Hijinks at the Americus Club [published May 3, 1885]

      I lately came across Andrew Jackson Plumb, the once noted Bohemian, lookin’ as fresh as he looked, well–say thirty years ago–and as full of jokes, stories and reminiscences.

      A. J. P.’s  memory is a perfect storehouse of genial anecdotes and practical jokes of the good old times. He remembers, for instance, as distinctly as if it was but yesterday the joke that Eugene Durnin and a lot of the Americus Club boys played upon John Fox, the well-known Supervisor, Congressman and State Senator.

      It was towards the close of a summer day, nearly two score years ago, and the club house in Indian Harbor was packed full of the boys, who were full of high spirits and were havin’ high jinks. Bill Tweed himself was down with the boys this time and was as free from care just then as if there was no such thing as an Albany lobby in existence and political pressure was only a name, instead of a nuisance.

      The chat on the Americus club house piazzas embraced, of course, a wide range of topics, but in one of the principal groups in which were Durnin, Fox, Plumb and Jake Somerindyke, (even then a veteran sport, but still hale and hearty), the talk got centered on boatin’, and finally, partly by Durnin’s skillful and sly hints thrown out now and then, got narrowed down to the respective pretensions of Fox and Somerindyke ‘emselves in the boat or rowin’ line.

      Now every man likes to think, or have others think, that he can swim, sail, fish and row–four things which really very few men can do very well, and which, therefore, every man tries to convince every man he can do better than most other men.

      John Fox was not an exception to this almost universal rule, and findin’ the rest of the boys all bragged about the skill with which they could handle and oar, he put in his oar and bragged, too. Durnin, somewhat to Fox’s surprise, but to his unbounded gratitude, seemed to become in the course of the conversation convinced that Fox could row, and finally offered to bet on his beatin’ Jake Somerindyke in a rowin’ match to be rowed the very next afternoon round one of the little islands in the harbor.

      The bet was taken up by Owen Brennan on behalf of Jake Somerindyke, and so, to back up the men who had backed ‘em up, both Fox and Somerindyke agreed to row against each other the next afternoon, Durnin agreein’ to act as Fox’s general superintendent of arrangements, and Owen Brennan agreein’ to serve in the similar capacity for Jake Somerindyke.

      There was a bigger attendance of the boys at the club course than usual the following afternoon, and, after preparing and palaverin’ and goin’ through the preliminaries, the row came off. John Fox was in capital trim, had a splendid boat and rowed vigorously. Yet, somehow he didn’t seem to propel his boat to satisfy himself. He fagged at the oars; he sweated like an ox. He would have sworn, hadn’t he been a Tammany man in good standin’. But the boat didn’t make the time he had evidently expected. Perhaps he had expected too much and hadn’t made do mental allowance for the state of the tide. Yes, that must be it. “It’s a devil of a flood tide, ain’t it?” he called out from his boat to his opponent, Jake, who yelled back, “I find it so here,” and tugged as vigorously (apparently) at his oars as did John Fox at his, but not as vainly, for Jake Somerindyke beat, at last–beat Fox badly.

      It was too bad, but it was the fate of war and oar, and Durnin told Fox not to be discouraged, he would do better next time, and then Durnin promptly paid over the amount he had staked on Fox to Owen Brennan. But as Brennan took Durnin’s money, John Fox saw a sort of look exchanged between Brennan and Durnin which perplexed him–in fact, there was something about the whole affair which bothered him. Why should his boat have pulled so heavily through the water? The tide had not been against him, but in favor of him. (This was proved now that the race was over.) It couldn’t have been the water, then; it certainly wasn’t himself, as he had pulled his best. The boat, too, looked all right. But could it have been the boat after all? Could anythin’ have been the matter with the boat? Could it have been tampered with? Then Fox said nothin’, but kept up a deal of thinkin’.

      And, after awhile, at night, when nobody was around and the race had been forgotten, Fox went down to the dock, and haulin’ in the little boat which he used in the match with Jake Somerindyke, examined it carefully. He found, what he had by this time strongly suspected, that a job had been put on up on him and his boat. His boat had been “skagged” as it was termed, that is, a piece of wood had been inserted crosswise under the bottom of the boat, extendin’ directly in an opposite direction to its length and line of motion, so as greatly to impede its progress through the water. All was now explained. No wonder the boat’s speed hadn’t satisfied him. No wonder he had tugged and sweated, and laid it to the tide.

      Then Fox hauled in the little boat which his opponent in the race, Jake Somerindyke, had used and examined that; but it was all right. It had not been “skagged.”

      Fox understood everythin’ now. Jake Somerindyke had only pretended to tug at his oars, only to keep up the illusion of a strong tide and the joke. And Durnin had known all about it, ten to one had put up the job himself, and had then made his little bet on Fox for a blind, bein’ willin’ to pay for his fun. Ten to one the boys generally had been let into the joke, and had been laughin’ at him all the while. John Fox was usually a pretty good fellow, but just here and now he failed to perceive where the laugh came in.

      And meetin’ Durnin later on, Fox threw a bottle of Stoughton’s bitters at him, and nearly got into a personal encounter.

