Literary New York Part 6

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BATTERY IN 1830.

(From a drawing by C. Burton.)]

After pa.s.sing through these rooms and with the memory of Poe strong upon you, walk away along the street remembering that in Poe's time it was a delightful country road. Stroll towards the Harlem River as he wandered many a moonlight night, his brain busy with the deep problems of _The Universe_. After a time you will pa.s.s on to the High Bridge, that carried the pipes of the Croton Aqueduct over the river,--this at least unchanged since his day. Walk over the path there, high above the water, and visit the lonely spot where the suggestion came to Poe for that requiem of despair, the mystic _Ulalume_.

In the little wooden house at Fordham Poe lived, weak and lonely and poor, after the death of his wife, making daily visits to her nearby grave,--the grave that is there no longer. He was cared for by Virginia's mother for something more than two years. Then in the June of 1849 he left Fordham. Before the end of the year he was dead.

Chapter IX

At the Close of the Knickerbocker Days

A bustling, energetic, but provincial city was New York between the years 1830 and 1840, the last days of the Knickerbockers. After 1840 it changed greatly, speeding rapidly on in the making of a metropolis.

Looking back now it is plain that the progress of enlargement went steadily on year by year, but then the changes came on imperceptibly enough.

To any one who knows the great metropolis of this twentieth century, it will seem remarkable that Hanover Square was the place where merchants and jobbers most did congregate, and that the business part of the city (and that really meant all the town in those times) lay all below Ca.n.a.l Street. Beyond that was the country, crossed by sand hills, watered by many rivulets, traversed by roads that led to the country places of the wealthy or to popular wayside taverns. The main thoroughfares looked wider than they do now, for they were far less crowded, although there were busses, and coaches, and drays, and many other vehicles of a variety that would look quite odd on the streets of this day, and in fact anywhere except in old prints, for they became extinct many a day ago. There were no surface roads, no elevated roads, no clanging electric cars, no bicycles, no motor carriages, no thousand and one conveniences of comfort and confusion that inventive genius and modern methods have called forth. To be sure the first street railroad in the world had just been projected and the cars were about to run through the streets, but this was not as yet established.

The architectural appearance of the city was more meagre, more uniform, far more picturesquely simple. There were wooden houses, squat and irregular, and there were brick houses, low and solid; there were no great towering structures to make one crane the neck to see the top. It was a city where provinciality stared out at every corner, a city which has been swept so entirely away that what is left of it lingers only in odd nooks and corners and back streets where even the oldest New Yorker has lost sight of it, and where visitors spend many hours seeking out old-time curiosities in the byways of the metropolis.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Museum at the north end of the Park

1825]

The larger buildings of those days, the ones to catch the eye of a stranger, are all memories now, and it is a difficult matter to say even where they stood with any degree of certainty. There was Masonic Hall in Broadway and Pearl Street, with its great chamber in imitation of the Chapel of Henry VIII., that was quite the pride of the town, and indeed looked upon as the most elegant reception-room in detail and appointment to be found in America. Close by, on the other side of the way, was Contoit's Garden, a delightful resort, where could be had the finest of ices and cakes. Farther on the Apollo dancing-rooms were a Mecca for the youth of the town. Opposite the lower end of City Hall Park was Scudder's, the first museum in the city, the forerunner of Barnum's, filled to overflowing with curiosities of earth and sea and air. Across the way, on the opposite side of the park, was the Park Theatre with its broad white front and its record as the chief playhouse of the city, although there were hosts of admirers and patrons of the Old Bowery, and of the National in Leonard Street, and of the Olympic in Broadway, where Mitch.e.l.l was established as a great favorite. Out beyond the city was Niblo's Garden, newly established and a real rural retreat; near to it, over on the Bowery Road, was the old Vauxhall, fast losing caste as a place of outdoor amus.e.m.e.nt. In Na.s.sau Street the Middle Dutch Church still stood, its silvery bell sounding over the city in which Sunday was a day set apart for religious observance and had not come to be a day of merrymaking.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE APOLLO ROOMS IN 1830.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Niblo's Garden]

It had come to be very near the end of the Knickerbocker days in this quiet city where brimstone matches and india-rubber overshoes had just been introduced,--indeed, it was close upon the year 1840,--when the Astor House was a new structure talked about all over the land as a wonderful palace. On the ground floor of this hotel John R. Bartlett kept a well stocked book-shop, and not a day but it was much visited by the literary folk of the town, for he was the friend of all bookish people. He himself was a quiet, scholarly man, and it was there in his shop, when his many friends left him leisure for work, that he arranged the greater part of his _Dictionary of Americanisms_, by which his name is remembered far better than by his historical records,--remembered when the fact that he was Secretary of State in Rhode Island is quite forgotten if it was ever widely known.

