The early years of the Saturday Club, 1855-1870

Front matter

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Contents

Introductory . . xi

I. The Attraction i

II. 1855-1856. The Saturday Club is Born: Also the

Chapter I THE ATTRACTION Redeunt satumia regna

Virgil, Eclogues

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 the New England heavens, ascending, was seen as a group, gave increasing light and cheer here and to the westward-journeying sons and daughters; reached our zenith; even began to be reported by star-gazers beyond the ocean. .-a ■' «*

These brave illuminators, — poets, scholars, statesmen, workers in science, art, law, medicine, large business, and good citizenship, — by the fortune of the small area of New England and its few centres of ripening culture, were more easily drawn together.

In the summer of 1855, eleven of these agreed to meet for monthly dinners in Boston. They soon drew friends with genius or wit into their circle. *

When the often asked question comes up, — Why did so many men suddenly appear in that generation, eminent in their various callings, using their gifts nobly for the public good, simple livers withal; and why, with another half century's immense advantages and opportunities, nothing like it has appeared in this country ^ — an answer might be hazarded something like this: The struggle for existence, in the new country, with untamed nature and man in the seventeenth century; in the eighteenth, the first only lessened and the second increased by the French and Indian neighbours, and later, by the oppression of the mother country; then, early in the nineteenth, a modified repetition of the latter, and the general poverty resulting from both. Over and above all this struggle for life and scant comfort, leaving no time for literature, science, and art, not only did the prolonged danger and the expense of crossing the ocean forbid enlightening travel to all except a few merchants and statesmen, but villages and smaller towns were practically shut off from the larger centres, now cities.

But at the time when most of these gifted men of the Eastern States were growing boys, the years of danger, famine, and extreme struggle had gone by, a moderate prosperity had come, stage-lines were established on the roads, ships were better, schools and colleges were improved and the latter not regarded mainly as training places for ministers and teachers; religion was assuming a milder and more human form, which softened life In the homes. Some good libraries, beside those In the colleges, were established, — the fame of new books, and then the books, crossed the sea, there was time to read, also eager appetite, only sharpened by indulgence and by the references to other authors in Great Britain and on the European continent. Through Coleridge, attention was turned to German philosophy, and Schiller's and Lessing's verse, and, through Carlyle, to Goethe.

Aspiring young scholars — George Ticknor, the Everetts, Bancroft, Cogswell, Frederick H. Hedge, Charles T. Brooks of Newport — went to pursue their studies in Germany, while students of medicine and natural science — as Holmes, Bigelow, Charles T. Jackson — went to Paris, as also did art students like William Morris Hunt, — and others, like Crawford, Powers, and Story, to Rome — visiting England on the way. Others went for general culture, like Prescott, Sumner, Longfellow, Cabot, and Parkman. Their horizon and their field of literature were broadened. They had seen art and culture; also oppression, and brave men struggling towards liberty. Full of new emotions, they returned home, now aware of America's deficiencies, but exulting in her opportunities. They became teachers in various fields, and their influence, reinforced by many patriot refugees from Germany, like Dr. Follen and Francis Lleber, was inspiring to the young generation.

A general spiritual and intellectual awakening which seemed in

The Attraction the air, gained force from this enHghtening influence. Eager study, more valiant and original writing, combinations for discussion began; communities gathered in brave hope to make life more sensible, many-sided, higher in its plane; reforms of every sort were urged and tried, the fruitful one of which was that against Slavery.

But concerning the New Englanders born in the first third of the nineteenth century, it is essential to keep in mind this fact, that, to these more cheerful and independent descendants of Pilgrims or Puritans, life was still serious, amusement occasional and secondary; they still lived in the presence of the unseen; they worshipped, and went apart for solitary thought; many of them came in contact with life's stern conditions, largely served themselves and practised self-denial and were familiar with economic shifts; they were hardier than we, and the few rich ones would be now deemed only in very moderate circumstances. Duty walked beside them from childhood. The struggle against the then aggressive and advancing institution of Slavery, and the vast war in which this culminated, sobered and yet inspired, in its later days, that generation.

