'The Legend'

 

[This post is about Washington Irving and the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  Before you get into the report on the centerpiece of that celebration, I want to point out some older posts on Rick On Theater that pertain to Irving (though they’re not all related the famous tale).

[In 2010, I posted six “Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle” (13-28 August) on the subject of New York theater, written in 1802 and 1803.  (Jonathan Oldstyle was one of the pseudonyms Irving used.)  On 25 November 2009, I posted “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow: Children’s Theater in America,” a report on theater for young audiences in which I used a production of a musical adaptation of the story by my friend Kirk Woodward as a model to discuss making theater for children.

[In “A Helluva Town, Part 3” (9 January 2012), I included a section on “‘Knickerbocker’ and Sleepy Hollow,” a short piece on the origins of the use of the name Knickerbocker in New York and a little history of the name Sleepy Hollow (which is retold below as well).]

Washington Irving (1783-1859), often called the Father of American Literature, published the second of his two most famous short stories, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” in 1820 (the first was “Rip Van Winkle,” published in 1819). 

Irving was born in New York City, but because of a yellow fever outbreak in the city in 1798, his family sent him 30 miles north to stay with friends in Tarrytown, where he first became familiar with the stories and legends around the nearby town that’s now called Sleepy Hollow.

In “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Irving wrote:

There is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world.  A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose. . . .  From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow . . . .  The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.

In 1835, he bought property in Tarrytown and he moved there from New York City.  During the early colonial period, place names were pretty much traditional: someone came up with a name for a settlement, a village, or a valley, and if it stuck, that’s what it was called. 

The village of Tarrytown seems to have been established under that name, based on an earlier Dutch appellation, in the 17th century.  (The English took over the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1674 and many Dutch names were either translated or anglicized.)  The village was incorporated as Tarrytown in 1870.

The little village seven miles north of Tarrytown, however, had a slightly different story.  When it was part of New Netherland, around 1655, the area around it was dubbed Slapershaven or, literally, Sleepers’ Haven.  After the English took control, the area and the village assumed several different informal names.  In 1874, the village incorporated as North Tarrytown.

Sleepy Hollow—derived, I imagine, from an English approximation of the traditional Dutch designation Slapershaven—was then only a made-up name created in the imagination of Washington Irving.  It seems to have existed as a common usage for places, such as the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (which Irving himself named) of the Old Dutch Church and Sleepy Hollow Manor, an upscale residential neighborhood with historic homes; but not the village of North Tarrytown. 

That is, until 1996, when the residents of North Tarrytown voted two to one to rename the village Sleepy Hollow to capitalize on the famous story and to differentiate it from Tarrytown.  Once the legalities (such as notifying the U.S. Postal Service) were completed, the town where Irving’s famous and popular story is set, was finally a real place, named on maps of the state and the county of Westchester.

(In an amusing sidebar, the football team of the former North Tarrytown high school is named The Horsemen.  That ranks right up there with the sports teams from the Key West school in Florida, whose name is The Fighting Conchs.)

Around this time of year, the New York area Irving christened “Sleepy Hollow Country,” which includes not only the village formerly known as North Tarrytown, but Tarrytown itself and the nearby village of Dearman, which in 1854 renamed itself Irvington in honor of the famous writer who was living in Tarrytown, bustles with visitors looking for a Halloween experience.

For most of the country, at least in the Northeast, Salem, Massachusetts, has claimed the title of Halloween capital of the world.  But Sleepy Hollow is putting up a challenge now.  Irving’s “Legend” is, after all, arguably the most iconic ghost story in the country’s literature.  Sleepy Hollow Country is a natural Halloween tourist destination.

Year round, there are sites related to “Legend,” starting with the Old Dutch Church, where the Headless Horseman started his ride.  It still stands in Sleepy Hollow since 1699, with the Old Dutch Burying Ground where the graves of Katrina Van Tassell and Abraham Martling (the model for Brom Bones), prominent characters in Irving’s tale, can be found.  (There are tours of the church and cemetery.)

Next to the burial ground in the churchyard is the contiguous, but separate Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where, aside from Washington Irving himself, a number of famous people are buried, including Andrew Carnegie, Walter P. Chrysler, Brooke Astor, and Elizabeth Arden).

Also in Sleepy Hollow is a bridge over the Pocantico River with a historical marker that reads: “The Headless Horseman Bridge described by Irving in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow formerly spanned this stream at this spot.”  It’s not the actual bridge, which was replaced long ago, and the location of the span Irving knew was in reality further upstream within Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, but never mind . . . .

In Tarrytown is Sunnyside, the home of Washington Irving from 1835 until his death in 1859 (of a heart attack at 76).  Before Irving bought the property and built Sunnyside, the land was owned until 1802 by the Van Tassel family.  There are events staged here relating to “Legend” and the house is open for tours as well.

“People want to believe in ghosts and things like that,” observed Mayor Ken Wray of Sleepy Hollow, “and it’s fun to do that.  And then you get here and you get into the woods, you get into the cemetery and go ‘Yeah, I could see this happening here.’“

There are other curious sights in Sleepy Hollow Country which aren’t associated with “Legend,” one of which is in Irvington (3 miles south of Tarrytown and another half mile further on to Sleepy Hollow).  Built in 1859-60, the Armour-Stiner House (aka: the Octagon House) is, aside from its architectural oddity, supposed to be haunted.  (It’s been featured in several horror films, such as 1981’s The Nesting.)

Sleepy Hollow Country has also built up its catalogue of Halloween events, including many that aren’t related to Irving’s scary tale.  The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in Croton-on-Hudson displays over 7,000 elaborately carved, illuminated pumpkins.

Sleepy Hollow itself, however, was the scene of a new attraction this fall that was very specifically planned to relate to “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  It’s creators had been working on it for two years.

Since the reason for adopting the name Sleepy Hollow was largely to increase focus on the town’s connection to Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and the association with Irving himself, who lived in Tarrytown and died there, but is buried in Sleepy Hollow, what could be more natural than to host a big celebration of the bicentennial anniversary of the story’s publication?

But that was going to be in 2020, right in the middle of the COVID pandemic.  So the celebration was postponed (twice) and this fall, the town mounted a special, 90-minute performance called The Legend that ran weekends from Friday, 23 September, through Sunday, 23 October.  (The production had originally been scheduled to close on 16 October, but its popularity resulted in a week’s extension.)

The Legend, in the words of its own promotional material, was “created and performed by Westchester Circus Arts” and presented by the Village of Sleepy Hollow (with a grant from New York State).  It makes “groundbreaking use of holograms of Washington Irving and the Headless Horseman, combined with live action circus performers to tell the story” of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” to commemorate its 200th anniversary.  (The actors whose images were digitized for the holograms weren’t identified.)

Performances were mounted in a large blue-and-yellow circus tent on the banks of the Hudson River in Sleepy Hollow’s East Parcel, the former parking lot of the now-closed General Motors automobile assembly plant on the west side of the village. 

(The plant, known as North Tarrytown Assembly, was closed by GM and transferred to the Village of Sleepy Hollow in 1996.  The 90 acres is split into two parcels by New York State’s Metro-North commuter railroad tracks.  The west side of the tracks is dedicated to mostly residential development; the East Parcel, as the other half is called, is used for public works facilities and amenities for public recreation.)

On the production’s own website (The Legend (sleepyhollowlegend.com)), Westchester Circus Arts describes The Legend as “a simmering adaptation of Washington Irving’s iconic ghost story, ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’  Audiences will be treated to a cirque/theatre noir production with narration by Washington Irving himself—in hologram form.”  (The Legend was recommended for viewers ages 10 and up, but younger children attended the performances and cheered and gasped right along with their older peers.)

(Cirque, contemporary circus, new circus, or nouveau cirque is a genre of performing arts developed in the early 1970s to the mid-1980s in which a story or theme is conveyed through traditional circus skills.  Theatre noir, as far as I can determine, is, in this usage, to theater what film noir is to cinema.)

For those who don’t already know Irving’s “Legend,” the WCA retelling, created, produced, and written by Carlo Pellegrini of Westchester Circus Arts and directed by Hilary Sweeney, WCA’s founder, is set in Sleepy Hollow and “Tarry Town” (as Irving styled it) in the early 1800s.  Irving, in the form of a hologram (created by the Montreal-based Neweb Labs), returns in the present day to tell us what he really meant by “the legend.”  

The story follows schoolteacher Ichabod Crane (played by Justin Durham, hand balancer and straps artist) who has, of late, been down on his luck but finds adventure when he accepts an invitation to teach the children of Sleepy Hollow.

Everything changes when the beautiful heiress of the Van Tassel fortune, Katrina Van Tassel (Zoë Isadora, third generation circus artist—a member of the famous “Flying Wallendas” family), enters the ballroom of her father’s (Carlo Pellegrini) holiday party by performing a seductive aerial ballet on silks.  Ichabod is stricken by his good fortune and believes he has the savoir faire to win Katrina’s hand—and her father’s money.

When Katrina’s presumed beau, Brom Bones (Mickey Lonsdale, comedic actor and acrobatic dancer), sees Katrina’s interest in Ichabod, the game’s afoot!  Ichabod finds himself involved in what may become a deadly love triangle, spurred by Brom’s practical—and perhaps fatal—jokes.  

