WITH A GLIMPSE OF THE OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE.
By Barry Lyndon.
The great Boston fire of 1872 had a forerunner in the same city. In 1711 a most sweeping conflagration occurred, which burned down all the houses on both sides of Cornhill, from School street to Dock square, besides the First Church, the Town House, all the upper part of King street, and the greater part of Pudding Lane, between Water street and Spring Lane. Nearly one hundred houses were destroyed, of which the débris was used to fill up Long Wharf. The fire "broke out," says an account in the Boston News-Letter, "in an old tenement within a backyard in Cornhill, near the First Meeting-house, occasioned by the carelessness of a poor Scottish woman by using fire near a parcel of ocum, chips, and other combustible rubbish."
The houses which were rebuilt along Cornhill, soon after the fire, were "of brick, three stories high, with a garret, a flat roof, and balustrade." Several of these houses were still standing in 1825; in 1855 only a very few remained; while only one, so far as we know, has come down to us to-day and is yet even well-preserved, namely, the Old Corner Bookstore, on the corner of the present Washington and School streets.
This old house teems with historical associations, past and present. Under its roof Mrs. Anne Hutchinson was wont to hold her Antinomian séances, under the very nose of Governor John Winthrop, when "over against the site of the Old Corner Store dwelt the notables of the town,—the governor, the elder of the church, the captain of the artillery company, and the most needful of the craftsmen and artificers of the humble plantation; and at a short distance from it were the meeting-house, the market-house, the town-house, the school-house, and the ever-flowing spring of pure water."
The Old Corner Store is supposed to have been built directly after the fire of 1711. It is an example of what is known as the colonial style of architecture, and is thought to be the oldest brick building now standing in Boston. Upon a tablet on its western gable appears the supposed date of its construction, 1712.
After passing through several ownerships the house reverted, in 1755, to the descendants of the Hutchinson family. In 1784 it belonged to Mr. Edward Sohier and his wife Susanna (Brimmer), and was valued at £1,600. In 1795 it came into the possession of Mr. Herman Brimmer, and was designated in the first Boston Directory (1789) as No. 76 Cornhill. In 1817 the front part of the building was used as an apothecary shop, by Dr. Samuel Clarke, the father of Rev. James Freeman Clarke. In 1824 the name of Cornhill was changed to Washington street, and the old store was variously numbered until it took No. 135. Here Dr. Clarke remained keeping shop until 1828, when he was succeeded by a firm of booksellers. After he left, the building was considerably changed, inside and out, and Messrs. Richard B. Carter and Charles J. Hendee then occupied the front room as a bookstore, in 1828, and Mr. Isaac R. Butts moved his printing-office from Wilson's Lane to the chambers soon afterwards. Messrs. Carter and Hendee continued in the store until 1832, when they removed to No. 131, upstairs, and were succeeded by John Allen and William D. Ticknor in 1832-34. From 1834 the store was occupied by Mr. W.D. Ticknor alone until 1845; and subsequently by himself and partners, Mr. John Reed, Jr., and James T. Fields, until the spring of 1864, when the senior partner died. The new firm of Ticknor (Howard M.), Fields (James T.), and Osgood (James R.) remained at the Old Corner till 1867, when they removed to No. 124 Tremont street. Messrs. E.P. Dutton & Co. next moved into the Old Corner Store, and was succeeded, September 1, 1869, by Alexander Williams & Co. The store is now occupied, since 1882, by Messrs. Cupples, Upham, & Co., well-known book publishers.
It will be seen that the first appearance of the name of Ticknor, as in any way associated with the publishing of books, was in 1832. In the spring of 1864 Mr. William D. Ticknor visited Philadelphia in company with Nathaniel Hawthorne; was taken suddenly ill and died there. Shortly afterwards his eldest son Howard M. Ticknor, a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1856, was taken into the firm, which, under the name of TICKNOR & FIELDS, held a very prominent place among American publishers for over twenty years. During the period ending with the year 1867 the Old Corner was one of the best known spots in Boston, not alone by reason of its antiquity, but equally by reason of its distinguished literary history and its habitués. Here Charles Dickens and Thackeray used to loiter and chat with their American publishers; Lowell, Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, and Whipple the essayist, made it their head-quarters. Nearly all of their best-known writings, and those of Emerson, Hawthorne, Saxe, Winthrop, Bayard Taylor, Mrs. Stowe, Aldrich, Howells, and a host of other well-known authors, sooner or later bore the imprint of the house of Ticknor. After the failure of Messrs. Phillips, Sampson,& Co., the "Atlantic Monthly," first suggested by Mr. Francis H. Underwood, now United States Consul to Glasgow, passed into the hands of Ticknor & Fields, and, a little later, was added "Our Young Folks," edited by J.T. Trowbridge and Lucy Larcom, "Every Saturday," edited by T.B. Aldrich, and the "North American Review," long edited by James Russell Lowell.
Still later the firm name was Fields, Osgood, & Co., then James R. Osgood & Co., then Houghton, Osgood,& Co., and again James R. Osgood & Co. The last-named firm published a remarkable series of books, which their successors inherit.
At no time in its history, from 1832 to the present time, has the firm been without a Ticknor in its copartnership. For a brief season, however, the name disappeared from the firm's imprint.
The great publishing house has just inaugurated a new tenure of life as Ticknor & Co., the copartnership consisting of Benjamin H. and Thomas B. Ticknor, sons of William D. Ticknor, and George F. Godfrey, of Bangor, Me., a gentleman of marked culture and geniality, and one, too, who, all may rest assured, will take kindly to and will find success in the book business. With scholarly acquirements, and with minds trained to the wants of to-day, the sons of W.D. Ticknor, both gentlemen of refined literary taste, now step to the front with strong hands and vigorous purposes, not alone to perpetuate but to add to the former reputation of the time-honored publishing house.
The new house succeeds to a rich inheritance of the books of younger American authors,—those of Howells, James, Edgar Fawcett, Kate Field, Mrs. Burnett, Miss Howard, Julian Hawthorne, George W. Cable, and others. That it means to maintain the supremacy is foreshadowed by the list of important works which it has announced as forthcoming.