Literary New York Part 2

There was a picket fence, painted white, on one side of the green slope, and Sergeant John Champe once hid his men behind it to carry off Arnold when he should take his nightly walk by the waterside, an attempt that failed through Arnold's changing his quarters on the selfsame day.

When the Revolution was over, Freneau was again in New York, which slowly recovered from the ravages of war. Hanover Square was a favorite haunt of his. He has left the record that he loved to linger in that open s.p.a.ce, where might be seen a mingling of business and home life. Freneau liked it, for there books were printed and sold, and, too, it was the "Newspaper Row" of the town. This open s.p.a.ce had been at first Van Brugh Street, taking its name from Johannes Pietersen Van Brugh, a wealthy Hollander whose home faced the square for close upon half a century. It bore his name until in 1714, when with the accession of George I. of Hanover it took the name of Hanover Square.

In a house facing this square, Bradford printed the first newspaper, and though in Freneau's time it was still standing, a more stately building was to take its place and bear a tablet telling of the old one. It was here that the other early newspapers came into existence: Parker's _Weekly Post-Boy_, in 1742; Weyman's _New York Gazette_, in 1759; Holt's _New York Journal_, in 1766. It was here, too, that was prominently displayed the "Sign of the Bible and Crown," before the house of Hugh Gaine. Freneau had flayed this man in his verse many a time.

Gaine was an Irishman who published the _New York Mercury_, and changed his politics to whichever side was uppermost--Whig to-day, Tory to-morrow. He printed Freneau's satires against Great Britain as a Whig, and then as a Tory fell under the power of Freneau's pen, for Freneau hated inconstancy quite as much as he did Tory principles.

Then there was close at hand the home of Rivington's _New York Gazetteer_. This Rivington, failing as a bookseller in London, planted his sign in Hanover Square and proudly proclaimed himself as the only London bookseller in America. He established his Tory newspaper, the _New York Gazetteer_, and had it wrecked by patriots, who threw the furniture out into Hanover Square and moulded the type into bullets. It was he who printed the poems of Andre; who after the war gave up a Tory paper and was strong for the cause of the new nation and was in consequence denounced by Freneau.

Freneau smiled to see the signs of Gaine and Rivington changed to suit the views of the new republic and rivalling one another in their show of patriotism. Tempted into Gaine's bookstore by the display of volumes, he chanced upon a friend who called him by name. And old Hugh Gaine, turning slowly about at the sound of a name he knew so well, stared at the enemy he had never seen:

"Is your name Freneau?" he asked. And the poet answered:

"Yes, Philip Freneau."

For just a moment the bookseller hesitated, then said:

"I want to shake your hand; you have given me and my friend Rivington a lasting reputation."

It was in one of these very bookstores that Freneau met Lindley Murray in the year after the peace was declared. From their first meeting the two were friends. Murray had acc.u.mulated a fortune as a salt merchant on Long Island during the British occupation. Strong patriot as Freneau was, he was attracted to the son at first through the memory of the parent, for it was Lindley Murray's mother, living on Murray Hill, who had saved Putnam's troops from being trapped by the British.

The friends.h.i.+p of Freneau and Lindley Murray might have ripened, but that in the year after their meeting Murray went to England, where he was to devote himself, for his own amus.e.m.e.nt, to horticulture, in a pretty little garden beside his home near York, and where he wrote his famous grammar for a young ladies' school.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

1. WILLIAM SMITH.

2. PETER STUYVESANT.

3. PHILIP FRENEAU.

4. THOMAS PAINE.

5. JOEL BARLOW.]

Even in the lifetime of Freneau, changes came to Hanover Square. For more than half a century it was the "Newspaper Row," then it gradually became the dry-goods district, then settled down to a general centre for wholesale houses. At one corner of the square lived for a time Jean Victor Moreau, the French General, after he had been banished for supposed partic.i.p.ation in the plot of Cadoudal and Pichegru against the life of the First Consul.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fraunces' Tavern]

In the years that followed the Revolution, Freneau spent much of his time in sea trips, but he was in the city again when George Was.h.i.+ngton took the oath of office as the first President of the United States at the Federal Hall in Wall Street; and was in the quaint St. Paul's Chapel, then quite a new structure, when Was.h.i.+ngton went there on the day of his inauguration. In the same year, Freneau lived for a time in Wall Street, close by the house where Alexander Hamilton lived, who in those days was a figure in literary New York by reason of his writing of the _Federalist_ papers. That was thirteen years before Hamilton occupied his country house, "The Grange," far up the island, which was to be still standing a hundred years later, when the city had crept up to and beyond it, and left it where One Hundred and Forty-first Street crosses Convent Avenue. Close by, in narrow Na.s.sau Street, when Freneau lived in Wall, was the home of a man who had been his cla.s.smate in college. This was Aaron Burr. He, too, in a few years, was to leave the humble house in Na.s.sau Street, to live in the Richmond Hill house, where the British Commissary Mortier had lived, and from which Burr walked forth on an eventful morning in 1804 to fight a mortal combat with Hamilton on the Jersey sh.o.r.e.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Broad St. and Federal Hall]

