Literary New York Part 3

There was one stately and studious member of the Friendly Club who, it is recorded, could seldom be persuaded to go to the Park Theatre except on the "great nights." James Kent, then a Professor of Law at Columbia College, when not at work (those were rare moments indeed), loved best to wander over the College grounds. These are now lost beyond all tracing in the overcrowding between the City Hall and Hudson River. Then it was a delightful country spot. When Professor Kent did not walk on the College grounds by the riverside, he strolled up Broadway past the hospital with his friend, Dr. David Hosack, and the two discussed at length the Elgin Botanical Garden that the physician had just laid out three miles above the city. It was this James Kent who came to be Chancellor of New York and whose memory lives in his _Commentaries on American Law_.

Beyond the city, separated from it in summer by a mile of marshy and untilled land, in winter by a dreary waste with a single road leading across a snow-bound way, lay the village of Greenwich. A dreamy little country place that had been an Indian village before the settling of New Amsterdam; with lines of peaked-roof houses on zig-zagged lanes, and now and again, in the midst of a farm-like garden, a rambling house of stone, with great square windows and gables enough for half a dozen houses. The village might have been thousands of miles away from New York for all the likeness it bore to it.

On a dusty and rarely travelled lane, that led from the village towards the city, lived a man who had won the hearts of Americans by writing _Common Sense_, but who lived to reap their hatred by writing _The Age of Reason_, a deistic argument against Christianity. In the quiet village his house was pointed out as the abode of a friendless man, and when they spoke of him the villagers whispered the dread name--Tom Paine.

There he lived with Madame Bonneville and her two sons, the only companions he cared to have near him save his own thoughts. In that picturesque spot he was fully content to pa.s.s his final days in solitude and marked contrast to a life of energy and excitement.

It is close upon a century since that time, and the pilgrim feet that seek to follow Paine through Greenwich Village must walk Bleecker Street (the dusty lane in much changed form), must pa.s.s Grove Street, and the fourth house from the corner, on the north side, walking towards the east, is Paine's. It was humble enough in the days when he lived there. It is far humbler now in contrast to the buildings that have grown up about it. A two-story frame house, the ground floor is made into a store, as though it made an effort to keep up with the business character of the street. Two brick structures rise above it on each side and seem to have forced the roof to a frightful angle, so different is it from its new neighbors. Once Joel Barlow went to see Paine there, and the two spent almost an entire day beside a front window, talking of many things. Paine recalled the troublous days of the French Revolution, when he had written his _Age of Reason_ in the prison of the Luxembourg, and had given it to Barlow to find a publisher. The author of the _Columbiad_ often spoke of the visit later.

The dusty road where the house stood, even though it was little travelled, came to be too noisy a place for Paine, for in his illness even the chance pa.s.ser-by irritated him. So he moved away to a house in a nearby field, so far from the road that he found absolute quiet.

In after days Grove Street swept this home away, and another building, numbered 59, is pointed out as the place where Paine died shortly after his removal.

The hatred of many people followed Thomas Paine even after death, and there could be no rest for an advocate of infidel opinions in a town where dwelt descendants of stern Huguenots. His body was taken to New Roch.e.l.le, and there, refused burial in hallowed ground, was finally laid to rest outside the town, in a corner of the farm given to him by the State in recognition of his services in the cause of the colonies against the mother country. Ten years later, William Cobbett, the English Radical, an ardent admirer of Paine, visited New Roch.e.l.le, and, seeing the neglected grave by the wayside, had the bones dug up one night and spirited away to England. In another twenty years the followers of Thomas Paine had grown in number, and the Paine Historical Society erected a monument over the empty grave by the roadside. But on this spot, where no rest had been permitted him in life or in death, it seems rather to mock than to bless his grave.

