Part 12 (1/2)
Robert Richard Randall was also, like his father, known as ”Captain,”
though there is no record of his ever having gone to sea as a sailor.
Indeed he would scarcely have been made an ”honourary” member of the Marine Society had he been a real s.h.i.+pmaster. Courtesy t.i.tles were _de rigueur_ in those days, when a man was popular, and he appears to have been thoroughly so.
When it came time for him, too, to die, he paid his father's calling what tribute he could by the terms of his will.
His lawyer--no less a person that Alexander Hamilton himself--called to discuss the terms of this last doc.u.ment. By the bye, Hamilton's part in the affair is traditional and legendary rather than a matter of official record;--certainly his name does not appear in connection with the will. But Hamilton was the lawyer of Randall's sister, and a close family friend, so the story may more easily be true than false.
This, then, is the way it goes: Alexander Hamilton was summoned to make out the last will and testament, or at least, to advise concerning it. Randall was already growing weak, but had a clear and determined notion of what he wanted to do with his money. This was on June 1, 1801. The dying man left a number of small bequests to friends, families and servants, before he came to the real business on his mind. His bequests, besides money, included, ”unto Betsey Hart, my housekeeper, my gold sleeve b.u.t.tons,” and ”unto Adam s.h.i.+elds, my faithful overseer, my gold watch,” and ”unto Gawn Irwin, who now lives with me, my shoe-buckles and knee-buckles.” Adam s.h.i.+elds married Betsey Hart. They were both Scotch--probably from whatever part of Scotland the Randalls hailed in the first place.
When these matters were disposed of, he began to speak of what was nearest his heart. He had a good deal of money; he wanted to leave it to some lasting use. Hamilton asked how he had made his money, and Randall explained he had inherited it from his father.
”And how did he get it?” asked the great lawyer.
”By honest privateering!” declared Captain Tom's son proudly.
And then, or so the story goes, he went on to whisper:
”My father's fortune all came from the sea. He was a seaman, and a good one. He had money, so he never suffered when he was worn out, but all are not like that. I want to make a place for the others. I want it to be a _snug harbour for tired sailors_.”
So the will, July 10, 1801, reads that Robert Richard Randall's property is left to found: ”An Asylum or Marine Hospital, to be called 'The Sailors' Snug Harbour,' for the purpose of maintaining aged, decrepit, worn-out sailors.”
One of the witnesses, by the bye, was Henry Brevoort.
The present bust of Randall which stands in the Asylum is, of course, quite apocryphal as to likeness. No one knows what he looked like, but out of such odds and ends of information as the knee-buckles and so on, mentioned in the will, the artistic imagination of St. Gaudens evolved a veritable beau of a mariner, with knee-buckles positively resplendent and an Admiral's wig. And, though it may not be a good likeness, it is an agreeable enough ideal, and I think everyone approves of it.
Robert Richard Randall is buried down there now and on his monument is a simple and rather impressive inscription commemorating this charity which--so it puts it--was ”conceived in a spirit of enlarged Benevolence.”
Shortly afterwards he died, but his will, in spite of the inevitable wrangling and litigation of disgusted relations, lived on, and the Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors is an accomplished fact. Randall had meant it to be built on his property there--a good ”seeded-to-gra.s.s”
farm land,--and thought that the grain and vegetables for the sailor inmates of this Snug Harbour on land could be grown on the premises.
But the trustees decided to build the inst.i.tution on Staten Island.
The New York Was.h.i.+ngton Square property, however, is still called the Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate, and through its tremendous increase in value the actual asylum was benefited incalculably. At the time of Captain Randall's death, the New York estate brought in about $4,000 a year. Today it is about $400,000,--and every cent goes to that real Snug Harbour for Tired Sailors out near the blue waters of Staten Island. So the ”honest privateering” fortune has made at least one impossible seeming dream come true.
As time went on this section--the Sailors' Snug Harbour Estate and the Brevoort property--was destined to become New York's most fas.h.i.+onable quarter. Its history is the history of American society, no less, and one can have no difficulty in visualising an era in which a certain naive ceremony combined in piquant fas.h.i.+on with the st.u.r.dy solidity of the young and vigorous country. In the correspondence of Henry Brevoort and Was.h.i.+ngton Irving and others one gets delightful little pictures--vignettes, as it were--of social life of that day. Mr. Emmet writes begging for some snuff ”no matter how old. It may be stale and flat but cannot be unprofitable!” Brevoort asks a friend to dine ”On Thursday next at half-past four o'clock.” He paints us a quaint sketch of ”a little, round old gentleman, returning heel taps into decanters,” at a soiree, adding: ”His heart smote him at beholding the waste & riot of his dear adopted.” We read of tea drinkings and coaches and his father's famous blunderbuss or ”long gun” which he is presenting to Irving. And there are other chroniclers of the times.
Lossing, the historian, quotes an anonymous friend as follows:
”We thought there was a goodly display of wealth and diamonds in those days, but, G.o.d bless my soul, when I hear of the millions ama.s.sed by the Vanderbilts, Goulds, Millses, Villards and others of that sort, I realise what a poor little doughnut of a place New York was at that early period!”
He goes on to speak of dinner at three--a formal dinner party at four.
The first private carriage was almost mobbed on Broadway. Mrs. Jacob Little had ”a very showy carriage lined with rose colour and a darky coachman in blue livery.”
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Brevoort's house stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street--it is now occupied by the Charles de Rhams.
And it chanced to be the scene of a certain very pretty little romance which can scarcely be pa.s.sed over here.
New York, as a matter of course, copied her fas.h.i.+onable standards from older lands. While Manhattan society was by no means a supine and merely imitative affair, the country was too new not to cling a bit to English and French formalities. The great ladies of the day made something of a point of their ”imported amus.e.m.e.nts” as having a specific claim on fas.h.i.+onable favour. So it came about that the fascinating innovation of the masked ball struck the fancy of fas.h.i.+onable New York. There was something very daring about the notion; it smacked of Latin skies and manners and suggested possibilities of romance both licensed and not which charmed the ladies, even as it abashed them. There were those who found it a project scarcely in good taste; it is said indeed that there was no end of a flutter concerning it. But be that as it may, the masked ball was given,--the first that New York had ever known, and, it may be mentioned, the very last it was to know for many a long, discreet year!
Haswell says that in this year there was a ”fancy” ball given by Mr.
and Mrs. Henry Brevoort and that the date was February 24th. It certainly was the same one, but he adds that it was generally p.r.o.nounced ”most successful.” This one may doubt, since the results made masked b.a.l.l.s so severely thought of that there was, a bit later, a fine of $1,000 imposed on anyone who should give one,--one-half to be deducted if you told on yourself!