Summer Love

Hettie Evarts was twenty that summer of 1872 in Geneva; Charlie Beaman was thirty-two. It was a time of important international negotiations and also, for the younger set, a summer of social intrigue. Hettie's sister Helen was there, as was Mary Adams and her brother Brooks who was secretary for his father Charles Francis Adams. Henry showed up in August with his new bride Clover Hooper, who he had first met when he was in London with his father and Wm M. Evarts during the war. After visiting Paris and calling on the government at Versailles, the delegation settled in Geneva. The Davises took quarters at the Beau Rivage, a well appointed hotel whose verandas provided a splendid view of the lake. The Evarts took a villa nearby and made it their home. The Adams took a place in the country.

William M. Evarts, one of the senior counsels for the tribunal, cultivated young friends and he was very fond of Beaman who shared his energy, common sense, intellectual ability, cheeriness, and dry wit. Charlie was evidently growing very fond of Hettie as well, and William M. encouraged the union. They made a fine young couple – Hettie inherited her father’s distinctive profile and his wit; Charlie sported a mustache, but had not yet grown portly. They were both smart and assertive, full of good taste, and had the wherewithal to use it.

Charlie had graduated from law school at Harvard in 1865. He was admitted to the bar that November and secured a position as secretary to Senator Charles Sumner and clerk of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. After privately publishing The National and Private Alabama Claims in 1871 he lobbied for a post as junior counsel on the Alabama Commission. Sumner had him appointed Examiner of Claims for the Department of State in November of 1871; in January 1872 he became solicitor for the US before the Arbitration Tribunal in Geneva.

In September the Tribunal found that Britain was liable for the damages caused by the Alabama, and awarded $15.5 million to the United States. While less than the $2 billion (and all of Canada) Sumner had originally sought, it was an advantageous settlement and helped launch Beaman’s career.

Returning to New York in 1873, Charlie went into partnership with Edward Dickerson who represented Thomas Edison, the New York Telephone Company and Western Union as patent attorney. While he had one of the five telephones in New York in his office, the Senate had none, so he wrote to Sumner telling him of his engagement to Hettie.

Charlie and Hettie were married in Windsor the summer of 1874. Fifty guests stayed at the Evarts compound for two days and two nights and Hettie looked magnificent in white silk and orange buds. After the wedding everyone returned to Runnemede to continue the party and Charlie sat down at the piano and belted out “I wish I was Single Again”. The next morning, Evarts was heard warbling away, making a horrible noise in the parlor, and his daughters rushed in aghast, “Father, we didn’t know you could sing!”

“Well, I never knew it myself until I heard Beaman.”

~

By the time of the marriage, Evarts had developed one of the finest farms in the country at Windsor. The main house, Runnemede, was raised up from the street on a knoll, rambling, unpretentious, yet full of comfort. When guests came, which they did with frequency, they were lodged next door at “Giants”, with its billiard room, and the separate office which eventually came to be called the “State Department”. Behind the house stood a greenhouse, a flower garden, and walks hedged with symmetrically trimmed pointed hemlocks. Beyond the garden was Paradise Pond, and fields of hay and corn and stables and barns, and tall stands of pine trees.

Charlie Evarts, who had been badly hurt during the war, thrown from his horse while serving in the Shenandoah, managed the farm for his father. Charlie raised swine and five hundred sheep and the farm won nearly all the blue ribbons at the Claremont fair in 1875. “The crops are magnificent and the cattle superb. I have had numbers of people remark that they never saw such a splendid crib of corn . . . I wish you might see the produce we are now harvesting.”

Altogether Evarts owned about six hundred acres on both sides of the Connecticut River, with over two hundred in cultivation. Evarts made the farm pay by “crediting the farm with everything taken off of it and charging nothing put on.” He offered his guests both milk and champagne, “Take your choice; they’re both refreshing, and they cost me the same.”

He took particular pleasure in sending produce of the farm to his friends. Writing George Bancroft, “I hope you will find as much useful aliment for the body and mind in this product as in former years from the same pen. If you continue to give it preference, for a scholar’s breakfast, over the grass-fed pork or mutton, it will give a new meaning to the high-sounding pretension on, “The pen is mightier than the sword.”



William M. Evarts served as Chief Counsel for the Republican Party during the disputed presidential election of 1876 between Hayes and Tilden. It all came down to some disputed ballots in Florida; after Hayes took the office in the great compromise of 1877 and reconstruction effectively came to an end, Evarts took office as Secretary of State.

