Certainly the custom of making the funeral as pleasant as possible for the visitors had not passed away even as late as the days of the Revolution; for during that war Tench Tilghman wrote the following description of a burial service attended by him in New York City: "This morning I attended the funeral of old Mr. Doer.... This was something in a stile new to me. The Corpse was carried to the Grave and interred with out any funeral Ceremony, the Clergy attended. We then returned to the home of the Deceased where we found many tables set out with Bottles, cool Tankards, Candles, Pipes & Tobacco. The Company sat themselves down and lighted their Pipes and handed the Bottles & Tankards pretty briskly. Some of them I think rather too much so. I fancy the undertakers had borrowed all the silver plate of the neighborhood. Tankards and Candle Sticks were all silver plated."[217b]
X. British Social Influences
With the increase of the English population New York began to depart from its normal, quiet round of social life, and entered into far more flashy, but far less healthful forms of pleasure. There was wealth in the old city before the British flocked to it, and withal an atmosphere of plenty and peaceful enjoyment of life. The description of the Schuyler residence, "The Flatts," presented in Grant's Memoirs, probably indicates at its best the home life of the wealthier natives, and gives hints of a wholesome existence which, while not showy, was full of comfort:
"It was a large brick house of two, or rather three stories (for there were excellent attics), besides a sunk story.... The lower floor had two spacious rooms, ... on the first there were three rooms, and in the upper one, four. Through the middle of the house was a very wide passage, with opposite front and back doors, which in summer admitted a stream of air peculiarly grateful to the languid senses. It was furnished with chairs and pictures like a summer parlor.... There was at the side a large portico, with a few steps leading up to it, and floored like a room; it was open at the sides and had seats all round. Above was ... a slight wooden roof, painted like an awning, or a covering of lattice work, over which a transplanted wild vine spread its luxuriant leaves...."
"At the back of the large house was a smaller and lower one, so joined to it as to make the form of a cross. There one or two lower and smaller rooms below, and the same number above, afforded a refuge to the family during the rigors of winter, when the spacious summer rooms would have been intolerably cold, and the smoke of prodigious wood fires would have sullied the elegantly clean furniture."[218]
But before 1760, as indicated above, the English element in New York was making itself felt, and a curious mingling of gaiety and economy began to be noticeable. William Smith, writing in his History of the Province of New York, in 1757, points this out:
"In the city of New York, through our intercourse with the Europeans, we follow the London fashions; though, by the time we adopt them, they become disused in England. Our affluence during the late war introduced a degree of luxury in tables, dress, and furniture, with which we were before unacquainted. But still we are not so gay a people as our neighbors in Boston and several of the Southern colonies. The Dutch counties, in some measure, follow the example of New York, but still retain many modes peculiar to the Hollanders."
"New York is one of the most social places on the continent. The men collect themselves into weekly evening clubs. The ladies in winter are frequently entertained either at concerts of music or assemblies, and make a very good appearance. They are comely and dress well...."
"Tinctured with the Dutch education, they manage their families with becoming parsimony, good providence, and singular neatness. The practice of extravagant gaming, common to the fashionable part of the fair sex in some places, is a vice with which my country women cannot justly be charged. There is nothing they so generally neglect as reading, and indeed all the arts for the improvement of the mind—in which, I confess we have set them the example. They are modest, temperate, and charitable, naturally sprightly, sensible, and good-humored; and, by the helps of a more elevated education, would possess all the accomplishments desirable in the sex."
With the coming of the Revolution, and the consequent invasion of the city by the British, New York became far more gay than ever before; but even then the native Dutch conservativeness so restrained social affairs that Philadelphia was more brilliant. When, however, the capital of the national government was located in New York then indeed did the city shine. Foreigners spoke with astonishment at the display of luxury and down-right extravagance. Brissot de Warville, for example, writing in 1788, declared: "If there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displays its follies, it is New York." And James Pintard, after attending a New Year levee, given by Mrs. Washington, wrote his sister: "You will see no such formal bows at the Court of St. James." If we may judge by the dress of ladies attending such gatherings, as one described in the New York Gazette of May 15, 1789, we may safely conclude that expense was not spared in the upper classes of society. Hear some descriptions: