NEW YORK
THE beautiful metropolis of America is by no means so clean a city as
Boston, but many of its streets have the same characteristics; except
that the houses are not quite so fresh-coloured, the sign-boards are not
quite so gaudy, the gilded letters not quite so golden, the bricks not
quite so red, the stone not quite so white, the blinds and area railings
not quite so green, the knobs and plates upon the street doors not quite
so bright and twinkling. There are many by-streets, almost as neutral in
clean colours, and positive in dirty ones, as by-streets in London; and
there is one quarter, commonly called the Five Points, which, in respect
of filth and wretchedness, may be safely backed against Seven Dials, or
any other part of famed St. Giles’s.
The great promenade and thoroughfare, as most people know, is Broadway; a
wide and bustling street, which, from the Battery Gardens to its opposite
termination in a country road, may be four miles long. Shall we sit down
in an upper floor of the Carlton House Hotel (situated in the best part
of this main artery of New York), and when we are tired of looking down
upon the life below, sally forth arm-in-arm, and mingle with the stream?
Warm weather! The sun strikes upon our heads at this open window, as
though its rays were concentrated through a burning-glass; but the day is
in its zenith, and the season an unusual one. Was there ever such a
sunny street as this Broadway! The pavement stones are polished with the
tread of feet until they shine again; the red bricks of the houses might
be yet in the dry, hot kilns; and the roofs of those omnibuses look as
though, if water were poured on them, they would hiss and smoke, and
smell like half-quenched fires. No stint of omnibuses here!
Half-a-dozen have gone by within as many minutes. Plenty of hackney cabs
and coaches too; gigs, phaetons, large-wheeled tilburies, and private
carriages—rather of a clumsy make, and not very different from the public
vehicles, but built for the heavy roads beyond the city pavement. Negro
coachmen and white; in straw hats, black hats, white hats, glazed caps,
fur caps; in coats of drab, black, brown, green, blue, nankeen, striped
jean and linen; and there, in that one instance (look while it passes, or
it will be too late), in suits of livery. Some southern republican that,
who puts his blacks in uniform, and swells with Sultan pomp and power.
Yonder, where that phaeton with the well-clipped pair of grays has
stopped—standing at their heads now—is a Yorkshire groom, who has not
been very long in these parts, and looks sorrowfully round for a
companion pair of top-boots, which he may traverse the city half a year
without meeting. Heaven save the ladies, how they dress! We have seen
more colours in these ten minutes, than we should have seen elsewhere, in
as many days. What various parasols! what rainbow silks and satins! what
pinking of thin stockings, and pinching of thin shoes, and fluttering of
ribbons and silk tassels, and display of rich cloaks with gaudy hoods and
linings! The young gentlemen are fond, you see, of turning down their
shirt-collars and cultivating their whiskers, especially under the chin;
but they cannot approach the ladies in their dress or bearing, being, to
say the truth, humanity of quite another sort. Byrons of the desk and
counter, pass on, and let us see what kind of men those are behind ye:
those two labourers in holiday clothes, of whom one carries in his hand a
crumpled scrap of paper from which he tries to spell out a hard name,
while the other looks about for it on all the doors and windows.
Irishmen both! You might know them, if they were masked, by their
long-tailed blue coats and bright buttons, and their drab trousers, which
they wear like men well used to working dresses, who are easy in no
others. It would be hard to keep your model republics going, without the
countrymen and countrywomen of those two labourers. For who else would
dig, and delve, and drudge, and do domestic work, and make canals and
roads, and execute great lines of Internal Improvement! Irishmen both,
and sorely puzzled too, to find out what they seek. Let us go down, and
help them, for the love of home, and that spirit of liberty which admits
of honest service to honest men, and honest work for honest bread, no
matter what it be.
That’s well! We have got at the right address at last, though it is
written in strange characters truly, and might have been scrawled with
the blunt handle of the spade the writer better knows the use of, than a
pen. Their way lies yonder, but what business takes them there? They
carry savings: to hoard up? No. They are brothers, those men. One
crossed the sea alone, and working very hard for one half year, and
living harder, saved funds enough to bring the other out. That done,
they worked together side by side, contentedly sharing hard labour and
hard living for another term, and then their sisters came, and then
another brother, and lastly, their old mother. And what now? Why, the
poor old crone is restless in a strange land, and yearns to lay her
bones, she says, among her people in the old graveyard at home: and so
they go to pay her passage back: and God help her and them, and every
simple heart, and all who turn to the Jerusalem of their younger days,
and have an altar-fire upon the cold hearth of their fathers.