What neither suitor realizes is that Katrina possesses a “very particular set of skills” and can summon “the Haunting Spirit” (Doug Stewart of Cirque Us) with incantations reminiscent of The Exorcist.  The intrigue mounts: is the “Haunting Spirit” the ghostly and ghastly Headless Horseman villagers see at night in pursuit of his prey?  Or is it something else that causes Ichabod to vanish suddenly one night in an epic battle between Light and Dark?

In addition to the cirque theatricalization of the storytelling, the WCA presentation is modernized for 21st-century audiences.  Katrina is “much more than the pretty face” that encourages the competition between Ichabod and Brom Bones.

“We figured, let’s bring it up to contemporary times and make Katrina that powerful woman who almost becomes the leader of the story,” revealed director Sweeney.

Producing The Legend had been a years-long effort by the Village of Sleepy Hollow’s administrator and grant writer, Anthony Giaccio and Fiona Matthew.  They re-engaged longtime collaborators Westchester Circus Arts to create a show that would celebrate the bicentennial of the publication of Irving’s story.  WCA had begun exploring the concept of holograms as part of the cirque performance with Neweb Labs to find out if the idea was possible for the bicentennial’s true date, two years ago. 

Westchester Circus Arts is a 10-year-old, woman-owned business, founded by circus artist Hilary Sweeney.  An aerialist for over 15 years, she’s performed in Cirque le Masque’s Carnivale, Above the Belt Off-Broadway at the Zipper Theater, Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, ImaginAerial, Grounded Aerial, and more.  Prior to her circus career she trained from the age of 5 in ballet.

Sweeney’s co-director, Carlo Pellegrini, is a veteran circus performer with over 40 years of professional circus experience who traveled the world with Lichtenstein Circus, Big Apple Circus, and Nikolais Dance Theater.  He’s a social circus educator and founder of Amazing Grace Circus, a community circus with a social purpose.

(According to the American Circus Educators Association, “Social Circus refers to the use of circus arts as a medium for social justice and individual wellness and uplifts the role of art and culture as powerful agents for change.  Social Circus practitioners support participants as creative change makers through the collective development of self-esteem, solidarity, and trust.”)

The tale is told by Irving, who’s the only character in The Legend who speaks.  “I came back 200 years later to explain what I really meant by the legend,” says the virtual Irving . . . and the show begins.

The five live performers interpret the spirit and emotional content of the story with acrobatics and circus arts.  Most of the action is center stage, but some of the performances are aerial work above the audience’s heads.

“Thanks to a pulley system stage-right,” reported John Soltes of Hollywood Soapbox, “the performers swing about from various rigs, always amazing the crowd below.”  The pulleys are operated in full view of the spectators, schooling them in the theatrical magic that goes on behind the scenes of such flying circus acts.  (It’s a peek behind the Wizard’s curtain in Oz!)

Among the more grounded work included performers balancing on their hands on wooden poles and juggling—using apples to match the spirit of the season.  The duel between Ichabod and Brom Bones, showing off Durham’s and Lonsdale’s acrobatic skills, consisted of jumping and rolling on a barrel that served as a platform.

Soltes proclaimed the presentation “a marvel to behold” on Hollywood Soapbox replete with “Gothic romance, . . . fearful trepidation, . . . dastardly villainy.”  Durham and Isadora “dazzle as would-be lovers” as they “couple obvious physical strength with touching artistry.” 

Describing the virtual recreation of Iriving as “exquisite hologram technology,” which “allows the performers to focus on their physical work and not have to remember any lines of dialogue,” Soltes advised that “audience members should strap in for a wild ride.”

He admonished ticket-holders, however, “not [to] go in expecting the death-defying feats that larger circus companies employ; instead, they should sit back and enjoy the stunning singularity and intimacy of the one-on-one cirque experience.” 

Soltes concluded by affirming that “The Legend is an enjoyable entry in the Halloween season of Sleepy Hollow Country,” adding, “One hopes that Westchester Circus Arts and the Village of Sleepy Hollow make this legendary Legend an annual tradition.”  (He wasn’t the only reviewer to express such a wish.)

On Woman Around Town, a website that offers guides for women to New York City and Washington, D.C., MJ Hanley-Goff began by describing the start of her Legend experience: “The flaps of the circus tent whipping from the winds coming over the Hudson River was a perfect, though most likely unintended, special effect during a preview performance.” 

Hanley-Goff went on to give a general run-down of the show:

With a “cirque theatre performance,” three of the main characters swing about the stage in an “aerial ballet” telling the story about an innocent schoolteacher who falls under the spell of the seductress, Katrina, and is out to win her hand.  Standing in his way is another suitor, Brom Bones, and the two end up in a battle that is more a gymnastic dance than street brawl, as a dark spirit spirals his way across the flowing drapes hanging from the circus top.  

News 12 Connecticut, an outlet of a group of regional cable news channels in the New York metropolitan area that provides news coverage 24 hours a day, labeled The Legend a “horrifying and thrilling entertainment experience.”

Debra C. Argen and Edward F. Nesta proclaimed The Legend “spectacular and mesmerizing” on the website Luxury Experience, an online consumer resource.  They found that “its gravity-defying aerial work . . . had our hearts pounding with excitement, and the acrobatic groundwork . . . added another essential element of surprise and daring to the nuanced performance.”

The writers found the holographic Irving’s description “[h]auntingly narrated” and “[d]eftly and creatively told,” and reported that the performance “had us on the edge of our seats with the hairs on the back of our necks sticking up as we watched the legendary tale unfold above and around us.”

Because “the performers are well-versed in their disciplines,” the writers deemed “their performances . . . engaging and dynamic.”  They affirmed, “We love the contemporary cirques, and Westchester Circus Arts was truly brilliant,” singling out “the exhilarating aerial work performed by Justin Durham, Doug Stewart, and Zoë Isadora.”

Argen and Nesta declared that attending The Legend was “the perfect way to get a jump start on Halloween!”  The production provided “a sensational . . . experience,” the writers asserted, adding, “If you love Halloween, you must see The LEGEND.”

A Helluva Town, Part 3

[On 15 and 18 August 2011, I ran a pair of articles on a collection of oddities and peculiarities about New York City. As big as this city is, and as old, there are plenty of those, so I’ve decided to compose a third installment of “Helluva Town.” If I come up with more interesting items unique to the Big Apple (explained in Part 2), I may very well write up additional installments of “HT.” (Let that serve as a BOLO: Be On the Look Out.)]

NEW YORK TIME

What other city, state, or region has a unit of time named after it? Especially one recognized, however derisively, by nearly everyone else? Is there anyone who speaks English who doesn’t know what “in a New York minute” means? I doubt it.

(Just to be clear, we’re not talking about the junk movie starring the Olson Twins from 2004 or the 1989 rock song by Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar, and Jai Winding covered by the Eagles in 1995. The phrase also served as the title of an episode of Law & Order in 2005—as well as other films, songs, and a video game.)

For those few who don’t know the term (have you all been living under a rock?), it means a very short span of time, a millisecond, a trice, faster than a speeding bullet, et cetera. (Some people say “New York second”—but they’re probably not from here!) “Officially,” a “New York minute” is defined (reportedly by Johnny Carson) as the time between a Manhattan traffic light turning green in front of you and the driver behind you blowing his or her horn. Clear?

The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) suggests that the term wasn’t actually coined in the Big Apple. (Texas in the mid-’60s is one possible origin.) Speculation is that it’s the notion of the fast-paced life here in New York City in the mind of someone from a less-hectic spot in rural America. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong! It just takes a Texan (or whoever) a whole minute to do what we here-abouts do in less than a second. So—waste time if you wanna. No skin off my nose! (Unless, of course, you’re in front of me when that light changes! In that case—fuggedaboudit!)

* * * *

Now, speaking of New York time-keeping: A 27-story building across 14th Street from the south end of Union Square Park is the location of perhaps the World’s Most Confusing Clock. There are lots of street clocks all over New York City, some old, some new, some lovely and ornamental, some plain and utilitarian, some analogue, and some digital, but “New York's very own time machine,” as the New York Times characterized it, is built into the façade of the luxury apartment house at 1 Union Square South which opened in 1998.

Completed in July 1999, Metronome, as the timepiece is called, was dedicated that October. Fifteen numerals endlessly count the hours, minutes, and seconds, and a few feet to their right, on a rippling wall measuring 60 feet by 100 feet, steam (“The Infinity”) periodically belches out of a five-foot, gold-rimmed hole (“The Vortex”). At the top of the circle, made of 24-carat gold-leafed bricks, is a huge hand, called “The Relic,” a bronze enlargement of one of George Washington’s hands in the equestrian statue across 14th Street in the southern plaza of Union Square. Below the steam aperture is a large piece of bedrock representing the geological history of the city. An electronic tone sounds at midnight and noon and a gold-and-black sphere spins in sync with the lunar phases. The husband-and-wife artists who created Metronome, Andrew Ginzel and Kristin Jones, say that the various elements of the work represent not only clock time, but geological and astronomical time as well.

