THE OLD CORNER
The human heart loves corners. The very word "corner" is suggestive of snugness and cosy comfort, and he who has no liking for them is something more or less than mortal. I have seen people whose ideas of comfort were singularly crude and imperfect; who thought that it consisted in keeping a habitation painfully clean, and in having every book or paper that might give token of the place being the dwelling of a human being, carefully out of sight. We have great cause for thankfulness that such people are not common, (for a little wholesome negligence is by no means an unpleasant thing,) so that we can say that mankind generally likes to snuggify itself, and is therefore fond of a corner. This natural fondness is manifested by the child with his playthings and infantile sports, in one of which, at least, the attractions of corners for the feline race are brought strongly before his inquisitive mind. And how is this liking strengthened and built up as the child increases in secular knowledge, and learns in the course of his poetical and historical researches all about the personal history of Master John Horner, whose sedentary habits and manducation of festive pastry are famous wherever the language of Shakespeare and Milton is spoken!
This love of nooks and corners is especially observable in those who are obliged to live in style and splendour. Many a noble English family has been glad to escape from the bondage of its rank, and has found more real comfort in the confinement of a Parisian entresol than amid the gloomy grandeur of its London home. Those who are condemned to dwell in palaces bear witness to this natural love of snugness, by choosing some quiet sunny corner in their marble halls, and making it as comfortable as if it were a cosy cottage. Napoleon and Eugenie delight to escape from the magnificence of the Tuileries to that quiet and homelike refuge for people who are burdened with imperial dignity, amid the thick foliage and green alleys of St. Cloud. Even in that mighty maze, the Vatican, the rooms inhabited by the Sovereign Pontiff are remarkably comfortable and unpalatial, and prove the advantages of smallness and simplicity over gilding and grandeur, for the ordinary purposes of life. An American gentleman once called on the great and good Cardinal Cheverus, and while talking with him of his old friends in America, said that the contrast between the Cardinal's position in the episcopal palace of Bordeaux and in his former humble residence when he was Bishop of Boston, was a very striking one. The humble and pious prelate smiled, and taking his visitor by the arm, led him from the stately hall in which they were conversing, into a narrow room furnished in a style of austere simplicity: "The palace," said he, "which you have seen and admired is the residence of the Cardinal Archbishop of Bordeaux; but this little chamber is where John Cheverus lives."
Literary men and statesmen have always coveted the repose of a corner where they might be undisturbed by the wranglings of the world. Twickenham, and Lausanne, and Ferney, and Rydal Mount have become as shrines to which the lover of books would fain make pilgrimages. Have we not a Sunnyside and an Idlewild even in this new land of ours! Cicero, in spite of his high opinion of Marcus Tullius, and his thirst for popular applause, often grew tired of urban life, and was glad to forsake the Senatus populusque Romanus for the quiet of his snug villa in a corner of the hill country overlooking Frascati. And did not our own Tully love to fling aside the burden of his power, and find his Tusculum on the old South Shore? In the Senate Chamber or the Department of State you might see the Defender of the Constitution, but it was at Marshfield that Webster really lived. Horace loved good company and the entertainment of his wealthy patrons and friends, but he loved snugness and quiet even more. In one of his odes he apostrophizes his friend Septimius, and describes to him the delight he takes in the repose of his Tiburtine retreat from the bustle of the metropolis, saying that of all places in the world that corner is the most smiling and grateful to him: —
Ille terrarum mihi præter omnes
Angulus ridet.
If we look into our hearts, I think we shall most of us find that we have a clinging attachment to some favourite corner, as well as Mr. Horatius Flaccus. There is at least one corner in the city of Boston, which has many pleasant associations for the lover of literature. Allusion was made a few days since, in an evening paper, to the well-known fact that the old building at the corner of Washington and School Streets was built in 1713, and is therefore older by seventeen years than the Old South Church. That little paragraph reminded me of some passages in the history of that ancient edifice related to me by an ancestor of mine, for whom the place had an almost romantic charm.
