the alarming three bears of the howe coat-of-arms.—brutality at the old boston latin school.—boyish mischief.—papa’s church.—grandmother cutler rebukes wemyss, the biographer of washington and marion.—grandfather ward, his liberality and his stern calvinism.
some one has said that it is hard to live under the shadow of a great name. it has been my great privilege and happiness to live, not under the shadow, but in the light of two honored names, those of my father and mother. they were honored and beloved because of their own love for and service to their fellow-men.
my father was nearly eighteen years older than my mother. he had had the responsibility and care of his young blind pupils for ten years before his marriage. hence he was well fitted to take an active part in our training, especially as he dearly loved children. the absence in europe, for more than a year, of my mother and the two younger children, harry and laura, brought julia and myself under his care when we were respectively five and six years old. we thus early formed the habit of close companionship with him, to which, as the elder, we had special claim. indeed, we all followed him about to such a degree that he once exclaimed jestingly, “why, if i went and sat in the barn i believe you children would all follow me!”
the housekeeper who was with us in these early years would sometimes say, “you do not know what a good father you have.” of course we did not. we knew that “papa” made us his companions whenever he could possibly do so. we knew that as “a good physician” he bound up our small wounds and cared for us when we were sick. we knew that if we did wrong we must expect his firm yet gentle rebuke. did he not tell me about a naughty little devil i had swallowed, bidding me open my mouth so that he could get hold of its tail and pull it out? lessons of thrift and generosity he early inculcated. we received a penny for every horseshoe and for every pound of old iron we picked up about the place.
he constantly sent, by our hands, gifts of the delicious fruit of the garden to our schoolmates and to the blind children.
when our mother played the most delightful tunes for us to dance, papa would join in the revels, occasionally pleading “a bone in his leg” as an excuse for stopping. together they planned and carried out all sorts of schemes for our amusement and that of our little friends.
when, at a child’s party in midwinter, fireworks suddenly appeared outside the parlor window, the great kindness of our parents in doing so much for our amusement began to dawn upon my childish mind. indeed, the howe juvenile parties were thought very delightful by others besides ourselves.
our parents told us stories of their youth, in which we were greatly interested. my father must have been a very small boy when he was alarmed by the howe coat of arms—three bears with their tongues out. i fancy he came across this vision in the attic and that it was banished there by grandfather howe, who was a true democrat.
father also told us that the family was supposed to be related to that of lord howe. i find the same statement made in farmer’s genealogy of the descendants of “john howe of watertown freeman 1640, son of john howe of hodinhull warwickshire.”
anecdotes of his school-days showed that my father, despite his feelings in the presence of the three bears, was a very courageous boy. at latin school the master whipped him for some small fault, but could not succeed in his amiable intention of making the child cry, “though he whipped my hand almost to jelly.” his federalist schoolmates were as brutal as their master. because sam howe, almost the only democrat in school, refused to abandon his principles, they threw him down-stairs.
grandfather howe lost a great deal of money by the failure of the united states government to pay him for the ropes and cordage which he, as a patriotic democrat, supplied to them in large quantities during the war of 1812. hence, when his son went to college, young sam howe helped to pay his way by teaching school in vacation. the country lads, some of whom were bigger than he, thought they could get the better of the new schoolmaster. he restored order by the simple but sometimes necessary process of knocking down the ringleader. the handsome young collegian found more difficulty in managing the girls!
he must have been very young when he assured his sister that the pump had a very agreeable taste on a frosty morning. the confiding girl followed his suggestion, but found it difficult to remove her tongue from the cold iron.
among his many pranks at college, the most original was a nocturnal visit to a fellow-collegian who had a store of good things in his room. “sam” howe entered the window as a ghost and carried off a turkey. when the unfortunate owner of the feast waked up and looked out of the window, he saw a dim white figure rising in the air. later on, the bones of the bird neatly picked were laid in front of his door. the boy was greatly worried and fully convinced that some supernatural being had visited his room. the affair so preyed on his mind that his fellow-students finally explained the joke.
strange to say, my father did not have much patience with his son when brother harry displayed at harvard the same kind of mischievous ingenuity. they had both inherited this quality from grandfather howe if we may judge by the following story.
having promised to pay sammy a penny for every rat he caught, the old gentleman surreptitiously withdrew the rodents from the trap. but sammy was quite equal to the occasion. he parried by making the same animal serve for several mornings, until his father exclaimed, “sammy, that rat begins to smell!”
