USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 12
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56a The Connecticut Society of Colonial Dames has undertaken this work which, since 1912, has been in the hands of Mrs. Elford Parry Trowbridge of New Haven, at the head of the "Old House Committee" which has been assisted by Mr. J. Frederick Kelly, who has now (1920) visited about one hundred and fifty houses and surveyed about half of them. The records of the houses surveyed are deposited in the State Library at Hartford and constitute an invaluable source of information of our early domestic architecture in Connecticut.
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NEW HAVEN :
In conclusion, I would like to ask :
First: Every citizen interested in the trees to walk to the Green and survey the wreckage, as well as to examine every tree he passes on his way there, and on his way home. I ask him to count horse-bitten trees and trees having their branch roots cut away. Anyone who will take the pains to open his eyes and look at the trees will be astonished to find how shamefully they have been neglected, and to note how very few fine specimens remain.
Second: Everyone interested in the trees to write a note or postal card, addressed to Professor Henry S. Graves, 360 Prospect Street, asking to have his name put down as a mem- ber of the proposed shade tree association.
Third : Everyone desirous of redeeming New Haven from its present disgrace and to restore her to her old place as the "City of Elms" to write or speak personally to the Mayor or Mr. Foley, or to some member of the Board of Aldermen or of the Board of Finance, so that our city officials may under- stand that it is the wish of the citizens at large to have the reclamation of the trees undertaken at once.
I venture to suggest that the members of the Council of One Hundred, and of our ancient and historical Chamber of Commerce should get together and take the steps required to secure the appointment of a city forester.
I shall thank anyone who will call my attention to mistakes in the foregoing by writing me, at No. 223 Bradley Street. To all other critics I am satisfied to ask them to look at the trees and then decide whether or not I have overstated the gravity of the situation.
NOTE :57 On March 31 and since any part of the foregoing article was written, Col. Isaac M. Ullman, acting for the Chamber of Commerce; Mr. Henry T. Blake, chairman of the Park Commission; Dr. W. E. Britton, the state entomologist ; Professor Henry S. Graves, director of the Forest School, and Judge A. Heaton Robertson, appeared before the Board of
57 The above note was printed in the papers as an appendix to the last installment of the article which was "run" in three separate issues of the papers.
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF ELMS.
Finance and urged an appropriation of funds for fighting the elm leaf beetle and doing further emergency work for the rescue of the elms. The Board of Finance voted an appropria- tion of $10,000, which will be spent under the direction of Mr. Foley. This is indeed a gratifying beginning, but it is only a beginning.58 The redemption of the New Haven elms will not be assured until a tree expert has been secured, until he has organized his work, and until our citizens become sufficiently interested to support an annual appropriation of from $10,000 to $20,000 to carry on the work of caring for the trees. It should be distinctly understood that this $10,000 now appro- priated is an emergency appropriation and nothing more, and that it does not provide for the systematic care of the trees, for extensive replanting which is imperatively necessary and for the treatment of diseased trees all over the city. No greater mistake can be made on the part of our citizens than to suppose that the trees are now safe and that good citizens can safely go to sleep again.
58 The elms were sprayed in 1909 and 1910, with the effect of mitigating for the time being the pest of the beetles; and many elms have been saved, as I can have no doubt. But these efforts were too late to save many of the finest trees on the Green and elsewhere, and Mr. Olmsted's prophecy has been only too completely fulfilled.
58a The ultimate purpose of the campaign of which "The Rise and Fall of the City of Elms" was one of the documents, was to provide for the systematic care of the city trees under the direction of a trained Superin- tendent who should devote his entire time to them. The movement led in the following year to the creation of a Bureau of Trees by an act of the State Legislature, amending the city charter. .
