From collection Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

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Metadata
1871-73
1871
distrit
1872
1873
Eliot's 1st Yearse HOT
GBD's first tup
Birth of Beatrif Jases(Ferrend) - Penic of 1873
abroad (22pp.)
-Travels in Europe "Virpt
1872-74
-
CHRONOLOGY OF IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE PERSONAL
AND PROFESSIONAL LIFE OF CHARLES ELIOT
November 1, 1859
Charles Eliot was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His father
was Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926), a professor of chemistry and math-
ematics at Harvard College. His mother was Ellen Derby Peabody
Eliot (d. 1869). He had one younger brother, Samuel Atkins Eliot
(1862-1950). (Samuel Atkins Eliot would later become president of
the American Unitarian Association from 1900-1927.)
October 1863 to August 1865
The Eliots were in Europe for the professional development of Pro-
fessor Eliot.
Winter 1863: Paris (Young Charles had typhoid fever.)
Summer 1864: London, Heidelberg, Switzerland
Winter 1864: Marburg, Germany
Summer 1865: Italy, Vienna, Berlin
June 1867 through June 1868
The Eliots returned to Europe because of Mrs. Eliot's ill health. From
June 1867 through September 1869, Grandmother Peabody and Aunt
Anna Peabody lived with the Eliots and took care of the boys.
Summer 1867: London and Paris
Winter 1867-68: Pau, in southern France (Ellen Eliot sick with
lung/throat congestion.)
Summer 1868 spent in Brookline, Massachusetts.
March 1869
Ellen Eliot died.
Summer 1869 spent in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.
September 1869
Charles W. Eliot began his tenure as the President of Harvard
University. His son Charles started to attend school regularly for
the first time.
Summer 1870 spent on Pond Street, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
Summer 1871
The Eliots spent their first summer on Mount Desert Island, Maine.
President Eliot, very concerned about the sickly condition of his son,
wanted him to experience outdoor life. The Eliots would continue to
camp and sail here every summer through 1878 (except for 1877).
3
In 1871, Charles made his first landscape plan for a section of
the Norton Woods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and drew plans for
imaginary towns.
Spring 1872
The Sunshine, a 43-1/2 foot sloop designed for cruising, was built for
the family.
Spring 1874
From the end of January through May, Charles went on a trip to
Florida with Aunt Anna. His father was in Europe on business for
Harvard University.
1875
At sixteen, Charles Eliot was in the habit of riding out to the end of
a trolley line and then walking five to ten miles to another stop to
return to town. He thus became intimately familiar with the open
countryside surrounding Boston. By 1878, he had recorded a partial
list of these "Saturday Walks":
Readville to Quincy
Wellesley to Dedham
Wellesley to Waltham
Grantville to Waltham
Auburndale by Stony Brook to Waltham
Stony Brook to Lexington by Beaver Pond
Stony Brook to Waltham
Stony Brook by Mead's Pond to Waverly
Belmont to Waverly
Woburn to Arlington
Winchester to Linden Station
Wyoming to Winchester
Wyoming to Arlington
Greenwood to Lynn
Lowell St. Station to Maplewood
Malden to Lynn
Summer 1876
Charles attended the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition with his
father and brother, Samuel Atkins Eliot.
October 1876
Charles Eliot was sent to Kendall's School, Appian Way, Cambridge.
He would make two important friends there-Roland Thaxter and
John H. Storer.
July 1877
He heard rumors for the first time that his father was wooing a Miss
Hopkinson.
4
R. Stanton Avery
Special Collections Dept.
New England Historic
Genealogical Society
101 Newbury Street
Boston, MA 02116
COPY
1871 - GBD & WWD go to London- then join parents at Baden-Baden
(Good copy - to be read for typographical errors)
1872-1874 - C.H.D. to Paris for winter, going to Riviera and
&WWW
to Rome; ChD. returned home in spring; GBD & WWD going
again, the same spring to England, Scotland and Wales,
with Mr. Dana as a companion on the trip; in the fall
of 1873 WWD returned home, & CHD joined GBD for a
winter in Paris and on Riviera, returning home in the
spring of 1874. (Good copy, but change has to be made,
as it is written incorrectly.)
1874 - 1878 -- Abroad - Rome, etc. (unfinished)
1878 - trip to Brittany ; trip to Spain, winter of 1877 to be
added to the story.
1882 - Trip to Central Italy & Sicily - Rough Copy
1891-1892 - Trip to Palestine & Up Nile - Good
Canoeing Trip to Moosehead Lake with Sam Warren - 1895
1902 - Trip with Geologists - Good
1903 - GBD & Vanderbilts - Good
1904 - To Sierras - Good
1907 - Last Trip Abroad Rough
A trip through Virginia
Staying at Biltmore
Estes Park - (Col. Fordyce*
1/16/2021
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DeCosta, B. F. (Benjamin Franklin), 1831-1904.
Online Version
Rambles in Mount Desert: : with sketches of travel on the New England coast,
Google Books:
from isles of Shoals to Grand Menan. / By B. F. De Costa.
Full text
New York, A. D. F. Randolph and Co.; Boston, A. Williams and Co., 1871.
available
280 p. : front. (mounted photo.) ; 16 cm
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Figure 11 : An 1873 depiction of the popular pastime "Rocking" along Mount Desert Island's coast.
Opportunities for exploration became more limited as sections of the coast were purchased and developed as
summer estates. Many areas were later made accessible through the efforts of the Path Committees of the
Village Improvement Societies. Pen and ink drawing from Mount Desert in 1873, portrayed in Crayon and
Quill (J. .R. Osgood & Co.) 1873, with the caption:
Here Florence, deftly tripping o'er the strand,
Oft begged for Reginald's supporting hand.
32
Copy 1
My first trip abroad was made in the summer of
1871, during the vacation period between my Freshman
and Sophomore years at Harvard. My older brother,
William Ward Dorr, at Harvard also in an earlier class,
and I sailed together from Boston as soon as the college
term was over to join our parents, who had crossed in
the early spring and would be awaiting us on the Rhine.
The only steamships to England then making regular,
mail-carrying trips were those of the Cunard Line, found-
ed by Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Novia Scotia, in 1839,
who had testified his faith in the triumph of steam over
sails by offering the British government a well-considered,
favorable contract for the carrying of mails; and the
company he formed was given the contract for it. Samuel
Cunard, it is interesting to note, was the son of a
Philadelphia Loyalist who fled to Nova Scotia, like many
others of his time, during the Revolution.
The Cunard vessels made only two trips a week at
that time, one from New York on Wednesdays, the other,
on which the older boats were used, from Boston on
Saturdays. The ship we sailed on was the Scotia, built
in 1862, the last of the side-wheelers.
JML. Blif. 13
(1871)
2.
An outstanding recollection of the voyage was when
I woke the first morning out and lay in my berth, immed-
iately beneath the deck, none too happily conscious of
the motion of the ship, and heard the tramping of the
sailors overhead as they hoisted the sails to speed us
on our way, for the wind was following. They sang some
of the old sea chanties as they pulled on the ropes, one
sailor singing the burden of the song, the others all
coming in on the chorus.
It took us thirteen days to reach Liverpool, days
of monotony till we came in sight of Ireland, with its
pale-green fields and high, uplifted coast, when all be-
came at once full of interest. We landed the next day
at Liverpool, where I got the impression, soon lost, of
the English as a race, distinct from the individual, and
my first introduction to an English breakfast.
From Liverpool we went straight on to Chester, one
of the most interesting of mediaeval towns, with its old
city walls and raised walks covered by the projecting upper
stories of the houses with their quaint gabled roofs and
heavy-beamed construction. The best shops of the town
opened on these walks, with steps leading up at intervals,
(1871)
3.
while stores of commoner sort fronted beneath them upon
the street below -- a curious arrangement which I have
never seen elsewhere.
The city's two main streets, extending straight
across from gate to gate and meeting at the market-center,
are a direct inheritance from the old Roman camp, Castra --
whence the city's name -- established in the first century
of our era as a check upon the turbulent Celtic tribes
in Wales beyond the River Dee and to serve as military
headquarters for the Island, its importance being indicat-
ed by the fact that it had no qualifying epithet of river
or other natural feature to distinguish it as did the other
camps in Britain -- Manchester, Gloucester, Lancaster and
the rest. And the chief camp it remained throughout the
whole long period of Roman occupation. During the greater
portion of that time, order so good was maintained by means
of subordinate camps and military roads that men could
travel in safety and villas be built and occupied outside
the cities in scarce less security than at the present
time.
An atmosphere of old Arthurian legend hangs about the
place and over the River Dee which borders it, whose waters
were held sacred by the ancient Britons. Of these legends
(1871)
4.
I had often read as a boy in Sir Thomas Malory, whose
famous book, Morte d'Arthur, was in our library and had
made great appeal to my imagination as did, too, the
later, half-legendary tales of Alfred, King of the West
Saxons, and his struggle against the Danes.
From Chester we went on to London, then at the
season's height. It was, as I look back on it, a great
historic scene, the culmination of a long period of in-
creasing wealth and power. Social life all centered
round the Court, Parliament, and the Aristocracy, who
came up from their country seats for the season, opening
their town houses.
There was as yet no tourist crowd; London expressed
the life of its own English people and presented itself
magnificently. Splendid equipages rolled by, the coach-
men in full livery, two footmen up behind, while the
crowd looked on and approved. It seemed then a very
solid world, destined to endure.
In the morning, if the day was pleasant, society
went out in number and rode on horseback in Rotten Row
corrupted in the common parlance from the original 'Route
du Roi' -- or drove in stately carriages alongside the Row,
(1871)
5.
stopping ever and anon to talk with the riders. It was
a great social spectacle and had a fitting setting in
Hyde Park, in the simplicity of its old elms and broad
greensward. Nothing consciously landscaped could have
had the same effect of unobtrusive dignity. Nor had
one any sense of incongruity between the people and the
Aristocracy, who seemed but the fit and natural culmina-
tion of the nation's life. It was the end of one epoch,
the beginning of another not yet come into its own.
One of the sights of the city at that time was the
departure in the morning from the White Horse Tavern in
Piccadilly of four-horse coaches, owned and driven by
gentlemen, men of rank and station, and headed for some
point of interest a day's run out and back, with relays
of horses at suitable distances for quick travel, as in
old coaching days. The horses, well matched and handled,
were of the finest and great pride was taken in their
good appearance by their drivers, who wore white top-hats
and smart coaching rigs, a costly flower in their button-
hole and a gaily dressed lady by their side. The passen-
gers, in gala autire, rode on top, two grooms up behind,
one of whom had a horn which he blew at intervals as they
(1871)
6.
rolled down the crowded street, carriages and wagons
drawing to the roadside and giving, by courtesy and
custom, clear passage to the coach, while all upon the
sidewalk turned and looked.
A characteristic and delightful feature of London
at that time was the hansom-cab, two-wheeled, with cover-
ed top and open front, the driver sitting up behind, the
view lying fully open ahead as one drove along. These
were in constant movement in the streets where fares were
to be found and one could always hail one without long
waiting, while the fares were low -- a shilling and up-
ward, according to the distance.
As the wealth was the greatest, so the shops on the
fashionable shopping streets of London, Bond Street and
the rest, were the finest in the world, making, without
ostentation, rich display, while along Piccadilly, oppo-
site Green Park, and the streets that opened out from it
houses were owned or suites of rooms were rented for the
season by gentlemen, their windows shaded by bright color-
ed awnings and decorated with flowers in boxes, making the
whole quarter gay.
(1871)
7.
We stayed, my brother and I, at a quiet but fashion-
able family hotel on the corner of Regent Street and Water-
loo Place, admirably kept by a Frenchman named Maurigy,
where my father and mother had stayed when they came out
that spring, of which my best remembrance is that of the
wonderful 'Southdown' mutton, done to a turn, served us
at dinner, and the green gooseberry tart with cream which
followed -- a dish unknown to us before, gooseberries not
thriving in the drier climate of eastern North America.
We visited no 'sights,' the Tower or other; the
real sight in London then was London itself, the living
city, London at its greatest when it reached a point of
pre-eminence and display it never reached before nor will
again. And, if one did not look too closely at what lay
behind, it was indeed a splendid show, which no ruins
from out the past could equal or approach in interest.
