Writers of Knickerbocker New York

by Hamilton Wright Mabie

“In June, 1787,” wrote Samuel Breck, “on my return from a residence of a few years in France, I arrived at that city [New York] and found it a neglected place, built chiefly of wood, and in a state of prostration and decay. A dozen vessels in port; Broadway, from Trinity Church, inclusive, down to the Battery, in ruins, owing to a fire that had occurred when the city was occupied by the enemy during the later part of the war—the ruined walls of the houses standing on both sides of the way testifying to the poverty of the place five years after the conflagration; for although the war had ceased during that period, and the enemy had departed, no attempt had been made to rebuild them. In short, there was silence and inactivity everywhere.” Mr. Breck was mistaken about the date of the fire, but his description of the desolate city was accurate.

In these depressing conditions, New York did not give itself up to gloomy misgivings; it had always been a cheerful, social community, and it was not long in recovering its prosperity and high spirits. Six years after the close of the war it was the Capital of the United States, the population had more than doubled, ships were in the harbor, grass no longer gave the streets a rustic aspect, and the tide of activity had reached the highest point in its history. There were nearly twenty-four thousand people living south of Reade Street on the west, and of Pike Street on the east; a swamp arrested the growth of the town along the East River. There were about twenty-four hundred slaves. The houses were mainly of English architecture, though peaked roofs and gable-ends to the streets recalled the good old days of Dutch dominion, when a canal ran through Broad Street and broad-sterned Dutch vessels lay at anchor in the centre of the town.

Politics ran high, and during elections language was used with far less restraint than at present. The first man sent to Congress from New York under the recently adopted national Constitution was Mr. John Lawrence, and a letter published in the “Daily Advertiser” in March, 1789, contains the following frank statement: “Of all the men who framed that monarchical, aristocratical, oligarchical, tyrannical, diabolical system of slavery, the New Constitution, One Half were lawyers. Of the men who represented, or rather misrepresented, this city and county in the late convention of this State, to whose wicked arts we may safely attribute the adoption of that diabolical system, seven out of the nine were lawyers.... And what crowns the wickedness of these wicked lawyers is, that a great majority of them throughout the State are violently opposed to our GOOD and GREAT HEAD and never-failing friend of the city and city interests, the present GOVERNOR.

“Beware, beware, beware of Lawyers!”

Very pleasant things were said about the New York of 1789 when, at the end of a three months’ session of the United States Congress, it was announced that only one member had been ill. After commenting on its nearness to the ocean and the sweetening of its air by abundant verdure, a charming picture is evoked by the statement that the residents on the west side of Broadway are “saluted by fragrant odors from the apple orchards and buckwheat fields in blossom on the pleasant banks of the Jersey shore.”

The little city was already charged with extravagance and frivolity, and the details of these offences are not lacking. One reads of blue satin gowns with white satin petticoats, large Italian gauze handkerchiefs with satin border stripes worn about the neck, completed by a head-dress of “pouf of gauze in the form of a globe, the headpiece of which was made of white satin having a double wing, in large plaits, and trimmed with a large wreath of artificial roses.” There were shoes of blue satin adorned by rose-colored rosettes, and muffs of wolfskin with knots of scarlet ribbon. The gentlemen of the period were arrayed with equal splendor: bottle-green, pearl, scarlet, purple, mulberry, and garnet were among the colors of cloths advertised by a local tailor on Hanover Square; while waistcoats fairly glowed with brilliant hues and brocaded and spangled buttons. Beaver and castor hats were in vogue, and superior boots were made by Mr. Thomas Garner, of Pearl Street, whose proud claim to the patronage of the fashionable was that he had worked for the first nobility in England. It cost approximately seventy-five dollars to dress a lady’s hair every day in the year; and there were dentists who pulled the teeth of the poor gratis between the hours of six and nine on the mornings of Monday and Thursday. The sociability and hospitality of the city made a deep impression on Noah Webster, who was also struck by the absence of affectation and of social snobbery.

Lectures appear to have been few in number and serious in theme; the city, which took its pleasures comfortably, took its opportunities of enlightenment sparingly and in a heroic temper. There appears to have been but one candidate on the lecture platform for public approval in this field during the winter of 1789, and he is described as “a man more than thirty years an Atheist.” The lecture was delivered at Aaron Aorson’s tavern, and tickets were to be had from the Aldermen!

The play enjoyed greater popular favor, but the John Street Theatre was without competition until 1798, when the Old Park Theatre was opened. During the season of 1789, William Dunlap put several home-made American dramas on the stage. He was the prolific author of forty-nine plays, which stand to the credit of his industry if not of his genius. These dramas were the premature births of the Genius of the American stage, and none of them survives. They were very faint prophecies of the interesting dramatic movement now in progress; but one of them, “Darby’s Return,” achieved the rare distinction of evoking a laugh from Washington—an occurrence so unusual that it stimulated a writer in the “Daily Advertiser” to report it in the most stately English: “Our Adored Ruler seemed to unbend and for the moment give himself to the pleasures arising from the gratifications of the two most noble organs of sense, the Eye and the Ear!”

The Musical Society gave an occasional recital, and there were subscription concerts under the management of local music-teachers. The young gentlemen at Columbia College were delivering Commencement orations “On the Progress and Causes of Civilization” and “On the Rising Glory of America.” There were nine publishers and booksellers in the city, and in the year of Irving’s birth one of them announced “The First American Novel” under the portentous title, “The Power of Sympathy; or, the Triumph of Nature.” The Society Library, disrupted by the war, was re-established, and a circulating library organized. William Dunlap, the playwright, painted portraits and, later, became one of the founders of the National Academy of Design. Mr. Edward Savage and Mr. Joseph Wright followed the same profession, and Washington sat for all three. The city was kept informed of events by five newspapers; a magazine had been born prematurely and expired after a brief and unimportant life. The journalistic style of the day was of an eloquence that is happily illustrated by a description of one of the barges which escorted Washington on his voyage across the bay to New York to attend his inauguration: “The voices of the ladies were as much superior to the flutes that played with the stroke of the oars in Cleopatra’s silken-corded barge, as the very superior and glorious water scene of New York bay exceeds the Cydnus in all its pride.”

The two-story house in which Irving was born, at No. 131 William Street, about half-way between Fulton and John Streets, was pulled down ten years before his death, and the house directly across the street, in which he spent his childhood, has shared its fate. The latter was larger and afforded greater facilities for boyish gymnastics. There were front and rear buildings with a narrow structure between which was hardly more than a passage, and it was from the sloping roof at the rear that Irving made his perilous descents when he set out to enjoy the forbidden pleasures of the John Street Theatre. George William Curtis tells a delightful story of a boy in Philadelphia, whose father, like the elder Irving, was of a very serious turn of mind, and who, by way of youthful reaction, secretly frequented the forbidden playhouse. “John,” said the father, “is this dreadful thing true that I hear of thee? Hast thou been to see the play-actress Frances Kemble?” “Yes, father.” “I hope thee has not been more than once, John.” “Yes, father,” was the honest if somewhat discouraging answer; “more than thirty times.”