I pity the man who, on a fine morning,
can walk through the shady and clean streets of Philadelphia
and cry, “all is barren!” In my eyes, it
appeared, even at first sight,and no place
improves more upon acquaintance,one of
the most attractive-looking towns I had ever beheld.
Coming immediately out of the noise,
bustle, and variety of Broadway, its general aspect
appears quiet, almost triste; but the cleanliness,
the neatness, the air of comfort, propriety, and health,
that reigns on all sides, bespeaks immediate favour.
The progress of improvement, and enlargement
too, are sufficiently evident, for at either extremity
of the city, the fall of hammer and chisel give unceasing
note of preparation. The circle designed and
marked out as the limit of its future greatness by
the sanguine mind of its sagacious founder has long
since been overleaped; the wide Delaware on one side,
and on the other the Schuylkill, seem incapable of
bounding the ambitious city. Already does Market-street
rest upon these two points, which cannot be less than
three miles apart.
Touching Market-street I ought to
know something, since, on two occasions, I got out
of my bed to visit it at four A.M. I am curious
in looking upon these interesting entrepôts
whence we cull the dainties of a well-furnished larder,
and a view over this was truly worth the pains; for
in no place have I ever seen more lavish display of
the good things most esteemed by this eating generation,
nor could any market offer them to the amateur in
form more tempting. Neatness and care were evident
in the perfect arrangement of the poultry, vegetables,
fruit, butter, &c.; and the display of well-fed beef,
with the artist-like way in which it was dressed,
might have excited our Giblets’ spleen even in
the Christmas week.
Poultry of all kinds here is equal
to that of any country, and the butter almost as good
as the best Irish, which I think the sweetest in the
world. The market, at the early time I mentioned,
offered a busy and amusing scene, and I passed away
a couple of hours here very much to my satisfaction,
besides cheating those souls of d d
critics, the musquitoes, out of a breakfast; for each
day, about the first light, I used to be awakened
by their assembling for a little dejeuner dansant,
whereat I was victim.
One of the pleasantest visits a man
can pay in Philadelphia on a hot day, is to the water-works
at Fair-mount, on the Schuylkill: the very name
is refreshing with the mercury at 96 deg. in the
shade; and, if there be a breeze in Pennsylvania,
you will find it here. No city can be better
supplied with water than this; and I never looked upon
the pure liquid, welling through the pipes and deluging
the thirsty streets, without a feeling of gratitude
to these water-works, and of respect for the pride
with which the Philadelphians regard their spirited
public labour. They have evinced much taste,
too, in the quiet, simple disposition of the ground
and reservoirs connected with the machinery; the trees
and plants are well selected for the situation, and
will soon add to the natural beauty of this very fine
reach of the river.
Mounting the east bank of the stream,
from this to the village of Manayunk, you have a very
pretty ride; and crossing the bridge at the “Falls
of the Schuylkill,”falls no longer,
thanks to the dam at Fair-mount,the way
back winds along by, or hangs above, the canal and
river, here marching side by side; offering, in about
four miles, as charming a succession of river views
as painter or poet could desire. It is a lovely
ramble by all lights, and I have viewed it by all,in
the blaze of noon, and by the sober grey of summer
twilight; I have ridden beneath its wooded heights,
and through its overhanging masses of rare foliage,
in the alternate bright cold light and deep shade of
a cloudless moon; and again, when tree, and field,
and flower were yet fresh and humid with the heavy
dew, and sparkling in the glow of early morning.
At the period of my first visit, the
huge piers of a new bridge, projected by the Columbian
Railroad Company, were just appearing in different
degrees above the gentle river’s surface.
The smoke of the workmen’s fires rising from
the wood above, and the numerous attendant barges
moored beneath the tall cliff from which the road was
to be thrown, added no little to the effect.
I have since seen this viaduct completed, and have
been whirled over it in the train of a locomotive;
and, although it is a fine work, I cannot but think
every lover of the picturesque will mourn the violation
of the solitude so lately to be found here.
I could not refrain from picturing
to myself the light canoes of the Delaware Indians
as at no very remote period they lay rocking beneath
the shelter of that very bluff where now were moored
a fleet of deep-laden barges: indeed these ideas
were constantly forcing themselves, as it were, into
my mind as I wandered over the changeful face of this
singular land, where the fresh print of the moccasin
is followed by the tread of the engineer and his attendants,
and the light trail of the red man is effaced by the
road of iron: hardly have the echoes ceased to
repeat through the woods the Indian’s hunter-cry
before this is followed by the angry rush of the ponderous
steam-engine, urged forward! still forward! by the
restless pursuer of his fated race.
