A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin - William Cullen Bryant
A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin
Verplanck
Delivered before the New-York Historical Society, May 17th, 1870
By William Cullen Bryant.
New York:
Printed for the Society
MDCCCLXX
At a special meeting of the New York Historical Society, held at Steinway
Hall, on Tuesday evening, May 17, 1870, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT delivered a
discourse on the _Life, Character and Writings of Gulian C. Verplanck_.
On its conclusion HUGH MAXWELL submitted the following resolution, which
was adopted unanimously:
_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Society be presented to Mr. BRYANT
for his eloquent and instructive discourse, delivered this evening, and
that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication.
Extract from the Minutes,
Andrew Warner,
_Recording Secretary_.
Officers of the Society, Elected January, 1870.
President, Thomas De Witt, D.D.
First Vice-President, Gulian C. Verplanck, LL.D.
Second Vice-President, John A. Dix, LL.D.
Foreign Corresponding Secretary, John Romeyn Brodhead, LL.D.
Domestic Corresponding Secretary, William J. Hoppin.
Recording Secretary, Andrew Warner.
Treasurer, Benjamin H. Field.
Librarian, George H. Moore, LL.D.
The life of him in honor of whose memory we are assembled, was prolonged
to so late a period and to the last was so full of usefulness, that it
almost seemed a permanent part of the organization and the active movement
of society here. His departure has left a sad vacuity in the framework
which he helped to uphold and adorn. It is as if one of the columns which
support a massive building had been suddenly taken away; the sight of the
space which it once occupied troubles us, and the mind wearies itself in
the unavailing wish to restore it to its place.
In what I am about to say, I shall put together some notices of the
character, the writings, and the services of this eminent man, but the
portraiture which I shall draw will be but a miniature. To do it full
justice a larger canvas would be required than the one I propose to take.
He acted in so many important capacities; he was connected in so many ways
with our literature, our legislation, our jurisprudence, our public
education, and public charities, that it would require a volume adequately
to set forth the obligations we owe to the exertion of his fine faculties
for the general good.
Gulian Crommelin Verplanck was born in Wall street, in the city of New
York, on the 6th of August, 1786. The house in which he was born was a
large yellow mansion, standing on the spot on which the Assay Office has
since been built. A little beyond this street, a few rods only, lay the
island of New York in all its original beauty, so that it was but a step
from Wall street to the country. His father, Daniel Crommelin Verplanck,
was a respectable citizen of the old stock of colonists from Holland, who
for several terms was a member of Congress, and whom I remember as a
short, stout old gentleman, commonly called Judge Verplanck, from having
been in the latter years of his life a Judge of the County Court of
Dutchess. Here he resided in the latter years of his life on the
patrimonial estate, where the son, ever since I knew him, was always in
the habit of passing a part of the summer. It had been in the family of
the Verplancks ever since their ancestor Gulian Verplanck with Francis
Rombout, in 1683, purchased it, with other lands, of the Wappinger Indians
for a certain amount of money and merchandize, specified in a deed signed
by the Sachem Sakoraghuck and other chiefs, the spelling of whose names
seems to defy pronunciation. The two purchasers afterwards divided this
domain, and to the Verplancks was assigned a tract which they have ever
since held.
This fine old estate has a long western border on the Hudson, and extends
easterly for four or five miles to the village of Fishkill. About half a
mile from the great river stands the family mansion, among its ancient
groves, a large stone building of one story when I saw it; with a sharp
roof and dormer windows, beside its old fashioned and well stocked garden.
A winding path leads down to the river's edge, through an ancient forest
which has stood there ever since Hendrick Hudson navigated the river
bearing his name, and centuries before. This mansion was the country
retreat of Mr. Verplanck ever since I knew him, and here it was that his
grandfather on the paternal side, Samuel Verplanck, passed much of his
time during our revolutionary war, in which, although he took no share in
political measures, his inclinations were on the side of the mother
country. This Samuel Verplanck, by a custom which seems not to have become
obsolete in his time, was betrothed when but seven years old to his cousin
Judith Crommelin, the daughter of a wealthy banker of the Huguenot stock
in Amsterdam. When the young gentleman was of the proper age he was sent
to make the tour of Europe, and bring home his bride. He was married in
the banker's great stone house, standing beside a fair Dutch garden, with
a wide marble entrance hall, the counting room on one side of it, and the
drawing room, bright with gilding, on the other. When the grandson, in
after years, visited Amsterdam, the mansion which had often been described
to him by his grandmother, had to him quite a familiar aspect.