This narrow thoroughfare, baking and blistering in the sun, is Wall
Street: the Stock Exchange and Lombard Street of New York. Many a rapid
fortune has been made in this street, and many a no less rapid ruin.
Some of these very merchants whom you see hanging about here now, have
locked up money in their strong-boxes, like the man in the Arabian
Nights, and opening them again, have found but withered leaves. Below,
here by the water-side, where the bowsprits of ships stretch across the
footway, and almost thrust themselves into the windows, lie the noble
American vessels which have made their Packet Service the finest in the
world. They have brought hither the foreigners who abound in all the
streets: not, perhaps, that there are more here, than in other commercial
cities; but elsewhere, they have particular haunts, and you must find
them out; here, they pervade the town.
We must cross Broadway again; gaining some refreshment from the heat, in
the sight of the great blocks of clean ice which are being carried into
shops and bar-rooms; and the pine-apples and water-melons profusely
displayed for sale. Fine streets of spacious houses here, you see!—Wall
Street has furnished and dismantled many of them very often—and here a
deep green leafy square. Be sure that is a hospitable house with inmates
to be affectionately remembered always, where they have the open door and
pretty show of plants within, and where the child with laughing eyes is
peeping out of window at the little dog below. You wonder what may be
the use of this tall flagstaff in the by-street, with something like
Liberty’s head-dress on its top: so do I. But there is a passion for
tall flagstaffs hereabout, and you may see its twin brother in five
minutes, if you have a mind.
Again across Broadway, and so—passing from the many-coloured crowd and
glittering shops—into another long main street, the Bowery. A railroad
yonder, see, where two stout horses trot along, drawing a score or two of
people and a great wooden ark, with ease. The stores are poorer here;
the passengers less gay. Clothes ready-made, and meat ready-cooked, are
to be bought in these parts; and the lively whirl of carriages is
exchanged for the deep rumble of carts and waggons. These signs which
are so plentiful, in shape like river buoys, or small balloons, hoisted
by cords to poles, and dangling there, announce, as you may see by
looking up, ‘OYSTERS IN EVERY STYLE.’ They tempt the hungry most at
night, for then dull candles glimmering inside, illuminate these dainty
words, and make the mouths of idlers water, as they read and linger.
What is this dismal-fronted pile of bastard Egyptian, like an enchanter’s
palace in a melodrama!—a famous prison, called The Tombs. Shall we go
in?
So. A long, narrow, lofty building, stove-heated as usual, with four
galleries, one above the other, going round it, and communicating by
stairs. Between the two sides of each gallery, and in its centre, a
bridge, for the greater convenience of crossing. On each of these
bridges sits a man: dozing or reading, or talking to an idle companion.
On each tier, are two opposite rows of small iron doors. They look like
furnace-doors, but are cold and black, as though the fires within had all
gone out. Some two or three are open, and women, with drooping heads
bent down, are talking to the inmates. The whole is lighted by a
skylight, but it is fast closed; and from the roof there dangle, limp and
drooping, two useless windsails.
A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking fellow, and,
in his way, civil and obliging.
‘Are those black doors the cells?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are they all full?’
‘Well, they’re pretty nigh full, and that’s a fact, and no two ways about
it.’
‘Those at the bottom are unwholesome, surely?’
‘Why, we _do_ only put coloured people in ’em. That’s the truth.’
‘When do the prisoners take exercise?’
‘Well, they do without it pretty much.’
‘Do they never walk in the yard?’
‘Considerable seldom.’
‘Sometimes, I suppose?’
‘Well, it’s rare they do. They keep pretty bright without it.’
‘But suppose a man were here for a twelvemonth. I know this is only a
prison for criminals who are charged with grave offences, while they are
awaiting their trial, or under remand, but the law here affords criminals
many means of delay. What with motions for new trials, and in arrest of
judgment, and what not, a prisoner might be here for twelve months, I
take it, might he not?’
