 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER IX.
Last week we went to Ravenswood, to visit Grant Thorburn's
famous garden. We left the city by Hell-gate, a
name not altogether inappropriate for an entrance to New-York.
The waters, though somewhat troubled and peevish,
were more composed than I had expected. This was owing
to the high tide; and it reminded me of Washington
Irving's description: “Hell gate is as pacific at low water
as any other stream; as the tide rises, it begins to fret; at
half tide it rages and roars, as if bellowing for more water;
but when the tide is full, it relapses again into quiet, and
for a time seems to sleep almost as soundly as an alderman
after dinner. It may be compared to an inveterate
drinker, who is a peaceful fellow enough when he has no
liquor at all, or when he is skin-full; but when half-seas
over, plays the very devil.” One of the steam-ferry boats
that crosses this turbulent passage, is appropriately called
the Plnto. It is odd that men should have confounded
together the deities that preside over Riches and over
Hell, and that the god of Commerce should likewise
be the god of Lies. Perhaps the ancients had sarcastic
significance in this.
The garden at Ravenswood is well worth seeing. An
admirable green-house, full of choice plants; extensive and
varied walks, neatly kept; and nearly three thousand dahlias
of shade and hue; and a catalogue of great names,
from Lord Wellington to Kate Nickleby and Grace Darling.
I never saw any floral exhibition more superb. They stood
facing each other in regal groups, as if the court beauties
of a coronation ball had been suddenly changed into blossoms
by an enchanter's wand. The location of the garden
is beautiful; in some places opening upon pretty rural
scenes of wood and pasture, and fronting on the broad blue
river, where, ever and anon, may be seen, through the intervening
foliage, some little boat, or sloop, with snowy
sail, gliding gracefully along in silence and sunlight.
Grant Thorburn, you know, of course; that little “spunk
o' geni, in a rickety tabernacle,” on whose history Galt
built his Lawrie Todd. The story derived small aid from
fiction; the first volume being almost literally Grant Thorburn's
history, as he tells it himself. To be sure, he never
pushed into the wilderness, to lay out “Judiville,” or any
other new town. Though Ravenswood has grown up
around him, and the tasteful name is of his own choosing,
he never could have endured many of the hardships of a
pioneer; for the village lies on the East River, a little south
of Hallet's Cove, not more than five miles from the city.
The name came from the Bride of Lammermoor; for
though a strict adherent of Scotland's kirk, he is a great
admirer of Sir Walter's romances. The pleasant old gentleman
returned in the boat with us, and was highly communicative;
for, in the first place, he loves to talk of himself
and his adventures, with the innocent and inoffensive
egotism of a little child; and in the next place, he favours
Boston ladies, having a pleased recollection of the great attention
paid him there. He told us he was born near St.
Leonard's Crags, and in his boyhood was accustomed to
pass Jeannie Dean's cottage frequently. His grandfather
was alive and stirring at the time of the Porteous mob,
heart of Mid Lothian a thousand times. I was charmed
to hear him recite, in the pure Scotch accent, Jeannie's eloquent
and pathetic appeal to the Queen. Speaking of
Scott's fidelity to the national character, I asked him if he
had not often met with a Dandie Dinmont; he replied,
“Yes, and with Dumbiedikes, too; but much oftener with
a `douce Davie Deans.' ”
Lawrie Todd is very true to the life; yet it is slightly
embellished with fictitious garniture, like a veritable portrait
in masquerade dress. The old gentleman's love of
matter of fact led him to publish a biographical sketch of
himself; which, so far as it goes, is almost in the identical
language used by Galt: both being in fact the very words
in which he has been long accustomed to repeat his story.
Another motive for giving an unadorned account of himself
in his little book, probably was the very natural and not unpleasing
propensity of an old man, to trace step by step
the adventures and efforts whereby he fashioned such a
flowery fortune from the barren sands.
