We are all associationists. There is no man who does not believe in
association in some degree. For myself, I am firm in the faith. Let me
not be misunderstood, however; I do not mean that principle of
association which the late Mr. Fourier advocated in France, and Mr.
Brisbane in America. I do not believe in the utopian schemes which have
been ground out of the brains of philosophers who mistake vagueness and
impracticability for sublimity, and which they have misnamed
association. The principle of association to which I pay homage is one
which finds a home in every human heart. It is that principle of our
nature which, when the bereaved Queen Constance was mourning for her
absent child, "stuffed out his vacant garments with his form." It is
that principle which makes a man love the scenes of his boyhood, and
which brings tears to the eyes of the traveller in a foreign land, when
he hears a familiar strain from a hand organ, however harsh and out of
tune. Even the brute creation seems to share in it; the cat is sure to
be found in her favourite place at the fireside, while the tea kettle
makes music on the hob; the dog, too, (let Hercules himself do what he
may,) will not only have his day, but will have his chosen corner for
repose, and will stick to it, however tempting you may make other places
by a superabundance of door mats and other canine furniture. And the
tired cart horse, when his day's labour is over, and he finds himself
once more in the familiar stall, with his provender before him--do you
not suppose that the associations of equine comfort by which he is
surrounded are dearer to him than any hopes of the luxury and splendour
of Her Britannic Majesty's stables at Windsor could be? Ask him if he
would leave his present peck of oats for the chances of royal service,
and a red-waistcoated, white-top-booted groom to wait upon him, and I
will warrant you that he will answer _nay_!
There is no nation nor people that is free from this bondage of
association. We treasure General Jackson's garments with respectful care
in a glass case in the Patent Office at Washington; in the Louvre, you
shall find preserved the crown of Charlemagne and the old gray coat of
the first Napoleon; and at Westminster Abbey, (if you have the money to
pay your admission fee,) you may see the plain old oaken chair in which
the crowned monarchs of a thousand years have sat. Go to Rome, and stand
"at the base of Pompey's statua," and association shall carry you back
in imagination to the time when the mighty Julius fell. Stand upon the
grassy mounds of Tusculum, and you will find yourself glowing with
enthusiasm for Cicero, and wonder how you could have grown so sleepy
over _Quousque tandem_, &c., in your schoolboy days. Climb up the
Trasteverine steep to where the convent of San Onofrio suns itself in
the bright blue air of Rome, and while the monks are singing the divine
office where the bones of Tasso repose, you may fill your mind with
memories of the bard of the crusades, in the chamber where his weary
soul found the release it craved. Go to that fair capital which seems to
have hidden itself among the fertile hills of Tuscany; walk through its
pleasant old streets, and you shall find yourself the slave of many
pleasing associations. The very place where Dante was wont to stand and
gaze at that wondrous dome which Michel Angelo said he was unwilling to
copy and unable to excel, is marked by an inscription in the pavement.
Every street has its associations that appeal to your love of the
beautiful or the heroic. Walk out into the lively streets of that city
which stands at the head of the world's civilization, and you are
overwhelmed with historic associations. You seem to hear the clatter of
armed heels in some of those queer old alleys, and the vision of Godfrey
or St. Louis, armed for the holy war, would not astonish you. The dim
and stately halls of the palaces are eloquent of power, and you almost
expect to see the thin, pale, thoughtful face of the great Richelieu at
every corner. Over whole districts, rebellion, and anarchy, and
infidelity, once wrote the history of their sway in blood, and even now,
the names of the streets, as you read them, seem to fill you with
terrible mementoes.
But to us, Americans, connected as we are with England in our
civilization and our literature, how full of thrilling associations is
London! From Whitehall, where Puritanism damned itself by the murder of
a king, to Eastcheap, where Mistress Quickly served Sir John with his
sherris-sack; from St. Saviour's Church, where Massinger and Fletcher
lie in one grave, to Milton's tomb in St. Giles's, Cripplegate, there is
hardly a street, or court, or lane, or alley, which does not appeal by
some association to the student of English history or literature. He
perambulates the Temple Gardens with Chaucer; he hears the partisans of
the houses of York and Lancaster, as they profane the silence of that
scholastic spot; he walks Fleet Street, and disputes in Bolt Court with
Dr. Johnson; he smokes in the coffee-houses of Covent Garden with Dryden
and Pope, and the wits of their day; he makes morning calls in Leicester
Square and its neighbourhood, on Sir Philip Sidney, Hogarth, Reynolds,
and Newton; he buys gloves and stockings at Defoe's shop in Cornhill;
and makes excursions with Dicky Steele out to Kensington, to see Mr.