(HOUSE BILL No. 786.) [434]
AN ACT CREATING A BUREAU OF TREES IN THE DEPART- MENT OF PUBLIC WORKS OF THE CITY OF NEW HAVEN AND PROVIDING FOR THE APPOINTMENT OF A SUPERINTENDENT OF TREES.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Assembly convened :
There shall be in the Department of Public Works in the City of New Haven a Bureau of Trees, the head of which shall be called the Superin-
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tendent of Trees, who shall, under the Director of Public Works of said city, have charge of the selecting, cultivation, procuring, planting, spray- ing, trimming preservation, and removal of all trees in the streets of the City of New Haven and in the parks and public places of said city not under the jurisdiction of the Park Commission. The salary of said Super- intendent of trees shall be determined by the Board of Finance. Said Superintendent shall be appointed for the term and in the manner provided by Section 75 of the Charter of the City of New Haven, and shall have the same rights and be subject to the same duties provided in Section 76 of the Charter of the City of New Haven, and the provisions of this act shall be construed as a part of said Section 76.
Approved, August 12, 1909.
For some reason unknown to the writer, City Hall was opposed to the appointment of a Superintendent of Trees. However, on March 15, 19II, Mr. George Alexander Cromie, a native of Scottstown, Province of Quebec, and a graduate of the Yale Forest School with the class of 1910, received the appointment on the earnest recommendation of Professor Graves and the writer.
Mr. Cromie's work has amply justified the confidence reposed in him at the time of his appointment. Under increasingly difficult conditions and despite many obstacles, such as overhead wires, the City trees have steadily increased in number and improved in condition.
A recent tree census shows that New Haven has now about 26,000 trees of fifty-four different species. Of these 8,100 are American elms, 8,700 sugar or rock maples, 5,300 red, Norway, and other maples. There has been a gain of 5,000 trees in the ten years of Mr. Cromie's service. In that time nearly 10,000 trees have been planted including 4,100 Norway, sugar and red maples, 2,400 plane trees (European sycamore), 1,200 native oaks, 700 elms and 500 lindens. In the ten years about 5,000 trees have been removed. With no intention of abandoning the elm, it has been found impracticable to plant it exclusively, since it is not as well adapted to the modern city as other species, smaller, less subject to insect attacks and more tolerant of city conditions. About 10,000 trees have been sprayed annually (except 1918) to check leaf-eating insects, like the elm-leaf beetle. Practical methods have also been used to check boring insects. The defoliation of the city trees in the early summer is now a thing of the past. The annual appropriation for the work of the Bureau of Trees has averaged $16,000, including the very considerable item for the removal of dead trees.
It seems unlikely that the new plantations of elms on the Green will ever equal those of the old days when conditions of growth were far more favorable than now. Certainly much must be spent on fertilizing the soil if large vigorous trees are desired. The community never realized in the great days of the elms how largely the fame of the city was due to the efforts and the practical enthusiasm of one man-James Hillhouse. (The above note written 1919 .- J. D. S.)
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THE RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF ELMS.
" 'The City of Elms' owes a greater part of its reputation to its beautiful trees. Its streets are lined with grand old elms or luxuriant maples, and its public squares are thick-shaded groves.
"The streets present long vistas of arched verdure; and one of these, a view of which is given by the wood-cut on the next page, is the admira- tion of strangers and the pride of the native-born. The meeting branches of the magnificent elms which border the long aisle form a Gothic archway of perfect symmetry and beauty. For these old trees, and for the taste which leads to the planting of others, the city is mainly indebted to the late Hon. James Hillhouse, who, about the year 1800, inclosed 'the Green' and set out the noble rows of elms which are, and will long remain, most beautiful memorials of his taste and public spirit. The citizens should honor his memory with some more enduring monument; yet, till the last shadow falls from the oldest elm, his name will be gratefully men- tioned by all who enjoy the summer shade or winter sheen of the grand old trees he planted.
" 'The Green,' as the principal public square is rurally named by the New Haveners, is unequaled by any similar park in the country. Its attraction consists not so much in the beauty of its public buildings situated within its inclosure as in its hundreds of large elms, each in its prime of age and symmetry. Most of these monarch elms are omitted from the sketch given on page I, lest a stranger might imagine that 'The Green' were only a grove of trees. Beyond the churches is seen the State House-an edifice of pure Doric architecture; and farther beyond appears the front of the College Chapel.