In 1791 Philip Freneau was in Philadelphia editing the _National Gazette_, the strongest political paper of his day, memorable for partisan abuse and for such bitter attacks on the administration that Was.h.i.+ngton alluded to its editor as "that rascal Freneau." The paper continued under Freneau until 1793, when he returned to New York for a time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Richmond Hill]

In those days of 1793 there were three or four detached houses in Cedar Street close by Na.s.sau. In the one nearest the corner, on any day of the week a man, slender and tall, with eyes that were keen and gray, with dress always in perfect taste, with broad-brimmed hat and queue, could be seen. He came from this house and walked over to Broadway, and his neighbors watched regularly for his going and his coming. He was Noah Webster, editor of _The Minerva_, a paper at that time devoted to the support of President Was.h.i.+ngton's administration.

His name was to become a household word, for his paper became the _Commercial Advertiser_ (that lived and throve even in the twentieth century), and after he had left the city he wrote a world-famed dictionary.

The poetic muse hovered closest about Philip Freneau in the days of stirring scenes and momentous events. The Poet of the Revolution was less active when quieter days came. Still he continued to pa.s.s a life of restless energy, and lived far into another century and long after many another writer had arisen to eclipse him in the literary life of New York.

Chapter IV

In the Days of Thomas Paine

When the eighteenth century was within two years of its close, a group of men, perhaps half a dozen in all, made up the writers of New York.

The city then lay between the park (a name that had just been bestowed upon the Common of old) and the Battery; with Broadway, the main thoroughfare of the town, sending out tendrils of narrow streets to tangle and turn about themselves in such persistent fas.h.i.+on that they were never to be straightened out. Quite abruptly, where the park began, Broadway dwindled from a street to a lane, but with a strong branch thoroughfare to the east which, with the advent of years, was to become Park Row. It was not a new thoroughfare by any means, since, as far back as the days of the Dutch Governors, it had been the one road that led up through the forested island.

There faced the road, and so quite of necessity faced the park as well, a square building, its front so taken up with windows and doors as to cause wonder that there should be any pretence whatsoever of a front wall. Not an attractive building, with these many windows always staring, like eyes, across the road into the park, but one to be remembered because, for one reason or another, it could well be called the literary centre of the town. Here it stood, the first Park Theatre, towering above its neighbors, glistening in its newness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Corner Stone of the Park Theatre

The corner stone of this Theatre was laid on the 5th day of May AD 1795

Jacob Morton } Wm. Henderson } Commissioners Carlile Pollock }

Lewis Hallem } John Hodgkinson } managers]

It was rare in the days when the Park Theatre was new, just as it is rare nowadays, for writers to be of a practical turn of mind. But in this little group, oddly enough, there was one man of business. He was the proprietor of the theatre, and although he wrote plays, and painted pictures, and wrote books, William Dunlap was a man of affairs. His home was around the corner in quiet Ann Street, which in another hundred years came to be a very noisy street indeed, crowded with venders of every sort of odds and ends that can be imagined. A block away, around another corner in Beekman Street, on the south side below Na.s.sau, was Dunlap's home when he had given up the theatre, settled down to literature, and got to writing his important books, the _American Theatre_ and the _History, Rise, and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States_. While he was yet managing the theatre, Dunlap's favorite strolling-place was up along the parkside, past the Brick Church, and so on a few steps across Na.s.sau Street to where Spruce Street has its start. On any pleasant afternoon he could be found standing on that corner, for a time at least, before the door of Martling's Tavern, where the Tammany Society had its first home. Looking at that first Wigwam after this lapse of time, it seems picturesque enough, and it must in truth have been so, for the enemies of the Tammany Society were in the habit of referring to it as the "Pig-pen." A frame building, low, rough, and unpainted, with a bar-room at one end, a kitchen at the other, and between the two a "long room," some steps lower than the general floor,--that was Martling's.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FIRST TAMMANY WIGWAM, CORNER Na.s.sAU AND SPRUCE STREETS.]

In the tap-room at Martling's, after an evening in which the untimely death of George Frederick Cooke had been discussed, Dunlap announced his intention of writing a life of his actor-friend, who then lay in a new-made grave in St. Paul's Churchyard. The book was written, and though few remember the volume now, it was widely read and served to keep alive the actor's memory. Since that time the grave has been cared for, and the marble tombstone, later erected by Edmund Kean, still stands amid the bushes close by the entrance door of the Chapel.

It was in the year 1810 that Cooke played at the Park Theatre, the first foreign "star" to come to the city and to attract the townspeople in such wise that they almost mobbed the playhouse in their efforts to see him. It was this same Cooke, who, hearing many speak of a young actor who had played there the year before, said, "I should have liked to have seen this Payne of yours." Cooke saw him the next year, and they appeared together in this same Park Theatre, Payne playing Edgar to Cooke's Lear.

