The City that Irving Knew
Stretching from Broadway towards the east, starting from the
ivy-covered walls of the Chapel of St. Paul--here lay the scenes of
Washington Irving's childhood. Golden Hill was the name given to this
district, long before Irving was born; called so because of its golden
appearance in the autumn days. It was a wondrously beautiful place,
and set squarely upon the hill-top was an inn that, in the days of the
Revolution, came to be a meeting-place for patriots. Even now, when
the glories of Golden Hill seem quite forgotten, there are those who
love to walk its crowded ways, and who firmly believe that it came by
its name in prophecy of the golden flower of literature one day to be
born close by it.
[Illustration: Golden Hill Inn]
The lane that once had its course up the grain-covered hill is there
yet; now, a crowded, dismal thoroughfare bearing the name of William
Street. It is well to start with this old lane, partly because it is
the oldest street in the Golden Hill district, and partly because the
Golden Hill inn of old still stands upon it: a squatty building built
of narrow bricks that were brought from Holland, with a tall chimney
like none of its neighbors; a venerable house full of cracks and
crevices, carved mantels, open fireplaces, wide doorways; made over to
conform to modern business ideas, but not conforming to these very
well; painted and patched up to look new, but looking quite its age to
any one with half an eye for architecture.
Almost opposite this inn of Golden Hill, midway of the block between
Fulton and John streets, there stood in the year 1783 a quaint little
two-storied dwelling with high-backed roof. One morning the patrons of
the inn had a bit to gossip about. It was a year for gossip anyway,
for the War of the Revolution was near its close. The talk was of a
child that had been born to the Irving family over the way, and who
was to be called Washington in honor of the man so well named the
"Father of his Country." Before another year the Irving family moved
into a house next to the inn on the north and separated from it only
by a garden. In this house Washington Irving spent his youth. Close by
he was baptized, in the Chapel of St. George. The Chapel is gone now,
but where Beekman Street crosses Cliff, on the front of a building
appear in raised letters the words "St. George Building," that show
the spot where it once stood.
Not far off is the place where the John Street Theatre was, where
Irving went with his friend James K. Paulding, who was himself to make
a name in the literature of the city. Irving's parents were not given
to theatre-going, but Irving, when the family prayers had been said
and he had been sent to bed, ofttimes crept out of the gable window,
slid down the slanting roof, dropped to the ground, and stole away. He
went, just as now following in his footsteps you can go, past the old
inn, around the next corner where, on a house wall, is a tablet
reciting the departed glories of Golden Hill, then on a few steps
until you reach, close by Broadway, a dreary arcade. Walk through the
arcade and you will find it heavy with the sounds of workmen and
machines. The arcade was a covered way leading to the playhouse, and
is all that remains of the theatre.
[Illustration: St. George's Chapel
Beekman St.]
Two minutes' walk away in Ann Street was Mrs. Ann Kilmaster's school,
where Irving studied. Ann Street is only three blocks long and far
from an inviting spot at any point, but here, in the last block of its
length, it dwindles to half the width it had in starting.
A score of steps from the school, at the northwest corner of Ann
Street and William, Irving lived with his mother after his father's
death. The house is no longer there, but there is one just like it
five houses farther along William Street, that stood there in Irving's
time.
In the Ann Street house, when he was a law clerk, he did his first
writing, the sketches signed "Jonathan Oldstyle," and published in the
_Morning Chronicle_, which was conducted by his brother Peter. From
this house, while still a lad, he loved to wander down the streets
that stretched over the eastern slope of Golden Hill, and spent hours
on the piers watching the ships loading and unloading, dreaming of the
foreign ports where they had touched, hoping that he might one day see
the shores of those far-away lands. For even in his boyhood the
longing for travel was strong upon him.
He was still a law clerk, and still living in this Ann Street house,
when he sat in an upper room with his brother William and James K.
Paulding, and they planned a magazine of their own. They went to see
David Longworth, the printer, in his shop beside the Park
Theatre,--"Dusky Davie" they called him, after a song that was popular
at the time,--and after many conferences and much secret doing the
three stripling writers started the sparkling _Salmagundi_ on its way,
with the avowed purpose "to instruct the young, reform the old,
correct the town, and castigate the age." Paulding was the "Launcelot
Langstaff" of the publication, and William Irving was "Pindar
Cockloft" the poet.
