My first visit in New York was in the spring of 1863. My mother and I stayed at Number 8 Bond Street, the home of her uncle, John Ward. Bond Street was already unfashionably downtown, though still dignified; its stately houses had immaculate white doorsteps. The rooms of Number 8 were large and high, the doors of heavy Santo Domingo mahogany, the furniture Georgian, in keeping with the rest.
Uncle John was adored by my mother and her sisters, to whom he was a second father; to me he is but a shadowy memory, not so distinct as his brother, Uncle Richard, who lived with him. Both were very tall men; Uncle Richard was slender, Uncle John heavily built, with a clean-shaven face, rare in those days when the moustache was almost universal. He was the President of the New York Stock Exchange, where his portrait by Wensler may still be seen. Did I hear Uncle Richard say to my mother, speaking of himself and his five brothers, all men over six feet tall?
“They were fine men, dearie! I am the least of them!”
“The Corner”, the house Grandfather Ward built on the corner of Bond Street, with the picture gallery extension running along Broadway, was still standing, a handsome house of soft-toned brick with white marble “trimmings.” The gallery had no windows, the lighting being from the top. The other day a gentleman said to me à prôpos of the extension:
“When I was a boy, I thought that was the city treasury and that all the money in New York was kept there, because there were no doors or windows for robbers to break in!”
“The Corner” was now owned by Mr. Sampson, from whom my mother got permission to show me the home of her youth. I received an impression of greater state than I had before known; it pleased me to think of my mother as a girl receiving her guests in the long drawing-rooms, one hung with blue, one with yellow, brocade. I admired the mantelpieces, with graceful sculptured figures, the work of Thomas Crawford, while still the marble cutter’s apprentice. There was ample space in the entrance hall and well-balanced stairway, that might have been planned by our own Boston architect, Bulfinch. We were not asked to go upstairs; I never saw the room where my mother sat “tied to her chair”, studying hour after hour. Was she thinking of that time of severe study when she wrote?
Who sows in tears his early years
May bind the golden sheaves;
Who scatters flowers in summer bowers
Shall reap but their withered leaves.
At Number 23 Bond Street lived Aunt Henry, widow of my mother’s uncle, Henry Ward, and mother of Cousin Henry.
“Mis’ Henry Ward will be pleased to see ye, Mis’ Julia,” the old negro butler exclaimed, as he opened the door, grinning until he showed all his ivories. In the darkened parlor I was startled by a savage cry:
“Good-by!”