day, we came by the merest chance upon “Extra Place”! What a name!
It is a little court nooked out of First Street,--how many New
Yorkers know that there is a First Street in fact and not merely in
theory?--between Second and Third avenues. Extra Place is a stone's
throw in length, a forgotten bit of forlornness, but at its end,
beyond sheds and tall board fencing, are suggestions of pleasant homes
of a distant past, great fireplace chimneys and queer windows, and an
old shade tree, and under the tree a brick-paved walk, formal in its
rectangle, where happy people walked in the long ago, and where once a
garden smiled, but where now no kind of flower grows wild.
The tree of the New York tenements is the ailantus, palm-like in its
youth, brought originally from China for the gardens of the rich. It
grows in discouraging surroundings, is defiant of smoke, does not even
ask to be planted; for, Topsy-like, it “jest grows.” Cut it down, and
it comes up again. It is said to have no insect enemies. An odd point
in its appearance is that every branch points up.
The former extraordinary picturesqueness of the waterfront has gone;
but still there is much there that is strange, and a general odor of
oakum and tar remains. And, leading back from the East-Side waterfront,
narrow, ancient lanes have been preserved, and by these one may enter
the old-time warehouse portion of the city, where still the permeative
smell of drugs or leather or spice differentiates district from
district.
Vanished is many a delightful old name. Pie Woman's Lane became Nassau
Street. Oyster Pasty Alley became Exchange Alley. Clearly, early New
Yorkers were a gustatory folk.
A notable vanishing has within a few months come to Wall Street
itself--the vanishing of the last outward and visible sign of the feud
of Alexander Hamilton[18] and Aaron Burr.[82] Hamilton was the leading
spirit in establishing one bank in the city, and Burr, through a clause
in a water-company charter, established another, and through all
these decades the banks have been rivals. Now they have united their
financial fortunes and become one bank.
An interesting rector of Trinity Church, which looks in such
extraordinary fashion into the narrow gorge of Wall Street, became
over a century ago Bishop of New York, Benjamin Moore, and he is
chiefly interesting, after all, through his early connection with
the then distant region still known as Chelsea, in the neighborhood
of Twenty-third Street and the North River, where he acquired great
land-holdings that had been owned by the English naval captain who had
made his home here and given the locality its name.
Chelsea still holds its own as an interesting neighborhood, mainly
because of its possession of the General Theological Seminary, which
has attracted and held desirable people and given an atmosphere of
quiet seclusion.
The seminary buildings occupy the entire block between Ninth and Tenth
avenues and Twentieth and Twenty-first streets. They are largely of
English style, and there are long stretches of ten-foot garden wall.
Now and then a mortar-boarded student strides hurriedly across an open
space, and now and then a professor paces portentously. The buildings
are mostly of brick, but the oldest is an odd-looking structure
of silver-gray stone. The varied structures unite in effective
conjunction. It may be mentioned that, owing to a Vanderbilt who looked
about for something which in his opinion would set the seminary in the
front rank, its library possesses more ancient Latin Bibles, so it is
believed, than does even the Bodleian.[83]
The chapel stands in the middle of the square, and above it rises
a square Magdalen-like tower,[84] softened by ivy; and, following
a beautiful old custom as it has been followed since the tower was
built, capped and gowned students gather at sunrise on Easter morning
on the top of this tall tower and sing ancient chorals to the music of
trombone and horn.
Chelsea ought to be the most home-like region in New York on account
of its connection with Christmas; for a son of Bishop Moore, Clement
C. Moore,[85] who gave this land to the seminary, and made his own
home in Chelsea, wrote the childhood classic, “'Twas the night before
Christmas.”
In this old-time neighborhood stand not only houses, but
long-established little shops. One for drugs, for example, is marked
as dating back to 1839. But, after all, that is not so old as a great
Fifth Avenue shop which was established in 1826. However, there is this
difference: the Chelsea shops are likely to be on the very spots where
they were first opened, whereas the great shop of Fifth Avenue has
reached its location by move after move, from its beginning on Grand
Street, when that was the fashionable shopping street of the city.
