Ladies' Social Club. Among its readers were Agassiz, Emerson, Greene,
Whipple, Clarke, and E. E. Hale. It was ironically styled the "Brain
Club," and died after many years because, according to one ex-member,
"the newer members brought into it too much Supper and Stomach and no
Brain at all." A successor has been the Round Table Club, with Colonel
Higginson for first president,--its meetings for essays and discussions
being held in the homes of its literary or artistic members.
Boston's Belgravia occupies a district which has been reclaimed from the
waters of the "Back Bay" of the Charles River,--on whose shore Hawthorne
placed the shunned and isolated thatched cottage of Hester Prynne in
"The Scarlet Letter," and the windows of many of Boston's Four Hundred
overlook the same delightful vista of water, hills, and western skies
which to the sad eyes of Hester and little Pearl were a daily vision. On
the water side of Beacon Street, within this select region, is the
four-floored, picturesque mansion of brick--its front embellished with a
growth of ivy which clusters about the bay-windows--where not long ago
we found the gentle and genial Holmes sitting among his books, serene in
the golden sunset of life, happy in the love of friends and in the
benedictions of the thousands his work has uplifted and beatified. The
mansion is redolent of literary associations, and throughout its
apartments were tastefully disposed articles of virtu, curios, and
mementos--literary, artistic, or historic--of affection and regard from
Holmes's many friends at home and abroad. His study was a large room at
the back of the house, occupying the entire width of the second floor.
Its broad window commands a sweep of the Charles, with its tides and its
many craft, beyond which the poet could see, as he said, Cambridge where
he was born, Harvard where he was educated, and Mount Auburn where he
expected to lie in his last sleep. We last saw the "Autocrat" in his
easy-chair, among the treasures of this apartment, with a portrait of
his ancestress "Dorothy Q" looking down at him from a side wall. His
hair was silvered and his kindly face had lost its smoothness,--for he
was eighty-five "years young," as he would say,--but his faculties were
keen and alert, and, in benign age, his greeting was no less cordial and
his outlook upon men and affairs was no less cheery and optimistic than
in the flush and vigor of early manhood. In this luxurious study were
written several of his twenty-five volumes,--"Over the Teacups" being
the most popular of those produced here,--and we found him still
devoting some hours of each day to light literary tasks, oftenest
dictating materials for his memoirs, which are yet to be published.
Above the study, and overlooking the river on which he used to row and
the farther green hills, is the chamber immortalized in "My Aviary;" and
here, as he sat in his favorite chair, surrounded by his family, death
came to him, and his spirit peacefully passed into the eternal silence.
Then the "Last Leaf" had fallen, to be mourned by all the world.
A door or two from Holmes sometime dwelt the versatile novelist, poet,
playwright, and "Altrurian Traveller." A popular print of "Howells in
his Library" is an interior of his Beacon Street house; the view of the
glassy river-basin, with the roofs and spires of Cambridge rising from
banks and bowers of foliage beyond,--which he pictures from the new
house of "Silas Lapham" on this street,--is the one Howells daily beheld
from his study window here. His latest Boston home was in the same
district on the superb Commonwealth Avenue, near the statue of Garrison,
and here, in a sumptuous, six-storied, bow-fronted mansion, he wrote
"The Shadow of a Dream" and other widely read books.
A modest, old-fashioned house on Beacon Street has long been the home of
the poet and starry genius Julia Ward Howe, writer of the "Battle-Hymn
of the Republic." Other members of her singularly gifted family have
sojourned here, and the "home of the Howes" has been frequented by men
and women eminent for culture and thought and for achievement in
literature or art.
In the adjacent Marlborough Street recently died the polished author and
orator Robert C. Winthrop, and here, too, was the home of Dr. Ellis, the
friend of Lowell's father.
Farther away in this newer Boston of luxury and culture is the charming
and hospitable home of the poet, essayist, novelist, and critic Mrs.
Louise Chandler Moulton, whose American admirers complain that in late
years she remains too much in London. When at home, she inhabits a
delightful dwelling which, from entrance to attic, teems with pictures,
rare books, curios, and other _souvenirs_ of her many friends in many
lands. In her library, where much of "Garden of Dreams," "Swallow
Flights," and other books was written, and where more of all "the work
nearest her heart" was accomplished, are preserved many autograph copies
of books by recent writers--several of them dedicated to Mrs.
