Literary New York Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: Audubon's Home

156th St. and N. River]

Audubon had pa.s.sed through the hardest struggles of his life, had travelled in England, in France, in Scotland, arranging for the publication of his bird pictures, that remarkable work which set his memory apart; he had succeeded in his life's object, and at the close of 1840 had come here to this forest hillside by the Hudson, built the house on the estate Minniesland, named in honor of his wife, made it a luxurious abode, and there gathered his friends about him.

With this home of Audubon there is a.s.sociated a memory of the early days of the telegraph. When Samuel F.B. Morse built the first telegraph line to Philadelphia, he had it strung across the river from Fort Lee to the bas.e.m.e.nt of Audubon's house, and there he received the first telegraphic message ever sent to the island of Manhattan. Here Audubon lived, wrote, and painted until even his rugged strength was worn out. He worked until those clever ambidextrous hands lost the cunning to work out the forms his active brain could still conceive.

The day came, in 1851, when he died, fortunately before any great change had come over the beauties of Minniesland. The peacefulness of Trinity Cemetery, which takes in part of the Audubon farm, is still faintly reminiscent of the scene of the ornithologist's later life, and there, close by the old house, is the grave of Audubon, and upon his tomb are sculptured the birds he loved so well, now keeping watch over him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Clement C. Moore's House

Chelsea]

While Audubon worked in his out-of-town retreat, another scholar and writer lived farther down the island towards the city. Clement C.

Moore lived in a little district of his own called Chelsea Village, now merged into the city by so deft a laying out of streets that there is little irregularity at the point where town and village met. A bit of the old village remains exactly as it was in the General Theological Seminary, and the block on which it stands, Twentieth to Twenty-first streets, Ninth and Tenth avenues, is still called Chelsea Square. Clement C. Moore inherited from his father, Bishop Benjamin Moore, a large tract of land along the river near the present Chelsea Square, and gave the land on which the seminary was built to that inst.i.tution. He himself lived in a house which his father had occupied before him and which stood on the line of the present Twenty-third Street on the block between Ninth and Tenth avenues. It was a very old building, renowned for the fact that General Was.h.i.+ngton had stopped there one afternoon when he had his headquarters in the city. Clement C. Moore was a professor in the General Theological Seminary, and while there compiled the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons ever published in this country. But it is not by reason of his learned books or his philanthropy that his name is best recalled, but by a poem which he wrote for his children and of which the world at large might never have known but that it was sent without his knowledge and published in an up-State paper. This poem, the Christmas cla.s.sic of _The Visit of St. Nicholas_, begins with "'T was the night before Christmas," and its simple yet merry jingle and delightful word-pictures have endeared it to all children since his time and will endure to please many more to come.

All that there was of literary New York half a century ago centred about Anne C. Lynch. She established a circle, a gathering which increased or fell off in numbers as men and women of brains came and went. This was the first near approach to a _salon_ in this country.

In the early days of her coming to the city, Miss Lynch lived in a neat-appearing brick house in Waverly Place, just off Was.h.i.+ngton Square. She moved elsewhere from time to time, the literary coterie moving about as she moved. At the height of her success, in 1855, she married the Italian educator, Vincenzo Botta, then in his second year in New York and occupying a professors.h.i.+p of Italian literature in the University of New York. The receptions of Mrs. Botta flourished and were as popular as had been those of Miss Lynch. Her writings, too, went on, and her most widely known work, the material for which she gathered during her intimate personal a.s.sociation with many authors, the _Handbook of Universal Literature_, was written when she lived in Thirty-seventh Street, a few doors west of Fifth Avenue.

In the early years of Anne C. Lynch's receptions, one of her intimates was Caroline M. Kirkland, the friend of Bayard Taylor. Mrs. Kirkland, who had just returned after a residence in Michigan, sought her advice before she published _Forest Life_, which was the second of her descriptions of the spa.r.s.ely settled region where she had spent three years of her life. The intimacy between these two continued for years, indeed until Mrs. Kirkland died, in 1864, stricken with paralysis while under the strain of managing a great sanitary fair during the Civil War.

