By Barry Lyndon.
The great Boston fire of 1872 had a forerunner in the same city. In 1711
a most sweeping conflagration occurred, which burned down all the houses
on both sides of Cornhill, from School street to Dock square, besides
the First Church, the Town House, all the upper part of King street, and
the greater part of Pudding Lane, between Water street and Spring Lane.
Nearly one hundred houses were destroyed, of which the _débris_ was
used to fill up Long Wharf. The fire "broke out," says an account in the
Boston _News-Letter_, "in an old tenement within a backyard in
Cornhill, near the First Meeting-house, occasioned by the carelessness
of a poor Scottish woman by using fire near a parcel of ocum, chips, and
other combustible rubbish."
The houses which were rebuilt along Cornhill, soon after the fire, were
"of brick, three stories high, with a garret, a flat roof, and
balustrade." Several of these houses were still standing in 1825; in
1855 only a very few remained; while only one, so far as we know, has
come down to us to-day and is yet even well-preserved, namely, the Old
Corner Bookstore, on the corner of the present Washington and School
streets.
This old house teems with historical associations, past and present.
Under its roof Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was wont to hold her Antinomian
_séances_, under the very nose of Governor John Winthrop, when
"over against the site of the Old Corner Store dwelt the notables of the
town,--the governor, the elder of the church, the captain of the
artillery company, and the most needful of the craftsmen and artificers
of the humble plantation; and at a short distance from it were the
meeting-house, the market-house, the town-house, the school-house, and
the ever-flowing spring of pure water."
The Old Corner Store is supposed to have been built directly after the
fire of 1711. It is an example of what is known as the colonial style of
architecture, and is thought to be the oldest brick building now
standing in Boston. Upon a tablet on its western gable appears the
supposed date of its construction, 1712.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF W.D. TICKNOR.]
After passing through several ownerships the house reverted, in 1755, to
the descendants of the Hutchinson family. In 1784 it belonged to Mr.
Edward Sohier and his wife Susanna (Brimmer), and was valued at £1,600.
In 1795 it came into the possession of Mr. Herman Brimmer, and was
designated in the first Boston Directory (1789) as No. 76 Cornhill. In
1817 the front part of the building was used as an apothecary shop, by
Dr. Samuel Clarke, the father of Rev. James Freeman Clarke. In 1824 the
name of Cornhill was changed to Washington street, and the old store was
variously numbered until it took No. 135. Here Dr. Clarke remained
keeping shop until 1828, when he was succeeded by a firm of booksellers.
After he left, the building was considerably changed, inside and out,
and Messrs. Richard B. Carter and Charles J. Hendee then occupied the
front room as a bookstore, in 1828, and Mr. Isaac R. Butts moved his
printing-office from Wilson's Lane to the chambers soon afterwards.
Messrs. Carter and Hendee continued in the store until 1832, when they
removed to No. 131, upstairs, and were succeeded by John Allen and
William D. Ticknor in 1832-34. From 1834 the store was occupied by Mr.
W.D. Ticknor alone until 1845; and subsequently by himself and partners,
Mr. John Reed, Jr., and James T. Fields, until the spring of 1864, when
the senior partner died. The new firm of Ticknor (Howard M.), Fields
(James T.), and Osgood (James R.) remained at the Old Corner till 1867,
when they removed to No. 124 Tremont street. Messrs. E.P. Dutton & Co.
next moved into the Old Corner Store, and was succeeded, September 1,
1869, by Alexander Williams & Co. The store is now occupied, since 1882,
by Messrs. Cupples, Upham, & Co., well-known book publishers.
[Illustration: THE OLD CORNER IN 1800.]
It will be seen that the first appearance of the name of Ticknor, as in
any way associated with the publishing of books, was in 1832. In the
spring of 1864 Mr. William D. Ticknor visited Philadelphia in company
with Nathaniel Hawthorne; was taken suddenly ill and died there. Shortly
afterwards his eldest son Howard M. Ticknor, a graduate of Harvard
College in the class of 1856, was taken into the firm, which, under the
name of TICKNOR & FIELDS, held a very prominent place among American
publishers for over twenty years. During the period ending with the year
1867 the Old Corner was one of the best known spots in Boston, not alone
by reason of its antiquity, but equally by reason of its distinguished
literary history and its _habitués_. Here Charles Dickens and
Thackeray used to loiter and chat with their American publishers;
Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, and Whipple the essayist, made
it their head-quarters. Nearly all of their best-known writings, and
those of Emerson, Hawthorne, Saxe, Winthrop, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Stowe,
Aldrich, Howells, and a host of other well-known authors, sooner or
later bore the imprint of the house of Ticknor. After the failure of
Messrs. Phillips, Sampson,& Co., the "Atlantic Monthly," first suggested
by Mr. Francis H. Underwood, now United States Consul to Glasgow, passed
into the hands of Ticknor & Fields, and, a little later, was added "Our
Young Folks," edited by J.T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom, "Every
Saturday," edited by T.B. Aldrich, and the "North American Review," long
edited by James Russell Lowell.
[Illustration: THE OLD CORNER IN 1850.]
Still later the firm name was Fields, Osgood, & Co., then James R.
Osgood & Co., then Houghton, Osgood,& Co., and again James R. Osgood
& Co. The last-named firm published a remarkable series of books, which
their successors inherit.
[Illustration: 124 TREMONT STREET.]
At no time in its history, from 1832 to the present time, has the firm
been without a Ticknor in its copartnership. For a brief season,
however, the name disappeared from the firm's imprint.
The great publishing house has just inaugurated a new tenure of life as
Ticknor & Co., the copartnership consisting of Benjamin H. and Thomas B.
Ticknor, sons of William D. Ticknor, and George F. Godfrey, of Bangor,
Me., a gentleman of marked culture and geniality, and one, too, who, all
may rest assured, will take kindly to and will find success in the book
business. With scholarly acquirements, and with minds trained to the
wants of to-day, the sons of W.D. Ticknor, both gentlemen of refined
literary taste, now step to the front with strong hands and vigorous
purposes, not alone to perpetuate but to add to the former reputation of
the time-honored publishing house.
The new house succeeds to a rich inheritance of the books of younger
American authors,--those of Howells, James, Edgar Fawcett, Kate Field,
Mrs. Burnett, Miss Howard, Julian Hawthorne, George W. Cable, and
others. That it means to maintain the supremacy is foreshadowed by the
list of important works which it has announced as forthcoming.
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