By GEORGE ALFRED TOWNSEND.
New York City, which is the soul and center of a series of cities which may be called the Metropolitan District, has not far from a million and a half of people, nearly all of whom reside upon an island of rocky formation, surrounded by deep water. Within recent years a district to the north of the island has been annexed to the city, and city protection and privileges partly extended to it, and new parks have just been legalized there, but little that has yet been done in the outlying districts and cities has been effectual to thin out the population of the great central city, whose inhabitants are gathered from all races.
The island of New York extends over thirteen miles along the North River, and it is densely built up as far as 70th Street, on that river, and on the East River it is almost solidly built up to Harlem, which is six or seven miles from the point of the city at the Battery. The middle of the island, to the extent of nine hundred acres, is occupied by the Central Park and other parks, and broad driveways or boulevards take up considerable of the unoccupied or partially occupied portion, so that the time is admitted to be near at hand when all this island will be covered with houses. The character of these houses is already indicated by the tall flats, apartment houses, or tenementhouses which are rising, apparently in the country parts, out of the green fields, and some of these are six, seven and eight stories high. Extensive apartment houses, in which the floors are rented or sold, are also being constructed in the vicinity of the park, sometimes to the height of nine, ten and even twelve stories.
It would therefore appear that the future residence of the New Yorker is to be some kind of a tenement structure after the fashion prevailing on the continent of Europe. For some of these costly tenements the rent is as high as six thousand to eight thousand dollars per annum. The cheapest tenements on New York island probably cost twenty dollars a month. Although a bridge has been built at enormous expense to connect New York and Brooklyn, it is a mere convenience, and has exercised no influence on the general character of New York island. While Brooklyn is growing, Harlem relatively is growing faster, at the northern end of New York island. The elevated railroads, of which there are four parallel to each other up and down the length of the island as far as the park, and three the whole length of the island, or to Harlem River, have rather exercised a recalling influence to the city from the suburbs, and the tendency is to extend New York across the Harlem River rather than across the Hudson or the East rivers and the bay, which are often embarrassed by fog, ice, and storm.
The New York manufactures have so expanded that the operatives do not go from the city to the country parts to do a day’s labor, but come from the country parts into New York to earn a living. The protective tariff has transferred the foreign commerce of New York to foreign nations, while it has made New York City our largest manufacturing city. These manufactories compressed on that small island necessarily partake of the tenement house character, and it has been necessary for the legislature to pass laws prohibiting the making of cigars in the tenement houses where the people live. A few years ago I was requested to visit some of these cigar tenements in the vicinity of Tompkins Square, and further uptown, and I found an extraordinary condition of things which has not yet been checked by legislation, because after the prohibitory law was passed it was found to be defective in phraseology, and has to be reënacted. In these tenements could be seen a whole family, men, women and children, living and working their tobacco, and at the same time cooking, sleeping, eating and entertaining, with the tobacco spread over the floor to be dried at night, the children walking on it, and the vapors of the tobacco filling the lungs of the sleepers. In the morning the man got up and began to cut, trim and fill cigars, and put them on the bench before him, and there he sat all day, for at least six days in the week, seldom going out to let the rooms be aired, and some of these buildings, from four to six stories high, were nothing but pigeon cases of such tobacco tenements.
It is to be doubted whether the law can reach such cases, because detection would always involve an intrusion into the living apartments of families, and would make in time such hostility that the law itself would have to be repealed. As in Lyons, France, and in Belgium, where the silk weavers, the lace makers, etc., take their work home, there is no doubt a tendency in New York City to live and toil on the same premises. The population of New York is made up from most of the laboring nations, and each of these brings its own habits, and expects to exercise them freely in this free country. The vices of European laboring society have been imported with the virtues. The city electing its officials by suffrage modifies its usages and government in the direction of these new elements, and the foreigner soon picks up from his demagogues and the small newspapers published in his own language aggressive ideas, which some think are rapidly becoming a great defensive system, some day to plague the metropolis.
Whatever we native Americans think about the foreign methods of living in New York, those methods are as natural to the immigrants as it is for us to occupy a whole house. Indeed, the American in such cities as New York is becoming of necessity the imitator of the foreigner, because the rent of a whole establishment on that cramped island is out of the reach of any but the well employed and independently prosperous.
As this article may come to eyes which have never seen the great city, I will convey to you some slight notion of the structure of New York island. This island is made of gneiss rock, or hard granite, which apparently extended in ribs or ridges, sometimes depressed, sometimes high, and in places like islands, and between these ridges and islands sand and gravel have been deposited, so that when you come to lay out a street, to lay pipes under the street, or to excavate for a house, you may strike solid rock, or you may find quicksand, and therefore the cost of building on the island is greater than almost anywhere on the globe. Probably the steam drills employed to blast on New York island exceed in number all the steam drills in the entire United States. Most of our cities are built on clay or sandy soil, and a cellar can be excavated in two or three days, whereas I have seen building lots in New York, only a hundred feet by twenty to twenty-five feet wide, which took months, or indeed a whole building season, to get the rock out, and when the cellar is excavated it is like a great trough or hole made in solid stone. Naturally, a man who has been at such expense to start his house looks into the air for his recompense. With that solid foundation in the stone he has procured from the cellar he begins to build a tower instead of a house, and to let it out in floors, and for each of these floors he expects to receive higher rent than is elsewhere paid for a large and complete house.