In Chelsea are still to be found the old pineapple-topped newel-posts
of wrought iron, like openwork urns; there are old houses hidden
erratically behind those on the street-front. One in particular remains
in mind, a large old-fashioned dwelling, now reached only by a narrow
and built-over passage, a house that looks like a haunted house, from
its desolate disrepair, its lost loneliness of location.
Chelsea is a region of yellow cats and green shutters, shabby green on
the uncared for and fresh green for the well kept. Old New York used
typically to temper the dog-days behind green slat shutters, or under
shop awnings stretched to the curb, and with brick sidewalks, sprinkled
in the early afternoon from a sprinkling-can in the 'prentice hand.
One of the admirable old houses of Chelsea is that where dwelt that
unquiet spirit, Edwin Forrest,[86] the actor. It is at 436 West
Twenty-second Street, a substantial-looking, square-fronted house, with
a door of a great single panel. And the interior is notable for the
beautiful spiral stair that figured in court in his marital troubles.
There are in Chelsea two more than usually delightful residential
survivals, with the positively delightful old names of Chelsea Cottages
and London Terrace. The cottages are on Twenty-fourth Street, and
the Terrace is on Twenty-third, and each is between Ninth and Tenth
avenues, and both were built three quarters of a century ago.
The cottages are alternating three-story and two-story houses, built
tightly shoulder to shoulder, astonishingly narrow-fronted, each with a
grassy space in front. Taken together, they make one of the last stands
on Manhattan of simple and modest and concerted picturesque living.
The Terrace is a highly distinguished row of high-pilastered houses,
set behind grassy, deep dooryards. There are precisely eighty-eight
three-and-a-half-story pilasters on the front of this stately row.
The houses have a general composite effect of yellowish gray. They
are built on the London plan of the drawing-room on the second floor,
so that those that live there “go down to dinner.” The drawing-rooms
are of pleasant three-windowed spaciousness, extending across each
house-front.
The terrace is notable in high-stooped New York in having the
entrance-doors on virtually the sidewalk level. That the familiar
and almost omnipresent high-stooped houses of the nineteenth century
ought all to have been constructed without the long flight of outside
stone steps characteristic of the city is shown by a most interesting
development on East Nineteenth Street, between Third Avenue and
Irving Place. There the houses have been excellently and artistically
remodeled, with highly successful and highly satisfactory results. With
comparatively slight cost, there has been alteration of commonplaceness
into beauty.
The high front steps have been removed, and the front doors put down
to where they ought to be. Most of the house-fronts have been given a
stucco coat, showing what could be done with myriad commonplace houses
of the city.
The houses are colorfully painted tawny red or cream or gray or
pale pink or an excellent shade of brown. You think of it as the
happiest-looking street in New York. Solid shutters add their effect,
some the green of bronze patina. There are corbeled gables. Some
of the roofs are red-tiled. Two little two-story stables have been
transformed by little Gothic doors. There are vines. There are
box-bushes. There are flowers in terra-cotta boxes on low area walls.
Here and there is a delightful little iron balcony, here and there a
gargoyle. On one roof two or three storks are gravely standing! There
are charming area-ways, and plane-trees have been planted for the
entire block. And here the vanishing is of the undesirable.
On Stuyvesant Square, near by, are the Quaker buildings, standing in an
atmosphere of peace which they themselves have largely made--buildings
of red brick with white trimmings, and with a fine air of gentleness
and repose; a little group that, so one hopes, is very far indeed from
the vanishing point.
And there is fine old Gramercy Park, whose dignified homes in the
past were owned by men of the greatest prominence. Many of the great
homes still remain, and the central space, tall, iron-fenced, is still
exclusively locked from all but the privileged, the dwellers in the
houses on the park. And there, amid the grass and the trees, sedate
little children, with little white or black dogs, play sedately for
hours.