"A pleasing peculiarity of New Haven is that its dwellings have so generally the appearance of homes. The houses are mostly built in the cottage or villa style of architecture, and each embowers itself in shade and shrubbery, through which are given glimpses of gardens and grape arbors. The people are famous horticulturists, and fruits and flowers abound in their seasons; nor is the enjoyment of these confined to the wealthy; for every house has its garden, and every man seems to live beneath his own 'vine and fig tree.' Indeed the stranger will find it difficult to fancy himself within a thrifty commercial city of thirty thou- sand inhabitants; or, at least, will hesitate in deciding whether New Haven is rus in urbe or urbs in rure."-From the leading article by N. W. T. Root, entitled "The City of Elms," in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. XVII, June, 1858.
From Volume VII of Fetridge's Hand-Books for Travelers (New York, 1887) I extract the following :
"New Haven, the last of the principal places of importance on our route, is one of the handsomest cities of New England. It contains 62,882 inhabitants. The city is finely laid out with wide streets and beautiful squares and shaded by splendid elm trees, from which it is called “Elm City." The city is rich in educational establishments at the head of which is the celebrated Yale College, ranking with the first institutions of the kind in the world."
VI.
THE FAMILIAR HALE: AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW BY WHAT STANDARDS OF AGE, APPEARANCE, AND CHARACTER, THE PROPOSED STATUE OF NATHAN HALE FOR THE CAMPUS OF YALE COLLEGE SHOULD BE JUDGED.6
"Durable stone preserve the monumental record. Nathan Hale, Esq., a Capt. in the army of United States, who was born June 6th, 1755, and received the first honors of Yale College, Sept. 1773; resigned his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22d, 1776. Etatis 22d." (Headstone in the graveyard at Coventry, Tolland County, Con- necticut.)
There is no existing portrait of Nathan Hale. In Stuart's "Life," published in 1856, there is a reference to a miniature which had then disappeared, and which must now be regarded as irretrievably lost. We know, however, that Hale was above medium height, well built, and of fair coloring. He excelled in contests of running, leaping, wrestling, firing at a mark, throwing, lifting, and playing ball; he was fond of hunting and fishing; he was clever with his hands; it is recorded by Stuart that he once said in jest that he "could do anything but spin." Such accounts as we have of Hale bring before us a handsome, frank and lively fellow of winning naturalness. He belonged to the epic Age of Homespun; he came from sturdy stock; he was country bred; there is no reason for believing that he was in any way different in appearance or breeding from the average country boy brought up on a farm by God-fearing, hard-working parents. He was a good scholar, but he found time for the full enjoyment of student life. Of his great popularity with his classmates there is abundant evidence. His modesty and manliness, his scholar- ship and his attractive personality, won friends for him just as they win friends to-day. Any student who will look up Hale's.
59 The Yale Alumni Weekly, April 3, 1907; the New York Evening Post, April 29, 1907.
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THE PROPOSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE
record can understand him as well as could one of his own classmates. After Hale left college and before he entered the army, he taught school in East Haddam and in New Lon- don. These experiences as a schoolmaster could not have changed him. His army life was too brief to have made a typical soldier of him, though his enjoyment of the social side of camp life is undisguised. His genial nature must have made him as great a favorite with his fellow-officers and soldiers as he had been in college with his tutors and fellow-students.
But the roughness of camp life can have had no attraction for him; neither did he ever mix with the world enough to acquire the polish of a courtier. Generous of impulse, modest and unassuming, he had natural good manners rather than fin- ished ease. His bringing up was homely-in the best sense. Gallant he undoubtedly was, but we should not think of apply- ing that word to him. The tributes paid to him after his untimely fate breathe a different feeling. They point to a seri- ous boy-nature which glows back of the stilted language of that day. A poem first published in 1836 by an unknown writer60 speaks of his "innate goodness," his "blameless car- riage and his modest air," and concludes-
"Removed from envy, malice, pride and strife, He walked through goodness as he walked through life; A kinder brother nature never knew,
A child more duteous or a friend more true."
Hale's tutor, Timothy Dwight, the elder, eulogized him in his epic, the "Conquest of Canaan" (1785), as follows :
"Thus, while fond Virtue wish'd in vain to save, Hale, bright and generous, found a hapless grave. With genius' living flame his bosom glow'd,
And science charm'd him to her sweet abode : In worth's fair path his feet adventur'd far, The pride of peace, the rising grace of war; In duty firm, in danger calm as even,
To friends unchanging, and sincere to heaven. How short his course, the prize how early won,
While weeping friendship mourns her favourite gone."
