Hawthorne Hall on Park Street

In an earlier post, I showed a later photograph of the site of Hawthorne Hall (also called the Hawthorne Rooms), which was a hall utilized by Mrs. Eddy on Park Street, between Tremont Street and the State House, on the edge of the Boston Commons. For some reason I have always been interested in that location, perhaps because it was where Mrs. Eddy delivered the lectures from the late 1870s to the mid-1880s that got her movement going. (Of course there were other reasons for the success of her movement at that time, such as the creation of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College on Columbus Avenue and the publication of The Christian Science Journal, as its name was changed to, but the Hawthorne Hall lectures played their important role as well.) 

William Lyman Johnson was just a boy when his father, William B. Johnson, took him to hear Mrs. Eddy speak at Hawthorne Hall in 1884, and in my collection is a photocopy of his historical manuscript that he prepared for the Christian Science Board of Directors in 1919. In that manuscript he provides an ingenuous look at that day, from the standpoint of a child who really didn’t want to be there. Below are lengthy excerpts of his recollection, which go beyond what he recorded for Mary Beecher Longyear as printed in The History of the Christian Science Movement (1926). The text is then followed by the floor plan of the Hall, an introductory card to hear Mrs. Eddy speak there, a photograph of William Lyman Johnson (one that we have seen before), along with roughly contemporaneous photographs of the very short Park Street, where the Hall was situated.

“The first time I saw Mrs. Eddy was in 1884 in the Hawthorne Rooms. My father had told me so much about her and the remarkable things she had done, and what wonderful healing her teaching had accomplished, that I wanted to see her, but did not desire to get to[o] close, for I had, somehow received the idea that she could read the thoughts in the minds of people, and I was afraid that if she read mine she might discover that I would rather be playing ball than going to church.

 

The Sunday afternoon was one of beauty, either in late Spring or early fall, that father and I walked to the Hawthorne Rooms. The rooms were not large, but well-lighted by the windows that fronted the Commons. I am afraid that the scenes along the malls [i.e., the walkway outside] and the emerald greens of the vast arches of the elms claimed more of my attention than did the preparations for the service. I envied the freedom of the birds that winged their way through the bowers of translucent green, traced the rough streams of eddying bark on the trunks of the old elms, and wished that I was out on the grass, or calling to the deer in the deer-park, or wondering at the changing shapes of the sprays of the fountain that was playing in the frog-pond, and splashing and sparkling into irridescent[sic] sprays of rainbows.

 

Before the service began the room became filled, and then a quiet, and I heard some one say:—‘here is Mrs. Eddy.’ I cannot remember what her sermon was about, but there is a strong recollection that the place was very quiet, and when I asked my father in a whisper, for a piece of peppermint, he did not seem to hear me, and something seemed to say to me ‘don’t whisper again,’ and I did not.

 

When the service come to an end my father left me, as he had some business of the church to do, and I was well content to look out upon the Common, and know that soon I would be running and skipping over the turf with the freedom of the other boys. A crowd of people was standing about the platform listening to what Mrs. Eddy was saying. My reveries were disturbed when father came over to me and said he wanted me to meet the Teacher. I remember I held back and father gently chided me and urged that I must act like a little gentleman, for he had told her of my singing, and she had said to him that I must go to the College and sing for her and some of her students, and added that if she asked me I must surely go as I would then be honored by singing for the greatest person on earth. But this was too much for me, for I did not want to sing for the greatest person on earth. . . . An unwilling captive, Father dragged me forward near the platform, and I took refuge behind a tall stout man. There were about a dozen people lingering about the platform and I could hear Mrs. Eddy speaking to them, and I stopped shifting from one foot to another and began listening and wondering at some of the things she said. I must have been there five minutes, when she stopped and there was silence. The thought came like a flash that she had looked clear through the fat man behind whom I had taken refuge and had seen me. It is evident, from what she told my father afterward that she sensed a child was near, and at that moment father dragged me forward and said:—‘Teacher this is my son.’ She reached out her hand with a most loving smile, and at the clasp all fears vanished. Holding it in a firm grasp she told me that my father had given her an account of my singing and success at the Conservatory, and said that she would like to hear me sing sometime. Just what I answered I do not remember for I kept watching her eyes, but when she asked me ‘what I should like to be when I grew up’ I told her:—‘a fine musician.’ Her answer was:—“I hope that you will be?’ and looking into my eyes, she said, as she put her hand on my head:— ‘may God bless you.’

 

The remarkable tones of her voice, the wonderful questioning of her eyes which seemed to look deep into me, rather frightened me at first, then drew tears from my eyes. The exceptional manner in which she spoke to others and the way she stood, made an unforgettable picture, and in after years, whenever I saw her, the impression engraved upon my boyish thought that day in Hawthorne Rooms came back with inspired freshness.

 

This first look from her eyes and the touch of her hand has ever lingered with me as one of the events of my life.”

William Lyman Johnson

         

 

Comments

[Craig Beardsley]

Thanks for this post and its special core text, a source with which few are familiar. Johnson's fine specimen of historical Christian Science fiction, From Hawthorne Hall (Homewood Press, 1922), was set in 1885--chosen as (a) zenith of American Culture and, perhaps not coincidentally, a high water mark for an epochal period in the history of the movement. I'm indebted to Keith for sharing that a 1942 letter by Johnson identifies the real-life counterparts of the characters depicted in the novel. Thanks, too, for the photos that bring together the city, the period, and this nascent period of Christian Science history.

[Keith]

Thanks, Craig. By the way a copy of From Hawthorne Hall is currently available on eBay, I see. A copy of that book in my collection includes the following nice inscription:

“May the contents of this book surround you with the wonderful atmosphere of the period when Mrs. Eddy walked among her people, and for their great need, as pilgrims in a new world of Spirit and Love, gave them the seven steps upward from suffering to health and spirituality in her poem:

‘Christ My Refuge’
William Lyman Johnson

March 5, 1938.”

The transcript that I have of the 1942 letter has the following information as to which characters in the novel correspond to which real Christian Scientists:

Delia Barker = Miss Julia S. Bartlett
Capt. and Mrs. East = Capt. and Mrs. Eastaman
Mrs. Roe = Mrs. Mary W. Munroe
Mr. Johns = William B. Johnson
Mary Hamilton = "one now living, who was remarkably healed."
"Gerald is what I would have liked to have been but ---- Parker is a composite character."