Literary New York Part 5

At the time that Cooper lived in New York there walked along Broadway, between Ca.n.a.l Street and the Chapel of St. Paul's, on almost every pleasant afternoon, a man who in appearance was a veritable Hamlet.

His garb was a customary suit of solemn black, and his eyes sought the ground as he moved with pensive step. This was McDonald Clarke, whose eccentric appearance and acts and whose melancholy verses gave him the name of The Mad Poet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PARK THEATRE, PARK ROW, 1831.]

If Broadway was his walk of an afternoon, Park Row was his haunt by night; and Windust's place, a door or two below the Park Theatre (literally below it, for it was beneath the sidewalk), was his centring point.

The resort of Edward Windust was not an old place, but a famous one.

It was opened in 1824 and lasted only until 1837, when the proprietor thought himself cramped in s.p.a.ce and opportunity and, moving away to seek a larger field, found failure. It was the actors' museum of the city. Its walls were lined with reminders of the stage: playbills, and swords that had seen the service of savage mimic wars; pictures, and frames of clippings, and bits of the wardrobes of kings and queens who had strutted their brief hour and pa.s.sed away. It was the nightly gathering point of such actors as were in town, such writers, such wits, such gallant gentlemen. Edmund Kean and the Wallacks, Harry Placide and Cooper, Jack Scott, Mitch.e.l.l, Brown, and Junius Brutus Booth were frequenters, with Fitz-Greene Halleck, Willis, Morris, and the rest, who nightly crowded the tier of stalls that ranged along one side of the room, making them resound with gay and brilliant talk.

In Windust's, too, sat McDonald Clarke in gloomy majesty night after night. There he formed among many others the acquaintance of Mordecai M. Noah, journalist and playwright, who had been Consul at Tunis and who in the years to come was to start several unsuccessful papers, until in 1843 he was to publish the _Sunday Times and Messenger_, which continued for more than half a century.

From Windust's McDonald Clarke often wandered out into the City Hall Park over the way, and sat there through many a long summer night dreaming over his _Elixir of Moons.h.i.+ne_, or, with the memory of his afternoon walks upon him, composing lines for his _Afara, or the Belles of Broadway_, and many another melancholy verse. Often he sat there until daybreak, then went on into Broadway again. He had a favorite early-morning stand on the Fulton Street side of St. Paul's Churchyard, and there, an hour before the town was stirring, soliloquized as he looked through the railings at the brown tombstones.

On these same mornings, but a few hours later, another writer looked down on the same faded tombstones, for Ray Palmer was the teacher of a young ladies' school down Fulton Street beyond Broadway. He was young then, in his twenty-second year, in ill-health, and suffering under discouragements that would have been unendurable to a weaker-dispositioned man. As he looked from the school window into the churchyard he wrote a hymn which remained in his desk for several years, until it was published in quite an accidental manner by Dr. Lowell Mason, when he needed material for a book of church music which he had compiled. In a few years this hymn, _My Faith Looks Up to Thee_, was to be sung oftener than any other American hymn.

The sights and the sounds of the busy city that were an inspiration to Ray Palmer always sent The Mad Poet in another direction,--on up Broadway to Leonard Street, turning down there two short blocks to Chapel Street, to the house where at that time he made his home. It was a dreary enough street and a dismal enough upper room, but there was a narrow window where the poet could look over the housetops in the midnight hour and watch the stars that he seemed ever to hold converse with. Or, if it was in the early evening, he had but to lean forward from his window to see the people going into the Italian Opera House on the next corner. The Italian Opera House had a great deal of attraction for The Mad Poet. Not that he went there often to attend the performances, but he liked to inspect it from his window height as though he caught a glimpse of the sorrows and disappointments connected with it. He had moved into the house in the year 1833--the year that the opera house was opened after it had been built for a company headed by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

This Da Ponte had come to America in 1805, having a record as an Italian dramatist, who had furnished libretti for Mozart's operas, _Don Giovanni_ and _Nozze di Figaro_. He was professor in Columbia College when he matured an idea for establis.h.i.+ng a home for Italian opera in New York, a plan which led to the building of the opera house near which The Mad Poet lived. It opened splendidly with the singers of the Cavalier di Rivafinoli, but a short season ended Lorenzo Da Ponte's hopes.

