I could scarcely sleep that night for eagerness and anticipation. Ever
since the afternoon when the vision of Miss Dudley appeared, to startle
me from my painting, in the little south parlor, she had been the
foremost figure in my brightest day-dreams, as often as, with little
Philip warm and slumberous on my knees, I could find time for
day-dreams. Accordingly, I had been more than wishing--longing--to see
her again; though I put off returning her visit, partly from real want
of time, partly from uncertainty about what was the proper etiquette for
me, and partly from the dread of dispelling some pleasant illusions, and
finding that the Miss Dudley of my reveries belonged to the realm of my
imagination rather than to that of my memory. I dreamed of her all that
night, when I was not lying awake to think of her; and when, in the
morning, I arose early to brush and brighten my somewhat faded black,
the keen autumn air, instead of chilling me, seemed but to whet and
sharpen my zest for my expedition.
Julia's toilet was not made when I heard the clatter of the recalcitrant
De Quincey backing the chaise out of his beloved, but little _be-lived_
in, stable. She sat up in bed, however, when I went in to kiss her, in
spite of Mrs. Rocket, turned me round to the window to see whether I
was looking my best, or, as she equivocally phrased it, "the best of
which I was capable," told me, that I had got a little _rouge_ the last
time I was out, and must ask Miss Dudley whether it was not becoming,
and hooked her forefingers into my naturally _gekräuseltes_ hair, to
pull it into what she always maintained to be the proper _pose_ above my
eyebrows.
Then down I ran, and off I went, through the town and along the road,
between rocks and evergreens with here and there a gate among them that
marked the entrance to the earthly paradise of some lucky gentleman.
"Sha'n't we be too early?" asked I, fidgeting, for my prosperity
appeared to me, just now, too perfect to be permanent.
"No," said the Doctor. "They are early people at Barberry Beach,--not
Sybarites in anything, so far as I can judge. It is near nine. Miss
Dudley tells me I shall almost always find her visible by that time. If,
not hearing from you, she has made other engagements, you know she is
more likely to be at leisure now than later."
"She does not look well yet. What was the matter with her?"
"_Angina pectoris_. That is Greek to you, Katy. Pain in the heart,
then."
"What made her have it?"
"That is a deep question in the most interesting of sciences,--that of
the metamorphoses of diseases. Many men would answer it according to
their many minds. To the best of my belief, the cause of Miss Dudley's
having a pain in her heart lay in her great-grandfather's toe."
"O Doctor! what _do_ you mean?"
"The gout."
"Well, that sounds very aristocratic and imposing; but, notwithstanding,
I know you are laughing at me."
"No, I am not. It is no laughing matter."
"Why, is it dangerous?"
"Dangerous!" said he. "It is deadly. Why, Katy, I never shall dare to
tell you anything again, if you are going to look so frightened! _She_
did not when I told her."
"Does she know?"
"Yes, and makes no secret of it, and is not unlikely to mention it
before you; so that you must accustom yourself to the idea, and be
prepared to face it as she does."
"How came she to know?"
"She asked me. I gave up very early in my practice, for several reasons,
the habit of lying to my patients. If they are cowards, or if, for any
reason, I think the truth and the whole truth would shorten their days,
I often tell them little or nothing; but I tell them nothing but the
truth. She is not a person to be put off from knowing what she has a
right to know."
"How did she take it?"
"Nobly and simply, without any affectation of indifference. As she put
the question, I laid my hand on her pulse; and, as it went on pretty
firmly, I went on too. When I had said all there was to say, she thanked
me earnestly, and said, as sweetly as anything could possibly be said,
that the information would add double weight to the cautions and other
counsels I had given her, and told me that, if I ever came to be in a
situation like hers, she trusted that I should find the comfort of being
dealt with with candor and kindness like mine. After all, Katy, she may
live yet many years, and die at last of something else; and that is
about the best that can be prognosticated of you and me, my dear."
"'Tis true the young _may_ die, but the old must," thought I. I was half
comforted, and only half. Yet the pensive shadow of coming doom--or
shall I not rather say the solemn dawn of approaching eternity?--seemed
to lend a new and more unearthly charm to the lovely spiritual vision I
cherished in my mind.
Presently, instead of passing a gate, the Doctor turned in at it, and
drove smoothly up the gentle slope of a hard-rolled winding avenue lined
with hemlocks. "Pretty, isn't it?" cried he. "O for the time when I
shall retire upon my fortune, and leave my office to Phil the second!
There, Katy! What do you think of that?"
What did I think? O, too much to be told, either then or now! From the
dark trees one forward step of each of De Quincey's forefeet brought us
out into a high amphitheatre, at the instant flooded with sunshine. A
higher hill, wooded with evergreens and bossed with boulders, made a
background behind it, on the right, for a large, low cottage of clear
gray granite, with broad piazzas curtained with Virginia creepers and
monthly honeysuckles, and cloistered on the south. In front of the
cottage was a shaven lawn, rimmed with a hedge of graceful barberries,
and lighted up by small circular spots of brown earth, teeming with
salvia and other splendid autumn flowers. Beyond and on the left ran a
long reach of rocky headlands, burning with golden-rod and wild-rose
berries mingled with purple asters and white spiræa, and all along from
below, but very near, spread out far and wide the inexpressible ocean.
It was a rough, ridgy, sage-greenish, gray ocean, I remember, that
morning, full of tumble and toss and long scalloped lines of spent foam,
covered over with a dim, low half-dome of sky,--with seagulls
flickering, and here and there a small, wild, ragged gypsy of a cloud,
of a little darker gray, scudding lawlessly under,--and threw out in the
strongest contrast the brilliant hues and sharp, clear outlines of the
shore.
The Doctor sprang from the chaise, left me in it, and threw me the
reins. I always wished he wouldn't, but he always would. The most I had
to gain by pulling them, if De Quincey grew restless, was to make him
_back_; and this was precisely what I least desired. My reasonable
expostulations, however, could never obtain any more grace from him who
should have been my guardian than a promise, if I would "make no fuss,
and broken bones" came of it, that he would "mend me softly." Therefore
I thought it most prudent not to expostulate; but my penance was this
time a brief one. He had hardly entered the door when the tall, striking
figure I recollected so well came dimly in view in one of the nearest
bay-windows, tapped on the glass with one slender white-frilled hand,
and nodded with a bright, glad smile; and back came the Doctor to help
me out.
"It is all right, Katy. Miss Dudley wants you, and does not want me. If
it rains, you can stay till I call for you. Otherwise, come back when
you like. The first door to your left in the hall."
Miss Dudley met me in the parlor-door, laughing. "I should have come out
to make prize of you," said she, "but they say it is rather bleak this
morning, and I am still under orders. I had almost given you up for this
week; but the Doctor assures me that he has already been suitably dealt
with and brought to repentance, and so there is no more to be said on
that point, especially as you have happened to hit on the very time when
I am most alone, and when, as I have been accustomed to be the busiest,
I feel my present idleness the most. You drove here, after all. You are
not tired? What should you say, first, to a walk with me?"
A staid-looking, exquisitely neat, elderly woman brought her bonnet,
umbrella, gloves, and a large Scotch plaid shawl, in which she wrapped
Miss Dudley, with much solicitude, and was so prettily thanked for her
pains that I longed to have the wrapping up to do myself.
"I really do not think I needed to be muffled up quite so closely
to-day," said my hostess, as she stepped lightly from the piazza to the
sunlit gravel-walk; "but Bonner is ten years older than I, and feels the
cold a good deal herself, and I do not like to make her anxious about
me. She had a great fright, poor thing! when I was ill. Where shall we
go, Miss Morne?--to the garden or the shore? I am not certain that those
clouds mean to give us time for both."
Not knowing which she would prefer, I answered that I could hardly
choose, unless she would be so kind as to tell me which was the most
beautiful. To my joy, she said the shore. The path ran close to the
edge of the cliffs; and below our very feet were the beach and the
breakers. We both forgot ourselves at first, I think, in the sight and
sound.
At length she turned, with a sudden movement, and looked me in the face.
"I do believe, Miss Morne," said she, "that you are one of the fortunate
people who have the power to enjoy this to the full. I trust that we may
often still enjoy it here together."
"Shall I tell you how I enjoy it, ma'am?" I exclaimed, carried out of
myself at sight of the enthusiasm that was tinging her delicate cheek
and lighting up her eyes. "As we enjoy those things that it never comes
into our heads to ask ourselves whether we like or not. Some things we
_have_ to ask ourselves, whether we like or not, before we know, and
even after we are scarcely sure; and some things, such as the poor
little 'Marchioness's' orange-peel and water, we have to 'make believe
very hard' in order to like at all. But home when we have been away, and
friends when we have been lonely, and water when we are thirsty, and the
sea always!--we never ask ourselves if those are good,--we know." Then
my face burnt. How it would burn in those girlish days!
