North America — Volume 1

by Anthony Trollope

In England a taste for very large shops has come up during the last twenty years. A firm is not doing a good business, or at any rate a distinguished business, unless he can assert in his trade card that he occupies at least half a dozen houses—Nos. 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, and 110. The old way of paying for what you want over the counter is gone; and when you buy a yard of tape or a new carriage,—for either of which articles you will probably visit the same establishment,—you go through about the same amount of ceremony as when you sell a thousand pounds out of the stocks in propriâ personâ. But all this is still further exaggerated in New York. Mr. Stewart's store there is perhaps the handsomest institution in the city, and his hall of audience for new carpets is a magnificent saloon. "You have nothing like that in England," my friend said to me as he walked me through it in triumph. "I wish we had nothing approaching to it," I answered. For I confess to a liking for the old-fashioned private shops. Harper's establishment for the manufacture and sale of books is also very wonderful. Everything is done on the premises, down to the very colouring of the paper which lines the covers, and places the gilding on their backs. The firm prints, engraves, electroplates, sews, binds, publishes, and sells wholesale and retail. I have no doubt that the authors have rooms in the attics where the other slight initiatory step is taken towards the production of literature.

New York is built upon an island, which is I believe about ten miles long, counting from the southern point at the Battery up to Carmansville, to which place the city is presumed to extend northwards. This island is called Manhattan,—a name which I have always thought would have been more graceful for the city than that of New York. It is formed by the Sound or East river, which divides the continent from Long Island, by the Hudson river which runs into the Sound or rather joins it at the city foot, and by a small stream called the Haarlem river which runs out of the Hudson and meanders away into the Sound at the north of the city, thus cutting the city off from the main land. The breadth of the island does not much exceed two miles, and therefore the city is long, and not capable of extension in point of breadth. In its old days it clustered itself round about the Point, and stretched itself up from there along the quays of the two waters. The streets down in this part of the town are devious enough, twisting themselves about with delightful irregularity; but as the city grew there came the taste for parallelograms, and the upper streets are rectangular and numbered. Broadway, the street of New York with which the world is generally best acquainted, begins at the southern point of the town and goes northward through it. For some two miles and a half it walks away in a straight line, and then it turns to the left towards the Hudson, and becomes in fact a continuation of another street called the Bowery, which comes up in a devious course from the south-east extremity of the island. From that time Broadway never again takes a straight course, but crosses the various Avenues in an oblique direction till it becomes the Bloomingdale road, and under that name takes itself out of town. There are eleven so-called Avenues, which descend in absolutely straight lines from the northern, and at present unsettled, extremity of the new town, making their way southward till they lose themselves among the old streets. These are called First Avenue, Second Avenue, and so on. The town had already progressed two miles up northwards from the Battery before it had caught the parallelogrammic fever from Philadelphia, for at about that distance we find "First Street." First Street runs across the Avenues from water to water, and then Second Street. I will not name them all, seeing that they go up to 154th Street! They do so at least on the map, and I believe on the lamp-posts. But the houses are not yet built in order beyond 50th or 60th Street. The other hundred streets, each of two miles long, with the Avenues which are mostly unoccupied for four or five miles, is the ground over which the young New Yorkers are to spread themselves. I do not in the least doubt that they will occupy it all, and that 154th Street will find itself too narrow a boundary for the population.

I have said that there was some good architectural effect in New York, and I alluded chiefly to that of the Fifth Avenue. The Fifth Avenue is the Belgrave Square, the Park Lane, and the Pall Mall of New York. It is certainly a very fine street. The houses in it are magnificent, not having that aristocratic look which some of our detached London residences enjoy, or the palatial appearance of an old-fashioned hotel in Paris, but an air of comfortable luxury and commercial wealth which is not excelled by the best houses of any other town that I know. They are houses, not hotels or palaces; but they are very roomy houses, with every luxury that complete finish can give them. Many of them cover large spaces of ground, and their rent will sometimes go up as high as £800 and £1000 a year. Generally the best of these houses are owned by those who live in them, and rent is not therefore paid. But this is not always the case, and the sums named above may be taken as expressing their value. In England a man should have a very large income indeed who could afford to pay £1000 a year for his house in London. Such a one would as a matter of course have an establishment in the country, and be an Earl or a Duke or a millionaire. But it is different in New York. The resident there shows his wealth chiefly by his house, and though he may probably have a villa at Newport or a box somewhere up the Hudson he has no second establishment. Such a house therefore will not represent a total expenditure of above £4,000 a year.

