Much was written about it as it occurred. In a general way its story is
common property, and its great success is history. The centennial of
Robert Fulton’s most notable achievement—the first voyage of his
steamboat up the Hudson—fell in the year 1907. It did not pass without
notice at the time, but the proposal to make it the central point of a
municipal festival at once brought to mind that in another two years
(namely, in 1909) would occur the ter-centenary of Henry Hudson’s
discovery and navigation of the great river. Here then, was a chance for
a dual display. The recent date and comparative failure of the St. Louis
Exposition, combined with New York’s distaste for the prolonged
inattention to its real business involved in an international
exposition, decided against the exposition idea. A commission, to be
called after the two men whose memory the celebration was to honor, was
formed by Act of the Legislature. It was given a large fund by the
State. New York City followed with another large sum, and private local
patriotism and civic pride followed with large subscriptions. The
commission was well-founded and amply funded. At its head was placed the
veteran soldier, lawyer, Congressman, diplomatist and man of affairs,
General Stewart L. Woodford, whose courtly presence, gentle bearing,
handsome face, white hair and beard gave a pictorial dignity to the
office hard to find elsewhere. But the active leadership, the real
working headship of this affair great in scope and multifariousness,
fell upon Hermann Ridder, a New-York-born German-American of great
executive skill, whose resolute uprise in the world of journalism and
whose wide acquaintance with the city, social, racial, religious,
industrial and financial, bespoke his fitness. To aid him were appointed
many men of standing in the city, but while they came and went at his
call, and attended this meeting and that, one and all they agreed that
since the work had fallen on such competent shoulders there they would
carefully allow it to remain. Mr. Ridder took up the burden and carried
it, carried it through. He shirked nothing, he directed everything, he
organized his staff of helpers, artistic and clerical, and kept them
busy. He looked after the formation of the working committees who would
work out the enormous detail which the naval, military, police, social,
artistic and publicity problems involved. Then he let the committees
work, and wisely dealt with results. So, he kept an even keel, if one
might put it that way, amid the occasional storms that will arise in
such cases. The city surely owes him something for his whole-hearted
devotion and unwearying service that did not cost the city a cent, and
insured the memorable success of a great festival worthy of the greatest
city on the continent, all the sooner for his work, perhaps, to be the
greatest city in the world.
The celebration, then, was arranged on a scale more elaborate than
anything theretofore undertaken by an American municipality, and in this
the Commission was seconded by the wonderful natural setting of the
city, fronting the expanse of the harbor and with broad rivers on either
side of the long tongue of land—Manhattan—that gently uplifts its
serried lines of stately homes and massive buildings, from South to
North. One of these rivers, the Hudson, a stream noble in itself and the
scene of the great suggestive feats of Henry Hudson and Robert Fulton,
invited special attention. It was, therefore, early decided that New
York’s tribute to these two great men and grand memories should share
its functions between land and water. Accordingly while a section of the
Commission planned land decorations, parades, assemblies, illuminations
and banquets to fill an entire week, the officers busied themselves
first with the Federal government at Washington to invite the naval
powers of the world to send warships wreathed in flowers, as it were,
and asking for a mighty squadron of our own ocean thunderers to greet
the armored Tritons from oversea. Then Holland, in whose service Henry
Hudson sailed the blue waters, offered a gift of unique kind, namely a
duplicate of the little ship, Half Moon, in which Hudson traversed the
Atlantic and ascended the river that has rightly come to bear his name.
It was not strange, then, that the Commission should resolve to build a
replica of that other historic craft, the Clermont, in which Fulton
first went up the same river under steam.