Moulton--and a priceless collection of letters from illustrious literary
workers. In her drawing-rooms one may meet many of the famed authors of
the day,--Higginson, Wendell, Horsford, Bynner, Nora Perry of the
charming books for girls, Miss Conway, Miss Louise Imogen Guiney, Mrs.
Howe, Arlo Bates, Adams, the jocosely serious Robert Grant, and others
of Boston's newer lights of literature.
If we "drive on down Washington Street" with "Silas Lapham," we shall
find in Chester Square the "Nankeen Square" where he dwelt in his less
ambitious days, and the pretty oval green with the sturdy trees which
the worthy colonel saw grow from saplings.
In a pleasant dwelling on the contiguous street lives and works the
bright and busy Lucretia P. Hale, sister of the author-divine. She was
the favorite scholar of Miss Elizabeth Peabody; and she has, through her
writings and her classes, acquired an influence and discipleship little
smaller than that which Margaret Fuller once possessed.
Farther south, in the Roxbury district, we seek the abode of the famed
author of "The Man without a Country." Sauntering along the shady and
delectable Highland Street, we interrogate a uniformed guardian of the
law, who heartily rejoins, "Dr. Hale's is a temple on the right a block
further on: and if any man's fit to live in a temple, it's him." As we
walk the "block further on" we think that, however defective his
grammar, the policeman's estimate of Hale is beyond criticism and agrees
with that of the thousands of readers and friends of the indefatigable
author, lecturer, preacher, editor, reformer, and promoter of all good.
We find the house--very like a Greek temple--standing back from the
street in the midst of an ample lawn, shaded by noble trees and decked
with a wealth of shrubbery and bloom. The mansion is a large square
edifice, with great dormer-windows in its roofs, surmounted by a cupola,
and having in front a lofty portico upheld by heavy Ionic pillars,
between which interlacing woodbine forms a leafy screen. Within is a
wide hall, and opening out of it are generously proportioned rooms, some
of them lined from floor to ceiling with thousands of books. The study
is a commodious room, with a "pamphlet-annex" adjoining it on the garden
side, and is crammed with book-shelves and drawers, while piles of
books, magazines, portfolios, manuscripts, and memoranda are disposed on
cases, tables, and stands about the apartment. Everything is obviously
arranged for convenient and ready use, and well it may be so, for this
is the work-room and "thinking-shop" of the hardest-working literary man
in America. The books which made his first fame were written before he
came to this house; of all the works produced in this study, the
numerous poems, romances, histories, essays, editorials, reviews,
discussions, translations,--to say nothing of the many hundreds of
well-considered and carefully written sermons,--we may not here mention
even the names, for no writer since Voltaire is more fruitful of
finished and masterly work. It is notable that Hale regards "In His
Name" as his best work from a literary point of view; of his other
productions, he thinks some of the poems of the latest collection, "For
Fifty Years," as good as anything,--"always excepting his sermons."
Among the abundant treasures of his study, Hale has a most interesting
and valuable collection of autograph letters, of which he is justly
proud. His father was Nathan Hale of the Boston "Advertiser," his mother
was sister to Edward Everett and herself an author and translator, his
wife is niece to Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, his son Robert has already
acquired a reputation in the domain of letters. The doctor himself has
been a writer from childhood, his earliest contributions being to his
father's paper. His illustrious sister declares that in their nursery
days she and her brother used to take their meals with the "Advertiser"
pinned under their chins,--a practice to which their literary precocity
has been attributed. We find Hale at the age of seventy-three blithe and
hopeful, working as much and manifestly accomplishing more than ever
before.
A little farther out on the same street is the dwelling where William
Lloyd Garrison spent his last years, and in this neighborhood lived Mrs.
Blake, poet of "Verses Along the Way." Here also are the early home of
Miss Guiney and the school to which she was first sent,--or rather
"carried neck and heels," because she refused to walk. Close by we find
the pleasant home in which Jane G. Austin wrote some of her famed
colonial tales and where she died not many months ago; and in the same
delightful suburb, a half-mile beyond Hale's house, is the retreat where
the beloved author of "Little Women" breathed out her too brief life.
