Diary of Charles Francis Adams, volume 3
1830-08-25
The morning was raw and blustering. As I had agreed to accompany Robert Buchanan to Cambridge today, we accordingly started early, and I drove him through Brookline and Brighton in order to show him some of the most cultivated spots in our vicinity. It was not a favourable day, but they looked well nevertheless. But it was rather a singular circumstance that after an absence from this Quarter of so short a period, I should yet feel so much at a loss for the road. Things have very much changed. One could hardly believe it who had been present all the time for with them improvements grow so gradually as to be nearly imperceptible.1
We reached Cambridge after the exercises for Commencement had been begun, and paid a short visit at Mr. Meredith’s room before we went to the Church.2 The exercises were much as usual. Some were tiresome, others I could not hear. The whole thing is a tax upon the patience of all excepting such as have relations present. I knew not a soul of the Speakers excepting T. Davis for the Master’s Oration which as far as I could hear it was good.3 We were delighted to close, and go to the dinner which though made for Graduates, I made to serve for Robert Buchanan also. The usual scramble for a bad dinner took place and the usual psalm, after which we left as rapidly as possible.4 From this we went and paid a short visit at Mr. Quincy’s, where we saw the ladies and a considerable number of dignitaries.5 But on the whole, I never recollect to have seen a poorer, meaner, more unsatisfactory Commencement.6 The glory of former days so far as it consisted of bustle, show and glare has departed, perhaps in truth there is no very great loss by the change. The weather threatened and we hurried off, but owing to the fatigue of our Horse did not reach home till a stormy night had set in.
Revolutionary shifts in the flow of traffic to the western suburbs occurred in the wake of the construction in 1821 of Western Avenue (Beacon Street as extended), a toll road a mile and a half long built over the Mill Dam that stretched across the Back Bay from Charles Street to Sewell’s Point (close to present Kenmore Square). There juncture was made with the Brighton Road which followed the course of the Charles River through Brookline, thence into Brighton to North Harvard Street, which, in turn, took one to the “Great Bridge” over the Charles and on to the present Boylston Street in Cambridge (Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History
, p. 92–94, 100–101). The developments can be seen on Bowen’s “map of Boston and the adjacent towns” 309in C. H. Snow, A Geography of Boston ..., Boston, 1830, and reproduced in the present volume.
Commencement exercises were held in the fourth meetinghouse of the First Church of Cambridge from 1756 until it was replaced in 1833. The church stood on a site southwest of the present Lehman Hall in Harvard Square (Hamilton V. Bail, Views of Harvard ..., Cambridge, 1949, p. 41).
Thomas Kemper Davis’ oration in English had the title “Every Man a Debtor to his Profession.” The press reported that it was “well received ..., a sound and sensible composition ..., eloquently spoken” (Boston Patriot, 25, 26 Aug., p. 2, col. 1).
At the commencement dinner in University Hall, the Seventy-eighth Psalm was traditionally sung (Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard, p. 247).
For Maria Sophia Quincy’s account of the 1829 commencement reception held from 5:30 to 7:30 in Wadsworth House, see M. A. DeW. Howe, ed., The Articulate Sisters, Cambridge, 1946, p. 182–183.
The Commencement of 1830 was the first since 1798 at which no honorary degrees were awarded (
Harvard Quinquennial Cat.).