Boston—Home Atmosphere—Various Experiences—Ethics rubbed in by a
six-pound Shot—Discontent—Makes up his mind to go to Sea—To Study
Navigation—Picture of his Life in Boston.
In the spring of 1826 Dr. Lyman Beecher moved with his family to Boston.
Henry Ward was thirteen years old the following June, “a green, healthy
country lad,” “with a round, full, red-cheeked face.” Here a new world
opened to him and a new set of influences was brought to bear upon him.
The same home life was around him, and, if possible, more intense than
ever; for Dr. Beecher had come to Boston to be the champion “of the
Faith once delivered to the saints,” and he threw himself into the work
with all the zeal and enthusiasm of an intensely ardent nature.
He had watched with intense interest every step of that reaction in
Massachusetts from the strict theocracy of the Puritans, called the
“Unitarian Controversy.” He thoroughly understood and heartily condemned
the process, employed by the wealthy and literary classes, of taking
away from the church, composed presumably of regenerate persons, the
power to govern their own affairs and of giving it to the congregation,
which was often composed of men hostile to a spiritual religion. He had
seen the dominant majority enter into the possession of church edifices
and church property, employ ministers opposed to the old faith, and
drive the orthodox ministry out into school-houses and town-halls; and
old foundations established by the fathers to perpetuate the faith had
been seized and made to support opposite and antagonistic views. All
this had kindled in him a burning indignation against the wrong that had
been perpetrated, and a deep sympathy for the brethren who had suffered.
“It was as a fire in my bones,” he said. “My mind was all the time
heating, heating, heating.”
“His family prayers,” we are told by Mrs. Stowe, “at this period,
departing from the customary forms of unexcited hours, became often
upheavings of passionate emotion such as I shall never forget. ‘Come,
Lord Jesus,’ he would say, ‘here where the bones of the fathers rest,
here where the crown has been torn from thy brow—come and recall thy
wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered on the mountains; these
sheep, what have they done? Gather them, gather them, O Good Shepherd,
for their feet stumble upon the dark mountains.”
Mr. Beecher in after-years spoke of the work here as something deeper
than a mere dispute between rival denominations or antagonistic creeds.
“The outward form of the great excitement was that of controversy
between the Unitarian and Calvinistic faiths. But, as compared with the
great inward reality, this was but superficial. It was broader than any
doctrinal controversy, deeper than any sectarian conflict. It was a
resurrection of vital religion, in all churches of every name, and in
the Unitarian churches as well as the Evangelical.”
It will be seen that the same atmosphere of deep feeling and triumphant
faith, if possible more tropical and more thoroughly charged with
electricity, continued in the new as in the old home; but outside the
family very different influences were brought to bear upon the lad, and
he was led out into a much wider range of experiences. We give as many
of these as space will allow.
The first thing that greatly impressed him seems to have been the bells:
“Is there any boy left in Boston to whose ears the Christ Church chimes
sound as they did to mine? Some travelled persons in Litchfield had
informed me that the churches in Boston were so thick that the bells on
Sunday morning would almost play a tune. The first Sunday morning after
the family took possession of the house in Sheafe Street, being in the
back-yard, I heard in a wondrous manner the tune of ‘Greenville,’ played
on bells! The whole air was full of ‘Greenville.’
“I was fully persuaded that this was the thing predicted, and that this
tune simply fell into place among the vast number of bell-strokes. Too
young to analyze or reason upon the matter, I listened with a pleasure
and amazement which I fear nothing will ever give me again till I hear
the bells ring out wondrous things in the New Jerusalem. Blessed city!
in which dwelt so divine a spirit of harmony that some airy hand
governed the widely scattered belfries, and taught the notes which each
bell carelessly struck to come together in time and tune, and march
through the air in harmony. And when, after a few minutes, the tune
changed and ‘St. Martyn’s’ came sadly and slowly through the air, I
could contain myself no longer, but rushed, red and eager, to bring out
‘Charles,’ the inseparable companion of all my marvels, who opened his
great eyes with a look of amazement as utter and implicit as if he had
been a young devotee witnessing his first miracle. I expounded to him
the cause, taking for text the reports which had been made to me while
yet in the country. Alas for marvels! The cook, overhearing, laughed us
out of countenance, and explained that it was a chime of bells, and also
what a chime was. Of course we were wiser and less happy. But never, in
forty years, has that _chime_ of bells sounded in my ears without
bringing back, for a second, the first electric shock of wonder and
pleasure.
“Next to Boston bells were Boston ships. Here first we beheld a ship! We
shall never again see anything that will so profoundly affect our
imagination. We stood and gazed upon the ship, and smelt the sea-air,
and looked far out along the water to the horizon, and all that we had
ever read of buccaneers, of naval battles, of fleets of merchantmen, of
explorations into strange seas, among rare and curious things, rose up
in a cloud of mixed and changing fancies, until we scarcely knew whether
we were in the body or out. How many hours have we asked and wanted no
better joy than to sit at the end of the wharf, or on the deck of some
newly-come ship, and rock and ride on the stream of our own unconscious
imagination! We went to school in Boston Harbor.
“Next to the merchant marine was the Navy-Yard. We stole over to
Charlestown almost every week. With what awe we walked past the long
rows of unmounted cannon! With what exhilaration we looked forth from
the mounted sea-battery that looked down the harbor, and just waited for
some Britisher to dare to come in sight! We have torn any number of
ships to pieces with those cannon, with imagination for our commodore
and patriotism for our cannoneer. There have been great battles in
Boston harbor that nobody knows anything about but ourself!”
Other experiences there were of a different nature.
The peaceful life of the quiet New England village, where each one took
his place mostly by the position of the family and held it largely
undisturbed, had given way to that of a city full of antagonisms and
strife. It was a life not exactly in accordance with the instructions of
a well-regulated Christian family, but its rough experiences were
undoubtedly adapted to bring out some qualities that were useful in an
after-career in which battle was to have so prominent a place.
“It was with some slight contempt that we beheld our first companions.
Our first home was in Sheafe Street, far down at the North End, next
door to Mr. Gay, the landlord. The boys thereabouts were smart and
lively, but few of them could wrestle, and none of them often held out
with us in a downright race. I was always long-winded, even before I
began public speaking.
“In those days no boy was a good boy among his fellows who had not the
courage of battle. It was the duty of all living in certain districts,
upon proper occasion, to fight the boys of other streets or districts.
The Salem-Streeters included all the small streets adjacent—Sheafe
Street, Bennett Street, etc. When nothing else was on hand small
scrimmages were gotten up between ourselves—Sheafe Street vs. Bennett
Street, etc.; but we all united against Prince Street. Prince-Streeters
were the natural enemies of all the surrounding streets. Yet, when the
West-Enders came over in battle array, yelling, throwing stones, and
driving in the timid lads caught out of bounds, all the North-Enders
rose, forgot their local feuds, and went forth in awful array to
chastise the wretches that lived at the West End. And if one were to
believe all the feats of which we boasted for a month thereafter, he
would be sure that since the days that Homer sang no such fighting had
ever taken place.
“But what were all these things to that implacable and ineradical hatred
which all true Boston boys entertained against Charlestown Pigs? For by
such a title did we expose the meanness, the degradation, the cowardice,
the utter despicableness of a boy born the other side of the ‘draw’ of
the Charlestown Bridge!”
While the father was coming to leadership in the pulpit his son Henry
was reaching the same point in his set by the only way opened to him at
that time.
“Copp’s Hill? It recalled many a boyish prank. One sport engaged our
youthful leisure. It was called ‘Follow your leader.’ It was considered
as a testimony to one’s courage when, by acclamation, he was elected to
leadership! The game was simple; but the results, always amusing, were
sometimes somewhat too stimulating for pleasure. The leader started upon
a run, with a long trail of boys in a line behind him, whom he
endeavored to throw off by doing things which they were not strong
enough or skilful or daring enough to imitate. If twenty boys started,
half would drop away, after a sharp run, by mere want of breath; another
section could be thrown off by some feat that terrified them.
“We recall one memorable chase. Called to the head of the column, I
plunged down Margaret’s Lane, up Prince and back, up toward Copp’s Hill,
reducing my followers, by sheer exhaustion, one-half. A brick house was
going up; into it I dashed, ran up the ladder, walked along the
floor-joists, and let myself down by a rope attached to a guy on the
front. Only six or seven could follow. A large mortar-bed lay near by. I
dashed into that, wading through the slush. Five came out on the other
side with me. Tough five! They followed me into a shop, right back into
the adjacent parlor, out at a side-door, though some of the last got the
yard-stick well laid on by the indignant shop-keeper, and the last one
out came dripping from a pail of water which a woman flung after ‘the
nasty varmints,’ as she styled us. Many other feats did we, but in vain.
