——"He pours out all, as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."
Perhaps the particular phase of change which the language itself was going through at the time may assist in giving these letters, to us, something of their air of genuine force and originality. But after making due allowance for the freshness of a vocabulary as yet unimpeded by any cumbrous burden of euphemism, we are still convinced that we must recognize the source of much of the quality we have noted only in the naïve and outspoken nature of the writer. For, if ever there was a man who knew just what he wanted and just how he wanted it, it was the T. H. of the amusing correspondence before us.
Thus lived, for some quarter of a century more, this cheery and prosperous gentleman, growing into a manly opulence, and enjoying to the full the pleasant "seate of self-fruition" which he had so carefully set up for himself on Beacon Hill. Not much addressing himself, indeed, to "looking abroad into universality," as Bacon calls it, but rather honestly and heartily "doing his duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call him." He filled various posts of honor and dignity meanwhile,—always prominent, and even conspicuous, in the public eye,—and was "one of His Majesty's Council" at the commencement of the troubles which led to the War of the Revolution. The full development of this mighty drama, however, Thomas Hancock did not live to see. He died of an apoplexy, on the first day of August, 1764, about three of the clock in the afternoon, having been seized about noon of the same day, just as he was entering the Council Chamber. He was then in the sixty-second year of his age. By his will he gave one thousand pounds sterling for the founding of a professorship of the Oriental languages in Harvard College, one thousand pounds lawful money to the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, six hundred pounds to the town of Boston, towards an Insane Hospital, and two hundred pounds to the Society for carrying on the Linen Manufactory,—an enterprise from which much appears, just then, to have been expected. His property was valued, after his decease, at about eighty thousand pounds sterling,—a very much larger sum for that time than its precise money equivalent would represent at the present day. Having no issue of his own, he left the bulk of his estate to his nephew John,—a gentleman who, without a tithe of the nerve and pith and vigor of this our Thomas, has yet happened, from the circumstances of the time in which he bore up the family-fortunes, to have acquired a much more distinguished name and filled a much larger space in the tablets of History than has ever fallen to the share of his stout old uncle.
The Hancock estate, as we have been accustomed to see it of late years, is greatly reduced from its original dimensions, and shorn of much of its ancient glory.[10] The property, in Mr. Thomas Hancock's time, extended on the east to the bend in Mount Vernon Street, including, of course, the whole of the grounds now occupied by the State House,[11]—on the west to Joy Street, called Hancock Street on the ancient plan of the estate now before us,—and in the rear about to what is now Derne Street, on the north side of Beacon Hill, and comprising on that side all the land through which Mount Vernon Street now runs, for the whole distance from Joy Street to Beacon-Hill Place. Thus was included a large part, too, of the site of the present reservoir on Derne Street, a portion of which, being the last of the estate sold up to the present year, was purchased by the city from the late John Hancock, Esq., some ten or twelve years ago. The two large wings of the house—the one on the east side containing an elegant ball-room, and that on the west side comprising the kitchen and other domestic offices—have long ago disappeared. The centre of the mansion, however, remains nearly intact, and with its antique furniture, stately old pictures, and the quaint, but comfortable appointments of the past century, still suffices to bring up to the mind of the visitor the most vivid and interesting reminiscences both of our Colonial and Revolutionary history.
