Memories of a happy life

Front matter

MEMORIES OF A forsee Y, DIRE

WILLIAM LAWRENCE Bishop of Massachusetts

MEMORIES OF A HAPPY LIFE.

Preface

THE pressure of my family and friends started me on this book: the fun of writing it has carried me through.

Was there ever such an interesting seventy-five years as this last? How can any one who has lived through them with eyes and ears open and friendliness all about him escape having memories that he enjoys sharing with others?

This is not a formal autobiography: it has not the required dignity: nor the solemnity that oppresses some examples of such literature. These pages are simply the jottings of one who has led rather an active life for over seventy-five years and who has been blessed beyond measure. During the writing my three bugbears have been egotism, dullness, and injustice to others. I hope that I have avoided them. At all events, I have tried to be myself.

Scores of-loyal friends and fellow workers, too many to name, have been in the back of my mind as J have written. In turning these pages they will recognize the times and scenes wherein they have given me their guidance, cheer, and support.

To me the surprising feature of life is that it becomes more interesting as one grows older. And a lifelong Christian faith suffuses the later years with serenity and hope.

WILLIAM LAWRENCE Bar Harsor, MAINE August, 1926 ay ; Bie oh ba a if ny ry: y igh vie oe a ii ial nN an iah! j nN PS APH i WSL Leda SW Ri an é ae Wh ii / one

Uae if atte ee ti by

} i

r ah Ab a ( heim i P pe lege i Pe f ; } veh At a

Mi rhe tual 7 ",

Contents

My Stock AnD BoyHoop

» STUDYING FOR THE Ministry: 1871-1875 . Lire 1n LawrENcE: 1876-1883

. CONSECRATION AS BISHOP AND TAKING UP THE

Chapter I My Stock And Boyhood

PEMBERTON SQUARE, Boston, in 1850 was a quiet pocket of the City’s West End, where dwelt about thirty families of the well-to-do but not richer citizens. Here resided young couples who had fortunes ahead of them, and older people who had saved enough to live comfortably. Here I was born, May 30, 1850. |

My ancestors on both sides, Lawrence and Appleton, were born on Massachusetts farms or in the villages. They tilled the soil, pastured the cattle, kept exact accounts of the farm and stock, were pious and careful to attend meeting on the Sabbath. On the Lawrence side, their farm at Groton sloped down from Farmers’ Row almost a mile to the Nashua River, and, as they went to the barn to milk the cows, they looked across the valley and saw the sun set behind the hills between Wachusett and Monadnock. On the 19th of April, 1775, my great-grandfather, Samuel Lawrence, heard the voice of his neighbor, Colonel William Prescott and his command, ‘Samuel, notify your men, the British are coming.’ He mounted the Colonel’s horse, notified his men, reported to the Colonel, marched with his company to Cambridge, and at Bunker Hill received through his beaver cap a British bullet which cut off a lock of his hair.

Both sides of my ancestry had a fair proportion of ministers. My great-grandfather Adams, minister of the First Church, Roxbury, died from exposure in preaching out-of-doors to the soldiers in the Revolution. My great-grandfather Appleton’s grave is under the shadow of the

Meeting House at Brookfield, where he was pastor. Both my grandfathers came to Boston in their youth to seek their fortunes. Neither of them had more than a few dollars; but they brought character and talents, inherited and acquired, with them. These they adapted to city life, revealing exceptional ability in business and in making and keeping their fortunes, while still retaining their love of the country, economical habits, piety, and a habit of liking people. Amos Lawrence and William Appleton became known throughout Boston for integrity, ability, and public spirit. The latter served the country with distinction in Congress.