Chapter V

The City that Irving Knew

Stretching from Broadway towards the east, starting from the ivy-covered walls of the Chapel of St. Paul--here lay the scenes of Washington Irving's childhood. Golden Hill was the name given to this district, long before Irving was born; called so because of its golden appearance in the autumn days. It was a wondrously beautiful place, and set squarely upon the hill-top was an inn that, in the days of the Revolution, came to be a meeting-place for patriots. Even now, when the glories of Golden Hill seem quite forgotten, there are those who love to walk its crowded ways, and who firmly believe that it came by its name in prophecy of the golden flower of literature one day to be born close by it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Golden Hill Inn]

The lane that once had its course up the grain-covered hill is there yet; now, a crowded, dismal thoroughfare bearing the name of William Street. It is well to start with this old lane, partly because it is the oldest street in the Golden Hill district, and partly because the Golden Hill inn of old still stands upon it: a squatty building built of narrow bricks that were brought from Holland, with a tall chimney like none of its neighbors; a venerable house full of cracks and crevices, carved mantels, open fireplaces, wide doorways; made over to conform to modern business ideas, but not conforming to these very well; painted and patched up to look new, but looking quite its age to any one with half an eye for architecture.

Almost opposite this inn of Golden Hill, midway of the block between Fulton and John streets, there stood in the year 1783 a quaint little two-storied dwelling with high-backed roof. One morning the patrons of the inn had a bit to gossip about. It was a year for gossip anyway, for the War of the Revolution was near its close. The talk was of a child that had been born to the Irving family over the way, and who was to be called Washington in honor of the man so well named the "Father of his Country." Before another year the Irving family moved into a house next to the inn on the north and separated from it only by a garden. In this house Washington Irving spent his youth. Close by he was baptized, in the Chapel of St. George. The Chapel is gone now, but where Beekman Street crosses Cliff, on the front of a building appear in raised letters the words "St. George Building," that show the spot where it once stood.

Not far off is the place where the John Street Theatre was, where Irving went with his friend James K. Paulding, who was himself to make a name in the literature of the city. Irving's parents were not given to theatre-going, but Irving, when the family prayers had been said and he had been sent to bed, ofttimes crept out of the gable window, slid down the slanting roof, dropped to the ground, and stole away. He went, just as now following in his footsteps you can go, past the old inn, around the next corner where, on a house wall, is a tablet reciting the departed glories of Golden Hill, then on a few steps until you reach, close by Broadway, a dreary arcade. Walk through the arcade and you will find it heavy with the sounds of workmen and machines. The arcade was a covered way leading to the playhouse, and is all that remains of the theatre.

[Ill.u.s.tration: St. George's Chapel

Beekman St.]

Two minutes' walk away in Ann Street was Mrs. Ann Kilmaster's school, where Irving studied. Ann Street is only three blocks long and far from an inviting spot at any point, but here, in the last block of its length, it dwindles to half the width it had in starting.

A score of steps from the school, at the northwest corner of Ann Street and William, Irving lived with his mother after his father's death. The house is no longer there, but there is one just like it five houses farther along William Street, that stood there in Irving's time.

In the Ann Street house, when he was a law clerk, he did his first writing, the sketches signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," and published in the _Morning Chronicle_, which was conducted by his brother Peter. From this house, while still a lad, he loved to wander down the streets that stretched over the eastern slope of Golden Hill, and spent hours on the piers watching the ships loading and unloading, dreaming of the foreign ports where they had touched, hoping that he might one day see the sh.o.r.es of those far-away lands. For even in his boyhood the longing for travel was strong upon him.

He was still a law clerk, and still living in this Ann Street house, when he sat in an upper room with his brother William and James K.

Paulding, and they planned a magazine of their own. They went to see David Longworth, the printer, in his shop beside the Park Theatre,--"Dusky Davie" they called him, after a song that was popular at the time,--and after many conferences and much secret doing the three stripling writers started the sparkling _Salmagundi_ on its way, with the avowed purpose "to instruct the young, reform the old, correct the town, and castigate the age." Paulding was the "Launcelot Langstaff" of the publication, and William Irving was "Pindar c.o.c.kloft" the poet.

To the west of Golden Hill, Cortlandt Street extends to the river. In a house on that street close by Broadway, the three writers of _Salmagundi_ spent much time at the home of the Fairlie sisters.

