“At No. 19 Boylston Place.”
“O Lord!” ejaculated the officer of the law, and rushed for the spot. His own home was next door!
On the other side of us lived Mrs. Richards and her five stalwart sons. Whenever our furnace sent out smoke, it went into the Richards’ house. Hence the young men, smelling smoke, came in to see what was wrong with us. Sister Laura, who was a very pretty and charming girl, roused suddenly from sleep, appeared barefoot upon the scene, with her fine hair floating over her shoulders. Two or three years later she married the youngest of the fire-fighters.
I was staying in New York at the time, and so missed the great scene of the fire. It was put out without much damage.
It will be judged from my mother’s remark that my engagement was a long one, my fiancé being a young lawyer studying in his father’s office. During the five years that elapsed before our marriage I found it pleasant to make visits in New York, staying with Great-uncle Richard Ward. He possessed the courtly manners of a gentleman of the old school, his diction being somewhat old-fashioned. Thus he frequently said, “No, lady,” or “Yes, lady,” a form of address now used chiefly by dependents. Uncle Richard was a thorough Ward, of tall and massive frame, though not at all stout. He had been six feet four inches tall in his younger days, and wore number eleven gloves, it was said. His shoes were on the same scale. During the life of Uncle John (when the two brothers lived together) there was a room at the rear of the house devoted to their footgear. It was a veritable acreage of shoes which resembled small cradles. Leather was then supposed to last longer if boots were given a rest instead of being used constantly. Uncle Richard wore one of the hideous wigs of the period, having lost his hair many years before. A family tradition declared that, from the receding of the gums, his teeth had all dropped out while still sound. He received us always with great kindness and hospitality. The only drawback to the pleasure of a visit at No. 8 Bond Street was the temperature of the house, which was cold for our modern taste. In addition to an old-fashioned and rather ineffectual furnace there were pleasant open-grate fires in all the rooms. We soon learned that we must not poke these too much when Uncle Richard was present, for a temperature comfortable to us was distressing to him. As we sat playing whist of an evening, he would get up and leave the room from time to time, in order to cool off in the hall.
He made it a point of pride not to wear an overcoat, and seldom did so, though he dressed very warmly beneath his invariable black suit. What he should wear on a cold day became in his later years a serious question. He would call in consultation his faithful old retainer. Mary Oliver would sometimes decide the matter by weighing the clothes!
Uncle Richard was very much interested in genealogy and took great pride in his ancestors. He informed me that the boys at school looked with respect on his brothers and himself because they were descended from four Governors! Dear deluded man! How could he so misunderstand boy nature! I’ve no doubt their schoolmates treated the brothers with due respect, the Wards being a large and powerful race. It is more prudent not to offend bigger boys.
He was showing me one day an old family Bible in which the names of seven generations of Wards were inscribed. Seeing a visitor come up the front steps, he closed the book.
“Now, my dear, we will not talk about ancestors before Mr. So-and-so,” he observed. “Because if we speak of these before other people, they also talk about theirs, and that is not so interesting!”
I do not think he wrote any account of his forebears, leaving that for his successor in the cult, Cousin John Ward. The latter does not mention the fourth awe-inspiring Governor, but perhaps he was on the distaff side.