Greenwich Village Part 10

"When, at the age of sixty-five, he came again to the nation he had helped to create, he was met by the new faces of a generation that knew him not, and by the cold shoulders, instead of the outstretched hands, of old friends. This was the bitter fruit of his 'Age of Reason,' which remains of all epoch-making books the one most persistently misquoted and misunderstood; for even now there are those who rate it as scoffing and scurrilous, whereas its tone throughout is n.o.ble and reverent, and some of the doctrines which it teaches are now recognised as not inimical to religion."

Brailsford, of a more picturesque turn of phrase, says that "slave-owners, ex-royalists, and the fanatics of orthodoxy" were against him, and adds:

"... The grandsons of the Puritan Colonists who had flogged Quaker women as witches denied him a place on the stage-coach, lest an offended G.o.d should strike it with lightning."

The state of New York, in a really surprising burst of generosity, presented him a farm in New Roch.e.l.le, and then, lest he imagine the Government too grateful, took away his right to vote there. They offered the flimsy excuse that he was a French citizen,--which, of course, he wasn't,--but it was all part of the persecution inspired by organised bigotry and the resentful conservative interests which he had so long and so unflaggingly attacked.

And so at last to Greenwich Village! Though I cannot engage that we shall not step out of it before we are through.

Thomas Paine was old and weary with his arduous and honourable years when he came to live in the little frame house on Herring Street, kept by one Mrs. Ryder.

John Randel, Jr., engineer to the Commissioners who were at work re-cutting New York, has given us this picture of Paine:

"I boarded in the city, and in going to the office almost daily pa.s.sed the house in Herring Street" [now No. 309 Bleecker Street] "where Thomas Paine resided, and frequently in fair weather saw him sitting at the south window of the first-story room of that house. The sash was raised, and a small table or stand was placed before him with an open book upon it which he appeared to be reading. He had his spectacles on, his left elbow rested upon the table or stand, and his chin rested between thumb and fingers of his hand; his right hand lay upon his book, and a decanter next his book or beyond it. I never saw Thomas Paine at any other place or in any other position."

In this house Paine was at one time desperately ill. It was said that the collapse was partly due to his too sudden abstinence from stimulants. He was an old man then, and had lived with every ounce of energy that was in him. The stimulants were resumed, and he grew somewhat better. This naturally brings us to the question of Paine as an excessive drinker. Of course people said he was; but then people said he was a great many things that he was not. When his enemies grew tired of the monotony of crying "Tom Paine, the infidel," they cried "Tom Paine, the drunkard" instead.

Which recalls a story which is an old one but too applicable not to be quoted here.

It is said that some official--and officious--mischief-maker once came to Lincoln with the report that one of the greatest and most distinguished of Federal generals was in the habit of drinking too much.

"Indeed?" said Lincoln drily. "If that is true, I should like to send a barrel of the same spirits to some of my other generals."

If Thomas Paine did drink to excess--which seems extremely doubtful--it's a frightful and solemn argument against Prohibition!

Mrs. Ryder's house where Paine lived was close to that occupied by his faithful friend Mme. de Bonneville and her two sons. Paine was devoted to the boys, indeed the younger was named for him, and their visits were among his greatest pleasures. And, by the bye, while we are on the subject, the most scurrilous and unjust report ever circulated against this great man was that which cast a reflection upon the honourable and kindly relations existing between him and Mme. de Bonneville.

In the first place, Paine had never been a man of light or loose morals, and it is scarcely likely that he should have changed his entire character at the age of three score and ten. Mme. de Bonneville's husband, Nicholas, was a close friend of Paine in Paris, and had originally intended to come to America with Paine and his family. But, as the publisher of a highly Radical paper--the _Bien Informe_--De Bonneville was under espionage, and when the time came he was not permitted to leave France. He confided his wife and children to his friend, and they set sail with his promise to follow later. He did follow, when he could--Washington Irving tells of chatting with him in Battery Park--but it was too late for him to see the man who had proved himself so true a friend to him and his.

The older De Bonneville boy was Benjamin, known affectionately by his parents and Paine as "Bebia." He was destined to become distinguished in the Civil War--Gen. Benjamin de Bonneville, of high military and patriotic honours.

I said we couldn't keep to Greenwich--we have travelled to France and back again already!

You may find the house if you care to look for it--the very same house kept by Mrs. Ryder, where Thomas Paine lived more than a century ago.

So humble and shabby it is you might pa.s.s it by with no more notice than you would pa.s.s a humble and shabby wayfarer. Its age and picturesqueness do not arrest the eye; for it isn't the sort of old house which by quaint lines and old-world atmosphere tempt the average artist or lure the casual poet to its praise. It is just a little old wooden building of another day, where people of modest means were wont to live.

The caretaker there probably does not know anything about the august memory that with him inhabits the dilapidated rooms. He doubtless fails to appreciate the honour of placing his hand upon the selfsame polished mahogany stair rail which our immortal "infidel's" hand once pressed, or the rare distinction of reading his evening paper at the selfsame window where, with his head upon his hand, that Other was wont to read too, once upon a time.

Ugly, dingy rooms they are in that house, but glorified by a.s.sociation. There is, incidentally, a mantelpiece which anyone might envy, though now buried in barbarian paint. There are gable windows peering out from the shingled roof. [Ill.u.s.tration: GROVE COURT]

Some day the Thomas Paine a.s.sociation will probably buy it, undertake the long-forgotten national obligation, and prevent it from crumbling to dust as long as ever they can.

The caretaker keeps pets--cats and kittens and dogs and puppies. Once he kept pigeons too, but the authorities disapproved, he told me.

