 | Saratoga in 1901 |  |
SARATOGA IN 1901.
ELI AN OLD MAN.
United States Hotel, Saratoga, Aug. 28th, 1901.
Thirty years ago, in the days of vigorous manhood, I often
visited this peaceful village. The last time was the year 1871,
after the great Franco-Prussian war, when Lan. wrote for the
Commercial, and before General Grant's second struggle for the
Presidency.
I was young then, but alas! I am now an old, gray-haired
man, tottering under the weight of three-score years. I well
remember the splendid young fellows who surrounded me in
those days. Many of them became distinguished in after-life,
and some, alas! were early reaped by the keen sickle of Death!
Many of these splendid fellows belonged to the 7th Regiment,
and were killed in the great Orange riot in 1880. Indeed, half
of the regiments were killed during those bloody times. This
riot took place just north of Central Park, and extended all
along up the Boulevard to High Bridge, which was then the
centre of the city. The Bloomery-dole road had been closed and
built over for many years. The City Hall and Post Office had
been moved up to Madison Square. Peter Gilsey alone survives
these changes, and he remembers and narrates how he sold out
the Herald publishing house, and how there was a grand public
meeting to subscribe money to buy the old Fifth Avenue Hotel
for the New York Times, after the long litigation had reclaimed
the old Times' site to the City Corporation.
At first they didn't think there was going to be a riot. There
had been a good deal of grumbling among the Boulevard
laborers up towards the old Jerome Race Track, and a good many
recent meetings had been held on Thirty-fourth street, which was
then a great Irish quarter. First they wanted their time
diminished to six hours per day. This was granted. Then some
bad leaders with orations, meetings, and pamphlets, inflamed the
laborers to declare for the Commune. The people thought it
was all talk, but one day on the 17th of June, 1880, the Communists
headed by an armed regiment absolutely appeared in the
centre of the city in front of the Great Westchester Hotel. They
commenced robbing, burning, and pillaging in every direction.
Their cry was, “The rich shall divide their property with the poor.”
The 7th Regiment, backed by the 9th, and the Brooklyn 23rd,
flew to its armory, seized arms, and commenced its march
against the rioters. The rioters without any attempt at a
parley, opened fire at their first appearance. Colonel Clarke fell
pierced by three balls, and General Shaler was knocked senseless
upon the ground by a shot from a concealed field-piece, and
was run over by the mob. Major Sniffin and Lt.-Colonel Fitzgerald
were also killed. The whole regiment was pushed back,
but were reinforced by General Dakin, with the 23rd Regiment
of the 5th Division. General Dakin was in front. A shower of
balls came and the General with four officers were killed
instantly, and the militia, outnumberd, had to fall back into
Central Park. Then came a time of terrible bloodshed. The
big hotels were gutted, banks robbed, and newspaper offices
burnt. The venerable Horace Greeley and Mr. Bryant were
lynched by the mob; Mr. Belmont and Mr. Aspinwall's picture
galeries were destroyed, and every window was broken in the
Alas! these were terrible times, and I shudder at my
own narration. Finally General Grant (the good man is dead
now), sent up 8,000 regular troops with Sheridan and Sherman
at their head. The mob was at last subdued. Since that time
we have had peace, and neither Catholics nor Orangemen think of
parading.
EUROPE.
I had been absent in Europe attending to our Moscow office
of the Grand International Aerial Flying Company for thirty
years, when I jumped into one of our aerial floating palaces for
my summer trip.
Our aerial train was destined for Saratoga viâ Baden-Baden,
Margate, Long Branch, and the Adirondacks, and was propelled
through the air on the large wing system invented by a
descendant of one of the Hoes, whose grandfather had, years
before, invented the great cylinder printing press. I had heard
very little of America during the past thirty years, my American
letters simply referring to personal and family matters, the
wealth and growth of the Perkins family. Baden-Baden,
Luxemburg, and Wiesbaden, were held by the French, under the
Presidency of a son of the Duc de Chambord, after the war of
1891. Napoleon III, had settled at Hempstead Plains, on Long
Island, and all Europe was quiet. After spending a day at
Baden, and an afternoon at Margate and Brighton, in England,
we
DROPPED DOWN AT LONG BRANCH.
We were astonished at the great change which the thirty
years had made. We looked for the old Continental Hotel. It
was gone. A venerable fisherman came along. I asked him if
he was sure we were at Long Branch. He said he was.
“But where is the Continental, the Mansion House, Howell's,
and those long wooden hotels which used to be here?” I asked.
