University of Virginia Library

10. TENTH INSTALLMENT.

[A scrap of paper which was overlooked when the last
installment was printed contained the following regulation
in regard to the management of Burwell Music Hall. It
is out of place here, but ought not to be omitted.—Ed.
Whig.]

When concert troupes insisted upon having their own
pianos, and displaying the name of the piano-maker in
large letters, as Chickering, Steinway, Knabe, etc., no
opposition whatever was made or even meditated, but as
soon as the performer had hitched up his stool, adjusted
his coat-tail, twiddled his preparatory twiddle, and banged
his preliminary bang, a tall man in a black visor walked
quietly out from behind the scenes with a sledge-hammer,
brained the performer, smashed the piano, threw the
pieces out of the window, and burnt player and pieces up
together; and the performance went on without further
interruption.

[What these people will do when they get to a world
where there is no chance, and will not be through all
eternity, of advertising themselves and their wares, I do
not know. It distresses me, but I don't know, and am
afraid I never will know.]

It should be borne in mind that the appearance of Richmond
in the vicinity of the Capitol Square was pretty
much this: a dilapidated Capitol, bound together with
grapevines and hoop-iron, and propped by long, North
Carolina whitewashed pine-trees. But on the three squares
extending from Ninth to Twelfth, that is to say from Bob
Scammell's oyster saloon to Judge Crump's, on what was
once called Governor Street, was first, on the Valentine
Square, the Virginia Historical Society building, a noble

structure; next, on the City Hall Square, Burwell Music
Hall, a superb edifice (far finer, architecturally, than any
academy of music in the country), with its flexible screen
lecture-room beneath; and third, on Ford's Hotel Square,
the massive and imposing, though not beautiful, circular
walls of Brice Church.

The environment of these noble buildings was not in
keeping—more money, of course—more money everywhere
and all the time. And yet I was not so loath to
spend as you might suppose. Old Dodson,[1] when I was
sick in 1872 at the Monumental Hotel, had been kind to
me (indeed, the poor man had no better sense than to be
kind to everybody), and accordingly I determined to do
something for Dodson, and for somebody I liked even
better than Dodson; I mean myself. Fact is, I tried to
please myself generally, almost alwaysly; it gave me much
pleasure to please myself.

Not to digress a bit.

The Catholics are a wise people. Their priests I like
prodigiously, their tenets I don't. But for all that, they
are wise enough, I tell you; i.e., when they have got a
good thing they know it just about as well as you or any
other man knows it. What is more, they find out the
good thing, get hold of it and keep it, long before you,
with your weak, Protestant mind, have any idea of it.

Monumental Hotel Square was the place for a hotel—
better, much better, I thought, than the site of the Shields
House, admirable as that undoubtedly was. But the
Catholics wouldn't sell their church, their bishop's house,
or the Virginia House—which was mean of them, in my
humble opinion. So I did the best I could. On all the
space I could purchase, from Grace to Broad, including
Blair's[2] drug store on the latter street, I built the most

magnificent granite hotel, ten stories high, that is in this
world. I challenge all comparison. A minute description
of the house will be found in the twenty-fifth thousand of
Græme's[3] Handbook of Richmond. Outside and inside
it is as near perfection as one could expect. Some of its
peculiar features will be given in my forthcoming work on
the American Hotel. Dodson has been keeping it for
the last ten years, and keeping it well, although people
said Dodson couldn't keep a house as big as that. It is a
superb ornament to the city, and makes St. Paul's Church
look rather small-potatoish. I doubt if there is on the
globe a pleasanter home for the traveler than Deane[4]
House.

“Doctor”—

In my time the Southern people had a ridiculous habit
of putting a handle to everybody's name—clerks were
colonels or majors, and corn-cutters professors. This
habit, silly as it was, was due, I think, to the innate hatred
of the Southern people for the word “Mister,” which is
abominable, in spite of Mrs. Browning's effort to make it
otherwise. Of course a man of my wealth could not remain
a plain Mister, and inasmuch as an academy in East
Tennessee had conferred upon me the title of LL.D. (in
return for which I endowed the institution with a postal
order for ten dollars), I was generally called Doctor, and
got to feel badly if everybody didn't call me Doctor.

“Doctor,” said Judge Robertson,[5] “your money is
going fast. Have you forgotten the University of Virginia?”

