At first, it might seem F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eudora Welty, and E. B. White have little in common, other than their country of birth and their line of work. But when they were growing up, these writers all were devoted readers of the same publication: St. Nicholas, the monthly magazine for children. Founded in 1873, St. Nicholas delighted and instructed children for almost 70 years.
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January 2011
George Washington received a jackass from the King of Spain this month. His Highness didn’t intend it as an affront, nor did the retired general interpret it as one; in fact, Washington was delighted. The master of Mount Vernon had learned of the “longevity and cheap keeping” of mules and, being an avid experimenter, had decided to breed a strain that would render the farm horse obsolete. Because most American mules were uselessly small, the stock for the animal Washington envisioned would have to come from abroad, and from Spain, if possible, where there existed a variety of jackass so prized for its size and strength that exporting it for breeding was forbidden by a royal edict.
On the afternoon of December 8, the world’s wealthiest man collapsed on the floor of the study in his Fifth Avenue mansion and died of a cerebral hemorrhage. William H. Vanderbilt, financier and “Colossus of Roads,” had ruled a web of rail that spun from New York to Buffalo and from there to points west, southwest, and beyond. He was a hard man, “public be damned” arrogance, unsavory business dealings, and all. But he had learned in a hard school.
As the eldest son of Cornelius, the Commodore, the self-made multimillionaire, William was expected to enter and eventually take over the family business. As a youth, however, his sickliness and only average abilities so enraged his father that when he was twenty-one, the Commodore banished him with his wife to a small Staten Island farm. When William mortgaged the land to enlarge his holdings, his father reportedly said: “You don’t amount to a row of pins … I have made up my mind to have nothing more to do with you.” William struggled on, adding 280 acres to the original 70 and steadily increasing his profits.
They were drawn like moths to the lights of New York City: amateur fiddlers and piano players, singers, tap dancers, and yodelers, mimics and comedians from all over the country. Many sold their properly to pay for the trip, some hitchhiked, and others rode freight trains into town. Their object: to audition for what was declared the nation’s favorite radio program on December 1—“Major Bowes’ Original Amateur Hour.”
Peggy Robbins’s article “The Oddest of Characters” on Constantine Rafinesque (June/July 1985) summed up the life of the man sensitively and delightfully. At Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, where his bones are entombed, Rafinesque is an enigma, and therefore intriguing. He has become a part of campus tradition and rumor. Regrettably it was here that his belongings were cast out into a hallway and he was asked to leave the campus. Today his eccentric genius would be welcomed.
The portrait which you somewhat tentatively identify as Rafinesque is a reproduction of an enamel miniature painted by William Birch (1735–1834). It was purchased by Transylvania University in 1938 and definitely is Rafinesque’s likeness.
In the June/July issue the article “Britain’s Yankee Whaling Town” mentioned that Milford Haven’s street plan might have been adopted from New York. Although New York City had some streets at right angles in 1793 when Milford Haven was first laid out, the gridiron street plan of New York above Houston Street was commissioned in 1807 and completed in 1811. It is referred to as the Commissioners’ Map and was based on a survey by the engineer John Randel, Jr. It is on display at the Museum of the City of New York.
In the August/September issue, you noted that August 10 would be the one-hundredth anniversary of the first commercially operated streetcars, which started running in Baltimore. It is interesting to note that the designer and builder of the Baltimore system was named Daft, and an eminent scientist of that time declared him a “knave or a fool” for thinking it possible to undertake such a project. The system used an exposed third rail in the center to power little electric locomotives that pulled one horsecar each. At cross streets, however, power was taken from an overhead electrified pipe by means of a crude copper collector. The system wore out after four years, and the line reverted to “oat power.”
Meanwhile, in January 1888 and 145 miles south of Baltimore, Frank Julian Sprague completed the first entirely successful installation of electric streetcars in Richmond, Virginia. Sprague’s system used the now familiar trolley pole and overhead wire system that eventually became universal, along with reduction gears to enable the electric motors to drive heavy cars up steep grades.
FOR A DEBUTANTE in turn-of-the-ceiitury New York, the highest mark of approval was having Peter Marié request a miniature portrait. Marié, a descendant of French planters in Santo Domingo and a beau of the old school, had made a fortune in New York before retiring at the age of forty in 1865. He went to all the grandest parties, entertained, belonged to New York’s best clubs. And he greatly admired beautiful women. The lifelong bachelor did more than admire them; he asked for their likenesses, acquiring so many that his house on Nineteenth Street became an informal museum of Society beauties. Even at the time, his habit was not merely old-fashioned, it was retrograde; by the 1880s, photography had long since taken hold, and the art of miniature painting was all but dead.