The five would stick. I remember that a large part of Copp’s Hill had
been dug down for filling the ‘Causeway,’ leaving a precipitous
face—well, say fifty feet high to the eyes, but, if measured, perhaps
twenty feet. Ascending the hill, I drew near the verge, a little
hesitant to venture the plunge. But to confess that I dare not do
_anything_ would be disgraceful, and so, with but a moment’s pause, I
jumped for a little crumbling foothold half-way down, and off from that,
as soon as on it, to the bottom, which I reached in a heap, with dirt
and stones and two boys following after! Not stopping to rub my shins,
rejoicing that only two were left, and desperate, I took my way to the
near wharf where ‘Billy Gray’s’ ships used to be, climbed the side, ran
along the deck, up the bowsprit, far out, and then, with a spring, off
into deep water! Down, down, down we went, and seemed likely to go on
for ever. At length the descent stopped, and we rose again to the
surface—O joy!—to see the two boys standing on the bowsprit! They did
not dare! That day’s work established our reputation! We know how
Alexander felt! Cæsar and Napoleon can tell us nothing new about the
glories of victory!”
That his country honesty was not altogether proof against the
temptations of his life in the city is shown by a description he gives,
in “Eyes and Ears,” of his successful attempt to purloin a six-pound
cannon-ball from the Navy-Yard:
“One day I visited some ill-constructed vaults where shot had been
stored. The six and twelve pound shot were extremely tempting. I had no
particular use for them. I am to this day puzzled to know why I coveted
them. There was no chance in the house to roll them, and as little in
the street. For base-ball or shinty they were altogether too
substantial. But I was seized with an irresistible desire to possess
one. As I had been well brought up, of course the first objection arose
on the score of stealing. But I disposed of that, with a patriotic
facility that ought long before this to have sent me to Congress, by the
plea that it was no sin to steal from the government. Next, how should I
convey the shot from the Yard without detection? I tried it in my
handkerchief. That was altogether too plain. I tried my jacket-pocket,
but the sag and shape of that alarmed my fears. I tried my
breeches-pocket, but the abrupt protuberance was worse than all. I had a
good mind to be honest, since there was no feasible way of carrying it
off. At length a thought struck me: Wrap a handkerchief about it and put
it in your hat.
“The iron ball was accordingly swaddled with the handkerchief and
mounted on my head, and the hat shut over it. I emerged from the vault a
little less courageous than was pleasant, and began my march toward the
gate. Every step seemed a mile. Every man I met looked unusually hard at
me. The marines evidently were suspecting my hat. Some sailors, leering
and rolling toward the ships, seemed to look me through. The
perspiration stood all over my face as an officer came toward me. Now
for it! I was to be arrested, put in prison, cat-o’-nine-tailed, or
shot, for aught I knew. I wished the ball in the bottom of the sea; but
no, it was on the top of my head!
“By this time, too, it had grown very heavy; I must have made a mistake
in selecting! I meant a six-pounder, but I was sure it must have been a
twelve-pounder, and before I got out of the Yard it weighed twenty-four
pounds! I began to fear that the stiffness with which I carried my neck
would excite suspicion, and so I tried to limber up a little, which had
nearly ruined me, for the shot took a roll around my crown in a manner
that liked to have brought me and my hat to the ground. Indeed, I felt
like a loaded cannon, and every man and everything was like a spark
trying to touch me off. The gate was a great way farther off than I had
ever found it before; I seemed likely never to get there.
“And when at length, heartsore and headsore, with my scalp well rolled,
I got to the gate, all my terror came to a culmination as the sentinel
stopped his marching, drew himself up, and, looking through me, smiled.
I expected him to say: ‘O you little thievish devil, do you think I do
not see through you?’ But, bless his heart! he only said: ‘Pass!’ He did
not say it twice. I walked a few steps farther, and then, having great
faith in the bravery of my feet, I pulled my hat off before me, and,
carrying it in that position, I whipped around the first corner and made
for the bridge with a speed which Flora Temple would envy.
“When I reached home I had nothing to do with my shot. I did not dare
show it in the house nor tell where I got it; and after one or two
solitary rolls I gave it away on the same day to a Prince-Streeter.