The central and principal portion of the house, which remains entire, is a very perfect and interesting specimen of the stateliest kind of our provincial domestic architecture of the last century. There are several other houses of a similar design still standing in the more important sea-port towns of New England. The West House, on Essex Street, in Salem, has but lately disappeared; but another in that neighborhood, the Collins House in Danvers, (now the property of Mr. F. Peabody, of Salem,) the Dalton House, on State Street, Newburyport, the Langdon House, (now the residence of the Reverend Dr. Charles Burroughs,) in Portsmouth, N. H., and the Gilman House, in Exeter, N. H., removed, not long since, to make way for the new Town Hall, were all almost identical with this in the leading features of their design. A broad front-door opening from a handsome flight of stone steps, and garnished with pillars and a highly ornamental door-head, a central window, also somewhat ornamented, over it, and four other windows in each story, two being on either side of the centre, a main roof-cornice enriched with carved modillions, a high and double-pitched or "gambrel" roof with bold projecting dormer-windows rising out of it, and a carved balcony-railing inclosing the upper or flatter portion of the roof, are features common to them all. The details of the Hancock House are all classical and correct; they were doubtless executed by the master-builder of the day with a scrupulous fidelity of adherence to the plates of some such work as "Ware's Compleat Body of Architecture," or "Swan's Architect,"—books of high repute and rare value at the time, and contemporary copies of which are still sometimes to be found in ancient garrets. There is a very perfect specimen of the former in the Athenæum Library, and another at Cambridge, while of the latter an excellent copy is in the possession of the writer,—and it is not difficult to trace, in the soiled and well-thumbed condition of some of the plates, evidences of the bygone popularity of some peculiarly apposite or useful design.
The material of the walls is of squared and well-hammered granite ashlar,—probably obtained by splitting up boulders lying on the surface of the ground only, above the now extensive quarries in the town of Quincy. We incline to this conjecture, because it bears an exact resemblance to the stone of the King's Chapel, built in 1753, and which is known to have been obtained in that way. In fact, the wardens and vestry of the Chapel, in their report on the completion of the building, congratulated themselves that they had had such good success in getting all the stone they needed for that building, as it was exceedingly doubtful, they remarked, whether the whole country could be made to furnish stone for another structure of equal extent.
The interior of the house is quite in keeping with the promise of its exterior. The dimensions of the plan are fifty-six feet front by thirty-eight feet in depth. A nobly panelled hall, containing a broad staircase with carved and twisted balusters, divides the house in the centre, and extends completely through on both stories from front to rear. On the landing, somewhat more than half-way up the staircase, is a circular headed window looking into the garden, and fitted with deep-panelled shutters, and with a broad and capacious window-seat, on which the active merchant of 1740 doubtless often sat down to cool himself in the draught, after some particularly vexatious morning's work with poor Glin's "Plumb Trees and Hollys." On this landing, too, stood formerly a famous eight-day clock, which has now disappeared, no one knows whither. But the order for its purchase is before us in the old letter-book, and will serve to give a very graphic idea of its unusual attractions. The order is addressed, as usual, to Mr. Wilks, and bears date December 20th, 1738. As the safe reception of the time-piece is acknowledged in a subsequent letter, there can be little doubt as to its identity.
"I Desire the favour of you to procure for me & Send with my Spring Goods, a Handsome Chiming Clock of the newest fashion,—the work neat & Good, with a Good black Walnutt Tree Case, Veneer'd work, with Dark, lively branches,—on the Top insteed of Balls let be three handsome Carv'd figures, Gilt with burnished Gold. I'd have the Case without the figures to be 10 foot Long, the price 15 not to Exceed 20 Guineas, and as it's for my own use I beg your particular Care in buying of it at the Cheapest Rate. I'm advised to apply to one Mr. Marmaduke Storr at the foot of Londn Bridge, but as you are best Judge I leave it to you to purchase it where you think proper,—wh. being the needfull, Concludes
"Sir Your &c. T. H."
On the right of the hall, as you enter, is the fine old drawing-room, seventeen by twenty-five feet, also elaborately finished in moulded panels from floor to ceiling. In this room the founder of the Hancock name, as a man of note, and a merchant of established consequence, must often have received the Shirleys, the Olivers, the Pownalls, and the Hutchinsons of King George's colonial court; and here, too, some years later, his stately nephew John dispensed his elegant hospitalities to that serene Virginian, Mr. Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Revolution, and to the ardent young French Marquis who accompanied him. The room itself, hung with portraits from the honest, if not flattering hand of Smibert, and the more courtly and elegant pencil of Copley, still seems to bear witness in its very walls to the reality of such bygone scenes. We enter the close front-gate from the sunny and bustling promenade of Beacon Street, pass up the worn and gray terrace of the steps, and in a moment more closes behind us the door that seems to shut us out from the whirl and turmoil and strife of the present, and, almost mysteriously, to transport us to the grave shadows and the dignified silence of the past of American history.