Below are Harriet Hammond Elliston's notes which I transcribed, as mentioned in the introduction below.
Introduction
In 1979 Marian Cannon Schlesinger came out with a little book called “Snatched from Oblivion, a Cambridge Memoir”. Since this little book was about growing up in Cambridge at about the time mother was growing up, I asked her to write down some of her thoughts regarding her family and life growing up in the first half of the twentieth century in Cambridge, Mass. During the War years of 1942-45, while our father was abroad, mother, Penny and I all lived in the upstairs apartment that her parents had made in their house at 11 Scott Street. This house was the very house in which she had grown up.
By 1975, at age seventy-one, mother was suffering from macular degeneration and was no longer able to pass her driver’s license eye test. In addition, her handwriting was never easy to decipher. She often attributed this to the fact that in her years at The Shady Hill School, she learned to write with gloves on her hands (as one will read below). Shady Hill was, at that time, an Open Air School, with classes on Mrs. Hocking’s porch. Classes were held outside in the fresh air no matter what the weather or season. In about 1981 she started writing her thoughts down in a black, bound composition notebook from which this is transcribed. In the year 2001 mother and I went over her hand written notes in order to be sure to have everything correct. These are her recollections and thoughts, with some minor corrections and notes added by me for clarification.
-- E. R. Elliston, 15 July 2002
A Short Memoir by Harriet Hammond Elliston
Rowley has expressed an interest in knowing more about life in Cambridge when and where I grew up. I was born on Kirkland Road, a small dead end street off Kirkland Street, on the thirteenth of December 1904. This was a neighborhood largely of Harvard professors, with the exception of one couple, Charlton Black and his wife who taught at B.U. Professor Black came from Scotland and had been a classmate of J. M. Barrie (the playwright) at Edinburgh University. Mrs. Black was Canadian.
To me, they were the parents of my playmates, persons more or less interested in what we were doing, but largely foreign, of eccentric habit, seen only when they came and went from the house with a green book bag thrown over the shoulder. The distinguished authority on Rousseau and the romantics would walk by absorbed in thought. We knew that he felt Rousseau’s idea of original childhood romance was nonsense, as anyone who had children could plainly see. He had two children who were among our friends, but totally outside his experience. Although he was an authority on romantic literature, his children didn’t reflect any of these qualities.
When I was three we moved to 11 Scott Street, a three minute walk from the old house on Kirkland Road, a neighborhood equally full of distinguished neighbors. To walk from Kirkland Road to our new house we crossed Kirkland Street, passed Miss Rand’s garden, always a joy to see, particularly in the Spring when her lawn and flower beds were a mass of color with crocuses purple, yellow and white. Then we turned down Irving Street, passed William James’ house, then bearing right to Scott Street where the sidewalk was lined with small white pine trees whose purpose was to screen the Cummings’ large garden from public view. Mr. Cummings preached from the pulpit of the late Edward Everett Hale at the Unitarian Church in Boston (Second Congregational Society). He was the father of E. E. Cummings, in my youth an older boy and often the subject of concern among the neighbors because he had gone to France and was arrested as an undesirable alien due to his anti French remarks during World War I. The Cummings had an “extended family” in a large airy household. There was Mr. and Mrs. Cummings, E. E., Elizabeth, Aunt Jane and Grandmother Cummings, who had been my grandmother’s dearest friend when they were girls growing up in New Hampshire. Then there was Sandy, their black cook. He was a big man with a warm laugh. He always wore a tall white chef’s hat and was an impressive figure to be often seen on the Cummings back porch. Continuing down Scott Street we passed the Thaxters, whose pink flowering trees spilled their blossoms over the hedge on the the sidewalk. Professor Thaxter was a botanist with a garden of luxuriant and rare plants which attested to his profession. Then came the Hammond’s house, a nice looking house with a big casement window and a barberry hedge that never seemed to do very well. After we bought the house my mother, in the course of time, persuaded blue scillas to come up in the grass to make a lovely blue pool in the lawn beside the house.
As time went on and I grew bigger, I was involved to some extent in the activities of my older brother Frank and his friends. When we played “cops & robbers” I was dragged breathless along by the hand over fences and between hedges. As I look back on my childhood, it seems to me that there was always one unfortunate child who was the butt of the gang, like Rosamand Gregor who lived with her mother, aunt and grand mother and was rather proper and grown-up in manner. The gang invented a game called “bull pull the rope” in which a bucket of water with a rope attached was set on the branch of a tree. The unsuspecting victim was blindfolded and told to count to ten and then pull the rope while everyone else ran and hid. Rosamand was “it”. She pulled the rope and down came not only the water but the bucket as well - quite unexpectedly. Luckily she was not hurt, but I always wondered why she appeared to bear resentment to me in later years. Perhaps she couldn’t forgive such childness.
