Mrs. Knight, who visited New York in 1704, having
performed the journey from Boston all the way on horseback, enjoyed the
"vendues" at Manhattan, where "they gave drinks"; was surprised to see
"fireplaces that had no jambs" and "bricks of divers colors and laid in
checkers, being glazed and looking very agreeable." The diversion in
vogue was "riding in sleighs about four miles out of town, where they
have a house of entertainment at a place called the Bowery." In 1769 Dr.
Burnaby recognized but two churches, Trinity and St. George, and "went
in an Italian chaise to a turtle feast on the East River." In 1788,
Brissot found that the session of Congress there gave great _eclat_ to
New York, but, with republican indignation, he laments the ravages of
luxury and the English fashions visible in Broadway,--"silks, gauzes,
hats, and borrowed hair;... equipages rare, but elegant." "The men," he
adds, "have more simplicity of dress; they disdain gewgaws; but they
take their revenge in the luxury of the table";--"and luxury," he
observes, "forms a class dangerous to society,--I mean bachelors,--the
expense of women causing matrimony to be dreaded by men." It is curious
to find the French radical of eighty years ago drawing from the life of
Broadway inferences similar to those of the even more emphatic
economical moralist of to-day.
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