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A New England Gentleman: Theodore Lyman III, 1833–1897
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
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Few small bodies of men have been more carefully studied, in recent years, than Boston's upper class. Winning their first fortunes in overseas trade, then transferring their capital to textiles and railroads, that class laid the foundations of America's Industrial Revolution as well as extending its own wealth and power. From such an economic base, so modern scholars assure us, they consolidated their class through marriage, through placing their sons in family firms or in the learned professions, and through guaranteeing the continuity of their fortunes, against incompetence or the claims of creditors and daughters' husbands, by the device of the family trust. They reached out to control or create institutions, whether Harvard, the Boston Athenaeum, or Massachusetts General Hospital. They played an important part in city government. In addition, it is alleged, they sought to control the masses through charities and the public school system. If all this characterized the first half of the nineteenth century, modern scholars assure us that in the second half atrophy set in as the city's growth slowed, as investments became more conservative, as political power was lost, as defensiveness and imitation replaced creativity. It must be added that some observers in those days, inside and outside the class, took the same view.
Many of the facts are beyond dispute. Hugh M. Blaisdell, the self-made businessman in Robert Grant's novel The Chippendales, was correct in saying that Boston “hasn't a first-class fortune,” though many in the second class.
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References
1 Among the best of such studies are Jaher, Frederic C., The Urban Establishment (Urbana, Ill., 1982), pp. 15–156Google Scholar; Pessen, Edward, Riches, Class and Power before the Civil War (Lexington, Mass., 1973)Google Scholar; Hall, Peter D., “Family Structure and Class Consolidation among the Boston Brahmins” (Ph.D., S. U. N. Y. Stonybrook, 1973)Google Scholar; Story, Ronald, The Forging of an Aristocracy: Harvard and the Boston Upper Class, 1800–1870 (Middletown, Conn., 1980)Google Scholar; Goodman, Paul, “Ethics and Enterprise: The Values of the Boston Elite, 1800–1860,” American Quarterly, 18 (1966), 437–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In an earlier style is Crawford, Mary C., Famous Families of Massachusetts (2 vols., Boston, 1930)Google Scholar.
2 New York, 1909.
3 Robert Treat Paine Papers, 9 Jan. 1894 (in Massachusetts Historical Society) has a letter from his broker advising him to sell Sante Fe securities and buy Bell Telephone instead.
4 I hope to do this myself, in a study of Boston's people and Institutions between the Civil War and World War I now approaching completion, and in a supplementary collection of short biographies. This larger project has been funded in part by the Social Science Research Council, with supplementary small grants from the British Academy – generosity which I acknowledge with gratitude.
5 Biographical detail may be found in Adams, Charles Francis Jr, “Memoir of Theodore Lyman,” Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, 2nd series, 20 (1906–1907), 147–77Google Scholar; in Agassiz, George R., ed., Meade's Headquarters 1863–1865: Letters of Colonel Theodore Lyman from the Wilderness to Appomattox (Boston, 1922)Google Scholar; and in DeWolfe Howe, Mark A., ed., Later Years of the Saturday Club (New York, 1968, 1st edn. 1927), pp. 149–53Google Scholar; facing p. 150 is a portrait of Lyman in uniform, slim, elegant, with moustache and side-whiskers, slightly bald though barely thirty, his expression serious and alert. The essential source, however, has been the thirteen volumes of Lyman's Private Notebooks (volumes II to 21, with supplements on Civil War campaigns numbered 13A and 13B)and four boxes of letters, three marked “Theodore Lyman III,” chiefly 1856–63, and one marked “Lyman Family Papers 1861–1863,” all in Massachusetts Historical Society. No one in the Society can explain the fate of the earlier Notebook volumes. I acknowledge permission to quote very extensively from these documents; and I am grateful, too, for much expert and friendly co-operation received during my visits to the Society between 1978 and 1981. Details of Lyman's home are in Notebook 21, 20 July 1874, and in Clark's Boston Blue Book 1895, s.v. Brookline.