‘Well, I guess he might.’
‘Do you mean to say that in all that time he would never come out at that
little iron door, for exercise?’
‘He might walk some, perhaps—not much.’
‘Will you open one of the doors?’
‘All, if you like.’
The fastenings jar and rattle, and one of the doors turns slowly on its
hinges. Let us look in. A small bare cell, into which the light enters
through a high chink in the wall. There is a rude means of washing, a
table, and a bedstead. Upon the latter, sits a man of sixty; reading.
He looks up for a moment; gives an impatient dogged shake; and fixes his
eyes upon his book again. As we withdraw our heads, the door closes on
him, and is fastened as before. This man has murdered his wife, and will
probably be hanged.
‘How long has he been here?’
‘A month.’
‘When will he be tried?’
‘Next term.’
‘When is that?’
‘Next month.’
‘In England, if a man be under sentence of death, even he has air and
exercise at certain periods of the day.’
‘Possible?’
With what stupendous and untranslatable coolness he says this, and how
loungingly he leads on to the women’s side: making, as he goes, a kind of
iron castanet of the key and the stair-rail!
Each cell door on this side has a square aperture in it. Some of the
women peep anxiously through it at the sound of footsteps; others shrink
away in shame.—For what offence can that lonely child, of ten or twelve
years old, be shut up here? Oh! that boy? He is the son of the prisoner
we saw just now; is a witness against his father; and is detained here
for safe keeping, until the trial; that’s all.
But it is a dreadful place for the child to pass the long days and nights
in. This is rather hard treatment for a young witness, is it not?—What
says our conductor?
‘Well, it an’t a very rowdy life, and _that’s_ a fact!’
Again he clinks his metal castanet, and leads us leisurely away. I have
a question to ask him as we go.
‘Pray, why do they call this place The Tombs?’
‘Well, it’s the cant name.’
‘I know it is. Why?’
‘Some suicides happened here, when it was first built. I expect it come
about from that.’
‘I saw just now, that that man’s clothes were scattered about the floor
of his cell. Don’t you oblige the prisoners to be orderly, and put such
things away?’
‘Where should they put ’em?’
‘Not on the ground surely. What do you say to hanging them up?’
He stops and looks round to emphasise his answer:
‘Why, I say that’s just it. When they had hooks they _would_ hang
themselves, so they’re taken out of every cell, and there’s only the
marks left where they used to be!’
The prison-yard in which he pauses now, has been the scene of terrible
performances. Into this narrow, grave-like place, men are brought out to
die. The wretched creature stands beneath the gibbet on the ground; the
rope about his neck; and when the sign is given, a weight at its other
end comes running down, and swings him up into the air—a corpse.
The law requires that there be present at this dismal spectacle, the
judge, the jury, and citizens to the amount of twenty-five. From the
community it is hidden. To the dissolute and bad, the thing remains a
frightful mystery. Between the criminal and them, the prison-wall is
interposed as a thick gloomy veil. It is the curtain to his bed of
death, his winding-sheet, and grave. From him it shuts out life, and all
the motives to unrepenting hardihood in that last hour, which its mere
sight and presence is often all-sufficient to sustain. There are no bold
eyes to make him bold; no ruffians to uphold a ruffian’s name before.
All beyond the pitiless stone wall, is unknown space.
Let us go forth again into the cheerful streets.
Once more in Broadway! Here are the same ladies in bright colours,
walking to and fro, in pairs and singly; yonder the very same light blue
parasol which passed and repassed the hotel-window twenty times while we
were sitting there. We are going to cross here. Take care of the pigs.
Two portly sows are trotting up behind this carriage, and a select party
of half-a-dozen gentlemen hogs have just now turned the corner.
