In the Days of Thomas Paine
When the eighteenth century was within two years of its close, a group
of men, perhaps half a dozen in all, made up the writers of New York.
The city then lay between the park (a name that had just been bestowed
upon the Common of old) and the Battery; with Broadway, the main
thoroughfare of the town, sending out tendrils of narrow streets to
tangle and turn about themselves in such persistent fashion that they
were never to be straightened out. Quite abruptly, where the park
began, Broadway dwindled from a street to a lane, but with a strong
branch thoroughfare to the east which, with the advent of years, was
to become Park Row. It was not a new thoroughfare by any means, since,
as far back as the days of the Dutch Governors, it had been the one
road that led up through the forested island.
There faced the road, and so quite of necessity faced the park as
well, a square building, its front so taken up with windows and doors
as to cause wonder that there should be any pretence whatsoever of a
front wall. Not an attractive building, with these many windows always
staring, like eyes, across the road into the park, but one to be
remembered because, for one reason or another, it could well be called
the literary centre of the town. Here it stood, the first Park
Theatre, towering above its neighbors, glistening in its newness.
[Illustration: The Corner Stone of the Park Theatre
The corner stone of
this Theatre was laid
on the 5th day of May
AD 1795
Jacob Morton }
Wm. Henderson } Commissioners
Carlile Pollock }
Lewis Hallem }
John Hodgkinson } managers]
It was rare in the days when the Park Theatre was new, just as it is
rare nowadays, for writers to be of a practical turn of mind. But in
this little group, oddly enough, there was one man of business. He was
the proprietor of the theatre, and although he wrote plays, and
painted pictures, and wrote books, William Dunlap was a man of
affairs. His home was around the corner in quiet Ann Street, which in
another hundred years came to be a very noisy street indeed, crowded
with venders of every sort of odds and ends that can be imagined. A
block away, around another corner in Beekman Street, on the south side
below Nassau, was Dunlap's home when he had given up the theatre,
settled down to literature, and got to writing his important books,
the _American Theatre_ and the _History, Rise, and Progress of the
Arts of Design in the United States_. While he was yet managing the
theatre, Dunlap's favorite strolling-place was up along the parkside,
past the Brick Church, and so on a few steps across Nassau Street to
where Spruce Street has its start. On any pleasant afternoon he could
be found standing on that corner, for a time at least, before the
door of Martling's Tavern, where the Tammany Society had its first
home. Looking at that first Wigwam after this lapse of time, it seems
picturesque enough, and it must in truth have been so, for the enemies
of the Tammany Society were in the habit of referring to it as the
"Pig-pen." A frame building, low, rough, and unpainted, with a
bar-room at one end, a kitchen at the other, and between the two a
"long room," some steps lower than the general floor,--that was
Martling's.
[Illustration: THE FIRST TAMMANY WIGWAM, CORNER NASSAU AND SPRUCE
STREETS.]
In the tap-room at Martling's, after an evening in which the untimely
death of George Frederick Cooke had been discussed, Dunlap announced
his intention of writing a life of his actor-friend, who then lay in a
new-made grave in St. Paul's Churchyard. The book was written, and
though few remember the volume now, it was widely read and served to
keep alive the actor's memory. Since that time the grave has been
cared for, and the marble tombstone, later erected by Edmund Kean,
still stands amid the bushes close by the entrance door of the Chapel.
It was in the year 1810 that Cooke played at the Park Theatre, the
first foreign "star" to come to the city and to attract the
townspeople in such wise that they almost mobbed the playhouse in
their efforts to see him. It was this same Cooke, who, hearing many
speak of a young actor who had played there the year before, said, "I
should have liked to have seen this Payne of yours." Cooke saw him the
next year, and they appeared together in this same Park Theatre, Payne
playing Edgar to Cooke's Lear.
The name of John Howard Payne did not then have the significance that
it came to have later. For he was known only as a youth who had acted
Norval in the tragedy of _Douglas_ with such fiery earnestness as to
be proclaimed the "Young American Roscius." Who could have foreseen
that adventurous "boy actor" grown to manhood, and writing a song that
was to live and be known the world over by reason of its appeal to all
hearts?