He had the rare faculty of saying at the dinner table the best things that were said there - invariably something that was quoted everywhere for days and even years afterward - and giving the impression while saying it that he had better things in reserve if he really cared to produce them. - John Hay

A cabinet position was a great honor, but it only paid ten thousand dollars per year, and the house that he rented on K Street cost him five thousand. There were social compensations however; John Hay served as his assistant Secretary of State, and Henry Adams found the State Department under Evarts to be "magnificently hospitable."

Lucy Hayes, the new first lady tried to bring social affairs to a more urbane level than had been the case during the Grant administration, but she didn’t permit dancing, exiled the billiard table to the White House attic, and frowned on liquor. When the Secretary of State arranged a grand state dinner for the visiting Russian grand dukes, the president and his wife left their wine untouched; and after another formal White House dinner Evarts drolly reported "It was a brilliant affair; water flowed like champagne!"

Charlie and Hettie bought a house on North Main Street in Windsor just above Runnemede in 1877. This extra space came in handily when the family needed all the space it could find when President Hayes visited Windsor after dedicating the Bennington Monument.

American Cicero

After Lincoln’s death, Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency, and immediately began arguing with the Republican congress about the proper path to reconstruction.

William M. Evarts appeared before a great rally at Cooper Union in October 1867. Standing before a banner inscribed “Andrew Johnson: Traitor, Renegade, Outcast”, Evarts castigated the Democrat Johnson as a “President without a Party”. The Radical Republicans won more seats in November, and, smelling blood, conducted an elaborate inquiry looking for evidence of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes or misdemeanors”. When they couldn’t find enough evidence to start impeachment proceedings against the President, the Republican Congress passed the “Tenure of Office Act” which made the removal of Cabinet officers subject to Senate consent, and any infraction would be deemed a “high misdemeanor”.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton was intriguing against the President, and Johnson knew it; he requested Stanton's resignation several times. After Stanton repeatedly declined the request, Johnson suspended him and appointed Grant in his place. Predictably, the Senate refused to confirm the removal of Stanton, and Grant relinquished the position. Johnson then appointed General Lorenzo Thomas; Stanton was incensed and claimed the office was still legally his. He had Thomas arrested, and barricaded the doors of the War Office to prevent his return.

The radicals claimed that Johnson’s removal of Stanton violated the Tenure Act and was grounds for impeachment. A vicious power struggle between the legislative and executive branches of government was under way.

Evarts, despite his opposition to Johnson four months previous, was one of the best litigators in the country, and, at William Seward’s suggestion, was retained as defense counsel when the impeachment trial got underway. This turn surprised many; Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, thought Evarts “a cold, calculating, selfish man”; The radical Independent called him “a hireling counsel . . . who pawned his honor for a lawyer’s fee.”

Thomas Nast chronicled the trial with his cartoons in Harper’s Weekly, and depicted Johnson as a murdered Caesar. Evarts, looking like Cicero, closed for the defense with a four day oration. He picked apart the managers case legally, practically, politically, morally; he piled on classical allusions, and pled for justice with the aura of a revival minister proclaiming the Gospel.

"We could summon from the people a million of men and inexhaustible treasure to help the Constitution in its time of need. Can we now summon resources enough of civil prudence and restraint of passion to carry us through this trial, so that, whatever result may follow, in whatever form, the people may feel that the Constitution has received no wound?"

The spectacle of the trial, the “Great American Farce”, elevated Evarts to the Pantheon of great American orators. Seven Republicans joined twelve Democrats to vote for acquittal, and Johnson stayed in office by one vote.

~

After the trial Johnson appointed Evarts Attorney General of the United States. Evarts took the position somewhat reluctantly, writing to Richard Henry Dana “As for a personal career in politics, I have never felt at liberty to plan for one, and I have less inclination for it than ever. I came here to do my duty in a difficult and dangerous juncture of the Government. I shall do it, and return to my business of farming and lawing, and leave to the newspaper correspondents the conduct of my affairs.”

The New York Bar Association honored the new Attorney General with a public dinner. Four hundred men marched into the Astor House arm in arm. The menu include green turtle soup, salmon, striped bass, filet of beef, turkey, ham, mutton, partridge, capon, oysters, sweet breads, lamb chops, venison, duck, claret, hock, sherry, champagne, brandy, bourbon, scotch, and rye whiskey, and the tables were festooned with edible ornaments including a statue of Evarts to accompany the Monument of Justice and Temple of Liberty.

William M. Evarts, noted for his love of wine, was asked whether drinking so many different vintages made him feel ill the following day. "Not at all," he replied, "it's the indifferent wines that produce that result."

~

Hanging on the wall in my “library”, next to my desk where I am writing this, there hangs a handsome steel engraving (marked “artist’s proof”) by Thomas Johnson of Abraham Lincoln in profile facing left. Below it is a photograph of Saint Gaudens’ bust of William M. Evarts, facing right. The common assumption is that he looks like Cicero, but to me he looks just like my grandfather.