“O, they went into the ocean years ago. The beach washed
the sea.
“Yes.”
“Well, that rides at anchor about where the West End used to
stand.”
“But what became of the President's cottage?”
“Well, that went with the rest. But the President didn't care.
He was very rich. He had made a good deal of money raising
horses in the White-House yard. By-and-by some one, I believe
Mr. Dana, gave him a fine colt. That colt became a racer, beat
everything in the country, became worth $100,000, and finally
General Grant resigned the Presidency to look after him. You
know Mr. Dana and President Grant made up after the election
in 1872, and they were very warm friends before Mr Dana died.”
“Dana dead!” I exclaimed filled with sorrow, “what killed
him?”
“Well, it is a sad story,” continued the old fisherman, “but I
will tell you about it as near as I can remember.
“You know Mr. Dana had a way of keeping a list of President
Grant's relations in a paper which he then published called the
Sun. Well he kept that list faithfully and well. Every relation
he could hear of he put down. The President kept on having
children—they in turn had other children, and there were a
great many grandchildren.
“Mrs. Grant suggested to the President the propriety of
drowning some of his children.
“But the President said,—`No, other Presidents have had
children—Mr. Adams and Mr. Van Buren, and while perhaps it
would have been better if Mr. Van Buren had drowned his
children, still, on the whole, I think I'll let ours live.'
“So they kept on living and increasing. By-and-by they made
a column—these children and grandchildren did—then two
columns, then a whole page. They took up so much room that
Mr. Dana gave up, first his editorials—then his local news—then
his foreign matter. Then for days and weeks the paper appeared
relations.”
“What then?” I asked deeply interested.
“Well everything went on well, till one day Mr. Dana got a
telegram from St. Louis; `Two more grandchildren for President
Grant.' What could he do? The paper was full. In a
quandary the unhappy man rushed over to the Tribune office
to see old Mr. Ripley, to see if there wasn't room for them in
the encyclopedia. Ripley said `he was sorry, but there was no
place for them.' Then in a fit of remorse, Mr. Dana threw his
scull-cap at Mr. Cummings, pulled a wide-brimmed sombrano
over his eyes, and started for the East River bridge—”
“And jumped off?”
“Nobody ever knew. His clothes were found the next
morning floating on the tide past Fort Hamilton.”
Filled with sorrow, for I loved Mr. Dana, I bade adieu to
what was once Long Branch, mounted the car, and flew
THROUGH THE AIR TO SARATOGA.
The first thing that met me as I alighted was this mammoth
hotel—the United States. Three gray-haired men tottered up
to bid me welcome. They were the venerable James H. Breslin,
Hiram Tompkins, and James M. Marvin. The silver-haired R.
H. Southgate, I found, was also one of the proprietors. The
parlors were gayly lighted, and the belles and beaux were just
going into the sit room.
“The what room?” I asked when they told me.
“The sit room. Why, don't you know about it?” they all
asked.
We don't dance the round dances any more you know in
America—it's too tiresome, then it's considered vulgar now.
The mammas accompany the daughters into the “sit” room,
when the gentlemen sit down by them, hold their hands, and
put their arms around their waists, and hold them to their
bosoms, just as they used to in the round dances, only they don't
go dancing around the room. There they sit and talk for hours.
“O, it's so much nicer! no getting heated and catching cold
—all is quiet and genteel. This is the result of thirty years of
civilization. The trouble of dancing all around the room was
more than the fun was worth.”
I now looked to see
HOW THE YOUNG LADIES WERE DRESSED.
Such a change! The high heels are gone. There are no
more round shoulders, but the Goddess of Fashion has not been
idle. Her ways are almost as ridiculous as they were in 1871,
when they used to stuff out with newspapers, and dangle their
hands and their right-angled wrists in front. Now, they have
the front soles of their shoes made an inch thick, while the
heels are taken off, and every young lady stands bent as far over
back, as she used to stand bent forward, thirty years ago. Their
dresses are stuffed out on each side with newspapers, just as they
used to stuff them out on the back. Sometimes the eyes are
painted black underneath, as they used to be.
They said the cretonne suits were worn for two years, then the
ladies got to wearing dresses made of peacock's feathers.
I noticed the waists of the dresses to-day at the United
States were very high—the same as you see in the pictures of
the shoulder. The dresses are cut low-neck—very low; but the
neck and shoulders are covered with white kid to match the
gloves. These necks fit so nicely that you think you are looking
at the naked shoulders. Shady young ladies now wear stuffed
arms and necks, and defy detection. The old fashion of powdering
the face to take away the gloss and glow of health, has been
discontinued.