The 15 digits of the time display, called “The Passage,” tell the time both elapsed from midnight and left till next midnight, all according to International Atomic Time; Metronome’s linked to an atomic clock for that purpose. The time is displayed in a military-like 24-hour format. For instance, in the numbers 090742000185214, the first six figures, read in pairs from the left, show that 9 hours, 7 minutes, and 42 seconds have passed since last midnight (in other words, it’s 9:07:46 a.m.), and the last six, read from the right, show that 14 hours, 52 minutes, and 18 seconds remain until the next midnight. The seventh digit from each end represents tenths of a second and the number in the middle, an unreadable flash of changing figures, is hundredths of a second. The three center numbers, the artists explain, become “a frenzy of intangible fractions of seconds, which reveal the pace of life in the city.”

During 2005, Metronome did not tell the time; it counted down the hours until the International Olympic Committee announced the 2012 Summer Olympics host city. New York City was in contention for the games, a bid Mayor Bloomberg boosted but which the city lost to London (thank goodness!).

Metronome, at $4.2 million, was one of the city's largest privately funded public art commissions in the ’90s. Ginzel and Jones, who’ve created many works of public art, call Metronome ''an ode to the impossibility of knowing Time.'' Not a few critics, both architecture writers and the public, found that a pretentious statement and have heaped opprobrium on the work. I’ve gotten used to it, but it holds little real meaning for me—and without an interpretation, I can’t remember what most of the symbolism stands for.

* * * *

A different kind of clock, which has become symbolic to the whole country in the last several years, doesn’t tell time at all: The National Debt Clock. We see an image of it whenever some politician wants to make a point in Congress about the current debt situation or when a newscast does a story on the subject. Before the necessary technology even existed, New York real estate developer Seymour Durst conceived of a National Debt Clock to call attention to the country’s soaring debt and each American family’s share of it. Durst installed the original clock, which used 306 individual light bulbs, on a Durst Organization building at the northwest corner of 6th Avenue and 42nd Street (facing Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library building) in February 1989, when the national debt was nearing $3 trillion.

In September 2000, when the prosperity of the 1990s resulted in the national debt slowly decreasing, the clock started to run backwards. The display wasn’t designed to go in reverse, however, and the clock was turned off and covered with a red, white, and blue curtain when the debt dropped to a steady $5.7 trillion. That didn’t last, and when the debt began to rise again, the clock was reactivated in July 2002, starting at $6.1 trillion. The current clock, whose high-resolution, dot-matrix numerals are designed to run backwards, replaced the original in 2004 on another Durst building at 44th Street and 6th Avenue. When the debt exceeded $10 trillion in September 2008, an additional digit was installed.

New York City’s National Debt Clock has inspired similar countdown clocks, including debt clocks in other countries as well as displays of other constantly changing figures like population growth.

THE CLOISTERS

Now, let’s go back in time—between six and nine centuries. Or just to 1938, if you prefer. In May of that year, The Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval-art complex, opened to the public. This is one of the true joys of living in New York City. Even if you aren’t a particular fan of medieval art—and I’m not—the presentation of the tapestries, sculptures, and sarcophagi in this beautiful setting in Fort Tryon Park in far northern Manhattan is just awe-inspiring. At The Cloisters, the display is as much the star of the show as the 5,000 artworks themselves. The collection also includes manuscripts, stained glass, metalwork, enamels, and ivories. (Trust me: if you are a fan of the art of the middle ages, you won’t be put off by the setting. It just makes the works more outstanding.) I don’t believe anything like The Cloisters exists anywhere else in the world. The fact that a place of such calm and pastoral peace is located in busy, hectic, often frenetic Manhattan is all the more astonishing.

Built with financial support from John D. Rockefeller, the building is constructed from architectural elements of five medieval French cloistered abbeys dating from the 12th to the 15th centuries, reassembled brick by brick between 1934 and 1938 on a hill overlooking the Hudson River. The former cloisters themselves are gardens today, planted according to horticultural information obtained from medieval manuscripts and artifacts, where visitors can take a moment’s respite from wandering the chapels and halls of the abbeys examining the art pieces in environments not too different from the ones in which they’d originally have been seen. (One of the cloister gardens, which all have slightly different delicate, slim columns around their arcade, is a small café where visitors can get a snack or have tea or a soft drink.) It goes without saying (but I will anyway) that the best time to visit The Cloisters is on a really nice day in spring or fall—though it’s certainly beautiful in summer or winter as well.

The basis of the museum’s holdings is the private collection of George Grey Barnard, an American sculptor and collector of medieval art. Rockefeller purchased Barnard's collection and donated it, along with a number of his own pieces—including the famous (and spectacular) Netherlandish Unicorn tapestries, displayed in a gallery of their own—to the Met. Rockefeller also bought over 65 acres of land along the riverfront for the park and site for the new museum (which occupies four acres), and even bought several hundred acres of the Jersey Palisades and donated them to the State of New Jersey to protect the museum’s unspoiled vista across the Hudson. (Say what you will about this famous industrialist, but this was truly a wonderful gift to the residents and visitors of New York City. Easily accessible by public transportation, Fort Tryon Park is admission-free and entrance to The Cloisters is modest—suggested donation for adults: $15—gaining visitors same-day admission to the Met as well.)

Since 1987, the surrounding area of Fort Tryon Park is turned over to the Medieval Festival for one day each October. The park is transformed into a medieval market town festooned with banners and flags where performers and visitors appear in period dress. Festival-goers are treated to authentic music, dance, magic of the middle ages. Minstrels, jugglers, and jesters ply the grounds, and costumed vendors demonstrate and sell medieval crafts and food and drink. The afternoon concludes with a jousting tournament among four mounted knights. Like the park itself, entrance to the Medieval Festival is free.

EGG CREAM

Nearly everyone knows something that’s uniquely identified with New York City, whether it’s the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Yankees, an expression like fuggedaboudit, or Manhattan clam chowder. One of the most enduring is the egg cream, especially associated with Brooklyn. For those who don’t know about egg creams, it’s a drink, sort of in the category of the ice cream soda or the milkshake . . . but different. An egg cream—which has neither eggs nor cream among its ingredients—is almost exclusively a fountain drink, making it harder and harder to find even in the Big Apple since soda fountains are becoming scarcer and scarcer. (A few attempts have been made to bottle egg creams, but it doesn’t really work—it has to be made fresh just before you drink it or it won’t get a head on it. You can make it at home—recipe follows—but somehow that doesn’t really work as well, either. Bottled seltzer doesn’t have the fizz that soda from a siphon has and the outcome is flat and limp.)

My grandfather was a pharmacist in New York City and when I was little, my greatest wish was to make my own fountain drink at his drug store; a real egg cream would have been my dream come true! It’s made from chocolate syrup, milk, and seltzer (that’s soda water for you deprived folks from somewhere else—also known as “two cents plain”) and probably dates from the late 19th century. I suppose you could look on it as an ice cream soda without the ice cream—if you wanted to be a killjoy.

The legend is that Brooklyn candy store owner Louis Auster invented it in 1890—but who knows. Others have laid claim to the honor as well. Even the origin of the name, egg cream, is unknown. There are many suggested sources, but none of them sound very convincing. One, for instance, is based on the German/Yiddish word echt, which means ‘real’ or ‘true’: the treat was made with echt cream, which became corrupted in English as egg cream. But since it isn’t even made with cream and no one calls it an egg milk, I don’t really buy that. The rest are even sillier.

The origin of the drink itself is less farfetched, though the stories are still undocumented. The most plausible is that it was a variation on the prototype of the milkshake, invented around 1885. Milkshakes, unlike the thick, creamy variation we know today, were originally made with cream, an egg, and flavored syrup mixed in a shaker until all foamy and then poured into a glass. Soda was added to the glass to finish the drink. To keep the cost low as prices rose, the eggs were eliminated and the cream was replaced with milk, giving birth to the egg cream. It cost about a nickel back in those days. (Unflavored seltzer sold for two cents, hence the name: “two cents plain.”) Recipes for drinks using the same name have been traced back to the late 19th century and to the years around World War I, but they were all slightly different than the egg cream we see in New York today.

The recipe for a modern egg cream is fairly simple, though it takes some practice and care to get it right. Take a large glass and pour in one part cold milk. You can froth the milk with a whisk or a frother if you have one. Whole milk works best; low-fat or skim milk will provide a wimpy egg cream—this is not a drink for the diet- or cholesterol-conscious. It’s an indulgence! Add two to three parts seltzer; a freshly opened bottle works best because the carbonation is still strong. (Club soda doesn’t yield a very good egg cream because it’s saltier than plain old seltzer. Fizzy mineral waters don’t work, either, because the bubbles are too small and weak. This ain’t an effete drink, either. Remember, it’s from Brooklyn!) If you own a soda siphon, you’re golden! Finally, squirt in up to a half inch of chocolate syrup, depending on how chocolaty you like your drink. (I understand that some people make the egg cream with vanilla syrup, but I say that’s phony. A real Brooklyn egg cream is chocolate and only chocolate.) You should stir the ingredients just a little very fast to preserve the layering, which is the mark of true Big Apple egg cream. You also don’t want to let all the fizz escape the seltzer with excessive agitating—there’s nothing worse than a flat egg cream! Finally, you’ve got to drink it right after it’s made. You can’t make an egg cream ahead of time and stash it in the fridge. It’s an impulse treat: you want it, you make it, you drink it.