My father, Amos Adams Lawrence, who had been married eight years when I was born, had already responded to his ancestral love for the country by buying with his brother William some ninety acres of land two and one half miles west of Boston. My mother never cared for the country, but was persuaded that it would be better for the children. My grandfather, Amos Lawrence, lived on the corner of Tremont and West Streets, where the Lawrence Building now stands. From that corner towards Boylston Street was Colonnade Row —a block of the most dignified and comfortable houses in Boston, with colonnade porches and balconies from which we children saw the great processions. Behind the brick wall on West and Mason Streets was the fruit garden. Within the house were old-fashioned furniture, big four-posted beds, and for cooking an open fire with crane and a brick oven beside the fireplace. Sunday beef never tasted so good as that roasted before the fire, and the apple pies baked in the brick oven can never be forgotten. Across the Common, halfway down Beacon Hill, William Prescott, the historian, and my grandfather Appleton built adjoining houses, still standing. They also had a colonnade and balcony from which we children saw the soldiers marching to save the Union in 61.

It seemed a long drive from the Common to our house in Longwood, for just beyond Charles Street the blocks of houses stopped. The Public Garden was then a dirty waste, and at Arlington Street was the city dump, where ashes and other refuse were thrown by tipcarts into the Back Bay. In Revolutionary days there was no way except by ferry from Boston to Brookline, or to Cambridge, except over Boston Neck, through Roxbury, and across the bridge away up the river. The old milestone which used to stand in Harvard Square and is now in the corner of the near-by graveyard says, ‘Eight miles to Boston, A.D. 1734. In order that Paul Revere might ride direct to Lexington, he waited with his horse on the Charlestown side of the water and was signalled by lanterns from the Old North Church. Dawes rode his horse around over the Neck.

Some years before we moved out to Longwood, a causeway had been constructed running west from the dump at Arlington Street through the water to the marsh land where Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue now intersect. This was Beacon Street, but in those days was always called ‘The Mill Dam.’ On the south side was the Back Bay, and on the north the Charles River. A plank walk ran along the south side of the road and a line of poplar trees. Driving out from Boston on a winter day was a cold trip. The northwest wind swept down the Charles River valley unobstructed, and the great mass of snowy ice caused by the tides on the flats gave the scene an Arctic look, for Cambridgeport was well back of the river across water and marsh. To the south one’s vision swept across the Back Bay to the Neck two miles away, and the Roxbury Meeting House stood out against the sky. Through holes cut in the ice men were spearing eels, and boys were skating. Halfway across the Dam was the tollgate, where every team and carriage stopped to pay toll: and just beyond, where at flood tide the Charles rushed in under a cut in the road to fill the Back Bay, and at ebb tide rushed out again, were the mill and the mill-wheel which ground corn hauled in from Brookline and Newton by the farmers. At the fork the “Brighton Road’ ran out where

Commonwealth Avenue now is, and the ‘Punch Bowl Road’ to the left, leading to the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brookline. Straight out Beacon Street, we drove over the marshes, crossing the Boston and Worcester — now the Albany — Railroad tracks. Over the road was a great sign, ‘Railroad Crossing: Look out for the Engine while the bell rings.’ On reaching the solid land we turned up to the right to ‘Cottage Farm’ where my father built our house. There was but one cottage in that whole district: hence the name. Houses in those days were built of wood, and the air-tight stove had succeeded the ancient open fireplaces. Mr. George M. Dexter, the architect of our house, had made a study of English country houses; he had taste, but little experience on the financial side of building. The result was that my father built what was for those days a beautiful English house of Roxbury pudding-stone, with large open fireplaces and a great hall, really unique in its time. In front was an open lawn, behind, a large grove of oaks. When, however, the extra bills came in, my father protested, then yielded; paid them, and threw them all, receipted, into the fire.

The neighborhood is now closely built up, and is almost a part of the city. Our grove, lawn, and garden are gone: the stone house has been lifted and turned on its axis: but from 1851 we, my father and mother and seven children, lived there. From it went the brides, and to-day the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren play in the hall; but the oak burning in the great fireplaces comes from the grove no longer. Suburban life had hardly begun then. Although less than three miles from the State House, we were really in the country. My father rode his horse every day into the city. Mother drove in when necessary. Our carriage, drawn by a pair of big gray horses, was a large English coach with C springs, a great brocaded coachman’s box, massive lamps heavily mounted with silver, and with platform and straps at the back for the footman. We drove out from Boston on Christmas evenings, as is described in my father’s diary: “At ten we left for home; nine inside the carriage, and myself riding as footman behind.’