And how foolish I felt, or had begun to feel, when Miss Dudley slowly
answered, looking mercifully away from me and at the waves: "Very true,
Miss Morne! You speak from your heart, and to mine."
The clouds were forbearing, and allowed us time afterwards for a visit
to the gorgeous garden. We walked to the summer-house at the very end,
from which a winding path began to climb the hill. There Miss Dudley
paused. "My chamois days are over, for the present, at least," said she.
"We must wait for my little nieces or nephew to escort you up there.
Shall we go in?"
When we did so, I thought that the interior of the cottage was not much
less grand, scarcely less beautiful, than what we had seen without. At
that period most housekeepers held the hardly yet exploded heresy, not
only that fresh air was a dangerous and unwholesome luxury, to be
denied, as far as might be, to any but the strongest constitutions,[2]
but that even sunshine within the doors was an inadmissible intrusion,
alike untidy and superfluous. On these points this house set public
opinion at defiance. It was set, of set purpose, at _wrong_ angles to
the points of the compass. Every wind of heaven could sweep it, at the
pleasure of the inmates, through and through, and the piazzas were so
arranged that there was not a single apartment in it into which the sun
could not look, through one window or another, once at least in the
twenty-four hours. The floors were tiled, ingrained, oiled,
matted,--everything but carpeted, except that of the state drawing-room;
and there the Wilton had a covering over it, removed, as I afterwards
found, only on occasions of state. The whole atmosphere seemed full of
health, purity, cheerfulness, warmth, and brightness. Brilliant flowers
peeped in at the windows, and were set on the tables in vases, or hung
in them from the walls. And there were pictures, and there were statues,
but there too was Miss Dudley, paring a peach for me, for sociability's
sake,--for she could not eat one herself, so soon after her breakfast;
and, as I knew the time must be running away very fast,--hard that it
will always run fastest when we are the happiest!--I seized my first
opportunity to say that few things would give me greater pleasure than
to furnish the illustrations she had mentioned, if I could but succeed
in executing them as I ought.
"As to that, I will be your sponsor," returned she, gayly, "if you would
like to begin them here. Your touch is very firm and true; and I will
show you all our tricks of color. Here is my paint-box. Have you time
to-day?"
I had time, and no excuse; though, in falling so suddenly into the
midst of painting-lessons from Miss Dudley, I really felt as if I was
having greatness thrust upon me in a manner to take my breath away. If I
had only had a little more time to think about it, my touch might have
been truer for the nonce. Her paint-box was so handsomely furnished,
too, and so daintily ordered, that I scarcely dared touch it. She gave
me a little respite, however, by rubbing the colors for me,--colors,
some of them, that, for their costliness, I could not allow myself at
all at home,--and selected for me two such exquisite brushes from her
store! Then she lay down beside me on a "couch of Ind," smiled as I laid
her plaid over her feet, and watched me at the work. How that brought my
poor Fanny back to me! But my new mistress went on unwearyingly,
teaching and encouraging me, and, if I was more than satisfied with her,
did not on her part show that she was less than satisfied with me. The
clock struck twelve before I dreamed of its taking upon itself to offer
such an untimely interruption.
"Now I am nicely rested," said she, soon after; "and I am afraid you
must begin to be nicely tired. Do you not?"
"No, indeed; I seldom do till nine o'clock at night."
"Then we will indulge ourselves here still a little longer. But hark!
Are not there my little people back from school?"
The expression common to those who love children stole into her face.
Young voices were drawing nearer.
"Come to my arms, O lovely cherub!" said one that had a boyish sound in
it, paternally.
"Look out and see them," whispered Miss Dudley to me.
I peeped through the blinds. A handsome and very graceful olive-hued
boy, apparently about fourteen years old, with a form like that of the
Mercury upborne by a zephyr, eyes like stars, lashes like star-beams,
and an expression that would have made him a good study for a picture of
Puck, half leaning, half sitting, on the stone balustrade, was tenderly
dandling in his arms a huge, vulgar-looking, gray, striped stable-cat,
that rolled and writhed therein in transports of comfort and affection.
"But, indeed, Paul," remonstrated another voice, _tout comme un serin_,
"Pet ought to be whipped instead of hugged! Lily says so."
"Tiger Lily? What a cruel girl! O, my Pettitoes! how can she say so?"
"Why," answered another girlish voice, a little firmer, but hardly less
sweet, than the first, "only think! While we were all in school, he
watched his opportunity and killed the robin that lives in the
crab-apple-tree. The gardener says he heard it cry, and ran with his
hoe; and there was this wicked, horrid, grim, great Pet galloping as
fast as he could gallop to the stable, with its poor little beak
sticking out at one side of his grinning mouth, and its tail at the
other!"
"Why, Pettitoes! how very inconsiderate! You won't serve it so another
time, _will_ you? Though how a robin can have the face to squeak when he
catches it himself at noon, after cramming himself with worms the whole
morning, is more than I can see!"
"O no, Paul! He was singing most sweetly! I heard him; and so did Rose."
"And so did I. He was singing through his nose as bad as Deacon Piper,
because he had a worm in his mouth. He couldn't leave off gobbling one
single minute,--not even to practise his music."
"Let us go out," said Miss Dudley.
We did so. Paul's retreating back was all that was to be seen of the
boy, with Pet's peaceful chin pillowed upon his shoulder, as, borne off
in triumph, he looked calmly back at Lily, who stood shaking her small,
chiselled ivory finger at him. Rose was still beside her, with her arm
around her waist, as if in propitiation.
Two twelve-year-old twins, in twin blue gingham frocks,--they were much
addicted to blue and pink ginghams,--they had that indefinable look of
_blood_ which belonged to their kin, which is sometimes, to be sure, to
be found in families that have no great-grandfathers, after they have
been well-fed, well-read, and well-bred for a generation or two, but to
which they had an uncommonly good right, as their pedigree--so I
afterwards found--ran straight back to the Norman Conquest, without a
single "probably" in it. They were, for their age, tall and slender,
with yet more springy buoyancy than their aunt in _pose_ and movement.
Strangers were always mistaking them for each other. That day I could
scarcely tell them apart, though afterwards I wondered at it. Rose was
the very prettiest child I ever saw, and Lily pretty nearly the most
beautiful person.
Lily was already the tallest. Her thick and wavy hair was _blonde
cendrée_, and all her features were perfectly Grecian. Her eyes were of
a very dark blue, that turned into nothing but clear radiance when she
was opposed or in any way excited. Her complexion was healthful, but
would be described as soft and warm, rather than brilliant. Her whole
fair little face was about as firm and spirited as a fair girlish face
could be.
Rose's larger eyes were of a pure, deep hazel. Her hair, as thick and
curly as Lily's, was far more glossy and flossy, and of the yellowest,
brightest gold-color. Her nose--a most perfect little nose--was more
aquiline than her sister's. Her skin was of the tints of the finest
rare-ripe peaches,--pure white and deepening pink; and all around her
mouth were dimples lying in wait for her to laugh.
As they met Miss Dudley, with the many-colored Virginia creepers behind
them and the flowers behind her, a better _tableau vivant_ of "first
youth" and _first age_ could scarcely have been put together than they
made. It made me wish that I had been more than a painter of
_specimens_. The elder lady presented me to the younger ones; and they
greeted me with that pretty courtesy that always charms us twofold when
we meet with it in children, because we scarcely expect it of them.
Rose's radiant little countenance, especially, seemed to say, "I have
heard of you before, and wished to know you"; and that is one of the
most winning expressions that a new countenance can wear. Then they put
their arms round "dear Aunt Lizzy," coaxed her for peaches, and obtained
the remainder of our basketful without much difficulty; and then I had
to depart, but not quite without solace, for Rose ran after me to say,
"Aunt Lizzy hopes, if you are not otherwise engaged, to see you again
Monday morning at nine; and she sends you this book that she forgot to
give you. It made her think of you, she says, when she was reading it."
It was Greenwood's "Sermons of Consolation"; and, written in her hand on
the fly-leaf, I found my name.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The old philosophy held, that "Nature abhors a vacuum"; but modern
observation shows that the natural Yankee abhors the air.
* * * * *
THE SWORD OF BOLIVAR.
With the steadfast stars above us,
And the molten stars below,
We sailed through the Southern midnight,
By the coast of Mexico.
Alone, on the desolate, dark-ringed,
Rolling and flashing sea,
A grim old Venezuelan
Kept the deck with me,
And talked to me of his country,
And the long Spanish war,
And told how a young Republic
Forged the sword of Bolivar.
Of no base mundane metal
Was the wondrous weapon made,
And in no earth-born fire
Was fashioned the sacred blade.
But that it might shine the symbol
Of law and light in the land,
Dropped down as a star from heaven,
To flame in a hero's hand.