GREENMARKETS

Back in ’89-’90, I had a temporary gig teaching at a state college in Oneonta, N.Y. That’s in the middle of the state, about five hours by car north of New York City. It’s in farm country—specifically dairy farm country. But do you know that I can get better, fresher, and more plentiful produce here in Gotham more easily than I could upstate? True. And the reason is: Greenmarket.

Founded in 1976, Greenmarket, run by a privately funded nonprofit organization, provides small farms the chance to sell locally grown products directly to consumers and ensures that New Yorkers can get the freshest locally grown food available. The idea started with 12 farmers at a single market at 59th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan and has grown to 53 sites all over the city (all five boroughs), representing almost 250 farms and other producers like fishermen and bakers. Greenmarket is the largest such enterprise in the country. The largest market is at Union Square, right in my own neighborhood (a half a block east), and customers come from all over the area, not just the city, to shop there four days a week. (A big draw every year are the special-order fresh turkeys at Thanksgiving and Christmas.) Even several of the restaurants in this neighborhood do some of their shopping at the Greenmarket.

There are some rules. The vendors can only sell what they grow, raise, or produce on their farms or other businesses. There’s no importing, reselling, or wholesaling. You won’t, for instance, find oranges in the Greenmarket—because no one around here grows them. If it’s out of season locally, the vendor can’t send off to Florida or Mexico for it and stock his stand. When the local tomatoes and corn are done for the year, you just have to go to the supermarket and get the stuff that sits in a warehouse somewhere for God-knows-how-long—or wait till next season. But while they’re in the fields (there are some hothouse tomatoes available all year ’round, of course—but the field-grown beefsteaks only last through the summer), they’re delicious and beat the store-bought tomatoes all to hell!

What’s more, the produce in the Greenmarket is ripe when I buy it. I can get tomatoes or peaches that won’t be ready to eat until the next day, but I never have to buy any that have been picked and shipped hard as a rock. The supermarket peaches have no flavor and the tomatoes aren’t much better (I never buy them in a store), but the fresh ones in the Greenmarket are the best-tasting fruits and veggies I ever eat. There are some things I won’t buy anywhere else anymore.

There are various sellers aside from straight farm produce, like bakers (bread, rolls, pies, cookies—you name it); jelly-makers; honey sellers; dairies that sell cheeses, yogurt, and ice cream alongside the milk and cream; even wineries. The non-farm products have to be made by the sellers and the ingredients have to be predominantly local. Some non-edible products are also sold, such as flowers and plants, candles, wreaths and decorative objects made from dried plants, and fleece.

My Greenmarket has a stand that sells potatoes of so many varieties, I’d never even seen some of them (including one that’s purple inside!), and one that has a dozen kinds of peppers displayed in bins arranged from mild to scalding hot! One preserves stand, along with the usual fruit jams and jellies and the different chutneys and relishes, carries a line of vegetable jellies like garlic and rosemary. They have a hot pepper jelly that I’ve discovered makes a fantastic condiment for pork and chicken and I always have a jar of it in my fridge. There are also more exotic products available, like squid, lemongrass, or bok choy (also catnip, for feline patrons)—all of it fresh. The produce has to be fresh-picked within days, depending on the product; most is picked within 24 hours of sale. (Lettuce or corn has to be the day before the sale or so, while potatoes and onions can be dug a little earlier.)

There aren’t any real restrictions on how far away the farm or fishery can be (as long as it’s “in the New York region”), though getting the products to market while they’re still fresh limits the distance a would-be vendor can travel. I get farmers not just from Long Island and Jersey, but from as far away as Pennsylvania. (A prospective Greenmarket vendor can wait years for a spot to become available in a popular market like Union Square.) I don’t know all the specific rules for the sellers, but it all adds up to the same basic result: the stuff’s all fresh and hasn’t been sitting on a truck or in a storeroom for weeks. I get a much longer shelf-life that way than I do with produce from a supermarket. Of course, since I only have to walk a half a block to replenish my supply, I don’t have to buy so much at one time.

BEEKMAN PALACE

Many towns have a haunted house or mysterious empty property around which legends and myths have grown up. New York City’s no different—except that maybe ours are bigger and, perhaps, stranger. One such site in the Big Apple is sometimes known as the Beekman Palace at 5 Beekman Street at the corner of Nassau Street, practically right across from City Hall Park. Properly known as Temple Court, a city landmark and once one of the best-known office buildings in New York, the building has an elaborate skylight and decorative ironwork that’s long been hidden from view in a vacant, deteriorated property. The ornate 129-year-old building was designated a city landmark in February 1998.

Temple Court, designed by Silliman & Farnsworth, was built by banker Eugene Kelly, who had amassed the 19th-century equivalent of $630 million by the time he died in 1894 at the age of 88. Put up in two stages beginning in 1881, the nine-story building, known first as the Kelly Building and redesignated Temple Court in 1882, was completed in 1883 as part of a wave of construction of tall, fireproof buildings with elevators that went up in lower Manhattan at the dawn of the skyscraper. The exterior features two pyramid-roofed corner towers climbing an additional story; the sole negative building review at the time of the landmarking described these as “donkey ears.” The earliest surviving building from that period, and only the third building erected in New York City after the introduction of elevators, it was extensively expanded in 1890. 5 Beekman Street is built around a central atrium soaring up nine stories to a pyramidal skylight, surrounded on every floor by Victorian iron railings, delicate Victorian iron balustrades ornamented with flowers, wings, sunbursts, spikes, and arabesques. Now restored, the iron-and-glass skylight looks up at the tower of the 54-floor Woolworth Building, another New York City architectural landmark, built 30 years later. For decades, since probably 1940 when the building was shuttered, the central atrium was walled off from public view. “I had no idea it existed,” recalled the daughter of one past owner in 1998. “I crawled under and went back in time.”

Temple Court went through an infelicitous renovation in the 1950s, with new walls and ceilings added. Above the false ceilings were cast-iron brackets shaped like roaring dragons, their tails whipping around, their scales reminiscent of shark's teeth, and their wings holding up the ceiling beams. The walls of the staircase that ascends the atrium are covered with patterned cast-iron paneling. Flat, mid-century walls hide deep, arched mahogany door and window frames that were almost untouched by the ugly drywall covering; much of the original tile work on the floors and walls is still intact. “We started uncovering things,” recalled an architect who’d been engaged to redecorate Temple Court in 1998, “and said, ‘Wait a minute. Why would you ever redecorate? You have to undecorate!’” Blogger Nick Carr of Scouting NY, who took dozens of terrific photos of the interior in November 2010, described the preservation of “the most beautiful atrium in New York City” due to its having been closed up for so many decades, as “a mosquito in amber.” Alex Herrera, the technical director of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, proposed giving Temple Court’s owners the ''King Tut Award'' for most successful entombment.

The space has been offered for photo shoots, videos, and films. For a November 2010 issue, Harper's Bazaar did a fashion layout there featuring the model Iman and scenes for the 2010 AMC cable TV series Rubicon were shot there, turning the site into the torture chamber of an East European prison.

Currently, the property owners are looking for a buyer. There’s a hang-up over some legal matter between the two companies which control the property, but the sellers are in negotiation with a company that wants to turn Temple Court into a hotel, restoring 5 Beekman Street to its turn-of-the-century grandeur and preserving the original details discovered under the 1950s disguise. The proposed 200-room luxury hotel would be called the Beekman Palace, and many people who’ve had contact with the building since its “rediscovery” in the late ’90s are fervently hoping it will happen. Carr of Scouting NY envisions “quite possibly the most unique hotel in all of New York City.” Even if we couldn’t afford to stay there, he points out, at least New Yorkers could walk in and “admire its beauty.”

“KNICKERBOCKER” AND SLEEPY HOLLOW

Washington Irving (1783-1859), one of the first American writers (with James Fenimore Cooper) to become famous in Europe, published The History of New-York in 1809, written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker. When I did some reading about Irving (I’ve also published some of his letters on ROT, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25, and 28 August 2010), I got curious about the name Knickerbocker. I wondered if the name used as a nickname for New Yorkers, especially those of Dutch origins, came from the name for the knee-pants or if there was a family name from which it derived, or if it meant something in Dutch. It turns out that it's entirely made up. Irving popularized Knickerbocker as a nickname for people and things New York, but he took it from a friend (and U.S. Representative from New York to the 11th Congress, 1809-11) named Herman Knickerbocker (1779-1855), who, in turn, was descended from an early Dutch settler in New Amsterdam, Harmen Jansen van Wijhe Knickerbacker (ca. 1650-ca. 1720), but Harmen Knickerbacker (a variant spelling, along with Knikkerbakker and Knickerbakker) made the name up when he arrived here. As far as I can tell, it was never a real name until then and it may not even have an etymological meaning in Dutch. (I didn't find one.)

