The Book of Philadelphia
By Robert Shackleton
©1918
The Penn Publishing Company
Philadelphia
Chapter I
INSIDERS AND OUTSIDERS
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[At
Broad and Chestnuts Streets]
HILADELPHIA is the City of
Brotherly Love; but if you hope to receive a share of the brotherly affection
it makes a great deal of difference whose brother you happen to be. And, more than that, it is looked upon as of
prime importance to know not only whose brother you are, but whose son or daughter,
whose grandson or granddaughter you are, who were your great-grandparents, even
who were
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your great-great-grandparents. No other American; city so coldly cuts its social cleavages; no
other has raised and upheld such unbrotherly
barriers. There are not only brothers—but others! If one is outside of certain
lines and
circles of consanguinity, Philadelphia is not the City of Brotherly Love but
the City of Unbrotherly Indifference.
All this would have immensely surprised William Penn
himself, who hoped so ardently for the growth of
an actual Philadelphia as the capital of his Sylvania. The city whose name meant fraternal affection was to
be in the midst of a smiling sylvan colony. But
the English King gave the first touch of exclusiveness to the new colony by his merry prefixing, of
Penn's own name to Sylvania, and neither the,
entreaties of Penn, which were laughed away, nor;
his offer of a bribe of twenty guineas to the
under-secretary who engrossed the charter; a bribe which was refused by
the wary clerk, who, though he loved money much,
feared the Merry Monarch more; could suffice to take away what Penn deemed the un-Quakerlike
use of his own name; he deplored the un-Qnakerlike
appearance of personal vanity.
In Philadelphia, family is a
fetich. And yet, it is
far more than a city of families. It is markedly
a city of individuality, of individualities, a city of character and of
characters; it is a city of a character which comes more from individuals than
from families, intense though family worship is. In this frank dependence on
individuals for its fame and progress, the city presents an odd contrast in
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the deference which it at the same time so frankly
yields to local lineage.
And, strangest of all, for this City of Unbrotherly Indifference to outsiders and love for
insiders, is the fact that its accepted leaders, its greatest men, have been
frankly outsiders!
Penn himself was the first example. Being the
founder, he could not well avoid being an outsider; but instead of making
himself an insider, by taking up his permanent home here, or even by living
here for many years or making frequent visits, his personal stay in the city
and province of his founding was brief.
William Penn had excellent grounds for that family
vanity which is so marked a trait of the city founded. His ancestors were not
such as sat upon the remote edges and outskirts of history. One Penn was even
so distinguished as to have much to do with that long-established English
institution; Saturday night bath, for, as barber to Henry the Eight, from whose
reign until well into that of the
Victorian the week-end bath was a fashion firmly fastened, he was expected
always to be present and, the old phrasing has come down, "always
use-full" And he had his reward, for in a painting by Holbein
representing a group of barber-surgeons receiving a charter from King Henry, he
is gravely as, befits the barber of a king.
Penn's own father, who was very much opposite of a
Quaker, found a road to fame by an admiral, gallant and capable, thus quite
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eclipsing, in the opinion of most of the non-fighting son, who
merely founded a commonwealth and a great city.
In the beautiful Church of St. Mary Redcliffe, in old Bristol, which Queen Elizabeth declared
to be the fairest and goodliest parish church in England, I saw the monument of
Admiral Penn, with his coat of arms and his armor set in impressive prominence
on the wall, and with a lengthy laudatory naming title after title that he had
won, and quaintly ending, that he had "in much Peace and Ancord In his Last and Best Port."
Very different is this proud monument the beautiful
old church from the monument, to William Penn himself; yet the sweet austerity
of; Penn's last resting place outdoes that of the father in impressiveness. For
the founder of Philadelphia rests in an out of the way nook in rural a lonely
spot called, Jordans, where stands a tiny Quaker
meeting-house, and his grave is marked only by a low-set stone, and all is
peace and restfulness, and the honeysuckle, the fragrant stock, the white
roses, grow close about the stone, and in, charming austerity there is immense
impressiveness.
The family and the descendants of William Penn
followed his example in not staying in Philadelphia, either living or dead,
admirable city from the first it has been. Of the thirteen children of Penn,
seven by his first wife, she of the unexpectedly romantic name of Gulielma, often shortened by him to "Guli," and six by his second,
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Hannah Callowhill, a name
retained in Philadelphia by unromantic Callowhill
Street, only one was even in America, his son John, and none was buried here. A
later John, a grandson of William, and also governor, died here in 1795 and was
buried in the cemetery of Christ Church; but the body was shortly taken up and
carried to England.
By accepting perforce the prefix of "Penn"
to the name of the colony, and by the effect of his own personality, Penn
himself gave the note of individuality which has throughout the passing years
marked the city.
