New York has but few “characters” left in it–”eccentric” characters, I mean. There are plenty of bad characters in the city, and plenty of good ones, but of real odd, original characters, differin’ from other characters, there are very few indeed, George Francis Train, who has subsided of late, and Henry Bergh, who has a sort of short-haired Henry Irving look, bein’ the most prominent eccentricities.
Anyone can see Bergh is a “character” by lookin’ at him. He carries a distinct individuality about him and his deportment. He is tall, thin, stately, walks with a slow swinging gait and always seems to be in a brown study. But he manages to see every horse and four-legged animal that happens to pass him. He don’t notice men or women especially, unless they notice him first; in which case he is very dignified and polite. He don’t even so much as glance at a pretty girl, but if there is anythin’ the matter with a horse or dog, look out for Bergh. He has brownish hair, hazel eyes, thin lips, a square chin, and a long, very long Grecian nose, which sniffs the air and seems to smell a horse from afar.
He has been for years and man ridin’ two hobbies, only two, and two entirely different hobbies. One of ‘em is a desire to be a dramatist, a love for the drama as he understands it; and the other is a love for the brute creation. His dramatic hobby has been of considerably longer standin’ than his horse hobby, and has cost him a lot of time and trouble and money, all to no account. He commenced play writin’ at twenty years of age, and has been at it for two generations. He has been carryin’ fifteen plays about him for over thirty years, two of which were produced for a time, a very short time. He has always regarded himself as really the greatest dramatist of his age, and as he is a rich man he can afford to keep up the delusion, which deludes only himself.
About twenty years ago he conceived the idea of a play, though, which he called “Human Chattels; or, a Chattel Mortgage,” and which had an “idea” in it which a clever dramatist might make some use of. The “human chattels” in this play are the silly American girls whose still more silly mothers sell ‘em to foreign fools.
This marryin’ off American girls to foreigners has always stirred Bergh’s bile, and he has gone for it not only in plays but in poems. Some twenty years ago he wrote a poem called “Married Off; or, the Noble Tramp,” which pitches into impecunious barber counts and that sort of gentry, and really in this point Bergh is nearer right then most poets, though his sentiments are a great deal better than his poetry. When the poem was published the critics, as he himself phrased it, “skinned him alive,” but, like Oscar Wilde, he still believes in himself, and knows the world will appreciate the author Bergh someday, in which case either the author’s got to live to be very old or the world’s got to appreciate him very soon.
But though Bergh has always cut a funny figure as an author, he has made a hit as a man. The world don’t take any stock in him as a writer, but the whole world now acknowledges him and takes off its hat to him as a philanthropist–a philanthropist of a first-class kind, who does good to a class that has neither money nor votes, and that don’t even know that he helps ‘em. That sort of thing is unselfish philanthropy, anyway.
And yet he got interested in this philanthropy, which made has made him famous, by a sheer accident.
He got a diplomatic appointment some twenty-four or five years ago to Russia, and was quite popular in St. Petersburg, which city takes more kindly to Americans than any other in Europe. He had a footman to follow him round, a native Russian, who wore gold lace all over him, after the style of diplomats’ servants in Russia.
One afternoon a Russian was beatin’ a little donkey horribly and Bergh’s servant–not Bergh himself, but his footman–interfered and protected the poor animal. The man beatin’ the donkey was a big, burly chap who could have licked the footman and Bergh together, but seeing all the gold lace on the footman, the man took him to be some distinguished personage and, havin’ that Russian awe of authority, the man submitted and stopped beating the donkey–all on account of the gold lace.
This gave Bergh an idea. He had always been kind-hearted towards animals, but had never thought of protectin’ or helpin’ ‘em. But seeing how a poor beast was saved from torture by a lot of lace and frills, Bergh conceived the idea of takin’ his footman around with him and amelioratin’ the condition of the four-footed beasts of St. Petersburg; so that first society for the prevention of cruelty to animals was really formed in the very heart of the greatest despotism in Christian Europe–Russia–and consisted originally of only two men, Bergh and his footman.