Fortunately, we can get nearer to Hale than through any contemporary account of him. His clumsy camp-basket and @ Probably Dr. Aneas Munson, the elder, one of Hale's correspondents.
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powderhorn, and, above all, his letters and the soldier's diary that he kept during the last few months of his life, show what manner of man he was. His letters reveal a nature so gener- ous and affectionate that one feels his tragic fate with a poignant sense of personal loss. In particular, his letters to his intimates, and theirs to him, show how whole-souled in friendship he must have been. The feeling is as fresh as though the letters were written yesterday. No one can read the faded pages of the diary without feeling that it brings us close to the real Hale-an everyday, wholesome, self-poised young man, deeply in earnest, mature in many ways, but still frankly boyish. We could not well spare the naïve entry, "Evening prayers omitted for wrestling." The wisdom of this precautionary measure appears in an entry two days later- "grand Wrestle on Prospect Hill no wager laid." A few days later this entry occurs: Wednesday 8th Cleaned my gun- pl'd some football & some chequers." It is refreshing to find that Hale was not too nice to use the slang of the day. Winter Hill, we read, was "stumped" to wrestle Prospect Hill. In a letter written when teaching school at East Haddam to his friend and classmate, Mead, he says: "From what I can collect, I think probable you have had some high doings this winter, but expect a more full account of these in your next." It is significant of his manly and cheerful temperament that despite the stress and fatigue of army life, despite the des- perate situation of his country, despite his absence from home, there is not a despondent line or reflection in his entire diary. Interesting and valuable as the diary is to the historical student, precious as every word of it is to every one of us as the personal record of Hale, it is not in any way remarkable in cold type, but the impression produced upon the reader by the original in the handwriting of Hale is incommunicable.
What, then, must a statue to Nathan Hale express but these characteristics? It should not represent him as a typical soldier or as a courtier, but as a student so young, handsome, straightforward, earnest and expressive of feature, as at once to win confidence just as he did long ago. Above all, a statue
,
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THE PROPOSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE
of Nathan Hale for the Campus should present him as young, fresh, unspoiled, country bred. It is the characteristic and bane of modern sculpture that it is too self-conscious, too posed as for its photograph. It is not to be supposed that when Hale stood on the gallows in front of Artillery Park he posed him- self for those who had to see him die, that he struck any the- atrical attitudes or breathed any defiance or assumed any air of sullen indifference. I conceive that he did nothing out of character.
Johnston's "Life," published in 1891, shows that Hale was hanged not in City Hall Park, as is commonly supposed, but in front of Artillery Park, which was in the neighborhood of First Avenue and Forty-fifth Street.61 Johnston sees no rea- son for supposing that there was anyone present beyond a few officers and artillerymen and some camp followers. I like to think that he went to his doom simply and quietly, thinking of the bright fields of his home in Coventry, of the college yard and buildings at New Haven, of his family and his friends; that he bore himself calmly-a brave fellow about to die. I can imagine him unflinching without, but tremulous within- he was young, life was dear to him, the earth that he looked out upon was fair, friendship had been sweet to him ; he did not wish to die. It is inconceivable that he said his memorable last words-"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"-with an heroic pose. No manly fellow of his sort would do it to-day, nor would any young man, bred as Nathan Hale was, have done it one hundred and thirty years ago. The supreme achievement of the actor, in Mr. Goodwin's touching characterization of Nathan Hale in Clyde Fitch's play, was the simple and natural way in which Mr. Goodwin gave the last words, unaccompanied by any sign of the actor's art. Mr. Goodwin knew that anything that savored of acting would detract from the touching solem- nity of the scene-from the thrilling last words.
61 Later researches place the site at about the intersection of Third Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street.