We attended a little school in a one-storied shanty at the corner of Beacon and Carlton Streets; and later my brother Amory and I walked to the Brookline public schools, across the fields over two miles away. Cut off as we were in our early years from the advantages of the city, our life had its compensations; and our habits and education were independent of city customs. Early hours, country games, and habits of industry were natural.

Breakfast was at seven o'clock, by candlelight, for we had no gas. Before that, however, my brother and I had blacked the family boots in the cellar, for which we were paid five cents a pair; for my father believed that the best way to set a right value on money was to earn it; and in many forms of labor we added to our savings bank account. Occasionally an extra dividend camein. When, for instance, a heifer calf was born, father claimed it; but when a bull calf, we claimed it, and sold it to the butcher for five dollars. My brother Amory and I had ponies, but only so long as we fed and cleaned them; and this was no slight work before school, for in spring and autumn the grammar school in Brookline began at eight o’clock. Most of the boys at school were of New England stock; the rest were Irish — no other race was represented. One of my most intimate friends was Dan Miley, the son of a day laborer.

Boys and girls were whipped at school in those days. I never saw that it did much good, for the same four or five were. always whipped, made stubborn, and put in a temper which in time brought another licking. How still the whole room was as the teacher picked up his heavy ruler from the desk, took the disobedient boy into the side room, and shut the door! Then we could hear him say, ‘Hold out your hand,’ and down came the ruler — one, two, three; sometimes a howl, sometimes stubborn silence — four, five, up to twenty and thirty; and out came the boy crying or simply sullen. If cries would not come, then the hand was turned over, and the blows fell on the back of the hand, and even then John Griggs’s stubborn endurance could not be broken. Sometimes the women teachers did the whipping. A thrill went through the room one day when a pretty new teacher called into the side room a popular but stubborn girl who refused to hold out her hand, and the teacher beat her across the eyes. We missed the teacher from her desk the next day. The School Committee had acted.

The only real physical discipline that I had was from my brother Amory. He was two years older than I, strong and fat. My temper was hot and quick, and I struck out in a second. He would then push me down, sit on me, pinion my arms under him while I wriggled and turned and fought. But there he sat quietly and for what seemed to me an eternity, getting up only after I had cooled off and promised humbly not to do it again.

When we were not riding over the country or playing games in the afternoons, we were with the men on the place, or the carpenters and masons. Unconsciously we gained information, friendship, a spirit of democracy, and a liking of people as such. Our own carpenter’s bench and tools made us ‘handy,’ so that through life I have had a real interest in the details of carpentry, plumbing, and house building. I believe that some of the present conditions of education, the private boarding-school, and the concentration of boys’ interests on certain sports have very great disadvantages. Boys do not have the chance to meet, like, and respect all sorts of people, or gain that handicraft, faculty of observation, and general intelligence which come only by experience.

Our fruit garden was a constant source of interest. Old Maloney, the gardener, who was always smoking his clay pipe, taught us to prune and graft. As the grapes did not flourish, father thought of a unique way of enriching the soil. Being a lover of horses, and a persistent rider, he was stirred with anger and pity at the cruel treatment of many working horses. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had not been thought of in those days, and it was difficult to get a man arrested for cruelty; so father bought many a worn-out horse and shot him. At the Brighton Cattle Market every Thursday there were usually decrepit horses for sale. One day he told Maloney to dig a deep and large trench the whole length of the grapevine trellis: then he rode to Brighton, bought nine horses at from $2.50 to $10 apiece, and had the limping, sore-covered beasts driven to the garden. Maloney led one and another and another on the edge of the trench: father shot him and Maloney covered him in. Thus the soil was in time enriched and the crops of grapes increased while the horses were released from suffering.