Returning to America, Bergh, gettin’ interested in his new and really splendid hobby (for, like every man who likes horses, I like Bergh’s idea), got talkin’ and writin’ it up and got a number of prominent people interested in it. Among these were Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, George Bancroft, Rev. Dr. Bellows, John A. Dix and Mayor Hoffman. Two of the richest men in America were with Bergh in this idea of his and showed that they had hearts as well as purses by endorsin’ it–John Jacob Astor and A. T. Stewart. As for at Stewart, he was always very fond of dumb animals and always very careful of his horse flesh, the Stewart Stables bein’ among the very best of their kind, and everybody used to remark how fine the horses were that drew the Stuart wagons.
Backed by such men as these, Bergh drew up a petition, got his friends to sign a sort of declaration of anti-cruelty to animals and applied in the Legislature for a charter for his new society–the first of the kind in the world, I believe.
I am aware that there was in existence an English society, got up by Lord Harrowby and his friends, but it was against cruelty in general and not cruelty to dumb animals in particular, although it did a great deal of good among beasts as well as men and women. But on this point I am not very clear. At any rate, Bergh’s society was the first and only one of the kind in this great country.
Well, Bergh got his charter passed all right and then invited his friends to have a sort of an intellectual glorification over it at the Clinton Hall, where he would deliver a speech. The night of the glorification was a settler. It really seemed as if the weather was down on the society, for it stormed so that only half a dozen or so could come; but among those who came, spite of the snow and sleet, and the wind and the cold, were Mayor Hoffman and A. T. Stewart; and as for Bergh, he was as enthusiastic as if he was deliverin’ his speech at the Academy of Music to a fashionable audience.
On the evenin’ of the day when the law passed organizin’ and givin’ legal right to this society, Bergh started out, feelin’ fine, to enforce the law. Nothin’ like commencin’ at once, and he soon found a chance to commence on. At the corner of Twenty-second street and Fifth avenue he came across a small crowd lookin’ at a big man beatin’ a lame horse brutally with the butt end of his whip, hitting the horse on his legs, and head, and nose. Nobody interfered and the brutal owner tortured the poor brute till Bergh came along. Bergh was mad, but he tried to restrain his indignation, and at first only remonstrated and tried to reason with the driver. He might as well have remonstrated with a mule or try to reason with a man in love or an angry mother-in-law. The driver only cursed him and beat the horse harder than ever. Then Bergh assumed his new, his new his brand new character as an officer of the law, and threatened to arrest the driver if he did not desist. But the driver had never heard of the new society and didn’t believe in it. He thought that Bergh was conveniently makin’ it up for the occasion, so he didn’t pay the slightest attention to Bergh’s threats, only by additional curses and extra whacks at the horse.
Bergh, finding himself defied, looked around for a police officer; but of course he didn’t find one. The police officer knew his business better. He was around the corner sparkin’ a pretty housemaid and couldn’t be disturbed just now on no account.
So Bergh undertook to make the arrest himself–only undertook to, but didn’t make the arrest, because he couldn’t. The driver was bigger and stronger than Bergh was, and came Mighty near arrestin’ his future usefulness for a long time. In short, he came within an ace of lickin’ Bergh outright, and most certainly would have licked him had Bergh not walked away, leaving the poor horse to his fate. This wasn’t a very promisin’ beginnin’ for a new society, but then there is an old and sometimes true saying, “a bad beginnin’ makes a good ending.”
The next day Bergh, havin’ recovered from his disappointment of the day before, started off determined to make a new beginnin’ and arrest somebody this time. So he came across a butcher boy carryin’ a lot of live sheep and calves in a cruel manner, and he forthwith arrested that butcher boy, stopped the cart and dragged the boy along to court. But when he got the boy to court he found he couldn’t keep him there; for the judge, not posted on the new law, discharged him. And when the butcher boy found himself safe outside, I am sorry to say, he put his fingers up to his nose in a disrespectful manner and called good Bergh a bad name. So on the whole his second attempt at making his society respected was, like his first, a failure,
In fact, for a long while all his attempts in this direction were failures. This new hobby seemed as likely to come to grief as his first hobby had already done. His “animal” hobby seemed fated to be as unlucky as his “artistic.” Do what he would, he was gettin’ laughed at for his pains; and one night he got so sick of the whole business that his wife found him upstairs in one of the attic rooms havin’ a good cry all to himself, just like a girl.