      Not showin’ his customary good sense in this instance so well as did Andrew Jackson Plumb himself afterwards, when some of the boys played a big joke on him on a fishin’ party.

      On this party were several old rounders, sports, and men-about-town, such as Major Oatman, the originator of the first Brooklyn skatin’ rink; Sam Cantrell, the then fashionable ladies’ shoemaker (who afterwards committed suicide at the Putnam House, because he was afraid that someday he would come to want, though at the very time he killed himself he was worth over $200,000 above all obligations); Charlie Gaylor, the dramatist and joker; Pope, the actor; “Doctor” Asher Atkinson, the skatin’ doctor; Andrew Jackson Plumb himself; and Spencer Cone, the father of the actress known now as Kate Claxton.

      The party started out from New York one fine Wednesday afternoon and went down to Fire Island, where old Sammis, the King of Fire Island, received them with a “swivel” salute and some liquid refreshments.

      And the next mornin’ they started out fishin’. The wind was from the southwest and there was a “choppy” sea. Somebody started out to sing, with a loud voice, “A life on the ocean wave,” but before he got through with the second verse he was glad “to seek the seclusion that the cabin grants,” wither he was followed –”not by” his sisters, his cousins and his aunts–but by Charlie Gaylor and Doctor Atkinson–not that they were at all sea sick, of course not, only they wanted to keep the other poor devil company.

      The fishin’ smack containin’ the party stood out to sea, and in course of time Plumb says, “Look at those sea gulls there,” pointing; “there’s the place for blue fish!”

      Now Plumb prided himself on his fishin’ and his perfect knowledge of all that appertained thereto; he didn’t propose to yield a point to Genio C. Scott (the prince of tailors, and one who always led the fashions) in this respect. Plumb had fished all over for striped bass, brook trout, pickerel, the muskelunge, the black bass, “the estuary cat-fish”–as he proudly and scientifically called it–and even for salmon. He knew all about fly fishing and reelin’ and line, bait, and could lay out thirty feet of line straight, without a bend from tip to tip of the rod, and was great on “over hand” and “under casts;” but of all kinds of fishin’ he prided himself on blue fishin’.

      But on this particular occasion it was his fishin’ that made Plumb “blue,” not his fish. For although he arranged his lines with the utmost skill, fixed his outriggers, and all that, and although he hauled in with a proud sense of triumph every time, yet he hauled in not blue fish but blue bottles–empty bottles–which the rest of the boys managed to attach to his lines while he went every now and then below to wet his whistle.

      There is a way of attaching a bottle to the end of the line, tyin’ it around the neck, centre and bottom, so as to make its motion at the end of the line produce precisely the same “feel” at the other end as a bluefish would. Three separate times did the boys fool Plumb in this way, each time Plumb thinking, “Well, now, there is no more foolin’ this time,” and of course he got the laugh dead against him. But he took the pipein’ good naturedly, and when they all got back to Sammis ordered wine for the party.

      All of that party, except Gaylor and Dr. Atkinson, and Plumb slept very little that night. They were very uneasy; in short, Plumb, had got even with the boys on the land for their trick on the water, and had gently but effectually jalaped their wine.

      He had spared Gaylord and Atkinson, because, as they were down in the cabin most of the time he had taken it for granted that they had nothing to do with the “bottle fish,” as the boys styled the joke they had played on him they alluded to it.

      But imagine his surprise and his chagrin when he found out later that it was Charley Gaylor and Doc Atkinson who had conceived and suggested the bottle-fish trick; only they had been compelled by circumstances beyond their control to relinquish the execution of their diabolical scheme to the others.

      So that after all, though he had nearly got ahead of the mere accomplices in the joke, the principals had even more neatly, and through his own good-natured stupidity, got ahead of him.

      This was the characteristic point of the affair after all, causin’ it to differ from other affairs of this sort, and it was this difference which, after the boys had got over their jalap, enabled ‘em to have a laugh on Plumb.

[Editor’s notes: Indian Harbor is located on the Connecticut coast near Greenwich. The Americus Club was William “Boss” Tweed’s exclusive political/social club for the Tammany elite. Though the seaside clubhouse started off modestly, it soon grew into an enormous retreat. The New England Historical Society described it as a “resort for rascals”:

“Though the Americus Club started out as a small enterprise, over time it grew to become an enormous yacht club and a clubhouse as big as a hotel. Many New York public projects during Tweed’s reign were larded with expenses that could be syphoned off by Tweed and his cronies. Undoubtedly New York taxpayers provided much of the cost of building the Americus Club into a grand sight on the shore of Greenwich. One particularly prized rug was said to have been specially woven at a cost of more than $20,000. Tweed capped membership at 100 people. Initiation cost $1,000 and dues cost $250 per month. Guests and members at the Americus Club dined on exorbitantly expensive meals with champagne served at every meal. The beds featured blue silk and white lace sheets, and black Italian marble mantels bore imported bronze statues. The club boasted all sorts of amenities and diversions. A barbershop, billiard rooms, pool rooms, library and bar all maintained by a staff of more than 100 servants. A stay there represented, one writer commented, the ‘ultimate in gaudy luxury.'”]