Alexander Hamilton's Itinerarium (1744)

At four o'clock I came to my lodging and drank tea with Mrs. Hog, and Mr. John Watts, a Scots gentleman, came to pay me a visit. At 5 I went to the coffee house, and there meeting with Mr. Dupeyster, he carried me to the tavern wherein a large room was conveen'd a certain club of merry fellows. Among the rest was H--d, the same whom I extolled before for his art in touching the violin, but that indeed seemed to be his principall excellency. Other things he pretended to but fell short. He affected being a witt and dealt much in pointed satyre, but it was such base metall that the edge or point was soon turned when put to the proof. When any body spoke to him, he seemed to give ear in such a careless manner as if he thought all discourse but his own triffling and insignificant. In short he was fit to shine no where but among your good [83] natured men and ignorant blockheads. There was a necessity for the first to bear with the stupidity of his satire and for the others to admire his pseudosophia and quaintness of his speeches and, att the same time, with their blocks, to turn the edge and acuteness of his wit. He dealt much in proverbs and made use of one which I thought pritty significant when well applied. It was the devil to pay and no pitch hot? An interrogatory adage metaphorically derived from the manner of sailors who pay their ship's bottoms with pitch. I back'd it with great cry and little wool, said the devil when he shore his hogs, applicable enough to the ostentation and clutter he made with his learning.

There was in this company one Dr. McGraa, a pretended Scots-man, but by brogue a Teague. He had an affected way of curtsieing instead of bowing when he entered a room. He put on a modest look uncommon to his nation, spoke little, and when he went to speak, leaned over the table and streeched out his neck and face, goose-like, as if he had been going to whisper you in the ear. When he drank to any in the company, he would not speak but kept bowing and bowing, sometimes for the space of a minute or two, till the person complimented either observed him of his own accord or was hunched into attention by his next neighbour; but it was hard to know who he bowed to upon account of his squinting. However, when the liquor began to heat him a little, he talked at the rate of three words in a minute, and sitting next me (he was very complaisant in his cups), he told me he had heard my name mentioned by some Marylanders and asked me if I knew his unkle Grierson in Maryland. I returned his compliments in as civil a manner as possible, and for half an hour we talked of nothing but waiting upon one another at our lodgings, but after all this complimentary farce and promises of serving and waiting [84] was over, I could not but observe that none of us took the trouble to enquire where the one or the other lodged. I never met with a man so wrapt up in himself as this fellow seemed to be, nor did I ever see a face where there was so much effronterie under a pretended mask of modesty.

There was, besides, another doctor in company named Man, a doctor of a man of war. The best thing I saw about him was that he would drink nothing but water, but he eat lustily at supper, and nothing remarkable appeared in his dis- course (which indeed was copious and insipid) but only an affected way he had of swearing by Ged att every two words; and by the motion of his hands at each time of swearing that polite and elegant oath, he would seem to let the company understand that he was no mean orator, and that the little oath was a very fine ornament to his oration.

But the most remarkable person in the whole company was one Wendal, a young gentleman from Boston. He entertained us mightily by playing on the violin the quickest tunes upon the highest keys, which he accompanied with his voice so as even to drown the violin with such nice shakings and gracings that I thought his voice outdid the instrument. I sat for some time imoveable with surprize. The like I never heard, and the thing seemed to me next a miracle. The extent of his voice is impossible to describe or even to imagine unless by hearing him. The whole company were amazed that any person but a woman or eunuch could have such a pipe and began to question his virility; but he swore that if the company pleased he would show a couple of as good witnesses as any man might wear. He then imitated severall beasts, as cats, dogs, horses, and cows, with the cackling of poultry, and all to such perfection that nothing but nature could match it. When the landlord (a clumsy, tallow faced fellow in a white jacket) came to re [85] ceive his reckoning, our mimick's art struck and surprized him in such a manner that it fixed him quite, like one that had seen the Gorgon's head, and he might have passed for a statue done in white marble. He was so struck that the company might have gone away without paying and carried off all his silver tankards and spoons, and he never would have observed.

After being thus entertained I returned to my lodging att 1 1 o'clock.

Saturday, July 7th. In the morning I waited upon Stephen Bayard to whom my letters of credit were directed. He invited me to a Sunday's dinner with him. We heard news of a coasting vessel belonging to N. England taken by a French privateer in her passage betwixt Boston and Rhode Island. I writ to Annapolis by the post. I dined att Todd's and went in the afternoon to see the French prizes in the harbour. Both of them were large ships about 300 ton burden, the one Le Jupiter and the other Le Saint Francois Xaviers. Warren, who took the St. Francis, has gained a great character. His praise is in every body's mouth, and he has made a fine estate of the business.189 I went home at night and shunned company.