But by the time I was ten I had my own circle of friends. Paul Sachs, the new head of the Fogg Museum had bought the beautiful house and garden of Charles Elliott, known as “Norton’s Woods, and moved his family to Shady Hill. This area was literally a stone’s throw from Scott Street which had, in the early days, actually been part of Norton’s Woods. Our two families became fast friends. The Sachs were warm hearted and generous with three daughters, Libby (Elizabeth), Celia and Marjorie. Libby, the eldest of the three, was exactly my age. The Sachs gave wonderful parties for all the neighborhood, young and old. There was a tremendous celebration at New Years with music, dancing, stunts, singing and games. This was highlighted by “Uncle” Paul doing a cakewalk with one of the young lady guests. In the winter the slopes of Shady Hill were covered with children on sleds to coast from the front steps down to the bottom of the hill where a fence protected the coasters from going out into the street
Paul Sachs was a distinguished collector of prints and drawings which hung throughout his house and would eventually go to the Fogg Museum collection. A series of Duerer woodcuts hung along the front stairs. A Rembrant (or perhaps Rubens) portrait of a young woman hung on the dinning room wall. Drawings of Degas, Picasso, Daumier and Rembrant hung casually about the house for all to see with an intimate viewing.
To return to the neighborhood and my friends: there was, in addition to Elizabeth Sachs, Alice and Beth Whiting and Margaret Arnold, all of whom have remained lifelong friends.
From Scott Street I could walk to school first to Mrs. Hocking’s back porch on Quincy Street where we were the first class of the Shady Hill School, called, at the time, “The Cooperative Open Air School.” The school soon outgrew the back porch and its new buildings were built on land almost directly across the street from our house on Scott Street. My brother Frank referred to the style of the buildings as the “Early Waiting Room” style of architecture. At Shady Hill we sat in open air classrooms heated marginally by a pot bellied stove. We wore caps, sweaters, gloves and we sat in sitting bags, the lower part of our bodies encased in the gray blanket that also covered our shoulders like a shawl. The school uniform was a gray sweater and a gray stocking cap, but mother did not care for this drab attire. I wore a cheery pink sweater and a light brown hat. It has sometimes been suggested that my poor handwriting was the result of years of writing with gloves on!
At age fourteen I had finished Shady Hill and with my classmates went on to the Cambridge Latin School, a vast change. There had been some thought of my going to the Brimmer School in Boston, a school run by an old friend and classmate of my father’s at Cambridge Latin, Mabel Cummings. After an interview, Miss Cummings expressed some doubt of whether I was ready for her school. My mother said that perhaps I should first go for a year to the Cambridge Latin School, to which Miss Cummings replied that she was not sure that she would want me after a year at public school. This was all that was needed. My father, who had attended public school with Miss Cummings, would not dream of my going to her snotty school!
So I went to the Cambridge High and Latin School along with all my Shady Hill classmates and Alice and Beth Whiting. It was a little further to walk to CHLS than to Shady Hill. It was, in fact, just half way to my grandfather’s house at the corner of Dana and Harvard Street. I graduated from High School in 1921 at age sixteen, and was privileged to shake the hand of the Honorable Mayor Quinn, a somewhat slippery politician and mayor of Cambridge. Cambridge Latin prepared me to pass college entrance examinations and was an invaluable experience in meeting people from many backgrounds. However, from the point of view of stirring intellectual curiosity and excitement in learning, Shady Hill was my most important educational influence until I got to Radcliffe.
