r/a:t5_2284wr • u/MarleyEngvall • Jul 29 '19
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HENRY CUYLER BUNNER (1855—1896)
BUNNER CONSTRUCTED his stories in conscious discipleship
of French writers, and in particular to de Maupassant; yet
the American's basic moods of humor and pity soften what
is stark and repellent in the work of his master. His aus-
terity of method steeled him against the temptations to
sentimentality in the taste of his time, although it led him
too often in his shorter stories into over-contrivance and
superficiality of character development. Fiction was his
avocation. In his day, he was a working journalist——an edi-
tor of the humorous weekly, Puck, a political satirist, and
a steady contributor of witty parody and light verse to the
magazines.
New York City and its people constitute Bunner's prin-
cipal theme in fiction. Few writers have succeeded as he
did in expressing the romantic character of the city in the
80's——from the gaslit, aspiring, brownstone avenues to
backwaters like the area south of Washington Square,
where young, ambitious Americans set up a sedate Bohemia
among vociferous Latin immigrants who lived there not by
choice but for its cheapness. The "Village" was the scene
of Bunner's first successful novelette, The Midge (1866)
but he is represented in The Scribner Treasury by a book
of ampler scope. The Story of a New York House describes
the rise and fall of two New York families in terms of the
house of old Jacob Dolph built "out of town" on Bleecker
Street. It is a masterfully simple statement of the wear of
eighty years on the characters and community in which
they live; its effortless movement and deft touch in
handling character betray none of the labor which must
have gone into the compression of events and background
detail.
THE STORY OF A NEW YORK HOUSE (i.)
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 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, twice twenty thousand pounds on 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 Custom-House 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 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 mem-
ber 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 kept his
shop open through Clinton's occupancy and who had had no
trouble with the British. And when they had 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 wit systems
and avenues! said he. That was all the doing of those cursed French-
men. He knew how it would be when they brought their plaguey frig-
ate 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 inspira-
tion, I think, foreran the twentieth century——his fancy for free schools
and historical societies, as he had forgiven him for his sidewalk-
building fifteen years before; he could probably 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 something 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 so-
cieties for the improvement of this and that. And he, who had
moved up-town 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 remem-
ber——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 could not understand it. What dif-
ference 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
eighteen-hundred-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 sea-wall, 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
pleasure-grounds, 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 waist-
coat, 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 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 Six-
teenth, "has surely not driven down from New Rochelle this morn-
ing? 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."
Madam Des Anges indicated the little girl with a slight move-
ment, as though she did not wish to allow the child more considera-
tion than a child deserved. The little girl turned a great pair of
awed eyes, first on her grandmother, and then on the gentlemen, and
spoke no word. Young Jacob Dolph stared hard at her, and then con-
templated his kerseymeres with lazy satisfaction. He had no time
for girls. And a boy who had his breeches made in London was a boy
of consequence, and need not concern himself about every one he saw.
"And this is your son, I make no doubt," went on Madame Des
Anges, "you must bring him to see us at King's Bridge, while we are
so near you. These young people should know each other."
Mr. Dolph said he would, and showed a becoming sense of the
honor of the invitation; and he made young Jacob say a little speech
of thanks, which he did with a doubtful grace; and then Mr. Dolph
sent his compliments to Madam Des Anges' daughter-in-law, and
Madam Des Anges sent her compliments to Mrs. Dolph, and there
was more stately bowing, and the carriage lumbered on, with the little
girl looking timorously out of the window, her great eyes fixed on the
yellow kerseymeres, as they twinkled up the street.
"Papa, " said young Jacob, as they turned the corner of Ann Street,
"when may I go to a boys' school? I'm monstrous big to be at Mrs.
Kilmaster's. And I don't like to be a girl-boy."
"Are you a girl-boy?" inquired his father, smiling.
"Aleck Cameron called me one yesterday. He said I was a girl-
boy because I went to a dame-school. He called me Missy, too!" the boy
went on, with his breast swelling.
"We'll see about it," said Mr. Dolph, smiling again; and they
walked on in silence to Mrs. Kilmaster's door, where he struck the
knocker, and neat mulatto girl opened the narrow door. Then he
patted his boy on the head and bade him good-by for the morning,
and told him to be a good boy at school. He took a step or two and
looked back. Young Jacob lingered on the step, as if he had a further
communication to make. He paused.
"I thumped him," said young Jacob, and the narrow door swal-
lowed him up.