6 The scattered evidence is in Letters, 21 Oct. 1856, 17 Jan. and 28 Feb. 1858, and in Notebook 16, 30 Dec. 1865, 22 Jan. and 2 May 1866; 17, 8 and 10 Dec. 1866, 2 and 20 Feb. 1867. The nearest to accurate measures for ranking Lyman, 's wealth are “Our First Men”: A Calendar of Wealth, Fashion and Gentility (Boston, 1846)Google Scholar and List of Persons, Copartnerships and Corporations who were taxed on twenty thousand dollars and upwards in the City of Boston in the year 1865 (Boston, 1866)Google Scholar.
7 Letters, 18 Aug. and 15 Sep. 1856, 21 Jan. 1857. Notebook 16, 30 Nov. 1865, 5 and 10 Jan. 1866; 17, 22 Sep. 1866; 19, 28 Nov. 1869; 20, 30 May 1872; 21, 28 Nov. 1872.
8 Notebook 15, 14 May 1865, shows Lyman paying $650 for a pair of bay colts; 19, 25 June 1870, describes the garden-party. Cora's birthday was celebrated by a party at which Lyman worked a magic lantern, and Christmas parties were similar, Notebook 16, 9 Mar. 1866; 20, 25 Dec. 1869.
9 Notebook 16, 12, 16 and 17 Mar. 1866. The system at Massachusetts General Hospital is described in Vogel, Morris J., “Boston's Hospitals, 1870–1930: A Social History” (Ph.D., Chicago, 1974), pp. 125–29Google Scholar.
10 Lyman was elected to the Saturday Club in 1881, but the Notebook gives no sign of interest. In Notebook 19, 3 Aug. 1870, he wrote on the death of an acquaintance: “a cheerful fellow in time gone by but he suffered a love disappointment with one of the Parkers, and finally he took to club life, and at last, developed softening of the brain.” Old-family weddings are in Notebook 19, 22 Apr. 1869, 6 July 1871. Lyman had some taste for practical jokes. On April Fools' Day, 1868, he prepared a doll in a basket, complete with milk and an explanatory note, enough to convince some Russell relatives, momentarily, that a dead foundling lay outside their Louisburg Square home.
11 Notebook 15, 21 Feb. 1865, and accounts at the back of the volume showing $277.50 spent on wine within a few months; 16, 18 Oct. and 13 Dec. 1865; 18, 6 Mar. 1868.
12 Notebook 15, 28 Apr. 1865; 16, 3 May 1866; 17, 5 Dec. 1866.
13 Notebook 13, 31 Aug. 1864; and for a more modern view, Garland, Joseph E., Boston's North Shore (Boston, 1978)Google Scholar. On shooting, Notebook 17, 3 Sep. 1866 (the quotation), 12–24 Oct. 1866; 18, 24–30 Oct. 1868. Among other journeys may be noted dental treatment in New York City, Notebook 19, 13–14 Jan. 1870, and a rail journey to California, 7 Apr. to 27 May 1870.
14 Notebook 19, 9 and 10 Nov. 1869; 20, 21 Oct., 15 and 30 Nov., 25 Dec. 1871, 1 Feb. 1872; 21, 6 Dec. 1872.
15 Notebook 13, 24 Mar. 1864; 17, 17 Feb. 1867; 20, 20 Mar. 1872.
16 Notebook 19, 8 Feb. 1870, 6 Feb. 1871.
17 Letters, 30 Mar. 1863.
18 Notebook 20, 21 June 1872. All other references come from the European tour of 1871–73, except “opera singers” which is in Letters, 22 Oct. 1861.
19 Notebook 19, 19 Jan. and 1 Mar. 1870.
20 Notebook 15, 3 Feb. 1865; 18, 24 Feb. 1869; 20, 28 Dec. 1871; to which may be added 16, 3 Feb. 1866, a “quite profane anecdote” by John Murray Forbes, with children present.
