The Story of a New York House (Illustrated) E-Book

Henry Cuyler

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

From being a clerk in an importing house, he turned to journalism, and after some work as a reporter, and on the staff of The Arcadian (1873), he became in 1877 assistant editor of the comic weekly Puck. He soon assumed the editorship, which he held until his death in Nutley, New Jersey. He developed Puck from a new struggling periodical into a powerful social and political organ. In 1886 he published a novel, The Midge, followed in 1887 by The Story of a New York House.

Leseprobe

Henry

The Story of a New York House (Illustrated Edition)

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Table of contents

I.

“I hear,” said Mrs. Abram Van Riper, seated at her breakfast-table, and watching the morning sunlight dance on the front of the great Burrell house on the opposite side of Pine Street, “that the Dolphs are going to build a prodigious fine house out of town—somewhere up near the Rynders’s place.”

“And I hear,” said Abram Van Riper, laying down last night’s Evening Post, “that Jacob Dolph is going to give up business. And if he does, it’s a disgrace to the town.”

It was in the summer of 1807, and Abram Van Riper was getting well over what he considered the meridian line of sixty years. He was hale and hearty; his business was flourishing; his boy was turning out all that should have been expected of one of the Van Riper stock; the refracted sunlight from the walls of the stately house occupied by the Cashier of the Bank of the United States lit with a subdued secondary glimmer the Van Riper silver on the breakfast-table—the squat teapot and slop-bowl, the milk-pitcher, that held a quart, and the apostle-spoon in the broken loaf-sugar on the Delft plate. Abram Van Riper was decorously happy, as a New York merchant should be. In all other respects, he was pleased to think, he was what a New York merchant should be, and the word of the law and the prophets was fulfilled with him and in his house.

“I’m sure,” Mrs. Van Riper began again, somewhat querulously, “I can’t see why Jacob Dolph shouldn’t give up business, if he’s so minded. He’s a monstrous fortune, from all I hear—a good hundred thousand dollars.”

“A hundred thousand dollars!” repeated her husband, scornfully. “Ay, and twice twenty thousand pounds on the top of that. He’s done well, has Dolph. All the more reason he should stick to his trade; and not go to lolling in the sun, like a runner at the CustomHouse door. He’s not within ten years of me, and here he must build his country house, and set up for the fine gentleman. Jacob Dolph! Did I go on his note, when he came back from France, brave as my master, in ‘94, or did I not? And where ‘ud he have raised twenty thousand in this town, if I hadn’t? What’s got into folks nowadays? Damn me if I can see!”

His wife protested, in wifely fashion. “I’m sure, Van Riper,” she began, “you’ve no need to fly in such a huff if I so much as speak of folks who have some conceit of being genteel. It’s only proper pride of Mr. Dolph to have a country house, and—”(her voice faltering a little, timorously) “ride in and—and out——”

“ Ride!” snorted Mr. Van Riper. “In a carriage, maybe?”

“In a carriage, Van Riper. You may think to ride in a carriage is like being the Pope of Rome; but there’s some that knows better. And if you’d set up your carriage,” went on the undaunted Mrs. Van Riper, “and gone over to Greenwich Street two years ago, as I’d have had you, and made yourself friendly with those people there, I’d have been on the Orphan Asylum Board at this very minute; and you would——”

Mr. Van Riper knew all that speech by heart, in all its variations. He knew perfectly well what it would end in, this time, although he was not a man of quick perception: “He would have been a member of the new Historical Society.”

“Yes,” he thought to himself, as he found his hat and shuffled out into Pine Street; “and John Pintard would have had my good check in his pocket for his tuppenny society. Pine Street is fine enough for me.”

Mr. Van Riper had more cause for his petulancy than he would have acknowledged even to himself. He was a man who had kept his shop open all through Clinton’s occupancy, and who had had no trouble with the British. And when they were gone he had had to do enough to clear his skirts of any smirch of Toryism, and to implant in his own breast a settled feeling of militant Americanism. He did not like it that the order of things should change—and the order of things was changing. The town was growing out of all knowledge of itself. Here they had their Orphan Asylum, and their Botanical Garden, and their Historical Society; and the Jews were having it all their own way; and now people were talking of free schools, and of laying out a map for the upper end of the town to grow on, in the “system” of straight streets and avenues. To the devil with systems and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of those cursed Frenchmen. He knew how it would be when they brought their plaguy frigate here in the first fever year—’93—and the fools marched up from Peck’s Slip after a red nightcap, and howled their cut-throat song all night long.

It began to hum itself in his head as he walked toward Water Street— Ça ira—ça ira—les aristocrats à la lanterne. A whiff of the wind that blew through Paris streets in the terrible times had come across the Atlantic and tickled his dull old Dutch nostrils.