On that crisis followed the growth of the country, its prosperity, the miracles wrought by Science in every occupation, and in the house, — also wider relations. We all know too well the resulting hurried and complicated life, the high pressure in work and in play, favourable to quick wits and athletic bodies and great national achievement, — unfriendly to the higher promptings of the Spirit in solitude, and the finer perceptions guiding life and colouring production. The later generation does its task bravely, but it is of a different kind, and does not meet the same wants. The old ground now lies fallow. In time its better crop should spring up.

But, to go back a little, in "the thirties" and "the forties," as part of the general awakening, revolution began to appear here and there in education, religion, social and political institutions, for new questions and impulses came to the consciences of the wise, and also of the unwise, and these had to be considered and perhaps tried. Such times are uncomfortable, but had to be gone through, for insistent propagandists thronged the roads of New England, and John Baptist voices would be heard.

But in the early "fifties" times were pleasanter to live in. The reforms had been sifted. Questions like Fourierite communitylife, extreme vegetarianism and avoidance of slave-labour products, abolition of domestic service, — even of money, and of marriage, — had been considered and dismissed. Temperance had met with a gratifying degree of success. Conscience had won away from the old Whigs a large and strong party, Anti-slavery people were no longer despised, and imperious Southern rule was now realized and increasingly opposed. All this made for peace and more genial social relations here when the new ideas had passed the crude stage. And yet to have been born and to have come into active thought and deed in those years of strong and conflicting tidesof intellect and conscience, surely moved and strengthened the characters of many of the men of whom this story treats.

THE DESIRE AND THE FORESHADOWING

Certain foreshadowings of our Club appear by 1836. Mr. Emerson's and Mr. Alcott's journals during this period record frequent gatherings at private houses in Boston, Concord, or Medford for interchange of thought, apparently without regular organization, — friends meeting and inducing other friends to come, — yet the name "Symposium" seems to have been used for such a gathering. The meetings were by day to suit country members, but such an hour naturally limited the attendance to scholars, clergymen, writers, and men of leisure, and no refreshments were served. Among the men whose names I find, more than one half were or had been clergymen —-- Rev. Ephraim Peabody, Rev. Frederick H. Hedge, Rev. Convers Francis, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. William Henry Channing, Rev. Theodore Parker, Rev. Cyrus A. Bartol, Rev. Caleb Stetson, and, then unfrocked, George Ripley, John Sullivan Dwight, George Partridge Bradford, Orestes Brownson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the laymen were Amos Bronson Alcott, James Elliot Cabot, Jones Very, sometimes Henry James, Thoreau once at least. Six of these were, later, members of the Saturday Club. Here then were sublime speculation, theology, metaphysics, scholarship, poetical aspirations, and philanthropy. But though music also was represented by

The Attraction

Dwight, and Cabot, beside his philosophy, was interested in art and in natural history, one feels that the metaphysical fencing was sometimes tedious to all but the swordsmen, and that Alcott's lofty and long flights out of sight from the plane of the understanding, and ignoring its questions, might have vexed these; that the aggressive Parker's blows at beliefs as they were must have troubled the more delicate Ephraim Peabody and George Bradford, and Emerson too, in spite of his respect for him. In short, that such a group needed lightening, dilution, lubrication by wit, humour, helles-lettres^ art, the advance of science, and to be more in touch with the active life of the world.

At about the time when the Symposia languished, perhaps about 1844, Emerson wrote in his journal, "Would it not be a good cipher for the seal of the lonely Society which forms so fast in these days, — two porcupines meeting with all their spines erect, and the motto, *We converse at the quills' end'?"

From perhaps too constant association with philosophers and reformers, Emerson, about the time when the Symposia ceased, was finding great refreshment and pleasure in a friendship with Samuel Gray Ward, a young man of high aspirations, careful breeding, much natural gift for and knowledge of art, and entirely at home in society and literature. A series of letters, given below, show the foreshadowing and the gradual evolution of the Saturday Club. Six years before its existence Emerson was talking over with his friend a scheme of a more genial nature than the Symposia for a Town-and-Country Club, where lonely scholars, poets, and naturalists, like those of Concord, might find a welcome resting-place when they came to the city, and meet there, not only other scholars and idealists, but also men of aflfairs, and others with the ease and refinement and cultivated tastes that society and travel had given them.

