Fifteen years later, a great improvement began to be visible in this hitherto neglected suburb. The whole southerly slope of the hill had been purchased in 1735 by a citizen of renown, and soon a fair stone mansion began to show its elegant proportions on the most eligible spot near its centre. By this time, as we have it, on the authority of no less reputable a chronicler than Mr. John Oldmixon, "the Conversation of the Town of Boston is as polite as in most of the Cities and Towns of England; many of their merchants having traded into Europe, and those that stayed at home having the Advantage of Society with travellers" (including, of course, Mr. Oldmixon himself). "So that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston," (this is in Mr. Anthony Trollope's own vein,) "when he observes the numbers of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesman in London." Primus inter pares, however, stood the builder of the house on Beacon Hill, and there seems to be little doubt that Mr. Hancock's doings on his fine estate created a great stir of admiration, and that the new stone house was thought to be a very grand and famous affair in the infant metropolis of New England, in the year 1737.
The precise period which brought Mr. Hancock to undertake the building of the house in Beacon Street was one in which it might not have been altogether uninteresting to have lived. The affairs of the mother country had been carried on for nearly twenty years of comparative peace, under the dexterous guidance of Sir Robert Walpole,—that cleverest, if not most scrupulous, minister of the British crown,—while my Lord Bolingbroke—permitted to return from France, but living under a qualified attainder, and closely watched by the keen-sighted minister—was occupying himself in writing his bitter and uncompromising pamphlets against the government of the House of Hanover. The minister's son Horace, an elegant, indolent youth, fresh from Cambridge, was travelling on the Continent in company with a shy and sensitive man of letters, not much known at the time,—by the name of Gray. This gentleman gained no small credit, however, some ten or twelve years afterwards, by the publication of "An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,"—a piece which, notwithstanding the remote date of its appearance, it is possible that some of our readers may have chanced to come across in the course of their literary researches. Giddiness, loss of memory, and other alarming symptoms of mental disorder had begun to attack the great intellect of Dr. Swift, and forced him to lay aside the pen which for nearly half a century had been alternately the scourge and the support of the perplexed cabinets of the time. His friend Mr. Pope, however, was living quite snug and comfortable, on the profits of his translations, at his pretty villa at Twickenham, and adding to his fame and means by the publication of his "Correspondence" and his "Universal Prayer." The learned Rector of Broughton, Dr. Warburton, encouraged by the advice of friends, had just brought out his first volume of "The Divine Legation of Moses"; the Bishop of Bristol had carried his great "Analogy of Religion" through the press the year before; Dr. Watts was getting old and infirm, but still engaged in his thirty years' visit to his friend Sir Thomas Abney, Knight and Alderman, of Abney Park, Stoke Newington. That remarkable young Scotchman, David Hume, was paying his respects to the sensational philosophy of Locke in a series of essays which "spread consternation through every region of existing speculation"; Adam Smith was a promising pupil under Hutcheson,—the father of Scotch metaphysics,—at the University of Glasgow. General Fielding's son Henry—but just married—was spending his charming young wife's portion of fifteen hundred pounds in the careless hospitality of his Derbyshire house-keeping,—three years' experience of which, however, reduced him to the necessity of undertaking his first novel for the booksellers, in the story of "Joseph Andrews." Captain Cook, at the age of thirteen, was a restless apprentice to a haberdasher near Whitby. And although "the age of steam" had certainly not then arrived, it must yet be allowed—in the words of the Highland vagrant to Cameron of Lochiel, not long after—that already
"Coming events cast their shadows before,"—
since we find that there lay in his nursery, in the family of Town Councillor Watt, the Bailie of Greenock, in the spring of the year 1736, a quiet, delicate, little Scotch baby, complacently sucking the tiny fist destined in after years to grasp and imprison that fearful vapory demon whose struggle for escape from his life-long captivity now furnishes the motive-power for the most mighty undertakings of man throughout the civilized world. It would surely have been something, we think,—the opportunity to have seen all these, from Bolingbroke in his library to James Watt in his cradle.