In 1856, the North was deeply angered by the cowardly blow of Preston Brooks, Congressman from South Carolina, upon the back of Senator Sumner’s head. The issue of slavery was rising fast. My father was a conservative and not a supporter of Sumner. This, however, was a national issue. Hence, when Sumner, partially recovered, came on his triumphal tour to Boston, he was taken from the train at Cottage Farm Station and rested over Sunday at our house. On Monday he drove over the Roxbury Neck to Boston amidst the cheers of the people.

The Prince of Wales made a tour of the country in 1860. We in these days are so accustomed to the reception of distinguished foreigners, even of royalty, that we have no conception of the interest and enthusiasm aroused throughout the country by the Prince. He too stopped at Cottage Farm, and I remember well the attractive young man as he drove through our avenue.

The Revolution was only twenty years farther away from us than the Civil War is from the boys of to-day. In our grove we found remains of earthworks, soldiers’ buttons, and Indian graves; across the Charles River was a fort where cannon still stood for the defense of Boston; and at church, Colonel Aspinwall, who had lost his arm in the war of 1812, made the history of our country very real.

I wonder if the boys of 1914 to ’18 have as vivid a memory of the World War as I still have of the years of the Civil War.

In politics my father was a conservative, a Whig, a strictly Union man who believed that the Union could be preserved and slavery gradually abolished by peaceful means. In 1856-58 Kansas was the center of the struggle. Would her people vote for slavery or freedom? The South poured in a horde of men; the New England Emigrant Aid Company recruited families and sent them to Kansas to settle and vote for a free State. My father, as treasurer, advanced and begged money for the cause and threw himself into the fray with such vigor that later, when Kansas was organized, its capital was named ‘Lawrence,’ and Lawrence University, to which he gave the first endowment, was afterwards made the State University. He worked in order that in legal ways and by a majority vote Kansas should be free. He deplored the savage methods of the Abolitionist John Brown; and yet he could not help admiring the fanatic. I remember that as he sat down to dinner one day he said, ‘John Brown came into my office to-day and I told him to go to Whipple’s to have his daguerreotype taken; he may be famous some day.’ Later he joined a few others in paying for counsel for John Brown, that he might have a fair trial.

The nomination of Abraham Lincoln threw everybody, schoolboys as well as voters, into parties. Father, as a Whig, supported the Union Party, not the Republican, and indeed allowed himself to be nominated for Governor, sure, however, of defeat. The majority of the boys at school backed ‘Abe the rail-splitter,’ and had on their jackets a pin with a little hatchet and three rails: at all games they stood the rest of the school and always beat. Torchlight parades were at their best in those days, for with street lamps of oil, or feeble gas, the torches and lanterns shone out gloriously; the ‘Wide Awakes’ with white rubber capes were Republicans. We, of the conservative minority, lived a disappointed life, although one Bell and Everett procession did pass through our avenue, stop at oat ie soso

WILLIAM APPLETON Crayon drawing by Cheney in 1843 he 7 AS Seve ett

*. 7

¢ 7 a e Pi * r J * oo) . »

Pena a JI he j oA : oy BAL th be a

“- 4.

‘ y eis . + i “) a eb ) - r< 4 : y E ie - Wig ¥ os on vere op pet ss ~ : rr iy es F iz A ee LP, * F. ‘ fa < wh diane *, a4 APary te oh % « a hAeptie