So we took in the great spectacle of its crowds and
pageantry; got ourselves clothes for the summer at half
the cost of what we would have paid at home, with wider
choice of material and better fit, furnished outselves
with top-hats of the famous Lincoln and Bennett make,
which I as a Freshman at Harvard had never worn before,
and indulged in the luxury, new to us, of shoes made to
order. Then we went our way to join our parents, now
awaiting us at Baden-Baden on the Rhine.
(1871)
8.
We left London on a stormy day to cross the channel
from Dover to Ostend, which was, as it turned out -- the
vessels being small -- one of the roughest trips that I
have ever made.
At Ostend -- on the Belgian coast -- the language
presented no difficulty for we both spoke French, but
not a word of German; and it was with much relief that
we found, arriving late that evening at Cologne, our
parents' very competent courier, an Englishman named
Wyatt, awaiting us as the train pulled in. Taking us
to a hotel, he provided us with a much-needed supper,
for, thanks to the crossing we had made, we had eaten
nothing since we breakfasted in London.
The next morning we visited the magnificent old
Gothic Cathedral, took a sight of the ancient city built
as a Roman colony -- whence the name, Colonia originally
in the first century of our era, and then left by steamer
to go up the Rhine to Baden-Baden. I remember well the
interest of that trip when all was new to me -- the famous
river of which I had read so much, city after city which
we stopped at, the old ruined castles, hillsides clothed
with vineyards, all rich in history and legend.
(1871)
9.
Our parents, whom we joined that afternoon, had
come out in April, sailing from New York to Liverpool,
whence they had gone, as we also when we came, to Chester,
and thence to Leamington, a mineral spring resort some
thirty miles away. There, arriving in the evening, my
father registered in the hotel guest book. When he came
down to breakfast the next morning an elderly waiter
approached him and said:
"Mr. Dorr, I read your name in the registry book
last night. May I ask if you are a relative of an
American gentleman, Mr. George B. Dorr, who came here
in 1842 with his young wife who was taken ill here and
died?"
It was my father's older half-brother, George
Bucknam Dorr, whose name I bear, and his beautiful young
wife, Joanna Hone Dorr, the daughter of Samuel S. How-
land of New York. She was taken ill there, as they were
on their way back to New York for her confinement, giving
birth prematurely to a child who also died. The waiter
remembered them well and that he should have done SO and
should have been there still and in the same position is
a striking instance of the conservatism of English life
at that time.
(1871)
10.
From Leamington, my father and mother drove out to
Kenilworth and Warwick Castle, two of the most picturesque
and historic ruins in England, and to Stratford-on-Avon,
the picturesque little country town which was Shakespeare's
birthplace and early home.
They then went on to London where to my mother all
was new, this being her first trip abroaa. There they
stayed two weeks, visiting the picture galleries, the
Houses of Parliament and St. Paul's Cathedral, and seeing,
as we, the living city's great historic show. Entertained
at dinner by English friends to whom they had shown hos-
pitality at home, I recall my mother's telling me of a
dinner where to her great interest she found herself
seated between Robert Browning, the poet, and Ivan Tourge-
neiff, the famous Russian novelist, with whom especially
she had much interesting talk.
From London, crossing the channel from Dover to Os-
tend, they went on to Bonn, the famous university town
and the birthplace of Beethoven, where they attended
service in the Old Cathedral and heard much good music,
it being the time of Whitsuntide or Pentecost, when the
marvel of the tongues of fire appeared:
(1871)
11.
"Now when Pentecost was fully come they were all
with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came
a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it
filled all the house where they were sitting. And there
appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and
it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with
the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues,
as the Spirit gave them utterance."
Thence they took steamer up the Rhine to Mayence,
built at a great strategic point which has given it im-
portance always and led to its being made in recent years
one of the strongest border fortresses in Germany, in case
the Christian spirit embodied in its old cathedral should
fail to keep the peace.
From Mayence, journeying through various old towns,
they went over the Brenner Pass to Italy, where, for all
was new to them, four weeks of such interest were spent
that memory of them never faded nor merged in that of
later years when all had grown familiar. Thence, return-
ing northward, they went to Baden-Baden to await our coming.
Baden-Baden tells in its very name of the value set
by the Romans, in the days of the Empire, on warm, outflow-
ing mineral springs, wherever found. The town is set on a
(1871)
12.
hill in a beautiful valley bordering the Black Forest,
where the springs that led to its fountains gush forth
from a number of sources at the foot of Castle Rock and
are thence piped direct to luxurious bath establishments
scattered through the town, which has made it a famous
resort, not only for the ill but idle.
From Baden-Baden, a united party now, we went on to
Heidelberg, on the Neckar, where we visited its ruined
castle, the most magnificent in Germany, overlooking the
town and valley, and saw the students of its famous univer-
sity -- a picturesque feature in the streets in their
corps uniforms. My mother's younger brother, George
Cabot Ward, giving up a business life to become, as he
then planned, a writer, had been a student here and my
mother, who had read at the time his letters home, was
interested to see the town and countryside where he had
lived and walked.
From Heidelberg we went on to Dresden, the capital
of Saxony, to see the famous Royal Gallery, amongst which
Raphael's Sistine Madonna, one of the greatest of all
pictures, stands out in my memory, pre-eminent and unfor-
gettable.
(1871)
13.
From Dresden we went on to Nuremberg in Bavaria,
most picturesque of mediaeval cities, famous as the
home of Albrecht Durer and scarce less so by the delight-
ful tradition associated with it of Hans Sachs, the cob-
bler poet, and his guild of Meistersingers.
Then, from Nuremberg we went directly up into the
Bavarian Alps to see the famous Passion Play at Ober-
ammergau, enacted by the villagers every tenth year
since 1633 in gratitude for the cessation of a plague
which had desolated the surrounding country. The whole
village takes part in its performance as a devout relig-
ious ceremony. Its regular decennial performance had
come the year before, in 1870, but after the first one
or two performances the villager who took, and marvellous-
ly well, the part of Christ had been drafted into service
in the Franco-Prussian War, and for the remainder of the
year the play was given up. But, the war over, he had
returned unharmed, with the long curls his Christus part
necessitated unshorn, and the Passion Play was taken up
again at the point where the war had interrupted it, and
that is how it chanced that we had the opportunity to see
it in 1871.
(1871)
14.
It was a great performance, distinguisned by utter
simplicity and true artistic feeling. Given in the open
air, only the stage covered, with the green background
of the hills, there was a wonderful sense of spaciousness
and freedom about it.
The play, given weekly, continued the whole day
through, with an interval at noon for rest and dinner.
The talk was in the local dialect, which none but those
of the country-side could follow. Scenes from the New
Testament were enacted at full length, but before each
a 'living picture, according to the design, it was said,
of some noted artist in the olden time, was shown in ap-
propriate anticipation of the scene from the life of
Christ which was to follow, and were most impressive.
In one were shown the Children of Israel gathered in
the Desert, in which a large portion of the people in
the village, hundreds of them, appeared upon the stage,
making a composition of great beauty, rich in the varied
color of their costumes. Another picture represented
Abraham offering up Isaac, bound as a sacrifice upon the
altar in obedience to the Divine command, and during this
one heard, coming from behind the curtained background of
the scene, a dull thumping sound repeated at short intervals,
(1871)
15.
which, following the action of the play, one knew to be
the nailing of Christ and the two thieves upon their
crosses. The scene from the New Testament which follow-
ed was marvellously realistic, moving the whole audience
profoundly.
There was no inn or tavern in the village, but the
peasants felt it an honor to entertain their visitors and
quartered them, now here, now there, as room could be
found, in their houses, furnished in true Tyrolean fashion.
A young artist friend of ours and distant relative of
my father's, Augustus Hoppin, of the old Hoppin family of
Rhode Island, had come up from Innsbruck with us and drew
some most amusing and delightful sketches of the village
scenes and people. In one of these, which I recall par-
ticularly, he showed himself lying in bed, his body cover-
ed with a high, four-foot square feather comforter, his
bare feet standing out below, toes turned up, while he
looked down at them, his head raised, with a quizzical,
amused expression.
Returning from Oberammergau, we went on to the old
city of Augsburg -- Augustusburg -- founded by the Emperor
Augustus, grand-nephew and heir to Caesar, at the head-
waters of the Danube, to control the pass between them
and those of the Rhine.
(1871)
16.
From Augsburg, crossing the Lake of Constance, head-
water of the Rhine, we made our way to Coire, the capital
of the Swiss canton of the Grisons. Here, the Rhineland
with its ancient legends and historic memories left behind,
we entered Switzerland with its high mountain passes, its
snow-capped peaks, its fresh, tumbling waters and magnifi-
cent encirclement of glacier-created lakes, where we spent
the next four weeks in great enjoyment.
From Coire we crossed by coach the Splügen Pass,
boundary between Switzerland and Italy, and went on to
Chiavenna, whose name -- Italianized from the Latin
Clavenna, The Key -- carries one back at a single stroke
to Roman times, when traders from Italy, with such goods
as they could carry in packs or on mule-back across the
great barrier of the Alps, came and went through a series
of passes to which Chiavenna served as key. Below lies
the Lake of Como, most beautiful of the Italian Lakes.
The low-lying, fertile plain of Lombardy below was once,
in recent geologic times, an arm of the Adriatic, extend-
ing along the foothills of the Alps, and filled to its
present level by the vast erosion of the glacial period,
adding to Italy its most fertile soil and beautiful scenery.
From Como we explored the rest of the Italian Lakes
and the passes leading to them, till the whole country
grew clear to us, leaving a memory which has never faded.
My brother and I made no attempt at mountain climbing,
the mountain passes, with their old Roman milestones,
stirring our imaginations with the story they told of
ancient travel over them, and, with the valleys, giving
us all we could absorb in a period so brief and a land
so interesting.
They have always held great fascination for me,
these high, wind-swept mountain passes with their bare
summits and the constant sound of falling waters from
the melting snow upon the mountain tops above, which
accompany the traveller at every step, ascending or
descending. We rode over them, sometimes in four-horse,
hooded coaches, or, sending our luggage around some
easier but longer route, on muleback or horseback as in
ancient days, the most delightful mode of travelling
where there is interest and picturesque detail upon the
way.
Our enjoyment was greatly added to during our stay
in Switzerland by joining at Cadenabbia, on Lake Como,
whither we drove from Chiavenna and spent some days,
(1871)
18.
friends my father and mother had made upon their way out
in April, Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Davids of Philadelphia and
their two attractive daughters, the one of my brother's
age; the other of my own. The elder, a girl of unusual
beauty and high spirits, and my brother became great
friends upon the trip, though, as it chanced, they never
were to meet again. Mr. Davids was one of the most in-
teresting men whom I have ever known, an artist who made
the most delightful sketches, a musician and composer who
improvised upon the organ, an excellent linguist, widely
read in European literature.
As I look back upon that trip, one scene stands out
in my memory beyond all others for its extraordinary
beauty. We had come by coach to Chamonix, arriving in
the evening when all was dark. At dawn the following
morning my father, rising early, called us all to see
the snow-clad summit of Mont Blanc, directly opposite
us, gloriously lighted by the first rays of the morning
sun, against the blue, cloudless sky of early dawn,
while the valley we were in and the lower, wooded moun-
tain slopes lay in deep shadow still. No wind was stir-
ring; there was neither mist nor haze. It was a scene
of such transcendent beauty that it scarce seemed earthly.
(1871)
19.
Another outstanding impression that I brought away
with me from Switzerland was that of standing on the bridge
at Geneva and watching the clear, transparent waters of the
lake flow out beneath me in a strong current to form, as
a single source, the River Rhone, while the lake itself
spread out before me, blue and beautiful, with its splendid
background of encircling mountains.
One other scene that memory brings strongly back to
me is that of the Lake of Lucerne, picturesque beyond all
others, famous for its association with the half-mythical
William Tell, the subject of one of Schiller's most strik-
ing dramas.
Our last stopping place in Switzerland was at Basle,
whose origin again goes back to Roman times when it was
built as an outpost against the barbarian tribes beyond
the Rhine.