If The Mad Poet from his housetop could have seen what the next few years had in store, he would have beheld the aged dramatist dying at his home in Spring Street, close to Broadway, his body followed from there by his mourning friends--Halleck and Verplanck and Woodworth and some few others,--followed to the churchyard surrounding the nearby St. Patrick's Church; he would have seen the mark above the grave crumbling away, leaving nothing to point the spot where Da Ponte lay buried with his dreams and his hopes. But no inspiration hinted any of these things to McDonald Clarke, and once, in speaking of Da Ponte, he said that there at least was a man who had lived long unrewarded but had attained his ambition at last.

For nine years after The Mad Poet went to the Chapel Street house his Broadway walks continued, his dress each year growing more shabby, his eye more downcast, and his verse more melancholy. Then one day he was seen close by his favorite stand near the Churchyard of St. Paul's, acting so strangely that he was thought to be intoxicated. Next morning he awoke to find himself a prisoner in a vagrant cell, and the shock to his sensitive nature sent him, a madman indeed, to the Blackwell's Island Asylum, where in a few days he died.

Years after, the author of _Glimpses of Home Life_, Emma C. Embury, whose home was in Brooklyn, told of a knoll in Greenwood Cemetery by the side of a little lake where the oak-trees shaded a modest tomb on which there were some lines of verse. They were lines written by McDonald Clarke. The tomb is there yet, still shaded by oaks that have grown st.u.r.dier with the pa.s.sing years, and the grave by the lake is the grave of The Mad Poet.

Chapter VIII

Those Who Gathered about Poe

When New York was a much younger city than it is, when it was well within bounds on the lower part of the island of Manhattan, long before there was a thought that it would overspread the island, jump over a stream and go wandering up the mainland, overleap a river and go spreading over another island to the sea,--long before the time when these things came to be, there lay scattered in several directions on the island of Manhattan and dotting the rolling country land beyond, several tiny villages. These were Harlem, and Yorkville, and Odellville, and Bloomingdale, and Chelsea, and Greenwich. The last was the hamlet closest to the city. Quaint and curious, it spread its scattered way along the Hudson River where houses had been set up according to the needs and vagaries of men on roads natural and unplanned. When the city grew larger and finally swept around Greenwich Village, the roads becoming city streets, the village continued a labyrinthian way, where strangers wandered and were lost before they knew it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: On Bloomingdale Road near 75th St. in Poe's time]

In the very core of this old-time Greenwich section and at the very place where the streets are so tangled, so irregular, so crooked, so often no thoroughfare, so winding that they seem to be seeking out the old farmhouses which they led to in early days, there is a pretty little playground for children. This Hudson Park is an open spot with green lawns and marble walks and a tall iron fence surrounding it; quite a model park with everything about fresh, and new, and modern.

It is so very new and so very neat and so very clean that one would not look there for old-time flavor. But curiously enough one thing about it seems out of tone. On the green lawn is a monument old and faded which, in an effort to match it with its natty surroundings, has been set upon a base of glistening white marble. The monument is a sort of key for the antiquarian, for without it this playground in its spick-and-span newness might not be readily identified as the old St.

John's Burying-Ground, where once stood the acc.u.mulated tombstones of more than fourscore years, until they were swept away and buried as deep as those whose memories they marked. A new generation tramples in and romps over the new park, with no knowledge or thought of what is below the surface.