‘ 1 FY th : - * ' - a “t a4 Pie) ‘ 1 ty ’ ‘ \ oe ae a ae F Z 7 OOF - : P . “i Ae .¥ ) on : . . 4 O 4 pe the front porch, and salute my father, as candidate for Governor. From Lincoln’s election to his inauguration were more anxious days than we youngsters knew. Very few anticipated war; but no one dared prophesy. After the inauguration events moved fast, and when, on April 6th, Fort Sumter was fired upon, the whole North awoke to the danger. Even then, however, few realized what was coming. My grandfather Appleton, who had lately retired from Congress, had started south by sea, and, happening to be entering Charleston Harbor, he heard the guns and then saw the surrender of Fort Sumter. By the courtesy of General Beauregard he visited the fort, then in Confederate hands, and, continuing his trip through the country, was entertained by Southern friends and came home. He and others could not believe that the South was really committed to rebellion. The shot of Sumter sounded, however, in the ear of every man and boy in the North, and on the moment political differences were wiped out. The Union was in danger, and every loyal man sprang to action. Colonel Salignac’s Zouaves with blue uniforms and red caps drilled in our grove and where the Braves’ Ball Field now is; my father, twenty years older than the rest, marched and drilled with them, and we boys, setting a barrel on our pony wagon filled with lemonade, served as sutlers. The Boston Cadets guarded the magazine across the river in Cambridgeport at the end of Magazine Street, and we carried them green vegetables and fruit. The Militia gathered on the Common and in the halls of Boston and were quickly shipped to Washington that Massachusetts might be first in the field. We children stood on the bank of the Worcester, now the Albany, Railroad, just behind our grove, and cheered the Sixth, as they went their journey through Baltimore to spill their blood on Lexington Day, the 19th of April. We walked into Boston to see the first volunteer regiment, of which my cousin, Sam Green, was assistant surgeon, and Company A, mostly from Brookline. When after review they came to ‘rest,’ the crowd burst through the ropes, and embraced every soldier of the regiment. Our blood boiled with anger at the death of Colonel Ellsworth, of the New York Zouaves, shot by a tavern-keeper as Ellsworth was hauling down a rebel flag: and we thrilled with patriotism at the order of General Dix, ‘If any man hauls down the Union flag, shoot him on the spot.’

The Brookline Rifles was organized, made up of boys armed with real but miniature rifles. Captain Moore of the Army was drill-master, and Moses Williams, captain. School drill was unheard of then. We went to various towns to show the school committees what boys could do. A committee from the Legislature, appointed to study the question of drilling in public schools, came out to the Brookline Town Hall to inspect us. I was twelve years old at the time, one of the drummer boys.

At the Brookline Town Meeting, father presented the committee’s report putting the Town on a war footing, and in the evening he drilled the townspeople. In the mornings, after an early breakfast, he mounted his horse and rode over to Harvard College, of which he was treasurer, to drill the students. He taught some of them single-stick and broadsword. With Colonel Henry Lee he recruited the Second Cavalry. How vividly I remember looking through the crack of the dining-room door and seeing Colonel Lowell and his staff, Major Caspar Crowninshield, Henry Russell, and others, who were then, and always remained to us, heroes! Bull Run sent a shock through the hearts of boys and men; we all scraped lint; and-on the news of Gettysburg, as we came out of Sunday morning service, every man, woman, and child set to work tearing sheets, tablecloths and napkins, making bandages and sending them to the front. The battle of the Monitor and the Merrimac was as if that of David and Goliath had taken place at Hampton Roads. Censors were unknown then. The country did not have to wait long days and weeks before getting news of the battle. But the very next day the

apers were filled with reports and personal experiences. Lists of killed and wounded direct from the field were

MY STOCK AND BOYHOOD Il scanned by every man and woman of the land. Fathers took train and went to the battle-field to find their boys. The story of Oliver Wendell Holmes, ‘My Hunt after “The Captain,”’ is a bit of true history, very real to us boys; the ‘Captain’ is now an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court in Washington. |

In the winter of ’62, father took Amory and myself to Washington. We passed a Sunday in Philadelphia, and heard the young preacher, Phillips Brooks, who was stirring the city. After service, his tall figure stood over us, as my father talked of the six Brooks boys in Saint Paul’s Church, Boston, and claimed him as one of his Sunday-School class.

In the station at Baltimore we heard cheers, and then saw the first squad of exchanged prisoners just arriving from Libby Prison, some of the Twentieth Massachusetts, emaciated, ragged, holding up pieces of maggoty bread which they had brought as evidence of their treatment. The low ceilings of all the cars were pierced with bayonet holes. Tired soldiers lay in the aisles, while the closed stoves at both ends of the cars sent forth a headaching heat.