Here is a solitary swine lounging homeward by himself. He has only one
ear; having parted with the other to vagrant-dogs in the course of his
city rambles. But he gets on very well without it; and leads a roving,
gentlemanly, vagabond kind of life, somewhat answering to that of our
club-men at home. He leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain
hour, throws himself upon the town, gets through his day in some manner
quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears at the door of his
own house again at night, like the mysterious master of Gil Blas. He is
a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent kind of pig, having a very large
acquaintance among other pigs of the same character, whom he rather knows
by sight than conversation, as he seldom troubles himself to stop and
exchange civilities, but goes grunting down the kennel, turning up the
news and small-talk of the city in the shape of cabbage-stalks and offal,
and bearing no tails but his own: which is a very short one, for his old
enemies, the dogs, have been at that too, and have left him hardly enough
to swear by. He is in every respect a republican pig, going wherever he
pleases, and mingling with the best society, on an equal, if not superior
footing, for every one makes way when he appears, and the haughtiest give
him the wall, if he prefer it. He is a great philosopher, and seldom
moved, unless by the dogs before mentioned. Sometimes, indeed, you may
see his small eye twinkling on a slaughtered friend, whose carcase
garnishes a butcher’s door-post, but he grunts out ‘Such is life: all
flesh is pork!’ buries his nose in the mire again, and waddles down the
gutter: comforting himself with the reflection that there is one snout
the less to anticipate stray cabbage-stalks, at any rate.
They are the city scavengers, these pigs. Ugly brutes they are; having,
for the most part, scanty brown backs, like the lids of old horsehair
trunks: spotted with unwholesome black blotches. They have long, gaunt
legs, too, and such peaked snouts, that if one of them could be persuaded
to sit for his profile, nobody would recognise it for a pig’s likeness.
They are never attended upon, or fed, or driven, or caught, but are
thrown upon their own resources in early life, and become preternaturally
knowing in consequence. Every pig knows where he lives, much better than
anybody could tell him. At this hour, just as evening is closing in, you
will see them roaming towards bed by scores, eating their way to the
last. Occasionally, some youth among them who has over-eaten himself, or
has been worried by dogs, trots shrinkingly homeward, like a prodigal
son: but this is a rare case: perfect self-possession and self-reliance,
and immovable composure, being their foremost attributes.
The streets and shops are lighted now; and as the eye travels down the
long thoroughfare, dotted with bright jets of gas, it is reminded of
Oxford Street, or Piccadilly. Here and there a flight of broad stone
cellar-steps appears, and a painted lamp directs you to the Bowling
Saloon, or Ten-Pin alley; Ten-Pins being a game of mingled chance and
skill, invented when the legislature passed an act forbidding Nine-Pins.
At other downward flights of steps, are other lamps, marking the
whereabouts of oyster-cellars—pleasant retreats, say I: not only by
reason of their wonderful cookery of oysters, pretty nigh as large as
cheese-plates (or for thy dear sake, heartiest of Greek Professors!), but
because of all kinds of caters of fish, or flesh, or fowl, in these
latitudes, the swallowers of oysters alone are not gregarious; but
subduing themselves, as it were, to the nature of what they work in, and
copying the coyness of the thing they eat, do sit apart in curtained
boxes, and consort by twos, not by two hundreds.
But how quiet the streets are! Are there no itinerant bands; no wind or
stringed instruments? No, not one. By day, are there no Punches,
Fantoccini, Dancing-dogs, Jugglers, Conjurers, Orchestrinas, or even
Barrel-organs? No, not one. Yes, I remember one. One barrel-organ and
a dancing-monkey—sportive by nature, but fast fading into a dull, lumpish
monkey, of the Utilitarian school. Beyond that, nothing lively; no, not
so much as a white mouse in a twirling cage.
Are there no amusements? Yes. There is a lecture-room across the way,
from which that glare of light proceeds, and there may be evening service
for the ladies thrice a week, or oftener. For the young gentlemen, there
is the counting-house, the store, the bar-room: the latter, as you may
see through these windows, pretty full. Hark! to the clinking sound of
hammers breaking lumps of ice, and to the cool gurgling of the pounded
bits, as, in the process of mixing, they are poured from glass to glass!