“But, after all, that six-pounder rolled a good deal of sense into my
skull. I think it was the last thing I ever stole (excepting a little
matter of a heart now and then), and it gave me a notion of the folly of
coveting more than you can enjoy, which has made my whole life happier.
It was rather a severe mode of catechising, but ethics rubbed in with a
six-pound shot are better than none at all.”
His student life, which had been such a failure heretofore, was improved
a little, and but a little. By means of the pressure of school
discipline, backed up and made formidable by family pride and the advice
and exhortations heard at home, he managed to make fair progress in most
of his studies, especially in the rules and exceptions of the Latin
grammar, and to the day of his death was able to establish his claims to
proficiency in that language by rattling off the list of eleven
prepositions that govern the ablative. But his heart was not in the
work. Disgust, insurrection, revolution, was the stormy way along which
he was rapidly travelling.
This period in his own life is described in “Norwood”: “Long before the
Amazon reaches the ocean it has grown so wide that from the channel no
shore can be seen from either side. It is still a river, but with all
the signs and symptoms of becoming an ocean. There is a period,
beginning not far from fourteen, in young lives, when childhood is
widened suddenly, and carries its banks so far out that manhood seems
begun, though as yet it is far off. The stream is ocean-deep. Upon this
estuary of youth the currents are shifting, the eddies are many. Here
are united the strength of the sea and the hindrances of the land.
“The important organic changes which, in our zone, take place in the
second full seven of years, produce important results even in the
coldest temperaments and in the slenderest natures. But in persons of
vigor of body and strength of feeling there is frequently an uprising
like a city in insurrection. The young nature, swelling to the new
influences with a sense of unmeasurable strength, sometimes turbulent
with passions, but always throbbing with excited feelings led on and fed
by tantalizing fancies, seems transformed from its previous self and
becomes a new nature. New moral forces are developed into activity.
Aspirations begin to quicken the soul. Ambitions grow nobler.”
Mrs. Stowe says: “The era of fermentation and development was upon him,
and the melancholy that had brooded over his childhood waxed more
turbulent and formidable. He grew gloomy and moody, restless and
irritable. His father, noticing the change, got him on a course of
biographical reading, hoping to divert his thoughts. He began to read
naval histories, the lives of great sailors and commanders, the voyages
of Captain Cook, the biography of Nelson; and immediately, like
lightning flashing out of rolling clouds, came the determination not to
rest any longer in Boston, learning terminations and prepositions, but
to go forth to a life of enterprise. He made up his little bundle,
walked the wharf and talked with sailors and captains, hovered
irresolute on the verge of voyages, never quite able to grieve his
father by a sudden departure. At last he wrote a letter announcing to a
brother that he could and would no longer remain at school; that he had
made up his mind for the sea; that if not permitted to go he should go
without permission. This letter was designedly dropped where his father
picked it up. Dr. Beecher put it in his pocket and said nothing for the
moment, but the next day asked Henry to help him saw wood. Now, the
wood-pile was the doctor’s favorite debating-ground, and Henry felt
complimented by the invitation, as implying manly companionship.
“‘Let us see,’ said the doctor, ‘Henry, how old are you?’ ‘Almost
fourteen!’ ‘Bless me! How boys do grow! Why, it’s almost time to be
thinking what you are going to do. Have you ever thought?’ ‘Yes; I want
to go to sea.’ ‘To sea! Of all things! Well, well! After all, why not?
Of course you don’t want to be a common sailor. You want to get into the
navy?’ ‘Yes, sir; that’s what I want.’ ‘But not merely as a common
sailor, I suppose?’ ‘No, sir; I want to be a midshipman, and after that
a commodore.’ ‘I see,’ said the doctor cheerfully. ‘Well, Henry, in
order for that, you know, you must begin a course of mathematics and
study navigation and all that.’ ‘Yes, sir; I am ready.’ ‘Well, then, I
will send you up to Amherst next week, to Mount Pleasant, and then
you’ll begin your preparatory studies, and if you are well prepared I
presume I can make interest to get you an appointment.’”
And so he went to Mount Pleasant, in Amherst, Mass., and Dr. Beecher
said shrewdly: “I shall have that boy in the ministry yet.”
In a sermon preached by his brother, Rev. T. K. Beecher, we have this
picture:
“All of you know more about ‘Henry Ward Beecher’ than I do, but I know
more about ‘Brother Henry’ than you do.
