Part 1

O shades of respectable Vans! O Livingstons, Kennedys, Jays! Lend me your names to conjure with, And bring back the fine old days— When the trade and wealth of the city Lay snugly the rivers between, And the homes of its merchant princes, Were built round the Bowling Green. Here’s to the homes that are past! Here’s to the men that have been! Here’s to the heart of New York, That beats on the Bowling Green!

Here’s to the men who could meet Mockers and doubters, with smiles; And planning for centuries hence, Lay out their city by miles. It has spread far out to the North, It has spread to the East and the West, Though the men who saw it in dreams, Now sleep in old Trinity’s breast. Here’s to the homes that are past! Here’s to the men that have been! Here’s to the heart of New York, That beats on the Bowling Green!

And here’s to the maids of the past! (They were beautiful maids we know,) That strolled in the Battery Park, In the years of the Long Ago. And though maids of to-day are fair, (No lovelier ever have been) They are proud to be called by the names Of the Belles of the Bowling Green. Here’s to the men of the past! Here’s to the maids that have been! Here’s to the heart of New York, That beats on the Bowling Green!

The Belle of Bowling Green

CHAPTER ONE

Monday’s Daughters

Every city has some locality to which its heroic and civic memories especially cling; and this locality in the city of New York is the historic acre of the Bowling Green. With that spot it has been throughout its existence, in some way or other, unfailingly linked; and its mingled story of camp and court and domestic life ought to make the Bowling Green to the citizens of New York all that the Palladium was to the citizens of ancient Troy. For as the Palladium held in one hand a pike, and in the other hand a distaff and spindle, so also, the story of the Bowling Green is one of the pike and the distaff. It has felt the tread of fighting men, and the light feet of happy maidens; and though showing a front of cannon, has lain for nearly three centuries at the open seaward door of the city, like a green hearthstone of welcome.

In the closing years of the eighteenth, and the early years of the nineteenth century, the Bowling Green was in a large measure surrounded by the stately homes of the most honourable and wealthy citizens; and though this class, before the war of 1812, had began to move slowly northward, it was some years later a very aristocratic quarter, especially favoured by the rich families of Dutch extraction, who, having dwelt for many generations somewhere around the Fort and the Bowling Green, were not easily induced to relinquish their homes in a locality so familiar and so dear to them.

Thus for nearly one hundred and forty years there had been Bloommaerts living in the old Beaver Path, and in Bloommaert’s Valley, or Broad Street, and when Judge Gerardus Bloommaert, in 1790, built himself a handsome dwelling, he desired no finer site for it than the Bowling Green. It was a lofty, roomy house of red brick, without extraneous ornament, but realising in its interior arrangements and furnishings the highest ideals of household comfort and elegance.

Sapphira, his only daughter, a girl of eighteen years old, was, however, its chief charm and attraction. No painting on all its walls could rival her living beauty; and many a young citizen found the road to the Custom House the road of his desire. For was there not always the hope that he might catch a glimpse of the lovely Sapphira at the window of her home? Or meet her walking on the Mall, or the Battery, and perhaps, if very fortunate, get a smile or a word from her in passing.

All knew that they could give themselves good reasons for their devotions; they did not bow to an unworthy idol. Sapphira Bloommaert had to perfection every mystery and beauty of the flesh—dark, lambent eyes, hardly more lambent than the luminous face lighted up by the spirit behind it; nut-brown hair, with brows and long eyelashes of a still darker shade; a vivid complexion; an exquisite mouth; a tall, erect, slender form with a rather proud carriage, and movements that were naturally of superb dignity: “the airs of a queen,” as her cousin Annette said. But Sapphira had no consciousness in this attitude; it was as natural as breathing to her; and was the result of a perfectly harmonious physical and moral beauty, developed under circumstances of love and happiness. All her life days had been full of content; she looked as if she had been born smiling.

This was exactly what her grandmother Bloommaert said to her one morning, and that with some irritation; for the elder woman was anxious about many people and many things, and Sapphira’s expression of pleasant contentment was not the kind of sympathy that worry finds soothing.

