The Book of New York by Robert Shackleton

Author:Robert Shackleton [Shackleton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV - Above Forty-Second

NEW YORK is a clubable city. Every New Yorker is supposed to belong to at least one club. Many belong to many clubs. Some join so many clubs as to seem to be trying to make a collection of clubs. Fifth Avenue gives the impression of having a great proportion of the clubs: and it does really have some of the best or most interesting, from the Salmagundi, with its new home far down toward Washington Arch, to the ''Millionaires' Club," the Metropolitan, opposite lower Central Park.

The most interesting of New York clubs have some special tang or atmosphere or character, from their representing the fine fleur of art or the stage or science or literature; and in this they follow the example of the early clubs of the city.

The first New York club that was worthy the name of a club was the Friendly Club, organized shortly before the Revolution. That "Washington, when he lived in New York, liked to visit its rooms, would alone be sufficient to mark it as a club most highly worthwhile, and it had among its members such interesting men as Charles Brockden Brown, who cut such a figure over a century ago only to become entirely forgotten, and the still famous James Kent, Kent of the Commentaries, one of the great lawyers, great judges, great legal writers of the English-speaking world; and it would be curious, were it not, for New York, so entirely typical, that he is not thought of as a New Yorker by this city where his fame was won! Had he lived in, let us say, Boston, and had done such permanent work, you would keep running against his statue, you would constantly keep reading about him, you would not be permitted to forget that he was a Bostonian. But while he was alive. New York honored him, and when he died his funeral was attended by an immense throng, and flags hung at half-mast all over the city and even on many ships in the harbor.

The second club of importance was the Bread and Cheese, founded in 1824: and that the club was founded by James Fenimore Cooper and had among its members such men as William Cullen Bryant and Fitz-Greene Halleck made it a club with typical New York tang. Bread and cheese were used in balloting for membership, bread meaning the affirmative and cheese the negative. Cooper himself has never been considered a New Yorker, because he betook himself to Cooperstown, and identified himself with that place, and died there; but he had so much to do with New York, and was here so long and so often, that any other city than this great indifferent city would be busily engaged in claiming him. But at the time of his death New York remembered him long enough to hold two special meetings to honor his memory: Washington Irving presided at the first, and Daniel Webster, with Irving sitting at his right, presided at the second.

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