There are churches on each side of Fifth Avenue,—perhaps five or six within sight at one time,—which add much to the beauty of the street. They are well-built, and in fairly good taste. These, added to the general well-being and splendid comfort of the place, give it an effect better than the architecture of the individual houses would seem to warrant. I own that I have enjoyed the vista as I have walked up and down Fifth Avenue, and have felt that the city had a right to be proud of its wealth. But the greatness and beauty and glory of wealth have on such occasions been all in all with me. I know no great man, no celebrated statesman, no philanthropist of peculiar note who has lived in Fifth Avenue. That gentleman on the right made a million of dollars by inventing a shirt-collar; this one on the left electrified the world by a lotion; as to the gentleman at the corner there,—there are rumours about him and the Cuban slave-trade; but my informant by no means knows that they are true. Such are the aristocracy of Fifth Avenue. I can only say that if I could make a million dollars by a lotion, I should certainly be right to live in such a house as one of those.

The suburbs of New York are, by the nature of the localities, divided from the city by water. New Jersey and Hoboken are on the other side of the Hudson, and in another State. Williamsburgh and Brooklyn are in Long Island, which is a part of the State of New York. But these places are as easily reached as Lambeth is reached from Westminster. Steam ferries ply every three or four minutes, and into these boats coaches, carts, and waggons of any size or weight are driven. In fact they make no other stoppage to the commerce than that occasioned by the payment of a few cents. Such payment no doubt is a stoppage, and therefore it is that New Jersey, Brooklyn, and Williamsburgh are, at any rate in appearance, very dull and uninviting. They are, however, very populous. Many of the quieter citizens prefer to live there; and I am told that the Brooklyn tea-parties consider themselves to be, in æsthetic feeling, very much ahead of anything of the kind in the more opulent centres of the city. In beauty of scenery Staten Island is very much the prettiest of the suburbs of New York. The view from the hill side in Staten Island down upon New York harbour is very lovely. It is the only really good view of that magnificent harbour which I have been able to find. As for appreciating such beauty when one is entering a port from sea, or leaving it for sea, I do not believe in any such power. The ship creeps up or creeps out while the mind is engaged on other matters. The passenger is uneasy either with hopes or fears; and then the grease of the engines offends one's nostrils. But it is worth the tourist's while to look down upon New York harbour from the hill side in Staten Island. When I was there Fort Lafayette looked black in the centre of the channel, and we knew that it was crowded with the victims of secession. Fort Tomkins was being built, to guard the pass,—worthy of a name of richer sound; and Fort something else was bristling with new cannon. Fort Hamilton, on Long Island, opposite, was frowning at us; and immediately around us a regiment of volunteers was receiving regimental stocks and boots from the hands of its officers. Everything was bristling with war; and one could not but think that not in this way had New York raised herself so quickly to her present greatness.

But the glory of New York is the Central Park;—its glory in the mind of all New Yorkers of the present day. The first question asked of you is whether you have seen the Central Park, and the second is as to what you think of it. It does not do to say simply that it is fine, grand, beautiful, and miraculous. You must swear by cock and pie that it is more fine, more grand, more beautiful, more miraculous than anything else of the kind anywhere. Here you encounter, in its most annoying form, that necessity for eulogium which presses you everywhere. For, in truth, taken as it is at present, the Central Park is not fine, nor grand, nor beautiful. As to the miracle, let that pass. It is perhaps as miraculous as some other great latter-day miracles.

