CLUBS: Studday Club. ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Page 1 of 3 Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Keyword Anywhere = Boston clubs Search Results: Displaying 26 of 1000026 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View Saturday Club records, Relevance: Format: Mixed Material Electronic resources: Click here to access the guide to this collection. Call number(s): OFFSITE STORAGE Request unavailable Please follow the link to the electronic resource. Requesting may be possible there. Ms. N-879 (oversize only) Creator: Saturday Club (Boston, Mass.). Title: Saturday Club records, 1864-1995. Description: 14 boxes (stored offsite); 1 oversize box and 1 folder in drawers (stored onsite). Restrictions: THE BULK OF THIS COLLECTION IS STORED OFFSITE. ADVANCE NOTICE IS REQUIRED FOR USE OF THIS COLLECTION. Scope: Records of the Saturday Club, a Boston dining club organized in 1855 by individuals involved with the arts and sciences, including correspondence, biographical sketches, and drafts related to the publication of The Early Years of the Saturday Club, edited by Edward Waldo Emerson in 1918; The Later Years of the Saturday Club, 1870-1920, edited by M. A. De Wolfe Howe in 1927; and http://balthazaar.masshist.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=26&ti=21,26&Search%5FArg=Bo... 3/1/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Page 2 of 3 Saturday Club: A Century Completed, edited by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Findley in 1958. Also includes financial records, membership lists, office correspondence, typescripts, news clippings, publishing proofs, club histories, rulebooks, personal correspondence, and photographs. Correspondents include Charles E. Norton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Charles W. Eliot, and Bliss Perry. Finding aids available: Collection guide available at: http://www.masshist.org/collection- guides/view/fa0358 Local notes: Formerly cataloged as "Saturday Club." Photographs removed to the MHS Photo Archives. Subject(s): American literature -Societies, etc. Biography --Collections. Clubs -Massachusetts --Boston. Men --Societies and clubs. Science --Societies, etc. Other Author(s): Dana, Richard Henry, Jr., 1815-1882. Eliot, Charles William, 1834-1926. Emerson, Edward Waldo, 1844-1930. Finley, John H. (John Huston), 1904-1995 Forbes, Edward W. (Edward Waldo), 1873-1969. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894. Howe, Mark De Wolfe, 1906-1967. Norton, Charles Eliot, 1827-1908. Perry, Bliss, 1860-1954. Previous Next Record Options Select Download Format Full Record Format for Print/Save Enter your email address: Email http://balthazaar.masshist.org/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=26&ti=21,26&Search%5FArg=Bo... 3/1/2020 FirstSearch: WorldCat Detailed Record Page 1 of 2 OC LC FirstSearch SOUTHERN NEW HAMPSHIRE UNIV WorldCat Detailed Record Click on a checkbox to mark a record to be e-mailed or printed in Marked Records. Resource Staff View My Account Options Home Databases Searching Results Sharing Comments Exit Hide tips List of Records Detailed Record Marked Records Go to page WorldCat results for: ti: samuel and ti: gray WorldCat Subjects Libraries ILL E-mail Print Export Help and ti: ward. Record 2 of 4. 2 Mark: Prev Next The early years of the Saturday club, 1855-1870, Edward Waldo Emerson 1918 English Book xii, [2], 515, [1] p. front., pl., ports. 25 cm. Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., GET THIS ITEM Availability: Check the catalogs in your library. Libraries worldwide that own item: 339 m Connect to Southern New Hampshire University Library Borrow this item from another library (Interlibrary Loan) FIND RELATED More Like This: Search for versions with same title and author I Advanced options Find Items About: Emerson, Edward Waldo, (max: 12) Title: The early years of the Saturday club, 1855-1870, Author(s): Emerson, Edward Waldo, 1844-1930. Publication: Boston, New York, Houghton Mifflin Co., Year: 1918 Description: xii, [2], 515, [1] p. front., pl., ports. 25 cm. Language: English Contents: 1. The attraction -- 2. 1855-1856: The Saturday Club is born: also The magazine or Atlantic Club -- 3. 1856: Louis Agassiz -- Richard Henry Dana, Jr. -- John Sullivan Dwight -- Ralph Waldo Emerson -- Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar -- James Russell Lowell -- John Lothrop Motley -- Benjamin Peirce -- Samuel Gray Ward -- Edwin Percy Whipple -- Horatio Woodman -- 4. 1857: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Cornelius Conway Felton -- 5. 1858: William Hickling Prescott -- John Greenleaf Whittier -- 6. 1859: Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Thomas Gold Appleton -- John Murray Forbes -- 7. 1860: Charles Eliot Norton -- 8. 1861: James Elliot Cabot -- Samuel Gridley Howe -- Frederick Henry Hedge -- Estes Howe -- 9. 1862: Charles Sumner -- 10. 1863: Henry James -- 11. 1864: John Albion Andrew -- Martin Brimmer -- James Thomas Fields -- Samuel Worcester Rowse -- 12. 1865 -- 13. 1866: Jeffries Wyman -- 14. 1867: Ephraim Whitman Gurney -- 15. 1868 -- 16. 1869: William Morris Hunt -- 17. 1870: Charles Francis Adams. Standard No: LCCN: 19-1503 http://firstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=sp02sw13-40420-edx 9/22/2005 FirstSearch: WorldCat Detailed Record Page 2 of 2 SUBJECT(S) Descriptor: American literature -- Massachusetts -- Boston -- History and criticism. Authors, American -- Homes and haunts -- Massachusetts -- Boston. Authors, American --- 19th century --- Biography. Named Corp: Saturday Club (Boston, Mass.) Geographic: Boston (Mass.) --- Intellectual life -- 19th century. Class Descriptors: LC: F73.1; Dewey: 810.9 Responsibility: by Edward Waldo Emerson Document Type: Book Entry: 19721109 Update: 20041108 Accession No: OCLC: 491202 Database: WorldCat 00 IIIII WorldCat results for: ti: samuel and ti: gray WorldCat Subjects Libraries ILL E-mail Print Export Help and ti: ward. Record 2 of 4. English Español Français Options Comments Exit OC © 1992-2005 OCLC LC Terms & Conditions http://firstsearch.oclc.org/WebZ/FSFETCH?fetchtype=fullrecord:sessionid=sp02sw13-40420-edx... 9/22/2005 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Saturday Club MHS Records 1864-1995; bulk: 1885-1965 Guide to the Collection COLLECTION SUMMARY CREATOR: Saturday Club (Boston, Mass.) TITLE: Saturday Club records DATES: 1864-1995 BULK DATES: 1885-1965 PHYSICAL 13 boxes, 1 cased volume, and 1 oversize box DESCRIPTION: CALL NUMBER: Ms. N-879 REPOSITORY: Massachusetts Historical Society , 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215 library@masshist.org (mailto:library@masshist.org) ABSTRACT This collection contains the records of the Saturday Club, a Boston social and literary organization, including correspondence, membership records, financial records, drafts and research for the club's published books of biographical sketches, and printed material. HISTORICAL SKETCH The Saturday Club was informally founded in Boston in 1855 on the initiative of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Samuel Gray Ward, and Horatio Woodman. Other notable founders and early members included Louis Agassiz, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The club met for dinner and conversation at 3:00 pm on the last Saturday of every month at the Parker House. The club gradually became more formalized until it incorporated in 1886, for the purpose of "having conversation and discussion upon historical, literary, scientific, and artistic subjects." The monthly meal was changed to a 1:30 pm Pork lunch in 1898, and the club changed its primary meeting location to the Union Club in 1902. Besides conversation and club business such as the nomination of members, meetings could include occasional guests, lectures, readings, and polls on current events. The other major activity of the Saturday Club was the publication on a regular basis of books containing biographical sketches of deceased members, detailing their lives and their involvement in the Saturday Club. The first published book, Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870, was written by Edward Waldo Emerson. In succession are: Later Years of the Saturday Club, 1870-1920, edited by M.A. de Wolfe Howe; Saturday Club: A Century Completed, edited by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr.; The Saturday Club, 1957-1986, edited by Thomas B. Adams and Paul Brooks; and Saturday Club: the 150- Year Milestone, 1986-2006, edited by James Engell and Michael Sinagel. The Saturday Club continues to this day. 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 attendance cards, and lists of members. Financial records include account books, financial reports and statements, banking records, securities records, bills and receipts, and royalty statements from Houghton Mifflin for the club's books. Publication drafts and research include biographical material about members that was gathered for publication of the club's books. Biographical research material ranges from newspaper clippings and excerpts from correspondence to notes, memos, and drafts related to the books' production and their introductory chapters. Printed material includes annual members' pamphlets, members' memoirs, book reviews, membership charts, Bliss Perry's Recollections of the Saturday Club (1942), and miscellaneous printed materials. ACQUISITION INFORMATION 1864-1927 records deposited by Mark A. DeWolfe Howe, 1929 1927-1965 records deposited by Thomas Boylston Adams and Elliot Forbes, various dates. 1965-1995 records deposited by the Saturday Club, July 2009. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION I. Administrative records, 1864-1965 This series includes correspondence; meeting minutes, attendance, and other membership records; legal records; and financial records. The correspondence concerns administration and activities of the club, such as meetings, new members, elections, finances, and book production. Prominent correspondents include Charles E. Norton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Edward Waldo Forbes, Edward Waldo Emerson, Mark Anthony DeWolfe Howe, Charles W. Eliot, Bliss Perry, and John H. Finley, Jr. Membership records include bound record books, attendance cards, and lists of members. Meeting minutes include committee reports, and describe such activities as nomination of members, votes, and discussions. Legal records are primarily records of the club's incorporation. Financial records include an account book, treasurer's annual reports and statements on expenditures and income, banking records, bills and receipts, and royalty statements from Houghton Mifflin and Company. A. Correspondence, 1885-1963 Arranged chronologically. This subseries contains correspondence related to the administration and activities of the Saturday Club. Correspondence throughout the subseries concerns attendance at meetings, nominating new members, acceptance of membership, and election of officers. From 1870 to 1890, Charles E. Norton, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Richard Henry Dana, Jr. were central correspondents in their roles as club administrators. Other early correspondents include Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Dean Howells, John A. Andrew, Phillips Brooks, George F. Hoar, and Charles Francis Adams. Topics of correspondence include club issues such as ensuring attendance and discussion, as well as current events. Edward Waldo Forbes became secretary in 1910, and was a major correspondent from that point until his resignation in 1961. Much correspondence concerns his project to collect autographs of club members who had not signed the second Saturday Club record book, as well as portraits of all club members. Other frequent topics from 1910 to 1961 include member resignations, bylaws, club maior tonic the club's finances such as 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Club: A Century Completed dates from 1948 and 1950, while that related to its production dates from 1955 to 1958, primarily with editors Edward Waldo Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr. 1885-September 1926 Box 1 October 1926-1934 Box 2 1935-1947 Box 3 1948-1963 Box 4 B. Meeting minutes, attendance, and membership records, 1864-1963 Arranged chronologically and by record type. This subseries contains Saturday Club record books, minutes and attendance records, and lists of members. The Saturday Club record books consist of two bound volumes with typescript copies. The first record book contains attendance records by meeting, notes on the adoption of club rules, and lists of people nominated and chosen for membership. The second record book includes the 1886 records of incorporation, charter, bylaws, club election reports, and summaries of meetings from 1886 to 1925. Also present are attendance cards mailed to the Union Club by members to indicate that they would be present at the next luncheon. Membership records include lists of members and material from Edward Waldo Forbes's project to collect portraits of all club members, as well as autographs of club members who had not signed the second Saturday Club record book. i. Saturday Club record books, 1875-1925 Volume 1, 1875-1887 Box 5 Folder 1 Volume 1 typescript, 1875-1887 Box 5 Folders 2-3 Volume 2, 1886-1925 Cased Vol. Volume 2 typescript, 1886-1913 Box 5 Folders 4-9 ii. Loose records, 1910-1959 1910-1950 Box 5 Folders 10-36 1951-1959 Box 6 Folders 1-10 iii. Members' signatures and portraits records, 1910-1959 Box 5 Folders 10a-10b iv. Attendance cards, 1918-1947 Box 6 Folders 11-24 V. Membership lists, 1864-1963 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Box 6 Folder 26 D. Financial records, 1889-1965 Arranged chronologically and by record type. This subseries contains an account book, financial reports and statements, banking records, securities records, bills and receipts, and royalty statements. The account book was kept from 1889- 1912 by Oliver Wendell Holmes and club treasurers W.W. Goodwin and Edward W. Forbes. The financial reports and statements include treasurer's annual reports and statements by W.W. Goodwin, Edward W. Forbes, and William H. Claflin. Securities records contain Edward W. Forbes' records of shares and bonds, including stock receipts and letters to stockholders. Starting in 1930, J.M. Forbes and Co. handled the club's securities, and the securities records consist only of statements from them. The securities records also include a bound volume kept by Edward W. Forbes that shows security accounting by company. Bills and receipts are for routine club activities such as lunches. i. Account book, 1889-1912 Box 6 Folder 27 ii. Financial reports and statements, 1909-1965 1909-1931 Box 6 Folder 28-32 1932-1965 Box 7 Folders 1-6 iii. Banking records, 1901-1930 Box 7 Folders 7-19 iv. Securities records, 1918-1961 1918-1935 Box 7 Folders 20-28 1936-1961 Box 8 Folders 1-24 V. Bills and receipts, 1921-1946 Box 8 Folders 25-28 vi. Royalty statements, 1922-1959 Box 8 Folders 29-31 II. Publication drafts and research, 1906-1963 This series consists of notes, memos, drafts, and research for the biographical sketches in the club's books Early Years of the Saturday Club, Later Years of the Saturday Club, The Saturday Club: A Century Completed, The Saturday Club: 1957-1986, and The Saturday Club: The 150-Year Milestone. The drafts 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Box 9 Folder 1 ii. Chapter drafts, 1906-1918 Arranged chronologically. Box 9 Folders 2-8 iii. Biographical drafts and research, 1906-1918 Arranged alphabetically. Adams, Charles Francis Box 9 Folder 9 Appleton, Nathaniel Box 9 Folder 10 Andrew, John A. Box 9 Folder 11 Brimmer, Martin Box 9 Folders 12-16 Brownell, Henry H. Box 9 Folder 17 Cabot, James Elliot Box 9 Folder 18 Dana, Richard Henry, Jr. Box 9 Folders 19-20 Dwight, John S. Box 9 Folder 21 Emerson, Ralph Waldo Box 9 Folders 22-23 Felton, Cornelius Box 9 Folder 24 Fields, James T. Box 9 Folder 25 Forbes, John Murray Box 9 Folders 26-27 Gurney, Ephraim W. Box 9 Folder 28 Hedge, Frederick H. Box 9 Folder 29 Hoar, Ebenezer Rockwood Box 9 Folders 30-31 Holmes, John