But something worse than this vexed the conservative spirit of Abram Van Riper. He could forgive John Pintard—whose inspiration, I think, foreran the twentieth century—his fancy for free schools and historical societies, as he had forgiven him his sidewalkbuilding fifteen years before; he could proudly overlook the fact that the women were busying themselves with all manner of wild charities; he could be contented though he knew that the Hebrew Hart was president of that merchants’ club at Baker’s, of which he himself would fain have been a member. But there was some thing in the air that he could neither forgive nor overlook, nor be contented with.

There was a change coming over the town—a change which he could not clearly define, even in his own mind. There was a great keeping of carriages, he knew. A dozen men had bought carriages, or were likely to buy them at any time. The women were forming societies for the improvement of this and that. And he, who had moved uptown from Dock Street, was now in an old-fashioned quarter. All this he knew, but the something which made him uneasy was more subtile. Within the last few years he had observed an introduction of certain strange distinctions in the social code of the town. It had been vaguely intimated to him—perhaps by his wife, he could not remember—that there was a difference between his trade and Jacob Dolph’s trade. He was a ship-chandler. Jacob Dolph sold timber. Their shops were side by side; Jacob Dolph’s rafts lay in the river in front of Abram Van Riper’s shop, and Abram Van Riper had gone on Jacob Dolph’s note, only a few years ago. Yet, it seemed that it was genteel of Jacob Dolph to sell timber, and it was not genteel of Abram Van Riper to be a ship-chandler. There was, then, a difference between Jacob Dolph and Abram Van Riper—a difference which, in forty years, Abram Van Riper had never conceived of. There were folks who held thus. For himself, he did not understand it. What difference there was between selling the wood to make a ship, and selling the stores to go inside of her, he could not understand.

The town was changing for the worse; he saw that. He did not wish—God forbid!—that his son John should go running about to pleasure-gardens. But it would be no more than neighborly if these young bucks who went out every night should ask him to go with them. Were William Irving’s boys and Harry Brevoort and those young Kembles too fine to be friends with his boy? Not that he’d go with them a-rollicking—no, not that—but ‘twould be neighborly. It was all wrong, he thought; they were going whither they knew not, and wherefore they knew not; and with that he cursed their airs and their graces, and pounded down to the Tontine, to put his name at the head of the list of those who subscribed for a testimonial service of plate, to be presented to our esteemed fellow-citizen and valued associate, Jacob Dolph, on his retirement from active business.

Jacob Dolph at this moment was setting forth from his house in State Street, whose pillared balcony, rising from the second floor to the roof, caught a side glance of the morning sun, that loved the Battery far better than Pine Street. He had his little boy by the hand—young Jacob, his miniature, his heir, and the last and only living one of his eight children. Mr. Dolph walked with his stock thrust out and the lower end of his waistcoat drawn in—he was Colonel Dolph, if he had cared to keep the title; and had come back from Monmouth with a hole in his hip that gave him a bit of a limp, even now in eighteenhundred-and-seven. He and the boy marched forth like an army with a small but enthusiastic left wing, into the poplar-studded Battery. The wind blew fresh off the bay; the waves beat up against the seawall, and swirled with a chuckle under Castle Garden bridge. A large brig was coming up before the wind, all her sails set, as though she were afraid—and she was—of British frigates outside the Hook. Two or three fat little boats, cat-rigged, after the good old New York fashion, were beating down toward Staten Island, to hunt for the earliest blue-fish.

The two Dolphs crossed the Battery, where the elder bowed to his friends among the merchants who lounged about the city’s pleasureground, lazily chatting over their business affairs. Then they turned up past Bowling Green into Broadway, where Mr. Dolph kept on bowing, for half the town was out, taking the fresh morning for marketing and all manner of shopping. Everybody knew Jacob Dolph afar off by his blue coat with the silver buttons, his nankeen waistcoat, and his red-checked Indian silk neckcloth. He made it a sort of uniform. Captain Beare had brought him a bolt of nankeen and a silk kerchief every year since 1793, when Mr. Dolph gave him credit for the timber of which the Ursa Minor was built.

And everybody seemed willing to make acquaintance with young Jacob’s London-made kerseymere breeches, of a bright canary color, and with his lavender silk coat, and with his little chapeau de Paris. Indeed, young Jacob was quite the most prominent moving spectacle on Broadway, until they came to John Street, and saw something rolling down the street that quite cut the yellow kerseymeres out of all popular attention.