“In trouble is the city, Sapphira, and over that bit of hair-work you sit smiling, as if in Paradise we were. I think, indeed, you were born smiling.”

“The time of tears is not yet, grandmother; when it comes, I shall weep—like other women.”

“Weep! Yes, yes; but one thing remember—deliverance comes never through tears. Look at Cornelia Desbrosses; dying she is, with her own tears poisoned.”

“I am sorry for Cornelia; I wish that she had no cause to weep,” and with these words she did not smile. It had suddenly struck her that perhaps it was not right or kind to be happy when there was so much fear and anxiety in her native city. The idea was new and painful; she rose and went with it to the solitude of her own room; and her mother after silently watching her exit, said:

“She is so gentle, so easily moved—was it worth while?”

“You think so? Give Sapphira a motive strong enough, and so firm she will be—so impossible to move. Oh, yes, Carlita, I know!”

“Indeed, mother, she obeys as readily as a little child. Our will is her will. She bends to it just like the leaves of that tree to the wind.”

“Very good! but there may come a day when to your will she will not bend; when a rod of finely tempered steel will be more pliant in your hand than her wish or will. We shall see. She is a very child yet, but times are coming—are come—that will turn children quickly into men and women. Our Gerardus, where is he?”

“He left home rather earlier than usual. He was sure there was important news.” Mrs. Bloommaert spoke coldly. Her mother-in-law always set her temper on edge with the claim vibrating through the two words “our Gerardus.” “There is so much talk and nothing comes of it but annoyance to ourselves,” she continued, “the cry has been war for five years. It comes not.”

“It is here. At the street corners I saw the bill-man pasting up news of it. In every one’s mouth I heard it. Alive was the air with the word war; and standing in groups, men were talking together in that passion of anger that means war, war, and nothing but war.”

“The blood of New York is always boiling, mother. When Gerardus comes he will tell us if it be war. I shall not be sorry if it is. When one has been waiting for a blow five long years, it is a relief to have it fall. Who is to blame? The administration, or the people?”

“As well may you ask whether it is the fiddle, or the fiddlestick, that makes the tune.”

“At any rate we shall give England a good fight. Our men are not cowards.”

“Carlita, all men would be cowards—if they durst.”

“Mother!”

“If they durst disobey the nobler instincts which make the lower ones face their duty.”

“Oh!”

“Carlita, you have no ideas about humanity.”

“I think mother I, at least, understand my husband and sons—as for Sapphira—”

“More difficult she will be—and more interesting. Peter and Christopher are all Dutch; they that run may read them, but in Sapphira the Dutch and French are discreetly mingled. She has tithed your French ancestors, Carlita—take good heed of her.”

“They were of noble strain.”

“Surely, that is well known. Now I must go home, for I know that Annette is already afraid, and there is the dinner to order. Pigeons do not fly into the mouth ready roasted, and Commenia is getting old. She is lazy, too; but so! The year goes round and somehow we do not find it all bad.”

As she finished speaking, Sapphira came hastily into the room. Her face was flushed, her eyes flashing, and she cried out with unrestrained emotion: “Mother! Mother! We must put out our flags! All the houses on the Green are flagged! Kouba has them ready. He will help me. And you too, mother? Certainly you will help? Kouba says we are going to fight England again! I am so proud! I am so happy! Come, come, mother!”

“My dear one, wait a little. Your father will be here soon, and—”

“Oh, no, no! Father may be in court. He is likely with the mayor. Perhaps he is talking to the people. We can not wait. We must put out the flags—the old one that has seen battle, and the new one that is to see it.”

“But Sapphira—”

“I have the flags ready, mother. Come quickly,” and without further parley she ran with fleet, headlong steps to the upper rooms of the house. Madame, her grandmother, smiled knowingly at her daughter-in-law.

“The will that is your will?” she asked; “where is it? You can see for yourself, Carlita.”

“The news seems to be true at last. You had better wait for Gerardus, mother. He will tell us all about it.”

“The news will find me out in Nassau Street.”

“Commenia can manage without you for one day.”

“There are strawberries to preserve. I like to manage my affairs myself. I have my own way, and some other way does not please me.”