No amusements? What are these suckers of cigars and swallowers of strong
drinks, whose hats and legs we see in every possible variety of twist,
doing, but amusing themselves? What are the fifty newspapers, which
those precocious urchins are bawling down the street, and which are kept
filed within, what are they but amusements? Not vapid, waterish
amusements, but good strong stuff; dealing in round abuse and blackguard
names; pulling off the roofs of private houses, as the Halting Devil did
in Spain; pimping and pandering for all degrees of vicious taste, and
gorging with coined lies the most voracious maw; imputing to every man in
public life the coarsest and the vilest motives; scaring away from the
stabbed and prostrate body-politic, every Samaritan of clear conscience
and good deeds; and setting on, with yell and whistle and the clapping of
foul hands, the vilest vermin and worst birds of prey.—No amusements!
Let us go on again; and passing this wilderness of an hotel with stores
about its base, like some Continental theatre, or the London Opera House
shorn of its colonnade, plunge into the Five Points. But it is needful,
first, that we take as our escort these two heads of the police, whom you
would know for sharp and well-trained officers if you met them in the
Great Desert. So true it is, that certain pursuits, wherever carried on,
will stamp men with the same character. These two might have been
begotten, born, and bred, in Bow Street.
We have seen no beggars in the streets by night or day; but of other
kinds of strollers, plenty. Poverty, wretchedness, and vice, are rife
enough where we are going now.
This is the place: these narrow ways, diverging to the right and left,
and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth. Such lives as are led here,
bear the same fruits here as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at
the doors, have counterparts at home, and all the wide world over.
Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten
beams are tumbling down, and how the patched and broken windows seem to
scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken frays. Many of
those pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright
in lieu of going on all-fours? and why they talk instead of grunting?
So far, nearly every house is a low tavern; and on the bar-room walls,
are coloured prints of Washington, and Queen Victoria of England, and the
American Eagle. Among the pigeon-holes that hold the bottles, are pieces
of plate-glass and coloured paper, for there is, in some sort, a taste
for decoration, even here. And as seamen frequent these haunts, there
are maritime pictures by the dozen: of partings between sailors and their
lady-loves, portraits of William, of the ballad, and his Black-Eyed
Susan; of Will Watch, the Bold Smuggler; of Paul Jones the Pirate, and
the like: on which the painted eyes of Queen Victoria, and of Washington
to boot, rest in as strange companionship, as on most of the scenes that
are enacted in their wondering presence.
What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of
square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy
wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight of steps,
that creak beneath our tread?—a miserable room, lighted by one dim
candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a
wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man: his elbows on his knees: his
forehead hidden in his hands. ‘What ails that man?’ asks the foremost
officer. ‘Fever,’ he sullenly replies, without looking up. Conceive the
fancies of a feverish brain, in such a place as this!
Ascend these pitch-dark stairs, heedful of a false footing on the
trembling boards, and grope your way with me into this wolfish den, where
neither ray of light nor breath of air, appears to come. A negro lad,
startled from his sleep by the officer’s voice—he knows it well—but
comforted by his assurance that he has not come on business, officiously
bestirs himself to light a candle. The match flickers for a moment, and
shows great mounds of dusty rags upon the ground; then dies away and
leaves a denser darkness than before, if there can be degrees in such
extremes. He stumbles down the stairs and presently comes back, shading
a flaring taper with his hand. Then the mounds of rags are seen to be
astir, and rise slowly up, and the floor is covered with heaps of negro
women, waking from their sleep: their white teeth chattering, and their
bright eyes glistening and winking on all sides with surprise and fear,
like the countless repetition of one astonished African face in some
strange mirror.
Mount up these other stairs with no less caution (there are traps and
pitfalls here, for those who are not so well escorted as ourselves) into
the housetop; where the bare beams and rafters meet overhead, and calm
night looks down through the crevices in the roof. Open the door of one
of these cramped hutches full of sleeping negroes. Pah! They have a
charcoal fire within; there is a smell of singeing clothes, or flesh, so
close they gather round the brazier; and vapours issue forth that blind
and suffocate. From every corner, as you glance about you in these dark
retreats, some figure crawls half-awakened, as if the judgment-hour were
near at hand, and every obscene grave were giving up its dead. Where
dogs would howl to lie, women, and men, and boys slink off to sleep,
forcing the dislodged rats to move away in quest of better lodgings.