Through Mrs. Kirkland, Lydia M. Child was introduced at the Lynch receptions, when she was a.s.sociated with her husband in conducting the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been a writer since her youth, having published her first book, _Hobomok_, in 1821. Her works had been much read, but lost much of their popularity after she published the first anti-slavery book in America, in 1833, under the t.i.tle _An Appeal for that Cla.s.s of Americans Called Africans_. She ever remained prominent as an abolitionist, but because of her opinions lost caste as a writer of novels. But Miss Lynch cared little what opinions any one held so long as they really had opinions and would stand by them, and Mrs. Child was welcomed to her home until she left the city, in 1844, to spend the rest of her life in Wayland, Ma.s.sachusetts.

Very often Edgar Allan Poe attended the Lynch receptions, taking with him his delicate wife, who seemed to get better for the moment when she saw her husband the centre of a notable gathering. For even here Poe had quite a following of his own. It was on one of these evenings that he gave it as his opinion that _The Sinless Child_ was one of the strongest long poems ever produced in America. This poem was just then making a great stir and on this special evening had been the subject of much discussion. The author was present, as she usually was where writers congregated, for the beautiful and witty Elizabeth Oakes Smith carried enthusiasm and inspiration wherever she went. She found time to form part of many a circle, even though her days were well filled, for she a.s.sisted her husband, "Major Jack Downing," in his editorial work. For many a year before she finally retired to Hollywood, South Carolina, she held her place as the first and only woman lecturer in America.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

1. W.D. HOWELLS.

2. J.G. HOLLAND.

3. RICHARD GRANT WHITE.

4. BRANDER MATTHEWS.

5. WILLIAM WINTER.

From an engraving of the picture by J.H. Marble; courtesy of Mr. W.E.

Benjamin.]

Another dear friend of Poe's might usually be found at these receptions. "Estella" Lewis, the poet, lived in Brooklyn and held there quite a court of clever people. The time came when she was, indeed, a friend in need to Poe in his time of dire necessity at Fordham. It was at her Brooklyn home that he read _The Raven_ before it was published, and Estella Lewis was the last friend he visited before he left New York on the journey south which ended in his death.

On the "Poe nights," too, Ann S. Stephens was usually to be found at Miss Lynch's. She became a much-read novelist, writing _Fas.h.i.+on and Famine_ and _Mary Derwent_. On these nights, too, might be seen Margaret Fuller, the transcendentalist. She had left her Ma.s.sachusetts home to take her place with Horace Greeley as literary editor of the _Tribune_, and between whiles devoted herself to charitable work in an effort to better the social condition of the poor of the metropolis.

During most of her stay she lived in a locality much changed since her time, near where Forty-ninth Street touches the East River. A picturesque spot it was, overlooking the green stretches of Blackwell's Island, in the midst of suburban life. Her stay in New York was short. After a year or so she went to Europe and in Italy married the Marquis Ossoli. She was on her way back to America, in 1850, a pa.s.senger in the merchantman _Elizabeth_, when the s.h.i.+p was wrecked off Fire Island and she perished with it.

To this group of writers also belongs Frances Sargent Osgood. While, somewhere about the year 1846, the country was ringing with her praise, she was living the secluded life of an invalid, with her husband, in what was then becoming a fas.h.i.+onable neighborhood, 18 East Fourteenth Street. Once, in 1845, she had met Poe, had been instantly attracted by him, and became thereafter his staunch admirer, expressing her opinion persistently whenever opportunity offered. He, on his part, appreciated her poetic genius, and more than once referred to the scrupulous taste, faultless style, and magical grace of her verse. And several of his poems are addressed directly to her.

There was a young man named Richard Henry Stoddard who frequented the Lynch receptions. He had worked for six years in a foundry learning the trade of iron moulder, and writing poetry as he worked. By the year 1848 he was beginning to make a name for himself, and his first volume of poems, _Footnotes_, had just been published. At Miss Lynch's house he met Miss Elizabeth Barstow, herself a poet, and some time later visited her at her home in Mattapoisett. This led to their marriage. Early in the year of his meeting with Miss Barstow, Stoddard made the acquaintance of Bayard Taylor. Taylor had already travelled on foot over Europe, had crystallized the results of these travels in _Views Afoot_, and was then working under Greeley on the _Tribune_, as one of the several editors. Side by side with him worked that pure-hearted and thoughtful man who had been the instigator and supporter of the Brook Farm experiment, George Ripley, who wrote the _Tribune's_ book criticisms.