And be to the world a portent
Of eternal might and right,
They chose for the steel a splinter
From a fallen aerolite.
Then a virgin forge they builded
By the city, and kindled it
With flame from a shattered palm-tree,
Which the lightning's torch had lit,--
That no fire of earthly passion
Might taint the holy sword,
And no ancient error tarnish
The falchion of the Lord.
For Quito and New Granada
And Venezuela they pour
From three crucibles the dazzling
White meteoric ore.
In three ingots it is moulded,
And welded into one,
For an emblem of Colombia,
Bright daughter of the sun!
It is drawn on a virgin anvil,
It is heated and hammered and rolled,
It is shaped and tempered and burnished,
And set in a hilt of gold;
For thus by the fire and the hammer
Of war a nation is built,
And ever the sword of its power
Is swayed by a golden hilt.
Then with pomp and oratory
The mustachioed señores brought
To the house of the Liberator
The weapon they had wrought;
And they said, in their stately phrases,
"O mighty in peace and war!
No mortal blade we bring you,
But a flaming meteor.
"The sword of the Spaniard is broken,
And to you in its stead is given,
To lead and redeem a nation,
This ray of light from heaven."
The gaunt-faced Liberator
From their hands the symbol took,
And waved it aloft in the sunlight,
With a high, heroic look;
And he called the saints to witness:
"May these lips turn into dust,
And this right hand fail, if ever
It prove recreant to its trust!
"Never the sigh of a bondman
Shall cloud this gleaming steel,
But only the foe and the traitor
Its vengeful edge shall feel.
"Never a tear of my country
Its purity shall stain,
Till into your hands, who gave it,
I render it again."
Now if ever a chief was chosen
To cover a cause with shame,
And if ever there breathed a caitiff,
Bolivar was his name.
From his place among the people
To the highest seat he went,
By the winding paths of party
And the stair of accident.
A restless, weak usurper,
Striving to rear a throne,
Filling his fame with counsels
And conquests not his own;--
Now seeming to put from him
The sceptre of command,
Only that he might grasp it
With yet a firmer hand;--
His country's trusted leader,
In league with his country's foes,
Stabbing the cause that nursed him,
And openly serving those;--
The chief of a great republic
Plotting rebellion still,--
An apostate faithful only
To his own ambitious will.
Drunk with a vain ambition,
In his feeble, reckless hand,
The sword of Eternal Justice
Became but a brawler's brand.
And Colombia was dissevered,
Rent by factions, till at last
Her name among the nations
Is a memory of the past.
Here the grim old Venezuelan
Puffed fiercely his red cigar
A brief moment, then in the ocean
It vanished like a star;
And he slumbered in his hammock;
And only the ceaseless rush
Of the reeling and sparkling waters
Filled the solemn midnight hush,
As I leaned by the swinging gunwale
Of the good ship, sailing slow,
With the steadfast heavens above her,
And the molten heavens below.
Then I thought with sorrow and yearning
Of my own distracted land,
And the sword let down from heaven
To flame in her ruler's hand,--
The sword of Freedom, resplendent
As a beam of the morning star,
Received, reviled, and dishonored
By another than Bolivar!
And my prayers flew home to my country:
O ye tried and fearless crew!
O ye pilots of the nation!
Now her safety is with you.
Beware the traitorous captain,
And the wreckers on the shore;
Guard well the noble vessel;
And steadily evermore,
As ye steer through the perilous midnight,
Let your faithful glances go
To the steadfast stars above her,
From their fickle gleams below.
* * * * *
THROUGH BROADWAY.
The incessant demolition of which Broadway is the scene denotes to the
most careless eye that devotion to the immediate which De Tocqueville
maintains to be a democratic characteristic. The huge piles of old
bricks which block the way--with their array of placards heralding every
grade of popular amusement, from a tragedy of Shakespeare to a negro
melody, and from a menagerie to a clairvoyant exhibition, and vaunting
every kind of experimental charlatanism, from quack medicine to flash
literature--are mounds of less mystery, but more human meaning, than
those which puzzle archæologists on the Mississippi and the Ohio; for
they are the _débris_ of mansions only half a century ago the
aristocratic homes of families whose descendants are long since
scattered, and whose social prominence and local identity are forgotten,
while trade has obliterated every vestige of their roof-tree and
association of their hearth-stone. Such is the constant process. As
private residences give way to stores and offices, the upper portion of
the island is crowded with their enlarged dimensions and elaborate
luxury; churches are in the same manner sacrificed, until St. Paul's and
Trinity alone remain of the old sacred landmarks; and the suburban
feature--those "fields" where burgomasters foregathered, the militia
drilled, and Hamilton's youthful eloquence roused the people to arms--is
transferred to the other and distant end of Manhattan, and expanded into
a vast, variegated, and beautiful rural domain,--that "the Park" may
coincide in extent and attraction with the increase of the population
and growth of the city's area. Thus a perpetual tide of emigration, and
the pressure of the business on the resident section,--involving change
of domicile, substitution of uses, the alternate destruction and
erection of buildings, each being larger and more costly in material
than its predecessor,--make the metropolis of the New World appear, to
the visitor from the Old, a shifting bivouac rather than a stable city,
where hereditary homes are impossible, and nomadic instincts prevalent,
and where local associations, such as endear or identify the streets
abroad, seem as incongruous as in the Eastern desert or Western woods,
whose dwellers "fold their tents like the Arabs, and as silently steal
away." The absence of the law of primogeniture necessitates the breaking
up of estates, and thus facilitates the methods whereby the elegant
homestead becomes, in the second or third generation, a dry-goods store,
a boarding or club house, a milliner's show-room or a dentist's office.
Here and there some venerable gossip will rehearse the triumphs of
refined hospitality, or describe the success of a belle or the
brilliancy of a genial leader in politics or social pastime, which,
years ago, consecrated a mansion or endeared a neighborhood,--whereof
not a visible relic is now discoverable, save in a portrait or
reminiscent paper conserved in the archives of the Historical Society.
And in this speedy oblivion of domestic and social landmarks, how easily
we find a reason for the national irreverence, and the exclusive
interest in the future, which make the life of America, like the streets
of her cities, a scene of transition unhallowed by memorials.
Yet, despite its dead horses and vehicular entanglements, its vile
concert saloons, the alternate meanness and magnificence of its
architecture, the fragile character of its theatrical structures, and
their limited and hazardous means of exit,--despite falling walls and
the necessity of police guardianship at the crossings, the reckless
driving of butcher-boys and the dexterity of pickpockets,--despite the
slippery pavement, and the chronic cry for "relief,"--Broadway is a
spectacle and an experience worth patient study, and wonderfully
prolific of life-pictures. With a fountain at one end, like a French
town, and a chime of bells at the other, like a German city, the
intermediate space is as representative a rendezvous as can be found in
the world.
The first thing that strikes an experienced eye in New York's great
thoroughfare is the paucity of loiterers: he sees, at a glance, that the
_flâneur_ is an exotic here. There is that in the gait and look of every
one that shows a settled and an eager purpose,--a goal sought under
pressure. A counting-room, office, court, mart, or mansion is to be
reached punctually, and therefore the eye and step are straightforward,
intent, preoccupied. But this peculiarity is chiefly obvious early and
late in the day, when business and professional men are on their way to
and from the place of their daily vocations. Later, and especially about
two hours after noon, it is the dress and number of the other sex that
win attention; and to one fresh from London, the street attire of
_ladies_--or those who aspire, with more or less justice, to that
title--is a startling incongruity; for the showy colors and fine
textures reserved across the sea for the opera, the _salon_, and the
fashionable drive, are here displayed on shopping expeditions, for which
an English lady dresses in neutral tints and substantial
fabrics,--avoiding rather than courting observation. The vulgar
impression derived in Broadway from an opposite habit is vastly
increased by modern fashions; for the apology for a bonnet that leaves
brow, cheek, and head fully exposed,--the rustle and dimensions of
crinoline,--the heavy masses of unctuous false hair attached to the back
of the head, deforming its shape and often giving a coarse monstrosity
to its naturally graceful poise and proportions,--the inappropriate
display of jewelry and the long silk trains of the expensive robes
trailing on the dirty walk, and continually caught beneath the feet of
careless pedestrians,--all unite to render the exhibition repulsive to
taste, good sense, and that chivalric sympathy inspired by the sight of
female beauty and grace, so often co-existent with these anomalies.
