(Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornel...)
Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume.
Four Addresses: By Henry Lee Higginson. The Soldiers' Field : The Harvard Union I: The Harvard Union Ii: Robert Gould Shaw
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Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson
The...)
Excerpt from Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson
The material for a life of Henry Lee Higginson is abundant. He had a fondness for keeping letters and memoranda, and the correspondence to which I have had access is enormous in quantity, and covers a period of more than seventy years. During both of his long sojourns in Europe, in his youth, he kept diaries, as he did fora while during the Civil War; and later in life he dictated some vivid Reminiscences. He was passion ately devoted to his friends, and wrote them with the great est frankness; and among his correspondents who were equally frank were some of the most interesting men of his generation.
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Addresses: On the Occasion of Presenting the Soldiers' Field and the Harvard Union to Harvard University (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from Addresses: On the Occasion of Presenting the...)
Excerpt from Addresses: On the Occasion of Presenting the Soldiers' Field and the Harvard Union to Harvard University
Over four hundred students and graduates of Harvard University as sembled in Sever Hall on the even ing Of June 10, 1890, to hear about The Soldiers' Field, which had been given to the University by Mr. Henry L. Higginson.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
The Improvement of the Charles River Basin: A Brief Consideration of the Arguments for and Against the Establishment of a Water Park Near the Centre of Metropolitan Boston (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from The Improvement of the Charles River Basin: ...)
Excerpt from The Improvement of the Charles River Basin: A Brief Consideration of the Arguments for and Against the Establishment of a Water Park Near the Centre of Metropolitan Boston
Some eighteen American cities now make special provi sion for boating and sailing, and fourteen for skating, in their park systems. Boston has done a good deal in the latter way at Jamaica Pond and elsewhere, but has provided nothing so available for 'such a large population as the pro posed park would afford. The eighth ward (bordering on this basin) is the densest in population of any in the city.
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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Henry Lee Higginson was an American banker and Union soldier. He was also the founder and patron of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.
Background
Henry Lee Higginson was born on November 18, 1834 in New York City, New York, United States. His father, George Higginson, was a grandson of Stephen Higginson and a descendant of Reverend Francis Higginson, a colonist whom Cotton Mather called "the first in a catalogue of heroes"; his mother, Mary Cabot Lee, was similarly well born.
In New York City George Higginson was for a time a commission merchant; but the family returned to Boston after the panic of 1837. There the father, his resources impaired, took a small office on India Wharf and a very small house in Chauncy Place. "We lived in the narrowest way, " the son wrote afterward, "and got on very well; went into a house a little bit larger in Bedford Place; went to a good school, then to the Latin school and had a pleasant boyhood. "
Education
Higginson went to a good school, then to the Latin school. He was industrious, but his scholarship was only fairly good. Summers he earned spending money by picking fruit and doing other chores on farms near Boston. He was thoughtful, an avid reader.
In 1851 he entered Harvard College, in the same class with Phillips Brooks, Alexander Agassiz, and George Dexter. His eyes, meantime, had begun to give trouble, and midway in his freshman year he was withdrawn and sent to Europe in charge of a clergyman.
The boy kept a diary of their extensive walking tours which shows that his lifelong interest in music began when he first went to the opera in London. He attended concerts in Munich and Milan, and at Dresden, where he paused to study German, he heard Tannhäuser with delight. He wrote home that he might make music his profession. He had an eighteen-month period of study under Samuel Eliot.
An injury to his left arm prevented him from becoming a pianoforte virtuoso; studies in harmony and composition, faithfully pursued, disclosed, according to his instructors, no great creativeness or originality.
In 1882, he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from Harvard University.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law from Yale University in 1901.
Career
In September 1853 Higginson assumed a clerkship which his father had secured for him in the office of Samuel & Edward Austin, India merchants. This position he held some twenty months. He was not a born businessman.
His youthful interest was in reform movements and music. His anti-slavery enthusiasm led him to equip "a good-looking Irishman with his family to go to Kansas to settle, " but the fellow deserted his family and disappeared. In November 1856, he inherited $13, 000 from an uncle, gave up his clerkship, and went to Europe purposing to make music his life work. He took lodgings at Vienna, but unexpected obstacles then, as throughout his life, kept him from doing what he really wanted to do.