We went for luncheon, with two recent woman's college graduates, all
familiar with New York, into the club house that was the home of Samuel
J. Tilden. Our companions were unusually excellent examples of the best
that the colleges produce; they were of American ancestry. But any
New-Yorker will feel that much of the spirit of the city has vanished,
that much of the honored and intimate tradition has gone, when we
say that, it being mentioned that this had been the Tilden home, it
developed that neither of them had ever heard of Samuel J. Tilden.
SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS
1. What is the authors' attitude toward the past?
2. What does the essay say concerning change?
3. In what spirit does the essay mention old buildings?
4. What does the essay prophesy for the future?
5. Tell the origin of some of the street names in New York City.
6. What does the essay say concerning the influence of people who
are now dead?
7. Point out examples of pleasant suggestion.
8. Show where the writers express originality of thought.
9. What is the plan of the essay?
10. What advantage does the essay gain by making so frequent
reference to names of people?
11. How do the writers gain coherence?
12. Point out pleasing allusions.
13. What spirit does the essay arouse?
14. What do the writers think concerning the present?
SUBJECTS FOR WRITTEN IMITATION
1. Things That Have Vanished 11. A Trip About Town
2. My Own Town Years Ago 12. Some Curious Buildings
3. Old Buildings 13. The Highway
4. The People of a Former Day 14. The Founding of My Town
5. Legacies 15. Early Settlers
6. Street Names 16. My Ancestors
7. The Story of a Street 17. Family Relics
8. The Story of an Old House 18. A Walk in the Country
9. The Farm 19. The Making of a City
10. Eternal Change 20. Main Street
DIRECTIONS FOR WRITING
Your object is not to tell what you do on any walk that you
choose to take, nor is it to tell what you see. You are not to try to
inform people concerning facts. You are to give them pleasing
impressions that come to you as you meditate on something that
has changed.
In order to do this you must, first of all, have a real experience,
both in visiting a place and in feeling emotion. Then you must make a
plan for your writing, so that you will take your reader just as easily
and just as naturally as possible over the ground that you wish him to
visit in imagination.
Make many allusions to people, to books, to events, and to anything
else that will bring back the past vividly. Make that past appear in
all its charm. You can do this best if your emotion is real, and if
you pay considerable attention to your style of writing. Use many
adjectives and adjective expressions. Above all, try to find words that
will be highly suggestive.
FOOTNOTES:
[65] Henry James (1843-1916). An American novelist noted for strikingly
analytical novels. His boyhood home was on Washington Square.
[66] Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849). Perhaps the most widely known
American poet and short story writer. _The Raven_ is the best-known
poem by any American poet. Poe wrote the poem while he was living in
New York City.
[67] Washington Irving (1783-1859). The genial American essayist,
biographer and historian. He spent much of his time in New York City.
[68] James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851). The first great American
novelist, best known for his famous “Leatherstocking Tales.”
[69] William Dean Howells (1837-1920). A celebrated modern novelist,
noted for his realistic pictures of life.
[70] F. Hopkinson Smith (1838-1915). An American civil engineer, artist
and short story writer. _Colonel Carter of Cartersville_ is one of his
best-known books.
[71] O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) (1867-1910). A popular American
short story writer, noted for originality of style and treatment.
[72] “Windows in Thrums”. The title of a novel by James Matthew Barrie
(1860.--) is _A Window in Thrums_, _Thrums_ being an imaginary village
in Scotland, inhabited principally by humble but devout weavers.
[73] Sir Richard Whittington (1358-1423). Three times Lord Mayor of
London; the hero of the legend of _Whittington and His Cat_.
[74] Petrus Stuyvesant (1592-1672). The last of the Dutch governors of
New York. In 1664 he surrendered New York to the English. His farm was
called “The Bouwerij”.
[75] _Hamlet._ While the date of _Hamlet_ can not be told with
certainty it is reasonably sure that Shakespeare wrote his version of
an older play about 1592.
[76] Rialto. A celebrated bridge in Venice, Italy. It has a series of
steps.
[77] Samuel J. Tilden (1814-1886). An American lawyer, at one time
Governor of New York. As candidate for the Presidency he won 250,000
more votes than Rutherford B. Hayes, but lost the election in the
Electoral College.
