HENRY VAN WART, J.P.
Many years ago I was one of a small dinner party of gentlemen at a house in the Hagley Road. I was a comparative stranger, for I only knew the host and two others who were there. I was a young man, and all the other guests were men of middle age. The party had been invited for the purpose of introducing me to "a few old friends," and I was to be married the next day to a relative of the host. Sitting opposite to me at table was a gentleman of some fifty or sixty years of age, whose fine oval face and ample brow struck me as having the most benevolent and "fatherly" expression I had ever seen. The custom had not then quite died out of toasting the guests at dinner parties, and upon a hint from the host this gentleman rose, and in simple and apparently sincere phrase, proposed to the company to drink my health. I mention it now, because I remember in what a kindly, genial way he pointed out to me the course of conduct best calculated to secure happiness in the state into which I was so soon to enter. I recollect, too, how his voice faltered as he spoke of his own long and happy experience as a husband and a father, and mentioned that in one great trouble of his life it was the loving support of his wife that enabled him to bear, and eventually to overcome it. The speaker was Henry Van Wart.
I suppose the impressionable state of my own mind at the time, made me peculiarly susceptible to external influences, and fixed minute circumstances more intensely on my memory; so that I now vividly recall the thought which then occurred to me—that I had never before seen so much gentleness and calm quiet benignity in a man. The impression then rapidly formed has lasted ever since, for in all the long years from that day until his death I never had cause to abate one jot of the reverential feeling with which he then inspired me. I have had hundreds of business transactions with his house; I have seen him often in the magistrate's chair; and I have met him publicly and privately, and he had always the same bland, suave, courteous, and kindly bearing. Strength of character and gentleness of conduct and manner were so combined in him that he frequently seemed to me to be a living proof of the truth of a saying of poor George Dawson: "The tenderness of a strong man is more gentle than the gentleness of the most tender woman."
Mr. Van Wart was an American by birth, and a Dutchman by descent. His ancestors emigrated from Holland about the year 1630 to the colony of New Netherland, established in North America by the Dutch in the year 1621. The capital of this settlement was named New Amsterdam, and was built upon the island of Manhattan, the entire area of which, now completely covered with buildings, and comprising the whole site of the city of New York, had been bought from an Iroquois chief, in fee-simple, for twenty-four dollars, being at about the rate of a penny for twelve acres! In 1652, New Amsterdam, then having about a thousand inhabitants, was incorporated as a city. Twelve years after, the entire province was seized by the British, under Colonel Nichols, and was re-named by him "New York." The Dutch made some unsuccessful attempts to recover possession, and they held the city for a short time, but in 1674 the whole colony was ceded by treaty to the English, who held it until the War of Independence. When they quitted it, on November 25th, 1783, Henry Van Wart was exactly two months old.
The struggle for the independence of the American states had been going on with varying success for many years, but the tide at length turned so decidedly against the British, that an armistice was sought and agreed upon. Hostilities were suspended, and a conference met in Paris. Here a treaty, acknowledging the independence of America, was agreed to by England, and signed on the 3rd of September, 1783. On the 25th of the same month, Henry Van Wart was born at a pretty village on the banks of the Hudson, called Tarrytown, a place since celebrated as the "Sleepy Hollow" of Washington Irving's delightful book, but at that time remarkable as the scene of one of the most distressing incidents in all the wretched struggle then just over—the capture of the unfortunate Major André.
Mr. Van Wart, feeling little inclination for his father's business of a farmer, was apprenticed to the mercantile firm of Irving and Smith, of New York. In accordance with the usage of the times, he became an inmate of the household of Mr. William Irving, the head of the firm. Mr. Irving, like his gifted brother, Washington, was a man of extensive reading and considerable taste, culture, and refinement. Mr. Van Wart's intercourse with the Irving family, had, no doubt, a considerable influence in forming his character. He probably learned from them the courtesy and kindness of manner which distinguished him through life.
On the termination of his apprenticeship in the year 1804, Mr. Van Wart married the youngest sister of his employer, and was despatched by the firm, who had unbounded confidence in his integrity and judgment, to organise a branch of the house at Liverpool. Here his eldest son, Henry, was born in 1806, soon after which the Liverpool concern was abandoned, and Mr. Van Wart returned to America, where he remained for some considerable period.
Soon after the birth of his second son, Irving, in 1808, Mr. Van Wart returned to England with his family, and commenced business in Birmingham. He first occupied a house on the left-hand side of the West Bromwich road, at Handsworth. The house, which is occupied by Mr. T.R.T. Hodgson, is a stuccoed one, with its gable towards the road; it stands near the "New Inn." After a short time he removed to the house at the corner of Newhall Street and Great Charles Street, which was, until recently, occupied by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.
He afterwards bought a stone-built house in Icknield Street West. This house stood on the right-hand side near the present Wesleyan Chapel. It is now pulled down. In connection with this purchase, a curious circumstance occurred. As already stated, Mr. Van Wart was born a few days after England had acknowledged the independence of America. Those few days made all the difference to him. Had his birth occurred a month earlier, he would have been born a British subject. As it was, he was an alien, and incapable of holding freehold property in England. To get over this difficulty, he had to apply for, and obtain, a special Act of Parliament to naturalise him. This having passed, he was enabled to complete the purchase of the house, to which he soon removed. Here his celebrated brother-in-law, Washington Irving, came on a visit, and in this house the greater part of the "Sketch-book" was written.
In 1814, the second American War was closed by treaty, and all the world was at peace. Business on both sides of the Atlantic became suddenly inflated, and there being at that time no restriction upon the issue of bank notes, mercantile transactions, to enormous amounts, were comparatively easy. Urged by American buyers, Mr. Van Wart purchased very large quantities of Birmingham and other goods, which he shipped to New York. In a very short time, however, a revulsion came. Prices fell rapidly, in some cases to the extent of 50 per cent; American houses by scores tottered and fell; the Irvings could not weather the storm, and their fall brought down Mr. Van Wart.