Sunday, July 8th. I spent the morning att home and att one a'clock went to dine with Mr. Bayard. Among some other gentlemen there was my old friend Dr. McGraa who to day seemed to have more talk and ostentation than usuall, but he did not shine quite bright till he had drank half a dozen glasses of wine after dinner. He spoke now in a very arbitrary tone as if his opinion was to pass for an ipse dixit. He and I unhappily engaged in a dispute which I was sorry for, it being dissonant to good manners before company, and what none but rank pedants will be guilty of. We were obliged to use hard physicall terms, very discordant and dissagreeable to ears not accustomed to them. I wanted much to drop it, but he keept teizing of me. [86] I found my chap to be one of those learned bullys who, by loud talking and an affected sneer, seem to outshine all other menin parts of literature where the company are by no means propper judges, where for the most part the most impudent of the disputants passes for the most knowing man. The subject of this dispute was the effect which the moon has upon all fluids, as well as the ocean, in a proportionable ratio by the law of gravitation or her attractive power, and even upon the fluids in the vessels of animals. The thing that introduced this was an action of McGraa's which exceeded every thing I had seen for nastiness, impudence, and rusticity. He told us he was troubled with the open piles and with that, from his breeches, pulled out a linnen handkercheff all stained with blood and showed it to the company just after we had eat dinner. After my astonishment att this piece of clownish impudence was over, I asked him if that evacuation att any particular times was greater or less, such as the full or change of the moon in the same manner as the catamene in women. I intended only to play upon him. He answered with a sneer that he did not believe the moon had anything to do with us or our distempers and said that such notions were only superstitious nonsense, wondering how I could give credit to any such stuff. We had a great deal of talk about attraction, condensation, gravitation, rarifaction, of all which I found he understood just as muchas a goose; and when he began to show his ignorance of the mathematical and astronomical problems of the illustrious Newton and blockishly resolve all my meaning into judiciall astrology, I gave him up as an unintelligent, unintelligible, and consequently inflexible disputant. And the company, being no judges of the thing, imagined, I suppose, that he had got the victory, which did not att all make me uneasy. He pretended to have travelled most countrys in Europe, to have shared the [87] favour and acquaintance of some foreign princes and grandees and to have been att their tables, to be master of severall European languages, tho I found he could not speak good French and he merely murdered the Latin. He said he had been very intimate with Professor Boerhaave and Dr. Astruc190 and subjoined that he knew for certain that the majority of the Spanish bishops were Jews.

There was another doctor att dinner with us who went away before this dispute began. His name was Ascough. When he came first in he told Mr. Bayard he would dine with him provided he had no green pease for dinner. Mr. Bayard told him there were some, but that they should not come to table, upon which, with some entreaty, the doctor sat down and eat pritty heartily of bacon, chickens, and veal, but just as he had begun upon his veal, the stupid negroe wench, forgetting her orders to the contrary, produced the pease, att which the doctor began to stare and change colour in such a manner that I thought he would have been convulsed, but he started up and ran out of doors so fast that we could never throw salt on his tail again. Mr. Bayard was so angry that he had almost oversett the table, but we had a good dish of pease by the bargain which otherwise we should not have tasted. This was the oddest antipathy ever I was witness to. Att night I went to Waghorn's and found my company had delayed their setting off till Tuesday; so I returned home.

Monday, July 9th. I waited upon Mr. Bayard this morning and had letters of credit drawn upon Mr. Lechmere att Boston. I dined with Mr. M s [Milne] and other company att Todd's and went to tarry this night att the inn where myhorses were in order to set out to morrow morning by times on my journey for Boston. We heard news this day of an English vessel loaden with ammunition and bound for New England k O" [88] being taken on the coast. I spent the evening att Waghorn's where we had Mr. Wendall's company who entertained us as before. We had among us this night our old friend MajorSpratt who now and then gave us an extempore rhime. I re- tired to bed att 1 2 o'clock. The people of New York att the first appearance of a stranger are seemingly civil and courteous, but this civility and complaisance soon relaxes if he be not either highly recommmended or a good toaper. To drink stoutly with the Hungarian Club, who are all bumper men, is the readiest way for a stranger to recommend himself, and a sett among them are very fond of making a stranger drunk. To talk bawdy and to have a knack att punning passes among some there for good sterling wit. Govr. C[linto]n himself is a jolly toaper and gives good example and, for that one quality, is esteemed among these dons.