_A Knickerbocker Pepys_
A Knickerbocker Pepys--The Span of a Life--A Man of Many
Responsibilities--Storm and Stress--Political Protestations--Hone and
the Journalists--Contemporary Impressions of Bryant and Bennett--Hone
and the Men of Letters--The Ways of British Lions.
There is one kind of immortality that is not so much a matter of amount
and quality of achievement as of the particular period of achievement.
That, for example, of Samuel Pepys.
Pepys, living in the turbulent, densely populated London of our time,
and recording day by day the events coming under his observation, would
probably have his audience of posterity limited to a little circle of
venerating descendants who would certainly bore the neighbours. It is
quite easy to picture the members of that circle in the year 1998, or
2024. "Listen to what Grandpapa's Diary says of the awful Zeppelin raids
of February, 1917," or, "But Great-grandpapa, who had just finished his
walk in the Park, and was passing Downing Street when the news came,
etc." "Il est fatiguant," whispered Mr. St. John of General Webb at one
of the dinners in "Henry Esmond," "avec sa trompette de Wynandael."
That persistent blowing of the "trompette" of grandpapa would likewise
be voted "fatiguant." "Grandpapa! A plague upon their grandpapa!"
It needed the smaller town, the more limited age, the greater intimacy
of life, to make Pepys's Diary the vivid human narrative that it has
been for so many years.
And as with the Pepys of seventeenth century London, so with the
chronicler of events day by day in the New York of the first half of the
nineteenth century. If there was a Knickerbocker Pepys it was Philip
Hone, who in the span of his life saw his city expand from twenty-five
thousand to half a million, and whose diary has been described as one of
the most fascinating personal documents ever penned.
There is a little thoroughfare far downtown called Dutch Street. It runs
from Fulton to John Street. There Philip Hone was born on the 25th of
October, 1780, and there he passed his boyhood in a wooden house at the
corner of John and Dutch Streets which his father bought in 1784. After
a common school education, he became, at seventeen years of age, a clerk
for an older brother whose business as an auctioneer consisted mainly in
selling the cargoes brought to New York by American merchantmen. Two
years as a clerk, and then Philip was made a partner. The firm
prospered, and by 1820, the future diarist, though only forty years old,
had become a rich man. With the best years of his mature life before
him, with a wish to see the world and a desire for self-improvement, he
retired from business, and in 1821, made his first journey to Europe,
sailing from New York on the "James Monroe." When he returned, he bought
a house on Broadway, near Park Place, on the exact spot now occupied by
the Woolworth Building, for which he paid twenty-five thousand dollars.
There is extant an old print of the house, showing also the American
Hotel on the corner, and another residence, the ground floor of which
was occupied by Peabody's Book Shop. On the block below, where the Astor
House was built later, were the homes of John G. Coster, David Lydig,
and J.J. Astor. It was one of the most magnificent dwellings of the
town, and there Hone entertained not only the distinguished men of New
York, but also such Americans of country-wide fame as Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and Harrison Gray Otis; and such old-world visitors as
Charles Dickens, Lord Morpeth, Captain Marryat, John Galt, and Fanny
Kemble. He had children growing up--his marriage to Catherine Dunscomb
had taken place in 1801, when he was in his twenty-second year--and for
the benefit of the young people his was practically open house. Public
and private honours were thrust upon him. An assistant alderman from
1824 to 1826, in the latter year he was appointed Mayor. (The Mayor was
not elected until 1834.) William Paulding had preceded him in the
office, and William Paulding succeeded him in 1827. But the Hone
administration was long remembered on account of its civic excellence
and its social dignity. For more than thirty years he served
gratuitously the city's first Bank of Savings, which was established in
1816, and in 1841 he became its president. Governor of the New York
Hospital, trustee of the Bloomingdale Asylum, founder of the Clinton
Hall Association, and of the Mercantile Library, trustee of Columbia
College, of the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, president of
the American Exchange Bank, and of the Glenham Manufacturing Company,
vice-president of the Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and
Dumb, of the American Seamen's Fund Society, of the New York Historical
Society, of the Fuel Saving Society, a director in the Matteawan Cotton
and Machine Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the Eagle
Fire Insurance Company, the National Insurance Company, a member of the
Chamber of Commerce, a manager of the Literary and Philosophical
Society, of the Mechanic and Scientific Association, a founder and a
governor of the Union Club, and a vestryman of Trinity Church--the
wonder is that he found time to write in his Diary at all. According to
Bayard Tuckerman, who edited the Diary and wrote the Introduction to it,
an ordinary day's work for Hone was "to ride out on horseback to the
Bloomingdale Asylum, to return and pass the afternoon at the Bank for
Savings, thence to attend a meeting of the Trinity Vestry, or to preside
over the Mercantile Library Association." "He was never," said Mr.