The old building (my grandfather used to tell me) was originally a dwelling-house. It had the high wainscots, the broad staircases, the carved cornices, and all the other blessed old peculiarities of the age in which it was built, which we irreverently have improved away. One hundred years ago the old corner was considered rather an aristocratic place of residence. It was slightly suburban in its position, for the town of Boston had an affection for Copp's Hill, and the inhabitants clustered about that sacred eminence as if the southern parts of their territory were a quicksand. Trees were not uncommon in the vicinity of the foot of School Street in those days, and no innovating Hathorne had disturbed the quiet of the place with countless omnibuses. The old corner was then occupied by an English gentleman named Barmesyde, who gave good dinners, and was on intimate terms with the colonial governor. My venerated relative, to whom I have already alluded, enjoyed his friendship, and in his latter days delighted to talk of him, and tell his story to those who had heard it so often, that Hugh Greville Barmesyde, Esquire, seemed like a companion of their own young days.
Old Barmesyde sprang from an ancient Somersetshire family, from which he inherited a considerable property, and a remarkable energy of character. He increased his wealth during a residence of many years in Antigua, at the close of which he relinquished his business, and returned to England to marry a beautiful English lady to whom he had engaged himself in the West Indies. He arrived in England the day after the funeral of his betrothed, who had fallen a victim to intermittent fever. Many of his relations had died in his absence, and he found himself like a stranger in the very place where he had hoped to taste again the joys of home. The death of the lady he loved so dearly, and the changes in his circle of friends, were so depressing to him, that he resolved to return to the West Indies. He thought it would be easier for him to continue in the associations he had formed there than to recover from the shock his visit to England had given him. So he took passage in a brig from Bristol to Antigua, and said farewell forever, as he supposed, to his native land. Before half the voyage was accomplished, the vessel was disabled: as Mr. Choate would express it, a north-west gale inflicted upon her a serious, an immedicable injury; and she floated a wreck upon the foamy and uneven surface of the Atlantic. She was fallen in with by another British vessel, bound for Boston, which took off her company, and with the renewal of the storm she foundered before the eyes of those who had so lately risked their lives upon her seaworthiness. When Mr. Barmesyde arrived in Boston, he found an old friend in the governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. Governor Pownall had but lately received his appointment from the Crown, and being a comparative stranger in Boston, he was as glad to see Mr. Barmesyde as the latter was to see him. It was several months before an opportunity to reach the West Indies offered itself, and when one did occur, Mr. Barmesyde only used it to communicate with his agent at Antigua. He had given up all ideas of returning thither, and had settled down, with his negro servant Cato, to housekeeping at the corner of School Street, within a few doors of his gubernatorial friend.
Governor Pownall's term of office was not a long one, but even when he was removed, Mr. Barmesyde stuck faithfully to the old corner. He had found many warm friends here, and could no longer consider himself alone in the world. He was a man of good natural powers, and of thorough education. He was one of those who seem never to lose any thing that they have once acquired. In person he was tall and comely, and my grandfather said that he somewhat resembled General Washington as he appeared twenty-five years later, excepting that Mr. Barmesyde's countenance was more jolly and port-winy. From all I can learn, his face, surmounted by that carefully-powdered head of hair, must have resembled a red brick house after a heavy fall of snow. If Hugh Barmesyde had a fault, I am afraid it was a fondness for good living. He attended to his marketing in person, assisted by his faithful Cato, who was as good a judge in such matters as his master, and who used to vindicate the excellence of his master's fare by eating until he was black in the face. For years there were few vessels arrived from England without bringing choice wines to moisten the alimentary canal of Mr. Barmesyde. The Windward Isles contributed bountifully to keep alight the festive flame that blazed in his cheery countenance, and to make his flip and punch the very best that the province could produce. Every Sunday morning Mr. Barmesyde's best buckles sparkled in the sunbeams as he walked up School Street to the King's Chapel. Not that he was an eminently religious man, but he regarded religion as an institution that deserved encouragement for the sake of maintaining a proper balance in society. The quiet order and dignity of public worship pleased him, the liturgy gratified his taste, and so Sunday after Sunday his big manly voice headed the responses, and told that its possessor had done many things that he ought not to have done, and had left undone a great many that he ought to have done.
