The recent sudden death of Dr. J. B. Wood (who probably left more friends and fewer enemies behind him than any journalist who ever died after forty years of service) calls to mind some of the many old members of the New York press: editors, journalists, specialists, etc., who have “dropped out” and most of whom have joined “the silent majority.”
There was old Major Noah, for example, Mordecai Mannassah Noah, whom they used to style “the king of the Jews.” He was a regular institution on Printin’ House Square–or what answered for it thirty or forty years ago. Noah was a pretty smart and a pretty good fellow, and while not at all opposed to the human race in general, he was particularly attached to one branch of it–himself. He believed in gettin’ all the good things one could, and holdin’ on to ‘em as long as one could. He got an office once from Tyler, and he held on to it “like grim death to a dead ——.” He got Tyler to appoint him a “secret inspector,” and a very “secret” inspector he was to be sure. Nobody ever saw him publicly inspectin’ anything except the notes he received for his salary. Once a month he conscientiously, in discharge of his duties, walked round the docks. A friend who met him on one of these monthly walks asked him what he was doin’.
“Oh!” replied Noah, with a smile. “I am seein’ that the pier heads of the wharves are all in their proper places, and taking care that the rats don’t run away with the underpinnin’ of the Dry Dock,” and that’s about all he ever did for his salary, which he drew regularly and promptly.
Noah was very fond of the theatre and opera, and took his pretty young wife to some place of amusement with him almost every night. He took pretty good care of himself and lasted a long while. He got to be nearly blind, though, towards the end. In fact he used to be led by the hand to the old Union Place Hotel which was one of his favorite haunts.
In the times I speak of James Watson Webb used to be seen down-town a good deal. He had a fine appearance, and looked like a general, which was somethin’. Webb always walked and sat erect, in which points he was just the opposite of old Hallock of the Journal of Commerce. Hallock was a regular old fogy, hated to go about any, and always sat about nearly double over his desk, seated on a high stool just like a schoolboy. His big feet were always two feet or more from the floor, kind of drawn under him, as he sat. His hat was drawn tightly over his head, his long ears were laid back, like a dog’s, and his shoulders were shrugged up. But in this peculiar position he would manage to do a good deal pretty good writin’. He took quite a fancy to that poor devil Michel, who used to translate French articles for the papers, and who finally took French leave of life, throwin’ himself into the East River.
One of the most frequent sights down-town in the long ago, was General George P. Morris. He was always spruce, well-dressed, natty and nice, rather undersized. with a full moon sort of a face, a big jolly mouth A bright twinkling eye, and whiskers of which he was very proud. The boys used to say he was prouder of his whiskers than he was of his poetry; but then his whiskers were more genuine than his verses. He was very particular about his hat and his boots, and in his way was almost as much of a dandy, as his partner, N. P. Willis, who used to be called “the band-box.”
Willis had a brother Richard, who was a sort of Oscar Wilde of the last generation. A too, too utterly artistic chap of early New York. Richard Willis was spoiled by being coddled, and called smart. Some wealthy old maid took a fancy to him when he was very young, and said he was a genius, and far too good to be kept in New York. So they sent this American wonder abroad, and had him educated in Germany.
But he was too much of an American to become a first-class German, and he got too much German in him ever to become a first-class American, so he settled down into bein’ a sort of nondescript.
Men didn’t take much stock in him, but the old blue-stockin’s went wild over him, and said he was the comin’ man. So he was. He was always “comin’,” but he never “came,” and there are a good many men just like him in New York to-day.
One of the “characters” of this time was Dr. Dixon of the Scalpel. The doctor was personally as “odd” as his journal. Nobody who ever met him was likely to forget him. He was very tall and very wiry–”powerfully billious,” as he used to say himself–very muscular and rushed along like a steam engine on two legs, or rather, four, for he kept his arms in motion, flyin’ about as if they were legs. He had very small, gray eyes and was very fond of tellin’ stories, though he couldn’t hear to listen to one.
