Beacon Hill is the great pyramid, or horn of dominion, as it were, of Boston’s most solid respectability of the older sort. Half-way up Beacon Hill, Aldrich is to be met with at the office of The Atlantic Monthly, of which he has been the editor since 1881. The publishers of this magazine have established its headquarters, together with their general business, in the old Quincy mansion, at No. 4 Park Street, which they have had pleasantly remodeled for their purposes. Close by, on the steep slope, is the Union Club; across the street the long, shaded stretch of Boston Common; and above it is the State House, presiding over the quarter, with its imposing golden dome half hidden amid the greenery. The editor’s office is secluded, small, neat, and looks down into a quiet old graveyard, like those of St. Paul’s and Trinity in New York. It seems a place strictly adapted to business, and is cut off from the outer world even by so much of a means of communication as a speaking-tube. There was formerly a speaking-tube, but an importunate visitor had his ear to it, and received a somewhat hasty message intended only in confidence for the call-boy, and it was abolished. “Imagine the feelings of a sensitive man—my feelings, of course—on such an occasion,” says the editor with characteristic drollery. “I flew at the tube, plugged it up with a cork, and drove that in with a poker!” Among the few small objects that can be called ornament scattered about is remarked a photograph of a severely classic doorway, which might have belonged to some famous monument of antiquity. It has a funereal look, to tell the truth, but it proves to be nothing less than the doorway of the residence of Thomas Bailey Aldrich himself, in Mt. Vernon Street. Like one of his own paradoxes, it has a very different aspect when put amid its proper surroundings.
Mt. Vernon Street crosses the topmost height of Beacon Hill. Parallel to the famed thoroughfare of Beacon Street, it is like a more retired military line that has the compensation for its retirement of being spared the active brunt of service. A very few minutes’ climb from the office of The Atlantic Monthly suffices to reach it. Precisely at that portion of it where the pretty grass-plots begin, to the houses on the upper side, is the attractive, stately mansion of an elder generation, in which Aldrich has taken up his abode. He bought it, some years ago, of Dr. Bigelow, a well-known name in Boston, and made it his own. It is one of a block, and is of red brick, four windows (and perhaps thirty feet) wide, and four tall stories in height, with a story of dormers above that. The classic doorway of white marble, solidly built, after the honest fashion of its time, is but a small detail after all in such an amplitude of façade, and melts easily into place as part of a genial whole. The quarter, its sidewalks and all, is chiefly of old red brick, tempered with the green of grass-plots, shrubs, and climbing vines. It has a pervading air of antiquity, and it quaintly suggests a bit of Chester or Coventry. The neighbors are, on the one hand, Charles Francis Adams; on the other, Bancroft, son of the historian; while, diagonally across the way, is a lady who is, by popular rumor, the richest woman in New England. The rooms of the house take a pleasing irregularity from the partial curvature of the walls, front and rear. They are all spacious, above-stairs as well as below. The “hall bedroom,” of modern progress, was hardly invented in its time. A platform and steps at one side of the hall, on entering (they clear a small alley to the rear) have a sort of altar-like aspect. The owner or his books might some time be apotheosized there, at need, amid candles and flowers. Aldrich has been fortunate in his marriage as in so many other ways. His family consists of a congenial and accomplished wife, and “the twins,” not unknown to literature. The most pervading trait of the interior is a sense of a discriminating judgment and ardor in household decoration. Both husband and wife share this taste, and together they have filled this abode and their two country houses with ample evidence of it, and with rare and taking objects brought from a wide circle of travel and research. Tribute should be paid to the quietness of tone, the air of comfort, in the whole. The collections are not made an end in themselves, but are parts of a harmonious interior. Several stories are carpeted alike, in a soft, low-toned hue. In days of professional decorators who throw together all the hues of the kaleidoscope, and none in a patch larger than your hand, and held upon these, brass, ebony, stamped leather, marquetry, enamels and bottle-glass, in a kind of chaotic pudding—in these days such an exceptional reserve as is here manifest seems little less than a matter of notable personal daring. The furniture is of the Colonial time, with a touch of the First Empire, and each piece has its own history. There is a collection of curious old mirrors. In a variety of old glazed closets and pantries in the dining-room (behind a fine reception-room, on the entrance floor), Mrs. Aldrich shows a rare collection of lovely china, both for use and ornament.
