Greenwich Village Part 12

Robert Richard Randall was also, like his father, known as "Captain,"

though there is no record of his ever having gone to sea as a sailor.

Indeed he would scarcely have been made an "honourary" member of the Marine Society had he been a real shipmaster. Courtesy t.i.tles were _de rigueur_ in those days, when a man was popular, and he appears to have been thoroughly so.

When it came time for him, too, to die, he paid his father's calling what tribute he could by the terms of his will.

His lawyer--no less a person that Alexander Hamilton himself--called to discuss the terms of this last doc.u.ment. By the bye, Hamilton's part in the affair is traditional and legendary rather than a matter of official record;--certainly his name does not appear in connection with the will. But Hamilton was the lawyer of Randall's sister, and a close family friend, so the story may more easily be true than false.

This, then, is the way it goes: Alexander Hamilton was summoned to make out the last will and testament, or at least, to advise concerning it. Randall was already growing weak, but had a clear and determined notion of what he wanted to do with his money. This was on June 1, 1801. The dying man left a number of small bequests to friends, families and servants, before he came to the real business on his mind. His bequests, besides money, included, "unto Betsey Hart, my housekeeper, my gold sleeve b.u.t.tons," and "unto Adam Shields, my faithful overseer, my gold watch," and "unto Gawn Irwin, who now lives with me, my shoe-buckles and knee-buckles." Adam Shields married Betsey Hart. They were both Scotch--probably from whatever part of Scotland the Randalls hailed in the first place.

When these matters were disposed of, he began to speak of what was nearest his heart. He had a good deal of money; he wanted to leave it to some lasting use. Hamilton asked how he had made his money, and Randall explained he had inherited it from his father.

"And how did he get it?" asked the great lawyer.

"By honest privateering!" declared Captain Tom's son proudly.

And then, or so the story goes, he went on to whisper:

"My father's fortune all came from the sea. He was a seaman, and a good one. He had money, so he never suffered when he was worn out, but all are not like that. I want to make a place for the others. I want it to be a _snug harbour for tired sailors_."

So the will, July 10, 1801, reads that Robert Richard Randall's property is left to found: "An Asylum or Marine Hospital, to be called 'The Sailors' Snug Harbour,' for the purpose of maintaining aged, decrepit, worn-out sailors."

One of the witnesses, by the bye, was Henry Brevoort.

The present bust of Randall which stands in the Asylum is, of course, quite apocryphal as to likeness. No one knows what he looked like, but out of such odds and ends of information as the knee-buckles and so on, mentioned in the will, the artistic imagination of St. Gaudens evolved a veritable beau of a mariner, with knee-buckles positively resplendent and an Admiral's wig. And, though it may not be a good likeness, it is an agreeable enough ideal, and I think everyone approves of it.

Robert Richard Randall is buried down there now and on his monument is a simple and rather impressive inscription commemorating this charity which--so it puts it--was "conceived in a spirit of enlarged Benevolence."

Shortly afterwards he died, but his will, in spite of the inevitable wrangling and litigation of disgusted relations, lived on, and the Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors is an accomplished fact. Randall had meant it to be built on his property there--a good "seeded-to-gra.s.s"

farm land,--and thought that the grain and vegetables for the sailor inmates of this Snug Harbour on land could be grown on the premises.

But the trustees decided to build the inst.i.tution on Staten Island.

The New York Washington Square property, however, is still called the Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate, and through its tremendous increase in value the actual asylum was benefited incalculably. At the time of Captain Randall's death, the New York estate brought in about $4,000 a year. Today it is about $400,000,--and every cent goes to that real Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors out near the blue waters of Staten Island. So the "honest privateering" fortune has made at least one impossible seeming dream come true.