A friend of mine who recently failed disastrously, showed me one of these new flat houses he had put up. It was three lots broad, each lot one hundred feet deep, making a front of seventy-five feet. Each of these lots he held to be worth $30,000, making $90,000 for the situation, though it was not on a fashionable street, but rather up a side street. He then raised one upon another seven apartments on each side of the entrance, and over the entrance were six bachelor apartments, each consisting of only one room, a bed alcove, and a bath closet. Consequently, there would be in such a building twenty tenants, of whom fourteen would be families. These fourteen paid from $1,800 to $1,300 apiece. Each had the same number of rooms, in the same space, the rents only being modified by the position of the floor. The lower floors of course rented higher than the upper floors. Generally speaking, each living place consisted of a parlor and a side room, either library or sitting room, a bath room, and a servant’s bath also, about three bed rooms, beside a servant’s bed room, a dining room, a kitchen, pantries and wardrobes. The only economy in such living lies in the reduction of the number of servants, and in the less expense of furnishing. The proprietor has to keep an engineer, an assistant engineer, a porter and assistant, and perhaps a housekeeper, and of course a watchman. Elevators front and rear accommodate the landlords and the servants. Such a building, exclusive of the ground, probably cost $150,000, and therefore it would be hard work to make ten per cent. upon it after paying salaries, taxes, etc. The bachelor apartments rented from $50 to $30 per month.
Now this stylish apartment house looks out at the rear upon a series of common tenement houses, where in old brick or frame buildings a dense mass of people look out of the back windows on their more aristocratic neighbors. These latter houses perhaps have a pole erected in the back yard which is as high as the house, and from every floor proceed to this pole clothes lines, attached there by pulleys, and whatever is washed is affixed to the line and run out by the pulley to dry. Most of the people in these back apartments live in one room, or at most in two, and there the good man arises in the morning, takes his early breakfast and goes out with his truck ordray, or hies him off to work and does not return again till night. The wife arises and sends the children off to school, and then she proceeds to wash or iron, or do other work, cooking her meals meantime, and supplying the children at noon, and the old man at night. Perhaps in that room or two live half a dozen people. They may even have a sub-tenant. There must be more or less exposure, more or less bad air, more or less indifference to the decencies of life, and yet it is surprising, on the whole, how much cleaner and better these people live than might be expected. This to some extent arises from the happy construction of the blocks in the new or uptown quarter of New York. Many of our American cities have deep blocks and alleys, or inferior streets, running up between them. The ground is too precious in New York to be sacrificed in such lanes, so the back yards touch each other, and the houses are built high stooped, the basement being the first story, and through the basement hall the slops, ashes, etc., are carried to the front street and there left for the scavenger and the ash-man to come and remove them. Consequently, each of these uptown blocks is one great court, open to the sun and to the sky. New York streets across town are only two hundred feet apart, and therefore the lots are of uniform depth.
The old Dutch city and its English successor in the lower part of the island covered a triangular space not a mile long, and about a mile wide. In the course of time Broadway was opened right up the center of this triangle, and streets called East Broadway and West Broadway were thrown in a course generally parallel to the two rivers, and the attempt was continued to make a more or less rectangular city, and finally, at the distance of more than two miles up, a real rectangular metropolis was secured by opening broad avenues, of which there are about twelve lengthwise of the whole island, and these are crossed by streets running in number up to 220th, and in the course of time in the annexed portion they will run to something like 300th Street. Although the city is thus expanded, business and population are very tenacious of the old and crowded situations. As it is impossible to draw the money and finance out of Wall Street, so it is next to impossible to alter the situation of the market houses, the railroad freight depots, the express offices, the steamboat piers, the ferries, and even the manufactories. As an immense portion of what is manufactured in New York is not sold to the people of the city, but for export, it remains a consideration to manufacture, prepare and pack goods down in the dense, lance-shaped point of the island. Consequently business, tenements, folly, manufactories, everything grow denser as you go down town, and the east side of the city is especially given up to the Germanic races. At that point there is a protuberance of the city into the East River, overlapping the city of Brooklyn, and the avenues here are not numbered, but being to the east of First Avenue they take the names of Avenues A, B, C and D.
Here you find the tenement houses in their glory. Grand Street is the great artery of that side of the town.
Fifty years ago there were but 200,000 inhabitants on this island; thirty-five years ago there were but 500,000; twenty-five years ago there were but 800,000 people; fifteen years ago there were 950,000. By the census of 1880 the population of the island was put down at over 1,200,000. It will not be far wrong to call it in general terms a million and a half. But the stable population of New York bears no comparison with its transient and daily population. It is immediately surrounded by two millions more of people who depend upon the city, and who can leave it at all hours of the night by ferries. It is the resort of sixty per cent. of all the ocean vessels in the country, with their crews. It contains the offices of nearly every corporation in the United States, all of which, after they have attained a certain stability or prominence, keep a commission house or branch office on New York island.
The morals of New York City are therefore to a great extent beyond the reach of mere administration, and have to be lenient according to the temptation and the concourse. Marriage itself is subordinate in such a hive, to society and necessity. The American elements of the population generally adhere to their traditions and decencies, but there is a native American generation in New York, begotten of foreign parents, which knows no other country than this, but is as different from Americans of the old time as we differ from the American Indians. From this secondary growth New York derives most of its mechanical, laboring, and artisan class. These, like their forefathers, adhere to the tenement house method of life. They do not understand the necessity of a whole house, which has to be furnished, cleaned and warmed, when they spend so much of the day and night elsewhere, either at work or pleasure. So does the American element, which goes from the country to New York, content itself with a room. As for the poor, as their families increase they have no resort but the tenement house.
