Before the Revolution
When William Bradford came to New York, in 1693, the town had grown so
large that it must needs have a night-watch--four men who each carried
a lantern, and who, strolling through the quiet streets, proclaimed at
the start of each hour that the weather was fair, or that the weather
was foul, and told beside that all was as well as it should be in
those nightly hours. More than this, the town went a step farther
towards the making of a metropolis, and lit the streets by night
(whether for the benefit of the night-watch or for some other the
records say not), by placing on a pole projecting from each seventh
house a lantern with a candle in it.
Pilgrims who year after year seek out the shrines that are connected
in one way or another with the literature of the city have worn a path
plain to be seen along the stone pavement about Trinity Church, a path
leading straight to a bit of greensward where, beside a gravel walk,
is the tomb of William Bradford. Although Bradford made slight
pretence of being a man of letters, he is remembered as one who loved
to foster literature. And, there being little enough left to recall
the writings of the seventeenth century, this tombstone has its many
visitors. The pilgrims who find their way to it have but half
completed their journey. If they leave the churchyard and stray on,
not going by way of crowded Wall Street, which would be the direct
course, but taking one of the more winding and narrow streets to the
south, they will come after a time to a thoroughfare where the
structure of the Elevated Road forms a bridge to convey heavy trains
that hurry past, stirring the air with constant vibration. In this
street, dark even when the sun shines brightest, is another reminder
of William Bradford,--a tablet in form, but quite as much a tombstone
as the other; for its brazen letters tell in true epitaph how he lived
here two hundred years gone by, and how here on this spot he set up
the first printing-press in the colony, and that here he did the
public printing, as well as such books and psalms, tracts and
almanacs, and such like things as he had time for. These were all
queer, rough-lettered, black-lined pamphlets, and none was more quaint
than John Clapp's _Almanac_, the first which came from the press and
the first written in the city.
John Clapp had time without end to write this almanac, and yet no one
ever knew just when he did it. He was the keeper of the inn in the
Bouwerie Village, and, having more idle moments than busy ones, he
spent most of his time on the broad stoop of the inn, pipe in mouth,
looking first at the house where Peter Stuyvesant had lived, then at
the dusty road leading away up country towards the King's Bridge in
one direction, and down country towards the town. But write it he did,
and Bradford printed it, and John Clapp was shrewd enough to advertise
himself well by writing in his Table of Contents concerning his
tavern:
It is two miles from the city, and is generally the baiting
place where gentlemen take leave of their friends, and where
a parting glass or two of generous wine
If well applied makes dull horses feel
One spur in the head is worth two in the heel.
Again, in a Chronological Table, under the June date, he made the
interesting announcement:
The 24th of this month is celebrated the feast of St. John
the Baptist, in commemoration of which (and to keep up a
happy union and lasting friendship by the sweet harmony of
good society) a feast is held by the _Johns_ of this city,
at John Clapp's in the Bouwerie, where any gentleman whose
name is John may find a hearty welcome to join in concert
with his namesakes.
In response to this there came such a large gathering as would make it
seem that all the townsmen had been baptized by one name.
It was by an odd slip that the only important book planned and partly
written in these last years of the seventeenth century was not printed
by Bradford. More than once had the Episcopal minister, the Rev. John
Miller, talked with this first printer of his plan for a history of
the colony which he was then writing. This would have been carried
out, beyond all doubt, if the clergyman had not just then decided to
go to England to settle some troublesome Church matters, taking his
history with him. As ill-fortune would have it, the ship in which he
sailed was captured by the French,--France then being at war with
England,--and rather than have the slightest bit of information
conveyed to the enemy through his means, the clergyman tossed the
precious pages into the sea. In the course of time, released by the
French, he reached England, and there rewrote the history from memory,
and drew for it a quaint map of the town as he had known it. Having
done so much he died, leaving his work to lie for more than a century
and a quarter unpublished, until, in 1843, a London bookseller put it
into print. The original, being sold again passed through several
hands until it finally found a resting-place in the British Museum,
where it is now preserved.
[Illustration: BROAD STREET, 1642.]