grandfather howe was very fond of building, a taste inherited by his descendants. when there was a question of his erecting a house on her property, his second wife said to him, “but your children would never permit it.” the old gentleman’s wavering resolve at once became fixed. he had no notion of listening to dictation from his sons and daughters. so he built the house, which, of course, became the property of our step-grandmother and went ultimately to her heirs, instead of to his own descendants, the howes.
my father always cherished the memory of his own mother, patty gridley, who was a very beautiful woman, of a lovely and sympathetic nature.
he liked to see his daughters sitting at their needlework. “it reminds me of my mother,” he would say. he could not bear to see bread wasted, because of her early teachings of thrift. on the top of his father’s house, there had been a cask or vat into which the lees of wine were thrown and left to ferment into vinegar.
with our mother, also, we had a delightful comradeship. having been brought up with undue strictness herself, she resolved that her children should not suffer in the same way. hence we had a happy familiarity with our parents; yet we felt their superiority to ourselves. mother taught us many things, after the fashion of mothers—lessons in the conduct of life and in social observance, of course. to be considerate of others, to enjoy small and simple pleasures, to take good things in moderation—these were a part of her philosophy. if we made a noise after the baby was asleep, we instantly heard her whispered warning, “hush!” indeed, it was an offense in her eyes to disturb any one’s rest.
her efforts to teach us punctuality were not altogether successful. there were dreadful moments when sister julia and i were so late in dressing for a party that mamma would be reduced almost to despair. sister laura saw these things and, being a wise little maiden, resolved that when her turn came to go into society she would be punctual. she carried out her resolution.
when we were old enough, our mother took us to the church of the disciples, by my father’s desire. he himself went only occasionally, but then papa had a church of his own, which we sometimes attended. in the great hall of the institution for the blind, he held at six o’clock every morning a brief service for the pupils. the deep reverence of his voice as he read a lesson from the bible, the solemn tones of the organ, the sweetness and beauty of the fresh young voices as the blind larks suddenly burst forth into their morning hymn of praise, were things never to be forgotten. truly papa’s church was not like any other!
many stories of her young days we heard from our mother. they were different in many ways from our own happy and athletic childhood. it is true that, like ourselves, she belonged to a family of six brothers and sisters, who had merry times together. but the great misfortune of losing her mother shadowed her young life. aunt eliza cutler (afterward mrs. francis), who took, as far as she was able, the latter’s place, was most conscientious in fulfilling her duties. but she was very strict with her young charges. witness the story of the little girl whom julia invited to tea. after this rash act her courage completely failed her. she did not dare bring her visitor down-stairs, and sat miserably waiting the course of events. the delay seemed to her interminable, but at length a message was sent up, coldly inviting “miss ward,” as she was called even in childhood, to bring her friend down to tea. she never repeated the offense.
our mother was very fond of her grandmother cutler, who spent the last years of her life under her son-in-law’s roof. she was a woman of literary tastes as well as of personal charm. the niece of general francis marion, the “swamp fox,” grandma cutler possessed a goodly share of spirit. thus when wemyss, the biographer of washington and marion, dined at the home of grandfather ward, mrs. cutler took the careless historian to task:
“mr. wemyss, how is it that you say in your life of the general that you have never heard what became of his sister esther, my mother?”
the old lady was a flaming huguenot, as her letters show.
i fear that, despite the fact that she had been a belle in the revolutionary period, she took snuff. our mother told us that the ward family carriage was in the habit of stopping at “lorillard’s,” then a small tobacco-shop, to buy great-grandmother’s favorite brand—this, if i remember aright, was maccaboy.
in our mother’s story of her early life the dominating figure was that of her father, samuel ward, the third of the name. she fully recognized his great affection for his children and his almost painful desire to shield them from all evil. evidently to grandfather ward “the world, the flesh, and the devil” were not outworn features of a half-forgotten creed, but dreadful realities. he was as liberal in giving money to good causes as he was illiberal in his religious views. during a period of hard times (perhaps in 1837), he suggested to our mother that they should take care of the conservatory themselves, sending away the gardener.
“for i will not cut down my charities,” quoth grandfather ward.
he left a large fortune for those days, but it was a good deal diminished by the management of his brother, who did not understand real estate. the grange, formerly the property of alexander hamilton, was a part of it. the ward family desired to have this sold to a great-uncle, for the nominal price of ten thousand dollars. my father very properly protested, yielding in the end, for the sake of peace. some twenty-five years later it was worth one or two million dollars, but the family were unable to hold it after the panic of black friday, september, 1869.