The latest history of New York City says that 500,000 people in New York, or more than one-third, live in tenement houses, and that the densest blocks in London do not compare, in the number of inhabitants, with the same space in the dense quarters of New York. A single block is referred to on Avenue B, which has fifty-two tenement houses, the population of them amounting to nearly 2,400 persons. One single house in New York is said to have 1,500 inhabitants, and often a house with twenty-five feet front accommodates 100 souls. Of course height is the great point to give such area. If you enter New York and walk toward the east side through the streets which run so close together, but which are all happily of fair width, and all straight, you will see row after row of red brick houses, generally built to the height of five or six stories. In themselves they are rather neat to look at, except for the signs of population at every window, where on a hot and steaming day everybody seems to press to get the air. You can see the baby at the breast, the hunchback elder child, the man rolling cigars, the Chinaman washing, the woman running her sewing machine, the musician practicing on the bugle, the dentist, perhaps, filling teeth in a tenement house at modest rates to suit. You may also see some quiet old German smoking his pipe and reading science, unaware that anything is much worse than it generally is in the world. These houses have a common entrance below, sometimes in the middle, generally at the side. Through this entrance pours in and out the population going above; the stairways are generally narrow, the steps worn almost through, sometimes loungers and children are playing in the halls, and our fastidious habits are much shocked at the necessary familiarity engendered.
Yet it is to be remembered that as one’s day is, so is his strength, even in the matter of smells, and while there are tenement evils there are also tenement house virtues. The close sociability engenders another species of Christianity. The policeman is near at hand to correct any evils. While the summers are dreadfully hot, the winters are also long and cold, and the two things most needed in a tenement house are coal and sunlight.
The tenement house laws have been made at Albany by the landlords of these houses, many of whom are rapacious and merciless. Not a single day is given by law, I understand, to a tenant who does not pay the rent. The landlord is permitted to put his agent or constable in any apartment and set the things on the sidewalk, whatever may be the disaster or the disease within. Many of these tenement houses have been built up by the sales of liquor and beer, and probably the majority of our Irish saloon-keepers project a corner in which they do business into a tenement house above, and they both provide the rum and collect the rent. Possibly the men above stairs drink away their wages in the saloon below, while the women work at something to keep the rent up.
In some cases, especially among the more rural Irish, the shanty in the suburbs is substituted for tenement house life.As you walk along some of the newly filled streets, composed of great rocks which have been blasted in one spot to fill up another spot, you will look down into a former meadow, now a mere hole surrounded by four dungeon walls of stone, and there you will see three or four shanties pitched together on suffrance, made of old boards taken out of some fence or from dry goods boxes. Unaware of anybody being about, you can sit there and hear the whole domestic menage going on; see Patrick, very drunk, sociably quarreling with his wife, who is not far behind him in her potations. They perhaps keep a cow somewhere down there under the planks, and this cow is being milked more or less all the time, and if the milk can not be sold it helps to support the life of the squatters.
Again, you will go into some far quarter of this island, many miles from the business centers, and to your surprise you will there find another species of tenement house, showing that this system of herding together and economizing room is the fate of this city at least. There seems to be no future for the tenement house system. The laws passed by our state legislature with reference to this city are more apt to be in favor of the tenement house proprietor than of the tenant. The tenants hardly know where the legislature is, while the tenement house owner is informed by his lawyer or lobbyist of what is going on. As far as philanthropy goes, it despairs of accomplishing anything in the midst of such a dense population. Of course, when things become outrageous, the police report them to the Board of Health, or the tenants take the law into their own hands.
This gregarious life leads to great independence of character among the women; the average survivor of the tenement house is no puny, frightened creature, but a very active animal, ready to scratch, retort, appeal to law, and loves and marries as she wishes. There is some natural deviation from virtue, as from cleanliness, yet the recuperative principle in women, as in men, is at least redeeming, and it is to be doubted whether the vices in the tenement houses exceed those in the fashionable streets.
It is believed here that the worst class of people New York possesses are the Bohemians from northern Austria. This degraded race was at one time, or until the emperors destroyed it politically, the repository of most of the vices of Europe. Among the Bohemians you find the domestic virtues at the lowest ebb, and socialism at its lewdest. A manufacturer was recently telling me of two Bohemians in his employment who grew weary of their wives, and without any other marriage, and without quarrel, they agreed, men and women, to change partners, and continue to live and work together. At a recent strike of cigar makers in this city, a working woman who stripped tobacco was set upon by three men and knocked down because she preferred to take lower wages rather than keep idle and support some of the demagogue patrols.
New York, however, has no such dens to-day as it had forty years ago, when the Five Points was in the height of its orgies. Through that old swampy quarter of the city broad streets have been cut, and manufactories have been established. I have my doubts whether, at this moment, the worst features of New York’s population are not to be found in some of the rougher suburbs off the island. The draft riots of 1863 assisted the peace and order of New York by bringing about a collision between the very bad elements and the law. The police, who are generally hated by the vicious as the visible representatives of the law, received from that moment a degree of discipline which has ever since been kept up, and the militia regiments of New York City have been provided with large armories, and are in a fair state of discipline.
Of course, in such a rank soil as this island, the gentler virtues do not grow, but my observation of some rural districts, many hundred miles from this city, is that they are far below the tenement house quarter in intelligence, and not above it in morals. The matter of virtue is to a large extent involved in the race; it will take a long time to debauch, utterly, people descended from the British and Germanic races. Fortunately, we have not had much immigration from the south of Europe, but the Italian quarter is attracting some attention, as possibly the worst we possess. The Chinese in New York are self-reliant, and a good many of them have shown a decided bias to be Christianized. I lived near a church, two or three years ago, where I one day observed a large number of Chinese, and glancing up at the church I saw that it was a Baptist one. On inquiry I found that a Chinaman who attended the Sunday-school of that church had been murdered by some semi-American roughs, and his classmates had come to pay the last honors to him. Like Americans, they came in cabs, and came filing out of that church quiet, uncomplaining, injured specimens of our common brotherhood.