The pants were named after the Knickerbocker family, who were known for wearing the short pants with long stockings, so that use doesn't date any further back than the early 19th century. (The German for the knee-pants we call knickerbockers or knickers is Kniebundhosen, literally 'knee-bound trousers.' I don't know what the Dutch word for them is.) Irving popularized the whole invented tradition of the New York Knickerbockers, the Dutch-descended elite of the former colony (akin to the Boston Brahmins) and perpetuated their habits and customs, such as the long-stemmed clay pipes the men smoked and the old-fashioned style of pants they wore long after the popular style had turned to trousers.

Virtually everything in New York that used or uses the name Knickerbocker, including the basketball team, owes the use to Irving; he invented the entire "tradition" out of whole cloth: it has no actual historical provenance! In fact, Irving popularized the name through a kind of hoax: he created an imaginary missing person named "Diedrich Knickerbocker," a fictional Dutch historian who’d supposedly disappeared from his hotel, in a series of newspaper ads and kept the story going until it went viral—as we'd say today. One of Irving’s notices was purportedly from the hotel manager who said that if Knickerbocker didn’t return to pay his bill, he’d publish a manuscript the historian left behind to cover the debt and when Irving published The History of New-York, it came out under the name Diedrich Knickerbocker, which eventually became one of the writer’s frequent pseudonyms.

* * * *

Sometime around 1645, in what was then the Dutch colony of New Netherland, settlers built the first European residence on the eastern bank of the Hudson River about 25 miles north of Manhattan (New Amsterdam). By 1674, when the British took the colony from the Dutch, the village that grew there was called Tarrytown. Just north of Tarrytown is a smaller village formerly known as North Tarrytown. By an overwhelming margin, the people of this Westchester County village voted on 10 December 1996 to change its name of 122 years to the more evocative appellation of Sleepy Hollow, deliberately calling to mind the area’s connection with Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.'' The famous tale of schoolmaster Ichabod Crane and his encounter with a headless horseman on a dark country lane was set in the area around Tarrytown and North Tarrytown.

As popular as the name-change was (residents voted for it 1,304 to 710), it was not universally well received. “I've been here all my life, and it's always going to be North Tarrytown to me,” said one resident. Some called the action “empty” and “pretentious,” though more people came out to vote on the issue than in some presidential elections. (Village name changes are rarer than presidential elections, after all. The previous recorded one in this area was in 1972 when East Paterson, New Jersey, became Elmwood Park. For the record—and for comparison—the present-day Saint Petersburg, Russia, was Leningrad, Soviet Union, until 1991. Before that, it was Petrograd, Soviet Union, until 1924, and before that, Saint Petersburg, Russia, again until 1914. Tsar Peter the Great founded the city in 1703, so it’s actually younger than Tarrytown, if not Sleepy Hollow.)

Aside from its association with Irving’s story (published, as it happens, under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker), Sleepy Hollow is the location of Philipsburg Manor House, a historic house, water mill, and trading site, and Kykuit, a Rockefeller family estate. It’s also where British Major John André, who was carrying the plans of West Point provided by Benedict Arnold, was captured during the Revolutionary War. In addition to Washington Irving, such prominent figures as Andrew Carnegie, Walter P. Chrysler, Brooke Astor, and Elizabeth Arden are buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

TATTOOS AND PINBALLS

New York City’s a navy town, lots of sailors. It’s also a counterculture center, of just about every type and leaning. So did you know that tattoos were illegal here for over 30 years until they were relegalized in 1997?

American style tattooing was born in Chatham Square in lower Manhattan. In 1875, Bostonian Samuel O'Reilly set up shop in New York City, a seaport and entertainment center attracting working-class people with money. His shop was so successful, he took on an apprentice, Charlie Wagner, and after O'Reilly's death in 1908, Charlie Wagner opened a tattoo supply business with a man named Lew Alberts who’d trained as a wallpaper designer. Alberts transferred his skills to the design of tattoos and is credited with redesigning much of early tattoo art.

In the 1920s, with prohibition and then the depression in the ’30s, Chatham Square lost its appeal and tattooing moved out to Coney Island and later Times Square, which had started to become sleazy and dangerous. Then, in 1961 there was an outbreak of hepatitis and tattooing was seen as a prime cause. Though most tattoo shops had sterilization equipment, few used them. Newspapers reported stories of blood poisoning, hepatitis, and other diseases and the public saw tattoo parlors as disreputable. At first, the city health department gave the tattooists the opportunity to form an association and regulate their own practices, but the skin artists were too independent-minded to organize themselves. A health code regulation went into effect in 1961 and the tattoo shops in Times Square and Coney Island were shut down. Tattoos became illegal and for a time it was difficult to get one in New York. Body art was only available on the second floors of buildings on Canal Street, in basements, apartments, and back rooms. The better shops moved to Philadelphia and New Jersey where it was still legal.

In the late 1960s, the attitude towards tattooing changed. Much of the credit goes to Lyle Tuttle, a handsome, charming, and media-savvy body artist who tattooed celebrities, particularly women like Janis Joplin, Cher, and the sex worker Annie Sprinkle. Magazines and TV interviewed Tuttle about this ancient art form and in the ’70s he appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. By the 1980s, tattooing, no longer seen as part of the subculture, had become popular again. Body art was becoming mainstream and sexy; hardly a band didn’t have tattoos. Underground tattooists began advertising openly, albeit in alternative publications. The New York Tattoo Society was formed in 1985 and eventually became the catalyst for legalization; the law prohibiting tattoo parlors was repealed in February 1997. Today, tattooing has made such a comeback in New York City that in 1998, the first Annual New York City Tattoo Convention convened; its 15th session is scheduled for May 2012.

* * * *

It’s pretty easy to see why New York City and its health department would become concerned over tattooing, however misguided it seems from our perspective today. But what about the lowly pinball machine? In 1939, pinball games, too, were banned in the Big Apple. What could the seemingly innocent pastime of so many teenaged boys, found in malt shops and soda fountains all over the country, possibly have done to cause that drastic action?

Pinball was banned from just before world War II to the mid-1970s in most of America's big cities, including Chicago, where the game was born and where virtually all of its manufacturers have historically been located; Los Angeles; and New York. The stated reason for the bans: Pinball was a game of chance, not skill, and so it was a form of gambling. To be fair, pinball really did involve a lot less skill in the early years of the game since the flipper wasn't invented until 1947, five years after most of the bans were imposed. Many lawmakers also believed pinball, on top of being a waste of time and money for impressionable youth, was a mob-run racket. (The machines robbed the "pockets of schoolchildren in the form of nickels and dimes given them as lunch money," New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia wrote in a court affidavit.)

In New York, the pinball ban was executed in a particularly dramatic fashion. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor was attacked, for instance, Mayor La Guardia issued an order to the city's police force making the round-up of pinball machines and the arrest of their owners their first priority. La Guardia led Prohibition-style raids in which thousands of machines were seized and dramatically smashed with sledgehammers by the mayor and police commissioner. The machines were then dumped into the city's rivers. The games weren’t relegalized in New York City until 1976.

The ban ended when Roger Sharpe, a witness for the Amusement and Music Operators Association, testified before a committee of the New York City Council in April 1976 that pinball games were no longer games of chance but had become games of skill. He played a game set up in the chamber, and, reminiscent of Babe Ruth's home run in the 1932 World Series, announced what he was going to shoot for and then did exactly what he’d said. Astonished committee members reportedly then voted to remove the ban. (Sharpe reportedly acknowledged later that his committee room shot had been sheer luck.)

The video-game boom in the 1980s put an end to the heyday of pinball, but that bubble didn’t last. Many old-line manufacturers either shifted to the new games or went out of business, but the challenge also spurred many designers and manufacturers to come up with new ideas for the pinball using the latest technology. The new models didn’t attract back the numbers of players the old pinball games had drawn, but they held onto a core of fans and when the coin-operated video-game phenomenon collapsed in the 1990s, the pinball was poised to come back. By 1997, however, the second boom in pinball interest dried up, too, supplanted largely by computer games which could be played at home, even by young teens and preteens who couldn’t go into arcades legally. Today, fewer companies are making pinballs, even the latest digital and computer-driven models, but once again, the games are holding on to die-hard fans, even though they may no longer look like the old pinball machines my generation grew up with, the kind immortalized in The Who’s Tommy. Players of the silver ball may no longer be able to feel all the bumpers, hear the buzzers and bells, or see the lights a-flashin’, but somewhere, someone will always dream of being “The Bally table king.”

Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VIII)

By Washington Irving

[Once again, Oldstyle replies to his friend Andrew Quoz. Both men find additional things to say about New York’s drama reviewers. Is it any wonder that some of the theater journalists took exception to Irving’s statements?]

LETTER VIII

(published 8 February 1803)

[The following communication was received someone since, but accidently mislaid.]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE

Sir,

I had just put on my spectacles and mended my pen, to give you an account of a visit I made some time since, with friend Quoz and my sister Dorothy, to a ball, when I was interrupted by the following letter from the former.

My friend Quoz, who is what the world calls a knowing man, is extremely fond of giving his opinion in every affair. He displays in this epistle more than usual knowledge of his subject, and seems to exert all his argumentative talents to enforce the importance of his advice. I give you his letter without further comment, and shall postpone my description of the ball to another opportunity.