This is a dining-room that has entertained many a distinguished guest; and the little dinners, to which invitations are rarely refused by the favored ones, are said to be almost as easy to give as enjoyable to take part in. The agreeable host, who has always allied himself much with artists, has on occasion dined the New York Tile Club. Again, his occupation as editor of The Atlantic makes it often his duty or privilege to bring home strangers of note who drop down upon him from afar. The unexpected is, indeed, one of the things consistently to be looked for in Aldrich. On the evenings of the week when he is not entertaining, he is very apt to be dining out himself. He is a social genius, and understands the arts of good fellowship. Good things abound even more, if possible, in his talk than in his writings. Every acquaintance of his will give you a list of happy scintillations of his wit and humor. There is nothing of the recluse by nature in Aldrich; nothing, either, of the conventional cut of poet or sage in his aspect. His looks might somewhat astonish those—as the guileless are so often astonished in this way—who had preconceived ideas of him from the delicate refinement, the exquisite perfection of finish, of his verse. As I saw him come in the other day from Lynn in a heavy, serviceable reefing-jacket, adapted to the variable summer climate of that point, he had much more the air of athlete than poet. I shall not enter upon the abstruse calculation of what age a man may now have who was born in 1837, but in looks, manners, habits, Aldrich distinctly belongs to the school of the younger men. He is now somewhat thickset; he is blond, and of middle height. He has features that lend themselves easily to the humorous play of his fancy. The ends of his mustache, pointed somewhat in the French manner, seem to accentuate with a certain fitness and chic the quips and cranks which so often issue from beneath it. Mentally, Aldrich seems Yankee, crossed with the Frenchman. In the matter of literary finish, he is refined by fastidiousness of taste to the last degree. He is a man of strong likes and dislikes; it would sometimes seem fair almost to call them prejudices. In his work he has scarcely any morbid side. He is the celebrator of every thing bright and charming, of things opalescent and rainbow-hued, of pretty women, roses, jewels, humming-bird and oriole, of the blue sky and sea and the daintiest romance of the daintiest spots of foreign climes. If man invented the arts to please,—as can hardly be denied,—few can be called more truly in the vein of art than Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
From the rear window of the dining-room one looks out into a little court-yard, more like a bit of Chester than ever. The building lot runs quite through to Pinckney Street, and is closed in on the further side by an odd little house of red brick, which is rented as a bachelor apartment. It was formerly a petty shop, until Aldrich bethought him both to transform it thus into a desirable adjunct, and to make it pay a considerable part of the taxes. It is like a dwelling out of a pantomime. One would hardly be surprised to see Humpty Dumpty dive into or out of it at any moment. Pinckney Street might have a chapter to itself. Narrower, modester, and at a further remove still from the front than Mt. Vernon Street, it begins to be invaded now by quiet lodging-houses, but still retains its quaintness and a high order of respectability. A bright glimpse of the sea is had at the end of its contracted down-hill perspective, over Charles Street. Aldrich formerly lived in Pinckney Street, then in Charles Street, and thence removed to his present abode. But, if it be a question of view, we must ascend rather the high, winding staircase to the large cupola, with railed-in platform, set upon the steep roof. The ground falls away hence on every side and all of undulating, much-varied Boston is visible. Mark Twain has pronounced the prospect from here at night, with the electric lights glimmering in the leafy Common and the myriad of others round about, as one of the most impressive within his wide experience. The golden dome of the State House rears its bulk aloft, close at hand. Up one flight from the entrance are the two principal drawing-rooms of the house, large and handsome. The most conspicuous objects on the walls of these are a few unknown old masters after the style of Fra Angelico—trophies of travel. There are also a remarkable pair of figures in Venetian wood-carving, nearly life-size. The pictures are, for the rest, chiefly original sketches done for illustration of the author’s books by the talented younger American artists.
On the same floor is the library, a modest-sized room, made to seem smaller than it is through being compactly filled from floor to ceiling with a collection of three thousand books. The specialties chiefly observed in its composition are Americana and first editions. Aldrich would disclaim any very ambitious design, but there are volumes here which might tempt the cupidity of the most finished book-fancier, and of a kind that bring liberal sums in market. Something artistic in the form has generally guided the choice, as for instance Voltaire’s “La Pucelle,” and the “Contes Moraux” of Marmontel, containing all the quaint early plates. You take down from the shelves examples of Aldrich’s own works done into several languages. Here is his “Queen of Sheba” in Spanish, Valencia, 1879. Here is the treasure which perhaps he would hardly exchange against any other—the autograph letter of Hawthorne warmly praising his early poems,—saying, among other things, that some of them seem almost too delicate even to be breathed upon. Never did a young writer receive more intelligent and sympathetic recognition from a greater source. Among the curiosities of the shelves in yet another way is a gift copy of the early poems of Fitz-Greene Halleck to Catherine Sedgwick. On the title-page is found a patronizing line of memorandum from that minor celebrity in American letters, reading “Mr. Halleck, the author of this book, is a resident of New York.” Aldrich has never been subjected to the severe pecuniary straits which befall so many literary men. He has undergone in his time, however, sufficient pressure to acquaint him with that side of life at least as an experience, to give him a proper appreciation no doubt of his ample worldly comfort, and also to furnish the stimulus for the development of his early powers. He had prepared, in his native town of Portsmouth, to enter Harvard College, but, his father dying, he became a clerk instead in the commission house of a rich uncle in New York. He had his own way to make in the literary world; he began at the very foot of the ladder, with fugitive contributions, and by degrees identified himself with the newspapers and magazines of the day. He even saw something of Bohemian life, a knowledge of which is no undesirable element in one who is to be a man of the world. He dined at Pfaff’s, and was one of a coterie which circled around The Saturday Press and the brilliant, erratic Henry D. Clapp. I recollect passing with him the office of this defunct journal in Frankfort Street, on the occasion when he had come to New York to be the recipient of a complimentary breakfast at Delmonico’s in honor of his induction into the editorship of The Atlantic Monthly. He looked with interest at the dingy quarters commemorating so very different a phase of his life, and repeated to me the valedictory address of the paper: “This paper is discontinued for want of funds, which, by a coincidence, is precisely the reason for which it was started.”