Here too are lanes and alleys, paved with mud knee-deep, underground
chambers, where they dance and game; the walls bedecked with rough
designs of ships, and forts, and flags, and American eagles out of
number: ruined houses, open to the street, whence, through wide gaps in
the walls, other ruins loom upon the eye, as though the world of vice and
misery had nothing else to show: hideous tenements which take their name
from robbery and murder: all that is loathsome, drooping, and decayed is
here.
Our leader has his hand upon the latch of ‘Almack’s,’ and calls to us
from the bottom of the steps; for the assembly-room of the Five Point
fashionables is approached by a descent. Shall we go in? It is but a
moment.
Heyday! the landlady of Almack’s thrives! A buxom fat mulatto woman,
with sparkling eyes, whose head is daintily ornamented with a
handkerchief of many colours. Nor is the landlord much behind her in his
finery, being attired in a smart blue jacket, like a ship’s steward, with
a thick gold ring upon his little finger, and round his neck a gleaming
golden watch-guard. How glad he is to see us! What will we please to
call for? A dance? It shall be done directly, sir: ‘a regular
break-down.’
The corpulent black fiddler, and his friend who plays the tambourine,
stamp upon the boarding of the small raised orchestra in which they sit,
and play a lively measure. Five or six couple come upon the floor,
marshalled by a lively young negro, who is the wit of the assembly, and
the greatest dancer known. He never leaves off making queer faces, and
is the delight of all the rest, who grin from ear to ear incessantly.
Among the dancers are two young mulatto girls, with large, black,
drooping eyes, and head-gear after the fashion of the hostess, who are as
shy, or feign to be, as though they never danced before, and so look down
before the visitors, that their partners can see nothing but the long
fringed lashes.
But the dance commences. Every gentleman sets as long as he likes to the
opposite lady, and the opposite lady to him, and all are so long about it
that the sport begins to languish, when suddenly the lively hero dashes
in to the rescue. Instantly the fiddler grins, and goes at it tooth and
nail; there is new energy in the tambourine; new laughter in the dancers;
new smiles in the landlady; new confidence in the landlord; new
brightness in the very candles.
Single shuffle, double shuffle, cut and cross-cut; snapping his fingers,
rolling his eyes, turning in his knees, presenting the backs of his legs
in front, spinning about on his toes and heels like nothing but the man’s
fingers on the tambourine; dancing with two left legs, two right legs,
two wooden legs, two wire legs, two spring legs—all sorts of legs and no
legs—what is this to him? And in what walk of life, or dance of life,
does man ever get such stimulating applause as thunders about him, when,
having danced his partner off her feet, and himself too, he finishes by
leaping gloriously on the bar-counter, and calling for something to
drink, with the chuckle of a million of counterfeit Jim Crows, in one
inimitable sound!
The air, even in these distempered parts, is fresh after the stifling
atmosphere of the houses; and now, as we emerge into a broader street, it
blows upon us with a purer breath, and the stars look bright again. Here
are The Tombs once more. The city watch-house is a part of the building.
It follows naturally on the sights we have just left. Let us see that,
and then to bed.
What! do you thrust your common offenders against the police discipline
of the town, into such holes as these? Do men and women, against whom no
crime is proved, lie here all night in perfect darkness, surrounded by
the noisome vapours which encircle that flagging lamp you light us with,
and breathing this filthy and offensive stench! Why, such indecent and
disgusting dungeons as these cells, would bring disgrace upon the most
despotic empire in the world! Look at them, man—you, who see them every
night, and keep the keys. Do you see what they are? Do you know how
drains are made below the streets, and wherein these human sewers differ,
except in being always stagnant?
Well, he don’t know. He has had five-and-twenty young women locked up in
this very cell at one time, and you’d hardly realise what handsome faces
there were among ’em.
In God’s name! shut the door upon the wretched creature who is in it now,
and put its screen before a place, quite unsurpassed in all the vice,
neglect, and devilry, of the worst old town in Europe.
Are people really left all night, untried, in those black sties?—Every
night. The watch is set at seven in the evening. The magistrate opens
his court at five in the morning. That is the earliest hour at which the
first prisoner can be released; and if an officer appear against him, he
is not taken out till nine o’clock or ten.—But if any one among them die
in the interval, as one man did, not long ago? Then he is half-eaten by
the rats in an hour’s time; as that man was; and there an end.
