Chapter 20

Whoever shall write a history of Philadelphia from the Thirties to the end of the Fifties will record a popular period of turbulence and outrages so extensive as to now appear almost incredible. These were so great as to cause grave doubts in my mind whether the severest despotism, guided by justice, would not have been preferable to such republican license as then prevailed in the city of Penn. I refer to the absolute and uncontrolled rule of the Volunteer Fire Department, which was divided into companies (each having clumsy old fire apparatus and hose), all of them at deadly feud among themselves, and fighting freely with pistols, knives, iron spanners, and slung shot, whenever they met, whether at fires or in the streets. Of these regular firemen, _fifty thousand_ were enrolled, and to these might have been added almost as many more, who were known as runners, bummers, and hangers-on. Among the latter were a great number of incendiaries, all of whom were well known to and encouraged by the firemen. Whenever the latter wished to meet some rival company, either to test their mutual skill or engage in a fight, a fire was sure to occur; the same always happened when a fire company from some other city visited Philadelphia.

This gave occasion to an incredible amount of blackmailing, since all house-owners were frequently called on to contribute money to the different companies, sometimes as a subscription for ball-tickets or repairs. It was well understood, and generally pretty plainly expressed, that those who refused to pay might expect to be burned out or neglected. The result of it all was a general fear of the firemen, a most degrading and contemptible subservience to them by politicians of all kinds, a terrible and general growth and spread of turbulence and coarse vulgarity among youth, and finally, such a prevalence of conflagration that no one who owned a house could hear the awful tones of the bell of Independence Hall without terror. Fires were literally of nightly occurrence, and that they were invariably by night was due to the incendiary "runner." A slight examination of the newspapers and cheap broadside literature of that time will amply confirm all that I here state. "Jakey" was the typical fireman; he was the brutal hero of a vulgar play, and the ideal of nineteen youths out of twenty. For a generation or more all society felt the degrading influences of this rowdyism in almost every circle--for there were among the vast majority of men not very many who respected, looked up to, or cared for anything really cultured or refined. I have a large collection of the popular songs of Philadelphia of that time, in all of which there is a striving downwards into blackguardism and brutality, vileness and ignorance, which has no parallel in the literature of any other nation. The French of the _Pere Duchene_ school may be nastier, and, as regards aristocrats, as bloody, but for general all-round _vulgarity_, the state of morals developed among the people at the time of which I speak was literally without its like. It is very strange that Pliny also speaks of the turbulence or rowdyism of the firemen of Rome.

I remember that even in Walnut Street, below Thirteenth Street, before my father's house (this being then by far the most respectable portion of Philadelphia), it happened several nights in succession that rival fire- companies, running side by side, fought as they ran, with torches and knives, while firing pistols. There was a young lady named Mary Bicking, who lived near us. I asked her one day if she had ever seen a man shot; and when she answered "No," I replied, "Why don't you look out of your window some night and see one?"

The southern part of the city was a favourite battleground, and I can remember hearing ladies who lived in Pine Street describe how, on Sunday summer afternoons, they could always hear, singly or in volleys, the shots of the revolvers and shouts of the firemen as they fought in Moyamensing.

Every effort to diminish these evils, or to improve the fire department in any way whatever, was vigorously opposed by the rowdies, who completely governed the city. The first fire-alarm electric telegraphs were a great offence to firemen, and were quietly destroyed; the steam- engines were regarded by them as deadly enemies. But the first great efficient reform in the Philadelphia fire department, and the most radical of all, was the establishment of a fire-detective department under a fire-marshal, whose business it was to investigate and punish all cases of incendiarism. For it was simply incendiarism, encouraged and supported by the firemen themselves, which caused nineteen-twentieths of all these disasters; it was the _fires_ which were the sole support of the whole system.