The early days of the eighteenth century saw the fitting out of the
first library to which the townsmen had general access--a library that
in the next fifty years was to change from the private property of the
Rev. John Sharpe into the Corporation Library, and later be chartered
as the Society Library, under which title it was to live to grow
richer and richer in literary treasures until it came to be called the
oldest library in America in the days when the city had grown far
beyond any bounds then thought of. In the first days of its existence,
the library occupied tiny quarters, quite large enough for all the
books it contained, in a room in the City Hall. This was not in the
old Stadt Huys of the Dutch by the waterside, for that was gone now,
but in a pretentious building facing the "broad street" that had been
made by the filling up of the Heere Graft of old. Other buildings
were set up at this same time. There was the new French Huguenot
church which had been in Petticoat Lane and was now rebuilt in the
newly laid-out street below the Maiden's Lane, called Pine Street from
the pine-trees there. Then there was the church called Trinity. Though
it, too, was a new church, the ground on which it stood had a history
that harked back to the very earliest Dutch times. For it was upon the
lower edge of the Annetje Jans Farm, the strip of land above the city
to the west which had been given to the husband of Annetje Jans far
back in the year 1635; that had been linked with another farm by
Governor Lovelace to make the Duke's Farm; and had become the King's
Farm when the duke after whom it was named became a king. And then, it
having become the Queen's Farm (and Queen Anne graciously presenting
it in the year 1703 to Trinity Church for all time), it took the last
name that it was to have and became the Church Farm--a name that was
to cling to it after every vestige of country green had disappeared
from its surface, and when houses had been set upon it as thick as the
stalks of grain that once ripened upon its rolling bosom.
[Illustration: "The Church called Trinity"]
The library in the City Hall was yet quite a new thing, the church
called Trinity had stood on the historic ground but a few years, the
French church was barely completed, and the town was so sprightly and
full of activity that 't is small wonder Madame Sarah Knight, coming
at such a time, should find much to wonder at and to write about. Her
coming marks another advance in literary New York, for Madame Knight
was a bookish woman come from far-off Boston town, and was a teacher
well versed in the "art of composition." She found all quite different
as compared with her own Massachusetts, where her father had been
sentenced to stand for two hours in the stocks, his conduct having
been found "lewd and unseemly" when, on a Sabbath day, after an
absence of three years, he had kissed his wife when she met him at his
own door-step! No wonder Madame Knight thought New York society quite
gay and reckless, for at this time Lord Cornbury governed, and he had
an odd fancy for wearing women's clothing indoors for his own
delectation and to the amusement of the citizens as he walked the
walls of the fort. Though Madame Knight met many persons of quality
and witnessed many interesting scenes, had her visit in the city been
extended, say for half a dozen years, until the coming of Governor
Robert Hunter, she would have met a man truly in full accord with her
ideas and tastes.
Had Governor Hunter's hopes been fulfilled there might have been a far
different writing of literary history. He came from England in the
summer of 1710, from the midst of a busy and troublous life, seeing
before him in imagination quiet and peaceful years with the wife he
cherished, and a career which should be helped on by his
correspondence with his English friends, Dean Swift, Richard Steele,
Joseph Addison, and some others. It would be an ideal life; he had
planned it well. But the repose he sought he scarce for an hour
realized. Undreamed-of turmoil kept him in a whirl of unsettledness.
And though the wife of his heart stood by his side, and he gained
comfort from knowing that nothing could turn her away, differences
with the Government at home, which refused to reimburse him for money
spent; wrangling with the Assembly, which refused money for the
conduct of affairs in the colony; the uprising of negro slaves; the
turbulent actions of unfriendly Indians--these things and others left
him never an hour for the work he had planned. It was a note of
despair that he sounded when he wrote to Swift across the sea:
This is the finest air to live upon in the universe, and if
our trees and birds could speak and our Assemblymen be
silent, the finest conversation also. The soil bears all
things, but not for me.... In a word, and to be serious, I
have spent my time here in such torment and vexation that
nothing hereafter in life can ever make amends for it.
Still, for all this, he found time for some writing, especially for a
play, the one called _Androborus_--The Man-eater,--in which he wrote
in such a bantering, humorous, satirical manner of the colonial
officers as to set the town going with laughter. From this on he got
along better and the people came to appreciate their Governor.
Gradually there centred about the house in the fort a "Court Circle,"
where the Lady Hunter shone brightly, not alone because she was the
first lady of the province, nor because her husband was Governor and a
writer, but because others came to know her as a loving, lovely, and
lovable woman. But when it looked as though the Governor was to have
at last the ease and rest and quiet he had hoped for from the
beginning, Lady Hunter died! This was the worst that could happen to
Robert Hunter. There was nothing more for him to live and struggle
for, he said. He resigned his office and, before many years, his life.