This was a carriage, the body of which was shaped like a huge section of a cheese, set up on its small end upon broad, swinging straps between two pairs of wheels. It was not unlike a piece of cheese in color, for it was of a dull and faded grayish-green, like mould, relieved by pale-yellow panels and gilt ornaments. It was truly an interesting structure, and it attracted nearly as much notice on Broadway in 1807 as it might to-day. But it was received with far more reverence, for it was a court coach, and it belonged to the Des Anges family, the rich Huguenots of New Rochelle. It had been built in France, thirty years before, and had been sent over as a present to his brother from the Count des Anges, who had himself neglected to make use of his opportunities to embrace the Protestant religion.

When the white-haired old lady who sat in this coach, with a very little girl by her side, saw Mr. Dolph and his son, she leaned out of the window and signalled to the old periwigged driver to stop, and he drew up close to the sidewalk. And then Mr. Dolph and his son came up to the window and took off their hats, and made a great low bow and a small low bow to the old lady and the little girl.

“Madam Des Anges,” said Mr. Dolph, with an idiom which he had learned when he was presented at the court of Louis the Sixteenth, “has surely not driven down from New Rochelle this morning? That would tax even her powers.”

Madam Des Anges did not smile—she had no taste for smiling—but she bridled amiably.

“No, Mr. Dolph,” she replied; “I have been staying with my daughter-in-law, at her house at King’s Bridge, and I have come to town to put my little granddaughter to school. She is to have the privilege of being a pupil of Mme. Dumesnil.”