OUT OF BOSTON
I
CAMBRIDGE: ELMWOOD: MOUNT AUBURN
_Holmes's Church-yard--Bridge, Smithy, Chapel, and River of Longfellow's
Verse--Abodes of Lettered Culture--Holmes--Higginson--Agassiz--
Norton--Clough--Howells--Fuller--Longfellow--Lowell--Longfellow's City
of the Dead and its Precious Graves._
Crossing the Charles by "The Bridge" of Longfellow's popular poem, a
stroll along elm-shaded streets brings us to the ancient Common of
Cambridge and a vicinage which has much besides its historic traditions
to allure the literary pilgrim. For centuries the site of a celebrated
college and a conspicuous centre of learning, it has long been the
abiding-place of representatives of the best and foremost in American
culture and mental achievement.
Close by the Common, and opposite the remains of the elm beneath which
Washington assumed the command of the patriot army, stood the old
gambrel-roofed house in which that "gentlest of autocrats," Holmes, was
born and reared, and upon whose door-post was first displayed his
"shingle," on which he whimsically proposed to inscribe "The Smallest
Fevers Thankfully Received;" across the college grounds is the home-like
edifice where lived the erudite Professor Felton, loved by Dickens and
oft mentioned in his letters; not far away, at the corner of Broadway,
was the home of Agassiz, since occupied by his son; and a few rods
eastward is the picturesque residence of the witty and profound Colonel
Higginson,--poet, essayist, novelist, and reformer. In the adjacent
Kirkland Street dwelt the delightful Dr. Estes Howe, brother-in-law to
Lowell, with whom the poet sometime lived and whom he celebrated as "the
Doctor" in the "Fable for Critics." Dr. C. C. Abbott formerly lived in
this neighborhood, and the collections on which his best-known books are
founded are preserved in the near-by Peabody Museum, beyond which we
find the tasteful abode of Professor Charles Eliot Norton, the friend
and literary executor of Lowell. Near the Common, too, dwelt for a year
or so that rare poet Arthur Clough, author of "The Bothie" and "Qua
Cursum Ventus;" and the sweet singer Charlotte Fiske Bates--the intimate
friend of Longfellow--had her habitation in the same neighborhood.
Opposite the southern end of the Common is the ancient village cemetery
celebrated in the poetry of Holmes and Longfellow; a little way
westward, Howells lived in a delightful rose-embowered cottage and
pleasantly pictured many features of the old town in the "Charlesbridge"
of his "Suburban Sketches." Two or three furlongs distant, within the
grounds of the Botanic Garden, long lived the American Linnaeus,
Professor Asa Gray.
Of all the Cambridge thoroughfares, the shady and venerable Brattle
Street, which curves westward from the University Press, is most
interesting and attractive. Near the Press building stands the historic
Brattle House,--its beautiful stairway and other antique features
preserved by the Social Club, to whom the property now belongs,--where
Margaret Fuller, the priestess and queen of modern Transcendentalism,
passed much of her youth and young womanhood, and where her sister, wife
to the poet Ellery Channing, was reared. Margaret, who is said to have
stood for the Theodora of Beaconsfield's "Lothair," first saw the light
in a modest little dwelling in Main Street nearer the Boston bridge, and
here attended school with Holmes and Richard Henry Dana; but it was in
this Brattle House that her marvellous, and in some respects unique,
intellectual career commenced. Here she acquired the moral and mental
equipment which fitted her for leadership in the most vital epoch of
American culture and thought, and here she attracted and attached all
the wisest and noblest spirits within her range. To her here came
Theodore Parker, the older Channing, Harriet Martineau, James Freeman
Clarke,--the earnest, brilliant, and thoughtful of all ages and
conditions. One noble soul who knew her here speaks of her friendship as
a "gift of the gods," and some eminent in thought and achievement
testify that they have ever striven toward standards set up for them by
her in that early period of her residence here.