_Views Afoot_ was the most popular book of the day when Stoddard walked into the _Tribune_ office and introduced himself to the author, finding him very hard at work in a little pen of a room. This was the start of a friends.h.i.+p which lasted for thirty years, and was only broken in upon by death.

A few days after, Stoddard called upon Taylor, who then lived in Murray Street, a few steps from Broadway. Charles Fenno Hoffman, who occupied rooms in the same building, was then beginning to show signs of the mental breakdown which was to cloud the last thirty-four years of his life. But Hoffman was prosperous and occupied luxurious quarters on the ground floor, while Taylor, despite the popularity of his book, led a life of hard work and struggle. He was ill paid for his services on the _Tribune_, as Greeley did not believe in high salaries, and he lived up four flights of stairs in a sort of two-roomed attic. There Stoddard went almost every Sat.u.r.day after his labors at the iron foundry, and there the friends.h.i.+p strengthened week by week; there Taylor taught Stoddard to smoke; there they discussed books and writers, and there wrote poetry together. There Taylor wrote _Kubleh_ and _Ariel in the Cloven Pine_, and, too, the song that won for him a prize when Barnum invited the entire country to a compet.i.tion in writing a song for Jenny Lind. Taylor was visited by a great many friends, and with them the youthful Stoddard became acquainted. Sometimes to the house in Murray Street came Rufus W.

Griswold, author of _Poets and Poetry of America_, _Prose Writers of America_, and kindred works. He had been one of Taylor's early advisers. The diplomatist and playwright, George H. Boker, often made one of the party at this time, when his tragedy, _Calaynos_, was being acted with great success at Sadlers's Wells Theatre in England.

Another visitor was Richard Kimball, the lawyer-author, then enthusiastically putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches to _St. Leger_.

These days of changing fortunes were the most romantic of Taylor's career. Many other places in the city are a.s.sociated with him, one a house near Was.h.i.+ngton Square, where he lived for some years and wrote among other things the _Poems of the Orient_. His last city home was at 142 East Eighteenth Street. There he wrote _Deukalion_, and from there he started out, after being dined and feted, on his mission as United States Minister to Germany. In England he met Carlyle. In Paris he had a "queer midnight supper" with Victor Hugo. In Germany, though he was then quite an ill man, he threw himself into official business with an energy that his const.i.tution, worn by years of persistent hard work, would not warrant. Before the end of the year, the friends in America who had wished him farewell in April, congratulating him that he had attained an honor that he prized, knew that he lay dead in Berlin.

Chapter XI

Two Famous Meeting-Places

Looking backward to the days before the Civil War is to bring into review a host of men who then walked through the city in which time has wrought so many changes, and to bring to the mind's eye familiar streets, but so altered that they seem like unknown highways.

There was the Battery, with its old-time appearance, when the green gra.s.s of summer was not cast into deep and continual shade by an overhanging device of modern travel, and when its broad walk was a promenade, the like and popularity of which was not to be found elsewhere. There stood squat Castle Garden, half in the water and half on the land, of nondescript style of architecture, suggesting a means of defence against an invading force and giving cause for wonder as to how it ever came by the flowery half of its name.

Wandering swiftly through the lower end of the town, memory recalls old houses whose begrimed fronts bore the markings of a good hundred years. There, by the Bowling Green, was where Was.h.i.+ngton and Putnam had their headquarters. Farther up-town a hotel arose where Franconi's Hippodrome had been. Still farther along was Murray Hill, where there was just enough elevation of land to account in a measure for its name. Still farther on were country places beyond the town--beyond the town then, but now come to be the very heart's core of the metropolis.