“Well, then, I shall go to Sapphira. My hands are itching for the flags. I am sure you understand, mother.”

“Understand! If it comes to that, I made up my mind many years ago about those English tyrants—and I have not to make it over. I think about them and their ways exactly as I did when I sent my dear Peter with Joris Van Heemskirk’s troops to fight them. Gerardus was but a boy then—ten years old only—but he cried to go with his father. God be with us! Wives and mothers don’t forget, O wee! O wee!”

Her voice softened, she looked wistfully backward and, with outstretched hand, waved her daughter-in-law upstairs. Then she opened for herself the wide, front entrance. The door was heavy, but it swung easily to her firm grip. And yet she was in the seventy-fourth year of her life days.

With a slow but imperious step she took the road to her own home. She was not afraid of the crowd, nor of the enthusiasm that moved it. At every turn she was recognised and saluted, for Madame Bloommaert was part and parcel of the honour of the city, and her bright, handsome face with its coal-black eyes and eyebrows, and snow-white hair lying like mist upon its brown temples, was a familiar sight to old and young. She was rather small of stature, but so disdainfully erect that she gave the impression of being a tall woman—an illusion aided by the buoyancy of her temper and the definite character of her movements.

Her home was on lower Nassau Street between Beaver and Marketfield. It had been her residence for fifty years, and was as perfectly Dutch as herself in its character. Nothing in the street, however, was more interesting than this human habitation. It appeared to have created for itself a sort of soul, so instinct with personality was it. A large garden surrounded it, though its space had been slowly curtailed as land in the vicinity became valuable; yet there was still room enough for some fine shrubbery, a little grass plot, beds of flowers, strawberry and other vines, and the deep, cool well, with its antique shed full of bright pewter dishes.

The house itself was of red brick, mellow and warm, and soft to the eyes with the rains and sunshine of half a century; and nothing could be finer than its front, sending up sharp points to the sky, with a little boat weathercock on the tallest point boxing about in the wind. Over the wide casements a sweetbrier climbed, and nodded its tiny flower; and the veranda, cunningly carved along the bottom railing in an open leaf pattern, was a perfect bower of Virginia creeper.

She opened the garden gate, and its mingled perfumes made her sigh with pleasure. Such boxwood borders, such gay, sweet flowers, such brick walks laid in zig-zag pattern, and shaded by elm and maple trees are not to be found in New York city now, but to madame they were only the beautiful frame of her daily life. She cast her eyes down to see if the walk had been swept, and then looked up at the house as if it were a friend. The flag she loved, the flag under which her young husband had died fighting for liberty, was floating from her window. She stood still and gazed at it. Without words it spoke to her, and without words she answered its claim. In a moment she had accepted whatever of trial or triumph it might bring her.

She went forward more hastily, but, ere she reached the entrance, a very pretty girl came running to meet her. “Have you heard the news, grandmother?” she cried. “Are you not very happy? What did Sapphira say? And Aunt Carlita?—and uncle?—and all of them?”

Madame was unable to answer her questions. She clasped her hand firmly, and went with her into the house. Straight to the main living room she went, an apartment in which the dearest portion of her household gods were enshrined: massive silver services on a richly carved sideboard; semi-lucent china in the corner cupboard; three pictures of Teniers that one of her husband’s ancestors had bought from the hands of the great painter himself; and chairs of antique workmanship that had crossed the ocean with Samuel Bloommaert in 1629 when he bought Zwanendael, the Valley of the Swans. The wide, open fireplace of this room was in itself a picture. The deep cavity at the back and the abutting jambs were coloured a vivid scarlet, with a wash made from iron dust; the hearthstone was white as snow with pipeclay, and in front of the heavy brass irons was a tall blue and white jar with dragons for handles, holding a bunch of red roses, mingled with green asparagus branches. The broad chimney piece above this home picture had also its distinctive charm. It shone with silver candlesticks, their snuffers, and little trays. It kept the silver posset pan that had made the baby’s food half a century ago; the christening cups of her son Gerardus and her daughter Elsie; and two beautiful lacquered tea-caddies from India and China.