Emerson was in England in 1847 and 1848, and in the latter year writes to Ward thence of the literary and society men he had met: "They have all carried the art of agreeable sensations to a wonderful pitch; they know everything, have everything; they are rich, plain, polite, proud, and admirable, but, though good for them, it ends in the using. I shall, or should soon, have enough of this play for my occasion. The seed-corn is oftener found in quite other districts. But I am very much struck with the profusion of talent."

The above letter was one of many written to him by Emerson, which Mr. Ward, a year or two before his death, sent to Mr. Norton to help on the history of the Club, introduced as follows. Mr. Ward wrote : —

Washington, March 27, 1906.

My dear Norton: —

As soon as I found by your letter that you and Edward Emerson are in search of material for the History of the Saturday Club, it occurred to me that, some years ago, in reading over Emerson's letters, I found more than one reference to its beginning, and, on sending for the letters to look the matter up, the first thing I laid my hand upon are the enclosed letters which go back to the very beginnings.

I find by the letter (Emerson's), 5th of October in that year [1849], what I had entirely forgotten, that the first suggestion came from me, and you will see how warmly Emerson took it up and made it his own.

But a letter, written three months before the one which Mr. Ward alludes to, shows that the Town-and-Country Club was not altogether a failure in his friend's mind; also that it included five future members of the Saturday Club besides himself: —

Concord, 12 July, 1849.

My dear Ward: —

The Club is not so out at elbows as your friend fancied, for besides other good men whom I do not remember, Cabot was there, who is always bright, erect, military, courteous, and knowing, a man to make a club.

Then Edward Bangs, Edward Tuckerman, Hawthorne, a good Atkinson whom Cabot brings, Hillard, Lowell, Longfellow, and other men of this world, have all shown themselves once, and, with a little tenderness and reminding, will all learn to come. There

The Attraction 7

is a whole Lill's Park also with tusks and snakes of the finest descriptions.^ Belief is the principal thing with clubs, as well as in trade and politics, and already we have such good elements nominally in this, that the good luck of a spirited conversation or one or two happy rencontres^ could now save it. Henry James of New York is a member, and I had the happiest half-hour with that man lately at his house, so fresh and expansive he is. My view now Is to accept the broadest democratic basis and we can elect twenty people every month, for years to come, and yet show black balls and proper spirit at each meeting. So, pray you to shine with all your beams on our young spirit. . . .

Yours affectionatelv,

From the next three letters it would seem that Ward had proposed the formation of a smaller, perhaps a dining club, including certain members of the former one, who would be comfortable and genial as well as wise convives. Emerson gladly falls in with the plan, but, loyal to Alcott, proposes him as one. The Channing he desires is not the whimsical Concord poet, but his good and enthusiastic cousin, Rev. WiUiam Henry Channing. i

Concord, September 12, 1849.

My dear Ward : —

. . . You will be in town in the winter, — it is a great happiness, — and will know how to extract the club of the club. Cabot, Channing, Alcott, Hillard, Longfellow, Edward Bangs, there are many bright men whom the sHghtest arrangement would assemble, — perhaps to the comfort of all, — can they not bring their cigars to the Club Room, or to the next room on a given evening.'' In these days, when Natural History is so easily paramount, I should put most trust, as I myself should certainly prefer, that the nucleus of the company should be savants. But Tuckerman,^ I believe, is

* Lili's Park is a half-humorous, poetic, autobiographic allegory of Goethe's, in which he represents himself as a bear in subjection to Lili's charm.

* Edward Tuckerman, Professor of Botany at Amherst College. Dr. Asa Gray called him the most profound and trustworthy American lichenologist of his day.

in Europe, and Desor ^ is gone exploring. These people are a veryclear, disinfecting basis. But I wish to see you and Cabot.

Ever yours,

R. W. Emerson.

Very probably Mr. Ward had answered Mr. Emerson's letter of September 12 and suggested that some of the men mentioned by him, especially Alcott, would not help in general good fellowship, and suggested in his letter a more congenial company.

