The times., 1899-07-30
ALiterarx Guidehnok.


Literary Haunts and Homes" by
Theodore F. Wolfe, is a sort of literary
guidebook to the city of New York and a
few other places Owing to the fact that
New York is the city of publishers, there
is no other place in the United States
which contains so many interesting haunt5
of noted writer's as are to be found on
Manhattan Island. Boston had some fame
in that direction in the first half of the
century, but even then the New York pub
fishing houses attracted many brilliant
men and women of the metropolis
New York has been SO busy publishing
literature and doing innumerable other
things that her chroniclers have thus far
been few, and SO the general public has
hardly realized the wealth OF material
which lies only half discovered in her mar
row streets. Some of the views which
have been presented OF New York life have
been superficial, and some have been
dreamy, and some have been sternly prac-
tical, but the man who knows this city as
her great novelistE knew London is yet to
appear. In the meantime, this book, which
pretends to no literary value, may i'm
press the provincial with a sense of the
wonder and poetry and pathos of her his
tory. Its chief faults that it is too mat
-Ol-ldCl, anu tbtIt 10 ilOt tuouSI VI IL
This mere skeleton could be expanded into
a guide to New York which would be as
invaluable to the tourist as Baedeker or
Hare to the English traveller.
Two or three of the chapter headings are:
In Oldest New York, About and Above
City Hall Park, The Latin Quarter and
Its Environs, and The Homes and
Haunts of Poe. The aforementioned takes
up large part of the book, and is illus
trated with picture of the Fordham cot
tage. Other illustrations are q photogra-
vure of Kipling's "Naulahka" at Brattle-
boro, VT (the name, by the way, means
very precious" or costing nine "lakhs'O (;
Bryants home, "Cedarmere," and Walt
Whitman's birthplace.
Some of the most interesting scraps of
information in the book are in the chapter
which deals with City Hall Park, where
the old-time newspaper Offices were. Here
are few of them, which the habitue of
that much travelled locality may or may
not know:
In the time before IT was shorn of its shrub
berry and despoiled of its fair dimensions the
park the resort of poor Mcdonald Clarke,
author of '"The Elixir of Moonshine, by the Mad
Poet" and other volumes who often sat out
the night in this place, when even the old hearse
was not available as a lodging, and perhaps it
was while gazing into s,arlit heaven during some
| nocturnal vigil here that he composed the ex-
quiste lines:
Night dropped her sable curtain down,
And pinned it with star"
. Just below the old park by the cor
! ner of Yesey Street, once stood the domicile Of
the founder of the Astor Library, whose personal
qualities drew to him here such men as Irving.
Francis and Halleck; n little way down Nesey
| Street wine shop stands upon the site OF 4
quondam dwelling of Horace Greeley; opposite
was sometime the Office OF Paulding and a few
doors below is the store which once belonged TO
the genial Frederick S. Cozzens, OF Sparrow
grass papers" Next door to the corner
OF Beekrnan Street was the pharmacy of Joseph
| Rodnan Drake, considered by Halleck the hand
somest man in New York. Here brakes most
popular poem, "The American Flag was writ
| ten, and here he languished in consumption, and
died at the carly age OF twenty-five.
Washington Square and its vicinity is the
| district called by this writer the Latin
Quarter of New York. In this chapter one
may find bits of information about the
originals of certain characters in fiction.
For instance, we are told that Laurence
Hutton was the Uncle Larry Laughton," !"
| of Brander Matthews Duchess" stories.
| Considering the vast amount of material
handled in the compilation of this book,
it is remarkably free from errors. but one
fails to see why Hopkinson Smiths mimi
! table heroine should be referred to as
Tom Crogan."
homes of Irving, Whitman Cooper, Kip
| ling, and others. Visitors to Brattleboro
those who go on Kipling pilgrimage
may be interested in the following para
graph about the novelist and his wife:
| Their first essay in housekeeping here was in the
nearby Bliss cottage. which they occupied during
| the erection of the house. The cottage is a
neat little whte-clapboard, story-and half fab
ric, which the novelist at first thought '-just
| large enough for two,' but which soon had a
third occupant in the person OF infant daugh-
| ter. In the contracted apartment
where Steele Mackaye had written Rose Slichel''
| years before, Kipling completed Many In
| ventions." wrote some of the poems of "The Sew
I en- Seas" and began the Jungle Books"
This book would be a good one to take on
| journey to New York, if one knew some
thing about the town, SO as to be able to
| discover the localities described amid all
the changes of the last half century. (Phil-
| adelphia: Lipplncott. $125)