Tuckerman, "voluntarily absent from a meeting where the interest of
others demanded his presence, and many were the good dinners he lost in
consequence." Again: "He had personal gifts which extended the influence
due to his character. Tall and spare, his bearing was distinguished, his
face handsome and refined; his manners were courtly, of what is known as
the 'old school'; his tact was great--he had a faculty for saying the
right thing. In his own house his hospitality was enhanced by a graceful
urbanity and a ready wit."
The story of Philip Hone's life is substantially the story of the town
from 1780 till 1851. When he first saw the light in Dutch Street, there
were but twenty thousand persons for the occupying British troopers to
keep in order. When, after his return from Europe in the early '20s he
bought on Broadway in the neighbourhood of City Hall Park, that was the
centre of fashionable residence.
But by 1837 trade was claiming the section, and Hone sold out and built
himself a new home, this time at the corner of Broadway and Great Jones
Street. He saw the residence portion of the city go beyond that point,
saw it grope up Fifth Avenue as far as Twentieth Street. The first entry
in the Diary bears the date of May 18, 1828; the last of April 30, 1851,
just four days before his death. That last entry shows that he felt that
the end was near at hand. "Has the time come?" he asks, and then quotes
seven stanzas from James Montgomery's "What is Prayer?", adding four
stanzas of his own.
Just eleven months to a day before the last entry, under date of May 30,
1850, Hone commented on the swiftly changing aspect of the city. To him
the renovation of Broadway seemed to be an annual occurrence. If the
houses were not pulled down they fell of their own accord. He wrote:
"The large, three-story house, corner of Broadway and Fourth Street,
occupied for several years by Mrs. Seton as a boarding-house, fell today
at two o'clock, with a crash so astounding that the girls, with whom I
was sitting in the library, imagined for a moment that it was caused by
an earthquake. Fortunately the workmen had notice to make their escape.
No lives were lost and no personal injury was sustained.
"The mania for converting Broadway into a street of shops is greater
than ever. There is scarcely a block in the whole extent of this fine
street of which some part is not in a state of transmutation. The City
Hotel has given place to a row of splendid stores.
"Stewart is extending his stores to take in the whole front from
Chambers to Reade Street; this is already the most magnificent dry-goods
establishment in the world. I certainly do not remember anything to
equal it in London or Paris; with the addition now in progress this
edifice will be one of the 'wonders' of the Western world. Three or four
good brick houses on the corner of Broadway and Spring Street have been
levelled, I know not for what purpose--shops, no doubt. The
houses--fine, costly edifices, opposite to me extending from Driggs's
corner down to a point opposite to Bond Street--are to make way for a
grand concert and exhibition establishment."
It is far from being all mellowness and amiability, that Diary. Hone had
his prejudices and dislikes and strong political opinions. In the
portraits that have been preserved there is the suggestion of
intolerance and smug self-satisfaction. Also life did not turn out quite
so rosy as it promised in 1828, when he retired from business with a
handsome competence. In 1836, during the commercial depression, he met
with financial reverses which forced him to return to the game of
money-getting. He became president of the American Mutual Insurance
Company, which was ruined by the great fire of July 19, 1845.
"A fire has occurred," he recorded in the entry of that date, "the loss
of which is probably $5,000,000; several of the insurance companies are
ruined, and all are crippled. My office, I fear, is in the former
category. We have lost between three and four hundred thousand dollars,
which is more than we can pay.
"This is a hard stroke for me. I was pleasantly situated with a moderate
support for my declining years, and now, 'Othello's occupation's gone.'"
But he met his reverses in a courageous manner, and in 1849 President
Taylor appointed him Naval Officer of the Port of New York, a place
which he held until his death.