Thence we took our way direct to Paris, arriving after
dark. Our train halted at the 'Barrier,' the line of earth-
works thrown up for the defense of the city in the recent
war; and there, in flickering torchlight, we saw, looking
out of the car window, an unforgettable sight, the helmets
of Prussian soldiers -- soldiers who had been left stationed
(1871)
20.
at strategic points around the city, there to remain un-
til a certain major portion of the indemnity demanded by
the German Government in compensation for the expenses of
the war should be paid. This had now been done and the
day of our arrival was that on which the withdrawal of
these troops was directed to begin. This indemnity,
regarded at the time as so colossal that it was doubted
if ever payment of it could be made, being put in the
form of bonds issued by the French Government, was, as
soon as placed upon the market, taken up by its people,
the frugal, hard-working peasantry in greater part, to
the surprise not only of the world at large but of the
German Government who had calculated on crippling by
means of it for a long time to come the recovery of France.
Arriving in Paris, we went to the Hotel Meurice on
the Rue de Rivoli opposite the Tuilleries Gardens, one
of the pleasantest hotels in Paris, from whose windows
in the morning we could see the ruins of the Tuilleries
Palace, which had been so recently the scene of splendid
entertainments and a world-famous center of the gayest
Court life in Europe. The long siege had come to an end
six months before, the uprising of the Commune which fol-
lowed it was over, and Paris, shorn of its splendor, was
now functioning as usual, its hotels and restaurants in
full swing, its sidewalks thronged with people.
(1871)
21.
But all over the city one saw evidence of the fanati-
cal and destructive work of the Commune. The Column Ven-
dome, which records in bronze scenes from the victories
of the First Napoleon, lay prostrate and broken in the
Place Vendome. The Tuilleries Palace was in ruins at
the head of the famous garden, between the Seine and the
Rue de Rivoli, upon which it had looked down; and it has
never been rebuilt. Everywhere throughout the city the
chief public buildings had been set fire to and destroyed
so far as possible by the fury of the Communistic uprising
which France's own soldiers, under General MacMahon, had
been called to suppress, while the victorious German troops
lay outside the city, indifferent to what befell within.
At night the city, whose brilliant illumination under
the Third Empire had given it the name of 'La Ville Lumiere',
lay in darkness and gloom and men's minds were full of the
humiliation which had befallen their country; but, none-
the-less, France, the Republic, was carrying on.
That the great Cathedral of Notre Dame, so beautiful
in itself and so rich in history, should have escaped
destruction is a marvel; so, too, it Was with the great
collection of masterpieces in the Louvre, which has few
equals in the world.
(1871)
22.
It is indeed a wonder that the destruction wrought
by the Commune was no greater. The barricades of paving
stones behind which they fought still blocked some of the
principal streets when we were there, and the picture I
got of the fury with which they resisted the advancing
troops is one that has never left me.
After an all too short stay in Paris, with the sights
it had to show and the lessons to teach, my father and
mother and I returned to London, sailing for home in time
for the opening of the college year; my brother, with-
drawing from Harvard, remained abroad to spend the fall
and early winter at Mentone, on the Riviera, for the
milder climate, with our aunt and cousin on our mother's
side.
872
V
i
X
Rewritten-firsing of 1943- c
1872-74 Trip
To add, in proper place, the following:
C. H. Dorr's account of climbing Mt Snowdon
C. H. Dorr's account of Haddon Hall
Account of Elizabeth Hind, Mr. Dorr's Welsh nurse.
(Miss Oakes has notes on Mrs. Hind, made earlier by GBD)
retermined Phyllin
July 23'43
S belie
p 9
18pp.essay
1872-74.
In the spring of 1872, my brother, who had stayed
on abroad with my aunt and cousin, spending the winter
at Mentone on the Riviera, for the milder climate, re-
turned to America and we all spent the summer together
at Bar Harbor, where my father, deeply impressed by the
beauty of the region during our first visit there in
1868, had now acquired, through successive purchases, the
whole of the original Oldfarm tract for the development
of a future summer home. This is how it came about that
the Government now possesses Acadia National Park, the
one and only park upon the Atlantic seacoast.
In the autumn my father and brother returned to
Europe, where my brother, interested in what he had seen
abroad, planned to study architecture at the famous Ecole
des Beaux Arts in Paris. He had great faculty with his
hands, drawing excellently, and keen interest in design.
My father thought well of this but felt uncertain of the
effect of the work and climate upon my brother's health.
So he decided to go with him abroad, spend the winter in
Paris and watch how it all turned out.
(1872-74)
H
1872
My father and brother sailed from New York in
September, 1872, on the White Star Liner Baltic, then
the newest and speediest of ocean-going craft, travel-
ling directly to London from Liverpool on their arrival
and thence to Paris, where they took a suite of rooms
on the Rue de Rivoli, overlooking pleasantly the Garden
1873
of the Tuilleries, which my father and I were to occupy
TRIP
again for a time the following year.
C
6
BD.
Continuing my course at Harvard, the one outstand-
ing recollection of that fall which I myself have is of
the great Boston Fire. I had come in from Cambridge on
a Saturday evening, when those of us whose homes were in
Boston customarily spent the night there and the follow-
ing day, and went with two of my classmates to the theate
During the first entriacte word began to circulate
through the theater that there was a big fire outside.
The play went on, but when the second entr'acte came
the rumor had gathered such proportions that, leaving
the theater, my friends and I went out to see what it
was all about. It was the great Boston Fire of Novem-
ber, 1872, which was, next to that in Chicago the
year before when a COW kicked over 10 lantern and act the
3.
whole city on fire, we worst Utet America bed ever Honored
till then or has known since. A wenterful and fearful
signt it was. The fire began in the dountown shopping
district, and, driven by a strong northwest with swept
on to the Harbor with terrific speed, tailding everything
in its course, stores, office buildings and whole blocks
of business buillettage w time test im the city. Minute
there was time to resoue people miss waite read tweltr
offices smill stores trought out to title Communi and pilled
there where, the I morning - Summay w one sew it
keeped in great stacks. But without it @@@ possible to save
wee little compared with What was lost. Streets smill old
family records, documents of every kims within people Hund
thought to the safely stored. - well - wort
up Me flames.
Trinity Church, then on Summer Street, which we at-
tended, changing to it from Emanuel because Phillips Brooks,
the most wonderful and inspiring preacher I have ever heard,
had recently come to it from Philadelphia, lay directly in
the path of the fire; and in the morning scarce one stone
remained above another.
4.
It so happened that when the fire broke out all the
horses in Boston were down with a distemper and the fire
engines then were drawn by horses and could not readily
be gotten out by hand. But so fierce was the fire once
it gained headway that nothing could have stopped it till
it reached the harbor, except what was resorted to to
prevent its forward sweep: blowing up by gunpowder the
houses in its further path.
I was out the whole night watching it, for a shift
in the wind might at any time have carried it into our
own and other residential sections. To illustrate the
intense heat which the fire created, I remember seeing
it sweep down before the wind a block of buildings on
one side of a street, while the block on the opposite
side remained untouched, a continuous stone block. But
presently lambent flames began to flicker around the
windows, the frames being ignited by the intense heat
from the burning structures across the street and not
by any contact with the flames. Then flames began to
spread within and, in eleven minutes as I timed it, cracks
ran like jagged lightning in a thunder storm, following a
zigzag course down the whole length of the block, and the
walls crashed into the street.
5
i
Older friends of mine and of my brother, recent grad-
uates of Harvard who had joined the Boston cadets, were
called out and remained, with changing shifts, on duty for
several successive days and nights, guarding the ruins from
looting and the goods upon the Common.
Power
I have never seen a sight which gave me such a sense
of power as did that fire when at its height. It was a
terrific spectacle and had the wind shifted the whole city
would have been doomed.
That fall, at Paris, my father found congenial compan-
ionship in a group of friends of his own time, among whom
were James Russell Lowell and John Holmes, younger brother
of Doctor Holmes -- whom my father thought yet wittier and
you'll
more humorous than he -- who with = few more made up a
delightful group to which my father's thoughts went back
often in later years.
My brother made his due entrance into the Ecole des
Beaux Arts but the lines followed were conventional, the
projects given the students involved long hours of absolute
seclusion and the whole spirit of it all was not in keeping
with our American way of thought. So, before the winter
6.
ended, my father thought it best for my brother to give
it up and took him off to the south where they drove
together over the famous Corniche Road, with its broad
views out over the Mediterranean beyond an ever-changing
foreground of pale green olive orchards and terraced gar-
dens, to Genoa and Spezia and thence on to Rome, whence,
my brother's outlook widened by the studies he had made
1873
and the winter's travel, he and my father returned to
Darri
America in the spring of 1373 where the care of my
Myster
Grandmother Ward had become a serious tax upon my mother.
It was a time, also, when they wisely thought my brother
Junner Travel 73
and myself were best away. Accordingly, when the spring
term at Harvard had ended, my brother and I sailed for
Liverpool and spent the summer together travelling in
England.
We went to New York to take the steamer, spending
one night at the Brevoort House and attending an amusing
play that evening, I remember, called "Larks on the Hudson."
Arriving at Liverpool, we went directly to London,
where we made our headquarters for the summer at an old
English Inn, the Queen's Hotel, on a side street off
Piccadilly. Staying there also was a friend my brother
(1872-74)
had made that spring, one of the old Dana family of America,
who was then living abroad and who joined us for a time in
our summer travels.
After taking in once more the London 'snow, 1 we left
to explore the country, with no fixed plan ahead but to
follow where interest might load. One of the first things
we did and one to which I have always looked back with
peculiar pleasure was going down to Oxford, where, after
a brief stay to see its old buildings and take in some-
thing of their history, we rented a boat my brother,
Mr. Dana and I -- and rowed leisurely down the Thames,
stopping over at the historic old Red Lion Inn at Henley
where the famous regattas are held, to one of which, in
1869, Harvard had sent over for the first time a competing
crew, which, though it failed to win, had aroused great
interest.
Our trip down the river was a delightful experience.
There were no power boats in those days to disturb the
quiet waters, nor multitude of gay pleasure craft, out
of key with the tranquil surroundings and atmosphere.
The system of locks kept the water to the level of the
lush green meadows upon either side, over which we could
look out broadly to the old country seats and wooded hills
(1872-74)
8.
that bordered the river valley. Waiting in the locks,
while the water was lowered to pass us through, made a
welcome break to rowing, while the river takes its course
through such historic ground that the ever-changing scene
was full of interest and the inns where we stopped at
mid-day or overnight were quaint and delightful.
Another thing we did that summer I have looked back
to always with pleasant memory. Travelling along the
western coast and finding ourselves near Barrow on More-
cambe Bay, we boarded a steamer to the Isle of Man,
to
Douglas, its chief town, then little visited except by
holiday-makers who came over on Saturday afternoons from
Barrow and Liverpool and did not wander far. The rest of
the week we had the island practically to ourselves, stay-
ing comfortably at its one hotel, a former mansion house
with old gardens and woods about it.
The language was Manx, a Celtic dialect, English
being but a foreign tongue to the Islanders. I recall
attending church at Douglas and hearing the service con-
ducted and a sermon preached in Manx, which differs little,
they say, from Irish or the language spoken in Brittany,
the people of all three being able to make-shift to under-
stand each other on occasion.
(1872-74)
9.
One of the main things that drew us there was the
picturesque account given by Sir Walter Scott in his
'Peveril of the Peak,' whose scene in good part is laid
at Castle Derby, a ruin now, with a little town and fish-
ing village beside it, on the opposite side of the island
from Douglas, looking out upon the Irish Sea. There we
found Scott's story looked upon as genuine history, events,
characters and all, and any question of its being such
would have been resented by the people.
At the time in which Sir Walter Scott sets his story,
the reign of Charles the Second, the Isle of Man was still
an independent principality and the proud Countess of Derby,
of whom he tells, was a sovereign in her own right upon the
Island, though but a peeress of the realm in England. This
Sir Walter brings out strikingly in his account of her and
her haughty bearing at the gay court of Charles. We supped
that evening at a little inn, built beside the Castle, where
they served us herring just brought in by fishing boats from
the Irish Sea and which, split and broiled, we all thought
the best fish, so caught and cooked, that we had ever eaten.
(1872-74)
10.
