The easy-going temper of the metropolis to which Irving was to give a lasting expression is still further indicated by the story that in order to escape the rigid requirements of his father’s Presbyterian faith the boy had himself confirmed in Trinity Church. His temper was genial and kindly, and the mingled sentiment and humor which were to give his books a quality American writing had so far lacked, made him a loiterer and an observer rather than an arduous and methodical student. New York was the gateway to the beautiful country of Dutch settlement and tradition on the banks of the Hudson, and the gun and fishing-rod were the instruments of exploration with which the boy who was to write “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle” carried his discoveries into the heart of a region in which it was always afternoon. He had read “Orlando Furioso” and had played the knight with great fire and gallantry in the back yard on John Street; he had surreptitiously saved candle-ends and read the moving adventures of Sindbad and Robinson Crusoe in forbidden places and at improper hours, and the thirst for travel was on him. He wandered about the pier-heads when he should have been poring over textbooks, and watched lessening sails with eager desire to fare with them to the ends of the earth. He was, in a word, taking that course in romance, adventure, and dreaming which boys of his temperament and genius have elected from the beginning of time, to the sore but fortunate disappointment of their elders. His brothers went through Columbia College, but he went up the Hudson and discovered to the imagination the river which Hudson had discovered to the eye. Diedrich Knickerbocker was last seen, it will be remembered, by the passengers in the stage for Albany!
The literary temperament in Irving was not without the confirmation of the literary impulse, and while he was still in his teens he began to try his hand at social satire, a form of literature which is practised only by men of city breeding and interest. In the “Morning Chronicle,” of which his brother Peter was editor and proprietor, he published, in 1802, a series of short papers dealing with the fashions and foibles of the town after the manner of the “Spectator” and “Tatler,” and especially with the manners of the actors and their auditors. They were boyish performances, but they showed sensibility and humor, and a chivalrous attitude toward women. Irving’s health, which had been uncertain, was established by a residence of two years in Europe, where he saw countries and peoples with infinite zest not only in the picturesque Old World but in the range and variety of character, the broad contrasts, the mingled tragedy and comedy of life in a more highly organized society. “I am a young man and in Paris,” he wrote to a friend at home, and he was happy in a wholesome appetite for a more picturesque and vivid life than he had enjoyed in the little provincial city at the mouth of the Hudson. When he returned in 1806 it was to find a group of companions whose knowledge of the great world was less than his, but who were equally ready for work or for mischief in a little provincial city which had developed what may be called a town-consciousness.
It was still bounded on the north by Anthony and Hester Streets; Greenwich Village, a pleasant suburban village through which Christopher Street now passes, was a place of refuge from the plague for families fleeing from the city; the State prison was there, and there were faint streets budding in the adjacent farms. Broome Street had been laid out; Astor Place and Greenwich Street, Mr. Jarvis tells us, were lanes; the latter had attained the dignity of a fashionable drive, and opulent citizens drove out to Greenwich Village on pleasant afternoons, as to-day they motor to West Point or Peekskill! The seats of fashion were to be found on the Battery, which would have remained the most delightful locality for residence in New York if the people of the metropolis had not conceived a repugnance to living in near proximity to business quarters. Lower Broadway, Upper Pearl and Nassau Streets were of high respectability; and Broadway had been paved as far as the City Hall. Beyond lay charming country roads, occasional country houses to which the leading families retreated from the summer heat, and thrifty farms whose owners were happily ignorant of the enormous future values of their fields.
The American imagination, which has since built so many cities over night in the newer sections of the country, did not slumber, however, even in a city in which Dutch reluctance to move faster than the fact was so large a factor, and a map made by Mangin in 1803 carries the Boston Road far north through a network of supposititious streets that lay across the broad fields owned by Mr. Bayard, Mr. Rutgers, Mr. Lispenard, Mr. De Peyster, and other well-known citizens, and obliterates as by magic the Swamp; the Collect, or fresh-water pond; and the salt meadows of the earlier maps.
The Collect was not, however, so easily dealt with. It was a marsh lying across the island from Roosevelt Slip to the Hudson at what is now the foot of Canal Street. The focal point of this marsh was a pond which found an outlet through the Swamp where leather has had its shrine these many years, and whence the first Brooklyn Bridge takes its flight over the East River. The Swamp had been drained and the water from the pond flowed along the course of the present Canal Street; but the pond was still to be disposed of. It was very deep and it was proposed at one time to connect it with the two rivers by canals, which would have made New Amsterdam reminiscent of old Amsterdam; but it was finally filled in by leveling the high ground, and adventurous youths and maidens who had been accustomed, on pleasant afternoons, to venture into the country beyond the City Hall lost a convenient excuse for Sabbath-day excursions.
It is amusing to find a pleasure-garden bearing the Old World name of Ranelagh on the older maps; and Old Vauxhall, which stood originally at the corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets in a house built by Sir Peter Warren, was also a public garden, patterned after its famous original in London and kept by Sam Fraunces, at one time a steward in the employ of Washington, and whose connection with the old tavern which still stands ensures his name a local immortality. Later this pleasure-ground covered the section between Broadway and the Bowery of which the Astor Library was the centre. The chief cattle-market was on the Bowery somewhat south of the garden. There were various road-houses along the East River where oysters and turtles were cooked with great skill. Fishing and water parties in summer and sleighing parties in winter found the best of fare in these houses, with their pleasant grounds. It was the day of the old-fashioned chaise, and there was a bridge on the Boston Post Road at about Third Avenue and Seventy-seventh Street which bore the suggestive name of the Kissing-bridge. The exaction of this kind of toll appears to have been widely practised; not only bridges but gates and stiles were penalized for women. The Rev. Mr. Burnaby sagely observed that this custom was “curious, yet not displeasing.” New York had spread out since Irving’s birth, but it was still a neighborly little city, of a social turn and disposed to make easy terms with life.
In 1809 Thomas Paine had just died in Greenwich Village, at what is now No. 293 Bleecker Street, where he was often to be seen at the open window reading, with his book in close proximity to a decanter of what appeared to be brandy or rum. It is reported that two clergymen who visited him with the hope of changing his attitude toward Christianity were abruptly dismissed and the housekeeper received orders to bar the door against such visitors. “If God does not change his mind, I’m sure no human can,” was her sage comment, and the author of “The Age of Reason” was troubled no more.
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