Turning to affairs somewhat nearer home, perhaps a slight glance at "ye conversation and way of living" of the good people of Boston, during the years that Mr. Hancock was carrying on his building and getting himself gradually settled in its comforts, may help us to conceive a better idea of the form and pressure of the age. Well,—Mr. Peter Faneuil was just then laboring to persuade the town that it might not be the worst thing they could do to accept the gift of a handsome new Town-Hall which he was very desirous to build for them,—an opinion so furiously combated and opposed by the conservatives and practical men of that day, that Mr. Faneuil succeeded in carrying his revolutionary measure, at last, in the open town-meeting, by a majority of only seven votes (a much larger majority, however, it is but fair to observe, than that which adopted a decent City-Hall for the same municipality only last year). Whitefield was preaching on the Common, in front of Mr. Hancock's premises, to audiences of twenty thousand people, "as some compute," "poor deluded souls," says the unemotional Dr. Douglass, writing at the period, "whose time is their only Estate; called off to these exhortations, to the private detriment of their families, and great Damage to the Public: thus perhaps every such exhortation of his was about £1000 damage to Boston." Governor Belcher, who came home from England with the same instructions as Governor which he was sent out to oppose as envoy, had been superseded in his high office by "William Shirley, Esquire,—esteemed for his gentlemanly deportment." Watchmen were required "in a moderate tone to cry the time o' night, and give an Account of the Weather as they walk't their rounds after twelve o'clock." The men that had been raised in town for the ill-starred expedition to Carthagena were being drilled on the Common,—and Hancock, writing to a friend, tells him, "We have the pleasure of Seeing 'em Disciplin'd every Day from 5 in morning to 8, & from 5 afternoon 'till night, before our house,—many Gentlen & others Daily fill ye Common,—& wee have not ye Less Company for it, but a quicker draft for Wine & Cider." Annually, on the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes, the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender were burned on the Common, amidst much noise and rioting, often degenerating into the tapping of claret and solid cracking of crowns between the North End and South End champions,—who made this always their field-day, par excellence,—to the great worriment of the Town Constables, and the infinite wrath and disgust of the Select Men. And, finally, we remark, "the goodness of the pavement in Boston might compare with most in London, for to gallop a Horse on it is three Shillings and fourpence Forfeit!"
Such were the curious and simple, but, withal, rather cozy and jolly old years in which the Hancock House was planned and built and first occupied. Always a really fine residence, it is now the sole relic of the family mansions of the old Town of Boston, as in many respects it has long been the most noted and interesting of them all. One hundred and twenty-seven years have passed away since its erection, and old Captain Bonner's map now requires a pretty close study to enable our modern eyes to recognize any clue to its present locality. It stands, in fact, a solitary monumental pillar in the stream of time,—a link to connect the present with the eventful past; and the prospect of its expected removal—though not, we trust, of its demolition—may render the present a fitting opportunity to call up some few of the quaint old reminiscences with which it is connected.
