The Bay State Monthly. Volume 2, No. 6, March, 1885. Various
trade, but the partners were veterans in experience, and no sooner had they shaped their plans than the public in many ways evinced its confidence in their undertaking. Better than a large capital was the encouragement they received from all with whom they had formerly had dealings; and they began under the most pleasing auspices.
The firm first occupied a very old, two-storied wooden building, known as "the old dye-house" on Washington Street, opposite the Old South "Church."1
Of course the store soon began to show its incapacity for the growing business, just as the "old corner" had done in the case of Ticknor and Fields, and as almost every ancient book-shop has done in the last quarter of a century. The proprietors of the establishment were not only their own employers, but their own employees as well. They attended to their own book-keeping, did their own selling and buying, tied up their bundles and packed all the cases. Early and late they shouldered their task, and started ahead. After three years thus spent the firm moved into the new store at 149 Washington Street, which still remains, and which the firm continued to occupy until 1873.
At this point it is convenient to go back a number of years and recount the principal events in the life of the junior partner of the house: Charles A.B. Shepard.
If the boy could have had his own way, when he started in life, the chances are that to-day he would be an American admiral. As it happened, his early passion and proclivities were not fostered; he became a bookseller whom all the world now knows as "Charley Shepard."
He was born in Salem, Massachusetts, October 18th, 1829, and received his education at the public school. He was one of the brightest scholars in his class, learned easily, was fond of books, never wearied of study, and never forgot what he acquired. At the start he was blest with a most marvelous and retentive memory, and a keen sense of the practical side of life. "It was thus," as one of his friends has remarked, "that his school days were profitable to him to a degree not common, and it was thus that his rapidly-growing literary attainments became the astonishment of strangers and the never failing delight and surprise of his friends."
Mr. Shepard's father was a sea-faring man, who, however, took good care to check every inclination towards that sort of life that existed in the mind of his son, at a very tender age. At his business start, therefore, the boy was forced into a channel that was not of his own choosing. At the age of fifteen, after having previously tried his skill as a boy of all work in the grocery business, he entered the store of John P. Jewett, a bookseller at Salem. He remained with Mr. Jewett eleven years, during which time he forgot all about the details of the West India trade and instead acquired a perfect knowledge of those of the making and selling of books. When, in 1846, Mr. Jewett removed to Boston and opened a store on Cornhill, Mr. Shepard accompanied him, and by his untiring energy, his close application to business and his intelligent way of conducting the affairs of the house in general, very largely contributed to the success which, in those days, was accounted so remarkable. He was even then looked upon as the "hardest worker" in the trade. He was the first to enter the store in the morning, and the last to leave at night. To many, it seemed as if his hours were only hours of toil; and yet, few young men of his age took life so easily as did he, or got more enjoyment out of it. It was during Mr. Shepard's connection with the house of John P. Jewett that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" first saw the light. The story of its publication has so often been told that it need not be repeated here. Mr. Shepard recalls all the incidents associated with it as vividly to-day as though they were but events of yesterday, and he is now the only living man that can tell them. As everybody knows, the book bounded into success, due as much to the shrewd advertising of the publisher as to the merits of the work itself. It redounds to the credit of Mr. Jewett that he never hesitated to acknowledge that whatever success he had as a Boston publisher was largely due to his sprightly clerk, who labored literally night and day, to master every detail of the business.
In 1855 Mr. Shepard conceived the idea of starting in business for himself, and formed a co-partnership which was known to the trade as Shepard, Clark and Brown. It flourished until the panic of 1857 swept over the country. Reverses came, and the house was forced to give up.
In 1862, as I have said, the firm of Lee and Shepard was started in business, with no other capital save that of brain and muscle. The two partners had long and favorably known one another. While strangely dissimilar in tastes, they yet exhibited many points in common. At the start, both were financially poor men; they possessed no funds, but, by virtue of their well known integrity and ability to succeed, could readily command the little which they required to begin life anew. Mr. Shepard, as well as Mr. Lee, had made himself indispensable to every firm with which he had been connected. Each had a wide circle of friends, and each was trusted by his friends. Both men had been generous in prosperity, and their good deeds, though known only to their intimate friends and the objects of their benevolence, were not trumpeted for worldly admiration. Both enjoyed a wide acquaintanceship with authors, and with books, with dealers, and with the public, and both had strong likes and dislikes, which made them as radical in politics as they were in personal affairs. In the firm, each has always had his own duties to perform, on the wise plan of a fitting division of labor. Yet while each partner seems exclusively to occupy his own field, independent of and unrestricted by the other, it rarely happens that there are any cross-purposes between them. The wheels of progress move on with unswerving and unerring progress; the law of compensation which is dominant in the establishment is always working aright.
Strangers who are for the first time brought in contract with these men, whether socially or on matters of business, invariably detect the strong points of conservatism which each exhibits. Mr. Lee gives one the impression of being a well-read man, as, in fact, he is. The faculty which he possesses of curiously gleaning the salient bits of knowledge out of current thought and expression, is something remarkable. The by-paths of literature are peculiarly his stamping-ground; and yet, upon almost every subject of important character, he will chat for hours intelligently and interestingly.
Mr. Shepard shows many of the same qualities. His brain is exceedingly fertile of ideas, his memory perfectly marvelous, his language pointed, easy-flowing and abounding in wit and humor. He exhibits singular quickness at repartee; he is fond of a joke, and will give and take with the keenest sense of enjoyment. His familiarity with standard literature serves him many a good turn; he makes it a duty to read thoroughly or to "dip into" every new book that is talked about. He fortifies himself, whether for daily life or for social intercourse, with all the intellectual weapons, so to speak, that can ever be called into play. Still, he moves along the pathway of life thoroughly without affectation; a "liberal education" seems to have been his by inheritance, and he can make better use of it than most college men with whom he is brought in contact.
It is as impossible for Mr. Shepard not to quote poetry as it is for him to fly through the air and his facility in so doing would alone make him a marked man. His whole soul is full of poesy, ever restless and exuberant. I am not aware that he ever molded a rhyme, or sung a measure of song in all his life. And yet so tenacious is his memory, so wonderful his talent in applying the epigrammatic utterances of the leading writers, both old and new, that a person, on being made cognizant of the fact, finds himself puzzled. Poetry enters into even the driest details of Mr. Shepard's business life. The signature to a check is often audibly accompanied by some melodic couplet. Anywhere and everywhere, and for everything that happens or may happen, the poetic spice is rarely wanting. Mr. Shepard does not deliberately intend this to be so; the gift rallies into utterance before he is aware of it, and he can no more suppress it than he can turn back the roaring waters of Niagara.
Possessed of such qualities as these, Mr. Shepard very easily finds friends and is the centre of their attraction. Outspoken, sometimes even to bluntness, a bitter hater of duplicity and meanness, a keen detector of counterfeit character, on the one hand; on the other, warm in his affections, generous to a fault, faithful to those whom he admires,—such is the man of whom I write. No one is ever at a loss to discover whether Mr. Shepard is his friend or his enemy.
Mr. Shepard has been intimately connected with the politics of his time. He began as a thorough, out-and-out abolitionist; during the war he was a stanch Republican, and a firm admirer of Charles Sumner. When the great Senator forsook his party, Mr. Shepard chose the same course, and to-day finds him enrolled upon the Democratic side, although, for some years
On the site now occupied by the "Old South Clothing House."