Box 9 Folder 32 Holmes, Oliver Wendell Box 9 Folders 33-35 Howe, Samuel Gridley Box 9 Folders 36-37 Hunt, William Morris Box 9 Folder 38 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Sumner, Charles Box 10 Folder 11 Ward, Samuel Gray Box 10 Folder 12 Whipple, Edwin P. Box 10 Folder 13 Whittier, John Greenleaf Box 10 Folder 14 Wyman, Jeffries Box 10 Folder 15 B. Later Years of the Saturday Club, 1921-1927 This subseries consists of notes and memos from production of Later Years of the Saturday Club, and drafts and research for book chapters, including biographical sketches of club members. Notable biographical subjects in this subseries include Charles Francis Adams, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Richard Henry Dana, Sr., Charles W. Eliot, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Jr., William James, and Francis Cabot Lowell. i. Notes and memos, ca. 1921-1927 Box 10 Folders 16-18 ii. Chapter drafts, ca. 1921-1927 Arranged chronologically. Published chapter drafts Box 10 Folders 19-21 Unpublished chapter drafts Box 10 Folders 22-30 Unpublished chapter drafts Box 11 Folders 1-9 iii. Biographical drafts and research, ca. 1921-1927 Arranged alphabetically. Adams, Charles Francis II Box 11 Folders 10-11 Agassiz, Alexander Box 11 Folder 12 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey Box 11 Folder 13 Amory, William Box 11 Folder 14 Bowditch, Henry P. Box 11 Folder 15 Brooks, Phillips Box 11 Folders 16-17 Clarke, James Freeman Box 11 Folder 18 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Fiske, John Box 11 Folder 26 Gibbs, Oliver Wolcott Box 11 Folder 27 Godkin, Edwin L. Box 11 Folder 28-29 Goodwin, William W. Box 11 Folder 30 Gray, Asa Box 11 Folder 31 Gray, Horace Box 11 Folder 32 Gray, John Chipman Box 11 Folder 33 Higginson, Henry Lee Box 11 Folder 34 Hoar, George Frisbee Box 11 Folder 35 Hoar, Samuel Box 11 Folder 36 Hooper, Edward W. Box 11 Folder 37 Howells, William Dean Box 11 Folder 38 James, Henry Jr. Box 12 Folders 1-2 James, William Box 12 Folders 3-4 Lowell, Francis Cabot Box 12 Folder 5 Lowell, John Box 12 Folder 6 Lyman, Theodore Box 12 Folders 7-8 McCall, Samuel W. Box 12 Folder 9 Maclaurin, Richard C. Box 12 Folder 10 Olmstead, Frederick Law Box 12 Folder 11 Parkman, Francis Box 12 Folder 12 Peabody, Robert S. Box 12 Folder 13 Perkins, Charles C. Box 12 Folder 14 Perkins, Edward N. Box 12 Folder 15 Pickering, Edward C. Box 12 Folder 16 Rov 12 Foldor 17 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Box 12 Folder 24-25 C. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed, 1941-1958 This subseries consists of notes and memos from production of The Saturday Club: A Century Completed, and drafts and research for biographical sketches of club members. Notes and memos include assignments of authors to biographical sketches, a book review of the completed book, suggested chapter mottoes, and Bliss Perry's 1942 notecards on the progress of research for the book. Notable biographical subjects in this subseries include William C. Endicott, Edward Waldo Emerson, and Alfred North Whitehead. i. Notes and memos, ca. 1941-1958 Box 12 Folders 26-28 ii. Biographical drafts and research, ca. 1941-1958 Arranged alphabetically. Cushing, Harvey Box 12 Folder 29 Edgell, George Harold Box 12 Folder 30 Emerson, Edward Waldo Box 12 Folder 31 Endicott, William C. Box 12 Folder 32 Haskins, Charles Homer Box 12 Folder 33 Grant, Robert Box 12 Folder 34 Loring, William Caleb Box 12 Folder 35 Lowes, John L. Box 12 Folder 36 Lyman, Theodore Box 12 Folder 37 Maginnis, Charles Donagh Box 12 Folder 38 Moreland, Edward L. Box 12 Folder 39 Walcott, Henry Pickering Box 12 Folder 40 Warren, Bentley Wirt Box 12 Folder 41 Whitehead, Alfred North Box 12 Folder 42 D. The Saturday Club: 1957-1986, 1960-1963 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Pickman, Edward Motley Box 13 Folder 4 Miscellaneous members Box 13 Folder 5 E. The Saturday Club: 150-Year Milestone research, 1957-1963 This subseries contains newspaper clippings on James R. Killian and biographical research and drafts on various other members. Box 13 Folders 6-7 F. Publication memoranda, 1906-1963 This subseries includes notes from the publication of the club's books, lists of possible biographical sources, suggested mottoes, and research material on unidentified biographical subjects. Box 13 Folder 8 III. Printed material, 1896-1995 A. Annual members' pamphlets, 1896-1955 Arranged chronologically. Member pamphlets produced for annual meetings contain lists of club officers and present members with their addresses, recent club votes, the charter and bylaws, and lists of past members with their dates of death. Sometimes the lists have been used to keep track of tasks, such as finding portraits of all members. Box 13 Folders 9-13 B Members' memoirs, 1905-1928 Arranged chronologically. This subseries contains printed memoirs of club members. Some of the memoirs are also authored by club members, such as Edward Waldo Emerson and Moorfield Storey. Some were printed for private circulation, and others were published in periodicals or by historical or professional societies. Woodward Hudson, Memoir of Samuel Hoar, Box 13 Folder 14 1905 Edward Waldo Emerson, Memoir of Ebenezer Box 13 Folder 15 Rockwood Hoar, 1907 Moorfield Storey, Charles Francis Adams, Box 13 Folder 16 1915 11/29/2016 Saturday Club Records, 1864-1995 Arranged chronologically. This subseries consists of book reviews of The Early Years of the Saturday Club and The Saturday Club: A Century Completed, from publications such as Harper's Monthly, The New York Times, The Boston Sunday Globe, and Newsweek. Also included is an advertising mock-up of The Later Years of the Saturday Club. Box 13 Folder 20 D. Bliss Perry, Recollections of the Saturday Club, 1942 cheese This subseries contains two printed copies of Bliss Perry's Recollections of the Saturday Club, written in 1942. Perry describes his memories of his interactions with the club and its members, atmosphere, discussions, and lunches over time. Box 13 Folder 21 E. Membership charts, 1949-1995 1949-1965 Oversize Box 1995 Mss. Large F. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed illustration mock-ups, ca. 1957 The subseries consists of illustration mockups for The Saturday Club: A Century Completed. The illustrations contain measurements, captions, and descriptions of where they will be placed in the book. Box 13 Folder 22 G. Miscellaneous printed material, 1920-1960 Arranged chronologically. Included are invitations; a program for Moorfield Storey's funeral service; addresses, including one by Moorfield Storey; a memoir of club member George Santayana by Joel Porte; articles, including one inscribed to Edward W. Forbes, obituaries; genealogical material; and material related to the Union Club of Boston, #8 Park St. Box 13 Folders 23-25 PHOTOGRAPHS REMOVED FROM THE COLLECTION The following photographs were removed from the collection to the MHS Photo. Archives: New England Magazine N.S. 19, (1898):24-34 THE FOGS. By Frank Walcott Hutt. T HERE were no mists in all the morning sky, And here lay open lea and heather-wold, And yonder, cliffs and uplands, steely-cold, And in the offing, fair ships coursing by. But late I heard the sea-mew prophesy Along the downs, with clamor harsh and bold; And at high noon a little cloud uprolled, And shut the world out from the day's great eye. And now a deep bell booms far out at sea; And all the windward islands and the plains Dip in the sudden miracle of white; And sighingly the waves' lone minstrelsy Falls on the ear like the far plash of rains, While the Fog lover comes to WOO the Night. THE SATURDAY CLUB. By George Willis Cooke. (1848-1923) HE Saturday Club, the results of the manner in which its which has occupied meetings were conducted. In his SO unique a place in diary, under date of October 14. 1854. the literary life of Alcott made this record: "Dine at Boston, originated the Albion with Emerson, Lowell, in Emerson's custom Whipple, Dwight, Hayne (of South of visiting Boston Carolina), and Woodman; and we ar- on the last Saturday of each month to range to meet there fortnightly here- take a look at the new books in the after for conversation." Mr. Frank "Old Corner Bookstore." He was B. Sanborn records in his life of Al- also in the habit of dining on these cott that in December, 1854, he occasions with a few intimate friends was at the Albion with Emerson, at the \lbion restaurant or the Parker Dwight, Alcott and an Englishman House.) This practice began with him by the name of Cholmondeley, when so early as the time of the Town and various literary topics were discussed. Country Club, founded by Alcott A few months later, during the last about 1849, and was perhaps one of week in May, 1855, a dinner was THE SATURDAY CLUB. 25 given to Lowell, at the Revere House, day Club owed its existence to acci- by his friends. At the head of the ta- dental causes or to the demands of in- ble on this occasion sat Longfellow, tellectual fellowship, In 1854 it had and at the foot Felton. On Longfel- taken a definite form, SO far at least as low's right were Lowell, Agassiz, it had become an established custom George T. Davis, F. H. Underwood, for a few literary friends to meet once Holmes, T. K. Parsons, Estes Howe, a fortnight or once a month for a din- Charles W. Storey, H. Woodman, and ner and literary conversation.> Long- B. Rölker. On his left were Emer- fellow recorded in his journal that he son, Edmund Quincy, Charles E. dined with the club February 28, 1857, Norton, J. S. Dwight, Thomas G. Ap- at the invitation of Agassiz, and was pleton, William W. White, John asked to join it, which he thought he Holmes, Robert Carter, Henry Ware would do. At the meeting of the club and Professor Benjamin Pierce. It in April, the fiftieth birthday of Agas- is evident that the personal and intel- siz was recognized. Longfellow pre- lectual associations begun in the sided and read the poem beginning: Transcendentalist and Town and It was fifty years ago, Country clubs continued even after In the pleasant month of May. those clubs had ceased their exist- ence; and that from time to time there Clever and humorous poems were came together the men who composed also read by Lowell and Holmes. In them, with others of the same intel- September Longfellow says that lectual and literary interests.) Charles Mackay dined with the club, In his biography of Richard Henry that the session was a quiet one, and Dana, Charles Francis Adams says that the heat of the room took away that when Emerson visited the book- all life and animation. He mentions store of Phillips and Sampson, on the that in May of the next year he again last Saturday of each month, he met dined with the club, and that he felt there Horatio Woodman; and by de- vexed on finding plover on the table, grees they got into the custom of go- and proclaimed aloud his disgust at ing to the old Albion restaurant or to seeing the game-laws thus violated. the Parker House to dine. At this He added that if any one wanted to time Dwight was accustomed to dine break a law, let him break the Fugi- at the Parker House, and he probably tive Slave law, as that is all it is fit for. joined Emerson whenever he was The fullest and most explicit ac- there. Then Woodman invited oth- count of the origin of the Saturday S.G.W. ers, including Samuel G. Ward, a Club was that set down in his journal banker and one of Emerson's friends. by Richard Henry Dana, the younger, The next person added to the group under date of August 6, 1857. "It seems to have been Edwin P. Whip- has become an important and much ple, the essayist and lecturer, then a valued thing to us," he wrote. "The rising literary man in Boston. Wood- members are Emerson, Longfellow, man was a lawyer, a man of attractive Agassiz, Lowell, Pierce, Motley, social qualities, and one who had a gift Whipple, Judge Hoar, Felton, for managing such dinners as these Holmes, S. Dwight, H. S.G.W. Mr. Sanborn says, "he had no partic- Woodman and myself. We have no ular sympathy with the Transcenden- written rules, and keep no records. talists, except as they became famous, Our only object is to dine together but a certain love for literature and once a month. Our day is the last literary men; he was also an epicure, Saturday in every month, and we dine knowing how to provide good din- at Parker's. A unanimous vote is re- ners and at which Boston tavern his quired to elect a member. The ex- friends ought to dine." pense of the dinner is assessed upon It will thus be seen that the Satur- those present and charged at the of- 26 THE SATURDAY CLUB. fice, SO we have no money affairs to had no connection with each other attend to. Guests are permitted, but except as the same persons belonged each man pays for the guest he in- to both In his biography of Emer- vites. The club had an accidental son, Doctor Holmes says that the At- origin, in a habit of Emerson, Dwight, lantic Club never had an existence, Whipple and one or two more dining and that there had erroneously been at Woodman's room at Parker's OC- supposed to be some connection be- casionally; for Woodman is a bach- tween the Saturday Club and the elor, a literary quidnunc and gossip, Atlantic Monthly. On the other hand, or as Gould says, 'a genius broker.' Francis H. Underwood, who took an Ward is a friend of Emerson's, and active part in bringing the magazine came. From this the club grew, into existence, and who was the assist- S6W Ward, Dwight, Woodman, Whipple ant or office editor for some years and Emerson being the originals. from its very beginning, said in a let- Agassiz, Pierce and I were early in- ter to Doctor Holmes: "You remem- vited to meet with them. This made ber that the contributors met for din- it more of a regular thing, and we es- ner regularly. It was a voluntary, in- tablished our verbal rule as to mem- formal association. The invitations bership, guests and expenses. Lowell and reminders were from my hand, as came in soon after, and then Motley I conducted the correspondence of the and Longfellow. The first formal magazine. I have hundreds of letters vote we had for members was at this in reply, and it is my belief that the stage, for up to this time unanimous association was always spoken of consent was obtained by conversation. either as the Atlantic Club or the At- The vote brought in Holmes and Fel- lantic dinner. Your very decided state- ton, which made the number fourteen, ment seems to me (in the ordinary use as many as we think it best to have." of phrases) erroneous." In his biog- The Saturday Club was sometimes raphy of Doctor Holmes, Mr. John T. known as the Atlantic Club; but the Morse confounds the Atlantic dinners two were quite distinct from each and breakfasts with the meetings of other, though in his biography of Em- the Saturday Club, though Dr. erson Doctor Holmes seems to con- Holmes himself did not fall into such fuse them together. Longfellow says an error. He did somewhere speak that on May 5, 1857, he dined at the of the Atlantic Club as "suppositi- Parker House with Phillips, the pub- tious"; and it is this statement against lisher, to talk about the new magazine which Mr. Underwood protested. The the latter was proposing to publish. fact seems to be that the Atlantic Club The other persons present were Em- consisted only of the gatherings of the erson, Lowell, Motley, Holmes, Cabot contributors to the Atlantic Monthly, and Underwood. In 1860 James T. on invitation of the publishers, who on Fields, of Ticknor and Fields, then such occasions gave them a breakfast the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, or a dinner. breakfasted Longfellow, Bryant, A letter written by Moses Dresser Holmes and others. Such gatherings Phillips, the head of the firm of Phil- as these, called together by the pub- lips and Sampson, and given in Doc- lishers of the magazine to bring about tor Hale's "James Russell Lowell and acquaintance and good fellowship His Friends." describes the first din- amongst its leading contributors, and ner given by the publisher to his con- that suggestions might be secured as tributors, in the early summer of 1857. to its management, formed