“A little Boston boy five years old had a brother Henry who was sixteen,
and a brother Charles who was fourteen; and though he knew of David and
Goliath, who ‘fell down slambang,’ and David, ‘little David ran up and
cut his head off’! though he knew about Samson and the lion, yet for the
present strength and greatness Henry and Charles were his heroes. Did
they not own a long sled and coast down Copp’s Hill and jump sixteen
sleds at the bounce? Did they not sharpen skates with enthusiasm and go
off to the mill-dam alone?
“By night when the tocsin rang and the little boy covered his head and
shivered under the sheets, did not Henry and Charles rush down two
flights of stairs and out the door, yelling fire? And they were at
school fitting for college at Mt. Pleasant. Their hair-trunk was two
days a-packing, and the stage took them away before daylight, leaving
the house so quiet and _so_ empty. Sixteen and five—oh! how magnificent
the boy of sixteen to the little boy of five. I speak of brother Henry.
“But at prayers, family prayers, Henry and Charles could sing, and so
could the little boy. A frail, blue-eyed, willowy mother sat in the
rocking-chair. Father would read—the little boy knew not what. But for
the singing from village hymns Henry sometimes fluted, making a queer
mouth; and then, all kneeling, it was ever asked by father, ‘Overturn
and overturn, till He whose right it is shall come and reign, King of
nations as King of saints.’
“Prayers over, Aunt Esther and the little boy, he standing in a chair,
washed the dishes, and Henry and Charles stormed out to the Latin
School. But they went to Mount Pleasant, and Mr. Colton was the teacher.
Twice a year they came home, at Thanksgiving and the summer vacation.
The expected stage drove up, and the little boy, in agony of delight
that could not be endured, hid himself on a trundle-bed under mother’s
and braided bed-cords till, searched out, he was tossed above the clouds
by great, strong brother Henry.
“At morning prayers, ‘Thou hast brought back our boys in health,’ the
little boy heard that and the ‘overturn and overturn’ part; and that
little boy, now your pastor, bears witness in your ears that the boys
were kept, and that since those days there have been overturnings not a
few. And further he tells you that those family prayers propagated the
ancestral religion in brother Henry, though they have failed to hand
down the ancestral theology.
“The boys must go to college, and leave the little boy to go to infant
school, to Miss Bull, and learn to tell the hour on a card clock, and
add, subtract, and count with an abacus. Henry in the world of departed
spirits, Amherst; Charles at Bowdoin. Every morning father praying for
our boys at college: ‘May they become good ministers of our Lord Jesus
Christ!’
”... Edward was a man, like father. But Henry and Charles were heroes,
doing things. How they could jump! How they whirled around the
horizontal bar! How Charles could flog a top! And Henry had peanuts and
red peppermints. Shall I ever be big and do things, and run to fires,
and go way down Milk Street?
“Yes, one vacation brother Henry took the little boy down on Milk
Street, past two Unitarian churches safely, past Tremont Theatre, past
an open stable-door where lay a red cow with monstrous horns, chewing
her big mouth with nothing in it, and looking, oh! so strong and hungry
at that little boy. But Henry wasn’t scared. He was whistling. ‘Come
along, Tom,’ he said, ‘that’s only a cow.’
“Henry and Charles at college; father and eight of us staging from
Boston to Cincinnati, leaving my heroes. Amherst and Bowdoin loom large
in my fancy still. My heroes were to stay and grow! Tidings once a
month: Charles has a fiddle, Henry has a six-keyed flute; Charles, and
something about circles and geometry; Henry, and phrenology and
temperance lectures.”
Such was his life in Boston, undoubtedly to a certain extent beneficial,
and, by reason of the activity of the streets of the city and the bustle
of the wharves, attractive. But coming at the turbulent period of his
own development, when the rough elements of its thoroughfares were more
congenial to him than the influences of its churches, libraries, or
homes, it was far from being satisfactory. Its liberty was not
altogether safe, nor were its restrictions healthful; and he says: “I
cannot see how, if I had remained much longer in Boston, I could have
escaped ruin.” We see him, therefore, start off on the lumbering
stage-coach, in the early autumn morning before daylight, for Amherst,
with a sense of relief and hearty thankfulness that he is escaped as a
bird from the snare of the fowler.