I was much indebted for understanding all this, and acting on it boldly, as I did, to the city editor and chief reporter on the _Evening Bulletin_, Caspar Souder. The Mayor of the city was Richard Vaux, a man of good family and education, and one who had seen in his time cities and men, he having once in his youth, on some great occasion, waltzed with the Princess--now Queen--Victoria. Being popular, he was called _Vaux populi_. I wrote very often leaders urging Mayor Vaux by name to establish a fire-detective department. So great was the indignation caused among the firemen, that I incurred no small risk in writing them. But at last, when I published for one week an article every day clamouring for a reform, Mayor Vaux--as he said directly to Mr. Souder, "in consequence of my appeals"--vigorously established a fire-marshal with two aids. By my request, the office was bestowed on a very intelligent and well-educated person, Dr. Blackburne, who had been a surgeon in the Mexican war, then a reporter on our journal, and finally a very clever superior detective. He was really not only a born detective, but to a marked degree a man of scientific attainments and a skilled statistician. His anecdotes and comments as to pyromaniacs of different kinds were as entertaining and curious as anything recorded by Gaboriau. Some of the most interesting experiences of my life were when I went with Dr. Blackburne from place to place where efforts had been made to burn houses, and noted the unerring and Red-Indian skill with which he distinguished the style of work, and identified the persons and names of the incendiaries. One of these "fire-bugs" was noted for invariably setting fire to houses in such a manner as to destroy as many inmates as possible. If there were an exit, he would block it up. Dr. Blackburne took me to a wooden house in which the two staircases led to a very small vestibule about three feet square before the front door. This space had been filled with diabolical ingenuity with a barrel full of combustibles, so that every one who tried to escape by the only opening below would be sure to perish. Fortunately, the combustibles in the barrel went out after being ignited. "I know that fellow by his style," remarked the Doctor, "and I shall arrest him at four o'clock this afternoon."

This fire-detective department and the appointment of Blackburne was the real basis and beginning of all the reforms which soon followed, leading to the abolition of the volunteer system and the establishment of paid _employes_. And as I received great credit for it then, my work being warmly recognised and known to all the newspaper reporters and editors in the city, who were the best judges of it, as they indeed are of all municipal matters, I venture to record it here as something worth mentioning. And though I may truly say that at the time I was so busy that I made no account of many such things, they now rise up from time to time as comforting assurances that my life has not been quite wasted.

This reminds me that I had not been very long on the newspaper, and had just begun to throw out editorials with ease, when Mr. Cummings said to me one day that I did not realise what a power I held in my hand, but that I would soon find it out. Almost immediately after, in noticing some article or book which was for sale at No. 24 Chestnut Street, I inadvertently made reference to 24 Walnut Street. Very soon came the proprietor of the latter place, complaining that I had made life a burden to him, because fifty people had come in one day to buy something which he had not. I reflected long and deeply on this, with the result of observing that to influence people it is not at all necessary to argue with them, but simply be able to place before their eyes such facts as you choose. It is very common indeed to hear people in England, who should have more sense, declare that "nobody minds what the newspapers say." But the truth is, that if any man has an eye to read and memory to retain, he _must_, willy-nilly, be influenced by reading, and selection from others by an able editor is often only a most ingenious and artful method of arguing. It has very often happened to me, when I wanted to enforce some important point, to clothe it as an anecdote or innocent "item," and bid the foreman set it in the smallest type in the most obscure corner. And the reader is influenced by it, utterly unconsciously, just as we all are, and just as surely as all reflection follows sensation--as it ever will--into the Ages!

There was much mutual robbing by newspapers of telegraphic news in those days. Once it befell that just before the _Bulletin_ went to press a part of the powder-mills of Dupont Brothers in Delaware blew up, and we received a few lines of telegram, stating that Mr. Dupont himself had saved the great magazine by actually walking on a burning building with buckets of water, and preventing the fire from extending, at a most incredible risk of his life. Having half-an-hour's time, I expanded this telegram into something dramatic and thrilling. A great New York newspaper, thinking, from the shortness of time which elapsed in publishing, that it was all telegraphed to us, printed it as one of its own from Delaware, just as I had written it out--which I freely forgive, for verily its review of my last work but one was such as to make me inquire of myself in utter amazement, "Can this be I?"--"so gloriously was I exalted to the higher life." The result of this review was a sworn and firm determination on my part to write another book of the same kind, in which I should show myself more worthy of such cordial encouragement; which latter book was the "Etruscan Legends." I ought indeed to have dedicated it to the _New York Tribune_, a journal which has done more for human freedom than any other publication in history.

I do not know certainly whether the brave Dupont whom I mentioned was the Charley Dupont who went to school with me at Jacob Pierce's, nor can I declare that a very gentlemanly old Frenchman who came to see him in 1832 was his father or grandfather, the famous old Dupont de l'Eure of the French Revolution. But I suppose it was the latter who carried and transformed the art of manufacturing moral gunpowder in France to the making material explosives in America. Yes, moral or physical, we are all but gunpowder and smoke--_pulvis et umbra sumus_!

There was a morning paper in Philadelphia which grieved me sore by pilfering my news items as I wrote them. So I one day gave a marvellous account of the great Volatile Chelidonian or Flying Turtle of Surinam, of which a specimen had just arrived in New York. It had a shell as of diamonds blent with emeralds and rubies, and bat-like wings of iridescent hue surpassing the opal, and a tail like a serpent. Our contemporary, nothing doubting, at once published this as original matter in a letter from New York, and had to bear the responsibility. But I did not invest my inventiveness wisely; I should have shared the idea with Barnum.

There was in Philadelphia at this time a German bookseller named Christern. It was the thought of honourable and devoted men which recalled him to my mind. I had made his acquaintance long before in Munich, where he had been employed in the principal bookseller's shop of the city. His "store" in Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, became a kind of club, where I brought such of my friends as were interested in German literature. We met there and talked German, and examined and discussed all the latest European works. He had a burly, honest, rather droll assistant named Ruhl, who had been a student in Munich, then a Revolutionist and exile, and finally a refugee to America. To this shop, too, came Andrekovitch, whom I had last known in Paris as a speculator on the Bourse, wearing a cloak lined with sables. In America he became a chemical manufacturer. When at last an amnesty was proclaimed, his brother asked him to return to Poland, promising a support, which he declined. He too was an honourable, independent man. About this time the great--I forget his name; or was it Schoffel?--who had been President of the Frankfort Revolutionary Parliament, opened a lager-beer establishment in Race Street. I went there several times with Ruhl.

George Boker and Frank Wells, who subsequently succeeded me on the _Bulletin_, would drop in every day after the first edition had gone to press, and then there would be a lively time. Frank Wells was, _par eminence_, the greatest punster Philadelphia ever produced. He was in this respect appalling. We had a sub-editor or writer named Ernest Wallace, who was also a clever humorist. One day John Godfrey Saxe came in. He was accustomed among country auditors and in common sanctums to carry everything before him with his jokes. In half-an-hour we extinguished him. Having declared that no one could make a pun on his name, which he had not heard before, Wallace promptly replied, "It's _axing_ too much, I presume; but did you ever hear _that_?" Saxe owned that he had not.

George H. Boker, whose name deserves a very high place in American literature as a poet, and in history as one who was of incredible service, quietly performed, in preserving the Union during the war, was also eminently a wit and humorist. We always read first to one another all that we wrote. He had so trained himself from boyhood to self-restraint, calmness, and the _nil admirari_ air, which, as Dallas said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I recorded the _bon mots_ and merry stories which passed among us all in the _sanctum_ in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of "Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking- room). Every one of us received a name. Mr. Peacock was Old Hurricane, and George Boker, being asked what his pseudonym should be, selected that of Bullfrog. These "Social Hall Sketches" had an extended circulation in American newspapers, some for many years. One entirely by me, entitled "Opening Oysters," is to be found in English almanacs, &c., to this day.

It was, I think, or am sure, in 1855 that some German in Pennsylvania, instead of burying his deceased wife, burned the body. This called forth a storm of indignant attack in the newspapers. It was called an irreligious, indecent act. I wrote an editorial in which I warmly defended it. According to Bulwer in the "Last Days of Pompeii," the early Christians practised it. Even to this day Urns and torches are common symbols in Christian burying-grounds, and we speak of "ashes" as more decent than mouldering corpses. And, finally, I pointed out the great advantage which it would be to the coal trade of Pennsylvania. A man of culture said to me that it was the boldest editorial which he had ever read. Such as it was, I believe that it was the first article written in modern times advocating cremation. If I am wrong, I am willing to be corrected.

To those who are unfamiliar with it, the life in an American newspaper office seems singularly eventful and striking. A friend of mine who visited a sanctum (ours) for the first time, said, as he left, that he had never experienced such an interesting hour in his life. _Firstly_, came our chief city reporter, exulting in the manner in which he had circumvented the police, and, despite all their efforts, got, by ways that were dark, at all the secrets of a brand-new horrible murder. _Secondly_, a messenger with an account of how I, individually, had kicked up the very devil in the City Councils, and set the Mayor to condemning us, by a leader discussing certain municipal abuses. _Thirdly_, another, to tell how I had swept one-half the city by an article exposing its neglect, and how the sweepers and dirt-carts were busy where none had been before for weeks, and how the contractor for cleaning wanted to shoot me. _Fourthly_, a visit from some great dignitary, who put his dignity very much _a l'abri_ in his pocket, to solicit a puff. _Fifthly_, a lady who, having written a very feeble volume of tales which had merely been gently commended in our columns, came round in a rage to shame me by sarcasm, begging me as a parting shot to at least _read_ a few lines of her work. _Sixthly_, a communication from a great New York family, who, having been requested to send a short description of a remarkable wedding-cake, sent me _one hundred and fifty pages_ of minute history of all their ancestors and honours, with strict directions that not a line should be omitted, and the article printed at once most conspicuously. {225} _Seventhly_, . . . but this is a very mild specimen of what went on all the time during office-hours. And on this subject alone I could write a small book.

Now, at this time there came about a very great change in my life, or an event which ultimately changed it altogether. My father had, for about two years past, fallen into a very sad state of mind. His large property between Chestnut and Bank Streets paid very badly, and his means became limited. I was seriously alarmed as to his health. My dear mother had become, I may say, paralytic; but, in truth, the physicians could never explain the disorder. To the last she maintained her intellect, and a miraculous cheerfulness unimpaired.

All at once a strange spirit, as of new life, came suddenly over my father. I cannot think of it without awe. He went to work like a young man, shook off his despair, financiered with marvellous ability, borrowed money, collected old and long-despaired of debts, tore down the old hotel and the other buildings, planned and bargained with architects--it was then that I designed the facade before described--and built six stores, two of them very handsome granite buildings, on the old site. In short, he made of it a very valuable estate. And as he superintended with great skill and ability the smallest details of the building, which was for that time remarkably well executed, I thought I recognised whence it was that I derived the strongly developed tendency for architecture which I have always possessed. I have since made 400 copies of old churches in England.

This was a happy period, when life was without a cloud, excepting my mother's trouble. As my father could now well afford it, he made me an allowance, which, with my earnings from the _Bulletin_ and other occasional literary work, justified me in getting married. I had had a long but still very happy engagement. So we were married by the Episcopal ceremony at the house of my father-in-law in Tenth Street, and a very happy wedding it was. I remember two incidents. Before the ceremony, the Reverend Mr., subsequently Bishop Wilmer, took me, with George Boker, into a room and explained to me the symbolism of the marriage-ring. Now, if there was a subject on earth which I, the old friend of Creuzer of Heidelberg, and master of Friedrich's _Symbolik_, and Durandus, and the work "On Finger-Rings," knew all about, it was _that_; and I never shall forget the droll look which Boker threw at me as the discourse proceeded. But I held my peace, though sadly tempted to set forth my own archaeological views on the subject.

The second was this: Philadelphia, as Mr. Philipps has said, abounds in folk-lore. Some one suggested that the wedding would be a lucky one because there was only one clergyman present. But I remarked that among our coloured waiters there was one who had a congregation (my wife's cousin, by the way, had a coloured bishop for coachman). However, this sable cloud did not disturb us.

We went to New York, and were visited by many friends, and returned to Philadelphia. We lived for the first year at the La Pierre Hotel, where we met with many pleasant people, such as Thackeray, Thalberg, Ole Bull, Mr. and Mrs. Choteau, of St. Louis, and others. Of Thalberg I have already remarked, in my notes to my translation of Heine's _Salon_, that he impressed me as a very gentlemanly, dignified, and quietly remarkable man, whom it would be difficult to readily or really understand. "He had unmistakably the manner peculiar to many great Germans, which, as I have elsewhere observed, is perceptible in the _maintien_ and features of Goethe, Humboldt, Bismarck," and Brugsch, of Berlin (whom I learned to know in later years). Thalberg gave me the impression, which grew on me, of a man who knew many things besides piano-playing, and that he was born to a higher specialty. He was dignified but affable. I remember that one day, when he, or some one present, remarked that his name was not a common one, I made him laugh by declaring that it occurred in two pieces in an old German ballad:--

"Ich that am BERGE stehen, Und sohaute in das THAL; Da hab' ich sie gesehen, Zum aller letzten mal."

"I stood upon the _mountain_, And looked the _valley_ o'er; There I indeed beheld her, But saw her never more."

Thalberg's playing was marvellously like his character or himself: Heine calls it gentlemanly. Thackeray was marked in his manner, and showed impulse and energy in small utterances. I may err, but I do not think he could have endured solitude or too much of himself. He was eminently social, and rather given at times to reckless (not deliberate or spiteful), sarcastic or "ironic" sallies, in which he did not, with Americans, generally come off "first best." There was a very beautiful lady in Boston with whom the great novelist was much struck, and whom he greatly admired, as he sent her two magnificent bronzes. Having dined one evening at her house, he remarked as they all entered the dining-room, "Now I suppose that, according to your American custom, we shall all put our feet up on the chimney-piece." "Certainly," replied his hostess, "and as your legs are so much longer than the others, you may put your feet on top of the looking-glass," which was about ten feet from the ground. Thackeray, I was told, was offended at this, and showed it; he being of the "give but not take" kind. One day he said to George Boker, when both were looking at Durer's etching of "Death, Knight, and the Devil," of which I possess a fine copy, "Every man has his devil whom he cannot overcome; I have two--laziness, and love of pleasure." I remarked, "Then why the devil seek to overcome them? Is it not more noble and sensible to yield where resistance is in vain, than to fight to the end? Is it not a maxim of war, that he who strives to defend a defenceless place must be put to death? Why not give in like a man?"