Ulysses S.Grant took office in 1870, and in 1872 he sent William M. Evarts to Geneva to try to settle the Alabama claims. Evarts's oldest daughter, Hettie, accompanied him and travelled around Europe with her friend Belle Gibbs who introduced her to a young sculptor in his studio in Rome. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was about to start a small portrait bust of Belle, and when she brought Hettie around to the studio, Hettie recognized Gus as the son of their old shomaker in New York. Belle's father had just bought his new statue of Hiawatha, with the intent of bringing it back to Central Park; Hettie commissioned Gus to copy two Roman busts, one of Demosthenes, and one of Cicero for her father.

There were two prominent busts of Cicero in Rome for Saint-Gaudens to copy. Gus asked Mr. Gibbs which one Mr. Evarts would like best. He started to copy the Capitoline Cicero, because he thought it would compliment the Demosthenes best, but Mr. Gibbs discovered that the Vatican Cicero was rather thin and bony, compared to the heavy set Capitoline.

“Mr. Evarts has the idea, as many of his friends have told him, that he resembles Cicero,” Gibbs explained. “Now Mr. Evarts is thin as possible and if he sees the bust of a fat man, I am sure he will not accept it.”

Saint-Gaudens bought another piece of marble and started over.

Education

By 1870 The Athenaeum needed more room for its growing library, Harvard College had a large collection of engravings it had been given by Francis Gray, but they were hidden away in Gore Hall, MIT had a collection of architectural casts it wished to display, and the American Social Science Association was considering the acquisition of a large collection of plaster copies of classical sculpture for the use of students and the instruction of the public.

Charles Callahan Perkins was back from Italy, and his mission was clear - to use all his warm persuasive skills to bring these groups together. The time had come for Boston to have a public Museum of Fine Arts. The city agreed to grant land on Copley Square for the building, and C.C.’s cousin John Hubbard Sturgis was retained to design the new museum. The new museum building would be a copy of the Queen Anne style Pine Bank on a grand scale, using the same terra cotta design elements as on the Perkins home.

The leaders of the new museum started a large fundraising campaign, but C.C. couldn’t wait for the new building to get the museum off the ground. He was anxious that the new museum become active immediately, and, as the new museum’s first Honorary Director, organized its first exhibit in the picture galleries of the Athenaeum.

The Boston Art Club had suspended its activities when the Civil War broke out, but C.C. met with his old friend, amateur painter and music publisher, George Russell in 1871, to discuss reviving the club. With Perkins at the helm they called a general meeting, and the revived club opened its membership to upper-class men who professed an interest in art. C.C. was elected President and the Club engaged a bow-front townhouse on Boylston Street for its quarters. The Club added a spacious picture gallery behind the building and in 1873 opened its first annual exhibition. From an informal artists' supper club, Perkins created a refined gentlemen's club with dining and reading rooms, an extensive library, paintings collection and a picture gallery. It hosted two juried exhibitions each year and hosted informal gatherings for its members on the first Saturday of each month.

For the improvement of the general public, he edited an American edition of Eastlake's "Hints on Household Taste" in 1872, and Von Falke's "Art in the House," in 1879. Anyone could become a connoisseur, if they read the book.

Just as it was important to collect material in museums, and for gentlemen to share their love of art, art education needed to begin in the public schools; from the time a child could guide a pencil, his instruction in drawing should start. In 1871, C.C. was elected a member of the school committee of Boston, and he worked tirelessly to establish art education in the schools. The previous year Massachusetts lawmakers had mandated drawing as one of nine required subjects taught in all public schools of that state. With passage of "An Act Relating to Free Instruction in Drawing", Massachusetts became the first state to legislate compulsory public art education.

The intent of this act was two-fold – industrial drawing was a skill needed for the economic development of the country, particularly for machinery and textile patterns. The lack of good ornamental designers forced the importation from Europe for articles that could be produced cheaper at home. Secondly, there was a moral benefit: drawing cultivated the habits of neatness and accuracy; it tended to improve the intellect of the masses and purify the tone of their moral character. It was directly useful in academic subjects such as natural history, natural science, and geography and it introduced students to the beautiful, the good and the true.

For his own sons, Charles took his brother Ned’s advice and packed son Neddy up in 1872 when he turned fourteen, and sent him to Saint Paul's, the new school set just west of Concord, New Hampshire for which Ned served as a trustee. Neddy soon found himself living in a dormitory cubicle and shinnying hockey pucks on the Lower School Pond, a world away from the Villa Capponi overlooking the Arno. His brother Charlie would follow him two years later, while their beautiful older sister Eleanor would be introduced to society on the continent.