Close by Miss Fuller's home, "under a spreading chestnut-tree" at the
intersection of Story Street, stood the smithy of Pratt, who was
immortalized by Longfellow as "The Village Blacksmith." To the poet,
passing daily on the way between his home and the college, the "mighty
man" at his anvil in the shaded smithy was long a familiar vision. The
tree--a horse-chestnut--has been removed, the shop has given place to a
modern dwelling, and years ago the worthy smith rejoined his wife,
"singing in Paradise."
A few steps westward from the site of the smithy is the "Chapel of St.
John" of another sweet poem of Longfellow; and just beyond this we
find, bowered by lilacs and environed by acres of shade and sward, the
colonial Cragie House, once the sojourn of Washington, but holding for
us more precious associations, since Sparks, Worcester, and Everett have
lived within its time-honored walls, and our popular poet of grace and
sentiment for near half a century here had his home, and from here
passed into the unknown. The picturesque mansion wears the aspect of an
old acquaintance, and the interior, with its princely proportioned
rooms, spacious fireplaces, wide halls, curious carvings and tiles, has
much that Longfellow has shared with his readers. On the entrance door
is the ponderous knocker; a landing of the broad stairway holds "The Old
Clock on the Stairs;" the right of the hall is the study, with its
priceless mementos of the tender and sympathetic bard who wrought here
the most and best of his life-work, from early manhood onward into the
mellow twilight of sweet and benign age. Here is his chair, vacated by
him but a few days before he died; his desk; his inkstand which had been
Coleridge's; his pen with its "link from the chain of Bonnivard;" the
antique pitcher of his "Drinking Song;" the fireplace of "The Wind over
the Chimney;" the arm-chair carved from the "spreading chestnut-tree"
of the smithy, which was presented to him by the village children and
celebrated in his poem "From my Arm-Chair." About us here are his
cherished books, his pictures, his manuscripts, all his precious
belongings, and from his window we see, beyond the Longfellow Memorial
Park, the river so often sung in his verse, "stealing onward, like the
stream of life." In this room Washington held his war councils. Of the
many intellectual _seances_ its walls have witnessed we contemplate with
greatest pleasure the Wednesday evening meetings of the "Dante Club,"
when Lowell, Howells, Fields, Norton, Greene, and other friends and
scholars sat here with Longfellow to revise the new translation of
Dante.
The book-lined apartment over the study--once the bedchamber of
Washington and later of Talleyrand--was occupied by Longfellow when he
first lived as a lodger in the old house. It was here he heard
"Footsteps of Angels" and "Voices of the Night," and saw by the fitful
firelight the "Being Beauteous" at his side; here he wrote "Hyperion"
and the earlier poems which made him known and loved in every clime.
Later this room became the nursery of his children, and some of the
grotesque tiles which adorn its chimney are mentioned in his poem
"To a Child:"
"The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing-girl, the grave bashaw.
The Chinese mandarin."
[Illustration: WHERE LONGFELLOW LIVED]
Along the western facade of the mansion stretches a wide veranda, where
the poet was wont to take his daily exercise when "the goddess
Neuralgia" or "the two Ws" (Work and Weather) prevented his walking
abroad. In this stately old house his children were born and reared,
here his wife met her tragic death, and here his daughter--the "grave
Alice" of "The Children's Hour"--abides and preserves its precious
relics, while "laughing Allegra" (Anna) and "Edith with golden
hair"--now Mrs. Dana and Mrs. Thorp--have dwellings within the grounds
of their childhood home, and their brother Ernst owns a modern cottage a
few rods westward on the same street.
In Sparks Street, just out of Brattle, dwelt the author Robert
Carter,--familiarly, "The Don,"--sometime secretary to Prescott and long
the especial friend of Lowell, with whom he was associated in the
editorship of the short-lived "Pioneer." Carter's home here was the
rendezvous of a circle of choice spirits, where one might often meet
"Prince" Lowell,--as his friends delighted to call him,--Bartlett of
"Familiar Quotations," and that "songless poet" John Holmes, brother of
the "American Montaigne."