To the west of Golden Hill, Cortlandt Street extends to the river. In
a house on that street close by Broadway, the three writers of
_Salmagundi_ spent much time at the home of the Fairlie sisters.
There lived Mary Fairlie, known to _Salmagundi_ readers as "Sophia
Sparkle," and who married Cooper the tragic actor.
In the Ann Street house most of the _Knickerbocker History of New
York_ was written. Washington Irving and his brother Peter were to
write it as an extravagant burlesque on Dr. Samuel Mitchill's _Picture
of New York_, then a very popular and learned work. But Peter Irving
was forced to Europe by ill health in 1808, and Washington settled
down to the history, changing its plan and scope. Ten minutes' walk to
the north of where Irving lived in Ann Street is a little park--a
green spot that has taken the place of the squalid Mulberry Bend slum.
In Mulberry Street opposite the park was the location of the imaginary
Independent Columbian Hotel where Dietrich Knickerbocker was supposed
to have lived, and left his manuscript in payment of his board bill.
But by far the most important house connected with this part of
Irving's life is gone now. This was in Broadway where Leonard Street
now crosses. A square house of many rooms, indeed it was a mansion in
the city of 1809. Here lived Josiah Ogden Hoffman, the protector of
the youthful author, in whose office Irving came by his law training.
In the Hoffman mansion, Irving courted Matilda Hoffman, the lawyer's
fair daughter; here he saw her sicken and grow more feeble day by day;
here she died, and so ended the romance of his life. He never
mentioned her name in after days and could not bear to hear it spoken.
But she lived in his memory, and he never married. In the depths of
his seclusion, during the first months of his sorrow, he finished the
_History_. But his heart was not in the laughter of the book, and he
made joy for others out of his own sorrow.
Two years after this, Irving was living beside the Bowling Green, at
16 Broadway, with his friend, Henry Brevoort, at the house of Mrs.
Ryckman. While here he edited the _Analectic Magazine_. From here he
often strolled up Broadway as far as Cortlandt Street, to dine at the
house of Jane Renwick, then passing her widowhood in the city. Her son
became the Professor James Renwick of Columbia College. It was she of
whom Burns sang as _The Blue-Eyed Lassie_.
Still another house knew the Irving of early days, the boarding-house
of Mrs. Brandish, at Greenwich and Rector streets, where he went from
Bowling Green. It was a pretty brick building on a quiet street then,
but it is a gloomy-enough place to look upon now, darkened by the
Elevated Railroad and overrun with hoards of noisy children and
tenement dwellers; a strange spot to look for memories of the
gentle-hearted Irving.
When Irving left New York in 1815, it was with no intention of
remaining away any length of time. In England he wrote _Rip Van
Winkle_, though he had never been in the Catskills, where the scene of
his classic lay. In Paris he met John Howard Payne, and the two worked
together, in the Rue Richelieu, adapting French plays to English
representation--but this partnership came to little. He went to Spain
and there, while writing the _Life and Voyages of Columbus_, he met a
young man then fitting himself by travel to enter on the duties of
Professor of Modern Languages in Bowdoin College. This was Henry W.
Longfellow, unknown then as a poet. While in Spain, Irving occupied
the Governor's quarters in the Alhambra, an otherwise deserted palace,
abiding there in a kind of Oriental dream, and living over in
imagination the _Conquest of Granada_. Back in London again as
Secretary of the Legation to the Court of St. James, he arranged his
material for the _Voyages of the Companions of Columbus_, and half a
dozen other works. Then, after seventeen years of wandering, he
returned to his native city.
Although he tells us that his heart throbbed at sight of New York, and
that in all his travels he had seen no place that caused such a thrill
of joy, it was no longer the city of his youth. He had left a town of
one hundred thousand people and found a city of two hundred thousand.
The companions of his youth had grown to be men, and many of them were
renowned in literature and business life. He found streets grown long
out of all remembrance, houses tall beyond all knowing, strangers who
knew him simply as a name. He found many silent graves where he had
left blooming youth. But for all this there were many ready and
anxious to do him honor.