what has Doctor Hale says that this was "the properly been called the Atlantic first of a series which the Saturday Club. It included many of the mem- Club of Boston has held from that day bers of the Saturday Club: but they to this day;" but in this statement he were not only not the same, but they is mistaken, as already clearly indi- THE SATURDAY CLUB. 27 cated. Mr. Phillips wrote to a rela- ity to believe that you will think them tive in these words: "I must tell you the most natural thoughts in the world about a little dinner party I gave to me. Though I say it that should about two weeks ago. It would be not, it was the proudest day of my proper, perhaps, to state that the or- life. igin of it was a desire to confer with It was natural that the Saturday my literary friends on a somewhat ex- Club should have been given the tensive literary project, the particu- name of the Atlantic on the part of lars of which I shall reserve till you outsiders, who recognized the fact come. But to the party: My invita- that many of the members contributed tions included only R. W. Emerson, to the magazine. The Saturday Club H. W. Longfellow, J. R. Lowell, Mr. was also sometimes spoken of as the Motley (the 'Dutch Republic' man), Literary Club; and it was popularly O. W. Holmes, Mr. Cabot, and Mr. designated as Emerson's or Agassiz's Underwood, our literary man. Im- club. It was also now and again agine your uncle at the head of such a laughed at as "The Mutual Admira- table, with such guests. The above tion Society," probably by those who named were the only ones invited, and would have been rejoiced to have se- they were all present. We sat down cured entrance to it Of this designa- at 3 P. M., and rose at 8. The time tion of the club Dr. Holmes wisely occupied was longer by about four said: "If there was not a certain hours and thirty minutes than I am in amount of mutual admiration among the habit of consuming in that kind of some of those I have mentioned [as occupation, but it was the richest time members, it was a great pity, and im- intellectually by all odds that I have plied a defect in the nature of men ever had. Leaving myself and 'lit- who were otherwise largely en- erary man' out of the group, I think dowed." In 1859 Richard Henry you will agree with me that it would Dana dedicated his "Cuba and Back" be difficult to duplicate that number to "the gentlemen of the Saturday of such conceded scholarship in the Club" and this fact sufficiently fixes whole country beside. Mr. Emerson the name made use of by the members took the first post of honor at my from the beginning. About the year right, and Mr. Longfellow the second 1888, a bequest of money being made at my left. The exact arrangement of to the club, it was incorporated as the table was as follows: "The Saturday Club." Mr. Underwood. In his account of the club Dana Cabot. Lowell. says that it was thought best not to Motley. Holmes. have more than fourteen members. Longfellow. Emerson. His biographer tells us that this limit Phillips. was imposed by Dana himself, and in a somewhat arbitrary manner. "In They seemed SO well pleased that other words, Dana, in this as in other they adjourned, and invited me to meet cases, held himself high and believed them again to-morrow, when I shall in exclusiveness; accordingly, though again meet the same persons, with one never allowing his position to be mis- other (Whipple, the essayist) added understood, he had been liberal with to that brilliant constellation of Philo- his blackballs. The result was that, in sophical, Poetical and Historical tal- order to elect any one, it became nec- ent. Each one is known alike on essary for the other members to watch both sides of the Atlantic, and is read for some occasion when Dana was beyond the limits of the English lan- away, and then rush in their candidate guage. Though all this is known to before he got back." The club slowly you, you will pardon me for intruding grew in its membership, however, it upon you. But still I have the van- Prescott being added in 1858; Haw- 28 THE SATURDAY CLUB. Adirondack Club thorne, Thomas G. Appleton and Another incident was the formation John M. Forbes in 1859; Charles of the Adirondack club, which in Au- Eliot Norton in 1860, - the earliest gust, 1858, made an excursion into member admitted of those now living; the wilderness of the Adirondack J. Eliot Cabot, S. G. Howe, F. H. Mountains. The party consisted of Hedge and Estes Howe in 1861; Emerson, Lowell, Agassiz, Hoar, Charles Sumner in 1862; Henry John Holmes, Wyman, W. J. Still- James in 1863; Martin Brimmer, man, Estes Howe and Woodman. James T. Fields, S. W. Rowse in Lowell was the leader and planned the 1864; John A. Andrew and Jeffreys excursion; though Woodman seems Wyman in 1866; E. W. Gurney in to have been the practical guide and 1867; John G. Whittier in 1868; Wil- factotum. A rough hut was built on liam M. Hunt in 1869; Charles Fran- the shore of Follansbee Pond; flannel cis Adams and Charles W. Eliot in shirts were worn, fir boughs and 1870; Charles C. Perkins in 187.1; blankets furnished the beds, and the Francis Parkman, Alexander Agassiz, fare was the fish and game of the wil- R. H. Dana, Sen., Wolcott Gibbs, derness. After breakfast each morn- Horace Gray, Edward N. Perkins in ing a mark was shot at, which Agas- 1873; Asa Gray and William D. How- siz once hit, having never before fired ells in 1874; Edmund Quincy in 1875; a gun, and steadily refusing to do SO and James Freeman Clarke in 1877. again. Emerson bought a riflc, which An interesting incident in the early he seems not to have used. A guide history of the club was that Emerson, one night paddled him into the lake, Hawthorne and E. Rockwood Hoar, and a deer was pointed out to him, living at Concord, to which the Fitch- but he did not shoot. This trip was burg road then had no train running described by Emerson in his poem after the club broke up, were obliged called "The Adirondacks," published to leave in the midst of the session or in his "Mayday and Other Pieces," remain in town over the night and 1867. He fitly described the wild life Sunday. Under these conditions of the woods, saying that: Judge Hoar provided a remedy by No placard on these rocks warned to the having his carry-all meet them at polls, Waltham and convey them to their No door-bell heralded a visitor, homes. It may be supposed that this No courier waits, no letter came or went, last part of the journey may have had Nothing was ploughed or reaped or bought or sold. in store the best wine of the feast; for Lowell describes Agassiz at the club He describes how Agassiz and Wy- meetings as listening intently to Hoar, man dissected the deer, trout and other creatures slain in wood and Pricked with the cider of the Judge's wit water; and he thus speaks of the man- (Ripe-hearted homebrew, fresh and fresh ner in which the other members of again). the party spent their time: The reason for this night ride will be seen from a note made by Emerson All day we swept the lake, searched every cove, in his journal. in 1862: "Cramped for Watching when the loud dogs should drive time at the club. by late dinner and in deer. early hour of the return train; a cramp Or whipping its rough surface for a trout; which spoils a club. For you shall Or bathers, diving from the rock at noon; Challenging Echo by our guns and cries; not, if you wish good fortune, even Or listening to the laughter of the loon; take the pains to secure your right- Or. in the evening twilight's latest red, and-left-hand men. The least design Beholding the procession of the pines; instantly makes an obligation to make Or, later yet, beneath a lighted jack, In the boat's bows. a silent night-hunter their time agreeable, - which I can Stealing with paddle to the feeding-grounds never assume." Of the red deer, to aim at a square mist. THE SATURDAY CLUB. 29 Longfellow refused pointedly to go own mind the great achievement of on this excursion, because he had his life was the founding of the Satur- heard that Emerson had bought a day Club, and his connection with gun, and he keenly felt the danger that club, which could only have come which might arise from such an in- about through his being its founder, strument in the hands of a philoso- was the thing of which he most prided pher, one more familiar with the in- himself." finite than with powder and game. After the disappearance of Wood- When asked why he would not join man, it seems to have in part fallen the party, he said that "somebody will upon Dwight to manage the affairs of be shot." the club. Writing to a friend, in Oc- During the earlier years of the Sat- tober, 1877, he said: "We had a de- urday Club, Horatio Woodman was lightful club dinner yesterday, Will- its purveyor, giving voluntary atten- iam Story sat at my side. J. F. Clarke tion to the menu and the other neces- too was there as a new member, and sities of its existence. He was a clever seemed radiantly happy. Also Bay- and a witty man, had a social quality ard Taylor, who is giving a course of that his intellectual gifts did not equal, Lowell lectures on German literature and by his genial comradeship won - how that would have interested the friendship of men who in every you! I had a long talk with him and way were greatly his superiors. In Doctor Hedge on the Nibelungen Lied, later years he appropriated the funds and in the evening I heard him lecture of his friends, resigned from the club, on that subject, which was very inter- and committed suicide, as Adams esting; his lectures are crowded." says, or disappeared from sight, about Some of Dwight's plans for seating 1870, as is stated by Mr. Sanborn. the members and guests, preserved by Doctor Holmes says that the club had him, indicate who were present or ex- no Boswell, and its golden hours pected on certain dates. Thus, in passed unrecorded. Mr. Adams ex- April, 1873, his sketch provides for presses the regret that Woodman did Holmes, Dana, Adams, Howe, not serve it in this capacity, for he had Dwight, Eliot, Hoar and Estes Howe. all the qualities that would have made In May of the same year twenty-one him successful in such a role, adding members were present and eight that "he had a craving for the ac- guests. On this occasion Longfellow quaintance and society of men of rep- sat at the head of the table and Agas- utation, and indeed lacked only the siz at the foot. On the right of the industry to have been a sort of Bos- chairman were Robert Dale Owen, well. In connection with the Satur- Parkman, Perkins, Dana, Appleton, day Club also an abundant field of in- Dwight, Judge Kent, Holmes, teresting gossip and reminiscence Adams, Senator Boutwell, Forbes, opened before him, had he known Wyman and Professor Gurney. On enough to labor in it. An amusing his left were Emerson, II. W. Bellows, story-teller, with a natural eye for Hedge, Henry James, Fields, Eliot, character and a well developed sense Hoar, Count Corti, C. C. Perkins, of humor, Woodman had at his Cabot, Rev. Charles H. Brigham, H. command an almost inexhaustible G. Denney, Whipple and Dr. E. H. fund of anecdotes relating to the men Clark. The journal of Richard Henry who in those days made the Parker Dana gives the reason for SO large an House and its somewhat famous res- attendance. "Our club dined to-day," taurant a sort of headquarters. he wrote, "the largest number we Though during the rebellion he was sufficiently active and prominent to is Dwight's connection with the club which has led me to make this study, as a part of my forthcoming bi- have been offered the position of As- ography of Dwight, whose life touched so many of the in- sistant Secretary of War, yet in his tellectual interests of Boston in his time, in so interesting a way. 30 THE SATURDAY CLUB. ever sat down, partly as the last of the the occasion go by without an expres- season to which many come, but sion of our feeling towards him. I chiefly to welcome Emerson, on his propose that, instead of nominating return from Europe and Egypt. It him for election as a regular member was really rather a brilliant gathering. of the club, which we would gladly Yet, as we sit at a long table, and the have done years ago, we unanimously room is on the street and, being warm, declare him an honorary member and the windows open, we have no general permanent guest of the club,' etc., etc. conversation. All the talking is in Agassiz put the question, and they all sets of two to four each. Towards the rose to their feet in response, and gave end of the dinner we change places a him a hearty cheer. It was very grat- little. Emerson looks years younger ifying, touching, and in the best pos- for his European tour, and is in good sible taste." spirits." During the first decade of its exist- Dana was wrong in saying that this ence, at least, before other clubs in was the last meeting of the season, for great numbers had been organized, at the June dinner Emerson sat at the the Saturday Club was of real service head of the table and Agassiz at the to its members. It gave them social foot. There were present Holmes, recreation, and it brought to them Brimmer, Pierce, Forbes, Cabot, mental stimulus. It brought together Dwight, Howe and Hoar, with Weiss many distinguished people, as Doctor and Barnard as guests. At the Jan- Holmes mentions, and it was a place uary meeting of 1877, Judge Hoar where the intellectual leaders of the was at the head of the table, and op- city could meet men from other cities posite him was Edmund Quincy. On and other countries in a friendly and the right of the chairman were happy way. "At one end of the table," Holmes, Harding, C. C. Perkins, says Doctor Holmes, "sat Longfel- Brimmer, Estes Howe and Dwight; low, florid, quiet, benignant, soft and on his left were Emerson, Park- voiced, a most agreeable rather than a man, Gibbs, Gray, Godkin, Norton brilliant talker, but a man upon whom and Edward N. Perkins. it was always pleasant to look, - A pleasant episode in the history of whose silence was better than any the club was the admittance of Rich- other man's conversation. At the ard Henry Dana, senior, the author of other end of the table sat Agassiz, ro- "The Buccaneer," "The Idle Man," bust, sanguine, animated, full of talk, and other works in prose and poetry, boy-like in his laughter." Mrs. Agas- as an honorary member of the club, siz says that her husband was espe- the only person accorded such distinc- cially attached to the club; and Doctor tion. Under the date of October 28, Holmes remarks that "the most jovial 1873, the younger Dana wrote in his man at table was Agassiz, his laugh journal: "Yesterday my father had a was that of a big giant." Around him great success and pleasure. I took were usually grouped the men of wit, him to the club to dine. We had Em- and those who most enjoyed laughter erson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Charles and fun. In this connection Jules Francis Adams, Sumner, Holmes, Marcou, the biographer, of Agassiz, Judge Hoar, President Eliot and oth- has said that the members "lingered ers, our usual set; and, after a while, long round the table, while hour after Emerson rose and asked a moment's hour passed in animated conversation, attention, and said: 'We are gratified in which bon mots and repartees were to-day by the presence of Mr. Dana. exchanged as rapidly as a discharge He has a higher as well as an older of fireworks - an encounter of anec- claim on the respect and honor of men dote, wit and erudition. At such of letters and lovers of literature than times Agassiz was at his best, with any of us here, and we must not let his incxhaustible bonhomie. With a THE SATURDAY CLUB. 3I lighted cigar in each hand, he would While Holmes's rockets curve their long force the attention of every one ellipse, And burst in seeds the fire that burst again around him. Excited by the pyro- To drop in scintillating rain. technic wit of James Russell Lowell, Judge Rockwell Hoar and Doctor Later on in the poem he describes Holmes, Agassiz, whose vivid imagi- the breaking up of the club meeting, nation was always on the qui vive, was and says: not a man to let others eclipse him. Then would come one of his made-up Now forth into the