One of the familiar figures in Bartlett's book-shop was a keen-eyed, spectacled man who walked with quite a noticeable limp. This was Charles Fenno Hoffman, a notable man of his time, whose song, _Sparkling and Bright_, was on everybody's tongue. Thirty-four years of his life were behind him, years that were full to overflowing. He was a New Yorker in the full meaning of the term, and many of the events of his active life had centred about the little book-shop. His birthplace was only eight blocks away, there where the structure of the Elevated Road throws its shadow over Greenwich Street at its crossing with Rector. Those interested searchers who have visited the house where Was.h.i.+ngton Irving boarded close by this same corner will find the house where Hoffman was born nearby it. Thoughts of Irving and Hoffman entwine themselves naturally and closely, for Hoffman's half-sister was that Matilda who was affianced to Irving and whose early death shadowed his whole life.

Just around the corner from Bartlett's shop Hoffman went to school at Columbia College, where the present Park Place now wends its way from the river to Printing House Square. After leaving college he studied law, but soon gave up that profession to become the a.s.sociate editor of the _American_ as the commencement of a literary career. In 1833 he founded the _Knickerbocker_ magazine, and while conducting it enjoyed the intimate fellows.h.i.+p of Harry Franco, William Cullen Bryant, Lewis g.a.y.l.o.r.d Clark, William L. Stone, the brothers Duyckinck, Frederick S.

Cozzens, Park Benjamin, John L. Stephens, and a great many others in the same field of writing.

All this was behind him when he became a familiar figure in Bartlett's shop; and more, too, for he had worked with N.P. Willis on the _Mirror_, and had travelled far in the wild West despite an accident in his youth which had crushed his leg between a boat and the wharf, leaving him a life-long cripple. In this western journeying he gathered material for _A Winter in the West_ and _Wild Scenes in Forest and Prairie_. He had already written _Vanderlyn_, and now in the book-shop was daily discussing his plans for _Grayslaer_. No hint came to the minds of those who listened to his witty talk in idle hours at the book-shop that in another ten years he would be taken from his last city home in Greene Street to live out the remaining thirty-four years of his life in the asylum at Harrisburg, Pa., a mental wreck.

It was Hoffman who introduced Lewis g.a.y.l.o.r.d Clark to the book-shop.

Clark had been a.s.sociated with him on the _Knickerbocker_ magazine, and it was Clark who continued that publication for many years in the office on Broadway, just south of Cortlandt Street. To the office very often went his twin brother, Willis g.a.y.l.o.r.d Clark, editor of the Philadelphia _Gazette_, who contributed his now long-forgotten verse to his brother's magazine almost to the day of his death.

It was quite natural that John L. Stephens should make Bartlett's book-shop a headquarters while he was in town, for Bartlett and he were firm friends of years' standing, and their minds ran along in very much the same historical groove. Many a story the famous traveller recounted to his friend and to the others who were gathered there, and his presence was eagerly looked for. He had been to Egypt and had written from there letters that were published in the _Knickerbocker_ when Hoffman was at its head. He had been to Arabia, to Poland, and to half a dozen other countries, and had written of his travels with a straightforward directness that was very much like his clear ringing talk. His visits to the book-shop happened years before he became interested in the Panama Railroad, for when this project came to his hand he devoted so much of himself to the building of the road across the Isthmus that he gave little time to writing.

Another man who lingered in the book-shop more than any of the others was a sort of _protege_ of Clark's, since Clark had in a great measure discovered him. His name was Frederick S. Cozzens, a wine merchant, and almost every afternoon he walked from his place around the next corner in Vesey Street, the second block below Broadway. It was Clark who recognized him as a humorist long before any one else appreciated him. His merry conversation was a delightful incident in the book-shop years and years before he moved to Yonkers and was then a great deal talked about as the author of the _Sparrowgra.s.s Papers_.

This book-shop was a veritable treasury of literary secrets, for if there was to be anything new in the literary world it was sure to be spoken of there before it was rumored about anywhere else. In this way the book-shop was first to hear of the publication of that journal of books and opinions, _Arcturus_, for Evert A. Duyckinck was one of the _habitues_ there. This is the author who, seven years later, with his brother George was to start the publication of _The Literary World_; and these are the brothers Duyckinck who while editing this publication collected material and wrote their _Encyclopaedia of American Literature_, which gave them fame long after both were dead.

