Chapter 10

Half a Century Ago

Like many a landed estate, like many a quiet village, like many a battle-ground, like many a winding and historic road, like so many other places of interest of which the island of Manhattan has been the scene in days agone--Minniesland is not easy to locate. Relentlessly and remorselessly the great masses of brick and mortar have forged ahead in their furtherance of the city's growth, seeking a level as they spread, dominating the island, levelling the hills, and stretching over valleys until the surface of the land is altered beyond all knowing. Minniesland is one of the almost buried districts of the great city. Its last surviving relic, a square ornamental structure, is the one token that it ever existed. Now that the town has surrounded this building, and streets have cut through and mutilated the first plan of the district, this house may be found standing where One Hundred and Fifty-fifth Street slopes down to the Hudson River. Enter it; pass through its ancient halls, and, standing on its porch, blot from the mind the spot as it is and reconstruct it as it was half a century ago.

Fifty years ago the city was far away there to the south, and this house, miles and miles away up-country, was at the edge of a forest stretching down the hillside to the river. There were other farmhouses around it. To the north was the mansion where Colonel Morris had lived before the Revolution; where Madame Jumel in later days had married Aaron Burr. To the south was the square frame building, close by a clump of thirteen trees, where Alexander Hamilton had lived and where his widow stayed on after his death.

Forgetting for a moment these old-time surroundings of the house by the forest edge, turn to the building itself, and imagine at the window a man sitting. He has long hair and clear blue eyes. He is painting at a small easel and working in quite a wonderful manner, for he is ambidextrous. He stops in his work and looks over the trees towards the Hudson. If that ever-moving river recalls to him his past life, John James Audubon, ornithologist, is reviewing a strange and adventurous career in many countries, full of losses, of suffering, of changes, of perils. He thinks of himself as a boy wandering through the dense, hot wilds of San Domingo; as a youth hard at his art studies in Paris under the master David; as a man at his father's country place on the Schuylkill, failing utterly and absolutely when he goes into business, and letting his father's fortune slip away from his nerveless grasp. He remembers, too, his marriage, and how his wife followed his restless career with unchanging love and remained always a balance-wheel to his impetuosity. He recalls how, through all the changes of that early and unsettled life, the naturalist-love born in him when he roamed the tropical home of his youth was always strongest in his nature, and was constantly cropping out in his mania for collecting beautiful things that were quite worthless from a commercial point of view, just as it was shown in his personal appearance; for his manner of dressing, always with his hair falling over his shoulders, marked him as a man regardless of conventionality, a man so bound within the circle of his own thoughts that he had little time or inclination to peek out and see which way the world was moving.

Audubon had passed through the hardest struggles of his life, had travelled in England, in France, in Scotland, arranging for the publication of his bird pictures, that remarkable work which set his memory apart; he had succeeded in his life's object, and at the close of 1840 had come here to this forest hillside by the Hudson, built the house on the estate Minniesland, named in honor of his wife, made it a luxurious abode, and there gathered his friends about him.

With this home of Audubon there is associated a memory of the early days of the telegraph. When Samuel F.B. Morse built the first telegraph line to Philadelphia, he had it strung across the river from Fort Lee to the basement of Audubon's house, and there he received the first telegraphic message ever sent to the island of Manhattan. Here Audubon lived, wrote, and painted until even his rugged strength was worn out. He worked until those clever ambidextrous hands lost the cunning to work out the forms his active brain could still conceive. The day came, in 1851, when he died, fortunately before any great change had come over the beauties of Minniesland. The peacefulness of Trinity Cemetery, which takes in part of the Audubon farm, is still faintly reminiscent of the scene of the ornithologist's later life, and there, close by the old house, is the grave of Audubon, and upon his tomb are sculptured the birds he loved so well, now keeping watch over him.