As time went on this section--the Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate and the Brevoort property--was destined to become New York's most fashionable quarter. Its history is the history of American society, no less, and one can have no difficulty in visualising an era in which a certain naive ceremony combined in piquant fashion with the st.u.r.dy solidity of the young and vigorous country. In the correspondence of Henry Brevoort and Washington Irving and others one gets delightful little pictures--vignettes, as it were--of social life of that day. Mr. Emmet writes begging for some snuff "no matter how old. It may be stale and flat but cannot be unprofitable!" Brevoort asks a friend to dine "On Thursday next at half-past four o'clock." He paints us a quaint sketch of "a little, round old gentleman, returning heel taps into decanters," at a soiree, adding: "His heart smote him at beholding the waste & riot of his dear adopted." We read of tea drinkings and coaches and his father's famous blunderbuss or "long gun" which he is presenting to Irving. And there are other chroniclers of the times.

Lossing, the historian, quotes an anonymous friend as follows:

"We thought there was a goodly display of wealth and diamonds in those days, but, G.o.d bless my soul, when I hear of the millions ama.s.sed by the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Millses, Villards and others of that sort, I realise what a poor little doughnut of a place New York was at that early period!"

He goes on to speak of dinner at three--a formal dinner party at four.

The first private carriage was almost mobbed on Broadway. Mrs. Jacob Little had "a very showy carriage lined with rose colour and a darky coachman in blue livery."

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brevoort's house stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street--it is now occupied by the Charles de Rhams.

And it chanced to be the scene of a certain very pretty little romance which can scarcely be pa.s.sed over here.

New York, as a matter of course, copied her fashionable standards from older lands. While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities. The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their "imported amus.e.m.e.nts" as having a specific claim on fashionable favour. So it came about that the fascinating innovation of the masked ball struck the fancy of fashionable New York. There was something very daring about the notion; it smacked of Latin skies and manners and suggested possibilities of romance both licensed and not which charmed the ladies, even as it abashed them. There were those who found it a project scarcely in good taste; it is said indeed that there was no end of a flutter concerning it. But be that as it may, the masked ball was given,--the first that New York had ever known, and, it may be mentioned, the very last it was to know for many a long, discreet year!

Haswell says that in this year there was a "fancy" ball given by Mr.

and Mrs. Henry Brevoort and that the date was February 24th. It certainly was the same one, but he adds that it was generally p.r.o.nounced "most successful." This one may doubt, since the results made masked b.a.l.l.s so severely thought of that there was, a bit later, a fine of $1,000 imposed on anyone who should give one,--one-half to be deducted if you told on yourself!

Nevertheless, George S. h.e.l.lman says that Mrs. Brevoort's ball, February 24, 1840,--was "the most splendid social affair of the first half of the nineteenth century in New York."

There was great preparation for it, and practically all "society" was asked--and nothing and n.o.body else. It was incidentally the occasion of the first "society reporting." Attree, of the New York _Herald_, was an invited guest and went in costume--quite an innovation for conservative old Manhattan.

Lossing tells us: "At the close of this decade the features of New York society presented conspicuous transformations. Many exotic customs prevailed, both public and private, and the expensive pleasures of the Eastern Hemisphere had been transplanted and taken firm root. Among other imported amus.e.m.e.nts was the masked ball, the first of which occurred in the city of New York in 1840, and produced a profound sensation, not only _per se_, but because of an attending circ.u.mstance which stirred 'society' to its foundation."

The British Consul in New York at that time was Anthony Barclay,--he lived at College Place,--who was destined later to fall into evil repute, by raising recruits here during the Crimean trouble. He had a daughter, Matilda, who was remarkably lovely and--if we may believe reports--a very great belle in American society. She had a number of "suitors," as they were gracefully called in those days, and among them was one Burgwyne, from South Carolina--very young, and, we may take it, rather poor.

Lossing says: "There was also in attendance a gay, young South Carolinian named Burgwyne."

The Consul and Mrs. Barclay disapproved of him strongly. But Matilda who was beautiful, warm-blooded and wayward did not. She loved Burgwyne with a reciprocal ardour, and when the masked ball at the Brevoorts' came on the tapis it seemed as though the G.o.ddess of Romance had absolutely stretched out her hands to these two reckless, but adorable lovers.

They had a favourite poem--most lovers have favourite poems;--theirs was "Lalla Rookh."