Legally, a tenement house in New York is one house occupied by more than three families living independently of each other, and doing their cooking on the premises. All tenement houses are compelled to have fire-escapes built outside of the house, of iron. There is one quarter of New York City where 300,000 persons are said to live on a square mile. Observers now say that not one-third, but one-half of the population of New York City lives on the tenement house plan.
A superficial observer here would think that the greatest misery on the globe was to be found in this tenement house quarter, yet I think that much of this sympathy will be thrown away, because in the large majority of cases the people who live under this system would not exchange it for any other.
A lecture delivered on Saturday, April 26, in the National Museum, Washington, D. C., by Major J. W. Powell, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey.
The lecturer at the outset stated that the valley of the Columbia River might be divided into two portions; the lower third lying but little above the sea level, the other two-thirds of the valley area drained by the Colorado and its tributaries being five to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea.
On the summit and sides of the mountain were thousands of lakes of clear water, which received their supply from the masses of snow which are collecting throughout the winter on the mountain ranges, filling the gorges and half burying the forests. In summer the snow melted and poured down the mountain sides in millions of cascades, eventually forming the Colorado River, which grew into a mad torrent ere it reached the Gulf of California. Eventful indeed would be the history of these waters if traced from their starting point. Some of these streams ran across arid plateaus, being fed in their course by intermittent showers. Each year their channels became deeper and deeper, cutting their way out of solid rock. Every river, brook, creek and rill ran into a cañon, so that these vast areas were traversed by a labyrinth of deep gorges hewn out of the rock by the ever-flowing streams. If the Colorado plateau had been in such a country as the District of Columbia, the land lying adjacent to the river courses would have been washed down by the rains and streams, and instead of cañons there would now be a broad system of valleys. It was an error to regard that Colorado plateau as a region of great erosion or degradation. It was a vast system of cañons, caused by the water eating its way through the hard rock, with lofty stone walls on either side.
Major Powell said that in 1867 and 1868 he had explored the Grand River and other tributaries of the Colorado, and these expeditions thrilled him with a desire to explore the vast cañons of the Colorado River itself. Accordingly in May, 1869, he started for this purpose with a small party of men and four boats from a point a few miles below where now the Union and Pacific Railroad crosses Yukon River. The first forty or fifty miles of their course was through low cañons, cut through the green and alcove lands of that region. Their course wassouthward. As they descended the river, a mountain seemed to stand athwart their path, and into this mountain the river penetrated. They followed around the base for a hundred miles or so, meeting the river beyond. Now, why had not the river flowedroundthe mountain instead of cutting its waythrough? The answer was exceedingly simple. Because the river was there before the mountain, and had the right of way, keeping steadfastly on its southward course, across which the lands had been gradually elevated. These land upheavals had taken place very slowly, enabling the river to force its passage as the land rose inch by inch.
At last they reached the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers—the head of the Colorado River—some three thousand feet below the general surface of the country. At that point the cañon was about three thousand feet in depth. One of the boats had been lost, and one of the men had left them before reaching this point. The walls of the cañon here were about half a mile high. One of these they determined to scale at a point a little below their camp, where there was a gorge—a natural break in the wall. Half way up further progress seemed impossible, but by crawling round a narrow ledge of rock they were enabled to resume their toilsome climb. From this point they could see the river fifteen hundred feet below them, wildly rushing and tossing, and at the same distance above them was the cañon’s brink that seemed to blend with the sky. Again the wall was found to have broken down, but by crawling up a fissure so narrow that they could press against the hinder side with their backs, while forcing with hands and feet their steep and dangerous path upward, they finally emerged into the upper world, where they could look out at the broad expanse of landscape. Away to the north were orange and azure cliffs, two and three thousand feet high; to the west were the Wasatch Mountains, and a plateau with a hundred dead volcanoes on its back, while to the east was another group of dead volcanoes. Thirty or forty miles away in the same direction were seen forests of green and masses of gray volcanic rock clothed with patches of snow; green, gray and silver, resplendent in that noon-day sun. To the south was a labyrinth of cañons.
On the following day they commenced the exploration of the Colorado River. From this starting point it was about seven hundred miles to the foot of the Grand Cañon. Through the entire series of cañons the river tumbled down more than 5,000 feet. The lecturer here stated that the fall of the Mississippi from Cairo down was about four inches to the mile, and of the Ohio some eight inches, and that the Colorado carried about as much water as the Ohio at Louisville. In some places the river was wide, and here its fall did not exceed that of the Ohio or Upper Mississippi. The fall in Marble Cañon, however, was from ten to three hundred feet to the mile! The boats, with the exception of the one in which he and Major Powell traveled, were about twenty-two feet long and decked, so that there were three water-tight compartments in each boat. His boat, in which were two other men, was only sixteen feet in length. This led the way, while the other boats, laden with provisions, etc., followed. The roar of the water in the cañon could be heard a long way off. The chief difficulty in navigating was riding the waves, which differed greatly from that of the sea. In the case of the latter the water remained, simply rising and falling, while theformalone rolled on; but in the former the water of the wave rolled on, the form being fixed. As long as the boat could be kept on the waves, all was well, but the great tendency was to drift into the whirlpool in the center. Three miles below the junction of the Grand and the Green rivers appeared a series of rapids and falls, and nearly two weeks were spent in running through this difficult portion of the river. Having passed through Cataract Cañon, they encountered Narrow Cañon, where the river for seven miles rushed down a steep declivity. Seven miles again below a stream came in on the right side. Up this the leading boat went, and one of the men, in reply to a query from another in one of the boats following, as to the nature of the water in this new stream, called out, “A dirty devil,” and by that name it was designated on the maps. It was a stream of red mud, having along its course hot mineral springs. The odor was fetid and foul, resembling, as the lecturer graphically described it, “One of those alabaster boxes of ointment with which they used to anoint abolitionists in the brazen days of yore.” Below Narrow Cañon was Glen Cañon, stretching for a hundred and fifty miles through homogeneous sandstone of a beautiful color, its walls often perpendicular and indented with glens, alcoves and caves. The latter were formed by the rain-showers running down the sides of the wall, and slowly eating them away. At the foot of the homogeneous sandstone was a soft, friable, crumbling sandstone, and through this the river had cut some fifty miles of its course. In the next cañon—Marble Cañon—was a series of cataracts and rapids which made progress very difficult. Here the falls were too steep to be “run,” and the boats were therefore let down by a line. First one was lowered, then the second passed down to and beyond the first, and then the third past the first and second.