The handsome country-seats of himself and son, standing
side by side in the midst of this spacious and beautiful
garden; urns supported by Cupids, (which they say in
Yankee land should be called cupidities;) and oriental
glimpses here and there, of some verdant mound among
the winding walks, surmounted by the tufted Sago Palm, or
spreading Cactus; all this contrasted oddly enough with
his own account of himself, as a diminutive Scotch lad
with “brief legs and shuffling feet,” squatted down on the
deck of the emigrant ship, which brought him here, poor
and friendless, in 1794. He thus describes himself, helping
the colored cook to prepare dinner, when they first drew
near the wharves of New-York: “I sat down with Cato,
as he was called, square on the deck, his feet against my
feet, with a wooden bowl of potatoes between our legs, and
boat came alongside with several visiters. One inquired
for a farmer's servant, wishing to engage one; another for
a housemaid; and the third, thanks be and praise! asked
if there was a nail-maker on board. My greedy ear snapped
the word, and looking up, I answered, `I am one.'
`You!' replied he, looking down as if I was a fairy;
`You! can you make nails?' `I'll wager a sixpence,' (all
I had) was my answer, `that I'll make more nails in one
day than any man in America.' This reply, the manner of
it, and the figure of the bragger, set all present into a roar
of laughter.”
A curious sample of Scotch thrift was shown when he
first opened a little shop, without capital to buy stock.
Brick-bats, covered with iron monger's paper, with a knife
or fork tied on the outside, were ranged on the shelves
like an imposing array of new cutlery; and a dozen snuff
boxes, or shaving boxes, made a great show, fastened on
round junks of wood.
“But although it must be allowed that this was a clever
and innocent artifice,” says Lawrie Todd, “yet, like other
dealers in the devices of cunning, I had not been circumspect
at all points; for by mistake, I happened to tie a
round shaving box on a brick subterfuge, which a sly, pawky
old Scotchman, who sometimes stepped in for a crack, observed.
“Ay, mon,” says he, “but ye hae unco” queer things
here. Wha ever saw a four corner't shaving box?”—
Whereupon we had a hearty good laugh. “Od,” he resumed,
“but ye're an auld farrant chappy, and no doot but
ye'll do weel in this country, where pawkrie is no' an ill
nest-egg to begin with.”
There is, however, no “pawkrie” about his flowers and
garden-seeds; they are genuine, and the best of their
kind; as their celebrity throughout the country abundantly
testifies.
I begged of the gardener a single spring of acacia, whose
light, feathery, yellow foliage looked like a pet plaything
of the breezes; and which for the first time enabled me
to understand clearly Moore's poetic description of the
Desert, where “The Acacia waves her yellow hair.”
I likewise took with me a geranium leaf, as a memento
of the rose-geranium which Grant Thorburn accidentally
bought in the day of small beginnings, and which proved
the nucleus of his present floral fame, and blooming fortune.
The gardener likewise presented us with a bouquet
of dahlias, magnificent enough for the hand-screen of a
Sultana; but this politeness I think we owed to certain
beautiful young ladies who accompanied us.
Altogether, it was a charming excursion; and I came
away pleased with the garden and its environs, and pleased
with the old gentleman, whose dwarf-like figure disappointed
me agreeably; for, from his own description, I
was prepared to find him ungainly and mis-shapen. I no
longer deem it so very marvellous that his Rebecca should
have preferred the poor, canny little Scotchman to her rich
New-York lover.
As I never deserved to be called “Mrs. Leo Hunter,”
you will, perhaps, be surprised at the degree of interest I
express in this man, whose claims to distinction are merely
the having amassed wealth by his own industry and shrewdness,
and having his adventures told by Galt's facetious pen.