From these starting points it was not so difficult to outline the rest
of the water programme. There should be a ceremony of receiving the two
historic craft down the bay and conducting them in a mighty parade
consisting of all the steam craft plying the nearby waters, ranged in a
fair flotilla up Hudson’s River passing the long range of seven miles of
warships and, after a ceremony of reception, returning in like order to
their berths and piers. There should be on land and water a grand
illumination by night with fireworks of the most spectacular kind. There
should again be a beautiful water pageant when the Half Moon and the
Clermont were escorted up the river that the towns and cities along its
banks might partake of the glory of the time. They would let the
procession of ships from New York end their pilgrimage at Newburg and
there let another flotilla conduct the memorial ships to Albany where
the river narrows and shoals. So was the unique water side of the
celebration outlined. For the land side the preparations were on an
equally grand scale, but here they were dealing with more familiar
material. We had had festival parades of like kind before; now we were
to have more of them than ever and each one to be more marvellous of its
kind than anything before conceived. No less than three great
processions were arranged—a grand civic procession illustrating in
floats three centuries of New York’s history, and made up of the men of
the forty races and nationalities of which our population is compounded;
a military parade to display every branch of our army service, state and
national, and in which details of sailors and marines from the foreign
warships as well as our own, should paradoxically testify to
international brotherly love by marching peacefully together armed to
the teeth. Lastly was designed a Carnival parade—a night march, devoted
to artistic symbols on illuminated floats and conducted by costumed
thousands from the German, Austrian and Swiss societies of the City.
It was natural to call on the city to drape and decorate its buildings
lavishly, to arrange for general illumination: to design a finely
pillared Court of Honor on Fifth Avenue just below 42d St. and hang it
with mazes of electric lights, to erect a grand reviewing stand facing
the Avenue and with its back to the great Library Building just emerged
from its scaffolding.
In such cases, many minor suggestions follow on the heels of the great
ones, and the week of wonders threatened to extend indefinitely. A
notable loan collection of paintings of the Dutch school was assembled
for exhibition at the Museum of Art, a rare collection of Colonial
furniture was also secured. Then came a reception with oratory at the
Metropolitan Opera House, an Irish concert at Carnegie Hall, an opera
house music festival, aquatic sports, an exhibition of flying machines
and a beautiful open air fête for 40,000 school children in the parks.
In a retrospect for our particular purpose, it is as well to grasp in
some such general way the chief features of the event. For the year in
which it had been actually incubating New York heard little and did not
care much about it, and wakened very gradually to the great festal
proportions it was to take. In fact people were returning to New York
from mountain and seaside after the heats of Summer before they clearly
understood how much was afoot in the way of civic entertainment. New
York’s self-consciousness differs from that of every other American
city. There is, for instance, no feeling that its greatness needs
proclamation. It is not worried about its growth: it has been always
growing. It is imaginatively undisturbed about its future: it is too
busy to trouble about its past. Perhaps it has never taken to any civic
phrase more kindly than describing itself as “little old New York,”
while it knows it is not little, and if it has any municipal thrill it
is over its modernity. Here was something coming which might be thought
of as an attempt to awaken “the Chicago feeling” in Gotham—that is a
somewhat delirious sensation of the bumptious and divinely ordained, the
throbbing of the inflamed nerve of Destiny. In a way of its own New York
gave way to it. The city began to hum, and when the time came in
September’s days of warm colors and genial airs the people were ready to
cheer, to march, to sail in line, to celebrate.
ORGANIZATION OF THE IRISH PARTICIPATION.
It was during the months of the previous springtime that the Irish share
in the celebration took shape, when Hermann Ridder met the
representatives of the Irish societies, and stating briefly but clearly
the general plan of the celebration, called for 10,000 Irishmen to take
part in the Historical civic parade. And to this they agreed. In a
compendious sketch he described the divisions of the procession and the
historical floats that were to make part of each—the Indian period, the
Dutch period, the Colonial period, the Revolutionary period, the Modern
period. Over forty nationalities besides the native American were to be
represented. To the Irish he conceded the right of the line. To them
would be assigned certain historic floats. In the upbuilding of New York
Mr. Ridder recognized that the immigrants from Europe had contributed
the major share. In other words it had been fed with population mainly
from oversea. Of the original Dutch stock but a trace remained: it had
largely scattered or died out. The early English stock had similarly
passed on. The influx from rural America or other American towns and
cities had been constant and latterly was increasing. Still the
immigrant and the children of the immigrant preponderated in the great
city.
[Illustration:
ROBERT FULTON ESQ^R
From a Celebrated Picture through the Courtesy of Vice-President
Joseph I. C. Clarke
of New York.