Another incident I remember from our stay at Douglas
was going out with my brother and Mr. Dana one Saturday
for a walk along the coast, and, finding a little bay en-
closed between two rocky points, I undressed and went in
swimming, seeing no need for bathing clothes. Waves were
breaking on the rocks on either side with considerable
force, dashing up in spray, but the beach at its back was
pebbly and the way out between the points seemed quiet
and safe. My brother and Mr. Dana did not venture in,
but waited for me at the back of the little cove. I
swam out easily into the open sea and thoroughly enjoyed
it, but when I sought to return and approached the entrance
to the cove, I found it quite another matter, for the current
bore me strongly toward the projecting rocks against which
the waves broke heavily. Twice I sought to enter and turned
back for a fresh start. The third time I made my entrance
to the bay successfully, though not without some anxious
moments. But then, with the beach before me, another diffi-
culty presented itself. For though no one had been in sight
when I went in, I found that, being Saturday and the boat
having brought the usual half-holiday crowd from Barrow,
(1872-74)
11.
a considerable group of people had gathered on the shore,
thinking me in danger, and were waiting to see what might
befall. Mr. Dana assured them, he told me afterward, that
I was a good swimmer and all right. But there they lingered
on, men and women alike; and I had gone in without a rag to
cover me. However, I faced the situation as best I might
and presently they turned away.
An amusing incident tnat I remember in connection with
our stay at the hotel was when we and our friend, Mr. Dana,
returning from some excursion, dined late together and went
late to bed. Mr. Dana, who liked upon occasion a good
bottle of wine and had found at the hotel a store of excel-
lent sparkling Moselle, was in a somewhat mellow mood when
he went up with us to go to bed. Being in a frame of mind
to take small matters seriously and unable to find his
slippers, he became properly indignant and rang for the
'Boots,' demanding them. The man could not find the
slippers either and Mr. Dana sent him off to fetch the
head chambermaid, but he returned instead with word from
her that she had gone to bed and would not get up, 'not
for the Lord Mayor of London. I
12.
The staircase and corridor ran round a central nall
and Mr. Dana's expostulations had made a considerable noise.
A guest occupying a neighboring room opened his door and
came out, garbed in the long white nightgown of the period,
and demanded indignantly what all that noise was about.
Our friend, short, dark and swarthy, but most courteous
always, said that he did not wish to disturb the other
guests but if the gentleman would step inside his room he
would explain. But the gentleman, taking one look at Mr.
Dana, retired, with no further word, into his room and
bolted the door, the matter ending there, much to my brother's
and my amusement.
Returning to Barrow and proceeding down the coast, we
residian
made our next stay at Bangor, at the entrance to the Menai
Ward
Strait
where my mother's grandfather, William Ward of Salem,
for whom my brother was named, captured at sea during the
Revolutionary War, had been held prisoner for nine months.
Of the experience he wrote, during his last years, an
exceedingly interesting account for his grandchildren, my
mother and her brothers, which we had often read and whose
scene we wished to see.
(1012-12)
time
13.
From Bangor we went on to Holyhead on the Island of
Anglesey, famous as the port of departure for the swift
Irish Mail, and thence to Carnarvon to visit the ruins --
said to be the most magnificent in the kingdom -- of the
Castle built there by Edward I in the Thirteenth Century,
which presently became the birthplace of his son, Edward
II, the first Prince of Wales, whence the title given ever
since to the King's eldest son and heir. There, too, at
Carnarvon we saw the remains of an old Roman fort or strong-
hold, built to command the straits.
Waler
Our next objective, leaving Carnarvon, was the climb-
ing of Mt. Snowdon, the highest peak in the kingdom south
of Scotland, following our father's footsteps, who, making
his first trip abroad, had come out on one of the early
Cunard liners twenty-five years before on a business voyage
but took the opportunity to see what lay within his reach
without wandering too far afield. He had told us of the
glorious view he had got on climbing Mount Snowdon, made
all the more striking by the long days he had just spent
at sea. But so long as we waited there the mountain summit
was continually shrouded in mist and clouds, and we finally
gave up the attempt.
(1872-74)
14.
Leaving Wales, we made our way up the western coast,
past Morecambe Bay, to Keswick and did what had been for
years a dream or mine to do, took a walking trip through
the
Cumberland Lake District, the home of a group
of
poets
Dorr
and writers with whom my mother had made me familiar from
mus
childhood on, reading to me as I grew up what she had best
loved herself in their writing. And so it was that Words-
poets
worth, Coleridge and Southey, Carlisle and Ruskin came to
be part of me, grew into my being, represented by what was
best in them.
But, these writers apart, the region, compact enough
to be easily traversed on foot, is one of the loveliest in
the world, with mountains not difficult to climb if one
takes one's time, and beautiful of form, with lakes of
corresponding size and loveliness, the whole disposed in
a region enriched by centuries of peaceful human occupation.
I was an excellent walker in those days, active and
strong, and a good climber, unwearied in long ascents. So,
too, were my companions and together we climbed in leisurely
fashion the region's famous peaks, rowed and sailed on the
lakes, and made the whole region our own by exploring it
and searching out the homes of those who had lived there
and whose presence had brought it fame. The weather was
(1872-74)
15:
ideal, sunshine and drifting clouds and the atmosphere,
heavy with moisture, making it such as poets and artists
dream of, an atmosphere in which the real is not too real,
the facts not hard, and I carried off with me a picture of
it which time has never dulled or comparison with other
regions made less beautiful.
Tourist invasion of the region on the larger scale
had not yet commenced; the inns were quaint and old-
fashioned, the cottages of the people simple, and all
fitted in well together in harmony with the lakes and
mountains, the sheep-herding and old-time occupations of
the people. It was a happy time to take the trip and we
thoroughly enjoyed it.
Leaving the Lake District with the memory of a rich
experience and background for future reading, we went on
to York to see the great cathedral, one of the noblest
ford
structures in the world, whose photograph I have kept by
me in my chamber ever since, where I daily see it. The
old city with its walls still standing in reminder of the
past and the battling it had witnessed and its ancient
buildings made an interesting setting for the cathedral
as it stands out dominating all and proclaiming the
supremacy of the spiritual. Here we lingered long enough
(1872-74)
16.
to take in its beauty and the historic scone, the latter
going back to Roman times when York was a seat of empire
in the North, an abode of experors.
From York, our summer over, my brother and I made
our way back to London and thence on to Paris to await
the coming of our father, soon to be, if not already,
on his way out to most us.
At Paris we went to the Hotel du Louvro, opposite
the old chateau converted by the first Napoleon into one
of the great picture galleries of the world. There we
stayed most pleasantly until the arrival of my father at
October
the beginning of October, when my brother left for home
n3
to spena the winter with my mother in Boston that sne
might not be left alone in her care of my grandmother,
the last of her generation and now clearly near her end.
My father and I then moved into the apartment on the Rue
de Rivoli which he and my brother had occupied the year
before.
Well in every other way and strong and active, I had
beet
had trouble with my eyes during my previous year at Har-
Anuscular
the
vard, owing to a hitherto unsuspected lack of convergence
of the two eyes, which made long-continued reading aifficult.
frhis
(1872-74)
17.
final
at
Our plan, which the Dean of the college had approved be-
year
fore I left ror abroad that summer, attendance at lectures
Harvord
not required, was that I might stay abroad reading with my
73-74
father and take my final examinations on my return the
following spring.
As my main theme for my last year at Harvard, I
had chosen history, in reading which I know my father
would be to the full as much interested as I. And the
memory or the reading we did together and the talks it
led to has never left me. One of the books we read to-
gether that winter was Macaulay's great work on the
History of England from the Accession or James the Second,
which made splendid reading and with whose attitude and
principle my rather and I were in absolute accord; whether
or not his facts were biased has always seemed to me a
matter of indifference. The picture he sets before one
stays, a wonderful comment upon human character and the
effects of power.
1874
We broke the long winter in Paris toward the end by
a visit of some weeks at Nice, upon the Riviera, contin-
uing our reading still but taking long walks together into
the high, mountainous interior with its donkey-ways and
18.
A
footpaths, its broad views across the sea, and whose
(Provencal) vegetation filled the sun-heated air with a
pungent fragrance.
When we returned to Boston in the spring, I found
myself well advanced in myselected studies and experienced
no difficulty in resuming my class work and taking my degree.
Haddon Hall, a mediaeval manor house in the Peak District near Bakewell, Derbyshire, E
Page 1 of 1
Haddon Hall
Haddon Hall is the finest example of a
mediaeval manor house currently in
existence in England.
The hall is one of the seats of the
Dukes of Rutland and lies alongside
the River Wye, just south of Bakewell.
The Rutlands used the hall very little in
the 18th and 19th centuries, so it was
almost unaltered since the end of the
16th century when the 9th Duke
realised its importance and began
restoration in the 1920s.
The house is in a beautiful situation and is very well preserved - even down to kitchens straight from the 17th
century - so it looks magnificent.
The highlight is a glorious 14th Century
Banqueting Hall complete with
minstrels' gallery but there is also a fine
oak panelled room with minature
portraits of Henry VII and his Queen, a
Tudor period Long Gallery (from which
Dorothy Vernon is said to have eloped
with her lover, Lord Edward Manners),
and some fine gardens.
The entrance courtyard still looks
perfectly medieval and opening off it is
the chapel, with a beautiful carved
alabaster retablo and pre-Reformation
frescos which have been revealed from
beneath the whitewash which hid them
for centuries.
Haddon Hall is open every day from 1st April to the end of September, from approximately 11.00 am to 5.00
pm, and Monday to Thursday in October, 11.00am to 5.00pm.
Haddon Hall
Haddon Hall Slideshow
Links
For current Entry Charges and Opening Times see the Haddon Hall
website.
Telephone: 01629 - 812855 and fax: 01629 - 814379.
http://www.cressbrook.co.uk/bakewell/haddtxt.htm
12/9/2005
(December 26)
2.
And, as for my parents it was a fulfilment of
interests and desires whose origin went back to childhood,
sowith me, then just grown to manhood, it was the beginning
of interests and studies that were never thenceforth to
cease or lose their hold upon me. I became deeply in-
terested in the period of the Reformation and the people
who took part in it, in the things they believed and the
evils they sought to correct, an interest which led me
on the one hand into the realms of philosophy and on the
other into those of religion and the foundation that it
rested on. I became interested in nature, too, the
development of life and the development of landscape.
In this my interest was first aroused to conscious life
brother
when my mother dother and I made our first triptogether four
years before, in 1871, to join our parents on the Rhine
and travel at leisure through Switzerland, its high
mountain passes and its lakes. In this Mr. Hugh Davids,
my father's and mother's friend with whom and whose family
we travelled, was a great help, for he was a real artist
whose sketches were an inspiration. He left me with the
desire which stayed with me for years, to become myself
a landscape painter. Such a desire was in my mother's
family, coming from what far-off ancestor I do not know
but clearly marked and strong in two of my mother's
brothers and equally in her. It is the one thing in life
that takes one into pleasant places and makes one alive to
BG3730 - GREAT BOSTON FIRE OF 1872
Page 1 of 1
(The) GREAT BOSTON FIRE OF 1872,
Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, 1997
Few events can be said to have changed the face of Boston forever.
Eventually destroying 775 buildings and causing millions of dollars in damage to the
commercial section that we now know as Boston's business district, the Great Boston Fire of
1872 was a spectacular conflagration that destroyed "old Boston" and allowed a phoenix to
arise from the ashes.
This exciting new pictorial history brings to life the drama that began one Saturday evening in
1872 when a fire started in an empty hoop-skirt factory on the corner of Summer and Kingston
Streets.
At the time, Boston was in the throes of a epizootic disease that caused all horses in the area to
be ill. This caused a virtual shutdown of transportation and city services and delayed the fire
department's response to calls for help. By the time the breathless firemen arrived, the fire had
already consumed the granite five-story factory and burst through the mansard roof, which
acted like a flue and spread the fire.
Within an hour, much of Summer Street was engulfed in flames and firemen from near and far
were being summoned to combat the spread of the deadly blaze. By midnight, the fire had
spread through Summer Street to Arch Street and was attacking Winthrop Square. Old Trinity
Church, at the corner of Summer and Hawley Streets, had given itself up to the flames.
With this moving new work, author Anthony Mitchell Sammarco has artfully combined images
and text to commemorate the 125th anniversary of the awesome fire.