But of all the points of interest none comes fresher to the mind than Broadway. And though they have all changed, some swept away, some freshened up, others reconstructed into modern ways and made to keep pace with the progress of the pa.s.sing days, no change or series of changes have brought about such complete renewal, if the reminiscent eye of the mind is to be believed, as has come to Broadway. Blotting out for the moment the city's chief canyon of travel as it is to-day, with its brobdingnagian structures, and its sights and sounds of business and pleasure and enterprise, let the highway of old take its place. As far back as fifty years ago, residences were gradually metamorphosed into business hives, but they managed to retain much of their conservative appearance for a long time, as though a battle were being waged as to whether Broadway should be a place of homes or a business thoroughfare. Trees by the curb line waved their branches in angry protest against commercial encroachments and in opposition to great glaring signs that blurted out business announcements in a bold-faced manner, that argued they had come to stay. While the Broadway of to-day gives the impression of narrowness because of the height of the sky-sc.r.a.pers that border it, it then looked exceedingly wide. It was never a quiet street, for a continual procession of omnibuses and other vehicles on business and pleasure bent streamed along it. Among the popular resorts at which they often stopped was Charles Pfaff's, where beer was sold. There of an evening met the literary Bohemians of the city, in the days when Bohemia really existed and before the word had well-nigh lost significance and respect. They were gifted men with great power of intellect, who spoke without fear and without favor and whose every word expressed a thought. They were real men and they made the world a real place, a place without affectation, without pretence, without show, without need of applause, and without undue cringing to mere conventional forms. These were the characteristics of the Bohemians, and Bohemia was wherever two or three of them were gathered together. Bohemia was the atmosphere they carried with them, and whether upon the streets or in Pfaff's cellar they were at home. Pfaff's happening to be a convenient gathering-place, and beer happening to be the popular brew with most of them, they gathered there.

It is a tradition that the place came into favor through the personal efforts of the energetic Henry Clapp. He was attracted to it, so the tradition runs, soon after he started the _Sat.u.r.day Press_ in 1858, that lively publication, so brilliant while it lasted, so soon to die, and at its death having pasted on its outer door an announcement which read: "This paper is discontinued for want of funds, which by a coincidence is precisely the reason for which it was started." Whether it is true or not that Clapp was the first to call attention to the resort that came to be the meeting-place of the Bohemians, matters little. It grew to be such a meeting-place, and it is quite true that the members of the staff of the _Sat.u.r.day Press_ did more than any one else to give it a name that has lived through the years.

It is hard to locate Pfaff's place now. Go to look for it on the east side of Broadway, above Bleecker Street three or four doors, and you will be disappointed, for there is nothing to locate--just a conventional business house. Take an idle hour and picture it in memory; that will be better. Thinking of it now it is quite natural to contrast it with modern eating- and drinking-houses, famous for their mirror-lined walls, richly carved appointments, carpeted floors, and flas.h.i.+ng electric lights. Pfaff's was a hole beneath the surface of the street, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, ill-kept. But it is far better to read George Arnold's poem embodying the spirit of the cellar, and recording how the company was "very merry at Pfaff's."

This poet was one of the merry company in the days when he wrote regularly for the columns of _Vanity Fair_. He has himself said that some of the poems were written in the late hours after an evening spent in the underground Broadway resort with Fitz-Hugh Ludlow, with Mortimer Thomson, the famous "Q. K. Philander Doesticks," and a score of like writers. It was Arnold, too, who caused an hour of sadness when he took there the story of the death of Henry W. Herbert, who was well known to all the habitues. They all knew his life's story; they had heard him tell of his father, the Dean of Manchester and cousin to the Earl of Carnarvon; they had heard him tell how he had come to New York from London, how he had taught in the school in Beaver Street near Whitehall, and how in that little school he had partly written his historical romance _Cromwell_, and how he had mapped out some of the others that followed it. They knew, too, how he had, under the name of "Frank Forester," produced such books as _American Game in its Season_, _The Horse and Horsemans.h.i.+p in North America_, and become famous by novel-writing. He was the first to introduce sports of the field into fiction in America. Some of his comrades knew the unhappiness that had crept into his life, but even his dearest friends were not prepared for the news which Arnold brought one day, that "Frank Forester" had died by his own hand in a room on the second floor of the Stevens House, there in Broadway by the Bowling Green, not more than the throw of a stone from the place where, in his early days in New York, he had taught school.