I have described Aldrich’s town house. He passes much of his time at Ponkapog, twelve miles away behind the Blue Hills, and at Lynn, on the sea-coast. “After its black bass and wild duck and teal,” says our author in one of his charming essays, “solitude is the chief staple of Ponkapog.... The nearest railway station (Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail a day; two mails a day would render the place uninhabitable.” He took a large old farmhouse in the secluded place, remodeled it, arranged for himself an attractive working study, and, used to men and cities though he was, for a period made this exclusively his home. His leading motive was the health of his boys, who needed an out-of-door life. Ponkapog owes him a debt of gratitude for spreading its name abroad. Until the publication of his entertaining book of travel sketches, “From Ponkapog to Pesth,” it must have been wholly unheard of, and even then I, for one, can recollect feeling that the appellation was so ingenious as to be probably fictitious. With a continuity that speaks strongly in its favor, Aldrich has passed the summers at Lynn for seventeen years. From these must be excepted, however, the summers of his jaunts to Europe, which are rather frequent. The latest of these took him to the Russian fair at Nijni Novgorod. In another, perhaps unlike any other traveler, he passed a “day [and a day only] in Africa.” At Lynn, he has lived, in different villas, all along the breezy Ocean Road. This is a street worthy of its name, and it has a certain flavor of Newport, being a little remote from the central bustle of the great shoe-manufacturing mart to which it belongs. Others will quote a list of varied advantages for the site; Aldrich will be apt to tell you he likes it for its nearness to the railway station. The present house, of which he has taken a long lease, is a large square wooden villa, painted red. It stands just in the edge of a little indentation known as Deer Cove. “After me, probably—who knows?” says the humorous host, who is not at all afraid of a bit of the common vernacular. Nahant, Little Nahant and minor resorts are in the view in front; Swampscott is three-quarters of a mile away, at the left, and Marblehead at no great distance beyond that. The feature of the water view is the bold little reef of Egg Rock, with three white dots of habitations on its back. “Egg Rock is exactly opposite everywhere. I recollect once trying to find some place to which it was not opposite, just as in childhood I tried once to walk around to the other side of the moon. In this latter case I suppose I must have walked fully two miles.” So my host describes his peculiar experience with it.
The main tide of fashion sets rather towards Beverly Farms and Manchester than in this direction. The family lead, gladly, a quiet life, little disturbed by a bustle of visits. They depend chiefly for society upon the guests they bring down with them. They find plenty of occupation and interest, too, in caring for their boys. These are twins, as I have said, and so much twins as to be with difficulty distinguished apart. I was interested to know if they began to develop the literary faculty. ‘Heaven forbid!’ said their father in comic horror. Aldrich’s study at Lynn is a modest upper room, in a wing, with a plain gray cartridge-paper on the walls, no pictures, and nothing to conspire with a flagging attention in its wanderings. One’s first impulse, on looking up from the little writing-table in the center of the floor, would be to cast his eyes out of the single window, where Egg Rock, in a bit of blue sea, is again visible. This window should be an inspiring influence, letting in its illumination upon the fabrics of the heated brain; and not in the gentler mood alone, for tragedy is often abroad there. The fog shrouds Egg Rock, then rolls in and envelopes the universe under its stealthy domination; again, the gale spatters the brine upon the window-panes, and beats and roars about the house as it might on the light at Montauk.
As an editor, Aldrich is methodical. He goes early in the day to the office of The Atlantic Monthly, and there writes his letters, examines his manuscripts, and sees (or does not see) his visitors upon a regular system. As to his personal habit of writing his literature, he has none—at least no times and seasons. He waits for the mood, and defends this practice as the best, or, at least for him, almost the only one possible. This has to do, no doubt, with the small volume of his writings, smaller comparatively than that of most of his contemporaries. This result is perhaps contributed to also by the easy circumstances of his life, and yet more by his devotion to extreme literary finish. Experienced though he is, and successful though he is, no manuscript leaves his hands to be printed till he has made at least three distinct and amended drafts of it. He could never have been a newspaper man; the merest paragraph would have received the same care, and in the newspaper such painstaking is ruinous. His was a talent that had to succeed in the front rank or not at all. He has produced little of late, far too little to meet the demands of the audience of eager admirers he has created. So delightful a pen, so droll and original a fancy, so charming a muse, we can ill afford to spare. Yet that mysterious genius that goes about collecting material for the archives of permanent fame can have but little to dismiss from a total so small and a performance so choice.
William Henry Bishop.
[After ten years as editor of The Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Aldrich resigned his position, and has since that time been living in Boston. In 1893 he published “An Old Town by the Sea,” and two years later “Unguarded Gates, and Other Poems.”—Editors.]