As became his day, Hone was a good trencherman. In the index to the
Diary there are one hundred and sixteen pages marked as containing
reference of some kind to dinner parties. The old New York names appear
again and again. H. Brevoort, Chancellor and Mrs. Kent, Mr. and Mrs.
W.B. Astor, Bishop Hobart, C. Brugière and Miss Brugière, Robert
Maitland, Dr. Wainwright, Mr. and Mrs. Anthon, Judge Spencer, Judge
Irving, Dr. Hosack, Peter Jay, P. Schemerhorn. And only the formal
dinner parties are indexed. Aside from them there are scores of
allusions to where the diarist dined and who dined with him. Small
wonder that the passing of a cook of unusual abilities was an event to
be recorded. An early entry, that of February 17, 1829, reads: "Died
this morning, Simon, the celebrated cook. He was a respectable man, who
has for many years been the fashionable cook in New York, and his loss
will be felt on all occasions of large dinner and evening parties,
unless it should be found that some suitable shoulders should be ready
to receive the mantle of this distinguished _cuisinier_." When Hone was
not entertaining at his own home or being entertained at somebody
else's, he was trying out the fare at some one of the public hostelries.
Date of December 18, 1830, there is reference to a familiar name.
"Moore, Giraud, and I went yesterday to dine at Delmonico's, a French
_restaurateur_, in William Street, which I had heard was on the Parisian
plan, and very good. We satisfied our curiosity, but not our appetites."
We are prone to regard the Civil War as an affair of the sixties. Hone
was one of those who perceived the threat of it thirty years before.
Always a bitter political opponent of Jackson, there was one occasion
when he was loud in his applause. The South Carolina Convention had
passed a number of resolutions regarded by Hone as rank treason, and the
beginning of rebellion. The President had dealt with the matter in a
proclamation, of which the diarist wrote December 12, 1832: "Very much
to the surprise of some, and to the satisfaction of all our citizens, we
have a long proclamation of President Jackson, which was published in
Washington on the 12th. inst., and is in all our papers this day. It is
a document addressed to the nullifiers of South Carolina, occasioned by
the late treasonable proceedings of their convention. The whole subject
is discussed in a spirit of conciliation, but with firmness and
decision, and a determination to put down the wicked attempt to resist
the laws. On the constitutionality of the laws which the nullifiers
object to, and their right to recede from the Union, this able State
paper is full and conclusive. The language of the President is that of a
father addressing his wayward children, but determined to punish with
the utmost severity the first open act of insubordination. As a
composition it is splendid, and will take its place in the archives of
our country, and will dwell in the memories of our citizens alongside of
the farewell address of the 'Father of his Country.' It is not known
which of the members of the cabinet is entitled to the honour of being
the author; it is attributed to Mr. Livingston, the Secretary of State,
and to Governor Cass, the Secretary of War. Nobody, of course, supposes
it was written by him whose name is subscribed to it. But whoever shall
prove to be the author has raised to himself an imperishable monument of
glory. The sentiments, at least, are approved by the President, and he
should have the credit of it, as he would have the blame if it were bad;
and, possessing these sentiments, we have reason to believe that he has
firmness enough to do his duty.
"I say, Hurrah for Jackson, and so I am willing to say at all times when
he does his duty. The only difference between the thorough-going Jackson
man and me is, that I will not 'hurrah' for him right or wrong. And I
think that Jackson's election may save the Union."
If he disliked Jackson on account of his policies, he seemed to dislike
journalists regardless of their political creeds. To his eyes they were
a pestilential crew. Here is the first glimpse of Bryant, the great
William Cullen Bryant, who as a mere boy had penned the beautiful
"Thanatopsis." It is of the date of April 20, 1831. "While I was shaving
this morning at eight o'clock, I witnessed from the front window an
encounter in the street nearly opposite, between William C. Bryant and
William L. Stone, the former one of the editors of the _Evening Post_,
and the latter the editor of the _Commercial Advertiser_. The former
commenced the attack by striking Stone over the head with a cow-skin;
after a few blows the men closed, and the whip was wrested away from
Bryant and carried off by Stone." Here and there are flung expressions
of admiration for Bryant's verse, but the tone is of one speaking of the
cleverness of a trained lizard. Thirteen years intervened between the
first and the last Bryant entry. In February, 1844, Nicholas Biddle, the
great financier, died. Something that Bryant wrote roused Hone's wrath.
