The Last Puritan

When evening quickens faintly in the street,

Wakening the appetites of life in some

And to others bringing the Boston Evening Transcript,

I mount the steps and ring the bell, turning

Wearily, as one would turn to nod goodbye to Rochefoucauld,

If the street were time and he at the end of the street,

And I say, "Cousin Harriet, here is the Boston Evening Transcript."

--T. S. Eliot

Ripe in years, withered, but impeccably preserved in the traditions of the late George Apley, the Boston Evening Transcript this week hovered near death's door. Last hope was that Bostonians could offer some "prompt, sound alternative" to death. Publisher Richard N. Johnson suggested a last-minute miracle--public subscription by 1,000 citizens of $500 each. Failing this, he announced, the issue of April 30 would be the last.

Two years ago the Transcript was given a transfusion of new capital, reorganization, modern format, a price boost from 3-c- to 5-c-. But the Transcript, immutably loyal to a vanished Boston, fitted Novelist Marquand's description of Wickford Point: "The whole place was like a clock which was running down, an amazing sort of clock, now devoid of weights or springs or hands, yet ticking on through some ancient impetus on its own momentum."

Founded in 1830 to afford worthy reading for the "better homes," the Transcript for 109 years was controlled by the family of Henry Worthington Button. In its antediluvian quarters across from the Old South Meeting House, the editorial offices of the Transcript reminded visitors of the sedate reading rooms of the Athenaeum. Reporters, scrupulously chosen with regard to social as well as journalistic attainment, lent a decorum to match the Transcript's antique presses (which had been named after members of the owning family). Until 1936 the single elevator was still operated by steam. (Said a visiting Englishman as the elevator inched upward: "Our trees grow faster than this.")

Although not noted for their high salaries, Transcript employes enjoyed the security of Civil Service employes. Once every 50 years the Transcript treated employes to a banquet. One of the co-owners, Henry D. Eustis, drove to work for years in a limousine, donned overalls to bale waste paper in the pressroom.

Periodically reprinting the Constitution and leading sermons preached east of the Mississippi, the Transcript specialized in nostalgic essays. But editorially the Transcript was not always a gentleman. Foe of book and stage censorship, in a city holding the record for censorship, the Transcript fought Prohibition, reported the Thaw case in "blunt, ugly words which pseudo-fastidious contemporaries mincingly blue-penciled." Famed for his acid if polished gusto was the Transcript's music and drama critic, the late H. T. ("Hell-to-Pay") Parker. But it was rumored that he wrote his first drafts in Latin.

Although the Transcript came to symbolize the twilight of New England's culture, Boston remembered also that the Transcript had once symbolized the flowering of that culture. Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Thoreau had been its contributors ; it had had one of the first women editors in U.S. journalism; had introduced the first women's page, the first church page. Above all it had become as inseparably part of New England traditions as Faneuil Hall or the Tea Party.

This week, as death hovered over the fuddy-duddy Transcript, even Boston's hard-boiled reporters were moved to respectful silence. Nostalgia as well as wryness colored the telling of the most famed Transcript legend--that of the butler who announced to his mistress: "There are four reporters here, madam, and a gentleman from the Transcript."

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