______

To JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, Gent.

My Dear Friend,

I once more address you on a subject that I fear will be found irksome, and may chafe that testy disposition (forgive my freedom) with which you are afflicted. Exert, however, the good humor of which at bottom I know you to have a plentiful stock, and hear me patiently through: It is the anxious fear I entertain of your sinking into the gloomy abyss of criticism, on the brink of which you are at present tottering, that urges me to write.

I would set before you the rights and wrongs of an actor, and by painting, in strong colors, the peculiarity of his situation, call your good sense into action.

The world, my friend Oldstyle, has ever been prone to consider the theatrical profession in a degraded point of view. What first gave rise to this opinion, I am at loss to conceive; but I consider it as the reliques of one of those ancient prejudices which the good sense of the world is daily discarding; and I flatter myself it will in a little time be totally exploded. Why the actor should be considered inferior in point of respectability to the poet, the painter, or any other person who exerts his talents in delineating character, or in exhibiting the various operations of the human mind, I cannot imagine. I know you, friend Oldstyle, to be a man of too liberal sentiments not to be superior to these little prejudices; and also one who regards an actor, provided his private character be good, with equal respect as the member of any other profession. Yet you are not quite aware of the important privileges solely attached to the dramatic performer. These I will endeavor to point out.

The works of a poet or painter you may freely criticise—nay, they offer them for that purpose—they listen attentively to your observations, and profit by your censures. But beware how you exercise such conduct towards an actor—he needs no instruction—his own impartial judgment is sufficient to detect and amend all his imperfections. Attempt to correct his errors and you ruin him at once—he'll starve to spite you—he is like a decayed substance, that crumbles at the touch.

No, sir—when an actor is on the stage he is in his own house—it is his castle—he then has you in his power—he may there bore you with his buffoonery, or insult you with his pointed remarks, with perfect impunity. You, my friend, who are rather apt to be dissatisfied, may call it hard treatment to be thus annoyed, and yet compensate the annoyer for his trouble. You may say, that as you pay an equivalent for your amusement, you should have the liberty of directing the actor in his attempts; and, as the Chinese does his ear-tickler, tell him when his instrument offends, and how he over-does himself in the operation. This is an egregious mistake: you are obliged to him for his condescension in exerting his talents for your instruction; and as to your money, why he only takes it to lessen in part the weight of your obligation.

An actor is, as I before observed, competent to judge of his own abilities—he may undertake whatever character he pleases—tragedy—comedy—or pantomime—however ill adapted his audience may think him to sustain it. He may rant and roar, and wink and grin, and fret and fume his hour upon the stage, and “who shall say nay?” He is paid by the manager for using his lungs and limbs, and the more he exerts them the better does he fulfil the engagement, and the harder does he work for his living—and who shall deprive him of his “hard-earned bread?”

How many an honest, lazy genius has been flogged by these unfeeling critics into a cultivation of his talents and attention to his profession!—how have they doomed him to hard study and unremitting exertion!—how have they prejudiced the public mind, so that what might once have put an audience in convulsions of laughter, now excites nothing but a slight pattering from the hands of the little shavers who are rewarded with seats in the gallery for their trouble in keeping the boxes. Oh! Mr. Oldstyle, it cuts me to the soul to see a poor actor stamp and storm, and slap his forehead, his breast, his pocket holes, all in vain: to see him throw himself in some attitude of distraction or despair, and there wait in fruitless expectation the applauses of his friends in the gallery. In such cases I always take care and clap him myself, to enable him to quit his posture, and resume his part with credit.

You was much irritated the other evening, at what you termed an ungenerous and unmanly attempt to bring forward an ancient maiden in a ridiculous point of view. But I don't see why that should be made a matter of complaint. Has it not been done time out of mind? Is it not sanctioned by daily custom in private life? Is not the character of aunt Tabitha, in the farce, the same we have laughed at in hundreds of dramatic pieces? Since, then, the author has but travelled in the same beaten track of character so many have trod before him, I see not why he should be blamed as severely as if he had all the guilt of originality upon his shoulders.

You may say that it is cruel to sport with the feelings of any class of society: that folly affords sufficient field for wit and satire to work upon, without resorting to misfortune for matter of ridicule: that female sensibility should ever be sacred from the lash of sarcasm, &c. But this is all stuff, all cant.

If an author is too indolent or too stupid, to seek new sources for remark, he is surely excuseable in employing the ideas of others, for his own use and benefit. But I find I have digressed, imperceptibly, into the “rights of authors,” so let us return to our subject.

An actor when he “holds the mirror up to nature,” may by his manœuvres, twist and turn it so, as to represent the object in any shape he pleases—nay, even give a caricature where the author intended a resemblance; he may blur it with his breath, or soil it with his dirty fingers, so that the object may have a colouring from the glass in which it is viewed, entirely different from its natural appearance. To be plain, my friend, an actor has a right whenever he thinks his author not sufficiently explicit to assist him by his own wit and abilities; and if by these means the character should become quite different from what was originally intended, and in fact belong more to the actor than the author, the actor deserves high credit for his ingenuity. And even tho’ his additions are quaint, and fulsome, yet his intention is highly praise worthy, and deserves ample encouragement.

Only think, my dear sir, how many snug little domestic arrangements are destroyed by the officious interference of these ever dissatisfied critics. The honest king of Scotland, who used to dress for market and theatre at the same time, and wear with his kelt and plaid his half boots and black breeches, looking half king, half cobbler, has been obliged totally to dismiss the former from his royal service; yet I am happy to find, so obstinate is his attachment to old habits, that all their efforts have not been sufficient to dislodge him from the strong hold he has in the latter. They may force him from the boots—but nothing shall drive him out of the breeches.

Consider, my friend, the puerile nature of such remarks. Is it not derogating from the elevated character of a Critic, to take notice of clubb’d wigs, red coats, black breeches and half boots! Fie, fie upon it! I blush for the Critics of the day, who consider it a matter of importance whether a Highlander should appear in breeches and boots, or an Otaheitan in the dress of a New-York coxcomb. Trust me, friend Oldstyle, it is to the manner, not the appearance of an actor, we are to look: and as long he performs his part well, (to use the words of my friend Sterne), “it shall not be enquired whether he did it in a black coat or a red.”

Believe me, friend Oldstyle, few of our modern critics can shew any substantial claim to the character they assume. Let me ask them one question—have they ever been in Europe? Have they ever seen a Garrick, a Kemble or a Siddons? If they have not, I can assure you (upon the words of two or three of my friends, the actors) they have no right to the title of critics.

They may talk as much as they please about judgment and taste, and feeling, but this is all nonsense. It has lately been determined, (at the theatre) that any one who attempts to decide upon such ridiculous principles, is an arrant goose, and deserves to be roasted.

Having thus, friend Oldstyle, endeavored in a feeble manner, to shew you a few of the rights of an actor, and of his wrongs; having mentioned his constant and disinterested endeavors to please the public; and how much better he knows what will please them than they do themselves; having also depicted the cruel and persecuting nature of a critic; the continual restraint he lays on the harmless irregularity of the performer, and the relentless manner in which he obliges him to attend sedulously to his professional duty, through fear of censure, let me entreat you to pause!—Open your eyes to the precipice on which you are tottering, and hearken to the earnest warning of your loving friend,

ANDREW QUOZ.

My friend Quoz certainly writes with feeling: every line evinces that acute sensibility for which he has ever been remarked.

I am, however, perfectly at a loss to conceive on what grounds he suspects me of a disposition to turn critic. My remarks hitherto have rather been the result of immediate impression than of critical examination. With my friend, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I begin to doubt the motives of our New-York Critics; especially since I have, in addition to these arguments, the assurances of two or three doubtless disinterested actors, and an editor, who, Mr. Quoz tells me is remarkable for his candor and veracity, that the Critics are the most ‘presumptuous,' ‘arrogant,' ‘malevolent,' ‘illiberal,' ‘ungentleman-like,' ‘malignant,' ‘rancorous,' ‘villainous,' ‘ungrateful,' ‘crippled,' ‘invidious,' ‘detracting,' ‘fabricating,' ‘personal,' ‘dogmatical,' ‘illegitimate,' ‘tyrannical,' ‘distorting,' ‘spindle-shanked moppets, designing villains, and upstart ignorants.'

These, I say, and many other equally high polished appellations, have awakened doubts in my mind respecting the sincerity and justice of the Critics; and lest my pen should unwittingly draw upon me the suspicion, of having a hankering after criticism, I now wipe it carefully—lock it safely up, and promise not to draw it forth again till, some new department of folly calls for my attention.

JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.

[The series was a great success for Irving, but his health was poor and his brothers financed a two-year trip to Europe from which he returned in 1806. He launched the satirical magazine Salmagundi (described as the Mad magazine of its day) in 1807. The magazine, which lasted until 1808, further established Irving as a writer of talent and appeal. (In the pages of Salmagundi, Irving coined the name Gotham—an Anglo-Saxon term that means ‘Goat’s Town’—for New York City.) He eventually followed this effort with the publication of The History of New York (1809), written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker—another word that came to mean ‘everything New York.’ From that point on, Irving’s prominence as a writer, one of the first Americans (with James Fenimore Cooper) to become famous in Europe as a writer, was firmly established.]