Addison. Drury Lane, despite its gin, and vice, and squalour, has its
associations. The old theatre is filled with them. They show you, in the
smoky green-room, the chairs which once were occupied by Siddons and
Kemble; the seat of Byron by the fireside in the days of his
trusteeship; the mirrors in which so many dramatic worthies viewed
themselves, before they were called to achieve their greatest triumphs.
Every where you find men acknowledging in their actions their allegiance
to this great natural law. Our own city, too, has its associations. Who
can pass by that venerable building in Union Street, which, like a deaf
and dumb beggar, wears a tablet of its age upon its unsightly front,
without recalling some of the events that have taken place, some of the
scenes which that venerable edifice has looked down upon, since its
solid timbers were jointed in the year of salvation 1685? Who can enter
Faneuil Hall without a quickening of his pulse? Who can walk by the old
Hancock House, and not look up at it as if he expected to see old John
(the best writer on the subject of American independence) standing at
the door in his shad-bellied coat, knee-breeches, and powdered wig? Who
can look at the Old South Church without thinking of the part it played
in the revolution, and of the time when it was obliged to yield its
unwilling horsepitality to the British cavalry? Boston is by no means
deficient in associations. Go to Brattle Street, to Copp's Hill, to
Mount Washington, to Deer Island,--though it must be acknowledged, the
only association connected with the last-named place is the Provident
Association.
If there be a fault in the Yankee character, I fear it is a lack of
sufficient respect for the memory of the past. Nature will have her way
with us, however we may try to resist her and trample old recollections
under foot. We worship prosperity too much; and the wide, straight
streets of western cities, with the telegraph posts standing like
sentinels on the edge of the sidewalks, and a general odour of
pork-packing and new houses pervading the atmosphere, seem to our
acquisitive sense more beautiful than the sculptured arch, the
moss-grown tower, the quaint gable, and all the summer fragrance of the
gardens of the Tuileries or the _Unterdenlinden_. I am afraid that we
almost deserve to be classed with those who (as Mr. Thackeray says)
"have no reverence except for prosperity, and no eye for any thing but
success."
Many are kindled into enthusiasm by meditating upon the future of this
our country,--"the newest born of nations, the latest hope of
mankind,"--but for myself I love better to dwell on the sure and
unalterable past, than to speculate upon the glories of the coming
years. While I was young, I liked, when at sea, to stand on the
top-gallant forecastle, and see the proud ship cut her way through the
waves that playfully covered me with spray; but of late years my
pleasure has been to lean over the taffrail and muse upon the subsiding
foam of the vessel's wake. The recollection even of storms and dangers
is to me more grateful than the most joyful anticipation of a fair wind
and the expected port. With these feelings, I cannot help being moved
when I see so many who try to deaden their natural sensibility to old
associations. When the old Province House passed into the hands of the
estimable Mr. Ordway, I congratulated him on his success, but I mourned
over the dark fate of that ancient mansion. I respected it even in its
fallen state as an inn,--for it retained much of its old dignity, and
the ghosts of Andros and his predecessors seemed to brush by you in its
high wainscoted passages and on its broad staircases; but it did seem
the very ecstasy of sacrilege to transform it into a concert-room. I
rejoiced, however, a few years since, when the birthplace of B.
Franklin, in Milk Street, was distinguished by an inscription to that
effect in letters of enduring stone. That was a concession to the
historic associations of that locality which the most sanguine could
hardly have expected from the satinetters of Milk Street.
But I am forgetting my subject, and using up my time and ink in the
prolegomena. My philosophy of association received a severe blow last
week. It was a pleasant day, and I hobbled out on my gouty timbers for a
walk. I wandered into Franklin Place, but it was not the Franklin Place
of my youth. The rude hand of public improvement had not been kept even
from that row of houses which, when I was a boy, was thought an ornament
to our city, and was dignified with the name of the Tontine Buildings.
