In Cambridge, on that same chilly night, Theodore Wedge and Samuel Bunting were strolling up Quincy Street after an evening at the home of Professor Charles Eliot Norton. There, a group of students had staged a reading of Shelley’s
Prometheus Unbound.
“Marvelous, just marvelous,” said Samuel. “I’d love to see such a play staged.”
“They call it a closet drama for a reason. It wasn’t
meant
to be staged.”
“Then those boys should be doing Shakespeare. Such marvelous young actors . . .”
Theodore could think of no better place to be than in Cambridge on a cool November night, his stomach full of port, his head full of poetry.
The passions of youth—and the disappointments—had faded. He had accepted that he would never be a great writer, that his name would be carved on no buildings, that he would leave no issue. He was a librarian, a profession to be proud of, especially in a library as majestic as Harvard’s. And he was, in most things, content.
He puffed his cigar and said, “Do you realize, Samuel, that our ancestors didn’t allow Shakespeare in the library until 1723. Yet this evening, we’ve heard students read a play in a professor’s own home, while in other professors’ homes, they are debating things like Darwinian evolution—”
“We did
not
descend from the apes,” said Samuel. “Professor Agassiz insists.”
“But unlike our ancestors—ape or otherwise—we may consider the possibility without fear of hanging, imprisonment, or rustication.”
“A naive man would say that we live in an enlightened world.”
“At least we have Eliot to enlighten Harvard,” answered Theodore. “He’s changing everything. In the Law School, they now teach law by studying real cases. There’s to be a course in something called organic chemistry. And that Professor Adams teaches not by lecture and rote recitation, but by having students engage in discussion, as they do in Europe. It’s called a seminar, I think.”
“Adams demands that we create a ‘reserve shelf,’” huffed Samuel, “to keep books for his medieval history course. Before he came, no one even took medieval history seriously.”
“Precisely why Eliot appointed him,” answered Theodore. “Eliot is blowing gusts of fresh air in every direction.”
“Hot air, if you ask me . . . or half the members of the faculty.”
“Ah, yes, the faculty. Experts all in the principles of hot air.”
The two gentlemen were taking Quincy Street to Massachusetts Avenue so that Samuel might catch a horsecar for Boston. Though they were close friends, Samuel still lived in his family’s old town house on Church Green in Boston, while Theodore resided in the Wedge house on Brattle Street.
Certain appearances still mattered, even at enlightened Harvard.
And though it was well after eleven, President Eliot’s house was also enlightened. Lamps burned all through the handsome array of gables, turrets, and great windows. And the front door was just then banging open.
“Be careful, Charles!” A woman in a dressing gown followed Eliot out the door.
“The university securities are irreplaceable.” Charles Eliot jumped into the chaise under the porte cochere. “They must be saved tonight.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to fetch help?”
“There’s none to be had.” Eliot snapped the reins and the chaise kicked forward. “Most men are either abed or drunk at this hour on a Saturday night.”
“We’re neither!” shouted Theodore as the chaise came out the drive.
“Who is it?” Eliot pulled up on the reins.
“Bunting and Wedge,” said Theodore.
“The librarians? Wedge of Brattle Street? Bunting of Church Green?”
Theodore smiled up at a face that looked ghostly blue in the gaslight. “Your memory is excellent, sir.”
Eliot looked at Bunting. “And your home is on fire, sir, if reports are correct.”
“My home?” Samuel Bunting gasped and brought a hand to his mouth. “On fire?”
“It began in a building on Summer Street, not far from Church Green. I’m told it’s spreading,” said Eliot. “I’m bound for the office of our treasurer to rescue our records.”
“Oh, God,” said Samuel Bunting. “Theodore, what am I to do?”
“Get in,” said Eliot. “The both of you. Perhaps we can help each other.”
By the time Eliot’s chaise clattered over the West Boston Bridge, the hump of Beacon Hill was silhouetted against a sky radiating waves of red, pink, and purple, as if there were a great bruise expanding somewhere beyond.
“Hurry. Please hurry,” said Samuel Bunting.
“I’ll hurry only so fast as a single mare pulling an overloaded chaise will go,” answered Eliot.
“But my house . . . the family portraits . . . my father’s Orientals.”