When these falls had been passed, they found themselves at the head of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado, which was about two hundred and seventy miles long, varying from five to six thousand feet in depth. Here they stopped several days to examine the cañon before entering it. Where the rocks were sandstone the river was comparatively quiet, but where limestone prevailed it presented a much more threatening appearance. In some places the river was very narrow, the entire volume of water being compressed into a width of not more than fifty feet. For a distance of twenty or thirty miles a curious set of buttresses stood out from the wall of the cañon, and between each two of these was a bay where the waters would sweep around seething and boiling. Sometimes lofty pinnacles of rock rose from the river’s bed, past which the boats darted with fearful rapidity. Many days were spent in traversing this part of the cañon. The weather was gloomy and much rain fell in showers, which in that region had a very different effect from those which fall in our own districts. There every drop was precipitated—as it were—into one vast rain trough, soon causing the waters to swell. At first was heard in the distance the patter of the drops on the rocks; then came the noise caused by the rills and brooks hurrying their streams to the main river, and louder yet the larger creeks and rivulets hurled their foaming waters, soon swelling the river itself into a furious and maddening torrent. The black clouds overhead appeared to be miles above them, mingling with the very skies. Through this dark cañon they worked their way, examining the rocks, toiling from daylight to dark. They were now living on half rations, as the supplies of food were fast decreasing. Suddenly was seen a fearful rapid, only three or four hundred yards below. A landing was effected and the camp pitched on a projecting rock some fifty feet above the water. The boats had to be hauled up out of the way of the torrent. In continuing the journey on the following morning, great difficulty was experienced in rounding this rock. The boats were pitched almost against it, and instantly rebounded on the retiring water. A few days later Diamond Cañon was reached. Here two streams came in, one from either side. A fearful “fall” was in sight, which, after long and careful consideration, it was determined to “run.” Here three of the men grew faint-hearted and left the party. It was afterward learned that they had fallen in with Indians and been killed.
The anxiety attending the resolution to “run” this “fall” was fearful. The lecturer said that he paced up and down a little sand-plot all night without sleeping or resting. In the morning rations were given to the deserters, who determined to watch the fate of the rest of the party. The “run” was successfully made, and it was hoped that the other three would then be induced to follow. This, however, they would not do. Onthe next day the most difficult point in the entire journey was reached, owing to obstructions caused by lava rocks. In one place a dam was found, the waters rushing over in a cataract. This it was also decided to “run,” on the right hand side. The decision was however reversed when the fearful danger of the attempt was realized. But already one of the boats had been let down to the very head of the fall, where the men were attempting to hold it by winding the rope around a great block of lava. There was one man who had been a whaler—named Bradley—in the boat. The roar of the waters was so deafening that no voice could be heard. At length he was seen to take out his knife with perfect composure, and in an instant he cut the rope, knowing that otherwise the boat would have been dashed to pieces by striking heavily against the wall of the cañon. A moment later, and he and the boat were hurled over the cataract, probably never to be seen again. But a few moments later he appeared a few hundred yards below, waving his hand. All haste was made to reach him, fearing he might be severely bruised, but in the hurry to reach him one of the party (the lecturer) fell overboard and was picked up by this invulnerable old whaler.
On the next day the foot of the Grand Cañon was reached. Thence they went to Virgin River, and from that point to Salt Lake, after which they hastened home.
In conclusion, the lecturer said that if all the sands that had been eroded by the rivers of that region, and washed into the ocean, could be brought into one mass, they would form a rock one mile and a half thick, and bigger than New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania put together.
We all read in the newspapers how, on the day when the Duke of Albany’s lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferry, the French Prime Minister and Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave a dinner party. An Englishman having expressed astonishment that this dinner had not been put off, a Frenchman answered by asking whether Lord Granville would countermand a banquet in case M. Wilson, M. Grévy’s son-in-law, were to die? Our countryman seems to have concluded that Lord Granville would not let his hospitalities be interfered with by M. Wilson’s decease; and perhaps he was right. M. Daniel Wilson holds more effective power than was ever possessed by a Dauphin of France; but his father-in-law is only the chief of a government, not the head of a court, and M. Wilson’s existence has therefore never been brought officially to the cognizance of foreign rulers. It does not follow, however, that because M. Wilson is a private person, the French government is bound to look upon the relations of foreign monarchs as being exactly in the same position as this gentleman. It is more than probable that if Marshal MacMahon were still president, the foreign secretary would not have given a dinner on the day when a child of the Queen of England had died suddenly on French soil. It is equally probable that there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers or M. Gambetta had been president.