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It is clear that, if he would succeed, the sculptor must approach his task in a spirit of complete understanding and sympathy, and in his work be moved by a spirit as simple and pure as was the spirit of Hale. The statue must have the sincerity and nobility of a work of Greek sculpture, if it is to reach the heart. The Hermes of Praxiteles, to refer to a familiar example, is as exquisite in naturalness and sweet- ness as it is perfect in execution. Hale's statue must have no sense of pose, no feeling of self-consciousness; it must be simple, strong, natural. We may not be able to command for Nathan Hale a sculptor with the technical resources of Praxiteles, but we have a right to ask for a figure inspiring in its simple significance. The value of correct dress is overestimated. Sculpture is more than
objective. Too much attention to dress distracts from the subjective thought to be expressed. The sculptor of to-day is tempted to render too minutely the ruffled shirt, the full skirted coat, and the breeches and hose of the Colonial gentle- man. Hale would have been out of character in fine
clothes. Why dress him up in them now and make a fine gentleman of him? Unless Hale's statue takes its place on Yale's Campus62 as naturally as the students, of to-day take their places there, it must be counted a failure. If it is self- conscious work, posed, theatrical, it will remain a solitary figure on the Campus-a thing apart from life, so much inert bronze, an incumbrance. If it realizes Hale as he was, Hale
62 Nathan Hale never heard the term "Campus" applied to the College Yard as it was known until as late as the 70's. Harvard College seems almost alone in its retention of the good old term yard, which has now been displaced throughout the entire country by the rather inappropriate term "campus." I submitted the manuscript of this article on Hale to the late Professor Thomas Day Seymour, who urged me to change the term "campus" to "yard" throughout the paper. I told him that as I was writing largely for the students of to-day, I felt that their term should be used, and also that I did not believe that any such thing as going back to the use of the term "yard" was possible, however much the purists might like it. For a discussion of this subject, see "The Use at American Colleges of the Word Campus," by Albert Matthews, Vol. 3 of the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, pp. 431-437.
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THE PROPOSED STATUE TO NATHAN HALE
as he lives in history, Hale as he has been enshrined in the hearts of Yale men since he for all time typified the Yale ideal, the work must be so direct in its appeal, so familiar in its spirit, that the students of to-day, as they pass back and forth, will feel that he is one of them-one of them in every way, but happily removed from the tumult of life, from loss and stain, and forever bright. If Nathan Hale can thus be made to live again on the Campus in the sight of all Yale men, what an inspiration will be furnished them-a friend to test all actions by, a friend to leave with a sense of loss and to come back to with a renewing of the life of the heart. These are high standards, but can Yale accept for Nathan Hale-her own hero-anything but the highest? Is there any place on the Campus for any statue of him except one from the hand of a master-sculptor, working with hand, brain and heart to portray him as he was, as he lives in the pages of his diary and in his letters and in the words of those who knew him best.
That Hale should have been entrusted with a grave and perilous errand, and that he should have had a captain's rank, shows how deeply his ability and the fine quality of his cour- age had impressed those about him. But those facts have led us to think of him as older than he was. It is hard to realize that, when Hale stood on the gibbet that Sunday morning, he was no older than the Junior of average age to-day. He died September 22, 1776. His twenty-first birthday fell on the sixth of the previous June. Undergraduates may well feel that Hale is one of them and claim him as a friend. His very youth brings him close to life on the Campus-lends bright- ness to his name, endears him to all who are quick to feel a modest and manly spirit.
"To drum-beat and heart-beat, A soldier marches by ; There is color in his cheek, There is courage in his eye, Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat, In a moment he must die.
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"From Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, From monument and urn, The sad of earth, the glad of Heaven, His tragic fate shall learn; And on Fame-leaf and Angel-leaf, The name of HALE shall burn !"
New Haven, Conn., March 27, 1907.
NOTE: The "Familiar Hale" was written to oppose the erection of a theatrical statue to Hale, above life size and representing him as older than he was at the time of his death. and to forward the claims of a design made at the instance of the writer by Bela Lyon Pratt in 1898. After a controversy covering about fifteen years Mr. Pratt's design was erected on the Yale Campus in September 1913. The late William Scranton Pardee, Yale 1882, began the fund with a subscrip- tion of $1000. The financing of the undertaking was for the most part carried on by the writer's friend, Frederick Winthrop Allen, Yale 1900.
"The poetic and deeply illustrative statue of Nathan Hale on the Yale Campus is highly esteemed by a small circle particularly interested in art; but the great majority of an exceptionally enlightened community is probably still unaware that this is a work of extraordinary merit." (Arthur Kingsley Porter in the Yale Review, April, 1918, p. 605.)
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