Theodore said, “I asked you to move away when everyone else did.”
“There you go”—Samuel waved his handkerchief—“always criticizing.”
Theodore was jammed between the grim president and the hysterical librarian, who leaned around Theodore and said to Eliot, “If the university paid us a decent wage, we wouldn’t have to live in our families’ old houses long after the neighborhood had sold out to merchants and banks. Even the New South congregation left.”
“Then you should have left,” said Eliot. “If your congregation moves, take it as a sign.”
“Oh, Mr. President, but you are heartless, sir,” said Bunting.
“If he were heartless,” said Theodore, “he would have left us to ride the horsecars. Stop complaining and make a plan.”
“A plan!” cried Bunting. “
You
make a plan. I can’t even think.”
The chaise lurched past the hospital, up the slope of Cambridge Street, amid crowds hurrying toward the flames.
“The plan,” Eliot told them, “is to go through Scollay Square and down State Street to the treasurer’s. Once we’ve rescued our securities, we’ll make for Church Green.”
Eliot’s horse was growing more skittish, as if she could smell the smoke. Or perhaps she was spooked by the sight of ten firemen hauling a big steaming pumper up the street.
“Where are their horses?” asked Theodore.
“Distemper. It’s killed most of the fire horses in the city.” Eliot snapped his reins.
As they pushed through Scollay Square, the deep roar of the fire became a living groan, and Theodore swore that he could feel the heat, though they were still shielded by block upon block of five-story granite buildings, far more substantial than the wooden structures lost in the Chicago fire the year before.
No one could have imagined that such modern buildings—with their huge plate-glass windows framed in cast iron, with their square slate-covered mansard roofs framed in wood—could burn so ferociously. But the hundreds of joined structures were built on streets just wide enough for two carts to pass, and as the heat shattered the windows and as the wood in the mansards ignited, they became perfect granite chimneys.
At the intersection of State and Washington Streets, a police officer stepped in front of Eliot’s chaise. The horse reared and almost turned them over.
“Here now! Here!” shouted the policeman. “You can’t be goin’ down Washington, ’cept on foot. A chaise with a spooked horse’ll clog things for certain!”
“Do you think we’re here to gawk?” demanded Eliot. “Let us pass. We’re bound down State Street.”
“And who might you be, up to no good on State Street?”
“I’m the president of Harvard.” Eliot thrust his face forward so that the policeman could see it, and almost as if he had planned it, a column of flame jumped somewhere, illuminating the birthmark. “I’m going to retrieve the college financial records.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” said the policeman. “If you’re goin’ down State Street, good luck to you, sir, but just keep the horse away from the fire.”
And on they went to Devonshire Street, where one of the few steamer companies with a healthy team came roaring past, its bell clanging, its three big horses straining, the smoke pouring from the engine stack.
Theodore could actually feel the wind from the galloping horses. Then he looked to his right and realized that it wasn’t the horses that were causing the wind, but the fire, which was sucking air along the narrow streets, sucking it in like a living thing, causing—
there
—an explosion of flame to burst through the smoking roof of a building three blocks away.
“Oh, God!” cried Samuel. “My house! I must save my house!” The little man leapt out of the chaise and began to run toward the fire.
Theodore jumped down and called after him, then looked back at Eliot. “Sir—”
“Go,” said Eliot.
“But the university records.”
“I’ll save them myself.” Eliot looked up at the flames jumping from roof to roof. “I have time. Your friend may not.”
A few blocks away, men who had seen hell in war were seeing it again in Boston.
Heywood Wedge and Dan Callahan needed only to park on Tremont Street and step into the crowd surging down Winter, toward the flames rising beyond Washington.
Even on two good legs, Heywood would not have ventured into such a maelstrom, except that the company offices—investment, accounting, and legal—were in a magnificent new structure called the Wedge-Fleming-Royce Block, built on Summer Street, on the old Cowgill land. Shortly after Heywood and Amelia had merged families, their families had merged firms.
“Stay on my left, sir,” said Dan Callahan. “That way I can keep the mob from knockin’ you off your cane.”
Though gas lamps on Winter Street still put out their bluish white glow, the light all around was red—shimmering in the plate-glass windows, reacting like a chemical that turned gray granite to pink, and glowing on the faces of hundreds of men pushing toward the flames.