Franklin Place looked as if two or three of its front teeth had been
knocked out. I walked on, and my sorrow and dismay were increased to
find that the last vestige of Theatre Alley had disappeared. It was bad
enough when the old theatre and the residence of the Catholic bishops of
Boston were swept away: I still clung to the old alley, and hoped that
it would not pass away in my time--that before the old locality should
be improved into what the profane vulgar call sightliness and
respectability, I should (to use the common expressions of one of our
greatest orators, who, in almost every speech and oration that he has
made for some years past, has given a sort of obituary notice of himself
before closing) have been "resting in peace beneath the green sods of
Mount Auburn," or should have "gone down to the silent tomb."
Do not laugh, beloved reader, at the tenderness of my affection for that
old place. There is a great deal of romance of a quiet and genial kind
about Theatre Alley. As I first remember it, commerce had not encroached
upon its precincts; no tall warehouses shut out the light from its
narrow footway, and its planks were unencumbered by any intrusive bales
or boxes. Old Dearborn's scale factory was the only thing to remind one
of traffic in that neighbourhood, which struck a balance with fate by
becoming more scaley than before, when Dearborn and his factory passed
away. The stage door of the theatre was in the alley, and the walk from
thence, through Devonshire Street, to the Exchange Coffee House, which
was the great hotel of Boston at that time, was once well known to many
whose names are now part of the history of the drama. How often was I
repaid for walking through the alley by the satisfaction of meeting
George Frederick Cooke, the elder Kean, Finn, Macready, Booth, Cooper,
Incledon, old Mathews, or the tall, dignified Conway--or some of that
goodly company that made Old Drury classical to the play-goers of forty
years ago.
The two posts which used to adorn and obstruct the entrance to the alley
from Franklin Street, when they were first placed there, were an
occasion of indignation to a portion of the public, and of anxiety and
vexation to Mr. Powell, the old manager. That estimable gentleman had
often been a witness to the terror of the children and of those of the
weaker sex (I hope that I shall be forgiven by the "Rev. Antoinette
Brown" for using such an adjective) who sometimes met a stray horse or
cow in the alley; so he placed two wooden posts just beyond the theatre,
to shut out the dreaded bovine intruders. But the devout Hibernians who
used to worship at the church in Franklin Street could not brook the
placing of any such obstacles in their way to the performance of their
religious duties; and they used to cut the posts down as often as Mr.
Powell set them up, until he took refuge in the resources of science,
and covered and bound them with the iron bands which imprisoned them up
to a very recent period.
Old Mr. Stoughton, the Spanish consul, used to occupy the first house in
Franklin Street above the alley, behind which his garden ran back for
some distance. How little that worthy gentleman thought that his tulip
beds and rose bushes would one day give place to a dry goods shop! Senor
Stoughton was one of the urbanest men that ever touched a hat. If he met
you in the morning, the memory of his bland and gracious salutation
never departed from you during the day, and seemed to render your sleep
sweeter at night. He always treated you as if you were a prince in
disguise, and he were the only person in the secret of your incognito.
He enjoyed the intimate friendship of that great and good man, Dr.
Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, who was afterwards transferred to
the archiepiscopal see of Bordeaux, and decorated with the dignity of a
Prince of the Church. He, too, often walked through the old alley. The
children always welcomed his approach. They respected Don Stoughton;
Bishop Cheverus they loved. His very look was a benediction, and the
mere glance of his eye was a _Sursum corda_. That calm, wise, benignant
face always had a smile for the little ones who loved the neighbourhood
of that humble Cathedral, and the pockets of that benevolent prelate
never knew a dearth of sugar plums. Years after that happy time, a
worthy Protestant minister of this vicinity--who was blessed with few or
none of those prejudices against "Romanism" which are nowadays
considered a necessary part of a minister's education--visited Cardinal
Cheverus in his palace at Bordeaux, and found him keenly alive to every
thing that concerned his old associations and friends in Boston. He
declared, with tears in his eyes, and with that air of sincerity that
marked every word he spoke, that he would gladly lay down the burden of
the honour and power that then weighed upon him, to return to the care
of his little New England flock. Now, Cardinal Cheverus was a man of
taste and of kind feelings, and I will warrant you that when he thought
of Boston, Theatre Alley was included among his associations, and
enjoyed a share in his affectionate regrets.