He talked about givin’ up the whole thing and lettin’ the animals take care of ‘emselves, but his wife, who was thoroughly interested in the thing herself, cheered him up and soon got the old man all right again.
Bergh dreaded more than anythin’ else the fun that the papers poked at him, and yet it was this very ridicule at last that helped him most.
One fine May mornin’ he came across some live turtles lyin’ in their boxes in a Florida schooner, with their flippers pierced and tied together with strings–a very bad state of things for the turtles. Seein’ and seizin’ his chance to make a stir, Bergh had the captain and all the crew of the Schooner arrested. But the judge before whom the case was tried decided against him and let the sailors go. This case caused no end of newspaper fun, and one of the daily papers got up a burlesque article pretending to describe a mass meetin’ of the animals at Union Square, in which meetin’, of course, all the horses, cats, dogs, turtles etc., passed a vote of thanks to Bergh. The article was really clever and set everybody to laughin’; but it also gave the society and Bergh a big send-off, acted as a first-class advertisement and really helped the cause along wonderfully, securing for it the very thing it most needed–public attention.
Perhaps the greatest job Bergh ever undertook was to save not a horse, but a cat. Some ten years ago they were puttin’ up a big buildin’ in Walker street, and during the process of erection a cat crawled in a large iron girder, supportin’ the front of the buildin’. The workmen, not knowin’ or not carin’ about the cat, walled up the end of the girder; and, although the cat wailed and meowed piteously, the masons never heeded her and kept on layin’ the front walls. About two days after this a gentleman, a downtown merchant, passing the buildin’, heard the cries of the poor pussy in her sore distress, and sent at once for Bergh. Bergh gettin’ the facts from some children in the neighborhood went right to the owners of the buildin’, and stated his case.
“ Well, what would you have us do?” said the owners.
“Do?” said Bergh. “Why get the cat out, to be sure.”
“What?” cried the principal owner. “Tear down part of the buildin’ we have just put up to save an old cat?”
“How can you ever hope for mercy hereafter,” cried Bergh solemnly, “if you refuse mercy here? How can you hope to succeed with such a crime committed in your buildin’?”
“Pshaw! Crime to kill a cat, or to let a cat die? I refuse to take any step in the matter,” shouted the principal owner, getting mad.
“Then,” shouted Bergh, gettin’ madder, “I will invoke the aid of the law. Either order those walls taken down and that cat set free at once, or I will order your arrest.”
That cat was set free, and I believe it was kept in Bergh’s house for some time after.
Some funny things have happened under the workin’s of the Bergh law. One afternoon on Nassau street an old horse fell down, and Bergh ordered the poor beast to be put out of its misery by being shot. But while Bergh’s man went for his gun, and while Bergh kept watch to see no one annoyed the poor beast, the old horse himself got on his legs again and walked away, tellin’ Bergh, I suppose, in his horse way, that he would see him later some other evening.
About ten years ago Bergh paid a visit to the New Jersey farms, and tried to get ‘em interested in his work. Among other farms, he visited Patterson, where there was a justice of the peace who quite endorsed Bergh’s views, and promised to carry ‘em out, which he did, in a curious way.
The justice had a daughter who had a beau who drove over from Hackensack to court his sweetheart in Patterson. The Justice didn’t like the young man for a cent, and used Bergh’s ideas to make things unpleasant for him. The Hackensack chap used to keep his horse standing in the cold at the justice’s gate while he sparked by the stove inside. It surely was hard on the horse, and the justice concluded that it fell under the head of cruelty to animals.
In his official capacity, he had the young chap arrested, and the case being decided against him, the Patterson Justice fined him twenty-five dollars, which the Hackensack chap paid, but he didn’t didn’t visit Patterson again.
Takin’ all in all, spite of all his little oddities, and spite of some mistakes the old man has made, goin’ too far and interferin’ with sportin’ matters he don’t know anythin’ about, Henry Bergh is a good man and his work a good work.
