Part 6
We do not know that the week just past had in it any event more important than the great Stevenson and Howe sleigh-ride, which took place on Monday last—the Stevenson school sleigh-ride, in the great Howe sleigh. The young ladies looked and behaved their very best. Miss Loring’s bonnet and yellow ribbons were remarkably becoming—shouldn’t wonder if other Judges than Judge Loring thought “our Gal” very good looking. Arrived at the pond, sliding became the order of the day. Misses Kate Selfridge and Susie Sargent were last seen with Mrs. Howe between them, like two little steam-tugs towing out a seventy-four. The 74 went down (on the ice) and the tugs scattered. Mr. Henry Marion (Bunker) Howe distinguished himself by a bump on the head, Mr. Bradford went about like a dear old Puss in Boots. After a good deal of slip-sliding, the party adjourned to the Hotel, where hot lemonade was demanded, drunk, and paid for, the young ladies supplying the spirits. The ride home was chiefly remarkable for the hearty cheering of sleighs and dirt-carts and hissing of toll-gate men.
Among our friends and playmates was Mary Adams, the youngest daughter of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. The town residence of the family was in Mount Vernon Street, only a stone’s-throw from the State House. It was a simple brick structure, of the fashion then prevailing. That early style of architecture gave an air of solidity and dignity not always found in the more ornate fashions of to-day. The Adams house was built in the English-basement style, the pleasant dining-room looking out upon Mount Vernon Street. Like the neighboring residences, it stood some twenty or thirty feet back from the sidewalk, a paved court leading up to the door and giving the abode a certain air of privacy and retirement. Spacious parlors ran across the entire front of the second story, the building being a wide one. At the rear, a ball-room had been built on, and I remember a delightful children’s party there. To say that we played at “pillows and keys” with John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., has a historic, almost a presidential sound.
At supper there was a ring in the cake, an essential feature of these juvenile entertainments. We drew lots out of a silk hat, and the prize fell to my share. As the slips were not folded up, “Ring,” written on one larger than the rest, was plainly discernible to my youthful eyes. The recording angel suggests in mitigation that greater care should have been taken to disguise that royal slip!
In the Adams’ nursery we had many merry times with our paper dolls and other toys. The favorite doll in that day was “Jenny Lind,” with changes of dress showing all the operatic rôles in which the famous prima donna had appeared.
I fear these recollections of mine will seem strange to those people who have heard that Boston society was opposed to theater-going in the ’Fifties and ’Sixties. There was, in some families, a disapproval of the theater, and certain of our young friends were not allowed to go to the play—save at the Boston Museum. This was considered a family place of resort, and many persons came to see performances there who would not have thought it right to go to a regular theater. The children liked to arrive early and to examine all the curiosities including the wax-works, which were terrible, yet fascinating. It seems strange now to think that a group representing the murder of a well-known Bostonian should have been exhibited here.
Boston people then dined at half past two o’clock, on the return of the children from school, business men coming home across the Common for the meal, and going back to their offices afterward. The dinner hour at the Adams’ was a little later, three o’clock, and this seemed in keeping with a certain stateliness that characterized the family, as well as great cordiality and hospitality. I remember that there was a profusion of silver plate, and all the appointments were handsome. A closed buffet with glass doors and glass shelves seemed to me especially elegant. Mr. Adams sat at the head of the table and carved, as the heads of families did at that time. I remember him as a quiet and dignified gentleman, yet kindly rather than stern. Doubtless we youngsters were impelled to behave well in his presence, yet I do not remember being afraid of him, as we should have been of an unkind or tyrannical man.
How quiet and primitive was the dear old Boston of that day! As girls of eight and ten years we loved to romp and play on the Common, tumbling about on the grass and having little feasts of strawberries in the small thimble-shaped baskets wherein those delectable berries were then sold. How delightful it would be, some of us thought, to have a real picnic on the State House steps!
The supplies having been secured from our respective homes, we met on the steps of Massachusetts’ Capitol, but, alas! unwelcome guests came too. Various boys of our acquaintance, led by Brooks Adams, the youngest of the family, appeared upon the scene, and we reluctantly beat a retreat, the boys forming a skirmish-line and hovering around us and our provisions. After this feat of daring we were never allowed to have picnics again within the city limits.
When summer came, the Adamses removed to the old family mansion in Quincy, and here, too, sister Julia and I had the pleasure of visiting them. I am afraid we did not think much about the presidential memories connected with the house, which was certainly a delightful one. On the second floor was a spacious drawing-room, only opened, I think, for state occasions. It was furnished in yellow damask, and I have a dim memory of family portraits as we sported about among the cushions.