The graveyard of St. John's was a quiet, restful place in a quiet, restful locality in the year 1837, when Edgar Allan Poe had a habit of wandering through it. In that year Poe lived within a few steps of the burial-ground in a modest wooden house that was numbered 113 Carmine Street. He was then in his twenty-eighth year, had published three volumes of poems, and had written some short stories and criticisms.

He had but just given up the editors.h.i.+p of the _Southern Literary Messenger_ at Richmond, a position he had secured through the friends.h.i.+p of John P. Kennedy, who had been his friend in his early struggles in Baltimore and who was to continue a friend to him through all his life. In 1832 Poe had first met him, when Kennedy was writing _Swallow Barn_. Afterwards Kennedy wrote _Horseshoe Robinson_ and other books before abandoning literature for politics and, in time, becoming Secretary of the Navy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The House in Carmine Street]

So Poe came to New York, and with him Virginia, his child wife, who was already marked a victim of consumption, and there in the Carmine Street house they lived. Sometimes she walked with her sombre-faced husband through the nearby burying-ground, but more often she sat at an upper window from which she could watch him on his ramble. In the same house lived William Gowans the bookseller of Na.s.sau Street; and there Poe did work for the _New York Quarterly Review_; there also he finished _The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym_.

In another house, some little distance away but in a direct course up Carmine Street, in Sixth Avenue close by Waverley Place, Poe lived for a short time, but long enough to write _The Fall of the House of Usher_ and some magazine work, when he went to Philadelphia to _The Gentleman's Magazine_, edited by William E. Burton, the famous comedian. Oddly enough, when Burton died years afterwards, he found a resting place in the obscure St. John's Burying-Ground.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

1. RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.

2. JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

3. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

4. BAYARD TAYLOR.

5. EDGAR ALLAN POE.

6. ROBERT FULTON.]

It was not until 1844 that Poe returned to New York, and during the years of his absence several writers with whom he was to become acquainted on his return had forged their literary way. There was Seba Smith, more generally known as "Major Jack Downing," from the humorous papers which he wrote under that name, and who about this time was writing the romance in verse called _Powhatan_. There was William Ross Wallace, the lawyer and magazine writer, who in after years was to be known through his poem of _The Liberty Bell_. There was the Congregational clergyman George B. Cheever making his way, having resigned his first pastorate, at Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, where he had been imprisoned for libel on account of his temperance sketch _Deacon Giles's Distillery_. There was Robert H. Messinger, known through his Horatian ode, _Give Me the Old_, his fame daily expanding in fas.h.i.+onable and literary circles. There was Edward Robinson, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary, just returned from a tour of exploration in Palestine with Rev. Eli Smith, publis.h.i.+ng _Biblical Researches in Palestine_. And there was Isaac McLelland, whose verse was as good as his sportsmans.h.i.+p. These were some few of the men who were first to recognize the genius of the poet.

Poe returned to New York the wiser for his experience with _The Gentleman's Magazine_ and with _Graham's Magazine_, but having failed to establish _The Stylus_, a proposed publication of his own, which during all his life was to be a vision of Tantalus, just beyond his grasp. He returned rich in experience, strong in adversity, poor in pocket. There was no glorious opening for him, and finally he accepted a sub-editors.h.i.+p on the _Evening Mirror_, grinding out copy for several hard-working hours each day.

The _Evening Mirror_ was a newly started publication, but its interests were so entwined with others that its history stretched back something more than twenty years from the day when Poe first occupied a desk in the office. Going back these one and twenty years, the better to understand the atmosphere in which Poe worked, to the spring of 1823, the time is reached when George P. Morris and Samuel Woodworth joined forces and opened an office for the publication of the _New York Mirror_ at 163 William Street. Morris was a young man then, but already gave strong evidence of the decided character he was to develop as an eminently practical printer and successful writer of songs--a man of such unusual personal magnetism that well-nigh every man who walked towards him a stranger walked away from him a friend.