While Audubon worked in his out-of-town retreat, another scholar and writer lived farther down the island towards the city. Clement C. Moore lived in a little district of his own called Chelsea Village, now merged into the city by so deft a laying out of streets that there is little irregularity at the point where town and village met. A bit of the old village remains exactly as it was in the General Theological Seminary, and the block on which it stands, Twentieth to Twenty-first streets, Ninth and Tenth avenues, is still called Chelsea Square. Clement C. Moore inherited from his father, Bishop Benjamin Moore, a large tract of land along the river near the present Chelsea Square, and gave the land on which the seminary was built to that institution. He himself lived in a house which his father had occupied before him and which stood on the line of the present Twenty-third Street on the block between Ninth and Tenth avenues. It was a very old building, renowned for the fact that General Washington had stopped there one afternoon when he had his headquarters in the city. Clement C. Moore was a professor in the General Theological Seminary, and while there compiled the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons ever published in this country. But it is not by reason of his learned books or his philanthropy that his name is best recalled, but by a poem which he wrote for his children and of which the world at large might never have known but that it was sent without his knowledge and published in an up-State paper. This poem, the Christmas classic of _The Visit of St. Nicholas_, begins with "'T was the night before Christmas," and its simple yet merry jingle and delightful word-pictures have endeared it to all children since his time and will endure to please many more to come.

All that there was of literary New York half a century ago centred about Anne C. Lynch. She established a circle, a gathering which increased or fell off in numbers as men and women of brains came and went. This was the first near approach to a _salon_ in this country. In the early days of her coming to the city, Miss Lynch lived in a neat-appearing brick house in Waverly Place, just off Washington Square. She moved elsewhere from time to time, the literary coterie moving about as she moved. At the height of her success, in 1855, she married the Italian educator, Vincenzo Botta, then in his second year in New York and occupying a professorship of Italian literature in the University of New York. The receptions of Mrs. Botta flourished and were as popular as had been those of Miss Lynch. Her writings, too, went on, and her most widely known work, the material for which she gathered during her intimate personal association with many authors, the _Handbook of Universal Literature_, was written when she lived in Thirty-seventh Street, a few doors west of Fifth Avenue.

In the early years of Anne C. Lynch's receptions, one of her intimates was Caroline M. Kirkland, the friend of Bayard Taylor. Mrs. Kirkland, who had just returned after a residence in Michigan, sought her advice before she published _Forest Life_, which was the second of her descriptions of the sparsely settled region where she had spent three years of her life. The intimacy between these two continued for years, indeed until Mrs. Kirkland died, in 1864, stricken with paralysis while under the strain of managing a great sanitary fair during the Civil War.

Through Mrs. Kirkland, Lydia M. Child was introduced at the Lynch receptions, when she was associated with her husband in conducting the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_. She had been a writer since her youth, having published her first book, _Hobomok_, in 1821. Her works had been much read, but lost much of their popularity after she published the first anti-slavery book in America, in 1833, under the title _An Appeal for that Class of Americans Called Africans_. She ever remained prominent as an abolitionist, but because of her opinions lost caste as a writer of novels. But Miss Lynch cared little what opinions any one held so long as they really had opinions and would stand by them, and Mrs. Child was welcomed to her home until she left the city, in 1844, to spend the rest of her life in Wayland, Massachusetts.

Very often Edgar Allan Poe attended the Lynch receptions, taking with him his delicate wife, who seemed to get better for the moment when she saw her husband the centre of a notable gathering. For even here Poe had quite a following of his own. It was on one of these evenings that he gave it as his opinion that _The Sinless Child_ was one of the strongest long poems ever produced in America. This poem was just then making a great stir and on this special evening had been the subject of much discussion. The author was present, as she usually was where writers congregated, for the beautiful and witty Elizabeth Oakes Smith carried enthusiasm and inspiration wherever she went. She found time to form part of many a circle, even though her days were well filled, for she assisted her husband, "Major Jack Downing," in his editorial work. For many a year before she finally retired to Hollywood, South Carolina, she held her place as the first and only woman lecturer in America.

Another dear friend of Poe's might usually be found at these receptions. "Estella" Lewis, the poet, lived in Brooklyn and held there quite a court of clever people. The time came when she was, indeed, a friend in need to Poe in his time of dire necessity at Fordham. It was at her Brooklyn home that he read _The Raven_ before it was published, and Estella Lewis was the last friend he visited before he left New York on the journey south which ended in his death.

On the "Poe nights," too, Ann S. Stephens was usually to be found at Miss Lynch's. She became a much-read novelist, writing _Fashion and Famine_ and _Mary Derwent_. On these nights, too, might be seen Margaret Fuller, the transcendentalist. She had left her Massachusetts home to take her place with Horace Greeley as literary editor of the _Tribune_, and between whiles devoted herself to charitable work in an effort to better the social condition of the poor of the metropolis. During most of her stay she lived in a locality much changed since her time, near where Forty-ninth Street touches the East River. A picturesque spot it was, overlooking the green stretches of Blackwell's Island, in the midst of suburban life. Her stay in New York was short. After a year or so she went to Europe and in Italy married the Marquis Ossoli. She was on her way back to America, in 1850, a passenger in the merchantman _Elizabeth_, when the ship was wrecked off Fire Island and she perished with it.

To this group of writers also belongs Frances Sargent Osgood. While, somewhere about the year 1846, the country was ringing with her praise, she was living the secluded life of an invalid, with her husband, in what was then becoming a fashionable neighborhood, 18 East Fourteenth Street. Once, in 1845, she had met Poe, had been instantly attracted by him, and became thereafter his staunch admirer, expressing her opinion persistently whenever opportunity offered. He, on his part, appreciated her poetic genius, and more than once referred to the scrupulous taste, faultless style, and magical grace of her verse. And several of his poems are addressed directly to her.

There was a young man named Richard Henry Stoddard who frequented the Lynch receptions. He had worked for six years in a foundry learning the trade of iron moulder, and writing poetry as he worked. By the year 1848 he was beginning to make a name for himself, and his first volume of poems, _Footnotes_, had just been published. At Miss Lynch's house he met Miss Elizabeth Barstow, herself a poet, and some time later visited her at her home in Mattapoisett. This led to their marriage. Early in the year of his meeting with Miss Barstow, Stoddard made the acquaintance of Bayard Taylor. Taylor had already travelled on foot over Europe, had crystallized the results of these travels in _Views Afoot_, and was then working under Greeley on the _Tribune_, as one of the several editors. Side by side with him worked that pure-hearted and thoughtful man who had been the instigator and supporter of the Brook Farm experiment, George Ripley, who wrote the _Tribune's_ book criticisms.

_Views Afoot_ was the most popular book of the day when Stoddard walked into the _Tribune_ office and introduced himself to the author, finding him very hard at work in a little pen of a room. This was the start of a friendship which lasted for thirty years, and was only broken in upon by death.

A few days after, Stoddard called upon Taylor, who then lived in Murray Street, a few steps from Broadway. Charles Fenno Hoffman, who occupied rooms in the same building, was then beginning to show signs of the mental breakdown which was to cloud the last thirty-four years of his life. But Hoffman was prosperous and occupied luxurious quarters on the ground floor, while Taylor, despite the popularity of his book, led a life of hard work and struggle. He was ill paid for his services on the _Tribune_, as Greeley did not believe in high salaries, and he lived up four flights of stairs in a sort of two-roomed attic. There Stoddard went almost every Saturday after his labors at the iron foundry, and there the friendship strengthened week by week; there Taylor taught Stoddard to smoke; there they discussed books and writers, and there wrote poetry together. There Taylor wrote _Kubleh_ and _Ariel in the Cloven Pine_, and, too, the song that won for him a prize when Barnum invited the entire country to a competition in writing a song for Jenny Lind. Taylor was visited by a great many friends, and with them the youthful Stoddard became acquainted. Sometimes to the house in Murray Street came Rufus W. Griswold, author of _Poets and Poetry of America_, _Prose Writers of America_, and kindred works. He had been one of Taylor's early advisers. The diplomatist and playwright, George H. Boker, often made one of the party at this time, when his tragedy, _Calaynos_, was being acted with great success at Sadlers's Wells Theatre in England. Another visitor was Richard Kimball, the lawyer-author, then enthusiastically putting the finishing touches to _St. Leger_.

These days of changing fortunes were the most romantic of Taylor's career. Many other places in the city are associated with him, one a house near Washington Square, where he lived for some years and wrote among other things the _Poems of the Orient_. His last city home was at 142 East Eighteenth Street. There he wrote _Deukalion_, and from there he started out, after being dined and fêted, on his mission as United States Minister to Germany. In England he met Carlyle. In Paris he had a "queer midnight supper" with Victor Hugo. In Germany, though he was then quite an ill man, he threw himself into official business with an energy that his constitution, worn by years of persistent hard work, would not warrant. Before the end of the year, the friends in America who had wished him farewell in April, congratulating him that he had attained an honor that he prized, knew that he lay dead in Berlin.