We have now before us, as we write, the original Contract or Indenture for the freestone work of the venerable structure. It is a document certainly not without a curious interest to those of us who have passed and repassed so often in our daily walks the gray old relic of New England's antiquity, to the very inception of which this faded paper reverts. It is an agreement made between Mr. Thomas Hancock and one "Thomas Johnson of Middleton in the County of Hartford and Colony of Connecticut In New-England, Stone-Cutter." By this instrument the Connecticut brown-stone man of that day binds himself to "Supply and Furnish the said Thomas Hancock with as much Connecticut Stone as Shall be Sufficient to Beatify and build Four Corners, One Large Front Door, Nine Front Windows and a Facie for the Front and back Part Over the Lower Story Windows of a certain Stone House which the Said Thomas Hancock is about to Erect on a Certain Piece of Land Situate near Beacon Hill in Boston aforesaid; as also So much of said Connecticut Stone as shall be Sufficient to make a water Table round the Said House, which Said Stone the Said Johnson Covenants and Agrees shall be well Cut, fitted and polished, workmanlike and According to the Rules of Art every way Agreeable, & to the Liking and Satisfaction of Mr. Hancock." The stone is to be delivered to Mr. Hancock's order at Boston, all "In Good Order and Condition, not Touched with the Salt Water, and at the proper Cost, Charge and Risque of the sd Johnson." The consideration paid to Johnson is fixed at "the Sum of three hundred Pounds in Goods as the Said Stone Cutter's work is Carryed on." The latter stipulation as to the payment would be curious enough at the present day, though it appears to have been not uncommon at the time this contract was executed. The perusal of Mr. Thomas Hancock's letter-book, however, now also lying before us, will not leave one in any need of this additional proof of the old Boston merchant's keen eye always to a business profit.
The Indenture is written in a clear, round, mercantile hand,—evidently Mr. Hancock's own, but his best, by comparison with the letter-book,—the leading words of the principal paragraphs being garnished with masterly flourishes, and the top of the paper "indented" by cutting with a knife so as to fit or "tally," after the fashion of those days, with the corresponding copy delivered to Johnson. It has been indorsed and filed away with evident care, and is consequently now in a state of absolute and perfect preservation. With the exception, however, of that little matter of the store-pay, and of the wording of the date of its execution, which is given as the "Tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c.," the document differs but little in its phraseology—so conservative is the letter of the law of real estate—from those in use for precisely such contracts in the year 1863.
"Thomas Hancock, of Boston in the County of Suffolk and Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, Merchant," as he is named and described in the paper before us, was the founder of the fortunes of the family, and a man of the most considerable note and importance in his day. He was the son of the Reverend Mr. John Hancock, of Lexington, in which town he was born on the 13th of July, 1703. He was sent to Boston early in life to learn the business of a stationer,—with which calling those of bookseller and bookbinder were then combined,—and served his time accordingly with the leading provincial bibliopole of the day, "the enterprising Bookseller Henchman," who died in 1761. Quick, active, thrifty, young Hancock soon made his way in the world,—his famous bookstore in Ann Street was known as the "Stationers' Arms" as early as 1729; the industrious apprentice in due course married his master's fair daughter Lydia; and so our Thomas Hancock went on his way to credit and fortune, and last and best of all to house-building after his own mind, "the comfortablest part of his own life," with strides quite as easy and certain as did his contemporary, the Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., of London,—whose career was, at that very time, so impressing itself upon the notice of that eminent hand, Mr. William Hogarth, of Leicester Fields in the Parish of St. Martin's, as to lead him to depict its events in the remarkable series of prints, "Industry and Idleness," in which they are now handed down for the admiration of posterity. And what the great painter tells us of his hero is equally true of ours,—that, "by taking good courses, and pursuing those points for which he was put apprentice, he became a valuable man, and an ornament to his country."
The pursuits connected with book-making were not, however, without their trials and troubles, even at that early day. From some of Hancock's letters for the year 1736, we find that one Cox was a sad thorn in his side, a grievous lion in his daily path. His chief correspondent among the booksellers in London at this period was Mr. Thomas Longman,—the founder of the renowned house of Longmans of our own time,—and to him Hancock often pours out his trials and grievances in the quaint and pointed style of the business letters of "The Spectator's" own day. Under date of April 10, 1736, for instance, he writes,—"I cannot Think of Doing much more in the Book way at present, unless Cox Recalls his Agent, which I am Certain He never will if you give up this point," (i. e. of making larger consignments to Hancock on his own account,) "as I can Improve my Money In other Goods from Great Brittan to so much better Advantage." Yet, he continues, "I am unwilling Quite to Quit The Book branch of Trade, and you Can't but be Senceable that it was my Regard to you has Occasioned it's being forced from me in this way."