Several years elapsed before I again was in Boston. In the interim, I heard something of the Miss Byleses from ladies who knew and visited them. I understood that, at length, they had found it impossible to prevent what they had so long dreaded, the opening of a street that would take in their little green lawn, their old horse-chesnut trees, and that part of their house that stood directly across the way. For this surrender of their property, they received from the city an ample compensation in money; also their house was made as good or rather better than ever besides being new roofed and thoroughly repaired. The despoiled sisters, though another and more comfortable residence was offered to them during the time of their destruction, as they termed it, steadily persisted in remaining on their own domain during the whole process of its dismemberment. Their house, as they said, was cut in half; that part which faced the end of Tremont street being taken away. They mourned over the departure of every beam and plank as if each was an old friend—and so they truly were. And deep indeed was the affliction of the aged sisters when they saw, falling beneath the remorseless axe, their noble horse-chesnut trees whose scattered branches, as they lay on the grass, the old ladies declared, seemed to them like the dismembered limbs of children. At this juncture, their grief and indignation reached its climax; and they excited much sympathy even among professed utilitarians. There were many indulgent hearts in Boston that felt as if the improvement of this part of the city might yet have been delayed for a few short years, till after these venerable and harmless females should have closed their eyes for ever upon all that could attach them to this side of the grave. And that even if the march of public spirit should in consequence have allowed itself to pause a little longer in this part of its road, “neither heaven nor earth would have grieved at the mercy.”
Miss Mary Byles, who with more sprightliness had less strength of mind than her younger sister, never, as the saying is, held up her head again.—Her health and spirits declined from that time—she sunk slowly but surely; and after lingering some months, a few days of severe bodily suffering terminated all her afflictions, and consigned her mortal remains to their final resting-place beside her father. In the meantime she had lost her nephew, Mather Brown, the painter, who died at an advanced age in London and who was to have been the heir of all that his aunts possessed.
In addition to the rest of their little wealth, the Miss Byleses had in a sort of strong hold up stairs a chest of old-fashioned plate, no article of which was on any occasion used by them. Also, they retained some rare and valuable books that had belonged to their father, and a few curious and excellent mathematical instruments brought by him from England, and which the University of Harvard had vainly endeavoured to purchase from them. Among other articles was an immense burning-glass, said to be one of the largest in the world, and which the old ladies kept locked up in a closet, and carefully covered with a thick cloth, lest, as they said, it should set the house on fire.
On a subsequent visit to the metropolis of the American east, I went to see the surviving Miss Byles; and when I reached the accustomed place I could scarcely recognize it. The main part of the old house was yet standing; but the loss of one end had given it quite a different aspect. There was no longer the green inclosure, the fence-gate, and the narrow path through the grass—the door opened directly upon a brick pavement and on the dusty street. To be sure there was a fresh-looking wooden door-step. New tenements had been run up all about the now noisy vicinity, which had entirely lost its air of quiet retirement. All was now symptomatic of bustle and business. The ancient dwelling-place of the Byles family had ceased to be picturesque. It had been repaired and made comfortable; but denuded of its guardian trees there was nothing more to screen from full view its extreme unsightliness. Above its weather-blackened walls (which the sisters would not allow to be painted, lest it should look totally unlike itself) the new shingles of the roof seemed out of keeping—I thought of all the poor ladies must have suffered during the transformation of their paternal domicile.
On knocking at the door, it was opened for me by an extremely good-looking neatly dressed matron, who conducted me into a room which I could scarcely believe was the original old parlor. The homely antique furniture had disappeared, and was replaced by some very neat and convenient articles of modern form. The floor was nicely carpeted; there were new chairs and a new table,—a bed with white curtains and counterpane, and window-curtains to match.—Nothing looked familiar but the antique crown chair and the pictures.
I found Miss Catharine Byles seated in a rocking chair with a pillow at her back.—She looked paler, thinner, sharper, and much older than when I last saw her. She was no longer in a white short gown but wore a whole gown of black merino, with a nice white muslin collar and a regular day-cap trimmed with black ribbon.
Though glad to find her so much improved as to comfort, I take shame to myself when I confess that I felt something not unlike disappointment, at seeing such a change in the ancient lady and her attributes. The quaintness, and I may say the picturesqueness of the old mansion, and its accessories, and also that of its octogenarian mistress, seemed gone for ever. I am sorry to acknowledge that at the moment I thought of the French artist Lebrun, who meeting in the street an old tattered beggar-man with long gray locks and a venerable silver beard, was struck with the idea of his being a capital subject for the pencil, and engaged him to come to him next day and have his likeness transferred to canvass. The beggar came; but thinking that all people who sit for their pictures should look spruce, he had bedizened himself in a very genteel suit of Sunday clothes, with kneebuckles and silk stockings; his face and hands nicely washed; his chin shaved clean; and his hair dressed and powdered; the whole man looking altogether as unpaintable as possible.—All artists will sympathize with the disappointed Lebrun, as he contemplated his beggar with dismay, and exclaimed “—oh! you are spoiled!—you are spoiled!” I suppose it is because I am a painter’s sister, that I caught myself nearly on the point of making a similar ejaculation on seeing the new-modelling of Miss Catharine Byles, and her domicile.
But a truce with such unpardonable thoughts—Miss Catharine recognized me at once, and seemed very glad to see me. She soon began to talk about her troubles, and her sorrows, and alluded in a very affecting manner to the loss of her sister, who she said had died of a broken heart in consequence of the changes made in their little patrimony; having always hoped to die, as she had lived, in her father’s house just as he had left it—“But the worst of all,” pursued Miss Catharine—“was the cutting down of the old trees.—Every stroke of the axe seemed like a blow upon our hearts. Neither of us slept a wink all that night. Poor sister Mary; she soon fretted herself to death. To think of our having to submit to these dreadful changes, all at once; when for ten years our dear father’s spectacles, were never removed from the place in which he had last laid them down.”