The lady from Amsterdam was particularly accomplished, and versed not only
in several modern languages, but in Greek and Latin, speaking fluently the
Latin, of which the Colloquies of her great countryman, Erasmus, furnish
so rich a store of phrases for ordinary dialogue. Her conversation is said
to have been uncommonly brilliant and her society much sought. During the
revolutionary war her house was open to the British officers, General
Howe, and others, accomplished men, of whom she had many anecdotes to
relate to her grandson, when he came under her care. For the greater part
of this time her husband remained at the country seat in Fishkill, quietly
occupied with his books and the care of his estate. Meantime, she wrote
anxious letters to her father, in Amsterdam, which were answered in neat
French. The banker consoled his daughter by saying that "Mr. Samuel
Verplanck was a man so universally known and honored, both for his
integrity and scholarly attainments, that in the end all would be well."
This proved true; the extensive estate at Fishkill was never confiscated,
and its owner was left unmolested.
On the mother's side, our friend had an ancestry of quite different
political views. His grandfather, William Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, in
Connecticut, was one of the revolutionary fathers. Before the revolution,
he was the agent of Connecticut in England; when it broke out he took a
zealous part in the cause of the revolted colonies; he was a delegate to
Congress from his State when Congress sat in New York, and he aided in
framing the Constitution of the United States. Afterwards, he was
President of Columbia College from the year 1787 to the year 1800, when,
resigning the post, he returned to Stratford, where he died in 1819, at
the age of ninety-two. His father, the great-grandfather of the subject of
this memoir, was Dr. Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, one of the finest
American scholars of his day, and the first President of Columbia College,
which however, he left after nine years, to return and pass a serene old
age at Stratford. He had been a Congregational minister in Connecticut,
but by reading the works of Barrow and other eminent divines of the
Anglican Church, became a convert to that church, went to England, and
taking orders returned to introduce its ritual into Connecticut. He was
the friend of Bishop Berkeley, whose arm-chair was preserved as an
heir-loom in his family. When in England, he saw Pope, who gave him
cuttings from his Twickenham willow. These he brought from the banks of
the Thames, and planted on the wilder borders of his own beautiful river
the Housatonic, which at Stratford enters the Sound. They were, probably,
the progenitors of all the weeping willows which are seen in this part of
the country, where they rapidly grow to a size which I have never seen
them attain in any other part of the world.
The younger of these Dr. Johnsons--for they both received the degree of
Doctor of Divinity from the University of Oxford--had a daughter
Elizabeth, who married Daniel Crommelin Verplanck, the son of Samuel
Verplanck, and the only fruit of their marriage was the subject of this
memoir. The fair-haired young mother was a frequent visitor with her child
to Stratford, where, under the willow trees from Twickenham, as appears
from some of her letters, he learned to walk. She died when he was but
three years old, leaving the boy to the care of his grandmother, by whom
he was indulgently yet carefully reared.
The grandmother is spoken of as a lively little lady, often seen walking
up Wall Street, dressed in pink satin and in dainty high heeled shoes,
with a quaint jewelled watch swinging from her waist. Wall Street was
then the fashionable quarter; the city, still in its embryo stater
extending but a little way above it; it was full of dwelling houses, with
here and there a church, which has long since disappeared. Over that
region of the metropolis where Mammon is worshipped in six days out of
seven, there now broods on Sunday a sepulchral silence, but then the walks
were thronged with churchgoers. The boy was his grandmother's constant
companion. He was trained by her to love books and study, to which,
however, he seems to have had a natural and inherited inclination. It is
said that at a very tender age she taught him to declaim passages from
Latin authors, standing on a table, and rewarded him with hot pound-cake.