Here is his comment of February 28: "Bryant, the editor of the _Evening
Post_, in an article of his day, virulent and malignant as are usually
the streams which flow from that polluted source, says that Mr. Biddle
'died at his country-seat, where he passed the last of his days in
elegant retirement, which, if justice had taken place, would have been
spent in the penitentiary.' This is the first instance I have known of
the vampire of party-spirit seizing the lifeless body of its victim
before its interment, and exhibiting its bloody claws to the view of
mourning relatives and sympathizing friends. How such a black-hearted
misanthrope as Bryant should possess an imagination teeming with
beautiful poetical images astonishes me; one would as soon expect to
extract drops of honey from the fangs of the rattlesnake."
But this was kindly tolerance compared to his attitude towards the elder
Bennett. The latter apparently came under Hone's notice in January,
1836, and the first mention in the Diary reads: "There is an
ill-looking, squinting man called Bennett, formerly connected with Webb
in the publication of his paper, who is now editor of the _Herald_, one
of the penny papers which are hawked about the streets by a gang of
troublesome, ragged boys, and in which scandal is retailed to all who
delight in it, at that moderate price. This man and Webb are now bitter
enemies, and it was nuts for Bennett to be the organ of Mr. Lynch's late
vituperative attack upon Webb, which Bennett introduced in his paper
with evident marks of savage exultation." To that famous masked ball
given by the Brevoorts on the evening of February 24, 1840, in their
house at Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue Hone went attired as Cardinal
Wolsey. He forgot to tell of the romance of the night, the elopement of
Miss Barclay and young Burgwyne, devoting his space to the expression of
his resentment over the presence at the affair of an emissary of
Bennett. "Whether the notice they" (the guests) "took of him" (the
"Herald" reporter), "and that which they extend to Bennett when he shows
his ugly face in Wall Street, may be considered approbatory of the
dirty slanders and unblushing impudence of the paper they conduct, or is
intended to purchase their forbearance towards themselves, the effect is
equally mischievous." Again, date of June 2, 1840: "The punishment of
the law adds to the fellow's notoriety, and personal chastisement is
pollution to him who undertakes it. Write him down, make respectable
people withdraw their support from the vile sheet, so that it will be
considered disgraceful to read it, and the serpent will be rendered
harmless." In the entry of February 14, 1842, Bennett is: "The impudent
disturber of the public peace, whose infamous paper, the _Herald_, is
more scurrilous, and of course more generally read, than any other."
September 2, 1843, Hone records that: "Bennett, the editor of the
_Herald_, is on a tour through Great Britain, whence he furnishes lies
and scandal for the infamous paper which has contributed so much to
corrupt the morals and degrade the taste of the people of New York." In
one of the last entries of the Diary, a few months before Hone's death,
allusion is made to a personal attack on the editor by the defeated
candidate of the Locofoco party for the District-Attorneyship. "I should
be well pleased to hear of this fellow being punished in this way, and
once a week for the remainder of his life, so that new wounds might be
inflicted before the old ones were healed, or until the fellow left off
lying; but I fear that the editorial miscreant in this case will be more
benefited than injured by this attack."
A man of literary tastes, or at least a man who wished to be regarded as
one of bookish inclinations, Hone seems never to have had any great
liking for men of letters as such. All of the gifted and unhappy Poe's
life in New York came within the period of the Diary, but in it is to be
found not a single mention of his name. There was no place at the Hone
table for the shabby, impossible genius. There was an impassable gulf
between the well-ordered household facing the City Hall Park, or at the
Broadway and Great Jones Street corner, and the humble Carmine Street
lodging, or the Fordham Cottage. Early references to Fenimore Cooper,
whom Hone first met at an American dinner to Lafayette in Paris in 1831,
are gracious enough, for the creator of Leather-Stocking was a
personage, and it suited Hone to stand well with personages. But when,
seven years later, Cooper returned to the United States after his long
stay abroad, and incurred the displeasure of his fellow-countrymen, Hone
was quite ready to join in the hue and cry.