Broadway has often been compared to a kaleidoscope,--an appellation
suggested by the variety of shifting tints, from those of female dress
to those of innumerable commodities, from dazzling effects of sunshine
to the radiance of equipage, vivid paint, gilded signs, and dazzling
wares. And blent with this pervading language of colors are the local
associations which the articles of merchandise hint. Consider how
extensive is their scope,--Persian carpets, Lyons silks, Genoa velvets,
ribbons from Coventry and laces from Brussels, the furs of the
Northwest, glass of Bohemia, ware of China, nuts from Brazil, silver of
Nevada mines, Sicily lemons, Turkey figs, metallic coffins and fresh
violets, Arabian dates, French chocolate, pine-apples from the West
Indies, venison from the Adirondacs, brilliant chemicals, gilded frames,
Manchester cloth, Sheffield cutlery, Irish linens, ruddy fruit, salmon
from the Thousand Isles, sables from Russia, watches from Geneva,
carvings from Switzerland, caricatures and India-rubber garments,
saccharine temples, books in tinted covers, toys, wines, perfumes,
drugs, dainties, art, luxury, science, all lavishing their products to
allure the throng,--phenomena common, indeed, to all streets devoted to
trade, but here uniquely combined with a fashionable promenade, and
affording the still-life of a variegated moving panorama. It is
characteristic, also, that the only palatial buildings along the crowded
avenue are stores and hotels. Architecture thus glorifies the gregarious
extravagance of the people. The effect of the whole is indefinitely
prolonged, to an imaginative mind, by the vistas at the lower extremity,
which reveal the river, and, at sunset, the dark tracery of the shipping
against the far and flushed horizon; while, if one lifts his eye to the
telegraph wire, or lowers it to some excavation which betrays the
Croton pipes, a sublime consciousness is awakened of the relation of
this swift and populous eddy of life's great ocean to its distant rural
streams, and the ebb and flow of humanity's eternal tide. Consider, too,
the representative economics and delectations around, available to
taste, necessity, and cash,--how wonderful their contrast! Not long
since, an Egyptian museum, with relics dating from the Pharaohs, was
accessible to the Broadway philosopher, and a Turkish khan to the
sybarite; one has but to mount a staircase, and find himself in the
presence of authentic effigies of all the prominent men of the nation,
sun-painted for the million. This pharmacist will exorcise his
pain-demon; that electrician place him _en rapport_ with kindred
hundreds of miles away, or fortify his jaded nerves. Down this street he
may enjoy a Russian or Turkish bath; down that, a water-cure. Here, with
skill undreamed of by civilized antiquity, fine gold can be made to
replace the decayed segment of a tooth; there, he has but to stretch out
his foot, and a chiropodist removes the throbbing bunion, or a boy
kneels to polish his boots. A hackman is at hand to drive him to the
Park, a telescope to show him the stars; he has but to pause at a corner
and buy a journal which will place him _au courant_ with the events of
the world, or listen to an organ-grinder, and think himself at the
opera. This temple is free for him to enter and "muse till the fire
burns"; on yonder bookseller's counter is an epitome of the wisdom of
ages; there he may buy a nosegay to propitiate his lady-love, or a
sewing-machine to beguile his womankind, and here a crimson balloon or
spring rocking-horse, to delight his little boy, and rare gems or a
silver service for a bridal gift. This English tailor will provide him
with a "capital fit," that German tobacconist with a creamy meerschaum.
At the artificial Spa he may recuperate with Vichy or Kissingen, and at
the phrenologist's have his mental and moral aptitudes defined; now a
"medium" invites him to a spiritual _séance_, and now an antiquarian to
a "curiosity shop." In one saloon is _lager_ such as he drank in
Bavaria, and in another, the best bivalves in the world. Here is a fine
billiard-table, there a gymnasium;--food for mind and body,
gratification to taste;--all the external resources of civilization are
at hand,--not always with the substantial superiority of those of London
or the elegant variety of Paris, but with enough of both to make them
available to the eclectic cosmopolite.
The historical epochs of New York are adequately traceable by the
successive pictures of her main thoroughfare,--beginning with the Indian
village and the primeval forest which Henry Hudson found on the island
of Manhattan in 1609, and advancing to the stockade fort of New
Amsterdam, built where the Battery now is, by Wouter Van Twiller, the
second Dutch governor, and thence to the era when the fur trade,
tobacco-growing, and slavery were enriching the India Company, when the
Wall was built on the site of the so-called financial rendezvous, to
protect the settlement from savage invasion, and a deep valley marked
the present junction of Canal Street and Broadway. The advent of a new
class of artisans signalizes the arrival of Huguenot emigrants; the
rebellion of Leisler marks the encroachment of new political agencies,
and the substitution of Pitt's statue for that of George III. on the
Bowling Green in 1770, the dawn of Independence, so sturdily ushered in
and cherished by the Liberty Boys, and culminating in the evacuation of
the British in 1783, the entrance of Washington with the American army,
and, two years after, in the meeting of the first Congress. These
vicissitudes left their impress on the street. Every church but the
Episcopal was turned by the English into a riding-school, prison, or
stable; each successive charter was more liberal in its municipal
privileges. The Boston stage long went from the Fort to the Park, and so
on by the old post-road, and was fourteen days _en route_; pestilence,
imported from the West India islands, depopulated the adjacent houses;
water was sold from carts; and dimly lighted was the pedestrian on his
midnight way, while old-fashioned watchmen cried the hour; and when, in
1807, Robert Fulton initiated steam navigation, the vast system of
ferriage was established which inundated the main avenue of the city
with a perpetual tributary stream of floating population from all the
outlying shores of the Hudson and East Rivers, Staten and Long Islands,
and the villages above Manhattan. A lady who lived in New York forty
years ago, and returned this season, expressed her surprise that the
matutinal procession of rustics she used to watch from the window of her
fashionable domicile in the lower part of Broadway had ceased, so
completely had suburban citizens usurped the farmers' old homes. The
beautiful pigeons that used to coo and cluster on the cobble stones had
no resting-place for their coral feet on the Russ pavement, so thickly
moved the drays, and so unremitted was the rush of man and beast. In
fact, the one conservative feature eloquent of the past is the
churchyard,--the old, moss-grown, sloping gravestones,--landmarks of
finished life-journeys, mutely invoking the hurrying crowd through the
tall iron railings of Trinity and St. Paul's. It is a striking evidence
of a "new country," that a youth from the Far West, on arriving in New
York by sea, was so attracted by these ancient cemeteries that he
lingered amid them all day,--saying it was the first time he had ever
seen a human memorial more than twenty years old, except a tree! And
memorable was the ceremony whereby, a few years since, the Historical
Society celebrated the bicentennial birthday of Bradford, the old
colonial printer, by renewing his headstone. At noonday, when the
life-tide was at flood, in lovely May weather, a barrier was stretched
across Broadway; and there, at the head of eager gold-worshipping Wall
Street, in the heart of the bustling, trafficking crowd, a vacant place
was secured in front of the grand and holy temple of Trinity. The
pensive chant arose; a white band of choristers and priests came forth;
and eminent citizens gathered around to reconsecrate the tablet over the
dust of one who, two hundred years ago, had practised a civilizing art
in this fresh land, and disseminated messages of religion and wisdom. It
was a singular picture, beautiful to the eye, solemn to the feelings,
and a rare tribute to the past, where the present sways with such
absolute rule. Few Broadway tableaux are so worthy of artistic
preservation. Before, the vista of a money-changers' mart; above and
below, a long, crowded avenue of metropolitan life; behind, the lofty
spire, gothic windows, and archways of the church, and the central group
as picturesquely and piously suggestive as a mediæval rite.
Vainly would the most self-possessed reminiscent breast the living tide
of the surging thoroughfare, on a weekday, to realize in his mind's eye
its ancient aspect; but if it chance to him to land at the Battery on a
clear and still Sabbath morning, and before the bells summon forth the
worshippers, and to walk thence to Union Square in company with an
octogenarian Knickerbocker of good memory, local pride, and fluent
speech, he will obtain a mental photograph of the past that transmutes
the familiar scene by a quaint and vivid aerial perspective. Then the
"Middle Road" of the beginning of this century will reappear,--the
traces of a wheat-field on the site of St. Paul's, still a fresh
tradition; Oswego Market, opposite Liberty Street, is alive with early
customers; the reminiscent beholds the apparition of Rutgers's orchard,
whose remaining noble elms yet shade the green vista of the City
Hospital, and which was a place for rifling bird's-nests in the boyhood
of his pensive companion, whose father played at skittles on the Bowling
Green, hard by the Governor's house, while the Dutch householders sat
smoking long pipes in their broad porticos, cosily discussing the last
news from Antwerp or Delft, their stout rosy daughters meanwhile taking
a twilight ramble, with their stalwart beaux, to the utmost suburban
limit of Manhattan, where Canal Street now intersects Broadway,--then an
unpaved lane with scattered domiciles, only grouped into civic
contiguity around the Battery, and with many gardens enhancing its rural
aspect. Somewhat later, and Munn's Land Office, at the corner of what is
now Grand Street, was suggestive of a growing settlement and the era of
speculation; an isolated coach-factory marked the site of the St.