Opposite the fireplace, at the end of the room, there was a long table black with age and heavy with Nuremburg carving; but it was on a small round one which stood by an open window that a dinner service for two persons was very prettily laid. Madame sat down in a chair near it, and Annette took off her scarf and bonnet and long gloves, and chattered volubly as she did so:

“I know you would like our flag to be out as soon as the rest, grandmother, and the Yates’ flag was flying, and the Vanderlyns’, and I had hard work to get ours flying before the Moores’ and the Rivingtons’. I thought the whole city had gone mad, and I sent Mink and Bass to find the reason out. They stopped so long! and when they came back, they said it was because we are going to fight England again. How men do love to fight, grandmother!”

“When for their liberty and their homes men fight they do well, do they not?”

“If you had heard Peter Smith talking to a little crowd at our very gate, you would think men found the reason for their existence in a gun or a sword. He said we should whip England in about six weeks, and—”

“That is enough, Annette. The sort of rubbish that Peter talks and simpletons believe I know. We shall win our fight, no doubt of that; but in six weeks! No, it may as likely be six years.”

“Grandmother! Six years! And will there be no balls, and suppers, and no lovers for six years? Of course, all the young men who are to be noticed will prefer fighting to anything else; and what shall I do for a lover, grandmother?”

“There is always Jose Westervelt.”

“He will not do at all. He is too troublesome. He thinks I ought not to dance with any one but him; actually he objects to my speaking to some people, or even looking at them. It is too uncomfortable. I do not like tyranny—no American girl does.”

“So you rebelled. But then, do you expect to catch fish without wetting yourself?”

“It has been done.” She was putting on her grandmother’s feet the cloth slippers she usually wore in the house, and as she rose she perceived with a smile the delicious odour of the roasted pigeons which a negro slave was just bringing to the table.

“I told Commenia to roast them, grandmother. I knew you would want something nice when you got back.”

“Before the fire did she roast them?”

“Yes—on skewers, and basted them with fresh butter. I found enough peas on the vines, and I pulled and shelled them myself, for it was next to impossible to keep the blacks off the streets.”

“Thank you, dear one.”

“I have had such a happy year, grandmother, and now, I suppose, all our gaieties will be ended.”

“Come, come, there will be more gaieties than ever. I am sure that the Battery will be put in fighting trim; then the Bowling Green, with soldiers, will be alive. What will follow? Drills and parades, and what not; and in all the houses round about the Green the women will make idols of the men in uniform. And to be sure they will show their adoration by meat offerings and drink offerings; ceremonies, Annette, which generally end in dancing and love-making.”

“You notice everything, grandmother.”

“I have been young and now I am old; but love never gets a day older. What love was in the beginning, he is now, and ever shall be. These pigeons are very good. You said you had some at the Radcliffes’ yesterday—what kind of a dinner did they give?”

“It was a good dinner, but not a dinner to be asked out to; you and I often have a better one—and there was no dancing, only cards and games—and Jose Westervelt.”

“Poor Jose!”

“Grandmother, he is so magisterial. He sets up his opinions as if they were a golden image; and I am not the girl to fall down before them.”

“He is a distinguished mathematician already.”

“And looks it: besides he knows no more of dancing than a Hindoo knows of skating. Also, since he came back from England, he is so cold and positive in his views, and so stiff and rigid in his London-made clothes, that I cannot endure him. Did you see Sapphira, grandmother?”

“Yes. With some hair work she was busy—a finger ring, or brooch or some such trifle. There will be other work soon, I think. In the last war we had to make all our own clothing and most of our household necessities. The last war! Oh, Annette, dear one, I lost everything in the last war!”

“But you are now a rich woman, grandmother.”

“I mean not that. I lost your grandfather; he was everything to me. There was money, yes; and there was property; but all in a bad way then. Now; well, it is a little different.”

“However did you manage?”

“I worked and hoped and helped myself and others, and left the rest to God. While I slept He made things to grow and prosper. And when this war is over we shall have settled our standing among the nations beyond all dispute, and New York will stride forward as if she wore the seven-leagued boots.”