the tyranny of the English governor, Lord Cornbury, who carried his
cruelties towards the Dutch inhabitants so far as to allow no Dominie,
or schoolmaster, to officiate in their language, without his special
license; about this time, there lived in the jolly little old city of
the Manhattoes, a kind motherly dame, known by the name of Dame
Heyliger. She was the widow of a Dutch sea-captain, who died suddenly
of a fever, in consequence of working too hard, and eating too
heartily, at the time when all the inhabitants turned out in a panic,
to fortify the place against the invasion of a small French
privateer.[14] He left her with very little money, and one infant son,
the only survivor of several children. The good woman had need of much
management, to make both ends meet, and keep up a decent appearance.
However, as her husband had fallen a victim to his zeal for the public
safety, it was universally agreed that "something ought to be done for
the widow;" and on the hopes of this "something" she lived tolerably
for some years; in the meantime, every body pitied and spoke well of
her; and that helped along.
[Footnote 14: 1705.]
She lived in a small house, in a small street, called Garden-street,
very probably from a garden which may have flourished there some time
or other. As her necessities every year grew greater, and the talk of
the public about doing "something for her" grew less, she had to cast
about for some mode of doing something for herself, by way of helping
out her slender means, and maintaining her independence, of which she
was somewhat tenacious.
Living in a mercantile town, she had caught something of the spirit,
and determined to venture a little in the great lottery of commerce.
On a sudden, therefore, to the great surprise of the street, there
appeared at her window a grand array of gingerbread kings and queens,
with their arms stuck a-kimbo, after the invariable royal manner.
There were also several broken tumblers, some filled with sugar-plums,
some with marbles; there were, moreover, cakes of various kinds, and
barley sugar, and Holland dolls, and wooden horses, with here and
there gilt-covered picture-books, and now and then a skein of thread,
or a dangling pound of candles. At the door of the house sat the good
old dame's cat, a decent demure-looking personage, that seemed to scan
every body that passed, to criticise their dress, and now and then to
stretch her neck, and look out with sudden curiosity, to see what was
going on at the other end of the street; but if by chance any idle
vagabond dog came by, and offered to be uncivil--hoity-toity!--how she
would bristle up, and growl, and spit, and strike out her paws! she
was as indignant as ever was an ancient and ugly spinster, on the
approach of some graceless profligate.
But though the good woman had to come down to these humble means of
subsistence, yet she still kept up a feeling of family pride, having
descended from the Vanderspiegels, of Amsterdam; and she had the
family arms painted and framed, and hung over her mantel-piece. She
was, in truth, much respected by all the poorer people of the place;
her house was quite a resort of the old wives of the neighbourhood;
they would drop in there of a winter's afternoon, as she sat knitting
on one side of her fire-place, her cat purring on the other, and the
tea-kettle singing before it; and they would gossip with her until
late in the evening. There was always an arm-chair for Peter de
Groodt, sometimes called Long Peter, and sometimes Peter Longlegs, the
clerk and sexton of the little Lutheran church, who was her great
crony, and indeed the oracle of her fire-side. Nay, the Dominie
himself did not disdain, now and then, to step in, converse about the
state of her mind, and take a glass of her special good cherry-brandy.
Indeed, he never failed to call on new-year's day, and wish her a
happy new year; and the good dame, who was a little vain on some
points, always piqued herself on giving him as large a cake as any one
in town.
I have said that she had one son. He was the child of her old age; but
could hardly be called the comfort--for, of all unlucky urchins, Dolph
Heyliger was the most mischievous. Not that the whipster was really
vicious; he was only full of fun and frolic, and had that daring,
gamesome spirit, which is extolled in a rich man's child, but
execrated in a poor man's. He was continually getting into scrapes:
his mother was incessantly harassed with complaints of some waggish
pranks which he had played off; bills were sent in for windows that he
had broken; in a word, he had not reached his fourteenth year before
he was pronounced, by all the neighbourhood, to be a "wicked dog, the
wickedest dog in the street!" Nay, one old gentleman, in a
claret-coloured coat, with a thin red face, and ferret eyes, went so
far as to assure Dame Heyliger, that her son would, one day or other,
come to the gallows!