The publication of literary periodicals was in the air that year of 1840, and the little book-shop, being a literary world unto itself, heard of all of them in turn before public announcement was made.

James Aldrich, who four years before had given up a prosperous business for a writer's career, projected his _Literary Gazette_, in which most of his poems afterwards appeared; and Park Benjamin, rather a newcomer in the town, it having been only three years since he transferred his _New England Magazine_ to New York under the t.i.tle of the _American Monthly Magazine_, the same year established _Our New World_. He was a pleasant, affable man, and his companions at Bartlett's place thought much of the author of _The Old s.e.xton_.

William Cullen Bryant lived in New York through these last days of Knickerbocker life and still lived there when these times were looked back upon as a period of great good-fellows.h.i.+p. He arrived in the city a young man, scarcely known, but he lived to be old, still a citizen, so entwined with the literary, social, and business interests that innumerable places can be pointed out to-day as bearing closely upon the poet's life and suggesting many reminders of himself and his work.

In the far down-town, in Broadway at the Pine Street corner, these memories start. At that corner, in a building long gone now, when Bryant was quite a stranger in the city, he edited the _New York Review and Athenaeum_, in which his own poem, _Death of the Flowers_, was published, and in which Halleck's _Marco Bozzaris_ first appeared.

In his office there Bryant often talked with Percival and with Hillhouse, and there he discussed with Verplanck and Sands what manner of verse he would contribute to the newly started _Talisman_ magazine.

Up Broadway a little farther, at the Fulton Street corner, is the publication office of the _Evening Post_, a building which more than any other in New York should call forth thoughts of Bryant, for he was the editor of that newspaper for two-and-fifty years. When he joined the staff in 1826, in two years succeeding Coleman as editor and remaining so until his death, the _Evening Post_ had its office in William Street, near Pine. But Bryant spent many years of his editorial life in the Broadway building, and one of its attractions, now pointed out to all visitors, is the poet's window on an upper floor where he sat at his desk, that was always stacked high and negligently with all manner of useless papers and rejected ma.n.u.scripts, and looked over the city to the south as he worked.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIEW OF OLD BUILDINGS IN WILLIAM STREET, LOOKING TOWARDS MAIDEN LANE, 1800.]

Standing beside this window there are memories of other men than Bryant to be called up, for here remembrance of many of his a.s.sociates comes vividly to mind. There was William Leggett, the poet's friend and business companion, the brilliant journalist who wrote _Tales of a Country Schoolmaster_, and who worked beside Bryant from 1829 to 1836.

With thoughts of him come those of Parke G.o.dwin, who joined the _Evening Post_ staff the year after Leggett left it, who as long as the poet lived was his close friend, and who, marrying Bryant's daughter f.a.n.n.y, wove closer year by year the relations that bound them. There are memories, too, of John Bigelow, who occupied an editorial chair on the _Post_ for a dozen years after 1849.

Going still farther up Broadway in search of Bryant reminders, you walk past the Post-Office and over the stretch of pavement made historic by the personal encounter between the poet and William L.

Stone. This happened in 1831, and Stone, then editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_, was not at all friendly to Bryant. The two met there on the parkside, just opposite where Philip Hone lived, and Hone, looking from his window, saw the encounter. Sitting down he immediately wrote of it in the diary which is such a perfect reflection of the city's history during the first half of the nineteenth century.

Those were the days when Stone was collecting his information concerning the Indians which he afterwards utilized to such advantage in _The Life of Joseph Brant_, _The Life of Red Jacket_, and kindred books.

Keeping on up Broadway to Leonard Street, thence over across town three blocks west to 92 Hudson Street, the stroller comes to a warehouse that has been reared above the home where Bryant lived when he became editor of the _Evening Post_ and from which he often walked around the corner to 345 Greenwich Street to make an evening call on his near neighbor and friend J. Fenimore Cooper.

On a little farther, up Varick Street this time, past the old Chapel of St. John's, lingering in its stately age quiet and dignified amid the unwholesome neighbors that have grown up around it. On the very next block, close by Ca.n.a.l Street, there is a red brick house with stone steps, and here Bryant lived after his removal from Hudson Street.

This same Varick Street leads straight north for half a mile until it touches Carmine Street, and in the second block of that thoroughfare is the house of age-worn brick that was the poet's "home in Carmine Street," of which he spoke so often and so affectionately.