"Ah, well," I said, "the authorities never have approved of things in this house."

He thought me quite mad.

Let us walk down the street toward that delicious splash of green--like a verdant spray thrown up from some unseen river of trees.

There is, in reality, no river of trees; it is only Christopher Street Triangle, elbowing Sheridan Square. Subway construction is going on around us, but there clings still an old-world feeling. Ah, here we are--59 Grove Street. It is a modest but a charming little red-brick house with a bra.s.s knocker and an air of unpretentious, small-scale prosperity. It has only been built during the last half-century, but it stands on the identical plot of ground where Paine's other Greenwich residence once stood. It wasn't Grove Street then; in fact, it wasn't a street at all, but an open lot with one lone frame house in the middle of it. Here Mme. de Bonneville brought Thomas Paine when his age and ill health necessitated greater comforts than Mrs.

Ryder's lodgings could afford.

Here he spent some peaceful months with only a few visitors; but those were faithful ones. One was Willett Hicks, the Quaker preacher, always a staunch friend; another was John Wesley Jarvis, the American painter--the same artist who later made the great man's death mask.

It was Jarvis who said: "He devoted his whole life to the attainment of two objects--rights of man and freedom of conscience."

And, by the bye, Dr. Conway has declared that "his 'Rights of Man' is now the political const.i.tution of England, his 'Age of Reason' is the growing const.i.tution of its Church."

In pa.s.sing I must once again quote Mr. van der Weyde, who once said to me: "I often wonder just what share Mary Wollstonecraft had with her 'Rights of Women'--in the inspiration of Paine's 'Rights of Man.' He and she, you know, were close friends."

Another friend was Robert Fulton of steamboat fame. I have truly heard Paine enthusiasts declare that our "infidel" was the authentic inventor of the steamboat! In any case, he is known to have "palled"

with Fulton, and certainly gave him many ideas.

There were, to be sure, annoyances. He was, in spite of Mme. de Bonneville's affectionate protection, still an object of persecution.

Two clergymen were especially tireless in their desire to reform this sterling reformer. I believe their names were Milledollar and Cunningham. Janvier tells this anecdote:

"It was during Paine's last days in the little house in Greenwich that two worthy divines, the Rev. Mr. Milledollar and the Rev. Mr. Cunningham, sought to bring him to a realising sense of the error of his ways. Their visitation was not a success. 'Don't let 'em come here again,' he said, curtly, to his housekeeper, Mrs. Hedden, when they had departed; and added: 'They trouble me.' In pursuance of this order, when they returned to the attack, Mrs. Hedden denied them admission--saying with a good deal of piety, and with even more common-sense: 'If G.o.d does not change his mind, I'm sure no man can!'"

Apropos of the two houses occupied by Paine in our city Mr. van der Weyde has pointed out most interestingly the striking and almost miraculous way in which they have just escaped destruction. Paine's "Providence" has seemed to stand guard over the places sacred to him, just as it stood guard over his invaluable life. A dozen times 309 Bleecker Street and 59 Grove Street have almost gone in the relentless constructive demolition of metropolitan growth and progress. But--they have not gone yet!

I have said that the Grove Street house stood in an open lot, the centre of a block at that time. Just after Paine's death a street was cut through, called Cozine Street. Names were fleeting affairs in early and fast-growing New York, and the one street from Cozine became Columbia, then Burrows, and last of all Grove, which it remains today.

Here let us make a note of one more indignity which the officially wise and virtuous ones were able to bestow upon their una.s.sumingly wise and virtuous victim.

The Commissioners replanning New York desired to pay Paine's memory a compliment and on opening up the street parallel with Grove, they called it Reason Street, for the "Age of Reason." This was objected to by many bigots (who had never read the book) and some tactful diplomat suggested giving it the French twist--_Raison_ Street. Already they had the notion that French could cover a mult.i.tude of sins. Even this was too closely suggestive of Tom Paine, "the infidel," so it was shamelessly corrupted to Raisin! Consider the street named originally in honour of the author of the "Age of Reason," eventually called for a dried grape!

This too pa.s.sed, and if you go down there now you will find it called Barrow Street.

On the 8th of June, 1809, Thomas Paine died.

The New York _Advertiser_ said:

"With heart-felt sorrow and poignant regret, we are compelled to announce to the world that Thomas Paine is no more. This distinguished philanthropist, whose life was devoted to the cause of humanity, departed this life yesterday morning; and, if any man's memory deserves a place in the breast of a freeman, it is that of the deceased, for,

_"'Take him for all in all, We ne'er shall look upon his like again.'"_

The funeral party consisted of Hicks, Mme. de Bonneville and two negroes, who loyally walked twenty-two miles to New Roch.e.l.le to see the last of the man who had always defended and pleaded for the rights of their pitifully misunderstood and ill-treated race.

To the end he was active for public service. His actual last act was to pen a letter to the Federal faction, conveying a warning as to the then unsettled situation in American and French commerce. Just before he had made his will.

It is in itself a composition worth copying and preserving. Paine could not even execute a legal doc.u.ment without putting into it something of the beauty of spirit and distinction of phrase for which he was remarkable. He had not much to leave, since he had given all to his country and his country had forgotten him in making up the balance; but what he had went to Mme. de Bonneville, for her children, that she,--let me quote his own words, "... might bring them well up, give them good and useful learning and instruct them in their duty to G.o.d and the practice of morality."

It continues thus:

"I herewith take my final leave of them and the world. I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spent in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator G.o.d."

Such was the last will and testament of "Tom Paine, Infidel."