The eight years which followed the starting of the _New York Mirror_ saw many changes; saw Morris becoming more and more popular as a writer of songs; saw him publis.h.i.+ng the memorable _Woodman, Spare that Tree_, that was to make his name known over the land; saw Woodworth withdraw from the _Mirror_, and that publication strengthened and starting anew when Morris drew to the enterprise Theodore S. Fay and Nathaniel P. Willis; saw Fay going abroad in a few years as Secretary of Legation at Berlin, in which city he was to live out most of his life.

N.P. Willis was a young man, too, in those early days of his a.s.sociation with Morris. He had given up the _American Monthly Magazine_ at Boston to devote his energies to the _New York Mirror_.

In the year that he became a.s.sociated with Morris, 1831, he went abroad at a salary of ten dollars a week, hoping to add strength and diversity to the paper by a series of letters. In London, poor and struggling, he managed to introduce himself into the fas.h.i.+onable set at that time presided over by Lady Blessington, and he came to be the adoration of all the sentimental young ladies in that set. There was a daintiness about his dress, a suggestion of foppishness in the arrangement of his blond hair, trifles about him which suggested the dandy and the idler; but withal there was a terrific capacity for work under the smooth outside. His letters to the _Mirror_ and other papers did much for the refinement of literature and art, and, indirectly, for the manners of the times. He was in America again in 1836, bringing with him an English lady as a bride,--the Mary for whom the country place Glen Mary at Owego was named, where he wrote his delightful _Letters from under a Bridge_. He was again in Europe in 1839, soon starting _The Corsair_, and back to America in 1844, to join his friend Morris (the _Mirror_ by this time being defunct) in the starting of a daily paper which took the name of the _Evening Mirror_. From this on Willis lived an active social-literary life, singing of Broadway with the same facileness as he sang of country scenes. He came to be a grave and patient invalid, living happily with his second wife as he had with his first, and ending his days at Idlewild,--his home on the Hudson.

It was with the newly started _Evening Mirror_ that Poe became connected on his return from Philadelphia, and it would seem that if he ever had prospects bright to look forward to it was with the fair-minded, business-like Morris and the gentle-hearted Willis. But when Poe had continued with them a brief six months even that gentle restraint proved too much. The _Evening Mirror_ did not last long after his going, though this had little to do with its failure. Then the indefatigable Morris, with Willis, started the _Home Journal_ at 107 Fulton Street, which continued into the twentieth century, and is now known under its changed t.i.tle of _Town and Country_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where Poe wrote "The Raven"]

While Poe was working on the _Mirror_ he lived with his frail wife Virginia and her mother, Mrs. Clemm, in Bloomingdale Village. It was a village indeed then, and about the scattered houses were broad roads and shaded lanes and cl.u.s.tering trees. The house in which Poe lived was on a high bluff beside a country road which is now Eighty-fourth Street, the house standing (as the thoroughfares run now) between Broadway and West End Avenue. It was a plain, square, frame dwelling with brick chimneys reaching high above the pointed roof, kept by Mrs.

Mary Brennan, and Poe rented rooms of her. Two windows faced towards the Hudson, and he could sit and looking through the trees catch a silvery glimpse of the river. Here he wrote _The Raven_ and _The Imp of the Perverse_. From here he sent _The Raven_ to the _American Review_ at 118 Na.s.sau Street, where it was published over the pen name of "Quarles"; and he was still living here when the poem was reprinted in the _Evening Mirror_, for the first time over his own name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM.

(From a drawing by C.W. Mielatz, by permission.)

Copyright, 1899, by The Society of Iconophiles.]

It had come to be the summer of 1845 when Poe left the _Evening Mirror_ for the long black desk in lower Na.s.sau Street where he helped Charles F. Briggs conduct the _Broadway Journal_. Briggs was the matter-of-fact "Harry Franco," a journalist of great ability who in another ten years was to edit _Putnam's Magazine_ from 10 Park Place.

