New York City has occupied a big place in the history of engravin’, as well as of American art generally–more place and space than it generally gets credit for.
Old Siebout, who flourished in fine style in his day in Gold street, was the first regular copper-plate engraver in New York. He was quite a character–a shrewd mixture of a tradesman and an artist. When he was makin’ his bargains beforehand about his prices, he was all trade–but after he got started in his work he was all art. In consequence he did well for his pocket and his profession both. He went to Europe several times. It was a big thing to go to Europe then, and his trips really did him good and enabled him to get some points in London which he made useful in New York. He took to engravin’ portraits of prominent people here, and got tip-top prices for tip-top pictures. He lived tip-top, too, and gave swell dinner parties at his house in Gold street. If he had only stuck to engravin’ he would have died as rich as he lived. But unfortunately he got speculatin’ in his old age, and lost everythin’ he had, save a farm, and went to die on that–glad to get even a little farm-house to die in.
Another early New York engraver was John Roberts. He was a Scotchman, and a sort of jack-of-all-trades. He could make musical instruments, and could play on ‘em after he had made ‘em. He could make machinery, he was great on sums in arithmetic–a sort of lightnin’ calculator– and above all, he was really a first-class engraver. His other things helped to fill up his time and astonish people, but his engravin’ brought him bread and butter. And he could eat a deal of bread and butter; he was a big feeder. He had an intimate friend and chum, a painter, called Benjamin Trott, and once his friendship for this Trott was put to a pretty severe test. He undertook to engrave one of Trott’s pictures, but when the engravin’ was done Trott thought it wasn’t worthy of his paintin’ and insisted that Roberts should destroy it. About one man in ten thousand would comply with such a request. The other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine would have said that they’re engravin’ was quite as good if not better than the paintin’. In short, they would have told the painter to go to the deuce. But the engraver really loved the artist so much that, rather than have any hard feelin’s with him, or hard words, he absolutely destroyed his engravin’.
Perhaps the most noteworthy man in the line of engravin’ who ever lived in New York was Alexander Anderson, who might with justice be called the father of American wood engravin’. Old Alexander Anderson lived for nearly a century in this city, and lived and died honored. Such a man ought never to be quite forgotten. There ain’t any danger of there bein’ too many men like him. His father was a printer, and used to publish a paper down near Wall Street. The old man was a politician as well as a printer, and he wanted to make his only son like him, but somehow Alexander didn’t take to his father’s hobbies, and from boyhood had a hobby of his own, engravin’. As his father said of him one day, “the confounded boy was always lookin’ at pictures in books.” So he was. Anything in the way of an engravin’ had an attraction for him. He used to swap marbles for engravin’s, swap good marbles for bad engravin’s, for most of “the book work” then was vile.
At last havin’ looked at and studied for two or three years all the engravin’s he could possibly get hold of, he tried his hand at engravin’ himself. His first effort was under decided difficulties. He couldn’t expect any aid from his father, so he went on his own hook. He took all the pennies he had and some that he borrowed, and got an old silversmith, across the way, who had taken a fancy to him, to roll ‘em into a solid mass in his mill. This gave him all the metal plate he needed, and then he made a graver for himself out of the back spring of a pocket-knife, which he ground to a fine point. With this rude apparatus he was master of the situation, and made his first engravin’. He wouldn’t have exchanged places with a king just then. And he made his engravin’s pay, too, even in this rude stage of it. The newspapers then used to publish all shippin’ advertisements with little ships on top of ‘em. The young Anderson set to work and engraved some of these advertisin’ ships, and got back all his original stock of pennies a hundred times over. From that time on Alexander Anderson was an engraver. His folks tried to make him a doctor, and in fact he tried, to please his folks, to make a doctor out of himself, but he was a born engraver and fulfilled his destiny.
Perhaps he might have done well as a doctor, but fate was against him in that line.
He commenced his career as a medical practitioner in a yellow fever year, and in the course of the epidemic he lost all his entire family within less than a month. One Sunday he had a father and mother livin’, a nice young wife, a little baby boy and an affectionate brother. On the correspondin’ Sunday next month he had neither father, mother, wife, child, nor brother livin’. They had all been swept away; all died of yellow fever in less than thirty days. This awful series of calamities disheartened him and showed him forcibly how little a physician can do after all. So he left New York a while and went to the only relative he had then in the world, an uncle, in the West Indies.
He then returned to New York and settled down to wood engravin’ as a business. He had nothin’ else to live for, so he lived for and in and by that. For fifty years he was the best man in his line in this city.
One of Anderson’s apprentices was named Adams, and this Adams, although not so fine a man or an engraver as his preceptor and master, lived to become identified with the greatest illustrated publication of its time, Harper’s Family Bible. Adams did the major part of the engravin’ for this work, and was not only liberally paid by the Harpers in salary, but was given an interest in the proceeds of the book. Later on, the book makin’ a tremendous success, the Harpers became desirous of buyin’ Adams out, so the engraver made a bargain with his publishers that he would surrender all pecuniary interest in the book for the sum of $5,000 a year, to be paid him durin’ life.
Adams was then middle-aged and rather sickly, so the Harpers jumped at this offer, thinkin’, naturally, that Adams would only live two or three years more. But he didn’t die as soon as they expected. On the contrary, he took a turn, just after he made this arrangement, for the better, recovered his health, and lived twenty years, getting his $5,000 a year all the time. The publishers never squealed, but they never made another bargain of that sort.
It sounds strange now, but even Harper’s Family Bible was “objected to” in its day. Some of the ministers thought its illustrations either too broad or too brutal.
One day a Methodist minister “dropped in” at Harpers’ and saw one of Adams’ early illustrations–the picture representin’ Adam seein’ Eve for the first time in Paradise. He held it up reproachfully to the notice of James Harper, then Mayor, sayin’ as he held it up: “Brother James, this will not do for Eve, I fear,” alludin to the innocence, and nothin’ else, in which our all-mother was clad.
“Brother,” said the Methodist mayor in reply to the Methodist minister, and alludin’ to the avidity with which the latter seized at the suggestions of his picture, “you would not have done for Adam, I fear.” So the mayor had the laugh on the minister.
[Editor’s notes: The engraver referred to in the opening paragraphs above was Cornelius Tiebout (Abt. 1773-1832), not Siebout. Nearly all of this column was adapted from “New York City After the War of 1812”, by Evart A. Duyckinck, Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, Volume 18, 1884. However, the source article does not contain the anecdote about James Harper and engraver James Alexander Adams.]