A well-known lecturer and local historian, Mr. Sammarco has crated an entertaining and
educational look at a critical and unsteady moment in Boston's past.
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ROMANTIC DAYS IN
OLD BOSTON
THE STORY OF THE CITY AND OF
ITS PEOPLE DURING THE
917.446
NINETEENTH CENTURY
(81)
BY
MARY CAROLINE CRAWFORD
AUTHOR OF "OLD BOSTON DAYS AND WAYS," "ST. BOTOLPH'S
TOWN," "AMONG OLD NEW ENGLAND INNS," ETC.
With Numerous Illustrations
N.K.STATE
FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE
BOSTON
Error
the painting her Thomas Sully, mode in ISMS
the Buston Muscum of / inc Arts.
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1910
294
ROMANTIC DAYS
IN OLD BOSTON
295
Brothers, the London bankers of that era, and
conclusion for years. The next song of the
the house with which the "Swedish Nightin-
nightingale will, of course, be Home, Sweet
gale " did her business. In the Boston Courier
Home.' May she live a thousand years and
of February 6, 1853, appears this brief notice of
sing it every day."
the wedding:
For one of her tours Jenny Lind engaged
'Although St. Valentine's Day has not quite
the orchestral services of the Germania Society,
reached us, yet the 'first bird of the season ,
an organization which first came to this country
has already chosen her mate. The queen of
in April, 1848, and in which William Schultze
song has committed matrimony. Jenny Lind
was long first violin and Carl Zerrahn first
is Jenny Lind no longer, but Mrs. Goldschmidt.
flute. This organization soon put in a whole
In plain English, the following record was made
season in Boston, giving twenty-four Saturday
yesterday on the books of the Boston city
evening concerts and the same number of
registrar:
public rehearsals on Wednesday afternoons.
' Married in this city, at the residence of
It appears to have been the precursor of the
Ward
Mr. S. G. Ward, by Rev. Charles Mason, as-
Boston Symphony orchestra which, since 1880,
sisted by Rev. Dr. Wainwright of New York,
has been generously maintained by Mr. Henry
the Swedish consul, Hon. Edward Everett,
L. Higginson. It was with the Germania that
Mr. and Mrs. T. W. Ward, Mr. N. I. Bowditch,
the famous girl violinist, Camilla Urso, of
her legal adviser, and other friends, Otto
whom a competent critic has said that she was
Goldschmidt of Hamburg to Mlle. Jenny Lind
one of the few young wonders who developed
of Stockholm, Sweden.'
into great artists at maturity, travelled as a
Mr. Goldschmidt has attended Jenny as her
star.
pianist for many months past. The match has
The red-letter musical event in the Boston
taken everybody by surprise, though we must
of this period was the Peace Jubilee of 1869,
say that we were struck with something con-
organized and conducted by Patrick Sarsfield
foundedly arch and roguish in the twinkle of
Gilmore, Carl Zerrahn acting as general musical
her eye when she sang John Anderson, My
director, Ole Bull and Carl Rosa playing first
Jo,' the last time she appeared in public in
violin in an orchestra numbering one thousand
this city. Such, however, has been the discretion
pieces(! the great singer, Parepa-Rosa, doing
of the parties that it may have been a foregone
the soprano solo parts and Adelaide Phillips
318
ROMANTIC DAYS
IN OLD BOSTON
319
manners. As years passed on the daughter,
she was in Washington and not Boston at
Anna, founded (in 1873) the Society To En-
the time - that Mrs. Howe wrote her " Battle
courage Study at Home,' which was all done by
Hymn."
correspondence. It was study at home for
This house must always be chiefly associated,
home. No one ever posed or worked for a
however, with Mrs. John T. Sargent and her
career. Mrs. Ticknor was actively interested
assembly of Transcendentalists. Charles
in the health of the students and it was
Lamb's remark about the fat woman seated in
all wonderful and graceful. But the annual
the doorway that it was a shrewd zephyr
meetings at her house were never held in
that could escape her" had its application to
the library. That was for the intimate circle
the person of distinction who could get in -
of the elect."
and out - of Boston without going to the
As soon as Mrs. Howe who in 1844 had
Radical Club. Not that Mrs. Sargent per-
gone with her husband, Dr. Samuel Gridley
secuted her lions or tracked them worryingly to
Howe, to live in the vicinity of the institution
their lairs. Instead she made her house on the
the noble doctor was carrying on in South
Monday when the Radical Club was meeting
Boston for the education of the blind - took
there a resort SO intellectually stimulating that
up a Boston residence she, too, by virtue of
no one wished to escape. The Radical Club
her wit and charm became a "social queen,"
had its origin in the spring of the year '67 in
a distinction which she enjoys even today at
the growing desire of certain ministers and lay-
the advanced age of ninety-one! The few who
men for larger liberty of faith, fellowship and
were really her intellectual kindred had, of
communion. It had no formal organization
course, journeyed faithfully to South Boston
and its members represented all religious de-
to see her. None the less, she discovered
nominations. The Club's first meeting was held
and wittily remarked that " in Boston Love
at 17 Chestnut Street, the residence of Rev.
crosses a bridge but Friendship stops at the
Cyrus Bartol, and for a time it oscillated between
Common." When there was no longer a bridge
that number and thirteen. But it never went
to cross Mrs. Howe's drawing-room, at 13
outside of Chestnut Street and it soon came to
Chestnut Street, became a favorite gather-
regard the roomy parlor of Mrs. Sargent's
ing-place for choice varieties of the genus
home as its permanent headquarters. Then
Bostonian. It was while living here - though
it grew in fame and numbers until at its
IN OLD BOSTON
355
sixty-five acres destroying property valued at
seventy-five million dollars!
This fire is of interest to us not simply because
it was a spectacular and impressive conflagra-
CHAPTER XII
tion, but also because it utterly changed the
aspect of Boston in that district over which it
THE GREAT BOSTON FIRE
burned. Mr. Harold Murdock has very cleverly
brought this fact out in the introduction to
OSTON had had several destructive fires
B
his little book, made up of what purport to
during the period covered by this book.
be "Letters Written by a Gentleman in
In 1824 a fire originated near the corner
Boston to His Friend in Paris Describing the
of Charles and Chestnut Streets, spread to
Great Fire." He here points out that a member
Beacon Street and destroyed sixteen buildings,
of the Harvard Class of 1872 who might have
thus inflicting on the city the great loss (for
left Boston immediately after his graduation
that time) of $150,000. On Fast Day, in 1825,
to return to-day for the first time "would look
fifty stores valued at a million dollars were
in vain for the old landmarks and accustomed
burned in Central and Kilby Streets, and in
sights of his boyhood days." Christ Church,
November of the same year ten buildings on
Faneuil Hall, the Old State House, The Old
Court Street containing many lawyers' offices
South Church, King's Chapel and the Park
were destroyed. In May, 1835, there came still
Street spire he would still find, to be sure.
another fire which rendered more than one
But the Common would have lost its gates and
hundred families homeless by the destruction
its Old Elm, 1 Tremont Street its far-famed
of buildings in Blackstone, Pond and Salem
trees planted by coachmaker Paddock, and
Streets.
Summer Street all of that old-time beauty and
The great Boston Fire, however, did not come
charm which made it, even in the early seventies,
until 1872. It broke out shortly after seven
a region to be reverenced.
o'clock on Saturday evening, November 9, in
the four story granite block at the corner of
For Boston in 1872 was still a small city,
comparatively, and a quaintly attractive one;
Summer and Kingston Streets. Ere it was
extinguished, it had burned over a space of
1 The old elm on Boston Common was the first thing Dean Stanley
asked Edward Everett Hale to show him when he visited Boston.
IN OLD BOSTON
357
356
ROMANTIC DAYS
it covered a territory of less than thirty square
Oliver Street and Liberty Square on the east,
and State Street on the north was taken in.
miles and embraced a population of 250,000.
Roxbury had been annexed in 1868, and Dor-
Happily, Fort Hill which, at this time, had
chester in 1870, but Brighton and West Rox-
been cut away but not built upon, gave the
bury were still separate towns. That the city
firemen a vantage point of which they made
excellent use and from this stand on the one
had not yet learned how to deal adequately
hand and from the Old South Church and the
with a great crisis is, however, shown by what
then new Post Office, on the other, an attack
happened when this fire broke out.
To be sure, conditions were untoward. It had
was made with such steadiness and pluck that,
been a very rainy day and almost every horse
on Sunday afternoon, the flames were effectively
in the city was ill with the strange disease which,
quenched. Naturally, however, the city was in
for want of a better name, was called "the
a deplorable condition. Thousands upon thou-
epizootic." Yet there were four hundred and
sands had seen their property consumed or
seventy-five paid men in the Boston fire depart-
had been thrown out of employment for they
ment - and the scene of the disaster was a
knew not how long, and the terrible excitement
centrally located one. The real trouble appears
of the anxious night and day during which the
to have been that everybody thought some one
fire raged had unstrung the nerves of the
else must have given the alarm, with the result
strongest. The whole community was on the
that it was not given at all for some time.
verge of panic, for every vacant space was
When the engines arrived upon the scene the
filled with hastily moved furniture or mer-
fire had already made great headway. And
chandise and pickpockets and petty thieves
although no wind was stirring it spread rapidly,
wandered to and fro at will. Finding that the
crossing Summer Street and entering both
police were quite inadequate to cope with the
Devonshire and Otis Streets. It also burned
situation, a whole brigade of militia was called
eastward down Summer Street to Church Green
out to do active duty (with the Old South
and from there went on rapidly to Broad Street
for their barracks) and guards were set to
and along High and Purchase Streets towards
patrol the streets at night. Fortunately, these
Fort Hill. Thus nearly everything in the terri-
precautions served to prevent any very shocking
tory bounded by Washington Street on the
breach of the peace.
west, Summer Street on the south, the water,
Though the number of dwelling houses which
358
ROMANTIC DAYS
had been destroyed was comparatively small the
loss of income by the stopping of employment
was so large that measures of relief had to be
organized at once. But the assistance freely
and generously offered by the people of other
IS
cities was not needed. There was, indeed, a
t,
surplus of twenty thousand dollars - of the
Z,
$341,913.68 collected in Boston itself - to re-
VS
turn when the relief committee was dismissed.
o
Fourteen lives were lost in the fire, seven being
S
firemen. For the families of these the relief
in
committee - of which Otis Norcross was treas-
urer - made permanent provision by placing
TI
in the hands of Martin Brimmer, Samuel D.
Warren, Avery Plumer, William Endicott, Jr.,
and George Higginson $81,870.90 in trust. To
aid working women and girls nearly seventy
thousand dollars was expended in clothing,
food, rent, sewing machines and transportation;
to families burned out and to other sufferers
coal, wood, stoves, furniture, clothing and other
necessaries to the amount of nearly seventy-
five thousand dollars was expended, while almost
twenty thousand dollars was invested in the
work of relieving the men who had lost their
employment by the fire. The committee seems
to have acted with great discretion in all this
administering of relief.
Of all the buildings swept away by the fire
Trinity Church was perhaps the most pic-
IN OLD BOSTON
359
turesque. Built (in 1829) of stately granite,
with a tower of impressive architecture, it
was at this time the weekly resort, because of
the preaching of the young Phillips Brooks, of
a large and varied company of people. Brooks
had come here from Philadelphia in 1869, a
handsome young bachelor of thirty-three, filled
with immense devotion to his work and dis-
tinguished by rare powers of eloquence. It
was largely through the influence of the Hon.
Robert C. Winthrop, long one of the first
citizens of Boston, that Brooks had been called
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH'S HOME AT PONKAPOG.
to the conservative old parish, but Winthrop's
Page 385.
enthusiasm over the young preacher was soon
justified by the crowds he drew. From the
very beginning of Brooks's incumbency Sexton
Dillon had hard work seating the throngs
who flocked to listen to him. Vainly did the
worthy man strive to meet an emergency so
wholly unlike anything he had hitherto known
in his long administration. Then he tried to
sort the people who presented themselves for
admission! "Dillon once came to me in the
vestry-room," " said Mr. Brooks in speaking of
the matter to a friend, 'to tell me of a method
he had devised to reduce the numbers who
sought admittance to the church. When a
young man and a young woman come together,
I separate them,' he explained, and he expected
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH'S STUDY, 59 MT. VERNON STREET.
me to approve the fiendish plan."