Evidently the sturdy spirit of the old Adamses was not wanting to their descendants, and with Master Brooks we had some conflicts (he was seven or eight at this time). Perhaps we, being so many girls, in some way infringed upon his rights.
The older sons of the house, John Quincy and Charles Francis, Jr., were at this time students at Harvard College, or had recently graduated there-from. They were genial, witty and delightful, and showed great kindness to their little sister and her friends. Of course we were only too well pleased to listen to the conversation of such clever and agreeable young men, though too youthful to have developed much feminine coquetry. Yet it was a salve to our pride that we were considered old enough to be worthy any notice from such brilliant people. Master Brooks did not appreciate us as his elder brothers did.
“Green Peace” was not more than eight miles distant from Quincy. My father was extremely fond of riding on horseback and often took us with him. The younger generation of the Adamses were also fond of this exercise, hence we used occasionally to join forces and pace through the lovely country lanes together. By this time I had attained to the dignity of semi-young-ladyhood. An untoward event attended our return from one of these expeditions. As our hospitable hosts detained us to “high tea,” it was dark when we went to the gate to remount our horses, and one of the young gentlemen, in putting me on my palfrey, landed me on the horse’s neck. When this disaster was discovered every one laughed heartily, while I crawled back into the proper position, feeling my youthful dignity somewhat diminished.
My father, who was active in the councils of the Republican party and who was a friend of Charles Francis Adams, once called to see him about some matter connected with his approaching election to Congress, if I remember aright. We were received in the wonderful mahogany room. The existence of this was not known until recent times, when some workmen accidentally discovered beneath the plaster a wall of solid mahogany reaching from floor to ceiling. The plaster was removed and the mahogany paneled and varnished, thus making a beautiful and unusual interior.
Mrs. Charles Francis Adams was a fine-looking woman whose bright black eyes bespoke keenness of mind as well as geniality and vivacity of temperament. At the time of which I speak, her hair was jet black and worn in the smooth bandeaux then fashionable. Both in appearance and in disposition she formed a contrast with her distinguished husband, who was already bald and gray, with blue eyes.
Brother Harry and sister Laura went at this time to a school kept by Miss Susan Hale, a sister of Edward Everett Hale. Harry had been from his tenderest years an extremely mischievous child. If Miss Hale punished him by putting him in the closet, some damage to the clothing hanging there was sure to result. Laura was a very good and amiable little girl, and conscientious as well.
Nevertheless, when she was about five years old a curious indisposition was wont to attack her as the time approached for starting for school. With the brutal penetration of the older sister, I saw that this was only “shamming.” But the elders were more lenient. The child perhaps might not feel well, so she was allowed to remain at home. As soon as the rest of us had departed she recovered her health with surprising promptness!
In extenuation of this little piece of innocent deception it should be said that she was rather a delicate child.
She, as well as Julia, developed a literary turn of mind very early. When only five years old she delighted the rest of us by reciting “Annie of Lochroyan” and other ballads from _Thalatta_, a book of which we were all fond. A little later, when she went to the school kept by Mr. Henry Williams, he called her in to read before the older girls, for the instruction of the latter. Dear, good man, he did not realize the naughtiness of girls. They made the child’s life miserable by teasing her after this event.
I have already mentioned some of our foreign teachers. Among these was a German, Dr. D——, who had ten children and, as I think, no servant. Yet he told us that he never wanted to dine out, as his wife was such a good cook. This seemed to me a little hard on that good woman. He had the habit of learning, before breakfast, one hundred words of some foreign language! Evidently he was a man of attainments but not of scientific accuracy.
One could pardon, as a poetic flight of fancy, his statement that the mastodon—or some other extinct beast—was as large as the Institution for the Blind. But when it came to the price of cows, that was another matter. He made a misstatement on this subject to the blind boys, some of whom were country lads, and thus lost their confidence. Possibly they were unjust, for the learned professor might have confused German and American prices!
VIII
THE AGASSIZ SCHOOL
_Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz.—Prof. Alexander Agassiz.—Papanti’s Dancing-school.—I Invent Fancy Dances.—We Swim, Skate, and Ride on Horseback.—Boston’s Purple-glass Windows._
AMONG the pleasant friends who came to “Green Peace” were Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz. Thus it naturally happened that I was sent to the Agassiz School. The journey from South Boston to Cambridge took so long, in those days, that I gave it up after three months’ trial. As I was then only twelve years of age, I did not fully appreciate the advantages offered by the school—advantages of which girls from distant parts of the United States were very glad to avail themselves. The special feature of the school, however, even the youngest pupils were old enough to enjoy. Who could help enjoying the closing hour of the day when the scholars assembled in the big class-room to listen to a delightful talk from the lips of the great naturalist himself? As he stood before the great blackboard, now drawing figures, now explaining to us the development of the little animals whose growth forms the coral reefs, the movement of the glaciers, or the reason of the gradual recession of Niagara Falls, we sat listening to his words with eager interest. He adapted himself to our youthful comprehension with the utmost ease—or, if there was any effort made, it was not an apparent one.