Nicholas Hotel; people flocked along, in domestic instalments, to
Vauxhall, where now stands the Astor Library, to drink mead and see the
Flying Horses; and capitalists invested in "lots" on Bayard's Farm,
where Niblo's and the Metropolitan now flourish; the one-story building
at the present angle of Prince Street was occupied by Grant Thorburn's
father; beyond lay the old road leading to Governor Stuyvesant's
Bowerie, with Sandy Hill at the upper end. In 1664, Heere Stras was
changed to Broadway. At the King's Arms and Burr's Coffee-House, near
the Battery, the traitor Arnold was wont to lounge, and in the
neighborhood dwelt the Earl of Stirling's mother. At the corner of
Rector Street was the old Lutheran church frequented by the Palatine
refugees. Beyond or within the Park stood the old Brewery, Pottery,
Bridewell, and Poor-house; relics of an Indian village were often found;
the Drover's Inn, cattle-walk, and pastures marked the straggling
precincts of the town; and on the commons oxen were roasted whole on
holidays, and obnoxious officials hung in effigy. Anon rose the brick
mansions of the Rapelyes, Rhinelanders, Kingslands, Cuttings, Jays,
Bogarts, Depeysters, Duers, Livingstons, Verplancks, Van Rensselaers, De
Lanceys, Van Cortlands, etc.; at first along the "Middle Road," and then
in bystreets from the main thoroughfare down to the rivers; and so,
gradually, the trees and shrubs that made a _rus in urbe_ of the embryo
city, and the gables and tiles, porches and pipes, that marked the
dynasty chronicled by old Diedrich, gave way to palatial warehouses,
magnificent taverns, and brown stone fronts.
The notes of old travellers best revive the scene ere it was lost in
modern improvements. Mrs. Knight, who visited New York in 1704, having
performed the journey from Boston all the way on horseback, enjoyed the
"vendues" at Manhattan, where "they gave drinks"; was surprised to see
"fireplaces that had no jambs" and "bricks of divers colors and laid in
checkers, being glazed and looking very agreeable." The diversion in
vogue was "riding in sleighs about four miles out of town, where they
have a house of entertainment at a place called the Bowery." In 1769 Dr.
Burnaby recognized but two churches, Trinity and St. George, and "went
in an Italian chaise to a turtle feast on the East River." In 1788,
Brissot found that the session of Congress there gave great _éclat_ to
New York, but, with republican indignation, he laments the ravages of
luxury and the English fashions visible in Broadway,--"silks, gauzes,
hats, and borrowed hair;... equipages rare, but elegant." "The men," he
adds, "have more simplicity of dress; they disdain gewgaws; but they
take their revenge in the luxury of the table";--"and luxury," he
observes, "forms a class dangerous to society,--I mean bachelors,--the
expense of women causing matrimony to be dreaded by men." It is curious
to find the French radical of eighty years ago drawing from the life of
Broadway inferences similar to those of the even more emphatic
economical moralist of to-day. In 1794, Wansey, a commercial traveller,
found the "Tontine near the Battery" the most eligible hotel, and met
there Dr. Priestley, breakfasted with Gates, and had a call from
Livingston; saw "some good paintings by Trumbull, at the Federal Hall,"
and Hodgkinson, at the theatre, in "A Bold Stroke for a Husband"; dined
with Comfort Sands; and Mr. Jay, "brother to the Ambassador," took him
to tea at the "Indian Queen";--items of information that mark the social
and political transition since the days of Dutch rule, though the
Battery still remained the court end and nucleus of Manhattan.
But it is not local memory alone that the solitude of Broadway awakens
in our aged guide; the vacant walk is peopled, to his fancy, with
the celebrities of the past whom he has there gazed at or
greeted,--Franklin, Jay, Tom Paine, Schuyler, Cobbett, Freneau, and
Colonel Trumbull, with their Revolutionary prestige; Volney and Genet,
with the memory of French radicalism; Da Ponte and the old Italian
opera; Colles and Clinton and the Erie Canal days; Red Jacket and the
aborigines; Dunlap and Dennie, the literary pioneers; Cooke, Kemble,
Kean, Matthews, and Macready, followed so eagerly by urchin eyes,--the
immortal heroes of the stage; Hamilton, Clinton, Morris, Burr, Gallatin,
and a score of political and civic luminaries whose names have passed
into history; Decatur, Hull, Perry, and the brilliant throng of
victorious naval officers grouped near the old City Hotel; Moreau, Louis
Philippe, Talleyrand, Louis Napoleon, Maroncelli, Foresti, Kossuth,
Garibaldi, and many other illustrious European exiles; Jeffrey, Moore,
Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, and the long line of literary lions, from
Basil Hall to Tupper; Chancellor Kent, Audubon, Fulton, Lafayette,
Randolph, the Prince of Wales, and the Queen of the Sandwich Islands,
Turkish admirals, Japanese officials, artists, statesmen, actors,
soldiers, authors, foreign _savans_, and domestic eccentricities, who
have perambulated this central avenue of a cosmopolitan American city.
Could they have all been photographed, what a reflex of modern society
would such a picture-gallery afford!
The old Dutch traders, with the instinct of their Holland habitudes,
clung to the water-side, and therefore their domiciles long extended at
angles with what subsequently became the principal avenue of the
settlement; and until 1642 Pearl Street was the fashionable quarter.
Meantime, where now thousands of emigrants daily disembark, and the
offices of ocean steamships indicate the facility and frequency of
Transatlantic travel, the Indian chiefs smoked the pipe of peace with
the victorious colonists under the shadow of Fort Amsterdam, and the
latter held fairs there, or gathered, for defence and pastime, round the
little oasis of the metropolitan desert where carmen now read "The Sun."
No. 1 was the Kennedy House, subsequently the tavern of Mrs.
Koch,--whose Dutch husband was an officer in the Indian wars,--and was
successively the head-quarters of Clinton, Cornwallis, and Washington,
and at last the Prime Mansion; and farther up was Mrs. Ryckman's
boarding-house,--genial sojourn of Irving, and the scene of his early
pen-craft and youthful companionships, when "New York was more handy,
and everybody knew everybody, and there was more good-fellowship and
ease of manners." Those were the days of ropewalks and "selectmen," of
stage-coaches and oil-lamps. The Yankee invasion had scarcely superseded
the Knickerbocker element. The Free Academy was undreamed of; and the
City Hotel assemblies were the embryo Fifth Avenue balls. An old
Directory or a volume of Valentine's Manual, compared with the latest
Metropolitan Guide-Book and Trow's last issue, will best illustrate the
difference between Broadway then and now.
But it is not so much the more substantial memorials as the "dissolving
views" that give its peculiar character to the street. Entered at the
lower extremity by the newly-arrived European, on a rainy morning, the
first impression is the reverse of grand or winsome. The squalor of the
docks and the want of altitude in the buildings, combined with the
bustle and hubbub, strike the eye as repulsive; but as the scene grows
familiar and is watched under the various aspects produced by different
seasons, weather, and hours of the day, it becomes more and more
significant and attractive. Indeed, there is probably no street in the
world subject to such violent contrasts. It is one thing on a brilliant
and cool October day and another in July. White cravats and black coats
mark "Anniversary week"; broad brims and drab, the "Yearly Meeting" of
the Friends; the "moving day" of the householders, the "opening day" of
the milliners, Christmas and New Year's, sleighing-time and spring,
early morning and midnight, the Sabbath and week-days, a cold spell and
the "heated term,"--every hour, season, holiday, panic, pastime, and
parade brings into view new figures and phases,--diverse phenomena of
crowd and character,--like the shifting segments of a panorama. The news
of victories during the war for the Union could be read there in
people's eyes and heard in their greetings. Sorrowful tidings seemed to
magnetize with sadness the long procession. Something in the air
foretold the stranger how beat the public pulse. The undercurrent of the
prevalent emotion seems to vibrate, with electric sympathy, along the
human tide.