Another story is, that she used to put sugar-plums near his bedside, to be
at hand in case he should take a fancy to them in the night. But, as he
was not spoiled by indulgence, it is but fair to conclude that her gentle
method of educating him was tempered by firmness on proper occasions--a
quality somewhat rare in grandmothers. A letter from one of her
descendants playfully says:
"It is a picture to think of her, seated at a marvellous Dutch bureau, now
in possession of her great-grand-daughters, which is filled with a
complexity of small and mysterious drawers, talking to the child, while
her servant built the powdered tower on her head, or hung the diamond
rings in her ears. Very likely, at such times, the child was thrusting his
little fingers into the rouge pot, or making havoc with the powder, and
perhaps she knew no better way to bring him to order than to tell him of
many of a fright of her own in the war, or she may have gone further back
in history, and told the boy how her and his Huguenot ancestors fled from
France when the bad King Louis forbade every form of worship but his own."
Dr. Johnson, the grandfather of young Verplanck, on the mother's side,
came from Stratford to be President of Columbia College, the year after
his grandson was born. To him, in an equal degree with his grandmother, we
must give the credit of bringing forward the precocious boy in his early
studies. I have diligently inquired what school he attended and who were
his teachers, but can hear of no other. His father had married again, and
to the lively Huguenot lady was left the almost entire charge of the boy.
He was a born scholar; he took to books as other boys take to marbles; and
the lessons which he received in the household sufficed to prepare him for
entering college when yet a mere child, at eleven years of age. He took
his first degree four years afterwards, in 1801, one year after his
maternal grandfather had returned to Stratford. To that place he very
frequently resorted in his youth, and there, in the well-stored and
well-arranged library he pursued the studies he loved. The tradition is
that he conned his Greek lessons lying flat on the floor with his thumb in
his mouth, and the fingers of the other hand employed in twisting a lock
of the brown, hair on his forehead. He took no pleasure in fishing or in
hunting; I doubt whether he ever let off a fowling-piece or drew a trout
from the brook in his life. He was fond of younger children, and would
recreate himself in play with his little relatives, but was no visitor to
other families. His contemporaries, Washington Irving, James K. Paulding,
and Governeur Kemble, had their amusements and frolics, in which he took
no part. According to Mr. Kemble, the elder men of the time held up to the
youths the example of young Verplanck, so studious and accomplished, and
so ready with every kind of knowledge, and withal of such faultless
habits, as a model for their imitation.
I have said that his relatives on the mother's side were of a different
political school from his high tory grandmother. From them he would hear
of the inalienable rights of the people, and the duty, under certain
circumstances, of revolution; from her he would hear of the obligation of
loyalty and obedience. The Johnsons would speak of the patriotism, the
wisdom, and the services of Franklin; the grandmother of the virtues and
accomplishments of Cornwallis. The boy, of course, had to choose between
these different sides, and he chose the side of his country and of the
people.
I think that I perceive in these circumstances how it was that the mind of
Verplanck was educated to that independence of judgment, and that
self-reliance, which in after life so eminently distinguished it. He never
adopted an opinion for the reason that it had been adopted by another. On
some points--on more, I think, than is usual with most men--he was content
not to decide, but when he formed an opinion it was his own. He had no
hesitation in differing from others if he saw reason; indeed, he sometimes
showed that he rather liked to differ, or chose at least, by questioning
their opinions, to intimate that they were prematurely formed. Another
result of the peculiar political education which I have described, was the
fairness with which he judged of the characters and motives of men who
were not of his party. I saw much, very much of him while he was a member
of Congress, when political animosities were at their fiercest, and I must
say that I never knew a party man who had less party rancor, or who was
more ready to acknowledge in his political opponents the good qualities
which they really possessed.
After taking his degree he read law in the office of Josiah Ogden Hoffman,
an eminent member of the New York bar, much esteemed in social life, whose
house was the resort of the best company in New York. His first public
address, a Fourth of July oration, was delivered when he was eighteen
years of age. It was printed, but no copy of it is now to be found. In due
season he was admitted to the bar, and opened an office for the practice
of law in New York. A letter from Dr. Moore, formerly President of
Columbia College, relates that Verplanck and himself took an office
together on the east side of Pearl street, opposite to Hanover square.