Yet, notwithstanding all this, the poor old soul loved her boy. It
seemed as though she loved him the better, the worse he behaved; and
that he grew more in her favour, the more he grew out of favour with
the world. Mothers are foolish, fond-hearted beings; there's no
reasoning them out of their dotage; and, indeed, this poor woman's
child was all that was left to love her in this world;--so we must not
think it hard that she turned a deaf ear to her good friends, who
sought to prove to her that Dolph would come to a halter.
To do the varlet justice, too, he was strongly attached to his parent.
He would not willingly have given her pain on any account; and when he
had been doing wrong, it was but for him to catch his poor mother's
eye fixed wistfully and sorrowfully upon him, to fill his heart with
bitterness and contrition. But he was a heedless youngster, and could
not, for the life of him, resist any new temptation to fun and
mischief. Though quick at his learning, whenever he could be brought
to apply himself, yet he was always prone to be led away by idle
company, and would play truant to hunt after birds'-nests, to rob
orchards, or to swim in the Hudson.
In this way he grew up, a tall, lubberly boy; and his mother began to
be greatly perplexed what to do with him, or how to put him in a way
to do for himself; for he had acquired such an unlucky reputation,
that no one seemed willing to employ him.
Many were the consultations that she held with Peter de Groodt, the
clerk and sexton, who was her prime counsellor. Peter was as much
perplexed as herself, for he had no great opinion of the boy, and
thought he would never come to good. He at one time advised her to
send him to sea--a piece of advice only given in the most desperate
cases; but Dame Heyliger would not listen to such an idea; she could
not think of letting Dolph go out of her sight. She was sitting one
day knitting by her fireside, in great perplexity, when the sexton
entered with an air of unusual vivacity and briskness. He had just
come from a funeral. It had been that of a boy of Dolph's years, who
had been apprentice to a famous German doctor, and had died of a
consumption. It is true, there had been a whisper that the deceased
had been brought to his end by being made the subject of the doctor's
experiments, on which he was apt to try the effects of a new compound,
or a quieting draught. This, however, it is likely, was a mere
scandal; at any rate, Peter de Groodt did not think it worth
mentioning; though, had we time to philosophize, it would be a curious
matter for speculation, why a doctor's family is apt to be so lean and
cadaverous, and a butcher's so jolly and rubicund.
Peter de Groodt, as I said before, entered the house of Dame Heyliger,
with unusual alacrity. He was full of a bright idea that had popped
into his head at the funeral, and over which he had chuckled as he
shovelled the earth into the grave of the doctor's disciple. It had
occurred to him, that, as the situation of the deceased was vacant at
the doctor's, it would be the very place for Dolph. The boy had parts,
and could pound a pestle and run an errand with any boy in the
town-and what more was wanted in a student?
The suggestion of the sage Peter was a vision of glory to the mother.
She already saw Dolph, in her mind's eye, with a cane at his nose, a
knocker at his door, and an M.D. at the end of his name--one of the
established dignitaries of the town.
The matter, once undertaken, was soon effected; the sexton had some
influence with the doctor, they having had much dealing together in
the way of their separate professions; and the very next morning he
called and conducted the urchin, clad in his Sunday clothes, to
undergo the inspection of Dr. Karl Lodovick Knipperhausen.
They found the doctor seated in an elbow-chair, in one corner of his
study, or laboratory, with a large volume, in German print, before
him. He was a short, fat man, with a dark, square face, rendered more
dark by a black velvet cap. He had a little, knobbed nose, not unlike
the ace of spades, with a pair of spectacles gleaming on each side of
his dusky countenance, like a couple of bow-windows.
Dolph felt struck with awe, on entering into the presence of this
learned man; and gazed about him with boyish wonder at the furniture
of this chamber of knowledge, which appeared to him almost as the den
of a magician. In the centre stood a claw-footed table, with pestle
and mortar, phials and gallipots, and a pair of small, burnished
scales. At one end was a heavy clothes-press, turned into a receptacle
for drugs and compounds; against which hung the doctor's hat and
cloak, and gold-headed cane, and on the top grinned a human skull.