]
The American Irish Historical Society, through its New York chapter,
took part in the earliest gatherings. The Friendly Sons of St. Patrick
in the City of New York, the oldest Irish organization in the country
with a history of 126 years behind it, was also early in the field. Its
President, William Temple Emmet, was chosen chairman of the gathering of
Irish societies and Alfred J. Talley of the American Irish Historical
Society was elected Secretary. First and last some eighty Irish
societies answered to the call. Broadly these were the Ancient Order of
Hibernians, the Clan-na-Gael, the Irish American Athletic Club, the
Irish Counties Athletic Clubs, the two societies named above and a
number of Gaelic and Literary societies. There appeared at first to be
no difficulty whatever about furnishing the quota called for: indeed
there was some claim that less than 12,000 would be inadequate, judging
from the muster rolls of all the societies desiring to participate. So
there was some indignant protest when it was learned later that on
account of the inordinate length of time it would take to get the
procession past a given point on the basis first laid down, the Irish
contingent would necessarily be cut down to 5,000 men. Eventually it was
recognized that this was just as well. It developed curiously that the
Irish in New York are not as numerously organized as they would seem.
When they get the Society habit they are likely to belong to many
societies, and this possibly multiplies by four their apparent number.
Many of the delegates belonged to half a dozen of the societies
represented. Naturally they could march with only one. The falling off
from this cause was most noticeable with the Ancient Order of
Hibernians—numerically the largest on its lodge rolls.
Committees of various kinds were appointed and to one—the
Historical—fell the lot of securing the appropriate floats to escort in
the procession. It was obvious that they should claim the Clermont
float, for was not Robert Fulton the American-born son of an Irish
father and Irish mother? It was equally obvious that they should claim
the Erie Canal float with which the name of Governor De Witt Clinton,
also of Irish descent and one-time Mayor of New York was inseparably
connected. In some predacious way the Scotch societies had secured the
Fulton Ferry float, claiming Fulton to be a Scottish name. It was seen
by the Historical Committee that an omission of a grave kind had been
made by the designers of the floats in not having one to celebrate the
giving of the first charter to the City of New York by Governor Dongan—a
charter always quoted with approval by the commentators on New York’s
civic history. Now Dongan was a fine official of well-balanced mind, a
learned man and an Irishman, and his appointment came from King James
II, who did not object to him as Irish and gave him the place because he
was a Catholic as well as otherwise qualified. The Commission agreed to
rectify its omission and ordered a Dongan float. The Clermont, Erie
Canal and Dongan floats were thereafter assigned to the Irish societies,
to man and to escort.
Much amusing detail might be added to this but it can be indicated in
the joyous way in which Martin Sheridan, the great athlete and champion
hurler of the discus, was chosen to impersonate Robert Fulton and John
Flanagan, the giant hammer-thrower of the Irish Athletic club, was named
for the engineer. Thomas P. Tuite, whose admirable sketch of the life of
Fulton is one of the memorable outcomes of the celebration, was
enthusiastically impressed to act as steersman of the Erie Canal barge.
With the Dongan float there was a difficulty. Major E. T. McCrystal,
editor and soldier, was easily persuaded to stand for Governor Dongan,
and it was not hard to get representatives for the New York councilmen
who were to accept the charter, but when it came to getting
impersonators for a file of British soldiers in red coats who were to
stand as representatives of the British monarchy, there was indignation
and revolt. Finally the British soldiers were cut out, and Dongan
tendered his charter without any red-coated backing. The choosing of the
ladies for the floats was wisely left to some ladies’ societies.
The best idea that came of the work of the Irish committees was that of
a concert of Irish music. It was brought forward by Jeremiah Lawlor, of
the Ancient Order of Hibernians, and ardently worked for by him. Once
presented to the Hudson-Fulton Commission it was given a place on the
official programme. Fortunately Victor Herbert, the distinguished
operatic composer and orchestra leader, was at hand, and instantly
accepted the concert committee’s invitation to take charge of the
programme. It involved some sacrifice on his part but he gladly made it,
and the success of the result must certainly have compensated him.
It was in the springtime, too, that another Irish feature of the
celebration was arranged, the chartering of the splendid Sandy Hook
steamer, Asbury Park, for the naval parade up the Hudson River. The
American-Irish Historical Society and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick
coöperated in this—at a cost of $5,000 for the use of the steamer for
that single day.
RECEPTION OF THE HALF MOON AND CLERMONT.
