house not far from ninety-eight Boylston Street, enjoyed theatres, lyceums, and concert courses. My older brother and sister had heard the great Ristori, seen the charming Fanny Kemble act, heard Dickens' famous readings during his visits to this country, when people crowded the sidewalks sitting on camp- chairs for hours to make sure of their seats.
The Handel and Hayden Society, a large chorus, was singing the great oratorios. It was a special honor to sing in those choruses, which were given in Music Hall with the accompaniment of the great organ, and Boston's finest men and women attended. Italian operas were given in Boston during those years, and echoes from them sounded everywhere; even the war-songs were interspersed with bits of Martha and Lucia di Lammermoor, and The Bohemian Girl. New England was then overrun with organ-grinders; one heard them on street corners all day long. I heard the sextet from Lucia in a café on the esplanade at Lugano a few years ago. In a second the lovely lake and its setting of mountains disappeared. I saw instead a thin, tattered little old man standing on a Boylston Street curb grinding out the melody from his organ, its faded red silk front all worn out, its bellows squeaky, the pennies and two-cent coppers dropping sparsely into a tin cup. After hearing them ground out thus we knew the familiar arias by heart and hummed them or sang the translated words. Mother sang us I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls, and How So Fair Stood She There, and even told us the story of La Somnambula as she had heard it pro- duced.
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On Sundays the great joy of the day was the music in church. It was the busiest day of the week at the rectory, and we ourselves were part of the activity, getting put into our best frocks, and at ten o'clock setting sail in the wake of our mother and sister. The neigh- bors marched to the joyful ringing of the bells in Dr. Gannett's church. The Rector went ahead, of course, his sombre black cape wrapped about him, his manuscript enclosed in a purple velvet sermon-case. As the door of Emmanuel Church was opened for our entrance a burst of triumphant organ music poured forth, and we went up the aisle in tune with a brisk march which bore us along "on wings of sound." The church, finished in dark wood, would look gloomy and severe today, but it was dignified, with Gothic arches and pillars. The clerestory of the chancel, however, was the most churchly feature; the chancel's ceiling was dark blue studded with gold stars like the real firmament. The thick carpeting of the aisles deadened all sound of footsteps; so there was nothing to divert the sonorous organ-tones which filled the church.
When we got into the Rector's pew, just under the pulpit, we all went down on our knees, and as we were very punctual but not ahead of time, that was usually the exact moment when the proces- sional march wound up and the organ quieted down to slow soft chords, then came to a stop. An instant's silence followed. Then from far off, as if he were up among the stars, Father's voice rang out declaring, "The Lord is in His Holy Temple." That turned the place into a Holy of Holies. Afterward all the music seemed worshipful, although it must be conceded that most of the church music of the day was inferior. But we didn't know that. Only now and then could we get a fine English anthem or a solo from a really great oratorio. When we did have that happiness, it was im- printed indelibly on our memories. I can hear Annie Louise Cary, a famous contralto who began her career in Emmanuel choir, as she sang Mendelssohn's O Rest in the Lord to a rapt congregation. We listened for the words, "And wait"-that long, sustained, clear note that made one's own breath come deep and long as we, too, waited absorbed and confident until the tone sank, softly repeating the connuand; "Wait patiently,"-but it was more anticipation than mere patience-"for Him."
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After the uplifting effect of music, one was rather let down by having to sit through the sermon. We felt the eloquence of our father, but we took in little of his discourse.
On Sunday afternoons we often went to meet our parents when they returned from the second service. Boylston Street was quiet ex- cept for a few strollers and a group of parishioners walking slowly homeward. Dr. Gannett, leaning on his two canes, would stop to talk to Father; Dr. Bowditch would salute us from his steps; the Putnams' long window next to our house would be open if it were warm spring weather, and the Judge would look down over his spectacles from a chair on the balcony, as we all came in at our own door to the shelter of Ninety-eight. Before we went to bed, Mother would play for us on the piano which was always piled with good music, mostly bound in portentous volumes with her name on them in gilt letters.
As a result of Mother's playing and the choir-inspiration, I longed to make music for myself during the week. The old closet where the pillows were kept and to which I had fled from the can- nonading of wartime had ceased to be a refuge, and was now a dun- geon for the impenitent. It was my mother's wise idea to shut me in there, knowing as she did that the solitude and darkness would quiet me down. Once alone, I forgot grievances and misdemeanors, and began improvising anthems and Te Deums, singing as I went. All manner of embellishments in bravura, variations, trills, now alto, now soprano, now falsetto, poured from the small cantatrice's throat as she sat on a rolled-up mattress playing choir to an imagi- nary congregation. The family, delighted to have me disposed of so satisfactorily, would nearly forget my existence.
There was another incident which connected the Te Deum more directly with family history. The Rector, writing one fore- noon in his study, was interrupted by the sound of a shrill voice on a high key. It was his fourth child singing to the invisible church congregation from the nursery upstairs.
"When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness, the sharp- ness-of Death, Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heav'n, of Heav'n to all believers."
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The music dropped from high heaven to wobbly tones below the staff, and stopped short. There was a dash of rapid steps along the hall and down the stairs. In at the door burst a tense little figure. "Papa! Papa! What are believers? Can nobody get into the King- dom of Heaven, only just them? And where is it? Up in the sky? How do we know that they have only believers there?"
The Rector raised his eyes from a passage that had been hard to express with a pen. He saw the old doorway at Forty Acres, felt a breath of warm air blowing on the face of a worried little boy, squeezed between the syringa bush and the closed green blinds of the Long Room. He was there waiting in case of need to defend his mother, whose unfaltering tones, low and distinct, answered the strained interrogations of the believers from the Orthodox Society.