Along the mantelpiece were glass vessels, in which were snakes and
lizards, and a human foetus preserved in spirits. A closet, the doors
of which were taken off, contained three whole shelves of books, and
some, too, of mighty folio dimensions--a collection, the like of which
Dolph had never before beheld. As, however, the library did not take
up the whole of the closet, the doctor's thrifty housekeeper had
occupied the rest with pots of pickles and preserves; and had hung
about the room, among awful implements of the healing art, strings of
red pepper and corpulent cucumbers, carefully preserved for seed.
Peter de Groodt, and his protégé, were received with great gravity and
stateliness by the doctor, who was a very wise, dignified little man,
and never smiled. He surveyed Dolph from head to foot, above, and
under, and through his spectacles; and the poor lad's heart quailed as
these great glasses glared on him like two full moons. The doctor
heard all that Peter de Groodt had to say in favour of the youthful
candidate; and then, wetting his thumb with the end of his tongue, he
began deliberately to turn over page after page of the great black
volume before him. At length, after many hums and haws, and strokings
of the chin, and all that hesitation and deliberation with which a
wise man proceeds to do what he intended to do from the very first,
the doctor agreed to take the lad as a disciple; to give him bed,
board, and clothing, and to instruct him in the healing art; in return
for which, he was to have his services until his twenty-first year.
Behold, then, our hero, all at once transformed from an unlucky
urchin, running wild about the streets, to a student of medicine,
diligently pounding a pestle, under the auspices of the learned Doctor
Karl Lodovick Knipperhausen. It was a happy transition for his fond
old mother. She was delighted with the idea of her boy's being brought
up worthy of his ancestors; and anticipated the day when he would be
able to hold up his head with the lawyer, that lived in the large
house opposite; or, peradventure, with the Dominie himself.
Doctor Knipperhausen was a native of the Palatinate of Germany; from
whence, in company with many of his countrymen, he had taken refuge
in England, on account of religious persecution. He was one of nearly
three thousand Palatines, who came over from England in 1710, under
the protection of Governor Hunter. Where the doctor had studied, how
he had acquired his medical knowledge, and where he had received his
diploma, it is hard at present to say, for nobody knew at the time;
yet it is certain that his profound skill and abstruse knowledge were
the talk and wonder of the common people, far and near.
His practice was totally different from that of any other physician;
consisting in mysterious compounds, known only to himself, in the
preparing and administering of which, it was said, he always consulted
the stars. So high an opinion was entertained of his skill,
particularly by the German and Dutch inhabitants, that they always
resorted to him in desperate cases. He was one of those infallible
doctors, that are always effecting sudden and surprising cures, when
the patient has been given up by all the regular physicians; unless,
as is shrewdly observed, the case has been left too long before it was
put into their hands. The doctor's library was the talk and marvel of
the neighbourhood, I might almost say of the entire burgh. The good
people looked with reverence at a man that had read three whole
shelves full of books, and some of them, too, as large as a family
Bible. There were many disputes among the members of the little
Lutheran church, as to which was the wiser man, the doctor or the
Dominie. Some of his admirers even went so far as to say, that he knew
more than the governor himself-in a word, it was thought that there
was no end to his knowledge!
No sooner was Dolph received into the doctor's family, than he was put
in possession of the lodging of his predecessor. It was a garret-room
of a steep-roofed Dutch house, where the rain patted on the shingles,
and the lightning gleamed, and the wind piped through the crannies in
stormy weather; and where whole troops of hungry rats, like Don
Cossacks, galloped about in defiance of traps and ratsbane.
He was soon up to his ears in medical studies, being employed,
morning, noon, and night, in rolling pills, filtering tinctures, or
pounding the pestle and mortar, in one corner of the laboratory; while
the doctor would take his seat in another corner, when he had nothing
else to do, or expected visitors, and, arrayed in his morning-gown and
velvet cap, would pore over the contents of some folio volume. It is
true, that the regular thumping of Dolph's pestle, or, perhaps, the
drowsy buzzing of the summer flies, would now and then lull the little
man into a slumber; but then his spectacles were always wide awake,
and studiously regarding the book.