But the Central Park is a very great fact, and affords a strong additional proof of the sense and energy of the people. It is very large, being over three miles long, and about three quarters of a mile in breadth. When it was found that New York was extending itself, and becoming one of the largest cities of the world, a space was selected between Fifth and Seventh Avenues, immediately outside the limits of the city as then built, but nearly in the centre of the city as it is intended to be built. The ground around it became at once of great value; and I do not doubt that the present fashion of the Fifth Avenue about Twentieth Street will in course of time move itself up to the Fifth Avenue as it looks, or will look, over the Park at Seventieth, Eightieth, and Ninetieth Streets. The great waterworks of the city bring the Croton River, whence New York is supplied, by an aqueduct over the Haarlem river into an enormous reservoir just above the Park; and hence it has come to pass that there will be water not only for sanitary and useful purposes, but also for ornament. At present the Park, to English eyes, seems to be all road. The trees are not grown up, and the new embankments, and new lakes, and new ditches, and new paths give to the place anything but a picturesque appearance. The Central Park is good for what it will be, rather than for what it is. The summer heat is so very great that I doubt much whether the people of New York will ever enjoy such verdure as our parks show. But there will be a pleasant assemblage of walks and water-works, with fresh air, and fine shrubs and flowers, immediately within the reach of the citizens. All that art and energy can do will be done, and the Central Park doubtless will become one of the great glories of New York. When I was expected to declare that St. James's Park, Green Park, Hyde Park, and Kensington Gardens, altogether, were nothing to it, I confess that I could only remain mute.

Those who desire to learn what are the secrets of society in New York, I would refer to the Potiphar Papers. The Potiphar Papers are perhaps not as well known in England as they deserve to be. They were published, I think, as much as seven or eight years ago; but are probably as true now as they were then. What I saw of society in New York was quiet and pleasant enough; but doubtless I did not climb into that circle in which Mrs. Potiphar held so distinguished a position. It may be true that gentlemen habitually throw fragments of their supper and remnants of their wine on to their host's carpets; but if so I did not see it.

As I progress in my work I feel that duty will call upon me to write a separate chapter on hotels in general, and I will not, therefore, here say much about those in New York. I am inclined to think that few towns in the world, if any, afford on the whole better accommodation, but there are many in which the accommodation is cheaper. Of the railways also I ought to say something. The fact respecting them which is most remarkable is that of their being continued into the centre of the town through the streets. The cars are not dragged through the city by locomotive engines, but by horses; the pace therefore is slow, but the convenience to travellers in being brought nearer to the centre of trade must be much felt. It is as though passengers from Liverpool and passengers from Bristol were carried on from Euston Square and Paddington along the New Road, Portland Place, and Regent Street to Pall Mall, or up the City Road to the Bank. As a general rule, however, the railways, railway cars, and all about them are ill-managed. They are monopolies, and the public, through the press, has no restraining power upon them as it has in England. A parcel sent by express over a distance of forty miles will not be delivered within twenty-four hours. I once made my plaint on this subject at the bar or office of an hotel, and was told that no remonstrance was of avail. "It is a monopoly," the man told me, "and if we say anything, we are told that if we do not like it we need not use it." In railway matters and postal matters time and punctuality are not valued in the States as they are with us, and the public seem to acknowledge that they must put up with defects,—that they must grin and bear them in America, as the public no doubt do in Austria where such affairs are managed by a government bureau.

In the beginning of this chapter I spoke of the population of New York, and I cannot end it without remarking that out of that population more than one-eighth is composed of Germans. It is, I believe, computed that there are about 120,000 Germans in the city, and that only two other German cities in the world, Vienna and Berlin, have a larger German population than New York. The Germans are good citizens and thriving men, and are to be found prospering all over the northern and western parts of the Union. It seems that they are excellently well adapted to colonization, though they have in no instance become the dominant people in a colony, or carried with them their own language or their own laws. The French have done so in Algeria, in some of the West India islands, and quite as essentially into Lower Canada, where their language and laws still prevail. And yet it is, I think, beyond doubt that the French are not good colonists, as are the Germans.