At this time of the "Court Circle," a mild, quiet man, the son of a
Presbyterian minister, came from Philadelphia to visit the Governor.
And no one could foresee that this Cadwallader Colden would remain
during the rest of his life and be, for almost half a century, the
leader of literary New York.
Colden came to be a friend of William Bradford, as he had been of
Hunter, and watched his work with deep interest. He often advised
Bradford when that first printer of New York published the _New York
Gazette_, in 1725, the first newspaper in the city, and upheld him a
few years later when the second newspaper was issued by Bradford's old
apprentice boy, Peter Zenger, who had become his rival.
In the first ten years that Colden lived in New York he wrote
diligently, and published his _History of the Five Nations_, an
exhaustive work telling of the powerful Indian tribes, of their forms
of government, and their wars. This was one of the earliest books of
importance, and he was planning a second part of this same history
when, in the year 1732, Cosby came to be Governor. In after years
Colden told how his studies and his writings were interrupted by the
coming of the new and lively Governor.
[Illustration:
Numb. 425
THE
New-York Gazette,
From _December_ 10, to Monday, _December_ 17, 1733.]
And now it seemed as though there were to be dissensions in the city.
There was trouble with the Governor; trouble with Peter Zenger, who
wished to print what the king's representatives did not want printed;
trouble about who should be Chief Justice. But when these were
straightened out there began a season of festivity, and during one
entire winter there were entertainments at which the culture, the
refinement, and the wit of the province gathered. These were days of
splendor, when women wore gay brocades and arranged their hair in a
variety of bewildering, towering, and fantastic shapes; when wide
skirts were in the heyday of their fashion; when tight-lacing was in
vogue; when men wore enormous wigs, and attired themselves in many
colors, adorning themselves with buttons of silver--large, and
decorated with the initials of the wearer.
In the height of this brilliant season there came from England, to
visit the Governor's family, Lord Augustus Fitzroy, son of that Duke
of Grafton who was Chamberlain to King George II. He was received with
all the ceremony due to his rank. The Mayor, the Recorder, and some
other city officials met, and presented to him the freedom of the city
in a box of burnished gold. Soon Lord Augustus had made himself so
vastly agreeable to one of the daughters of Governor Cosby that there
was talk of a marriage. But everybody agreed that this could not be,
for the match was beneath him, according to the ideas of English
society. Still, the young man was determined, the young woman was
inclined, and the Governor's wife was a strategist. So one mild
summer's night the young nobleman, resplendent in gay clothes, with a
couple of his friends, assisted Dominie Campbell over the fort wall,
where they found the young woman waiting, and there in the silence and
the darkness the marriage occurred. There was some stern talk of what
ought to be done to Dominie Campbell, and wonderment as to what the
Duke of Grafton would say, but nothing serious came of it, although
the romantic wedding was the talk of the town for many a year.
Cadwallader Colden lived down by the waterside near the fort wall over
which Dominie Campbell was dragged. And in his house there, when
Cosby's rule quieted down, Colden got to his studies again. He lived
until the days of the Revolution were at hand; lived to exercise the
duties of Governor in a stormy period; lived to see the town rent by
turmoil and political rancor; lived to be hated by many people for
loyalty to a king they would no longer serve. Quite to the end of
his life he remained a leader, and, dying, left writings on history,
medicine, geology, botany, metaphysics, and other learned subjects.
[Illustration: KING'S COLLEGE, ABOUT 1773.]
It was in this midway time between the days of Cosby and the period of
the Revolution that William Smith lived and wrote. Not so marked a
figure in literature as Colden, nor so profound a student; not one to
leave so strong and lasting an imprint, but well to be remembered as a
writer whose birthplace was New York. Born in the year after Colden
published his _History of the Five Nations_, he attained a high place
as a lawyer, giving his attention to the political and legal records.
When still a young man he was one of those who spoke at the ceremony
of the laying of the corner-stone of King's College--which was to be
in existence a century and a half later as Columbia University. For
many years he lived close by Colden and intercourse would have led to
mutual good, but the two were not friendly after Smith wrote a history
of the city and Colden criticised it.
Although William Smith was one of the earliest writers to own New York
as his birthplace, he would not join in a revolt against the king whom
he had served all his life. So he accepted the post of Chief Justice
of Canada, leaving others to become the writers of the Revolution.