Gentlemen wear trowsers very large at the knee, and tight at
the bottom. The coats are cut low in the neck with short
sleeves, something like the ladies' dresses in 1872. Gentlemen
also wear single eye-glasses, waxed mustaches and imperials, and
earrings, a fashion which used to be observed thirty years ago
by the ladies. Gentlemen's hats are generally the mode,
chapeau de brigand, turned up at the sides, with rooster's feathers.
After breakfast I strolled out to see the great city of Saratoga.
I found the aristocratic Clarendon precisely as I had left it thirty
they found it would interfere with the hand-organ, and the project
fell to the ground. Many of the Clarendonites were so
attached to the hand-organ that they remained all winter to
hear it play.
The Grand Union, I found, was burnt to the ground in 1894.
They had been without gas in Saratoga for three nights. Then
came the great eclipse of the sun in 1894. Everybody was
anxious to see it, but the gas was out. In a rash moment Wm.
Leland, to gratify a guest, touched a light to one of the wings,
expecting to make a small temporary light to see the eclipse by,
and then he proposed to put it out. William became interested
in the eclipse, the flames spread apace, and soon the whole structure
was wrapped in flames. Judge Barnard, Judge Hilton, and
A. T. Stewart perished in the flames. Mr. Stewart left his
Thirty-fourth street house to New York as an art gallery. Warren
Leland escaped, moved up to John Brown's tract, cleared off the
North Woods, and now has a mammoth farm where Murray
used to conspire with the musquitos to bring suffering upon his
fellow-men. He is a public benefactor.
At Congress Hall, which now extends twelve blocks back
over the Indian encampment, I found many familiar faces.
The next charming belles were those little babies which I left
a good many years ago. Miss Flora Davis, Miss Gracie Buckley,
Miss Julia Watson Southgate, a golden-haired blonde, and Miss
Madge Heywood Breslin, a liquid-eyed brunette. They near the
centre of an admiring group.
INTEMPERANCE.
After traveling for thirty years among the temperance
societies of Scotland, seeing a few muddled red-nosed Lords in
England and France, and spending some time in Germany where
it is impossible for people to drink enough of her flimsy beer and
sour wine to get drunk on, it was really refreshing for me to drop
down on the shores of our dear native land, and see our
drunk? They had built a new Kursaal for gambling and
drinking in the rear of Congress Hall. There at twelve o'clock
at night every boy went to look upon the bright and shining
example of American intemperance. When I saw the great blue
eyes of the new generation of Americans rolling foolishly—and
listened to their meaningless but loving twaddle, I felt the
impulse of a spell. What was it? It was the power of association.
It carried me back to New York in her younger days—
carried me back to the theatre bar-room at the Grand Opera
House,—carried me back to the Gilsey House and the knights of
the round table, at 11 p. m. Tears came to my eyes, as after my
thirty years absence, I caught a whiff of their whiskey breath—
for it reminded me of the old free-lunch atmosphere of Ford's
and Jerry Thomas'. It reminded me of the lobby rooms in the
capitol at Washington, reminded me of the air about City Hall
in the palmy days of the “ring,” and of the tail end of a Fifth
Avenue wedding reception in 1872. It was a revival of the pure
and lovely associations of my youth, to see a man honestly drunk
all over—drunk in his eyes—legs, in the scowl of his eyebrows,
and the small of his back. But alas! it was a sight that wounded
my personal pride. I thought that the science of sweet and
beautiful intemperance had been carried to perfection in the days
of my youth. It was a sad thought, that in this great work of
civilization the proud 1872 of my youth was indeed behind the
1901 of my old age.
With tears in my eyes I turned away from the sad spectacle—
the eclipse of the early career of American intemperance! In
1901 I found everybody drank—drank steady, and drank like
the Bostonians, between drinks, too. Why Gilsey House
openings, Old Brewery sprees, or the struggles of the regular
army officers with raw Commissary on the frontier were nothing
in the consumption of poor whiskey at the Saratoga Kursaal
or at the Red Lion above the park. The old drinking of my boyhood
officially, the intemperance prestige of our youth will be destroyed,
and with all our glorification, the Republic of Washington, in
the glorious march of intemperance, will have to stand in the
shadow of the hereditary aristocracy of 1901.
| Saratoga in 1901 | |