With Washington Irving it was another matter. But who could have failed
to feel genial towards the quiet, scholarly, altogether charming
gentleman of Sunnyside? Also the legs of Irving fitted well and often
under the Hone mahogany, and the part of the author that was perceptible
above the table gave a flavour and dignity to the board. Somehow we see
Hone's cheeks puffed out with pride as he chronicles: "My old friend,
Washington Irving, who visits his native country after an absence of
seventeen years. I passed half an hour with him very pleasantly." "I
have devoted nearly the whole day to Washington Irving." "Irving and I
left them and came to town to meet friends whom I had engaged to dine
with me." "Washington Irving acquainted me with a circumstance, etc."
"We next visited Washington Irving, who lives with his sister and nieces
on the bank of the river." Any one who reads the Diary can see that Hone
thoroughly approved of Irving. But just what, in his heart of hearts,
did Irving think of Hone?
The Diary gives some significant glimpses of Charles Dickens in America.
In 1842 New York welcomed the Englishman riotously. Washington laughed
at New York for doing too much and went to the other extreme. John
Quincy Adams gave the Dickenses a dinner at which Hone was a guest.
"Some clever people were invited to meet them" is the way the ingenuous
Hone puts it. "They" (Dickens and Mrs. Dickens) "came, he in a
frock-coat, and she in her bonnet. They sat at table until four o'clock,
when he said: 'Dear, it is time for us to go home and dress for dinner.'
They were engaged to dine with Robert Greenhow at the fashionable hour
of half-past five! A most particularly funny idea to leave the table of
John Quincy Adams to dress for a dinner at Robert Greenhow's!" Hone
referred to the visitors as "The Boz and Bozess," and described the
author of "Pickwick" as "a small, bright-eyed, intelligent-looking young
fellow, thirty years of age, somewhat of a dandy in his dress, with
'rings and things and fine array,' brisk in his manner, and of a lively
conversation"; and Mrs. Dickens as "a little, fat, English-looking
woman, of an agreeable countenance, and, I should think, 'a nice
person.'"
Dickens was not the only British author of those days to kindle the
flames of American resentment. Almost all who came to our shores seemed
to possess the faculty of "getting a rise" out of Yankee sensibilities.
Captain Marryat was one of the offenders. At a dinner in Toronto he gave
an injudicious toast. Thereupon the town of Lewistown, Maine, built a
huge bonfire on the shore directly opposite Queenstown and destroyed all
the "Midshipman Easys," "Peter Simples," "Japhets," and "Jacob
Faithfuls" that could be obtained. Hone commented sensibly on the
affair in his Diary for May 5, 1838. "Captain Marryat, I dare say, made
a fool of himself (not a very difficult task, I should judge, from what
I have seen of him); but the Lewistownians have beaten him all to smash,
as the Kentuckians say. How mortified he must have been to hear that his
books had been burned after they were paid for!" A year before Marryat
had dined at the Hone house in New York and the host wrote: "The lion,
Captain Marryat, is no great things of a lion, after all. In truth, the
author of 'Peter Simple' and 'Jacob Faithful' is a very every-day sort
of a man. He carries about him in his manner and conversation more of
the sailor than the author, has nothing student-like in his appearance,
and savours more of the binnacle lamp than of the study." And again, six
months after the Lewistown flare-up: "It would have been better for both
parties if the sailor author had been known on this side of the Atlantic
only by his writings ... he has evidently not enjoyed the benefits of
refined society, or intercourse with people of literary talents."
The Knickerbocker Pepys grew mellower as he advanced in years. There is
a marked change in the tone of the Diary dating from the very time when
he himself suffered financial reverses. It was the test of the man that
misfortune did not embitter him, but made him more kindly in his
judgments of those about him. The smug self-satisfaction belonged to
the early days. In the closing years of his useful life there was but
one thing that disturbed him greatly. He foresaw the Deluge that was to
come. December 12, 1850, was his last Thanksgiving. He wrote: "The
annual time-honoured Thanksgiving-day throughout the state. No nation,
ancient or modern, ever had more causes for thanksgiving, and reasons to
praise the Author of all good, than the people of the United States. Yet
there are many, at the present time, ignorant and unworthy of the
blessings they enjoy, who would throw all things into confusion, break
up the blessed Union which binds the States, and should bind the
individuals forming their population; who would destroy the harmony, and
condemn the obligations, of Constitution and law. Factionists, traitors,
madmen--the Lord preserve us from the unholy influence of such
principles!"