A few steps beyond Trinity Churchyard on Broadway is a narrow
thoroughfare called Thames Street. It is easy to be found, and beside
it is a tall building on which is a tablet relating how the Burns's
Coffee-House once stood on the spot. This had been a mansion built by
Etienne De Lancey, a Huguenot noble, and Thames Street was the
carriage-way that led to the door. In this coffee-house the merchants
of the city signed the Non-Importation Agreement in the days before
the Revolution.
When Irving returned to the city the coffee-house was gone, and on
its site was the City Hotel, the main hostelry of the city. Here the
chief citizens gathered and a banquet was held and all honor paid to
the "illustrious guest, thrice welcome to his native city."
[Illustration: The City Hotel]
From the site of this old house, it is a pleasant walk down Broadway,
past the Bowling Green to Bridge Street, where, at No. 3, Irving,
after his return, went to live with his brother Ebenezer, who had been
the Captain Greatheart of "Cockloft Hall." Here, in this home, Irving
spent many happy days. It was called by him "the family hive," for it
was always filled to overflowing with relatives.
[Illustration:
1. JAMES KIRKE PAULDING.
2. PHILIP HONE.
3. WASHINGTON IRVING.
4. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
5. FITZ GREENE HALLECK.
6. J. FENIMORE COOPER.]
But one place above all others in New York is filled with the memory
of Irving. This is a bit of ground on the east side of the city, a
point of land stretching out into the river. Here of all places the
spirit of Irving still lingers, for here of all places it is less
changed in appearance since his feet trod the ground. In Irving's day
it was a stretch of countryside with summer houses of the wealthy at
long distances facing the river. Now, though the city has encompassed
it, there is still left the one green spot by the riverside beyond
Eighty-eighth Street. The East River Park they call it, and there are
rough stone steps leading to the waterside, winding paths and
overhanging trees--the trees that Irving stood beneath. And there,
across the stretch of water, is Hell Gate, its tempestuous waters
tamed by the hand of man, but nevertheless the same Hell Gate that
Irving looked upon and that Irving wrote about. Part of this park were
the grounds of John Jacob Astor, the friend of Irving. His house stood
beyond the park, where Eighty-eighth Street now touches East End
Avenue,--a square two-story frame dwelling of colonial type, painted
white, with deep veranda, wide halls, and spacious rooms; set high
upon a hill, backed by a forest of towering trees, and fronted by a
vast lawn stretching by gentle slope to the cliff at the riverside.
Here Irving was a guest, and wrote _Astoria_, telling of Astor's
settlement on the Columbia River and of scenes beyond the Rockies;
here he met Captain Bonneville and his friends, and the journals of
the one and thrilling tales of the other gave material for the
_Adventures of Captain Bonneville_.
The house of Astor is gone now, but within the limits of this park
still stands the home of Gracie, the merchant, where Irving was a
constant visitor, and where, in the rooms given over to stranger
hands, still linger memories of Paulding and Halleck, Bancroft and
Drake, and a host of others.
[Illustration: The House of Astor where Irving wrote "Astoria"]
It was while working on _Astoria_ that Irving began the building of
Wolfert's Roost, the Van Tassel house of the _Legend of Sleepy
Hollow_, on that delightful spot on the Hudson which in the first
days of Irving's residence there was called Dearman. In after time the
name was changed to Irvington, in his honor, and Wolfert's Roost, in
honor of the glorious country, became Sunnyside. It is Sunnyside to
this day, altered by additions made in the intervening years, but
still the house of Irving; and the ivy clinging to its walls has
sprung from a root taken from the ruins of Scott's "fair Melrose" and
planted where it now grows by the friendly hand of Jane Renwick.
[Illustration: Where Irving lived--17th St. and Irving Place]
On the corner of Seventeenth Street and Irving Place (a thoroughfare
to which his memory gave a name), late in life, Irving lived betimes.
Here was once the home of John T. Irving, a nephew of the author. It
is a sturdy house still, and looks as youthful as its neighbors that
were built many a day after it. Then it stood quite alone in a stretch
of country. From the windows of the large room on the ground floor,
Irving could see the waters of the East River. In this room he wrote
portions of _Oliver Goldsmith_, parts, too, of the _Life of Mahomet_,
and arranged the notes of what was to be his last book--the _Life of
Washington_.
But his real home was Sunnyside, and there, in the year 1859, when he
was seventy-six years old, he died.