From a photograph by Louis A. Holman.
Page 386.
360
ROMANTIC DAYS
IN OLD BOSTON
361
The journalistic habit of giving space to
Square were already underway, to be sure, but
current church news seems to have dated from
that he had a great fondness for old Trinity
these golden days in old Trinity. I find the
we see from his letters written at the time.
following description of a Sunday morning
" The desolation [of the fire] is bewildering.
there: "The old building seems the fitting
Old Trinity seemed safe all night, but toward
place of worship for the solid men of Boston.
morning the fire swept into her rear and there
There is an air of ancient respectability about
was no chance. She went at four in the morning.
it.
The deep roomy pews, thoughtfully
I saw her well afire, inside and out, carried off
padded, seem adjusted for sleeping, and though
some books and robes and left her. She went
seven can sit comfortably in them, if you
majestically and her great tower stands now
humbly ask for the fifth seat in some of them,
as solid as ever, a most picturesque and stately
beware of the lofty look and high-bred scorn
ruin. She died in dignity. I did not know how
which seems to say, ' Are not the galleries free
much I liked the great gloomy old thing till
to negro servants and strangers?
I shall
I saw her windows bursting and the flame
have to let you in, I suppose. Take that
running along the old high pews."
prayer-book and keep quiet; service has begun.
Yet Phillips Brooks's sermon in Huntington
Don't you see Mr. Brooks?
Hall, the following Sunday, was full of an
" Yes, we do see the Rev. Phillips Brooks,
onward and upward sweep, of insistence that
a tall, stout, powerfully built man, with smooth,
life comes through death - the lesson of the
boyish face and very near-sighted eyes, which
fire.
nevertheless, by the help of glasses, seem to
search you out in whatever dark corner you
may be hidden. He is reading the service with
a thin voice and rapid, breathless, almost
stuttering delivery and yet with a certain
impulsive and pleading earnestness that carries
even Congregationalists onto their knees, and
takes them to the throne of grace."
Brooks felt very keenly the loss of the old
church. Plans for the present edifice on Copley
IN OLD BOSTON
363
'Boston chapter of his American Notes his
impressions of the city and of its institutions
during this visit of 1842. The most satisfying
passage is that which describes his tour of the
CHAPTER XIII
Perkins Institution for the Blind in South
Boston and his wonder at what had there been
SOME FAMOUS VISITORS AND THE WAY WE
ENTERTAINED THEM
done for Laura Bridgman, Dr. Howe's famous
pupil.
M
ANY of the famous people who came to
During Dickens's visit in 1867 he was enter-
Boston for a visit during the period
tained by Mr. and Mrs. James T. Fields in
covered by this book have been discussed
the charming old house at 148 Charles Street
in connection with the mission which brought
in which Mrs. Fields still lives, surrounded
them here; and others will, for lack of space,
by souvenirs of her many grateful guests. In
be passed over entirely or merely mentioned.
that pleasant volume, Biographical Notes
But the visits of Charles Dickens in 1842
and Personal Sketches, this lady, who was
and in 1867 call for more detailed attention.
Dickens's hostess on Christmas Eve and who
His first coming was the sensation of the early
afterwards, that same night, heard him read
half of the nineteenth century. From the day.
"the Carol," paints vividly the enthusiasm
of his arrival in the city press and people vied
with which the beloved writer was received
with each other to do him honor and SO great
by his audience. "The whole house rose and
was his vogue that a wit declared him Fanny
cheered! The people looked at him with
Ellslerized," that piquant dancer having been
gratitude as one who held a candle in a dark
similarly lionized during her stay in Boston.
way."
Three days after his arrival in Boston Dickens
It was during this visit that there occurred
gave a sitting for the Francis Alexander portrait
the famous Walking-Match, posters of which
of himself now owned by Mrs. James T. Fields,
are now dearly prized by American collectors
and as great a throng attended him from the
of Dickensiana. Dickens had said that his
Tremont House - his headquarters - to the
agent, George Dolby, could outwalk Osgood;
artist's studio at 41 Tremont Row as if he had
but James T. Fields was of the opinion that
been Royalty. Dickens has recorded in the
his partner, Osgood, was the better man. Ac-
364
ROMANTIC DAYS
IN OLD BOSTON
365
cordingly, the match was arranged for two
Osgood, of course, felt that she showed great
hats a side and the glory of their respective
favoritism in this respect: but she frankly
countries' (Dolby was an Englishman, of
admitted that she would have done the same
course).
by the Englishman had she met him coming in
The time set for the contest was Feb. 29,
first.
1868, and the course was to be over the
To Dickens, as to many another distinguished
Mill Dam road to Newton Centre, a route
visitor from abroad, Boston gave a ball; tickets
Dickens and Fields had already traversed in
for the function that bears his name brought
preparation for the "event." When the author
forty dollars each! Usually, these great balls
and publisher went over the ground they
were given at the Boston Theatre, which was
became very thirsty, only to find that the
equipped with a floor made in sections and SO
stores of the village supplied nothing except a
arranged that it could be fitted on over the
few oranges! They purchased these, however,
parquet seats, thus giving extensive dancing
and sat down on a doorstep to enjoy them. In
space on a level with the stage. Here were
the "sporting narrative" which Dickens had
held a number of functions that figure in the
to write concerning the match (won by Osgood)
social history of the period. The Tigers' Ball,
he indulges in a highly characteristic sentence
February 28, 1859; the Mount Vernon Ball,
about this incident:
March 4, 1859; Firemen's Military and Civic
"Six miles and a half, good measure, from
Ball, March 18, 1859; Grand Juvenile Ball,
the first tree in the Mill Dam road lies the little
March 23, 1859; National Sailors' Fair, Novem-
village (with no refreshments in it but five
ber 7, 1864; and State Military Ball, March
oranges and a bottle of blacking) of Newton
5, 1866. During the war a Fair in Aid of the
Centre."
Sanitary Commission also took place here and
Mr. Dolby, in speaking of the "Great
many a Bostonian, still living, recalls pleasantly
Walking Match," was ever wont to affirm that
the splendid entertainment and dance given in
England must have won had not Mrs. Fields
this place in honor of the Russian Grand Duke
arrived on the scene in her carriage, and, turning
Alexis, December 8, 1871.
around, accompanied Osgood the rest of the
All these balls, however, pale before the
walk, plying him the whole time with bread
memory of that given to the late Edward VII
soaked in brandy. All, with the exception of
of England during his visit to Boston in 1860.
The Boston Globe Online: 125th Anniversary
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The Boston Globe
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125 th Anniversary
12
The Great Fire
Moments
of 1872
That Mattered
(1872-1997)
(Overview)
Crowding, conflict and
(By John Powers)
conflagration
1872
By Peter S. Canellos
The Great Fire of 1872
(Peter S. Canellos)
t started
1895
I
with a
whisper,
The building of the
became a
Boston Public Library
hiss, and
(Louise Kennedy)
blew up into a
1900
roaring blaze
The opening of
that consumed
Boston in ruins. What caused the fire is
Symphony Hall
65 acres and
unknown, but its advent had been
(John Yemma)
left behind, by
predicted.
the morning of
1910
November 12, 1872, a charred crater where much of
The reelection of
Boston's financial district had been. ``I saw the fire
Mayor John F.
Fitzgerald
eating its way straight toward my deposits," Dr.
(Martin F. Nolan)
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote mournfully. Starting
on Summer Street, the fire ate almost all of Franklin
1920
Street, Congress Street, and Federal Street. It
The trading of
marched to the door of the Old South Meeting
Babe Ruth
House. Only the militia-like mobilization of citizens
(David M. Shribman)
spared such secular temples as the Old State House.
1922
"The [Old South Meeting
The founding of
Its cause is unknown, but
House] and Faneuil Hall
Raytheon Co.
its advent had been
are in Boston, but they are
(Paul Hemp)
predicted. JohnStanhope
the treasures of the
Damrell, the fire chief,
country. The painful,
almost gradual approach
1927
pleaded with the city
of the flames to the old
The execution of
every year from 1866 to
church as watched by the
Sacco and Vanzetti
'72 to install new
spectators was shared by
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4/15/2003
The Boston Globe Online: 125th Anniversary
Page 2 of 3
hydrants with multiple
those in distant parts of
outlets, and for larger
the country who could see
1954
only by the telegraph. --
The world's first
pipes to relieve a drastic
HARPER'S WEEKLY,
successful kidney
water shortage. When, in
1872
transplant
1871, Chicago burned,
(Richard A. Knox)
the Boston city fathers dispatched Damrell to
Illinois; his report all but predicted the fire the
1960
The demolition of
following year.
the West End
(Derrick Z. Jackson)
Boston's charm was also its downfall. Much of the
city was clustered in a downtown warren, where the
1963
onetime residences of Daniel Webster and Edward
The creation of
Everett rubbed shoulders with countinghouses,
the Magellan Fund
stables, and leather factories. In the gaslight era,
(Joan Vennochi)
great fires were predicted with almost ecclesiastical
1974
fervor, like the plagues of the Middle Ages. If
The court-ordered
Boston were to be SO visited, it would surely be
desegration of
here, on these knotted Colonial streets.
Boston schools
(Thomas F. Mulvoy Jr.)
Yankee parsimoniousness undermined Yankee
preparedness. The City Council rejected Damrell's
1976
The Tall Ships Parade
plea for a steam engine in the vulnerable district,
(Jack Thomas)
saying it was too expensive. The water board
dismissed the need for new pipes.
Disaster breeds renewal. Beaux Arts office fronts
A City
sprouted from the detritus of the financial district.
and
Meanwhile, civic eyes turned to the Back Bay to
Its Newspaper
build replacements for lost churches and public
buildings. They looked to surrounding communities
for residential expansion, annexing Roslindale in
1873 and Jamaica Plain, West Roxbury, Allston,
Brighton, and Charlestown in 1874. But other
communities - notably Brookline - refused to join
the immigrant core, touching off wavelike tensions
of enlargement and confinement that reverberate to
this day.
Unlike newer cities, Boston is corseted in its
Edwardian boundaries; town lines crisscross
Massachusetts like political firewalls. Nearby towns
maintain their micro-governments. Cramped space
sometimes makes for cramped spirits; for better or
worse, people carry their town, neighborhood,
ethnic, or racial markers, whether with pride or
frustration.
Boston is still a city of warrens. A better-funded fire
department stands guard. But space - real arm-
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Panic of 1873
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The Grant Administration
Panic of 1873
A major economic reversal began in Europe and reached the United States in the fall of
1873. The signal event on this side of the Atlantic was the failure of Jay Cooke and
Company, the country's preeminent investment banking concern. The firm was the principal
backer of the Northern Pacific Railroad and had handled most of the government's wartime
loans.
Cooke's fall touched off a series of events that encompassed the entire nation. The New
York Stock Exchange was closed for 10 days. Credit dried up, foreclosures were common
and banks failed. Factories closed their doors, costing thousands of workers' jobs. The
volume of destitute people soon overwhelmed the abilities of charities to function. Most of
the major railroads failed.
The public tended to blame President Grant and Congress for mishandling the economy.
The causes were much broader, however. The postwar period was one of frenetic,
unregulated growth with the government playing no role in curbing abuses. More than any
other single event, the extreme overbuilding of the nation's railroad system laid the
groundwork of the Panic and the depression that followed. Recovery was not realized until
1878.
In addition to the ruined fortunes of many Americans, there developed from the Panic of
1873 bitter antagonism between workers and the leaders of banking and manufacturing.
This tension would erupt into the labor unrest that marked the following decades.
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The financial panic of 1873
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The following is an excerpt from Volume III of The Great Republic by the Master Historians
The book was published in the early 1900's and edited by renowned American historian
Hubert H. Bancroft. It covers United States history from the War of 1812 through the
Civil War and Reconstruction. Within the book. Bancroft comments on each historical event,
as well as includes more detailed accounts by other historians.
The financial panic of 1873
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Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, the financiers of the
Northern Pacific Railroad. Failure after failure
succeeded, panic spread through the whole
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The financial panic of 1873
Page 2 of 3
business was expanding the currency was
contracting. Paper money had depreciated, and the
conditions foreboded a crash. The Jay Cooke firm
stood at the head of the great banking concerns.