Presidents are not all alike. In their views as to the functions of a republic—in their opinions as to the amount of authority which a republican ruler may exercise over his ministers, as to the more or less pomp in which he should live, as to the etiquette which he should enforce, and as to the relations which he should personally maintain with the rulers of other countries, M. Grévy and his predecessors have all differed from one another. The three presidents who have governed France since 1871 have in fact been so dissimilar in their characters, tastes, principles, and objects, that it is really curious to compare their various methods of living and ruling.
M. Thiers was seventy-four years old when he became supreme ruler of France, after the siege of Paris. After the first vote of the Assembly, which appointed him chief of the executive, M. Thiers took up his residence at the Préfecture, in the apartments which M. Gambetta had vacated.
“Pah! what a smell of tobacco!” he exclaimed, when he strutted into the ex-dictator’s study; and presently Madame Thiers, her sister Mdlle. Dosne, and the solemn M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, added their lamentations to his. They had been going the round of the house, and found all the rooms tenanted by hangers-on of M. Gambetta’s government, who had not yet received notice to quit, and who hoped perhaps that they might retain their posts under the new administration. All these gentlemen smoked, read radical newspapers, refreshed themselves with absinthe, or beer, while transacting the business of the state; and played billiards in their leisure moments. They were dismissed in a pack before the day was over; but Madame Thiers decided that it would require several days to set the house straight; and so M. Thiers’ removal to the Archbishop’s palace, where Monseigneur Guibert (now Cardinal), whom he afterward raised to the see of Paris, offered him hospitality. M. Thiers would, no doubt, have liked very much to sleep in Louis XIV.’s bed, and to have for his study that fine room with the balcony, on which the heralds used to announce the death of one king and the accession of another in the same breath. His secretary and faithful admirer, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, went about saying that it was fitting the “national historian” should be lodged in the apartments of the greatest of the kings; but this idea did not make its way at all. M. Thiers ended by saying that the rooms were too large, while Madame Thiers despised them for being full of draughts and having chimneys which smoked. Nevertheless, M. Thiers was nettled at seeing that the Republicans objected quite as much as the Royalists to see him occupy the royal apartments. “Stupid fellows!” he exclaimed on seeing a caricature which represented him as a ridiculous pigmy, crowned with a cotton nightcap, and lying in an enormous bed surrounded by the majestic ghosts of the Bourbon kings. Then half-angry, half-amused, he ejaculated with his usual vivacity: “Louis XIV. was not taller than I, and as to his other greatness I doubt whether he would ever have had a chance of sleeping in the best bed of Versailles if he had begun life as I did.” Shortly after this, M. Mignet meeting Victor Hugo spoke to him in a deprecating way about the fuss which had been made over this question of the royal apartments. “I don’t know,” answered the poet. “Ideas of dictatorship would be likely to sprout under that tester.” This was reported to Thiers, who at once cried: “I like that! If Victor Hugo were in my place, he would sleep in the king’s bed, but he would think the dais too low, and have it raised.”
It was quite impossible for Thiers to submit to any of the restraints of etiquette. He was abourgeoisto the finger-tips. His character was a curious effervescing mixture of talent, learning, vanity, childish petulance, inquisitiveness, sagacity, ecstatic patriotism, and self-seeking ambition. He was a splendid orator, with the shrill voice of an old costerwoman; asavant, with the presumption of a schoolboy; a kind-hearted man, with the irritability of a monkey; a masterly administrator, with that irrepressible tendency to meddle with everything, which worries subordinates, and makes good administration impossible. He was a shrewd judge of men, and knew well how they were to be handled, but his impatience prevented him from acting up to his knowledge. He had a sincere love of liberty, with all the instincts of a despot. He was most charming with women, understood their power, and yet took so little account of it in his serious calculations that he often offended, by his Napoleonic brusqueness, ladies who were in a position to do him harm, and did it.
M. Feuillet de Conches had to give up M. Thiers as hopeless. What was to be done with a president who, at a ceremonious dinner to Ambassadors and Ministers, would get upfrom table after the first course and walk round the room, discussing politics, pictures, the art of war, or the dishes on themenu? Mr. Thiers’ own dinner always consisted of a little clear soup, a plate of roast meat—veal was that which he preferred—some white beans, peas, or lentils, and a glass saucer of jam—generally apricot. He got through this repast, with two glasses of Bordeaux, in about a quarter of an hour, and then would grow fidgety. “Is that good that you are eating?” he would say to one of his guests, and thence start off on to a disquisition about cookery. Telegrams were brought to him at table, and he would open them, saying, “I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but the affairs of France must pass before everything.” If he got disquieting news he would sit pensive for a few moments, then call for a sheet of paper and scribble off instructions to somebody, whispering directions to his major-domo about the destination of the missive.
But if he received glad tidings, he would start from his chair and frisk about, making jokes, his bright gray eyes twinkling merrily as lamps through his gold-rimmed spectacles. After dinner there was always a discussion,coram hospitibus, between him and Madame Thiers as to whether he might take some black coffee. Permission to excite his nerves being invariably refused, he would wink, laughing, to his friends, to call their attention to the state of uxorious bondage in which he lived, and then retire to a high arm-chair near the fire, where he soon dropped off to sleep. Upon this, Madame Thiers would lay a forefinger on her lips, saying, “Monsieur Thiers sleeps;” and with the help of her sister she would clear the guests into the next room, where they conversed in whispers while the President dozed—a droll little figure with his chin resting on the broad red ribbon of his Legion of Honor, and his short legs dangling about an inch above the floor. It was always very touching to see the care with which M. Thiers’ wife and sister-in-law ministered to him. The story has been often told of how M. Thiers having been forbidden by doctors to eat his favorite Provençal dish of fish cooked with garlic, M. Mignet, the historian, used to smuggle some of this mess enclosed in a tin box into his friend’s study, and what a pretty scene there was one day when Madame Thiers detected these two countrymen enjoying the contraband dainty together.