Mr. Barmesyde was not a mere feeder on good things, however; he had a cultivated taste for literature, and his invoices of wine were frequently accompanied by parcels of new books. The old gentleman took a great delight in the English literature of that day. Fielding and Smollett were writing then, and no one took a keener pleasure in their novels than he. He imported, as he used to boast, the first copy of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary that ever came to America, and was never tired of reading that stately and pathetic preface, or of searching for the touches of satire and individual prejudice that abound in that entertaining work. His well-worn copy of the Spectator, in eight duodecimo volumes, presented by him to my grandfather, now graces one of my book shelves. His books were always at the service of his friends, who availed themselves of the old gentleman's kindness to such an extent that his collection might have been called a circulating library. But it was not merely for the frequent "feast of reason and flow of soul" that his friends were indebted to him. He was the very incarnation of hospitality. I am afraid that my excellent grandparent had an uncommon admiration for this trait in the old fellow's character, for a frequent burning twinge in one of the toes of my right foot, and occasionally in the knuckles of my left hand, reminds me of his fondness for keeping his legs under Mr. Barmesyde's festive mahogany. A few years ago, when a new floor was laid in the cellar at the old corner, a large number of empty bottles was discovered, whose appearance bore witness to the previous good character of the place as a cellar. Some labels were also found bearing dates like 1697, 1708, 1721, &c. To this day the occupants of the premises take pleasure in showing the dark wine stains on the old stairs leading to the cellar.
But Mr. Barmesyde's happiness, like the gioia de profani, which we have all heard the chorus in the last scene of Lucrezia Borgia discordantly allude to, was but transient. The dispute which had been brewing for years between the colonies and the mother country, began to grow unpleasantly warm. Mr. B. was a stanch loyalist. He allowed that injustice had been done to the colonies, but still he could not throw off his allegiance to his most religious and gracious king, George III., Defender of the Faith. He was ready to do and to suffer as much for his principles as the most ardent of the revolutionists. And he was not alone in his loyalty. There were many old-fashioned conservative people in this revolutionary and ismatic city in those days as well as now. The publication in this city of a translation of De Maistre's great defence of the monarchical principle of government, (the Essay on the Generative Principle of Political Constitutions,) and of the late Mr. Oliver's "Puritan Commonwealth," proves that the surrender of Cornwallis and the formation of the Federal Constitution did not destroy the confidence of a good many persons in the truth of the principles on which the loyalists took their stand. The unfortunate occurrence in State Street, March 5, 1770, gave Mr. B. great pain. He regretted the bloodshed, but he regretted more deeply to see many persons so blinded by their hatred of the king's most excellent majesty, as to defend and praise the action of a lawless mob just punished for their riotous conduct. The throwing overboard of the tea excited his indignation. He stigmatized it (and not without some reason on his side) as a wanton and cowardly act, – a destruction of the property of parties against whom the town of Boston had no cause of complaint, – a deed which proved how little real regard for justice and honour there might be among those who were the loudest in their shrieks for freedom. Of course he could not give utterance to these sentiments without exciting the ire of many people; and feeling that he could no longer safely remain in this country, he concluded to return to England. In the spring of 1774, Hugh Greville Barmesyde gave his last dinner to a few of the faithful at the old corner, and sailed the next day with a sorrowing heart and his trusty Cato for the land of his birth. He spent the remainder of his days in London, where he died in 1795. He was interred in the vault belonging to his family, in the north transept of the Parish Church of Shepton Mallet, in Somersetshire, where there is still a handsome tablet commemorating his many virtues and the inconsolable grief of the nephews and nieces whom his decease enriched.