[Letter VIII is Irving’s last letter in the series that commented on theater. Letter IX, published on 23 April 1803, is about dueling, which was legal in the United States until later in the 19th century. Indeed, Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States and part-owner of the Morning Chronicle, fatally shot Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington, in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, on 11 July 1804; Hamilton died the next day. (Letter I, published on 15 November 1802, is a commentary of clothing fashions in the city; Letter II, 20 November, is a description of New York weddings.]

Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VII)

By Washington Irving

[Continuing with his tactic of responding to Oldstyle’s friend Andrew Quoz, Irving’s alter ego returns to the theater for more experiences on which to comment. This time, Quoz is in attendance, too.]

LETTER VII

(published 22 January 1803)

Sir,

I mentioned in my last my intention of visiting the theatre on Monday night. I accordingly reached there, with the assistance of Jack Stylish, who procured for me in one of the boxes an uncomfortable and dirty seat, which, however, I found as good as any of my neighbours. In the pit I was determined never again to venture. The little Frenchman mentioned in my former remarks had adopted the same resolution; for on casting my eyes around the theatre, I recognised his sharp phiz, and pinched up cocked hat, peering over the ledge of the Shakspeare. The poor little fellow had not changed his place for the better; a brawny Irishman was leaning with arms akimbo on his shoulders, and coolly surveying the audience, unmindful of the writhings and expostulations of the irritated little Gaul, whose chin was pressed hard upon the front of the box, and his small black eyes twinkling with fury and suffocation. How he disengaged himself I don’t know, for my attention was just then called away by a different object, and on turning round some time afterwards, little Monsieur had disappeared.

I found every thing wore its old appearance. The same silence, order, and regularity prevailed as on my former visit. The central chandelier hung unmolested in the heavens, setting off to advantage the picture of Mr. Anybody, with which it is adorned, and shedding a melancholy ray into that den in which (if we may judge from the sounds that issue thence) so many troubled spirits are confined.

I had marched into the theatre through rows of tables heaped up with delicacies of every kind—here a pyramid of apples or oranges invited the playful palate of the dainty; while there a regiment of mince pies and custards promised a more substantial regale to the hungry. I entered the box, and looked round with astonishment—not a grinder but had its employment. The crackling of nuts and the craunching of apples saluted my ears on every side. Surely, thought I, never was an employment followed up with more assiduity than that of gormandizing; already it pervades every public place of amusement; nay, it even begins to steal into our churches, where many a mouthful is munched in private; and few have any more objection to eat than laugh in their sleeves.

The eating mania prevails through every class of society; not a soul but has caught the infection. Eating clubs are established in every street and alley, and it is impossible to turn a corner without hearing the hissing of frying pans, winding the savoury steams of roast and boiled, or seeing some hungry genius bolting raw oysters in the middle of the street. I expect we shall shortly carry our knives and forks, like the Chinese do their chop sticks, in our pockets.

I was interrupted in my meditations by Jack Stylish, who proposed that we might take a peep into the lounging room, the dashing appearance of which Jack described in high terms; I willingly agreed to his proposal.

The room perfectly answered my expectations, and was a piece with the rest of the theatre: the high finish of the walls, the windows fancifully decorated with red baize and painted canvass, and the sumptuous wooden benches placed around it, had a most inviting appearance.

I drew the end of one of them near to an elegant stove that stood in the centre of the room, and seating myself on it, stretched my lame leg over a chair; placing my hands on the head of my cane, and resting my chin upon them, I began to amuse myself by reconnoitering the company, and snuffing up the delightful perfume of French brandy, Holland gin, and Spanish segars.

I found myself in a circle of young gentry, who appeared to have something in agitation, by their winking and nodding: at the same time I heard a confused whispering around me, and could distinguish the words smoke his wig—twig his silver buckles—old quiz—cane—cock'd hat—queer phiz —and a variety of others, by which I soon found I was in bad quarters. Jack Stylish seemed equally uneasy as myself, for though he is fond of fun himself, yet I believe the young dog has too much love for his old relation, to make him the object of his mirth. To get me away, he told me my friend Quoz was at the lower end of the room, and seemed by his looks anxious to speak with me, we accordingly joined him, and finding that the curtain was about rising, we adjourned to the box together.

In our way I exclaimed against the indecorous manner of the young men of the present day; the impertinent remarks on the company in which they continually indulge; and the cant phrases with which their shallow conversation is generally interlarded. Jack observed that I had popp'd among a set of hard boys; yes, master Stylish said I, turning round to him abruptly, and I observed by your winks and grins that you are better acquainted with them than I could wish. Let me tell you honest friend, if ever I catch you indulging in such despicable fopperies, and hankering after the company of these disrespectful youngsters, be assured that I will discard you from my affections entirely. By this time we had reached our box: so I left my cousin Jack to digest what I had just said; and I hope it may have weight with him; though I fear, from the thoughtless gaiety of his disposition, and his knowledge of the strong hold he has in my foolish old heart, my menaces will make but little impression.

We found the play already commenced. I was particularly delighted with the appearance and manners of one of the female performers. What ease, what grace, what elegance of deportment—this is not acting, cousin Jack, said I—this is reality.

After the play, this lady again came forward and delivered a ludicrous epilogue. I was extremely sorry to find her step so far out of that graceful line of character in which she is calculated to shine; and I perceived by the countenances around me that the sentiment was universal.

Ah, said I, how much she forgets what is due to her dignity. That charming countenance was never made to be so unworthily distorted: nor that graceful person and carriage to represent the awkward movements of hobbling decrepitude—take this word of advice fair lady, from an old man and a friend: Never, if you wish to retain that character for elegance you so deservedly possess—never degrade yourself by assuming the part of a mimic.

The curtain rose for the after-piece. Out skipped a jolly Merry Andrew. Aha! said I, here is the Jack-pudding. I see he has forgot his broomstick and grid-iron; he'll compensate for these wants, I suppose, by his wit and humour. But where is his master, the Quack? He'll be here presently, said Jack Stylish; he's a queer old codger; his name's Puffaway; here's to be a rare roasting match, and this quizzical looking fellow turns the spit. The Merry Andrew now began to deal out his speeches with great rapidity; but, on a sudden, pulling off a black hood that covered his face, who should I recognise but my old acquaintance, the portly gentleman.

I started back with astonishment. Sic transit gloria mundi! exclaimed I, with a melancholy shake of the head. Here is a dreary, but true picture, of the vicissitudes of life—one night paraded in regal robes, surrounded with a splendid train of nobility; the next, degraded to a poor Jack-pudding, and without even a grid-iron to help himself. What think you of this, my friend Quoz? said I; think you an actor has any right to sport with the feelings of his audience, by presenting them with such distressing contrasts. Honest Quoz, who is of the melting mood, shook his head ruefully, and said nothing. I, however, saw the tear of sympathy tremble in his eye, and honored him for his sensibility.

The Merry Andrew went on with his part, and my pity encreased as he progressed; when all of a sudden he exclaimed, “And as to Oldstyle, I wish him to old nick.” My blood mounted into my cheeks at this insolent mention of my name. And what think you of this, friend Quoz? exclaimed I, vehemently; I presume this is one of your “rights of actors.” I suppose we are now to have the stage a vehicle for lampoons and slanders; on which, our fellow citizens are to be caricatured by the clumsy hand of every dauber who can hold a brush!

Let me tell you, Mr. Andrew Quoz, I have known the time when such insolence would have been hooted from the stage.

After some persuasion I resumed my seat, and attempted to listen patiently to the rest of the afterpiece; but I was so disgusted with the Merry Andrew, that in spite of all his skipping, and jumping, and turning on his heel, I could not yield him a smile.

Among the other original characters of the dramatis personæ, we were presented with an ancient maiden; and entertained with jests and remarks from the buffoon and his associates, containing equal wit and novelty. But jesting apart, I think these attempts to injure female happiness, at once cruel and unmanly. I have ever been an enthusiast in my attachment to the fair sex. I have ever thought them possessed of the strongest claims on our admiration, our tenderness and our protection. But when to these are added still stronger claims—when we see them aged and infirm, solitary and neglected, without a partner to support them down the descent of life—cold indeed must be that heart, and unmanly that spirit, that can point the shafts of ridicule at their defenceless bosoms—that can poison the few drops of comfort heaven has poured into their cup.

The form of my sister Dorothy presented itself to my imagination; her hair silvered by time; but her face unwrinkled by sorrow or care.

She “hath borne her faculties so meekly,” that age has marked no traces on her forehead: amiable sister of my heart! cried I, who hast jogged with me through so many years of existence, is this to be the recompense of all thy virtues; art thou who never, in thought or deed, injured the feelings of another, to have thy own massacred, by the jeering insults of those to whom thou shouldst look for honour and protection?