The accumulation of dollars and cents, I grant is a form of
power the least attractive of any to the imagination; but
yet, as an indication of ability of some sort, it is attractive
to a degree; and moreover there is something in mere
success, which interests us—because it is a stimulus which
the human mind spontaneously seeks, and without which
it cannot long retain its energies. Added to this, there is
a roseate gleam of romance, resting on the shrewd Scotchman's
life. First, there is a sober sentiment, a quaint,
the memory of his patient, quiet Rebecca in a sacred veil
of tender reverence. Secondly, he is a sort of High
Priest of Flora; and though not precisely such an one as
would have been chosen to tend the shrine of her Roman
Temple, yet this will give him a poetic claim upon my
interest, so long as the absorbing love of beauty renders
a Flower-Merchant more attractive to my fancy than a
dealer in grain.
Were I not afraid of wearying your patience with descriptions
of scenery, I would talk of the steamboat passage
from Ravenswood; for indeed it is very beautiful. But I
forbear all allusion to the gliding boats, the vernal forests,
falling in love with their own shadows in the river, and the
cozy cottages, peeping out from the foliage with their
pleasant, friendly faces. I have placed the lovely landscape
in the halls of memory, where I can look upon it
whenever my soul needs the bounteous refreshings of nature.
I congratulate myself for having added this picture
to my gallery, as a blessing for the weary months that are
coming upon us; for Summer has waved her last farewell,
as she passed away over the summit of the sunlit hills, and
I can already spy the waving white locks of old Winter, as
he comes hobbling up, before the gale, on the other side.
I could forgive him the ague-fit he bestows on poor Summer,
as she hurries by; but the plague of it is, he will
stand gossiping with Spring's green fairy, till every tooth
chatters in her sweet little head.
Now, of a truth, my friend, I have been meaning to write
sober sense; but what is written, is written. As the boy
said of his whistling, “it did itself.” I would gladly have
shown more practical good sense, and talked wisely on
“the spirit of the age,” “progress of the species,” and the
like; but I believe, in my soul, fairies keep carnival all the
year round in my poor brain; for even when I first wake,
their midnight dance has been. But I did not bore you
with scenery, and you should give me credit for that; we
who live cooped up in cities, are so apt to forget that any
body but ourselves ever sees blue sky enough for a suit of
bed curtains, or butter-cups and greensward sufficient for a
flowered coverlet. “Don't crow till you're out of the wood,”
though; for the aforesaid picture hangs in the hall, and I
may yet draw aside the curtain and give you a peep, if you
are very curious. Real pictures, like everything else real,
cannot be bought with cash. Old Mammon buys nothing
but shadows. My gallery beats that of the Duke of Devonshire;
for it is filled with originals by the oldest masters,
and not a copy among them all; and, better still, the sheriff
cannot seize them, let him do his worst; others may prove
property in the same, but they lie safely beyond the reach
of trover or replevin.
As we passed Blackwell's Island, I looked with thoughtful
sadness on the handsome stone edifice erected there
for a Lunatic Asylum. On another part of the island is a
Penitentiary; likewise a noble building, though chilling
the heart with its barred doors and grated windows. The
morally and the intellectually insane—should they not both
be treated with great tenderness? It is a question for serious
thought; and phrenology, with all its absurd quackery
on its back, will yet aid mankind in giving the fitting answer.
There has at least been kindness evinced in the
location chosen; for if free breezes, beautiful expanse of
water, quiet, rural scenery, and “the blue sky that bends
o'er all,” can “minister to the mind diseased,” then surely
these forlorn outcasts of society may here find God's best
physicians for their shattered nerves.
Another object which interested me exceedingly was the
Long-Island Farm School, for foundlings and orphans.
Six or eight hundred children are here carefully tended by
out to service or trades. Their extensive play-ground runs
along the shore; a place of as sweet natural influences as
could well be desired. I thought of the squalid little
wretches I had seen at Five Points, whose greatest misfortune
was that they were not orphans. I thought of
the crowd of sickly infants in Boston alms-house—the innocent
victims of hereditary vice. And my heart ached,
that it could see no end to all this misery, though it heard
it, in the far-off voice of prophecy.
| Letters from New York | |