FYI
While delegates to the Democratic National Convention will be making history in Boston this week, FYI offers a look at some of the people and events that over the centuries helped shape the city into what it is today.
What makes a Boston Brahmin? -- It's a state of being; you can't apply to be one. The word and its concept in Boston has been adapted from the Hindu notion of a Brahman caste, the class of priests atop Indian society. A Boston Brahmin is seen as a cultured member of a long-established upper-class family. The term does not necessarily apply to all descendants of the Puritans and Pilgrims and other early Protestant congregations but more to the latter-day families of the powerful movers and shakers of 19th-century Boston, families with names like Lowell and Lawrence and Appleton and Cabot, who were are among the city's first industrialists.
In "The Many Voices of Boston: A Historical Anthology, 1630-1975," by Howard Mumford Jones and Bessie Zaban Jones (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975), John Jay Chapman, a poet and essayist (1862-1933), referred to Martin Brimmer of Boston (1829-1896) as "The Perfect Brahmin," describing him thus:
"He was the best of old Boston; for he was not quite inside the Puritan tradition and was a little sweeter by nature and less sure he was right than the true Bostonian is. He was a lame, frail man, with fortune and position; and one felt that he had been a lame, frail boy, lonely, cultivated, and nursing an ideal of romantic honor. There was a knightly glance in his eye and a seriousness in his deep voice that told of his living, and of his having lived always, in a little Camelot of his own."
A popular bit of verse by a John Collins Bossidy has defined for many the ways of the Brahmin community in Boston: "So this is good old Boston, the home of the bean and the cod, where the Lowells talk only to the Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God."
Puritans and Pilgrims -- Not the same: The Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth in 1620, and the Puritans sailed into Boston Harbor 10 years later, in 1630. Theologically speaking, the Pilgrims and the Puritans shared a deep belief in the primacy of the Scriptures as the only road map to the good life ordained by God. In the broad sense, Puritans tried to work inside the established Protestant Church in England to advance their cause, while the Pilgrims came to believe that the religious establishment would never accept their views, thus their move to Holland and, then, to the south coast of Massachusetts in search of the freedom to worship as they chose.
Puritanical Boston -- an update: Over the decades the phrase "Banned in Boston" attained a certain notoriety as some producers secretly hoped to have their works banned in the city the better to attract an audience.
Seeing the compelling need to protect his citizens from the vulgar side of life, in 1924, Mayor James Michael Curley barred from all city theaters expressions such as "My God," "Dear God," "hell," and "damn." In 1929, some 60 literary works were recorded on the "banned" list, including Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," Theodore Dreiser's "American Tragedy," Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass," Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry," and Voltaire's "Candide." In that same year, those who wanted to see a production of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "Strange Interlude" had to go to nearby Quincy.
The late Richard J. Sinnott (a name wonderfully appropriate to the position) was Boston's last so-called city censor, and from 1960 to 1982 he had the final word on the licensing of shows in Boston, though he didn't get involved in the book side of things.
The last event he put on hold due to content was a stage production of "Hair" scheduled to play in Boston in 1970. One scene, he told the Globe in 2002, involved a degrading use of the American flag and another a vulgar use of rosary beads by actors dressed up as nuns. He managed to get the producers to alter the scene, and the show went on.
As to the books Boston banned, the last recorded case involved William Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," which was ruled obscene by a municipal judge in 1965.
Wondering about something you've seen in Boston? Want to know how something in the city works? Send your questions to FYI, City Weekly, The Boston Globe, P.O. Box 55819, Boston, MA 02205-5819. Or e-mail them to fyi@Globe.com. 