A walk in Broadway is a most available remedy for "domestic" vexation
and provincial egotism. "Every individual spirit," says Schiller, "waxes
in the great stream of multitudes." Stand awhile calmly by the rushing
stream, and note its representative significance, or stroll slowly
along, with observant eye, to mark the commodities and nationalities by
the way. The scene is an epitome of the world. Here crouches a Chinese
mendicant, there glides an Italian image-vender; a Swedish sailor is
hard pressed by a smoking Cuban, and a Hungarian officer is flanked by a
French loiterer; here leers a wanton, there moans a waif; now passes an
Irish funeral procession, and again long files of Teutonic "Turners";
the wistful eyes of a beggar stare at the piles of gold in the
money-changer's show-window; a sister of charity walks beside a Jewish
Rabbi; then comes a brawny negro, then a bare-legged Highlander; figures
such as are met in the Levant; school-boys with their books and
lunch-boxes, Cockneys fresh from Piccadilly, a student who reminds us of
Berlin, an American Indian, in pantaloons; a gaunt Western, a keen
Yankee, and a broad Dutch physiognomy alternate; flower-venders,
dog-pedlers, diplomates, soldiers, dandies, and vagabonds, pass and
disappear; a firemen's procession, fallen horse, dead-lock of vehicles,
military halt, or menagerie caravan, checks momently the advancing
throng; and some beautiful face or elegant costume looms out of the
confused picture like an exquisite vision; great cubes of lake crystal
glisten in the ice-carts hard by blocks of ebon coal from the forests of
the primeval world; there a letter-carrier threads his way, and here a
newsboy shouts his extra; a milk-cart rattles by, and a walking
advertisement stalks on; here is a fashionable doctor's gig, there a
mammoth express-wagon; a sullen Southerner contrasts with a grinning
Gaul, a darkly-vested bishop with a gayly-attired child, a
daintily-gloved belle with a mud-soiled drunkard; a little shoe-black
and a blind fiddler ply their trades in the shadow of Emmet's obelisk,
and a toy-merchant has Montgomery's mural tablet for a background; on
the fence is a string of favorite ballads and popular songs; a mock
auctioneer shouts from one door, and a silent wax effigy gazes from
another. Pisani, who accompanied Prince Napoleon in his yacht-voyage to
America, calls Broadway a bazaar made up of savagery and civilization, a
mile and a half long; and M. Fisch, a French _pasteur_, was surprised at
the sight of palaces six or seven stories high devoted to commerce and
_les figures fines et gracieuses, la démarche légère et libre des
femmes, les allures vives de toute la population_. The shopkeepers are
urbanely courteous, says one traveller. "Horses and harness are fine,
but equipages inferior," observes another; while a third remarks, after
witnessing the escapade of vehicles in Broadway: "American coachmen are
the most adroit in the world."
It has been said that a Paris _gamin_ would laugh at our _fêtes_; and
yet, if such a loyal custodian as one of the old sacristans we meet
abroad, who has kept a life-vigil in a famous cathedral, or such a
vigilant chronicler as was Dr. Gemmelaro, who for years noted in a diary
the visitors to Ætna, and all the phenomena of the volcano,--_if_ such a
fond sentinel were to have watched, even for less than a century, and
recorded the civic, military, and industrial processions of Broadway,
what a panoramic view we should have of the fortunes, development, and
transitions of New York! The last of the cocked-hats would appear with
the final relics of Dutch and Quaker costume; the celebration of the
opening of the Erie Canal would seem consummated by the festivals that
signalized the introduction of Croton, and the success of the Atlantic
Telegraph; the funeral _cortége_ of Washington would precede that of
scores of patriots and heroes, from Hamilton and Lawrence to John Quincy
Adams and General Wadsworth; Scott would reappear victorious from
Mexico, Kossuth's plumed hat wave again to the crowd, grim Jackson's
white head loom once more to the eager multitude, and Lafayette's
courteous greetings win their cheers; St. Patrick's interminable line of
followers would contrast with the robes and tails of the Japanese,--the
lanterns of a political battalion, with the badges of a masonic
fraternity,--the obsolete uniform of the "Old Continentals," with the
red shirts of the firemen and the miniature banners of a Sunday-school
phalanx,--the gay citizen soldiers who turned out to honor Independence
or Evacuation Day, with the bronzed and maimed veterans bringing home
their bullet-torn flags from the bloody field of a triumphant patriotic
war,--the first negro regiment raised therefor cheerily escorted by the
Union League Club, with the sublime funeral train of the martyred
President. Including party demonstrations, popular ovations, memorable
receptions and obsequies,--Broadway processions, historically speaking,
uniquely illustrate the civic growth, the political freedom, the
cosmopolitan sympathies, and the social prosperity of New York.
The mutations and ameliorations of Broadway are singularly rapid. It is
but a few years since the eye of the passenger therein often caught
sight of pleasant domestic nooks,--bulbs in bloom, a canary, gold-fish,
or a graceful head bent over a book or crochet-work, at the cheerful
window,--where now iron fronts and plate-glass of enormous size proclaim
the prosperous warehouse. One of those sudden and sweeping
conflagrations, which so frequently make a breach in the long line of
edifices, destroyed within a few months the tall white walls of the
American Museum, with its flaring effigies of giants, dwarfs, and
monsters, and its band of musicians in the balcony, so alluring to the
rustic visitor. The picturesque church of St. Thomas and the heavy
granite façade of the Stuyvesant Institute, the "Tabernacle," the
Art-Academy, and the Society Library buildings have given way to palaces
of trade, and been transferred to the indefinitely extensive region of
"up town." Stewart's lofty marble stores redeemed the character of the
east side, long neglected in favor of the more crowded and showy
opposite walk; and his example has been followed by so many other
enterprising capitalists, that the original difference, both of aspect
and prestige, has all but vanished.
Among the most noticeable of the later features are the prevalence of
flower-venders, and the increase of beggars; as well as the luxurious
attractiveness of the leading confectioners' establishments, which, in
true American eclectic style, combine the Parisian café with the London
pastry-cooks and the Continental restaurant,--delectable rendezvous of
women who lunch extravagantly. Another and more refined feature is the
increase of elegant Art stores, where Gerome's latest miracle of
Oriental delineation, a fresh landscape of Auchenbach, or a naive gem by
Frere, is freely exposed to the public eye, beside new and elaborate
engravings, and graphic war-groups of Rogers, or the latest crayon of
Darley, sunset of Church, or rock-study by Haseltine. These free
glimpses of modern Art are indicative of the growing taste for and
interest therein among us. Pictures were never such profitable and
precious merchandise here, and the fortunes of artists are different
from what they were in the days when Cole used to bring his new
landscape to town, deposit it in the house of a friend, and personally
call the attention thereto of the few who cared for such things, and
when the fashionable portrait-painter was the exclusive representative
of the guild in Gotham.
The Astor House was the first of the large hotels on Broadway; and its
erection marks a new era in that favorite kind of enterprise and
entertainment of which Bunker's Mansion House was so long the
comfortable, respectable, and home-like ideal. Yet it is noteworthy that
inns rarely have or keep a representative character with us, but blend
popularity with fashion, as nowhere else. One may be associated with
Rebeldom, another with trade; this be frequented by Eastern, and that by
Western travellers; and nationalities may be identified with certain
resorts. But the tendency is towards the eclectic and homogeneous;
individuality not less than domesticity is trenched upon and fused in
these extravagant caravanseries; and there is no fact more
characteristic of the material luxury and gregarious standard of New
York life, than that the only temple erected to her patron saint is a
marble tavern!
Broadway has always had its eccentric or notable _habitués_. The Muse of
Halleck, in her palmy days, immortalized not a few; and many persons
still recall the "crazy poet Clarke," the "Lime-Kiln man," the courteous
and venerable Toussaint,--New York's best "image of God carved in
ebony,"--tall "gentleman George" Barrett, and a host of "familiar faces"
associated with local fame or social traits. The representative clergy,
physicians, lawyers, merchants, editors, politicians, bards, and
beauties, "men about town," and actors, were there identified, saluted,
and observed; and of all these, few seemed so appropriately there as the
last; for often there was and is a melodramatic aspect and association
in the scene, and Burton, Placide, or the elder Wallack walked there
with a kind of professional self-complacency. Thackeray, who had a quick
and trained eye for the characteristic in cities, delighted in Broadway,
for its cheerful variety, its perpetual "comedy of life"; the
significance whereof is only more apparent to the sympathetic observer,
because now and then through the eager throng glides the funeral car to
the sound of muffled drums, the "Black Maria" with its convict load, or
the curtained hospital litter with its dumb and maimed burden. And then,
to the practised frequenter, how, one by one, endeared figures and faces
disappear from that diurnal stage! It seems but yesterday since we met
there Dr. Francis's cheering salutation, or listened to Dr. Bethune's
and Fenno Hoffman's genial and John Stephens's truthful talk,--watched
General Scott's stalwart form, Dr. Kane's lithe frame, Cooper's
self-reliant step, Peter Parley's juvenile cheerfulness,--and grasped
Henry Inman's cordial hand, or listened to Irving's humorous
reminiscence, and met the benign smile of dear old Clement Moore. As to
fairer faces and more delicate shapes,--to encounter which was the
crowning joy of our promenade,--and "cheeks grown holy with the lapse of
years," memory holds them too sacred for comment. "Passing away" is the
perpetual refrain in the chorus of humanity in this bustling
thoroughfare, to the sober eye of maturity. The never-ending procession,
to the sensitive and the observant, has also infinite degrees of
language. Some faces seem to welcome, others to defy, some to lower, and
some to brighten, many to ignore, a few to challenge or charm,--as we
pass. And what lessons of fortune and of character are written
thereon,--the blush of innocence and the hardihood of recklessness, the
candid grace of honor and the mean deprecatory glance of knavery,
intelligence and stupidity, soulfulness and vanity, the glad smile of
friendship, the shrinking eye of fallen fortune, the dubious recognition
of disgrace, the effrontery of the adventurer, and the calm, pleasant
bearing of rectitude,--all that is beautiful and base in humanity,
gleams, glances, and disappears as the crowd pass on.