The last week in September is apt to be blessed with fine, mild weather
in New York, and this time it held good. No more beautiful day could be
wished than Saturday, September 25, 1909, when the banks of the Hudson
River for ten miles from its mouth became the vantage ground for many
more than a million sightseers, with the great stream itself a Broadway
of the water over which the floating procession was to pass. Toward the
City shore the long line of the gathered warships stretched adrape with
gay bunting. Behind the water-front packed with human beings from the
Battery Park to Grant’s tomb and beyond, rose the great mass of the
city, its lifted turrets and spires and its soaring buildings forming a
majestic background. Power spoke in every line and mass that met the
eye, and beauty of a kind seldom seen gave its impress of delight. Down
the harbor, the fleet of steamers was gathering in its hundreds, every
craft from great Hudson River and Sound steamers and private yachts to
squadron upon squadron of tugs. All were flag-draped and all were laden
with joy-bound participants. The Brooklyn shore down to Fort Hamilton at
the Narrows, and the heights and shore of Staten Island from Fort
Wadsworth curving around the harbor were black with human beings. Hard
by the Kill von Kull lay the Half Moon and the Clermont, the one a
quaint, picturesque ghost of the great days of adventure of the early
seventeenth century, the other in its long square ugliness a reminder
that adventure with steam power in a new element was concerned with
fitness and not with beauty; that Fulton was thinking of the turning of
his ridiculous paddle wheels rather than the looks of things. And on the
Dutch craft stood a make-believe Henry Hudson with a Dutch crew clad in
the sea-dogs’ garments of his time. What a dim, pathetic figure that
real Hudson of whom here was the twentieth century shadow. He must have
been a man of grim purpose and of strong flesh and blood, but never did
a man so near our time fade out into the mist more completely than he
who first sent the prow of a white man’s ship up past the Palisades and
the Highlands. On the Clermont was also a goodly company rigged out in
the habiliments of 1807 that still bore something of the lines of the
dandies of Paris in the time of the Directory. But it was a man of
Robert Fulton’s blood who impersonated the creator of the first
steamship that could truly navigate, and that meant that there was Irish
blood in him.
It was when the procession in the course of the afternoon began to move
with our long slim darting torpedo boats escorting the Half-Moon and the
Clermont and all the other steam craft following that the true glory of
the day began, and as the vessels swung into line heading northward
every piston-beat of the engines, every turn of the churning screws and
splashing paddles seemed to make a chorus of Fulton! Fulton! Fulton! and
in a precious undertone to many a thousand of the onlookers it murmured
Ireland! Ireland! Ireland! whence came the brain that had put a heart of
giant power into every floating fortress, every giant of the
transatlantic trade that the great flotilla passed as it swept up the
river. As the little ship of Hudson and the ungainly master-boat of
Fulton passed, the fleets of the world saluted them. So they passed up,
acclaimed from the banks and the stream, the Half-Moon and the Clermont
halting at the picturesque water gate on the Riverside slope for the
reception ceremonies where the dignitaries waited from the Governor of
New York state down.
THE ILLUMINATIONS ON WATER AND LAND.
For the rest of those afloat it was a sail nearly to Yonkers before the
last of the United States battleships was passed, and the turning point
reached. By this time the evening was falling rapidly in a glory of
crimson sunset that made the river glow as paven with red gold, the
Palisades rising black as ebony against the west, and the lingering rays
falling in warm ivory and pale pink on the white house-line of New York
on its hills farther down the stream. But as the light paled, and the
shadows filled with purple and presently when a misty greyness was
coming over all on land and water, another glory began which was to
gladden and grow until it made a great picture that perhaps the world
had never seen and certainly the world of Columbus and Hudson and Fulton
had never witnessed before—the festal lighting on water and on land.
Lucky were those in that day procession up the river whose craft could
linger in the upper reaches until all the glory of night was ablaze. The
warships outlined in strings of electric lamps, the lights on the moving
craft, the monuments on shore brilliantly set off with skeleton tracing
of light, building after building on both sides of the river glowing
with electric lights in every fantasy of device and color, the houses
one and all lit up at every window, the tower of Madison Square one
mighty shaft of light. Farther South the sky-piercing tower of the
Singer building like a glowing mural crown dominated the vast field of
the twenty-story office buildings, all illuminated to their roofs. In
the harbor the Liberty Statue shone in an island of light. Up the East
River a special glory was seen with its three great bridges spanning the
stream in glittering cobwebs of light that hung between the water and
the sky. All the buildings on the New York and Brooklyn shores swam in a
shimmering golden haze. The avenues were long lines of diamonds strung
from pillar to pillar, and then to the north a wonderful aurora of
fan-spread search-lights, and from a dozen points over the island and
the rivers spouted, great fountains of fireworks storming the heavens
with jets of colored fire. It was fascinating, intoxicating, and the
millions watched it in a daze from nightfall until midnight when at last
the city and the river were left to the stars.