Wander whither you will,take
any direction, the most frequented or the most secluded,at
every and at all points do these lines of railway
intercept your path. Each state, north, south,
and west, is eagerly thrusting forth these iron arms,
to knit, as it were, in a straiter embrace her neighbours;
and I have not a doubt but, in a very short time,
a man may journey from the St. Lawrence to the gulf
of Mexico coastwise with as much facility as he now
does from Boston to Washington, a distance of four
hundred and fifty miles, which may be at this day
performed within forty hours, out of which you pass
a night in New York.
But to leave anticipations and imaginings,which,
by the way, is a forbearance hard of practice in a
region where all things are on the whirl of speculative
change, and where practical results outrun the projections
of even the most visionary theorist,and
return to make such rapid survey of this interesting
city as may be ventured on during a first visit of
some twenty days. I feel, indeed, that but little
can be really known in so short a time of a place
containing two hundred and twenty thousand souls,
and having in a rapid state of advancement various
alterations and improvements, including nearly five
thousand new buildings all immediately required:
although there are persons gifted with such power
of intuition, that, as I learn from their own showing,
they are enabled in half the period to decide upon
the condition of the whole state of Pennsylvania;
to discover the wants of its capital, the defects
of its institutions, the value of its commerce, the
drift of its policy; to gauge its morals, become intimate
with its society, and make out a correct estimate
of its relative condition and prospects compared with
the other great divisions of the Union, surveyed, I
presume, with equal rapidity, judged with equal candour,
and estimated with equal correctness.
Each in his degree: and so, in
my way, good reader, I will endeavour to give you
some notion of this capital of old Penn’s Sylvania;
but if your own imagination come not to the help of
my outline, I fear, after all my painstaking, your
notion of the subject will be only a faintish one.
Philadelphia is built upon a peninsula
formed by two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill,
having a long graduated rise from each, the highest
point being about the centre of the city. It is
laid out in squares, and the streets run in parallel
lines of two and three miles in length, retaining
the same names throughout, only divided by Market-street
into north, and south: with the exception of this
dividing street, those running east and west are named
after trees, flowers, and fruits,as chestnut,
walnut, peach, &c.; and those parallel with the rivers,
first, Front-street, or that facing the water; next,
Second-street, third, fourth, fifth, &c. distinguished
as, divided by Market-street, into South-second, North-second,
&c.; a simplicity of arrangement which is unique,
and renders the stranger’s course an exceeding
easy one: all he has to do is, first, to run down
the latitude of his street by any of the great avenues,
and, having fairly struck it, steer north or south,
as may be, till he hits upon the friendly number.
The side-walks throughout are broad
and well-ordered, neatly paved with brick, and generally
bordered by rows of healthful trees of different kinds,
affording in hot weather a most welcome shade, and
giving to the houses an air of freshness and repose
rarely to be met with in a populous city.
The dwellings are chiefly of brick,
of a good colour, very neatly pointed; and nothing
can be more tasteful than their fitting-up externally.
The windows are furnished with latticed shutters; these,
when not closed, fold back on either hand against the
wall, and being painted green, and kept with much
care and freshness, would invest humbler dwellings
with an attractive air, especially in the eyes of an
Englishman, accustomed to the dingy aspect of our city
residences, which look as though the owners had resolved
on making them as forbidding as possible without,
in order to enhance the excelling comforts within.
Now the houses of Philadelphia are
as clean and neat in all the detail of the exterior,
as they are well-ordered and admirably furnished.
The mountings of the rails and doors are either of
polished silver plating or brass, and kept as bright
as care can make them. The solid hall-door, in
hot weather, is superseded by one of green lattice-work,
similar to the window-shutters, which answers the
purpose of keeping out every intrusive stranger, except
the air,air being at such seasons, as most
strangers are at all times, especially welcome to Philadelphia,
which is about the hottest place I know of in the
autumn; the halls are commonly flagged with fine white
marble, are spacious, lofty, and well fitted-up.
The houses average three stories,
but in the best streets, those of the first class
are run up to five, and even six, and are of great
depth: indeed, I should say, the inhabitants
of this city generally enjoy greater space in their
lodgings than is afforded to those of any other large
capital. Where population increases rapidly rents
are necessarily high; and a good house in Philadelphia
costs about as much, independent of taxation, as a
dwelling of the same class in London.
Besides the great market, which gives
its name to the dividing line of the city, and runs
through its whole breadth, there are several others,
less extensive perhaps, but all alike under cover,
well adapted to the purpose, and boasting a due proportion
of the abundance of good things, which, profusely
displayed on all sides, give ready evidence of the
agricultural wealth of the neighbourhood.
Numbers of the best market-farmers
for vegetables, poultry, butter, &c. are Germans,
who, although most earnest in enriching the country
by their labour, yet cling with strange tenacity to
the customs and language of “Fader-land.”