Here follows the letter which Mr. Ward spoke of in his letter to Norton : —

5th October, 1849.

I should be delighted with your plan of a circle, if it can be brought about; but I fear I am the worst person that could be named, except Hawthorne, to attempt it. If Tom Appleton were here, and had not lost all his appetites, he is a king of clubs — but I suppose he is full. Cabot, Bangs, ^ and William [Henry] Channing are the men I should seek, and Henry James of New York, if he were here, as he used to talk of coming. . . . He is an expansive, expanding companion and would remove to Boston to attend a good club a single night.

Again he writes : —

I was in town an hour or two yesterday, thoughtless of Christmas, when I left home, and was punished for my paganism by not finding you, and not finding any one with whom I had to do, at their posts. But for your Club news, it is the best that can be. I saw Bangs two or three days ago, and Bradford^ on Sunday. Both heard gladly, but both made the same doubt — they had

^ Edward Desor, a young Swiss naturalist and geologist, met Agassiz at Neufchatel in 1837 and became his collaborator in his Alpine studies. Ten years later, he came with Agassiz to the United States and was Agassiz's assistant in his researches at Lake Superior. He returned to Switzerland in 1852.

* Edward Bangs, a lawyer and man of agreeable presence and literary tastes.

' George Partridge Bradford, a scholar and teacher, genial and refined but excessively modest. He was the brother of Mrs. Samuel Ripley, Mr. Emerson's aunt by marriage, and great friend.

T^he Attraction nothing to bring. Yet they will doubtless both be counted in. Bradford did not know but he was home on some points; thought the Club had better give the supper, and not the members. Then there is always the same supper, and tender persons will not offer you wine, but the guilty, broad-shouldered Club only. Certainly it is better to have the Club the perpetual host, and not each bashful member. The persons named by Longfellow are doubtless desirable, Appleton in the superlative degree, but I suppose him all preoccupied. Yet Longfellow should know. Billings I do not know; nor Perkins; yet have no objections. Agassiz again I suppose quite too full already of society.. What night is best.'' Monday is freest. For me, I think Tuesday and Wednesday are inconvenient for [attending] the Club; Tuesday chiefly because our village Club of twenty-five farmers, &c., meets on that night and I do not wish to resign. But we must ballot for every night in the week, and for which has the most marks.

Ever yours,

R. W. E.

Saturday, 29 December. [1849.]

My dear Sam: —

I shall be in town Monday and will go to your office at 3 o'clock. Bradford named George Russell, and thought he would like to join. Rockwood Hoar, the new judge, is a very able man, and social ; do you know him t Eustis, ^ the new professor at Cambridge, Is said to be valuable, and I have always hoped to know Tuckerman, the botanist; who, I believe, is just now in Europe. I am not sure that I feel the need of pressing none but householders. Minors and cadets make better clubs, and I am usually willing to run the risk of being the oldest of the party. . . .

Yours,

R. W. E.

The dream now seems nearing realization, for Longfellow wrote in his journal, February 22, 1850: "Dined with Emerson at Lowell's. We planned a new club to dine together once a month."

* Henry Lawrence Eustis, Professor of Engineering in the Lawrence Scientific School.

lo "The Saturday Club

Emerson now felt encouraged, and wrote two days later to Ward: —

24 February, 1850.

I saw Longfellow at Lowell's two days ago, and he declared that his faith in clubs was firm. "I will very gladly," he said, "meet with Ward and you and Lowell and three or four others, and dine together." Lowell remarked, "Well, if he agrees to the dinner, though he refuses the supper, we will continue the dinner till next morning!" Meantime, as measles, the influenza, and the magazine appear to be periodic distempers, so, just now, Lowell has been seized with aggravated symptoms of the magazine, — as badly as Parker or Cabot heretofore, or as the chronic case of Alcott and me. He wishes me to see something else and better than the Knickerbocker. He came up to see me. He has now been with Parker, who professed even joy at the prospect offered him of taking off his heavy saddle,^ and Longfellow fosters his project. Then Parker urges the forming of a kind of Anthology Club: ^ so out of all these resembling incongruities I do not know but we shall yet get a dinner or a "Noctes."