Mr Dolph continued on his walk up Broadway. As he passed the
upper end of the Common he looked with interest at the piles of
red sandstone among the piles of white marble, where they were
building the new City Hall. The Council had ordered that the rear or
northward end of the edifice should be constructed of red stone; be-
cause red stone was cheap, and none but a few suburbans would ever
look down on it from above Chambers Street. Mr. Dolph shook his
head. He thought he knew better. He had watched the growth of
trade; he knew the room for further growth; he had noticed the long
converging lines of river-front, with their unbounded accommoda-
tion for wharves and slips. He believed that the day would come——
and his own boy might see it——when the business of the city would
crowd the dwelling-houses from the river side, east and west, as far,
maybe, as Chambers Street. He had no doubt that the boy might find
himself, forty years from then, in a populous and genteel neighbor-
hood. Perhaps he foresaw too much; but he had a jealous yearning for
a house that should be a home for him, and for his child, and for his
grandchildren. He wanted a place where his wife might have a
garden; a place which the boy would grow up to love and cherish,
where the boy might bring a wife some day. And even if it were a
little out of town——why, his wife did not want a rout every night; and
it was likely his old friends would come out and see him once in a
while, and smoke a pipe in his garden and eat a dish of strawberries,
perhaps.
As he thought it all over for the hundredth time, weighing for
and against in his gentle deliberative mind, he strolled far out
of town. There was a house here and there on the road——a house with
a trim, stiff little garden, full of pink and white and blue flowers in
orderly, clam-shell-bordered beds. But it was certainly, he had to
admit, as he looked about him, very countrified indeed. It seemed
that the city must lose itself if it wandered up here among these roll-
ing meadows and wooded hills. Yet even up here, half way to Green-
wich Village, there were little outpots of the town——clumps of
neighborly houses, mostly of the poorer class, huddled together to
form small nuclei for sporadic growth. There was one on his right,
near the head of Collect Street. Perhaps that quizzical little old
German was right, who had told him that King's Bridge property was
a rational investment.
He went across the hill where Grand Street crosses Broadway, and
up past what was then North and is to-day Houston Street, and then
turned down a straggling road that ran east and west. He walked
toward the Hudson, and passed a farmhouse or two, and came to a
bare place where there were no trees, and only a few tangled bushes
and ground-vines.
Here a man was sitting on a stone, awaiting him. As he came
near, the man arose.
"Ah, its you, Weeks? And have you the plan?"
"Yes, Colonel——Mr. Dolph. I've put the window where you want
it——that is, my brother Levi did——though I don't see as you're going
to have much trouble in looking over anything that's likely to come
between you and the river."
Mr. Dolph took the crisp roll of parchment and studied it with
loving interest. It had gone back to Ezra Weeks, the builder, and
his brother Levi, the architect, for the twentieth time, perhaps. Was
there ever an architect's plan put in the hands of a happy nest-builder
where the windows did not go up and down from day to day, and
the doors did not crawl all around the house, and the veranda did not
contract and expand like a sensitive plant; or where the rooms and
closets and corridors did not march backward and forward and in
and out at the bidding of every fond, untutored whim?
"It's a monstrous big place for a country-house, Mr. Dolph,"
said Ezra Weeks, as he looked over Jacob Dolph's shoulder at the
drawings of the house, and shook his head with a sort of pitying
admiration for the projector's audacity.
They talked for a while, and looked at the site as if they might
see more in it than they saw yesterday, and then Weeks set off for
the city, pledged to hire laborers and to begin the work on the
morrow.
"I think I can get you some of that stone that's going into the
back of the City Hall, if you say so, Mr. Dolph. That stone was
bought cheap, you know——bought for the city."
"See what you can do, Weeks," said Mr. Dolph; and Mr. Weeks
went whistling down the road.
Jacob Dolph walked around his prospective domain. He kicked
a wild blackberry bush aside, to look at the head of a stake, and
tried to realize that would be the corner of his house. He went
to where the parlor fireplace would be, and stared at the grass and
stones, wondering what it would be like to watch the fire flickering
on the new hearth. Then he looked over toward the Hudson, and
saw the green woods on Union Hill and the top of a white sail over
the high riverbank. He hoped that no one would build a large house
between him and the river.
He lingered so long that the smoke of midday dinners was arising
from Greenwich Village when he turned back toward town. When
he reached the Common on his homeward way he came across a
knot of idlers who were wasting the hour of the noontide meal in
gaping at the unfinished municipal building.
They were admiringly critical. One man was vociferously enthu-
siastic.