"Little business as I had then," proceeds the Doctor, "he seemed to have
still less. Indeed I am not aware that he had, or cared to have, any legal
business whatever. He spent much of his time out of the office and was not
very studious when within, but it was evident that he read or had read
elsewhere to good purpose, for though I read more Greek than law and
thought myself studious, I had occasion to discover more than once that he
was a better Grecian than I, and could enlighten my ignorance." From other
sources I learn that in his legal studies he delighted in the reports of
law cases in Norman French, that he was fond of old French literature, and
read Rabelais in the perplexing French of the original. It is mentioned in
some accounts of his life that he was elected in 1811 to the New York
House of Assembly by a party called the malcontents, but I have not had
the means of verifying this account, nor am I able to discover what were
the objects for which the party called malcontents was formed. In this
year an incident occurred of more importance to him than his election to
the Assembly.
On the 8th of August, 1811, the Annual Commencement of Columbia College
was held in Trinity Church. Among those who were to receive the degree of
Bachelor of Arts was a young man named Stevenson, who had composed an
oration to be delivered on the platform. It contained some passages of a
political nature, insisting on the duty of a representative to obey the
will of his constituents. Political parties were at that time much
exasperated against each other, and Dr. Wilson of the College, to whom the
oration was submitted, acting it was thought at the suggestion of Dr. John
Mason, the eloquent divine, who was then Provost of the College, struck
out the passages in question and directed that they should be omitted in
the delivery. Stevenson spoke them notwithstanding, and was then privately
informed by one of the professors that his degree would be denied him.
Yet, when the diplomas were delivered, he mounted the platform with the
other graduates and demanded the degree of Dr. Mason. It was refused
because of his disobedience. Mr. Hugh Maxwell, afterwards eminent as an
advocate, sprang upon the platform and appealed to the audience against
this denial of what he claimed to be the right of Stevenson. Great
confusion followed, shouts, applauses and hisses, in the midst of which
Verplanck appeared on the platform saying: "The reasons are not
satisfactory; Mr. Maxwell must be supported," and then he moved "that the
thanks of the audience be given to Mr. Maxwell for his spirited defence of
an injured man." It was some time before the tumult could be allayed, the
audience taking part with the disturbers; but the result was that Maxwell,
Verplanck, and several others were prosecuted for riot in the Mayor's
Court. DeWitt Clinton was then Mayor of New York. In his charge to the
jury he inveighed with great severity against the accused, particularly
Verplanck, of whose conduct he spoke as a piece of matchless impudence,
and declared the disturbance to be one of the grossest and most shameless
outrages he had ever known. They were found guilty; Maxwell, Verplanck,
and Stevenson were fined two hundred dollars each, and several others
less. An appeal was entered by the accused but afterwards withdrawn. I
have heard one of our judges express a doubt whether this disturbance
could properly be considered as a riot, but they did not choose to avail
themselves of the doubt, if there was any, and submitted.
There is this extenuation of the rashness of these young men, that Dr.
Mason, to whom was attributed the attempt to suppress certain passages in
Stevenson's oration, was himself in the habit of giving free expression to
his political sentiments in the pulpit. He belonged to the federal party,
Stevenson to the party then called republican.
I have said the accused submitted; but the phrase is scarcely accurate.
Verplanck took his own way of obtaining redress, and annoyed Clinton with
satirical attacks for several years afterward. Some of these appeared in a
newspaper called the _Corrector_, but those which attracted the most
attention, were the pamphlets styled Letters of Abimelech Coody, Ladies'
Shoemaker, the first of which was published in 1811, addressed to Dr.
Samuel Latham Mitchell.