“Why, Judge, what am I to do? The whole world
wants me to do something for everything. Here is John
Tinsley contending that I ought to do something to commemorate
Mann Page, Mont. Miller, Lyttleton Tazewell,
and all the bright fellows that boarded at Mrs. Mosby's,

corner of Ninth and Franklin, before the war; my Academy
for Editors, my Asylum for Worthless Young Men,
my Cathedral, my Richmond Park, my semi-Phalansterian
Square, etc., haven't even been begun—just put yourself
in my place, Judge.”

“Well, well,” said the judge, “I give up; I let you
off.”

“Strikes me, Judge, that the Miller fund ought to have
gone to the University.”

“Too late, now; too late. That's long past; we look
to the present and the future—have to look to them.”

“Yes; but did it never occur to you that if the people
of the South and of Virginia really did want to build up
the University they would be sure to find a way; would
go earnestly to work about it, as Washington and Lee has
done, and that if they do not ardently desire to build it
up, it ought not to be built up?”

“Right enough; but have you forgotten Dr. Maupin?”

“No,” said I warmly, “and never will or can. Neither
have I forgotten Stephen Southall (how I enjoyed his editorials
in the Whig in Ridgway's time!), nor Prof. Gilder-sleeve
(of the Bema), nor Prof. Minor, nor any of them.”

The allusion to Dr. Maupin overcame me. I handed
the judge a check for half a million, and away he went.

My Academy for Editors was established at Standards-ville,
in the county of Greene. Its main object was to
teach editors to kneel down and pray for some sense,
some diminution of self-sufficiency, some ability to see
both sides of a subject; in a word, some wisdom from on
high, before they wrote their editorials. Particulars will
be found in the paper marked Z. [No such paper is dis-cerned
in the bundle of MSS.—Ed. Whig.]

My Asylum for Wuthless Yung Menn was built on a
beautiful plot of ground of five acres, about half-way between
Richmond and Ashland. Its object was to rescue
society from the Wuthless Yung Mann, and no one was
sent there who was not an incurably Wuthless[6] Yung

Mann—a person much more deserving of protection and
tender isolation from the vain world than the worthless
old man. (Particulars will be found in the paper marked
ZZ.) [Greatly to our regret, this paper is also missing.
—Ed. Whig.]

A suggestion thrown out in the Dispatch some time in
1873 materially modified my views about a park for Richmond.
My first idea was to buy ten thousand acres of
land on both sides of the river, above the city, and to
have a park surpassing Laura Park in Lynchburg. This
was done in part only, as will be told.

As a rule, parks are built on this or that side of a city,
accessible enough to some, but out of the reach of the
bulk of the population, except at a cost either of time or
money, or both, which few, if any, of the poorer classes
can afford. Why not have a park accessible to everybody?
This was that great work which my agents, Williams
& Apperson (Grubbs having retired on a huge fortune),
accomplished for me within six months,—the most
signal real-estate triumph ever achieved.

They bought for me a strip of ground varying from an
eighth to a quarter, and in some places half a mile in
width, and extending entirely around the city, including
Manchester, which had been consolidated with Richmond.
At the upper end of the city, above the reservoir, it
swelled out into a park proper, presenting in bird's-eye
view the appearance of an irregular ring with a large set
on the southwestern side. A good broad street ran
through the centre of the ring, and at suitable intervals,
not too close together, a few public and private houses,
with gardens attached, were allowed to be built. From
the Capitol to the Boulevard, as it was called, the distance
varied from a mile to a mile and a half, or two miles—the
city extending a goodly distance beyond the Boulevard.
This arrangement secured to the children of all classes
easy access at any time to fresh air, grass, flowers, trees,
fountains, birds, squirrels, deer (these last protected from

dogs by reason of the growing common sense of the people,
who ordered all dogs not properly trained, to be shot
by policemen), and a thousand other pleasures (aquaria
here and there and the like) and health-insurements for
the little people, ay, and for the big ones, too.