A great charm of these talks was that in them the professor brought us the fresh fruits of his own experience. He had personally investigated the glaciers before coming to America. The theory that they had once covered the earth originated with him, if I remember aright. He had also visited the coral reefs. I have understood from Prof. Alexander Agassiz that his father’s views about these were not fully accepted by later scientists. To the lay mind it would appear that Science is almost as fickle as Fashion!
Of Darwinism Professor Agassiz was a vigorous opponent. The new doctrine seemed to him irreconcilable with the idea of a divine Providence, and would, he feared, destroy the faith of mankind. Professor Agassiz and Professor Asa Gray found themselves diametrically opposed on this question. There is a legend of a lively meeting between them in Cambridge, where words almost led to blows!
An account of the Agassiz School would be incomplete if it did not mention the Agassiz omnibus, a white, high-stepped vehicle which took its winding way through the thoroughfares of old-fashioned Boston, calling for the girls at streets and places which have now vanished into the past like the old ’bus itself, or, if they exist at all, exist only as soulless business streets, with great granite blocks of shops replacing the dear old houses shaded by lofty trees.
The purple-glass windows which they had inherited from an earlier generation (some are still to be seen on Beacon Hill) furnished indisputable proof of the wonderful virtue of early Boston boys, or of the extreme watchfulness of Puritan parents.
While there were some very studious girls, about whose profound learning wonderful stories were whispered, who patronized the Agassiz omnibus, there were also fashionable and rather frivolous young ladies among our number—who danced at balls and parties in the evening and as a natural consequence came to school very tired in the morning. Human nature in mid-Victorian days was very much as it is now. One sad memory is indissolubly connected with the Agassiz omnibus. It relates to the hats I wore—and to those which, had fate permitted, I should have liked to wear. The views of my dear mother on the subject of headgear differed from those of her neighbors. In Boston the sumptuary laws of this period prescribed that your hat should be as nearly as possible the exact ditto of that worn by every other woman and girl in the town. During this particular spring white-straw bonnets, trimmed with green ribbon outside and pink ribbon inside, were the regulation wear. Now blue was my color, and my bonnet was garnished with a ribbon of bluish gray tint, more becoming to me than the universal pink. I was prepared to accept this variation from type, the bonnet being pretty in itself. But, alas! this was not the worst. Our mother also had an idea that round hats were more suitable for school-girls than bonnets. Accordingly, I was provided with a brown straw shade-hat, the brim of which seemed huge to my excited imagination. It was expected that I should wear this to school, reserving the bonnet for best.
I adopted the desperate expedient of wearing my winter bonnet out of the proper season. Oh, how I scrutinized the girls, as they entered the omnibus, to see how many still wore their winter bonnets! Several obligingly did so, but their number became daily less. At last I was driven from the burrow—or trench—of that velvet bonnet and obliged to come out into the open. A few times I tremblingly wore the huge round hat—the only one in the stage. Once or twice I took refuge in the Cambridge street-cars—but here lurked the danger of Harvard students with their critical eyes. At last I boldly put on the Sunday blue bonnet. What if it did fade and wither from too frequent exposure? At least I should be saved from wearing the despised round hat!
Even then, however, there were exceptions to this sumptuary law, practised in Cambridge itself, had I only known it.
It was perhaps in this very year, 1858, that Charles Francis Adams, Jr., then a student at Harvard, drew upon himself a remonstrance from his fellows on account of his headgear, to which he made the following reply:
_“An Adams can wear any sort of hat he wishes.”_
His fellow-student, my brother-in-law, related this story to me many years afterward, in a grieved spirit. I assured, him that Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was right. Certain families of the Hub possessed at that date a prescriptive right to dress as they pleased, every one knowing who they were.
Young Mr. Adams, far from showing conceit, was simply illumining the way for us all in the direction of personal independence.
The Agassiz School was held in the professor’s own pleasant house on Quincy Street, Cambridge, very near Harvard College. Probably the older girls were conscious of this fact, but I was too young to bear it much in mind. The students whom I met occasionally in the street seemed to me great and august beings. Time, however, brings its revenges. In later life, when my sons were undergraduates, I had occasion to revisit Cambridge. The students no longer inspired me with awe; whether they were afraid of me or not I cannot say.