A short walk under the arching elms of Brattle Street brings us to
Elmwood, the life-long home of Lowell. The house, erected by the last
British lieutenant-governor of the province, is a plain, square
structure of wood, three stories in height, and is surrounded by a park
of simple and natural beauty, whose abundant growth of trees gives to
some portions of the grounds the sombreness and apparent seclusion of a
forest. A gigantic hedge of trees encloses the place like a leafy wall,
excluding the vision of the world and harboring thousands of birds who
tenant its shades. Some of the aquatic fowl of the vicinage are referred
to in Longfellow's "Herons of Elmwood." In the old mansion, long the
home of Elbridge Gerry, Lowell was born and grew to manhood, and to it
he brought the bride of his youth, the lovely Maria White, herself the
writer of some exquisite poems; here, a few years later, she died in the
same night that a child was born to Longfellow, whose poem "The Two
Angels" commemorates both events. Here, too, Lowell lost his children
one by one until a daughter, the present Mrs. Burnett,--now owner and
occupant of Elmwood,--alone remained. During the poet's stay abroad, his
house was tenanted by Mrs. Ole Bull and by Lowell's brother-bard Bailey
Aldrich, who in this sweet retirement wrought some of his delicious
work. To the beloved trees and birds of his old home Lowell returned
from his embassage, and here, with his daughter, he passed his last
years among his books and a chosen circle of friends. Here, where he
wished to die, he died, and here his daughter preserves his former home
and its contents unchanged since he was borne hence to his burial. Until
the death of his father, Lowell's study was an upper front room at the
left of the entrance. It is a plain, low-studded corner apartment, which
the poet called "his garret," and where he slept as a boy. Its windows
now look only into the neighboring trees, but when autumn has shorn the
boughs of their foliage the front window commands a wide level of the
sluggish Charles and its bordering lowlands, while the side window
overlooks the beautiful slopes of Mount Auburn, where Lowell now lies
with his poet-wife and the children who went before. His study windows
suggested the title of his most interesting volume of prose essays. In
this upper chamber he wrote his "Conversations on the Poets" and the
early poems which made his fame,--"Irene," "Prometheus," "Rhoecus,"
"Sir Launfal,"--which was composed in five days,--and the first series
of that collection of grotesque drolleries, "The Biglow Papers." Here
also he prepared his editorial contributions to the "Atlantic." His
later study was on the lower floor, at the left of the ample hall which
traverses the centre of the house. It is a prim and delightful
old-fashioned apartment, with low walls, a wide and cheerful fireplace,
and pleasant windows which look out among the trees and lilacs upon a
long reach of lawn. In this room the poet's best-loved books, copiously
annotated by his hand, remain upon his shelves; here we see his table,
his accustomed chair, the desk upon which he wrote the "Commemoration
Ode," "Under the Willows," and many famous poems, besides the volumes of
prose essays. In this study he sometimes gathered his classes in Dante,
and to him here came his friends familiarly and informally,--for
"receptions" were rare at Elmwood: most often came "The Don," "The
Doctor," Norton, Owen, Bartlett, Felton, Stillman,--less frequently
Godkin, Fields, Holmes, Child, Motley, Edmund Quincy, and the historian
Parkman.
While the older trees of the place were planted by Gerry, the pines and
clustering lilacs were rooted by Lowell or his father. All who remember
the poet's passionate love for this home will rejoice in the assurance
that the old mansion, with its precious associations and mementos, and
the acres immediately adjoining it, will not be in any way disturbed
during the life of his daughter and her children. At most, the memorial
park which has been planned by the literary people of Boston and
Cambridge will include only that portion of the grounds which belonged
to the poet's brothers and sisters.
A narrow street separates the hedges of Elmwood from the peaceful shades
of Mount Auburn,--the "City of the Dead" of Longfellow's sonnet. Lowell
thought this the most delightful spot on earth. The late Francis Parkman
told the writer that Lowell, in his youth, had confided to him that he
habitually went into the cemetery at midnight and sat upon a tombstone,
hoping to find there the poetic afflatus. He confessed he had not
succeeded, and was warned by his friend that the custom would bring him
more rheumatism than inspiration. Dr. Ellis testified that at this
period his friend Dr. Lowell often expressed to him his anxiety "lest
his son James would amount to nothing, because he had taken to writing
poetry."