Another friend of George Arnold's, who sometimes spent hours with him at Pfaff's, was George Farrar Browne, but few will remember him by this name, while many will recall that which he made famous, Artemus Ward. He had pa.s.sed his apprentices.h.i.+p as a printer and reporter, had made the country ring with the name of the lively but illiterate showman, and was in New York trying to carry _Vanity Fair_ to success--a task which he could not accomplish.

Another of the Pfaff company was Thomas Bailey Aldrich. This was at a time when he had editorial charge of the _Sat.u.r.day Press_ after he had come from Portsmouth and served three years at his desk in the commission house of his rich uncle. Working over the books of the firm, his mind was often busy with themes outside of the commission house, all tending towards a literary career.

Another lounger at Pfaff's whose name has become famous in the world of letters was William Winter, who was sometimes a visitor. Howells went there on his first visit to New York and dined with Walt Whitman, and there were others--Bayard Taylor and Stedman among them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The University Building]

It was only a few minutes' walk from Pfaff's to Was.h.i.+ngton Square, and there could be found the substantial-appearing University building, where Theodore Winthrop had his office and where he wrote _Cecil Dreeme_ and _John Brent_. From that gloomy building he was called to the war, and to his home there friends brought the details of his death--shot through the heart while rallying his men in an attack which he had helped to plan at the action of Big Bethel in June, 1861. At the time of his death he was scarcely known as a writer, and it was not until the publication of _Cecil Dreeme_ that the world realized that it had lost an entertaining story-teller as well as a brave soldier when Winthrop fell.

Among others who served in the Seventh Regiment of New York, of which Theodore Winthrop was a member, was Fitz-James...o...b..ien, the erratic and brilliant journalist, whose tale of _The Diamond Lens_ was his best contribution to the literature of the day. The only literary man of the Seventh to return to New York was...o...b..ien's friend, Charles Graham Halpine, who resigned, and lived to make his name famous by his humorous sketches of army life supposed to have been penned by "Private Miles O'Reilly."

The name of Winthrop naturally suggests the name of Dr. John W.

Draper, who was a.s.sociated with the University of New York for more than thirty years. His technical writings made his name known over the world, and he spent many years of his life in the dingy old University building working on a _History of Intellectual Development in Europe_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Studio Building in West 70th St.]

Fitz-James...o...b..ien has told of how he was once sent by a newspaper to see Henry T. Tuckerman, in a big brown building in Tenth Street. This studio building, just east of Sixth Avenue, is there yet, and the room on the second floor where O'Brien had his talk with the scholarly essayist and critic may be seen. At that time Tuckerman was writing _The Criterion; or, The Test of Talk about Familiar Things_. In this large room overlooking the street it was his custom on Sunday evenings to entertain his literary friends.

Another home where there were Sunday-evening gatherings for many years was that of Alice and Phoebe Cary. This house, one of the few residences remaining in a neighborhood otherwise given up to business structures to-day, is numbered 53 on East Twentieth Street. Here the Carys lived when they made their home in this city, coming from their Ohio birthplace to a wider field of activity. You can walk now into the little parlor where the gatherings were held. You can go into the room above, where Phoebe worked--when she found time; for in the joint housekeeping of the sisters Phoebe often said that she had to be the housekeeper before she could be the poet. In that room she wrote, after coming from church one Sunday, the hymn which has made her name famous and well-beloved, _Nearer My Home_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 53 EAST 20th St.]

There on the same floor was the favorite work-corner of Alice, and sitting close by the window, where she could look out into the street, she wrote many of her poems of memory and of domestic affection. In this room, too, she died.

To recite the names of those Sunday-evening callers would be to recall all the writers in the city at that time, and to mention all those prominent in the world of letters who came from out of town. James Parton was often one of the company, in the days when he was arranging the material for his _Life of Horace Greeley_, material gathered from those who had known the great editor during his early days in New Hamps.h.i.+re and Vermont. Greeley himself dropped in occasionally, and also another member of the _Tribune_ staff, Richard Hildreth, the writer from Ma.s.sachusetts, who had been a.s.sociate editor of the Boston _Atlas_ and who in after years was United States Consul at Trieste.