Ever yours,

R. W. E.

* The short-lived l^ew England Magazine, of which Parker was editor.

* The Anthology Club was of men of letters which had existed in Boston in the early years of the century. Emerson's father was one of its members, and editor for a time of the journal, The Monthly Anthology, from which that club took its name.

Chapter II 1855-1856 ALSO THE MAGAZINE OR ATLANTIC CLUB

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook Unless the deed go with it.

Shakspeare

THOUGH the haze of remoteness and of failing memories had, even before the end of the last century, begun to obscure the origin of the Saturday Club, and also because of a misapprehension by outsiders very natural because of its personnel, it is still possible to discover through the dimness two threads between which this group of remarkable men oscillated for a time as a centre of crystallization. One was friendship and good-fellowship pure and simple. The other was literary, and involved responsibilities, namely, a new magazine. In each, as moving spirit, there was an active, well-bred, sociable man, eager for this notable companionship and with executive skill ready to manage the details of the festive meetings.

Two clubs actually resulted, and nearly at the same time. Of this, conclusive documentary evidence exists, some of which will be here given and some referred to. The membership of these clubs was, at first, largely identical. The merely friendly group soon became elective; somewhat later took the name the Saturday Club, increased much in size, in time was incorporated, and still flourishes, a pleasant, utterly informal company of men more or less eminent, dining, or rather having a long lunch, together on the last Saturday of each month, except July, August, and September. The other club, designed to interest the best authors in launching a really good magazine, might have been at first properly called the Magazine Club, but not until 1857 did it give birth, as will be told in detail, to the Atlantic Monthly j and, after that, the frequent

The Saturday Cluh simple meetings of the Atlantic Club were not long continued. At increasing intervals, however, the publishers gave notable banquets to the growing company of the magazine's contributors.

The men who brought the Saturday and the Magazine Club, — later, Atlantic Club, — respectively, into actual existence, but with quite differing purposes, must now receive their due credit.

Of Horatio Woodman, who really brought the Saturday Club into being, Mr. F. B. Sanborn tells that he came to Boston from New Hampshire,^ was a friend of the Littlehale family of whom Mrs. Ednah Cheney was one, and was introduced by her to Mr. Alcott. Very likely also Mrs. Cheney introduced him to Emerson. Mr. Woodman was a member of the Suffolk Bar; he was a bachelor, and had rooms probably first at the Albion Hotel on Tremont Street, where Houghton and Button's great store now stands; certainly, later, at Parker's hotel.

Mr. Woodman loved the society of men of letters, and was in the position and had the skill to bring them together now and then for a cheerful, leisurely dinner at a public house. From the testimony of Mr. Dana's journal, confirmed in almost every respect by Mr. Samuel G. Ward in conversation with Mr. Charles F. Adams, Jr., when he was writing Dana's life, the substance of the following account of the beginnings of the Saturday Club is drawn. Mr. Emerson very often left his study in Concord on a Saturday to go to the Athenaeum Library, call on friends, or see his publishers on business. He was Hkely to drop in at the original "Corner Bookstore" of Ticknor and Fields on the corner of Washington and School Streets, and Woodman would find him there, ask him where he was going to lunch, and suggest one of the good inns near by. Presently finding that Emerson, with the aid of his intimate but much younger friend, Sam G. Ward, had in mind the formation of a social dining club of friends, men of various gifts and attractions. Woodman worked gradually toward the realization of this hope, naturally In such a way as would include himself. He had an undoubted gift to manage the details of such a club.

* Mr. Woodman was born and brought up in Buxton, Maine, but may perhaps have taught school in New Hampshire,

Very probably other extempore dinners, arranged by Woodman, may have taken place earlier, but this letter Is the first record which I have found. About a year before the Saturday Club was really born, Dana wrote In his diary for 1854: —

"December 16. Dined at the Albion in a select company of Emerson, Lowell, Alcott, Goddard (of Cincinnati, lecturer), an English gentleman named Cholmondely (Oxford graduate), a clever and promising Cambridge student named Sanborn, and Woodman. It was very agreeable. Emerson Is an excellent dinner-table man, always a gentleman, never bores, or preaches, or dictates, but drops and takes up topics very agreeably, and has even skill and tact in managing his conversation. So, indeed, has Alcott; and it is quite surprising to see these transcendentalists appearing as men of the world."