The war went on until Clinton or some friend was provoked to answer in a
pamphlet entitled An Account of Abimelech Coody and other celebrated
Worthies of New York, in a Letter from a Traveller. The writer saterizes
not only Verplanck, but James K. Paulding and Washington Irving, of whose
History of New York he speaks disparagingly. In what he says of Verplanck
he allows himself to refer to his figure and features as subjects of
ridicule. This war I think was closed by the publication of "The Bucktail
Bards," as the little volume is called, which contains The State
Triumvirate, a Political Tale, and the Epistles of Brevet Major Pindar
Puff. These I have heard spoken of as the joint productions of Verplanck
and Rudolph Bunner, a scholar and a man of wit. The State Triumvirate is
in octo-syllabic verse, and in the manner of Swift, but the allusions are
obscure, and it is a task to read it. The notes, in which the hand of
Verplanck is very apparent, are intelligible enough and are clever,
caustic and learned. The Epistles, which are in heroic verse, have
striking passages, and the notes are of a like incisive character. De Witt
Clinton, then Governor of the State, valued himself on his devotion to
science and literature, but he was sometimes obliged, in his messages and
public discourses, to refer to compends which are in every body's hands,
and his antagonists made this the subject of unsparing ridicule.
In the family of Josiah Ogden Hoffman, lived Mary Eliza Fenno, the sister
of his wife, and daughter of John Ward Fenno, originally of Boston, and
afterwards proprietor of a newspaper published in Philadelphia, entitled
the _Gazette of the United States_. Between this young lady and Verplanck
there grew up an attachment, and in 1811 they were married. I have seen an
exquisite miniature of her by Malbone, taken in her early girlhood when
about fifteen years old--beautiful as an angel, with light chestnut hair
and a soft blue eye, in the look of which is a touch of sadness, as if
caused by some dim presentiment of her early death. I remember hearing
Miss Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for
having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to
him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness
natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him
on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings. She
playfully chides him for wandering from the Apostolic Church to hear
popular preachers and clerks that sing well; which she regards as crimes
against the memory of his ancestors--an allusion to that part of the
family pedigree which traced his descent in some way from the royal line
of the Stuarts. She rallies him on his passion for old books, remarking
that some interesting works had just appeared which must be kept from him
till he reaches the age of three score, when they will be fit for his
perusal. She writes to him from Boston, that he is accounted there an
amazingly plain spoken man--he had called the Boston people heretics. She
writes to him in Stratford, imagining him in Bishop Berkeley's arm-chair,
surrounded by family pictures and huge folios. These letters were
carefully preserved by her husband till his death, along with various
memorials of her whom he had lost; locks of her sunny brown hair, the
diamond ring which he had placed on her finger when they were engaged to
each other, wrapt in tresses of the same bright hair, and miniatures of
her, which the family never heard of till he died; all variously disposed
among the papers in the drawers of his desk; so that whenever he opened
it, he might be reminded of her, and her memory might become a part of his
daily life. With these were preserved some letters of his own, written to
her about the same time, and of a sportive character. In one of these he
laments the passing away of the good old customs, and simple ways of
living in the country, supplanted by the usages of town life. Everybody
was then reading Coelebs in Search of a Wife, and Verplanck who had just
been looking over some of the writings of Wilberforce, sees in it
resemblances to his style, which led him to set down Wilberforce as the
author.
He lived with his young wife five years, and she bore him two sons, one of
whom died at the age of thirty unmarried, and the other has become the
father of a numerous family. Her health failing he took her to Europe, in
the hope that it might be restored by a change of air and scene, but after
languishing a while she died at Paris, in the year 1817. She sleeps in the
cemetery of Pere La Chaise, among monuments inscribed with words strange
to her childhood, while he, after surviving her for sixty-three years, yet
never forgetting her, is laid in the ancestral burying ground at Fishkill,
and the Atlantic ocean rolls between their graves.
He remained in Europe a little while after this event, and having looked
at what the continent had to show him, went over to England. In his
letters to his friends at home he spoke pathetically of the loss of her
who was the blessing of his life, of the delight with which, had she
lived, she would have looked at so many things in the old world now
attracting his attention; and of the misfortune of his children to be
deprived of her care and guidance. In one of his letters he speaks
enthusiastically of the painter, Allston, with whose genius he was deeply
impressed as he looked on the grand picture of Daniel interpreting the
Dream of Belshazzar, then begun but never to be finished. In the same
letter he relates this anecdote: