Part 8 (2/2)
And right and left they did their commissioner-like best to cut the town all to one pattern. Of course they couldn't, quite, but the effort was of lasting and painfully efficacious effect. They could not find it in their hearts, I suppose, to raze Richmond Hill House completely,--it was a n.o.ble landmark, and a home of memories which ought to have given even commissioners pause,--and maybe did. But they began to lower it--yes: take it down literally. No one with an imaginative soul can fail to feel that as they lowered the house in site and situation so they gradually but relentlessly permitted it to be lowered in character. It is with a distinct pang that I recall the steps of Richmond Hill's decline: material and spiritual, its two-sided fall appears to have kept step.
A sort of degeneracy struck the erstwhile lovely and exclusive old neighbourhood. Such gay resorts as Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens had encroached on the aristocratic regions of Lispenard's Meadows and their vicinity. Brannan's Gardens were close to the present crossing of Hudson and Spring streets. And--Richmond Hill did not escape! It too became a tavern, a pleasure resort, a ”mead garden,” a roadhouse--whatever you choose to call it. It, with its contemporaries, was the goal of many a gay party and I am told that its ”turtle dinners” were incomparable! In winter there were sleighing parties, a gentleman and lady in each sleigh; and--but here is a better picture-maker than I to give it to you--one Thomas Janvier, in short:
”How brave a sight it must have been when--the halt for refreshments being ended--the long line of carriages got under way again and went das.h.i.+ng along the causeway over Lispenard's green meadows, while the silvered harness of the horses and the brilliant varnish of the Italian chaises gleamed and sparkled in the rays of nearly level suns.h.i.+ne from the sun that was setting there a hundred years and more ago!”
The secretary and engineer to the commissioners who cut up, levelled and made over New York was John Randel, Jr., and he has left us most minute and prolific writings, covering everything he saw in the course of his work; indeed one wonders how he ever had time to work at all at his profession! Among his records is this account of dear Richmond Hill before it had been lowered to the level of the valley lands. It was, in fact, the last of the hills to go.
After describing carefully the exact route he took daily to the Commissioners' office in Greenwich, as far as Varick Street where the excavations for St. John's Church were then being made (1808), and stating that he crossed the ditch at Ca.n.a.l Street on a plank, he goes on thus:
”From this crossing place I followed a well-beaten path leading from the city to the then village of Greenwich, pa.s.sing over open and partly fenced lots and fields, not at that time under cultivation, and remote from any dwelling-house now remembered by me except Colonel Aaron Burr's former country-seat, on elevated ground, called Richmond Hill, which was about one hundred or one hundred and fifty yards west of this path, and was then occupied as a place of refreshment for gentlemen taking a drive from the city.”
In 1820, if I am not mistaken, the levelling (and lowering) process was complete. Richmond Hill's sad old windows looked no longer down upon a beautiful country world, but out on swiftly growing city blocks. In 1831, a few art-loving souls tried to found a high-cla.s.s theatre in the old house,--the Richmond Hill Theatre. Among them was Lorenzo Daponte, who had been exiled from Venice, and wrote witty satirical verse.
The little group of sincere idealists wanted this theatre to be a real home of high art, and a prize was offered for the best ”poetical address on the occasion,”--that is, the opening of the theatre. The judges and contestants sat in one of the historic reception rooms that had seen such august guests as Was.h.i.+ngton and Burr, Adams and Hamilton, Talleyrand and Louis Philippe.
Our good friend General Wetmore can tell us of this at first hand for he was one of those present.
”It was,” he says, ”an afternoon to be remembered. As the long twilight deepened into evening, the shadows of departed hosts and long-forgotten guests seemed to hover 'round the dilapidated halls and the dismantled chambers.”
The winner of the prize was Fitz-Greene Halleck; and it was not at all a bad poem, though too long to quote here.
The theatre was never a brilliant success. To be sure, such sterling actors as Mr. and Mrs. John Barnes and the Hilsons played there, and during a short season of Italian opera, in which Daponte was enthusiastically interested, Adelaide Pedrotti was the prima donna.
And one of New York's first ”opera idols” sang there--Luciano Fornasari, generally acclaimed by New York ladies as the handsomest man who had ever been in the city! For a wonder, he wasn't a tenor, only a ba.s.so, but they adored him just the same.
Somehow it grows hard to write of Richmond Hill--a hill no longer, but a shabby playhouse, which was not even successful. The art-loving impresarios spent the little money they had very speedily and there was no more Richmond Hill Theatre.
Then a circus put up there--yes, a circus--in the same house which had made even sensible Mrs. Adams dream dreams, and where Theo Burr had entertained her Indian Chief! In 1842, it was the headquarters of a menagerie, pure and simple.
In 1849--thank G.o.d--its nightmare of desecration was over. It was pulled down, and they built red-brick houses on its grave and left its ancient memories to sleep in peace.
”And thus” [Wetmore once again] ”pa.s.sed away the glories and the shadows of Richmond Hill. All that remains of them are a few fleeting memories and a page or two of history fast fading into oblivion.”
For once, I cannot quite agree with him--not when he says that. For surely the home of so much romance and grandeur and charm and importance must leave something behind it other than a few fleeting memories and a page or two of history. Houses have ghosts as well as people, and if ever there stood a house with a personality, that was sweet, poignant and indestructible, it was the House on Richmond Hill.
I, who tell you this, am very sure. Have I not seen it sketched in bright, shadowy lines upon the air above Charlton and Varick streets,--its white columns s.h.i.+ning through all the modern city murk?
Go there in the right mood and at the right moment, and you will see, too.
CHAPTER V
_”Tom Paine, Infidel.”_
... These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the suns.h.i.+ne patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it _now_, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman....
I have as little superst.i.tion in me as any man living; but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that G.o.d Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.--”The Crisis.”
I want you to note carefully the t.i.tle of this chapter. And then I want you to note still more carefully the quotation with which it opens. It was the man known far and wide as ”the infidel,”--the man who was denounced by church-goers, and persecuted for his unorthodox doctrines,--who wrote with such high and happy confidence of a fair, a just and a merciful G.o.d Almighty.
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