The loss of so much good building-ground was a terrific
blow to land-owners. When they saw the city progressing
square after square beyond the Boulevard, and remembered
the comparatively trifling price they had received
for their property, they cursed Apperson, and
Williams, and myself till we would have been black in
the face if we had only heard them. Suit after suit was
instituted to set aside, recover, what not. No use. My
agents were not slouches by a long ways. They knew
their business. The infernal gods alone know the amount
of litigation that ensued, and has been kept up to this day.
My attorneys, Matthews & Matthews,[7] who have been
worked nearly to death, tell me they see no end to the
trouble. As it doesn't trouble me, and gives them some
fifty thousand dollars each a year, I don't care how long
the suits continue.

The park proper is called Parke[8] Park. It contains
only three thousand acres, but is as highly and beautifully
ornamented as it is possible for landscape gardening to
go. With the islet-studded river, crossed by numbers of
elegant bridges, running through its midst, its scenic
surprises at almost every turn, its statues,[9] its bowers,

kiosks, conservatories, etc., etc., many think it equal to
Chatsworth, and very much superior to Laura Park, in
Lynchburg. I cannot think so. The little mountains
embraced in the latter park, and the admirable advantage
taken of them by Jones, who made every inch tell in art
effects, and, above all, the magnificent views obtainable
from the mountain roadways and towers, make it, in my
candid estimation, superior to any park in this country
or in Europe. Both are good enough and beautiful
enough, in all conscience. Their relative merits afford
a subject of continued amicable quarrels between the
Lynchburg and Richmond papers.

Life, as it is known to most of us, is like the upper
part of the Appomattox River,—a narrow stream, muddy
more than half the time, full of snags, hammocks, and
sand-bars, with only here and there a good fishing-hole.
When the boys come back from the academic and collegiate
ridges, provided, as they and their fond, foolish
parents (who, being in business, ought to have more
sense) fancy, with the best tackle in the world, they find
Tom, Dick, and Harry, who have been raised to the
work on the spot, and never quitted it, already squatted
down by the holes, with the plainest poles, and the
meanest-looking cymlins, and the morest fish, and with
no more idea of quitting “them holes” in favor of the
college boys till death do them dislodge, than they have
of going to heaven to cook the fish or spend the money
they acquire in this earthly vale. [By the way, I wish I
had told Judge Robertson that one good primary school,
based upon a proper knowledge of human nature and the
human mind, and in which the knowledge that is of most
immediate use to most people (there was not such a
school, nay, not the approach to it, in Virginia in my
time) should alone be taught, would, in my judgment,
outweigh all the universities on earth. How many
parents know and feel restive under this, and yet sit
quiet! Poor parents! But, after all, the practical

school of the shop, the factory, the store, the printing-office,
etc., is and must long remain the best school.
How to make money honorably and to save it, in other
words, how to support yourself and family, that is the
best, the indispensable education (for how can you and
family so much as live if you do not acquire a knowledge
of self-maintenance?), to which even reading and writing
are secondary.]

A consequence of this false system of education is that
as civilization advances there is a continuous increase of
educated men and women with refined tastes who do not
know how to get along, or, if they do, find all the fishing-holes
in life's Appomattox full,—Rob and Tom having
learned how to make money while Edward and Fitzhugh
were grubbing up Greek roots. This being the case, the
educated men and women sink into clerkships and secondary
places, with salaries of from five hundred to two
thousand dollars—there being a limit and a decennially
lessening limit to the relative numbers of doctors, lawyers,
and preachers. No provision is made for these clerks
and minus quantities in the sum of social life. They ought
to be content to live as cheaply as mechanics who earn
double their salary, but they are not. They cannot be;
the education which ought never to have been given to
nine-tenths of them has unfitted them for cheap living.
Little builders, grog-shop and corner-grocery sharks,
whose greed for money is ravenous and cruel as the
grave, build for the multitude who are content to live
anyhow, and the big builders build for the rich merchants,
eminent doctors, great lawyers, and fashionable
preachers. The educated, cultivated incapable no human
being considers.

