Pop quiz: What does a painting by Raphael from a Vatican Museum have to do with Portsmouth, NH? Hint: The painting depicts Aristotle the philosopher and his students attending the Athenian school.
Okay, that was a tough one. But it all ties into the research I’m doing for an upcoming feature story about the Portsmouth Lyceum on Chestnut Street in town. You see, in the early 1800s, before there was a Music Hall, that site was occupied by a Baptist church. Portsmouth citizens used to gather at the church building for all sorts of events and meetings and, for reasons not yet clear to me, the building became known as “The Temple.”
In 1826 a traveling lecturer and teacher named Josiah Holbrook (1788–1854) kicked off what became the American Lyceum movement. The idea, in a time before universal free public schools, was to bring lectures on important topics to the general public at little or no cost. Think of it as an early version of adult education, especially for young working class men and women during the Industrial Revolution. Many young people had gone directly to the farm or factory, with little schooling. Lyceum lectures were designed to deliver knowledge on important topics to the community at large. Thousands of “lyceums” were held in towns across Europe and the United States, usually in public buildings.
The idea caught on in Portsmouth in 1833. The first series of talks were held at The Temple. A season ticket was good for about a dozen lectures, initially presented by the most educated and erudite men of Portsmouth–teachers, journalists, ministers, and doctors. Two-thirds of the original Portsmouth audience were women, and one-third were men. Lectures were held each Tuesday evening preceded by a brief concert by the Portsmouth Coronet Band.
Charles Brewster reported on the lectures in The Portsmouth Journal, so we know what topics were popular in the early years. Speakers lectured for two hours on everything from the circulation of blood, phrenology, and the poetry of Shakespeare to volcanoes, the character of Benjamin Franklin, the U.S. Constitution, and how the brain works.
The American lyceum movement peaked soon after the Civil War. Audiences wanted more entertainment and less education. Portsmouth’s Temple burned to the ground in 1876. Instead of rebuilding the church, investors replaced the old building with the historic Music Hall that stands today. Among the theater’s most popular events, Writers on the New England Stage, follows a tradition that harkens back, not just to the Portsmouth Lyceum, but to the original Greek Lyceum of 300 BC. What goes around, comes around.
Copyright by J. Dennis Robinson
The Tale of a French Cat
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