darkness all are gone, stories - a mixture of dream and sci- But memory, still unsated, follows on, Retracing step by step our homeward walk, ence. If he thought any one in the With many a laugh among our serious talk. company was doubting its truth, he would look at him with a dumb re- Then follows an account of his con- quest not to betray him. On the next versations with Agassiz as they find occasion he would repeat the same their way homeward, and of the re- story without any hesitation, and the luctant "Good-night" with which they third time he told it, he was sure that parted from each other when the end it really happened, and was true." of their walk had been reached. Lowell said nothing about the club Doctor Holmes said that he was not in his letters, SO far as they have been able to forget the very modest, deli- published; but he wrote to Motley, cate, musical way in which Longfel- when ambassador of the United States low read his charming verse addressed to Great Britain: "I have never seen to Agassiz on the occasion of his fifti- society, on the whole, SO good as I eth birthday; and Mrs. Agassiz says used to meet at our Saturday club." the poet had an exquisite touch for In his memorial poem to Agassiz, occasions of this kind, whether serious however, he described the club with a or mirthful. If the wit and laughter poet's appreciation and sympathy Of of the club flowed around Agassiz, Agassiz and his place at the table the quieter conversation secured its these are his words: opportunity near Longfellow, on whose left Emerson most often found Once more I see him at the table's head his place. Longfellow often spoke of When Saturday her monthly banquet the club in his diary, and with evident spread To scholars, poets, wits, enjoyment and appreciation of its All choice, some famous, loving things, not meetings. He seldom does more than names, mention his attendance, with perhaps And SO without a twinge at others' fames; some brief word as to who was pres- Such company as wisest moods befits, Yet with no pedant blindness to the worth ent and what was done of special im- Of undeliberate mirth, portance; but his frequent reference to Natures benignly mixed of air and earth, it indicates how much it was in his life Now with the stars and now with equal zest for some years. Tracing the eccentric orbit of a jest. Emerson was described by Doctor Again he says of Agassiz: Holmes as usually sitting near the Longfellow end of the table, "talking Ample and ruddy, the board's end he fills in low tones and carefully measured As he our fireside were, our light and heat, utterances to his neighbor or listening Centre where minds diverse and various and recording any stray word worth skills remembering on his mental photo- Find their warm nook and stretch unham- pered feet; graph." "I went to the club last Sat- I see the firm benignity of face, "urday," wrote Holmes to Motley, in Wide-smiling champaign, without tame- April, 1870, "and met some of the ness sweet, friends you always like to hear of. I The mass Teutonic toned to Gallic grace, The eyes whose sunshine runs before the sat by the side of Emerson, who al- lips ways charms me with his delicious 32 THE SATURDAY CLUB. voice, his fine sense and wit, and the biographer says that outside of his delicate way he steps about among own front door there was nothing that the words of his vocabulary, and at gave him SO much pleasure as did the last seizing his noun or adjective, - Saturday Club. "He loved it; he the best, the only one which would hugged the thought of it." He could serve the need of his thought." "I not keep its affairs out of his letters, well remember amongst other and he gossiped about its doings with things." says Doctor Holmes again, a flowing pen. Evidently it had a "how the club would settle itself to lis- large place in his heart, because of the ten when Dana had a story to tell. Not fellowship it gave him, and because of a word wasmissed, and those who were the noble men with whom it brought absent were told at the next club what him into frequent contact they had lost. Emerson smoked his In writing to Motley, in February, cigar and was supremely happy, and 1861, Holmes shows how important laughed under protest when the point the club had already become in his of the story was reached." Probably life, for he says: "The club has no one attended the club more regu- flourished greatly, and proved to all larly than Emerson, for he greatly en- of us a source of the greatest delight. joyed the meetings; and he was wont I do not believe there ever were such to praise the brilliant conversation he agreeable periodical meetings in Bos- heard there. His own attitude was ton as these we have had at Parker's." that of an eager listener, and he took Writing to the same friend, in 1865, less satisfaction in speaking himself he again expresses his interest in the than in hearing the clever men about club meetings. "What a fine thing it him. In 1864, when the club held a would be," he says, "to see you back Shakespearean anniversary meeting, at the Saturday club again! Longfel- he rose to speak, stood for a minute or low has begun to come again. He two, and then quietly sat down. Speech was at his old place, the end of the did not come, and he serenely permit- table, at our last meeting. We have ted silence to speak for him.> Emer- had a good many of the notabilities son continued his connection with the here within the last three or four club until about 1875, always taking a months; and I have been fortunate warm interest in the meetings, until enough to have some pleasant talks his failing speech and memory made with most of them." "We come to- them no longer attractive to him. gether on Saturdays and have good No one can doubt that Doctor talks and pleasant." he says in 1871, Holmes furnished his full share of the "rather than jolly times. Many of your wit and wisdom of the club. He has old friends are commonly there, written of it in his biographies of Mot- among the rest Summer not rarely. ley and Emerson, as well as on other There is a great deal of good feeling, occasions. In his letters it was a fre- I think, in our little circle of literary quent subject of mention, especially and scientific people. I find Longfel- to those correspondents, like Motley low peculiarly sweet in disposition, and Lowell, who were themselves gentle, soothing to be with, not com- members of the club. He first men- monly brilliant in conversation, but at tioned it in his biography of Motley, times very agrecable, and saying ex- and then said that "it offered a wide cellent things with a singular mod- gamut of intelligencies, and the meet- esty." Ten years later many changes ings were noteworthy occasions. The had taken place in the club; some of vitality of this club has depended in a the members had died, and others had great measure on its utter poverty in gone away to Europe or were too far statutes and by-laws, its entire ab- away from Boston to attend the meet- sence of formalism, and its blessed ings. "I go to the Saturday club quite freedom from speech-making." His regularly," wrote Doctor Holmes to THE SATURDAY CLUB. 33 Sat. Club/Parker House) May 31.1573 longfellow R.Dale Owen 0 o Emerson. 0 Fr. Parkman a 0 H.W. Bellows. Ed. r Perkinso R.H. a : 0 Ryer Dr. Hedge. o Hirry Junes. T.G. Applican o o J. T. Fields I S. Deight 0 Pres. Elist. dudge Kent Present: a 0 21 members Judge Hour. O. W. Holmes a Count Corti. Chro. Fr. Adarse 0 S guests guests C.C. Perkins. Sen. Bortwill a 0 I. Elist Cabet Julk Farbes a c Rew. Chao Brighan Jeffies Winners. o H. 9. Deving Peef. Gurrage o. E P. Whipple 0 Dr. E.H. Clark. 0 Agassing absent. Martin Brinner C.E. Morter Wm. M.Hurt ** * Estes Howe PaintB Pierce I.A. andrew G.S.S.Howe S.W.Rouse C.C.Felter J.R. Sowell Chus Sunser N.Hawthome J.L. Motley S.G.Ward, t H Wordman TABLE PLAN FOR THE SATURDAY CLUB DINNER, MAY 31, 1873, BY JOHN S. DWIGHT. 34 THE SATURDAY CLUB. Lowell, in 1883. "but the company is the dinners, and SO were Judge more of ghosts than of flesh and blood Hoar and Mr. J. M. Forbes. These for me. He lamented the fact that three, with a few intimate friends like Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, Low- Lowell and James Freeman Clarke, ell, Hawthorne, Motley and Summer who came less frequently, kept up a no longer attended, and added, "I feel steady fire of bright sayings and as if I belonged to the past." He pro- jokes, to which the younger genera- posed. however, with the aid of the tion was often glad to listen in silence. younger members, to keep the club Since the death of Doctor Holmes alive until Lowell could return to give and Judge Hoar, everything is some fresh life to it. He had already changed in this respect ; but the din- lamented that the club was not what ners of the club still remain as social it was when Lowell had attended its and informal as ever. though the old meetings. Finally, in 1890, he com- leaders are gone. plained that he hardly saw a face of For twenty years. beginning about the old times, except those of Dwight 1850, the Saturday was the leading and Hoar, "where we used to have club of Boston, and it contained most those brilliant gatherings." His biog- of the men of wit. brilliant parts and rapher savs that probably no other literary reputation who lived in or member of the club felt about it as near the city. It was a gathering of Doctor Holmes did, and adds that of genial friends, who sought good fel- all who sat at its table he was by far lowship and intellectual relaxation. the most brilliant talker. We may ac- The meetings were social and not lit- cept this opinion without admitting erary; no essays were read. and no lec- the truthfulness of Mr. Morse's state- tures were given.> At one meeting of ment that if Holmes had traveled the club, when a reporter forced his largely he would have held the club in way into the room before dinner and less esteem. Such a statement falsely asked Doctor Holmes what subjects assumes that more of cosmopolitan- were to be discussed, he received the ism would have made Doctor Holmes reply. "We do nothing but tell our old another man, and would have saved stories. We never discuss any- him from enjoying the men he met at thing." Except on rare occasions the Saturday Club the literary part of the meeting SGW. Mr. Samuel G. Ward, now a resi- consisted of conversation only. The dent of Washington, is the only orig- dinner was the central object, and inal member of the club now living. that was expected to bring out quite The other older members are Senator enough of social chat and conversa- Hoar. Professor Norton, President tional stir of thought to give the meet- Eliot, Judge Grav. E. L. Godkin, J. ings a real interest. There being no M. Forbes and Wolcott Gibbs. The rules to observe and no red tape to club still continues to meet at the Par- follow, the meetings were purely in- ker House, on the last Saturday of formal, and therefore cheerful and each month. except July, August and cordial. All the members knew each September. There are now thirty- other intimately, and consequently eight members. Chief Justice Field felt quite at home with each other and of the Supreme Court of Massachu- ready for the free expression of setts is the president, and Professor thought and sentiment. Already the W. W. Goodwin of Harvard Univer- club has assumed a considerable im- sity is the secretary. There is not in portance in the literary history of Bos- the club at present so large a propor- ton, and that importance is likely to tion of literary men as formerly. A increase as the history of the club is member has said of the club, in 1884, more fully known and as its members that Doctor Holmes was then presi- are looked at from a time more re- dent; and he was always present at mote. 7/10/2020 S.G.W. In 1856 when they strudge Clerk was formed, The Early year of the S.Clists clearer "undoubted Miginal members, include SGW. The we active when he was back in poston and suce mudered in business, years before relocation to nyc (see pg. 19). Fellow members: Louis agassis; Richard H. Dave Sh, John Sollera Durfet. RWE, Shaneze R.Hoor, J.R. Lovelle, John Lothrop Monley, Pelrce, SGI; Edwin Parey whipple Horetro Woodman. Queton To what extent does S6W appear in the extant Papers of each follow charter member ? also, given Alwair W.Halmes -Charles LE Norton Thomas gold appleton, & Carrelous cmuay Felton EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB By AMY LOWELL New York Times (1857-1922); Mar 1919; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851-2006) pg. 80 EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB Dr. Emerson's History of This Well-Known ler. A number of them went to study in given in alphabetical order, were: Louis Germany; students of medicine, and nnt- Agassiz, Richard Henry Dana. Jr., John Literary Organization Not Unlike an Old- ural science, and art went to Paris; eculp- Sedivan Dwight, Ralph Waldo Emerson, tors sailed direct to Rome: and others, Cornelius Conway Felton, Ebenezer Rock- Fashioned New England Album nebulous as to their design. traveled vague- wood Hoar, Oliver Wendell Holmes. Henry ly about Europe unbibing general cul- Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell ture." So was the Brahmin caste aug- Lowell, John Lothrop Motley, Benjamin By AMY LOWELL presents them. these gentlemen are SO mented by a new selection. These traveled Pierce, Samuel Gray Ward, Edwin l'ercy THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY good as to verge on the colorless. LuckNy Americans were at once brought together Whipple, and Horatio Woodman. Such CLUB, 1875-1870. By E-ward Waldo we know that such was not the case. and set apart. But to them America owes was the personnel of the club during the Emerson. With illustrations. Boston and New York: Houghton Millin Company. If one has the knowledge and energy to her greatest liberal advance. early years of 1855-6-7. They met at 3 1918. $7.50. readjust the point of view a little, this ac- Man has always been a clubable animal, o'clock on the last Saturday of every T of us who were not quite born count of sixteen of New England's most yet it Is somewhat startling to find this month, and freqently lingered until 9. Or yesterday remember when it was stirring years is absorbingly interesting natural instinct springing up in one of the those who could, lingered, for the Concord the fashion to have plush and We must remember that theBoston of those most austere of men. Emerson's anxiety members had a last train to catch, until leather bound albums containing days way a small town in a very young to meet and talk and listen adds a pleasant Judge Hoar concelved the brilliant idea of country. It lay a long sea voyage away touch to a portrait none to understandingly having his son drive his carryall to Wal- photographs of one's family and friends, and even of the places one had visited, from the movements of the great world. drawn. hitherto. For it was Emerson who tham, which boasted a later train. Then It was a peculiar community. this Brahmin conceived the idea of the Saturday home. ten miles to Concord, still talking to laid out conspleuously on the parlor table. Boston of the '50s. The tradition of edu- Club." and his much younger friend, Mr. the jog-jog of his big black horse in the 1 was reminded of this old custom the mo- ment I took a copy of The Early Years cation which caused the early settlers to Samuel Gray Ward, who aided and abetted lampless starlight of country lanes. of the Saturday Club into my hands. found Harvard College so early as 1636 him in his desire, and who, by stepping It is all very long ago. Another world in had persisted. These people had read and in and making his own name conspleuous customs, ideas and taste. More spring-like Size, weight, format, were almost exact; studied omniverously for two centuries. in the affair. solved the problem of a and hopeful than ours, when Longfellow only. instead of the plush or leather bind- They were steeped in the Bible, they were fortunate and stable club." Mr. Ward was could write: lovely morning tempted ing. this volume is clothed in decent bot- familiar with Shakespeare and Milton. with a man