21 Notebook 18, 11 Mar. 1869.
22 Notebook 16, 18 Mar. 1866.
23 Notebook 19, 6 Aug. 1869, 1 Jan. 1870; 20, 8 Apr. 1872 (the quotation); 21, 2 May 1873.
24 Notebook 17, 19 July 1867; 19, 31 Dec. 1869; 21, 12 Oct. 1873.
25 Papers Relating to the Garrison Mob (Cambridge, Mass., 1870), pp. 50, 62–65, 71–73Google Scholar. The comment on oratory is in Notebook 19, 6 Apr. 1870, which also informs us that Charles W. Eliot had toned down some of Lyman's angrier passages!
26 Notebook 15, 9 Jan. 1865 – he recovered enough to attend an opera on the following evening. The burlesques may be found in Massachusetts Historical Society.
27 Notebook 18, 11 Mar. 1869; 19, 2 and 16 Sep. 1869, 15 Feb. 1870. Story, chapter 8 and esp. pp. 155–56, shows that this was the period in which Harvard separated itself from the Commonwealth's influence, and secured a new system by which the Overseers were elected by the alumni.
28 Letters, 9 Feb., 2 Mar., 13 and 26 May, 26 Aug. 1856. Appropriately, Elizabeth's Christmas present in 1870 would be a case of instruments.
29 Notebook 15, 15 and 23 Jan. 1865; 16, 21 Aug. 1865. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edn, 6, 178–86, s.v. Echinodermata, provides sufficient definition.
30 See the list of Lyman's works in the Union Catalog.
31 The whole subject is illuminated by Lurie, Edward, Louis Agassiz: A Life in Science (Chicago, 1960)Google Scholar, which had as one of its sources a set of Lyman's scientific papers in the Museum. See esp. chapter 6 on Lyman's Museum work, and pp. 377–78 for the letter to Alexander. Lurie also, pp. 135–62, treats other scientific institutions of Boston and Cambridge: Lyman was a member of the Boston Natural History Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Thursday Club, and the Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture (whose most frequently recorded activities were dinners).
32 Letters, 20 Nov. 1856.
33 Letters, 1 Oct. 1861, 18 May 1862.
34 Letters, 23 Jan.,? and 10 Mar., 24 Apr. 1863; while 18 Mar. 1863 has a letter from a friend, Dr Boott, trying to dissuade Lyman from volunteering by using arguments very much like those Lyman had used to Cora about Howland.
35 Notebook 11, 10 Aug. 1863. The original letters, and the Order, are filed with Lyman's 1863 correspondence.
36 Notebook 11, 14 and 15 July 1863.
37 A fuller quotation has already been printed in Howe, , Saturday Club, p. 151Google Scholar.
38 Notebook 12, 13 Sep. 1863; and 2 Sep. had called the interior of the Capitol “an incongruous mixture of fine marble, common plaster, and tobacco juice.”
39 Notebook 12, 3 and 20 Jan. 1864.
40 Notebook 13, 14 Mar. 1864.
41 The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series i, 36 Part i, 677; Part ii, 410–11, 439–40, 444–45, 672–74; 40 Part iii, 171, 173, 175, 274–75, 313–15, 350, 354, 357.
42 Notebook 13, 20 Oct. 1864. The full story is in Greenslet, Ferris, The Lowells and their Seven Worlds (Boston, 1946), pp. 272–300Google Scholar. Notebook 15, 9 Feb. 1863, shows Lyman collecting photographs of friends who had fallen.
43 Notebook 15, 9, 17, 19, 22, and 25 Mar., 10 Apr. 1865. The relaxation is further proved by the fact that Lyman could find time to gratify his wife's desire to collect buttons from the generals, beginning with Meade.