In his charming wife Professor Agassiz had a most efficient helpmeet who entered into all his plans and followed his work with loving zeal and intelligence. Mrs. Agassiz, who survived her husband for many years, was a very charming woman. She had a noble and whole-souled nature, which one fancied was contagious, for the moment at least. I think it would have been impossible to do a mean thing while in her company.
In the days of the Agassiz School she was still a young woman, and we all felt that she was the presiding genius of the establishment as she flitted from room to room in her pretty, trim morning dress and cap with its fresh flowing ribbons, which seemed to correspond so well with the sweetness and freshness of her disposition. She heard the lessons of the younger pupils, but I am sure that she exercised a sweet and wholesome influence over all the scholars, old and young.
Prof. Alexander Agassiz taught in his father’s school. I remember him in those days as a handsome, rather melancholy-looking young man who was suspected of being afraid of the biggest girls. Not long afterward he married one of them, Miss Anna Russell, daughter of my father’s old chum, George Russell. Prof. Alexander Agassiz was much more reserved and grave than his father, whose genial temperament was full of warmth and sunshine. Occasionally he also gave us a lecture.
During many years of his life, Louis Agassiz worked through a great part of the night, sleeping very late in the morning. It is said that one Sunday morning Mrs. Agassiz, while dressing for church, suddenly called out, “Agassiz! there is a snake in my boot!” To which the Professor drowsily replied, “I wonder where the others are!”
I remember a lecture where he showed us an orange to represent a sea-urchin. With a sudden movement he opened the fruit, which we then saw had been cut, into the form of a starfish, thus showing the relationship between the two types of creatures, and the audience burst into applause.
In 1859 our parents made a visit to the West Indies which our mother described in _A Trip to Cuba_. We children stayed with various relatives and friends, Mrs. Charles H. Dorr, at that time living in Jamaica Plain, hospitably receiving me. I thus came to know the young girls living in that pleasant suburb, and to attend the school of Miss Lucia M. Peabody. The double attraction was so strong that I was willing to take the trip of some six miles daily, for more than three years, walking from South Boston to the Jamaica Plain horse-car in Boston.
Miss Peabody not only loved study herself, but made it attractive to others. She was an excellent teacher, to whom I owe much gratitude.
If it had not been for Charlotte Bowditch, I should have been the first scholar in arithmetic. But Charlotte, who was a granddaughter or great-niece of the famous navigator, was hopelessly ahead of us all. This was an excellent thing for my vanity.
Among my school memories is that of a very extraordinary dictionary belonging to one of my friends. The learned German—he must have been a German—who compiled it had evidently been imposed upon by some wag. Thus the synonyms for “to die” were given as “to kick the bucket,” “to hop the twig,” “to go to Davy Jones’s locker.” I do not think the book was vicious, but it abounded in slang. Perhaps it was prepared for the use of sailors in foreign ports!
Our physical culture began early. We learned to swim without especial instruction, each one of us following out his or her own ideas, brother Harry keeping his head under water, sister Julia paddling dog-fashion, I swimming on my back.
We learned to ride very young, beginning with José, a little Spanish donkey presented to us by Albert Sumner, a brother of Charles. He had been for some years the mount of Mr. Sumner’s daughter Kate, and was an animal of high character. In his letter of introduction Mr. Sumner duly sets forth José’s many excellent traits, mentioning also that as he came from Barbary he must be a pure Barb! He was a gentle animal, but possessed of the amiable determination characteristic of his species. He never bit, kicked, nor scratched, but he was a person of dignity and his movements were marked by great deliberation. The only way in which we could coax him out of a walk was to run before him, holding out a piece of bread. This soon became fatiguing to the advance courier.
When we had a children’s party, he was brought out for the entertainment of the visitors. José did not like to have strange children on his back, and could tell at once when the reins were in the hands of an inexperienced rider. In this case he would turn toward the fence, putting his head and forefeet under the lowest board. He thus obliged the child either to dismount or to come in contact with the fence. Sometimes he would vary the proceedings by running to the barn.
Indeed, running away was one of José’s accomplishments, so inconsistent is donkey nature. The fences at South Boston were from time to time adorned with little posters bearing the legend: “Lost—a small brown donkey. The finder will please return him,” etc.
Once my brother Harry, who was perhaps eight years of age, received an official letter beginning, “Sir, your ass is in the pound.”
José was from time to time the shrine of a singular pilgrimage. A group of people, bearing a child sick with whooping-cough, would arrive at “Green Peace” and ask to interview our donkey. The parents took their station, one on each side of José, and passed the child to each other three times over and under the animal. In order to make the cure complete, a piece of bread was put in the donkey’s mouth and then given to the child. The superstition rests on the theory that the donkey is a sacred animal, since Christ once rode on him; witness the cross upon his back.