There lived Mary Fairlie, known to _Salmagundi_ readers as "Sophia Sparkle," and who married Cooper the tragic actor.

In the Ann Street house most of the _Knickerbocker History of New York_ was written. Washington Irving and his brother Peter were to write it as an extravagant burlesque on Dr. Samuel Mitchill's _Picture of New York_, then a very popular and learned work. But Peter Irving was forced to Europe by ill health in 1808, and Washington settled down to the history, changing its plan and scope. Ten minutes' walk to the north of where Irving lived in Ann Street is a little park--a green spot that has taken the place of the squalid Mulberry Bend slum.

In Mulberry Street opposite the park was the location of the imaginary Independent Columbian Hotel where Dietrich Knickerbocker was supposed to have lived, and left his ma.n.u.script in payment of his board bill.

But by far the most important house connected with this part of Irving's life is gone now. This was in Broadway where Leonard Street now crosses. A square house of many rooms, indeed it was a mansion in the city of 1809. Here lived Josiah Ogden Hoffman, the protector of the youthful author, in whose office Irving came by his law training.

In the Hoffman mansion, Irving courted Matilda Hoffman, the lawyer's fair daughter; here he saw her sicken and grow more feeble day by day; here she died, and so ended the romance of his life. He never mentioned her name in after days and could not bear to hear it spoken.

But she lived in his memory, and he never married. In the depths of his seclusion, during the first months of his sorrow, he finished the _History_. But his heart was not in the laughter of the book, and he made joy for others out of his own sorrow.

Two years after this, Irving was living beside the Bowling Green, at 16 Broadway, with his friend, Henry Brevoort, at the house of Mrs.

Ryckman. While here he edited the _a.n.a.lectic Magazine_. From here he often strolled up Broadway as far as Cortlandt Street, to dine at the house of Jane Renwick, then pa.s.sing her widowhood in the city. Her son became the Professor James Renwick of Columbia College. It was she of whom Burns sang as _The Blue-Eyed La.s.sie_.

Still another house knew the Irving of early days, the boarding-house of Mrs. Brandish, at Greenwich and Rector streets, where he went from Bowling Green. It was a pretty brick building on a quiet street then, but it is a gloomy-enough place to look upon now, darkened by the Elevated Railroad and overrun with h.o.a.rds of noisy children and tenement dwellers; a strange spot to look for memories of the gentle-hearted Irving.

When Irving left New York in 1815, it was with no intention of remaining away any length of time. In England he wrote _Rip Van Winkle_, though he had never been in the Catskills, where the scene of his cla.s.sic lay. In Paris he met John Howard Payne, and the two worked together, in the Rue Richelieu, adapting French plays to English representation--but this partnership came to little. He went to Spain and there, while writing the _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, he met a young man then fitting himself by travel to enter on the duties of Professor of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College. This was Henry W.

Longfellow, unknown then as a poet. While in Spain, Irving occupied the Governor's quarters in the Alhambra, an otherwise deserted palace, abiding there in a kind of Oriental dream, and living over in imagination the _Conquest of Granada_. Back in London again as Secretary of the Legation to the Court of St. James, he arranged his material for the _Voyages of the Companions of Columbus_, and half a dozen other works. Then, after seventeen years of wandering, he returned to his native city.

Although he tells us that his heart throbbed at sight of New York, and that in all his travels he had seen no place that caused such a thrill of joy, it was no longer the city of his youth. He had left a town of one hundred thousand people and found a city of two hundred thousand.

The companions of his youth had grown to be men, and many of them were renowned in literature and business life. He found streets grown long out of all remembrance, houses tall beyond all knowing, strangers who knew him simply as a name. He found many silent graves where he had left blooming youth. But for all this there were many ready and anxious to do him honor.

A few steps beyond Trinity Churchyard on Broadway is a narrow thoroughfare called Thames Street. It is easy to be found, and beside it is a tall building on which is a tablet relating how the Burns's Coffee-House once stood on the spot. This had been a mansion built by etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot n.o.ble, and Thames Street was the carriage-way that led to the door. In this coffee-house the merchants of the city signed the Non-Importation Agreement in the days before the Revolution.

