New York - The Novel

seemed to John that it hadn’t been such a bad thing that he’d spent time with fellows like Charlie. I may be a rich man of forty now, living in comfort, he thought, but I know the life of the streets, the wharfs, and the taverns, and I run my business better because of it. He knew what men like Charlie were thinking, knew when they were lying, knew how to handle them. He thought of his own son, James. James was a good fellow. He loved the boy, and there was nothing much wrong with him. He’d taken pains with his general education, always explaining things about the trade of the city, things to watch out for. Putting him on the right path. But the fact was, John considered, that the next generation was being brought up too genteel. What James needed, his father was thinking, was to learn a few of the lessons that he’d learned himself.
    So when, late in the evening, Charlie remarked that his son Sam was thirteen, exactly the same age as James, John suddenly leaned over to him and said: “You know what, Charlie, your Sam and my James should get together. What do you think?”
    “I’d like that, John.”
    “Why don’t I send him over?”
    “You know where to find me.”
    “Day after tomorrow, then. Noon.”
    “We’ll be waiting.”
    “He’ll be there. Let’s have a last drink.”
    The Pope had been burned to a cinder by the time they parted.

    The following morning, John Master told his son James about Charlie White and that he was to go to visit him the next day. He reminded him again that evening. Early on the day in question, before he went out, he gave James precise directions for finding Charlie’s house, and told him not to be late. James promised he’d be punctual.

    Mercy Master had a visitor of her own that afternoon. She’d chosen a time carefully. Both her son James and his elder sister Susan were out. Her husband wouldn’t be home for a long time yet. When the architect arrived, he was ushered by Hudson into her parlor, where she had cleared a little table, and soon the drawings were laid out upon it.
    She was preparing her husband’s tomb.
    Not that she wanted John dead. Far from it. Indeed, it was part of her passion that John should be well cared for, dead or alive. And so, as a Quaker, she was being practical.
    Mercy’s passion for her husband had only grown with the years. If she saw a new wig, or a fine coat in the latest London fashion, or a splendid carriage, why then she would immediately think: My John would look well in that. If she saw a fine silk dress, she would imagine how it might please him to see her wearing it, and how well they might look together. If she saw a Chippendale chair in a neighbor’s handsome house, or some beautiful wallpaper, or a handsome silver service, she would want to buy them too, to make their own house more elegant and worthy of her husband. She’d even had his portrait painted, along with her own, by fashionable Mr. Copley.
    Her passion was innocent. She had never cut herself off from her Quaker roots. Her love of such finery was not to make a worldly show at the expense of others. But since her husband was a good man, who had been blessed with success in his business, there seemed no harm in enjoying the good things that God had provided. In this, she certainly had the example of other Quakers before her. In Philadelphia, the Quaker oligarchs ran the city like Venetian nobles; just above New York, it was a rich Quaker named Murray who had built the magnificent country villa called Murray Hill.
    And here in the city, God had never provided such opportunities for elegance before. If the cultivated classes of Boston and Europe had found New York somewhat coarse in John’s youth, things were changing fast. The rich classes were drawing ever further apart from the hurly-burly of the streets. Tidy Georgian streets and squares were closing themselves off into a genteel quiet. In front of the old fort, a discreet and pleasant park, called the Bowling Green, after the fashion of Vauxhall or Ranelagh Gardens in London, now provided a haven where respectable people could promenade. The theater might be limited, and concerts few, but the aristocratic British officers who had recently arrived in the city could find themselves in houses quite as fine as their own at home. The town house of one rich merchant family—the Waltons—with its oak paneling and marble foyer, put even the British governor to shame.
    England. England was the thing. If the