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Authors: Roger Austen
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During his first seven years of childhood, Charles seemed to have every reason to feel secure in the family home. Along with Grandpa and Grandma Freeman, the Stoddards were living in a commodious, broad-fronted white house at 24 Frank Street. In addition to the older children, Ned and Sarah, he was to have younger brothers to play with: Sam, born in 1846, and Fred, born in 1850. A childhood friend recalled that it was always grand fun at the Stoddards'. In the large side yard there was a tent with flags, a cannon, a whirling contraption called "flying horses," and, on the lawn in a shady corner to keep it cool, a bucket of lemonade. 3
For Charles, as he recalled, childhood had been difficult. Never a rough-and-tumble boy, he was "very timid and sensitive": "I hated most games, I liked better to lounge about, dream-building." 4 While the more rambunctious children played, Charles preferred to "steal apart . . . and, throwing myself upon the lawn, look upon them in their sports as from a dim distance. Their joy was to me like a song, to which I listened with a kind of rapture, but in which I seldom or never joined." For reasons that he could not then begin to understand, he just did not fit in. In spite of a doting family, he was a "lonely child. . . often loneliest when least alone," and his chief consolation was ''intense and absorbing love, and love alone." 5
The prevailing religious tone in the household was set by his mother and her parents, much to the boy's dismay. While Grandpa Stoddard over in Pembroke had become a comparatively liberal Unitarian, the Freemans and their daughters were God-fearing Presbyterians. Everyone was forced to attend Sunday services in a dreary unadorned church that Charles recalled with loathing for having offered nothing "for the eye to fall on with a sense of rest; nothing to soothe or comfort the heart" (TH 20). As it turned out, there was something. One day, while enduring the two-hour service in "dumb misery," Charles chanced to notice at the rear of the church a picture of an angel "floating through the air with a lute poised lightly upon his breast." Finding solace in this bit of beauty, he turned his back on the minister and gazed until "the man in the pew behind me seized me abruptly by the shoulders and turned me face about" (TH 22-23).
By contrast, the aura of the mysterious Catholic cathedral across from his home filled the boy with wonder. The music that wafted out of the
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stained-glass windows was strangely beautiful; and while standing across the street on Sunday nights, Charles sometimes caught "glimpses of clustering tapers, twinkling like dim stars through clouds of vapor" (TH 15 ). He longed to go inside, but he knew better than to ask his parents, who had no use for unsanctified religious practices. Without his parents' knowledge, Charles prevailed upon the maid to take him into the cathedral, where he was much impressed with the tapering columns, painted arches, rose windows, pictures, statues, and frescoes. "I saw an altar that inspired me with curious awe; a throng of worshipers, who knelt humbly and prayed incessantly, so that the quiet of the chapel was broken by the soft murmur of lisping lips" (TH 15-16). True, he was somewhat frightened by the dark-robed priests, who reminded him of the illustrations in a book at home picturing the most harrowing excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. But this surreptitious visit planted a seed that was to take root twenty years later. When it came to aesthetic beauty, Charles was convinced that the Presbyterians could notand, of course, would nothold a candle to the Catholics.
After 1850, the comforts of gracious living gradually gave way to the frightening reality that this branch of the Stoddard family was headed for the poorhouse. From his eighth to eleventh years, Charles moved with his family into increasingly narrow quarters: in 1850 to Fitzhugh Street in Rochester; then to a former wayside inn outside of
I
During his first seven years of childhood, Charles seemed to have every reason to feel secure in the family home. Along with Grandpa and Grandma Freeman, the Stoddards were living in a commodious, broad-fronted white house at 24 Frank Street. In addition to the older children, Ned and Sarah, he was to have younger brothers to play with: Sam, born in 1846, and Fred, born in 1850. A childhood friend recalled that it was always grand fun at the Stoddards'. In the large side yard there was a tent with flags, a cannon, a whirling contraption called "flying horses," and, on the lawn in a shady corner to keep it cool, a bucket of lemonade. 3
For Charles, as he recalled, childhood had been difficult. Never a rough-and-tumble boy, he was "very timid and sensitive": "I hated most games, I liked better to lounge about, dream-building." 4 While the more rambunctious children played, Charles preferred to "steal apart . . . and, throwing myself upon the lawn, look upon them in their sports as from a dim distance. Their joy was to me like a song, to which I listened with a kind of rapture, but in which I seldom or never joined." For reasons that he could not then begin to understand, he just did not fit in. In spite of a doting family, he was a "lonely child. . . often loneliest when least alone," and his chief consolation was ''intense and absorbing love, and love alone." 5
The prevailing religious tone in the household was set by his mother and her parents, much to the boy's dismay. While Grandpa Stoddard over in Pembroke had become a comparatively liberal Unitarian, the Freemans and their daughters were God-fearing Presbyterians. Everyone was forced to attend Sunday services in a dreary unadorned church that Charles recalled with loathing for having offered nothing "for the eye to fall on with a sense of rest; nothing to soothe or comfort the heart" (TH 20). As it turned out, there was something. One day, while enduring the two-hour service in "dumb misery," Charles chanced to notice at the rear of the church a picture of an angel "floating through the air with a lute poised lightly upon his breast." Finding solace in this bit of beauty, he turned his back on the minister and gazed until "the man in the pew behind me seized me abruptly by the shoulders and turned me face about" (TH 22-23).
By contrast, the aura of the mysterious Catholic cathedral across from his home filled the boy with wonder. The music that wafted out of the
Page 5
stained-glass windows was strangely beautiful; and while standing across the street on Sunday nights, Charles sometimes caught "glimpses of clustering tapers, twinkling like dim stars through clouds of vapor" (TH 15 ). He longed to go inside, but he knew better than to ask his parents, who had no use for unsanctified religious practices. Without his parents' knowledge, Charles prevailed upon the maid to take him into the cathedral, where he was much impressed with the tapering columns, painted arches, rose windows, pictures, statues, and frescoes. "I saw an altar that inspired me with curious awe; a throng of worshipers, who knelt humbly and prayed incessantly, so that the quiet of the chapel was broken by the soft murmur of lisping lips" (TH 15-16). True, he was somewhat frightened by the dark-robed priests, who reminded him of the illustrations in a book at home picturing the most harrowing excesses of the Spanish Inquisition. But this surreptitious visit planted a seed that was to take root twenty years later. When it came to aesthetic beauty, Charles was convinced that the Presbyterians could notand, of course, would nothold a candle to the Catholics.
After 1850, the comforts of gracious living gradually gave way to the frightening reality that this branch of the Stoddard family was headed for the poorhouse. From his eighth to eleventh years, Charles moved with his family into increasingly narrow quarters: in 1850 to Fitzhugh Street in Rochester; then to a former wayside inn outside of
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