Over and over again one notices similitudes
between Philadelphia and Boston, and curiously the two old cities are indeed
alike, with the likeness dependent in great degree upon the loyalty to family
descent. But in comparing the two cities, one may constantly notice the
contrast at it was families that made Boston, but individuals who made
Philadelphia.
And again and again, once the fact is realized, one
comes back to that curious fact that the greatest individuals of Philadelphia
were not really of the city. Cold as Philadelphia is and has always been to
outsiders, difficult as it is and has always been for outsiders to become
affiliated—aphiladelphiated, so to speak—it is to
outsiders, and not to insiders, that Philadelphia mainly owes her achievements
and prestige.
Franklin more than any other individual, represents
and characterizes Philadelphia; and Franklin
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dropped in quite casually from Boston, and quite without the backing of proud New England
family connection. That his father was a pious and prudent man and his mother a
discreet and virtuous woman, as he himself expressed it on the epitaph which he
wrote for their monument, covered all that could be said on that score; and
this was nothing at all from the viewpoint of family.
Yet Philadelphia, like Boston, stands in
extraordinary degree for the sense of respectability which lies in family
permanence.
Next to Franklin, no name is so closely associated
with Philadelphia as that of Stephen Girard; and Girard was a native of France,
whose Philadelphia advent was even more casual than that of Franklin; for with
his ship he slipped into Philadelphia in a successful effort to escape English
privateers, and, rather than go out to certain capture, stayed on, and became a
great Philadelphia merchant.
Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, the
great Philadelphian who financially saved the country, was English born, and
Jay Cooke, the financier, of the nation during the Rebellion, was an Ohio man.
It is a curious similarity, in regard to these two outsiders who became so
important, that each of them, after saving the nation financially, failed in his own finances and lost everything. And an unhappy
dissimilarity is that although Jay Cooke happily rehabilitated himself
financially, Morris, the greater man of the two, unhappily did not.
Philadelphia has a university of work, Temple
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University, whose students, coming from all parts of
the country, have passed beyond one hundred thousand in number in the few
decades of the university's existence; and the man who founded this university,
Russell Conwell, founded also a great hospital, and a
church which has greater seating capacity than any other Protestant church in
the United States, and Sunday by Sunday he fills it; and he has also made
himself known as among the most popular of living lecturers, in thousands of
lectures throughout the land; and this Philadelphian was born in a little hill
town in Massachusetts.
The two editors who have the distinction of winning,
with their periodicals, probably the greatest and most widespread circulation,
not only of Philadelphia but of the world, Edward Bok
and George Horace Lorimer, came to Philadelphia, the
one from Holland by way of Brooklyn and the other from Kentucky by way of
Chicago.
Side by side with the fact that the greatest Philadelphians,
in accomplishment, were not born Philadelphians, there has always gone a
curious indifference to distinguished men, both that the city has had and that
it might have had. It is curious that Philadelphia had the chance to have
Phillips Brooks; that in fact he was for a time a Philadelphian, being rector
of Holy Trinity some half century ago; but his qualities were not sufficiently
appreciated here, New England got him back and made him a bishop.
And there was another bishop that the Philadel-
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phians rejected who became the head of a very considerable
corner elsewhere, Bishop Potter: for although she kept two Bishop Potters, who
by the way, were both of them born in New York State, she let the other and
greater Potter, Henry C. Potter, leave here and go to New York City to become a
very distinguished bishop indeed.
The indifference has extended to the point of not
even claiming greatness that actually belongs to the city, if the city has not
sufficiently cared for the man who did the deeds of greatness. The city is so
delightfully sufficient unto itself that it has always believed that it could
afford to accept or ignore, just as it chanced to decide.
There was Tom Paine. He was a Philadelphian when he
did his greatest service for the country. Yet he is never claimed as
Philadelphian; and this was not because he was a free-thinker in religion, for
Stephen Girard was an avowed free-thinker, and Franklin was known to be
essentially one. And, as usual, Paine was not a born Philadelphian.
The way in which Tom Paine won high achievement is in
itself a fascinating story.
An Englishman, he came to America late in 1774, armed
with a letter of introduction from Franklin, who was then abroad. Within a few
months occurred the battles of Lexington and Concord, and all that this meant
to Paine at that time was, as, he expressed it in a letter, that it was very
hard on him to have the country set on fire about his ears just as he was
getting settled! But before the end of 1775
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he was flaming with American enthusiasm. “I have
always," writes this patriot of a few months’ growth, "I have” always
considered the independency of this continent an event which sooner or later
must arrive;"
By the time he had been a year in America he was
writing the brilliantly patriotic "Common Sense," and it was
published in January of 1776; not, however, to Paine's financial advantage, for
his publisher even managed to figure up the balance against him of 29 pounds,
12 shillings and one penny—and somehow that penny seems to stand for so much!