Our rooms in Washington looked out on Pennsylvania Avenue. In the morning began a six-hour long procession of army wagons, each drawn by six mules or four horses, covered with Virginia and Maryland mud, going to the storehouses for supplies, and back they passed in the afternoon. Washington was knee-deep in mud, and the few Government buildings stood in the midst of a squalid city, magnificent then only in plan and distances. Willie, the President’s favorite son, had died the day before we arrived, so that we missed seeing Mr. Lincoln, a loss which I have always regretted. Colonel Lee and Major Revere, of the Twentieth Massachusetts, just from Libby Prison, were being welcomed by their friends. Confusion seemed to reign; officers and orderlies galloped here and there, throwing mud in every direction; office-seekers and ne’erdo-weels from every part of the country jostled modest heroes, and anxious and mourning parents who had come to learn about their boys.

System makes for efficiency, but shuts out much personal experience. To-day boys are roped a hundred yards away from a house on fire; in my day we rushed into the house, helped save the stuff, and then watched the roof fall in. In the World War the people worked at a distance and through great organizations; in the Civil War we were in the midst of things.

In the sixties Harvard College and the public schools, except the Boston Latin, had but little relation to each other. Hence in 63 Amory and I, leaving the Brookline Grammar School, after some tutoring in Latin, went to Mr. Dixwell’s in Boylston Place, Boston, which was then the best fitting-school for Harvard. The boys presented Huntington Wolcott, who left his desk for the War, with a sword, and within a few weeks we gathered at his bier. He was, like thousands on thousands of others, a victim to typhoid fever. He left Roger at the school to live to be the Governor of Massachusetts during the Spanish War. We studied our Latin and Greek grammar, learned interminable lists of exceptions to rules, and in spite, no doubt, of the best teaching of that time, those of us who were of only average ability got a distaste for the classical authors for whose enjoyment we had struggled through the grammar. In the spring of ’65 the sound of drum and music warned Mr. Dixwell and the school that a returning regiment was passing and we ran out to Boylston Street, saw the bronzed and thin faces of the officers and men, their stained and worn uniforms, and cheered the tattered flags which now stand in the State House. The news of Lincoln’s death is so vivid to me now that I recall just where I stood and the voice of the man, a stranger to me, who told me.

During my early childhood our summer cottage at Lynn stood on the bank where our view had the sweep of Long Beach, Nahant, Egg Rock, and the open Atlantic. William Prescott, the historian, John Lowell, who founded ‘the

Lowell Institute Lectures, Benjamin R. Curtis, a leader at the bar, and merchants like Nathan Appleton and Benjamin T’. Reed had estates whose lawns sloped down to the ocean. Later, my father bought Clark’s Point at Nahant where Amory and I sailed our boat and rode our horses. At Cupid’s Rock all Nahant boys and men in the garb of nature bathed and dived. Cabot Lodge’s father had bought the old hotel estate on East Point, and to the indignation of his neighbors gradually closed what they felt was a public right of way.

As the bowling-alleys and stables of the old hotel were still standing, we boys, Cabot Lodge, Frank Chadwick, Sturgis Bigelow, and Frank Amory, amused ourselves smashing the windows and were chased over fence after fence by Cabot’s gardener. Smashing windows was, I am inclined to think, a favorite amusement; for it was our custom in riding over the Mill Dam on the bus to and from Dixwell’s School to break the street lamps with our catapults: a harmless amusement in our minds until we saw posters upon fences offering twenty-five dollars reward for the arrest of lamp-glass breakers. Though still conscious that it was a harmless amusement, we thought it advisable to stop. In the sailing races, a Beverly boy, a schoolmate and friend, always beat the rest of us— Edward Burgess, who through boyhood and college was deeply interested in the study of bugs, moths, and butterflies; drawing sketches, figuring their speed and the curves of their wings. He also studied the models of his boats and improved them each summer. It was he who in later years modelled the Puritan, the Mayflower, and the Volunteer, and thus set this country to the fore in international yachting.