This house had handled most of the government
loans during the war, and as already stated, were
financing the doubtful Northern Pacific scheme.
When this firm broke, strong institutions tottered
and thousands of people in every rank of life were
stricken with absolute ruin or sufferings that were
none the less poignant for being outside the
category of direct financial failures. The blow was
felt for years in impaired credit, pressure for
payment of dues, the lowering of securities and
general dread of even safe enterprises. United
States bonds fell from five to ten per cent. Savings
were exhausted and many banks went under.
Labor felt the cruel stroke for long after in the
shutting down of factories and the half-time
employment. The country was in a state of alarm
and disgust at the bitter consequences of
questionable acts in Congress, by the
Administration, and in the realm of finance, and its
indignant resolve to change things for the better
was expressed in the heated contest which
replaced the Grant administration with that of
President Hayes, in 1876.
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Cyl No 1 page
3
ha ve advanced immepasurably from the positivism
of ignorance since my days at college.
Cylinder No. 2 --1
same date
of
But/the one great phenomenon, transcending all others
in importance and interest, consciousness, we know absolutely
nothing and do not even attempt to understand the problem
of it. And we are conscious of our ignorance. We have
such knowledge as an animal needs to live and nothing
more.
GBD: end of this section of notes which is to be copied
as opportunity comes and read over to me for revisiun.
Dict. list
It was a pleasant part of England
1.
"Gardens do not naturally exist
2
gardens
The earliest
Herbalists
3
The summer we spent toget er in England
4.
That summer in Eng. with its leisurely quest 5.
*
Re turning from a brief trip, my father
6. *
Gladstone
Our summer in 1875 in Eng
happy one
7.o
Those years of intimate companionship
8.
When Edward Dorr came out
9.
Returning from our wintter on the Nile
10.
The tracing out of
11.
This search after my father's
..
12.
That summer in England in 1875 marks
13.
During one of my later trips abroad, friends
14.
(Shrewsbury)
Leaving York-- Dukeries
15.
That summer I came to know my England
16
Ihad the rare ;ood f ortune -mother and "ather 17.
This quest after the homes ..... futher took.
18.
That whole summer's journey
19.
Kent
20
Ph.D. LLB. Harvard College
Grant
Grant
GRANT, ROBERT (Jan. 24, 1852-May 19,
His savoir-faire and his rather mellow satirical
1940), novelist and judge, was born in Boston
outlook appeared again in his first novel, The
of Scottish Highland and English descent, the
Confessions of a Frivolous Girl (1880), which
eldest child of Patrick Grant, a commission
was well received, though it was made a re-
merchant, and Charlotte Bordman (Rice)
proach against him in some quarters when he
Grant. Moving in Boston's best social circles,
was first considered for the bench. His first
he grew up on Beacon Hill-see his boys'
serious novel, Face to Face, was published
story, Jack Hall (1887)-and attended the
anonymously in 1886, but he did not really
Boston Latin School and the Arlington Street
establish himself as a serious writer until 1900,
(Unitarian) Church. He graduated from Har-
when he published Unleavened Bread, whose
vard College in 1873 and in 1876 became one
feminist heroine, Selma White, has been com-
of Harvard's early Ph.D.'s, in English phi-
pared to Becky Sharp and Madame Bovary.
lology. In 1879 he received his LL.B. from the
By reference to this book, Edith Wharton [q.v.]
Harvard Law School and was admitted to the
called Grant the predecessor of Sinclair Lewis
Massachusetts bar. Thereafter he pursued both
and Theodore Dreiser.
a legal and a literary career. Columbia Uni-
Grant himself considered Unleavened Bread
versity awarded him an honorary degree in
his best novel; with Leo Ditrichstein [q.v.]
1921, Harvard in 1922, and he was elected to
he dramatized it for a George C. Tyler produc-
the American Academy of Arts and Letters in
tion in which Ditrichstein, Elizabeth Tyree, and
1915. Always a loyal son of Harvard, he
Eleanor Robson appeared. Some critics, how-
served as a member of its Board of Overseers.
ever, prefer The Chippendales (1909), in which,
with but brief interruptions, from 1895 to 1921
feeling that even Howells had written of Boston
(after 1917 as president).
society as an outsider, Grant tried to picture it
Grant began his public career as a member
from the inside, discriminating between what
of the Boston Board of Water Commissioners.
must go and what might be salvaged of the
Five years later, in 1893, he became a judge of
old values. His last novel, The Dark Horse
probate and insolvency for Suffolk County,
(1931), is "A Story of the Young Chippen-
which position he held until his retirement in
dales" and the inside workings of Massachu-
1923. In 1927 he served with President A. Law-
setts politics. Though it lacks the force of its
rence Lowell of Harvard and President Samuel
predecessor, it is technically one of Grant's
W. Stratton [q.v.] of the Massachusetts Insti-
most accomplished works.
tute of Technology on a committee appointed
Grant returned to the imaginary city of Ben-
by Gov. Alvan T. Fuller to review the evidence
ham, which he had created in Unleavened
upon which Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Van-
Bread, in both The Undercurrent (1904) and
zetti [qq.v.] had been convicted. Their report
The High Priestess (1915). The High Priest-
censured Judge Webster Thayer for his remarks
ess again concerns feminism; the aging Selma
off the bench but found no evidence of an un-
White makes a brief reappearance, but the
fair trial or conviction.
central figure is a feminist of a less monstrous
Grant was married, on July 3, 1883, to Amy
order. In The Undercurrent both the situations
Gordon Galt, daughter of Sir Alexander Galt,
and the characters are chosen to support Grant's
GBO's
the Canadian statesman, and granddaughter of
thesis that religious opposition to the remar-
the novelist John Galt. They had four sons:
riage of innocent people after divorce works
Robert, Alexander Galt, Patrick, and Gordon.
cruel and fruitless hardship. On a less serious
Grant died in Boston at the age of eighty-eight
level, Grant dealt with divorce problems also
and was buried in Mt. Auburn Cemetery in
in The Orchid (1905) and The Bishop's Grand-
Cambridge.
daughter (1925). He was much concerned
Though Grant admired Dickens, both Balzac
about the growing American tendency to seek
and Thackeray exerted more influence upon his
divorce for incompatibility, and the cynicism
literary work. He considered Vanity Fair the
and evasions occasioned by the wide differ-
greatest novel ever written. At Harvard he
ences between the marriage and divorce laws
wrote for, and helped to edit, both the Advocate
of the forty-eight states. In the 1920's he de-
and the Lampoon and was class poet in 1873.
voted considerable energy to agitating in behalf
His first literary success was a satire in classi-
of a uniform federal divorce law.
cal meters on modern society, The Little Tin
In addition to his novels, Judge Grant wrote
Gods-on-Wheels (1879) this was reprinted,
such books as The Reflections of a Married
with a number of his occasional and other
Man (1892), The Opinions of a Philosopher
poems, in Occasional Verses, 1873-1923 (1926).
(1893), The Convictions of a Grandfather
257
Graves
Graves
(1912), and Law and the Family (1919), some
of Shanghai and the Yangtse Valley. In 1901,
of them with a thin fictional veneer. Finding
the mission having grown sufficiently to require
the short story difficult, he published only two
a division of territory and another bishop, his
collections: The Bachelor's Christmas (1895)
jurisdiction became Kiangsu Province only
and The Law-Breakers (1906). His attitude
and his title Bishop of Shanghai. For two brief
toward society and toward fiction was not un-
periods (1899-1901 and 1918-20) he was also
like that of his friend Edith Wharton, but he
charged with oversight of the mission in the
was much less brilliant both in style and in
Philippines.
technique, and the range between his best and
Though Graves had heavy episcopal responsi-
his worst work is very wide.
bilities, he found time to take an active part in
[Robert Grant, Fourscore-An Autobiog. (1934) and
other affairs. He participated in many inter-
"Marriage and Divorce," Yale Rev., Jan. 1925; inter-
denominational ventures, though remaining
views in Boston Sunday Post, Dec. 27, 1903, and Boston
aloof from such as he felt led towards church
Evening Transcript, Oct. 17, 1931; obituary, N. Y. Times,
May 20, 1940; Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance
unity. For many years he spent much time
(1934); Who Was Who in America, vol. I (1942).]
and energy in famine relief work, for which
EDWARD WAGENKNECHT
he was decorated by the Chinese government.
But his primary concern was in extending and
GRAVES, FREDERICK ROGERS (Oct.
strengthening his diocese, in which much
24, 1858-May 17, 1940), missionary bishop of
progress was made, and in the development of
the Protestant Episcopal Church, was born in
an indigenous church. He had a significant
Auburn, N. Y., the eldest of seven children of
part in the drawing together of the American,
Samuel Seabury and Elizabeth Anna (Wilson)
Canadian, and English church missions into
Graves. The forebears of both parents were
a single Anglican body, organized in 1912 as
members of the Church of England who came
the Chung Hwa Sheng Kung Hui (Holy
early to America and settled in Vermont. From
Catholic Church of China), of which he was
the age of six Graves spent his childhood and
the second presiding bishop (1913-23).
youth in Geneva, N. Y., where his father op-
From 1925 on, Graves's work became in-
erated a large plant nursery. There he had the
creasingly difficult, as he had to deal with the
major part of his education, in private schools
disruption caused by the Nationalist revolution
and in Hobart College, from which he was
in the twenties and by the Japanese invasions
graduated in 1878. His theological training was
in the thirties, with financial problems caused
in the General Theological Seminary in New
by the depression in America, with his wife's
York City. He later received honorary doc-
illness, and with his own declining health. His
torates from the seminary (1893) and from
wife died in 1926, and in 1934 he suffered a
Oxford (1908).
paralytic stroke, but he recovered sufficiently
While in seminary Graves volunteered for
to carry on his work. He sought to resign in
work in China, and he proceeded to that field
1936, but at the urgent request of the bishops
shortly after his graduation and ordination as
in America agreed to remain in office longer.
deacon in 1881. His first post was in Wuchang,
Early in 1937, however, he had to make his res-
where, except for about two years (1885-87)
ignation final. He maintained his residence at
as a professor in the theological school of St.
St. John's University, where he remained
John's College in Shanghai, he remained until
through the Japanese attack on Shanghai and
1893, doing evangelistic work and teaching
afterwards lived quietly until his death. His
theology. He also carried on the work of trans-
ashes were interred in Holy Trinity Cathedral,
lation, chiefly of books needed in seminary
Shanghai.
teaching, begun by Bishop Samuel Isaac Joseph
Graves was generally regarded within his
Schereschewsky [q.v.]. In 1882 he was or-
own communion as one of the chief architects
dained a priest in Shanghai, and there, the next
and builders of the Chinese Anglican Church.
year, he married Josephine Harriet Roberts of
Outside his church he was widely respected by
Brooklyn, N. Y., a member of the Shanghai
Chinese and Westerners alike as one whose
mission. They had four children: Elizabeth
contribution to the Christian cause in China was
Woodward, Frederick Rogers, Lucy Josephine,
of very considerable significance.
and Josephine Marion. The daughters later
were missionaries in his diocese.
[Unpublished life of Graves by his daughter Lucy,
containing many quotations from his journals, letters, and
On June 14, 1893, in St. Thomas's Church,
a MS of his memoirs written in 1930; F. R. Graves,
New York City, Graves was consecrated the
"Some Recollections of a Bishop in China," Spirit of
Missions, June 1918, and Recollections: 1881-1893
fifth bishop for China with the title of Bishop
(1928); Handbooks on the Missions of the Episc.
258
INTRODUCTION TO THE 1999 EDITION
xix
found formal education onerous. In 1876 he wrote: "To my dis-
may was sent to Kendall's School, Appian Way!
Disliked most
of the boys but liked Kendall. Often dissolved in tears even in
schoolroom; much to my despair."3 Fortunately, his education
was supplemented by drawing lessons from Charles H. Moore,
which he liked. He made lifelong friends at Kendall's, however,
especially Roland Thaxter and John H. Storer, and his prepara-
tion there helped him pass the entrance examination for Harvard
College in June 1877.