Mrs. Grace Dunlap's little shop was an institution which many considered
to be coexistent with the alley itself. It was just one of those places
that seem in perfect harmony with Theatre Alley as it was twenty-five
years ago. It was one of those shops that always seem to shun the
madding crowd's ignoble strife, and seek a refuge in some cool
sequestered way. The snuff and tobacco which Mrs. Dunlap used to
dispense were of the best quality, and she numbered many distinguished
persons among her customers. The author of the History of Ferdinand and
Isabella was often seen there replenishing his box, and exchanging kind
courtesies with the fair-spoken dealer in that fragrant article which is
productive of so many bad voices and so much real politeness in European
society. Mrs. Dunlap herself was a study for an artist. Her pleasant
face, her fair complexion, her quiet manner, her white cap, with its gay
ribbons, rivalling her eyes in brightness, were all in perfect keeping
with the scrupulous neatness and air of repose that always reigned in
her shop. Her parlour was as comfortable a place as you would wish to
see on a summer or a winter day. It had a cheerful English look that I
always loved. The plants in the windows, the bird cage, the white
curtains, the plain furniture, that looked as if you might use it
without spoiling it, the shining andirons, and the blazing wood fire,
are all treasured in my memory of Theatre Alley as it used to be. Mrs.
Dunlap's customers and friends (and who could help being her friend?)
were always welcome in her parlour, and there were few who did not enjoy
her simple hospitality more than that pretentious kind which sought to
lure them with the pomp and vanity of mirrors and gilding. Her punch was
a work of art. But I will refrain from pursuing this subject further. It
is no pleasure to me to harrow up the feelings of my readers by dwelling
upon the joys of their _praeteritos annos_.
When Mrs. Dunlap moved out of the alley, its glory began to decline.
From that day its _prestige_ seemed to have gone. Even before that time
an attempt had been made to rob it of its honoured name. Signs were put
up at each end of it bearing the inscription, "Odeon Avenue"; but the
attempt was vain, whether it proceeded from motives of godliness or of
respectability; nobody ever called it any thing but Theatre Alley. At
about that time nearly all the buildings left in it were devoted to the
philanthropic object of the quenching of human thirst. We read that St.
Paul took courage when he saw _three_ taverns. Who can estimate the
height of daring to which the Apostle of the Gentiles might have risen
had it been vouchsafed to him to walk through Theatre Alley. One of the
most frequented resorts there rejoiced in the name of "The Rainbow"--an
auspicious title, certainly, and one which would attract those who were
averse to the cold water principle. Some of the places were below the
level of the alley, and verified, in a striking manner, the truth of
Virgil's words, _Facilis descensus taverni_. Among certain low persons,
not appreciative of its poetic associations, the alley at that time was
nicknamed "Rum Row"; and he was considered a hero who could make all the
ports in the passage through, and carry his topsails when he reached
Franklin Street. Various efforts were made at that period to bring the
alley into disrepute. Among others, a sign was put up announcing that it
was _dangerous passing_ through there; I fear that Father Mathew would
have thought a declaration that it was dangerous _stopping_, to have
been nearer the truth. But the daily deputations from the Old Colony and
Worcester Railways could not be kept back by any signs, and the alley
echoed to their multitudinous tramp every morning. Mr. Choate, too, was
faithful to the alley through good and evil report, and while there was
a plank left, it was daily pressed by his India rubbers. To such a lover
of nature as he, what shall take the place of a morning walk through
Theatre Alley!
But _venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus_, and the old alley has
been swept away. During the past century how many thousands have passed
through it! how many anxious minds, engrossed with schemes of commercial
enterprises, how many hearts weary with defeat, how many kind, and
generous, and great, and good men, who have passed away from earthly
existence, like the alley through which they walked! But while I mourn
over the loss, I would not restore it if I could. When so many of its
old associations had been blotted out; when low dram-drinking dens had
taken the place of the ancient, quiet dispensatories of good cheer; when
grim and gloomy warehouses, with their unsocial, distrustful iron
shutters, had made the warm sunlight a stranger to it,--it was time for
it to go. It was better that it should cease to exist, than continue in
its humiliation, a reproach to the neighbourhood, and a libel upon its
ancient and honourable fame.