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.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THEATRE ALLEY
We are all associationists. There is no man who does not believe in association in some degree. For myself, I am firm in the faith. Let me not be misunderstood, however; I do not mean that principle of association which the late Mr. Fourier advocated in France, and Mr. Brisbane in America. I do not believe in the utopian schemes which have been ground out of the brains of philosophers who mistake vagueness and impracticability for sublimity, and which they have misnamed association. The principle of association to which I pay homage is one which finds a home in every human heart. It is that principle of our nature which, when the bereaved Queen Constance was mourning for her absent child, "stuffed out his vacant garments with his form." It is that principle which makes a man love the scenes of his boyhood, and which brings tears to the eyes of the traveller in a foreign land, when he hears a familiar strain from a hand organ, however harsh and out of tune. Even the brute creation seems to share in it; the cat is sure to be found in her favourite place at the fireside, while the tea kettle makes music on the hob; the dog, too, (let Hercules himself do what he may,) will not only have his day, but will have his chosen corner for repose, and will stick to it, however tempting you may make other places by a superabundance of door mats and other canine furniture. And the tired cart horse, when his day's labour is over, and he finds himself once more in the familiar stall, with his provender before him—do you not suppose that the associations of equine comfort by which he is surrounded are dearer to him than any hopes of the luxury and splendour of Her Britannic Majesty's stables at Windsor could be? Ask him if he would leave his present peck of oats for the chances of royal service, and a red-waistcoated, white-top-booted groom to wait upon him, and I will warrant you that he will answer nay!