M. Thiers had naturally a great notion of his dignity as president of the republic, and he was anxious to appear impressively on all state occasions; but the arrangements made to hedge him about with majesty were always being disconcerted by his doing whatever it came into his head to do. His servants were dressed in black, and he had a major-domo who wore a silver chain and tried to usher morning visitors into the president’s room in the order of their rank; but every now and then M. Thiers used to pop out of his room, take stock of his visitors for himself, and make his choice of those whom he wished to see first. Then the most astonishing and uncourtly dialogues would ensue:
“Monsieur le Président, this is the third time I have come here, and I have waited two hours each time.”
“My friend, if you had come to see me about the affairs of France, and not about your own business, we should have had a conversation long ago.”
Precedence was always given by M. Thiers to journalists, however obscure they might be. Ambassadors had to wait while these favored ones walked in. A journalist himself, the quondam leader-writer of theNationalextended the most generous recognition to the brethren of his craft, but he also did this because he was wide awake to the power of the press, and had generally some service to ask of those whom he addressed as “my dear companions.” He had such a facility for writing that when a journalist came to him “for inspiration” he would often sit down and dash off in a quarter of an hour the essential paragraph of a leader which he wished to see inserted. At the time of the Paris election of April, 1873, when his friend the Comte de Rémusat, then foreign secretary, was the Government candidate with the insignificant M. Barodet opposing him, a writer on theFigarocalled at the Elysée and M. Thiers wrote a whole article of a column’s length for him. It was printed as a letter in leaded type with the signature “An old citizen of Paris;” and a very sprightly letter it was, which put the issue lying between M. de Rémusat and his radical adversary in the clearest light. However, the electors of Paris acted with their usual foolishness in preferring an upstart to a man of note, and within a month of this M. Thiers resigned in disgust.
Marshal MacMahon accepted the presidency without any desire to retain it. If anything seemed certain at the time of his accession, it was that Legitimists and Orleanists would soon patch up their differences and that a vote of the Assembly would offer the crown to Henri V. The Ministry formed under the auspices of the Duc de Broglie labored to bring about this consummation, and the Marshal was prepared to enforce the decrees of the Assembly whatever they might be. At the same time he established his household at once on a semi-royal footing, as though he intended there should be at least a temporary court to remind French noblemen of old times, and to give them a foretaste of the pomps that were coming. M. Thiers had been abourgeoispresident; the Marshal-Duke of Magenta was agrand seigneur. Under Madame Thiers’ frugal management the £36,000 a year allowed to the president sufficed amply to cover all expenses; under the Duchess de Magenta’s management the presidential income did not go half way toward defraying outlay. The Marshal had a comfortable private fortune (not equal to M. Thiers’), but he was only enabled to hold such high estate in his office by means of the assistance pressed upon him by wealthy relatives.
The first signs of returning splendor at the Elysée were seen in the liveries of the new president’s servants. Instead of black they wore gray and silver, with scarlet plush, hair powder, and on gala occasions wigs. M. Thiers, when he went to a public ceremony, drove in a substantial landau, with mounted escort of the Republican Guard, and his friends—he never called them a suite—followed behind in vehicles according to their liking or means. Marshal MacMahon with the Duchess and their suite were always enough to fill three dashing landaus. These were painted in three or four shades of green, and lined with pearl gray satin; each would be drawn by four grays with postilions in gray jackets and red velvet caps; and the whole cavalcade was preceded and followed by outriders. Going to reviews, however, the Marshal of course rode, and this enabled him to make a grand display with his staff ofaides de camp. M. Thiers had a military household of which his cousin General Charlemagne was the head; but this warrior never had much to do, and it was no part of his business to receive visitors. Anybody who had business with M. Thiers could see him without a letter of audience by simply sending up a card to M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire. Marshal MacMahon, on the contrary, was as inaccessible as any king. Visitors to the Elysée in his time were passed from one resplendent officer to another till they entered the smiling presence of Vicomte Emmanuel d’Harcourt, the President’s secretary, and this was thene plus ultra. Against journalists in particular the Marshal’s doors were inexorably locked. So far as a man of his good-natured temper could be said to hate anybody, the Duke of Magenta hated persons connected with the press. For all that, he did not object altogether to newspaper tattle, for whilst he read theJournal des Débatsevery evening from a feeling of duty, he perused theFigaroevery morning for his own pleasure.
The sumptuous ordinance of Marshal MacMahon’s household was rendered necessary in a manner by the Shah of Persia’s visit to Paris in 1873. It is a pity that M. Thiers was not in office when this constellated savage came to ravish the courts of civilized Europe by his diamonds and his haughtilybrutish manners, for it would have been curious to see the little man instructing the Shah, through an interpreter, as to Persian history or the etymology of Oriental languages. In the Marshal, however, Nasr-ed-Din found a host who exhibited just the right sort of dignity; and all the hospitalities given to the Shah both at Versailles and Paris—the torchlight procession of soldiers, the gala performance at the opera, the banquet at the Galerie des Glaces—were carried out on a scale that could not have been excelled if there had been an emperor on the throne. In the course of the banquet at Versailles the Shah turned to the Duchess of Magenta and asked her in a few words of French, which he must have carefully rehearsed beforehand, why her husband did not set up as emperor. The Duchess parried the question with a smile; but perhaps the idea was not so far from her thoughts as she would have had people imagine.
