I met Marsh, the veteran hotel clerk, probably the oldest hotel clerk in the city, at his post, the other day, at the Union Square Hotel. Marsh is still active and smart, though he can remember back as far as the days of the old City Hotel and Willard & Jennings, its well-known proprietors.
These two men, Jennings and Willard, were really remarkable, each in himself, and together constituted a splendid team for drivin’ a hotel trade.
Willard was “the office” man of the two. He was an office man in reality, bein’ in the office about eighteen hours out of twenty-four. He was a whole hotel staff in his single self, host, clerk, book-keeper, cashier, and occasionally bar-keeper.
Jennings was the superintendin’ or overseein’ partner of the concern, and he did oversee and he did superintend. He saw to everythin’ in a quiet, close way, without any fuss. It was supposed that he never slept; certainly no one ever saw him go to bed. He was never in the office, but was in every other part of the house, every hour of the day and night. He was a tall, slightly made, serious lookin’ fellow, a cross between a clergyman and horse jockey in his appearance.
He was a bachelor; a confirmed old bachelor. The only woman he was ever seen to talk to was Mary, the head of the City Hotel chambermaids, and who in that capacity was, in her time, one of the most widely noted women in America. It was always thought that Mary, who was under the middle age, and rather good lookin’, was settin’ her cap matrimonially for Jennings. But if so she said her cap in vain, and only had her trouble for her pains.
As luck would have it, while Mary was wastin’ her sweetness on the unappreciative Jennings, whom she couldn’t get, she was blind and deaf to an admirer whom she could have got at any minute. Thomas, the well-known hotel porter to the City Hotel, the most pompous and precise of porters, was head over ears in love with Mary, and everybody from Boston to New Orleans, who had ever stopped at the City Hotel, knew it. But Mary ignored the devotion, and gave Thomas the cold shoulder, a state of affairs which made it bad for all the men servants and waiters attached to the City Hotel, who were liable at any moment to feel the effects of old Thomas’ love-troubles in their own positions.
It is said on good authority that no less a personage than Henry Clay, in one of his visits to New York, interested himself in this love making affair all on one side between Thomas and Mary. The Kentucky statesman, so rumor goes, had a little talk with Mary one day in which he took occasion to speak a good word for poor Thomas. But even the eloquence of Henry Clay failed to melt the head abigail’s heart, and the tongue that could influence a Congress couldn’t influence a chambermaid.
Willard was famous for his memory. It is really astonishin’ how many hotel clerks have powerful faculties of recollection, but from all accounts Willard took the lead. A gentleman from Baltimore, with a sick son, once visited New York, and puttin’ up at the City Hotel overnight, was assigned to a certain room, which he praised very highly to Willard the next mornin’, but in which he had left an umbrella, in the hurry of his departure. Altogether the Baltimore gentleman and his son had not been at the hotel over twelve hours, and had not been in Willard’s company ten minutes altogether.
Eight years afterwards the Baltimore man revisited New York and entered the City Hotel for the second time in his life. He had not reached the office desk when Willard advanced to meet him, called him by name, asked after the health of his son, told the porter to show him the same room he had occupied and liked so much eight years before, and wound up by goin’ behind the counter and restoring to the Baltimore man the identical umbrella which he had left behind him.
Willard was just the opposite of Jennings in his personal appearance. He was short, squatty, jolly-lookin’, with a large, fine head, covered with shortcropped, iron-grey hair; he had small, quick eyes, which were twinklin’ all the time, never at rest, takin’ in everythin’, though he himself “took in” nobody, bein’ as honest and as open as the day.
A good story is told of Willard in connection with the opening night of Niblo’s Garden. Billy Niblo had been keepin’ a “coffee house” in Pine street, and had made a good deal of money, so he started his up-town garden, and made quite a time over the openin’ of it. Many of the resident guests of the City Hotel were invited to attend the openin’, and above all it was made a point that Willard should attend. Niblo promised to send a special stage or bus to the City Hotel to take Willard and his friends to the garden and bring ‘em back.
Niblo kept his word, and about seven o’clock the stage was at the door and Willard at last was ready to go, and for the first time for years started forth to spend the evenin’ outside of the City Hotel limits; but just as Willard was about steppin’ into the stage somebody told him to put his hand to his head, and doin’ so Willard discovered that he had started off without a hat. He went back to get a hat and detained the stage so long that two of his friends went into the hotel to see what was the matter.
There they found Willard in terrible perplexity, for to tell the simple truth, he didn’t know what in the world to do for a hat, and then it came out that, goin’ out so little as he did, he had no regular hat of his own–used to put on for the moment any old hat that came handy; but to-night, of course, when he wanted a hat so much, he couldn’t come across a spare one.
Willard for ten minutes had been fussin’ and fidgetin’ all round the office, lookin’ on shelves and in cupboards for some old hat, but in vain. He gave it up in despair and announced to his friends that if he went at all he would be compelled to go without a hat.