In Pearl Street, scarce a foot of which is left untrod by the
footsteps of the writers of the city, Payne was born. Around the
modest house that bore the number 33, near to Whitehall Street, he
first toddled with baby steps, and the nearby "broad" street, where
the canal had been, was his first journey when he could walk. His
parents moved to East Hampton, on Long Island, so early in his
childhood, and so many of his childish days were passed in the fields
there while his father taught school in the Clinton Academy, that
East Hampton is often spoken of as the place of his birth. But for all
that the "lowly thatched cottage" of his song was there, and for all
that much of his later life was passed in foreign countries, Payne
loved the city of his birth and took occasion many times to say so.
In London, when ill-luck bore hardest upon him, he wrote _Clari, the
Maid of Milan_, and gave _Home, Sweet Home_ to the heroine as her
principal song. He received the honors of New York when he returned
for a brief period, twenty-two years after his boyish triumph at the
Park Theatre, and was so affectionately remembered that when, a decade
later, he died in far-away Tunis, it was felt that he should not be
left in a foreign land. But, although this sentiment was strong, it
was not until 1883 that his body was brought to America. Then, for a
day, the coffin lay in state in the City Hall, in the Governor's Room,
close by a window from which a view could be had of where the old Park
Theatre had stood, just across the stretch of green sward. And the
people, in honor of the man whose one song had thrilled an entire
world, filed past the sealed coffin by the thousands, and shed many a
tear that day.
One of the tortuous streets springing from Broadway, starting close by
Trinity Church, winding away to the east, and mingling with other
streets until brought to an abrupt halt by the river, was called, and
is still called, Pine Street. In the first days of the nineteenth
century it bore no suggestion, save in name, of a forest that once
stretched above the city. In those good old days when the Dutch held
full sway, Cornelius van Tienhoven was the bookkeeper of the West
India Company, and when he married the step-daughter of Jan Jansen
Damen, the bride brought him as dower a slice of this forest. When,
later, a clearing was cut through the wood it was called Tienhoven's
Street. But such a name rang too strongly Dutch for those who served
an English king, and when the English came they quickly called it King
Street. And so it remained until after the Revolution, when, in
remembrance of the Dutch forest, the name was changed to Pine Street.
Now, whether it was pure accident or whether he searched and found the
prettiest street in all the town, it is nevertheless a fact that here
Dr. Elihu Hubbard Smith had fixed his home, scarce more than a block
from Trinity Church, and here he wrote much of his verse. Here, too,
in his house, on many a Tuesday evening, met the Friendly Club, and
at these meetings, following the custom of the club from the time that
Washington lived in the city, each member in turn read a passage from
some favorite author, thus giving impetus to the conversation. In Dr.
Smith's parlor, joining in these discussions, sat William Dunlap,
Charles Brockden Brown, James Kent, Joseph Dennie, and all the writers
of the circle. It was Dr. Smith who wrote the prologue for the Park
Theatre upon its opening, and not a member of the Friendly Club but
attended the first performance.
[Illustration: MAP OF STREETS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK IN 1827.]
It is small wonder that Charles Brockden Brown was the foremost member
of the club. He had just claim. Thrusting aside criticism and advice,
ignoring the fact that he was an invalid facing the hardship that must
be overcome, he stood forth as the first writer in America to support
himself by his pen alone. The Bar, even though there was ever so fair
a prospect of his earning a living by it, could not attract him
against his natural desire. The writings of this determined genius
could not but be successful. Seeking no friends, but having many,
preferring the single companionship of Dr. Smith, with whom he lived,
Charles Brockden Brown wrote his novel, _Wieland_, and followed it in
the next three years with _Ormond_, _Edgar Huntley_, _Arthur Mervyn_,
_Jane Talbot_, and _Clara Howard_. Many a man of the pen, in
admiration of the iron will of this first American novelist, finds a
delight in thinking of him and in following his footsteps along Pine
Street and the lower end of Broadway to the Battery.
[Illustration: The Post Office
William St.]
In the days of bereavement following the death of Dr. Smith, the
companion of Brown's solitude was Joseph Dennie. Often in the
intervals of work they wandered through the quiet park, and many a
time they knelt together in the Brick Church, a square beyond the Park
Theatre, with the memory of their dead companion strong upon them. The
shadow of their friend's death was still over them when they parted,
and Joseph Dennie went to Philadelphia to start his magazine, _The
Portfolio_, which was to cause the name of "The Lay Preacher" to ring
through the land. He was in Philadelphia when Brown, in 1803, started
_The Literary Magazine and American Register_. But the next year he
was in New York again, occasionally joining in a literary partnership
in which there was a third member now, for Brown had married the
daughter of Dr. Linn, the Presbyterian minister. The years rolled on,
and Brown sought to fight off death by terrific work. But death only
clutched him the tighter. The strolls with Elizabeth, his
gentle-hearted wife, grew shorter and shorter and less frequent, until
they ceased altogether six years after his marriage, and another
landmark in the literary history of the city had gone down.