Then Paine enlisted and took up his musket and
marched and froze and fought and retreated and suffered with the other soldiers
and in the intervals of his duty, at night around the scanty camp-fires, wrote
the first part of the "Crisis," and it was printed and sent out on
the very eve of Washington's attack at Trenton, and had great influence in
heartening the handful of soldiers for the desperate attempt. "These are
the times that try men's souls!" Such were the ringing opening words.
Paine's own account of the "Crisis" is
still preserved: "On the eighth of December, 1776, I came to Philadelphia
and, seeing the deplorable and melancholy condition the people were in, afraid
to speak and almost to think, the public presses stopped, and nothing in
circulation but fears and falsehoods, I sat down, and in what may be called a
passion of patriot wrote the first number."
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What a city of glorified indifference, to be
indifferent to such Philadelphia achievements as these of Tom Paine! And it is
so typical. One finds it hard to believe, for Philadelphians have forgotten it
or never write or speak of it, that General McClellan
was born here, and the city is just as silent in regard to the fact that here
was the birthplace of General Pemberton. Indeed, I think it likely that few
Philadelphians know that either of these famous generals was Philadelphia born.
And the ease of Pemberton was so positively bizarre. Born in this city, of
old-time Quaker stock, educated at West Point and serving in the Mexican War, a
Northerner of Northerners, he nevertheless joined the Confederate army and was
so trusted as to be given the command at Vicksburg, which place, with his army,
he surrendered to Grant. Exchanged, Pemberton once more threw himself into the
fighting and was in command of Confederate artillery at Petersburg and
Richmond, again facing Grant up to the end. Then, after a while, this curious
Philadelphia Quaker so felt the drawing charm of his city, that he yielded to
it and crept unobtrusively back, and died at nearby Penllyn.
The similarities, so often insisted upon, between
Boston and Philadelphia, are not so noticeable as
their differences.
In Boston, not only is every Bostonian who won even a
medium fame proudly remembered, but the house where he lived is remembered, and
street addresses and descriptions are scattered freely through
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every book which treats of that city. But in Philadelphia
all this is different. The city takes a pride in forgetting its own people,
except the outsiders who became insiders!—and a perverse pride in forgetting
where they lived. No Philadelphia book gives the names, or, if by some rare
chance a few names are given, no mention whatever of the home is made.
Did you ever hear of Kate Smith? "Fate sought to
conceal her by calling her Smith," as the poet sang. But nothing could
long conceal this particular Kate Smith. She wrote the story of "Rebecca
of Sunnybrook Farm." Yes; that story, with the most charming of young girl
heroines, was written by Kate Smith of Philadelphia, though few knew she had
been a Philadelphian. After a while she had left Philadelphia, and lived in
California and Maine and New York, and incidentally developed a partiality for
marrying into names holding within them the odd combination of "igg," such as Wiggin and
Riggs. She was born in Philadelphia on
September 28, in the year—but, well, never mind about the year! That is quite
immaterial. Some people always stay young.
Where was Henry George born? For, although the fact
is forgotten, the great Single Taxer was born at 413
South Tenth Street. Where did Robert Morris live? His unfinished
"Folly" is tauntingly remembered, but his home is forgotten.
Nay, you would ask in vain where lived
the most famous Philadelphian of all, Benjamin Franklin,
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A few, a very
few, could tell where was located the home that he built for himself after he
had been for many years a Philadelphian, the home that was his when he died,
but no one could tell you, with certainty, where he lived and worked during the
most important years of his life, the formative years, when he and his printing
press were establishing their permanent place in the history of not only
Philadelphia but of the world. Boston honors his birth-site, London his lodging
place, Twyford his visiting place, Paris knows where
he lived while at the French court, but Philadelphia has forgotten his
working-place.
And yet it is
not that Franklin has, been neglected. Never was a man more profoundly honored,
more deeply and ineradicably kept in mind, by any city. It is only that in this
respect, as almost all other respects, Philadelphia is a city apart, a city of
individuality, a city that is different, a city that must needs even forget or
remember her distinguished ones, or forget or remember facts in regard to her
distinguished ones, according to a code and a practice of her own.
Or, take
Girard. It would be hard to find his home or the site of his home. But none the
less he is honored and remembered. A beautiful old bank building, far down
town, the first of the classic pillared fronts and worthy of its leadership,
bears his name, and a superb new building planned by that great lover of
architectural beauty, Stanford White, and put up within a few years at the
busiest corner
THE BROAD
STREET VISTA
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of
Philadelphia, bears his name, not through a connection with his estate, but to
do honor to his memory.
[Three Arches
in Supreme Court Room]