Richard Cobden, when in New York, was caught and long detained in a mesh
of drays and carriages in Broadway, and he remarked that the absence of
passionate profanity among the carmen and drivers, and the good-natured
patience they manifested, were in striking contrast with the blasphemous
violence exhibited in London under like circumstances; and he attributed
it to the greater self-respect bred in this class of men here by the
prospect and purpose of a higher vocation. It is curious to observe how
professional are the impressions and observations of Broadway
pedestrians. Walk there with a portrait-painter, and he will infer
character or discover subjects of art in every salient physiognomy. The
disparities of fortune and the signs of depravity will impress the
moralist. The pictorial effects, the adventurous possibilities, the
enterprise, care, or pastime of the scene, elicit comments in accordance
with the idiosyncrasies or aptitudes of the observer. What gradations of
greeting, from the curt recognition to the hilarious salute! What
variety of attraction and repulsion, according as your acquaintance is a
bore or a beauty, a benefactor or a bankrupt! The natural language of
"affairs," however, is the predominant expression. From the days of Rip
Van Dam to those of John Pintard, it is as a commercial city that New
York has drawn both her rural and foreign population. And her chief
thoroughfare retains the distinctive aspect thereof, as the extension of
the city has eliminated therefrom all other social elements,--fashion
being transferred to the Fifth Avenue, indigence to the Five Points, and
equipages to the Central Park. Police reports abound with the ruses and
roughnesses of metropolitan life, as developed in the most frequented
streets, where rogues seek safety in crowds. A rheumatic friend of ours
dropped a guinea in the Strand, and, being unable to stoop, placed his
foot upon the coin, and waited and watched for the right man to ask to
pick it up for him. He was astonished at the difficulty of the choice.
One passer was too elegant, another too abstracted, one looked
dishonest, and another haughty. At last he saw approaching a serious,
kindly-looking, middle-aged loiterer, with a rusty black suit and white
cravat,--apparently a poor curate taking his "constitutional." Our
friend explained his dilemma, and was assured, in the most courteous
terms, that the stranger would accommodate him with pleasure. Very
deliberately the latter picked up the guinea, wiped it carefully on his
coat-sleeve, and transferred it to his vest-pocket,--walking off with a
cheerful nod. Indignant at the trick, the invalid called out "Stop,
thief!" The rascal was chased and caught, and, when taken to the police
office, proved to be Bristol Bill,--one of the most notorious and
evasive burglars in London. Many like instances of false pretences are
traditional in Broadway,--where there are sometimes visible scenic
personages, like a quack doctor whose costume and bearing were borrowed
from Don Pasquale, and Dr. Knickerbocker in the elegant and obselete
breeches, buckles, and cocked hat of the olden time.
A peculiar hardihood and local wit are claimed for what are called the
B'hoys. A cockney, in pursuit of knowledge under difficulties, was
walking up Broadway with the hospitable citizen to whose guidance he
had been specially commended by a London correspondent.
"I want," said the stranger, "to see a b'hoy,--a real b'hoy."
"There's one," replied his companion, pointing to a strapping fellow, in
a red shirt and crush hat, waiting for a job at the corner.
"Ah, how curious!" replied John Bull, examining this new species with
his double eye-glass,--"very curious; I never saw a real b'hoy before. I
should like to hear him speak."
"Then, why don't you talk to him?"
"I don't know what to say."
"Ask him the way to Laight Street."
The inquisitive traveller crossed the street, and, deferentially
approaching the new genus, lisped, "Ha--ah--how d' do, ha? I want to go
to Laight Street."
"Then why in hell don't you go?" loudly and gruffly asks the b'hoy.
Cockney nervously rejoined his friend, saying,--"Very curious, the
Broadway b'hoys!"
To realize the extent and character of the Celtic element in our
population, walk down this thronged avenue on a holiday, when the Irish
crowd the sidewalks, waiting for a pageant; and all you have ever read
or dreamed of savagery will gleam, with latent fire, from those myriads
of sullen or daredevil eyes, and lurk in the wild tones of those
unchastened voices, as the untidy or gaudily dressed and interminable
line of expectants, flushed with alcohol, yield surlily to the backward
wave of the policeman's baton. The materials of riot in the heart of the
vast and populous city then strike one with terror. We see the worst
elements of European life cast upon our shore, and impending, as it
were, like a huge wave, over the peacefulness and prosperity of the
nation. The corruptions of New York local government are explained at a
glance. The reason why even patriotic citizens shrink from the primary
meetings whence spring the practical issues of municipal rule is easily
understood; and the absolute necessity of a reform in the legislative
machinery, whereby property and character may find adequate
representation, is brought home to the most careless observer of
Broadway phenomena. But it is when threading the normal procession
therein that distrust wanes, in view of so much that is hopeful in
enterprise and education, and auspicious in social intelligence and
sympathy. It may be that on one of our bright and balmy days of early
spring, or on a cool and radiant autumnal afternoon, you behold, in your
walk from Union Square to the Battery, an eminent representative of each
function and phase of high civilization;--wealth vested in real estate
in the person of an Astor, peerless nautical architecture in a Webb; the
alert step and venerable head of the poet of nature, as Bryant glides
by, and the still bright eye of the poet of patriotism and wit, as
Halleck greets you with the zest of a rural visitor refreshed by the
sight of "old, familiar faces"; anon comes Bancroft, a chronicler of
America's past, yet moving sympathetically through living history the
while; Verplanck, the Knickerbocker Nestor, and the gentlemen of the old
school represented by Irving's old friend, the companionable and
courteous Governor Kemble; pensive, olive-cheeked, sad-eyed Hamlet, in
the person of Edwin Booth, our native histrionic genius; Vandyke-looking
Charles Elliot, the portrait-painter; Paez, the exiled South American
general; Farragut, the naval hero; Hancock, Hooker, Barlow, or some
other gallant army officer,--volunteer heroes, maimed veterans of the
Union war; merchants, whose names are synonymous with beneficence and
integrity; artists, whose landscapes have revealed the loveliness of
this hemisphere to the Old World; women who lend grace to society and
feed the poor; men of science, who alleviate, and of literature, who
console, the sorrows of humanity; the stanch in friendship, the loyal in
national sentiment, the indomitable in duty, the exemplary in Christian
faith, the tender and true in domestic life,--the redeeming and
recuperative elements of civic society.
* * * * *
MY HEATHEN AT HOME.
Kicking my "Dutch wife,"[3] that comfortable Batavian device, to the
foot of the bed, and turning over with a delicious stretch just as day
began to dawn, I opened my eyes with a drowsy sense of refreshing
favor,--a half-dream, mixed of burning and breeze,--and discovered old
Karlee, my pearl of bhearers,[4] waiting in still patience on the
outside of the tent-like mosquito curtain, punka in hand, and tenderly
waving a balmy blessing across the sirocco-plagued sand of my slumber.
"Good morning, Karlee."
"_Salaam, Sahib-bhote-bhote salaam!_[5] Master catch plenty good isleep
this night, Karlee hope."
"So, so,--so, so. But you look happy this morning; your eyes are bright,
and your kummerbund[6] jaunty, and you sport a new turban. What's the
good news, old man?"
"Yes, Sahib. Large joy Karlee have got,--happy _kismut_,[7]--too much
jolly good luck, master, please."
"Aha! I'm glad of it. None too jolly for my patient Karlee, I'll
engage,--not a whit too happy and proud for my faithful, grateful,
humble old man. And what is it?"
"By master's favor, one man-child have got; one fine son he come this
night, please master's graciousness."
"A son--your wife!--what, you, Karlee, _you_?"
"Please master's pardon, no,--Karlee wife, no; Karlee daughter, Karlee
ison-in-law, one man-child have catch this night, by Sahib's merciful
goodness."
"So! your daughter and her husband, the young kitmudgar,[8] they that
were married last year. Good! let us exalt our horn, let us glorify
ourselves; for is it not written, 'By a son a man shall obtain victory
over all people; by a son's son he shall enjoy immortality; and by a
son's son's son he shall reach the solar abodes'? Verily it is pleasant
to have a boy-butcha in the house,--the heir and lord. So we will even
make merry to-day; to-day we will take holiday. Let the buttons wait,
and the beard go awry; send the barber away, and tell the tailor to come
to-morrow; for one day Sahib, the master of earth, abdicates in favor of
_Puttro_, the 'Deliverer from Hell,' the true king for every pious
Hindoo. And here are some rupees to buy him a happy horoscope with, and
to pay the _gooroo_[9] for a good strong charm, warranted to avert the
Evil Eye."