What is this intolerable tolling of great bells, and crashing of wheels,
and shouting in the distance? A fire. And what that deep red light in
the opposite direction? Another fire. And what these charred and
blackened walls we stand before? A dwelling where a fire has been. It
was more than hinted, in an official report, not long ago, that some of
these conflagrations were not wholly accidental, and that speculation and
enterprise found a field of exertion, even in flames: but be this as it
may, there was a fire last night, there are two to-night, and you may lay
an even wager there will be at least one, to-morrow. So, carrying that
with us for our comfort, let us say, Good night, and climb up-stairs to
bed.
* * * * *
One day, during my stay in New York, I paid a visit to the different
public institutions on Long Island, or Rhode Island: I forget which. One
of them is a Lunatic Asylum. The building is handsome; and is remarkable
for a spacious and elegant staircase. The whole structure is not yet
finished, but it is already one of considerable size and extent, and is
capable of accommodating a very large number of patients.
I cannot say that I derived much comfort from the inspection of this
charity. The different wards might have been cleaner and better ordered;
I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed me so
favourably elsewhere; and everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse
air, which was very painful. The moping idiot, cowering down with long
dishevelled hair; the gibbering maniac, with his hideous laugh and
pointed finger; the vacant eye, the fierce wild face, the gloomy picking
of the hands and lips, and munching of the nails: there they were all,
without disguise, in naked ugliness and horror. In the dining-room, a
bare, dull, dreary place, with nothing for the eye to rest on but the
empty walls, a woman was locked up alone. She was bent, they told me, on
committing suicide. If anything could have strengthened her in her
resolution, it would certainly have been the insupportable monotony of
such an existence.
The terrible crowd with which these halls and galleries were filled, so
shocked me, that I abridged my stay within the shortest limits, and
declined to see that portion of the building in which the refractory and
violent were under closer restraint. I have no doubt that the gentleman
who presided over this establishment at the time I write of, was
competent to manage it, and had done all in his power to promote its
usefulness: but will it be believed that the miserable strife of Party
feeling is carried even into this sad refuge of afflicted and degraded
humanity? Will it be believed that the eyes which are to watch over and
control the wanderings of minds on which the most dreadful visitation to
which our nature is exposed has fallen, must wear the glasses of some
wretched side in Politics? Will it be believed that the governor of such
a house as this, is appointed, and deposed, and changed perpetually, as
Parties fluctuate and vary, and as their despicable weathercocks are
blown this way or that? A hundred times in every week, some new most
paltry exhibition of that narrow-minded and injurious Party Spirit, which
is the Simoom of America, sickening and blighting everything of wholesome
life within its reach, was forced upon my notice; but I never turned my
back upon it with feelings of such deep disgust and measureless contempt,
as when I crossed the threshold of this madhouse.
At a short distance from this building is another called the Alms House,
that is to say, the workhouse of New York. This is a large Institution
also: lodging, I believe, when I was there, nearly a thousand poor. It
was badly ventilated, and badly lighted; was not too clean;—and impressed
me, on the whole, very uncomfortably. But it must be remembered that New
York, as a great emporium of commerce, and as a place of general resort,
not only from all parts of the States, but from most parts of the world,
has always a large pauper population to provide for; and labours,
therefore, under peculiar difficulties in this respect. Nor must it be
forgotten that New York is a large town, and that in all large towns a
vast amount of good and evil is intermixed and jumbled up together.
In the same neighbourhood is the Farm, where young orphans are nursed and
bred. I did not see it, but I believe it is well conducted; and I can
the more easily credit it, from knowing how mindful they usually are, in
America, of that beautiful passage in the Litany which remembers all sick
persons and young children.
I was taken to these Institutions by water, in a boat belonging to the
Island jail, and rowed by a crew of prisoners, who were dressed in a
striped uniform of black and buff, in which they looked like faded
tigers. They took me, by the same conveyance, to the jail itself.
It is an old prison, and quite a pioneer establishment, on the plan I
have already described. I was glad to hear this, for it is
unquestionably a very indifferent one. The most is made, however, of the
means it possesses, and it is as well regulated as such a place can be.