But those men did not go like mindless creatures drawn to disaster. Most carried bags or boxes or satchels. A few pulled handcarts they hoped to fill with what might be left of their own goods or someone else’s. And neither the thunderous roar of a wall collapsing into Summer Street nor a blizzard of embers exploding into the air could keep them from surging forward.
Then a unit of Veteran Guards—wearing old uniforms and forage caps, with bayonets fixed—came rushing along Washington Street, and like a sluice gate, they closed the intersection.
“We can’t let you through!” shouted the captain. “The fire’s comin’ this way!”
“The fire’s goin’
every
way,” cried someone in the crowd. “Let us through!”
And a hundred voices joined in. “Let us through! . . . Stand aside! . . . Let us save what we can!”
“Now, lads,” answered the captain, “let the firemen do their jobs.”
“Dan,” said Heywood, “we have to get through. There are papers to save.”
Then they heard the clanging of a fire bell, followed by cries of “Gangway! Gangway!” And Steamer Number Twelve came rolling down Winter Street, hauled by a crew of firemen in leather helmets.
Dan whispered to Heywood, “Give the lads a hand.” And they helped push the steamer past the guards and onto Summer Street.
And somehow, in the midst of this disaster, four men met.
Theodore Wedge and Samuel Bunting rushed south along Devonshire, past buildings igniting one after another like Roman candles. Then they came by the brilliant white Beebe Block, which dominated Winthrop Square on sunny days and dominated it now, with fire roaring from hundreds of windows, while firehoses sent streams of water hissing impotently against the red-hot granite walls.
Meanwhile, Heywood Wedge and Dan Callahan slipped away from the steamer crew and hurried east on Summer Street, past C. F. Hovey and Company, past Trinity Church, past Stedman and Penners, Wholesalers of Drygoods.
“They’re all doomed”—Heywood looked up at the flying firebrands and the smoke seeping through the roofs—“every building from here back to Washington Street.”
“Includin’ yours.” Dan looked ahead.
“We have to try to save the company papers,” said Heywood.
So they hurried on, with carpetbags over their heads to protect them from red-hot flecks of granite and from plate-glass windows that exploded as the pressure built up behind them and sent shards of glass flying into the street.
If there was any good in this, it was that there were no families caught in their beds. This was a district for business. Most of the people who would have been living here had moved away long ago. One who had not was the man they saw as they approached the intersection of Summer and Devonshire.
They knew him. And even though the fire was roaring, the firemen shouting, and the granite walls cracking like thunder, they could hear him crying.
Samuel Bunting was on his knees in front of the y-shaped intersection where the majestic New South Church had once stood. Now, a mercantile building was there, and the flames were tearing it apart. But Samuel’s eyes were fixed on an ancient bowfront on the far side of the intersection. It was the last private home in the neighborhood. It was his, and it was a four-story tower of flame.
“Theodore!” Heywood came hobbling up to them with Dan Callahan close beside. “Get him out of the street before he gets hurt.”
“I don’t care if I get hurt,” cried Samuel.
“Don’t say that.” Theodore put his hands under Bunting’s arms and tried to help him to his feet. “Here, here . . .”
“No.” Samuel curled up like a ball on the street.
Theodore said to Dan and Heywood, “Help us.”
“No!” cried Heywood. “If that old poof can’t—”
“Don’t call him that!” cried Theodore. “Don’t call anyone that, damn you!”
“Let him stay there and cry, then,” Heywood said. “You cry with him. I’m going to save the family papers.”
“I don’t know about that, sir.” Dan was looking ahead to the W.F.R. Block, as it was called, and flames were leaping in half the windows.
Heywood said, “The office windows are still dark. The fire hasn’t gotten there yet. But we must hurry.”
Samuel Bunting continued to cry, “My house, my paintings, my carpets.”
Heywood looked at Samuel, shook his head, and said to Dan, “Come on.”
Theodore grabbed Heywood’s sleeve. “You can’t go into that building.”
“Would Aunt Dorothy say that?” demanded Heywood. “What about family wills and secret codicils? What about that ‘small gift of majestic proportions’? Its whereabouts may even be told in one of the safes.”