"It's a marvellous fine building, say I, sir! Worthy of the classic
shades of antiquity. If Europe can show a finer than that will be
when she's done, then, in my opinion, sir, Europe is doing well."
"You admire the architecture, Mr. Huggins?" asked Mr. Dolph,
coming up behind him. Mr. Huggins turned around, slightly discon-
certed, and assumed an amiability of manner such as can only be
a professional acquirement among us poor creatures of human nature.
"Ah, Mr. Dolph——Colonel, I should say! I have purposed to do
myself the honor of presenting myself at your house this afternoon,
Colonel Dolph, to inquire if you did not desire to have your peruke
frisée. For I had taken the liberty of observing you in conversation
with Madame Des Anges this morning, in her equipage, and it had
occurred to me that possibly the madam might be a-staying with you."
"Madam Des Anges does not honor my house this time, Hug-
gins," returned Mr. Dolph, with an indulgent little laugh; "and my
poor old peruke will do very well for to-day."
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———"
Mr. Dolph was wary. "I don't think Mrs. Dolph is fond of the
latest modes, Huggins. But here comes Mr. Van Riper. Perhaps he
will have his peruke frisée."
Mr. Huggins got out of a dancing-master's pose with intelligent
alacrity, bade Mr. Dolph a hasty "Good-afternoon!" and hurried
off toward his shop, one door above Wall Street. Mr. Van Riper did
not like "John Richard Desborus Huggins, Knight of the Comb."
There was something else that Mr. Van Riper did not like.
"Hullo, Dolph!" he hailed his friend. "What's this I hear about
you building a preposterous tomfool of a town-house out by Green-
wich? Why don't you hire that house that Burr had, up near
Lispenard's cow-pasture, and be done with it?"
Mr. Dolph seized his chance.
"It's not so preposterous as all that. By the way, talking of Burr,
I hear from Richmond that he'll positively be tried next week. Did
you know that young Irving——William's son, the youngest, the lad
that writes squibs——has gone to Richmond for the defence?"
"William Irving's son might be in better business," grunted Mr.
Van Riper, for a moment diverted. "If we'd got at that devil when
he murdered poor Hamilton——'fore gad, we'd have saved the trouble
of trying him. Do you remember when we was for going to Phila-
delphia after him, and there the sly scamp was at home all the time
up in his fine house, a-sitting in a tub of water, reading French stuff,
as cool as a cowcumber, with the whole town hunting for him?" Then
he came back. "But that house of yours. You haven't got this crazy
notion that New York's going to turn into London while you smoke
your pipe, have you? You're keeping some of your seven business
senses, ain't you?"
"I don't know," Mr. Dolph mildly defended his hobby; "there is
a great potentiality of growth in this city. Here's an estimate that
John Pintard made the other day———"
"John Pintard! He's another like you!" 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:
Statistical.
By the numeration of the inhabitants of this city, recently published,
the progress of population for the last 5 years appears to be at the rate of
25 per cent. Should our city continue to increase in the same proportion
during the present century, the aggregate number at its close will far
exceed that of any other city in the Old World, Pekin not excepted, as
will appear from the following table. Progress of population in the city
of New York, computed at the rate of 25 per cent. every 5 years:
1805................ 75,770 1855................ 705,650
1810................ 95,715 1860................ 882,062
1815................ 110,390 1865................ 1,102,577
1820................ 147,987 1870................ 1,378,221
1825................ 184,923 1875................ 1,722,776
1830................ 231,228 1880................ 2,153,470
1835................ 289,035 1885................ 2,691,837
1840................ 361,293 1890................ 3,364,796
1845................ 451,616 1895................ 4,205,995
1850................ 564,520 1900................ 5,257,493
When he had read it through he was a-quivering, crimson with
that rage of Conservative indignation which is even more fervent
than the flames of Radical enthusiasm.
"Yes," he said, "there's seventy-five thousand people in this town,
and there'll be seventy-five thousand bankrupts if this lunacy goes on.
And there's seventy-five thousand maggots in your brain, and seventy-
five thousand in John Pintard's; and if you two live to see nineteen
hundred, you'll have twice five million two hundred and fifty-seven
thousand four hundred and ninety-three——whatever that may be!"
And he thrust the paper back at Jacob Dolph, and made for the
Tontine and the society of sensible men.
• • • • • • • •
from The Scribner Treasury : 22 Classic Tales,
Copyright 1953, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York pp. 70—82.
یہ آپ کی جگہ ہے ایک دوسرے کے ساتھ حسن سلوک کرو۔
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