There may be diverse opinions as to Thomas Moore's greatness, but there can scarcely be two as to his lyric gift. He could write charming love-songs, simple and yet full of colour, and, given the Oriental theme, it is no wonder that youths and maidens of his day sighed and smiled over "Lalla Rookh" as over nothing that had yet been written for them. It is a delightful tale, half-prose and half-poetry, written entirely and whole-heartedly for lovers, and Burgwyne and Matilda found it easy to put themselves in the places of the romantic characters in the drama--Lalla Rookh, the incomparably beautiful Eastern Princess and Feramorz, the young Prince in disguise, "graceful as that idol of women, Crishna."

[Ill.u.s.tration: GROVE STREET. Looking toward St. Luke's Church.]

They secretly agreed to go to the masked ball at the Brevoorts' as their romantic favourites and prototypes. The detailed descriptions in the book gave them sufficient inspiration. She wore floating gauzes, bracelets, "a small coronet of jewels" and "a rose-coloured, bridal veil." His dress was "simple, yet not without marks of costliness,"

with a "high Tartarian cap.... Here and there, too, over his vest, which was confined by a flowered girdle of Kaskan, hung strings of fine pearls, disposed with an air of studied negligence."

So they met at the ball and danced together, and I suppose he quoted:

_"Fly to the desert, fly with me, Our Arab tents are rude for thee; But, oh! the choice what heart can doubt, Of tents with love, or thrones without?"_

Obviously she chose the tents with love, for as the clock struck four they slipped away together and were married!

As Lossing puts it:

"They left the festive scene together at four o'clock in the morning, and were married before breakfast."

They did not change their costumes, dear things! They wanted the romantic trappings for their love poem--a love poem which was to them more enchanting--more miraculous--than that of Lalla Rookh and the King of Bucharia. I hope they lived happily ever after, like the brave, young romanticists they were!

In 1835 a hotel was opened on the corner of Eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, and it was appropriately named for the ill.u.s.trious family over the way. The Brevoort House is certainly as historic a pile, socially speaking, as lower New York has to offer. Arthur Bartlett Maurice says of it:

"In the old-time novels of New York life visiting Englishmen invariably stopped at the Brevoort."

Of this hotel more anon, since it has recently become knit into the fabric of the modern Village.

But a scant two blocks away from the Brevoort stands another hostelry which is indissolubly a part of New York's growth--especially the growth of her Artist's Colony. It is the Lafayette, or as many of its habitues still love to call it--"The Old Martin." This, the first and most famous French restaurant of New York, needs a special word or two. It must be considered alone, and not in the company of lesser and more modern eating places.

John Reed says that the "Old Martin" was the real link between the old Village and the new, since it was the cradle of artistic life in New York. Bohemians, he declared, first foregathered there _as_ Bohemians, and the beginnings of what has become America's Latin Quarter and Soho there first saw the light of day--or rather the lights of midnight.

Jean Baptiste Martin who had been running a hotel in Panama during the first excavations there--made by the French, as you may or may not remember--came to New York in 1883. He had been here the year before for a time and had decided the city needed a French hotel. He arrived on the 25th of June, and on the 26th he bought the hotel! He chose a house on University Place--No. 17--a little _pension_ kept by one Eugene Larru, and from time to time bought the adjoining houses and built extensions until he had made it the building we see today. He called it the Hotel de Panama.

But it was not as the Hotel de Panama that it won its unique place in the hearts of New Yorkers. "In 1886," Mr. Martin says, "I decided to change the name of my place. 'Panama' gave people a bad impression.

They a.s.sociated it with fever and Spaniards, and neither were popular!

So it became the Hotel Martin. Then, when I started another restaurant at Twenty-sixth Street, the 'Old Martin' became the Lafayette."

The artists and writers came to the Hotel Martin to invite their respective Muses inspired by Mr. Martin's excellent food and drink.

From the bachelors' quarters on the nearby square--the Bened.i.c.k and other studio houses--shabby, ambitious young men came in droves. Mr.