THE IRISH CONCERT.
On Sunday, September 26, New York was fain to rest from its long outing
of Saturday. When, however, night had fallen there was no fatigue
visible in the smiling faces that gathered for the Irish Concert in
Carnegie Hall. In securing the hearty coöperation of Victor Herbert, the
famous composer and orchestra leader, the committee had armed itself for
a triumph. Mr. Herbert is Irish-born, and of true Irish stock, a
grandson of Samuel Lover, the Irish novelist and ballad writer whose
“Low-backed Car” and “Rory O’Moore” threaten to outlive most of the
lyrics of his generation. In Germany he received his musical education
which was thorough. As a student of harmony and counterpoint none
surpassed him in avidity to master all that the best could impart.
Learning successively to play well nigh every instrument in the
orchestra, he became proficient on the violoncello, acting as solo
violoncellist in the Royal Court orchestra at Stuttgart, and taking a
high rank as a virtuoso. When he came to this country in 1886 it was to
take the important post of solo violoncellist under Anton Seidl, the
great Wagnerian conductor at the Metropolitan opera house. His German
was so good that musical people around Fortieth street wondered “how
well the Dutchman spoke English,” a curious reversal of Lever’s humorous
conceit: “I knew by your French you were English, and I knew by your
English you were Irish.” Herbert, however, was not long in the land of
the free before his Irish heart made itself known to his fellow-Gaels,
and ever since it has beat in unison with them. In music he heard a
higher call than being a prominent figure among the instrumentalists of
even so famous a Wagnerian as Anton Seidl. When Patrick Sarsfield
Gilmore, of loving musical memory, passed away, it was Victor Herbert
who was called to succeed him as bandmaster of the 22d regiment, and
thereafter waved the magical baton of Gilmore’s wonderful band. To this
he added the duties of Kappellmeister to Anton Seidl’s orchestra and to
the famous organization of Theodore Thomas. In 1898 he obeyed a call to
Pittsburg to head a great orchestra, and remained there six years, his
power and talent developing all the while. Returning to New York he
recruited an orchestra of his own which soon won popular and critical
esteem. But his forte lay in musical composition. The immediate road to
success and fortune was, to his mind, by the way of comic opera, and
work after work of this nature came sparkling from his brain to the joy
of multitudes and to his own rapid enrichment. Still he led his now
famous orchestra all over the land, working day and night, for he loved
his work. The ambition to do greater things, however, never left him,
and passing from mere facile outpouring of the riches of his inspiration
he turned to the higher work in the realm of music. His oratorio, “The
Captive,” a fine work, first heard at the Worcester (Mass.) musical
festival was highly praised. Many of his serious fugitive pieces became
popular with musicians and the world of music awaits with pleasant
anticipation the grand opera into which he has for some time been
putting his soul. He has for years been a member of the Friendly Sons of
St. Patrick, always prompt to make the musical features of its
gatherings notable, and always lending freely of his geniality to its
symposiums of good fellowship.
Bear with me for this straying into the paths of biography, for Victor
Herbert’s personality, his training, and his Irish birthright should be
known to every son of Ireland in America, not merely as a matter of race
pride but of race inspiration. We pride ourselves on our love of music.
The echoes of the olden Celtic harps must be in our souls, but we have
done little enough as a people to deserve the exquisite heritage. Our
innate love of the art should be broadly cultivated and steadily
developed, and in Victor Herbert I see a man who may yet do something
great in this way for his race and ours, as he is sure to do in lofty
composition for his own enduring fame. That is why I have dwelt on his
striking career. In securing his hearty interest in the Irish Concert
success was assured, for it brought with it the services of the
magnificent orchestra trained for years under the sway of his relentless
baton.