"Ah! Master's bountiful favor too much compassion have,--too much
pitiful munif--"
"That's all right, old man. Salaam now; and good luck to the baby."
Now here, thought I, is a chance to observe my pagan at home, under the
most favorable circumstances. Karlee will devote the occasion to the
domestic felicities; he will spread holiday fare, and there will be
neighborly congratulations, and a hospitable relaxation in the family of
the orthodox heathen rigor. I will make a "surprise party" of myself,
and on the recommendation of a string of corals for the new butcha I'll
catch him in the very dishabille of his Hindooism. And I did.
* * * * *
I had often heard that Karlee lived well, and that his household enjoyed
substantial comfort in a degree notably superior to the general
circumstances of his class. With eminent intelligence and devotion he
had served for more than forty years various American gentlemen residing
in Calcutta, by whom, in his neat-handedness, he was esteemed a sort of
he-Phillis; and for his housewifely dusting of books and furniture, his
orderly keeping of drawers and trunks, his sharp eye to punkas and
mosquito-nets, and his exacting discipline of sweepers and messengers,
barbers, tailors, and washermen, he had been rewarded with generous
buksheesh over and above his stipulated, wages, which were liberal; so
that among bhearers he was distinguished for respectability, by income
as well as influence, and represented the best society. Between his own
savings and those of his wife,--who, as an _ayah_, or nurse, in an
English family high in the Civil Service, was extravagantly prized for
her fidelity, skill, and patience,--Karlee had laid up a little fortune
of ten thousand rupees; but that was partly by dint of a clever
speculation now and then in curiosities and choice presents, which he
disposed of among those of his American or English patrons who happened
to be homeward bound. As it is not permitted to a bhearer to engage
directly in trade, these neat little transactions were in all cases
shrewdly managed by a friend of Karlee's, a smart _sircar_,[10] in the
employ of a _banyan_,[11] the bhearer resting strictly in the
background, a silent partner, and limiting his co-operation to the
prompt furnishing of capital, which consisted not of rupees merely, but
of many a cunning hint as well, as to the tastes, ways, and weaknesses
of his customers. It was a mutual understanding: we knew of Karlee's
interest in these sentimental "operations," and we openly patronized
him; he knew which of us had wives, and which sweethearts, across the
black water, and he mysteriously patronized us. On that subject my
heathen was always at home; and so it happened, by a happy dispensation
of cause and effect, that at home he lived like a gentleman.
Through narrow, dingy miles of scrambling bazaar, redolent of all the
unfragrances of that dusty, sweaty, greasy, jabbering quarter, I rolled
in my light buggy, behind a nimble Arab mare, to a suburban retreat on
the eastern skirt of the Black Town, where, just beyond a cluster of
mean huts of the _sooa-logue_, the low laboring rabble, I found Karlee's
genteel abode, and was refreshed by the contrast it presented to the
hovel of his next neighbor, whose single windowless apartment, and walls
of alternate rows of straw and reeds, plastered with mud, proclaimed
most unpicturesquely the hard fate of him who springs from the soles of
Brahma's feet. Karlee's walls were of solid clay of substantial
thickness. His floor was raised a foot or two above the ground, and
there was a neatly thatched roof over all, swelling out in an elongated
dome, and oddly resembling an inverted boat. As in the rural districts,
Karlee had fenced in his privacy with a thick hedge of clipped bamboo
surmounting a quadrangular embankment. Before the grateful porch two
beautiful tamarind-trees and a palm bestowed their kindly shade, and in
the hedge the bamboos, with their golden stems and bright green leaves,
rustled cheerfully.
On the other side of the road, and shyly retired from it in a close
bamboo covert, dwelt Karlee's partner in the curiosity and general fancy
line, the sharp sircar, with whom (both being _soodras_,[12] and of the
same sect) his social relations were intimate and free. The sircar,
having thriven under the patronage of more than one rich and liberal
_baboo_,[13] to whose favor he had recommended himself by his business
alertness and his ever-politic compliance, had attained unto the honor
of a brick house of two stories, plastered and whitewashed without and
within, with a flat roof, having a low parapet, and laid with a
rain-proof composition of clay and lime. Though his stairs are narrow,
his veranda is commodious; and when he shall have made his fortune in
the curiosity and general fancy line, he will have wings, with a
central area open to the sky, and a double veranda with a lattice. Then,
his accommodations being sufficiently enlarged, the proudest wish of his
heart shall be gratified in the reunion of his entire family--children
and grandchildren, even uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces--under the
same roof.
As I drove up to Karlee's hedge, and, tossing the reins to my
_syce_,[14] passed under the tamarind-trees to the little porch, the old
man came out to meet me with unwonted precipitation; and, although he
maintained with admirable presence of mind that imperturbable gravity,
that tranquil, expectant self-possession, which is the study of a
Hindoo's life, and to which he gives all his mind from the time when he
first begins to have any, ever solicitous to be master of himself though
China fall, it was not difficult on this occasion to detect in the
fluttering lights and shades of his countenance an expression mixed of
astonishment, gratification, and confusion, very natural to a poor
bhearer who had never before been taken by a Sahib in the very bosom of
his family. There was something at once pitiful and comical in the
subdued "fidget" with which, applying his joined palms to his forehead,
and lowly louting, he made his most obsequious salaam again and again.
"Master have command for Karlee? Any wrong thing happen, master?
_Dhobee_[15] come? _Mehtur_[16] not sweep room? _Punka-wallah_[17] run
away? Sahibs make visit? _Kitmudgar_ not--"
"No, no; everything all right and proper. I have come to bring good
wishes and a lucky eye to all this house, and a small _salaamee_, a
pretty gift, for the new _Suntoshum_,--the jewel that hangs on its
mother's bosom."
"Ah! master make slave too much happy honor. Master's pitiful
graciousness all same _Barra Lard Sahib_" (the Governor-General). "Poor,
foolish bhearer kiss master's feet."
"Well, another time for that. Lead the way now, and let me make my
salaam to your coolest mat and your largest punka, for I am hot and
tired."
"S'pose Sahib like, _Belatta pawnee_ have got?"
"_Acha; Belatta pawnee lou_."[18]
Here, indeed, was a wide stride in the direction of refinement and
Evangelism! Soda-water in a bhearer's house! Karlee had not served the
Sahibs, and observed "Young Bengal" baboos, in vain. From _Belatta
pawnee_ to Isherryshrob and Simpkin (sherry and champagne) is not far,
and well does Young Bengal know the way.
A quick glance, as I passed in, informed me that Karlee's house
consisted of four rooms; probably two sleeping apartments, one for the
men and another for the women, a kitchen, and a common room for meals,
family chats, and visitors. Like all true Hindoo houses, uncorrupted by
the European innovations which snobbish baboos affect, it contained but
few articles of furniture, and those of the simplest and most
indispensable description,--nothing for luxury, nothing for show. To the
outfit of the poorest laborer's domicile he added little more than a
white cloth spread over checkered Chinese matting, to stand for chair,
table, and bed; a cushion or two to recline upon; a few earthen vessels
of the better quality, to hold rice or water; a brass lamp for cocoa-nut
oil; several more primitive lamps rudely made of the shell of the
cocoa-nut; an iron mortar and pestle--foreign, of course--for pounding
curry; a couple of _charpoys_, or wooden cots; a few brass _lotahs_, or
drinking-cups; and two or three hubble-bubbles. But the crowning glories
were a Chinese extension chair, of bamboo and wicker, and quite a pretty
hookah,--both evidently dedicated to company occasions. These were all
that I could see in the two rooms to which I was admitted, and these
were no doubt the very splendors of Karlee's establishment. If he had
been a rich Anglicized baboo, he would have had a profusion of hot,
tawdry chairs, and a vulgar-gorgeous cramming of gilt-edged tables,
sweaty red sofas, coarse pictures in overdone frames, Bowery mirrors,
and Brummagem chandeliers.
Comfortably installed in the Chinese chair, and refreshed with the
Belatta pawnee, I proceeded to take notes. Karlee had discarded his
working dress for festal attire,--the difference being one of quality
merely. Round his waist he wore a _dhotee_ of coarse muslin, tight
above, so as to form the _kummerbund_, or waistband, but thence falling
in loose and not ungraceful folds down the legs to the ankles. Over his
body another ample mantle, in no respect differing from the _dhotee_ as
to texture or color, was wrapped like a broad scarf, and carelessly
flung over the shoulder in the fashion of a Highland plaid. In the
"cold" season he would draw this over his head for a hood. These sheets
of cloth are worn just as they come from the loom; needle or pin has
never touched them, and they are held in place by tucking the ends under
the folds.