He bent down and put his arm around me, helping me to climb up over the arm of his chair.
"Listen," he said. "The Kingdom of Heaven is right here, right in this house and on Boylston Street all round us. All children are in it anyway; the Lord Himself said so. It is wherever His friends are. We get into it just by loving Him and doing the things He loves to have done. That's what friends do, isn't it? And friends be- lieve in each other. You and I do that, don't we?"
The child bent down her head, and looked straight into his eyes. "That's a good idea, papa! I see; don't you? Friends first, then you believe in the friends. And in the Kingdom of Heaven all the while."
I was still for a moment-he told me this long afterward, when he was old and I had forgotten-and then climbed down and ran away. From the stairway echoed: "Cherubim and seraphim, cheru- bim and seraphim, cherubim and seraphim, continually do cry."
It was the only approach to a theological discussion the Rector ever had with his second daughter.
Meanwhile our parents, coming slowly to the conclusion that their fourth child might really be "musical," as they put it, began to think about a training for me. I could not spend my days in the airless and feathery closet. It would be as well to curtail the Te Deums for the time being, and as father suggested, try the effect of
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tempo upon temper and temperament. There were no psychiatrists at that period but common-sense was an excellent substitute. My parents discovered that a first-rate music-school existed in Boston, under the direction of Mademoiselle Gabrielle de la Motte, a Frenchwoman whose methods were said to be European, and her knowledge of great musicians and their works authoritative. The Rector felt well satisfied with what he heard of her instruction. He went to see her, and arranged that she should take his little daugh- ter as a pupil, the younger the better, she had said. So it was an- nounced to me that I was going to learn to play the piano.
It was a thrilling announcement. I laughed aloud in my delight; a habit which was annoying to the more polite in the family circle. Why so boisterous on all occasions? But the elders had a theory, or rather a sort of general principle, that spontaneity should be at least tolerated, since bottling it up might increase my self-conscious- ness. I needed training of all sorts, but especially manual training, which was ignored in the contemporary methods of education. Both sisters were "handy," the older one with a distinct talent for drawing and water-color painting, small Molly for the household arts. I did not know how to hold anything but a book; I dropped things, let doors slam. But now, to learn piano-playing would be my own accomplishment, not just like those of my family; and to play as Mother did-to get beautiful sounds out of the big books and the white keys-to be able to sit in Grandmother's shady parlor as Aunt Kate could do, playing on and on with people listening-that was the sum of my ambition and desire. I could not get to sleep for a long, long time that night. It was not the hour for indulging in Te Deums, but I sang them inside my head, as I would have described it. Lessons, lessons-what would they be like?
I found out next day what a music-school was like. It was de- cided that as I was now eight-years-going-on-nine, and had already been to day school without Harriet, I might be allowed to walk by myself to the house of Mademoiselle. One can hardly imagine a child of eight making that trip alone from Boylston Street to the State House in this generation, but old Boston was safe and slow.
Once inside that house you were in America no longer; yon
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seemed, as the Rector said, to have been suddenly transported to France. The street might have been in one of the quiet corners of Paris. Even a child could appreciate the foreign air of the place, and my first reaction was a wave of homesickness. I would have failed at the very first lesson if it had not seemed such a wonderful thing to take music-courses, and if I had not known there were other children there. The very walls, the quaint old prints and por- traits, the oval mirror in the hall with a prim little white-spread stand beneath it, seemed to go with the teacher and her French figure. She was about forty then; a wiry person with high forehead slightly receding, gray hair drawn tightly and smoothly back from her temples, gray eyes which looked you keenly but kindly through, a pointed chin above a close white collar; an invariably simple, perfectly fitted gray gown and small black silk apron. She was not unkindly, but a child could not feel drawn to her on first acquaint- ance. I resisted my first temptation to rush home in a panic, and re- flected that after all I had good legs and knew the way to Boylston Street when the affair was over.
In the room which would have been a parlor stood four square pianos, back to back with two high stools at each. This was the class- room, with provision for eight at a time. The technical part of the lesson was performed by teamwork, two children at each piano. One other little girl and I were younger than the rest of our class. We were taught finger-exercises, without books or notes, but Mademoiselle read us portions of a book she was about to publish, and made us learn by heart simple instructions in theory. She stood in the middle of the room and beat time with a little baton. We had to keep very much alive when the eight played together, as a mis- step stopped the whole class and frightened the stumbler.
After the lesson I was sent upstairs into a small hall where there was an upright piano, and given a practice lesson under a young woman named Miss Jones. She had a thin, red face and black cork- screw curls bunched at the back of her head. She traversed the ground that had been gone over by Mademoiselle, and then had me play exercises and scales again and again, rapping my fingers sharply with a wooden knitting-needle if I made mistakes. One other day
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in the week was devoted to private lessons, and learning simple little "recreations" as our leader called them. If I did well, I was presented with a bar of delicious French chocolate, said to be int- ported direct from Paris, and ate it on the way home, in defiance of a point of etiquette which forbade chewing on the street.
So the spring term passed, and after the summer vacation we went to work again. Mademoiselle had written to the Rector that his little girl had made very unusual progress thus far. She was to be trained for a performance in the annual soirée given by the pupils of the school in February, at which eight children, all but two of them about ten years of age, were to play an octette on four grand pianos. She felt sure that I, though younger, could take part in this, and offered to give me instruction one more day in the week with- out extra cost.
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