When Irving returned to the city the coffee-house was gone, and on its site was the City Hotel, the main hostelry of the city. Here the chief citizens gathered and a banquet was held and all honor paid to the "ill.u.s.trious guest, thrice welcome to his native city."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The City Hotel]

From the site of this old house, it is a pleasant walk down Broadway, past the Bowling Green to Bridge Street, where, at No. 3, Irving, after his return, went to live with his brother Ebenezer, who had been the Captain Greatheart of "c.o.c.kloft Hall." Here, in this home, Irving spent many happy days. It was called by him "the family hive," for it was always filled to overflowing with relatives.

[Ill.u.s.tration:

1. JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.

2. PHILIP HONE.

3. WASHINGTON IRVING.

4. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.

5. FITZ GREENE HALLECK.

6. J. FENIMORE COOPER.]

But one place above all others in New York is filled with the memory of Irving. This is a bit of ground on the east side of the city, a point of land stretching out into the river. Here of all places the spirit of Irving still lingers, for here of all places it is less changed in appearance since his feet trod the ground. In Irving's day it was a stretch of countryside with summer houses of the wealthy at long distances facing the river. Now, though the city has encompa.s.sed it, there is still left the one green spot by the riverside beyond Eighty-eighth Street. The East River Park they call it, and there are rough stone steps leading to the waterside, winding paths and overhanging trees--the trees that Irving stood beneath. And there, across the stretch of water, is h.e.l.l Gate, its tempestuous waters tamed by the hand of man, but nevertheless the same h.e.l.l Gate that Irving looked upon and that Irving wrote about. Part of this park were the grounds of John Jacob Astor, the friend of Irving. His house stood beyond the park, where Eighty-eighth Street now touches East End Avenue,--a square two-story frame dwelling of colonial type, painted white, with deep veranda, wide halls, and s.p.a.cious rooms; set high upon a hill, backed by a forest of towering trees, and fronted by a vast lawn stretching by gentle slope to the cliff at the riverside.

Here Irving was a guest, and wrote _Astoria_, telling of Astor's settlement on the Columbia River and of scenes beyond the Rockies; here he met Captain Bonneville and his friends, and the journals of the one and thrilling tales of the other gave material for the _Adventures of Captain Bonneville_.

The house of Astor is gone now, but within the limits of this park still stands the home of Gracie, the merchant, where Irving was a constant visitor, and where, in the rooms given over to stranger hands, still linger memories of Paulding and Halleck, Bancroft and Drake, and a host of others.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The House of Astor where Irving wrote "Astoria"]

It was while working on _Astoria_ that Irving began the building of Wolfert's Roost, the Van Ta.s.sel house of the _Legend of Sleepy Hollow_, on that delightful spot on the Hudson which in the first days of Irving's residence there was called Dearman. In after time the name was changed to Irvington, in his honor, and Wolfert's Roost, in honor of the glorious country, became Sunnyside. It is Sunnyside to this day, altered by additions made in the intervening years, but still the house of Irving; and the ivy clinging to its walls has sprung from a root taken from the ruins of Scott's "fair Melrose" and planted where it now grows by the friendly hand of Jane Renwick.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Where Irving lived--17th St. and Irving Place]

On the corner of Seventeenth Street and Irving Place (a thoroughfare to which his memory gave a name), late in life, Irving lived betimes.

Here was once the home of John T. Irving, a nephew of the author. It is a st.u.r.dy house still, and looks as youthful as its neighbors that were built many a day after it. Then it stood quite alone in a stretch of country. From the windows of the large room on the ground floor, Irving could see the waters of the East River. In this room he wrote portions of _Oliver Goldsmith_, parts, too, of the _Life of Mahomet_, and arranged the notes of what was to be his last book--the _Life of Washington_.

But his real home was Sunnyside, and there, in the year 1859, when he was seventy-six years old, he died.