He was just the very antipodes of another man who used to be around New York in his day, Donald G. Mitchell. “Ik. Marvel” Mitchell always walked slowly, spoke very dignifiedly and cautiously, wore straw colored kid gloves, never laughed loud, had mustaches the color of his gloves, and never looked at anythin’ with “the naked eye.” He always carried and used a tortoise shell glass. Mitchell was for a while the “fashionable” favorite of New York. The ladies of “good society” all praised his works and bought ‘em too, and used to talk to Mitchell about ‘em, and tell him they were “so sweet,” and Mitchell rather liked this “taffy,” and swallowed large quantities of social sugar. But he soon subsided, and hasn’t been much heard of since.
One of the noted sites of old New York used to be old George Bush. He was the man who introduced the writin’s of Swedenborg to this country, and was himself the head of the first Jerusalem Church. Bush was an “enthusiast,” and one of the most “enthusiastic” of his class. He was honest in his enthusiasm and would rather have talked Swedenborg then eat any day. He used to dine, when he took the time or trouble to dine at all, at Sweeney’s.
Bush was tall, white-haired, very venerable and intellectual lookin’, slim, and slightly stoopin’, and always wore a long black Spanish cloak, which made him look like a highly intellectual bandit. He was one of the most learned, and most simple-minded of men, and everybody liked him. He had a wonderful charm of manner, and attracted strangers at once and made ‘em friends.
There were many other men of more or less note around New York in those days who have since died or “fizzled out.” Tuckerman; Headley; Dr. Hempel, the first leadin’ homeopathic doctor and medical writer; Henry James; Richard B. Kimball; Dr. Mayo (one of the cleverest and laziest of men); Lewis Gaylord Clarke (who was always to be seen with a cane and a bundle of papers); Henry Watson; old Cornelius Matthews (who is still living, I believe); “Gaslight” Foster, as he was called because he wrote New York by Gaslight; the “chevalier” Tom Picton, as he was styled; “Disbanded Volunteer” Joe Barber; Steve Masset, or “Jeems Pipes, of Pipesville;” James F. Otis; Joe Scoville; Fred West, of the old Atlas; Hiram Fuller; Harry Franco Briggs, and others too numerous to mention.
One of the chief haunts of the literary people of New York in the times of which I write used to be the house kept by the Wellingtons in Nielsen Place.
The Wellingtons have long since passed away and been forgotten, but in their day they had many friends who remembered ‘em kindly. They were two old maid sisters, who were very fond of literary people and kept a boardin’ house for ‘em, where, if the “literary people” had any money they paid, and if they didn’t have any money–which they often didn’t–they didn’t pay, and lived all the same. This was a fine arrangement for the “literary people,” but a poor show for the Wellingtons, and it ultimately broke ‘em up.
Everybody who boarded at the Wellingtons’ had either written somethin’, or composed somethin’, or painted somethin’, or criticized somethin’. Artists, poets, newspaper men, critics, all live there together in anythin’ but a happy family. They quarreled all the time–at meal times especially. Dinner at Wellingtons’ was a regular pandemonium. There were several critics, headed by a Mrs. Ellet, and several artists, headed by an artist called Mebly, and the artists under Mebly were always contendin’ with the critics under Ellet, and there was the deuce to pay. Among the artists under Mebly was a lady painter called Cuddehy–Mrs. Cuddehy–who attracted the notice of Peter Cooper and who was appointed the head of the Art School at Cooper Institute. Among the literary and artistic people at Wellingtons’ were Mrs. Newman, the great spiritual medium, and a musician who composed a stabat mater which “failed” at the Cooper Institute. Then there were half a dozen “cranks” boardin’ there, and altogether what with its critics, authors, musicians, artists, cranks and spiritualists, Wellingtons’ was, while it lasted, one of the most curious and all together lively places in Old New York.
But the very site of the Wellingtons’ has been rebuilt, their very names have been forgotten by newspaper people, and of the old time newspaper men of New York only a very few now remain.
[Editor’s notes: Mordecai Noah was virulently anti-abolitionist, and had several run-ins with African-American theater productions. He promoted a Zionist community to be established on an island in the Niagara River. Edward H. Dixon, though a skilled eye surgeon, held unfounded theories on sexual health and the supposed harms of masturbation. He suggested remedies which did more harm than good.
One would have loved to be a fly on the wall at the Wellington sisters’ dining room. The discussions between the critics on one side, led by the capable Elizabeth Ellet, and the artists on the other side, led by globe-trotting Fritz Melby, must have generated fireworks, with spirit medium Mrs. N. P. Newman in the middle.]
