The Fair Beginning of a New Life in Ancient Albany.
The life in Albany was to me as if I had become a citizen of some new
world. I had seen the old burgh once or twice before, fleetingly and with
but a stranger's eyes; now it was my home. As I think upon it at this
distance, it seems as if I grew accustomed to the novel environment almost
at the outset. At least, I did not pine overmuch for the Valley I had
left behind.
For one thing, there was plenty of hard work to keep my mind from moping.
I had entirely to create both my position and my business. This latter
was, in some regards, as broad as the continent; in others it was
pitifully circumscribed and narrow. It is hard for us now, with our eager
national passion for opening up the wilderness and peopling waste places,
to realize that the great trading companies of Colonial days had exactly
the contrary desire. It was the chief anxiety of the fur companies to
prevent immigration--to preserve the forests in as savage a state as
possible. One can see now that it was a fatal error in England's policy to
encourage these vast conservators of barbarism, instead of wholesome
settlement by families--a policy which was avowedly adopted because it was
easier to sell monopolies to a few companies than to collect taxes from
scattered communities. I do not know that I thought much upon this then,
however. I was too busy in fitting myself to Albany.
Others who saw the city in these primitive Dutch days have found much in
it and its inhabitants to revile and scoff at. To my mind it was a most
delightful place. Its Yankee critics assail a host of features which were
to me sources of great satisfaction--doubtless because they and I were
equally Dutch. I loved its narrow-gabled houses, with their yellow pressed
brick, and iron girders, and high, hospitable stoops, and projecting
water-spouts--which all spoke to me of the dear, brave, good old Holland I
had never seen. It is true that these eaves-troughs, which in the
Netherlands discharged the rainfall into the canal in front of the houses,
here poured their contents upon the middle of the sidewalks, and New
England carpers have made much of this. But to me there was always a
pretty pathos in this resolution to reproduce, here in the wilderness, the
conditions of the dear old home, even if one got drenched for it.
And Albany was then almost as much in the wilderness as Caughnawaga. There
were a full score of good oil-lamps set up in the streets; some Scotchmen
had established a newspaper the year before, which print was to be had
weekly; the city had had its dramatic baptism, too, and people still told
of the theatrical band who had come and performed for a month at the
hospital, and of the fierce sermon against them which Dominie
Freylinghuysen had preached three years before. Albany now is a great
town, having over ten thousand souls within its boundaries; then its
population was less than one-third of that number. But the three or four
hundred houses of the city were spread over such an area of ground, and
were so surrounded by trim gardens and embowered in trees, that the effect
was that of a vastly larger place. Upon its borders, one stepped off the
grassy street into the wild country-road or wilder forest-trail. The
wilderness stretched its dark shadows to our very thresholds. It is
thought worthy of note now by travellers that one can hear, from the steps
of our new State House, the drumming of partridges in the woods beyond.
Then we could hear, in addition, the barking of wolves skulking down from
the Helderbergs, and on occasion the scream of a panther.
Yet here there was a feeling of perfect security and peace. The days when
men bore their guns to church were now but a memory among the elders. The
only Indians we saw were those who came in, under strict espionage, to
barter their furs for merchandise and drink--principally drink--and
occasional delegations of chiefs who came here to meet the governor or his
representatives--these latter journeying up from New York for the purpose.
For the rest, a goodly and profitable traffic went sedately and
comfortably forward. We sent ships to Europe and the West Indies, and even
to the slave-yielding coast of Guinea. In both the whaling and deep-sea
fisheries we had our part. As for furs and leather and lumber, no other
town in the colonies compared with Albany. We did this business in our
own way, to be sure, without bustle or boasting, and so were accounted
slow by our noisier neighbors to the east and south.
There were numerous holidays in this honest, happy old time, although the
firing of guns on New Year's was rather churlishly forbidden by the
Assembly the year after my arrival. It gives me no pleasure now, in my old
age, to see Pinkster forgotten, and Vrouwen-dagh and Easter pass
unnoticed, under the growing sway of the New England invaders, who know
how neither to rest nor to play.
But my chief enjoyment lay, I think, in the people I came to know. Up in
the Valley, if exception were made of four or five families already
sketched in this tale, there were no associates for me who knew aught of
books or polite matters in general. Of late, indeed, I had felt myself
almost wholly alone, since my few educated companions or acquaintances
were on the Tory side of the widening division, and I, much as I was
repelled by their politics, could find small intellectual equivalent for
them among the Dutch and German Whigs whose cause and political sympathies
were mine.
But here in Albany I could hate the English and denounce their rule and
rulers in excellent and profitable company. I was fortunate enough at the
outset to produce a favorable impression upon Abraham Ten Broeck, the
uncle and guardian of the boy-Patroon, and in some respects the foremost
citizen of the town. Through him I speedily became acquainted with others
not less worthy of friendship--Colonel Philip Schuyler, whom I had seen
before and spoken with in the Valley once or twice, but now came upon
terms of intimacy with; John Tayler and Jeremiah Van Rensselaer, younger
men, and trusted friends of his; Peter Gansevoort, who was of my own age,
and whom I grew to love like a brother--and so on, through a long list.