In a later entry, in his diary, Mr. Dana, gives further evidence of these loose gatherings for Saturday dinners which Woodman made and managed pleasantly.

Another of these informal premonitions appears in the following letter from Woodman to Emerson: —

Boston, June 5, 1855.

Dear Mr. Emerson: —

At the Revere House on the evening when the surges from our end of the table broke in foam over you, Mr. Agasslz and Mr. Peirce agreed to join you, Mr. Whipple, and me over a beefsteak at Mrs. Meyer's ^ at half past 2, on Saturday next, when you said you would be there. Unless I hear from you, I shall surely expect you, because otherwise It would be getting them by false pretences.

They have such genuine and undogmatizing value, — Mr. Agasslz, especially, dips [jzV] so naturally and swallow-like from what Is profound to the highest trifle, that we ought to be thankful to meet them.

Really, I thought, as I talked with each in turn the other night,

' This was a good restaurant on Court Street nearly opposite Hanover Street. Mrs. Meyer was said to have been the sister of the elder Papanti, who taught three generations of Bostonians to dance.

of imagination, how few literary men among us had so much of it and could talk so closely and instructively of it.

Perhaps Richard H. Dana, Jr., may join, and of course any one else you think of, except that the stock of provisions- may be short without previous notice, if many more are invited.

Always truly yours,

Horatio Woodman.

But now comes on the scene Woodman's competitor, with a more serious end in view, which handicapped his desired club from the first; a man bright and genial and loyal, but who had a rather disappointing ending of his life, though not, like the other, sad and sudden. Our member, and my associate, Mr. Bliss Perry, thus pleasantly speaks of Francis H. Underwood: "A graceful writer, and a warm-hearted, enthusiastic associate of men more brilliant than himself. Underwood's name is already shadowed by . . . forgetfulness. . . . But he played the literary game devotedly, honestly, and always against better men. ... In 1853, when he was but twenty-eight, he conceived the notion of a new magazine. Some such project had long been In the air, as Is evident from the letters of Emerson, Alcott, and Lowell, but Underwood was the first to crystallize it. It was to be anti-slavery in politics, but was to draw for general contributions upon the best writers of the country. . . ." The contributors, Mr. Perry says, had already promised, and Underwood should have enjoyed the full credit of the enterprise. "Then came, alas, the hour of bitter disappointment. J. P. Jewett and Co, failed, and the magazine plans were abandoned. . . ."

Mr. Underwood then became associated with the firm of Phillips & Sampson and made himself valuable as their literary adviser and reader. Never letting drop from his mind his dream of a magazine in Boston superior to any that the country had« yet seen, he lost no opportunities of meeting with the New England authors, and it was he who organized, somewhat loosely, a dining club meeting at Parker's on Saturday afternoons. This jovial letter from Professor Felton of Harvard College shows how early these dinners began : —

Cambridge, Friday, Feb. 13, 1856.

In bed.

My dear Underwood : —

I am much obliged to you for taking the trouble of informing me of to-morrow's dinner — but It is like holding a Tantalus' cup to my lips. I returned 111 ten days ago from Washington, having taken the epidemic that is raging there at the present moment and have been bed-ridden ever since, living on a pleasant variety of porridge and paregoric. Yesterday I was allowed to nibble a small mutton-chop, but it proved too much for me and — here I am worse than ever. I have no definite prospect of dining at Parker's within the present century. My porridge is to be reduced to gruel, and paregoric Increased to laudanum. I am likely to be brought to the condition of the student in Canning's play;

"Here doomed to starve on water gru- El never shall I see the U- Niversity of Gottingen."

And never dine at Parker's again ! I hope you will have a jovial time; may the mutton be tender and the goose not tough; may the Moet sparkle like Holmes' wit; May the carving knives be as sharp as Whipple's criticism; May the fruits be as rich as Emerson's philosophy; May good digestion wait on appetite and Health on both — and I pray you think of me as the glass goes round.