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| Delmonico's Restaurant - SW Corner Fifth Avenue at 26th Street NYC (1876-1899) (Public Domain - United States) |
...How a man
made his money was no concern of “Del's”; he was welcome so long as his
behavior was correct and the “solid” element raised no objection. Hummel was well-mannered; and even the
stalwarts of the Tenderloin police, unchoosey as to the sources of the incomes
that were much larger than their salaries, took their ease in off hours with
the dudes and the dandies, the Cuban patriots and prima donnas, the lovely women
and lonely old maids who nightly gathered there. Nor was the unction of religion
withheld from the well-fed throng.
A patron of
imperishable benignity was the Reverend Thomas J. Ducey. In addition to
fulfilling parish duties, Father Ducey occuped the position of virtual domestic
chaplain to the Delmonico family. His
mother had been housekeeper for James T. Brady, the celebrated forensic orator
of the mid-century whose name had been all but synonymous with the Chambers
Street Delmonico's. This early association had given Ducey a tenuous connection
with the world of wealth and as a priest he had devoted himself to the
spiritual welfare of that class. Men and women plentifully blessed with the
goods of this earth are surely entitled to the consolations of religion as much
as the poor; indeed, if Holy Writ be trustworthy they may need those
consolations more. To them Father Ducey
extended the blessings of church and ceremonial in the style to which they were
accustomed.
In 1880
Father Ducey was enabled to build his own church - St. Leo's in East Twenty-eighth
Street - mainly with the assistance of two intimate friends Lorenzo and Charles
Delmonico. St. Leo's was a small church
and select; the congregation was drawn from the well-to-do who lived in the
neighborhood. Father Ducey like a London monsignor of the same period was
sometimes lightly termed the “apostle to the genteel”, yet he was as compatible
with the poorest suppliant as with the proudest millionaire. He solicited the
welfare of his flock on weekdays as well as Sundays dined where they dined (at
Delmonico's) and was a constant reminder of their hopes of heaven in the
banquet hall as in the sacristy. The dinner banquet hall sacristy hour was his
vespers, and it was said that the text Father Ducey elucidated with the
profoundest penetration came from the Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter
11, verse 19: “The Son of man came eating and drinking.”
At times the
diocesan authorities wondered about Father Ducey; he was considered erratic;
they certainly looked askance at some of the jokes the good Ducey was inspiring.
Example: “Why is St Leo's like a certain theater on Fourteenth Street? Answer: “Because
it has a tony pastor.”(*)
Father Ducey
pursued what is known as “the even tenor of his ways”- even while winding his
way back to the rectory from Delmonico's - and might have winningly invoked the
sanction of the concluding sentence of the above-cited Scriptural verse: “But
wisdom is justified of her children.”
(*) Tony Pastor
.