These and their associates were educated and refined gentlemen, not
inferior in any way to the Johnsons and Butlers I had left behind me, or
to the De Lanceys, Phillipses, Wattses, and other Tory gentry whom I had
seen. If they did not drink as deep, they read a good deal more, and were
masters of as courteous and distinguished a manner. Heretofore I had
suffered not a little from the notion--enforced upon me by all my
surroundings--that gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with
loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another
name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen
disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the
ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence
the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its
citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political
life, were of my way of thinking.
More than this, I soon came to realize that this question for and against
England was a deeper and graver matter than I had dreamed it to be. Up in
our slow, pastoral, uninformed Valley the division was of recent growth,
and, as I have tried to show, was even now more an affair of race and
social affiliations than of politics. The trial of Zenger, the Stamp Act
crisis, the Boston Massacre--all the great events which were so bitterly
discussed in the outer Colonial world--had created scarcely a ripple in
our isolated chain of frontier settlements. We rustics had been conscious
of disturbances and changes in the atmosphere, so to speak, but had lacked
the skill and information--perhaps the interest as well--to interpret
these signs of impending storm aright. Here in Albany I suddenly found
myself among able and prudent men who had as distinct ideas of the evils
of English control, and as deep-seated a resolution to put an end to it,
as our common ancestors had held in Holland toward the detested Spaniards.
Need I say that I drank in all this with enthusiastic relish, and became
the most ardent of Whigs?
Of my business it is not needful to speak at length. Once established,
there was nothing specially laborious or notable about it. The whole
current of the company's traffic to and fro passed under my eye. There
were many separate accounts to keep, and a small army of agents to govern,
to supply, to pay, and to restrain from fraud--for which they had a
considerable talent, and even more inclination. There were cargoes of
provisions and merchandise to receive from our company's vessels at
Albany, and prepare for transportation across country to the West; and
there were return-cargoes of peltries and other products to be shipped
hence to England. Of all this I had charge and oversight, but with no
obligation upon me to do more of the labor than was fit, or to spare
expense in securing a proper performance of the residue by others.
Mr. Jonathan Cross and his lady came down to Albany shortly after I had
entered upon my duties there, and made a stay of some days. He was as kind
and thoughtful as ever, approving much that I had done, suggesting
alterations and amendments here and there, but for the most part talking
of me and my prospects. He had little to say about the people at the
Cedars, or about the young master of Cairncross, which was now approaching
completion, and I had small heart to ask him for more than he volunteered.
Both Mr. Stewart and Daisy had charged him with affectionate messages for
me, and that was some consolation; but I was still sore enough over the
collapse of my hopes, and still held enough wrath in my heart against
Philip, to make me wish to recall neither more often than could be helped.
The truth is, I think that I was already becoming reconciled to my
disappointment and to my change of life, and was secretly ashamed of
myself for it, and so liked best to keep my thoughts and talk upon
other things.
Lady Berenicia I saw but once, and that was once too often. It pleased her
ladyship to pretend to recall me with difficulty, and, after she had
established my poor identity in her mind, to treat me with great coolness.
I am charitable enough to hope that this gratified her more than it vexed
me, which was not at all.
The ill-assorted twain finally left Albany, taking passage on one of the
company's ships. Mr. Cross's last words to me were: "Do as much business,
push trade as sharply, as you can. There is no telling how long English
charters, or the King's writ for that matter, will continue to run
over here."
So they set sail, and I never saw either of them again.
It was a source of much satisfaction and gain to me that my position held
me far above the bartering and dickering of the small traders. It is true
that I went through the form of purchasing a license to trade in the city,
for which I paid four pounds sterling--a restriction which has always
seemed to me as unintelligent as it was harmful to the interests of the
town--but it was purely a form. We neither bought nor sold in Albany. This
made it the easier for me to meet good people on equal terms--not that I
am silly enough to hold trade in disrespect, but because the merchants who
came in direct contact with the Indians and trappers suffered in
estimation from the cloud of evil repute which hung over their business.
I lived quietly, and without ostentation, putting aside some money each
quarter, and adventuring my savings to considerable profit in the
company's business--a matter which Mr. Cross had arranged for me. I went
to many of the best houses of the Whig sort. In some ways, perhaps, my
progress in knowledge and familiarity with worldly things were purchased
at the expense of an innocence which might better have been retained. But
that is the manner of all flesh, and I was no worse, I like to hope, than
the best-behaved of my fellows. I certainly laughed more now in a year
than I had done in all my life before; in truth, I may be said to have
learned to laugh here in Albany, for there were merry wights among my
companions. One in particular should be spoken of--a second-cousin of
mine, named Teunis Van Hoorn, a young physician who had studied at Leyden,
and who made jests which were often worthy to be written down.
So two years went by. I had grown somewhat in flesh, being now decently
rounded out and solid. Many of my timid and morose ways had been dropped
meantime. I could talk now to ladies and to my elders without feeling
tongue-tied at my youthful presumption. I was a man of affairs,
twenty-five years of age, with some money of my own, an excellent
position, and as good a circle of friends as fortune ever gave to
mortal man.
Once each month Mr. Stewart and I exchanged letters. Through this
correspondence I was informed, in the winter following my departure, of
the marriage of Daisy and Philip Cross.