[78] John Jacob Astor (1763-1848). A German immigrant who, through the
founding of a great fur business, established the Astor fortune. He
bequeathed $400,000 for the Astor Library.
[79] James Lenox (1800-1880). An American philanthropist who founded
the great Lenox Library.
[80] John Tyler (1790-1862). Tenth President of the United States.
[81] James Monroe (1758-1831). Fifth President of the United States;
originator of the “Monroe Doctrine” policy designed to prevent foreign
interference in affairs in North or South America.
[82] Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804). A great American statesman and
financier. He was killed in a duel with Aaron Burr (1756-1836), an
American politician.
[83] The Bodleian Library. The great library of Oxford University,
England, named after Sir Thomas Bodley, one of its founders.
[84] Magdalen College. One of the colleges of Oxford University,
England. It is noted for an especially beautiful tower.
[85] Clement C. Moore (1779-1863). A wealthy American scholar and
teacher who wrote the poem, _'Twas the Night Before Christmas_.
[86] Edwin Forrest (1806-1872). A great American actor, noted for his
rendition of Shakespeare.
THE SONGS OF THE CIVIL WAR[87]
By BRANDER MATTHEWS
_(1852--). One of the most influential American critics and
essayists, Professor of Dramatic Literature in Columbia University.
He was one of the founders of The Authors' Club, and The Players,
and a leader in organizing the American Copyright League. He is
a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He is
the author of works that illustrate many types of literature,
including novels, short stories, essays, poems and plays. Among his
books are:_ A Story of the Sea, and Other Stories; Pen and Ink;
Americanisms and Briticisms; The Story of a Story; Vignettes of
Manhattan; His Father's Son; Aspects of Fiction; Essays in English;
The American of the Future.
=When companionable people meet in pleasant converse, whether before
the open fire at home, or in chance gatherings at any place, they
tell one another about the interesting experiences that they have
had or the discoveries that they have made. If you could place on
paper what any one of them says, except in narration, and if you
could, at the same time, show the feeling and the spirit of the
speaker,--if you could in some way transfer the personality of the
speaker to the paper,--you would, in all probability, produce an
essay.=
=The author of _The Songs of the Civil War_ has learned some
interesting facts concerning our national songs. He communicates
those facts as he would to a company of friends, indicating
throughout his remarks his own interests and beliefs. His words
are the pleasant words of friendship,--not the formal giving of
information that characterizes most encyclopedia articles. That
part of his essay which is given here is sufficient to indicate the
charm of his presentation.=
A national hymn is one of the things which cannot be made to order.
No man has ever yet sat him down and taken up his pen and said, “I
will write a national hymn,” and composed either words or music which
a nation was willing to take for its own. The making of the song of
the people is a happy accident, not to be accomplished by taking
thought. It must be the result of fiery feeling long confined, and
suddenly finding vent in burning words or moving strains. Sometimes the
heat and the pressure of emotion have been fierce enough and intense
enough to call forth at once both words and music, and to weld them
together indissolubly once and for all. Almost always the maker of the
song does not suspect the abiding value of his work; he has wrought
unconsciously, moved by a power within; he has written for immediate
relief to himself, and with no thought of fame or the future; he has
builded better than he knew. The great national lyric is the result
of the conjunction of the hour and the man. Monarch cannot command
it, and even poets are often powerless to achieve it. No one of the
great national hymns has been written by a great poet. But for his
single immortal lyric, neither the author of the “Marseillaise”[88]
nor the author of the “Wacht am Rhein”[89] would have his line in the
biographical dictionaries. But when a song has once taken root in the
hearts of a people, time itself is powerless against it. The flat and
feeble “Partant pour la Syrie,” which a filial fiat made the hymn of
imperial France, had to give way to the strong and virile notes of
the “Marseillaise,” when need was to arouse the martial spirit of the
French in 1870. The noble measures of “God Save the King,” as simple
and dignified a national hymn as any country can boast, lift up the
hearts of the English people; and the brisk tune of the “British
Grenadiers” has swept away many a man into the ranks of the recruiting
regiment. The English are rich in war tunes and the pathetic “Girl I
Left Behind Me” encourages and sustains both those who go to the front
and those who remain at home. Here in the United States we have no
“Marseillaise,” no “God Save the King,” no “Wacht am Rhein”; we have
but “Yankee Doodle” and the “Star-spangled Banner.” More than one
enterprising poet, and more than one aspiring musician, has volunteered
to take the contract to supply the deficiency; as yet no one has
succeeded. “Yankee Doodle” we got during the revolution, and the
“Star-spangled Banner” was the gift of the War of 1812; from the Civil
War we have received at least two war songs which, as war songs simply,
are stronger and finer than either of these--“John Brown's Body” and
“Marching Through Georgia.”