Young Ned was simple, friendly, unassuming, interested in his studies, in literature and art, but not much into athletics, although he did play tennis. He entered Harvard College as a Sophomore in 1876, and became a member of the Hasty Pudding Club, the O.K. Club, the Art Club, and was on the Crimson Editorial Board. He wrote a poem for the Class Supper and the Class Ode for Day. He roomed in the privately owned Beck Hall, favored by the society swells (including Teddy Roosevelt), and known for the “Beck Hall Spread”, the most exclusive society fest at Harvard each spring. Of course, with his family living on Jamaica Pond, Ned was often at Oakwood, enjoying its delightful hospitality. He must have missed something of the full swing of college life, but perhaps gained more from all the cultivated people he met at home.

He did have one notable social success. While still in college he became engaged to Miss Elizabeth Hoar Evarts, the daughter of the Secretary of State of the United States of America, William M. Evarts.

Art for All

Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance - Henry James

When we commenced this first century of our national existence, we were newly emancipated colonies whose richest possession was a God-given love of liberty. We are at present one of the great powers of the earth, and have reason for well-justified pride in the history of the hundred years which have now so nearly elapsed. We have sent ships into the uttermost parts of the world, and by commerce have increased in wealth; we have manned great fleets, and have equipped great and heroic armies; we have intersected the vast area of our territory with a net-work of iron, and have brought its farthest extremities into possibility of instant communication; we have built countless cities, and enriched them with every kind of useful and charitable institution, and have gained for ourselves a world-wide reputation in science and in literature. All this and more, for we have given to the world examples of men in power whose reputation is unstained by any shadow of self-seeking ambition, and of men in private life whose overflowing charity has won for them the love and admiration of mankind. These are great things, some of them the greatest things which a nation can do. And yet it seems to me, that we can hardly arrogate to our country the title of the model republic so long as we are content to live without art, which both in ancient and in modern times has been regarded by all civilized nations as one of the crowning glories of a great state, and neglect all means for the cultivation of an appreciation of its beauties. — C. C. Perkins.

Charles Callahan Perkins was a true amateur - he loved the arts. He had considerable talents; he could paint and engrave and he could compose and conduct music, but he was torn between his talents, and perhaps he would never, with his great wealth, be able to feel the suffering a great artist so often requires. With his enthusiasms however, and his ability to collect and patronize and endow, Charles discovered a great role to play with his life.

All around him in Tuscany he found sculpture created by the old masters going back to the thirteenth century. It was the finest sculpture the world had known since classical times, but its history had never been adequately recorded. C. C. Perkins researched, wrote, and engraved the illustrations to The Tuscan Sculptors, in 1864. The book was immediately recognized as the standard authority on the subject. He continued this work in 1868 with The Italian Sculptors, a history of the art in the other Italian cities during the same period. In 1869, in recognition for his contributions, he became the first American elected to the Academe des Beaux Arts in Paris.

With two young sons and a teenage daughter, the time came for the Perkins family to return to Boston in 1869. They moved into the family’s Oakwood house on Jamaica Pond, next door to sister Sarah Cleveland’s new stick wood style Nutwood, and up the embankment from the Queen Anne Revival Pine Bank that brother Ned was having built on cousin John Hubbard Sturgis’s design, following the disastrous fire that had destroyed Pine Bank II the previous year. The pond provided excellent skating in the winter and sailing in the summer, and an abundant supply of good company in the generous houses found around its shores.

For a summer home Charles’s wife Fanny and her mother Mary Anne Bruen purchased a cornfield on Bellevue Avenue in Newport and worked to recreate the grand style they had lived in Florence. They planted beautiful trees all around the property, and built a relatively modern stone summer cottage, Villa Bruen, in the Gothic Revival style with large porches to catch the breezes off the ocean.

Longfellow invited Charles to join the Saturday Club which met every month at the Parker House. As Oliver Wendell Holmes explained it, the Saturday Club had no organization, and seemed to have sprung to life fully clothed as it were, almost without parentage. It was natural that men such as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, Hawthorne, Motley, and Sumner should meet and dine together as they did, in fact, every month. The club had no constitution or by-laws, made no speeches, read no papers, observed no ceremonies. Its members came and went at their pleasure. There was nothing Bohemian about the club, but it certainly provided many good times and not a little good talking.

Charles and Fanny entertained at both Oakwood and Villa Bruen, frequently sponsoring concerts and recitals. They attended Harriet Beecher Stowe’s birthday party, and continued to correspond with Julia Ward Howe, Matthew Arnold, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Brownings.

There was no question Charles had come into his own on the European continent as an art historian and a connoisseur. His next career was to become one of the great evangelists of art and culture to America.