Away with such despicable trumpery—such shallow, worn-out attempts to obtain applause from the unfeeling. I'll no more of it; come along friend Quoz, if we stay much longer, I suppose we shall find our courts of justice insulted, and attempts to ridicule the characters of private persons. Jack Stylish entreated me to stay and see the addition the manager had made to his live stock, of an ass, a goose, and a monkey. Not I, said I, I'll see no more. I accordingly hobbled off with my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, Jack declaring he would stay behind and see the end of the joke. On our way home, I asked friend Quoz, how he could justify such clumsy attempts at personal satire. He seemed, however, rather reserved in his answers, and informed me he would write his sentiments on the subject.

The next morning Jack Stylish related to me the conclusion of the piece. How several actors went into a wheel one after another, and after a little grinding, were converted into asses, geese and monkeys, except the Merry Andrew, who was found such a tough jockey, that the wheel could not digest him, so he came out as much a Jack-pudding as ever.

JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.

* * * *

[A further set of explanatory notes: the Shakspeare – The Shakespeare box, located at the front of the second tier in the Park Theatre; quiz – An odd or eccentric person, in character or appearance; the play already commenced – The Provoked Husband (1728) by John Vanbrugh (1664-1726), performed at the Park Theatre on 14 January 1803; grid-iron – A flat framework of parallel metal bars used for broiling meat or fish; old nick – the devil.

[The last letter in this series will appear on ROT in a few days.]

Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle (Letter VI)

By Washington Irving

[Beginning with Letter VI, Irving begins the conceit of Jonathan Oldstyle’s replying to the responses of a friend, Andrew Quoz. Quoz takes exception to some of Oldstyle’s remarks and writes his own letters to the editors of the Morning Chronicle which Oldstyle answers in turn. This allows Irving the opportunity of defending his own opinions at the same time that he continues his good-natured criticism of the theater scene in New York. As we’ll see, Iriving especially expands his remarks about the reviewers—a topic to which he will return in Letter VIII.]

LETTER VI

(published 17 January 1803)

[The following communication from our correspondent, OLDSTYLE, and his friend, will, we hope, induce a number to attend the benefit performance this evening, and see the diverting farce alluded to in the latter part of Mr. Quoz’s letter]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE MORNING CHRONICLE

Sir,

As I was sitting quietly by my fireside the other morning, nursing my wounded shin, and reading to my cousin, Jack Stylish, a chapter or two from Chesterfield's Letters, I received the following epistle from my friend Andrew Quoz: who, hearing that I talked of paying the actors a visit, and shaking my cane over their heads, has written the following letter, part of which is strongly in their defence.

________

To JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, Gent.

My Dear Friend,

I perceive by the late papers you have been entertaining the town with remarks on the Theatre. As you do not seem from your writings to be much of an adept in the Thespian arcana, permit me to give you a few hints for your information.

The theatre, you observe, begins to answer all the purposes of a coffee-house. Here you are right: it is the polite lounge, where the idle and curious resort, to pick up the news of the fashionable world; to meet their acquaintances, and to shew themselves off to advantage. As to the dull souls who go for the sake of the play, why if their attention is interrupted by the conversation of their neighbors, they must bear it with patience—it is a custom authorized by fashion. Persons who go for the purpose of chatting with their friends are not to be deprived of their amusement; they have paid their dollar, and have a right to entertain themselves as well as they can. As to those who are annoyed by their talking, why they need not listen to it—let them mind their own business.

You were surprized at so many persons using opera glasses; & wished to know whether they were all near sighted. Your cousin, Jack Stylish, has not explained that matter sufficiently—for though many mount glasses because it is the go, yet I am told that several do it to enable them to distinguish the countenances of their friends across our scantily illumined theatre. I was considerably amused the other evening with an honest tar, who had stationed himself in front of the gallery, with an air of affected foppishness, & was reconnoitering the house thro’ a pocket telescope. I could not but like his notion, for really the gods are so elevated among the clouds, that unless they are unusually strong of vision, I can't tell how they manage to discern with the naked eye what is passing in the little painted world below them.

I think you complain of the deficiency of the music; and say that we want a greater variety and more of it. But you must know that, though this might have been a grievance in old times, when people attended to the musicians, it is a thing of but little moment at present.—Our orchestra is kept principally for form sake. There is such a continual noise and bustle between the acts that it is difficult to hear a note; and if the musicians were to get up a new piece of the finest melody, so nicely tuned are the ears of their auditors, that I doubt whether nine hearers out of ten would not complain, on leaving the house, that they had been bored with the same old pieces they have heard these two or three years back. Indeed, many who go to the theatre carry their own music with them; and we are so often delighted with the crying of children by way of glee, and such coughing and sneezing from various parts of the house, by way of chorus—not to mention the regale of a sweet symphony from a sweep or two in the gallery—and occasionally a full piece, in which nasal, vocal, whistling and thumping powers are admirably exerted and blended, that what want we of an orchestra?

In your remarks on the actors, my dear friend let me beg of you to be cautious. I would not for the world that you should degenerate into a critic. The critics, my dear Jonathan, are the very pests of society: they rob the actor of his reputation; the public of their amusement: they open the eyes of their readers to a full perception of the faults of our performers, they reduce our feelings to a state of miserable refinement, and destroy entirely all the enjoyments in which our coarser sensations delighted. I can remember the time when I could hardly keep my seat thro’ laughing at the wretched buffoonery, the merry-andrew tricks, and the unnatural grimaces played off by one of our theatric Jack Puddings: when I was struck with awful admiration at the roaring and ranting of a buskined hero, and hung with rapture on every word, while he was “tearing a passion to tatters—to very rags!” I remember the time when he who could make the queerest mouth, roll his eyes, and twist his body with the most hideous distortions, was surest to please. Alas! how changed the times, or rather how changed the tastes. I can now sit with the gravest countenance, and look without a smile on all such mimicry; their skipping, their squinting, their shrugging, their snuffling, delight not me; and as to their ranting and roaring,

“I'd rather hear a brazen candlestick turned,
Or a dry wheel grate on the axle tree,”

than any such fustian efforts to attain a shallow gallery applause.

Now, though I confess these critics have reformed the manners of the actors as well as the tastes of the audience; so that these absurdities are almost banished from the New-York stage; yet do I think they have employed a most unwarrantable liberty.

A critic, my dear sir, has no more right to expose the faults of an actor, than he has to detect the deceptions of a juggler, or the impositions of a quack. All trades must live; and, as long as the public are satisfied to admire the tricks of the juggler, to swallow the drugs of the quack, or to applaud the fustian of the actor, whoever attempts to undeceive them, does but curtail the pleasures of the latter, and deprive the former of their bread.

Ods-bud, hath not an actor eyes and shall he not wink?—hath not an actor teeth and shall he not grin?—feet and shall he not stamp?—lungs and shall he not roar?—breast and shall he not slap it?—hair and shall he not club it? Is he not fed with plaudits from the gods? delighted with thumpings from the groundlings? annoyed by hisses from the boxes?

If you censure his follies, does he not complain? If you take away his bread will he not starve? If you starve him will he not die? And if you kill him will not his wife and seven small infants, six at her back and one at her breast, rise up and cry vengeance against you? Ponder these things seriously my friend Oldstyle, and you will agree with me that, as the actor is the most meritorious and faultless, so is the critic the most cruel and sanguinary character in the world. “As I will show you more fully in my next.” Your loving friend,

ANDREW QUOZ.

_______

From the tenor and conclusion of these remarks of my friend Mr. Andrew Quoz, they may not improperly be called the “Rights of Actors;” his arguments are, I confess, very forcible, but, as they are entirely new to me, I shall not hastily make up my mind. In the mean time, as my leg is much better, I believe I shall hobble to the theatre on Monday evening, borrow a seat in a side-box, and observe how the actors conduct themselves.

JONATHAN OLDSTYLE.

* * * *

[A further set of explanatory notes: my wounded shin – The Morning Chronicle of two days before had carried the following item: “We have received a note from our correspondent Jonathan Oldstyle. The old gentleman . . . states that he has been confined to his house since the famous Battle of Hexham, in which engagement he received a broken shin, in a skirmish with some impudent boys, who assailed him for his check of admittance during the interval between the play and the farce”; Chesterfield's Letters – Letters to His Son (1774) by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773), written to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (1732-68); tar – sailor; regale – an entertainment or fête; merry-andrew – clown or buffoon; Jack Puddings – buffoon characters appearing in stage and street performances; buskined – wearing buskins, the traditional footwear of Greek tragedians; fustian – pretentious speech or writing; pompous language; Ods-bud – a corruption of “God’s blood,” an oath; club it – make into a knot or tail, a hairstyle common for men in the late 18th century.

[New York City had only 65,000 inhabitants at the time that Irving wrote these letters. The theater district was, of course, not located uptown (which didn’t even exist yet in any case); the Park Theater, which housed the play Jonathan Oldstyle first went to see, was downtown at 23 Park Row, between Beekman and Ann Streets. (The park in the name is what’s now City Hall Park. The theater, at one time the only one in New York City, opened in 1798 and burned down in 1848.) The last two letters I’ve selected to reproduce will be published on ROT within the next week. Please return to see how Irving wraps up his critical remarks about New York theater in the earliest years of the 19th century.]