There was another personage in the house, however, to whom Dolph was
obliged to pay allegiance. Though a bachelor, and a man of such great
dignity and importance, yet the doctor was, like many other wise men,
subject to petticoat government. He was completely under the sway of
his housekeeper; a spare, busy, fretting housewife, in a little,
round, quilted, German cap, with a huge bunch of keys jingling at the
girdle of an exceedingly long waist. Frau Ilsé (or Frow Ilsy, as it
was pronounced) had accompanied him in his various migrations from
Germany to England, and from England to the province; managing his
establishment and himself too: ruling him, it is true, with a gentle
hand, but carrying a high hand with all the world beside. How she had
acquired such ascendency, I do not pretend to say. People, it is true,
did talk--but have not people been prone to talk ever since the world
began? Who can tell how women generally contrive to get the upper
hand? A husband, it is true, may now and then be master in his own
house; but who ever knew a bachelor that was not managed by his
housekeeper?
Indeed, Frau Ilsy's power was not confined to the doctor's household.
She was one of those prying gossips that know every one's business
better than they do themselves; and whose all-seeing eyes, and
all-telling tongues, are terrors throughout a neighbourhood.
Nothing of any moment transpired in the world of scandal of this
little burgh, but it was known to Frau Ilsy. She had her crew of
cronies, that were perpetually hurrying to her little parlour, with
some precious bit of news; nay, she would sometimes discuss a whole
volume of secret history, as she held the street-door ajar, and
gossiped with one of these garrulous cronies in the very teeth of a
December blast.
Between the doctor and the housekeeper, it may easily be supposed that
Dolph had a busy life of it. As Frau Ilsy kept the keys, and literally
ruled the roast, it was starvation to offend her, though he found the
study of her temper more perplexing even than that of medicine. When
not busy in the laboratory, she kept him running hither and thither on
her errands; and on Sundays he was obliged to accompany her to and
from church, and carry her Bible. Many a time has the poor varlet
stood shivering and blowing his fingers, or holding his frost-bitten
nose, in the church-yard, while Ilsy and her cronies were huddled
together, wagging their heads, and tearing some unlucky character to
pieces.
With all his advantages, however, Dolph made very slow progress in his
art. This was no fault of the doctor's, certainly, for he took
unwearied pains with the lad, keeping him close to the pestle and
mortar, or on the trot about town with phials and pill-boxes; and if
he ever flagged in his industry, which he was rather apt to do, the
doctor would fly into a passion, and ask him if he ever expected to
learn his profession, unless he applied himself closer to the study.
The fact is, he still retained the fondness for sport and mischief
that had marked his childhood; the habit, indeed, had strengthened
with his years, and gained force from being thwarted and constrained.
He daily grew more and more untractable, and lost favour in the eyes
both of the doctor and the housekeeper.
In the meantime the doctor went on, waxing wealthy and renowned. He
was famous for his skill in managing cases not laid down in the books.
He had cured several old women and young girls of witchcraft; a
terrible complaint, nearly as prevalent in the province in those days
as hydrophobia is at present. He had even restored one strapping
country girl to perfect health, who had gone so far as to vomit
crooked pins and needles; which is considered a desperate stage of the
malady. It was whispered, also, that he was possessed of the art of
preparing love-powders; and many applications had he in consequence
from love-sick patients of both sexes. But all these cases formed the
mysterious part of his practice, in which, according to the cant
phrase, "secrecy and honour might be depended on." Dolph, therefore,
was obliged to turn out of the study whenever such consultations
occurred, though it is said he learnt more of the secrets of the art
at the key-hole, than by all the rest of his studies put together.
As the doctor increased in wealth, he began to extend his possessions,
and to look forward, like other great men, to the time when he should
retire to the repose of a country-seat. For this purpose he had
purchased a farm, or, as the Dutch settlers called it, a _bowerie_, a
few miles from town. It had been the residence of a wealthy family,
that had returned some time since to Holland. A large mansion-house
stood in the centre of it, very much out of repair, and which, in
consequence of certain reports, had received the appellation of the
Haunted House. Either from these reports, or from its actual
dreariness, the doctor had found it impossible to get a tenant; and,
that the place might not fall to ruin before he could reside in it
himself, he had placed a country boor, with his family, in one wing,
with the privilege of cultivating the farm on shares.
The doctor now felt all the dignity of a landholder rising within him.
