In precisely an hour from the time we had left the wharf we landed on Staten Island, and proceeded at once to the place of rendezvous. This was a large public-house fitted up in a most magnificent style by Colonel M***, late keeper of the A*** Hotel, one of the few landlords possessed of the talent of making people comfortable. The building was very spacious; but its wings were a little too long, and the small garden in front almost entirely destitute of trees,—a fault from which no public, and hardly any private, mansion in the United States, can be said to be entirely exempted.
The Americans have, indeed, a singular aversion to trees and shrubs of every description: their highest idea of perfection in a landscape being an extended plain sown with grass. They consider trees as a mark of barbarism, and are, in their zeal for civilization, extirpating them wherever they find them. The hills and islands in the harbour of Boston, which were once studded with the majestic pine and the gnarled oak, are now completely shorn: the city of Albany, built on a gentle declivity once covered with variegated wood, is daily becoming more and more flat and less shady; the fashionable inhabitants paying more for levelling the ground, and felling the trees, than for the erection of their dwellings. The beautiful trees on the shores of the Monongahela and the Ohio are, at an enormous expense, destroyed root and branch, to give the inhabitants of Pittsburgh the benefit of light and air; and even the “old liberty tree” of Boston, with all its historical associations and recollections, stands no more. How singularly this taste of the Americans contrasts with that of the English, who, after burning and sacking the colony of New Jersey, placed a sentinel near the tree under which William Penn had concluded the treaty with the Indians!
The fault of the garden apart, the Pavilion of Staten Island, or “the Brighton Pavilion,” as it is sometimes called, offers really a fine and healthy retreat from the noise and dirt of New York; and this the more so, as, from its elevation, it is accessible on all sides to the sea-breeze. We ascended a few steps, and found ourselves at once in a capacious bar-room, fitted up in the best American style. Labels of all sorts, and in all languages, stuck on innumerable bottles placed at small distances from one another, and interlined with lemons and oranges, whose bright and pale gold was again relieved by the dark-green hock, and the silver-headed champaign bathed in ice. By the side of these stood the grave and manly Carolina madeira, the fiery sherry, and the sombre port. For the lovers of condensation there were also old French cognac, Irish and Scotch whisky, and an ominous-looking bottle, whose contents portended to be the original beverage of Van Tromp. The favourite drink, however, seemed to be mint-julep; for a huge mass of ice and a forest of mint, together with two large bottles of French and peach brandy, gave, alas! but too positive proofs of the incapability of the landlord to maintain the balance of power among spirits so different in action and principle.
The bar was thronged, even at this early hour, with young men from sixteen to twenty-four years of age, for whom the busy bar-keeper was preparing ice-punch, mint-juleps, port and madeira sangarie, apple-toddy, ginsling, &c. with a celerity of motion of which I had heretofore scarcely seen an example. This man evidently understood the value of time, and was fast rising into respectability; for he was making money more quickly than the “smartest” broker in Wall Street.
“Mr. S*** and Mr. P***?” said he, as he saw us enter; and, on being answered in the affirmative, touched a bell, which was instantly answered by a servant. “Show these gentlemen to No. 3.”
We were led into a large room, in which from fifteen to twenty persons might have been assembled, exciting their appetite for breakfast by drinking juleps.
“I present you a new friend,” said one of my companions. “I hope you will be gratified with making his acquaintance. Monsieur de *** from Germany.”
Hereupon all the gentlemen rose, one by one, and shook hands with me; each of them saying, “How d’ye do? Very glad to see you.” At last one of them, by way of entering into conversation, told me that he was exceedingly glad to meet with a gentleman from that country. “I have myself,” said he, “passed a long time in Germany.”
“What part of Germany?” demanded I.
“Oh, no particular part,” replied he; “only principally up and down the Rhine. Capital country that!—excellent hock!—fine historical associations!—excellent people the Germans!”