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Prior to the above, mother wrote about her MacLeod family relatives and parents:
My mother, Mabel MacLeod was the sixth and youngest child of Hugh MacLeod and Harriet Hill MacLeod. Hugh MacLeod (note: Hugh Macleod also spelt his name McLeod), in turn, was the youngest son of a large family from Scotsburn, Nova Scotia where the MacLeod relations still abound. He had siblings Janet, David, Donald and Duncan. Some stayed in N.S. Janet went to the U.S. (Chicago, I think) (note: some correction is necessary here - a) additional siblings of Hugh’s include Lavinia & Mary MacLeod and b) Perhaps mother has confused David with Janet. Janet went to Rhode Island, David to Chicago). She was the great grandmother of Spence Burton, who used to say when he was at Harvard and going to visit Hugh MacLeod, “I am going to Sunday dinner with my grandmother’s uncle.” (note: Cousin Spence came from Cincinnati and became a priest in the Anglican Church entering the Order of the Cowley Fathers. He started the Cowley Father’s monastery on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Mass and became the Bishop of Nassau and the Bahamas where HHE and WAE would visit him) David also went to the U.S. (note: Chicago & Detroit) and was the father of Cousin Josephine and Cousin Betty. Cousin Josephine, also called Tantine, was a close friend of the Swami Vivekananda and of Ghandi for many years. Her cousin Mabel became acquainted with the Swami while visiting Betty and Tantine at their summer place in the Catskills. Tantine built the Vedantist Ashram in Calcutta, having visited India several times. She was a great character with a free spirit. Her sister, Cousin Betty and husband Frank Leggett had a lot of cash and were very generous with Tantine and the Vedantist efforts. (note: It turns out Betty & Frank were also interested in the Swami’s work) Cousin Betty had two children by her first husband Mr. Sturges. The children were Hollister Sturges and Alberta who became the Countess of Sandwich. By a second marriage, cousin Betty had a daughter Tamer Leggett who married an Englishman David Margeson, prominent in British conservative politics and a very hard-boiled, worldly character. There were four Margeson children. Cousin Betty also owned an Elizabethan house in Stratford on Avon which was once owned by Wm. Shakespeare’s daughter. It is now a national monument.
Cousin Betty’s daughter Alberta , who married George Montagu the Earl of Sandwich, became the Countess of Sandwich. Mabel was always closely in touch with cousin Alberta and we all visited the Montagus from time to time at their stately home, Hinchingbrooke in Huntingdonshire near Cambridge. Today a part of Hinchinbrooke Castle is a museum and the rest has been bought by the Cambridge County Council and is a large coeducational school, a great change from the old days.
Hugh MacLeod attended Amherst College and, I believe, Union Theological Seminary where he prepared for the ministry of the Congregational Church. He was a minister at Brentwood N.H. church where he met Harriet Stark Hill, one of his parishioners and married her. Harriet Stark Hill was named for her mother’s friend Molly Stark, whose husband had been a general in the American Revolution. She was about thirty years old when she married Hugh MacLeod. She had a tragic love affair, and was engaged to marry Elisha Hynman. Elisha died of “galloping consumption” three weeks before they were to be married. We have a tiny seal that Elisha made for Harriet. The small light brown stone is engraved with “U + I / 0”.
Hugh and Harriet MacLeod had six children. The eldest boy died in infancy, then Georgie who lived to be about twenty and died as a result of an accident. When at a job in California some lumber fell on him and crushed his chest. Then Gertrude, who became a pianist, studying in Boston with Benjamin Lang and moving among the young artistic and musical people of the time. Gertrude went for a weekend to N.H. where she contracted typhoid and died. Harriet Ester, called “Etta” was the next and fourth child. She was very beautiful with long golden hair that fell to her waist. She had rheumatic fever as a child and lived only into her early twenties. “Uncle Charlie” was the fifth child and the only one of mother’s siblings whom we knew throughout his life. He, like all of the MacLeods, was good looking, lively, warm and full of stories about his youth in California. He liked to show us his gold watch given to him in California by a man whose wife and daughter had been saved when uncle Charlie stepped out in the road and grabbed the bridle of their runaway team of horses. Mother always thought he should have been allowed to stay in California where the life there suited him so well. Mabel, my mother, was the sixth and last child, who was about fourteen years old when the family returned East after years in California where the family had moved to Valley Ford when she was quite a little girl. She had been born in Colebrook N.H. and then was a brief time in Wisconsin before going to California. We have a picture of mother and Etta at school in California. I believe her brother George was engaged to marry the young school teacher. We also have report cards showing Mabel never got less than an “A” at school. Mother used to tell us about life in Valley Ford and how you never inquired too closely into the past history of anyone since most people went there to get away and establish a new identity. While growing up in California, Etta and Mabel were sent sheet music by their older sister Gertrude studying panio in Boston. The two girls played Beethoven and Mozart sonatas for four hands when Mabel was seven years old.
Returning to the East, the family lived in Lynn, Mass. where my grandmother had a sister Ester who was a practicing physician. This sister was not a warm person. She had some money but was very envious of her sister Harriet since, although she was married, she was childless. I gather that she was very bitter and always mentioned to her poor relations that she would not leave her money to them if they were not nice to her. In the end she did leave whatever she had to a cat’s home in Lynn!
Uncle Charlie lived most of his life in Lynn after the family returned east from California. He drove an express wagon, worked in a large greenhouse and had a wonderful garden of his own. He also kept chickens. Mother always thought that he should not have been uprooted from California where he had been very happy. When I was a child I used to go with mother a couple of times a year to see Uncle Charlie and his nice wife Alice on the narrow gauge railway from Boston to Lynn. They had one child, “Little Alice” who died of some unidentified bleeding ailment, perhaps anemia or some other blood disorder, at age fourteen. They knew practically everything about gardening. I remember Uncle Charlie saying that some flower didn’t need much sun, and I wondered how he could possibly know such a thing! Uncle Charlie used to come to see us in Cambridge and to Weston where he helped us with scything the grass. He came once in the Spring and I remember he squashed tent caterpillars between his thumb and fingers! Uncle Charlie and Aunt Alice had a tiny house in Hawks Park, Florida where they went for the winter. Aunt Alice brought me the skin of a diamond back rattle snake that she had killed in her garden with a broom! I remember being in their house in Lynn, there was an old gentleman who wore a little skull cap. He was my mother’s Uncle Sylvester Hill. I can’t remember having any exchange of words or conversation with him.
To return to mother. Mother, after attending Lynn High School, where she was an excellent student, went on to Radcliffe College graduating in the class of 1894. There she attended all the natural science courses that she could find. Radcliff was still the Annex (to Harvard College) but achieved an independent identity while she was there. Buy this time the MacLeod family had moved to Cambridge to an apartment on Langdon Street. Mabel was highly musical and an accomplished pianist. She was a pupil of Benjamin Lang and gave at least one public recital in Boston. She taught piano to young people and in this way supported the family. She, of course, went to all the Boston Symphony Orchestra concerts where she met Franklin Tweed Hammond, also a keen musician. Frank’s father had stopped his violin lessons when he was twelve years old because he was afraid Frank would want to be a professional violinist. After they met, Frank wanted to see more of Mabel so he rented an apartment directly under the MacLeod apartment on Langdon Street. To his disappointment Mabel was away for the summer visiting friends. The story mother told me was that she was already away on a visit when he moved in. Soon after she returned home he met her on the street and talked briefly. When she said that she was going away in a day or two he remarked, to her surprise, “What, again?” She did not have any idea that he had come there to be near her. Mabel and Frank were married in October 1898. Frank was an assistant attorney general with a salary of $1000 per year. Mabel’s bridal trousseau consisted of a new blouse and what other clothes she had already. Mabel was so beautiful that her worldly Cousin Betty Leggett (nee MacLeod) once remarked that if she had had Mabel’s looks she would have been a famous beauty all over Europe! At about this time Cousin Spence went to Harvard College and Mabel became a close friend and confidant of his. He talked to her fully about his desire to enter the Order of Cowley Fathers at age twenty-one.
Music was from the beginning of their life together an essential ingredient of living. They played violin and piano for an hour or two practically every evening after supper. Sometimes they invited other players in to make up a trio or quartet. Once, during World War II, mother met a young man standing waiting for the bus at the bus stop on Kirkland Street. He had with him his cello, so mother got into a conversation with him. Soon he was around at the house playing in a trio with Judge and Mrs. Hammond. All their life together they not only played but traveled in the summer to places where music abounded at summer schools, music camps and festivals.
At first, after their marriage, Mabel’s parents lived with them. Grandfather MacLeod died before I was born, Grandma lived until I was three years old and moved with us from Kirkland Road to the new house at 11 Scott Street in about 1907. Mabel and Frank had a great sorrow losing their first child Elizabeth who died of pneumonia at the age of less than two years. Mabel never totally got over this loss. Then came Franklin Jr. in 1901, Harriet in 1904 and John MacLeod in 1914. Mabel and Frank Hammond were active in Cambridge life. Frank was a successful lawyer in the firm of Maybery, Hallowell and Hammond. Together they had many close friends in the academic circles of Harvard, where Frank had gone to college. Some of their friends included Alfred North Whitehead, Ralph Baston Perry, Ada Colmstock, Paul Sachs, George Washington Pierce and Arthur Holcumb to name a few of the distinguished people of the day. (Note: R.B. Perry was a Prof. of Philosophy and brother in law to Bernard Berenson - Prof of fine arts, A.N. Whitehead was a Prof. of Philosophy, Ada Colmstock was the president of Radcliff College, Paul Sachs was Prof. of Fine Arts & Curator of the Fogg Museum, Geo. Washington Pierce was a Physics Prof. and Arthur Holcumb Prof. of Economics)