It was a really comical freak of fortune that brought M. Jules Grévy to succeed Marshal MacMahon. The story goes that during the street fighting of the Revolution of 1830, a law-student was kicked by one of the king’s officers, for tearing down a copy of the ordinances placarded on a wall. The officer was armed, the student was not; so the latter ran away and lived to fight another day. For the officer, as it is said, was Patrice de MacMahon, and the law-student Jules Grévy. M. Grévy is a man of talent and great moral courage, but he owes his rise to an uncommon faculty for holding his tongue at the right moment. “I kept silent, and it was grief to me,” says the Psalmist. M. Grévy may have felt like other people at times, an almost incomparable longing to say foolish things; but having bridled his tongue he was accounted wiser than many who had spoken wisely. Under the empire he practiced at the bar, continued to make money, was elected in his turnbâtonnier, or chief bencher as we might say, to the Order of Advocates, and in 1868 was returned to the Corps Législatif by his old electors of the Jura—in which department he had by this time acquired a pretty large landed estate. A neat, creaseless sort of man, with a bald head, a shaven chin and closely-trimmed whiskers, he looked eminently respectable. The only reprehensible things about him were his hat and his hands. He always wore a wide-awake instead of the orthodox chimney-pot, and he eschewed gloves. If his hands were cold he put them into the pockets of his pantaloons. Some pretended to descry astuteness in this contempt for the usages of civilized man, for the wide-awake is more of a radical head-dress than a silk hat. But it never occurred to M. Grévy at any time since he first achieved success, to regulate his apparel, general conduct, or words, in view of pleasing the Radicals.
The Assembly elected after the war at once chose M. Grévy for its speaker, and he took up his abode in the Royal Palace, from which party jealousies had debarred M. Thiers. But he did not alter his manner of life one whit on that account. In Paris and Versailles he was to be seen sauntering about the streets looking in at shop windows, dining in restaurants, or sitting outside a café smoking a cigar and sipping iced coffee out of a glass. He had a brougham, but would only use it when obliged to go long distances. It often happened that setting out for a drive he would alight from his carriage and order his coachman to follow, and for hours the puzzled and disgusted coachman would drive at a walking pace behind his indefatigable master, who took easy strides as if he were not in the slightest hurry.
There is one point of resemblance between M. Grévy and the Marshal, for M. Grévy is a keen sportsman; but in most other things the two differ, though in sum M. Grévy differs more from M. Thiers than he does from the Marshal. His manner of living at the Elysée is dignified without ostentation. His servants do not wear gray and scarlet liveries; but the arrangements of his household are more orderly than those of M. Thiers could ever be. His servants in black know well how to keep intruders at a distance. No mob of journalists, inventors and place hunters calls to see M. Grévy in the morning. On the other hand, three or four times a week a great number of deputies, artists, journalists and officers may be seen going into the Elysée as freely as if they were entering a club. They do not ask to see the President or the latter’s secretary, M. Fourneret, but they make straight for a magnificent room on the ground floor overlooking the garden, which has been converted into a fencing saloon, and there they find M. Daniel Wilson,le fils de la maison. All thesehabitués, who form the court of the Third Republic, keep their masks, foils and flannels at the Elysée, and set to work fencing with each other as if they were at Gâtechair’s or Paz’s. Presently a door opens and the President walks in. For a moment the fencing stops, the combatants all turn and salute with their foils, whilst the visitors stand up. But, with a pleasant smile and a wave of the hand, M. Grévy bids the jousters to go on, and then he walks round the room, saying something to everybody, and inviting about half a dozen of the guests to stay to breakfast.
M. Grévy has allowed his beard to grow of late, and he is almost always attired in evening clothes, with themoiréedge of his scarletcordonpeeping over his waistcoat. But for the rest he is the same unassuming man as ever, and he takes life very easily. Now and then the Cabinet meets at the Elysée in the Salle des Souverains, and he presides over it. It is worth observing that in this Salle there are the portraits of a dozen sovereigns of the nineteenth century, including Queen Victoria, but not a symbol of any kind to remind one that it is a Republican Government that sits in this room. Even the master of the house has more in him of the Constitutional Monarch than of the President. The Constitution has conferred upon him large powers which he never uses; he seems to keep his eye on the portrait of the English Queen whilst his ministers discourse. Whatever papers are offered for his signature he signs, and then it isBon jour, Messieurs; au revoir; and while the ministers disperse the President makes his way to his private apartments, where he finds his daughter and his grandchild, in whose company he sometimes takes more delight than in that of statesmen.
Now and then there is a dinner at the Elysée, twice a week at least there are evening receptions, and about twice in the winter there are grand balls. On all these occasions everything is done in the best possible style, and the President discharges his functions of host with a serenity which disarms all criticism. He says nothing much to anybody, but he is the same to all. If by chance he falls into deep conversation with any particular guest, nobody need suspect that state matters are being discussed. The probabilities are that the President will be talking about the next performance of his new breechloader at Mont-sous-Vaudrey. Moreover, what makes M. Grévy more puzzling and interesting at once to those who behold him so simple in his palace, is the knowledge which all have, that when his time comes for leaving the Elysée he will walk out of it as coolly as he went in, without wishing that his tenancy had been longer, and certainly without doing anything to prolong it. His only anxiety will be to see that his gun-case suffer no damage at the door.—Abridged from Temple Bar.