Essays from the Chap-Book. Various
I sought were of a large city, I might say of Chicago, only she has no colonial records; so I frankly reveal that I wished to search the records of the criminal courts of New Amsterdam.
Now I had read a score of times, and heard a score of times more in the glibly-rounded sentences of elegant historical lectures, patriotic addresses, commemorative “papers” of patriotic-hereditary societies, that to the municipal honor of that very large frog in a puddle, viz.: New York, which grew out of the pollywog New Amsterdam, all records of colonial times of that city were still preserved, were cherished as sacred script in that fitting cabinet, the venerable Hall of Records in the City Hall Park. Thus introduced, I ventured to its gates.
It is an ancient, dingy building, whose opening portals thrust you upon a cage-like partition strongly suggestive of a menagerie, and also olfactorily suggestive of the menageries’ accompaniment, “an ancient and a fish-like” – nay, more, a bird- and beast-like smell.
A doorway on either side of the cage lead to various desks and rooms, and enclosures and closets, all labelled with well-worn signs; and as I glanced bewildered from placard to placard, from sign to sign, there approached that blessed and gallant metropolitan engine for the succor of feminine ignorance, incapacity, and weakness – a policeman. Gladly did I follow in his sturdy wake to the office of the Clerk of Records, who would know all about it. Alas! he was out. A callow, inky youth, his deputy, had never heard of any Dutch records, and didn’t believe there were any in New York. My policeman had vanished. The youth leaned out of his latticed window, pointed round a corner to an enclosed office: “Go ask him, he can tell you.” I went and asked him; for a third time I told my tale, already rehearsed to policeman and youth. “I wish to see the colonial records of the criminal courts in New York in the seventeenth century. Part are in Dutch. I hear they have been translated, and that the English translation is here, for the use of the public. If this is not so, I wish to see the original Dutch and English records from the year 1650 to 1700.”
It is impossible to overstate the expression of blank surprise and incredulity with which this inquiry was greeted. The official vouchsafed one curt answer: “I never heard of such a thing as a Dutch trial in the criminal courts of New York, and I don’t believe there ever was one. If so, he will know.”
“He” was a haven, for his office was labelled Satisfaction – and he was satisfactory. After a fourth explanation of my desires, he answered me with the elaborately patient and compassionate politeness usually employed by men in business and public offices to a woman’s apparently useless inquiries. He said gently: “Only deeds and transfers are here in the Hall of Records; those records you wish to see are all in the County Clerk’s office, over there.”
Over there was the court-house of Tweed’s inglorious fame. Within the said office four transfers, from book-keeper to messenger, to civil clerk, to County Clerk, found me, after four more dogged repetitions, encaged myself in a dingy wire prison, surrounded by millions of compartments with papers and deeds, and flanked by scores of spittoons. Errand boys, messengers, aged porters, young attorneys, came and went, papers were given and received with mechanical rapidity and precision by the monarch of the cage, an elderly Irishman, smooth-shaven, massive-featured, inscrutable, blank of expression, who finally turned to me with civil indifference. But this was not the right place for me to come; those records were at the court-house at Ninth Street, where the criminal courts were held. I patiently prepared to assail the Ninth Street abode of Themis, not without an unworthy suspicion that this Hibernian Sphinx sent me there to get rid of me. But a gentleman-like and eavesdropping bystander proffered his advice: “Those records you want are in the office of the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas, in the third story of this building.” And he thrust me with speed in the ascending elevator. The room pointed out to me as my goal proved to be the Supreme Court, a scene of peaceful dignity, but, alas, there was no such officer anywhere as the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas. Gloomily turning to the Surrogate’s office to examine the will of this Dutch criminal whom I was running to earth, mine eyes encountered this sign: Office of the Court of Common Pleas. Certainly this was the office and the records were here, though the clerk was not. Other clerks there were; to the most urbane for the tenth time I told my tale, and finally was shown the records. “These are in Dutch,” I said; “will you show me the English translation?” “Are they in Dutch?” he answered with some animation. “I never knew that. I have been here twenty years, and no one has ever asked to see them before.”
Of course there was no English translation. I can read and translate printed Dutch with ease; but seventeenth century Dutch differs more from modern Dutch than does old French from the French of to-day. Add to this the unique variations in spelling of the Dutch clerks, the curious chirography, the faded ink, and no antiquary will be surprised to learn that an hour had passed ere I had read enough of those records to learn that they were wholly civil cases, boundary disputes, adjustment cases, etc. I wearily rose to leave, when a newly-arrived person of authority said airily: “I can tell you all about those old Criminal Court records. They are all over in the City Hall, in the office of the Superintendent of City Affairs.” I trust I showed becoming credulity and gratitude.
I walked out into the beautiful little park, aglow with beds of radiant scarlet and yellow tulips, that remembered and significantly commemorated their Holland ancestors and the old Dutch-American town, even if the city’s servants knew them not; and I strolled under the trees and breathed with delight the fresh air of heaven; for wherever men congregate in offices, there ventilation is as naught.
I sought the Superintendent’s office. To him, ignominiously but cheerfully ensconced in the cellar-like basement, I descended, where glimmered a light so dim, so humid, that I had a sense of being in subaqueous rather than subterranean depths, and I was struck with the civic humor that placed the Superintendent subter omnia.
He really knew nothing about these records, but there was a man in the Library who would know. Through underground tunnels and cemented passages and up a narrow staircase, I reached the noble aboveground abode of our municipal corporation.
Here all was radiant with prosperity. No lean and hungry race filled those corridors and chambers; jocund and ruddy were all, as were our city fathers of yore who drank vast tuns of sack-posset and ale. Well may we say when on those men and on these we gaze: Nobly wert thou named Manhattan! —the place where all drank together!
Mighty is Manhattan and great even the reflection of her power. Neither poverty-stricken nor meagre of flesh am I, but I shrank into humble insignificance before those well-fed aggrandizations of the city’s glory and prosperity who bourgeoned through the corridors of our modern Stadt Huys; and I fain would have saluted them with respectful mien and words as of yore as “Most Worshipful, Most Prudent, and Very Discreet, their High Mightinesses,” – not Burgomasters and Schepens, but Aldermen and Councilmen, – but the tame conventionalities of modern life kept me silent.
In the Library the sought-for man sent me to the Clerk of the Common Council, who in turn bade me be seated while he lured from an adjoining “closet,” as old Pepys called his office, one who would be glad to tell me all about everything relating to those ancient days.
Here was something tangible. Glad to tell me! In truth he was. Never have I seen such a passion for talking. Forth poured a flood of elaborate Milesian eloquence, in which intricate suggestions, noble patriotic sentiments, ardent historical interest, warm sympathy in my researches, and unbounded satisfaction and glowing pride over New York’s honorable preservation of the records of her ancestors all joined. Nevertheless and notwithstanding, when I ran my fat but sly and agile political fox to earth, and made him answer me directly, I simmered down merely this one solid fact: “If ye go to Mr. De Lancy’s office in the Vanderbilt Building, he can tell ye where thim ricords is, an’ no one ilse in this city can.”
I tendered as floriated and declamatory a farewell expression of gratitude as my dull tongue could command to my city authority, who was, I am led to believe from the tablet on the office from which he emerged, a common councilman, but who might have been a score of glorious aldermen distilled and expressed and condensed into one, so rotund, so ruby-colored, so shining, so truly grand was he, so elegant, albeit loose, of attire, so glittering with gold and precious stones. As I thanked him in phrases sadly etiolated in comparison with his own glowing pauses,