It is important to understand the values that President Eliot
tried to instill in his sons. In 1914 he wrote a short but informa-
tive article for The Delineator titled "Bringing Up a Boy." Al-
though written almost two decades after the death of his son, this
essay clearly recalls young Charles: "The alert boy is often
troublesome to parents and teachers, but he is the most promis-
ing boy, and great pains should be taken to direct his inquiring
mind and eager senses to whole objects, like plants, animals,
brooks, forests, landscapes and the products and tools of human
industry." President Eliot believed that heredity, rather than
environment, was the greater determinant, but he emphasized
in his article the role that parents tran play in providing an ap-
propriate setting for learning. Clearly, Charles Eliot was a child
who caused his father grave concern for many years and great
pride when success was achieved.
THE EDUCATION OF A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT
Charles Eliot's preparation for a career in landscape architec-
ture began long before his Harvard years. During the family's
travels in Europe, his parents showed him the beauties of many
natural and manmade landscapes. After the death of his mother,
1871
his father and other family members continued this tradition. In
the summer of 1871 the Eliots spent their first summer on Mount
Desert Island in Maine, and the following year they acquired a
forty-three-and-half-foot sloop, The Sunshine. Maine would re-
main a central and important part of Charles Eliot's life there-
after.
In spring 1874 young Charles accompanied his aunt Anna
Peabody on a trip through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
A notebook (fig. 6) in which he recorded his impressions of the
landscape, people, and local customs provides us early evidence
of his response to landscapes. At this time he was sketching fre-
FIGURE 5. Ellen Peabody Eliot with Samuel Atkins Eliot on her lap
quently (fig. 7), exhibiting the natural talent that would later
and Charles Eliot at her side. Courtesy of Alexander Y. Goriansky.
encourage him to consider a career in landscape architecture.
In shaping his education, Charles had the advantage
dis-
Northeast Harbor, Me.,
14 September 1923
My dear Dorr:
Elist
Before I built a house in 1881 near Northeast
1873
Harbor, I camped on Calf Island, Frenchman's Bay, for
eight years, and then became very familiar with the shores
of the Bay and all its passages and inlets which were safe
for 1 good-sized sailing yacht which drew five feet and a
half. I then made the acquaintance of Scheedic Eoad and
all the approaches to it by land and water. During these
years I repeatedly climbed Schoodic Head, and enjoyed the
wonderful prospects northeasterly by Petit Manam and beyond
towards Grand Manan, southwesterly tcwards Baker's Island,
the Duck Islands, and Iale are Esut, and due vest to the
high hills of Mount Desert Island just across the bay.
These prospects are unique. They are far the finest on
the Atlantic Coast of the United States; and therefore
the Head itself should be preserved in all its own beauty
of geologic structure and forest decoration for the enjoy-
ment of future generations.
This conservation can be best made sure by adding
the Schoodic Peninsula to the Lafayette National Park now
established on Mount Desert Island. It will then come
under the scientific management of the National Pale Screin.
Sinf your
Chall W.Elist.]
1872:
Bistop Laurence arrives fuel
15 Bautherbou(age ? ).
his
Quated in letter to L.B. Deery
^
(8/19/32), cited in Rieley vol. 19. 15.
OLD PARK STREET AND
ITS VICINITY
BY
ROBERT MEANS LAWRENCE, M.D.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riberside Press Cambridge
1922
OLD PARK STREET AND ITS VICINITY
REMINISCENCES OF PARK STREET
living in this house. Dr. Mason Warren died here on
The final occupants of the old homestead were
August 19, 1867. During the season of 1868-69, the
Mrs. Jonathan Mason Warren and her unmarried
house was leased to and occupied by John Lothrop
daughter, Annie C. Warren, who remained there un-
Motley, the historian. In the summer of that year
til the house was pulled down and replaced as an
the writer returned from a three years' course of
office and store building, which was leased to Messrs.
medical study in Europe, and began the practice of
Doll & Richards for a term of years. This event oc-
his profession in the old doctor's office; and con-
curred in the year 1878.
tinued in practice there until 1874, when he removed
The tearing down of the old Bulfinch building
to Number Fifty-Eight Beacon Street, where he has
opened a vista into the cemetery from Park Street.
since resided (1922).
Public attention was thus drawn anew to this old
The night of the Great Boston Fire in 1872 was a
relic of the past. The grave of John Hancock was
memorable one for Number Two. This private
situated in this part of the grounds and had always
dwelling was then on the very front line of the resi-
been an object of interest to visitors at Number Two
dential district; and with its neighbors in the block
Park Street. A single stone with the simple inscrip-
was nearer to the seat of the conflagration than any
tion "Hancock" was all that marked the site of the
dwelling-house of that period. The writer, being the
grave. It was not long after this occurrence that a
only occupant of the house at that time, hastily
suitable monument was placed over the grave of this
summoned members of the family from their homes
distinguished Bostonian, for the first time, SO as to
in the "Back Bay," and they kept open house for
be easily seen by the passer-by on the crowded Tre-
the greater part of the night. Old fire bags, bearing
mont Street thoroughfare. Numbers Three and Four
the name of John C. Warren, were unearthed from
of this block had, if my memory serves me right,
their concealment in ornamental fire buckets of the
already been claimed for business purposes; but Num-
date 1816. These were filled with silver; and to-
ber One was still occupied by Mr. Thomas Wiggles-
gether with valuable paintings, were removed to the
worth and his two sisters, Miss Mary and Miss Anne.
homes of relatives. This was not done until the fire
I was sent to school at Park Street Church at the
had worked up Summer Street as far as Washington
age of five. This was in 1847. It was a girls' school,
Street, when it was felt that the stampede of vehicles
kept by Miss Dwight, and I was the only boy.
of all kinds would soon make passage from Park
The school-room was situated in the brick portion of
Street to Beacon Street impracticable.
the tower which supports the steeple, and was lighted
110
111
HARVARD COLLEGE.
Boston Daily Globe (1872-1960): Jan 17, 1874: ProQuest Historical Newspapers Boston Globe (1872 - 1901)
pg. 8
HARVARD COLLEGE.
The Annual Report of President Eliot-A Grati-
fying Recapitulation of the Work
of the Year.
President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard
College has presented to the Board of Overseers
his report for the year 1872-73, which gives a
gratifying showing for the period which it
covere, and indicates that Haivard stands up-
on as firm a foundation now as in the past.
Despite various losses, especially in the departments
of the university supported mainly by the Bussey
trust fund, resulting from the great November fire,
the financial showing of the institution is good and
fairly indicative of its undiminished strength. Past
accumulations supplied the means of making good a
deficit of $5400 found in the balances of receipts and
expenses of the Bussey Institution. Small detielts
occurring in the Law, Medical and Divinity Schools
were almost entirely met by the reduced expenses for
the year, and in the Dental and Lawrence Scientitie
Schools fair surpluses are noted. The deficit In
1671-12 of $11,444 in the accounts of the university
proper. including the college and library accounts, is
partially met, this year,by it suplus and reduction of
$7000 in expenses. Thesub:criptions of the graduates
toward covering the university losses by the fire of
1872, amounting to $183,040 01. The entire loss Line
not yet been ascertained with certainty, and the
principal of the fund has not yet been applied to the
supply of deficits In 1672-3, the interest alone having
been employed. The report shows lifty-nine teach-
ers applied in the department of Instruction.
against fifty-one during the previous year, there be-
ing an increase in the number of assistant professors
and instructors, and a decrease of other teachers.
The insufficiency of the number of apartments for
lecture and recitation purpose is quite as embarrass-
ing as ever, and the prospects of supplying this de-
ticiency have been removed by the death of the late
Cyrus Wakefield, " ho had designed extending liberal
aid. Progress has been made in the development of
a plan allow Ing regular students, in any department.
to enjoy the advantages of instruction, fice of ex-
pense, in any other department, with the exception
of exetcises in the special laboratories. Eighteen
years has because the average age of admission, and
the standard requirements of admission, though
altered. in FOINC respects, have not been ruised.
In connection with the Parker fellowship, three
fellowships of S1000 each have been estab.
lished, which may be held by graduates for threee
years, with the privilege of pursuing their studies
at home or abroad. The Parker fellowship, it
will be remembered, is designed for the develop-
ment of any special powers for a single department
of learning, in the case of those who are in too mod-
erate circuinstances to defray the expenses of a costly
course. The report niludes to the experiment of
competitive examinations for women. which will be
inaugurated in June next. Many other subjects of
equal importance to those referred to above are con.
sidered at more or less length, and the document, as
an entirety, will amply repay permsal.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
PRESIDENT GRANT.
Boston Daily Globe (1872-1960); Aug 15, 1873; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Boston Globe (1872-1901) -
pg. 1
PRESIDENT GRANT.
THE PRESIDENT DOWN EAST.
AUGUSTA, Me., August 14.-Today the President
rode to Gardiner and called on his old West Point
friend, Colonel Gardiner. On his return he dined
with Senator Morrill of this city. At 5 o'clock, this
afternoon, it began to rain, and continued to rain just
enough to make it disagreeable qut of doors, but that
circumstance did not appreciably affect the brilliancy
of the assemblage at the residence of Speaker Blaine
in the evening. At 9 o'clock the reception began and
at eleven the guests still came. Speaker Blane received
his guests with President Grant, Miss Nellie Grant
and Mrs. Blaine on his right. There was a large
number of prominent gentlemen with their Jadies
from all parts of the State.
Among them were Governor Perham and staff and
the Ex ecutive Council, Senators Hamlin and Morrill of
this State, Hons. Eugenc Hale and J. H. Burleigh,
members of Congress, the Hon. J. H. Bailey of New
York, the Hon. N. Dingley of Lewiston. the Hons. C.
W. Goddard and C. P. Kimball of Portland, the Hon.
J. E. Butler of the State Senate. the Hon. E. F. Webb,
Speaker of the House, Colonel Murray and Major
Whittemore of the United States Army. The tollets
of the ladies were elegant, charming and beautiful.
A large platform bad been erected in the adjoining
grounde, protected by a canopy from the weather and
beautifully decorated. Here the company joined in
the dance. At 9 o'clock, to-morrow morning, the
Presidential party will take a special train for Rock-
land, and thence will take the revenue cutter McCul-
Joch for Mount Desert and thence to Bangor, arriving
at Bangor on Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening
the President and party will return to this city and
pass the Sabbath with Speaker Blaine.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
SEASONABLE NOTES.
Boston Daily Globe (1872-1960); Jul 22, 1874; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Boston Globe (1872-1901) -
pg. 2
SEASONABLE NOTES.
The first German of the season at Saratoga
was danced at Congress Hall, Monday, between 12
and 2 o'clock.
The most comfortable and cheapest way to
get to Mount Desert is to take the care on the Enstern
Railroad and go to Portland, and then step on board
the stenmer Lewiston, Captain Charles Deering.
which leaves Portland every Tuesday and Friday
evening, at 10 o'clock, or on arrival of express trains
from Boston. The trip to Mount Desert, along the
rugged shore of Malue, is n delightful one. Nowhere
ou the Maine coast. is there a more romantic and
poetic spot than Mount Desert. The island is
a mass of mountains crowded together and
seemingly rising from the water. and it is diffi-
cult to conceive of any liner combination of land
and water than 18 presented by the thirteen moun-
tains, large and small, that constitute Mount Desert.
Or late years, this place has become quito a popular
resort for thore seeking genuine comfort and pleasure,
divested of all the nonsensities attached to the so-
called watering-places. There are plenty of good
hotels and cottages there. the charges are reasonable,
the society unexceptionable, and with splendid facili-
ties for boating, fishing, etc., one can realize all the
pleasures of a Summer Idyl without sacrificing com-
fort to expense and showy luxuries. Those who have
never visited Mount Desert have something yet to add
to the sum total of their life's enjoyment.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ADD: July 2011
"In 1872, Verplank Colvin, an Albany lawyer and outdoor enthusiast, persuaded the New York
State legislature to supply the financial resources for the first topographical survey of the
Adirondacks (visaited several years earlier by the Dorr family).
Rather than charting the region with inexact compasses and barometers that involved estimates
of altitude from the drop in air pressure, Colvin provided more accurate measurements through
the use of the principles of triangulation and an angle-measuring telescope called a theodolite.
Fopr bearny thirty years he persisted in this effort which resulted in mapping the region with
remarkable precision
"
Kim Martineau. "Charting old Territory," Adirtondack Explorer May/June 2012, 14-15.
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1871 - 1873