Memories grave and gay

by Florence Howe Hall

While there were some very studious girls, about whose profound learning wonderful stories were whispered, who patronized the Agassiz omnibus, there were also fashionable and rather frivolous young ladies among our number—who danced at balls and parties in the evening and as a natural consequence came to school very tired in the morning. Human nature in mid-Victorian days was very much as it is now. One sad memory is indissolubly connected with the Agassiz omnibus. It relates to the hats I wore—and to those which, had fate permitted, I should have liked to wear. The views of my dear mother on the subject of headgear differed from those of her neighbors. In Boston the sumptuary laws of this period prescribed that your hat should be as nearly as possible the exact ditto of that worn by every other woman and girl in the town. During this particular spring white-straw bonnets, trimmed with green ribbon outside and pink ribbon inside, were the regulation wear. Now blue was my color, and my bonnet was garnished with a ribbon of bluish gray tint, more becoming to me than the universal pink. I was prepared to accept this variation from type, the bonnet being pretty in itself. But, alas! this was not the worst. Our mother also had an idea that round hats were more suitable for school-girls than bonnets. Accordingly, I was provided with a brown straw shade-hat, the brim of which seemed huge to my excited imagination. It was expected that I should wear this to school, reserving the bonnet for best.

I adopted the desperate expedient of wearing my winter bonnet out of the proper season. Oh, how I scrutinized the girls, as they entered the omnibus, to see how many still wore their winter bonnets! Several obligingly did so, but their number became daily less. At last I was driven from the burrow—or trench—of that velvet bonnet and obliged to come out into the open. A few times I tremblingly wore the huge round hat—the only one in the stage. Once or twice I took refuge in the Cambridge street-cars—but here lurked the danger of Harvard students with their critical eyes. At last I boldly put on the Sunday blue bonnet. What if it did fade and wither from too frequent exposure? At least I should be saved from wearing the despised round hat!

Even then, however, there were exceptions to this sumptuary law, practised in Cambridge itself, had I only known it.

It was perhaps in this very year, 1858, that Charles Francis Adams, Jr., then a student at Harvard, drew upon himself a remonstrance from his fellows on account of his headgear, to which he made the following reply:

“An Adams can wear any sort of hat he wishes.”

His fellow-student, my brother-in-law, related this story to me many years afterward, in a grieved spirit. I assured, him that Charles Francis Adams, Jr., was right. Certain families of the Hub possessed at that date a prescriptive right to dress as they pleased, every one knowing who they were.

Young Mr. Adams, far from showing conceit, was simply illumining the way for us all in the direction of personal independence.

The Agassiz School was held in the professor’s own pleasant house on Quincy Street, Cambridge, very near Harvard College. Probably the older girls were conscious of this fact, but I was too young to bear it much in mind. The students whom I met occasionally in the street seemed to me great and august beings. Time, however, brings its revenges. In later life, when my sons were undergraduates, I had occasion to revisit Cambridge. The students no longer inspired me with awe; whether they were afraid of me or not I cannot say.

In his charming wife Professor Agassiz had a most efficient helpmeet who entered into all his plans and followed his work with loving zeal and intelligence. Mrs. Agassiz, who survived her husband for many years, was a very charming woman. She had a noble and whole-souled nature, which one fancied was contagious, for the moment at least. I think it would have been impossible to do a mean thing while in her company.

In the days of the Agassiz School she was still a young woman, and we all felt that she was the presiding genius of the establishment as she flitted from room to room in her pretty, trim morning dress and cap with its fresh flowing ribbons, which seemed to correspond so well with the sweetness and freshness of her disposition. She heard the lessons of the younger pupils, but I am sure that she exercised a sweet and wholesome influence over all the scholars, old and young.