44 Notebook 12, 13 Sep. 1863; 13B, 28 June 1864.
45 Notebook 15, 19 and 20 Apr. 1865.
46 Notebook 16, 3 May 1866.
47 There is a membership list of the Club in Notebook 18, 12 Feb. 1868. The cornerstone of Memorial Building was laid, Meade being present, as recorded in Notebook 19, 5 Oct. 1870. Lyman was briefly associated with the veterans' organization entitled The Army of the Potomac: a rally is described in Notebook 19, 11 May 1871. More subjectively, Lyman tells how he thought of dead friends when attending the first post-war entertainment of Hasty Pudding – Notebook 16, 17 Nov. 1865.
48 Notebook 20, 20 Oct. 1871; and 19, 17 Sep. 1869, shows Mrs Shaw a guest at Brookline.
49 The early reports are not printed in Massachusetts Public Documents; but those from 1877 to 1882 make the Commission's history and purpose clear enough. 1882, Doc. 25, p. 21, has a tribute to Lyman. Enforcement difficulties are discussed in 1881, Doc. 25, pp. 6–7, 14–15, 40–44 (Massachusetts); 1878, Doc. 34, pp. 20–26 (Connecticut). 1877, Doc. 34, p. 16, and 1880, Doc. 25, p. 8 have the quotations.
50 Notebook 21, 20 July 1873, has four and a half pages on symptoms and treatment. Since Lyman devoted the same careful attention to his wife's symptoms in 1867, and in Notebook 18, 26 Feb. 1868, suspected tuberculosis from the eyes and skin of a beautiful girl seen at a Boston concert, and often compared and criticized doctors' judgements, one may fairly say that he was displaying, in this field too, his scientific turn of mind.
51 Notebook 15, 21 May 1865; 16, 29 Nov. 1865; 20, 10 Dec. 1871, 4 Feb. 1872. Lyman's admiration for Brooks appeared in Notebook 12, 24 Jan. 1864, where he read a sermon in his tent, and in 19, 5 Dec. 1869, where he enjoyed another, at Trinity Church. He also valued the Rev. Willson of Salem, who had married him, had christened Cora, and christened a son as late as 1879. The coolness of tone, however, can be detected in the comment he made on a sermon by a New York minister, Notebook 13, 17 Apr. 1864: “He (like many clergymen) handled the Infinite in a rather easy way, but he had a good manner and an excellent voice for singing.”
52 Notebook 21, 11 Sep. 1873, a long report of a discussion with Brooks. Curiously, there are several entries in 1874 on the help Lyman derived from hearing a “radical Unitarian”named Brown.
53 Notebook 21, 21 and 30 Sep. 1873, 9 Aug. 1874.
54 Notebook 21, 22 Sep. 1873, 17 Apr. 1874. An entry in the back of Notebook 15 shows no 1865 donation exceeding $100.
55 Notebook 21, 16 Nov. 1873, 9 Mar. 1875, the latter a reflection on Cora's birthday, when he visited Mount Auburn.
56 Adams, pp. 171–76. Lyman was also a founder of the Massachusetts Reform Club.
57 Congressional Record, 48 Congress 1 Session, pp. 649, 731, 747, 1140, 5610; 2 Session, pp. 66, 324, 347, 607, 913, 939, 979, 1016, 1448.
58 48 Congress 1 Session, pp. 408, 1001, 1065, 1498, 1590, 2033–34, 4336.
59 Ibid., pp. 5998, 6174.
60 Ibid., pp. 1917, 3192, 3763–64, 4193, 4687; 2 Session, pp. 1769, 1843–44.
61 48 Congress i Session, pp. 491–92, 4447–53, 4485–92. Since Vermont had two elderly congressmen, Biographical Dictionary of the American Congress cannot provide certain identification: the older of the two was Luke P. Poland. There is a biography of Hunt: Longacre, Edward G., The Man Behind The Guns (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.
62 Notebook 16, 12 Mar. 1866; 21, 14 June 1885.
63 Milford Times, 10 June 1893, in Winslow Warren Scrapbook; Charles Francis Adams Jr., Memorabilia, 10 Apr. 1895 – both in Massachusetts Historical Society.
64 Notebook 18, 23 Aug. 1867; 21, 4 July 1880.