Of the lyrical outburst which the war called forth but little trace is
now to be detected in literature except by special students. In most
cases neither words nor music have had vitality enough to survive a
quarter of a century. Chiefly, indeed, two things only survive, one
Southern and the other Northern; one a war-cry in verse, the other
a martial tune: one is the lyric “My Maryland” and the other is the
marching song “John Brown's Body.” The origin and development of the
latter, the rude chant to which a million of the soldiers of the Union
kept time, is uncertain and involved in dispute. The history of the
former may be declared exactly, and by the courtesy of those who did
the deed--for the making of a war song is of a truth a deed at arms--I
am enabled to state fully the circumstances under which it was written,
set to music, and first sung before the soldiers of the South.
“My Maryland” was written by Mr. James R. Randall, a native of
Baltimore, and now residing in Augusta, Georgia. The poet was a
professor of English literature and the classics in Poydras College
at Pointe Coupee, on the Faussee Riviere, in Louisiana, about seven
miles from the Mississippi; and there in April, 1861, he read in the
New Orleans _Delta_ the news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops
as they passed through Baltimore. “This account excited me greatly,”
Mr. Randall wrote in answer to my request for information; “I had
long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there
inflamed my mind. That night I could not sleep, for my nerves were all
unstrung, and I could not dismiss what I had read in the paper from my
mind. About midnight I rose, lit a candle, and went to my desk. Some
powerful spirit appeared to possess me, and almost involuntarily I
proceeded to write the song of 'My Maryland.' I remember that the idea
appeared to first take shape as music in the brain--some wild air that
I cannot now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once
begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be called
a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect.
I was stirred to a desire for some way linking my name with that of my
native State, if not 'with my land's language'. But I never expected to
do this with one single, supreme effort, and no one was more surprised
than I was at the widespread and instantaneous popularity of the lyric
I had been so strangely stimulated to write.” Mr. Randall read the poem
the next morning to the college boys, and at their suggestion sent it
to the _Delta_, in which it was first printed, and from which it was
copied into nearly every Southern journal. “I did not concern myself
much about it, but very soon, from all parts of the country, there was
borne to me, in my remote place of residence, evidence that I had made
a great hit, and that, whatever might be the fate of the Confederacy,
the song would survive it.”
Published in the last days of April, 1861, when every eye was fixed
on the border States, the stirring stanzas of the Tyrtæan bard[90]
appeared in the very nick of time. There is often a feeling afloat
in the minds of men, undefined and vague for want of one to give it
form, and held in solution, as it were, until a chance word dropped
in the ear of a poet suddenly crystallizes this feeling into song,
in which all may see clearly and sharply reflected what in their own
thought was shapeless and hazy. It was Mr. Randall's good fortune to
be the instrument through which the South spoke. By a natural reaction
his burning lines helped to fire the Southern heart. To do their work
well, his words needed to be wedded to music. Unlike the authors of
the “Star-spangled Banner” and the “Marseillaise,” the author of “My
Maryland” had not written it to fit a tune already familiar. It was
left for a lady of Baltimore to lend the lyric the musical wings it
needed to enable it to reach every camp-fire of the Southern armies. To
the courtesy of this lady, then Miss Hetty Cary, and now the wife of
Professor H. Newell Martin, of Johns Hopkins University, I am indebted
for a picturesque description of the marriage of the words to the
music, and of the first singing of the song before the Southern troops.