In 1860 he returned to Boston, still undecided as to his future. He had made a little money through sale of German wines, and he planned to become a wine merchant. The outbreak of the Civil War interfered with that design. Higginson was among the first to enlist and had an honorable military service, but one full of the frustrations to which he was liable. Commissioned second lieutenant in Colonel George H. Gordon's regiment, the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry, in May 1861, he was promoted to first lieutenant in July. He found conditions at Hagerstown, Maryland, unfavorable, however, and rejoiced at securing transfer to the 16t Massachusetts Cavalry of which he was commissioned captain in October 1861, and major in March 1862. Typhoid kept him from his command several months. At Beaufort Island, South Carolina, he showed marked ability in handling men and horses, yet, when the others attacked Charleston, in June 1862, his company stayed on guard at Beaufort--"cussedest luck, " he wrote. Ordered later to the northern front, he was severely wounded in the indecisive skirmish at Aldie, Virginia. He rejoined his regiment at City Point, Virginia, but just missing the spectacular battle at Petersburg, he was invalided home again, where he resigned.
From January to July 1865 he was employed in the Ohio oil fields. With two other Boston men he undertook the Utopian experiment of operating a cotton plantation in Georgia in 1866-1867. They expected to demonstrate that free negro labor could be profitably and pleasantly employed. Their losses from two cotton crops were $65, 000, and they gladly sold for $5, 000, land which had cost them $30, 000. On January 1, 1868, Higginson became, somewhat reluctantly, a member of the Boston banking firm of Lee, Higginson & Company with which his father, an uncle, and a brother were already connected.
His youthful interest in music was renewed when in 1873 he represented Massachusetts as an honorary commissioner at the Vienna Exposition. He then resumed acquaintance with former teachers and other musicians and began to formulate plans for a Boston orchestra of Continental standards.
The depression following the 1873 panic caused postponement of his design, but in 1881, selecting Georg Henschel as its first conductor, he launched the Boston Symphony, which under successive conductors, Wilhelm Gericke, Arthur Nikisch, Emil Paur, Max Fiedler, and Karl Muck, became the leading organization of its kind in America. Preferring to be its sole underwriter, he paid during his long connection with it deficits aggregating nearly $1, 000, 000. Although strongly pro-Ally, he endured personal humiliation during the World War because of his loyalty to its conductor, Doctor Muck. On May 4, 1918, he announced from the platform of Symphony Hall that others must carry the burden of the concerts.
Aside from his support of the Orchestra his principal benefactions were to educational institutions: to Harvard, to which he conveyed, June 10, 1890, land for Soldiers' Field in an address that ranks high as an example of oratory, and, in 1899, $150, 000 for a Harvard Union building, designed to promote democracy among Harvard men; to Radcliffe College, of which he and Mrs. Higginson were supporters while it was still "the Annex" and which he served for eleven years as treasurer; to Princeton, Williams, University of Virginia, and several secondary schools. For twenty-six years, 1893-1919, he was a fellow of the Harvard Corporation, in which he had a large influence.
His death and interment in Mount Auburn Cemetery followed an operation in November 1919.
(Originally published in 1921. This volume from the Cornel...)
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Religion
In religion Higginson was a Unitarian.
Politics
By 1848 Higginson was a convinced abolitionist.
He is generally credited with having thwarted, in 1909, a plan of electing Theodore Roosevelt president of the University. He hated labor unions and resisted unionization of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He disliked government regulation of railroads and other big business. In politics he was a Republican "with frequent lapses. "
Friendly as he was toward the Teutonic musicians in his own orchestra, he believed wholeheartedly in the atrocity stories of the war era. He was an advocate of national preparedness, and, after the Armistice, of the League of Nations.
Views
Quotations:
"I always like the severe in architecture, music, men and women, books. "
"Any well-trained businessman is wiser than the Congress and the Executive. "
Membership
Higginson served as the first president of the Harvard Club of Boston during a period when he helped raise a lot of money to send needy students to Harvard.
He served as president of the Boston Music Hall and as a trustee of the New England Conservatory of Music from 1892-1919. He was also the president of the Tavern Club from more than 20 years, a "literary social club. "
In 1916, he accepted election to honorary membership in Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia music fraternity.
Personality
Higginson inherited from a Puritan ancestry his vigorous physique and a simple, somewhat naïve personality. Henry Higginson showed sturdiness and steadiness of character rather than extraordinary mentality.
His virtues and limitations were those of an earnest, confiding man, loyal to his friends and distrustful of their critics.
"The Major, " as he was known in State Street, never believed himself meant by nature to be a banker. Others have said that his character rather than his commercial ability brought him success.
Connections
During a long convalescence Higginson married, in December 1863, Ida, the daughter of Professor Louis Agassiz. They had a daughter.