He had a little of the German pride of territory in his composition,
and almost looked upon himself as owner of a principality. He began to
complain of the fatigue of business; and was fond of riding out "to
look at his estate." His little expeditions to his lands were attended
with a bustle and parade that created a sensation throughout the
neighbourhood. His wall-eyed horse stood, stamping and whisking off
the flies, for a full hour before the house. Then the doctor's
saddle-bags would be brought out and adjusted; then, after a little
while, his cloak would be rolled up and strapped to the saddle; then
his umbrella would be buckled to the cloak; while, in the meantime, a
group of ragged boys, that observant class of beings, would gather
before the door. At length, the doctor would issue forth, in a pair of
jack-boots that reached above his knees, and a cocked hat flapped down
in front. As he was a short, fat man, he took some time to mount into
the saddle; and when there, he took some time to have the saddle and
stirrups properly adjusted, enjoying the wonder and admiration of the
urchin crowd. Even after he had set off, he would pause in the middle
of the street, or trot back two or three times to give some parting
orders; which were answered by the housekeeper from the door, or Dolph
from the study, or the black cook from the cellar, or the chambermaid
from the garret-window; and there were generally some last words
bawled after him, just as he was turning the corner.
The whole neighbourhood would be aroused by this pomp and
circumstance. The cobbler would leave his last; the barber would
thrust out his frizzed head, with a comb sticking in it; a knot would
collect at the grocer's door; and the word would be buzzed from one
end of the street to the other, "The doctor's riding out to his
country-seat."
These were golden moments for Dolph. No sooner was the doctor out of
sight, than pestle and mortar were abandoned; the laboratory was left
to take care of itself, and the student was off on some madcap frolic.
Indeed, it must be confessed, the youngster, as he grew up, seemed in
a fair way to fulfil the prediction of the old claret-coloured
gentleman. He was the ringleader of all holiday sports, and midnight
gambols; ready for all kinds of mischievous pranks, and harebrained
adventures.
There is nothing so troublesome as a hero on a small scale, or,
rather, a hero in a small town. Dolph soon became the abhorrence of
all drowsy, housekeeping old citizens, who hated noise, and had no
relish for waggery. The good dames, too, considered him as little
better than a reprobate, gathered their daughters under their wings
whenever he approached, and pointed him out as a warning to their
sons. No one seemed to hold him in much regard, excepting the wild
striplings of the place, who were captivated by his open-hearted,
daring manners, and the negroes, who always look upon every idle,
do-nothing youngster as a kind of gentleman. Even the good Peter de
Groodt, who had considered himself a kind of patron of the lad, began
to despair of him; and would shake his head dubiously, as he listened
to a long complaint from the housekeeper, and sipped a glass of her
raspberry brandy.
Still his mother was not to be wearied out of her affection, by all
the waywardness of her boy; nor disheartened by the stories of his
misdeeds, with which her good friends were continually regaling her.
She had, it is true, very little of the pleasure which rich people
enjoy, in always hearing their children praised; but she considered
all this ill-will as a kind of persecution which he suffered, and she
liked him the better on that account. She saw him growing up, a fine,
tall, good-looking youngster, and she looked at him with the secret
pride of a mother's heart. It was her great desire that Dolph should
appear like a gentleman, and all the money she could save went towards
helping out his pocket and his wardrobe. She would look out of the
window after him, as he sallied forth in his best array, and her heart
would yearn with delight; and once, when Peter de Groodt, struck with
the youngster's gallant appearance on a bright Sunday morning,
observed, "Well, after all, Dolph does grow a comely fellow!" the tear
of pride started into the mother's eye: "Ah, neighbour! neighbour!"
exclaimed she, "they may say what they please; poor Dolph will yet
hold up his head with the best of them."
Dolph Heyliger had now nearly attained his one-and-twentieth year, and
the term of his medical studies was just expiring; yet it must be
confessed that he knew little more of the profession than when he
first entered the doctor's doors. This, however, could not be from
want of quickness of parts, for he showed amazing aptness in mastering
other branches of knowledge, which he could only have studied at
intervals. He was, for instance, a sure marksman, and won all the
geese and turkeys at Christmas holidays. He was a bold rider; he was
famous for leaping and wrestling; he played tolerably on the fiddle;
could swim like a fish; and was the best hand in the whole place at
fives or nine-pins.