A Discourse on the Life, Character and Writings of Gulian Crommelin Verplanck | Page 3

as appears from some of her letters, he learned to walk.
She died when he was but three years old, leaving the boy to the care of
his grandmother, by whom he was indulgently yet carefully reared.
The grandmother is spoken of as a lively little lady, often seen walking
up Wall Street, dressed in pink satin and in dainty high heeled shoes,
with a quaint jewelled watch swinging from her waist. Wall Street was
then the fashionable quarter; the city, still in its embryo stater extending
but a little way above it; it was full of dwelling houses, with here and
there a church, which has long since disappeared. Over that region of
the metropolis where Mammon is worshipped in six days out of seven,
there now broods on Sunday a sepulchral silence, but then the walks
were thronged with churchgoers. The boy was his grandmother's
constant companion. He was trained by her to love books and study, to
which, however, he seems to have had a natural and inherited
inclination. It is said that at a very tender age she taught him to declaim
passages from Latin authors, standing on a table, and rewarded him
with hot pound-cake. Another story is, that she used to put sugar-plums
near his bedside, to be at hand in case he should take a fancy to them in
the night. But, as he was not spoiled by indulgence, it is but fair to
conclude that her gentle method of educating him was tempered by
firmness on proper occasions--a quality somewhat rare in grandmothers.
A letter from one of her descendants playfully says:
"It is a picture to think of her, seated at a marvellous Dutch bureau,
now in possession of her great-grand-daughters, which is filled with a
complexity of small and mysterious drawers, talking to the child, while
her servant built the powdered tower on her head, or hung the diamond
rings in her ears. Very likely, at such times, the child was thrusting his
little fingers into the rouge pot, or making havoc with the powder, and
perhaps she knew no better way to bring him to order than to tell him

of many of a fright of her own in the war, or she may have gone further
back in history, and told the boy how her and his Huguenot ancestors
fled from France when the bad King Louis forbade every form of
worship but his own."
Dr. Johnson, the grandfather of young Verplanck, on the mother's side,
came from Stratford to be President of Columbia College, the year after
his grandson was born. To him, in an equal degree with his
grandmother, we must give the credit of bringing forward the
precocious boy in his early studies. I have diligently inquired what
school he attended and who were his teachers, but can hear of no other.
His father had married again, and to the lively Huguenot lady was left
the almost entire charge of the boy. He was a born scholar; he took to
books as other boys take to marbles; and the lessons which he received
in the household sufficed to prepare him for entering college when yet
a mere child, at eleven years of age. He took his first degree four years
afterwards, in 1801, one year after his maternal grandfather had
returned to Stratford. To that place he very frequently resorted in his
youth, and there, in the well-stored and well-arranged library he
pursued the studies he loved. The tradition is that he conned his Greek
lessons lying flat on the floor with his thumb in his mouth, and the
fingers of the other hand employed in twisting a lock of the brown, hair
on his forehead. He took no pleasure in fishing or in hunting; I doubt
whether he ever let off a fowling-piece or drew a trout from the brook
in his life. He was fond of younger children, and would recreate
himself in play with his little relatives, but was no visitor to other
families. His contemporaries, Washington Irving, James K. Paulding,
and Governeur Kemble, had their amusements and frolics, in which he
took no part. According to Mr. Kemble, the elder men of the time held
up to the youths the example of young Verplanck, so studious and
accomplished, and so ready with every kind of knowledge, and withal
of such faultless habits, as a model for their imitation.
I have said that his relatives on the mother's side were of a different
political school from his high tory grandmother. From them he would
hear of the inalienable rights of the people, and the duty, under certain
circumstances, of revolution; from her he would hear of the obligation

of loyalty and obedience. The Johnsons would speak of the patriotism,
the wisdom, and the services