of the world who knew who would me into town. In the street, met Prescott, tic-green cloth. a pleasant reminder of the tightly buttoned frockcoats of the mld- Baron and Defor. and Addison and Alex- go well with who, it kind of knowledge rosy and young, with a gay blue satin century. It must be admitted, however, ander Pope. They were stern and right- which Mr. Emerson may very well have waisteoot, gray trousers, and shoes." This been without. Yet it was Horatio Wood- cous folk, and conduct was to them the was the historian of The Reign of Fer- that since we are obliged to read these man, 11 gentleman quite unknown to fame, portraits, and not merely look at them. the most important subject with which a man dinand and Isabella and "The Con- form or the book is a great disadvantage. could occupy his mind. But, with all this, who practically founded the club. Coming quest of Mexico." Both facts are typical from Maine. lie was somewhat outside the No one but is stevedore could hold it for there was a vein of poetry running through of the adolescent viges and glory of the circle. but he had the good taste to like their granite seriousness which. now that times. One waxes superlative like Dr. more than a minute: and, in these de- the Puritan grip was relaxing. was begin- remarkable then, and with a zeal worthy of Emerson as one thinks of it. generate days. reading desks seldom make IL Doswell, he was in the habit of asking a part of the furniture of a private library. ning to make itself felt. To change the There are many pictures with just such such to dine with him at various taverns. This is a club record, designed for its metaphor. the times were ripe for an abun- cross-lights in them in the book. Long- Dr. Could speaks of Woodman as " a dant blossoining Amusement," as Dr. fellow is translating Dante's "Divina members. and, as such. is fitting. The genius broker :: in the words of W: S. Emerson says, " was occasional and secon- Commedia," and Norton is working on the club members will cherish it; SO should Gilbert. I think he might bc described as dary: they still lived in the presence of the Vita Nuova." Every Wednesday eve- the public. but will the public read it? pushing young particle.' But he unseen; they worshipped and went apart ning these two and Lowell meet together Scarcely in its present clumsy proportions, must have done his pushing with a certain for solitary thought. and criticise what has been done and then I imagine. As one of them. I cannot suf- Duty walked tact. for the remarkable men went to his ficiently deprecate this most unfortunate beside them from childhood." But set we have a little supper. to which one or dinners: and what was a dream to Emer- barrier of weight and size. which must off against this. and more important than two other friends come in, and at which son. and a matter of discussion with Ward. all, they possessed to a superlative degree we always have a pleasant time." We see somehow be overcome, and which can became in Woodman's hands an actual the dry. strong tang of native Yankre Norton and Parkman working evening af- never be overcome sufficiently to make the table. set in a front room? of Parker's humor. ter evening on the revision of The Ore- reading other than 8 physical weariness. Hotel, and round the table were gathered The young nien of the time were seized gon Trail in the solitary counting room To Bostonlans, The Saturday Club four poets. one historian. one essayist, with a veritable nostagga for the culture of after office hours. There is Judge Hoar, is n tradition; but, in spite of the firm one biologist and geologist. one mathema- the older countries. Coleridge and Carlyle swimming the Tiber just to see if he could; belief in its widely advertised reputation. tician and astronomer. one classical had opened their (yes to German philoso- and Lowell, shinning up a pine tree four which the club itself seems to hold, I scholar, one musical critie. one Judge. two phy and to the poetry of Goethe and Schil- doubt whether many present-day readers lawyers, and one banker." Their names, (Continued on Page 146) not brought up in the shadow of the State House ever heard of it. This fact alone justifics the publication of the book. We have had it recrudescence of New England lately. The autobiographies of Charles Francis Adams and his brother Henry. e letters of Miss Susan Hale, have turned the reading public's attention back to the time when New England was America, or at least the thinking pa t of It. Dr. Emerson's book is a series of dis- solving view3 of the period-slight, mere hints of pictures quickly withdrawn. but of an intriguing charm. The original plan," says the preface, WILL to preserve first a record of the first half-century of its [the club's) existence. By sanction of the club only sixteen years of its history are here presented, but they tell of its golden age." Here. at the outset, we come across the chief fault of the book-its exaggeration. The men dealt with were most of them remarkable, some eminent, but to open Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the volume with this paragraph: In the middle of the last. century a constellation, which--as separate stars of differing magnitude, but all bright- had for twenty years been visible, at first dimly, in i e New England heav- ens, ascending, was seen as a group, gave increasing light and cheer here and to the westward-journcying sons and daughters; reached ,our zenith: even began to be reported by star- gazers beyond the ocean. is to create an instant prejudice against the attitude of the author. That is mere bombast and rhodomontade. and there is far too much of it in the book. The au- thor has been brought up in the shadow of these great ones, and yet he was not one of then. a fact which might have saved him from much breathless admira- tion: but his book would have been more interesting had he been able to draw off and gain a little perspective. Also, he is too much concerned to place halos on all and sundry. The result is an annoying confusion of values. In the individual portraits. too, the piquant charm of char- acter is largely lost. as is the case in those photographs where much working to oblit- erate wrinkles has resulted in a smooth vacuity of expression. As Dr. Emerson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB ( Continued from Page 141) teen feet in circumference for the same excellent reason: and Emerson, trying to shoot a deer and excusing himself for his EARLY YEARS OF probably Intentional failure to do 80 by THE SATURDAY CLUB explaining that all he could see was a square mist." They go to hear Jenny ( Continued from Preceding Page) Lind. under the management of P. T. Bar- num, sing in a hall over the Fitchburg bags contain no volume of Browning Railroad Station: the Cambridge residents They were too provincial to be alive to charter an omnibus and lurch through still, small voices attempting a new speech. The Port " into town to see Warren at They are too provincial still to heed, oven the Museum or Fanny Kemble at the Bos- If they must perforce hear. Speaking of ton Theatre. & prose address by Professor Pierce, Dr. Work and play and abundance of both. Emerson exclaims: This joyous paean It is true that this was a mutual admira- a nobler poem than the vers libre offered tion society. but admiration is quite as as such today." And again: necessary a condition to success as criti- cism is, and even If we take Lowell's esti- Longfellow, like Tennyson, has been mate with a grain of salt, they were an regarded with superior pity by apos- ties and practitioners of the rugged unusual group of men. In a letter from the involved, the lawless in form and England, probably during a little momen- subject He, a man sweet, wholesome tary wave of homesickness, Lowell says: normal, did not deal with pathological but universal experiences. To him se- I have never seen dvilization at se lection, purity, and finish were inevit- high a level in some respects as here. able. In plain living and high thinking, I fancy we have, or used to have, the Did Dr. Emerson but realize it, this advantage, and I have never seen so- gratuitous attack is most complimentary. ciety on the whole as good as I used Touch6, Prince! to meet at the Saturday Club. Mr. Dwight, in the last number of This was written in 1883, and already Dwight's " Journal of Music," essayed a the used to have" rings somewhat sadly more graceful valedictory on the same across the page. For the descendants of theme: the tradition have altered It, and not for We candidly confess that what now the better. The " plain living still per- challenges the world as new music sists, but the high thinking has unfor- falls to stir us to the same depths of soul and feeling that the old masters tunately mostly degenerated into .. tall did. Startling as the new talking." Such is the danger of assuming, composers are, and novel, and curious, ready-made, the virtues of one's ances- brilliant, beautiful at times, they do not bring us nearer heaven. We feel tors. no inner call to the proclaiming of the It must be admitted that the 'high new gospel. thinking in the book becomes a trifle This is the real tragedy of age, for de wearlsome. They say what we consider not even the Scriptures tell us that heaven needs no statement. People are con- has many mansions? Professor Parry pro- stantly referred to as shining spirits," codes the quotation I have just given poems are " sublime": Mr. Fields can with this admirable traism: H Ultimately, think of no higher tribute to Hawthorne as is inevitable, the younger generation than to say that .. his writings have never parted company from him and took Its soiled the public mind with one unlovely own road." Image''; and Dr. Hosmer, admiring, but Times have changed with hurricane worriedly apologetic, continues the bur- swiftness in these latter years. The rup- den: ture with the past has been severe, far Humanity rolls before him as it did more severe than other generations have before Shakespeare, sometimes weak, known. I say have known," because himself sometimes suffering, heighten to happy. heroic, regulate joy. depressed, He mitigate its did movement, not Its exultant, concern BORROW. to the beginnings they do not always know. They did not know Walt Whitman. But its or even changing more slowly, the artists of His work was to portray It as It moved, and in that conception of his mission the Saturday Club had prejudice to en- he established his masterfulness as an counter. William Hunt, returning home artist, though it abates somewhat, does after two years spent in studying with the it not, from his wholeness as a man? Barbiron painters, was stirred by an at- Hawthorne himself, master of prose tack in The Advertiser from some authori- though he was, takes a .. vast satisfac- ty at Harvard on the modern French tion in Longfellow's poetry, and Dr. painters." He replied in a scathing Emerson, loyal to inherited estimates, an- article: nounces with a fine dogmatism: Evan- The standard of art education is in- geline '-a pocm that will hold its place deed carried to a dizzy height at Har in literature while true affection lasts." I vard University when such men as Millet are ranked as triflers. . cannot think that true affection " has It is not worth while to be alarmed quite departed from the world, -but even about the influence of French art. It Dr. Emerson must be aware that .. Evan- would hardly be mortifying If a Millet geline." in the opinion of the modern or a Delacroix should be developed in Boston. It is not our fault that we critic, fell out of her niche so long ago inherit ignorance in art; but we are not that the moss is growing where she stood. obliged to advertise It. Yet I believe that Longfellow might The chapter on Hunt is particularly de- have been a poet in another place at an- lightful. He must have been an unusual other time. The little poems to Lowell, man, far more than his pictures would lead us to suppose. There is something Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. one in French and one in Italian, prove prophetic in his remark when Dr. Holmes it. The truth seems to be that he was a kind of literary chamcleon. French and handed him a little Japanese vase asking if he would like to see it. Hunt ex- Italian verse is not goody-goody, and claimed: " Like to see it? By God, It's Longfellow unconsciously took on the nn- one of those damned ultimate things!" tional characteristics with the tongue. It One wonders why, with so much insight is a thousand pities that these self-centred and real artistic sensitiveness, he was not Brahmins were deaf to Walt Whitman and Poe, but why did their English mail- (Continued on Following Page) (Continued on Following Page) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB ( Continued from Preceding Page) greater painter. Perhaps we are an- swered by the words of one of his pupils: Even what Is called the moral passion had a place in his art." In fact, it may have been Puritanism which throttled him. There were a goodly array of writers in th. Saturday Club, one painter, (the other does not count,) and one musician. But there were also scientists. and the chapters on Acassiz, Professor Pierce, and Jeffries Wyman are among the most interesting of all. They would only be garbled by quota- tion. but there is a pleasant little remind- er of these remote times in the fact that In. Wyman 11.25 member of the Boston Fire Brigade and ran with the old tub." which means that the brigade was a volun- teer organization with a small hand pump on wheels as the only apparatus, if we ex- copi the leather bucket which each member owned and was bound to bring, duly marked with his initials. My grandfather's bucket still hangs in the hall of a member of the family. Professor Pierce I remember well. and his sweet. benignant face. 1 must have seen him many times. but once stands out In my memory. A certain dinner party to which I was brought to see the great ones of the earth. after the fashion of our educationally forethoughted parents. Mr. Longfellow carried me round the table in a scrap basket. and the recollection of that ride is quite as vivid as though it were yesterday. Certainly, if there were great- er poets and painters than these of the Saturday Club. there were few greater scientists anywhere in the world at that time. At one of the great expositions in Paris a mural tablet was erected with the names of all the eminent mathematicians of the world carved upon it; Archimedes headed the list. which contained only twenty-one names: the last was Pierce. Probably the part of this large book in which the world will be most interested is that dealing with the civil war. The times are so like those terrible ones which we have just lived through. The narrative of following years pursued by Dr. Emer- son is most excellent: we hear the rumors of war, we see the club and their friends getting ready. we watch with them from the tall windows as their sons march away. It is almost too painful. We used to read such things as history: now they are cruel fact. Dr. Emerson gives us many glimpses behind the scenes. He tells how Messrs. Forbes and Aspinwall agreed to send n vessel with powder and food to Fort Sum- ter, in case it should be attacked, advanc- Ing the money at their own risk. But before the matter could be arranged Fort Sumter had fallen. The railroad bridges between Baltimore and Washington are burned. but Mr. Forbes charters steamers in Boston and Fall River and the Massa. chusetts troops are sent safely to Wash- ington by sea. Three years pass, the war continues; but, great and devastating as it was. it did not sap every spring of life, as the present war has done. Longfellow still works on his translation of the In- ferno ": Agassiz goes to South America on scientific expedition, and young men of military age are among his assistants. The Saturday Club was composed of men in the middle period of life, and we see the war from their angle. Particularly important in this connection are the chapters on Summer, and Forbes, and Andrew, and Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Charles Francis Adams. At last comes peace, and the Harvard