The name of John Howard Payne did not then have the significance that it came to have later. For he was known only as a youth who had acted Norval in the tragedy of _Douglas_ with such fiery earnestness as to be proclaimed the "Young American Roscius." Who could have foreseen that adventurous "boy actor" grown to manhood, and writing a song that was to live and be known the world over by reason of its appeal to all hearts?

In Pearl Street, scarce a foot of which is left untrod by the footsteps of the writers of the city, Payne was born. Around the modest house that bore the number 33, near to Whitehall Street, he first toddled with baby steps, and the nearby "broad" street, where the ca.n.a.l had been, was his first journey when he could walk. His parents moved to East Hampton, on Long Island, so early in his childhood, and so many of his childish days were pa.s.sed in the fields there while his father taught school in the Clinton Academy, that East Hampton is often spoken of as the place of his birth. But for all that the "lowly thatched cottage" of his song was there, and for all that much of his later life was pa.s.sed in foreign countries, Payne loved the city of his birth and took occasion many times to say so.

In London, when ill-luck bore hardest upon him, he wrote _Clari, the Maid of Milan_, and gave _Home, Sweet Home_ to the heroine as her princ.i.p.al song. He received the honors of New York when he returned for a brief period, twenty-two years after his boyish triumph at the Park Theatre, and was so affectionately remembered that when, a decade later, he died in far-away Tunis, it was felt that he should not be left in a foreign land. But, although this sentiment was strong, it was not until 1883 that his body was brought to America. Then, for a day, the coffin lay in state in the City Hall, in the Governor's Room, close by a window from which a view could be had of where the old Park Theatre had stood, just across the stretch of green sward. And the people, in honor of the man whose one song had thrilled an entire world, filed past the sealed coffin by the thousands, and shed many a tear that day.

One of the tortuous streets springing from Broadway, starting close by Trinity Church, winding away to the east, and mingling with other streets until brought to an abrupt halt by the river, was called, and is still called, Pine Street. In the first days of the nineteenth century it bore no suggestion, save in name, of a forest that once stretched above the city. In those good old days when the Dutch held full sway, Cornelius van Tienhoven was the bookkeeper of the West India Company, and when he married the step-daughter of Jan Jansen Damen, the bride brought him as dower a slice of this forest. When, later, a clearing was cut through the wood it was called Tienhoven's Street. But such a name rang too strongly Dutch for those who served an English king, and when the English came they quickly called it King Street. And so it remained until after the Revolution, when, in remembrance of the Dutch forest, the name was changed to Pine Street.

Now, whether it was pure accident or whether he searched and found the prettiest street in all the town, it is nevertheless a fact that here Dr. Elihu Hubbard Smith had fixed his home, scarce more than a block from Trinity Church, and here he wrote much of his verse. Here, too, in his house, on many a Tuesday evening, met the Friendly Club, and at these meetings, following the custom of the club from the time that Was.h.i.+ngton lived in the city, each member in turn read a pa.s.sage from some favorite author, thus giving impetus to the conversation. In Dr.

Smith's parlor, joining in these discussions, sat William Dunlap, Charles Brockden Brown, James Kent, Joseph Dennie, and all the writers of the circle. It was Dr. Smith who wrote the prologue for the Park Theatre upon its opening, and not a member of the Friendly Club but attended the first performance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF STREETS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK IN 1827.]

It is small wonder that Charles Brockden Brown was the foremost member of the club. He had just claim. Thrusting aside criticism and advice, ignoring the fact that he was an invalid facing the hards.h.i.+p that must be overcome, he stood forth as the first writer in America to support himself by his pen alone. The Bar, even though there was ever so fair a prospect of his earning a living by it, could not attract him against his natural desire. The writings of this determined genius could not but be successful. Seeking no friends, but having many, preferring the single companions.h.i.+p of Dr. Smith, with whom he lived, Charles Brockden Brown wrote his novel, _Wieland_, and followed it in the next three years with _Ormond_, _Edgar Huntley_, _Arthur Mervyn_, _Jane Talbot_, and _Clara Howard_. Many a man of the pen, in admiration of the iron will of this first American novelist, finds a delight in thinking of him and in following his footsteps along Pine Street and the lower end of Broadway to the Battery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Post Office

William St.]

In the days of bereavement following the death of Dr. Smith, the companion of Brown's solitude was Joseph Dennie. Often in the intervals of work they wandered through the quiet park, and many a time they knelt together in the Brick Church, a square beyond the Park Theatre, with the memory of their dead companion strong upon them. The shadow of their friend's death was still over them when they parted, and Joseph Dennie went to Philadelphia to start his magazine, _The Portfolio_, which was to cause the name of "The Lay Preacher" to ring through the land. He was in Philadelphia when Brown, in 1803, started _The Literary Magazine and American Register_. But the next year he was in New York again, occasionally joining in a literary partners.h.i.+p in which there was a third member now, for Brown had married the daughter of Dr. Linn, the Presbyterian minister. The years rolled on, and Brown sought to fight off death by terrific work. But death only clutched him the tighter. The strolls with Elizabeth, his gentle-hearted wife, grew shorter and shorter and less frequent, until they ceased altogether six years after his marriage, and another landmark in the literary history of the city had gone down.