More than one of Poe's friends said that the combination of Harry Franco and the poet must a.s.suredly bring forth great literary results and financial success. But the partners.h.i.+p did not work at all well.

In a very short time Poe bought out his partner's interest through an arrangement with Horace Greeley and moved the office of the paper into Clinton Hall. But the _Broadway Journal_ under the management of Poe was less of a success than it had been under Briggs and Poe, and the poet retired from it in the first month of 1846.

This Clinton Hall in which Poe had his office was a substantial building at the southwest corner of Na.s.sau and Beekman streets. Temple Court now stands on the site. A second and a third building of the name have arisen in Astor Place, the second having been remodelled in 1854 from the Astor Place Opera House, the scene of the Forrest-Macready riots. The present building, tall and heavy-looking, is the home of the Mercantile Library, as each Clinton Hall has been in its turn, and still retains the name first given to it in 1830, when Governor De Witt Clinton presented a _History of England_ as a nucleus for the library.

About the time when Poe was with the _Broadway Journal_ he moved into a house not a great many steps from Broadway, in Amity Street, since renamed West Third Street. Here amid surroundings marked by a simplicity due less to simple tastes than poverty Poe lived and wrote by the side of the delicate wife who was wasting away before his eyes.

Here he penned the _Philosophy of Composition_, by which he would make it appear that _The Raven_ was not a product of inspiration, but the work of calm reason and artistic construction,--a theory which no one seems to have accepted. Here, too, he wrote _The Literati of New York_, a series of papers that appeared in _G.o.dey's Lady's Book_, and were the sensation of the hour in literary circles. Their criticisms were severe and impa.s.sioned, and one of the criticised, believing himself ill-treated and his writings unjustly abused, sought vindication. His answer entirely overlooked the libel laws and he was promptly sued for damages by Poe. This was Thomas Dunn English, a young man then twenty-four years old, who a few years before, in 1843, had been asked by N.P. Willis to write a poem for the _New Mirror_.

The poem was written and sent to Willis with the suggestion that he either print it or tear it up as he thought best. Willis printed it, and though the writer came to be known as a poet, author, physician, lawyer, and statesman, the best known of his achievements were these verses of _Ben Bolt_.

In the spring of 1846, when the poet's wife grew more feeble, her brilliant eyes more brilliant, and her pallid look more unearthly, Poe moved out into the country to a little village called Fordham in Westchester County. This was then far out from the city, a secluded spot with rocky heights from which a view could be had of country lanes and broad sweeps of meadow where farmers worked in the fields.

Since then the open landscape has given way to the regularity of city streets and buildings.

Not a great distance from the railroad station still stands the house where Poe lived; such a plain, low wooden building that those that have grown up around it seem to be shouldering it out of the way, and the widening and improving of streets have pushed it somewhat aside from its original position. But there the dingy little house still stands with its veranda, where Poe walked in the night just outside the sitting-room windows,--walked and dreamed out his _Eureka_. There are the door and the dwarf hallway. Inside, to the right, is the room, with its meagre furniture, much of which was purchased with the proceeds of the suit against Thomas Dunn English, where Poe received the friends who remembered him in his hours of illness, of poverty, and distress. In a room towards the front lay the dying wife on her straw bed, covered with the poet's coat and clasping the tortoise-sh.e.l.l cat closely to her wasted form. Up the stairs is the attic chamber, with its slanting roof, where Poe worked, with the cat at his elbow; where after his wife's death he penned a dirge for her in the exquisite _Annabel Lee_; where he wrote the first draught of _The Bells_, which he was to revise and complete while on his lecture trip to Lowell. Next to it is the room where slept Mrs. Clemm, his more than mother.

So many memories cling to this home of Poe that those who search for substantial literary reminders have made it a visiting shrine, much to the dismay of landowners who hold to the strong belief that historic old houses are well enough as curiosities, but are inconvenient things when they stand in the way of money-making improvements.