I, being better than a human being, and having no desire
to “git my rent,” did consider him, and built in the
upper part of the city a dozen or two squares of houses
for him and his kind. They were built with every conceivable
labor-saving convenience, required little fuel to
heat them, were inexpensively lighted, and needed scarcely
any furniture,—wardrobes, bureaus, presses, etc., being
in the very structure of the houses themselves. (I was
sick unto death of seeing my wife's thirty-feet dray run

ning like mad from end to end of the city.) The rent
for each house covered the taxes (they were high—taxes
are always high) and repaired the annual wear and tear—
that was all. Mr. R. D. Ward[10] attended faithfully
to this business for me. The houses were not crammed
down upon the ground as close as they could set, but
were separated by a space of twelve to fifteen feet, and
in the middle of each side of each square was a house
built expressly for the accommodation of young men and
bachelors,—my object being to give them better quarters
than they got in the down-town dens, and to have them
so close to the neighboring families as to offer them every
incentive to visit the ladies, brighten up the evening (so
often so dull for the want of young company), fall in love
with the girls, marry early, help the minus-quantity
fathers, and so help society onward. I also encouraged
many polished gentlemen to remain bachelors, but at the
same time to be true to their social duties, and to make
themselves (what they can do, and the worn-down husbands,
too often cannot) the very life and charm of the
households that are happy enough to call them friends.

I doubt if I ever did a better or a wiser thing than the
building of these same squares. They were not all
lumped together in a single district of the city, but were
interspersed among other squares, and gave to the town
a tone which otherwise it could never have had. The
houses were eagerly rented by clerks, accountants, editors,
and insurance agents, and the rooms in the bachelors'
homes were just as eagerly sought by unmarried men.
To be sure there were certain young men who preferred
to remain down-town, as near as possible to their beloved
bar-rooms and bagnios, but this could not be helped.
No one, not even their own mothers, could wish such
beasts turned loose in a decent man's family. A snug

wing-room in each of the bachelor's homes was set apart
for the matron, a sort of concierge who kept the house in
order and attended to the sewing of the young men, or
matronized the young ladies of the vicinity whenever the
former gave a party, dancing or other, to the latter.
From time to time some one or other of these old widows
or maids destroyed the peace of mind of some of their
old bachelor tenants, an infliction which, however deserved,
would soon have driven the bachelors away but
for the timely interference of the married ladies of the
neighborhood. After all, things regulated themselves
pretty well, without the aid of police. A great point
was gained in giving numerous old ladies the occupation
they most delight in—keeping house, their own house, as
it were, and in ministering exclusively to male tenants;
and another great point was the putting of bachelors old
and young in close proximity to the ladies. You may
love all the ladies in the world with the maddest devotion,
but if they live so far away from you that you can
never lay eyes on them or have their pretty palms in
yours, the chances are that you will marry very few of
them at one time. Proximity is the great thing; it is
next to certainty in matters of the matrimonial kind. I
forgot to say that little by little the bachelors learned
that nothing sweetened and enlivened their parties half
so much as a fine sprinkling of married ladies. Occasionally
the bachelors took breakfast and tea at home, but
they were so often invited out to these meals that the
matrons seldom had the opportunity of turning an additional
honest penny by feeding them,—which made them
indignant quite frequently. Women past the marrying
point, and without daughters or female pets of their own,
soon take a proprietary interest in their masculine tenants,
and object to their marrying anybody. It is hard, but I
have found that there is no way of making everybody
happy all the time,—not even old bachelors, old widows,
or old maids.[11]

Auxiliary to the family squares were the semi-phalansterian
squares, based upon Chas. Fourier's excellent but
excessively-carried-out idea, and designed to rescue decent
people from the fangs of ruthless cooks, maids, and other
domestic servants, black or white, who had long ruled the
roast in a savagely tyrannical manner. They were built
precisely like the family square, the houses twelve to thirteen
feet apart, with a bachelor's home in the middle of
each side of the square, only the lots were not so deep,
leaving a large quadrange in the centre of the square, on
which was erected a large building containing all the
appliances for cooking, washing, ironing, etc., for all the
families residing in that square; also servants' rooms in
abundance. Except in case of sickness, or when there
were very young children, servants were wholly dispensed
with; kitchens and laundries were unknown; marketing
was unknown, groceries even were supplied by the man
in charge of the central hall, who, getting things by
wholesale, and having but one fire to keep up, fed his
customers more cheaply than they could have fed themselves,
hired servants and furnished them just when they
were needed and no longer, and in fine carried out the
idea of the Fourierite phalanstery in such a way that the
families who patronized him were enabled to live hotel-fashion
in their private houses—an admirable good thing,
I promise you. I built twelve dozen of these squares in
various parts of Richmond, and now the Semi-Phalanstery
is the rule rather than the exception in all the great cities
of Christendom, and in many small ones also.