Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [302]
The academy’s demise did not mean, on the other hand, that the new Historical Society would have to carry on by itself. Business-minded New York wasn’t ready for art, but neither were men like John Pintard ready to abandon the campaign for municipal uplift and enlightenment.
“ACTIVE EXERTIONS & USEFUL IMPROVEMENTS”
It wasn’t accidental that Pintard, Clinton, Mitchill, Dunlap, and many of their friends were also active in Freemasonry, an international movement devoted to personal betterment, fraternal loyalty, and the diffusion of knowledge to dispel (as Mitchill put it) “the gloom of ignorance and barbarism.” Under the leadership of Robert R. Livingston, grand master from 1784 to 1801, the Masons founded ten lodges in the city. Arguably the most influential was the Holland Lodge, whose masters included both Clinton and Pintard, and whose members included such eminent and powerful residents as John Jacob Astor, Cadwallader D. Golden (grandson of the colonial governor), and Charles King (president of Columbia College).
De Witt Clinton, in particular, was an ardent Mason. From master of the Holland Lodge (1794) he rose to become grand high priest of the Grand Chapter, grand master of the Grand Encampment of New York, and grand master of the Knights Templar of the United States, the highest office of the Cerneau Scottish Rite body. What attracted him, apart from the opportunity lodge work gave him to establish links with powerful men throughout the city, state, and nation, was the fraternity’s lineage of descent from “scientific and ingenious men” and its commitment to having each member “devote to the purposes of mental improvement those hours which remain to him after pursuing the ordinary concerns of life.”
Even when his public life was at its busiest, Clinton found time for an impressive range of intellectual interests. He belonged to, and often led, the most prestigious literary and learned organizations of his day. He studied botany, zoology, geology, ornithology, ichthyology, and chemistry, and his published papers, which earned the praise of scientific societies throughout the United States and Europe, covered such disparate subjects as the fish of New York State, Iroquois language and customs, archaeology, and the cockroach. Justifiably proud of his achievements, Clinton could describe himself with aplomb—others called it insufferable vanity—as “distinguished for a marked devotion to science; few men have read more, and few men can claim more various and extensive knowledge.”
Clinton was never content with private scholarly pursuits, however, and he was among the first New Yorkers to say that people of his class had a duty to improve the lives of others. As early as 1794, in an address to the Black Friars Club, he summoned patrician New Yorkers to reject “selfishness” and enlist in the cause of “disinterested benevolence.” They should rise “from the couch of affluence and ease,” he said, not only to encourage the “polite arts and useful sciences” but to build schools and hospitals, care for the poor, and modernize the penal system. This was an idea practically unknown in New York before independence, and it drew heavily on Clinton’s identification with the Masonic movement (“the most antient benevolent institution in the world” he called it), on his frank admiration for contemporary British reformers, and on his personal connections with such prominent Quaker philanthropists as Thomas Eddy and John Murray Jr. (both of whom he met through his wife,