Commemoration. and Dr. Emerson ac- knowledges what I have always heard as a matter of family history, that Lowell's faunous "Ode," written for the occasion. made no great impression at the time; was, in fact, overshadowed by Phillips Brooks's opening prayer. Only commensurate with the desire for knowledge in these Boston Brahmins was their extraordinary faculty for seeking it at the wrong sources. Hunt fuddles his sense of color at the palette of the Barbi- zon painters; Henry James and Elliot Ca- bot confuse themselves to ineptitude upon German philosophy; Norton sits at the feet of Ruskin. and as one of the .. Com- mittre of Fifty foists upon posterity the ghostly eyesore of Memorial Hall. Even Agassiz, adopted member of the caste, de- nied Darwinism with all the vigor of his per-onality. They might have done better by New Enzland had they really been "constellations" instead of small and very fixed stars. But then, they might not have bren at all. By them we have bein kept fifty years behind the mind of Europe: without them we should probably have been one hundred years behind. I have spoken of Dr. Emerson's habit of exaggeration and his sentimentality; he also has allowed himself to report the same ancedotes in a number places, but still his are the best chapters in the book. It is not his fault that some of these Saturday Club members are people of extremely slight importance. l'rofes- ( Continued on Page 150) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. EARLY YEARS OF THE SATURDAY CLUB ( Continued from Page 148) sor Perry's contributions are the papers on Dwight, Lowell, Motley, Whipple, I'rescott, Whittler, Hedge, and Estes Howe-at least these are signed by him; there are only eight, and the preface says that he wrote nine; but the proofreading has been scamped and some of the chap- ters are unsigned. Professor Perry's pages lack the snap of Dr. Emerson's, but they have a juster idea of proportion and a nice sense of humor. Baffled by the difficulty of placing the required aura about the head of Estes Howe, Professor Perry solves the difficulty most neatly by calling him " a personable gentleman of Intellectual tastes." Mr. Moorfield Storey is responsible for the chapters on Sumner and Charles Francis Adams. They are clear, straightforward narratives, but without the epigrammatic brilliance which is usual to Mr. Storey. Mark A. Do- wo!f Howe on James T. Fields is verbose and none too animated, and ex-Governor McCall, dealing with his predecessor, Governor Andrew, is simply dull. Mr. Forbes's paper on Martin Brimmer owes its charm to the excerpts from John Jay Chapman's autobiographical volume " Memories and Milestones," and is marred by injudicious praise of Mr. Brim- mer's amateurish book on Egypt. Evl- dently Mr. Forbes has not escaped the un- reasoning hero worship peculiar to the Emerson family. Such is the record of this pleasant old club: and, even if we differ with the au- thors in their critical pronouncements, here and there, it is eminently a volume with a perfume hanging about it, and one which it is a pleasure and profit to read Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. THE SATURDAY CLUB FLORENCE HOWE HALL New York Times (1857-1922); Apr 13. 1919: ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 2006) pg. 92 THE SATURDAY CLUB The New York Times Review of Rooks: A S one who well remembers many of the members of the Saturday Club. I should be glad to add a postscript to Miss Amy Lowell's very interesting but not altogether sympathetic review of Dr. Emerson's book, published in THE TIMES Book REVIEW of Sunday, March 23. Miss Lowell fancies that the Brahmins of the Saturday Club," as she calls them, were a self-centred group of men. No one who saw them in the flesh and who was old enough to listen to their delightful talk would say this. If they had been, they could scareely have concealed this damning fact from the critical and rather satirical eyea of a schoolgirl, the present writer. True, I never attended a meeting of the Saturday Club, although my father, Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, belonged to it. But cleven of the original fourteen members, and some of the later ones, were from time to time guests in the household of my par- ents. Certain of them we knew very well. They were all middle-aged or elderly men, by no means the heroes of young feminine Imagination. Yet their conversation seemed wholly delightful to it girl who loved Alh- letie sports quite as well as reading, per- haps a little better. Miss Lowell says: It is a thousand pities that these self- centred Brahmins were deaf to Walt Whitman and Poe, but why did their English mail bags contain no volume of Browning? They were 100 provincial to be alive to still small voices, attempt- ing a new speech. Has our poetess forgotten that Emerson, one of the founders of the club. was among the first to recognize the genuine of Whit- man? : Leaves of Grass : was published in 1855. Emerson's cordial letter of recog- nition and praise, (written July 21. 1855.) contains the phrase: I greet you at the beginning of a great career. Whitman had this sentence printed in letters of gold on the covers of the volumes of the second edition of : Leaves of Grass." Edward Everett Hale in January, 1876, published in The North American Review, then under the editorship of the Rev. Andrew P' Peabody, a favorable review of it. 1a this he speaks of " the freshness, simplicity and reality of the book. of the author's wonderful sharpness and dis- tinctness of imagination." In April, 1860, Lowell, then editor of The Atlantic Monthly, printed in the magazine. Whit- man's Bardic Symbols. I remember well the appearance of the first edition of "Leaves of Grass, although 1 was less than'ten years old when it was published. The volume I saw was prob. ably a presentation copy to my mother, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. It was a tall quarto, 50 thin as to suggest the idea that it was stread out to cover as much space as possible. I heard it discussed by my elders and gained a vague impression that the young man who wrote it was some- what coarse. I do i.ot know who invented the phrase: The barbarie yawp of Whit- man." Unkind and unjust as it is, it would seem to describe his utterances quite as appropriately as that of the still small voice." The men of the Saturday Club did not need to " look in their English mail bags for volumes of Browning," since these were Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner Further reproduction prohibited without permission. promptly republished by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields of the "Old Corner Book-Store." It is needless to say that this was fre- quented by the literary men of that day. Mr. Fields was not a charter member of the Saturday Club but joined it later on. The club was founded in 1855, the year in which " Men and Women : was published. On Nov. 29, 1855 Robert Browning wrote to Fields: "I take advantage of the opportunity of the publication in the United - States of my * Men and Women --for which you. being more righteous than the law, have liberally remunerated me- to express my earn- est desire that the power of publishing in America this and every subsequent work'of mine may rest exclusively with you and your house." (From the sketch of James T. Fields in the Early Years of the Saturday Club.") It might seem superfluous to say that the writings of Edgar Allan Poe were well known to the literary men of Boston at the time of which we are speaking. had not Miss Lowell appeared to doubt this. FLORENCE HOWE HALL. New York, April 7. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 108 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY 32,41 (Mar. 1959) past, as he then saw it, augured well; but the act of "predicting" it was still more important than the results. The historian devised a rational order strong and complex enough to contain the mani- fold, refractory data of the past; taking his science from the age, he gave in return a model of how scientific reason could function in the American democracy. This fine biography invites us to reflect on the significance of that achievement. Sketching the milieu in which Adams worked, Mr. Samuels emphasizes the sense of a New Empire which per- vaded American intellectual life as well as business enterprise. A good example is the work of the geologists whom Adams knew and admired, and the implication is that the spirit which moved Clarence King to conduct his survey of the Fortieth Parallel in- spired Adams also: as an historian he mapped his own cross-sec- tion, reckoning the nation's resources and potentialities in human terms. Like the great Surveys, the great History was a contribution towards the rationalization of American society in a time when disruption and grab seemed the dominant way of life. While the gilded monuments of that divided age have long since peeled, its more durable intellectual works show their value more clearly than ever. J.C. LEVENSON. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920-1956. Edited by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr. (Boston: Hough- ton Mifflin Company, 1958. Pp. xix, 410. 47 portraits. $10.00.) Bostonians have a natural affinity for banding into dining clubs. Some of these groups salve their New England consciences by preparing or sitting through papers; some maintain the polite fiction of serving the public good in one manner or another; oth- ers quite honestly exist for the higher purposes of eating, drink- ing, and smoking in congenial company. Organizations of this kind find it convenient to call themselves after the day of the week upon which they meet. The Wednesday Evening Club has brought together clergymen, lawyers, physicians, and a composite fourth class described as "merchants, manufacturers, and gentle- men of literature and leisure" at an increasingly late hour since BOOK REVIEWS 109 1777. Although Wednesday can clearly claim seniority, other days of the week have not been forgotten. The Thursday Evening Club, for example, is now in its 114th year, and the Saturday Club in its 104th in 1959. The doings of most Boston dining clubs survive in the imperma- nent memories of their members. Sometimes there is a thin cen- tenary volume, but mostly the historian has to approach them through tantalizing fragments in letters and diaries. The Saturday Club, by contrast, with three stout quarto volumes, fully illus- trated, clearly takes the prize for the convenience, completeness, and extent of its published record. In 1918, Dr. Edward W. Emerson, son of its founder, Ralph Waldo Emerson, published The Early Years of the Saturday Club 1855-1870. Dr. Emerson began work on this volume, which con- tains summaries of each year's doings, followed by lives of de- ceased members who had been elected in those years, intending to preserve a record of the club's first half century. As the fulness of treatment would have made this an unreasonable burden, he limited himself to the first sixteen years, and even SO achieved a 514-page volume. Nine years later, M. A. DeWolfe Howe, edited a second volume Later Years of the Saturday Club 1870-1920. Here the pattern changed somewhat. The annual summaries of club activities were eliminated and the record confined to biog- raphies by many hands. Seven were by Dr. Emerson, four by Mr. Howe, the remainder by other members. Now The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920-1956, edited by Edward W Forbes, grandson of the founder, and Professor John H. Finley, Jr., Mas- ter of Eliot House, brings the record down to date. The third volume matches its predecessors in format and dig- nity, but let no one be fooled thereby into dismissing it as a nos- talgic modern sequel to the record of a mighty but lost past. It is anything but that. To me it is the most exciting of the three. Grant that it includes fond memories of a few men who carried into modern times the virtues of a vanished past. It also contains the lives of men who have been mighty contributors to the present, and future. Among the subjects described is Alfred North White- head, who wrote Mankind is now in one of its rare moods of shifting its outlook. The mere compulsion of tradition has lost its force. It is the busi- 110 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ness of philosophers, students, and practical men to re-create and re-enact a vision of the world, conservative and radical, including those elements of reverence and order without which society lapses into riot, a vision penetrated through and through with unflinching rationality. We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our age. So are Dr. George Richards Minot, Nobel prize winner for his development of liver therapy in pernicious anemia, and Theodore Lyman, whose discovery of a series of lines in the ultraviolet spec- trum of atomic hydrogen "turned out to be the 'prototype of all spectral series' and became the experimental cornerstone of the celebrated quantum theory of atomic structure developed by Bohr in 1913." Karl Compton of M.I.T., Dr. Harvey Cushing and others of their stripe are included. Justice Holmes, President Lowell, Bishop Lawrence, humanists of the quality of E. K. Rand, John Livingston Lowes, and C. H. Grandgent, such historians as Charles H. Haskins and Archibald Cary Coolidge, and the unique naturalist Thomas Barbour, are all here with the scientists as [a result of the Saturday Club's remarkable gift for choosing mem- bers for the fine temper of their minds rather than the sub-section of learning in which they use them. After running through the contents of the third volume, one questions the validity of Dr. Emerson's claim to have dealt with the club's "Golden Age" in the first. Many hands of many ages have made this volume; hence it avoids being a consistent collection of eulogies of old school friends. Sometimes, as with Dr. George Richards Minot and Dr. Hans Zinsser, the sketches are by a contemporary friend and colleague; in these cases the biographer is Dr. Paul Dudley White. The masterly sketches by Charles P. Curtis, Zechariah Chafee, Lucien Price, and John Finley describe members somewhat, or even considerably, older than the writers. While many of the members have been made the subjects of extended biographies elsewhere, the sketches in this volume often add valuable supple- mentary information derived from personal knowledge.> Charles P. Curtis, for example, in writing of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in his sketch of President Lowell, tells how he was Bishop Lawrence's "errand boy" in petitioning Governor Fuller to ap- point the Lowell-Grant-Stratton committee. BOOK REVIEWS 111 The Bishop wanted no publicity. I took the petition one Sunday morning to the Governor's personal counsel, Joseph Wiggin, at his home, with the Bishop's instructions that Wiggin was to let me know the next morning that the Governor had it. If not, I said, the Bishop would present it in person, walking alone and in public up the front steps of the State House at noon, and I was instructed to inform the newspapers. This, of course, was not necessary. The passage that I have italicized above does much to explain William Lawrence's methods and his great accomplishments. George R. Harrison's account of Karl Compton's wrath at the destruction of the Japanese cyclotrons by the U. Army after the signing of the surrender (pp. 350-351) and Zechariah Chafee's record of a conversation with T. N. Perkins on the manner of cop- ing with politicians (p. 263) are equally worthy of notice. In their several ways the sketches give vivid pictures of their varied subjects. Witness the account of Nelson Perkins. A close friend, who was seeking an office of national importance, came into Perkins' office to show him several letters of recommen- dation obtained from distinguished persons. Perkins put his feet on his desk, read through the laudatory epistles, spat in the waste- basket, and said, "Brains of Napoleon and character of Jesus Christ." Or John Finley's perceptive description of Edward Kennard Rand: His friendships, one felt, included the ancient authors, and as Horace easily addressed Roman friends in poems that held echoes of the Greek authors, SO Rand mingled present and past in the common light of cheerful fellowship, as if, compared to fellow- ship, time were irrelevant. Lightness was his code and signature; he by nature shunned the thunders of Cicero, even the gravity of Virgil, for Horace's smiling indirection and deceptive ease. Some- thing may have been lost to his teaching and writing by this cast of mind. He did not like to deal with things massive and central, perhaps because they struck him as obvious. Moreover, he pre- ferred not to speak ill, hence would calmly neglect dull pages of an author to fix with joy on a redeeming phrase. Any one who wishes to meditate upon the nature of the Satur- day Club and the blending of personalities that has assured its continuing vitality, will find food for thought in a folding chart at the end of the book that lists past and present members and indicates at a glance the composition of the club at any time dur- THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ing its first century. This graph, which emphasizes the overlapping of generations more clearly than anything I have seen elsewhere, was characteristically enough, devised by an engineer member, Edward Loyburn Moreland. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed is a remarkable record of a remarkable organization. It is equally readable both for profit and for pleasure. Can one say more? WALTER MUIR WHITEHILL. The American Heritage Book of the Revolution. By the Editors of American Heritage. Editor in Charge, Richard M. Ketchum. Narrative by Bruce Lancaster, with a chapter by J. H. Plumb. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., and Símon and Schuster. 1958. Pp. 384. $12.50.) Although it is rather more than just a picture book, The Revo- lution claims our attention chiefly on account of its 600-odd il- lustrations, many of which, according to the editor, have never before been reproduced. Most of the illustrations are contem- porary, but not quite all: there are a few later primitives and some "artist's conceptions" of dubious authenticity. Several of these, incidentally, are not identified as such in the captions or even in the credits in the back of the book. About a third of the pictures are in full color. Bruce Lancaster's narrative of the events from 1763 to 1783 is both longer and rather better than one expects to find in a book of this sort. True to the form, it is short on analysis and long on action and "colorful" details. ("British Sergeant Hugh McQuar- ters dropped his linstock to the breech of the piece that suddenly flamed out in stunning explosion ") But in spite of his histori- cal novelist's penchant for linstocks, shrilling and muttering fifes and drums, and secondary characters with irrelevant nick-names -my favorite is Gen. George "Joe Gourd" Weedon-, Mr. Lan- caster manages to tell the essential story. He sticks to the facts, eschewing patriotic embellishments; he is fair to the British and Loyalists; and he is generous and accurate in his comments on the importance of the French alliance. Most of Mr. Lancaster's chapters are followed by several pages 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery Sat. day 31.1573 Longfellow R.Dake Owento Emerson Fr. Parkman a H.W. Bellows. sur Pakisso Rye Dr. Heige. Hirry Jakes P.G. Applicant IT Fields J.S. beinght Pres. blat dudge Kirt Present: 2, members judge Hour. O.W.Holnes e Court Corti Cheft Al C C. Perkins Scan Bostwall a / Unit Cabet Julk Forbes à Rev. Che Bright Jeffers W. H.S. being Pay Guerage E. P Whipple of E.H. Clark. o Agussing about Martin Benca C.E. Norten W R. Hurt ** Eates Have /. S.m.Ruse c.e.Felter IR Lowele squard Save G. word 11 Mately IN water DIAGRAM OF A SATURDAY CLUB DINNER, IN THE HANDWRITING OF JOHN S. DWIGHT A diagram of the seating plan at the Saturday Club during an 1873 meeting, drawn by member John Sullivan Dwight. (Courtesy Susan Wilson) "Some people might have a vision of the Saturday Club of older white males sitting around a table in the 19th century would essentially he accurate and that certainly is 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery The ARTery New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head 06:49 March 24, 2017 By Erin Trahan Anita Diamant speaking during a meeting of the School Street Sessions. (Andrea Shea/WBUR) This article is more than 2 years old. 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery If you walked down School and Tremont streets in Boston in 1855 you might've run into the likes of Emerson, Thoreau or Longfellow. If it was a Saturday night, you might see them talking literary shop over gin punch and cigars inside the brand new Parker House Hotel. But you wouldn't be invited in. This private, all-male club was known as the Saturday Club and now a bunch of mostly female Boston-based poets have thrown open the doors to host public literary events at the same, historic location. Get local arts and culture news, critiques, events and ticket giveaways sent to your inbox each week with The ARTery's newsletter. Sign up now. Omni Parker House historian Susan Wilson says the group of poets, philosophers and scientists started meeting at the hotel when it opened in 1855. "The president of Harvard would be sitting here, Francis Parkman the famous historian would be sitting there, and [John Greenleaf Whittier would come in and Thoreau snubbed his nose because he didn't like the cigar smoke," she describes. "There's a famous quote from Thoreau. He mentioned that he didn't really eniov coming to the Saturdav 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery Club at the Parker House because it was SO smoke filled he said, 'I much prefer the men's room at the Fitchburg Railroad. " The Saturday Club lays claim to many famous firsts, including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's supposed first reading of his widely-recited Paul Revere poem. Wilson says that it cannot be proven, but "allegedly when he was working on 'Paul Revere's Ride, Longfellow read it first to the people here." The Atlantic Monthly magazine started in the Saturday Club's smoke-filled rooms and Charles Dickens - while touring the United States - debuted "A Christmas Carol" to its gentlemen members. 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery The door to Charles Dickens' suite at the Parker House Hotel when he visited in 1867-68 is still in the hotel today -- but on display. (Courtesy Susan Wilson) Wilson explains that into the 20th century it was very common for clubs to be either male or female. "Louisa May Alcott or Harriet Beecher Stowe or other women of the era wouldn't be coming to the Saturday Club meetings," she says. "This was a guys' club." Today's club is very different. Sure, people gather around one enormous table in the still-elegant Omni Parker House. But the events are free, open to anyone, and are organized by a committee dominated by female writers. Boston's poet laureate Danielle Legros Georges is one of the co-founders. "There are wonderful discussions that take place in schools and universities but we're interested in something extracurricular that was open to the public that was open to students and all kinds of people," says Legros Georges. The club's latest guest speaker was best-selling local author Anita Diamant. She read a passage from Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own, which she says inspired her to write historical fiction about women's lives. "What I find deplorable, I continued, looking about the bookshelves, is that nothing is known about women before the 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery 18th century. " "When I read that in the 1970s, we knew more about women before and after the 18th century, but there was still a sense that we were missing a lot," Diamant said. After the talk and roundtable dialogue, Diamant says she thinks that while reviving the tradition of the old club is a great idea, she's not sure the men who made up the original club would know how to work this particular room. "It's nice to remember that these literary lights from the past sat at a long table," she says. "I don't think they would recognize this as continuous from what they did. I think they would be freaked out by it. I can't imagine them, thinking 'What are they doing here?'' The new group was only temporarily called the Saturday Club. That's thanks to an unexpected email received by co- founder poet Joe Bergin. "It was from the president of the Saturday Club. And he very cordially set us straight and said that the Saturday Club did indeed still exist and we would be well advised to find a new name for ourselves. So fair enough," recalls Bergin. 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery Sat. hey 31.1573 Longfollow R.Dake Owento o Emerson Fr. Parkman a 0 H.W. Bellows. sub Pakaso H. Bankia Ryon Dr. Heige. Heary Jukes R.G. Applican I.T Fields I.S. Dinight Pres. blat dudge Kent Purcut: O.W.Holmas 2, members judge Hour. o Count Corti Che Fi Adams your C C. Perkins Sca. Beatwill a / Elit Cabut. J.K. Forber à Bright Jeffers Wymeno o H.S. Deing Pay Guesting. E. I Whipple 0 Dr. E.H. Clark. Agassing about Martin C.E. Moster Hm. A. Hurt Edis Have Pierce / S.m.Rasse c.e.Felter le Lonale 16 Mithy s.g.mard in Wather DIAGRAM OF A SATURDAY CLUB DINNER, IN THE HANDWRITING OF JOHN S. DWIGHT A diagram of the seating plan at the Saturday Club during an 1873 meeting, drawn by member John Sullivan Dwight. (Courtesy Susan Wilson) "Some people might have a vision of the Saturday Club of older white males sitting around a table in the 19th century and that would essentially be accurate and that certainly is 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary "Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery no longer accurate today," says James Engell. He would know. The Harvard professor of English literature is president of the Saturday Club - yes, the one started in 1855 is still ticking. The Saturday Club is still invite-only but Engell says there are female members and people of color. But try to find it online as Bergin did? Nothing. And it's no longer a literary club. Engell calls it an "old-fashioned conversation club" for leaders of all professions. "People don't keep it secret, there's no oath about secrecy, there's no secret handshake - there's nothing like that," Engell laughs. "It's not that kind of society, it's not a society in that sense. It's a simple club." The new group is now called the School Street Sessions. Like today's Saturday Club, both groups embrace the increasingly rarefied art of conversation. With five gatherings behind the group, covering topics from African-American literature during colonial New England to textile workers' lives as told through poetry, the Sessions are gearing up for its Women's History Month meeting with a lineup of local women poets reading women poets. As always, conversation will continue in the bar downstairs as it did after Diamant's talk, when I spoke with Boston College sociology professor Eve Spangler, a first-timer who came with a book club friend 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery Spangler admires what she calls the Victorian-era bar's "noisy but atmospheric" décor with wainscoting and tin ceilings. Then she explains that as a social science writer she attends a lot of events related to her subject of study, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but not literary events. "So this was fun," she says. School Street Sessions advisory committee president, poet Deborah Melone, says there's a core group who attends and often faces she doesn't recognize. She got involved with the group because of how it was taking an idea from Boston's elite and opening it up to everyone. "I was thrilled that there was this slightly rebellious aspect of it and I think that's working," she says. Poet Sandee Storey, also one of the Sessions' organizers, says she has longed for a forum that presents "non-fiction elements as they've been dealt with in literature - especially in New England. And now we finally have one," she says. "So we can talk about the mill workers, through poetry. We can talk about immigrants through poetry." Storey also organizes a poetry reading series in Jamaica Plain and for her the School Street Sessions add a new dimension to Boston's literary community. "It's unique. I don't know of any other places where there's literature and history all in the same program. We're not a historical society and we're not a literary organization, we're both. And SO the 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery Members of School Street Sessions' advisory committee Danielle Legros Georges, Deborah Melone and Mary Bonina. (Andrea Shea/WBUR) While the past has certainly inspired the group, Legros Georges says they are now more concerned about the future. "We've become our own thing, a new thing, even though we drew inspiration from that group initially, maybe less of a focus on the Saturday Club. I mean I like the history - I like our history and its history - but I think we're kind of moving beyond that." Yet in one last striking similarity to the Saturday Club, the School Street Sessions has no web presence, either. To learn more, you need to send an email to the president. 2/7/2020 New Literary Group Turns History Of Boston's Legendary 'Saturday Club' On Its Head I The ARTery The next School Street Session is a celebration of Women's History Month with a lineup of local women poets reading other women poets. It's on Saturday, March 25, at the Omni Parker House at 3:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. This segment aired on March 24, 2017. Erin Trahan Film Writer Erin Trahan writes about film for The ARTery. More. We noticed that you are using an adblocker. If you are not already a member, please consider a donation. Thank you! C Copyright WBUR 2020 2/7/2020 Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) - Wikipedia Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) The Saturday Club, established in 1855, was an informal monthly gathering in Boston, Massachusetts, of writers, scientists, philosophers, historians, and other notable thinkers of the mid-Nineteenth Century. Contents Overview Gallery Further reading References "A Group of the Saturday Club", External links from Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1896 Overview The club began meeting informally at the Albion House in Boston. [1] Publishing agent and lawyer Horatio Woodman first suggested the gatherings among his friends for food and conversation. [2] By 1856, the organization became more structured with a loose set of rules, with monthly meetings held over dinner at the Parker House. [1] The Parker House served as their place of meeting for many years. It was a hotel built in 1854 by Harvey D. Parker. [3][4] The gatherings led to the creation of the Atlantic Monthly, to which many of the members contributed. [2] The name was suggested by early member Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. [5] 2/7/2020 Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) - Wikipedia X The original members of the group included Woodman, Louis Agassiz, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and James Russell Lowell. [2] In the following years, membership was extended to Holmes, Cornelius Conway Felton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and William Hickling Prescott. [6] Other members included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Asa Gray, John Lothrop Motley, Benjamin Peirce, Charles Sumner, John Greenleaf Whittier, and others. Invitations to the group were considered a sort of affirmation of acceptance into Boston's high society. Ohio-native William Dean Howells was invited by James Russell Lowell in 1860 and recalled in a memoir that it seemed like a rite of passage. Holmes joked that Howells's presence serve as "something like the apostolic succession the laying on of hands". A few years later, Howells was named editor of the Atlantic Monthly, which published many of the works by members of the group. [7] In 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes published a poem titled "At the Saturday Club" in which he reminisced about the gatherings. By then, many of its members were dead. Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, published two books about the Saturday Club and its members in the early 20th century. A version of the Saturday Club still exists in Boston. Gallery Ignored Samuel g. Ward whose conversations c Emerson inopined its creation. 2/7/2020 Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) - Wikipedia Oliver Wendell Louis Agassiz Benjamin Peirce Holmes Charles Sumner and Parker's, School Ralph Waldo Henry Wadsworth Street, Boston, 1855 Emerson, ca. 1872 Longfellow, 1863 Asa Gray John Lothrop Motley, ca. 1860 Further reading 2/7/2020 Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) - Wikipedia Adams, Thomas Boylston. Saturday Club 1957-1986. Boston: Saturday Club, 1988. Emerson, Edward Waldo. Early years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870 (https://books.google.com/books?id=sqkRAAAAYAAJ).Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918. Emerson, Edward Waldo. Later years of the Saturday Club, 1870- 1920. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. Forbes, Edward Waldo. Saturday Club: A Century Completed, 1920- 1956. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958. Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "At the Saturday Club (https://books.google.co books?id=bMxaAAAAMAAJ&dq=saturday%20club%20%22oliver%2 Owendell%20holmes%22&Ir=&as_drrb_is=q&as_minm_is=0&as_miny maxm_is=0&as_maxy_is=&num=100&as_brr=1&as_pt=BOOK S&pg=PA269#v=onepage&q=saturday%20club&f=false)". 1884. References 1. Mellow, James R. Nathaniel Hawthorne in His Times. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980: 539. ISBN 0-8018-5900-X 2. Gale, Robert L. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 210. ISBN 0-313-32350-X 3. Whitehill, Walter Muir. "Review of The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920-1956" by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Mar., 1959), pp. 108-112. 4. Morison, Samuel Eliot. "Review of Later Years of the Saturday Club" by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1928), p. 267. 5. Broaddus, Dorothy C. Genteel Rhetoric: Writing High Culture in Nineteenth-Century Boston. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina, 1999: 46.ISBN 1-57003-244-0. 6. Gale, Robert L. A Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 210-211. ISBN 0-313-32350-X 7. O'Connell, Shaun. Boston: Voices and Visions. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010: 92. ISBN 978-1-55849-820-4 External links Guide to the Saturday Club Records (http://www.masshist.org/collectio n-guides/view/fa0358), Massachusetts Historical Society 2/29/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Massachusetts Historical Society ABIGAIL Founded 1791 the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Search Headings Titles History Help ABIGAIL Home Database Name: Massachusetts Historical Society Search Request: Subject Browse = Clubs Massachusetts Boston. Search Results: Displaying 38 of 91 entries Previous Next Bibliographic Holdings Table of Contents MARC View Friday Club (Boston, Mass.) records, wwg with to Format: Mixed Material Call number(s): Ms. N-1252 Place Request Creator: Friday Club (Boston, Mass.) Title: Friday Club (Boston, Mass.) records, 1859-1884. Description: 1 vol. Scope: Records of the Friday Club of Boston, Mass. kept by William Whitwell Greenough. Established as an eating and discussion club and composed mostly of Harvard graduates, the Friday Club met to discuss philosophical, political, and historical subjects. Records document attendance, guests, and, for the earlier years, topics of conversation. Among the members were Charles Francis Adams, Louis Agassiz, Benjamin R. Curtis, C.C. Felton, James Russell Lowell, and George Ticknor. 2/29/2020 ABIGAIL, the Library Catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society Old shelf mark: 35.10. Subject(s): Adams, Charles Francis, 1807-1886. Agassiz, Louis, 1807-1873. Curtis, Benjamin Robbins, 1809-1874. Felton, C. C. (Cornelius Conway), 1807-1862. Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891. Ticknor, George, 1791-1871. Harvard University --Alumni and alumnae. Clubs --Massachusetts -Boston. Other Author(s): Greenough, William W. (William Whitwell), -1899. Previous Next Record Options Select Download Format Full Record Format for Print/Save Enter your email address: Email Search Headings Titles History Help Exit 4 108 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY V.32,#1 (1959). past, as he then saw it, augured well; but the act of "predicting" it was still more important than the results. The historian devised a rational order strong and complex enough to contain the mani- fold, refractory data of the past; taking his science from the age, he gave in return a model of how scientific reason could function in the American democracy. This fine biography invites us to reflect on the significance of that achievement. Sketching the milieu in which Adams worked, Mr. Samuels emphasizes the sense of a New Empire which per- vaded American intellectual life as well as business enterprise. A good example is the work of the geologists whom Adams knew and admired, and the implication is that the spirit which moved Clarence King to conduct his survey of the Fortieth Parallel in- spired Adams also: as an historian he mapped his own cross-sec- tion, reckoning the nation's resources and potentialities in human terms. Like the great Surveys, the great History was a contribution towards the rationalization of American society in a time when disruption and grab seemed the dominant way of life. While the gilded monuments of that divided age have long since peeled, its more durable intellectual works show their value more clearly than ever. J.C. LEVENSON. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920-1956. Edited by Edward W. Forbes and John H. Finley, Jr. (Boston: Hough- ton Mifflin Company, 1958. Pp. xix, 410. 47 portraits. $10.00.) Bostonians have a natural affinity for banding into dining clubs. Some of these groups salve their New England consciences by preparing or sitting through papers; some maintain the polite fiction of serving the public good in one manner or another; oth- ers quite honestly exist for the higher purposes of eating, drink- ing, and smoking in congenial company Organizations of this kind find it convenient to call themselves after the day of the founded week upon which they meet. The Wednesday Evening Club has 1777 brought together clergymen, lawyers, physicians, and a composite fourth class described as "merchants, manufacturers, and gentle- men of literature and leisure" at an increasingly late hour since 927 See BOOK REVIEWS 109 1777. Although Wednesday can clearly claim seniority, other days of the week have not been forgotten. The Thursday Evening 1845 Club, for example, is now in its 114th year, and the Saturday Club- 1855 in its 104th. The doings of most Boston dining clubs survive in the imperma- nent memories of their members. Sometimes there is a thin cen- So too tenary volume, but mostly the historian has to approach them GBD! / through tantalizing fragments in letters and diaries. The Saturday Club, by contrast, with three stout quarto volumes, fully illus- trated, clearly takes the prize for the convenience, completeness, and extent of its published record. 1918 In 1918, Dr. Edward W. Emerson, son of its founder, Ralph Waldo Emerson, published The Early Years of the Saturday Club 1855-1870. Dr. Emerson began work on this volume, which con- tains summaries of each year's doings, followed by lives of de- ceased members who had been elected in those years, intending to preserve a record of the club's first half century. As the fulness of treatment would have made this an unreasonable burden, he limited himself to the first sixteen years, and even so achieved a 1927 514-page volume. Nine years later, M. A. DeWolfe Howe, edited a second volume Later Years of the Saturday Club 1870-1920. Here the pattern changed somewhat. The annual summaries of club activities were eliminated and the record confined to biog- raphies by many hands. Seven were by Dr. Emerson, four by Mr. Howe, the remainder by other members. Now The Saturday Club: A Century Completed 1920-1956, edited by Edward W. Forbes, 1959 grandson of the founder, and Professor ohn H. Finley, Jr., Mas- ter of Eliot House, brings the record down to date. The third volume matches its predecessors in format and dig- nity, but let no one be fooled thereby into dismissing it as a nos- talgic modern sequel to the record of a mighty but lost past. It is anything but that. To me it is the most exciting of the three. Grant that it includes fond memories of a few men who carried into modern times the virtues of a vanished past. It also contains the lives of men who have been mighty contributors to the present, and future. Among the subjects described is Alfred North White- head, who wrote Mankind is now in one of its rare moods of shifting its outlook. The mere compulsion of tradition has lost its force. It is the busi- 110 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ness of philosophers, students, and practical men to re-create and re-enact a vision of the world, conservative and radical, including those elements of reverence and order without which society lapses into riot, a vision penetrated through and through with unflinching rationality. We must produce a great age, or see the collapse of the upward striving of our age. So are Dr. George Richards Minot, Nobel prize winner for his development of liver therapy in pernicious anemia, and Theodore Lyman, whose discovery of a series of lines in the ultraviolet spec- trum of atomic hydrogen "turned out to be the 'prototype of all spectral series' and became the experimental cornerstone of the celebrated quantum theory of atomic structure developed by Bohr in 1913." Karl Compton of M.I.T., Dr. Harvey Cushing and others of their stripe are included. Justice Holmes, President Lowell, Bishop Lawrence, humanists of the quality of E. K. Rand, John Livingston Lowes, and C. H. Grandgent, such historians as Charles H. Haskins and Archibald Cary Coolidge, and the unique naturalist Thomas Barbour, are all here with the scientists as a result of the Saturday Club's remarkable gift for choosing mem- bers for the fine temper of their minds rather than the sub-section of learning in which they use them. After running through the contents of the third volume, one questions the validity of Dr. Emerson's claim to have dealt with the club's "Golden Age" in the first. Many hands of many ages have made this volume; hence it avoids being a consistent collection of eulogies of old school friends. Sometimes, as with Dr. George Richards Minot and Dr. Hans Zinsser, the sketches are by a contemporary friend and colleague; in these cases the biographer is Dr. Paul Dudley White. The masterly sketches by Charles P. Curtis, Zechariah Chafee, Lucien Price, and John Finley describe members somewhat, or even considerably, older than the writers. While many of the members have been made the subjects of extended biographies elsewhere, the sketches in this volume often add valuable supple- mentary information derived from personal knowledge. Charles P. Curtis, for example, in writing of the Sacco-Vanzetti case, in his sketch of President Lowell, tells how he was Bishop Lawrence's "errand boy" in petitioning Governor Fuller to ap- point the Lowell-Grant-Stratton committee. BOOK REVIEWS 111 The Bishop wanted no publicity. I took the petition one Sunday morning to the Governor's personal counsel, Joseph Wiggin, at his home, with the Bishop's instructions that Wiggin was to let me know the next morning that the Governor had it. If not, I said, the Bishop would present it in person, walking alone and in public up the front steps of the State House at noon, and I was instructed to inform the newspapers. This, of course, was not necessary. The passage that I have italicized above does much to explain William Lawrence's methods and his great accomplishments. George R. Harrison's account of Karl Compton's wrath at the destruction of the Japanese cyclotrons by the U.S. Army after the signing of the surrender (pp. 350-351) and Zechariah Chafee's record of a conversation with T. N. Perkins on the manner of cop- ing with politicians (p. 263) are equally worthy of notice. In their several ways the sketches give vivid pictures of their varied subjects. Witness the account of Nelson Perkins. A close friend, who was seeking an office of national importance, came into Perkins' office to show him several letters of recommen- dation obtained from distinguished persons. Perkins put his feet on his desk, read through the laudatory epistles, spat in the waste- basket, and said, "Brains of Napoleon and character of Jesus Christ." Or John Finley's perceptive description of Edward Kennard Rand: His friendships, one felt, included the ancient authors, and as Horace easily addressed Roman friends in poems that held echoes of the Greek authors, SO Rand mingled present and past in the common light of cheerful fellowship, as if, compared to fellow- ship, time were irrelevant. Lightness was his code and signature; he by nature shunned the thunders of Cicero, even the gravity of Virgil, for Horace's smiling indirection and deceptive ease. Some- thing may have been lost to his teaching and writing by this cast of mind. He did not like to deal with things massive and central, perhaps because they struck him as obvious. Moreover, he pre- ferred not to speak ill, hence would calmly neglect dull pages of an author to fix with joy on a redeeming phrase. Any one who wishes to meditate upon the nature of the Satur- day Club and the blending of personalities that has assured its continuing vitality, will find food for thought in a folding chart at the end of the book that lists past and present members and indicates at a glance the composition of the club at any time dur- 112 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY ing its first century. This graph, which emphasizes the overlapping of generations more clearly than anything I have seen elsewhere, was characteristically enough, devised by an engineer member, Edward Loyburn Moreland. The Saturday Club: A Century Completed is a remarkable record of a remarkable organization. It is equally readable both for profit and for pleasure. Can one say more? WALTER MUIR WHITEHILL. The American Heritage Book of the Revolution. By the Editors of American Heritage. Editor in Charge, Richard M. Ketchum. Narrative by Bruce Lancaster, with a chapter by J. H. Plumb. (New York: American Heritage Publishing Co., and Simon and Schuster. 1958. Pp. 384. $12.50.) Although it is rather more than just a picture book, The Revo- lution claims our attention chiefly on account of its 600-odd il- lustrations, many of which, according to the editor, have never before been reproduced. Most of the illustrations are contem- porary, but not quite all: there are a few later primitives and some "artist's conceptions" of dubious authenticity. Several of these, incidentally, are not identified as such in the captions or even in the credits in the back of the book. About a third of the pictures are in full color. Bruce Lancaster's narrative of the events from 1763 to 1783 is both longer and rather better than one expects to find in a book of this sort. True to the form, it is short on analysis and long on action and "colorful" details. ("British Sergeant Hugh McQuar- ters dropped his linstock to the breech of the piece that suddenly flamed out in stunning explosion ") But in spite of his histori- cal novelist's penchant for linstocks, shrilling and muttering fifes and drums, and secondary characters with irrelevant nick-names -my favorite is Gen. George "Joe Gourd" Weedon-, Mr. Lan- caster manages to tell the essential story. He sticks to the facts, eschewing patriotic embellishments; he is fair to the British and Loyalists; and he is generous and accurate in his comments on the importance of the French alliance. Most of Mr. Lancaster's chapters are followed by several pages