“Are you a girl-boy?” inquired his father, smiling. “I thumped him,” said young Jacob, and the narrow door swallowed him up. Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting him. As he came near, the man arose. “Ah, it’s you, Weeks? And have you the plan?” They were admiringly critical. One man was vociferously enthusiastic. There was a perceptible diminution in Mr. Huggins’s ardor; but he was still suave. “I hope the madam is in good health,” he remarked. “She is, I believe,” said Mr. Dolph. “And your good lady, sir? I have not had the pleasure of treating Mrs. Dolph professionally for some time, sir, I——” There was something else that Mr. Van Riper did not like. Mr. Dolph seized his chance. “John Pintard! He’s another like !” said Mr. Van Riper. “Well, look at it for yourself,” pleaded the believer in New York’s future. Mr. Van Riper took the neatly written paper, and simply snorted and gasped as he read this: . For they stayed in the old house until 1822. “What is it?” he asked, nervously. And then he broke down and cried a little, feebly, and got his son’s hand in the darkness and put on his own shoulder. “Jacob, I want to sell the house.” “Father!” “The old house, I mean; I shall never go back there.” “I shall never go back there,” he said again. Then his voice broke and became plaintively kind. He looked vacantly out of the window, trying to see the unforeseen with his mental sight. “I’m not coming any nearer, Mr. Van Riper,” said Jacob Dolph, with a smile which he could not help. And then he marched off to bed by himself, suffering no one to go with him. In the morning, before he went out for his daily tramp into town, old Jacob would say to young Jacob: “I suppose I shall see you at dinner, my boy?” One afternoon, in May of 1827, young Jacob found his father in the breakfast-room, and said to him: “Father, I am going to marry Aline Des Anges.” “Des Anges. That’s a good family, Jacob, and a wonderful woman, Madam Des Anges. Is she alive yet?” When Madam Des Anges, eighty years old, and strong and well, heard of this, she said: There was to be a grand supper, later; and the time of waiting was filled up with fashionable conversation. “It was heroic,” said Dr. F. Madam Des Anges dandled her quizzing-glass as though she meant to put it up to her eye, and said, in a weary way: She attacked him in a vehement whisper. But all she could get out of Van Riper was: “The old harridan! She’ll remember my name this year or two to come, I’ll warrant ye!” sang the misguided slaves of fashion, as they sped out of hearing. “Oh, Jacob, don’t, don’t. She didn’t mean it!” “I have a headache to-night, my dear, and I think I shall take my dinner in my room.” And he would go feebly up stairs, and when old Julius, who always waited upon him, brought up his tray, he would ask: “Is it a fine dinner, Julius? Did everybody come?” And Julius would invariably reply, with profound African dignity: “Except the dinner we gave Mr. Hamilton; in State Street, Julius,” the old man would put in. The doctor’s face was dark. “How is she, doctor? For God’s sake, tell me—is she—is she——” “The hospitality of this house is prover—” the precise doctor recommenced. “Damn the hospitality!” cried Jacob Dolph: “I mean—oh, doctor— tell me—is anything wrong?” “It’s all over?” “And bravely over!” And the doctor nodded his head with a dignified cheerfulness. “And may I go to her?” “You may, sir, after you have given me my glass of port. But remember, sir——” Dolph turned to the sideboard, grasped a bottle and a glass, and thrust them into the doctor’s hand, and started for the door. “What is it now?” he demanded, impatiently. The doctor looked at him with a gaze of wonder and reproach. “It is a male child, sir,” he said. head, he heard the weak, spasmodic wail of another Dolph. “There’s no help for it—I’ve got to do it,” said Jacob Dolph. “I should not advise it, Dolph, if it can be helped,” Mr. Van Riper observed, thoughtfully. “It can’t be helped.” Dolph kicked at the hearthrug, as he answered, somewhat testily: “I’m not making a speculation of it.” Mr. Van Riper was unmoved. “And I’m not making a speculation of you, either,” he said, calmly: “I am speaking only for your own benefit, Dolph.” Mr. Dolph put his hands in his pockets, strode to the window and back again, and then said, with an uneasy little laugh: “I beg your pardon, Van Riper; you’re quite right, of course. The fact is, I’ve got to do it. I must have the money, and I must have it now.” Mr. Van Riper stroked his sharp chin. Ten years had given Jacob Dolph a certain floridity; but at this he blushed a hot red. “Mortgage on the house? No, sir,” he said, with emphasis. “Well, any other security, then,” was Van Riper’s indifferent amendment. Again Jacob Dolph strode to the window and back again, staring hard at the carpet, and knitting his brows. Mr. Van Riper waited in undisturbed calm until his friend spoke once more. “It’s none of my business, of course,” he observed; “but if you haven’t any objection to telling me——” “ boy?” queried Dolph, raising his eyebrows. Van Riper smiled. “Yes,” he said, “my boy. You didn’t know I had a boy, did you? He’s nearly a year old.” “You and I go different ways, Dolph,” he said. “We’re plain folks over in Greenwich Village, and you—you’re a man of fashion.” Jacob Dolph smiled—not very mirthfully. Van Riper’s gaze travelled around the room, quietly curious. “It costs money to be a man of fashion, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” said Dolph, “it does.” There was silence for a minute, which Van Riper broke. Dolph shook his head. “I’ve been quite enough of a fool,” he replied. After Mr. Dolph had bowed his guest to the door, Mrs. Dolph slipped down the stairs and into the drawing-room. “Did he take it?” she asked. “He said we had better not sell it now—that it would bring more a few years hence.” “He doesn’t understand,” said Mrs. Dolph. “He understand,” said Mr. Dolph. Then she went over to him and kissed him. “It’s only selling the garden, after all,” she said; “it isn’t like selling our home.” “It isn’t like selling our house,” she said. IV. “The city grows, you see, my boy, and we’ve got to grow with it. I’ve stood still; but you sha’n’t.” “Well, governor,” said the younger man, “I’ll be frank with you. I don’t like the prospect.” “You will—you will, my boy. You’ll live to thank me.” Jacob Dolph grew red in the face and shook his head vigorously. ABRAM VAN RIPER’S SON. “Central American,” responded the clerk, with brevity, and resumed his whistling of “My name is Jake Keyser, I was born in Spring Garden; To make me a preacher my father did try.” “Central American ?” pursued the inquirer. “It’s no use a-blowing, for I am a hard ‘un— I’m bound to be a butcher, by heavens, or die!” Eustace recovered sufficiently to demand of his father: “I say, sir, shall I have to handle that damned stuff?” “Hush!” said his senior; “here’s Mr. Van Riper.” Mr. Van Riper came to the office door to welcome them, with his thin face set in the form of a smile. “I am going to try to, sir,” replied the young man. “He will, Van Riper,” put in his father, hastily; “he’ll like it as soon as he gets used to it—I know he will.” “Looks like his father,” was Mr. Daw’s comment. “Hm! Jacob’s better.” And he led the neophyte away. Thus began Eustace Dolph’s apprenticeship to business, and mightily ill he liked it. “Here, Dolph, I’ve done with this. You’d better take it back—it may be wanted down your way.” “If it hadn’t been for the Dolphs, devil the rattle you’d have had.” The baby was born in the spring, and everybody said she was the image of her mother. He read it, and all the color of the winter’s day faded out of his face. “I’ve got to go down to Van Riper’s,” he said, “at once; he wants me.” “Has anything happened to—to Eustace?” his wife cried out. He kissed her, and was gone. Half an hour later he sat in the office of Abram Van Riper’s Son. “He ain’t here!” he roared. “I told you so—I saw him turn the corner.” “Shtap an’ burrn the bondholder’s house!” yelled a man behind. Eustace Dolph turned round with a furious, threatening gesture. “You damned fool!” he thundered; “he’s no bondholder—he’s one of . Go on, I tell you! Will you let that nigger get away?” He half drove them down the steps. The old man stepped out, his face aflame under his white hair, his whole frame quivering. “Oh, John,” she cried, “father hasn’t come home yet, and it’s five o’clock, and he left home at nine.” John Rand threw off his flannel jacket, and got into his coat. As they went up the steps they met the young hospital surgeon, going back to his ambulance.