The New York Times, March 9, 1930. PAGE NUMBER 148
THOMAS PAINE’S OLD HOUSE
Place Where the Writer Labored Is in Hands of the Wreckers
THE old Greenwich Village home of Thomas Paine, the rationalist, is to be demolished to make way for a modern building. Nearly a century and a quarter have elapsed since the author of “Common Sense” and “The Age of Reason” took up residence in the wooden house adjacent to Bleecker and Grove Streets that is now about to come down. Diarists of an earlier New York have described with considerable realism the Tom Paine who used to sit writing beside a sunny window of the modest domicile, a pipe in one hand and a flagon on the table beside him.
Paine’s active life during the American Revolution and later in the critical days of the French Revolution, when he was a prisoner in Paris, has often been described. While still a comparatively young man Tom Paine came to America from England, where he had been born of Quaker stock in 1737. Benjamin Franklin, whom he met in London, had given him letters of introduction to friends in Philadelphia, and these letters helped him to his first job. As assistant editor of The Pennsylvania Magazine he received a salary of $250 a year, and his prolific writings while he occupied the editorial chair are still widely quoted. A prominent figure in Colonial affairs during the War of Independence, Paine worked constantly for the cause, accepting no pay for his services.
“In a great affair where the happiness of man is at stake I love to work for nothing,” he said. “I should lose the pleasure, the spirit and the pride of it were I conscious that I looked for reward.”
Paine’s first pamphlet, “Common Sense,” appeared in January, 1776. “These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Paine in the first number of “The Crisis,” a series of essays, which were later incorporated in the “Common Sense” pamphlet. This pamphlet, according to some students, did more to prepare the popular mind for the Declaration of Independence than any other contemporary paper, speech or document.
After the war Paine received public recognition for his work. Pennsylvania gave him $2,500 for his expenses; New Jersey presented him with a small place at Bordentown, and New York granted him a farm, near New Rochelle, which he kept to the day of his death. From 1783 to 1787 Paine spent most of his time in and near Philadelphia, leading the life of a cultivated gentleman of those days. He was General Washington’s guest at Rocky Creek on several occasions. Always interested in science, he invented about this time an iron bridge with a single arch, and in 1787 he sailed for Havre to lay his bridge model before the French Academy of Science.
But while Paine professed to love science, politics was, when all was said and done, his very life. Paris was on the road to revolution when he arrived in Havre, and the inventor of bridges turned enthusiastically from patents to politics. Paine’s life thereafter in both England and France was stormy. In London he entered into political controversy with the scholarly Edmund Burke and was forced to leave the country. In Paris he fared no better than he did in England. Still writing, arguing and taking active part in all public questions, he came under the eye of public officials. As a member of the Assembly that condemned the King of France to death, Paine was a lonely minority.
“My having voted and spoken extensively, more so than any other member, against the execution of the King, had already fixed a mark upon me. Pen and ink were then of no use to me. No good could be done by writing. My heart was in distress at the fate of my friends, and my harp was hung upon the weeping willows.” Paine knew that he was to be arrested.
When he was in daily expectation of being guillotined he wrote the first part of “The Age of Reason,” a work which gave him the reputation of being a foe to Christianity. He finished it only six hours before he was arrested. He spent more than a year in a French prison and during that time wrote, along with poetry and other prose, the second part of his larger work. His book not only called forth many replies from laymen and clergymen in all parts of the world, but caused an attempt to be made to prosecute its publisher. Paine’s bold manner of exposing what he called “the fallacy of long-established opinions on religious subjects” roused the indignation of the whole order of priesthood.
Tom Paine returned to America in 1802, a sick old man. During the succeeding seven years of his life, he worked spasmodically. He died alienated from many of his earlier friends by reason of his sensitiveness to what he termed unjust criticism. And at his death he was hailed as “the Great Commoner of Mankind.”