The idea of a leadin’ hotel proprietor havin’ no hat to call his own struck the boys as very funny and they had their joke at it, windin’ up by unitin’ together and payin’ for a first-class hat for Willard, from Charles St. John’s popular hat store, right opposite the City Hotel.
Willard accepted the hat with joint laughter and gratitude, and as he put it on said it was the first hat he had ever been able to call his own. Then the stage started off for Niblo’s, and all the boys had a good time.
By the by, Niblo’s Garden, when first opened, was indeed a real Garden. There was a plain board fence runnin’ around the block bounded by Houston, Prince, Broadway and Crosby streets, enclosin’ the Garden. Imagine a board fence encirclin’ that locality now! On the southeast corner of Broadway was the entrance to the bar and restaurant of the Garden, which bar and restaurant was really quite large and showy as well as comfortable.
Then there was a separate entrance to the Garden itself further up Broadway. Here there were trees planted, and a beau and his girl could get ice cream, port wine, sugar-lemonade and cake. Billy Niblo in person attended to the saloon and restaurant, while Mrs. Niblo in person attended to the Garden. Mrs. Niblo, however, kept her eyes open to everything’ that was goin’ on, whether in Garden, bar or restaurant, on the cashier and the till. She was a first-class smart woman, this Mrs. Niblo, and perhaps to her ought to be given the main credit of the success of the Garden. True, it was Billy Niblo’s idea, but Mrs. Billy Niblo carried it out, and there ain’t much in an idea unless it is well carried out. So Niblo must be added to the long list of men who were made by their wives. The Garden itself was really a pretty place, kept in tiptop order. The beds were well filled with flowers, cages with singin’ birds were suspended from the trees. There were settees arranged around, and a number of vine-clad Summer houses were to be seen, and enjoyed, here and there. Then at night there were colored lanterns hung all around, makin’ the place really charmin’, prettier than any place of the kind New York has since had.
After a while Niplo built in the centre of the Garden an open saloon where performances were given, with John Sefton, and such people, in the cast. This was the real commencement of the theatrical part of the entertainment, which gradually encroached upon the garden part of the show, and finally did away with it altogether. Then the Ravels came, and from that time there was no more Niblo’s Garden, save in name.
Niblo was a friend of Edward Windust, who kept the famous saloon or cellar down-town, about where the Mercury office now stands, and to which I have previously alluded. Windust’s had two entrances, one directly from Park Row and one windin’ along zigzag and every which way from Ann street. Over the Park Row entrance was a Latin sign, “Nunquam non Paratus.” A peddler once mistook this for the name of the firm ownin’ the saloon. He thought it was a queer name, but still that was none of his business, which was simply to try to sell his goods to the proprietors of the place, whatever their names might be. So the peddler first asked the barkeeper if he could see Mr. Nunquam, and then, before the barkeeper could recover from his astonishment, said: “If Mr. Nunquam is out, Mr. Paratus will do as well.” This mistake of the peddler’s got wind and kept New York in fun for some time. It wasn’t so hard to amuse New York then as it is now.
There was a sort of actors’ museum kept at Windust’s, which contained portraits of great actors, old play-bills, newspaper extracts relatin’ to the theatre, a sword which was said to be the one which Garrick had used as Macbeth, and a lot of professional odds and ends. As many as fifty actors and authors and newspaper men have been gathered together at one time in one night.
A number of interestin’ episodes also occurred at Windust’s, from time to time. Once Booth and Kean got drunk together there one day, and wouldn’t leave the place at evenin’, when they were due to appear at the old Park together. Simpson, the manager, came after them and tried to drive ‘em away to the theatre, but they wouldn’t go. And it was only after half an hour’s talk and liquidatin’ the full score of their bill to Windust, and promisin’ all sorts of things, that the manager got his actors to depart. But they never played better in their whole lives, after they once got on the stage that night.
Tom Hamblin at Windust’s almost scalped a dramatic critic for havin’ written somethin’ he considered derogatory about Josephine Clifton; and Harry Placide once gave a supper here in honor of Clara Fisher, whom he regarded as “the world’s wonder,” a supper largely attended by everybody but the ladies, who were represented by proxy, Harry Placide himself representin’ Clara Fisher.
Windust made lots of money, but he wasn’t satisfied with the old stand and his old patrons and his old luck. Like most men, he wanted somethin’ new, and he got more than he wanted of it.
He opened the Athenaeum hotel at the corner of Broadway and Leonard street, made a great flourish of trumpets over it and felt sure that he was a great man. But he wasn’t; he was only a great fool. He lost a lot of money in this new place, and then went back to his old location.
But by this time the former prestige of the place was over; its very fame had been forgotten; a new class of people had come up who didn’t particularly care about Windust, and, in short, there was never again a “Winddust’s” in New York.