Some of the less orderly "liberty boys" bore witness to the imperfect sympathy that existed between them and the late occupant of the old corner, by breaking sundry panes of glass in the parlour windows the night after his departure. The old house, during the revolutionary struggle, followed the common prosaic course of ordinary occupancy. There was "marrying and giving in marriage" under that steep and ancient roof in those days, and troops of clamorous children used to play upon the broad stone steps, and tarnish the brasses that Cato was wont to keep so clean and bright. In the latter part of the last century the old house underwent a painful transformation. An enterprising apothecary perverted it to the uses of trade, and decorated its new windows with the legitimate jars of various coloured fluids. It is now nearly half a century since it became a bookstore. Far be it from me to offer any disturbance to the modesty of my excellent friends, Messrs. Ticknor and Fields, by enlarging upon the old corner in its present estate. It were useless to write about any thing so familiar. They are young men yet, and must pardon me if I have used the prerogative of age and spoken too freely about their old establishment and its reminiscences. I love the old corner, and should not hesitate to apply to it the words of Horace which I have quoted above. I love its freedom from pretence and ostentation. New books seem more grateful to me there than elsewhere; for the dinginess of Paternoster Row harmonizes better with literature than the plate glass and gairish glitter of Piccadilly or Regent Street.
The large looking-glass which stands near the Washington Street entrance to the old corner used to adorn the dining-room where Mr. Barmesyde gave so many feasts. It is the only relic of that worthy gentleman now remaining under that roof. If that glass could only publish its reflexions during the past century, what an entertaining work on the curiosities of literature and of life it might make! It is no ordinary place that may boast of having been the familiar resort of people like Judge Story, Mr. Otis, Channing, Kirkland, Webster, Choate, Everett, Charles Kemble and the elder Vandenhoff with their gifted daughters, Ellen Tree, the Woods, Finn, Dickens, Thackeray, James, Bancroft, Prescott, Emerson, Brownson, Dana, Halleck, Bryant, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell, Willis, Bayard Taylor, Whipple, Parkman, Hilliard, Sumner, Parsons, Sprague, and so many others whose names will live in literature and history. It is a very pleasant thing to see literary men at their ease, as they always are around those old counters. It is a relief to find that they can throw off at times the dignity and restraint of authorship. It is pleasant to see the lecturer and the divine put away their tiresome earnestness and severe morality, and come down to the jest of the day. It refreshes one to know that Mr. Emerson is not always orphic, and that the severely scholastic Everett can forget his elegant and harmonious sentences, and descend to common prose. For we can no more bear to think of an orator living unceasingly in oratory than we could of Signorina Zanfretta being obliged to remain constantly poised on the corde tendue.
The bust of Sir Walter Scott has filled the space above the mirror I have spoken of, for many years. It is a fine work of Chantrey's, and a good likeness of that head of Sir Walter's, so many stories high that one can never wonder where all his novels came from. Except this specimen of the plastic art, and one of Professor Agassiz, there is little that is ornamental in the ancient haunt. The green curtain that decorates the western corner of the establishment is a comparatively modern institution. It was found necessary to fence off that portion of the shop for strict business purposes. The profane converse of the world cannot penetrate those folds. Into that sanctissimum sanctissimorum no joke, however good, may enter. What a strange dispensation of Providence is it, that a man should have been for years enjoying the good society that abounds at that corner, and yet should seem to have so little liking for a quiet jest as the estimable person who conceals his seriousness behind that green curtain!
But every thing must yield to the law of nature, and the old corner must share the common lot. Some inauspicious night, the fire-alarm will sound for District III.; hoarse voices will echo at the foot of School Street, calling earnestly on No. 3 to "hold on," and No. 9 to "play away"; where erst good liquor was wont to abound water will more abound, and when the day dawns Mr. Barmesyde's old house will be an unsightly ruin, – there will be mourning and desolation among the lovers of literature, and wailing in the insurance offices in State Street. When the blackened ruins are cleared away, boys will pick up scraps of scorched manuscripts, and sell them piecemeal as parts of the original copy of Hiawatha, or Evangeline, or the Scarlet Letter. In the fulness of time, a tall, handsome stone or iron building will rise on that revered site, and we lovers of the past shall try to invest it with something of the unpretending dignity and genial associations of the present venerable pile, which will then be cherished among our most precious memories.