Their costume and manner yet continues as distinct
and recognizable as was the appearance of their progenitors
on landing here some eighty years back, for the colony
from which they are chiefly derived had existence
about the middle of the eighteenth century; and many
of these men, yet speaking no word of English, are
of the third generation. They have German magistrates,
an interpreter in courts when they act as jurors,
German newspapers, &c.; and are the stoutest, if not
the promptest, asserters of democracy.
They are usually found a little in
arrear on the subject of all passing events; and at
election times, or on occasions of extraordinary stir,
when a man is striving to render them au courant
with late occurrences, they will now and then interrupt
their informant with, “Bud why de teufel doesn’t
Vashington come down to de Nord and bud it all to
rights?”
The public buildings are here of a
more ambitious style of architecture than any of the
other cities can boast, and some of them are built
in exceeding good taste; but the one which had most
interest in my eyes was the old State-house, wherein
the “Declaration of Independence” was
signed. The Senate-chamber is, I fancy, little
changed since that period; and contained, when I was
last within it, models for various public works:
amongst others, several for a heroic statue of Washington,
about to be erected, somewhat late in the day to be
sure, by the city; others for the new college, now
building, according to the will of the late S. Girard,
and intended to assist in perpetuating his name and
wealth to all posterity.
Such appears to have been the great
object of the will of this worthy citizen, and there
is every prospect of its fully answering the purpose,
since it has already set the whole community by the
ears, and promises to prove as prolific of evils as
the strong box of Miss Pandora, without having even
Hope at the bottom.
This man, who has been so much eulogized
dead, seems, as well as I could glean amongst his
contemporaries, to have been anything but estimable
in his living character. He is universally described
as having been tricky, overreaching, and litigious
in his dealings as a merchant; an unfeeling relation,
an exacting, ungrateful, and forgetful master; and
a selfish, cold-hearted man: unoccupied with
any generous sympathy, public or private, throughout
a long life, devoted to one purpose with sleepless
energy, and to one purpose onlymaking and
hoarding money; which, living, he contrived, as far
as in him lay, to render as little beneficial to any
as possible, and, dying, disposed of to his own personal
glorification, but to the vexation of the community,
amongst which he appeared to have lived unhonoured,
and certainly died unregretted!
I am aware that “de mortuis
nil nisi bonum” has usually been
applied to cases similar to the above; “nil
nisi justem” I think a sounder reading
where a man is held up as a public example, and deem
that the selection of a church or a college for a
monument should not be permitted to shield the base
from animadversion, or call for honours to the worthless.
THE THEATRESWALNUT AND CHESTNUT:
So called were the houses at which
I first acted here, situated in the two fine streets
bearing the same names.
The Walnut is a summer theatre, and
the least fashionable; and here it was my fortune
to make my debut to the Philadelphians with
good success: a French company occupied at the
same time the Chestnut, where, after a seven nights’
engagement at the other house, I succeeded them; the
proprietors being the same at both.
These houses are large, handsome buildings,
marble-fronted, having ample and well-arranged vomitories;
and are not stuck into some obscure alley, as most
of our theatres are, but standing in the finest streets
of the city, and every way easy of approach:
within, they are fitted up plainly, but conveniently,
and very cleanly and well kept. I prefer the
Chestnut, as smaller, and having a pitas
I think all pits ought to benearly on
a level with the front of the stage, instead of being
sunk deep below, looking, when filled, like a huge
dark pool, covered with upturned faces.
A crowded audience here presents as
large a proportion of pretty, attractive women as
are anywhere to be seen; and the male part is singularly
respectable and attentive. Here again I must protest
against the charge of insensibility being laid at
their doors; that is, as far as my own feeling and
experience goes.
If by applause, a constant clapping
of palms or hammering of sticks is only meant, interspersed
with cries of “Bravo!” I admit they are
deficient; but if an evident anxiety to lose no word
or look of the artist, an evident abstraction from
everything but the scene, with demonstrations of admiration
discriminating and well applied, may be accepted as
sufficient marks of approval, then has the actor no
cause of complaint.
With the tragedian, who strains after
what in stage parlance are called points, and
calculates on being interrupted by loud clapping before
the sense of the sentence be complete, or else wants
breath to finish it, a Philadelphian audience might
prove a slippery dependence, since they come evidently
to hear the author as well as see the actor, and are
“attentive, that they may hear.”
For myself, the unreserved laughter
in which they indulged I found abundant applause,
and in well-filled houses the best assurance that
they were pleased. The company here was a very
good one, and the pieces as well gotten up as anywhere
in the States.
I paid frequent visits to this charming
city, and shall have occasion again to refer to it.
My first impressions are here set down, and favourable
as these were, a more intimate knowledge only served
to confirm them.