From this point, a walk due east straight across town to the Bowery is as direct a route as could be found to the house where Bryant boarded in Fourth Street near the Bowery. It was here he entertained the friendly Unitarian clergyman, Orville Dewey, and discussed poetry with him. Here too he began the acquaintance with his fellow-lodger, Parke G.o.dwin, without a thought that G.o.dwin would one day be his son-in-law, without a thought that they would walk side by side through a literary life for close upon half a century.

Still on up-town, this time to Union Square. Between that green spot and Irving Place in Fifteenth Street, you come upon the home of the Century Club in its early days, when it was the chief place in America for the entertainment of men of letters. This club, founded by Bryant, was presided over at various times by Bancroft, Verplanck, and men whose names are equally well remembered. Bryant was the president when he died. The club now has a sumptuous home in Forty-third Street near Fifth Avenue.

Last home of all of Bryant in New York is the brownstone house next to the College of St. Francis Xavier, in Sixteenth Street. Here he lived during the last years of his life when he was not pa.s.sing the long spring and summer months at his well-beloved Cedarmere at Roslyn, Long Island, which had been his favorite abiding place since 1843. It was in this Sixteenth Street house that he wrote his last lines of verse--on the birthday of Was.h.i.+ngton; it was here that he died.

One more structure not a great distance away calls up strongly the memory of Bryant. In Fourth Avenue at Twentieth Street is picturesque All Souls' Church, which has been there since 1855. Built of brick trimmed with Caen stone, planned in the form of a Greek cross, it was the first example of the Byzantine style of architecture in America.

It was to have a tall, square, tower-like steeple, but this was never built. To this church the body of Bryant was taken, and there in the presence of all literary New York, and while the whole city mourned, Dr. Bellows, who had been his long-time friend, preached his funeral sermon.

Chapter X

Half a Century Ago

Like many a landed estate, like many a quiet village, like many a battle-ground, like many a winding and historic road, like so many other places of interest of which the island of Manhattan has been the scene in days agone--Minniesland is not easy to locate. Relentlessly and remorselessly the great ma.s.ses of brick and mortar have forged ahead in their furtherance of the city's growth, seeking a level as they spread, dominating the island, levelling the hills, and stretching over valleys until the surface of the land is altered beyond all knowing. Minniesland is one of the almost buried districts of the great city. Its last surviving relic, a square ornamental structure, is the one token that it ever existed. Now that the town has surrounded this building, and streets have cut through and mutilated the first plan of the district, this house may be found standing where One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street slopes down to the Hudson River. Enter it; pa.s.s through its ancient halls, and, standing on its porch, blot from the mind the spot as it is and reconstruct it as it was half a century ago.

Fifty years ago the city was far away there to the south, and this house, miles and miles away up-country, was at the edge of a forest stretching down the hillside to the river. There were other farmhouses around it. To the north was the mansion where Colonel Morris had lived before the Revolution; where Madame Jumel in later days had married Aaron Burr. To the south was the square frame building, close by a clump of thirteen trees, where Alexander Hamilton had lived and where his widow stayed on after his death.

Forgetting for a moment these old-time surroundings of the house by the forest edge, turn to the building itself, and imagine at the window a man sitting. He has long hair and clear blue eyes. He is painting at a small easel and working in quite a wonderful manner, for he is ambidextrous. He stops in his work and looks over the trees towards the Hudson. If that ever-moving river recalls to him his past life, John James Audubon, ornithologist, is reviewing a strange and adventurous career in many countries, full of losses, of suffering, of changes, of perils. He thinks of himself as a boy wandering through the dense, hot wilds of San Domingo; as a youth hard at his art studies in Paris under the master David; as a man at his father's country place on the Schuylkill, failing utterly and absolutely when he goes into business, and letting his father's fortune slip away from his nerveless grasp. He remembers, too, his marriage, and how his wife followed his restless career with unchanging love and remained always a balance-wheel to his impetuosity. He recalls how, through all the changes of that early and unsettled life, the naturalist-love born in him when he roamed the tropical home of his youth was always strongest in his nature, and was constantly cropping out in his mania for collecting beautiful things that were quite worthless from a commercial point of view, just as it was shown in his personal appearance; for his manner of dressing, always with his hair falling over his shoulders, marked him as a man regardless of conventionality, a man so bound within the circle of his own thoughts that he had little time or inclination to peek out and see which way the world was moving.