There was one stately and studious member of the Friendly Club who, it
is recorded, could seldom be persuaded to go to the Park Theatre
except on the "great nights." James Kent, then a Professor of Law at
Columbia College, when not at work (those were rare moments indeed),
loved best to wander over the College grounds. These are now lost
beyond all tracing in the overcrowding between the City Hall and
Hudson River. Then it was a delightful country spot. When Professor
Kent did not walk on the College grounds by the riverside, he strolled
up Broadway past the hospital with his friend, Dr. David Hosack, and
the two discussed at length the Elgin Botanical Garden that the
physician had just laid out three miles above the city. It was this
James Kent who came to be Chancellor of New York and whose memory
lives in his _Commentaries on American Law_.
Beyond the city, separated from it in summer by a mile of marshy and
untilled land, in winter by a dreary waste with a single road leading
across a snow-bound way, lay the village of Greenwich. A dreamy little
country place that had been an Indian village before the settling of
New Amsterdam; with lines of peaked-roof houses on zig-zagged lanes,
and now and again, in the midst of a farm-like garden, a rambling
house of stone, with great square windows and gables enough for half a
dozen houses. The village might have been thousands of miles away from
New York for all the likeness it bore to it.
On a dusty and rarely travelled lane, that led from the village
towards the city, lived a man who had won the hearts of Americans by
writing _Common Sense_, but who lived to reap their hatred by writing
_The Age of Reason_, a deistic argument against Christianity. In the
quiet village his house was pointed out as the abode of a friendless
man, and when they spoke of him the villagers whispered the dread
name--Tom Paine.
There he lived with Madame Bonneville and her two sons, the only
companions he cared to have near him save his own thoughts. In that
picturesque spot he was fully content to pass his final days in
solitude and marked contrast to a life of energy and excitement.
It is close upon a century since that time, and the pilgrim feet that
seek to follow Paine through Greenwich Village must walk Bleecker
Street (the dusty lane in much changed form), must pass Grove Street,
and the fourth house from the corner, on the north side, walking
towards the east, is Paine's. It was humble enough in the days when he
lived there. It is far humbler now in contrast to the buildings that
have grown up about it. A two-story frame house, the ground floor is
made into a store, as though it made an effort to keep up with the
business character of the street. Two brick structures rise above it
on each side and seem to have forced the roof to a frightful angle, so
different is it from its new neighbors. Once Joel Barlow went to see
Paine there, and the two spent almost an entire day beside a front
window, talking of many things. Paine recalled the troublous days of
the French Revolution, when he had written his _Age of Reason_ in the
prison of the Luxembourg, and had given it to Barlow to find a
publisher. The author of the _Columbiad_ often spoke of the visit
later.
The dusty road where the house stood, even though it was little
travelled, came to be too noisy a place for Paine, for in his illness
even the chance passer-by irritated him. So he moved away to a house
in a nearby field, so far from the road that he found absolute quiet.
In after days Grove Street swept this home away, and another building,
numbered 59, is pointed out as the place where Paine died shortly
after his removal.
The hatred of many people followed Thomas Paine even after death, and
there could be no rest for an advocate of infidel opinions in a town
where dwelt descendants of stern Huguenots. His body was taken to New
Rochelle, and there, refused burial in hallowed ground, was finally
laid to rest outside the town, in a corner of the farm given to him by
the State in recognition of his services in the cause of the colonies
against the mother country. Ten years later, William Cobbett, the
English Radical, an ardent admirer of Paine, visited New Rochelle,
and, seeing the neglected grave by the wayside, had the bones dug up
one night and spirited away to England. In another twenty years the
followers of Thomas Paine had grown in number, and the Paine
Historical Society erected a monument over the empty grave by the
roadside. But on this spot, where no rest had been permitted him in
life or in death, it seems rather to mock than to bless his grave.