The women work in covered sheds, erected for that purpose. If I remember
right, there are no shops for the men, but be that as it may, the greater
part of them labour in certain stone-quarries near at hand. The day
being very wet indeed, this labour was suspended, and the prisoners were
in their cells. Imagine these cells, some two or three hundred in
number, and in every one a man locked up; this one at his door for air,
with his hands thrust through the grate; this one in bed (in the middle
of the day, remember); and this one flung down in a heap upon the ground,
with his head against the bars, like a wild beast. Make the rain pour
down, outside, in torrents. Put the everlasting stove in the midst; hot,
and suffocating, and vaporous, as a witch’s cauldron. Add a collection
of gentle odours, such as would arise from a thousand mildewed umbrellas,
wet through, and a thousand buck-baskets, full of half-washed linen—and
there is the prison, as it was that day.
The prison for the State at Sing Sing is, on the other hand, a model
jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe, the largest and best examples of
the silent system.
In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute: an
Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and
female, black and white, without distinction; to teach them useful
trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them worthy
members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar to that at
Boston; and it is a no less meritorious and admirable establishment. A
suspicion crossed my mind during my inspection of this noble charity,
whether the superintendent had quite sufficient knowledge of the world
and worldly characters; and whether he did not commit a great mistake in
treating some young girls, who were to all intents and purposes, by their
years and their past lives, women, as though they were little children;
which certainly had a ludicrous effect in my eyes, and, or I am much
mistaken, in theirs also. As the Institution, however, is always under a
vigilant examination of a body of gentlemen of great intelligence and
experience, it cannot fail to be well conducted; and whether I am right
or wrong in this slight particular, is unimportant to its deserts and
character, which it would be difficult to estimate too highly.
In addition to these establishments, there are in New York, excellent
hospitals and schools, literary institutions and libraries; an admirable
fire department (as indeed it should be, having constant practice), and
charities of every sort and kind. In the suburbs there is a spacious
cemetery: unfinished yet, but every day improving. The saddest tomb I
saw there was ‘The Strangers’ Grave. Dedicated to the different hotels
in this city.’
There are three principal theatres. Two of them, the Park and the
Bowery, are large, elegant, and handsome buildings, and are, I grieve to
write it, generally deserted. The third, the Olympic, is a tiny show-box
for vaudevilles and burlesques. It is singularly well conducted by Mr.
Mitchell, a comic actor of great quiet humour and originality, who is
well remembered and esteemed by London playgoers. I am happy to report
of this deserving gentleman, that his benches are usually well filled,
and that his theatre rings with merriment every night. I had almost
forgotten a small summer theatre, called Niblo’s, with gardens and open
air amusements attached; but I believe it is not exempt from the general
depression under which Theatrical Property, or what is humorously called
by that name, unfortunately labours.
The country round New York is surpassingly and exquisitely picturesque.
The climate, as I have already intimated, is somewhat of the warmest.
What it would be, without the sea breezes which come from its beautiful
Bay in the evening time, I will not throw myself or my readers into a
fever by inquiring.
The tone of the best society in this city, is like that of Boston; here
and there, it may be, with a greater infusion of the mercantile spirit,
but generally polished and refined, and always most hospitable. The
houses and tables are elegant; the hours later and more rakish; and there
is, perhaps, a greater spirit of contention in reference to appearances,
and the display of wealth and costly living. The ladies are singularly
beautiful.
Before I left New York I made arrangements for securing a passage home in
the George Washington packet ship, which was advertised to sail in June:
that being the month in which I had determined, if prevented by no
accident in the course of my ramblings, to leave America.
I never thought that going back to England, returning to all who are dear
to me, and to pursuits that have insensibly grown to be a part of my
nature, I could have felt so much sorrow as I endured, when I parted at
last, on board this ship, with the friends who had accompanied me from
this city. I never thought the name of any place, so far away and so
lately known, could ever associate itself in my mind with the crowd of
affectionate remembrances that now cluster about it. There are those in
this city who would brighten, to me, the darkest winter-day that ever
glimmered and went out in Lapland; and before whose presence even Home
grew dim, when they and I exchanged that painful word which mingles with
our every thought and deed; which haunts our cradle-heads in infancy, and
closes up the vista of our lives in age.